“Are you looking at me?” Riccetto said to him.
He smiled: “Yes,” he said, partly timid and partly pretending.
“Aaaaaah,” said Bégalo, as if he were reconsidering something that had escaped him, all friendly and confident, “let me introduce a friend of mine.”
Riccetto let the leg that was bent against his chest slide down, and extended his right hand, with which he’d been holding his leg, toward his new acquaintance. The man shook it, with a convent girl’s smile. “A pleasure,” he said, alluding to the pleasure he counted on extracting from that acquaintance, if everything went well, and letting his gaze fall on the dispenser of that very pleasure, who was sitting there, tranquil and happy, on the parapet in front of him, as if he were ready to sing a little song.
“You’re looking at me,” said Riccetto, following the evolutions of that gaze.
The faggot pretended to feel he had been caught out, pretended to smile in embarrassment, his livid mouth, in which the tongue was moving like a snake’s, full of provocation; and he put a hand on his chest, nervously clutching the open collar of his shirt at his throat, partly as if he wanted to protect himself from the dampness of the night, partly as if to modestly protect who knows what from the male gaze.
“You’d like it, eh,” said Begalone.
“Mmmmh, I’d like it!” said the faggot, shrugging one shoulder and pretending to be bored.
Alduccio began to lose patience, even feeling slightly neglected. “Well, shall we get going?” he said.
“Where are you going?” said the fag, drawling his words.
“Let’s go down to the river, okay,” said Alduccio. They were beside the parapet the Lungotevere between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Garibaldi.
“You’re crazy, my friend,” said the fag, offended.
“Come on,” Alduccio insisted, “we go down the stairs, we go under the bridge and do whatever.”
“No no no no no,” said the fag, waving one hand and shaking his head, with an absolutely negative expression.
“Why not?” Alduccio continued, getting angry. “Where do you find a better place than this? What, we have to stay half an hour? Two minutes and bye-bye! We pretend we have to take a leak, and who comes to bother us down there!” While he was talking the fag forgot about him, and smiling, his teeth bared, he continued to look at Riccetto, sometimes in his eyes and sometimes in that place; when Alduccio was silent, the fag took notice of him again, and concluded, curt and crisp, as if the thing by now were out of the question:
“No, I won’t go down there.”
And he started smiling, making eyes at Riccetto.
“Boy, are you ugly,” Riccetto said to him.
Alduccio returned to the attack: “So what do we do?” Begalone backed him up: “Aoh, let’s stop wasting time, come on now, sweetheart!” The fag was almost fifty but he was trying to look at least twenty years younger: he continued to clutch the collar of his shirt against his scrawny chest with the expression of one in delicate health. “Okay, let’s go,” he said yielding to the two boys.
“Yeah! You keep saying let’s go, let’s go, and then you don’t move from here!” said Alduccio.
There was almost no one passing now between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Garibaldi, and Riccetto remembered when he was a boy, right after the war ended, and what used to happen there: along the parapet, sitting as he was now, there would be at least twenty young men ready to sell themselves to the first comer; and the faggots came by in droves, singing and dancing, bald and peroxided, still young, or old, but all acting like lunatics, completely oblivious of the people passing on foot or in the trams, and calling to each other loudly by name—Wanda! Bolero! Ferroviera! Mistinguette!—when they spotted each other from a distance, hurrying to meet and kissing each other delicately on the cheeks, the way ladies do so as not to ruin their makeup. And when they all gathered, in front of the boys, leaning against the parapet, who watched, playing the heavies, they began to dance, some doing a little ballet, some doing the cancan, and now and then, in the midst of this mad revelry, they’d shout: “We’re free! We’re free!”
At that time yes, you could go down the stairs and in among the briars, with the mud and bits of dirty paper, under Ponte Sisto or Ponte Garibaldi, do everything you wanted without fear. Sometimes the police van passed, there was a little flurry, but then it all went back to the way it was before. Riccetto was there that night not to get up to something but to pass the time, in a nostalgic mood.
“Come on, I’ll take you to a nice spot,” he said, inspired by a magnanimous impulse of generosity.
The faggot accentuated the fixed mask of his smile, nodding his head in every direction, but feeling radiant, as if seen in profile, like a soubrette photographed with bare shoulders in an advertisement for Altieri. In fact he was making the gesture women make when they throw their hair back behind their shoulders, and he leaned forward, twisting slightly, ready to follow Riccetto.
Riccetto took them on the 44, which went to the places where he had lived as a boy. They got out at Piazza Ottavilla, which had practically been in the countryside when Riccetto lived there, turned left on a street that hadn’t existed before, or had been only a path going downhill through the big fields, with willows and patches of tall reeds here and there, as on the slopes of a valley: but now there were buildings, already built and inhabited, and construction sites. “Let’s go farther down,” said Riccetto. They went farther down and, beyond the last construction sites, came to an alley that led to Donna Olimpia, first passing through the courtyard of an old tavern with a pergola, full of drunks. They kept going, but the path didn’t last much longer, because just at the end of those fields, which were now crowded with houses, there was a new street, with, similarly, buildings that had been built or were under construction. Right behind was the slope of Monte di Casadio, where Riccetto had spent entire days as a kid. They went in that direction, and, when they were at the top of the slope, which was almost sheer below them, they found themselves looking at Ferrobedò. It was at their feet, at the bottom of the moon-whitened valley. Behind it could be seen, against the whitish clouds, the jagged black tangle of Monteverde Nuovo, in a big semicircle, and on the right, behind Monte di Casadio, the tops of the skyscrapers of Donna Olimpia.
“Okay, like this,” said Riccetto, “now you go here to the right,” and he pointed to a sort of path through the underbrush that descended along the spine of the hilltop and seemed made for goats, “and right in front of you you’ll find a cave. You’ll see it right away. No one will bother you there. . . . I’ll say goodbye, be well.”
“But where’re you going, you’re leaving us now?” said the faggot, sulkily, shrugging.
“He’s got his own shit, what business is it of yours,” said Alduccio, who wasn’t at all sorry that Riccetto was leaving.
“Whaa-at,” said the faggot, “he’s gg-o-ing, just like that?”
“Come on,” said Riccetto, generously, “I’ll walk you as far as the cave.” They descended along the path, holding tight to the bushes, and found themselves in a small green clearing that was muddy because from the cave, nearby, a rivulet of black drain water flowed. “There, inside,” said Riccetto. The faggot couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t stay, and took him by the arm, smiling with an air of invitation, and hiding his face flirtatiously behind one shoulder, so as to smile up at him.
Riccetto laughed, too, patiently. Since he had been at Porta Portese he had gained weight, and didn’t care so much about always being the smartass. Now he was a man experienced in life. “Damn,” he said, as if he were on the guy’s side, “two aren’t enough for you?”
“N-no,” said the fag, bending one knee slightly, like a little girl playing coy to get her way.
“Damn,” Riccetto repeated, “you like to have fun, huh?” And full of understanding and a sense of his own superiority, he went down the path, wa
ving goodbye, slyly, without looking back.
Halfway down the hill, a path descended for twenty meters or so, and led right to the center of Donna Olimpia. He had only to jump over a ruined wall at the end of it, go a short distance along a street, and he was in front of the Franceschi schools. It was still a pile of rubble, as if the collapse had happened two days earlier, except that on the debris, washed by the rain and burned by the sun, someone had dumped some garbage. Riccetto stopped in front, hands in his pockets, to take a look. Yes, it was true, the blocks of masonry that had rolled into the street and the landslides of debris had been piled up in a somewhat orderly way: only a few blocks, here and there, were still lying in the street. You could see that when there had been a show of starting the reconstruction, right around the elections, those two or three had been ignored and, with the elections over, no one had taken the trouble to come and remove them.
Riccetto observed everything around him with great interest: he even walked around behind to look at the courtyards, where the washtubs and the toilets were, then went back out front, facing the mountain of rubble and the structures at the corners, still standing, uninhabited, with rotting wood boards nailed to the windows. He stood there for a while, because he had come to Donna Olimpia just for this reason; then he pulled up the collar of his shirt, hunching his shoulders a little because it was beginning to get cool, and slowly took a walk around the center of Donna Olimpia, with the crumbling sidewalks and the closed newspaper stand, and only a few people going home silently, sleepily, and, in front of the Case Nove, something new: two policemen, pale with boredom and cold, who, standing guard, sometimes were still, sometimes walked up and down, like two shadows in the shadow of the buildings, with the gun holsters at their belts.
Riccetto had nothing on his conscience, and was in that neighborhood simply for sentimental reasons: he passed the two guards slowly, almost feigning indifference, and went to the Grattacieli, which were four big apartment buildings connected to one another such that the rows and the diagonals of windows were uninterrupted and lined up for hundreds of meters vertically and horizontally, and as a result you could recognize the stairwells from the outside by the enormous vertical rows of rectangular windows: while below, through arcades, underpasses, small porticoes, in the Fascist style, six or seven small internal courtyards of old packed earth extended, with the remains of what must have once been flowerbeds, all littered with rags and paper, at the bottom of the funnel of walls that rose to the moon. At that hour, almost no one went through the gate that opened onto Via di Donna Olimpia into those internal courtyards, those half-dark passages; or if someone did, he hurried past the barred windows of the cellars, entered a doorway, and began to climb up toward his own landing on the long flights of stairs that stank of dust.
Riccetto wandered around the courtyards hoping to meet someone with whom he could exchange a few words. After a while, in fact, he saw, coming down the iron stairway of Via Ozanam, the outline of a young man. “Maybe I know him,” Riccetto thought, and walked toward him. He was a redhead, all freckled, with bushy red eyebrows and his hair carefully combed, with the part on one side. Riccetto looked at him as he approached, and the other, feeling he was being observed, looked back attentively, ready for any eventuality. “Hi, we know each other,” said Riccetto, advancing with his hand outstretched.
“If you say so,” said the other, eyeing him more closely.
“Damn, isn’t your name Agnolo?” said Riccetto.
“Yes,” said the other.
“I’m Riccetto,” Riccetto exclaimed, as if he were making a revelation.
“Ah,” said Agnolo.
“So, how are you?” Riccetto asked politely.
“I’m getting by,” said Agnolo, who was obviously very sleepy.
“What can you tell me?” said Riccetto, who instead was all sprightly.
“What do I have to tell. The usual. I just left work and I’m so tired I’m falling down.”
“You work in a café?”
“Yeah.”
“And the others? Obberdan, Zambuia, Bruno, Lupetto?”
“They all work, more and less, that’s all.”
“Rocco, Arvaro?”
“Who’s Arvaro?”
“Arvaro Furciniti, you know Capoccione.”
“Aaah,” said Agnolo. Rocco had gone to live in Risano, and that was that. Alvaro’s was, instead, a sad story, and it had just ended a few weeks ago. It was early March. Raining. Alvaro was in a bar, in Testaccio, where some guys were playing pool, looking bored; he was playing, too, just to pass the time. They were all criminals, in that bar, including the owner, a bald fat man with little curls on his neck that made him look like Nero, and who was a fence: of those who were playing pool, wearing good shirts, even though it was a work day, in fact a Monday, no one had pulled off fewer than two or three big jobs, and they were living on that—for the moment, at least. But they’d been playing in that damp room behind the bar all afternoon, and were fed up, so they decided to take a little tour of Rome. When they were in the neighborhood of Piazza del Popolo, the opportunity to steal an old Aprilia presented itself, and they would have been fools to waste it: there was nothing inside, not even a pair of gloves, but they decided to take it and have some fun that evening, then abandon it somewhere. They had drunk a little at the bar in Testaccio, and had drunk a little more walking through Piazza di Spagna and Via del Babuino, and they were drinking again now, driving around Rome in the stolen Aprilia. They were completely drunk and began to speed like lunatics. They took a whirl around Piazza Navona, then, since the oval of Piazza Navona was too narrow, they headed toward Via dei Cerchi and the Archeology walk, and, taking turns at the wheel, drove at a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty kilometers an hour along the wet streets. Two motorcycle cops chased them, but, slipping down through the Anagrafe and the narrow streets of Piazza Giudia, they shook them off: they returned to Piazza Navona, and, driving around it, hit a baby carriage, knocking it five or six meters; luckily it was empty, because the baby was walking with its mother; a man shouted at them, they stopped abruptly, got out, confronted him, beat him, leaving him with a bloody mouth, got back in the car, and headed off at full speed for Governo Vecchio and Borgo Panigo. They came out on the Lungotevere, and headed up toward Ponte Milvio; near the Ministero della Marina, one of them saw a good-looking woman walking alone, all dressed up, beside the parapet: they slowed down, one got out, accosted the woman and grabbed her purse. Backing up, they crossed the bridge and went back toward Borgo Pio; they drove around Piazza San Pietro for a while and ended up in Testaccio again, where they drank another three or four glasses of cognac. It was already evening, and they decided to make a run through the countryside to Anzio, Ardea, or Latina. They got back in the Aprilia, hurtled at full speed toward San Giovanni, and took the Appia: after half an hour they were in a small town whose name they hadn’t even seen, and they went to have half a liter in a tavern, then they drove up and down over the country roads at more than a hundred kilometers an hour, until, almost by chance, they ended up in a place near Latina that one of them knew. It was the middle of the night. They left the car on the side of the road and entered the courtyard of a country house, where they stole twenty chickens, killing the dog with a gun. They loaded the chickens into the car, and took off at a hundred and thirty, turned onto the Appia again, and thirty kilometers from Rome, just before Marino, who knows how, they crashed into the back of a tractor-trailer. The Aprilia was reduced to a pile of twisted metal, and mixed up together inside were bloody bodies and chicken feathers. The only one who got out alive was Alvaro: but he had lost one arm and was blind.
Telling this story, Agnolo had begun to feel a little cool, maybe because he was tired, and, slightly pale, he looked impatiently out of the corner of his eye at those who at intervals were returning home, passing through the entranceway silent and hunched.
“Let me go to slee
p, okay, otherwise my father will get mad,” he said, finally, stretching.
“See you, then,” said Riccetto, who was sorry he was going like that but didn’t want to show it.
“Bye, what’s your name—Riccè,” said Agnolo, shaking his hand, and he disappeared into the broad black passage of entrance M or N, with its dusty stairways, stained every so often by the light of a solitary electric bulb.
Riccetto, pensive and calm, went out through the courtyards to Via di Donna Olimpia, passed the cops again, and, whistling, hands in his pockets, took the street that descended from the foot of Monte di Casadio to Ponte Bianco, beyond Ferrobedò. He no longer had anything to do there, and he walked more quickly, still whistling. He couldn’t wait to reach Ponte Bianco and get the tram to go home and sleep.
Ferrobedò, or, to be exact, Ferro-Beton, extended to his right in the spun sugar of the moonlight, a fragrant white dust—orderly and so silent that he could hear a watchman, inside a warehouse, singing in a low voice. And beyond it, on a kind of plateau, against the light, at the top of those big black hills, the immense semicircle of Monteverde Nuovo was outlined, dotted with lights, under strips of clouds that looked like porcelain, all grainy, in the smooth sky. Riccetto hadn’t been in that neighborhood since the schools collapsed: and he almost had trouble recognizing it. There was too much cleanliness, too much order, he couldn’t understand it anymore. Ferrobedò, down below, was a mirror: with the tall chimneys, which reached almost to the street from the depths of the shallow valley, the piles of ties stacked in perfect order in the yards, the ribbons of track that shone around some motionless black freight cars, the rows of sheds that, at least from above, looked like dance halls they were so clean, with their identical reddish roofs all lined up.
Even the metal fence, which along the street followed the scrubby slope above the factory, was brand-new, without a hole. Only the old watchman’s booth, near the fence, was still stinking and filthy: as in the past, passersby continued to relieve themselves there; inside and also outside, all around, there were at least several inches of shit. That was the only place that Riccetto found familiar, just as when he was a boy and the war had barely ended.
The Street Kids Page 20