“Who taught you to row? See, even the walls are laughing!”
“Who taught me to row?” Agnolo replied. “That shit.”
“Stick it up your ass!” they said promptly.
“Up yours!” Agnolo yelled, red as a pepper.
“You shit!” the boys shouted.
“Bastards!” cried Agnolo.
Meanwhile he continued to strain at the oars while the boat moved not an inch. On the other piling, on the left, were some other sons of bitches: they were lying in the hollows in the stone like big lizards, half napping in the sun. The shouts woke them. They got up, all white with dust, and gathered on the side of the piling that faced the boat. “Hey boatman,” one shouted, “wait for us!” “What’s he want?” Riccetto said suspiciously. A second one climbed halfway up the piling by grabbing onto the iron rings, and, with a shout, dove in: the others dove in from wherever they were, and they all began to cross the river, swimming with half-strokes. After a few minutes there they were, hair over their eyes, faces sly, hands gripping the sides of the boat. “What do you want?” Marcello said. “To get in the boat,” they said, “why, you got some objection?” They were all bigger, and the others had to shut up. They got in, and in no time one said to Agnolo: “Gimme,” and took the oars. “Let’s go past the bridge,” he added, staring at Agnolo as if to say: “Okay with you?” “Let’s go past the bridge,” said Agnolo. Immediately the kid began to row with all his strength: but the current under the piling was strong, and the boat was full. To go those few meters took more than a quarter of an hour.
Borgo antico
dai tetti grigi sotto il cielo opaco
io t’invoco . . .
Ancient city
with gray roofs under a dull sky
I sing of you . . .
The four from Vicolo del Bologna, lounging in the boat, sang as loud as they could, so as to be heard by passersby on Ponte Sisto and along the banks of the Tiber. The boat, overloaded, sank up to its edges as it moved.
Riccetto, paying no attention to the newcomers, was still stretched out, sulking, on the flooded bottom of the boat, with his head just above the edge: and he went on pretending to be on the ocean, out of sight of land. “There’s a pirate!” shouted one of the boys from Trastevere, his hands cupped on his old thief’s face, standing at one end of the boat: the others kept singing at the top of their lungs. Suddenly Riccetto turned onto one elbow, to get a better view of something that had attracted his attention on the surface of the water, near the shore, almost under the arches of Ponte Sisto. He couldn’t figure out what it was. The water was eddying just there, making countless little circles, as if it were being swirled by a hand: and in fact in the center he caught sight of something like a small black rag.
“What is it,” he said then, getting to his feet. They all looked in that direction, in the almost still mirror of the water, under the last arch. “It’s a swallow, fuck it,” said Marcello. There were swallows everywhere, flying just above the walls, under the arches of the bridge, on the open river, grazing the water with their breasts. The current had dragged the boat back a little, and they saw that the swallow was drowning. It was hopping, beating its wings. Riccetto was kneeling on the side of the boat, leaning forward. “Hey shit, can’t you see you’re gonna tip us over?” said Agnolo. “Look,” cried Riccetto, “it’s drowning!” The boy from Trastevere who was rowing stopped, oars suspended over the water, and the current pushed the boat back toward the point where the swallow was thrashing. But after a while he lost patience and began rowing again. “Hey you,” Riccetto shouted, thrusting a hand in his direction, “who told you to row?” The other clicked his tongue contemptuously and the biggest said: “What’s it to you.” Riccetto looked at the swallow, which was still struggling, twitching, suddenly whipping its wings. Then, without saying a word, he jumped into the water and started swimming toward it. The others shouted at him, laughing: but the boy at the oars kept rowing, against the current, toward the opposite side. Riccetto grew distant, dragged forcefully by the water: they watched him getting smaller, as he approached the swallow, on the mirror of stagnant water, and tried to grab it. “Riccettooo,” shouted Marcello with as much breath as he had, “why don’t you get it?” Riccetto must have heard him, because they could just make out his voice crying: “It’s pecking me!” “Damn,” Marcello shouted, laughing. Riccetto tried to catch it, but it escaped, beating its wings, and the current, which was strong there, and full of eddies, was now dragging both of them toward the piling. “Riccetto,” cried his companions on the boat, “let it go!” But at that moment Riccetto had made up his mind and seized it, and was swimming one-handed toward the shore. “Let’s go back, come on,” said Marcello to the kid who was rowing. They turned. Riccetto was waiting for them on the shore, sitting on the dirty grass, holding the swallow. “Why’d you save it,” Marcello said to him. “It was fun to watch it die!” Riccetto didn’t answer right away. “It’s all wet,” he said after a while, “let’s wait for it to dry off!” It didn’t take long; in five minutes the bird was flying off among its companions, over the Tiber, and Riccetto could no longer distinguish it from the others.
2.
RICCETTO
Summer 1946. At the corner of Via delle Zoccolette, in the rain, Riccetto sees a small group of people and slowly approaches. In the middle of the group—thirteen or fourteen people, with rain-bright umbrellas—an uncommonly large black umbrella was open, with three cards placed on it in a row: the ace of diamonds, the ace of cups, and a six. A Neapolitan was shuffling them, and people were betting on the cards—five hundred, a thousand, even two thousand lire. Riccetto stood there watching the game for half an hour; one man, playing avidly, lost on every round, while others, also Neapolitans, sometimes lost and sometimes won. When that first bunch dispersed, it was already getting late. And Riccetto went up to the Neapolitan who was shuffling the cards and said:
“Hello, could I ask a question?”
“Sure,” the other answered, sticking out his chin.
“You from Naples?”
“Yeah.”
“You play this game in Naples?”
“Yeah.”
“And how d’you play this game?”
“Well . . . it’s not easy, but if you put in a little time you can learn.”
“Could you teach me?”
“Sure,” said the Neapolitan, “but . . . ”
He began to laugh with the expression of someone who is making a deal, and thinks to himself: “Let’s see, what can I tell you!” He dried his wet face, which was youthful and wrinkled, with big pendulous lips. He looked Riccetto in the eye. “Well, I’ll teach you, why not,” he said, since the other was silent, “but I’ll want some compensation.” “Of course,” Riccetto answered seriously.
But meanwhile a new group of people was about to form around the umbrella, including the same Neapolitans who had been there before. “Now wait,” said the Neapolitan, winking, as he lined up the cards on the umbrella. Riccetto stood apart, and began to watch the game again. Two hours passed, the rain turned to drizzle, and it was now almost dark. The Neapolitan finally decided to quit, closed the umbrella, put the cards in his pocket, and glanced at his companions: there were two, one fair-haired and nearly toothless; the other, short, in a three-quarter-length checked wool overcoat, looked like a Jew. They listened cordially to their companion, who said he had business to take care of, and they went off cheerfully with their equipment, giving a nod of farewell to Riccetto, too.
“Let’s go,” said the Neapolitan. Riccetto had money; they took the tram, got off at Ponte Bianco, and in a moment were at Donna Olimpia. Riccetto’s mother, sitting in the middle of the single room that was her home, with four beds in the corners, against the walls, which weren’t even walls but partitions, looked at them and said: “Who’s that?” “Friend of mine,” Riccetto said abruptly, ignoring her, imperio
us. But since she went on busting his ass, and was a relentless busybody, Riccetto looked into the next room, where Agnolo lived with his family, to see if there were any adults. He saw only two or three snot-nosed kids, all of them whining. He went in with the Neapolitan, and sat on the bed where Agnolo and his little brothers slept head to foot, settling on the blanket, which was all scorched from ironing. The Neapolitan began the lesson: “There are five of us,” he said. “One deals and the others stand around pretending to be just passing by. So, let’s say I’m the dealer, and I start the game, and my buddies, hanging around the umbrella, form the group. People come over and at that point one of my guys moves away to open up the circle and someone takes his place . . . At first this fellow’s unsure whether to play or not. My buddy, on the other hand, plays: he puts a thousand, two thousand, depending, as he likes; while he looks for his money, the one who deals, me, let’s say, I exchange the card, but the card I exchange, I give the good one to my buddy, and the no-good one I put in the middle. So you who don’t understand the game, you don’t see that I’ve changed the card, and you bet on it, too. But I go: ‘If you folks lose, it doesn’t interest me at all,’ and my buddy instead insists, win one, lose one, win one, lose one. ‘Well, both turn over your cards.’ So my buddy wins, and the other loses. When the sucker has lost a lot, my buddy plays again and puts let’s say a thousand . . . ” The Neapolitan went on for a while explaining how the game was played, and Riccetto sat listening to him talk and talk, and he didn’t understand a damn thing. When the man finished, he said to him, “Hey, friend, you know, I didn’t get it! Would you be kind enough to start again from the beginning, if you don’t mind, of course!” But just then Agnolo’s mother arrived. “Sorry, Sora Celeste,” said Riccetto, heading out, followed by the Neapolitan, “I had to have a word with my friend here.” Sora Celeste, dark and hairy as a clump of purslane, said nothing, and the friends, exiting quickly, went to sit on the steps of the Franceschi schools. The Neapolitan started the explanation again, warming up as he talked and turning red in the face like a plate of fettuccini: he stood up in front of Riccetto—who kept nodding—looking him in the eye with an almost angry expression as he talked and talked, and he stared even harder when he was silent for a moment to give more weight to what he had said, looking partly interrogative, partly inspired, knees bent, legs apart, belly thrust forward, hands hanging down and open like a goalie when he’s expecting a high ball.
Then he went psst with his big lips, those of a beggar from Porta Capuana, as if the profound and illuminating thought that was passing through his brain would enlighten Riccetto, too.
He did all that to earn five hundred lire. Riccetto didn’t understand shit this time, either. Meanwhile darkness had fallen, and the thousands of rows and diagonals of windows and balconies of the Grattacieli were lighted up, radios were going at full volume, and from within the kitchens came the sounds of dishes and women’s voices shouting, quarreling, singing. Filing past the steps where the two friends sat were people going about their business, some returning dirt-stained from the job, some dressed up and leaving the house again to go out with their friends.
“Come on, let’s go have a drink,” Riccetto said generously, like a man of thirty, knowing his mark and imagining, correctly, that his throat was dry. At that proposal, the other felt restored to life, and in the grip of enthusiasm—after saying, about the drink, simply and almost indifferently, “Let’s go”—began talking again as if nothing had happened. And as he walked toward Monteverde Nuovo, beside Riccetto, he put on a big show, demonstrating how the guy who played the cards on an open umbrella in the middle of a crowd acted, or how the accomplice who bet did, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, or acting the part of the sucker, a dumb type, but with enough money, and therefore respectable, who among all those in the crowd decided to play, and lavishly bet a thousand, two thousand. . . . The Neapolitan—who was from Salerno—imitated the gestures and expression of each one perfectly and with a certain respect.
They went to Monteverde Nuovo, because Riccetto didn’t want his business to be known around Donna Olimpia, where people were all disgusting gossips. “People who seem to be just looking are poking into your business,” he said, from experience, to the Neapolitan, to justify that walk up the hill, first on a stretch of road littered with piles of dirt and chunks of asphalt, and then on a path through trampled fields, above which were the barracks for the evacuees. There, too, and in Monteverde Nuovo, there was great chaos, great merriment, the hubbub of a Saturday night. The two went into a rundown bar right in the big market square where the end of the tramline was, just beyond the Delle Terrazze, the movie theater. The bar had a pergola fenced with woven reeds, where it was already dark. They sat on the ramshackle benches and ordered half a liter of Frascati. After the first few sips they were already half-drunk. The Neapolitan began his explanation for the fourth time; but now Riccetto was fed up and no longer felt like listening. The Neapolitan, too, was tired of saying the same things. While he talked, Riccetto looked at him with a smile that was slightly resigned, slightly sarcastic, and, little by little, the other let it go; and, contentedly, they began to talk about other things. They were sly ones, both of them, and had plenty to tell about life in Rome and in Naples, about the Italians and about the Americans, with much mutual respect and much credit given, while at the same time, very subtly, every time they could, they mocked each other, and each, in the depths of his consciousness, considered the other a fool, and felt satisfied when he was talking, bored when he had to listen.
But gradually as he drank the Neapolitan became stranger and stranger: at the end of the second glass it was as if his face had been rubbed with sandpaper, cancelling out the features: it was like a piece of burned meat, with the eyes half closed as if blinded by an intense light from some unknown source, and the pendulous lips pasted together. When he spoke it was a kind of whine: eyes steady, laughing, in contradiction to the serious and deeply felt words he was uttering. By now he was speaking only his own dialect. He was hunched over, drawn in between his shoulders, bathed in sweat, with that pulpy inflated face that stared straight at Riccetto, its gaze shining with brotherly love. “Hey,” he said, “I gotta confess something!” “Whadd’ya mean?” said Riccetto, who was also a little tipsy.
But the Neapolitan snickered sadly, shaking his head, and was silent for a while. Then he said: “It’s an extremely grave matter. I want to tell it to you, cause you’re a friend!” At this declaration they were both moved. The Neapolitan was silent again, and Riccetto, with a serious and dignified expression, encouraged him: “So tell me what you have to say, if you want, eh! I don’t insist.”
“I’ll tell you,” said the Neapolitan “but you have to promise me one thing!”
“What?” said Riccetto readily.
“Not to tell anyone,” the Neapolitan said solemnly, completely fuddled.
Riccetto understood the situation; he became even more serious, puffed out his chest, and put a hand on it: “Word of honor,” he said.
The Neapolitan, as if he had recovered—and his eyes, in their narrow sockets, continued to laugh on their own—began to tell his story. He said that he had killed an old woman and her two unmarried daughters in Via Chiaia, with an iron bar, and then had burned them. He took more than a quarter of an hour to tell this braggart’s tale, repeating things two or three times and getting everything all mixed up. Riccetto wasn’t impressed at all, realizing immediately that it was the blather of a drunk; but he listened attentively, humoring him and pretending to believe him, in order to have the right to tell his stories, too. And how many he had to tell, about all the things that had happened to him in those two years, since the arrival of the Americans!
In those two years Riccetto had become a total bastard. If he wasn’t exactly like that kid he knew who someone came over to one day at the Delle Terrazze and said, “Hey you, you better run home, your mother’s not moving,” and the next
day, when Riccetto asked him “How’s your mother?” he’d smiled faintly and said, “She’s dead.” “What?” said Riccetto. “She’s dead. Dead,” the other confirmed, amused by Riccetto’s surprise. If he wasn’t exactly like that, in other words, he was halfway there. At his age he had already known so many hundreds of people of every class and every race that by now they were all the same: and he, too, could almost have behaved like that guy who lived near the Piazza della Rotonda and who one day, with a friend of his, had beaten up a fag to steal a couple of thousand lire, and when his friend said to him, “Uh-oh, we killed him,” answered, without even looking at him, “What do I care.”
The Street Kids Page 3