The Ragazzi

by Pier Paolo Pasolini

  * “Draw forward, Alichino and Calcabrina,” he/then began to say, “and thou, Cagnazzo;/and let Barbariccia lead the ten.

  Let Libicocco come besides, and Draghinazzo,/tusked Ciriatto, and Graffiacane, and Farfarello,/and furious Rubicante….

  _____

  “I’m so hungry I could shit my pants,” Begalone yelled. He pulled off his shirt, standing in the dirty trodden grass by the bank of the Aniene, among the burned-over bushes. He unbuttoned his pants and took a leak right where he stood. “What are you pissing there for?” Caciotta called from where he himself was taking a leak some distance away. “O.k., I’ll. go piss in the Via Arenula,” said Begalone, “you idiot.” “Let’s go for a swim,” Caciotta said contentedly—in these three years he had put on weight—“and then let’s go to the movies.” “Where you hiding the money?” Alduccio asked sarcastically. “That’s my worry,” said Caciotta. “He must have picked up a lot of butts last night,” Alduccio yelled, already naked and his feet in the water. Caciotta, buckling his belt around his clothes, answered with a restrained, “Fuck you too.”

  He put down his bundle of clothes with the others’, by a dusty bush, and climbed straight up the bank to the field where the grain had recently been cut, and where two or three horses were grazing. The smallest boys, who had come before noon, were playing together up there. “Hey, you’re all naked!” Caciotta yelled. “Mind your own fucking business!” Sgarone yelled back. “You little bastard,” Caciotta shouted at the boy, making a grab for him. But he slipped away and ran down the bank by the swimming-place. As it happened, Begalone, Tirillo, and the other boys were naked too. Caciotta had talked that way because that morning he had stolen his nephew’s drawers, and had made a pair of trunks out of them, doing the sewing himself. “That’s what I call dressed to kill,” said Begalone, laughing. Someone was yelling at the top of his lungs from halfway across the river, which was flowing darkly beneath the sun over its narrow bed between reedy, bushy banks. The boys who meant to swim out to the dredge came along on floats made of bundles of reeds. “Let’s swim across,” Alduccio called from the bottom of the bank, and jumped into the water. Almost all the big boys followed after him; the little ones stopped playing and went toward the river’s edge. “What’s the matter, aren’t you going in?” they asked Caciotta. “It ain’t that I’m not brave, it’s just that I’m so fucking scared,” Caciotta said.

  The others swam across with long strokes, crossing the path of those who were coming downstream on their floats, and reached the far shore, steep and filthy. A stream as white as limewater sliced through the bank, flowing through the dried mud and weathered bushes at the foot of the seaweed processing plant with its green storage tanks and tobacco-colored walls, all windowless. Begalone went down below the factory drain to bathe.

  ‘‘That’s what you need, all right,” Caciotta yelled. Begalone, making a trumpet with his hands but scarcely turning his head, yelled across to the opposite side, “Bring your sister over here for a bath!”

  “Hey, shitass!” Caciotta called.

  “Hey, clapface,” Begalone answered.

  The boys who had come down from the dredge on their floats went ashore by the swimming-place, and rolled around in the black mud under the steep bank; the younger boys came down to join them.

  There were three of the younger boys still up on the top of the bank. They had come down from the Ponte Mammolo district, and after stopping on the bridge to look for a moment, they had gone to join the others on the edge of the drop to* the river, right by the bend. They hadn’t yet made up their minds to undress. They were watching the boys who were skylarking about in the mud and shallow water, and the others who were paddling in the streamlet by the processing plant on the farther shore. The two smaller boys were laughing, having a good time just looking on. The older boy watched quietly, then slowly began to take off his clothes. The two others undressed too, and they piled their clothes in one heap. The smallest boy took the clothes under his arm while the others started down to the river. The little boy stood there sulking. “Hey, Genè,” he called, “don’t I get to swim too?” “Later,” Genesio answered in a low voice. More groups of boys came around the bend in the river, in the stubble burning slowly here and there on the slopes by the Via Tiburtina and at the edge of the stream, crackling into little tongues of flame. They came on two or three at a time, yelling and jumping in the empty fields, the Pecoraro hill and the white walls of the Silver Cine in the background.

  They were half-naked, their trousers held up by lengths of string for belts, their ragged shirts or sweaters flopping outside their pants. They pulled off their trousers on the way, and came to the edge of the field carrying their clothes in their hands. “I can swim better than you can, I’m telling you,” Armandino, holding onto his dog’s collar, said angrily to a boy who was behind him. “Up yours,” said the boy, intent on pulling off his grimy gray shirt as quickly as he could. When they reached the swimming-place, just above where it was all swampy and reedy, Armandino threw a stick into the water and the dog scrambled down the bank in a great cloud of dust, sniffed at the water, and plunged in. All the boys drew near to watch. The dog seized the stick, and holding it in teeth that were bared clean to the gums, came happily up onto the bank, dripping muddy water. Armandino patted him contentedly, then threw the branch into the water again, farther out, making the dog go through all that fuss again. He emerged elated, dropped the stick and jumped up on the boys. He attacked them, setting his forepaws on their chests, his tail curling about his hind legs, dripping wet, whining with joy. They backed away laughing. “Hey, you little mutt,” they said affectionately. The dog fastened on Sgarone, knocking him almost to the ground, holding him with his forepaws as if he wanted to embrace him, his mouth open.

  “He wants to slip it to you,” said Tirillo.

  “Like hell he does,” said Sgarone, pushing the dog away, not at all sure of his intentions.

  “Let’s make the dog give it to Piattoletta,” Roscietto called, laughing.

  “Lets, let’s!” the others shouted.

  “Hey, Piattolè,” they yelled down toward the shore, where Piattoletta was playing by himself in the mud and garbage of the river. “Come on up here and bend over,” the boys shouted from the height of the bank. He did not answer, crouching, his shoulder blades sticking out, his arms pitifully thin, his face like a mouse’s, his chin resting on his chest. He had a big, floppy cap on his head to cover the scabs; it made his pimply, hairy neck look even thinner. He had a face with a yellow cast, two huge eyes, and lips that stuck out like a monkey’s. Sgarone and Roscietto came down and began pulling him by the arm. He started to cry quietly, and the tears suddenly flooded his face all the way to his neck. “Come on and give the dog a taste of it, come on!” they yelled at him. “Let’s see what you got there!” He grabbed hold of bushes and clutched at the muddy soil, crying and saying nothing. But meanwhile the dog, still jumping from one boy to the next along the bare stubbled edge of the bank, whining with excitement, suddenly started to pick up in his jaws the clothes piled here and there, and race around with them. “Hey, you little bastard!” the boys shouted, laughing, afraid that he might drop the clothes in the water. Sgarone and Roscietto, laughing too, let go of Piattoletta, who slipped down among the bushes, and climbed up to make sure their bundles of clothes tied with a string were safe.

  Mariuccio was holding on tightly to his own clothes and his brothers’, drawing back worriedly whenever the dog came up; but the dog paid no attention to him, even when he bumped against the boy’s side, almost knocking him over, and wetting him with his soaked fur. Then the dog noticed the boy and jumped up happily to pull the bundle of clothes from his hands. “Hey, Genè, hey, Genè,” Mariuccio cried out in terror. The dog had got his teeth into Genesio’s trousers and was tugging at them. The other boys laughed. “You little bastard!” they shouted at the dog. Genesio and his other brother came up the bank dripping water, and scared the dog off by brandishing a
stick at him. Genesio took the clothes from Mariuccio and, still not saying a word, rolled them up again.

  There was a moment of calm, and all that could be heard was the voice of an old drunk who had come down to drop his pants somewhere among the rubbish, and who was singing under the arches of the bridge. But the boys who had crossed to the far shore started back, stemming the current together, yelling and singing. Caciotta, who hadn’t gone into the water yet, called, “Beglaò, is it warm, hey, Begalò?”

  “It’s warm,” Begalone answered, arms and legs thrashing about in the oil-coated water, “warm as piss.”

  “Why don’t you jump?” Sgarone yelled at Caciotta.

  “Probably can’t swim,” said some little boy.

  “Yeah, shithead, teach me, won’t you?” said Caciotta, his face darkening.

  “Go on, cross the river,” said Armandino, who had undressed meanwhile; like Caciotta, he had a pair of trunks that he had got hold of God knows how.

  “Let me stick it in just a little way . . .” the old drunk warbled from under the bridge.

  “Come on, Caciò, come on!” Alduccio and Begalone called up from the water’s edge.

  “Yeah, here he goes,” said Armandino with a grin.

  From the foot of the bank, Roscietto slung a handful of river-muck at Caciotta. Furious, Cacciotta yelled, “Who did that?” moving to the edge of the bank and looking down. The boys laughed.

  “If I find the guy who did it, I’ll use his head for a football.”

  “You can swim,” said Armandino, “but I don’t see you crossing the river.”

  “I can cross it all right, only the fucking thing scares me.” Genesio had taken a half-cigarette from his trouser pocket, and was smoking it as he watched the commotion. He and his brothers were the only ones from Ponte Mammolo, and they were on their own here. Suddenly a dozen boys surrounded them. “Give us a drag,” they said, “ah, come on, lemme have a drag. What’s the matter, you going to smoke it all by yourself?” They clustered about Genesio like beggars, waiting for a drag, pushing and shoving one another out of the way. “Where you from?” Sgarone asked, to get things onto a friendly footing. “Ponte Mammolo,” Genesio answered. “That’s where we live,” Mariuccio announced. After taking a couple of drags, Genesio passed the butt to Sgarone, and the others crowded around him, waiting for their turn.

  “First we go swimming,” Caciotta repeated with satisfaction, “and then we go to the movies.”

  “What’re they showing in Tiburtino?” Armandino asked.

  “ ‘The Lion of Amalfi,’ ” said Caciotta, stretching out contentedly in the dust and rubbish.

  The hundred and fifty lire in his pocket accounted for his good spirits. From time to time the buses from Casale di San Basilio and Settecamini passed along the Via Tiburtina, beneath the silent sun that wrapped the Tivoli hills in haze beyond the shimmering fields. An odor of rotten apples, coming from the processing plant, hung over everything, clinging like an oil stain spreading out from the factory building—that looked like a spider with its walls and storage tanks—over the banks of the Aniene, the asphalt of the roadway, and the stubble, burning with a flame that was invisible in the glaring sun.

  “Hey, Borgo Antico,” Riccetto called patronizingly to Genesio’s middle brother. Riccetto had come down from the bridge along the path, erect, his chest swelling out under his polo shirt, wearing his out-for-a-stroll air—so much so that a boy from Tiburtino, catching sight of him, yelled, “Well, will you look who’s here!” “Hey, Borgo Antì,” said Riccetto gaily and mockingly from the edge of the steep bank, for Borgo Antico was paying absolutely no attention to him, and as if he had not heard at all had squatted down on the dirty shore and turned his frowning face toward the river. Riccetto, looking scornful, began to undress. He piled his clothes at his feet, not hurrying at all. Then he pulled on a pair of loud trunks, took a cigarette from his pocket, and lit up. He squatted down in the hot dust and looked again at the boys milling around below the bank. Mariuccio was standing near him, holding his brothers’ clothes against his ribs. “Hey, Borgo Antì,” Riccetto began again. “Here’s where I came in,” sneered the little kid, who had it in for him. The other boy paid no attention whatsoever. “Hey, sing us a song, Borgo Antì,” Riccetto called. But Borgo Antico didn’t even turn his head, crouching immobile, his chocolate face dark and shining. “What, he sings too?” asked Sgarone sarcastically. “Why, sure,” said Riccetto in the same voice. Borgo Antico was still silent, and Genesio too was quiet, as if they had no idea what was going on. Mariuccio, the smallest of the brothers, said, “He don’t feel like singing.” “Hey, shithead,” said Riccetto to Borgo Antico, “what’s the matter, your throat dry?” “What’ll you give him?” Genesio asked suddenly. “I’ll give him a cigarette, how about it?” “Sing,” Genesio ordered his brother. “He’s going to sing now,” Mariuccio announced. Borgo Antico lifted his skinny dark shoulders and pressed his bird’s face even tighter into his chest. “Sing, why don’t you?” Genesio said, already angry. “What am I supposed to sing?” Borgo Antico said hoarsely. “Sing Tuna Rossa,’ go ahead,” said Riccetto. Borgo Antico sat down, pulling his knees up against his chest, and began to sing in Neapolitan, producing a voice ten times his own size, and so full of passion that he sounded like a thirty-year-old. The other boys, who had been out of sight under a hump in the bank, right in the mud, came around him to listen. “Jesus, how he can sing!” said Roscietto, and all over the river you couldn’t hear anything but that voice. At the song’s high point, when everyone was standing stock-still, another handful of mud struck Caciotta’s head—he still hadn’t made up his mind to jump into the water. “Who did that?” he began again, getting mad. “Let’s see what you got in that hand,” he said, catching sight of Armandino, who, with his dog at his side, had one hand hidden behind his back. Armandino stared right into his eyes, his own mocking and just a little scared, defiant, pretending he couldn’t care less. He was silent a moment, refusing to show his hand. Then suddenly he pulled it from behind his back and showed it, palm up. But Caciotta jumped behind him, and grabbing hold of him under the arms, forced him to get up.

  Taken by surprise, Armandino pushed the hair away from his eyes, still looking at Caciotta with a mixture of insolence and nervousness. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” “What’s that you were sitting on?” asked Caciotta, getting even angrier, picking up a handful of mud that had been kneaded and shaped for throwing. “Stop breaking balls, why don’t you?” Armandino stammered. “It was you, right?” said Caciotta. Pointing his hand stiff-fingered at Caciotta, Armandino burst out, “Look at him, will you? Who the hell’s fucking with you anyway, you jerk?” But he moved back about ten steps, just in case. Caciotta watched him, speechless, choking with rage, and moved threateningly toward the boy—who had behind him the whole field and the riverbank as far as the dredge to retreat in, all the way to the Fisherman’s Rest in Tiburtino, but who stayed where he was, hunched a little, red-faced, ready for anything for pride’s sake. When Caciotta came close, he bent down suddenly, almost crying, picked up a dried turd, and slung it at him. But he couldn’t get away immediately because Caciotta, beside himself, was on him in two jumps and had grabbed him by the seat of his underpants as he turned. Armandino ran away, his underpants hanging down in tatters from his bare backside. He went a long way off, amid a storm of laughter, as far as the bend of the river, and sat himself down while Caciotta turned back to the others with scarcely concealed triumph. Armandino began to slip his underpants around back-to-front. He didn’t give a damn if he was bare in front; the main thing was to have his butt under cover. The other boys went on jeering at him, standing together at the top of the bank. “Hey, look, even Piattoletta’s laughing!” said Begalone, who had come up from the water to join the others, and who now saw Piattoletta with his mouth open. As soon as he heard this, Piattoletta stopped laughing and turned to go back down the bank. But Begalone’s hand stopped him. The contrast between the two boy
s was immense. Squint-eyes, freckles, reddish skin and all, Begalone could still be considered the toughest of the group, and you can bet that’s just the way he was considered, patiently holding on to Piattoletta by the back of the neck without even looking at him. He had spent part of the night sleeping in Salario and part in the Villa Borghese, among the whores and bums, or picking pockets on the trolley. The other boy had come down to the river after spending the morning with his grandmother, picking through garbage heaps in the stinking fields or among the shanties down where the drains from the Polyclinic spill into the Aniene. Now, with Begalone’s hand forcing him down to the ground, he squatted silently like one of those animals that plays dead, ready to start bawling under the filthy white cap that was so enormous it reached down his back. Only his flapping ears kept the cap from sliding down over his nose.

  “Even Piattoletta’s laughing, the little jerk,” Begalone repeated in a gaily patronizing voice, slapping his hand hard against the bony knobs of the boy’s spine. Piattoletta watched him, jolted by the slaps. “You’re going to break him in two,” said Riccetto. “What? Are you kidding? How’m I going to break a tree trunk like that?” And he gave him another shot in the shoulder. Piattoletta laughed a little, his mouth twisting.

  “You want to know what he’s laughing at? You want to know?” said Sgarone. “He’s laughing because he saw Amandino’s nuts.”

  “Is that right?” said Begalone. “The little bastard! I didn’t know you had to put blinders on when he was around. You like nuts, huh? I hope they kill you—you and that Arab you got for a father.”

  Piattoletta hung his head down, looking around out of the corners of his eyes, while everyone laughed.

  “What do you mean, nuts?” asked Tirillo, shaking himself, legs spread, his belly against Piattoletta’s nose. “This is what he wants, the little fag.”

  “Give it to your sister, why don’t you?” muttered Piattoletta, who had already started crying. Tirillo struck him two or three times in the face with his naked belly, knocking him over in the dirt. “Let him go,” said Begalone. “He’s going to give us a speech in German, ain’t you, Piattole?”