Chapter XIX: Don Crescenzio's Trials (2)

'Good Lord!' Don Crescenzio just managed to bring out, falling full weight on a chair.

They said no more. The mother devoutly clutched her rosary. But both Trifari's parents seemed so tired that Don Crescenzio felt desperate, finding everywhere different forms of misfortunes, and greater ones than his own. Still, he clutched at a straw; above everything, he wished to know all about it, with that bitter enjoyment a man feels in tasting the full agony of his misfortune. He, too, had fled, then; he, too, had escaped him; that money, too, was lost--lost for ever.

'But who gave him the money to get away?' he cried out in an exasperated tone.

'Are you really friendly to him?'

'Yes, yes, I am.'

'Truly are you?'

'Yes, I tell you.'

'Here is his letter. Take it; you will find out from it.'

Then by the faint light of fading day he read the unhappy man's long letter. Eaten up by debts and his ruling passion, not knowing where to lay his head, he wrote to his parents, taking leave of them on going to make his fortune in America. Of the four hundred francs it had taken about three hundred and fifty to pay for a third-class ticket on a steamer, counting in a few francs for his keep the first two or three days in Buenos Ayres. He owned up to everything. He was the cause of his own ruin and of his family's. He cursed gambling, fate, and himself, swearing at bad luck and his own bad conscience. He sent back a few francs to the two poor old folks, begging them to go back to their village, to get on as well as they could, until he was able to send them something from Buenos Ayres. He told them to go home, and he would not forget them, and the money would just serve for two third-class fares to their village; nothing would be left over to buy food even. He begged them on his knees to forgive him, not to curse him. He had not had the courage to kill himself, for their sakes; still, he begged them to forgive him. Though he was leaving them like this, he implored them not to give him a curse as a parting provision on this wretched journey of his. He was starting with no luggage or money, and would be cast into the ship's common sleeping-place. The letter was full of tenderness and rage: abuse of the rich, of gentlemen and Government, came alternately with prayers for forgiveness and humble excuses.

Don Crescenzio read twice over that agonized letter written by a man enraged at himself and mankind, feeling himself wounded in the only tender feeling of his life. He folded it absent-mindedly, and looked at the two old people. It seemed to him that they were centenarians, falling to pieces from decrepitude and hard work, bent by age and sorrow.

'What are you going to do now?' he asked in a whisper, after a short time.

'We are going to our village,' the old man muttered. 'To-morrow we will go by the first train.'

'Yes, yes, we are going back,' the poor old woman groaned, without looking up.

'What are you to do there?' he rejoined, wishing to find out the full extent of all that misfortune.

'We are to work by the day in the fields,' said the old man simply.

He examined the two, so old, tired, and bent, now making ready to begin life again so as to get bread, to dig the ground with shaking arms, bending their brown faces and sparse white hair, under the summer sun. Struck to the heart by this last blow, feeling the chorus of misfortune growing around him, he did not open his mouth about the money he was to have got from Trifari; indeed, feverishly, he felt such pity for the two old folk that he said to them:

'Can I do anything for you?'

'No, no, thank you,' the two said, with the despairing gestures of those who expect no more help.

'Keep up your courage, then.'

'Yes, yes, thank you,' they muttered again.

He left them without saying more. It was night now when he went down into the street. For a moment, feeling confused and dismayed, he thought, Where was he to go? Anew, set along by quite a mechanical goad, he took courage, and, crossing Toledo Street, went up to the high part by San Michele Church, where the Rossi Palace stood out dark and lofty. In that mansion lived the last of those largely indebted to him, the most desperate of all. So as not to have a bad omen at the beginning of the day, he had kept them to the last. But he had found money nowhere; and now, with the natural rebound of the unhappy who fight against their misfortunes by that strength of hope which never dies, now he began again to believe that Cesare Fragalà and the Marquis di Formosa would give him the money in some way--that it might rain down from heaven.

When he went into Cesare Fragalà's flat, led across an empty dark room by little Agnesina, who came to open the door, carrying a half-burnt candle, he had at once regretted he had come. Husband, wife and daughter were seated at a small table, with a cloth too small for it, taking their supper silently, looking at every little bit of fried liver they put in their mouths for fear of leaving too little for the others. The child especially, having a healthy youthful appetite, measured her mouthfuls of bread so as not to eat too much of it. Cesare Fragalà sat very solemnly, all traces of a smile having gone from his face, and looked at the tablecloth with his brows knit. His wife, the good Luisella, with her big black eyes, on whose brow the happy mother's diamond star had shone, had now a humble, subdued look in a plain stuff gown. Quietly with her calm eyes the child looked serenely, with a martyr's patience, at the visitor, as if she understood and expected the request he was about to make. Before that gentle, thoughtful child's eye Don Crescenzio felt his tongue tied, so it was with an effort he stammered out:

'Cesare, I am come about that business.'

A flame of fire burned in Cesare's cheeks. The wife gave up eating, and the child cast down her eyelids as if the blow were coming on her own head.

'It is difficult for me to do anything for you, Crescenzio; you don't know all our embarrassments,' Cesare said faintly.

'I do know--I know,' said the other, hardly able to keep down his feelings; 'but I am in a worse state than you are.'

'I don't believe you can be,' muttered the merchant, who had gone through the bankruptcy court a few days before, in a dreary tone; 'I don't think you can be.'

'Your honour is safe, Cesare, but I am not to save mine. What can I say? I add nothing more.'

And, not able to bear it any longer, feeling Agnesina's sympathetic eyes on him, he began to weep. A little evening breeze coming from a half-shut balcony made the lamp quiver. It was a fantastically wretched group, the husband, wife, and daughter clinging to each other, all most unhappy, looking at that wretched man sobbing.

'Could we not give him something, Luisella?' Cesare timidly whispered in his wife's ear, while the other mourned vaguely.

'How much do you owe him?' said Luisa thoughtfully.

'Five hundred francs ... it was more. I paid part of it.'

'Was it a gambling debt?' she asked coldly.

'Yes, it was.'

'What was he saying about honour?'

'He gave us credit. If he is not paid, Government will have him put in prison.'

'Has he children?'

'Yes, he has.'

She went out of the room. The two men looked sadly at each other, and the girl gazed at them both with her kindly, encouraging eyes. After a little Luisa came back looking rather pale.

'This is our last hundred-franc note,' she said, in her pleasant voice. 'There is only a little small change left for ourselves; but the Lord will provide.'

'God will provide,' the child repeated, taking the hundred-franc note from her mother's hands and giving it to Don Crescenzio.

Ah! at that moment, before these poor people, who counted their mouthfuls of bread, who stinted themselves of the last remnant of their money to help him; at that moment, in the midst of sad, gentle expressions on the faces of ruined folk, who still kept faith and compassion, he felt his heart break; he shook as if he was going to faint. For a minute he thought of not taking the money; but it seemed to him charmed, made sacred by passing through that good woman's hands and the brave little girl's. He only said quiveringly:

'Forgive me, forgive me for taking it.'

'It is nothing,' Cesare Fragalà said at once, with his easy good-nature.

'You are so kind, so kind,' Crescenzio muttered, as he took leave, looking humbly at the two--the woman and the child--who bore misfortune so bravely.

Cesare went out of the room with him.

'I am sorry it is so little,' he said; 'it won't do you any good.'

'It is worth a hundred thousand, as far as the heart is concerned!' the lottery-keeper exclaimed sadly. 'But I have to give four thousand six hundred francs to Government, and this is all I have got.'

'Have the others given you nothing?'

'Nothing. I found nothing but misfortunes and bad luck everywhere. I am going up to the Marquis di Formosa's now.'

'Don't go there,' said Fragalà, shaking his head; 'it is no use.'

'I will try.'

'Don't try for it. They are worse off than we are. They dread every day they will lose Lady Bianca Maria. Her father has lost his senses.'

'Who knows? I might get it.'

'Listen to me: don't go. You might come in for some ugly scene.'

'Some ugly scene! What do you mean?'

'Yes, the Marchesina gets convulsions; she cries out frightfully in them. Every time we hear her we leave the house. She cries out always, "Mother! Mother!" It is agonizing.'

'Is she mad?'

'No, she is not. She calls for help in her fits. They say that she sees.... Don't go there; it is no use. Do what is right.'

'Very well. Thank you,' said the other.

They embraced, as sad and excited as if they were never to see each other again.

Now, when Don Crescenzio got to the Rossi Palazzo entrance, after hurriedly going downstairs almost as if he feared to hear the Lady Bianca Maria Cavalcanti's dying cries behind him--when he got out on the street alone, amid the people going and coming from Toledo Street that soft spring evening, he suddenly thought it was all over. The hundred francs his weeping had dragged from the Fragalàs' wretchedness was shut up in his otherwise empty purse in his great-coat pocket. Just there he felt something like an increasing heat, for that money was really destiny's last word. He would get no more; all was said. His desperate resolutions, his growing emotion, his day's struggle, running, panting, speaking, telling his wrongs, weeping, and the great dread of ruin tarrying with him, had done nothing but drag the last mouthful of bread from his most innocent debtor. A hundred francs--a mockery to the sum he had to pay on Wednesday, without fail. A hundred francs, no more; a drop of water in the desert. He felt it, for he had used up a lot of strength and excitement, and had only managed to drag these few francs from the Fragalà family's honesty; so he felt flabby, weak, and exhausted. That was the last word. Then there was no more money for him; he must look on himself as ruined--ruined, with no hope of salvation. A cloud--perhaps it was tears--swam before his eyes. The flow of the crowd took him to the bottom of Toledo Street; he let himself be carried along. He felt that he was the prey of destiny, with no strength to resist; he was like a dry leaf turned over by the whirlwind. He could do nothing more--nothing; all was ended. Some other people still owed him money. Baron Lamarra, Calandra the magistrate, and two or three others owed him small sums. But he did not want to go to them even; it was all useless, all, since, wherever he had gone, wherever he had taken his despair, he had found the marks of a scourge like his own--the gambling scourge--that had sent them all to wretchedness, shame, and death like himself.

He dared not go back to his home now, though it was getting late. He had gone down by Santa Brigida and Molo Road to Marina Street, where he lived in one of those tall, narrow houses one reaches by gloomy alleys from Porto, which look on to rather a dull sea between the Custom-house and the Granili, and from Marina Road, where fishermen's luggers and boats are anchored and tied up. Among the thousands of windows he gazed at the lighted-up one where his wife was putting the babies to bed. But he dared not go in--no. Was it not all ended? His wife would read the sentence, the condemnation, in his face, and he could not bear that. An increasing feebleness took hold of him; he felt as if his arms and legs were broken, and in the darkness and silence--where only the cabs taking travellers to the evening trains, only the trams going to the Vesuvian districts, gave a touch of life to the dark, broad Marina Road--not able to stand, he sat down on one of the seats in the long, narrow Villa del Popolo, the poor folk's garden that goes along the seashore. From there he still saw, though further off in the distance, like a star, the lighted window in his little home. How could he go in to bring tears and despair into that peaceful, happy little atmosphere! That innocent infant and the other about to come into the world, the mother so proud of her husband, of her little boy: must he--_he_--make them quiver with grief and shame that evening? This would be unbearable for him. How tremendous a punishment it was, falling on everyone's head, as if all were accursed, and destroying health, honour, fortune, everything!

In a dream, going on from one thing to another, he knit together all the threads of that chastisement that started from himself and returned to him, going on from his despair to that of others, while he still gazed at the slight beacon where his family were waiting for him. He saw again Ninetto Costa's pale, worn face, setting out for a much longer journey certainly than to Rome, leaving his mother a bankrupt suicide's name; he saw Marzano the advocate struck with apoplexy, his lips bloated, amid the frightful wretchedness that left no money to buy more ice, whilst a dishonouring accusation had been made against him, shaming his gray hairs; then Professor Colaneri, chased away from the school, accused of having sold his conscience as a teacher, and, after having cast off the clerical robe, now obliged to give up the religion he was born in, of which he had been a priest; he saw Dr. Trifari sailing in an emigrant ship, without a farthing, short of everything, while his old parents had to go back to dig the hard earth so as to earn their living; and Cesare Fragalàs resigned surrender, which ended the name of the old firm, and left him to confront a future of wretchedness. Finally, above everything, the illness Lady Bianca Maria Cavalcanti was dying of, while her father had not a bit of bread to put in his mouth. All, all were being punished, great and small, nobles and common folk, innocent and guilty, and he with them--he and his family, struck in all he held dearest--his means, home, happiness, and honour--a band of unfortunates, where the innocent were the ones that had to weep most, where little infants, girls, and women paid for grown men's mistakes, and old people, too--a band of wretched ones--to whom, in his mind, he added others that he knew and remembered. Baron Lamarra, with the accusation of forgery held over him by his wife, had gone back to work as a contractor, in the sun on the streets, among buildings in course of construction; and Don Domenico Mayer, the hypochondriacal official, who one day in despair, not being able to move for debt, had thrown himself from a fourth-floor window, dying at once; and Calandra the magistrate, who had twelve children, was so badly reported on that every six months he ran the chance of being put on the shelf; and Gaetano the glover, who had killed his wife Annarella with a kick on the stomach when she was two months gone with child: but no one knew anything about it except his children, who hated their father, as every Friday he promised to kill them also, if they did not give him money. All--all of them were at death's door, yet living on, amidst the pinching of need and the canker of shame. And he, finally, who had his family there in the little house waiting, while he had not the courage to go back, feeling that the first announcement of their misfortune would burn his lips. It was all one chastisement, one frightful punishment--that is to say, the hand of the Lord bearing heavily on the wicked, the guilty, and striking them to the seventh generation; or, rather, the same sin, the same guilt, that infamous, cursed gambling, had got to be an instrument of chastisement against those who had made an idol of it; for the gambling passion, like all others that are outside of life and real things, had the germ, the seed of bitter repentance, in the vice itself. They were struck where they had sinned, or, rather, by the sin itself. It was just one long burst of weeping from all eyes, even the purest ones, a burst of sobs from the cleanest lips; a crowd of poor, honest, innocent creatures struggling amidst hunger and death, paying for others' mistakes, giving the guilty the remorseful thought that they had cast the people they loved best into this great abyss. Not one safe, not one, of those who had given up their life to gambling, to infamous, wicked gambling, that eater-up of blood and money. Not even he or his family were safe; he, too, was broken; his children were to be reduced to holding out their hands. The punishment was too great; it was unbearable. What had he done to have to go to prison like an evil-doer, that his wife should be ashamed of belonging to him, and his children would never mention his name? What had he done to have to stay there in the street like a beggar, who dare not go back to his den, having got no alms from hard-hearted men? Ah! it was too much, too much! What fault had he committed?

A couple of policemen went through Marina Street, and cast searching glances into the darkness of the footpaths in Villa del Popolo; but the shadows were deep, and the men did not notice Don Crescenzio lying at full length on a seat. But he, by a quick change of scene, saw before him his lottery shop in Nunzio Lane, on glowing Friday evenings and anxious Saturday mornings, when the gamblers crowded to the three wickets in his shop, their eyes lighted up by hope, their hands quivering with emotion. He saw again the placards in blue and red letters that incited gamblers to bring more money to the lottery. He saw again the number of advertisements of Cabalists' newspapers and the mottoes: 'So you will see me'; 'It will be your fortune'; 'The people's treasure'; 'The infallible'; 'The secret unveiled'; 'The wheel of fortune.' He remembered the medium's frequent visits and his fatal intimacy with all the other Cabalists, spiritual brothers, and mathematicians, who excited the gamblers with their strange jargon and impostures. He saw it again at Christmas and Easter weeks, when the gambling became wild, fierce; for people have such a longing to get into the long-dreamt-of Land of Cockayne. And he always saw himself pleased with their illusions that ended in a sad disappointment; pleased that that mirage should blind the weak, the foolish, the sick, the poor, the sanguine--all those who live for the Land of Cockayne; pleased that everyone should get the infection, that no one was safe; quite delighted when, at great festivals, the rage increased and the stakes augmented his percentage. He saw it all clearly: his own figure bending to write the cursed ciphers and the lying promises in the ledger, the gamblers' crimson or pale faces distorted by passion. He bowed his head, crushed, feeling he had deserved the punishment, he himself, his family, on to the seventh generation. The lottery was a disgrace that led to illness, wretchedness, prison--every sort of dishonour and death. And he had kept a shop for the infamous thing!