Difficult Loves (16 page)

Wheels could be heard crunching on the gravel: it was Baci's old cab with the horse half dead; when he stopped, a woman jumped out of there, too. She had a full velvet skirt trimmed with bows and lace, a bosom roped in necklaces, a black band around her throat, dangling earrings, a lorgnette, and blond wig topped by a big romantic hat decorated with artificial roses and grapes and clouds of ostrich feathers.

More waves of sailors had arrived at The Tub of Diogenes. One was playing an accordion and another a saxophone, and women were dancing on the tables. Despite Emanuele's efforts, there were still many more sailors than women, yet no one

could reach a hand out without touching a bosom or a thigh that seemed to have got lost, since it was impossible to tell who it belonged to; there were legs in mid-air and bosoms knee-high. Velvety hands, creeping claws, sharply pointed red nails, quivering fingertips, were groping at tunics, caressing muscles, tickling arms. And mouths met, almost flying through the air, and clung behind ears like clams; huge lips seemed coated with scarlet almost up to the nostrils. Innumerable legs were squirming everywhere, like the tentacles of some enormous octopus, legs sliding about and colliding with haunches and thighs. Then everything seemed to melt away in the sailors' hands, and they found themselves holding a hat trimmed with bunches of grapes, or a dental plate, or a stocking wrapped around the neck, or a sponge, or a piece of silk trimming.

Jolanda had remained alone in the little room with the giant sailor. The door was locked and she was combing her hair in front of the mirror over the wash basin. The giant went to the window and opened the curtains. Outside could be seen the dark naval area and the mole with a line of lights reflected in the water. Then the giant began singing an American song that went, "The day is over, the night is falling, the skies are blue, the bells are beginning to ring."

Jolanda approached the window, too, and gazed out into the darkness; their hands met on the window sill and remained there motionless beside each other. The big sailor went on singing in his voice of iron, "Children of God, let us sing Hallelujah!"

And Jolanda repeated: "Let us sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"

During all this time Emanuele was anxiously moving

around among the sailors without finding a sign of his wife, pushing away the bodies of excited women who every now and then fell into his arms. Suddenly, he was confronted by the group of taxi drivers, who had pushed in to get him to pay the fares shown on their meters. Emanuele's eyes were tearful, but the drivers weren't going to let him off without paying. Now they were joined by old Baci, who was cracking his big coachman's whip and muttering, "If you don't pay up, I'll take her away again!"

Then whistles shrilled and the bar was surrounded by military police. It was the patrol from the
Shenandoah
with rifles and helmets. They turned out all the sailors, one by one. Then the Italian police trucks arrived and loaded up all the women they could lay hands on.

The sailors were lined up outside the bar and marched off toward the port. When the police trucks laden with women passed them on their way, there was a great shout of greetings from both sides. The giant sailor, who was in the leading file, began singing in his resounding voice, "The day is over, the sun is setting, let us sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah!"

Jolanda, squeezed inside a truck between Lollypop and the Wriggler, heard his voice getting farther away and took up the song: "The day is over, the work is done—Hallelujah!"

And they all began singing the song, the sailors and the women, one group going toward the port, the other toward the police station.

At The Tub of Diogenes Felice was beginning to pile up the tables. But Emanuele sat there slumped on a stool, his chin on his chest and his hat on the back of his head. They had been about to arrest him, too, but the American officer in charge of operations had made some inquiries and gestured

for him to be left alone. And now he, the officer, had also stayed on, and there were only the two of them left in the bar, Emanuele drooping desolately on his stool and the American standing in front of him with his arms crossed. When he was certain that they were quite alone, the officer shook the plump man by an arm and began talking to him. Felice approached to act as interpreter, a broad grin on his stubbly cobbler's face.

"Tell him that you can get him a girl, too," he said to Emanuele.

Emanuele blinked his eyes, then let his chin fall on his chest again.

"You to me, girl," said the officer. "Me to you, dollars."

"Dollars! ..." Emanuele mopped his face with his handkerchief. He got up. "Dollars," he repeated. "Dollars."

He and the officer left the bar together. Night clouds were flying high in the sky. From the end of the mole the lighthouse was winking slowly, rhythmically. The air was still full of the song: "Hallelujah!"

"The day is ending, the skies are blue, Hallelujah!" sang Emanuele and the officer, as they strolled along in the middle of the street, arm in arm, in search of a haunt for an all-night spree.

SLEEPING LIKE DOGS

Every time he opened his eyes he felt the acid yellow light of the big arc lamps in the ticket office glaring down at him; and he would pull up the lapels of his jacket in search of darkness and warmth. When he'd lain down he had not noticed how hard and icy the stone tiles on the floor were; now shafts of cold were infiltrating, coming up under his clothes and through the holes in his shoes, and the scarce flesh on his hips was aching, squashed between bone and stone.

But he'd chosen a good place, quiet and out of people's way, in that corner under the stairs; so much so that after he'd been there a little time four women's legs came high over his head and he heard voices say, "Hey, he's taken our place."

The man lying down heard, though he was not properly awake; a dribble was oozing from a corner of his mouth onto the bent cardboard of the little suitcase that was his pillow, and his hair had settled itself to sleep on its own, following the horizontal line of his body.

"Well," said the same voice from above the dirty knees and the spreading bell of the skirt, "let's put our things down. At least we can get our bed ready."

And one of those feet, a woman's in a boot, prodded his

hips like a sniffling snout. The man pulled himself up on his elbows, blinking his stunned and aching pupils in the yellow light, while his hair, apparently taking no notice, stood straight up on its own. Then back he dropped, as if he wanted to thump his head into the suitcase.

The women had taken the sacks off their heads. A man now came up behind, put down a roll of blankets, and began to arrange them. "Hey, you," said the older of the women to the man lying down, "move up, you can get underneath, too, then." No answer; he was asleep.

"He must be dead tired," said the younger of the two women, who was all bones, with the fleshy parts almost hanging as she bent down to spread the blankets and prop the sacks of flour underneath.

They were three black marketeers, on their way south with full sacks and empty tins; people whose bones had grown hard from sleeping on the floor in railroad stations and traveling in cattle cars; but they had learned to organize themselves and took blankets with them, to put underneath for softness and above for warmth; the sacks and tins acted as pillows.

The older woman tried to slip a corner of blanket under the sleeping man, but had to raise him a bit at a time because he never moved. "He must really be dead tired," said the older woman. "Maybe he's one of those emigrants."

Meanwhile, the man with them, a thin man, had got between two of the blankets and pulled an end over his eyes. "Hey, come down here; aren't you ready?" he said to the back of the younger woman, who was still bending down arranging the sacks as pillows. The younger woman was his wife, but they knew the floors of station waiting rooms almost better than their marriage bed. The two women got underneath the

blankets, and the younger one and her husband lay against each other making shivering noises, while the older one was tucking up that poor sleeping wretch. Perhaps the older one was not so old, but she was trodden down by the life she led, always lugging loads of flour and oil on her head up and down in those trains; even her dress was like a sack, and her hair went in all directions.

The head of the sleeping man was slipping off the suitcase, which was too high and wrenched his neck; she tried to arrange him better, but his head nearly fell on the ground; so she propped his head on one of her shoulders and the man shut his lips, swallowed, settled farther down on a softer part, and began snoring again.

They were all just getting off to sleep when a trio from southern Italy arrived, a father with a black mustache and two dark, plump daughters, all three very short; they were carrying wattle baskets and their eyes were gummed with sleep under all that light. The daughters seemed to be wanting to go in one direction and the father in another; so they were quarreling, without looking one another in the face and almost without talking, except for short phrases between clenched teeth and jerky arm movements. When they found the place under the stairs already occupied by those four, they stood looking on, more stunned than ever, until two youths in puttees with coats slung over their shoulders came up to them.

These two at once began trying to persuade the trio of southerners to put all their blankets together and make up one group with the four already there. The two youths were Venetians emigrating to France, and they made the black-market group get up and rearrange all the blankets so that the

whole bunch could settle down together. It was obvious that all this was just a maneuver to get near the two girls, already half asleep; but finally they were all settled, including the older of the black-market women, who had not moved because she had that man's head sleeping on her breast. The two Venetians had, of course, got the girls in between them, leaving the father on one side; but their hands also succeeded in reaching the other women by groping about under the blankets and coats.

Someone was already snoring, but the father from southern Italy could not manage to doze off in spite of all the sleep weighing on him. The acid yellow light burrowed right under his lids, under the hand covering his eyes; and the inhuman calls of the loudspeakers—"Slow train ... platform ... leaving ..."—kept him in a state of continual restlessness. He needed to urinate, too, but did not know where to go and was afraid of getting lost in that huge station. Finally he decided to wake one of the men and began shaking him; it was the unfortunate man who had been sleeping there first of all.

"The latrine, friend, the latrine," he said and pulled him by an elbow, sitting up in the middle of that heap of wrapped-up bodies.

The sleeping man suddenly sat up with a start and opened his misty red eyes and rubbery mouth at that face bending over him; a little wrinkled face, like a cat's, with a black mustache.

"The latrine, friend," said the southerner.

The other sat there stunned, glancing around in alarm. They both kept looking at each other open-mouthed, he and the man from southern Italy. The man still half asleep could not understand anything; he found that woman's face on the

floor beside him and gazed at it terror-struck. He may have been about to let out a shriek, but then, suddenly, he buried his head in the woman's breast again and dropped back to sleep.

The man from southern Italy got up, overturning two or three bodies, and began moving with uncertain steps along that huge, glaringly bright and cold hall. Through the windows could be seen the limpid darkness of the night and a view of geometric iron girders. He saw a dark little man, even shorter than himself, wearing a flashy crumpled suit, come up to him with a careless air.

"The latrine, friend," the man from southern Italy asked him imploringly.

"Cigarettes, American, Swiss," answered the other, who hadn't understood, showing the corner of a pack.

It was Belmoretto, who spent the whole year hanging around stations and had no home or even a bed on the face of the earth, and who every now and again took a train and changed cities, wherever his uncertain trafficking in cigarettes and chewing tobacco took him. At night he ended up joining with some group sleeping in the station between trains, and so managed to lie down for an hour or two under a blanket; if not he wandered around till morning, unless he happened to run into someone who would take him home and give him a bath and some food and make him sleep with him. Belmoretto came from southern Italy, too; he was very kind to the old man with the black mustache; he took him to the latrine and waited till he had finished, so as to accompany him back. He gave him a cigarette and they smoked together, looking through eyes sandy with sleep at the trains leaving and the mounds of people sleeping on the floor down in the hall below.

"We sleep like dogs," said the old man. "Six days and six nights since I've seen a bed."

"A bed," said Belmoretto. "Sometimes I dream of it, a bed. A lovely white bed all to myself."

The old man went back to try to get some sleep. When he raised a blanket to make room for himself, he saw the hand of one of the Venetians on the leg of one of his daughters. He tried to pull the hand away, but the Venetian thought it was his friend trying to have a taste, too, and pushed him. The old man cursed and raised his fist over him. But the others shouted that they could not sleep, and the old man eventually climbed back to his place on his knees and got under the blankets, quietly. He felt cold and curled himself up. A longing to cry came over him. Then, very cautiously, he advanced his hand among the nearest bodies and met two women's knees, which he began to stroke.

The older of the black-market women still had resting on her breast the face of the man who looked as if he had been squashed down by tons of sleep; whenever she touched him there was no reaction, only slight signs here and there of partial reawakening. Now the woman felt a hand, a small hand all lines and calluses, on her knee, and she squeezed her legs around the hand, which stopped and was quiet at once. The old man from southern Italy could not manage to sleep but he felt happier; the soft warmth in which his little hand was wrapped seemed to be diffusing itself all over his body.