Matilde Serao - The Land of Cockayne

But that day there was no need for Donna Caterina to fail, to make off; the numbers drawn were so bad, perhaps not one of her clients had won; and Donna Concetta climbed up the Chiara way very easily, not hurrying at all, knowing it was a desolate Saturday for all gambling Naples, getting ready for her battle of usury on Monday. All these unhappy creatures with broken hopes passed near her; she shook her head wisely over human aberrations, and clutched the hem of her crape shawl in her ringed fingers. A woman who was coming quickly down the street, dragging a little boy and girl behind her, and carrying a baby, touched her in passing on her way into the Impresa court, where some people were still lingering. She was very poorly dressed; her calico skirt was so frayed and dirty it filled one with pity and disgust, and she had a ravelled woollen shawl round her neck; her face was so lean and worn, her teeth so black, and hair so sparse, that the children, who were neither ragged nor dirty, looked as if they did not belong to her. The sucking child only was rather slight—it laid its head on her shoulder to sleep; but the poor thing was so agitated she did not notice it. Seeing Carmela, her sister, still seated on the high stone, her hands loose in her lap, and head sunk on the breast, all alone, as if petrified in speechless grief, she went up to her, and said:

'Carmela!'

'Good-day, Annarella,' said Carmela, starting, giving a sickly smile.

'Are you here too?' she asked in a sad, surprised tone.

'Yes, I came,' Carmela answered, with a resigned gesture.

'Have you seen my husband, Gaetano?' Annarella asked anxiously, letting the baby's head slide from her shoulder to her arm, so that it could sleep more comfortably.

Carmela raised her big eyes to her sister's face, but seeing her so dishevelled and ugly from privation and misery, so old already, so doomed to illness and death, asking the question so despairingly, she dared not tell her the truth. Yes, she had seen her brother-in-law Gaetano, the glove-cutter; she had first seen him trembling and anxious, thin, pale and downcast, but she felt too sorry for her sister, the delicate, sleeping baby, and the other two who were gazing around them, and she lied.

'I have not seen him at all.'

'He must have been here,' Annarella muttered in her rough drawl.

'I assure you he was not here, really.'

'You will not have seen him,' Annarella repeated, obstinate in her sad incredulity. 'How could he not come? He comes here every Saturday. He might not be at home with his little ones; he might not be at the glove factory, where he can earn bread; but he can't be anywhere else than here on Saturday to hear the numbers come out: here is his ruling passion and his death.'

'He plays a lot, doesn't he?' said Carmela, who had grown pale and had tears in her eyes.

'All that he can spare and more than he has got. We might live very well, without asking anything from anyone; but instead, with his bonafficiata, we are full of debts and mortifications; we only eat now and then, when I bring in something. These poor little things!'

Her voice was so broken with maternal agony that Carmela's tears fell, overcome by infinite pity. Now they were almost alone in the court.

'Why do you come to hear this lottery drawn?' Annarella asked, suddenly enraged against all those that play.

'What am I to do?' said the other in her sweet, broken voice. 'You know I would like to see you all happy, mother, and you, Gaetano, your babies, and my lover Raffaele—and somebody else. You know your cross is mine, that I have not an hour's peace thinking of what you suffer. So all that is over of my earnings I play: the Lord must bless me some day or other. I must get a terno then; then I'll give it all to you.'

'Poor sister!' said Annarella, with melancholy tenderness.

'That day must come—it must,' she whispered passionately, as if speaking to herself, as if she already saw that happy day.

'May an angel pass and say amen,' Annarella murmured, kissing her baby's forehead. 'Where can Gaetano be?' she went on, care coming back.

'Say truly,' begged Carmela, getting down from the stone on her way off, 'you have nothing to give the children to-day?'

'Nothing,' was the answer in that feeble voice.

'Take this half-franc, take it,' said the other, pulling it out of her pocket and giving it to her.

'God reward you.'

They looked at each other with such mutual pity that only shame of the passers-by kept them from bursting into sobs.

'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, Carmela!'

The suffering girl kissed the baby softly. Annarella, with the languid step of a woman who has had too many children and worked too hard, went off by the Santa Chiara cloister, pulling her two other little ones behind her. Carmela, pulling her discoloured shawl round her, dragging her down-at-heel shoes, went down towards Banchi Nuovi. It was just there a cleanly-dressed youth, his trousers tight at the knees and wide as bells over the ankle, with a neat jacket, and hat over one ear, stopped her with the look of his clear, cold, light-blue eyes, biting lips, as red as a girl's, under his fair little moustache. Stopping before she spoke to him, Carmela looked with such intense passion on the young fellow she seemed to wish to enfold him in an atmosphere of love. He did not seem to notice it.

'Well, have you won anything?' he asked in a hissing little ironical voice.

'Nothing,' said she, opening her arms desolately. She held down her head so as not to weep, looking at the point of her shoes, which had lost their varnish and showed the dirty lining through a split.

'How do you account for that?' the young fellow cried out angrily. 'A woman is always a woman!'

'Is it my fault if the numbers won't come out?' the love-lorn girl said humbly and sadly.

'You should look out for the good ones. Go to Father Illuminato that knows them, and only tells women; go to Don Pasqualino, he that the good spirits help to find out the right numbers. Get it out of your head, my girl, that I can marry a ragged one like you.'

'I know—I know!' she muttered humbly. 'Say no more about it.'

'You seem to forget it. Masses are not sung without money. Let us say good-bye.'

'Won't you come this evening?' she dared to ask.

'I have something to do. I must go with a friend. Send me a couple of francs.'

'I have only one,' she exclaimed, quite red and mortified, taking it out of her pocket.

'May you die in want!' he cursed, chewing his stump of Naples cigar. 'Give it here! I will try to arrange my affairs better.'

'Won't you pass by the house?' she begged with her eyes.

'If I do pass, it will be very late.'

'It does not matter; I'll wait for you on the balcony,' she said, persisting in her humiliation.

'I can't stop.'

'Well, give a whistle. I'll hear you, and sleep quieter, Raffaele. What trouble will it be to whistle in passing?'

'All right,' he agreed indulgently. 'Good-bye, Carmela!'

'Good-bye, Raffaele!'

She stopped to look at him as he went away quickly in the direction of Madonna dell' Aiuto. The patent-leather shoes creaked as the youth walked in the proud way peculiar to the lower-class guappi.

'May the Virgin bless every step you take,' the girl said to herself tenderly as she went off. But as she went along she felt discouraged and weak. All the bitterness of that deceptive day, the sorrow she bore for others' grief—for her mother, a servant at sixty; for her sister, who had no bread for her children; her brother-in-law, who was going to ruin; her affianced, that she would have liked to make rich and happy as a lord, and who never had a franc in his pockets—all these sorrows, and still deeper ones, the greatest of all, the most afflicting grief, her own powerlessness, poured into her mind, her whole being. It was not enough for her to work at that nauseating trade at the tobacco factory for seven days a week; that she had not a decent dress to wear, nor a pair of whole shoes, so that she was coldly looked on at the factory. She fasted four times a week to give her mother a franc, Raffaele two, her sister Annarella half a franc; what was over went to the lottery. It was no use, she never could do anything for those she loved; her hard work, wretchedness, hunger, did no one any good.