Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga Read Free Book Online Page A

church clock at Punta booming out nine strokes, so close at hand that they seemed to be falling on her head, and she smiled as if a friend had called to her by name in the midst of a crowd of strangers.
    She turned happily down the village street, singing her enchanting song at the top of her voice, and holding on tightly to the forty
soldi
in her overall pocket.
    As she passed by the chemist’s shop she looked inside and saw the chemist and the notary, wrapped up in their cloaks, playing at cards. A little further on she came across the poor village idiot of Punta, who was going up and down the street with his hands in his pockets singing the same old song he had been singing night and day, in the cold midwinter and hot midsummer, for twenty years. On reaching the first trees of the avenue leading in a straight line to Ravanusa she met a pair of oxen, lowing peacefully as they ambled slowly towards her.
    ‘Hey! Nedda!’ shouted a familiar voice.
    ‘Is that you, Janu?’
    ‘Yes, it’s me, with the master’s oxen.’
    ‘Where are you coming from?’ Nedda asked, without stopping.
    ‘From La Piana. I called at your house. Your mother’s expecting you.’
    ‘How is she?’
    ‘Still the same.’
    ‘God bless you!’ the girl exclaimed, as if she had been expecting the worst, and she began to run on again.
    ‘Goodbye, Nedda!’ Janu called after her.
    ‘Goodbye,’ Nedda responded from the distance.
    And she thought the stars were shining like so many suns, that all the trees, every one of which she recognized, were spreading their branches over her head to protect her, and that the stones of the road were caressing her aching feet.
    Next day, it being a Sunday, there came the visit of the doctor, who set aside for his destitute patients the day he could not devote to his farms. It was truly a joyless visit, because the doctor was not accustomed to standing on ceremony with his customers, and in Nedda’s poor cottage there was neither waiting-room nor any friend of the family to whom he could speak frankly about the invalid’s true condition.
    There followed another sorrowful event when the parish priest arrived in his rochet, 3 accompanied by the sexton with the extreme unction, and two or three parishioners mumbling various prayers. The sexton’s bell jingled out keenly across the fields, and the cart-drivers halted their mules along the road when they heard it and raised their caps. When Nedda heard it coming up the stony path leading from the road to the house, she pulled the tattered blanket up to the invalid’s chin so that no one would notice the absence of any sheets, and spread her best white pinafore over the rickety table, which she had levelled up with the aid of one or two tiles. While the priest was carrying out his office, she went and knelt outside the front door, muttering her prayers mechanically, staring with a faraway look at the boulder beside the doorway where her old mother used to sit and warm herself up in the April sun, bending an inattentive ear to the customary sounds of the neighbourhood and the bustling of all the people going about their business without a care in the world. The priest went away, and the sexton paused in the doorway, vainly waiting for them to offer him the usual alms for the poor.
    Late that evening Zio Giovanni saw Nedda hurrying down the road towards Punta.
    ‘Hey there! Where are you going at this hour?’
    ‘I’m going for the medicine the doctor ordered.’
    Zio Giovanni was a thrifty man, who liked to grumble.
    ‘More medicines!’ he muttered. ‘Wasn’t it enough for them to order the medicine of the holy oil? They’re all in league with the chemist to drain the blood from the poor! Take my advice, Nedda, save your money and go back and stay with your poor mother.’
    ‘You never know, it could do her some good!’ the girl replied, lowering her eyes sorrowfully and quickening her step.
    Zio Giovanni moaned, then called after her, ‘Hey,