‘… there’ll be a special detachment for Duke too … to gut rabbits. God, you boast so much, Duke, and I’ve never seen you do anything more than twist chickens’ necks and skin rabbits!’
Duke puts a hand on his Austrian pistol and looks as if he’s going to gore him with his fur cap. ‘I’ll cccut your ggguts out!’ he shouts.
Then Mancino makes a false move. He says: ‘And what shall we put Pin in charge of?’
Pin looks at Mancino as if noticing him for the first time. ‘Oh, Mancino, you’re back, are you …? You’ve been away from home so long … Lots of exciting things have happened while you were away …’
He turns round slowly; Dritto is in a corner, looking serious; Giglia is near the door with that hypocritical smile of hers always on her lips.
‘Guess what detachment you’ll be in charge of, Mancino …’
Mancino gives his sour laugh and tries to forestall him: ‘A cooking-pot detachment …’ he says, and doubles up with laughter, as if he had made the wittiest joke in the world.
Pin shakes his head, with a serious face. Mancino blinks … ‘a hawk detachment …’ he says, and tries to laugh again, but only makes a strange sound in his throat.
Pin shakes his head again.
‘… a naval detachment …’ says Mancino, and now his mouth has not opened, and there are tears in his eyes.
Pin now puts on a clownish, hypocritical expression, and says slowly and unctuously: ‘Well, your detachment won’t be so very different from others. Except that it’ll only be able to move about in the open, along wide roads, and in places where there’s nothing growing higher than bushes.’
Mancino begins laughing again, first silently then louder and louder; he has not yet realized what Pin is getting at, but is laughing all the same. The men are now hanging on Pin’s every word, some of them have already understood and are grinning.
‘It’ll be able to go anywhere, except in the woods … except where there are branches … where there are branches …’
‘Woods … Ha, ha, ha … Branches,’ laughs Mancino. ‘Why though …?’
‘It would get stuck … your detachment would … get stuck by your cuckold’s horns!’
The others burst into roars of laughter. The cook gets up, looking sour, his mouth contracted. The laughter dies down a little. The cook looks round, then begins laughing himself again, with swollen eyes and twisted mouth, a forced, savage laugh, and clapping his hands on his knees and pointing to Pin as if to say: ‘That’s a good one …’
‘Pin … take a look at him …’ he says, grinning falsely now. ‘Pin … we’ll give him the lavatory detachment, that’s what we’ll give him …’
Dritto has now got up too.
He takes a step or two towards them. ‘Stop all this nonsense,’ he says sharply. ‘Don’t you realize you mustn’t make any noise?’
It is the first time since the battle that he has given an order. And he gives it on the excuse that they are not supposed to make any noise, instead of saying: ‘Stop all this nonsense because I don’t like it.’
The men give him sour looks; he is no longer their commander, this man.
Giglia’s voice is now heard: ‘Pin, why don’t you sing us a song, instead … Sing us the one …’
‘The lavatory detachment …’ croaks Mancino. ‘With a chamber-pot on your head … Ha, ha, ha … Pin with a chamber-pot on his head, imagine it …’
‘What would you like me to sing you, Giglia?’ says Pin. ‘The same one as last time …?’
‘Shut up,’ says Dritto. ‘Don’t you know the orders? Don’t you know we’re in a danger zone?’
‘Sing us that song …’ says Giglia. ‘The one you do so well … How does it go? Oili, Oilà …’
‘With a chamber-pot on his head,’ the cook is still laughing and clapping his knees, though there are tears of rage at the corners of his eyes. ‘And an enema-tube as a gun … A burst of enema-tubes, you’ll give, Pin …’
‘Oili, Oilà, Giglia, are you sure …?’ says Pin. ‘I’ve never heard of any songs that go “Oili, Oilà”, there aren’t any …’
‘Bursts of enema-tubes … Look at him … Pin,’ croaks the cook.
‘Oili, Oilà,’ Pin begins improvising. ‘The husband goes to war, oilir oilor, and leaves his wife at home, oilim oilom!’
‘Pin is a little pimp, oilir oilimp!’ shouts Mancino, trying to drown Pin’s voice.
Dritto sees that for the first time no one is obeying him. He grabs Pin’s arm and begins twisting it: ‘Shut up! Shut up! D’you understand?’
Pin feels the pain but goes on singing: ‘Oiler, oiler, the wife and the commander, oili oiloo, what will he do?’ The cook is determined to outdo Pin, refusing to listen to his song: ‘Oili, Oilore, you’re the brother of a whore!’
Dritto is now twisting both Pin’s arms, feeling the little bones under his fingers; he’ll break them in a second, if he goes on. ‘Shut up, you little bastard, shut up!’
Pin’s eyes are full of tears; he is biting his lips: ‘Oili oilo, to the bushes off they go, oili oilogs, like a pair of dogs!’
Dritto drops one of Pin’s arms and puts a hand over his mouth. It is a foolish, dangerous thing to do. Pin sinks his teeth into a finger and bites with all his might. Dritto gives a lacerating scream. Pin lets go the finger and looks round. They all have their eyes on him, these incomprehensible enemies the grown-ups: Dritto is sucking his bleeding finger, Mancino is laughing hysterically, Giglia is looking ashen, and all the others are following the scene breathlessly with glittering eyes.
‘Swine!’ shouts Pin, breaking into sobs. ‘Bastards! Bitches!’
The only thing for him now is to escape. Get right away. Pin runs outside.
Dritto is shouting after him: ‘No one is to leave the camp! Come back, Pin, come back!’ and makes as if to run after him.
But at the door he bumps into two armed men.
‘Dritto, we were looking for you.’
Dritto recognizes them. They are two runners from brigade headquarters.
‘Kim and Ferriera want to see you. To report. Come with us.’
Dritto becomes impassive again. ‘Let’s go,’ he says, and picks up his tommy-gun.
‘Unarmed, they said,’ the men explain.
Dritto does not flicker an eyelid; he takes the strap off his shoulder.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
‘And the pistol too,’ say the men.
Dritto loosens his belt and lets the pistol fall to the ground.
‘Let’s go,’ he says.
Now he is standing between the two men.
He turns round: ‘Our turn to fetch the rations is at two o’clock. Begin getting everything ready. At half-past three, two of our men must go on sentry duty, beginning from where the last night’s roster broke off.’
He turns round again and walks off between the two men.
Chapter Twelve
Pin is sitting all alone on a mountain crest; sheer away at his feet drop rocky slopes furry with bushes, and then valley folding into valley down to where black rivers coil in the depths. Long wisps of cloud are moving up the slopes and blotting out the scattered villages and trees.
This is something irreparable now – as irreparable as when he stole the pistol from the sailor, or left the men in the tavern, or escaped from prison. Never again will he be able to return to the detachment, never will he be able to go into action with them now. It is sad to be like him, a child in a world of grown-ups, always treated as an amusement or a nuisance; and never to be able to use those exciting and mysterious things, weapons and women, never to be able to take part in their games. But one day Pin will be grown-up too, and be able to behave really badly to everyone, revenge himself on those who have behaved badly to him; how Pin would like to be grown-up now, or rather not grown-up, but remain as he is, yet admired and feared, a child and yet a leader of grown-ups on some marvellous enterprise.
Now he will leave these windswept unknown p
arts and go far away, back to his own kingdom in the river-bed, back to the magic spot where the spiders make their nests. Down there his pistol is buried, with that mysterious name; pee thirty-eight. With his pistol Pin will become a partisan all on his own, with no one to twist his arm till it nearly breaks, no one to send him off to bury dead hawks so that a man and woman can roll about together among rhododendrons. He will do wonderful things, will Pin, always on his own; kill an officer, a captain, the captain who goes round with that bitch and spy of a sister. Then he will be respected by all the grown-ups, and they will want him to go into action with them; perhaps they will teach him how to handle a machine-gun. And Giglia will no longer say: ‘Sing us a song, Pin,’ just so that she can snuggle up against her lover; Giglia won’t have lovers any more, and one day she will let her breast be touched by him, by Pin, that warm pink breast under her man’s shirt.
Now Pin is walking with long strides along the paths winding down the mountainside from the Pass of the Half-Moon; he has a long way to go. And as he walks along he begins to feel that his enthusiasm for those projects was forced, not genuine at all, that they were just fantasies which would never come about in reality, and that he would go on being a poor lost wandering child forever.
Pin walks for the whole day long. He passes places where lovely games could be played, with big white stones to jump about on and twisted trees to climb; he sees squirrels on the tops of pine-trees, snakes winding through the undergrowth, all good targets for stones. But Pin feels no desire to play any games, and goes on walking as hard as he can go, with the sadness clouding in his throat.
He passes a cottage and stops to ask for something to eat. It is inhabited by a little old couple who live on their own and keep goats. The two old folk greet him kindly, offer him chestnuts and milk, and talk about their sons who are all prisoners-of-war far away; then they sit round the fire and begin saying the Rosary, asking Pin to join in too.
But Pin is not used to dealing with people who are good and feels ill at ease – nor is he used to saying the Rosary; so while the old couple are murmuring away with closed eyes he quietly gets down from his chair and goes off.
That night he digs himself a hole in a haystack and sleeps in it; in the morning he presses on, into areas that are becoming more dangerous, infested by Germans. But Pin realizes how useful it sometimes is to be a child, and how no one would believe him even if he said quite openly that he was a partisan.
At one point he finds the way barred by a road-block. From some way off he can see Germans frowning at him under their helmets. Pin goes boldly up to them.
‘My sheep,’ he says. ‘Have you seen my sheep?’
‘Was?’ The Germans can’t understand.
‘Sheep. She-e-e-p. Ba-a-a-a-a …’
The Germans laugh; they have understood. With that long hair and all wrapped up as he is, Pin might easily be a little shepherd-boy.
‘I’ve lost a sheep,’ he whines. ‘It must have passed this way, for sure. Where’s it gone to?’ And Pin nips under the barrier and walks on, calling out, ‘Ba-a-a-a …’ He’s got away with that too.
The sea, which yesterday looked just a turbid mass of cloud on the edge of the sky, is now becoming a darkening strip of colour and then a great blue background to the hills and houses.
Pin reaches his own river-bed. It’s an evening with very few frogs about. Black tadpoles are setting the water in the puddles aquiver. There, beyond the bamboos, begins the path of the spiders’ nests, the magic place which only Pin knows. There he can weave strange spells, become a king, a god. He starts walking up the path, his heart in his mouth. Yes, there are the nests. But the earth is disturbed, some hand seems to have passed over it all, tearing up the grass, moving the stones, destroying the nests and breaking open the walls of chewed grass; Pelle! Pelle knew the place; he’s been here, with those lips of his slobbering with rage, scooped the loose earth out with his saliva-flecked hands and nails, pushed sticks into the tunnels and killed all the spiders one by one, looking for the pee thirty-eight pistol! Did he find it? Pin can no longer recognize the hiding-place; the stones he had laid are no longer there, the grass is torn out in handfuls. This should be the place though, the hole he scooped out for it is still there, but now it’s full of earth and bits of stone.
Pin puts his head in his hands and sobs. No one will ever give him his pistol back now. Pelle is dead and did not have it among his weapons; where could he have put it, who could he have given it to? The pistol was the last thing Pin had in all the world; what is he to do now? He can’t go back to the partisans; he has behaved too badly to all of them, Mancino, Giglia, Duke, Long Zena. There has been a round-up at the tavern and everyone there has been deported or killed. The only one left is Michel the Frenchman, in the Black Brigade. But Pin does not want to end up like Pelle, climbing up a long staircase waiting to be shot at. He is alone in all the world, is Pin.
The Dark Girl of Long Alley is trying on a new blue dressing-gown, when she hears a knock at the door. She listens; these days she is afraid of opening her door to people she doesn’t know, when she’s in her old home in the alley. There’s another knock.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Open up, Rina. It’s your brother, Pin.’
Rina opens the door and her brother comes in, dressed in strange clothes, with a shock of hair wider than his shoulders, filthy, ragged, his boots falling to bits, his cheeks clotted with dust and tears.
‘Pin! Where on earth have you come from? Where have you been all this time?’
Pin enters without looking at her, and says hoarsely: ‘Now don’t start annoying me. Where I’ve been is my business. Have you made anything to eat?’
The Dark Girl becomes all maternal: ‘Wait a minute and I’ll get something ready. Sit down. How tired you must be, poor Pin. You’re lucky to have found me at home. I’m scarcely ever here nowadays. I live at the hotel now.’
Pin begins chewing bread and a piece of German hazelnut chocolate.
‘They treat you well, I see.’
‘Pin, I’ve been so worried about you! What have you been doing all this time? Being a vagabond, a rebel?’
‘And what about you?’ asks Pin.
The Dark Girl is spreading slices of bread with German malt spread and passing them to him.
‘And what are you going to do now, Pin?’
‘I don’t know. Let me eat.’
‘Look here, Pin, you must try and be sensible. You know, at the place I work they need bright lads like you and could look after you well. There’s no real work; just going round all day, watching people.’
‘Say, Rina, have you any weapons?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Well, I’ve got a pistol. I keep it with me because one never knows these days. Someone from the Black Brigade gave it to me.’
Pin raises his eyes and swallows down the last mouthful. ‘Will you show it to me, Rina?’
The Dark Girl gets up. ‘Why are you so obsessed with pistols? Didn’t you have enough of them when you stole Frick’s? This one is just like Frick’s. Here it is. Poor Frick, they’ve sent him over to the Atlantic coast.’
Pin looks at the pistol, fascinated. It’s a pee thirty-eight. His pee thirty-eight!
‘Who gave it to you?’
‘I told you, someone in the Black Brigade. A blond boy; he had such a cold. And without exaggeration he must have had at least seven different pistols on him. “What d’you do with so many?” I asked. “Give me one,” I said. But he didn’t want to, however much I begged him. A mania for pistols, he had. Finally he gave me this one because it was in the worst condition. But it works all the same. “What’s this you’re giving me,” I said, “a cannon?” And he said, “Well, this way it stays in the family.” God knows what he meant.’
Pin is not even listening any more; he is turning his pistol over and over in his hand. Then he raises his eyes to his sister, hugging the pistol to his chest as if it were a do
ll, and says hoarsely, ‘Listen to me, Rina, this pistol’s mine!’
The Dark Girl gives him a black look. ‘What’s got hold of you? Have you become a rebel?’
Pin takes up a chair and flings it on the ground.
‘Cow!’ he shouts with all his strength. ‘Bitch! Spy!’
He thrusts the pistol into a pocket and bangs the door on his way out.
Outside it is already night. The alley is deserted, like when he came. The shutters of the shops are up. There are shrapnel shelters against the walls, made of planks and sand-bags.
Pin takes the path to the river-bed. He feels as if he were back at that night when he stole the pistol. Now he has his pistol, but everything is just as it was; he is alone in all the world, and lonelier than ever. And Pin’s heart is overflowing with a single question, as it was that night: ‘What shall I do?’
He walks along the irrigation channels, weeping. First he cries silently then breaks out into loud sobs. There is no one to come towards him now, as there was before. No one? A big shadow of a man is falling on a turn of the channel.
‘Cousin!’
‘Pin!’
These are enchanted places, where magical things always happen. The pistol is enchanted too, like a magic wand. And Cousin is also like a great magician, with his tommy-gun and his woollen cap, as he pats Pin’s head and asks: ‘Well, Pin, what are you doing down here?’
‘I came to fetch my pistol. Look. A German naval pistol.’
Cousin looks at it closely.
‘Lovely. A P.38. Look after it carefully.’
‘And you, what are you doing here, Cousin?’
Cousin sighs, with that eternally regretful air of his, as if he were always undergoing some punishment.
‘I’m going to pay a visit,’ he says.
‘These places are mine, down here. Magic places. Spiders make their nests here.’
‘Do spiders make nests, Pin?’
‘This is the only place in the whole world where they do,’ explains Pin, ‘and I’m the only person who knows it. Then that Fascist Pelle came and mucked everything up. Would you like me to show you?’
The Path to the Spiders' Nests Page 17