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

Varannisa!’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘I’ll go to the chemist’s. Don’t worry, I’ll be back sooner than you would have been. And you won’t have to leave your poor mother alone.’
    The girl’s eyes filled with tears. ‘God bless you!’ she said, as she tried to hand him the money.
    ‘You can pay me back later,’ growled Zio Giovanni, and he sprinted off as though he were a twenty-year-old.
    The girl returned to her mother, saying, ‘Zio Giovanni’s gone for us,’ in an unusually tender sort of voice.
    The dying woman, hearing Nedda replacing the handful of coins on the table, gave her a questioning look.
    ‘He told me we could pay him back later,’ said her daughter.
    ‘God bless him for his charity!’ murmured the sick woman. ‘So you’ll still have something to spend.’
    ‘Oh, Mother!’
    ‘How much do we owe Zio Giovanni?’
    ‘Ten
lire.
But don’t worry, Mother! I shall carry on working!’
    The old woman gazed at her at length through half-closed eyes, then embraced her without a word.
    Next day the undertakers called, along with the sexton and several of the women living nearby. When Nedda had arranged the body of her mother on the bier in her best clothes, she placed in her hands acarnation she had grown in a cracked pot, along with the finest tress of her own hair. She gave the gravediggers the few
soldi
she had left so that they would do their job in a proper fashion and be sure not to jolt the dead woman too much on the rocky path leading to the cemetery. Then she tidied up the bed and the house, put away the last bottle of medicine on a high shelf, and went and sat in the doorway gazing up at the sky.
    A robin, the bird of cold November mornings, began to sing in the bushes and the brambles that hung above the wall opposite, and from time to time, as it hopped among the thorns and the brushwood, it fixed its mischievous eyes upon her as though it had something to tell her. Nedda thought to herself that her mother, the day before, had heard it singing. In the garden next door magpies were still pecking away at the olives strewn about the ground. She had driven them off by throwing stones at them, so that the dying woman would not have to listen to their funereal croaking. But now she watched them impassively, without making a move, and as the lupine-seller or the vintner or the carters made their way down the neighbouring street, shouting so as to be heard above the noise of their cartwheels and the bell-collars of their mules, she said to herself, ‘That’ll be so-and-so, that’ll be whatsisname.’ When the Angelus rang, and the first stars appeared in the evening sky, it struck her that she no longer needed to go to Punta to buy any more medicines, and as the noises gradually subsided in the street, and darkness descended on the garden, she thought to herself she no longer needed to light the lamp.
    Zio Giovanni found her standing in the doorway.
    She had got to her feet on hearing footsteps approaching along the path, because she was not expecting anyone to call.
    ‘What are you doing there?’ Zio Giovanni asked. She shrugged her shoulders, without bothering to answer.
    The old man sat down beside her on the doorstep, and asked no further questions.
    ‘Zio Giovanni,’ said the girl, after a long pause, ‘now that I have no one else to care for, and I don’t have to look for work nearby, I’ll go to Roccella where the olives are still being harvested, and when I return I’ll pay you back the money you lent us.’
    ‘I didn’t come here asking for the money!’ Zio Giovanni gruffly replied.
    She said no more, and they both sat there in silence listening to the hooting of an owl. Nedda thought perhaps it was the one that had kept her company coming back from Piano, and her heart swelled with emotion.
    ‘Do you have work to go to?’ Zio Giovanni asked her finally.
    ‘No, but I’ll always find a charitable soul to offer me something to do.’
    ‘I heard that over at Aci