History (38 page)

"The world STINKS!! Are you just fi that out?" Ninnari

confi triumphantly. "Eh, I caught on to that a long time ago! It's lousy, and it STINKS! But all the same," he added, having second thoughts, and beginning to move his feet, "for me . . . this stink . . . gets me excited! Some women, you know? they stink like . . . like what?

. . . like women! And that stink of women gives you a hard-on . . . For me," he proclaimed, "all the stink of life gives me a hard-on!!"

At that, his feet, on their own, had started moving to the jazz rhythm of a moment earlier. "Then what? How did you get away?!" he asked, with curiosity, as he danced.

"How did I do it? I did it . . . I jumped down . . . at a stop . . . Villach . . . no, before. I don't know where . . . There were a couple of dead bodies to unload : an old guy . . . and an old woman . . . No! I don't want to talk about it any more! That's enough!!" And here Vivaldi Carlo frowned, with a nausea ted but oddly helpless and naked expression, like a capricious child who has fi spilled his whole story and says, exhausted: now leave me alone.

"Bravo. We won't talk any more about it. Have a dri k!" Sora Mer cedes urged him. "Anyway, it'll all be over soon. In a little while, thank God, the liberators will be here!"

"When are they going to come, then, these Messiahs? . . ." Caru lina's other grandmother sighed at this point, in a whining little voice. Unlike Granny Dinda, she was usually quiet. "They're corn Granny, they're coming. It's a matter of hours!! Let's drink to it!" was the general chorus from The Thousand. And Carulina, who, in spite of her emotion, still continued to harbor her treacherous hilarity, seized the occasion to turn it loose, corn out with a laugh that sounded like a horn's honking. Carlo then raised his eyes towards her, and gave her a sweet, childlike smile.

His face seemed drained but relaxed, in convalescence after a raving illness. Th was no longer any sign of that corr expression which had disfi it until a moment before. And the very excitement of the wine, burning in his eyes, had now been transformed by the putri fi of a moment earlier into a tremendous radiance, shy and ingenuous. He was

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crouching in an uncomfortable position, with one leg half-extended and the other raised, to leave room for Rossella, and he seemed a messenger from some defeated and scattered tribe, sent perhaps also to ask for aid.

Following the general example, he poured himself more wine, but with a clumsy movement, so that he spilled some over the edge of the glass. "That brings good luck! Good luck!" all shouted then, "spilled wine means good luck!" and they fought to dip their fi in that wine, to wet the skin behind their ears with it. Even those who hadn't moved from their places were included in this little baptism, especially by the hand of Carull, who didn't forget anyone: not even Useppe, immersed in sleep behind his curtain, or the other kids sleeping about the room, or the half dozing Ida, who reacted to the tickle with a faint unconscious laugh. The only one excluded was Vivaldi Carlo himself; but in the end, overcoming her awe, Carulina took care of him, too. "Thank you . . . thank you!" he kept repeating. "Thank you!" And not knowing how to respond to this profusion of thanks, embarrassed by their excess, she remained there, sway ing on her legs, in a kind of courtly ballet.

"A toast to the liberators! A toast to our comrade partisans!" Giuseppe Secondo shouted. And after having clinked glasses with this one and that, he came over to Carlo. "Cheer up, comrade!" he encouraged him, toasting, "it's only a few more months now. In a little while, we'll break through in the North too. And by spring at the latest you'll see your home again!"

Vivaldi Carlo responded with an uncertain smile, which expressed a kind of gratitude, without wanting to give way to exaggerated hope.

Examining him, Giuseppe Secondo felt an immediate and sociable need to drag him too, at once, into the general festivity. "By the way, comrade," he said to him then, expansively,
"I
meant to ask you a while ago : instead of staying here, with this anger that's rotting your insides, why don't you go and join in the armed struggle, along with our partisan comrades? You're a smart boy, and a brave one, too!"

Perhaps Vivaldi Carlo had been expecting just such a question! In fact, even before the old man could put it into words, his features had become taut in an urgent, aware determination which dispelled the wine's fog. He frowned sternly, and, with a glum bitterness, declared :

"I CAN'T."

"Why can't you?" exclaimed Nino, who had meanwhile come around to that side of the table.

Vivaldi Carlo blushed, as if he were about to confess something illicit: "Because," he stated, "I can't kill anyone."

"You can't kill? What do you mean? Not even the Germans?! Wh not? Is it some kind of vow you made in church?!"

The interrogated boy shrugged. "Me?" he declared with an almost

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. . .
.
. .
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contemptuous smile. 'Tm an atheist!" Then he trained his eyes on Nino's face, and speaking slowly and forcefully, despite his lips being sticky from drink, he explained, in a tone of insurrection :

"My-ideals-REJECT-violence. All evil is derived from violence!" "Then what kind of anarchist does that make you?"

"True anarchism cannot admit violence. The anarchist ideal is the negation of power. And power and violence are the same thing . . ."

"But without violence how can you manage to have an Anarchist Government?"

"Anarchism rejects Government . . . And if the means has to be violence, then it's no good. We don't pay the price. In this case, Anar chism isn't achieved."

"Then, if it isn't going to get done, I don't like it. I like things that get done."

"It depends on what you mean by ACTION," Vivaldi Carlo re butted, crossly, in a low voice. Then, expanding again, with intent, persua sive ardor, he declared : "If the price is betraying the ideal, then the end has failed before it begins! The ideal . . . the idea isn't a past or a future

. . . it's the present in action . . . And physical violence kills it at the roots . . . Violence is the worst thing of all."

This resolute defense of his ideals seemed to have heartened him, but made him shy, at the same time. As if ashamed of his eyes' natural ferv

he lowered them, so you could see only those lashes, too long and thick, recalling his still recent boyhood. "So then," Ninnuzzu persecuted him still, "tomorrow if you bump into that German who stuck you into the bunker or the other one who loaded you onto the freight train, what'll you do? Let them live?!"

"Ycs . . . " Vivaldi Carlo said, while his upper lip curled in a grim ace that again corrupted his features, like a passing shudder. And at the same time, in Nino's eyes there reappeared that new, blind fl like a photographer's bulb, which had already amazed Ida at the beginning of the evening.

"
Non-violent anarchists,"
Giuseppe Secondo decreed meanwhile, puzzled, "as an idea, is something to be taken into consideration . . . But, when you need violence, you need it! Without violence, the socialist revo lution won't be achieved."

"I like the revolution!" Nino exclaimed. "I don't believe in anarchy without violence! And you know what I say? YOU KNOW? That the Communists, and not the anarchists, will bring on the real anarchy!"

"The real liberty is the red fl " Quattro approved, with contented eyes.

"In Communism, everybody'll be comrades!" Nino went on, at full

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tilt, carried away. "There won't be any more offi ers, or professors, or ti or barons or kings or queens . . . and no Fuhrers or Duces!"

"And Comrade Stalin, what about him?" . . . Giuseppe Secondo in quired, concerned.

"Him! He's diff Nino decided fi "He's above discussion!" And in his voice, beyond his peremptory rhetoric, there was a certain familiar and intimate note, as if they were talking about an old relative who had held him, as a little boy, on his lap and had let him play with his moustache.

"Nobody touches him!" he further declared, and this time the earlier note was accompanied by another, fi er : to assert if necessary to all present that this exclusive privilege was due Stalin, not only for his own well-known personal merits, but also, and in a special way, beca of the particular protection of Ace of Hearts.

At that moment, emerging from beneath Vivaldi Carlo's leg, Rossella made a daring, sudden leap and landed on his stomach. And looking him square in the face, in a polite but also demanding fashion, she addressed him directly with the sentence: "Nian nian nian nian?l" which, in transla tion, would mean: "Don't you think it's time to go to bed?l"

This brief cattish action distracted Nino's interest from the matters under discussion, mentally transporting him to the field of cats in general, a particularly humorous breed in his opinion ( though, obviously, less im portant than dogs ). At this fl notion, some futile and laughing sparkles could be seen to play, briefl in his eyes. Then, all of a sudden, remembering his imminent rising at dawn, he emitted an enormous yawn It was the signal for retiring. Vivaldi Carlo was the fi to stand, swaying a bit at the knees.
"Mama mia,
it's all gone to my legs, that wine," he grumbled, following Rossella towards their corner. Giuseppe Secondo arranged to bed down on the fl in a blanket, ceding his mattress to the guests. And Nino accepted the offer in all simplicity and without thanks, as his logical right. Following a habit acquired as guerr fi he and Quattropunte, as they stretched out side by side on the single mattress,

rejected any idea of undressing, removing only their boots. On the fl near their heads, they placed their belts with pistols, and the fl

And at the initiative of Giuseppe Secondo, who thoughtfully set his alarm clock for them, they asserted that when necessary they could also do with out it, because Quattropunte had a precision alarm inside his brain.

But long before the sound of the alarm clock, perhaps about four o'clock, an urgent shuffi of bare feet, after a hazardous journey in the semidarkness, arrived at Nino's pillow. And a little voice, faint but intrepid and determined, began repeating into his ear, almost into the pavilion : "Oh, oh! Ino! Inol! ohl"

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A
first, instantaneous effect on Nino was a certain shift in the plot of his dream. The scene is taking place in a movie theater where he, who is seated in the orchestra seats with the audience, is also directly engaged in the action on the screen, riding over a prairie out West, among other horses in a wild chase. At present his horse begs him to scratch his right ear, where there's an itching sensation. But, as he scratches the horse's ear, he realizes he isn't on an animal's withers, but is hoisted astride a Stuka in fl and the itching sensation is inside his own ear, caused by an urgent telephone call from America .
.
.

"Pass it to the squadron leader." Nino rolls over on one side and continues zooming in the Stuka at an altitude of twenty thousand feet, to the engine's tranquil hum. But that American telephone, meanwhile, con tinues teasing him with its calls, also tugging occasionally at his hair, and putting a paw on his arm . . .

At this point ( thanks to a new and special nerv mechanism which acted as a signal on his bandit nights ) Nino stirred and raised his head, still not waking up entirely; and instinctively he grabbed his fl In a brief glow, he perceived the clear blue of a pair of eyes blinking towards him, surprised by the light, but also full of a festive complicity as if it were Christmas Eve; and then, immediately reassured, he fl himself down again to sleep.

"Who is it?!" Quattro's sleepy voice grumbled beside him in alarm "Nobody."

"Ino . . . Ino . . . it's me!"

Before he started snoring again, Nino gave an answeri grumble of understanding, which could have corresponded to an
aw
ri
or ok
a
y
,
as it could have meant the opposite, or nothing at all. His transitory half-wake fulness had barely been infiltrated by the comical and curious impression of an almost imperceptible presence, the size of a gnome, which he recog nized as some kind of entertainment, even if its identity was confused. Perhaps a fantastic animal, more lively and pretty than the other animals which notoriously sought his vicinity, and somehow belonged to him. And it made him laugh, jumping around him to greet him from the four cardinal points of the universe. And it wouldn't go away, and at present was walking on top of him.

And, truly, his brother Useppe, after pondering for a moment beside the mattress, had resolutely climbed onto it and was advancing there, between Nino's knee and Quattro's leg. Given his dimensions, he could easily settle into that minimum available passage. He let out a glorious little laugh, and fell asleep.

And so, for the rest of that great night, Useppe slept naked between the two armed warriors.

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