The Street Kids

by Pier Paolo Pasolini

  Riccetto felt very well disposed when he saw how smoothly things were going, and was even slightly moved, in his unusual embarrassment. “So when do we eat?” he asked, full of expectation. “I don’t know, soon,” answered Caciotta. Meanwhile the other drifters, who were exhausted, continued to play that nuisance of a game. “Hey, let’s us play, too,” said Riccetto decisively, with the intention of asserting his rights. They went into the courtyard, argued a bit with the others, who were in an even shabbier state, and began playing, though they didn’t know a thing about basketball, a game they had never heard of. For the entire half hour they played, Riccetto did nothing but concentrate on not shouting, “Fuck you . . . ”

  Then the monks called them, clapping their hands, and led them into a big room beyond the entrance with the coupons, where there were tables ten meters long with benches around them: they were given two small dry rolls each and two ladlefuls of a pasta-and-bean soup, told to say, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” and then were allowed to eat.

  For ten days or so Riccetto and Caciotta went to the brothers’. Only at noon, however, because at night the brothers closed up shop. Thus they often ate only once a day. At night they made do. Either with money they scrounged in the morning at the station or at the market in Piazza Vittorio, or by stealing something from the stalls. Finally, one evening, fortune smiled on them, and they could tell the brothers to fuck off. It was on a tram, where a woman had got on carrying a large bag with a wallet inside it: that wallet, through the window of the grocery on Via Merulana which the woman had entered shortly before, had seemed to bulge in a promising manner, and the woman, coming out, had put it inside the bag, which was full to the top and didn’t close tightly. It was fate; Riccetto and Caciotta had just thirty lire in their pockets. Dividing it quickly, fifteen each, they ran for the tram, which was already moving, and jumped on. They entered separately and took positions near the woman. She held on to the handrail, looking at her fellow passengers with hatred. Riccetto moved closer, because he was to do the job, and Caciotta stood behind him to cover his movements; then Riccetto, having very slowly opened the bag, took out the wallet with his right hand and slid it against his chest under his left arm, until he could clutch it in his armpit. Then, still sheltered by Caciotta, he made his way through the crowd, and they got out at the first stop, cutting down through the gardens of Piazza Vittorio, and

  un amen non sarai potuto dirsi

  tosto così com’ ei furo spariti

  there wouldn’t be time to say an amen

  so quickly did they disappear.

  They disappeared in the direction of San Lorenzo, passing through the arch of Santa Bibiana. And since they were in that neighborhood, they thought of making a visit to Tiburtino, to see how things had settled down after their flight with the chairs from the upholsterer in Via dei Volsci . . .

  It was early evening, and a small breeze cheered the atmosphere at the time when workers are coming home from the job and the trams go by as tightly packed as a tin of anchovies, and you have to wait three hours at the stop just to hang on to the running board. From San Lorenzo to the Verano and all the way to Portonaccio it was all a festival, a clamor, a stampede. Riccetto sang,

  Quanto sei bella Roma,

  quanto sei bella Roma a prima sera,

  How lovely you are, Rome,

  how lovely you are, Rome, in the early evening,

  at the top of his lungs, completely reconciled with life, full of great plans for the near future, and touching the cash in his pocket: cash, which is the source of every pleasure and every satisfaction in this filthy world. Caciotta followed close behind, peaceful and happy. They arrived at Portonaccio and sat down to wait—singing, hands in their pockets—in the middle of the big space under the overpass, for the bus to Tiburtino. One had just left, and you wanted to wait for another; when that one arrived, such a crowd had already gathered to wait that no one could have forced you to make the effort to get on. They waited for a third, and it was the same. Big clouds carried by a wind that blew both cool and warm came up from San Pietro; there was thunder and a little rain. Riccetto and Caciotta gave up on the buses, because at that hour they were torture, and went for a short walk, together with some soldiers, behind the Tiburtina station, amid warehouses, excavations, construction sites, through wet fields, to see if there were any whores. When they returned to the bus stop, under the overpass, the little lights of the Verano had come on, twinkling reddish in lines and circles above the walls. The bus was there: but also the usual crowd rushing it. “What’s the time, Caciò?” said Riccetto. “I don’t know, maybe eight, eight-fifteen,” said Caciotta; but in fact it must have been at least ten. “It’s late,” said Riccetto, but with no loss of good humor. “Let’s get on.”

  They almost knocked down two or three old women and two or three old men, they were belligerent with the conductor, they trampled some toes and shoved right and left, and ended up behind the driver, in the corner. They leaned back and observed ironically the little scenes taking place in the bus. Then, at last, they started to see some of their friends and, as soon as they arrived, greeted them gaily.

  “So?” Caciotta said with a protective and confident expression, shaking their hands one by one. “What’s happening?”

  “What, can’t you see,” said one, with a dispirited look, and clothes that stank of the shop, “we’re going home from work?”

  “I see, I see,” said Caciotta.

  The other continued bitterly: “We go home, we eat, we sleep, and tomorrow morning the same grind again!”

  Caciotta said, “Yeah!” and looked at them blissfully.

  “And you, how are things with you, Caciò?” asked a fair-haired boy, Ernestino, noticing that special expression on Caciotta’s face.

  Caciotta looked at him for a moment longer, his eyes dim; then, his gestures obstructed by the throng, he silently stuck a hand in his pocket and dug around, in utter calm, staring ironically and with an air of detachment at Ernestino and the two or three other youths, who watched him with amusement.

  Then, very slowly, he took out the wallet, opened it carefully, and delicately removed from one of the compartments a bundle of hundred-lire bills. Then, with an unexpected gesture, he struck Ernestino—chak chak—two or three times on either side of his face with the pack of bills. After which he put it all back in the wallet and wearily shoved the wallet in his pocket, very pleased with himself.

  Ernestino’s eyes were laughing, he was pleased to have played the part of victim in that scene of Caciotta’s. “What are you going to do with it,” he said cheerfully, “it’s four thousand!”

  “Yeah, plus what we have hidden,” said Caciotta, his mouth twisted and his eyes growing even dimmer.

  Riccetto was silent, drowsy, even as he acted a little self-important, because he didn’t know Ernestino and the others well. They were old friends of Caciotta’s, who were born in Tiburtino and had grown up there.

  He and Ernesto and a kid named Franco, who was also there, and went by Penna Bianca, had known each other since they were kids, and Tiburtino and Pietralata were still in the middle of the real countryside, and the new apartment blocks and Forte were newly built. Occasionally, when they were barely eight, they would leave home and stay away for weeks, starving or eating onions or a peach stolen, here and there, at the markets, or a bit of pork sneaked out of an old biddy’s shopping bag. They ran away from home, like that, for no reason, because they liked having fun. At the Army barracks they scrounged a smoke. And to sleep they might settle under the watermelon seller’s awning, in front, on top of the watermelons.

  Caciotta’s good humor and his gratitude toward life, which was due to the money he had in his pocket, made him sentimental and disposed to recollection.

  “Hey Ernestì,” he said almost sweetly, “you remember that time at the watermelon seller’s?”

  �
��What, no, I don’t remember,” said Ernestino, who, not having money in his pocket, was indifferent.

  “Riccetto,” said Caciotta, pulling on his sleeve, “listen to this . . . You remember, Ernestì,” he said laughing, “what a scare one night, near Bagni de Tivoli, when we slept with a club under our heads?” Ernestino laughed. “This watermelon seller,” Caciotta explained to Riccetto, “had a pig in Bagni de Tivoli, in a hut in the middle of the fields . . . Now, since we’d done a good job guarding the watermelons, he thought he’d send us to guard that pig. And he also had a rabbit there. One night the mother of the watermelon seller shows up and says ‘Go to Bagni,’ she says, ‘and buy half a kilo of bread.’ You know, two kilometers there and two back . . . it was already dark. . . . So the mother of the watermelon seller, while we’re on the road, takes this rabbit, kills it, cooks it, and eats it. Then she takes the bones, digs a hole, and buries them. . . . What an old bag! So we get back, the two of us, and we go to see the rabbit and the rabbit isn’t there. Then the watermelon seller arrives, the owner, and says: ‘The rabbit?’ so Ernestino here and I said to him: ‘Dunno, we went to buy bread and when we came back the rabbit was gone.’ So the boss: ‘Couldn’t one of you go?’ We answer: ‘If we went alone we’d be scared, so we both went.’ So the boss, furious takes five hundred lire out of his pocket: ‘Then you’re fired, both of you, and if I ever catch you around here again I’ll take you to jail!’

  “But what’d we care,” he continued, contentedly, “we went back to Pietralata, to fight with the other kids in the neighborhood, to be hired at the circus . . . you remember Ernestì? . . . with the lions . . . and the tigers . . . And the time that Rondella ran away, a Maremmano mare, and we ran after her all night, through the fields behind Pietralata, and we caught her, she was swimming in the Aniene!” Riccetto was listening happily, in complete sympathy with Caciotta and his old friends. The others nodded, too, laughing, feeling all their instincts as cunning bastards reinvigorated in the depths of their souls. Among the boys from Tiburtino there was one from Pietralata, listening with a pissed-off expression, his face dark and his hair snaky, a tall kid, so tall the others barely reached his armpits: he had settled next to them, with one hand on the handrail, weary and concentrated, listening with a soft expression on his shifty face. His name was Amerigo, and Caciotta hardly knew him except by sight. The bus jolted over the cobblestones of Tiburtina, shaking its cargo of humans, so packed in that a needle couldn’t pass between them, and the little gang from Tiburtino was becoming rowdier. “See what nice curls he’s got,” said Ernestino in a pause in the conversation, looking at Riccetto’s head. “Huh, you don’t know,” Caciotta broke in, brightly, “that to make the curls he gets you to fart in his face?” While the others laughed, Amerigo, without moving too far from where he was, touched Caciotta with his elbow: “Hey you, what’s your name,” he said gently, in an almost toneless voice, “I’ve got something to say to you!”

  4.

  STREET KIDS

  The people are a wild savage

  in the bosom of society.

  —TOLSTOY

  Amerigo was drunk. “Let’s get out here at Forte,” he said to Caciotta, who was listening deferentially. “Let me introduce you to a friend of mine,” Caciotta said then, just to say something. Amerigo extended his hand toward Riccetto as if it were made of lead; the collar of his jacket was raised, his face was green beneath curls plastered with dust, and his big brown eyes were glassy, staring. He shook Riccetto’s hand hard, without seeming to, as if there were not the least doubt, between them, that they were both operators. But he immediately forgot about him, and, turning to Caciotta, said: “You got it?” He was playing the serious type, yet what Caciotta had meanwhile understood was that he was not someone you could joke with: at Farfarelli’s one day he had seen him lift up, with one hand, six chairs tied together, and he had knocked out and sent to the hospital more than one person in Pietralata. “What did you do?” said Caciotta, as between equals, from one thug to another. “Now we’ll talk,” said Amerigo, pulling up the collar of his jacket even more.

  The bus stopped at Forte di Pietralata; from the bar, which was still open, a ray of light grazed the asphalt surface of Via Tiburtina. Amerigo jumped off the running board, springing back up, like an athlete, his hands still in his pants pockets. “Let’s go,” Caciotta said to Riccetto, who didn’t understand the turn things were taking, and they followed. “We’ll walk this piece,” said Amerigo setting off from in front of the Army barracks toward Tiburtino. When they were a little farther along, he grabbed Caciotta by the elbow; walking, he put one foot in front of the other, with a face so mean it seemed that no matter what part of his body you touched, you’d get hurt. He dragged his feet, like a slightly weary boxer, and yet, on that downhill walk, it was clear that he was quicker and more alert than a beast. With Caciotta and Riccetto he continued to act the serious type, who thinks nothing at all of the power he has and of his reputation as the nastiest goon in Pietralata: he had the complicit air of one who is about to do business with an equal, and isn’t going to be had. “If you come with me,” he said to Caciotta, “you’ll be glad.” “Where?” said Caciotta. Amerigo gestured with his head toward Tiburtino. “Here,” he said, “at Fileni’s.” Caciotta had never heard that name. He was silent. Amerigo continued, pretending to believe that the other had understood. “Today is Saturday, let’s hurry,” he said in a tired, womanish voice, maybe like his mother’s, as his face got yellower and yellower. “So let’s go,” said Caciotta, like a thug; anyway, there was nothing else to do, and by now he was looking at it as entertainment.

  Riccetto instead held back, eyes narrowed. When they were at the entrance to Tiburtino III he said: “Bye, guys, I’m off.” “Where you going?” said Caciotta, stopping. Amerigo also stopped and glanced obliquely with his hands half in his pockets. “To bed, the hell with you. I’m so sleepy I’ll die if I take another step!”

  Amerigo approached, looking at him with eyes that appeared to be bloodshot, laughing: he was laughing because it wasn’t possible to go against what he had decided.

  “Kid,” he said in a low, calm voice, cajoling, “I already told you, you’re coming with me, and then you’ll thank me for it. . . . You don’t know me . . . ” Caciotta, who did know him, looked off to one side, amused. Anyway, he understood that Riccetto would go with them to this Fileni’s.

  “I’m telling you, I’m sleepy,” said Riccetto.

  “What do you mean sleepy,” said Amerigo, scowling as he laughed, still delighted by the thought that it was absurd not to follow his advice. “Let’s go!” He put a hand on his heart: “Caciotta here can tell you, right, Caciò? I’m someone who no one can say anything about me, and if I make a promise, kid, listen, everything goes the way I say . . . why? We’re all friends here, no? I do you a favor, so to speak, and another time you do one for me, what, shouldn’t we give each other a hand?” He’d turned solemn: not to go with him you had to understand would be foolish, but that business between Amerigo and Caciotta gnawed at Riccetto, to him it stank. Caciotta was watching with a strange expression: “Do what you want,” he seemed to be saying, “I’m not going to interfere.” Riccetto shrugged. “So who’s saying anything about you?” he said to Amerigo. “You’re right: you go with Caciotta wherever, what do you need me for?” But Amerigo didn’t know which of the two had the money in his pocket. He looked at Riccetto with a patient and very serious expression. He got so close that his winey breath mixed with Riccetto’s. But just then two familiar shadows appeared against the yellow shadow of the first apartment blocks of Tiburtino, coming down toward the fountain where the three had stopped.

  “The cops,” said Caciotta. “They know me,” he continued. “They’re the ones who wanted to arrest me the other night at the cinema in Tiburtino!”

  Amerigo watched them approach, with his sick eyes; he put a hand over his face and squeezed his forehead between his fingers. He was
as white as a sheet and his mouth was twisted as if he were about to cry. When the two shadows with the bandoliers over their shoulders had moved on, into the neighborhood, he passed his hand over his forehead one last time. “Oh God, how it hurts,” he said, “like a nail going straight through my head.” But it had already passed.

  Again he approached Riccetto, and put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Riccè,” he said, “what’s your name, don’t be an idiot, it’s better if you come.” He resumed his expansive and oratorical style. “Word of honor,” he said, “may I be the worst son of a bitch if later you don’t come to me and say: Amerigo, I have to thank you and I also apologize.” His hand weighed on Riccetto’s shoulder like a ton of bricks.

  They went down the main street of Tiburtino, where only two of the bars had lights on, and amid the decrepit, grimy one-story houses, with a few rags hanging over the windows, the strumming of a guitar could be heard. They passed through the covered market, greasy and greenish with fish, cut along two or three of the identical streets that divided the lots, and arrived at a house with a battered, rickety Novecento-style loggia. They went up a short flight of stairs, then along a stone balcony looking onto the street that ran parallel, and knocked at a half-open door, through which a faint light shone. A hand opened it from the inside, and they found themselves in a kitchen where a group of people were gathered around a table in silence. Six or seven were playing cards; the rest, leaning against the walls or the sink, which was piled with dirty dishes, were watching.