History (91 page)

452 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 47

gilded to look like gold, the size perhaps of a small slice of roll, adorn with two legends, one around the circumference and one in the center, and carefully wrapped in cellophane, all hidden under a pile of still-fresh leaves. On the ground, outside the hole, there was an unwrapped paper, with leftover salt lupins. And outside the dwelling, spread out to dry on a rock, and held fast by a couple of stones, there was a pair of briefs, of a very small size. After having considered all these items, Useppe put everything back in its place as it had been before.

Here, however, to tell the truth, when the exploration was ended, Useppe preceded Bella outside the hut, and at that point something hap pened behind his back which cannot be ignored. Bella, in short, having second thoughts, retreated a couple of steps and in an instant ate all the lupins in the paper. Then in her boori ignorance, without even suspect ing she was culpable, she trotted gaily and contentedly after Useppe, who had noticed nothing.

For that whole day, the hut's unknown inhabitant didn't show up; and likewise the next day, at their arrival, there was nobody. Somebody must have been there in the interv however, because to the objects listed above others had been added : a tin alarm clock, wound up; a half consumed fl of water; and an empty Coca-Cola bottle.

\Vh Bella, having had her swim, was drying out in the sun, Useppe withdrew to their tent, where she joined him a little later, stretching out to nap under the tree. And Useppe, who wasn't sleepy, climbed up the same tree, to a certain limb where he used to perch, when he was ti of playing, to sing poems there which he always invented on the spur of the moment and promptly forgot. On the higher branches, over him, the sun beat down; and except for some little birds' hasty visits, there was a popu lati of infi itesimal creatures of odd aspect and, if you examined them carefully, of marv colors, who lived in the trunks and frequented the leaves. These, too, in the sun, displayed to Useppe all the colors of the rainbow, and also others, unknown : with patterns of fabled geometry, which Useppe's eyes entered like travelers in an Arab quarter. Moreover, from that sentry-post, his eyes could cover a stretch of the river, and the sunny shore.

Useppe had been there perhaps half an hour when he glimpsed, in the rippled water of the ri below, a pygmy head advancing, then two arms emerging, and an enti little boy sneezing as he came out of the water. Surely believing himself unobserved by anyone, as soon as he reached land, he slipped off his little bathing briefs. And all naked, he ran towards the downward slope, where he vanished.

Unquestionably, he was the inhabitant of the mysterious hut! At this discovery, Useppe called Bella from above; but sleepily, she answered him

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with a slight flick of her left ear, not even opening her eyes. And Useppe decided to wait, shifting towards higher branches to peep and see if there he could observe some other sign of life from the stranger. But even from up there, the hut was invisible to him; everything was deserted around them; and only the rustle of the current could be heard, amid the buzzing of the afternoon light.

Suddenly, Bella pri ked up her ears and leaped up, warn perhaps by her nose, of something new in the offi And frantically wagging her tail, still alert, she let out a bark, grandiose but cordial.

This bark's effect was not immediate, but almost. Half a minute later, footsteps approached. And with the caution of an explorer advancing through a fi jungle, the little boy of a moment earlier, no longer naked, presented himself beneath the tent of trees. At the sight of him, Useppe, as if at a sensational apparition, seized with great high spirits, slipped down his treetrunk in furious haste. Seeing this boy close to, Useppe thought he immediately recognized an undeniable resemblance to the unforgotten tail less animal.

The boy had, in fact, thin little arms and legs, exceptionally short in their proportions ( though he himself was far from tall ). His face, espe cially seen in profi protruded like an animal's muzzle. His eyes were round and set apart, of a lively olive color; his nose, small and restless, was almost flat. And his mouth, so straight it seemed without lips, still stretched to his ears when he condescended to smile.

On his head, recently shaved, a thick wool was growing back, like a little brown coat; and some tiny tufts of hair also blossomed from his ears, which were minuscule, and stuck out somewhat. Finally, over his white polo shirt and his dark gray shorts, this character wore, at present, a comi cal makeshift garment, not even sewn, and with two holes for sleeves : it derived, apparently, from a piece of khaki tarpaulin, once hastily painted here and there with patches of greenish-brown paint!

From his height, you would have thought he was eight, or at most nine; whereas, in reality, he was twelve ( nor did he fail, when necessary, to boast of this seniority, affi a long past, a life full of experience).

Having arrived in the pair's presence, he eyed them, still cautious and on guard, but with a certain obvious superiority. And, irrepressible, his proud gaze betrayed a joyous satisfaction in resting on Bella. In fact, his hand (or little paw) reached out to touch her:

"Anybody else here, with you two?" he asked then, grimly. "Nooo . . . Nobody else!"

"You're by yourselves?"

"Ess."

"And who are you?"

454 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1947

"I'm Useppe. And this is Bella." "And what did you come here for?" ". . . To play . . .
"

"Is today the first time you've come here?''

"Nooo . . . We've been here a thousand times . . . MORE than a thousand!" Useppe declared.

It seemed a real third degree. The mysterious being looked Useppe straight in the face, with an air of complicity, but also of authority:

"I warn you : you mustn't tell anybody in the whole world you saw me.

You understand? NOBODY in the world!"

Useppe shook his head in reply, as if to say no, no, no, with such ardor that not even a blood-oath could better have guaranteed the secrecy due this stranger.

The newcomer then sat down on a stone; and as, with a worldly air, he lighted a cigarette he had fi from his shorts, he explained :

"The cops are after me."

From his tone, you might have surmised that all the police forces of Italy, and perhaps of Europe, were hot on his heels. A silence followed. Useppe's heart was pounding. Inevitably, in his imagination, all the stranger's pursuers appeared in the guise of so many Professor Marchionnis, heavy, bespectacled, elderly, and with drooping moustaches.

But the other boy's heart, meanwhile, was so irresistibly transported towards Bella, with such emotion, that on his little face, or muzzle as may be, a smile shone, his lips clenched, but extending from ear to ear, and multiplied in so many little wrinkles, while his eyes brightened smartly, intent, like a lover's.

"You want a smoke, too?" he asked her ( while she, returning his feelings, made a fuss over him, close, almost nose to nose). And, joking, he blew a little smoke into her nose. At which, also joking, she reacted with a kind of merry sneeze.

"Is BELLA her real name?" "Yes, her name's Bella."

"Is she old?"

"Nooo . . ." Useppe answered. And then he declared, with a certain personal emphasis :

"She's littler than me!" "How old are you?"

Calculating, Useppe showed fi one hand with all the fi ers ex tended, then the other hand, with only one fi raised, which, on refl tion, he crooked a little at the knuckle.

"Five, going on six!" the other deduced immediately. And in return he declared, with great pride:

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''I'm going on THIRTEEN!" l1 assuming a slow and condescend ing attitude, he went on to say:

"Down home, back in my village, we have a dog, too, but not this big, medium-size, with a black face and pointy ears. He only has one and a half ears, because his father ate the other half.

"He belongs to my uncle, my mother's brother, and he takes him hunting."

He paused, then concluded : "His name's Toto."

After this, they remained silent. Finishing his cigarette, the stranger took the last puff from the butt with hasty and ostentatious voluptuous ness. Then he buried the miserable remaining stub, in a very proper way, as if he were giving it a decent burial, and he stretched out on the grass, propping his head against the stone. Bella had sat down next to him, and Useppe, in turn, had huddled on the ground, facing him. They remained in silence, gazing at one another, fi nothing further to say. Suddenly Bella raised her head abruptly, but she didn't bark or move from her place. A little bird had lighted on a high branch, directly above them. It was quiet for a moment, then it skipped two or three times on the same branch, then made several movements of its head (as if to tune its own song), and then it sang. A wondrous merr fl Useppe's veins. Bella also had immediately recognized the song, for she looked up, pleased, her mouth open, her tongue quivering slightly. For his part, the third listener remained quiet, peeping upwards with a single eye, distracted or

absorbed in his own thought.

At the bird's parting whirr, Useppe started laughing, running towards the newcomer. "Hey!" he called him impetuously, with an exultant little cry. And without hesitation, he asked him:

"You know that song?" "What song?"

"That one he was singing just now!"

"Him who? The
acedduzzo?"
the fugitive from justice asked suspi ciously, one of his little paws pointing towards the branch.

"Yes!" And thrilled with secrecy, but impatient to tell him the news, Useppe revealed in one breath : "It goes like this :

It's a joke a joke all a joke!"

"Who told you that's how
it
goes?!"

Useppe didn't know how to answer this question; still, transported by the little song, he irresistibly repeated it, and this time without omitting the notes.

456 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 47

The stranger had an idle and luminous little smile, shrugging one shoulder at the same time : "The
aceddi,"
he affirmed, "have
a
language all their own. How can anybody know it? . . ." He made a skeptical grimace, but a little later, in a self-important tone, he said :

"In my village, there's a wine-seller who's also the barber, and he has a real talking
aceddu,
it talks just like a human! But you don't find that kind of
aceddu
in the trees. It's not Italian. It's a Turk. And he says hello and says Happy Easter and Merry Christmas, and dirty words, and laughs. He's a parrot. All diff colors. And he learned a song they sing in my village, and he sang it!"

"How does the song go?" Useppe asked. "It goes like this :

I'm the king and cardinal, I can talk and laugh.

But when I'm in company

I can also shut my mouth!"

At the sound of all these songs, Bella had started jumping, as if at a festival. Useppe, on the contrary, had sat down in the grass again, to contemplate the mysterious being.

"What's the name of your village?" he asked him. "Tiri

In uttering this name, the interlocutor assumed a smug look, like one mentioning, to a group of illiterates, a place of exceptional renown : "Last year, during the Giro d'ltalia, Bartali went through, the champion cyclist!" he declared. " . . . I even have a medal I snitched from a Shell station! A medal made in honor of Gino Bartali in some big industrial factories in the Kingdom of the Mountain, near Milan . . .
"

Here Useppe blushed, remembering, in fact, the cellophane-wrapped medal he and Bella had already observ inside the hut of boughs. Surely this stranger would have been displeased to know his house had been discovered . . . But he didn't notice Useppe's fl having at that mo ment lowered his eyes, concealed by two thick fringes of lashes. Suddenly, a coughing fi brutal considering his smallness, attacked him like a series of slaps. As soon as he had caught his breath again, he remarked proudly :

"Smoker's cough!"

And digging into the pocket of his shorts, he took out an almost intact pack of Lucky Stri "American!" he boasted, showing them to Useppe. "They were a present!"

"Who gave them to you?" "A faggot."

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Useppe was unaware of this epithet's meaning, but rather than seem too ignorant, he refrained from asking it.

Along with the cigarettes, he had taken from his pocket a piece of newspaper, which he examined with formal ostentation, as if it were a top secret document. There was a little news item of a few lines, headed :
Three boys escape from Gabelli Reformatory_ Two captured. One still at large.
And below, among other things, there was mentioned a certain
Scim6 Pietro,
from Tiriolo (province of Catanzaro). After having exam ined the document at length, as if he hadn't known it by heart for some time, the fugitive made up his mind and, submitting it to Useppe, with his little black fi he underlined the words
Scim6 Pietro.
But for Useppe, who didn't know how to read, those two words, no less than the entire document, were an undecipherable enigma. Then the other boy revealed to him with braggadoccio: "That's my name. That's me. Scim61" (His full name, actually, as revealed also in the document, was Scim6 Pietro. Scim6 was his surname. But he was used to being called only by