History (26 page)

School, by now, had become an impossible constraint. And not infre quently, in the morning, especially in bad weather, after grumbling a reply to Ida's usual call, he would roll over again under the blankets when she had gone out, and would continue sleeping voluptuously at least another

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two hours, indiff to the missed class. When he did get up then ( all charged with free and fresh energies, happy to have had a vacation ), even the tenants on the fl below took fright and started complaining, hitting the ceiling with a broom. The house was transformed into a stadium, a circus,
a
jungle. The morning's greatest amusement was the search for
Roma
and
Lazio,
fatally given to vanishing in the heat of the usual con tests. In an epic hunt furniture was shifted, upset, explored, turned inside out, and everything was fl in the air, until Blitz, all dusty, would reappear from some cranny, carrying the retrieved prey in his teeth, ex ultant, applauded like a champion.

Such childish games did not exhaust, but rather exacerbated, Nino's turbulence, driving it to excess, like a tribe aroused by its own yells. In the midst of those crazy competitions, in a furious and almost tragic gaiety, he would start running around the rooms, imitating the leaps and roars of lions, tigers, and other wild beasts. Then he would jump on a table, shout ing; "Achtung! Every to the wall !! In three seconds it will be H hour! Three . . . two and a half . . . two . . . one and a half . . . one
0 • 0
H
HOUR! !! Heil Hitler!" with such fi verisimilitude that even Blitz was bewildered, and Useppe peered into the air, expecting the appearance of the famous H HOUR, which for him was :identifi with a kind of
airpane.

In the afternoons, sometimes, persecuted by Ida's sulks, Ninnuzzu would sit at the little table to do his schoolwork. But he would :i

ately start yawning, like a malaria case. And he would leaf through the books with a bitter frown, as if he didn't know what to do with them, every now and then tearing off a bit of page and chewing it, promptly spitting it on the fl Finally, nauseated by that absurd torment, he would get up, saying he needed a breath of air before settling down to study. Blitz would rush to him, enthusiastic at this decision; and the pair would not be seen again in the house until suppertime.

Often, however reluctantly, he did without Blitz's company, to be freer in his actions; and these actions, even if they were only tri to the movies or on the tram, loomed menacing and nefarious in Ida's puzzled mind. On top of everything else, he had developed a quarrelsome charac ter. Once he arrived home with the knuckles of his right hand bleeding; and he said he had beaten up somebody who had insulted the Duce. And how had he insul ted him? He had said the Duce was an old man now, maybe sixty.

Another time, coming home with a tom jersey, he said he had been in a fi caused by jealousy. Not his own, but somebody else's; some girl's boyfriend had become jealous of him.

Yet another time, he turned up at the house with a black eye. And he

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said he had taken on two characters by himself and they had had a fi

two against one. Who were they? How should he know who they were? They were two shits he'd never seen before, but as he went past, with his hat pulled down and his blanket around him, they had nudged each other and murmured : "Hey, look at the Negus!"

That blackened eye (as Ida had refused him the money for a pair of dark glasses ) was an excuse for him to stay away from school for several days. But for that matter, his absence from school by now was more frequent than his presence; and on his own initiative, he signed his excuses with his mother's name. vVhen the Principal fi summoned him to report with his father or his mother, that is with the responsible head of his family, Nino explained that his only family was a little brother, and a dog, and a widowed mother (occupied all day long as a teacher in the school ); so he himself was the head of the family. After which, since the Principal (a blustering man with white mane, vaunting a youthful, com radely manner) was a decorated Fascist, who moreover was named Arnalda like Mussolini's brother, Nino became fi with self-confi

and taking advantage of this conversation, asked for a recommendation so that he could be immediately accepted as a volunteer in the war. But the Principal answered that at his age his duty as a Fascist was to study, until the Fatherland called on him; you do not serv the Fatherland only on the battlefi but also in the classroom and the factory, etc. And, to conclude, eager to be rid of him, quoting the Duce's motto
Book and Musket,
he dismissed Nino with a Roman salute.

The torment of classes drove him nearly crazy. Th desk was too narrow for him, and, even without being aware of it, every now and then he gave it a shove, or sighed. For all the subjects discussed in class he cared absolutely nothing : it seemed comical to him that people should assemble for this purpose, wasting whole mornings. And he was gri by the downright physical temptation to burst from the benches, upsetting every thing, to launch into his imitation of the tiger or the lion, as he did at home. Then, not knowing how to save himself from such temptation, he would suddenly pretend to have a deep cough, deliberately, to have himself sent into the corridor.

To make his presence less disruptive, the teachers had isolated him, like a reprobate, at a desk in the back row. But under his occupancy, that lonely abode seemed no longer a pillory but rather the cock's single cage in a common hen run. And from tha t special isolation, his presence stimu· lated even more the almost enamored vassal-obeisance his classmates in general felt for him.

When the mood seized him, he was capable of mobilizing the whole

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class in his enthusiasm. So one sirocco morning, to enliven the Greek lesson, at
a
certain point he planted his feet against the desk in front of his and began to shove, unobserv And at his prearranged signal, his accom plices imitated him, all together; thus, in a shameless silence, the whole row of desks began to advance like Birnam wood towards the teacher's dais. The teacher, always culpable because of his suspect political ideas, unnerv by hardships and half-crazed with hunger, at this phenomenon displayed a blanched face, as if for a moment he really felt himself nailed, like Mac beth, to the spot marked by his destiny.

But these wr schoolboy pranks no longer allayed Ninnuzzu's boredom, which, towards the spring equinox, became tragic. During school hours he yawned constantly; and when, with the best of intentions, he suppressed his yawns, the eff forced him to clench his teeth or make frightening faces. Involuntarily, he would sprawl on the bench of his desk as if on a triclinium; and when scolded by the teacher, in sitti up straight, he would assume the sinister air of a murderer in the patrol wagon.

Unable to resist the incessant yearning to smoke and to move his feet, he invented a form of dysentery for himself (as an excuse for leaving the room more often ). And so in the end he spent a good part of his school mornings in the latrine. Where he lingered to turn slips of paper and random scraps of tobacco into his wartime cigarettes, sucking on them afterwards with fury and voluptuousness, to the last mangy shred, which burned his hand. Then, if he was in the mood, he would amuse himself by fouling up the place, decorating a door or a corner of a wall with some drawing of fabulous wickedness. And when, taking his time, he went back into the classroom (as already before leaving it) he didn't bother to act his sick man's role; but ra ther, he had a proud, anarchistic manner. So his schoolmates looked at him with laughing glances of admiration and silent solidarity.

One of those days, during a recess, the Principal sent for him, to warn him that if he didn't show up the next day with his mother, he would not be admitted to the school. He said all right, and went back to the class room. But the moment he was back inside, he immediately regretted being there; and he produced the familiar excuse of his ailment, to leave the room. This time, however, he didn't go to the latrines, but went down the steps, and passing the porter's lodge, he said :
Special permission!
with such
a
hard look that the porter himself took fright, and didn't dare argue. Since the gate was locked, he climbed over it. And just outside, he peed against the wall, bidding the school his last farewell.

That same evening he announced to Ida that now he knew all that

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was to be known, and was quitting school. He would have to stop soon anyway, to go to war. Wh the war was over, they could discuss the matter further.

This news had the power to shake Iduzza for a few moments, from her evening weari and even to stir some of her extreme ambitions.
At
heart, her fi idea, when Ninnuzzu was little, had been to see him be come a great professor, a scientist, a man of letters, in short an important professional man; and she still felt, in spite of everything, the inexorable obligation to have him take a degree. No other expense seemed so neces sary to her; so, recently, to keep intact at least her famous treasure hidden in her corset, she had sold off her little gold objects, various furnishings of the house, and every other salable thing: even the wool mattresses, which she had exchanged for others of kapok, plus a few pounds of pasta.

At Nino's catastrophic announcement, she seemed to swell out, her hair actually on end, like certain small helpless animals when they want to assume a frightening mien. As usual, in a poor and comical resurrection of her mother Nora, she found on her own lips the tragic invectives of the children of Zion against Tyre or Moab . . . And amid these insults and lamentations, she fl herself here and there about the kitchen, as if she hoped that from the chimney or beneath the sink, some ally would appear before her, some help . . . But there was nothing to be done; she had to combat Nino alone. And her protests had more or less the effect on him of the voice of a cricket or a frog on a pistolero riding across the pampas.

His few interjections, into Ida's implacable monologue, were only to say to her, in a conciliatory voice: "Aw, rn why don't you cut it out?" until, fi with some signs of impatience, he went off into the living room-study. And Ida followed him.

Then, exasperated, so as not to hear her, he began to sing the Fascist anthems, like an immense chorus, improvising some obscene vari on them, to make things worse. At this point, as could have been foreseen, fear annihilated Ida. Ten thousand imaginary policemen spurted from her brain within that explosive room, while Nino, proud of his success, actually began singing "Red Flag." Nor was Blitz's accompaniment wanting: dis concerted by the unequal dialogue, he came out with wild, scattered barks, as if he saw two moons in the sky.

". . . that's enough. Go off then . . . to the war . . . anywhere you like . . ." Ida began repeating, aside, her throat dry. Her voice was a bare murmur. And swaying, she sank down in a chair, like a bundle.

Meanwhile, Useppe, wakened by the racket from his fi sleep, and unable, with his small stature, to reach the door knob, was calling out in alarm : "Maa! In
a
! Aieeee!" Promptly, pleased with this diversion, Nino moved to liberate him; and to refresh himself after the tormenting scene

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with his mother, he abandoned himself to the usual games with Useppe and the dog. A wondrous gaiety was released in the rooms. While Ida, mute on her chair, began to write the following message, leaving it then clearly visible on her son's table:

Nino/

all is over between us!

I
swear it!

your mother.

Because of her trembling wrist, the letters of this piece of writing were so crooked and confused they seemed the work of a fi pupil. On the following morning, the message was still where she had left it, and the daybed was untouched, empty. That night Nino had slept away from home.

After that evening, not infrequently Nino spent his nights outside the house, nor did anyone know where or with whom. Once, towards the beginning of the third week, he disappeared in the company of Blitz for two days. And Ida, frightened, in her helplessness, wondered if she should summon her resolve and search for him in the hospitals, or even ( for her, the most horrible menace of all ) at the Police Station; then he was seen reappearing, followed by Blitz, joyous and all newly dressed. He wore a black oilskin windbreaker with a pale blue lining, a powder blue shirt, neatly pressed pants of simulated fl and brand new shoes, positively de luxe, with crepe soles. He even had a wallet (and he showed it with great display) containing a fi note.

Ida observed these novelties, dazed and uneasy, perhaps suspecti further thefts; but Ninnuzzu, anticipating all questions, announced to her, radiant and smug : "They're presents!" "Presents . . . who gave them to you?" she murm red hesitantly. And he, with bold and sibylline prompt ness, replied : "A virgin!"

Th seeing his mother somewhat perturbed by this word, he im mediately reacted, correcting himself, with a shameless face : "Well then,
a
whore! Okay?" But at this clearer answer, his mother's already distraught face actually became covered with blushes, so he burst out heatedly:

"Hey! If I say a
virgin,
you nearly faint. If I say a
whore,
you throw up. So I'll give you another choice : a
fairy

At this new reply, lduzza, more innocent than a nun as far as certain terms were concerned, looked at him with inert simplicity, understanding nothing. Meanwhile Useppe had arrived; and even amid the impassioned

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assaults of Blitz he remained dazzled at the sight of his new, elegant brother. As if he were at the Puppet Theater, when from the top of the stage, Roland the Crusader desc
e
nds in his silver armor.