Lenzetta slept with his older brother in a little windowless room, one in an old bed like a gondola and the other on a cot. Around midnight Lenzetta, who hadn’t been able to get to sleep and was high from the wine, tossed away the old patched sheets and started to sing. His brother was sleeping like a top, his mouth half-open and the sheets twisted around his legs, but after a while he began to show signs of annoyance. He turned over suddenly, catching all of the sheet under his belly. Lenzetta, stoned out of his mind, went on singing with all the steam he had. Then his brother woke up with a start and said, “Hey!” “Fuck you,” said Lenzetta, getting to his feet. His brother caught on to what was happening, looked at him, gave him a shove that slammed him against the wall, and dropped off again. Next morning as Lenzetta went out into the street, he saw his brother waiting for him with his Lambretta. “Get on,” he said. Lenzetta obeyed, and his brother tore through the morning traffic over to Maranella, cut through the alleys around Torpignattara, where you weren’t supposed to drive at that hour because the market was open then, sprinted off at forty-five miles an hour toward Mandrione, passed it, and pulled into Acqua Santa like a maniac. He didn’t dismount or even slow down to go through the alleys that were knee-deep in dust, but turned into them in high gear; once in among the fields and quarries below a tall tower, he shut the motor off, got down, and told Lenzetta, “Put up your hands.” They pounded each other for a half-hour, and at last Lenzetta, just about exhausted, managed to run away.
Riccetto and Alduccio were walking along slowly because they had walked all the way from Pietralata. They were dragging their feet as if they belonged to two other people, their backs riding on legs as limp as rags, but they were making a big thing all the same out of their young hoodlum insolence. They must have covered at least three miles, from the Via Boccaleone down through the Via Prenestina to Acqua Bullicante, passing by a field full of shit, a village made up of shacks, an apartment house as big as a mountain, and a weather-beaten factory building. And that wasn’t the end, the best was yet to come, for they had to go all the way through Casilina. Lenzetta, fresh as a daisy after having thoroughly cursed out the two pilgrims, and having been called jerk and shithead in return, was walking briskly in the lead, the others limping after him, in bad moods from fatigue and the pain in their feet.
The place over on the Via dell’Amba Aradam—Lenzetta had discovered it—was really first-rate. It was a little out of the way, right by the bridge where the road crossed the Viale di San Giovanni, beside green and brown walls in among gardens that were choked with leafless plants, and old, upper-class villas that had seen better days. Up on a bluff there was a whole row of low buildings roofed with rusty sheet metal, glowing in the last rays of sunlight. Far back, over in one corner, was the smallest of the shacks, but it had a large fenced-in court that was full of old iron. There was a deep silence over everything, but inside the shanties or among the junk heaps a workman was whistling quietly, or a voice was calling and another answering. The three toughs went along in Indian file, one humming and one whistling. Only when they were a little farther along, among the ruins, did they say anything at all, scarcely moving their lips. “Jesus,” said Riccetto, “what a load of axle shafts!” “What did I tell you?” said Lenzetta triumphantly. “Yeah, but it’s still daylight,” said Riccetto, so as not to give him too much satisfaction. “And then, without a three-wheeler you can’t do a fucking thing here.” “Yeah, a three-wheeler. And where you going to get one, you dope?” Lenzetta grumbled, twisting his mouth. “Let’s go down to Maranella and ask Remo the junkman for one,” Alduccio said, suddenly piqued because of the bad reception given his idea. Lenzetta stared at him, frowning pityingly, and then clicked his tongue, not deigning to answer. “Stupid,” he said suddenly a moment later, “you want all three of us to go back to Forlanini? Do it on foot again, from there to Maranella, and then back again? Is your head screwed on right?” “But who’s telling you to do it all on foot again? Who’s saying anything about that?” Alduccio said, flushed and angry. “Just listen to him!” “O.k., how?” asked Lenzetta, already a little more interested. Riccetto was listening attentively to the discussion, not saying a word. “Let’s get a little money, why don’t we?” Alduccio cried. “Oh, yeah,” Lenzetta said, disappointed. “Let’s go,” said Alduccio. And without even turning toward his companions, he started off toward San Giovanni.
“Where’s that idiot going now?” asked Lenzetta, trotting after him with Riccetto. “Has he gone crazy?” “He’s not crazy, he’s not crazy,” Riccetto said.
It wasn’t long before they figured out what Alduccio had in mind. But when they reached the piazza at Porta San Giovanni, they found the place deserted. True, there were some people on the benches along the wall that fences off the drop, but not the kind of people that the three friends were looking for. There was a fat woman who was bursting out of her cream-colored silk suit, her lips still sugary from the pastry she had just eaten, her face looking like a boiled fish, and next to her an ugly little guy, maybe her husband, with a face like a fried fish, the poor bastard, just getting over a drunk. And here and there a little kid and a nursemaid. Beyond the wall that gave upon the Tuscolano section, like a terrace, beyond tennis courts and expanses of trodden earth, the warm red evening was now descending, making the windows glow in the crowded pale blue buildings, so that the scene looked like a Martian panorama. On the near side of the wall that Alduccio and the others were leaning against, the gardens of San Giovanni, full of shrubs and flower beds stretched out in the same sad light, grazed by the last rays of sun that fell directly upon the galleries and great statues of the cathedral’s facade, and gilded the red granite of the obelisk.
Discouraged, and showing it in their sneers, the three criminals were over by the wall—Lenzetta stretched out on it, belly-up, with his hands under his dust-streaked neck, singing; Riccetto sitting on the edge with his legs dangling; only Alduccio was standing, his legs crossed in a nervous pose, leaning a hip and an elbow against the wall. He was the only one who wasn’t acting disgusted, for he was looking forward hopefully to the march of events. There he stood, one hand buried in his pocket, looking like the sheriff’s son, his thick lips overshadowed with black down and his deep-set shining eyes resembling two mussels dripping with lemon juice.
And his faith was rewarded. When Lenzetta and Riccetto, who had suddenly decided to go get a drink at the fountain, slowly made their way back to the wall, taking it easy so as to kill a little time, they found Alduccio ready to leave, all merry and bright. ”Come on, let’s go,” he said. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out three hundred-lire notes, all worn. “A man came by,” he explained. “He gave them to me for nothing, just to be friendly.” Then he added gaily, “Just to feel it for a minute.” The others weren’t looking for such elaborate explanations; such things happened. They lost no time, and yelling and shouting so as to make themselves heard by whoever happened to be around, they went to the tram stop down by the Porta di San Giovanni, and in something like half an hour they were in Maranella again.
They drew a blank at Remo the junk-dealer’s. He had already taken the three-wheeler home to Pigneto, to a courtyard swarming like an anthill with people, and had gone off to the tavern. He was sitting at a little worm-eaten table, red as a lobster under two inches of black-and-white beard, and all swollen up as if he had gas under his skin instead of blood. He was talking with a little old man who was as shriveled as a piece of salt cod, and who still talked with a country accent though he’d lived in Rome for the last hundred years. Between those two there was a third whose face was hidden because he had fallen asleep over the table and lay there like a pile of rags. Lenzetta appeared in the doorway, giving the place the once-over. He saw Remo immediately, and called to him in a sly, confidential voice: “Hey, Remo, can I talk to you a minute?” Remo broke off the intellectual discussion he was carrying on with grandpa. “Excuse me,” he said, “let me go see what that young punk wants.” The other p
ut on the expression of a man who’s suddenly left alone and swallowed a sip of wine, his Adam’s apple jumping. The other two boys were outside the door, on the crumbling sidewalk by the trolley tracks. “These here are friends of mine,” said Lenzetta, looking even more knowing, his face reddening. “Pleased to meet you,” said all three, shaking hands. “Say, Re’,” Lenzetta said hypocritically, coming right to the point, “you gotta do me a favor.” “Why, sure,” said the other, half-ironic, half-polite. “You gotta lend us your three-wheeler—I mean, if it’s possible. How about it?” Remo didn’t say yes or no. He had gotten the picture right away, and he had figured his own angle even quicker; in return for the three-wheeler, lent as a favor, they would have to bring him the stuff for sale, and he would know how to set a price on it. With a comradely smile, he took out a cigarette-paper, and, licking and spitting, rolled himself a smoke. You have to take it easy, you know, because in Maranella, where the Via dell’Acqua Bullicante runs into the Casilina, there’re more comings and goings, both cars and people, than in the Via Veneto… .
It must have been around eleven, eleven-thirty, when Riccetto and the others, taking turns pedaling the three-wheeler, with one boy sprawled on his belly inside the van in the back and another trotting behind hanging onto the saddle, having gone all the way back up the Via Casilina, finally got to the place, dead tired.
A hair’s breadth above the walls and the bungalows, covered with fretwork like family tombs or summer houses in watering places—built by the rich in Mussolini’s time, when Riccetto couldn’t have known a thing about them, any more than he did, incidentally, now that he was alive—a moon as big as an oil drum appeared, lighting up everything. Alduccio stayed outside with the three-wheeler, at the foot of the slope. Riccetto and Lenzetta crawled into the court on their bellies through a hole in the fence near the shed, hidden among two or three saplings and a jumble of dry refuse. Once having squeezed through the gap and raised their heads on the other side, like crushed worms, they found themselves inside the enclosure and looked around; Lenzetta decided that the occasion called for a little rhetoric: “Here we are in junk heaven,” he said. Satisfaction and fear showed in the faces of the two gangsters, though they wanted to show nothing more than a natural professional interest—especially Lenzetta, who felt that he was the boss of the expedition. “Let’s go,” he said breathily, without losing any more time. And since the other hesitated, his ears pricked up like a dog listening for a suspicious sound, Lenzetta got annoyed. “Hey, stupid,” he said, “let’s go!” He went over to the pile that looked the most substantial, inspected it, picked something up, threw it down after examining it in the moonlight, and began to flit around among the other piles like a ghost. Riccetto followed him, looking around too, making no sound. Leaving behind the piles of auto tires, wheels, and other stuff that didn’t interest them, they found what they were looking for in the middle of the courtyard. And they started in with the transport operation. First, one piece at a time, they piled it all up by the hole in the fence. Then Riccetto crept through, and Lenzetta passed the stuff out to him from inside. When everything was outside the fence, Lenzetta came out too, and together, at top speed, they ran up and down from the slope to the three-wheeler, from the three-wheeler to the slope, red as hot peppers, the tendons in their necks straining and their spines rigid with effort. Alduccio thought he was dreaming as he saw the stuff pile up—auto batteries, bronze gears, iron pipe, axle shafts, and a hundred pounds of lead. He helped with the loading, placing the stuff in the van of the three-wheeler while the others came and went. “There’s still room for more,” he said when they came back from the last trip. “Yeah, well stick this in,” Lenzetta said, putting on airs, but before he had properly got the words out of his mouth his eyes turned with a hard look toward the Via dell’Amba Aradam. The others fell silent, busying themselves with the three-wheeler. A boy in a white shirt was coming toward them. When he came close they could see that he was a plump young man with a face as smooth as a piggy bank and dopey eyes. Lenzetta, seeing that he was some poor little rich student, recovered himself, and staring at the boy with eyes that had just been all watery with fright, said to him, “What you lookin’ at?” “Nothing,” said the other, moving by quickly, as if their words had been a simple exchange of courtesies, perfectly natural at that hour and in those circumstances.
But Lenzetta, turning after the round-shouldered form going off into the distance, returned to the attack. “Hey, Fats, if you ain’t looking at nothing, beat it, or I’ll make you see stars.”
The student made no answer. But when he had gone far enough he turned halfway round and yelled, “Bunch of robbers!”
“That boy’s spying for someone,” said Alduccio, sounding scared, all his confidence evaporating on the spot. “Run Aldo, and wait for us in front of the hospital,” said Lenzetta, equally shaken up, and he started to run after the fat boy while Alduccio pedaled off in the other direction, and Riccetto didn’t know which one to follow. The fat boy, who sure as hell didn’t think Lenzetta was running after him to apologize and make up, scampered off like a scoundrel along the walls by the Porta Metronia. Then Lenzetta turned around, caught up with Riccetto, who was waiting for him, and together they ran after Alduccio who was pedaling away, all in a lather and white-faced from the strain. They spelled one another, taking short turns, and pedaling and running they got to the Via Appia Nuova. “Oh, Jesus!” said Lenzetta, throwing himself flat in the middle of the road, right on the tram tracks.
He lay there with his legs spread and his hands on his chest like a corpse. “If I go another ten steps, it’ll be the end.”
The other two left the three-wheeler, laughing, and followed his example, rolling in the gravel under the trees that stretched away endlessly in two lines down the center of the road.
“Really worked your ass off, eh?” said Riccetto, his head between the three-wheeler’s wheels. At that hour there was almost no one on the road, except for young fellows on their Lambrettas taking their girls to Acqua Santa.
Lying on the ground in the middle of the road, watching the couples pass by, they yelled, “Get out!” Or else, “Don’t listen to him, honey!”
A soldier, coming along with a piece of tail behind him hanging onto his pants, wanted to act tough, and yelled, in a half-Neapolitan accent, “Knock it off!”
The boys exploded as if someone had stuck a pin in their backsides. They half rose, leaning on their elbows in the dust.
“Hey, you, getting civilized in Rome?” Alduccio yelled.
“You see this?” Riccetto added didactically, his hands making a megaphone around his mouth. “This here’s the Basilica of San Giovanni!”
“Hey, they still use tom-toms in your country?” Lenzetta howled, increasing the dosage, and getting up on his knees to do so.
“Hey, let’s go,” said Alduccio when they had calmed down a little. “We going to spend the night here?”
Lenzetta sat up and lit a butt.
“Give me a drag,” said Alduccio, getting ready to pedal away. After a couple of draws, Lenzetta grumbled and passed the butt to him, and Alduccio, smoking, hadn’t turned his pedals four times when, slap, crack, bang, the front wheel got caught in the trolley track and was smashed to hell.
Nothing to worry about. The merest trifle. How far was it from there to Maranella? And Riccetto and Lenzetta had scarcely done any walking at all that day! While Aldo, furious and bitter, stayed behind to guard the three-wheeler and the stuff, which they had piled up on the sidewalk of a street that ran into the Appia Nuova a little farther down, Riccetto and Lenzetta put one foot in front of the other and made their way back to Maranella, to the pushcart-man’s place. But the pushcart-man’s place was closed. “Fuck the no-good bastard,” said Lenzetta, grinding his teeth over that fathead who was God knows where.
“Oh, he closes up this time of night, huh?” said Riccetto vindictively. “We’ll screw him good. That’ll learn him.” To tell the truth, it was after midnig
ht, but they didn’t give a damn. They went into the fathead’s little courtyard and carried off the best cart.
“Tomorrow we don’t bring it back, what do you say?” Lenzetta said, pleased to have his conscience clear.
There wasn’t a soul about where they had left Alduccio on the Appia Nuova. But just before they came to the corner of the Via Camilla, a shadow started toward them, and as it drew near it took on the form of a skinny old man with a ragged cap on his head. He was carrying an axle shaft, and when he saw the two boys he tried to hide it.
Lenzetta turned as red as a turkey cock, and spoke to him without beating about the bush. “Hey, Pop, where’d you find that axle shaft?” Riccetto waited, his hands on the raised shafts of the cart.
The Ragazzi Page 12