“Let’s have another half liter,” cried Lenzetta, and held out his hand, “you feel like it?”
But Riccetto slapped the extended hand. “Spit in your eye!” he said.
Lenzetta spread his arms. “Why are you talking about Jesus Christ and the Madonna when you’re hungry,” he said, with a face that was as red as a pork chop. Then, staring at Riccetto, he burst out laughing even louder: “Why do you want to drink milk,” he said, “when you’ve always drunk the pure water of streams! Of black drains!”
“You shut up,” Riccetto replied, “you’ve got such bunions on your feet, you could go and beg.”
But Lenzetta kept staring at him, and, seized by a thought that gave him an irresistible urge to laugh, he waved both hands, the fingers squeezed together, in front of Riccetto and cried: “Remember when you went looking for empty cans, and you went and sold them for pennies, for fun!”
From Riccetto, too, a laugh escaped. Lenzetta was bursting. He stood up so he could speak better. “But don’t you remember,” he resumed, “when you went to the maternity hospital, where they were distributing food to the poor, and you got them to give you two or three cans . . . ” He imitated Riccetto’s movements, as, all depressed, he was given a can of soup by the hospital workers, “one you ate and the others you kept aside, and then you went and sold them to the wretched starving people just like you!”
At that remark they both started laughing as if they’d never stop. Lenzetta, making some unintentional movements, jumped, laughing uproariously, and a sharp crack could be heard at his feet under the table. Riccetto looked down and saw on the floor Cappellone’s Berretta, which had fallen out of Lenzetta’s pants. “That son of a bitch!” he thought. “So he must have stolen my shoes at Villa Borghese!” Lenzetta quickly leaned under the table and stuck the revolver back in his belt.
The old man had the expression of someone who has just been kicked in the rear, and, turning around, sees that the one who hit him has twisted his foot and is screaming with pain.
“Got any photos of your daughters?” Lenzetta asked, sitting up again, still cheerful. “If they’re ugly,” he thought, “we’ll pay for the liter and split!” The old man, his face long and slack from the wine under the fly-specked light bulb that bleached it out, took out his wallet and after exploring it with dirty fingers, compartment by compartment, showed them the photograph of a girl in her First Communion dress.
“Is that how she is now?” asked Riccetto, who was a little disappointed.
“Noo! Not exactly like she is now!” said the old man and rummaged some more in the wallet. He couldn’t resist the temptation to show his identity card: there he was, all cleaned up, with a collar and black suit, and a Rudy Vallee-like expression. Antonio Bifoni, son of the late Virgilio, born in Ferentino, 11-3-1896. Inside the wallet were two or three lire in change, a Communist Party membership card, two applications for welfare, and an unemployment card. Finally he took out the other photos. Lenzetta and Riccetto fell on them eagerly.
“Wow, get a look!” said Riccetto, in a whisper, almost more with gestures than with words.
“I’ll take this one,” said Lenzetta, also softly, turning his back to the old man, “you take the other.”
To get from the tavern to where they had to go, you passed through Porta Furba, turned down toward Quadraro, cut between some houses as isolated as sheds, and arrived at the vegetable garden, which on one side was bounded by a white path, and on the other vanished into some meadowland with a villa and a pinewood at the far end.
There was a stink of manure and wet straw, and a strong scent of fennel, which could be seen stretching like a green cloud, lettuce growing in the middle, on the other side of a tumbledown fence, through breaks in the hedge of wet reeds that bordered it.
“Let’s go here,” said the old man, his face like a werewolf’s, as he moved, hunched and stealthy, down to where the fence ended, all twisted, and a row of wet, uneven boards began, until they reached a wooden gate: between this and the boards there was a kind of passage, a hole, covered by thorny stalks and some reeds. The old man began to scrape around it to widen it, kneeling in the dew-soaked hollow on plantain, purslane, mallow, and chard. Through that hole they entered the garden.
Moonlight fell over the whole garden, which was so big that you couldn’t see the fence on the other side. The moon was now high in the sky; it had shrunk and seemed to want nothing more to do with the world, completely absorbed in contemplation of what was beyond. To the world, it seemed to show only its backside; and, from that small silver rear, a grand light rained down, which pervaded everything. It shone at the end of the garden where peach trees, willows, mock orange, wild cherry, elderberry sprouted here and there in hard clumps, like wrought iron, twisted and weightless in the white dust. Then it descended, skimming the plane of the garden and making it bubble with light, or glazing it with a soft brightness: with the curling leaves of chard or lettuce half in light and half in shadow, and the yellow plots of lamb’s lettuce and the gold-green of leeks and salad greens. And here and there were piles of straw, tools left by the farmers, in the most picturesque disarray, as if the earth worked itself, and no one had to bust his ass laboring.
But the old man had eyed the cauliflowers, and only those. Wasting no time, and followed by the two friends, he crossed the hollow and advanced along the path, which was a sort of narrow track covered by an inch of water in the middle of the cauliflower patch, and from which furrows, watery as well, went off to the right and the left, dividing the plot into many squares. In these the cauliflowers were lined up, as big as peacocks, in rows of four or five meters. “Come on,” said the old man, who was already holding his knife open in his hand. And, heading down one of the furrows, he plunged among the rows of cauliflowers that came up to his waist, and began to knock them down with strokes of the knife. He cut them off and stuck them in the sack, pushing them down with his hands and feet. The accomplices, standing back to observe, looked at each other and burst out laughing, louder and louder, until their guffaws could have been heard in Quadraro. “Shut up, will you,” said the old man looking nervously over the bluish tops of the cauliflowers. After a while, when their early enthusiasm had passed, they were silent: then slowly they made up their minds to do something, and each of them tore off some cauliflowers, without moving from the path, and choosing the first that came to hand. They put their booty, uprooted from the fertile ground by the top, stalk and all, in the old man’s sack, crushing and nearly upsetting the load, then kicking it. “Be gentle,” the old man urged. But they paid no attention and went on amusing themselves by stuffing into the sack as many cauliflowers as they could, laughing heartily. But finally the old man picked up the sack, hoisted it onto his back, and went off, staggering under the weight, toward the hole. Lenzetta, however, said peacefully: “Hey, wait a minute, I gotta take care of something,” and, without waiting for a response, he undid his belt, pulled down his pants, and began heedlessly to take a dump on the wet grass. Riccetto and Sor Antonio, too, given the situation, imitated him, and, three in a row, they all squatted on the grass under a big cherry tree, with their butts exposed to the moonlight.
Lenzetta, having finished, began to sing. The old man, squatting, as he was, near his full sack, looked at him sideways and, alarmed, said: “Hey, you, you know my nephew, for a cabbage, just one, did six months in jail? You all want to go to jail?”
Lenzetta at those sensible words was silent. “Sor Maè,” Riccetto said then, taking advantage of that private moment, while Lenzetta was already pulling up his pants, “is your daughter engaged?”
Lenzetta burst out laughing and did his usual “pfff, pff, pff,” excusing himself by saying he was laughing because of the stink and holding his nose; the old man, slyly putting up with the role of the fool that circumstances had forced him to play, responded in a friendly way: “No, she’s not engaged.” They pulled up their pants, buckled
their belts, and on all fours followed Lenzetta, who was already crawling through the hole in the fence.
When they were on the street, the two bastards, of course, didn’t want the old man to do the hard work, and offered at all costs to carry the full sack. They took turns carrying it on their backs, pretending to be cheerful and indifferent and making a racket, while they trudged wearily, cursing to themselves because of the effort, behind Sor Antonio, who, forced to play the role of the fool, now had the fools carrying his load. When, gradually, they’d left behind Porta Furba, and were deep into a shanghai of garden plots, streets, metal fences, little villages of huts, empty lots, construction sites, clumps of apartment blocks, swamps, and had almost arrived at Borgata degli Angeli, between Tor Pignattara and Quadraro, the old man said, in the manner of a polite and worldly person: “Why don’t you come in?” “Thanks, why not,” the two sweaty thugs answered, while thinking: “That’s all we needed, that he wouldn’t invite us to come up, this fag!”
Borgata degli Angeli was deserted at that hour, and between the big boxes of the apartment blocks, built in even rows, four dirt roads covered with garbage could be seen and, above, the cloudless sky where the small moon was slowly setting.
The street door of the building where Sor Antonio lived was open. They went in and started up a flight of stairs, two, three, with a shambles of crumbling landings, doors, windows opening onto courtyards, and on the walls dirty charcoal drawings made by kids. The old man rang the bell at No. 74, inside, with the two helpers expectant behind him, and after a bit the oldest daughter came to open the door.
She was a beautiful cunt, no more than twenty, in a bathrobe that was falling off her shoulders, all disheveled, her eyes puffy and her flesh warm with sleep. Seeing the two guests, she ducked behind a ragged screen that stood in the middle of the entrance.
Sor Antonio went in, leaned his sack against the screen, and called in a loud voice, “Nadia!” No one came out but on the other side of the wall they could hear a shi shi shi, the way women do when three or four are together.
“God damn,” thought Riccetto, “is there a whole tribe in there?”
“Nadia!” Sor Antonio repeated.
A louder stirring could be heard, then the older daughter emerged again, with her bathrobe fastened, wearing shoes, and with her hair combed.
“Let me introduce these friends,” said Sor Antonio. Nadia approached with a smile, modestly, holding one hand at the neckline of her bathrobe and stretching the other out toward them, its fingers slender, soft, and white as butter, which immediately got the two friends excited.
“Claudio Mastracca,” said Riccetto, shaking that pretty little hand.
“Alfredo Di Marzi,” said Lenzetta, doing likewise, with the flushed and fluid face he had in moments of emotion; she was so embarrassed you could see she felt like crying, especially since they were all four standing there, without moving, staring at each other.
“Sit down,” said Sor Antonio, and went ahead, through a curtained door, into the kitchen. There, between the stove and the credenza and four or five chairs, there was also, against the wall, a cot, where, red and sweaty, two girls were sleeping, head to foot, with the sheets all twisted and more gray than white. On the table were dirty pots and plates, and a cloud of flies, wakened by the light, circled and buzzed as if it were noon.
Nadia entered last and stood apart, near the door.
“Don’t pay any attention,” said Sor Antonio, “it’s a house of workers!”
“Well, you should see my house!” said Lenzetta, with a sneering laugh, to encourage him, but the way a boy would, used to talking to boys as dirty as him. Riccetto laughed, too, at his friend’s allusive remark. Lenzetta, in the grip of enthusiasm, continued, with no more scruples, as if he were holding forth at the Bar della Pugnalata, his eyes leaking sarcasm: “The kitchen of our house is just like a crapper, and all the mice leave for vacation from our bedroom!”
Meanwhile Sor Antonio had made a sudden decision: he jumped up and dragged the sack of cauliflowers into the kitchen, settling it proudly under the sink.
“These two fine boys helped me,” he told his daughter, “otherwise when would I have managed to get these all here! At Christmas!”
At her father’s remark, Nadia’s chin trembled, though she was doing her best to smile; she seemed about to burst into tears, and turned her face in the other direction.
“Heeey,” said Lenzetta, jovially, sticking out his stomach and raising his arms, “don’t start crying for nothing!”
But, as if she’d been expecting precisely those words, she really did start crying and ran away behind the screen.
“Crazy, idiot!” someone cried after a moment from behind it.
“My wife,” said the old man.
In fact, less than a minute later Sora Adriana, too, emerged in a bathrobe but with her hair neatly combed into a bun, full of pins, and two boobs that were not inferior to the sack of cauliflowers. “The mother’s better than the daughters,” thought Riccetto. She entered the kitchen rapidly, still quivering with contempt, continuing the speech she had begun in the other room: “That fool, damn her! What, she starts crying because a person has to get by, what nonsense! In these times today! Where she gets it, this daughter of mine, I don’t know . . . ”
She broke off, calmed down a bit, and observing, with two rapid glances, the guests, who, shabby and sly, offered themselves to her gaze.
“Let me introduce these friends of mine,” the old man said again.
“A pleasure,” she said, frowning slightly and hastily completing that social duty. “Claudio Mastracca,” Riccetto repeated, “Alfredo Di Marzi,” Lenzetta repeated. When the necessary digression of the introduction was over, she began again on the subjects she cared about, if also in a more confidential tone: “Imagine, to see a daughter of twenty who weeps like a girl, and why! For four rotten cauliflowers! What, is it something to be ashamed of?” And she raised her head in a sign of defiance, eyes flaming and hands on her hips, toward an invisible audience, probably of gentlemen. “Nadia!” she said then, sticking her head past the doorpost. “Nadiaaaa!”
In the meantime, the two girls who were sleeping head to foot had awakened, and were lying there with their eyes open, enjoying events. Nadia returned after a while, still embarrassed, drying the corner of her eyes with one hand, and smiling because of the foolishness of her earlier behavior, with an air of saying: “Pay no attention!” “Crazy!” repeated the mother, still in a tone of defiance, toward whom she alone knew: “Now, is there really anything to be ashamed of?”
“And us, don’t we maybe have to do a little stealing?” said Lenzetta, still trying to boost morale with his usual delicacy. “We’re absolutely unemployed!”
“Nothing surprising about it,” Riccetto added, in an almost worldly tone, “everybody steals, some more, some less.”
At those eloquent consolations the girl was on the verge of being overcome by her emotions again: luckily at that moment her sister came in, all dolled up, the one who was eighteen. She had taken a while to enter because she had put on her good dress, of black silk, and had even added a little lipstick. She was counting on the surprise of her appearance, and came forward modestly. “Let me introduce these two fine boys, my friends,” the old man said ceremoniously for the third time. “This is my other daughter.”
“Lucian-na,” she said in a drawling voice, acting puppyish, like a girl in a comic book.
“Claudio Mastracco,” “Alfredo Di Marzi,” repeated the two fine boys.
“A pleasure,” she said, smoothing her hair back with one hand.
“Very happy to make your acquaintance,” stammered Riccetto and Lenzetta, pleased and as red as roosters. Shortly afterward the third daughter appeared, a redhead, with a freckled face and a ribbon in her hair, who didn’t enter the kitchen but stood half outside and half in, staring at the two fi
ne boys without saying a word, like the two girls in the bed.
And in fact she was scarcely more than a girl herself, in a flowered dress, plain as a monk’s habit, with her skinny, knobby legs sticking out beneath it. The mother meanwhile had started up her offstage commotion again, compelled to speak by a profound and deep-rooted conviction, and she knew why, and with whom, she was angry.
“You’re right, signora,” Lenzetta concluded, when she had finished, “it’s normal!” But his warmth had a different source, that is, the fact that he was completely aroused by that dairy she carried around with her.
“What can we offer you?” said Sor Antonio. “A coffee?”
“No, never mind, Sor Antò!” said Riccetto, while Lenzetta looked at him eagerly. “You’d go to the trouble for the two of us?” Riccetto added, with an unexpected and carefree air of disdain for the two unfortunates who were him and his companion. Sor Antonio hadn’t noticed, but at the word “coffee” the four women, along with the two girls in the bed, had looked at each other. But he insisted: “What trouble, in fact it’s a pleasure for us,” he said, carried away by his courtesy. The glances around him became dismayed. Sora Adriana opened her mouth slightly as if she wanted to say something, but then she closed it and was silent, while her daughters looked at her with apprehension and feigned indifference in their eyes.
“So make this cup of coffee,” said Sor Antonio, consumed by his duty as the master of the house.
His wife stood motionless between her daughters, who now looked at her, now at each other; Nadia was about to start crying again and Luciana, with an embarrassed half smile, tossed her head gently so that her hair would fall back on her shoulders. Sora Adriana, quickly shaking her head and putting a hand on her breast, said: “As far as doing it goes, I would do it, only that . . . that I have to say . . . we forgot to buy sugar . . . ” Sor Antonio felt the blow. “Ah, my Antonio, what do you want,” said his wife, “with all these thoughts I can’t keep my head straight anymore, you know . . . ”
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