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Modernism and Fascism
Also by Roger Griffin

The Nature of Fascism (1991)

Fascism (in ‘The Oxford Readers Series’, 1995)
International Fascism: Theories, Causes, and the New Consensus (1998)
Fascism: Critical Concepts in Political Science edited with Matthew Feldman (2004)
Modernism and Fascism
The Sense of a Beginning
under Mussolini and Hitler

Roger Griffin
© Roger Griffin 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-8783-9

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication

may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted

save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2007 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Companies and representatives throughout the world

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the

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ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–8784–6 paperback

ISBN 978-1-4039-8784-6 ISBN 978-0-230-59612-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230596122

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from
fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and
manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental
regulations of the country of origin

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
 This ain’t no time for doubting your power
This ain’t no time for hiding your care
You’re climbing down from an ivory tower
You’ve got a stake in the world we ought to share
This is the time of the worlds colliding
This is the time of kingdoms falling
This is the time of the worlds dividing
Time to heed your call
Send your love into the future
Send your precious love into some distant time
And fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing
Send your love into the future
Send your love into the distant dawn

‘Send Your Love’. Words and music by Sting © 2003

Reproduced by permission of
Steerpike (Overseas) Ltd/EMI Music Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0QY
This page intentionally left blank
This book is dedicated to the memory of my mother
And to the future of my son
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Acknowledgements xiv

Introduction: Aufbruch 1
New horizons 1
The quest for a bigger picture 4
Fascism as the offspring of modernism 6
Aufbruch 9

Part One The Sense of a Beginning in Modernism

1 The Paradoxes of ‘Fascist Modernism’ 15
Revolting against the modern world 15
Fascism and modernism: ‘aporia’ or paradox? 18
Strategies for resolving the aporias of fascist modernism 22
Nazism’s convoluted ‘anti-modernism’ 26
A ‘synoptic interpretation’ of fascist modernism? 32
The Babel effect in academia 34
The methodological crisis in the humanities 35
‘Reflexive humanities’ and the itinerary of this book 36
Julius Evola revisited 39

2 Two Modes of Modernism 43

Modernism’s ‘dialogic’ (dire logic?) 43
The malaise of modernity 45
Modernity as ‘decadence’ 49
An ideal type of modernism 54
Nietzsche’s modernist revolt 58
Epiphanic and programmatic modernism 61
The porous membranes of modernisms 64
Exploring the modernism of fascism 66

3 An Archaeology of Modernism 70
The rituals of modernity 70
A ‘primordialist’ theory of modernism 72
The need for a ‘sacred canopy’ 74
x Modernism and Fascism

The erosion of our ‘sheltering sky’ 76

The search for transcendence 78
The terror of Cronus 80
TMT 85
Temporalization revisited 88
The birth of aesthetic modernism 91
Three case studies in cultural modernism 92
The primordial dynamic of modernist movements 96

4 A Primordialist Definition of Modernism 100

The myth of transition 100
The rite of passage 102
The revitalization movement 104
Programmatic modernism revisited 107
Modernity and the liminoid 109
A primordialist definition of modernism 114
Beyond the ‘decay of values’ 117
The search for transcendence in modern art 121
A modernist evaluates modernism 126

5 Social Modernism in Peace and War 1880–1918 130

Past masters 130
Occultist social modernism 132
Modernity’s ‘cultic milieu’ 135
Rightist social modernism 137
Modernist body politics 141
Scientistic ‘narratives of change’ 146
Warning shadows 151
1914: the beginning of a beginning 153

6 The Rise of Political Modernism 1848–1945 160

Creatio ex profundis 160
Homo faber as Promethean modernist 164
Dionysian socialism 167
Marxism as modernism 172
The modernism of organic nationalism 175
Futural reaction 177
Fascism as political modernism 179
The fascist regimes as ‘gardening states’ 183
Political modernism and the Gorgon’s gaze 186
 Contents xi

Part Two Fascism’s Modernist State

7 The Birth of Fascism from Modernism 191
Death in Florence 191
The modernism of the ‘pure act’ 193
The palingenetic climate of post-Risorgimento Italy 195
Italianist modernism 199
The maximalist concept of nationalist modernism 201
The search for a mazeway of one political modernist 204
The political modernism of the first ‘Fascists’ 206
The birth of Fascism as a revitalization movement 210
A confluence of modernisms 213
Fascism as the Rohrschach test of Italian modernism 216

8 The Fascist Regime as a Modernist State 219

Fascism’s ‘challenge to Time’ 219
Fascism’s technocratic modernism 224
The ‘voracious amoeba’ of Fascist culture 227
Cultural modernism under Fascism 233
The modernist dynamic of Fascism’s social transformation 239
The pursuit of a ‘crystalline modernity’ 242
The ‘true face’ of Fascist modernism 245
…and the ‘look’ of Nazism 249

9 Nazism as a Revitalization Movement 250

Joseph: A German destiny 250
Reconnecting forwards 255
Nazism’s alternative modernity 258
Mein Kampf as a modernist manifesto 260
Nazi modernization revisited 265
The Weimar Republic as a ‘stressed’ society 268
The sacralization of politics under Nazism 271
Hitler as a modern propheta 273
Germany’s new beginning 275

10 The Modernism of Nazi culture 279

Graduating from fin-de-siècle Vienna 279
‘In the mind of the Führer’ 281
The modernism of Nazi art 286
Aesthetic modernism under Nazism 289
A modernist classicism 291
xii Modernism and Fascism

The modernism of Nazi music 295

Racially acceptable literature and dance 300
Through the lens of Nazism 304
The ‘destructive creation’ of Nazi modernism 306

11 The Third Reich’s Biopolitical Modernism 310

Nazi Lebensfreude 310
The ‘otherness’ of Nazi modernity 315
Converting to Hitler 319
Nazism’s marriage of technology with Being 321
The Nazi cult of technocratic modernism 324
Planning the Third Reich 327
The modernist racial state 329
The ‘ecology’ of genocide 331

12 Casting Off 336

Ending without closing 336
Maximalizing modernism 338
A footnote on postmodernity 344
Fascism: neither modern nor anti-modern 347
The modernist causality of generic fascism 349
The role of modernism in abortive fascisms 354
A modernist Iron Guard? 356
Modernist intellectuals and fascism 358
Locating fascisms in ‘something larger’ 360
The modernism of humanistic research 362

Postscript: A Different Beginning 365

The greening of Dionysus 365
A different beginning? 367

Appendix: More on Methodology 370

Notes 376
Bibliography 434
Index 461
List of Illustrations

1. Still from Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will (1935) 11

2. Dadaist painting by Julius Evola, 1920 17
3. Elevation of Giuseppe Terragni’s 1936 Casa del Fascio, Como 20
4. Vittorio Morpurgo’s building to house the Ara Pacis, Rome,
1938 21
5. Mussolini opening Morpurgo’s Ara Pacis building in 1938 21
6. Adalberto Libera’s highly modernist house built for
Curzio Malaparte on Capri 23
7. Walter Gropius’ 1933 project for the Reichsbank, Berlin 29
8. Goya, ‘Saturn (Cronus) devouring one of his sons’ (c. 1815) 82
9. Paul Nash, ‘We are making a New World’ (1918) 158
10. ‘Marco Polo Tower’ designed by Vittorio Calza Bini, Naples,
1940 229
11. Mario Palanti’s 1933 entry for the Palazzo del Littorio
competition 230
12. Model of another entry for the Palazzo del Littorio competition 231
13. Meeting room of Giuseppe Terragni’s 1936 Casa del Fascio,
Como 236
14. Model of the projected EUR ’42 exhibition complex, showing
Adalberto Libera’s arch 237
15. Artist’s impression of Libera’s completed arch for the EUR ’42
exhibition 237
16. One of Albert Speer’s ‘Cathedrals of Light’, Berlin, 1937 278
17. Painting by Ulrich Ertl, ‘Mountain of Redemption’ 290
18. Painting by Otto Meister, ‘Mount Olympus in Rain’, 1943 290
19. Maquette of ‘Monument to Work’ by Josef Thorak (unbuilt) 292
20. German forerunner of electronic computer technology, 1941 311
21. A model of the proposed headquarters of the Nazi radio
broadcasting centre planned for Berlin (but never built) 315
22. Artist’s impression of a black hole 341
23. Still of actors portraying Hitler and Speer discussing the plans
for Germania from the German TV docu-drama Speer und Er 353

xiii
Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without the generous period of
sabbatical leave made possible by an AHRC Research Leave award for one
semester combined with a Brookes Research Leave award for two. I hope
the final outcome goes some way towards justifying the trust placed in me
by the various anonymous assessors of my grant applications. I also owe an
enormous debt to several key members of the School of Arts and Humanities
at Oxford Brookes University who gave me moral or practical support to
progress with this project at various points in its long gestation when it was
needed, and to the hundreds of its students who have taken my history courses
over the years who became unwitting guinea-pigs for the interpretations and
theories that culminated in this metanarrative, some of them showing the
sort of spontaneous enthusiasm for my approach to history which is the life-
blood of a teaching career. The process of writing the book and assembling
the illustrations for it over the last 18 months has also revealed the remarkable
generosity and humanity retained by some academics and para-academics
despite the mounting temporal, bureaucratic, and financial stress inflicted on
this particular global community.
So many people have played a role in the genesis or completion of this
project that the list resembles the credits that roll unseen down the screen
as people leave the cinema. To explain the unique contribution of each one
would swell further the dimensions of a tome already full to bursting. I thus
propose simply to list everyone democratically in alphabetical order of their
first name. They all know what they have done for me, in some cases reading
a whole draft, proofreading the entire manuscript, suggesting key books of
which I was oblivious, writing an inspiring article, or simply, in a timely
moment, pointing me in the right direction academically or emotionally in
my own wrestling match with Cronus and modernity. I hope that in their
different ways those who are still with us can all find something in the final
result that makes them pleased to be acknowledged in this understated way:
Alice Demartini, Alfred Schobert, Andreas Umland, Aristotle Kallis, Cassie
Watson, Claudio Fogu, Clotilde D’Amato, Cyprian Blamires, David Baker,
David Luke, David Nash, David Robertson, Detlef Mühlberger, Emilio
Gentile, Francesco Innamorati, George Mosse, Gillian Hooper, Gregory
Maertz, Ian Kershaw, Jeffrey Schnapp, John Perkins, John Stewart, Josephine
Reynolds, Library staff in the Bodleian Library (upper reserve), Karla Poewe,

xiv
 Acknowledgements xv

Marco Demartini, Marco Medicina, Marius Turda, Mark Antliff, Mary

Chamberlain, Matthew Feldman, Michael Golston, Michael Strang, Mitch
Sedgwick, Modris Eksteins, Orietta Rossini, Orietta Panicelli, Paul Hooper,
Paul Jackson, Paul Weindling, Peter Fritzsche, Peter Harbour, Peter Osborne,
Peter Pulzer, Quinto Demartini, Reginald Cave, Richard Evans, Rob Pope,
Robert Murray, Roberto Ventrone, Robin Mowat, Roger Eatwell, Rosalba
Demartini, Samuele Demartini, Siegfried Jäger, Stan Mathews, Stanley
Payne, Steve King, Sue Neale, Susanne Baackmann, Susan McCrae, Tudor
Georgescu, Walter Adamson, Werner Loh, Zygmunt Baumann, and last, but
far from least, Mariella, without whom nothing would have been possible.
This book is about the quest for transcendence under the conditions of
Western modernity, and about the human need to draw from the past to
give meaning to the future. If it is to be dedicated to anyone, then it is to
the person from my past who did most to instil a search for ‘higher’ values
and an appreciation of life’s fragile beauty, Joan Griffin, and to the person in
whom the best of what I have learnt will, I hope, live on in a different way
in the future, Vincent Griffin. On 11 December 2005 while I was writing this
book his precocious grasp of the principles of academic life was illustrated by
the following exchange: Vincent (aged 6, looking at the overflowing shelves
in my study) ‘Did you make all these books?’; Roger Griffin: ‘No, I read them
to write mine’; Vincent: ‘But that’s cheating, Rog.’
Introduction
Aufbruch

‘Then you know your destination’, he asked. ‘Yes’, I said ‘I have

already said so, “Away-From-Here” that is my destination.’ ‘You
have no provisions with you’, he said. ‘I don’t need any’, I said. ‘The
journey is so long that I will die of hunger if I do not get something
along the way. It is, fortunately, a truly immense journey.’
Franz Kafka, Der Aufbruch [A New Beginning] (1922)1

The sense of an ending […] has not diminished, and is as endemic

to what we call modernism as apocalyptic utopianism is to political
revolution.
Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (1966)2

Tomorrow has become today: the feeling that the world is ending
has given way to the sense of a new beginning. The ultimate goal
now stands out unmistakably within the field of vision now opening
up before us, and all faith in miracles is now harnessed to the active
transformation of the present.
Julius Petersen, The Longing for the Third Reich (1934)3

NEW HORIZONS

This book is a sustained attempt to explore the profound kinship that exists
between modernism and fascism. These two concepts are still widely assumed
to be antithetical and oxymoronic when combined in the phrase ‘fascist
modernism’, especially within the context of the regimes led by Mussolini
and Hitler. Nevertheless, the second part of the book will present them as
outstanding examples of the ‘modernist state’. The Leitmotif of the book is
that a key element in the genesis, psychology, ideology, policies, and praxis
of fascism was played by the ‘sense of a beginning’, the mood of standing on
the threshold of a new world. It is a mood of heady expectancy which is the
dialectical twin of the obsession with the closing of an era explored by the

1
2 Modernism and Fascism

English literary historian Frank Kermode in his seminal text on modernism, The
Sense of an Ending, four decades ago. Whereas his focus was the significance of
‘apocalyptic time’ as a central topos of the modernist imagination, the theme
of this book is the way the belief that transcendence can be achieved through
cultural, social, and political transformation leaves its stamp on the ideology,
policies, and practice of Fascism and Nazism.
The germ of the undertaking can be found in a passage written some 15 years
ago in The Nature of Fascism, my bid to offer historians and political scientists
a more useful definition than those currently available for investigating such
issues as the relationship of Italian Fascism to Franco’s Spain, Hitler’s Germany,
the Romanian Iron Guard, or the prospects of fascism’s post-war revival in
old or new forms. In one section I spelled out the implications of seeing in
the rebirth myth (the myth of ‘palingenesis’) not just the key definitional
component of fascism, but the element that in the extreme conditions of
inter-war Europe could endow some variants of nationalism and racism with
extraordinary affective and destructive power. It contains the assertion that,
far from being intrinsically anti-modern, fascism only rejects ‘the allegedly
degenerative elements of the modern age’, and that its ‘thrust towards a new
type of society’ means that ‘it represents an alternative modernism rather than
a rejection of it’.4
In order to unpack this cryptic statement my original plan for a slim volume
on fascist culture surveying ‘successful’ and abortive movements, both inter-war
and post-war (such as Third Positionism and the European New Right), proved
utopian. Instead, it has been necessary to devote considerable attention to re-
conceptualizing ‘modernism’ (Part One), and to limit my detailed application
of the resulting ideal type to the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler (Part Two),
chosen both because of profound differences in their conception of the new
national culture, and because they alone offer case studies not only in fascism’s
utopian aspirations as a revolutionary project but its praxis as a regime. The
aim is to cast fresh light not just on fascism, but on the nature of modernity and
modernism as well, thereby providing the basis for future work, particularly
by other specialists whose work impinges on some of the many aspects of this
vast topic which have been necessarily omitted or neglected here.
Incongruously enough, a ‘kitsch’ image flitted through my mind on the
day when after months of planning, grant applications, and draft proposals I
finally embarked on ‘realizing’ this venture through the magic lantern of the
computer screen. It was that of Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet perched
precariously on the prow of the Titanic. They stand atop a structure as tall as
a skyscraper, with a powerful breeze ruffling their hair, both enraptured by the
dizzy sensation of ploughing a thin white line through the grey-blue vastness
of the Atlantic. We are encouraged to feel that with every fibre of their being
 Introduction 3

they feel they are living at the cutting edge of time and space, surrendering
themselves to the part metaphysical, part erotic sensation of imbibing with
each gulp of air a foretaste of unlimited freedom and possibility, of becoming
the master and mistress of their communal destiny.
The lovers-to-be are standing on the threshold of an unimaginable New
Time, racing headlong towards the New World, an America more utopian
myth than geographical reality. The poignancy of the scene, underscored by the
tear-jerking Irish love-song that accompanied the closing credits, derives from
the tragic-ironic gap between the exhilarating but drastically foreshortened
‘field-of-vision’ available to the young pair, and the spectator’s knowledge
that a horrendous fate awaits them just over the horizon. Yet there are other
ways of interpreting this event.
When the actual ship went down on the 15 April 1912 it was a knee-jerk
response for some evangelical Christians to interpret the disaster as a sign
of the hubris of modern man, and some contemporary artists instinctively
endowed it with more free-floating apocalyptic significance. Even a century on
it is still tempting to see the sinking as presaging the imminent fate of Western
civilization as a whole as it speeds on its maiden voyage headlong into two
decades of catastrophic wars, dictatorships, and mass killing which so cruelly
exposed the myth of unlimited progress on which liberal-capitalist-imperialist
civilization was being built in the belle époque.5 Doubtless, still more cosmic
layers of symbolism contribute to the perennial fascination emanating from
the ocean liner’s fate. In the present context, though, the fact that my psyche
plucked this scene from a film which so unashamedly transmutes a historical
disaster into Hollywood melodrama suggests two alternative readings, both
of which have an immediate bearing on the following 12 chapters.
One might be the subliminal acknowledgement that setting out to rethink the
relationship between modernism and fascism is a ‘high risk venture’, not least
because it involves constructing what once was a standard product of academic
research but which is now regarded with considerable suspicion, namely a
‘master narrative’ of a vast and an intrinsically multivalent topic. I will return
to this aspect of the book shortly. More importantly, the ecstatic moment on
the prow of the Titanic can be seen as a tableau vivant for a particular way that
human beings can experience time ‘mythically’ as pregnant with exhilarating
potential for renewal and purification. Apart from my own sense of ‘setting
sail’ which informed the composition of this preface, an important subtext of
this study is the catastrophic impact on modern history that such an experience
of time can have once translated from the realm of personal relationships and
poetry into political and social aspirations to build a new society at all costs.
It is this mood that helped convince the revolutionaries of the French National
Assembly they were not just changing the political and social regime in France,
4 Modernism and Fascism

but regenerating history, creating a new type of ‘man’, and starting time anew.6
It is the state of mind that seduced Friedrich Nietzsche into believing his
books were intellectual ‘dynamite’, blowing a hole in the oppressive rock walls
trapping his contemporaries in the existing phase of cultural evolution, and
thus opening up a portal into an entirely new kind of human history based
on a ‘transvaluation of all values’.7 It is a moment of higher consciousness
captured in the Futurist Manifesto, when Filippo Marinetti, a decade before
becoming a member of the first Fascio, claimed to be ‘standing on the last
promontory of the centuries’ and announced the death of ‘Time and Space’.
Indeed, one of the poetic symbols which he offers for the new consciousness
was ‘adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon’.8
It will be argued in this book that – at least for its most committed, idealistic
activists – fascism in the inter-war period was the vehicle for realizing the heady
sense, not of impotently watching history unfold, but of actually ‘making
history’ before a new horizon and a new sky. It meant breaking out of the
ensnarement of words and thoughts into deeds, and using the power of human
creativity not to produce art for its own sake, but to create a new culture in a
total act of creation, of poesis. Fascism for its most ardent believers promised
to be literally epoch-making.
In the event, the two movements that managed to place themselves at the
helm of political power catastrophically failed to achieve the permanent trans-
formation of society they craved, let alone bring about a sea-change in History
itself. Mussolini’s Third Rome lasted only two decades compared with the 500
years of the Roman Empire, while the Reich that Hitler intended to last for a
whole millennium lay in ruins after a mere 12 years. The Axis they formed led
directly or indirectly to the deaths of millions, eventually leaving their nations
in the rubble of broken promises and shattered dreams. Yet their ambitions,
failures, and crimes against humanity remain unintelligible if due weight is not
given to the role played in mobilizing their troops, both military and civilian,
by consciously inducing a revolutionary experience of standing on the edge
of history and proactively changing its course, freed from the constraints of
‘normal’ time and ‘conventional’ morality.

THE QUEST FOR A ‘BIGGER PICTURE’

As the allusions to Nietzsche and Marinetti imply, the premise of this enquiry
is that the ‘visions of the world’ (Weltanschauung, or visione del mondo)
which conditioned the policies of the two very different fascist dictatorships
established in inter-war Europe were both deeply bound up with intellectual and
artistic modernism, but in ways that defy simplistic equations or reductionist
formulae. Despite over half a century of sustained academic effort and
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 “I’ll manage to get you a position by the day, and your grandson
Alessio too, never fear,” said Goosefoot to Padron ’Ntoni; “but you
mustn’t expect high wages, you know! ‘Strength of youth and
wisdom of age.’ For my assistance in the bargaining I trust to your
good-will.”
“In time of famine one eats barley bread,” answered Padron
’Ntoni. “Necessity has no nobility.”
“That’s right, that’s right! I understand,” replied Goosefoot, and
away he went, in good earnest, to speak to Padron Cipolla at the
drug-store, where Don Silvestro had at last succeeded in enticing
him, as well as Master Filippo and a few other bigwigs, to talk over
the affairs of the Commune—for after all, the money was theirs, and
it is silly not to take one’s proper place in the government when one
is rich and pays more taxes than all the rest put together.
“You, who are rich, can afford a bit of bread to that poor old
Padron ’Ntoni,” suggested Goosefoot. “It will cost you nothing to
take him on by the day, him and his grandson Alessio. You know that
he understands his business better than any one else in the place,
and he will be content with little, for they are absolutely without
bread. It is an affair worth gold to you, Padron Fortunato; it is
indeed.”
Padron Fortunato, caught as he was just at that propitious
moment, could not refuse; but after higgling and screwing over the
price—for, now that the times were so bad, he really hadn’t work for
any more men—he at last made a great favor of taking on Padron
’Ntoni.
“Yes, I’ll take him if he’ll come and speak to me himself. Will you
believe that they are out of temper because I broke off my son’s
marriage with Mena? A fine thing I should have made of it! And to
be angry about it! What could I do?”
Don Silvestro, Master Filippo, Goosefoot himself—all of them, in
fact—hastened to say that Padron Fortunato was quite right.
 Mena, meanwhile, did not even put her nose at the window, for it
was not seemly to do so now that her mother was dead and she had
a black kerchief on her head; and, besides, she had to look after the
little one and to be a mother to her, and she had no one to help her
in the housework, so that she had to go to the tank to wash and to
the fountain, and to take the men their luncheon when they were at
work on land; so that she was not Sant’Agata any longer, as in the
days when no one ever saw her and she was all day long at the
loom. In these days she had but little time for the loom. Don
Michele, since the day when the Zuppidda had given him such a
talking to from her terrace, and had threatened to put out his eyes
with her distaff, never failed to pass by the black street; and
sometimes he passed two or three times a day, looking after
Barbara, because he wasn’t going to have people say that he was
afraid of the Zuppidda or of her distaff; and when he passed the
house where the Malavoglia lived he slackened his pace, and looked
in to see the pretty girls who were growing up at the Malavoglia’s.
In the evening, when the men came back from sea, they found
everything ready for them: the pot boiling on the fire, the cloth
ready on the table—that table that was so large for them, now that
they were so few, that they felt lost at it. They shut the door and ate
their supper in peace; then they sat down on the door-step to rest
after the fatigues of the day. At all events, they had enough for the
day’s needs, and were not obliged to touch the money that was
accumulating for the house. Pa-dron ’Ntoni had always that house in
his mind, with its closed windows and the medlar-tree rising above
the wall. Maruzza had not been able to die in that house, nor
perhaps should he die there; but the money was beginning to grow
again, and his boys at least would go back there some day or other,
now that Alessio was growing into a man, and was a good boy, and
one of the true Malavoglia stamp. When they had bought back the
house, and married the girls, if they might get a boat again they
would have nothing more to wish for, and Padron ’Ntoni might close
his eyes in peace.
 Nunziata and Anna, their cousin, came to sit on the stones with
them in the evenings to talk over old times, for they, too, were left
lonely and desolate, so that they seemed like one family. Nun-ziata
felt as if she were at home in the house, and came with her brood
running after her, like a hen with her chickens. Alessio, sitting down
by her, would say, “Did you finish your linen?” or “Are you going on
Monday to Master Filippo to help with the vintage? Now that the
olive harvest is coming you’ll always find a day’s work somewhere,
even when you haven’t any washing to do; and you can take your
brother, too; they’ll give him two soldi a day.” Nunziata talked to him
gravely, and asked his advice with regard to her plans, and they
talked apart together, as if they had already been a gray-haired old
couple.
“They have grown wise in their youth because they have had so
much trouble,” said Padron ’Ntoni. “Wisdom comes of suffering.”
Alessio, with his arms round his knees like his grandfather, asked
Nunziata, “Will you have me for a husband when I grow up?”
“Plenty of time yet to think about that,” replied she.
“Yes, there’s time, but one must begin to think about it now, so
that one may settle what is to be done. First, of course, we must
marry Mena, and Lia when she is grown up. Lia wants to be dressed
like a woman now, and you have your boys to find places for. We
must buy a boat first; the boat will help us to buy the house.
Grandfather wants to buy back the house by the medlar, and I
should like that best, too, for I know my way all about it, even in the
dark, without running against anything; and the court is large, so
that there’s plenty of room for the tackle; and in two minutes one is
at the sea. Then, when my sisters are married, grandfather can stay
with us, and we’ll put him in the big room that opens on the court,
where the sun comes in; so, when he isn’t able to go to sea any
longer, poor old man! he can sit by the door in the court, and in the
summer the medlar-tree will make a shade for him. We’ll take the
room on the garden. You’ll like that? The kitchen is close by, so you’ll
have everything under your hand, won’t you? When my brother
’Ntoni comes back we’ll give him that room, and we’ll take the one
up-stairs; there are only the steps to climb to reach the kitchen and
the garden.”
“In the kitchen there must be a new hearth,” said Nunziata. “The
last time we cooked anything there, when poor Cousin Maruzza was
too unhappy to do it herself, we had to prop up the pot with stones.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Alessio, sitting with his chin in his hands,
and nodding gravely, with wide dreamy eyes as if he saw Nunziata at
the fire and his poor mother weeping beside the bed.
“And you, too,” said he, “can find your way in the dark about the
house by the medlar, you have been there so often. Mamma always
said you were a good girl.”
“Now they have sown onions in the garden, and they’re grown as
big as oranges.”
“Do you like onions?”
“I must; I have no choice. They help the bread down, and they
are cheap. When we haven’t money enough to buy macaroni we
always eat them—I and my little ones.”
“For that they sell so well. Uncle Crucifix doesn’t care about
planting cabbages or lettuce at the house by the medlar, because he
has them at his own house, and so he puts nothing there but
onions. But we’ll plant broccoli and cauliflower. Won’t they be good,
eh?”
The girl, with her arms across her knees, curled upon the
threshold, looked out with dreaming eyes, as well as the boy; then
after a while she began to sing, and Alessio listened with all his ears.
At last she said, “There’s plenty of time yet.”
“Yes,” assented Alessio; “first we must marry Mena and Lia, and
we must find places for the boys, but we must begin to talk it over
now.”
 “When Nunziata sings,” said Mena, coming to the door, “it is a sign
that it will be fair weather, and we can go to-morrow to wash.”
Cousin Anna was in the same mind, for her field and vineyard was
the washing-tank, and her feast-days were those on which she had
her hands full of clothes to be washed; all the more now that her
son Rocco was feasting himself every day, after his fashion, at the
tavern, trying to drown his regret for the Mangiacarubbe, who had
thrown him over for Brasi Cipolla, like a coquette as she was.
“‘It’s a long lane that has no turning,’” said Padron ’Ntoni.
“Perhaps this may bring your son Rocco to his senses. And it will be
good for my ’Ntoni, too, to be away from home for a while; for when
he comes back, and is tired of wandering about the world,
everything will seem as it should be, and he will not complain any
more. And if we succeed in once more putting our own boat at sea—
and it’s putting our own beds in the old places that we know so well
—you will see what pleasant times we shall have resting on the
door-steps there, when we are tired after our day’s work, when the
day has been a good one. And how bright the light will look in that
room where you have seen it so often, and have known all the faces
that were dearest to you on earth! But now so many are gone, and
never have come back, that it seems as if the room would be always
dark, and the door shut, as if those who are gone had taken the key
with them forever. ’Ntoni should not have gone away,” added the old
man, after a long silence. “He knew that I was old, and that when I
am gone the children will have no one left.”
“If we buy the house by the medlar while he is gone,” said Mena,
“he won’t know it, and will come here to find us.”
Padron ’Ntoni shook his head sadly. “But there’s time enough yet,”
he said at last, like Nun-ziata; and Cousin Anna added, “If ’Ntoni
comes back rich he can buy the house.”
Padron ’Ntoni answered nothing, but the whole place knew that
’Ntoni would come back rich, now he had been gone so long in
search of fortune; and many envied him already, and wanted to go
in search of fortune too, like him. In fact they were not far wrong.
They would only leave a few women to fret after them, and the only
ones who hadn’t the heart to leave their women were that stupid
son of La Locca, whose mother was what everybody knew she was,
and Rocco Spatu, whose soul was at the tavern. Fortunately for the
women, Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni was suddenly discovered to have
come back, by night, in a bark from Catania, ashamed to show
himself, as he had no shoes. If it were true that he had come back
rich he had nowhere to put his money, for his clothes were all rags
and tatters. But his family received him as affectionately as if he had
come back loaded with gold. His sisters hung round his neck, crying
and laughing for joy, and ’Ntoni did not know Lia again, so tall she
was, and they all said to him, “Now you won’t leave us again, will
you?”
The grandfather blew his nose and growled, “Now I can die in
peace—now that these children will not be left alone in the world.”
But for a whole week ’Ntoni never showed himself in the street.
Every one laughed when they saw him, and Goosefoot went about
saying, “Have you seen the grand fortune that Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni
has brought home?” And those who had not been in such a terrible
hurry to make up their bundles of shirts and stockings, to leave their
homes like a lot of fools, could not contain themselves for laughing.
Whoever goes in search of fortune and does not find it is a fool.
Everybody knows that. Don Silvestro, Uncle Crucifix, Padron Cipolla,
Master Filippo, were not fools, and everybody did their best to
please them, because poor people always stand with their mouths
open staring at the rich and fortunate, and work for them like Cousin
Mosca’s ass, instead of kicking the cart to pieces and running off to
roll on the grass with heels in the air.
The druggist was quite right when he said that it was high time to
kick the world to pieces and make it over again. And he himself, with
his big beard and his fine talk about making the world over again,
was one of those who had known how to make a fortune, and to
hold on to it too, and he had nothing to do but to stand at his door
and chat with this one and that one; for when he had done
pounding that little bit of dirty water in his mortar his work was
finished for the day. That fine trade he had learned of his father—to
make money out of the water in the cistern. But ’Ntoni’s grandfather
had taught him a trade which was nothing but breaking one’s arms
and one’s back all day long, and risking one’s life, and dying of
hunger, and never having, a day to one’s self when one could lie on
the grass in the sun, as even Mosca’s ass could sometimes do; a real
thieves’ trade, that wore one’s soul out, by Our Lady! And he for one
was tired of it, and would rather be like Rocco Spatu, who at least
didn’t work. And for that matter he cared nothing for Barbara, nor
Sara, nor any other girl in the world. They care for nothing but
fishing for husbands to work worse than dogs to give them their
living, and buy silk handkerchiefs for them to wear when they stand
at their doors of a Sunday with their hands on their full stomachs.
He’d rather stand there himself, Sunday and Monday too, and all the
other days in the week, since there was no good in working all the
time for nothing. So ’Ntoni had learned to spout as well as the
druggist—that much at least he had brought back from abroad—for
now his eyes were open like a kitten’s when it is nine days old. “The
hen that goes in the street comes home with a full crop.” If he
hadn’t filled his crop with anything else, he had filled it with wisdom,
and he went about telling all he had learned in the piazza in Pizzuti’s
shop, and also at Santuzza’s tavern. Now he went openly to the
tavern, for after all he was grown up, and his grandfather wasn’t
likely to come there after him and pull his ears, and he should know
very well what to say to anybody who tried to hinder him from going
there after the little pleasure that there was to be had.
His grandfather, poor man, instead of pulling his ears, tried to
touch his feelings. “See,” he said, “now you have come, we shall
soon be able to manage to get back the house.” Always that same
old song about the house. “Uncle Crucifix has promised not to sell it
to any one else. Your mother, poor dear, was not able to die there.
We can get the dowry for Mena on the house. Then, with God’s help,
we can set up another boat; because, I must tell you, that at my age
it is hard to go out by the day, and obey other people, when one has
been used to command. You were also born of masters. Would you
rather that we should buy the boat first with the money, instead of
the house? Now you are grown up, and can have your choice,
because you have seen more of the world, and should be wiser than
I am now I am old. What would you rather do?”
He would rather do nothing, that’s what he would rather do. What
did he care about the boat or the house? Then there would come
another bad year, another cholera, some other misfortune, and eat
up the boat and the house, and they would have to begin all over
again, like the ants. A fine thing! And when they had got the boat
and the house, could they leave off working, or could they eat meat
and macaroni every day? While instead, down there where he had
been, there were people that went about in carriages everyday;
that’s what they did. People beside whom Don Franco and the town-
clerk were themselves no better than beasts of burden, working, as
they did, all day long, spoiling paper and beating dirty water in a
mortar. At least he wanted to know why there should be people in
the world who had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves, and were
born with silver spoons in their mouths, and others who had
nothing, and must drag a cart with their teeth all their lives. Besides
which, that idea of going out by the day was not at all to his taste;
he was born a master—his grandfather had said so himself. He to be
ordered about by a lot of people who had risen from nothing, who,
as everybody in the place knew, had put their money together soldo
after soldo, sweating and struggling! He had gone out by the day
only because his grandfather took him, and he hadn’t strength of
mind to refuse. But when the overseer stood over him like a dog,
and called out from the stern, “Now, then, boy, what are you at?” he
felt tempted to hit him over the head with the oar, and he preferred
to weave baskets or to mend nets, sitting on the beach, with his
back against a stone, for then if he folded his arms for a minute
nobody called out at him.
Thither came also Rocco Spatu to yawn and stretch his arms, and
Vanni Pizzuti, between one customer and another, in his idle
moments; and Goosefoot came there too, for his business was to
mix himself up with every conversation that he could find in search
of bargaining; * and they talked of all that happened in the place.
* Senserie—a sort of very small brokerage, upon which a tiny
percentage is paid.
From one thing to another they got talking of Uncle Crucifix, who
had, they said, lost more than thirty scudi, through people that had
died of the cholera and had left pledges in his hands. Now, Dumb-
bell, not knowing what to do with all these ear-rings and finger-rings
that had remained on his hands, had made up his mind to marry
Vespa; the thing was certain, they had been seen to go together to
write themselves up at the Municipality, in Don Silvestro’s presence.
“It is not true that he is marrying on account of the jewellery,” said
Goosefoot, who was in a position to know; “the things are of gold or
of silver, and he could go and sell them by weight in the city; he
would have got back a good percentage on the money he had lent
on them. He marries Vespa because she took him to the Municipality
to show him the paper that she had had drawn up, ready to be
signed before the notary, with Cousin Spatu here, now that the
Mangiacarubbe has dropped him for Brasi Cipolla. Excuse me. Eh,
Cousin Rocco?”
“Oh, I don’t mind, Cousin Tino,” answered Rocco Spatu. “It is
nothing to me; for whoever trusts to one of those false cats of
womankind is worse than a pig. I don’t want any sweetheart except
Santuzza, who lets me have my wine on credit when I like, and she
is worth two of the Mangiacarubbe any day of the week. A good
handful, eh, Cousin Tino?”
“Pretty hostess, heavy bill,” said Pizzuti, spitting in the sand.
“They all look out for husbands to work for them,” added ’Ntoni.
“They’re all alike.”
“And,” continued Goosefoot, “Uncle Crucifix ran off panting to the
notary, with his heart in his mouth. So he had to take the Wasp after
all.”
 Here the apothecary, who had come down to the beach to smoke
his pipe, joined in the conversation, and went on pounding in his
usual way upon his usual theme that the world ought to be put in a
mortar and pounded to pieces, and made all over again. But this
time he really might as well have pounded dirty water in his mortar,
for not one of them understood a word he said, unless, perhaps, it
were ’Ntoni. He at least had seen the world, and opened his eyes,
like the kittens; when he was a soldier they had taught him to read,
and for that reason he, too, went to the drug-shop door and listened
when the newspaper was read, and stayed to talk with the druggist,
who was a good-natured fellow, and did not give himself airs like his
wife, who kept calling out to him, “Why will you mix yourself up with
what doesn’t concern you?”
“One must let the women talk, and manage things quietly,” said
Don Franco, as soon as his wife was safe up-stairs. He didn’t mind
taking counsel even with those who went barefoot, provided they
didn’t put their feet on the chairs, and explained to them word for
word all that there was printed in the newspaper, following it with
his finger, telling them that the world ought to go, as it was written
down there.
 XIII.

P
adron ’Ntoni, when his grandson came home to him drunk in
the evening, did his best to get him off to bed without letting
him be seen by the others, because such a thing had never
been known among the Malavoglia, and old as he was, it brought
the tears to his eyes. When he got up by night to call Alessio to go
out to sea, he let the other one sleep; for that matter, he wouldn’t
have been of any use if he had gone. At first ’Ntoni was ashamed of
himself, and went down to the landing to meet them with bent head.
But little by little he grew hardened, and said to himself, “So I shall
have another Sunday to-morrow, too!”
The poor old man did everything he could think of to touch his
heart, and even went so far as to take a shirt of his to Don
Giammaria to be exorcised, which cost him thirty centimes.
“See,” he said to ’Ntoni, “such things were never known among
the Malavoglia! If you take the downward road, like Rocco Spatu,
your brother and your sister will go after you. ‘One black sheep
spoils the flock.’ And those few pence which we have put together
with such pains will all go again—‘for one fisherman the boat was
lost ‘—and what shall we do then?”
’Ntoni stood with his head down, or growled something between
his teeth; but the next day it was the same thing over again; and
once he said:
“At least if I lose my head, I forget my misery.”
“What do you mean by misery? You are young, you are healthy,
you understand your business; what do you want more? I am old,
your brother is but a boy, but we have pulled ourselves out of the
ditch. Now, if you would help us we might become once more what
we were in other days; not happy as we were then, for the dead
cannot return to us, but without other troubles; and we should be
together, ‘like the fingers of a hand,’ and should have bread to eat. If
I close my eyes once for all, what is to become of you? See, now I
tremble every time we put out to sea, lest I should never come
back. And I am old!”
When his grandfather succeeded in touching his heart ’Ntoni
would begin to cry. His brother and sisters, who knew all, would run
away and shut themselves up, almost as if he were a stranger, or as
if they were afraid of him; and his grandfather, with his rosary in his
hand, muttered, “O blessed soul of Bastianazzo! O soul of my
daughter-in-law Maruzza! pray that a miracle may be worked for us.”
When Mena saw him coming, with pale face and shining eyes, she
met him, saying, “Come this way; grandfather is in there!” and
brought him in through the little door of the kitchen; then sat down
and cried quietly by the hearth; so that at last one evening ’Ntoni
said, “I won’t go to the tavern again, no, not if they kill me!” and
went back to his work with all his former good-will; nay, he even got
up earlier than the rest, and went down to the beach to wait for
them while it wanted still two hours to day; the Three Kings were
shining over the church-tower, and the crickets could be heard
trilling in the vineyards as if they had been close by. The grandpapa
could not contain himself for joy; he went on all the time talking to
him, to show how pleased he was, and said to himself, “It is the
blessed souls of his father and his mother that have worked this
miracle.”
The miracle lasted all the week, and when Sunday came ’Ntoni
wouldn’t even go into the piazza, lest he should see the tavern even
from a distance, or meet his friends, who might call him. But he
dislocated his jaws yawning all that long day, when there was
nothing to be done. He wasn’t a child, to go about among the
bushes on the down, singing, like Nunziata and his brother Alessio;
or a girl, to sweep the house, like Mena; nor was he an old man, to
spend the day mending broken barrels or baskets, like his
grandfather. He sat by the door in the little street, where not even a
hen passed by the door, and listened to the voices and the laughter
at the tavern. He went to bed early to pass the time, and got up on
Monday morning sulky as ever. His grandfather said to him, “It
would be better for you if Sunday never came, for the day after you
are just as if you were sick.” That was what would be best for him—
that there should not even be Sunday to rest in; and his heart sank
to think that every day should be like Monday. So that when he
came back from the fishing in the evening, he would not even go to
bed, but went about here and there bemoaning his hard fate, and
ended by going back to the tavern. At first when he used to come
home uncertain of his footing, he slipped in quietly, and stammered
excuses, or went silently to bed; but now he was noisy, and disputed
with his sister, who met him at the door with a pale face and red
eyes, and told him to come in by the back way, for that grandfather
was there.
“I don’t care,” he replied. The next day he got up looking
wretchedly ill, and in a very bad humor, and took to scolding and
swearing all day long.
Once there was a very sad scene. His grandfather, not knowing
what to do to touch his heart, drew him into the corner of the little
room, with the doors shut that the neighbors might not hear, and
said to him, crying like a child, the poor old man! “Oh, ’Ntoni, don’t
you remember that here your mother died? Why should you disgrace
your mother, turning out as badly as Rocco Spatu? Don’t you see
how poor Cousin Anna works all the time for that big drunkard of a
son of hers, and how she weeps at times because she has not bread
to give to her other children, and has no longer the heart to laugh?
‘Who goes with wolves turns wolf,’ and ‘who goes with cripples one
year goes lame the next.’ Don’t you remember that night of the
cholera that we were all gathered around that bed, and she confided
the children to your care?”
’Ntoni cried like a weaned calf, and said he wished he could die,
too; but afterwards he went back—slowly, indeed, and as if
unwillingly, but still he did go back—to the tavern, and at night,
instead of coming home, he wandered about the streets, and leaned
against the walls, half dead with fatigue, with Rocco Spatu and
Cinghialenta; or he sang and shouted with them, to drive away his
melancholy.
At last poor old Padron ’Ntoni got so that he was ashamed to
show himself in the street. His grandson, instead, to get rid of his
sermons, came home looking so black that nobody felt inclined to
speak to him. As if he didn’t preach plenty of sermons to himself;
but it was all the fault of his fate that he had been born in such a
state of life. And he went off to the druggist, or to whoever else
would listen to him, to exhaust himself in speeches about the
injustice of everything that there was in this world; that if a poor
fellow went to Santuzza’s to drink and forget his troubles, he was
called a drunkard; while those who drank their own wine at home
had no troubles, nor any one to reprove them or hunt them off to
work, but were rich enough for two, and did not need to work, while
we were all the sons of God, and everybody ought to share and
share alike.
“That fellow has talent,” said the druggist to Don Silvestro or
Padron Cipolla or to anybody else whom he could find. “He sees
things in the lump, but an idea he has. It isn’t his fault if he doesn’t
express himself properly, but that of the Government, that leaves
him in ignorance.” For his instruction he lent him the Secolo (the
Age) and the Gazette of Catania.
But ’Ntoni very soon got tired of reading; first, because it was
troublesome, and because while he was a soldier they had made him
learn to read by force; but now he was at liberty to do as he liked,
and, besides, he had forgotten a good deal of it, and how the words
came one after another in printing. And all that talk in print didn’t
put a penny in his pocket. What did it matter to him? Don Franco
explained to him how it mattered to him; and when Don Michele
passed across the piazza he shook his head at him, winking, and
pointed out to him how he came after Donna Rosolina as well as
others, for Donna Rosolina had money, and gave it to people to get
herself married.
 “First we must clear away all these fellows in uniform. We must
make a revolution, that’s what we must do.”
“And what will you give me to make the revolution?”
Don Franco shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his mortar,
for talking to such people as that was just beating water with a
pestle, neither more nor less, he said.
But Goosefoot said, as soon as ’Ntoni’s back was turned, “He
ought to get rid of Don Michele, for another reason—he’s after his
sister; but ’Ntoni is worse than a pig now that Santuzza has taken to
keeping him.” Goosefoot felt Don Michele to be a weight on his mind
since that active official had taken to looking askance at Rocco Spatu
and Cinghialenta and himself whenever he saw them together; for
that he wanted to get rid of him.
Those poor Malavoglia had come to such a pass that they were
the talk of the place, on account of their brother. Now, everybody
knew that Don Michele often walked up and down the black street to
spite the Zuppidda, who was always mounting guard over her girl,
with her distaff in her hand. And Don Michele, not to lose time, had
taken to looking at Lia, who had now become a very pretty girl and
had no one to look after her except her sister, who would say to her,
“Come, Lia, let us go in; it is not nice for us to stand at the door now
we are orphans.”
But Lia was vain, worse than her brother ’Ntoni, and she liked to
stand at the door, that people might see her pretty flowered kerchief,
and have people say to her, “How pretty you look in that kerchief,
Cousin Lia!” while Don Michele devoured her with his eyes Poor
Mena, while she stood at the door waiting for her drunken brother to
come home, felt so humbled and abased that she wanted the energy
to order her sister to come in because Don Michele passed by, and
Lia said:
“Are you afraid he will eat me? Nobody wants any of us now that
we have got nothing left. Look at my brother, even the dogs will
have nothing to say to him!”
 If ’Ntoni had a spark of courage, said Goosefoot, he would get rid
of that Don Michele. But ’Ntoni had another reason for wishing to
get rid of Don Michele. Santuzza, after having quarrelled with Don
Michele, had taken a fancy to ’Ntoni Malavoglia for that fashion he
had of wearing his cap, and of swaggering a little when he walked,
that he had learned when he was a soldier, and used to hide for him
behind the counter the remains of the customers’ dinners, and to fill
his glass as well now and then on the sly. In this way she kept him
about the tavern, as fat and as sleek as the butcher’s dog. ’Ntoni
meantime discharged himself, to a certain extent, of his obligation to
her by taking her part, sometimes even to the extent of thumps,
with those unpleasant people who chose to find fault with their bills,
and to scold and swear about the place for ever so long before they
would consent to pay them. With those who were friends with the
hostess, on the contrary, he was chatty and pleasant, and kept an
eye on the counter, too, while Santuzza went to confession; so that
every one there liked him and treated him as if he were at home. All
but Uncle Santoro, who looked askance at him, and muttered,
between one Ave Maria and another, against him, and how he lived
upon his girl like a canon, without lifting a finger; Santuzza replying
that she was the mistress, and if it were her pleasure to keep ’Ntoni
Malavoglia for herself as fat as a canon, she should do it; she had no
need of anybody.
“Yes, yes,” growled Uncle Santoro, when he could get her for a
minute by herself. “You always need Don Michele! Master Filippo has
told me time and again that he means to have done with it, that he
won’t keep the wine in the cellar any longer, and we must get it into
the place contraband.”
“Don Filippo must attend to his own affairs. But I tell you once for
all, that if I have to pay the duty twice over, I won’t have Don
Michele here again. I won’t, I won’t!”
She could not forgive Don Michele the ugly trick he had played her
with the Zuppidda, after all that time that he had lived like a
fighting-cock at the tavern for love of his uniform; and ’Ntoni
Malavoglia, with no uniform at all, was worth ten of Don Michele;
whatever she gave to him she gave with all her heart. In this way
’Ntoni earned his living, and when his grandfather reproved him for
doing nothing, or his sister looked gravely at him with her large
melancholy eyes, he would reply:
“And do I ask you for anything? I don’t spend any money out of
the house, and I earn my own bread.”
“It would be better that you should die of hunger,” said his
grandfather, “and that we all fell dead on the spot.”
At last they spoke no more to each other, turning their backs as
they sat. Padron ’Ntoni was driven to silence sooner than quarrel
with his grandson, and ’Ntoni, tired of being preached to, left them
there whining, and went off to Rocco Spatu and Cousin Vanni, who
at least were jolly? and could find every day some new trick to play
off on somebody. They found one, one day, which was to serenade
Uncle Crucifix the night of his marriage with his niece Vespa, and
they brought under his windows all the crew, to whom Uncle Crucifix
would no longer lend a penny, with broken pots and bottles, sheep’s
bells, and whistles of cane, making the devil’s own row until
midnight; so that Vespa got up the next morning rather greener than
usual, and railed at that hussy of a Santuzza, in whose tavern all
that noisy raff had got up that nasty trick; and it was all out of
jealousy she had done it, because she couldn’t get married herself
as Vespa had.
Everybody laughed at Uncle Crucifix when he appeared in the
piazza in his new clothes, yellow as a corpse, and half frightened out
of his wits at Vespa and the money she had made him spend for his
new clothes. Vespa was always spending and spilling, and if he had
left her alone would have emptied his money-bags in a fortnight;
and she said that now she was mistress, so that there was the devil
to pay between them every day. His wife planted her nails in his
face, and screamed that she was going to keep the keys herself;
that she didn’t see why she should want a bit of bread or a new
kerchief worse than she did before; and if she had known what was
to come of her marriage, with such a husband, too! she would have
kept her fields and her medal of the Daughters of Mary. And he
screamed, too, that he was ruined; that he was no longer master in
his own house; that now he had the cholera in his house in good
earnest; that they wanted to kill him before his time, to waste the
money that he had spent his life in putting together! He, too, if he
had known how it would be, would have seen them both at the
devil, his wife and her fields, first; that he didn’t need a wife, and
they had frightened him into taking Vespa, telling him that Brasi
Cipolla was going to run off with her and her fields. Cursed be her
fields!
Just at this point it came out that Brasi Cipolla had allowed himself
to be taken possession of by the Mangiacarubbe, like a great stupid
lout as he was; and Padron Fortunato was always hunting for them
up and down on the heath, in the ravine, under the bridge,
everywhere, foaming at the mouth, and swearing that if he caught
them he would kick them as long as he could stand, and would
wring his son’s ears off for him. Uncle Crucifix, at this, became quite
desperate, and said that the Mangiacarubbe had ruined him by not
running off with Brasi a week sooner. “This is the will of God!” he
said, beating his breast. “The will of God is that I should have taken
this Wasp to expiate my sins.” And his sins must have been heavy,
for the Wasp poisoned the bread in his mouth, and made him suffer
the pains of purgatory both by day and by night.
The neighbors never came near the Malavoglia now, any more
than if the cholera were still in the house; but left her alone, with
her sister in her flowered kerchief, or with Nunziata and her cousin
Anna, when they had the charity to come and chat with her a bit. As
for Anna, she was as badly off as they were with her drunkard of a
son, and now everybody knew all about it; and Nunziata, too, who
had been so little when that scamp of a father of hers had deserted
her and gone elsewhere to seek his fortune. The poor things felt for
each other, for that very reason, when they talked together, in low
tones, with bent heads and hands folded under their aprons, and
also when they were silent, each absorbed in her own pain.
 “When people are as badly off as we are,” said Lia, speaking like a
grown-up woman, “every one must take care of one’s self, and look
after one’s own interests.”
Don Michele, every now and then, would stop and joke with them
a little, so that the girls got used to his gold-bound cap, and were no
longer afraid of him; and, little by little, Lia began to joke with him
herself, and to laugh at him; nor did Mena dare to scold her, or to
leave her and go into the kitchen, now they had no mother, but
stayed with them crouching on the door-step, looking up and down
the street with her tired eyes. Now that they were deserted by the
neighbors, they felt their hearts swell with gratitude towards Don
Michele, who, with all his uniform, did not disdain to stop at the
Malavoglia’s door for a chat now and then. And if Don Michele found
Lia alone he would look into her eyes, pulling his mustaches, with
his gold-bound cap on one side, and say to her, “What a pretty girl
you are, Cousin Malavoglia!”
Nobody else had ever told her that, so she turned as red as a
tomato.
“How does it happen that you are not yet married?” Don Michele
asked her one day.
She shrugged her shoulders, and answered that she did not know.
“You ought to have a dress of silk and wool, and long ear-rings;
and then, upon my word, there’d be many a fine city lady not fit to
hold a candle to you.”
“A dress of silk and wool would not be a proper thing for me, Don
Michele,” replied Lia.
“But why? Hasn’t the Zuppidda one? And the Mangiacarubbe, now
that she has caught Brasi Cipolla, won’t she have one too? And
Vespa, too, can have one if she likes.”
“They are rich, they are.”
“Cruel fate!” cried Don Michele, striking the hilt of his sword with
his fist. “I wish I could win a tern in the lottery, Cousin Lia. Then I’d
show you what I’d do.”
Sometimes Don Michele would add, “Permit me,” with his hand to
his cap, and sit down near them on the stones. Mena thought he
came for Barbara, and said nothing. But to Lia Don Michele swore
that he did not come there on account of Barbara, that he never
had, that he never should, that he was thinking of quite a different
person—did not Cousin Lia know that? And he rubbed his chin and
twisted his mustaches and stared at her like a basilisk. The girl
turned all sorts of colors, and got up to run into the house; but Don
Michele caught her by the hand, and said:
“Do you wish to offend me, Cousin Malavoglia? Why do you treat
me in this way? Stay where you are; nobody means to eat you.”
So, while they were waiting for the men to come back from sea,
they passed the time, she in the door, and Don Michele on the
stones, breaking little twigs to pieces because he did not know what
to do with his hands. Once he asked her, “Would you like to go and
live in town?”
“What should I do in town?”
“That’s the place for you! You were not meant to live here with
these peasants, upon my honor! You are of a better sort than they
are; you ought to live in a pretty little cottage, or in a villa, and to go
to the marina, or to the promenade when there is music, dressed
prettily, as I should like to see you—with a pretty silk kerchief on
your head, and an amber necklace. Here I feel as if I were living in
the midst of pigs. Upon my honor I can hardly wait for the time
when I shall be promoted, and recalled to town, as they have
promised me, next year.”
Lia began to laugh as if it were all a joke, shaking her shoulders at
the idea. She, who didn’t know even what silk kerchiefs or amber
necklaces were like.
Then one day Don Michele drew out of his pocket, with great
mystery, a fine red and yellow silk kerchief wrapped up in a pretty
paper, and wanted to make a present of it to Cousin Lia.
 “No, no!” said she, turning fiery red. “I wouldn’t take it, no, not if
you killed me.”
Don Michele insisted. “I did not expect this, Cousin Lia; I do not
deserve this.” But after all, he had to wrap the kerchief once more in
the paper and put it back into his pocket.
After this, whenever she caught a glimpse of Don Michele, Lia ran
off to hide herself in the house, fearing that he would try to give her
the kerchief. It was in vain that Don Michele passed up and down
the street, the Zuppidda screaming at him all the time; in vain that
he stretched his neck peering into the Malavoglia’s door; no one was
ever to be seen, so that at last he made up his mind to go in. The
girls, when they saw him standing before them, stared, open-
mouthed, trembling as if they had the ague, not knowing what to
do.
“You would not take the silk kerchief, Cousin Lia,” he said to the
girl, who turned red as a poppy, “but I have come all the same,
because I like you all so much. What is your brother ’Ntoni doing
now?”
Now Mena turned red too, when he asked what her brother ’Ntoni
was doing, for he was doing nothing. And Don Michele went on: “I
am afraid he will do something that you will not like, your brother
’Ntoni. I am your friend, and I take no notice; but when another
brigadier comes in my place he will be wanting to know what your
brother is always about with Cinghialenta and that other pretty
specimen, Rocco Spatu, down by the Rotolo in the evening, or
walking about the downs, as if they had nothing to do but to wear
out their shoes. Look after him well, Cousin Mena, and listen to what
I tell you tell him not to go so much with that meddling old wretch
Goosefoot, in Vanni Pizzuti’s shop, for we know everything; and he
will come to harm among them. The others are old foxes. And you
had better tell your grandfather to stop him from walking so much
up and down the beach, for the beach is not meant to walk about
on; and the cliffs of the Rotolo have ears, tell him; and one can see
very well, even without glasses, the boats that put out from there at
dusk, as if they were going to fish for bats. Tell him this, Cousin
Mena; and tell him, too, that this warning comes from one who is
your friend. As for Master Cinghialenta, and Rocco Spatu, and Vanni
Pizzuti as well, we have our eye on them. Your brother trusts old
Goosefoot, but he does not know that the coastguards have a
percentage on smuggled goods, and that they always manage to get
hold of some one of a gang, and give him a share to spy on them
that they may be surprised.”
Mena opened her eyes still wider, and turned pale, without quite
understanding all this long speech; but she had been trembling
already for fear that her brother would get into trouble with the men
in uniform. Don Michele, to give her courage, took her hand, and
went on:
“If it came to be known that I had warned you, it would be all
over with me. I am risking my uniform in telling you this, because I
am so fond of all you Malavoglia. But I should be very sorry if your
brother got into trouble. No, I don’t want to meet him some night in
some ugly place where he has no business; no, I wouldn’t have it
happen to catch a booty worth a thousand francs, upon my honor I
wouldn’t.”
The poor girls hadn’t a moment’s peace after Don Michele had
warned them of this new cause of anxiety. They didn’t shut their
eyes of a night, waiting behind the door for their brother, sometimes
until very late, trembling with cold and terror, while he went singing
up and down the streets with Rocco Spatu and the rest of the gang,
and the poor girls seemed to hear the cries and the shots as they
had heard them that night when there was the talk of hunting two-
legged quail.
“You go to bed, and to sleep,” said Mena to her sister; “you are
too young for such things as this.”
To her grandfather she said nothing, for she wished to spare him
this fresh trouble, but to ’Ntoni, when she saw him a little more quiet
than usual, sitting at the door with his chin upon his hands, she took
courage to say: “What are you doing, going about with Rocco Spatu
and Cinghialen-ta? You have been seen with them at the Rotolo and
on the downs. And beware of Goosefoot. Remember how Jesus said
to John, ‘Beware of them whom God has marked.’”
“Who told you that?” said ’Ntoni, leaping up as if he were
possessed. “Tell me who told you.”
“Don Michele told me,” she answered, with tearful eyes. “He told
me that you should beware of Goosefoot, and that to catch the
smugglers they had to get information from some one of the gang.”
“He told you nothing else?”
“No, he told me nothing else.”
Then ’Ntoni swore that there wasn’t a word of truth in the whole
of it, and told her she mustn’t tell his grandfather. Then he got up
and went off in a hurry to the tavern to drown his worries in wine,
and if he met any of the fellows in uniform he gave them a wide
berth. After all, Don Michele really knew nothing about it, and only
talked at random to frighten him because he was jealous about San-
tuzza, who had turned him (Don Michele) out of the house like a
mangy dog. And, in short, he wasn’t afraid either of Don Michele or
of any of his crew, that were paid to suck the blood of the people. A
fine thing, to be sure! Don Michele had no need to help himself in
that fashion, fat and sleek as he was, and he must needs try to lay
hands on some poor helpless devil or other if he tried to get hold of
a stray five-franc piece. And that other idea, too, that to get
anything in from outside the country one must pay the duty, as if the
things had been stolen! And Don Michele and his spies must come
poking their noses into it. They were free to take whatever they
liked, and were paid for doing it; but others, if they tried at the risk
of their lives to get their goods on shore, were treated worse than
thieves, and shot down like wolves with pistols and carbines. But it
never was a sin to rob thieves. Don Giammaria said so himself in the
druggist’s shop. And Don Franco nodded, beard and all, and sneered
that when they got a republic there would be no more such dirty
work as that.
“Nor of those devil’s officials,” added the vicar.
“A lot of idle fellows who are paid for carrying guns about!”
snarled the druggist, “like the priests, who take forty centimes for
saying a mass. Tell us, Don Giammaria, how much capital do you put
into the masses that you get paid for?”
“About as much as you put into that dirty water that you make us
pay the eyes out of our heads for,” said the priest, foaming at the
mouth.
Don Franco had learned to laugh like Don Silvestro, just on
purpose to put Don Giammaria into a passion; and he went on,
without listening to him:
“Yes, in half an hour their work is done, and they can amuse
themselves for the rest of the day, just the same as Don Michele,
who goes flitting about like a great ugly bird all day long, now that
he doesn’t keep the benches warm at Santuzza’s any more.”
“For that, he has taken it up with me,” interposed ’Ntoni; “and he
is as cross as a bear, and goes swaggering about, because he has a
sabre tied to him. But, by Our Lady’s blood! one time or another, I’ll
beat it about his head, that sabre of his, to show him how much I
care for it and for him.’
“Bravo!” exclaimed the druggist. “That’s the way to talk! The
people ought to show their teeth. But not here; I don’t want a fuss
in my shop. The Government would give anything to get me into a
scrape, but I don’t care to have anything to do with their judges and
tribunals and the rest of their machinery.”
’Ntoni Malavoglia raised his fist in the air, and swore that he was
going to have done with it, once for all, if he went to the galleys for
it—for the matter of that, he had nothing to lose. Santuzza no longer
looked upon him as she formerly did, so much had her father
obtained of her, always whining and wheedling at her between one
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