Free Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga Page A

Turiddu.
    ‘Hey there, Turiddu, don’t you ever say hello to your old friends any more?’
    ‘Ah!’ sighed the young fellow. ‘It would be a happy man who could say hello to you!’
    ‘If you want to say hello to me, you know where I live!’ Lola replied.
    Turiddu called to say hello to her so often that Santa took notice, and slammed her window in his face. The neighbours gave each other a nod and a wink whenever the sharpshooter passed down the street. Lola’s husband was away with his mules, doing the rounds of the country fairs.
    ‘On Sunday I’m going to confession. I had a terrible dream last night!’ said Lola.
    ‘Don’t worry about it! Don’t worry!’ Turiddu pleaded.
    ‘No, now that Easter’s coming, my husband will be wanting to know why I haven’t been to confession.’
    ‘Ah!’ murmured Cola’s daughter Santa as she waited her turn, kneeling in front of the confessional where Lola was laundering her sins. ‘I swear I won’t let you get away with it by crawling to Rome!’
    Alfio returned home with his mules, laden with shekels, and with a fine new Easter dress for his wife.
    ‘You do well to bring her presents,’ his neighbour Santa told him, ‘because while you’re away your wife dresses up your home with a pair of horns!’
    Alfio was one of those cart-drivers who take offence easily, and whenhe heard his wife being talked about in that fashion his colour changed as though he’d been knifed.
    ‘By Almighty God!’ he exclaimed. ‘If you haven’t been seeing clearly, you’ll have no eyes left to cry with by the time I’ve finished with you, and that goes for all your family as well!’
    ‘I don’t do much crying!’ Santa replied. ‘I didn’t even cry when I saw Gnà Nunzia’s son Turiddu going in to your wife’s house every night.’
    ‘Right,’ Alfio replied, ‘and thank you very much.’
    Now that the cat was back, Turiddu no longer hung about the street every day, but filled in his time at the tavern, with his friends. On the evening of Holy Saturday, they were sitting round one of the tables with a dish of pork sausages. As soon as Alfio came in, Turiddu knew, simply from the way he stared at him, that he had come to settle the unfinished business of theirs, and put his fork down on his plate.
    ‘Can I do anything for you, Alfio?’ he said.
    ‘I don’t need any favours from you, Turiddu. I haven’t seen anything of you for a while, and I just wanted a word on that matter you know about.’
    Turiddu began by holding out a glass of wine to him, but Alfio brushed it aside with a sweep of his arm.
    Then Turiddu got up and said, ‘If you want me, Alfio, here I am.’
    The cart-driver flung his arms round Turiddu’s neck.
    ‘If you’d like to come down to the cactus grove at Canziria tomorrow morning, we can talk the thing over, my friend.’
    ‘Wait for me at dawn on the main road, and we’ll go there together.’
    With these words they exchanged the kiss of the challenge. Turiddu took the tip of the cart-driver’s ear between his teeth and bit it, by way of a solemn promise to keep the appointment.
    His friends left the sausages where they were without uttering a word, and took Turiddu home. Poor Gnà Nunzia had been waiting up for him till a late hour for nights on end.
    ‘Mamma,’ Turiddu said, ‘do you remember when I went off to the army, and you thought I would never come back? Give me a big kiss like you did then, because tomorrow morning I’m going on a long journey.’
    Before dawn he dug out the flick-knife that he’d hidden under a pile of straw before going off as a conscript, then he set off for the cactus grove at Canziria.
    ‘Oh! Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ wailed the terrified Lola, as her husband was about to leave.
    ‘I’m not going very far,’ Alfio replied, ‘and it would be better for you if I never came back.’
    Lola, in her nightdress, knelt down to pray at the foot of the bed, pressing to