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The Story of Saint Joseph’s Ass
by
His wife had a lump in her throat when she looked at that burned up cornfield, and only answered with the big tears that came to her eyes.
“It isn’t the donkey’s fault. He brought a good year to Neighbor Neli. It’s we who are unlucky.”
So the ass of Saint Joseph changed masters once more, for Farmer Cirino went back again with his sickle from the corn field, there was no need to reap it that year, in spite of the fact that they’d hung images of the saints on to the cane hedge, and had spent twenty cents having it blessed by the priest.”The devil is after us!” Farmer Cirino went swearing through those ears of corn that stood up straight like feathers, which even the ass wouldn’t eat; and he spat into the air at the blue sky that had not a drop of water in it. Then Neighbor Luciano the carter, meeting Farmer Cirino leading home the ass with empty saddlebags, asked him: “What do you want me to give you for Saint Joseph’s ass?”
“Give me what you like. Curse him and whoever made him,” replied Farmer Cirino.”Now we haven’t got bread to eat, nor barley to give to the beast.”
“I’ll give you three dollars because you’re ruined; but the ass isn’t worth it, he won’t last above six months. See what a poor sight he is!”
“You ought to have asked more,” Farmer Cirino’s wife began to grumble after the bargain was concluded.”Neighbor Luciano’s mule has died, and he hasn’t the money to buy another. If he hadn’t bought the Saint Joseph’s ass he wouldn’t know what to do with his cart and harness; and you’ll see that donkey will bring him riches.”
The ass then learned to pull the cart, which was too high on the shafts for him, and weighed so heavily on his shoulders that he wouldn’t have lasted even six months, scrambling his way up the steep rough roads, when it took all Neighbor Luciano’s cudgeling to put a bit of breath into his body; and when he went downhill it was worse, because all the load came down on top of him, and pressed on him so much that he had to hold on with his back curved up in an arch, with those poor legs that had been burned by fire, so that people seeing him began to laugh, and when he fell down it took all the angels of paradise to get him up again. But Neighbor Luciano knew that he pulled his ton and a half of stuff better than a mule, and he got paid forty cents a half-ton.”Every day the Saint Joseph’s ass lives it means a dollar and a dime earned,” he said, “and he costs me less to feed than a mule.”Sometimes people toiling up on foot at a snail’s pace behind the cart, seeing that poor beast digging his hoofs in with no strength left, and arching his spine, breathing quick, his eye hopeless, suggested: “Put a stone under the wheel, and let that poor beast get his wind.” But Neighbor Luciano replied: “If I let him go his own pace he’ll never earn me my dollar and a dime a day. I’ve got to mend my own skin with his. When he can’t do another stroke I’ll sell him to the lime man, for the creature is a good one and will do for him; and it’s not true a bit that Saint Joseph’s asses are Jonahs. I got him for a crust of bread from Farmer Cirino, now he’s come down and is poor.”
Then the Saint Joseph’s ass fell into the hands of the lime man, who had about twenty donkeys, all thin skeletons just ready to drop, but which managed nevertheless to carry him his little sacks of lime, and lived on mouthfuls of weeds that they could snatch from the roadside as they went. The lime man didn’t want him because he was all covered with scars worse than the other beasts, and his legs seared with fire, and his shoulders worn out with the collar, and his withers gnawed by the plow saddle, and his knees broken by his falls, and then that black-and-white skin that in his opinion didn’t go at all with his other black animals.”That doesn’t matter,” replied Neighbor Luciano, “it’ll help you to know your own asses at a distance.” And he took off another fifteen cents from the dollar and a half that he had asked, to close the bargain. But even the mistress, who had seen him born, would no longer have recognized the Saint Joseph’s ass, he was so changed, as he went with his nose to the ground and his ears like an umbrella, under the little sacks of lime, twisting his behind at the blows from the boy who was driving the herd. But the mistress herself had also changed by then, with the bad times there had been, and the hunger she had felt, and the fevers that they’d all caught down on the plain, she, her husband, and her Turiddu, without any money to buy sulfate, for one hasn’t got a Saint Joseph’s ass to sell every day, not even for seven dollars.