History (94 page)

After an attack, this exhausted sleep did not always bring dreams; or rather they were dreams Useppe forgot completely on waking. But this time, he had a dream of which, in his memory afterwards, there lasted not exactly a recollection, but a shade, palpitating and colored. He dreamed he was in the same place where he actually was : only the river had taken the shape of a great circular lake, and the little hills around were much higher than in reality, all buried under a snowfall. I neglected to say, at the time, that in the winter of 1945 snow fell in Rome: and it had represented an unusual spectacle for Rome, and an extraordinary one for Useppe.

Then Useppe had been just over three; and after that time, the spec tacle of the snow had receded in his memory, until it was hidden in a mist; but now, today it emerged again in this dream. That Roman snow, how ever, had been a peaceful sight, of incredible calm and whiteness; and instead, this snow in the dream was a blizzard such as Useppe had never seen in his life. The sky was blackish, a whistling wind bent the trees of the littl hollow and of all the shores around, and the snow whirled, a ma chine-gun fire of pointed, murderous bits of ice. From the surrounding peaks, the trees stretched, naked and black, like fl bodies, perhaps already dead. And all along the range of hills the only sound was the whistle of the gusts : there were no voices, nobody in sight.

Useppe, in the dream, wasn't on the shore, but in the water of the river-lake. And this water, though enclosed in a circle by the hills, seemed of an infi size. It was all an iridescent color, calm and luminous, and of a gentle, wondrous warmth, as if it were constantly crossed by unseen springs, which the sun heated. Useppe swam in this water naturally, like a little fi and around him, all across the tepid lake, there emerged count-

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less little heads of other swimmers, his playmates. They were all strangers to him; but he recognized them all the same. And in fact, it wasn't hard to understand that there present were all Scim6's numerous nephews and nieces, immediately identifi by their protruding little muzzles, imitat ing the famous tailless animal; and also there was a great crowd of little round heads with bright cheeks, lively black eyes : all twins, or close rela tives, of his niece Ninuccia.

But the most extraordinary thing about this festive lake was that the circle of hills, tormented by the grim storm, was refl there, by con trast, untouched and blissful, in the full serenity of a summer just begin ning. l11e tortured trees were doubled there, unharmed, in the vivid health of their leaves; their refl ramifi all over the lake, traced a kind of green arbor there, beneath the blue water, resembling a garden hung in the sky. And the water's movement accompanied them like a summer breeze, with a sound of a faint song and a murm

Nor was there any doubt the lake was real and authentic, while the panorama above was a trick, something like Chinese shadows on a screen. This was obvious in the dream, which was, all in all, comic. And the sleeper derived a delicious pleasure from it and emitted little joyous excla mations in his sleep. Beside him, Bella on the contrary meanwhile uttered some grumblings, perhaps reliving in her dream the emotions of that heroic afternoon of hers.

Left to himself, Useppe would probably have slept like that for at least twelve hours, uninterrupted. But after about three hours, when the sun was declining, Bella woke up, gave her coat a great shake, and wakened him with the warning:

"It's time to go home. Mamma's waiting for us, for supper."

Useppe's homeward journey was strange, because, though he moved his feet after Bella's leash, he hadn't completely come out of his dream. They passed beneath the tent of trees, and the cries that birds make, gathering towards sunset, still seemed to him the swaying of that water, where sounds and refl played together. He raised his eyes, and in the roof of boughs he thought he saw again the wondrous green arbor mirrored in the lake, with his swimming companions playing, sticking up their little heads. Even the Saturday-evening city noises reached him muffi like a vast whisper at the bottom of the water, and this subaqueous sound for him was mingled with the throb of the fi stars.

He was so sleepy that his head drooped at supper. And the next day he went on sleeping past lunchtime, ignoring Ida's calls. When he fi did get up, it took him a while to regain his sense of time. Suddenly he remembered he and Bella were to meet Scim6 at the hut.

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They arrived at about four: late for the appointment with Scim6. And, in fact, Scim6 wasn't there. Since today was Sunday, and the season was now summery, bathers must have rested on the little beach that morning. There were some Peroni beer-bottle caps and banana peels; but luckily no trace of pirates there, or anywhere around. The hut was as they had left it the day before. Flung on the mattress were Scim6's briefs, still damp; and the fl was on the ground, next to the stone with the candle, like yester day. Useppe didn't notice the fact that the candle had grown no shorter since the day before. The only novelty: the alarm had stopped. Useppe supposed that Scim6, in his haste, had forgotten to wind it. And since he had learned to tell time on clocks, he saw it said two.

That
two
for him meant unquestionably two in the afternoon; whereas, really, the alarm, at the moment it had stopped, unwound, was marking two at night. Useppe didn't know, and was never to know, that after saying goodbye to them, Scim6 hadn't come back to sleep in the hut, and had spent the night in the Reformatory. Some city acquaintance of his, perhaps out of legalistic scruples, had reported him and allowed him to fall into a trap. Yesterday, in Rome, Scim6 had been recaptured; and today, perhaps, he was spending his Sunday locked in a cell, being pun ished for his escape.

Useppe had no suspicion of such an event. He said to himself, embit tered, that Scim6, after having waited in vain for him and Bella to keep the appointment, had certainly gone off tired of waiting, to be on time for the fi Sunday show. And surely by now he was already at the movies, nor would he return to the hut before night. So, for today, they wouldn't see each other.

This idea was enough to grieve him. Out of due respect for Scim6's dwelling, he left the hut and sat on the ground, a step from the entrance. Seeing him sad, Bella sat beside him, without disturbing him, calm, only amusing herself now and then by poking her head in the air to frighten a passing gnat. Despite her age, and even in the gravest situations, she was always susceptible to temptations from her puppy past.

As
for her daily swim, after what had happened yesterday, she was led to give it up, no longer daring to leave Useppe alone on the shore, even for brief moments. Indeed, she made an eff to keep a certain distance between him and the little beach, as if the water represented the wolf for her.

Today the sun was baking, like full summer; but they were sitting in the cool, in the square patch of the hut's shadow. Beyond the little hollow, some trees rose, and from one of them the solitary, precocious song of a

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male cicada was heard. He must surely have been a still-little cicada, intent on his beginner's exercises, because, despite his stubborn determination, he produced the sound of an infi esimal violin, barely scraped with a thread. And so, at the sound, Useppe recognized him immediately as that very cicada barely emerged from the nest that Scim6 had seen born a couple of days ago.

A certain weariness from yesterday still lingered in Useppe's body, and he had no desire to roll and run and climb as on other days. But at the same ti he was overcome with a restlessness which tempted him to shift and change places, though it didn't tell him where to go. This impatience continued even inside the tree tent. The roof of boughs brought him a vague reminiscence of yesterday's dream, which already today, however, was mostly erased from his memory. He no longer remembered the details of its landscape, or the blizzard, or the little heads, or the refl ions. What he saw of it again was an expanse of water in a gentle movement of colors, with a singing whisper that accompanied its rocking. And he felt again a desire for his little bed and rest, opposed by a fear of falling asleep while everybody was awake.

Seeing he needed solace and distraction, Bella, seated beside him, decided to tell him a story. And blinking slightly, in a fabulous tone, fi with melancholy, she began by saying :

"Once I had some puppies . . ."

She had never spoken of them to him before. "I don't know how many there were," she went on, "because I can't count. But when it was feeding time, all my tits were occupied, that's sure, every one!!! So there were lots of them, and each more beautiful than the other. One was black and white. One was all black with one white ear and one black; and one was also all black with a little goatee . . . When I looked at one, he was the most beautiful; but I would look at another, and this one was the most beautiful; then I would lick another, and meanwhile another would stick his nose up, and he was beyond doubt the most beautiful. Their beauty was infi ite, that's the truth of it. Infi ite beauties can't be compared."

"What were they called?" "They didn't have names." "They didn't have names." "No.''

"And where've they gone?"

"Where? . . . I don't know what to think about that. From one moment to the next, I looked for them, and they weren't there any more. Usually, when they go off they come back later, at least that's what hap pened with other friends of mine, who also had puppies . . ." (Bella, like her friends, was convinced that each successive litter was another return of

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the same puppies ) " . . . but mine never came back again. I hunted for them, I waited for them a long time, but they never came home."

Useppe was silent. "Each more beautiful than the other!" Bella re peated, convinced, her eyes dreaming. Then, thinking it over, she added : "It's natural. The same thing happens with others . . . with all our people. Eh, take for example my Antonio, the Naples one . . . He is surely the most beautiful of all! But my Ninnuzzu, he too, you only have to see him : nobody exists who's more beautiful than he! !"

It was the fi time Ninnuzzu's name had been mentioned between them. On hearing it, Useppe's face trembled, but then settled in an alert little smile. Bella's speech, really, barked out in canine accents, cradled him like a melodious soprano aria.

"And you," she resumed with conviction, looking at him, "you are always the most beautiful in the whole world. That's certain."

"And my mamma?" Useppc inquired .

"Her! Did you ever see a more beautiful girl? Ah, everybody in Rome knows that! She's an infi beauty. Infi

Useppe laughed. He was absolutely in agreemen t on this point. Th he asked anxiously :

"And Scim6?"

"What a question! Everybody can see: he's the most beautiful!" 'The most beautiful of all?"

"Of all."

"And Davide?"

"Aaaah! Davide's beauty is the greatest. Positively. The maximum." "Infi

"Infi

Useppe laughed with contentment, because to tell the truth on the subject of beauty there was complete agreement between him and the shepherdess. Giants or dwarfs, beggars or dandies, decrepitude or youth, nothing made any diff to him. And neither the twisted nor the hunchback, the paunchy nor the scrawny : to him none was less lovely than the world's Paragon, provided all were friends equally and smiling (asked to invent a heaven, he would have built a place along the lines of the "big room of The Thousand" ). For some time, however, he had been rejected, and that was understandable: it was because he had this bad sickness.

"Let's go away," he said to Bella.

The streets were lively with the Sunday afternoon crowd. Beyond some houses under construction, on an open lot, a large carnival had pitched . its tents. There weren't only merry-go-rounds, stands, shooting galleries, miniature cars, etc., but even a roller-coaster, and fl swings where you were spun in a circle at a dizzying speed. Useppe, who had