The Ragazzi

Home > Other > The Ragazzi > Page 10
The Ragazzi Page 10

by Pier Paolo Pasolini


  A good thing, too, because he had scarcely passed the door of the new building beyond the balcony when the carabinieri came by. He saw them just in time to cut around the corner. “Son of a bitch,” he said aloud, as if he were singing—he was so pleased not to have been spotted. He started to run through the deserted streets of the housing development, down toward the Via Boccaleone, and then, still at a run, down the Tor Sapienza road. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky now; lights were showing on the left, towers with signal lights, the reflectors at the power plant, and beyond them, far away by now, Tiburtino with its rows of new houses against the black sky. Before him in the warm darkness the lights of the other suburbs gleamed, all the way to Centocelle, the Borgata Gordiani, Tor de’ Schiavi and Quarticciolo. Dead-tired, Riccetto finally got to the bus stop at the Via Prenestina and began to wait for the Quarticciolo bus. He fished out the five hundred-lire notes that he had managed to hang onto, and picked out the most ragged one to give the conductor.

  “Now what?” he said when the empty bus let him off at Prenestino. He took a look around, hitched up his pants, and recognizing that there was nothing there for him, he philosophically broke into song. A trolley was pulling in from the Via Prenestina, and it stopped for a moment, all agleam, under a gnarled tree; then it made a circuit around three or four low houses scattered among the dirty lots, and came to a halt once more on the opposite side. Some of the passengers who had gotten off ran toward the suburban buses parked in a line before a squalid café that was still lit up; some went off quietly to their beds in the neighborhood, in the Borghetto Prenestino, with all its little dwellings like cubes or henhouses, white as Arab buildings or black as mountain cabins, full of peasants from Apulia, the Marche, Sardinia, or Calabria: They were youngsters and old men who at that hour were coming home drunk and covered with rags. Some went off to the groups of hovels piled up together in construction lots, among the slopes of the alleys that ran toward the Via Prenestina. Riccetto decided to buy three Nazionali, since he’d been dying for a smoke for some time. Completely relaxed now, he crossed the small piazza, and went into the bar, counting his money. He came out again with a cigarette stuck to his lower lip, and his crafty eyes rolling around in search of somebody with a match. “Let me have a light, kid?” he asked a young boy who was smoking, looking decadent and leaning against a post. Wordlessly, the boy held out his lighted cigarette, and Riccetto thanked him with a toss of his head, stuck his hands into his pockets, and went off singing through the gray alley where the trolley turned around.

  All about him were scaffoldings, houses under construction, big empty lots, rubbish heaps, building sites; from far away, perhaps from Maranella, behind the Pigneto, you could hear a phonograph amplified by a loudspeaker. In the field by Casilina, this side of Maranella, there was probably a merry-go-round. Riccetto headed in that direction, his hands in his pockets and his head drawn down into his shoulders by the emotion he was putting into his solitary song.

  For a while around Acqua Bullicante he saw nobody, except for a few old people hurrying home. But when he came to the road that turned uphill between the walls of two factories, toward Borgata Gordiani, a group of boys appeared, walking along unhurriedly, occupying the entire width of the road, calling out and raising hell, in a group as disorganized as a swarm of flies over a dirty table. One boy was cuffing another on the head, getting him riled; one was shadowboxing, punching the air right and left, and then throwing a hook that made his eyes glaze with satisfaction; another was showing his class by acting indifferent, his hands lazily riding in his pockets, and his whole attitude announcing, “Weak as I’m feeling, who’s going to make me exert myself?”—sneering at his companions. Some were arguing, twisting their mouths in disgust, thrusting out their arms and clicking their tongues, or, in the heat of discussion, cupping their chins with both hands and drawing them toward their chests, from which position they stared quizzically at their interlocutors for half an hour. All of the Via dell’Acqua Bullicante was observing them with profound concentration. As far as Riccetto was concerned, they were just a bad smell. Not that their tomfoolery had anything to do with him. If anything, it was the world in General they had it in for, the entire human race that didn’t know how to have a good time the way they did. But it annoyed Riccetto that they should be showing off while he was all alone, and excluded for the time being from any such bunch of loud-mouths, forced to listen quietly to the racket they were making. He began to whistle louder, not giving them as much as a glance, and went on his way. But he had not left them more than twenty yards behind when he heard the sound of sobbing from the other side of the ditch that ran along the filthy gardens. He drew near, and saw a boy squatting on the grass, his chest bare.

  “What happened to you?” he asked. But the boy went on crying and didn’t answer. “Hey, what’s the matter?” asked Riccetto. Coming closer still, he saw that the boy was completely naked. Skinny and wet from the dew, he had gotten down on his knees and was starting to whine through his sobs like a little child. “They took my clothes and hid them on me, the sons of bitches.” “Who did it?” Riccetto asked. The boy stood up, his cock sticking out, tears all over him. “Them,” he said plaintively. Riccetto started to run after the group of boys he had just passed.

  “Hey, you,” he yelled. They all stopped and turned around. “Hey, was it you that hid the pants on that kid over there?” Riccetto inquired firmly but politely. “They’re right there by him,” one of them said cheerfully. “He’ll find them all right.” Riccetto moved back a few steps. Neither he nor anyone else felt like having an argument; on the contrary, they felt like allies, because they were sports compared to that asshole who was crying over there. “Forget it, he’s a jerk,” one of them said, striking his forefinger against his nose. Riccetto shrugged. “Poor bastard,” he said. Now his responsibility as defender of the weak was over, and indeed they saw the jerk come out of the ditch with his pants on, holding his torn shirt. But the other boys didn’t move, and one of them stared at Riccetto, laughing. “You looking at me?” asked Riccetto. The boy had thick, cracked lips, and a delinquent’s face set on a skinny neck that was as wrinkled as a cabbage. “What, do you know me?” asked Riccetto, who saw the boy silhouetted against the light of a street lamp. “Why shouldn’t I know you?” said the other cheerfully. “I’m Lenzetta,” he went on. “We saw each other last night in the Villa Borghese, didn’t we?” “Oh, excuse me,” said Riccetto magnanimously, recognizing him now, and he came forward with his hand outstretched. “Where you going?” he asked. “Where could I be going, hungry as I am?” said Lenzetta. The others laughed. “How about you?” said Lenzetta. Riccetto laughed philosophically, turned his shirt collar up, and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. “How should I know?” he said. “I’m still staying away from home and I sure as shit don’t feel like going back.” “Why not?” Lenzetta asked, amused. “Think I want to get jailed?” asked Riccetto. “I was playing cards in a house in Tiburtino, and the cops came, and the guys they picked up, well, it’s their ass now. The bastards. You know, Caciotta was there too.” “Who’s Caciotta?” asked Lenzetta. “The boy who was with me last night, the redhead. By now he’s probably in a detention cell, the son of a bitch.” “I’m still staying away from home too,” said Lenzetta, “and who wants to go back? My brother’ll kill me if he sees me.” “What do you mean, he’ll kill you?” asked one of the group, “I’m telling you they picked him up Saturday night.” “I know,” said Lenzetta, “but my mother’s still at home, ain’t she, and she can go get stuffed for all I care. I can’t stand her.” “Well, that’s your fucking trouble,” said his friend, laughing and shaking his finger at him. “Your mother’s at home, your brother’s in the can—anything you do, you’re in the shit. You go home, you get busted. You run around, you get busted. You better watch out.” Everyone laughed. “What the fuck do I care?” said Lenzetta. Laughing and shoving one another, they turned up toward Maranella. “Well,” someone said, “Elina i
sn’t home tonight.” “Who told you so?” said another disgustedly. “She’s always there.” “Shit,” said the first, “she had a belly the size of a washtub. She’s probably at the Polyclinic by now, having the kid.” “What do you mean, belly?” the other retorted. “It can’t be more than four months at the outside.” “Four months your ass,” said the first. “She had a belly on her like a house when I screwed her in the spring.” “Shit, ten years ago, you mean,” said Lenzetta. “But who gives a shit anyway? If there’s a hundred lire in this whole crowd, you can cut my throat.” “What, you mean it would be the first time you went there empty-handed?” someone said. “I tell her, let’s do it and I’ll give you the money. We do it, and I don’t give her a thing.” “What a bastard!” Lenzetta yelled.

  They had gone along chattering in this way as far as Maranella, and they weren’t thinking about Elina any more. They heard the phonograph of the merry-go-round playing near by, and a murmur of voices and trampling feet still nearer, right at the Maranella crossroads, by the tram stop. Everybody was headed in that direction, as if something had happened there, or a festival was going on, late as it was. “It’s the circus people,” one boy yelled, beginning to run. “What circus? What circus?” Lenzetta retorted calmly, but quickening his steps, in his lazy way, along with the others. A small crowd could be seen coming down from Casilina, black against the badly lit and broken pavement. Near the Due Allori movie house, they stopped, mottled by the torches they carried in their hands. “It’s a religious procession, what the fuck,” said Lenzetta in disappointment.

  The boys had stopped at the crossroad, which they had reached on the run. They were undecided now whether to go to Prato, where the merry-go-round was, and maybe the shooting gallery with the blonde in it would still be open, or to stop and watch the goings-on here in Maranella. They sat down with a sarcastic air on the edge of the sidewalk, among the legs of the bystanders who were crowding in to see the procession. One boy was singing; one was punching another who had settled himself to watch; others were rolling, locked together, in the dust. Meanwhile the procession drew up. “Shit,” said Riccetto, “we could have stayed in Prenestino and been better off.” “What could you do there?” asked Lenzetta. “Elina’s there, ain’t she?” said Riccetto with a leer. The people coming up now were overblown old women, and some old men scattered among them, and a couple of kids. All were holding candles inside cardboard funnels so the night wind wouldn’t blow them out. Every now and then they would burst out singing, each for himself. When they came to the crossing, they stopped, gathering in a group on the sidewalk near the pizza shop. Two boys set a table against the crumbling wall, and an old man climbed up onto it, and began to make a speech denouncing the Communists and exalting the spirit of Christ.

  There was lots of commotion around where Lenzetta, Riccetto, and the others were camped, so much so that the old man, who was speaking the Cispadano dialect, could scarcely be heard. “Louder!” yelled one of the boys. “Looking to get paid off with a drink, hey, Mozzo?” said Lenzetta. Mozzone was silent for a moment, listening. “Listen to that guy talk,” he said after a while, his voice soft with wonder. Riccetto nudged Lenzetta. “Hey, I’ve had it up to here,” he said. “What do you want?” asked Lenzetta. “Let’s go back there,” Riccetto said, motioning with his head toward Prenestino. “You’re crazy,” Lenzetta said. “I got the money all right,” Riccetto explained, “but just for the two of us.” Lenzetta glanced at him and then looked around. “Wait,” he said. The others were all preoccupied. “Get up,” he said, “and go on down by Acqua Bullicante, and I’ll come after you.”

  Riccetto got up and slowly moved off through the crowd that was baiting the old man, but in less than five minutes he ended his harangue, and the procession moved off once more, singing, and turned down toward the center of the town. Lenzetta caught up with Riccetto on the run. “What about the others?” asked Riccetto.

  “We shook them,” said Lenzetta. “They went to the merry-go-round.”

  As they talked, they retraced their way all along the Via dell’Acqua Bullicante, and at their backs the sambas playing on the phonograph and the songs of the marchers faded away. Now the streets were empty except for somebody or other coming back from Prenestino or the Impero toward the Borgata Gordiani, or toward Pigneto, or some drunk on his way home, singing now “Bandiera Rossa,” now “La Marcia Reale.”

  They found Elina in that realm of shadows where she was queen, beyond the filthy lots full of rubbish heaps where the tram turned around, among the rutted roads, in an open space darkened by the enormous shadows of two or three skyscrapers under construction on the far side, and facing one already built, but still without a road or courtyard before it, abandoned among weeds and litter. The enormous box, with all its windows alight, rose alone into the sky, where a few stars gleamed sadly. Elina was holed up behind it, next to the wire fence and the row of bushes that ran around the subdivided lots, still no more than enormous garbage heaps, with here and there a hovel or a pile of gravel.

  Lenzetta and Riccetto went up to the woman, who was small and fat as a sausage, bargained a while, and, passing through the strands of a barbed-wire fence, went forward between sodden clumps of reeds.

  It didn’t take long. As soon as they came out, they proceeded calmly to a fountain in the center of the little piazza where the tram terminus was, to wash up a bit. Lenzetta was going to take care of the sleeping arrangements. Beyond the Borgata Gordiani, in a field from which you could see all the suburbs, from Centocelle to Tiburtino, at the end of a dew-soaked kitchen garden, there were some great rusty oil drums, left in an enclosure with some other old iron. They were wide enough to crawl into, and as long as a person. Lenzetta had spread some straw in one of them; he took some of it out and put it in a neighboring drum. They stretched out, and slept till after ten the next morning.

  Lenzetta Generally hung around the Via Tuscolana, the Piazza Re di Roma, the Via Taranto, where there were neighborhood markets, barracks, and a soup kitchen run by the friars. When he was away from home, he got along by doing a little work—as little as he could—for some fish-seller or notions-vendor, or picking up a little from market stalls or on the trolley. When he was in the mood, he stayed in the suburbs, in Prenestino or Quadraro, carrying a worn-out sack and hunting for old iron or scraps of lead among the rubbish. But he didn’t do that often because he got backaches from bending, and besides, it left him with his mouth so full of dust that it took just about a bottle of wine to rinse it out, and that way he lost half the profits of the enterprise. Riccetto, too, wasn’t enthusiastic about the old-iron racket, for the additional reason that it was, after all, kid stuff. So they went to the suburbs just for the purpose of sleeping in the oil drums, and they spent the daytime in the city. If by chance they picked up enough money for the next day too, they said to hell with working and breaking your back. They took the bus and rode out to Acqua Santa. They slipped past four withered saplings along the Appia Nuova, went up a slope ankle-deep in dust, and pushed through a region of holes, caves, ridges, scorched fields, ravines, ruined foundations, and abandoned roads, the vast and rugged promised land of Acqua Santa. Their hope was that they might encounter some hustler on duty on top of a hillock, at the crossing of two ruined roads, waiting for beardless customers from the shantytowns or the first housing projects that loomed in the distance; or else, posted at the entrance to a cave, or among the blackberry bushes surrounding a pond, some fat German or other, with his newspaper spread beside him and his gold-rimmed glasses, from whom they could lift what they wanted. They would look at him as if casually, or else stop to take a leak; and he would come after them, up over ridges and down through gullies, to the filthiest-looking ponds, just as the great Roman poet used to sing:

  “Heard the fairy call out after the punk,

  ‘I’m exhausted, darling, slow down or I’m sunk.’ ”

  One day the two darlings—all alone, though—on coming up to the pond with the red fence ar
ound it, found a youngster from Tiburtino there, Alduccio. Riccetto quickened his step a bit to go and shake the boy’s hand enthusiastically. “What’s new?” he asked cordially, while slipping out of his clothes. Alduccio was stretched out on the dirty grass in his shorts, in the shade of a clump of reeds. He answered politely, ”Same as usual. The longer you stick around the more you feel like you want to give it all the fuck up and turn robber or something.”

  “Jesus,” said Riccetto, pulling his shirt over his gleaming head.

  “You don’t work, you don’t eat, like they say, and where the hell do you find work?” He chewed his gum with a decadent, disdainful air.

  “O.k.,” said Riccetto, continuing in Alduccio’s humorous vein, “we get ourselves a couple of Berettas and we organize a mob.” Alduccio looked at him as if he weren’t joking at all. “Right,” he said. Lenzetta, who couldn’t bear not butting into a conversation for more than one minute, and who had pricked up his ears at the word “Beretta,” exclaimed mockingly, “What do you mean, Beretta. Cappella, not Beretta!”*

  _____

  * Beretta, the name of an Italian arms firm, hence a pistol of that make; literally, “cap.” Cappella, a pun on cappello, “hat.”—Trans.

  _____

  Riccetto and Lenzetta stretched out on the bank of the pond too. “Well, now,” Riccetto began again, “what you got to tell me about Tiburtino?”

 

‹ Prev