“It doesn’t matter,” said Riccetto gaily, maintaining the tone of the most complete underestimation of himself and his companion, “for us it’s good even without sugar!”
Lenzetta agreed, laughing, his face red and blotchy. At that outcome the whole Bifoni family cheered up. Sora Adriana, saying, “I’ll make it for you myself . . . ” took the coffeepot and lighted the stove, with the help of her daughters, and that activity spread so much enthusiasm that, while the two fine boys and Sor Antonio chatted in a friendly manner, even the two little girls emerged from under the sheets in their nightgowns and began to make a hubbub in the room.
In a moment the coffee was ready, and was served in two unmatching cups to Lenzetta and Riccetto, while Sor Antonio and his wife had theirs in two large chipped cups. Blowing on it to cool it Riccetto said: “Now let’s drink, and then we’ll get out of your way!” “You’re not in the way,” said Sor Antonio grandly. Sora Adriana, drinking her coffee, didn’t hide her disgust, partly in self-defense. “Eeeuu, gross stuff!” the two fine boys thought to themselves, hiding their shudder of disgust under a cordial and worldly expression, sipping the coffee cheerfully, and, finally, putting the cups down on the table among the flies.
“Time to go!” said Riccetto again.
“What, already?” said Sor Antonio, with a gesture of surprise, as if, instead of two or three in the morning, it were just after dinner.
“Damn,” said Lenzetta, “soon it’ll be noon!”
“Then stay a little longer,” the old man insisted, spreading his arms.
“We’ll say goodbye, Sor Antonio,” said Riccetto briskly, extending his hand toward the old man with a manly and slightly sly expression.
“All right, then I’ll walk you out,” said the old man. Tall and pale as a beanpole, he went to the door and waited for them on the landing while they said goodbye, punctiliously shaking the hands of, one by one, Sora Adriana, Nadia, Luciana, and the last, who had come forward for the ceremony, still as mute as a fish, joining the worldly jabber of goodbyes. She offered her hand without blinking, without saying a word, while the other two were already off on their own business, behind the screen, now wearing the expressions they had when they were alone.
Sor Antonio descended the stairs feebly, taking the steps sideways, noiseless thanks to his cloth shoes. Riccetto poked Lenzetta with his elbow, taking advantage of the fact that Sor Antonio was ahead of them. Lenzetta looked at him. “Give me the money,” Riccetto said in a low, fierce voice, out of fear that the other would pay no attention to him. In fact Lenzetta’s face darkened and he pretended not to have heard. “Don’t play dumb,” Riccetto said, still in a very low voice, more with looks than with words, clenching his teeth and glancing furiously at Lenzetta. “Give me the money, come on.” Lenzetta felt bound to give it to him, and grimly dug it out of his pocket. They had already reached the bottom of the stairs and the dilapidated entrance, and the old man opened the street door. Outside it was already getting light: behind the row of forty big boxlike apartment buildings in Borgata degli Angeli, beyond Quadraro, beyond the countryside, beyond the foggy outlines of the Alban hills, a reddish light was stamped on the sky, as if behind a glass window, and it was as if over there, in the other part of the sky, there was another Rome, which was silently burning.
“Well, now I’ll say goodbye to you boys,” said Sor Antonio, “now I’m going to sleep.”
“God forbid,” said Lenzetta, “that we should keep bothering you!”
The old man smiled, with his head lowered, pressing his jaws together as if he were chewing a handful of dried chestnuts.
“Wait, Sor Maè!” said Riccetto hastily, holding out in a crumpled pile the hundred and fifty lire. Sor Antonio looked at the cash, observing it attentively. “No, no, not at all . . . ” he said.
“Come on, take it,” Lenzetta encouraged him.
The old man continued to argue a little, but meanwhile, in the end, he took the hundred and fifty.
“God damn, what a sun!” said Lenzetta as the old man went back inside, and they remained alone in the middle of the neighborhood: in fact a barely violet crystalline light had arrived to float in the spaces of the streets, between the buildings, reflected all the way down there by that sort of distant and invisible fire, behind the hills, while under the eaves two or three owls fluttered, letting out some cries.
Lenzetta, listening to them anxiously, and putting all together in one heap the thought of the role of fine boys they had played, of the Bifoni family and death, and feeling his knees turn to water, stood for a moment thoughtfully, as if concentrating, then he pulled up one leg so the knee was against his stomach, and let out a fart. But it took an effort, because it wasn’t heartfelt.
* * *
Among the many topics on which the toughs of Maranella gave their opinion at the Bar della Pugnalata or the Tappeto Verde—between one shot and the next, as they played pool or watched the game, leaning wearily against the walls of the room where the two pool tables barely fit and if you raised an arm you touched the ceiling—was Riccetto’s engagement.
Depending on how they felt, sometimes they discussed it like brothers, with an allusive air, taking it very seriously; other times, instead, without giving a damn about it. For his part, Riccetto felt he was the most interesting, there among them, and as such obliged to at least buy a new pair of pants. Friendly and joking, but preserving an air of mystery concerning his private business, he moved with a swagger, the new pants tight over his hips. They were gray tube pants, with the pockets cut crosswise, and he walked slightly hunched, his thumbs in the belt, dragging his feet, with the tired and clumsy look of a country kid. They were like many tubes around his fly, and they shifted as he walked, tube here, tube there, tube up, tube down, and when he stopped, leaning against a wall or the edge of the pool table, with his legs crossed, they formed a single bulge, tense, tranquil, and threatening. As for the rest, he still slept with Lenzetta in the oil drums on the fields of Borgata Gordiani: but that arrangement didn’t last much longer, because it didn’t suit Riccetto’s new situation.
Lenzetta knew a place, in Via Taranto, on the top floor of a seven- or eight-story building: on a landing that on one side led, through a broken-down door that was always open, into a kind of loft where there were water tanks, on the other into an uninhabited apartment, whose door must have been closed for several months. They carried up a pack of newspapers, which during the day they hid amid the water tanks, and their stuff, and chose as their bedroom that landing.
Engagement required a serious life: and in fact Riccetto—content to play the part of a serious youth, the part that at the Bar della Pugnalata inspired the most substantial comments, those which gave him the most pleasure—had started working. He was working for a fishmonger who had a stall at the market in Maranella, and on Sunday, to be completely faithful to his role, he gave up, mystically, going out with Lenzetta and the others, to Centocelle or into Rome, and took his girl to the movies. His girl, though, wasn’t the one who was twenty, or even the eighteen-year-old: but the freckled redhead, who wasn’t that pretty, the one who, the night the two friends had gone to Sor Antonio’s, hadn’t said a word and had stood listening to them near the dirty curtain at the door. When he was with her, and they weren’t necking—and this was rare, because they were never really alone, but then neither of them minded much—Riccetto was so bored that sometimes he got in a really bad mood. Then he found some excuse to quarrel and he always ended up slapping her. He couldn’t wait till it was time to leave, to go to the Bar della Pugnalata and find Lenzetta and the gang of sly bastards; he showed up there with an air of satisfaction, naturally, like one who is now set, has triumphed over all worries, and has nothing more to expect from life.
At the same time, however, he did not, by being a serious youth, give up the other temptations and occupations of a smartass son of a bitch, such as the others continued to be.
If there was a ruckus to make he made it, and he always took part in the robberies they organized every so often to the detriment of the owner of the Bar della Pugnalata, who was a nice guy, and the morning after, cleaning up, vented and complained to them. Since Lenzetta and some of the others had already been to Porta Portese, they knew the “modern” methods of education that were used with tough kids, which was what, proud and self-satisfied, they considered themselves; and so, since the owner’s sister treated them badly, to justify themselves and put their consciences to rest—not that it mattered at all to them but because they had a convenient way to do it—they said that they organized those little thefts because she didn’t know how to handle them, to punish her . . . At the same time, the pittance that Riccetto earned from the fishmonger wasn’t enough for him. And so how to behave like an honest guy! When there was stealing to be done, he stole, of course, with that unsatisfied hunger for money he had! Now he also had the ring to get for the girl . . . so he and Lenzetta decided to organize a big robbery: to get a haul of axle shafts and other scrap iron that would keep them in the money at least for a month.
They were four: Riccetto, Lenzetta, Alduccio, and a kid named Lello, a friend of Lenzetta, one of those who hung around the Bar della Pugnalata. They had a cart.
When they turned onto Via Casilina, the wind started blowing and columns of garbage and white dust swirled over the squares and open spaces, playing on the wires of the train line from Naples as if on a guitar. Immediately, behind all that white the sky turned black, and against that background, as black as the inferno, the pink and white façades of Via Casilina shone like chocolate wrappers. Then that light dimmed, too, and everything was dark, spent, cold, under the chafing of the gusts that filled their eyes with granules of dust.
The four took shelter in a doorway just in time to escape the first downpour. The thunder rumbled as if six or seven cupolas the size of San Pietro, inside a giant oil drum, were banging against one another up in the middle of the sky, and the crashes could be heard, like imitations, a few kilometers away, behind the rows of houses and expanse of the neighborhoods, toward Quadraro or San Lorenzo, or who knows where, maybe even over where there was still some blue sky and the sparrows were flying.
After half an hour the rain stopped, and the four arrived at Porta Metronia, cold and wet as fleas, in the place they had robbed the other time. It wasn’t raining, but the sky was still dark, as if a veil had been laid over it to cover something terrifying, and that veil was even more terrifying: here and there red flashes of lightning pierced it. Night had fallen at least two hours earlier, and Porta Metronia was completely deserted and dripping. The four counted off: it fell to Riccetto to stay outside with the cart. The others went in, and once they were inside the compound, they counted off again to decide who would go in first with the sack. It fell to Lello. Jittery, and trembling like a leaf, Lello entered, and threw axle shafts, drills, and other stuff into the sack, until it was so full he could hardly move it. So he called Lenzetta and Alduccio to help him carry it, since by now the worst was over. He came out but couldn’t find the other two. So he ran out of the compound, to Riccetto, who was waiting with the cart, and asked him where they had gone. And Riccetto said he had seen them enter. So Lello went back to try to carry the sack to the cart by himself. Riccetto saw him disappear inside the warehouse, but when, after a while, he reappeared dragging the sack, the watchman emerged and fell on him. Meanwhile Lenzetta and Alduccio, who had gone into a shed that was behind the scrap iron storage area, and couldn’t be seen from the street, were now coming out with the other sack, full of something that Riccetto couldn’t figure out but had the shape of cheeses. When they reached the yard of the storage area, however, they saw Lello caught by the guard, trying, unsuccessfully, to wriggle free and run away. So, in an attempt to help him, they abandoned the sack of cheese and attacked the guard, but he, poor fellow, began calling for help, and the owner of a nearby bakery and his workers hurried out. Only Alduccio managed to escape: but right at the gate, before he reached the street, where Riccetto, acting as if nothing were happening, was waiting for him, he encountered some other people who had rushed over: so he took off along the metal fence toward another, smaller gate that was farther on: he was about to climb over it but in his hurry his foot slipped on the wet iron and one of the bars, pointed like a spear, pierced his thigh. But he still managed to jump down on the other side, and Riccetto ran over to help him: the two or three men who had been chasing him, seeing that he was hurt, let him go, because there was nothing to do. Riccetto put his arm under Alduccio’s, led him a little farther down, toward the Archeology Walk, and, when they reached a protected spot, bound the wound tight with a piece of undershirt; then they went on, and got the tram, standing on the rear platform, and got off at Ponte Rotto. Riccetto left Alduccio at the entrance of the Fatebenefratelli hospital. Meanwhile, gradually, the rain and thunder had started up again, in those neighborhoods and on those streets where Riccetto, thinking that either Alduccio in the hospital or the other two in a jail cell, punched or hit with sandbags, would talk, prepared to wander all night.
* * *
It began to lighten. Over the roofs of the houses strips of cloud could be seen, chafed and beaten by the wind, which up there must be blowing free as it had at the beginning of the world. Below, instead, it only crumpled the edges of posters dangling from the walls, or raised bits of paper, rustling them against the cracked sidewalk or the tram tracks.
Where the houses were spread out—in some squares, on the overpasses, silent as a graveyard, in the lots that were merely construction sites, with the frames built to the fifth floor and the dirty ground around—the whole sky could be seen: covered by thousands of clouds, as small as pustules, as bubbles, which descended toward the faded, serrated peaks of the skyscrapers in the background, in all shapes and colors. Black conch shells, yellowish mussels, deep blue whiskers, gobs of spit the color of egg yolks; and in the background, after a strip of blue, clear and glassy as a river in the polar regions, a large white cloud, curling, fresh, and immense, so that it looked like the mountain of Purgatory.
And Riccetto, his face as white as a sheet, was returning to Via Taranto, slowly, waiting until the market stalls were set up and people came to do their shopping. He was almost fainting with hunger, poor kid, and he put one foot in front of the other without even knowing where he was going. Via Taranto was nearby: how long would it take to get there? He turned onto Via Taranto, in fact, which was as deserted as a minefield, with countless closed blinds in the façades massed darkly on the slope, rising toward the sky full of those candied fireworks. And the fresh breeze, which would make a face go white and blue, like fennel, every so often shook the rows of sleepy, consumptive trees that, on either side of the street, rose with the façades toward the sky over San Giovanni. But where the market was, at the intersection of Via Monza or Via Orvieto, there was no trace of the stalls. Not a scrap of paper could be seen: not a stalk, or shard, or clove of crushed garlic—nothing, it was as if there had never been markets there, and never would be. “Ah, all right,” said Riccetto, with his hands sunk so far into his pockets that he had pulled the crotch of his trousers to his knees, and huddled inside his shirt with the collar raised. And he turned onto the first street he came to, slowly. “Damn this shit,” he said, suddenly angry, teeth clenched and his voice almost loud. “Who’s going to hear me here?” he said then, casting an exploratory look around, “and so what if someone does hear me.” He stood trembling like a leaf. The streetlights that were still on faded suddenly: the light fell more crudely and sadly from the sky and pasted itself to the walls. Everyone, from doormen to office workers, from maids to noblemen, was still sleeping behind the painted shutters of Via Pinerolo. But suddenly at the end of the street there was a screeching of brakes so loud that it would have been heard at San Giovanni; and immediately afterward bangs, which echoed throughout the neighborhood now struck by the light of day. Ricce
tto headed without exerting himself in that direction, and arrived at Piazza Re di Roma. That was where all that racket was. Behind the stunted trees on the wet black flower beds, with the empty benches, the garbage truck was stopped; and lined up along the sidewalk were a dozen garbage bins, with the sweepers standing around, cursing, sleeves rolled up. The driver had gotten out, and, curls falling over his eyes, was listening, leaning on the truck’s dirty bumper, with his hands in his pockets. A kid, with a little smile that tightened his mouth, was amused because he didn’t give a damn about the argument, in fact, it suited him because that way he wasn’t working, and he stood quietly a little apart, with an axle in his hand. “But didn’t you go and call him, that son of a bitch?” the driver asked, suddenly addressing the youth; he reddened slightly and then said calmly: “Of course.” “Well, my boys, what should I tell you!” the driver said, turning to the two sweepers. “Figure it out yourselves!” And he climbed back up into the cab, stretching out on the seat and sticking his feet out the window. But it wasn’t such a big tragedy for the sweepers: they just had to dump the cans into the truck themselves, instead of having one of the kids do it: the other, with a brazen face, and dirty as a gypsy, went along. And then, after all, damn them, if at Borgata Gordiani or Quadraro there hadn’t been boys who, for the right to pick through all the garbage, would get up at three in the morning and work for four or five hours, wouldn’t they always have had to do that job themselves? But now they were spoiled, and it tormented them, poor fellows, to find themselves in such trouble. Riccetto was standing there, with his hands already pulled half out of his pockets, and eyes that spoke.
A toothless man, with a beard as black as coal, jaws pale in the cold air, and a beggar’s eyes, which sparkled like a dog’s, drunkenly, even though it was four in the morning, said to him: “Let’s go.” Riccetto didn’t have to be asked twice, and, while the sweepers sneered, saying, as they leaned over the frozen cans, “Come on, now you’ll eat well,” “Take advantage, boys, here’s a good thing,” he, paying no attention to them, grabbed the other axle that was sticking out from the truck and with the other guy, his colleague, began, vigorously, to roll the garbage cans into the truck and unload them.
The Street Kids Page 14