“Let’s get off here, Ardù!” said Begalone, jumping down off the bumper, bent and nimble, so that he looked like a witch.
Alduccio stood up on the running board, so that the conductor could see him better, and pounding on the window cried: “Bye, you ugly shit!”
He jumped off the tram onto the pavement, while the conductor gave himself the satisfaction of sticking his head out and, clutching the block of tickets in his fist while people waited to get on, shouting, “Apes!”
“Hold it,” cried Bégalo, kneeling, pushing his stomach out, as, bursting with energy and cunning, he held his fingers at the level of his chest and made the shape of two swollen eyes.
To the right was the Colosseum, burning like a furnace, and through the openings in the arcades puffs and columns of smoke emanated, the blood-red color of pomegranate and candy wrappers. It rose up into the sky, against the Celio and the Oppio, above Via Labicana, sparkling with cars, above Via dell’Impero, amid the fanning of the spotlights.
“Now what do we do?” said Alduccio.
“Let’s take a walk, come on!” said Begalone.
“Let’s take a walk,” said Alduccio: they went down to the Colosseum, circled it, cut under the Arc of Constantine to Viale dei Trionfi, which ran straight—dark, hot, embedded between the ruins and the green pines of the Palatine hill—then made a big curve in the direction of Via dei Cerchi.
They walked a little distance apart, hands in their pockets, shabby and slumping, and singing, as usual, each on his own.
“Zoccoletti, zoccoletti . . . ”
sang Begalone. “Did you see,” he said, breaking off, “Caciotta’s face?”
“Zoccoletti, zoccoletti . . . ”
he resumed, in a louder voice, making a whole stretch of the deserted avenue echo, under umbrella pines as green as billiard balls beside the crumbling stones of the ruins. But Alduccio didn’t think about it at all, he was too busy singing, hands in his pockets, leaning forward and with his head high, swaying this way and that, his eyes half closed and his neck drawn down between his shoulders.
A tiny, dusty moon beat down on Via dei Cerchi, but it shed a boundless light over the whole expanse, the black bushes, the stones, the piles of debris and garbage. Everyone there looked at it sideways, angrily, because the only places in shadow were below the massive walls around the immense oval of the Circus Maximus. On the parapet just where Alduccio and Bégalo had arrived, and behind which the Circus extended in the dusty moonlight, with here and there the stump of a tower, some men were sitting, some youths, and even a few boys, and farther along, level with the tram stop, but in the field, moving shadows could be seen, coming together and separating.
“It’s the flying squad!” Bégalo shouted sarcastically, with a hand cupped around his mouth, laughing his head off.
They went on laughing for a while, even when the whores couldn’t hear them anymore, bent double, leaning on the wall or shoving each other, making rude noises and spitting. But the laughter passed quickly, because maybe those little potbellied whores would have given it to them, or at least done something. They were both worked up, and would have done it even with a seventy-year-old. That was why the idea of laughing passed immediately, and instead they walked seriously, almost angry, glancing like pimps over the wall, exploring the big oval field, with its ruins and the brush that was black in the white dust cloud of the moon. There were groups of soldiers, a few staggering youths, and the usual streetwalkers, shouting at each other like bitches, making as if to hit each other with their purses.
“We missed the boat!” said Begalone, discouraged, as he walked. “We should have retired to the old people’s home, damn it to hell! I sure would have liked to have a touch, tonight, but nothing. . . . Fuck poverty, fuck it! Hold on, look at that,” he added, indicating someone passing in a custom-built car. “He’s having fun! Does it seem right that that guy is all dressed up, loaded, going around with that gorgeous cunt, and we got nothing? Those crooks! But the good life will end! That flag will change!” And he was silent for a bit, his mouth tightened in an expression of disgust.
But when they turned onto Via del Mare, into the gardens sloping up to the temple of Vesta, Begalone said, “Look,” and stared, gawking, into the gardens.
“What?” asked Alduccio uncertain whether to ignore him or pay attention.
Begalone began to whistle, doubled over. “Are you calling the sheep?” said Alduccio.
“Damn, they’re hot!” cried Bégalo. Hot were two girls sitting on the steps of the temple: two blondes, voluptuous in every way, skirts pulled up suggestively, and a décolletage that showed half their boobs.
They were sitting apart, in silence, facing each other, but as if without seeing, staring instead at the gardens, up at the flowerbeds sloping down from the banks of the Tiber, and down toward Piazza di Bocca della Verità, the Arc of Janus, and the old church, dazzling in the moonlight; it was as bright as day.
Bégalo and Alduccio, coming from Via dei Cerchi toward Ponte Rotto, passed by with a swagger, singing. But when they were a little farther on, they changed their minds and slowly turned back.
The two hotties hadn’t moved, as if they hadn’t even breathed: Bégalo and Alduccio, walking close together—like two bad dogs who, after being chased and beaten with sticks, slow down on a dirty sidewalk, tails between their legs—went back along Via del Mare, and then turned around again. They came through the middle of the gardens, always keeping an eye on the two flaming roses. But the girls seemed not to have even noticed them. They descended again toward the temple, but on the opposite side, which opened onto the slope, entered the shadowed colonnade, and ventured slowly in the direction of Bocca della Verità, where the moonlight was blazing.
The bimbos had paid no attention to them this time, either, but sat unmoving, as before. The scruffy dogs, half in shadow and half in light, sat down with their backs against the flaking yellow wall of the temple.
“Which would you fuck?” asked Begalone.
“Both,” said the other.
“Hey, how many you want, then!” said Begalone.
“Both or none,” Alduccio explained, joking, “because if not the other’s offended.”
“Yes, they must be waiting for a sucker who’ll pay,” muttered Bégalo.
“Well, so what? Aren’t we good to pay?” said Alduccio optimistically.
“Should we try?” said Bégalo after a while.
“Sure, let’s go!” said Alduccio. Instead they sat there; talking not too loudly, laughing, with their knees pulled up against their chests, their bottoms in the dust, their hair and the tips of their shoes grazed by the light; but when, finally, the two women exchanged a few words, then they got bolder and began to make more noise.
“Give me a smoke, come on,” cried Bégalo.
“When we’re done with this we’re all out,” Alduccio said, lighting the cigarette.
“What, we can’t get another?”
“Yeah, but if we wouldn’t even give money to a blind man!”
“Feel how hot it is,” cried Bégalo, panting, “hot enough to crack a turtle’s butt!”
“Oh,” he said after a while, “I’m really dying in this heat . . . ”
“So?” said Alduccio.
“Let’s go swimming in the fountain,” Begalone suggested.
“Are you nuts?” said Alduccio, amused.
“I’m not kidding!” said Begalone in disgust.
“Fuck! Go on,” said Alduccio, laughing.
The two girls laughed to each other.
“Come on, Ardù!” cried Begalone.
They got to their feet in the half-light, and, joking around, quickly unbuttoned their shirts; they took them off and threw them on the ground, in the darkest shadow. In their undershirts, with their hair parted on the side and smoothed back, looking like Samson and Absalo
m, they sat down again, in order not to lose their balance taking off their pegged pants.
“Let me get my shoes off first,” said Alduccio, softly, moved by his new shoes, with the expression of someone who likes to poke fun on his own. He took them off and tossed them a little way away. Finally they peeled the undershirts off their dark sweaty chests, and were in their underpants.
“Look at what a hunk I am,” said Begalone, puffing out his chest.
“Hoo, you’re built like a car chassis,” said the other.
“Zoccoletti, zoccoletti,” Bégalo sang, picking up the clothes they had scattered around to act like toughs: they tied them together with their belts and put them under their arms. They came out of the shadows like that, stopped for a moment on the steps in the glow of the moon, and then began to run, making a racket, through the flowerbeds. They threw their clothes on the grass, under the chain hanging that hung around the fountain, climbed up, because the basin was more than a meter off the ground, and stood on the edge.
“I’m shaking, damn,” said Bégalo, pressing his lips together and crouching down.
“Come on, Bégalo, it’s hot,” said Alduccio.
“Yes, like a broth,” said Bégalo, with his toes hooked on the edge, like a monkey. Alduccio gave him a shove and he fell in the water like a sack of potatoes.
“God damn, what a belly flop,” said Bégalo, emerging with his head dripping.
“Now I’ll show you,” cried Alduccio. He did a pencil dive and water sprayed out of the basin, slapping the fountain’s marble base. Bégalo was singing at the top of his lungs, his head and shoulders out.
“Shut up, you dope,” said Alduccio, “if a cop hears you we’re screwed!”
“Look, the dead man’s float!” said Begalone; he pretended to be dead, went under, and came out half drowned, drying his face like a madman; his face was covered by his hair, as stiff as spinach and longer than the Magdalene’s. “You want to act big and you can’t!” said Alduccio, laughing. In the three minutes they’d been in the fountain they’d washed the pavement for ten meters all around, with all the roots and flowerbeds.
“I’m getting out,” said Bégalo.
“Me, too,” cried Alduccio. “I’m not trying to get pneumonia, you know.”
They stood up again on the edge, with their underpants pasted on, transparent, did another dive, then leaped out of the fountain.
“Damn,” said Bégalo, his teeth chattering.
Dripping wet, they picked up their clothes and, holding them under their arms, ran across the mowed lawn, jumping over the low hedges. Laughing, they ran, to warm up. Then they leaped up the steps of the temple, entered the colonnade, and, passing behind the two girls, slipped back into the shadows. There they started hitting each other: the girls barely looked at them, indifferent or with simpering little smiles.
“Come here,” said Begalone, “so we can wring out our underpants.” Laughing, their teeth chattering, they withdrew a little farther, beyond the curve of the temple, took off their underpants and wrung them out, one on one side and one on the other. As always when he was getting dressed again after a swim, Bégalo was overcome by a wave of sentimentality: “Mai e poi mai—t’ho amata così tanto in vita mia . . . Never, ever—have I loved you so much in my life . . . ” he sang, his soaking wet underpants at his neck, as he put on his socks. But while they were lounging, slowly getting dressed, the two doves skipped out. They went up toward the Lungotevere, the street that ran along the Tiber, a book in hand, the loose pleated skirts swaying in the hot light. Begalone went to sit on the steps where they had been, still half naked, holding his pants in one hand.
“Hey, sexy!” he cried.
Alduccio, too, half dressed, went over with his hands cupped around his mouth and had his say: “Look at these babes!”
“Come on,” he added, “let’s get dressed and go for it!”
They were already at Monte Savello when Alduccio and Begalone, with their clothes on over their still wet skin, caught up.
“Okay, let me see how you stop a woman,” said Begalone, while they hurried toward the two girls, who were moving at a calm, quick pace.
“God damn, they’re running,” said Alduccio, who always walked as if his feet hurt. “Why don’t you go up to them?” he said then, panting.
“Yeah, I feel so weak,” said Bégalo, even more exhausted.
“You’re such a pickup artist, fuck, say something.”
“Like fuck,” said Begalone with disgust.
Meanwhile, however, the two girls, turning onto the Lungotevere, arrived at a big car, got in, one started the engine, and bye-bye Jesus Christ.
The punks stood with their backs against the parapet, tired out, like two plucked turkeys. “You look like a beggar,” Alduccio said after a while, gazing at Bégalo and bursting into laughter. “And you look like you’ve been in jail,” said Begalone. “Shit,” he added, “we can’t end the night like this.” “Yeah, but with a hundred and fifty lire what do you want to do?” Sadly he caressed the pocket with the hundred and fifty lire stolen from Caciotta. “Let’s go have a fuck at Via dei Cerchi,” said Begalone, “we can toss a coin.” “You’re crazy,” said Alduccio hitting his forehead with two fingers, “and then we’ll walk all the way to Tiburtino.” “Of course not,” Begalone snapped, “we can’t scrape up another hundred and fifty? We won’t find an idiot we can’t cheat out of a little change around here?” “And when are you gonna find him? Christmas!” said Alduccio. “Fuck you,” said Bégalo, “what do you want to bet?” They went down toward Ponte Garibaldi like two hungry wolves. Near the public urinal at the corner of the bridge, on the Via Arenula side, there was an old man backed up against the parapet. Begalone went inside to pee, then he, too, went and leaned against the wall, where Alduccio had already positioned himself. They stood like that in silence for a while. Then Bégalo took a cigarette butt out of his pocket, and bending politely down toward the man, asked him: “Do you have a match, please?” In five minutes they had stolen fifty lire.
Another hundred they picked up at Ponte Sisto, from an elderly man with a purse under his arm who started in with some exaggerated whining that would have made a crone lactate. It was Begalone who cut him off, saying, “We’re so hungry we’re sneezing, God damn, we haven’t eaten since this morning!” The man gave them a hundred lire and they bought themselves four bombe, and immediately went off on Via dei Giubbonari. They walked quickly toward the whorehouse in Campo dei Fiori. They were talking seriously. “So, are you a man, too?” Alduccio was saying darkly. “Look at this!” cried Begalone, stopping in the middle of the street and extending his hand. “Did you get the money?” “So,” said Alduccio, “what do you mean?” “Nothing,” Begalone replied. “I get the money, and he gets a fuck. Idiot!” Begalone cried, tapping the side of his nose with two fingers. But at that moment they passed a rosticceria, Begalone said “Fuck,” and went in; they gobbled up three rice balls each, and when they came out again they were in the same condition as before. But, since they were there, they kept going, drifting, down Via dei Giubbonari, and here they were at the end of the street and about to enter Campo dei Fiori, when Alduccio elbowed Begalone, and with a nod of his head, and eyes focused in a sleepy yet astute gaze, indicated a man who, walking in front of them, every so often gave them a long glance. “We’ve got him,” said Begalone. The man, now slowing down, now going faster, entered Campo dei Fiori, then turned to the left, among crowds of boys who were playing with a ball of rags in the wet square; he stopped for an instant near the filigree shed roof of a urinal to look back. Begalone and Alduccio observed him carefully. He was well enough dressed, with a nice shirt and a good pair of sandals. Hesitantly the short man continued toward Piazza Farnese, and then returned to Campo dei Fiori via a dark alley; and so on, two or three times. He wandered around on those streets like a mouse drowning in a bathtub.
* * *
“You, what are you doing here,” said Riccetto, lowering his gaze to Begalone, Alduccio, and the subject they were picking up.
“Give me a light, and cut it out,” said Begalone, approaching Riccetto with a cigarette between his lips. Riccetto held out his lighter, without moving a centimeter, only slightly lowering his eyelids, given that, with respect to Begalone and the other two, he was a little higher: sitting on the parapet of the Lungotevere, one leg dangling and the other folded up against his chest.
“You have a date with someone?” Bégalo repeated.
“What do you mean, date!” said Riccetto.
“Smartass,” said Bégalo.
Alduccio and the other man stood slightly apart.
“Arduccio likes him a lot,” said Bégalo, sneering, with a little envy. The other, however, eyed Riccetto, who had purposely taken that suggestive position, with his legs spread.
The Street Kids Page 19