History (22 page)

emotion : "Wallows, wallows . . . ttars . . . tun . . . wallows . . . ain

• . . oice . . ." And when they fi stopped at a patch of mangy grass, where two scrawny city trees had put down their roots, and they sat on that grass to rest, Gi useppe's happiness, in the face of this sublime beauty, be came almost fear; and he clung to his brother's windbreaker with both hands.
  

It was the fi time in his life he had seen a fi and every blade of grass seemed to him illuminated from within, as if it contained a thread of green light. And so the leaves of the trees were hundreds of lightbulbs, where not only the green glowed, and not only the seven colors of the spectrum, but also other, unknown colors. The blocks of cheap housing around the little square, in the morning's open light, also seemed to kindle their colors through an inner splendor, which gilded and silvered them like the tallest castles. The few pots of geraniums and of basil at the windows were minuscule constellations, illuminating the air; and the people, dressed in colors, were moved around through the square by the same rhythmic and grandiose wind that moves the celestial circles, with their cl their suns, and their moons.

A fl was fl over a doorw A cabbage-white butterfl had lighted on a daisy . . . Giuseppe whispered :

"Wallow . .
"

"No, that's not a swallow! I t's an insect! A butterfl Say : BUTTERFLY."

Giuseppe smiled hesitantly, revealing his first baby teeth, just sprout ing. But he couldn't say it. His smile trembled .

"Come on, try! Say: BUTTERFLY! Hey, are you an idiot or some thing?! Now what're you doing? Crying?! If you cry, I won't take you out

with me any more!" "Wallow."

"No, not wallow! It's a butterfly, I told you! Now, what's my name?" "Ina."

"And him, this animal here with the collar, what's his name?" "I."

"Right! That's my kid brother!! Now then, what's this?" "Ty."

"Ty hell! BUTTERFLY! Hey, stupid! And this is a
tree.
Say : TREE. And that thing over there is a bicycle. Say: BICYCLE. Say :
Piazza dei

Sanniti!"

"Ty. Ty. Ty!" Giuseppe exclaimed, deliberately this ti playing the

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clown. And he laughed whole-heartedly at himself, just like a clown. Nino laughed too, and even Blitz : all together like clowns.

"Okay, cut the joking. This is serious. You see that thing waving.

"Lag."

That's the Hag. Say : FLAG."

"Good. Tricolored Hag." "Aikor lag."

"Good for youl Now shout : eia eia alala!" "Lalla."

"Great. And you? What's your name? High time you learned your

own name. You know all the names in the world, and you still don't know your own. What's your name?"

,

"

"GIUSEPPE ! Say it after me : GIUSEPPE!"

Then his little brother concentrated, in a supreme eff of search and conquest. And heaving a sigh, with a pensive face, he said :

"Useppe."

"Jeezus! ! You're an ace, you are! You even got the
ess
right! Useppe! I like tha t. I like it better than Giuseppe. You want to know something? As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to call you Useppe from now on. Climb aboard. We're leaving."

And with Giuseppe once more astride Nino's shoulders, they hastily started along the road back. Th return was even happier than the outward journ : for the world, having lost its fi tragic emotion, had become more familiar. In that dash of Nino's, it was like a merry-go-round, a fair; in it, to perform the wonder of wonders, there appeared, in succession : two or three dogs, a donkey, various vehicles, a cat, etc.

"I . . . i . . ." shouted Giuseppe (or rather Useppe ), recognizing Blitz in all the four-legged animals that passed, straying or hauling, and perhaps also in the wheeled vehicles. Whereupon Ninnuzzu seized the opportunity to enrich his vocabulary still further with the words
automobile
( momobile) and
horse
( oss); until, fed up for today with acting as teacher, he left him to the creations of his fancy.

On their second excursion, which followed a few days later, they went to see the trains at the Tiburtina Stati : not only the part on the square, the area open to passengers ( momobiles . . . ark) but also the more special area reserved for freight ca reached from a back street. Acces to this area, for the ordinary public, was forbidden by a fence; but Ninnuzzu, who had some acquain tances on the inside, pushed open the gate and entered freely, as if in an old fi of his. And, in fact, since his childhood, that corner of the San Lorenzo district had been a kind of preserv for him and for his street friends.

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At the present moment there was no one inside ( except for an elderly little man in coveralls, who waved familiarl to Ninnuzzu from the dis· tance). And the only visible traveler, on any of the few trains waiting there, was a calf, looking down from the open platform of a car. It stood there calmly, tied to an iron bar, barely sticking out its helpless head (its two little horns, still tender, had been torn out ); and from its neck, on a string, hung a tiny medal, like a tag, on which the last stage of his journey perhaps was written. None of that information had been given the traveler; but in his broad, moist eyes you could sense a dark foreknowledge.

The only one who seemed to take an interest in him was Blitz, who on sighting him, gave out a soft, drawling whimper; but then, over the head of his brother, who held him hoisted on his shoulders, Giuseppe was also observing the calf. And perhaps between the child's eyes and the animal's there was some unforeseen exchange, subterranean and imperceptible. All of a sudden, Giuseppe's gaze underwent a curious change, never seen before, which, however, nobody noticed. A kind of sadness or suspicion crossed his eyes, as if a little dark curtain had been drawn down; and he kept looking back towards the freight car, above his brother's shoulders, as Ninnuzzu now, with Blitz, was striding towards the exit.

"Oss . . . oss . . ." he managed to say, with a quavering mouth; but he said it so softly that perhaps Ninnuzzu didn't even hear him, nor did he bother to correct him. And here the minuscule adventure ended. Its durati had been infi And already the three were coming out into the square again, where another unexpected adventure quickly dis pelled the shadow of the fi

A vendor of colored balloons happened to be going by; and amused at his novice brother's rejoicing, the generous Nino spent almost his entire wealth to buy him one, a red one. Then they resumed their way home, no longer three, but four, if you count the balloon, whose string Giuseppe was holding with real anxiety . . . when all of a sudden, perhaps two hundred yards farther on, his fingers accidentally relaxed, and the balloon escaped him, into the air.

It seemed a tragedy; instead, it was the opposite. In fact, Giuseppe welcomed the event with a laugh of surprise and joy. And, his head back, his eyes upraised, for the fi time in his life he said the following words, which no one had taught him :

"Fly away! Fly away!"

Similar excursions of the trio were repeated various other times, all through the month of May; and inevitably the news of that droll trio rollicking around the neighborhood soon reached Ida's ears. Now, after a first jolt, she felt refreshed by it, as if by a providential solution. But out of inertia, she adopted a course of non-interv and didn't mention any·

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thing to Nino . . . So those childish flights proceeded in a double
in
tri : since for Nino their chief fascination lay in their illicitness, Ida involuntarily favored their success by her silence.

However, this new development was certainly another knot in Ida's already confused skein. Even more than before, when she went out of th house, she would hurry, like a street cat with its ears down, cutting comers to avoid the neighbors and their indiscreet questions. Which, in fact, were always spared her; however, this general silence was inexplicable to her and in her suspicions became a threat, postponed from day to day.

The fact was that the scandal of her maternity, which she thought still a secret, was no longer a secret at all around those parts ( Nino's comrades, obviously, had kept their word only up to a certain point); but then, for those Roman proletarians, it wasn't even a scandal. Nobody felt like ston ing that poor little schoolteacher, who was always seen bustling about, alone and occupied, in her run-over shoes; and if some neighbor woman, encountering her by chance, mentioned the baby, it wasn't out of malice, but rather as a compliment. Still she would blush as if they had accused her of illegal prosti

These encounters with the neighbor women occurred, for the most part, while she was standing in line outside the food stores, which were always the least supplied, and in general they sold ersatz products, instead of the genuine article. The legal rations were being reduced, month by month, to a ridiculous inadequacy, whereas Nino's hunger so ravaged him that he was almost transformed into a cannibal, ready to eat his mother. The only citizens good at fi themselves were the well-off who could take advantage of the black market; but this was not Ida's case. And then her pri war for surv began, which was later to develop, growing more and more ferocious.

The greatest part of her time, outside the school, was spent hunting provisions; and at the same time she begged for private lessons, willing to accept, as payment, a packet of dried milk or a can of tomato paste, etc.

These hunting days of hers, reducing her to a condition of pri

stru distracted her from all the other daily anxieties inheri from her mother.

Now Giuseppe, too, wanted to eat. His mother's breasts, after the fi months, had exhausted their milk, and he, weaned early, that winter had already become used to more virile foods. She prepared him some makeshift gruels, boiling up in a special little pot anything edible she could scrape together; and he, full of trust, fed on these gruels, growing as best he could. It seemed that most of all he wanted to increase his height a bit; but the little he gained in length, he lost in breadth; and he looked fairly skinny, though harmoniously built. His face, however, remained round, with an

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expression of good health due to his merry disposition. His skin, almost ignorant of the sun, had by nature a tanned Calabrian hue. And his eyes, which had never yet seen the sea, or the river, or even a pool, seemed nevertheless to draw their color from unknown marine depths, like the eyes of fi or of sailors.

At night, retiring with him in the larger room, Ida would gaze spell bound at the sleep of those little eyes, so blissful they seemed unaware of dreams. For herself, on the other hand, even more than the insomnia which had been bothering her for some time, she feared the dreams which had taken to visiting her with an unwonted profusion, fl her among absurd events, like Alice in Wonderland. Her sleep seemed to have be come her real wakefulness, and perhaps her present long spells of insomnia unconsciously wanted to delay this chimerical vigil.
As
soon as she fell asleep, as if at the collapse of a partition, her nighttime labyrinthine jour ney would begin, without pauses or gaps. Here she is, in a no-man's-land, a kind of suburb, with some temporary constructions. She is the only one wearing clothes in the midst of a crowd of naked people, all standing, their bodies huddled one against the other with no breathing space. And she is ashamed of being dressed, though no one seems to notice her. All those people look dazed, with chalky, staring faces, absent eyes, and without voice, as if every means of communica among them had vanished. She is weeping, so her very loud sobbing is the only sound present; but, pre cisely because it is the only one, she seems to be laughing . . .

. . . But now the laughter no longer comes from her; in fact, some body, hidden, is laughing at her, as she stands alone, erect, like a marion ette, among some piles of beams and rubble. Nobody can be seen, but beneath those piles a din is heard like thousands of chewing teeth, and under it, the whimpering of a child, whom she can't help, no matter how hard she tries, because her movements are rigid as if her whole body were made of wood. Finally, the laughter becomes confused with the barking of a dog, perhaps it's Blitz, who is scratching desperately to free Ninnarieddu and Giuseppe. But at this point she fi she has fallen into some under ground room, where a deafening music reechoes, horribly comical, forcing her to dance. And in the dance she has to show her legs, but she tries to cover them, knowing she has some terrible scars that disfi her thigh and calf, and for which she will be punished unto the seventh genera tion . . .