“Where do we sell them?” Riccetto asked with a businesslike air. “For Christ’s sake,” said Begalone, “why don’t you try Porta Portese?” Riccetto yawned, and then he turned his sleepy eyes toward Caciotta. “What do you say we go?” Caciotta tossed off the glass, putting the finishing touch on his drunkenness, and hurrying out of the wineshop, he cried, raising one hand, “Hail, O Garbage!” Riccetto finished his wine too, spilling a good deal of it on his black shirt, and coughing, he followed after Caciotta.
It was a good four or five kilometers from where they were to Porta Portese. It was Saturday morning, and the August sun was like a drug. Besides, Riccetto and Caciotta had to make a big detour so as not to go through San Lorenzo, where the man who had sent them off early that morning to deliver the chairs in the Casal Bertone had his store. “All we need is not to be able to sell this stuff now,” said Caciotta with false pessimism, for in actual fact he was striding along in high spirits. “We’ll make out, we’ll make out,” said Riccetto with a scornful smile, taking a butt out of his pocket. “How much you think we’ll get, Riccè?” Caciotta asked innocently. “We’ll get just about thirty thousand,” Riccetto said, taking the last few drags on the cigarette, and added, “and who’s going to go home again after that?” Calling it home was a manner of speaking. To go there, not to go there—it all came to the same thing. As for eating, nobody ate there. As for sleeping, you could sleep just as well on a park bench. Call that a home? Besides, Riccetto couldn’t stand his aunt, or her son Alduccio either. His uncle was a lush who was always breaking balls. And then, how were two whole families supposed to manage, one of them with four kids, one with six, all in two narrow little rooms, without even a toilet—that was downstairs in the center of the courtyard. Those were the arrangements under which Riccetto had been living since the school buildings had collapsed a year before, for it was at that time that he had gone to live in Tiburtino with his relatives.
They went to sell the armchairs to Antonio, the junkman in the Vicolo dei Cinque to whom Riccetto, Marcello, and Agnolo had sold the broken-up manhole cover three or four years earlier. They got fifteen thousand lire and went off to buy new clothes. A little ashamed, a little anxious not to look anyone in the eye, the boys went to the Campo dei Fiori where they sell pants for a thousand or fifteen hundred lire, and good-looking knit shirts for less than two thousand. Then they each got a pair of pointy black-and-white shoes, and Caciotta bought the sunglasses he’d been dreaming of for a long time. Limping along on their aching feet, swollen because of the long walk from Portonaccio, they went looking for a place to leave their bundle of old clothes. Finding a place around there was easier said than done. They left the clothes in an outhouse belonging to a bar near the Ponte Garibaldi, stuffing them in carelessly, and thinking to themselves as they filed by the bar under the scrutiny of the bartenders, “If we find them again, great; if we don’t find them, tough.”
They went off to eat pizza and French toast at Silvio’s in the Via del Corso. It was getting late—time to think of how to spend the afternoon, for Christ’s sake. Flush as they were, the only problem was making a choice: the Metropolitan or the Europa, the Barberini or the Capranichetta, the Adriano or the Sistina. They left in a hurry anyway, because: Go on out and get in your licks, stay at home and there you sticks. They were all excited and full of fun, not even remotely aware of the fact that the joys of this world are brief, and fortune fickle. They bought a copy of Paese Sera in order to look at the amusements page, and quarreled over it, pulling it out of one another’s hands, each of them wanting to read it himself. Finally, in a rage, they managed to agree on the Sistina.
“But do I like to have a good time!” said Caciotta, leaving the theater in a happy frame of mind—four hours later, for they had seen the film twice. He adjusted his sunglasses on his nose, and walking loose along the sidewalk of the Via Due Macelli, he bumped into the passers-by on purpose.
“Hey, you mutt!” he would yell at some lady who, seeing him approach, had assumed an offended air. If she happened to turn around once more, that was it. Drawing himself up, standing on the edge of the sidewalk, with his hand at the side of his mouth, he would yell even louder, “Hey, mutt! Hey, bowlegged! Hey, old tore-out!”
And then there were some kinds of people he just couldn’t stand, really couldn’t stand. “Hey, look at them!” he yelled, eyeing a tall, good-looking woman with an enormous rear end who was coming down the street with a stocky four-eyed guy. When they came up and brushed past, Riccetto and Caciotta, grinning from ear to ear and bending down almost far enough to touch the ground with their noses, began to sputter and spit like two newborn babies. The four-eyed guy turned halfway round: And what do you want? Looking each other in the eye, bending double like puppets, they exploded again. “What a man!” Caciotta yelled. But a dignified lady bore right down on them, so split! And they ran off, pleased with themselves, up toward the Villa Borghese, because of all the places that had benches that you could sleep on, that was the one where you could have the most fun. Starting out by the Porta Pinciana, they went down along the avenue that paralleled the bridle path. The avenue was filled with cars and passers-by till late in the day. At the end, past the rotunda of the Ginestre, there was another avenue that ran down to the parapets of the Pincio and the Casina Valadier. Two rows of oleanders in rectangular beds, stretching in a thin line between street and sidewalk, shaded the benches backed against the retaining-wall, behind which was a slope with a bridle path at the bottom. There were people sitting on the benches, enjoying the cool air. “I’d like to rest a little,” Riccetto said carelessly, and they stretched out belly-up, singing, glad to be alive, on the dry grass of the slope, waiting for it to get a bit later. When they turned into the avenue again, the benches were already rather more sparsely occupied, and fewer people were passing by, but the real life of the place was just beginning. Here and there you could see old men in their shirtsleeves, or groups of young boys, some wearing jackets on their sweating backs, some in colored sport shirts. Most of them were sitting down as if they were in a living room, holding their knees close together like women, or else cross-legged, one arm lying in their laps, leaning forward slightly and smoking in little nervous puffs, holding the cigarette with all four fingers held out straight. Farther along on another bench, also in the shade of an oleander, a gentleman was talking to a dark boy who was wearing one of those blue collarless jerseys that can be bought at Porta Portese for five hundred lire. And still farther along, there were other figures among the trees, beneath the street lamps. “I can see all the way up my girlfriend’s dress,” Caciotta said suddenly, staring across the walk to where, under the cone of light cutting the darkness around the street lamp, a woman was sitting on a bench, her blood-colored skirt hiked up over her knees. “Look at that,” said Riccetto, interested at once. “Hey, you bastard,” someone yelled at Caciotta from a neighboring bench. “How about that?” said a young boy whose skin was as black as a skillet, and his hair blacker still, its dirty curls anointed with tonic. He was sitting spread-legged in the middle of one of the benches, a friend on either side.
“Picking up stuff?” Caciotta asked excitedly, sitting down by them.
“Where do you get that pick-up business?” the dark boy, known as Negro, said ironically, in a voice loud enough to be heard by two heavy-set men who were passing by, accompanied by two of the Villa Borghese beauties, all in high good humor. “Up yours! ” Riccetto muttered after them. “This here’s a friend of mine,” Caciotta said, introducing Riccetto to the others. They shook hands all around. Now some distance away, the two sports and the whores were making a big production out of lighting their cigarettes. Negro and the other boys watched them out of the corners of their eyes. The smaller of Negro’s two companions was talking quietly to the other, a big-headed, husky boy with lively eyes. “Get off my back, Calabre,” the hefty boy answered calmly. “Having a good time tonight, Cappello?” Caciotta asked him, feeling him out. “Sure,” s
aid Cappellone, his mouth spreading from ear to ear, and he sprawled over the bench, stretching out his legs nearly to the bed of oleander. The boy called Calabrese was preoccupied with his own serious business at hand, and he didn’t look at the new arrivals. “Let me feel it,” he said in a voice that was hoarse from the cold he always had because he slept in the open every night, right there in the Villa Borghese. He was in his twenties, but his dark, warty face looked as if it belonged to a boy of fifteen. He put his hand on Cappellone’s bulging pockets. “Fuck off, will you?” said Cappellone, in a sudden outburst. “Here, you satisfied now?” he asked, and pulled a revolver from his pocket. “What a nut,” said Negro. Cappellone, laughing, hid the gun away again in his dusty pants. “Jesus!” said Caciotta. “It’s a Beretta, huh?” said Riccetto, coming closer. But he got no answer. Calabrese went on with his interrogation, speaking in a toneless voice, his eyes at once listless and vicious. “What about the pen?” “I’ve got it, dumb bunny,” said Cappellone. “No, Picchio’s got it, hasn’t he?” said Negro excitedly, reaching his arm out to Calabrese for emphasis. “He’s all tanked up and giving his best to the whores,” said Calabrese sulkily. “Let’s go find him,” said Cappellone. “Let’s go,” said Calabrese. Cappellone rose from the bench and stretched, laughing. Riccetto and Caciotta followed Calabrese and Cappellone, who were sauntering down the walk. But Negro, as soon as they had risen, said, “Who’s gonna make me if I’m comfortable right here?” He stretched out on the bench belly-up, cocking first one leg up on the backrest and then the other.
The avenue that led to the Porta Pinciana was still crowded with women, boys in work clothes, and foreigners, who were promenading to the sound of jazz coming from the Casina delle Rose. But at the exit to the Villa Borghese, in front of the arches of the Porta Pinciana, the avenue that continued along the bridle path and then turned down along the Muro Torto was all dark and silent. Some loafers were pushing their way along, getting their bearings as if they were up to something; then came a couple of soldiers, then a young fellow on a motor scooter, and all of them vanished into the shadow of the trees. On the right ran the same wall that divided the avenue from the slope, and farther down, in darkness, before the broad stretch in the moonlight were the parallel fences that enclosed the sand-track. The playing fields were yellow and trampled. Young boys played soccer there in the daytime, and servant girls strolled there, but at this hour the action was all down around the riding enclosure—property of the army— that was studded with square-cropped bushes and reeked of horse piss. Coming out of the shadow of the plane trees into the middle of the field, or out of the maze of bushes by the riding enclosure, and climbing up across the sand-track, were sailors from Taranto, or Salerno, black and dried-up, truckers from around Bologna wearing trousers cut low in the crotch and swinging their arms, and kids from Prati or Flaminio—all of them with that caved-in feeling. At their backs, down below, it was completely still. When Riccetto, Caciotta, and the two habitues of the Villa Borghese got there, it was already late, and the periods of silence between the noises of those going down and of those coming up were beginning to lengthen. “There’s Picchio,” Calabrese announced, as if he had made him out in the darkness. “Where?” asked Cappellone. “You deaf?” said Calabrese. “Fuck you,” said Cappellone, sitting on the railing as if prepared to stay there for an hour. And in fact, from down behind the track, nearly as far as the chestnut trees, among the wire-mesh fencing and the tangled brush in the darkest part of the riding enclosure, you could hear throatsplitting yelling. As it came closer, it grew louder. “Bitches! Bitches!” It died away for a moment, then rang out again. “Bitches!” And at every repetition the word sounded as if the man yelling it was getting more and more intoxicated with rage. As far as they could tell without being able to see him, he must have stopped every once in a while, turning halfway around toward the riding enclosure and yelling again. Or perhaps he was walking slowly, stumbling repeatedly, looking backward all the while. In any case, he must have had his hands at his mouth to make a megaphone; he was yelling with such fury that you could hear the catarrh rasping in his throat.
“Bitches! Bitches!”
Then the voice stopped again, as he took a few steps, or maybe he spit. At first, because his voice cracked on the “i,” it seemed as if he might be yelling it for a joke. But then the sliding tone convinced you that he was yelling for real, in a holy rage, foaming at the mouth. They must have been able to hear that yell from right in the middle of the bridle path all the way to the avenue and the Casina delle Rose. The man fell silent and rested up for a bit, and then he sounded off again, as if he couldn’t find any other word in his rage: “Bitches!”
By now he was just below the railing and you could make out his stumbling form. He was shaking from head to foot as if he were caught in a high wind. His hands wouldn’t stay quiet for a moment. He stuffed his shirt tail into his pants and pulled it out again, tightened his belt, took the gum he was chewing out of his mouth, and brushed back the hair that was falling over his eyes.
“Filthy bitches!” he yelled even louder at an audience that had crouched down diplomatically among the bushes, in pious retreat and reflection. He sat down suddenly. Then he rose again and began to climb once more, still looking behind him. After a few steps he stopped, felt around inside the shirt, which hung far down over his pants, and let loose a complicated outburst, chewing the words and the gum at the same time, and spitting as he yelled.
“Hey, Picchio,” Cappellone interrupted from above, “it looks like they’re letting you talk to yourself, isn’t that right?” Picchio kept climbing without answering, and then turned to look back down toward the playing field, where his female audience kept as mute as the Sphinx, and yelled again, “Bitches!” Then he came up by the path that crossed the track between the railings. He came up to where the others were on the avenue and sat down among them on the nail-studded railing. He chewed his gum, stretching his whole mouth in the process, grinding his jaws and leaking spit. “What you been up to, Pi?” asked Calabrese, his eyes smiling at last, like those of an animal feeding.
“Fuck those bitches!” Picchio exploded. As he yelled and chewed, the skin all over his dried-up little face wrinkled. “They won’t give me any tail!”
“You let them do you that way, Picchio?” asked Cappellone. A sneer crossed Calabrese’s swollen face. Picchio got up again, drew away from the others, put his hands to his mouth, and, turning to the playing field that stretched away at their feet, yelled, “Bitches!” once again.
“Where’s the pen?” Calabrese asked, by way of beginning the investigation. Picchio gave Calabrese a sidelong glance as if he didn’t recognize him. “What’s the matter, do you think I’m so dumb I wear my ears over my nose?” he yelled at the whores. “Don’t I have five hundred to pay with? Bitches!” He waved his arm at them. “I’ll show you tomorrow night, I’ll show you!” “What are you going to show them?” asked Cappellone. “What am I going to show them?” said Picchio, chewing away and screwing up his nose. “Bunch of cunts is what they are.” Then he said to Calabrese, looking at him out of the corner of his eye and arching his brows in resignation, “Here it is.”
Calabrese took the pen and looked at it in the light. “Who’d you pinch it off of?” asked Riccetto, watching him.
“Off a kid on the bus,” Picchio said, chewing.
“What do you mean, a kid?” asked Cappellone. “You said you got it off an American.”
Picchio paid no attention to him.
“And what can you do with that thing?” asked Riccetto, shrugging.
“Christ, won’t you give five hundred lire for it?” asked Calabrese.
“Yeah, sure,” said Riccetto.
“O.k., what’ll you cough up for it?” asked Calabrese.
“You’re making me laugh. Get off my back, will you,” said Riccetto.
“Let’s go have a drink,” Picchio cried out suddenly, perking up, jumping up and down, so dried out that if the
wind rose he’d fly away.
“He must be rich,” said Calabrese.
“What do you mean, rich?” Picchio said, chewing and puffing. “I got three hundred.”
Riccetto and Caciotta sat there waiting to see how things turned out.
“Let’s go,” said Picchio in a hoarse voice, gesturing shakily toward the Porta Pinciana. “O.k., let’s go,” said Cappellone, following him with Calabrese. Riccetto and Caciotta didn’t move. “Come on,” Cappellone said to them.
When they came to the arches at the Porta Pinciana, they found Negro and another wool-head, a little guy with a puffy criminal face and two porcelain eyes. He was from Acqua Bullicante, his name was Lenzetta, and the others all knew him. “Hey,” said Cappellone, “two from Tiburtino, one from Acqua Bullicante, two from Primavalle, one homeless, and Picchio here from Hell’s Acre—we could organize the Greater Rome Vice League!”
The Ragazzi Page 7