Riccetto had abandoned himself to a wave of memories: and when the Neapolitan was silent, moved by his own confession, with that face like a roasted dog, it was his turn for recollection. But he told the truth. Since they had started talking about the Americans earlier, Riccetto took up the subject. “Listen to this bit!” he said, cheerful and worldly. And he began to tell two or three stories, one rowdier than the next, all about the time when the Americans were there, and in which he always featured as the biggest bastard of all.
The Neapolitan looked at him with absorption, nodding his head yes, and smiling wearily. Then suddenly he puffed up his chest and without changing expression, still staring at Riccetto, began: “I must atone!” and so on for another quarter of an hour, him this time, with that exaggerated pride about his crime. Riccetto let him vent a little, as was only right, looking at him and laughing, too. Then as soon as the man slowed down and began to mutter, he started up again:
“The Americans were good! . . . They made me kind of mad, though they were useful to me! But the Poles damn them were nasty, you know, really nasty! Oh, I remember that one time, I was in Toraccia, we were going to rob the Poles’ camp. We were walking, there near the caves, we heard yelling, we went closer, there were two whores arguing with these Poles because they wanted their money. So in the meantime one comes out of the cave, and we hide, and one stays inside with these two whores. And maybe they thought he had gone to get the money. Instead the guy arrives with a gas can. Then before he goes into the cave, he unscrews the top, takes it off. He pours it into a trash can, then he calls his friend, that other Pole, and right at the entrance of the cave they throw that gas on the two whores. The other lights a match and sets them on fire. We hear shouting, screaming, we go there and we see the two whores burning.”
Then it was the Neapolitan’s turn again, but by now he was so drunk that his eyes wouldn’t even open. “Shall we have another glass?” Riccetto asked, joking. Yeah, maybe the guy didn’t even hear him, and merely laughed for a bit. “You all right?” Riccetto asked, cheerful, ready to go. By now they were both tired of sitting there chatting. It was Riccetto who took the initiative: “Hey . . . you,” he said, “should we get out of here?” The Neapolitan laughed again, with his eyes lowered; then, swaying, he got up, and with long strides headed straight toward the door in the wall of woven reeds. It was dark: everyone had eaten and come back out to get some air. Kids were racing motorcycles around the piazza, from the Delle Terrazze, lighted up in the background, to the half-empty tram platform. While Riccetto paid, the Neapolitan conscientiously performed some complicated operations: he sneezed, blew his nose into his fingers, and peed, then they went together to the platform to wait for the tram that would take the Neapolitan back into Rome.
“Where do you live?” Riccetto asked while they were waiting. The Neapolitan put on a cunning and diabolical smile, but was silent. Riccetto insisted: “So, you don’t wanna tell me?” he said with a slightly offended expression. The Neapolitan took his hand, and held it tight in his own, which were warm and puffy. “You’re a friend,” he began solemnly, and again out came a load of assurances of friendship, a load of oaths and declarations. Riccetto, however, wasn’t so enthusiastic, because he was so hungry and tired he could barely stand up. In the end, the Neapolitan’s situation was this: he and his companions had come to Rome to seek their fortune only a few days ago. That was why he had agreed to that job with Riccetto for five hundred lire. Otherwise he’d never have stooped to a fucking deal with Riccetto. With the card game they’d certainly make millions. Meanwhile he and his friends were sleeping in a cave on the slope leading down to the Tiber, in Testaccio. Riccetto knew which: and he pricked up his ears. Glimpsing vast possibilities, he said, “So then you need someone who can offer a little help . . . teach you the best places . . . ”
The Neapolitan hugged him, then put his index finger against his nose and signaled to Riccetto to be quiet, that they had already understood each other. He liked that gesture, and repeated it two or three times: then he took Riccetto’s hand in his and started off again with vows of friendship, returning to certain confused and grand general principles that Riccetto, who had a much clearer idea and a much more concrete plan in his head, had trouble following. “Yes, yes!” he said. One tram had passed, and another: finally, at the third, the Neapolitan got on with the five hundred lire in his pocket, and they made an appointment for the next day, repeating it two or three times, down at Ponte Sublicio.
* * *
Finally Riccetto had found a profession: not like Marcello, who had now started working in a café, or like Agnolo, who was working as a painter with his brother, but something much better, something that raised him in rank so that he could by now consider himself equal, for example, to Rocco and Alvaro, who had gradually moved from stealing manhole covers to more demanding jobs, with more responsibilities, though even with that, in the end, their pockets were empty and their faces even meaner than before. Now Riccetto had more to do with them than with the kids his own age, that is, the fourteen-year-olds. They couldn’t afford to go out and have fun with someone who always had money, since they hadn’t a cent, or had, at the very most, two or three hundred lire. To tell the sincere truth, sometimes, and more than sometimes, even Rocco and Alvaro were broke: but it was a completely different thing! That it really was a completely different thing Riccetto found out that Sunday when he went to Ostia with them, rich as a god.
With the cards, in fact, it had gone pretty well at first. Riccetto and the Salernitans would set up in some nice little corner near Campo dei Fiori or Ponte Vittorio, or in Prati, and later—when in place of the umbrella they were able to put up a stand and in place of the cards three carefully planed pieces of wood with an elastic band, two without cards and one with a card stuck into the elastic—also at Piazza di Spagna or in some other elegant place: then they gaily touted the passersby, and a fine group of people, dressed up and moneyed, would gather. Officially, Riccetto was only the kid, the one who held up the stand, but in reality he had a more delicate responsibility: and he got a thousand lire a day, and even more. But one Saturday evening, already early June, while they were putting together a group in Via dei Pettinari, the cops showed up all of a sudden, racing down from Ponte Sisto: Riccetto was the first to see them and he immediately cut out along Via delle Zoccolette. One of the cops shouted at him: “Stop or I’ll shoot.” He turned, saw that he really did have a gun in his hand, but thought: “You don’t want to murder me, I hope,” and kept running until he reached Via Arenula and disappeared among the narrow streets of Piazza Giudia. The other three were caught. They were taken to the police station and, the next day, sent back to their village with a travel pass and a good riddance. Anyway, that same Saturday night, Riccetto had gone down into the cave near Ponte Sublicio, which was the cellar of a centuries-old building, and, ignoring the pile of clothes that made up the wardrobe of the three unlucky southerners, went straight for the two or three bricks that covered the hole where the savings of a month of work were stashed: fifty thousand-lire notes.
That was why, that first Sunday in June, Riccetto was flush and in good spirits.
It was a fine morning, with the sun blazing free and lively, beating down on the Grattacieli, which looked clean and fresh, through a long expanse of blue, raining gold everywhere. On the gleaming hills of Monte di Splendore and Monte di Casadio, on the façades of the big apartment buildings, on the courtyards, on the sidewalks: and amid all that gold and that freshness people in their Sunday best were swarming at the center of Donna Olimpia, at the doors of the houses, around the newsstand . . .
Riccetto had left the house early, dressed up and with his back pocket bulging. In a knot of older boys who were arguing loudly in front of the entrance to the Case Nove, he immediately saw Rocco and Alvaro: in their work clothes because they hadn’t yet washed, wearing cloth pants loose at the crotch and tight at the ankles, inside which their legs mov
ed like flowers in a vase, crossed like those of soldiers in photographs: while their faces, above, looked like exhibits from a museum of criminals, preserved in oil. Riccetto approached, ignoring the boys his age, who, a little farther on, were kicking a ball stolen from a kid who was crying. Seeing him, Alvaro turned; the bones of his face were as if crushed by hammer blows, so that when he smiled they shifted on their own, and he said, distracted: “Things going well, huh?”
“Why not,” said Riccetto, no less cunning.
He was so confident and so cheerful that Alvaro looked at him with interest.
“What are you doing today?” Riccetto said.
“Who knows,” said Alvaro, taking his time, with an expression that was on the one hand weary, on the other allusive and mysterious.
“What do you say we go to Ostia?” said Riccetto. “Today I’m loaded.”
“Eh!” said Alvaro, causing all the bones in his face to move up and down. “You must have a couple of hundred, then!”
Rocco was also listening to the conversation with interest.
“Certainly, a couple of hundred!” Riccetto said, quivering.
“I got fifty thousand,” he said after a while. “Fif-ty thou-sand!” he repeated, lowering his voice and cupping his hand to the side of his mouth.
Alvaro, imitated by Rocco, was overcome by a burst of hilarity; he had to sit on the step and, roaring with laughter, almost ended up rolling on the ground. Riccetto waited a little, amused, until he recovered, then grabbed him by the shirt collar with two fingers and said, “Look here.” They went around a corner and Riccetto showed them the fifty bills. The two friends went, “Wow, you weren’t kidding!” and made a resigned expression that meant, “Lucky you!”
“So, you’ll come to Ostia?” Riccetto said then.
“Sure, let’s go to Ostia,” Rocco answered.
“But first we have to wash, change,” Alvaro said. “Go on, I’ll wait for you,” said Riccetto. The other two exchanged a glance. “Hey,” Alvaro said hesitantly after a moment, his face flattening under the skin into an expression of satisfaction, “Riccè, what do you say to getting some pussy at Ostia?” Riccetto was immediately equal to the situation: “Why not,” he said, “if you find the girl!” “Oh we’ll find one, we’ll find one,” said Rocco. “So we’ll be back here in half an hour,” said Alvaro. They went into the courtyard of the Case Nove, but instead of going home, or to get the five hundred lire for the ticket and the cabana, they turned into the smaller entrance on the right that opened onto Via Ozanam, and went into the tobacconist, where there was a telephone. They approached the phone with an official air: Alvaro dialed the number and Rocco, pulling out the fifteen lire, followed the call closely.
“Hello,” said Alvaro, “could you please call Nadia? Yeah, Nadia, it’s a friend of hers.” The person who had answered the telephone went to call Nadia and in the meantime Alvaro glanced at Rocco, leaning with one shoulder against the flaking wall, in concentration.
“Hello,” he said then, politely, “is that Nadia? Listen . . . There might be a little business. . . . Do you have time today? . . . to come to Ostia . . . Ostia, yes . . . What? . . . Yes, waah, what, I’m a big talker, me? . . . But it’s a sure thing, it’s a sure thing! . . . Wait for us at Marechiaro, got it, at Marechiaro. . . . There where the dance floor is, in front there . . . Yeah, like the other time . . . at three fifteen . . . All right . . . bye!” He hung up and, followed by Rocco, flushed with satisfaction, left the tobacconist.
Nadia was lying on the sand, unmoving, her face filled with hatred for the sun, the wind, the sea, and all the people who had come to sit on the beach, like an invasion of flies on a table that’s been cleared. They were there by the thousands, from Battitini to the Lido, from the Lido to Marechiaro, from Marechiaro to Principe, from Principe to Ondina, in dozens of beach clubs, some lying on their backs, some on their stomachs, but those were for the most part old people: the young people—the boys in their long trunks, baggy or form-fitting, so that everything underneath was visible, the girls, those dopes, in very tight suits, their hair long—walked back and forth without stopping, as if they had a nervous tic. And they all called to one another, shouting, yelling, teasing, playing, going in and out of the cabanas, calling the attendant; there was even a band of young men from Trastevere in Mexican hats who were playing in front of the cabanas with an accordion, a guitar, and castanets; and their sambas were mixed in with the rhumbas of the loudspeaker at Marechiaro that echoed against the sea. Nadia was lying there in the middle in a black bathing suit; she had a lot of hair, black as the devil’s, curling and sweaty in her armpits, and the hair on her head was black like coal, too, as were her eyes, blazing furiously.
She was around forty, nice and fat, with tits and big hard thighs that made so many folds of shiny, smooth fat that they looked as if they’d been inflated with a pump. She was in a bad mood, fed up with lying there in that fanatical din, since she never went swimming in the sea, not for any reason: she’d had her swim in the morning, at the Mattonato, in Sor’Anita’s bathtub. Riccetto, Alvaro, and Rocco hadn’t been there for even ten minutes and already she would have liked to be going about her own business.
“What’s eating your ass, Nadia?” Alvaro asked her calmly, seeing that she was sulking. At those words she snapped all at once. “Let’s go,” she said, “let’s do what we have to do, make it quick, and that’s it! What are we waiting here for, you want to tell me?”
“Heey, what’s your damn hurry,” said Rocco. She looked offended, and turned like a viper, with her mouth drawn down and eyes glazed with fury, gray like those of someone with heart disease: “You feel like a fuck?” she said looking Alvaro furiously in the eyes. “Why not?” said Alvaro. “So let’s go, what’re you waiting for?” she concluded fiercely, with that red mouth that looked like a pit in hell. Alvaro kept looking at her, his eyes shining cheerfully with good-humored irony: “You, I think, still haven’t had any today,” he said, making the gesture of pressing something down with the palm of his hand. “You look horny!” he added gaily.
“Damn you,” she hissed, savagely, cruder than a worker in a slaughterhouse.
“Now we’ll make you happy, come on,” said Rocco, picking up where Alvaro had left off. “We got something for you.”
“Riccetto does, too,” Alvaro said, “and he’s just a kid. You really gotta see what a piece!”
Riccetto remained impassive, kneeling on the sand, legs slightly apart: he, too, was wearing a Mexican hat, set behind his ears so that the curls sprayed out on his forehead, and tied with a string under his chin.
“Let’s go,” Alvaro finally gave in, gesturing to the whore with his chin in the direction of the cabana. She hid her satisfaction under a disgusted and dignified look, and, placing her hands on the ground and turning, with her rear end up, she started to raise, a little at a time, the pounds of fat distributed in bundles large and small here and there from her tits to her calves.
“Stop!” Alvaro ordered, “I’m going in front.” He got up and went ahead, disappearing among the umbrellas, the recliners, and the flesh of the bathers. After a while Nadia, straightening first onto her knees, rose to her feet, and followed him, planting her big feet in the burning sand.
Riccetto and Rocco stayed there, waiting for their turn. Rocco stretched out, hands under his neck, with his usual foolish expression. Since during the entire morning neither Rocco nor Alvaro had ever mentioned taking a swim, and had been lounging with their backs against the cabanas, looking at the pretty cunts turned out by Trastevere or Prati, by Maranella or Quarticciolo, Riccetto asked him: “Rocco, you know how to swim?”
“What, not know how to swim!” said the other, unperturbed. “You see me in the water, I’m a mermaid!”
“So let’s have a swim while we’re waiting, come on!” said Riccetto.
“I don’t feel like it,” Rocco said yawning. “Go ahe
ad, go by yourself if you feel like it.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna go,” said Riccetto, decisively, and with some emotion. He took off the sombrero and ran toward the waves. He stood there thinking about it for half an hour, putting first one foot in the water and taking it out, then the other and taking it out, then advancing until the water reached his knees, jumping every time a wave came, as if he’d taken a kick in the pants. The entire mirror of water in front of him was so jam-packed with bathers there was almost no room, and a big fly swung back and forth among the heads. Finally he made up his mind and jumped in, like a little goose. His swim consisted of standing around, getting cold, the water up to his nipples, and watching some boys who were climbing up a pole, skinning themselves, and doing belly flops from the top.
When he got back to the Marechiaro dance floor, the others had already been. Now it was his turn, but he sat down again, put the Mexican hat back on his head and said nothing. Instead, Alvaro spoke, moving his jaws. “Hey,” he said, “Riccetto, before you go, don’t you think it would be right to offer us something . . . Hey, I don’t insist, of course . . . but you know we had just enough money for the train and the cabana . . . ” “Not at all,” Riccetto answered: he ran to the cabana, took the bundle of bills out of his pants pocket, peeled off one, came out, and signaled to his companions to move. They got up and went to the bar to have a Coke.
The sun was already setting, and the uproar had increased: the sea sparkled like a sword beyond the mass of bodies. The stalls and the cabanas resounded with innumerable cries, and the showers were full of young men and boys, like carcasses covered with ants. The musicians in the orchestra played at full strength and the phonograph of Marechiaro was deafening. “Riccetto,” Alvaro observed after a while, “it’s your turn now.”
Riccetto immediately stood up, without saying a word, ready to go with Nadia into the cabana: the others laughed, seeing him, including Nadia, who, sitting at the table, had cheered up somewhat. “Aren’t you gonna pay first,” Alvaro said good-humoredly, with a certain kindness, not wanting to take too much advantage of Riccetto’s mistake. “I forgot,” Riccetto apologized, laughing, though inside he was embarrassed: he paid and went in, as Alvaro had done. The cabana was even hotter now that the air and the sand were a little cooler: it was like being in an oven. The clothes stank a little, especially the socks, but there was a good odor, too, of salt and brilliantine. After a while, as Riccetto grew used to the shadowy light inside, and got more excited, Nadia’s hand knocked at the door and Riccetto opened it: she came in, carrying behind her those buttocks: when a straying hand, on Arenula or Farnese, gave them a slap, it felt like a python’s tail, lifting and spreading. Riccetto stood in the middle, with the Mexican hat on his head. Silently she undid the top and bottom of her two-piece bathing suit, and peeled them off her sweaty flesh, while Riccetto, watching her, took off his pants. “Get to work,” he ordered her, in a low voice.
The Street Kids Page 4