Free Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga

that you’re marrying Alfio, with four mules in his stable, we mustn’t start people’s tongues wagging. My poor old mother, on the other hand, was forced to sell our own bay mule and that patch of vineyard along the main road while I was away in the army. Times have changed, and you no longer remember standing at the window to chat with me down in the courtyard, or when you gave me that handkerchief, just before I went away. God knows how many tears I’ve shed into it since I wandered off so far from home that our village had never been heard of. Goodbye then, Lola, let’s forget we were ever friends with one another.’
    Lola went ahead and married the cart-driver, and on Sundays she would stand on her veranda with her hands across her belly to show off all the big gold rings her husband had given her. Turiddu continued to pass up and down the street, pipe in his mouth and hands in his pockets, with an air of indifference, eyeing all the girls. But deep inside he was distraught to think that Lola’s husband had all that gold, and that she pretended not to notice him as he passed by.
    ‘I’m going to teach that bitch a thing or two,’ he muttered.
    Opposite Alfio’s lived Massaro Cola, the vine dresser, who was said to be as rich as a pig, and had a daughter in the house. Turiddu said and did all the things required to worm his way into Massaro Cola’sgood books, and began to hang around the house and fill the girl’s ears with sweet nothings.
    By way of reply, Santa would say, ‘Why don’t you go and say these fine things to that Lola girl?’
    ‘Lola’s a great lady! Lola’s married now to a big wheel!’
    ‘Big wheels are too good for me.’
    ‘You are worth a hundred Lolas, and I know someone who wouldn’t even look at her or anybody else, if you were around. Lola isn’t worth as much as your little finger, that she isn’t.’
    ‘When the fox couldn’t get at the grapes…’
    ‘He said: what a lovely girl you are, my currant bun!’
    ‘Hey, Turiddu! Keep those hands to yourself!’
    ‘Are you afraid I’m going to eat you?’
    ‘I’m not afraid of you or anyone else.’
    ‘Ah! Your mother came from Licodia, and don’t we know it! You’ve got fiery blood in your veins! Oh, I could eat you up simply looking at you!’
    ‘Keep on looking, then, and we shan’t leave any crumbs lying around. But, for the time being, just pick up that bundle for me, would you?’
    ‘For you I would pick up the whole house, honestly I would!’
    So as to save herself from blushing, she hurled a log at him that happened to be within her reach, missing him by a hair’s breadth.
    ‘Let’s get on. Fine words butter no parsnips.’
    ‘If I were a rich man, I’d be looking for a wife like you, Santa.’
    ‘I won’t be marrying any big wheel, the same as Lola, but I do have a dowry of my own when the good Lord sends me the right man.’
    ‘We all know you’re rich, we know that.’
    ‘Get moving then, if you know it, because my father’s due any minute, and I don’t want him to find me out here in the courtyard.’
    Her father began to turn up his nose at the affair, but the girl pretended not to notice, because the tassel on the sharpshooter’s cap had begun to tickle her fancy, and kept on dancing up and down in front of her eyes. When the father showed Turiddu the door, the daughter opened the window for him, and stayed there chatting away to him every evening, so that the whole neighbourhood talked of nothing else.
    ‘I’m crazy about you,’ said Turiddu. ‘I can’t sleep and I can’t eat.’
    ‘Rubbish!’
    ‘If only I were the son of King Victor Emmanuel, I’d be able to marry you!’
    ‘Rubbish!’
    ‘By all that’s holy, I could gobble you up like a loaf of bread!’
    ‘Rubbish!’
    ‘I really could, honestly!’
    ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’
    Lola was all ears every evening, concealed behind her pot of basil, now turning pale, now blushing, and one day she called out to