Short Sicilian Novels by Giovanni Verga

Author:Giovanni Verga
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781907650796
Publisher: Dedalus Limited
Published: 2012-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

BLACK BREAD

NEIGHBOUR NANNI had hardly taken his last breath, and the priest in his stole was still there, when the quarrel broke out between the children as to who should pay the costs of the burial, and they went at it till the priest with the aspersorium under his arm was driven away.

For Neighbour Nanni’s illness had been a long one, the sort that eats away the flesh off your bones and the things out of your house. Every time the doctor spread his piece of paper on his knee to write out the prescription, Neighbour Nanni watched his hands with beseeching eyes, and mumbled, “Write it short, you honour; anyhow write it short, for mercy’s sake.”

The doctor carried out his own job. Everybody in the world carries out his own job. In carrying out his, Farmer Nanni had caught that fever down there at Lamia, land blessed by God, producing corn as high as a man. In vain the neighbours said to him, “Neighbour Nanni, you’ll leave your bones on that half-profits farm!”

“As if I was a baron,” he replied, “to do what I like and choose!”

The brothers, who were like the fingers on the same hand as long as their father lived, had now each one to think for himself. Santo had a wife and children on his back; Lucia was left without any dowry, as good as turned on the street; and Carmenio, if he wanted to have bread to eat, would have to go away from home and find himself a master. Then the mother, who was old and ailing, didn’t know whose business it was to keep her, for none of the three children had anything at all.

The oxen, the sheep, the store in the granary had all gone with their owner. There remained the dark house, with the empty bed, and the equally dark faces of the orphans. Santo carried his things across, with Red-head, his wife, and said he’d take his mamma to live with him. “Then he won’t have to pay house-rent,” said the others. Carmenio made up his own bundle and went as shepherd to Herdsman Vito, who had a piece of grazing land at Camemi; and Lucia threatened to go into service rather than live with her sister-in-law.

“No!” said Santo. “It shan’t be said that my sister had to be servant to other folks.”

“He wants me to be servant to Red-head,” grumbled Lucia.

The great question was this sister-in-law who had driven herself into the family like a nail. “What is there to be done, now I’ve got her?” sighed Santo shrugging his shoulders. “I should have listened in time to that good soul, my father.”

That good soul had preached to him: “Leave yon Nena alone, for she’s got never a bit of dowry, nor house, nor land.”

But Nena was always at his side, at the Castelluccio farm; whether he was hoeing or mowing, she was there gathering the corn into sheaves, or removing the stones from under his feet with

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