Certain types they couldn’t stand, they really couldn’t. “Will you look at this!” Caciotta cried, for example, studying a tall woman with a huge rear, who was walking along with a short bespectacled man: when they passed, grazing them, Riccetto and Caciotta, sneering and bending over until their nostrils almost touched the ground, began to go “pffff, pffff,” sputtering like pots on the boil. The four-eyes turned partway around: and then—who could resist?—looking at each other and bowing like puppets they burst out laughing as hard as they could. “Fantastic!” cried Caciotta. But a cop was coming right toward them, and so—scram!—they ran off, lightheartedly, toward Villa Borghese, which, of all the places that had benches to sleep on, was the one where you could have the most fun. Entering at Porta Pinciana, they took the road that skirted the riding ring, which was crowded with cars and strollers until late. At the end of that road, after the rotunda of the Ginestre, there was another road that led down to the parapets of the Pincio and to Casina Valadier. Two rows of oleanders, set in rectangular flowerbeds, and running in a narrow line between the road and the sidewalk, shaded the benches against the fence; behind them was the slope up to the riding ring. There were people sitting on the benches, enjoying the cool air. “I want to take a rest,” Riccetto said carelessly, and they stretched out on their backs, on the dry grass of the slope, singing, full of gratitude toward life, as they waited for it to get later. When they returned to the road, in good spirits, the benches were already a little emptier, and there were fewer passersby: but that was when real life began. Here and there were old men in shirtsleeves; or a group of youths, some with jackets over sloping shoulders, some in multicolored T-shirts. Most were sitting and chatting, with their knees pressed together like women, or their legs crossed, one arm on their lap as they leaned forward slightly; smoking, they took small nervous puffs, holding the cigarette with all four fingers extended. Farther along, on another bench, also in the shadow of an oleander, they glimpsed a man talking to a dark youth, in one of those low-necked blue shirts that can be bought at Porta Portese for five hundred lire; and, still farther, other silhouettes, in the bushes, under the street lights. “You can see my friend’s whole thigh,” Caciotta said suddenly, staring at the other side of the street, where, in the glare from the street light that cut the shadows, a woman was sitting on the bench in a blood-red skirt that hit above the knee. “Take a look,” Riccetto said, suddenly excited. “Hey, son of a bitch,” someone shouted at Caciotta from a nearby bench. “Well?” said a young man with skin as black as a frying pan, and greasy, dirty curly hair that was even blacker. He was sitting with his legs apart in the middle of a bench, with two friends beside him.
“What, a pickup?” said Caciotta, excited, sitting down nearby.
“What do you mean pickup, what pickup,” said the Negro sarcastically, in a loud voice, to make himself heard by two large men, who were walking by, in high spirits, leading two of the darlings of Villa Borghese. “Damn,” Riccetto mumbled after them. “Let me present a friend of mine,” said Caciotta, introducing Riccetto to the others. They shook hands. In the background the fat men and the prostitutes continued to chat, lighting cigarettes; the Negro and the others squinted at them. The smaller of the Negro’s companions spoke softly to the other, who was large, with a big head and laughing eyes. “Get out, Calabrè,” he answered serenely. “You’re doing well tonight, huh, Cappellò?” Caciotta asked him, testing the waters. “Why not?” said Cappellone, his mouth as wide as a beam, and he sprawled on the bench, extending his legs almost as far as the flowerbed.
Calabrese was completely preoccupied by the seriousness of their business, and he didn’t look at the two new arrivals. “Let me touch,” he said, his voice hoarse because he had a cold, as he always did, since he slept outside every night, there at Villa Borghese: he was twenty or so, but his dark, chubby face was that of a mischievous child of fifteen. With his hand he patted Cappellone’s bulging pockets. “Fuck off, go on,” Cappellone said, with a start. “Here it is, you like it?” And he pulled a revolver out of his pocket. “Crazy,” said the Negro. Cappellone, laughing, put it back in his pants, which were stiff with dust. “Damn,” said Caciotta. “It’s a Beretta, is it?” asked Riccetto, coming closer. But they didn’t answer. Calabrese, continuing his probe in a monotonous voice and with a tired, sly gaze: “And the pen?” “Why should I have the pen, jerk,” said Cappellone. “Picchio has it, doesn’t he!” said the Negro angrily, extending one arm toward Calabrese. “Then he got drunk and let the whores cheat him out of everything,” said Calabrese sullenly. “Go find him,” said Cappellone. “Let’s go,” said Calabrese. Cappellone got up from the bench and stretched, laughing. Riccetto and Caciotta followed Calabrese and Cappellone, who were trudging lazily down the road; the Negro, instead, as soon as they got up, said: “Who’s gonna make me go, it’s very nice here!” He lay down on the bench on his back, stretching out one leg, then the other.
The road that led to Porta Pinciana was still crowded with women, smartly dressed youths, foreigners, all strolling to the sound of the jazz from the Casina delle Rose. But at the entrance to Villa Borghese, in front of the arches of Porta Pinciana, the road that skirted the riding ring and descended along the Muro Torto was dark and silent: lowlifes ventured to walk down there—or sometimes, finding their way, a sinister air about them, two or three soldiers, or a youth on a scooter—and immediately disappeared into the covering darkness of the trees. On the right was the fence that divided the road from the slope, and farther down, in the darkness, before the big expanse grazed by the moon, were the two fences that marked the boundary of the sand track. The flat areas were all yellow and trampled, because during the day kids played ball there and the maids went for walks, and now entire units of the Army were going down in packs, to the riding enclosure, with its squared hedges, burned by the odor of horse pee. They emerged from the shadow of the plane trees grouped in the center of the open space, or from the chaos of fences and bushes by the riding enclosure, coming back up along the track: dark, skinny sailors from Tarento or Salerno, tankmen from north of the Po in baggy trousers, their arms swinging, and kids from Prati or Flaminio, all exhausted. And they left behind, down at the bottom, the most complete silence. When Riccetto and Caciotta, with the other two habitués of Villa Borghese, got there, it was already late, and the silence between a descent and an ascent began to increase. “Picchio,” Calabrese announced, as if he had seen him. “Where is he?” said Cappellone. “What, are you deaf?” said Calabrese. “God damn,” said Cappellone, sitting down on the fence posts, as if he intended to settle in for an hour. In fact, down at the end of the track, almost even with the chestnuts, between the metal fences and the darkest thickets of the riding ground, a voice could be heard shouting at the top of its lungs. Gradually, as they got closer, it became louder.
“Whores! Whores!” it shouted. Then it faded for a moment, but right away returned:
“Whores!” it repeated, and, each time, the word seemed to be shouted by someone who was getting more and more angry. The person shouting, as far as anyone could understand without seeing him, must be stopping every so often, turning sideways toward the riding enclosure, and shouting from that position. Or maybe he was walking slowly, with his head thrown back, and every so often stumbling. He also must have cupped his hand around his mouth, and he was shouting so loud that you could hear the catarrh scraping his throat:
“Whoooores, whooores!”
He broke off again, to take a few steps or to spit. At first, since he was dragging out the “o” a little, it seemed he was about to leave, mocking them. But then the intonation of the voice made it clear that he was truly angry, spraying saliva in his rage. The shouting surely could be heard in the middle of the riding ring, as far as the road, all the way to the Casina delle Rose. It was silent, it rested for a moment, then it started up again, as if that rage could find no other words than that: “Whores!”
He was now almost
at the fence, and his silhouette could be seen, swaying, trembling from head to foot as if a north wind were blowing. He couldn’t keep his hands still for an instant: he tucked and untucked his shirt, he tightened his belt, pulled the gum he was chewing out of his mouth, pushed back his hair, which was falling over his eyes.
“Filthy whores,” he cried even louder at the women, who in the meantime were squatting diplomatically among the thickets at the far end of the field, in holy contemplation; suddenly he sat down, then rose and started up the hill again, still facing backward. After a few steps he stopped again, groping in his shirt, which hung loosely over his pants, and started on a long story, full of complications, chewing his words along with the gum, and spitting out drops of saliva.
“Picchio,” Cappellone interrupted him from above. “They’re making you go around talking to yourself, if I’m not wrong, yeah, Pì?” Picchio turned uphill without saying anything, then he looked again at the end of the field, where the women were mute as sphinxes, and shouted: “Whores!” Then he came up the path between the fences and across the track. He reached the road where the others were and sat down with them on the small fixed posts. As he chewed, his whole mouth widened, so that his jaws creaked and he dripped saliva. “What did you do, Pì?” asked Calabrese, eyes at last smiling, like those of a masticating beast.
“Damn them,” Picchio cried loudly, jumping up. As he shouted and chewed, the skin of his small, lean face wrinkled.
“They don’t want to fuck me,” he cried.
“You let them play these tricks, Picchio?” said Cappellone. Calabrese, with his round face, sneered. Picchio got up, teetering, cupped his hands around his mouth, and, turning toward the expanse below them, repeated:
“Whores!”
“The pen?” said Calabrese, trying to start the investigation. Picchio looked at him sideways, as if without even seeing him. “What, am I wearing rings in my nose,” he had started shouting again at the prostitutes, “wouldn’t I give you the five hundred lire? You whooores!” He waved his arm in their direction: “Tomorrow night I’ll show you!” “What will you show them, Picchio?” said Cappellone. “What will I show them?” said Picchio chewing and sniffing. “It’s their fucking business.” “Here it is,” he said then, turning to Calabrese, looking at him out of the corner of his eye and smoothing his eyebrows with an air of resignation.
Calabrese took the pen and looked at it in the light. “Who’d you steal it from?” Riccetto asked, observing it.
“A kid on the tram,” muttered Picchio.
“What do you mean, kid,” said Cappellone, “you said it was an American.”
Picchio paid no attention to him.
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Riccetto, shrugging his shoulders.
“Really,” said Calabrese, “you can’t scrape up five hundred lire?”
“Yeah!” said Riccetto.
“Hey, you,” said Calabrese, “how much you wanna bet on it?”
“Don’t make me laugh, come off it,” Riccetto replied.
“Let’s go get a drink,” cried Picchio suddenly, rousing himself and jumping to his feet, so thin that a small breeze would have blown him away.
“He’s loaded,” said Calabrese.
“What do you mean loaded,” Picchio said muttering and fuming. “I’ve got three hundred!”
Riccetto and Caciotta sat and waited to see how things played out.
“Let’s go,” said Picchio, hoarsely, staggering off toward Porta Pinciana. “Let’s go,” said Cappellone, following him with Calabrese. Riccetto and Caciotta didn’t move. “Let’s go” Cappellone said to them.
When they were under the arches of Porta Pinciana, they found the Negro and another curly-haired fellow, small, with the round face of a delinquent and eyes like porcelain, who was from Acqua Bullicante; his name was Lenzetta, and the others already knew him. “Okay,” said Cappellone. “Two from Tiburtina, one from Acqua Bullicante, two from Primavalle, one drifter, and Picchio here from Valle dell’Inferno: we could be the League of Degenerates of the Neighborhoods of Rome!”
All seven went to a pizzeria in the neighborhood of the station to have a bottle with Picchio’s money; then they went back up Via Veneto, with their shirts hanging out, or in undershirts, with their shirts tied around their necks, shouting, singing, and threatening the wealthy who even at that hour were walking around all dressed up, with the Alfa waiting. Villa Borghese was almost empty by now. They could barely hear the violins from the Casina delle Rose. When they reached the riding ring, Picchio woke up again and started shouting at the top of his lungs: “Hey, whores!” He climbed the fence, went down the slope, and, as soon as he was on the grass in the clearing, fell down with his face in the dirt and went to sleep.
“Damn I’m horny,” said Riccetto, “with all those hot girls on Via Veneto.”
“Let’s go down and see if the whores are still there,” said Caciotta.
“Sure,” said Calabrese, “they want money! Cash!”
“What, we don’t have the money?” said Caciotta triumphantly. The others pricked up their ears.
“Let’s go then,” said the Negro, sneering under the woolly hair that fell curling over his ears. “What are we waiting for?”
They crossed the open space, in the moonlight, reached the riding enclosure, and looked: but the prostitutes had already left.
“The police van must have passed,” Calabrese said shrewdly.
“All right,” said Caciotta, “tonight . . . ” and as he talked he waved his hand, index finger and thumb extended.
Lenzetta playfully gave him a pat on the buttocks.
“See,” he said, “what a fine ass!”
“What a fine dick,” Caciotta corrected.
“Does it reach all the way from behind?” asked the one from Acqua Bullicante, Lenzetta.
“Of course,” said Caciotta, patiently, “and there’s a piece left over for you, too.”
“He got you,” the Negro concluded, as if he were saying amen. They climbed the hill on the other side of the clearing and turned onto the road where they had met. But there was too much traffic to sleep. They went out in the middle of the gardens near the Casina Valadier, where each of them stretched out on a bench and fell sleep.
The night passed quickly: the trams below the Muro Torto hadn’t yet begun to move and all Rome was still sunk in sleep, but the sun was already beating down on the fields and woods of Villa Borghese, with a bright white light that clung to the walls and to the small busts beside the flowerbeds.
Riccetto was wakened by a kind of strange coolness on his feet. He turned over a little on the bench and tried to go back to sleep, but then he raised his head to see what the hell was happening with his feet. A fresh, dazzling ray of sun fell obliquely through the leafy branches, lighting up his socks, which were full of holes.
“Hey, did I take off my shoes last night?” Riccetto asked in a loud voice, sitting up suddenly.
“No, I didn’t take them off,” he answered, looking under the bench, on the grass, among the bushes. “Caciotta, Caciotta,” he yelled, shaking Caciotta, who was still sleeping, “they stole my shoes!”
“What did you do?” said Caciotta groggy with sleep.
“They stole my shoes,” Riccetto yelled again. “And the money, too!” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. Although he was still practically asleep, Caciotta, too, looked in his pockets: there wasn’t even a lira, and his sunglasses had disappeared. “God damn,” cried Riccetto desperately. The others had also wakened, and were looking at him from a distance.
“I didn’t take a lira,” said the one from Acqua Bullicante, Lenzetta, sitting on his bench. Calabrese instead looked on silently with his round face, shaking his head, in his eyes the expression of one who knows how things stand but doesn’t want to speak. Riccetto and Caciotta left without saying a
word or even looking at the others, who were acting dumb, giving a worried and innocent appearance to their shifty faces, so that no one could dare to say a thing about them. In all of Villa Borghese, whitened by the hot sun, not a soul could be seen. They went down into the open field of the riding ring and crossed it. At the end, on the other side, face-down, Picchio was still sleeping. He was wearing a pair of blue and white cloth shoes, all frayed and with holes in the soles. Riccetto gently took them off, and put them on his own feet, although they were a tight fit; then they left through Porta Pinciana.
* * *
That day they went to eat at the brothers’. They had to, because even though they had wandered around Piazza Vittorio for the entire morning, they hadn’t picked up a cent.
Pale with hunger, they passed furtively under the scaffolding at the station, and reached Via Marsala, where at No. 210 there was a doorway with “Refectory” written above it that belonged to the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin, one of those names like that. They stuck their noses in, then their heads, taking one step forward and half a step back, since they were in those spiffy outfits, except for Riccetto’s cloth shoes: and they found themselves in a short corridor leading to a courtyard of packed earth that was full of penitents, like the two of them, playing basketball, and it was abundantly clear that they were doing it just to please the monks. Riccetto and Caciotta glanced at each other, to check their expressions, and nearly ran out, seeing how pitiful they both looked. Instead they began laughing, and, pushing and shoving, with smiling, impudent faces, they went in.
A fat-bellied monk came toward them, sweaty and disheveled, and they moved aside, thinking: “Now, what does this guy want?” But the brother said in a loud voice: “Do you want to eat, boys?” Riccetto turned away so as not to show that he was about to laugh, while Caciotta, who had been there before, said: “Yes, father.” At the word “father” Riccetto couldn’t hold out and began to gurgle, so that he had to pretend to be tying one of those filthy shoes he had on in order to hide his face. The brother said, “Come along,” and led them through an entrance on the other side of the courtyard, where there was a small table with a record book and a coupon book. Pulling up his cassock so that you could almost see his belly, the brother asked for their particulars. “Our what?” said Riccetto, surprised but obliging, putting himself at the monk’s service. When they found out what the heck these “particulars” were, they gave false information and, in exchange, respectfully took the coupon from the brother’s hands.
The Street Kids Page 7