Difficult Loves (6 page)

"You're mined!" they said to him.

They started down a companionway. After a few steps, they hesitated: at their feet the black water began, rustling in the enclosed space. Standing still and mute, the boys from Piazza dei Dolori looked at it; in the depths of that water there was the black glint of colonies of sea urchins, slowly unfolding their spines. And the walls on every side were encrusted with limpets, their shells dripping green algae; the iron of the walls seemed eroded. And there were crabs teeming at the edges of the water, thousands of crabs of every shape and every age, which scuttled on their curved, spoked legs, and opened their claws, and thrust forward their sightless eyes. The sea slapped dully in the space of the iron walls, licking those flat crab bellies. Perhaps the entire hold of the ship was full of groping crabs, and one day the ship would move on the crabs' legs and walk through the sea.

The boys came up on deck again, at the prow. Then they saw the little girl. They hadn't seen her before, though it was as if she had always been there. She was a little girl of about six, fat, with long curly hair. She was all sunburned, wearing only little white pants. There was no telling where she had come from. She didn't even look at them, totally concerned with a medusa that was lying on its back on the wooden deck, the flabby festoons of its tentacles spread out. With a stick the little girl was trying to turn it upright.

The Piazza dei Dolori boys stopped all around her, gaping. Mariassa was the first to step forward. He sniffed.

"Who're you?" he said.

The girl raised the pale-blue eyes in her dark, plump face; then she resumed working the stick as a lever under the medusa.

"She must be one of the Arenella gang," Carruba said; he knew them.

The Arenella boys let some girls come with them to swim or play ball, and even to make war with reed weapons.

"You," Mariassa said, "are our prisoner."

"Gang!" Cicin said. "Take her alive!"

The little girl went on poking at the jellyfish.

"Battle stations!" Paulo yelled, as he happened to look around. "The Arenella gang!"

While they had been involved with the girl, the Arenella boys, who spent their whole day in the sea, had come swimming underwater and silently climbed the anchor chain; now they appeared over the railings. They were short, stocky kids, light as cats, with shaved heads and dark skin. Their trunks weren't black and long and floppy like those of the Dolori boys, but consisted of a single length of white canvas.

The battle began; the Piazza dei Dolori boys were thin, all nerves, except for Bombolo, who was a fatty; but they had a fanatical fury when they swung their fists, hardened by endless brawls in the little streets of the old city against the gangs from San Siro and the Giardinetti. At first the Arenella kids had the advantage, because of the surprise element; but then the Dolori gang perched on the ladders and there was no dislodging them. They wanted to avoid, at all cost, being forced to the railing, where it would be easy to dump them into the drink. Finally Pier Lingera, who was the strongest of the bunch and also the oldest and who hung out with them only because he had been kept back in school, managed to force one of the Arenella boys to the edge and push him into the sea.

Then the Dolori gang took the offensive, and the Arenella kids, who felt more at home in the water and, being sensible,

had no notions about honor in their heads, one by one eluded their enemies and dived in.

"Come and get us in the water. We dare you!" they yelled.

"Gang! Follow me!" yelled Cicin, who was about to dive.

"Are you crazy?" Mariassa held him back. "In the water they'd win hands down!" And he started shouting insults at the fugitives.

The Arenella boys began to splash water up from below; they splashed so hard there wasn't a place on the ship that wasn't wet. Finally they got tired of that and swam out to sea, heads down and arms arched, surfacing every now and then to breathe, in little spurts.

The Piazza dei Dolori boys had remained masters of the field. They went to the prow; the little girl was still there. She had succeeded in turning over the medusa and was now trying to lift it on the stick.

"They left us a hostage!" Mariassa said.

"Hey, gang! A hostage!" Cicin was all excited.

"You cowards!" Carruba shouted behind the other bunch. "Leaving your women in the enemies' hands!"

They had a highly developed sense of honor around Piazza dei Dolori.

"Come with us," Mariassa said, and started to put a hand on her shoulder.

The girl motioned him to keep still; she had almost succeeded in lifting the medusa. As Mariassa bent over to look, the girl pulled up the stick, with the medusa balanced on it, pulled it up, up, and slammed it into Mariassa's face.

"Bitch!" Mariassa yelled, spitting and putting his hands to his face.

The little girl looked at them all and laughed. Then she

turned, went straight to the top of the prow, raised her arms, joining her fingertips, did a swan dive, and swam off without looking back. The Piazza dei Dolori boys hadn't moved.

"Say," Mariassa asked, touching one cheek, "is it true that medusas make your skin burn?"

"Wait and find out," Pier Lingera said. "But the best thing would be to dive in right away."

"Let's go," Mariassa said, starting off with the others.

Then he stopped. "From now on we have to have a woman in our gang, too! Menin! Bring your sister!"

"My sister's a dummy," Menin said.

"That doesn't matter," Mariassa said. "Come on!" And he gave Menin a shove, pushing him into the water because he didn't know how to dive. Then they all dived in.

MAN IN THE WASTELAND

Early in the morning you can see Corsica : it looks like a ship laden with mountains, suspended out there on the horizon. If we lived in another country it would have inspired legends, but not here: Corsica is a poor land, poorer than ours; nobody has ever gone there and nobody has ever given it any thought. If you see Corsica in the morning it means the air is clear and still and there's no rain in the offing.

On one of those mornings, at dawn, my father and I were climbing up the dry, stony gullies of Colla Bella, with the dog on a chain. My father had encased his chest and back in scarves, coats, a hunting jacket, vests, knapsacks, canteens, cartridge belts; from all this, a white goatee emerged; on his legs he wore an old pair of scratched-up, leather puttees. I had on a threadbare, too-tight jerkin that left my wrists and waist exposed, and trousers, also tight and threadbare; and I took long strides like my father, but with my hands dug into my pockets and my long neck pulled down between my shoulders. Both of us carried old hunting guns, a fine make but neglected and streaked with rust. The dog was a harrier, ears drooping till they swept the ground, a short bristling coat

on its bones that seemed to scrape the skin. Behind him he dragged a chain that might have served for a bear.

"You stay here with the dog," my father said. "From here you can keep an eye on both trails. I'll go to the other, and when I get there I'll give you a whistle. Then you turn the dog loose. Watch out: a hare can slip past in a second."

My father continued up the stony track, and I crouched down on the ground with the dog, whimpering because he wanted to follow. Colla Bella is a height rising from the pale shore, all barren terrain, weeds hard to crop, crumbling walls of ancient embankments. Farther down, the black haze of the olive groves begins; farther up, the tawny woods, made patchy by fires, like the backs of mangy old dogs. Everything lazed in the gray of the dawn as in a half-opening of still-sleepy eyelids. At sea no outlines could be distinguished; the water was striped by shafts of mist for all its breadth.

My father's whistle came. Released from the chain, the dog set off in great zigzags up the stony bed, snapping the air with yelps. Then, silent, it began to sniff the ground and ran off, still sniffing diligently, its tail erect, a rhomboid white spot under it that seemed illuminated.

I kept the gun aimed, resting on my knees, and my eyes aimed, resting on the intersection of the trails, because a hare can slip past in a second. Dawn was revealing colors, one by one. First the red of the wild arum berries, the reddish slashes on the pine trees. Then green, the hundred, the thousand greens of the fields, bushes, woods, which a short time before had been uniform : now, instead, a new green appeared every moment, distinct from the others. Then the blue: the loud blue of the sea which deafened everything and made the sky turn wan and timid. Corsica vanished, engulfed by the light,

but the border between sea and sky did not become firm: it remained that ambiguous, confused zone frightening to look at because it does not exist.

All of a sudden houses, roofs, streets were born at the foot of the hills, along the sea. Every morning the city was born like this from the realm of shadows, all at once, tawny with tiles, sparkling with glass, lime-white with stucco. The light every morning described it in the smallest details, narrowed its every doorway, enumerated all its houses. Then the light moved up along the hills, revealing more and more particulars : new terraces, new houses. It arrived at Colla Bella, yellow and barren and deserted; and it discovered a house up there as well, isolated, the highest house before the woods, within range of my gun, the house of Baciccin the Blissful.

In shadow, the house of Baciccin the Blissful seemed a heap of stones; around it there was a dirt terrace, caked, gray, like the surface of the moon, from which rose scrawny plants, as if he cultivated poles. There were some wires stretched, for laundry, it seemed; but they were his vineyard of consumptive, skeletal vines. Only a slender fig tree seemed to have the strength to support its leaves, writhing under the weight, at the edge of the terrace.

Baciccin came out; he was so thin that, to be seen, he had to stand in profile; otherwise all you saw was his mustache, gray and bristling. He was wearing a woolen Balaclava helmet and a homespun suit. He saw me waiting and came over.

"Hare, hare," he said.

"Hare. As usual," I answered.

"Shot at one this big last week on that track. Close as here to there. Missed."

"Bad luck."

"Bad luck, bad luck. I'm not one for hare anyway. I'd rather stand under a pine tree and wait for thrush. In one morning you can get five or six shots."

"So you shoot your dinner, Baciccin."

"That's right. But then I miss them all."

"It happens. It's the cartridges."

"The cartridges, the cartridges."

"The ones they sell are no good. Make your own."

"That's right. I do make my own. Maybe I make them wrong."

"Ah, you have to have the knack."

"That's right, that's right."

Meanwhile he had assumed a position, his arms folded, in the center of the crossing and was not going to move. The hare would never go by if he stood in the way like that. I'll tell him to move, I thought; but I didn't tell him, and I sat there waiting all the same.

"No rain, no rain," Baciccin said.

"Corsica: did you see it this morning?"

"Corsica. All dry, Corsica."

"A bad year, Baciccin."

"Bad year. Planted beans. Did they grow?"

"Did they grow?"

"Did they grow? No."

"They sold you bad seed, Baciccin."

"Bad seed, bad year. Eight artichoke plants."

"Damn."

"Tell me what I got from them."

"You tell."

"All died."

"Damn."

Costanzina, the daughter of Baciccin the Blissful, came from the house. She could have been sixteen: olive-shaped face, eyes, mouth, nostrils, shaped like an olive; and braids down her back. She must have had olive-shaped breasts, too: all the same style; like a statuette, wild as a she-goat, wool socks up to her knees.

"Costanzina," I called.

"Oh!"

But she did not come closer; she was afraid of frightening the hares.

"Hasn't barked yet, hasn't flushed it," Baciccin said.

We pricked up our ears.

"He hasn't barked. No use going away yet," and he went off.

Costanzina sat down beside me. Baciccin the Blissful had started wandering around his bleak terrace, pruning the scraggy vines; every now and then he would stop and come back to talk.

"What's new around Colla Bella, Tancina?" I asked.

The girl began to recount, dutifully: "Last night I saw the hares over there, jumping in the moonlight. They went 'hee! hee!' Yesterday a mushroom sprouted behind the oak. Poisonous, red with white spots. I killed it with a stone. A big, yellow snake came down the path at noon. She lives in that bush. Don't throw stones at her; she's harmless."

"Do you like living on Colla Bella, Tancina?"

"Not in the evening. The mist comes up at four o'clock, and the city disappears. Then, at night, you can hear the owl cry."

"Scared of owls?"

"No. Scared of bombs, planes."

Baciccin came over. "The war? How's the war going?"

"The war's been over a good while, Baciccin."

"Fine. What's taken the war's place, then? Anyway, I don't believe it's over. Whenever they used to say that, it would start up again—every time, in some different way. Am I right?"

"Yes, you're right. ... Which do you like best, Tancina: Colla Bella or the city?" I asked.

"In the city there's the shooting gallery," she answered, "trams, people shoving, movies, ice cream, the beach with umbrellas on it."

"This girl," Baciccin said, "isn't all that crazy about going to the city; the other one liked it so much she never came back."

"Where is she now?"

"Hmph."

"Hmph. We need rain."

"That's the truth. Need rain. Corsica, this morning. Am I right?"

"You're right, yes."

In the distance there was an explosion of yelps.

"Dog's flushed a hare," I said.

Baciccin came and stood in the trail, his arms folded.

"He's hunting. A good hunter," he said. "I had a dog, a bitch name of Cililla. She'd trail a hare for three days. Once she flushed him at the top of the wood and chased him two yards in front of my gun. I fired twice. Missed."