“What, is he German?” Riccetto asked.
“That little shit is German, English, and Moroccan—go ask his mother!” said Begalone.
Piattoletta’s face was bathed in tears, and he let them run down his face and throat without wiping them away.
“You ought to see how he talks German,” said Sgarone. “Say something, Piattolè.”
“Go on, say something,” yelled Begalone, “up yours and your grandmother’s.”
“If you don’t say something,” said Tirillo, jumping to his feet, “we’ll ream out your asshole for you.”
“Yeah, because right now it’s just a little one,” said Roscietto.
“Are you or ain’t you?” said Begalone, grabbing hold of Piattoletta. “Because if you don’t start talking German, I’m going to throw your clothes in the river, and you can go home bare-assed to Pietralata.”
Piattoletta went on crying. “Where’s this shit-ass hidden his clothes?” asked Begalone. “Down there, in the mud,” Sgarone yelled, and ran to get them. “And this cap too,” said Begalone, pulling it from Piattoletta’s head, exposing his shaven skull, crisscrossed with white scars.
He made a heap of the clothes, and holding them up with one hand, jumped into the river and swam across. When he reached the other bank, beneath the drain of the processing plant, he yelled to Piattoletta, “If you don’t talk German now, you can get these crummy clothes tomorrow morning!”
“Go on, say something, why the hell not?” Riccetto said cheerfully.
“Damn you!” Sgarone yelled, giving him a kick in the back. Piattoletta began to cry louder, his monkey-face growing even more distorted and disgusting; but he decided to talk. “Ack rick grau ricke fram ghelenen fil ack ack,” he said, as softly as he had been crying.
“I can’t hear you! Talk louder!” Begalone yelled from the far shore. “Ir zum ack gramen bur ack minen fil ack zum cramen firen,” Piattoletta said a little louder, suddenly beginning to cry again. “Now talk like the Indians!” Begalone yelled. Piattoletta obeyed immediately, and, tears still streaming from his tightly shut eyes, he began to hop and flutter his arms, crying, “Eeyoo, eeyoo-oo-oo-ooh, ee-oo.” Begalone set the clothes down under a bush and jumped into the water, yelling, “Now do it with your asshole and I’ll bring the stuff back.”
The sun had sunk a little over toward Rome; coal dust seemed to hang in the air. “Let’s go,” said Genesio to his brothers. He made Mariuccio hand him his clothes, and he slipped on the trousers that had a rip in the cuff where the dog’s teeth had torn them. “Son of a bitch,” he said between his teeth, looking at the rip. “What’s Mamma going to say to you?” asked Mariuccio. Genesio didn’t answer. He took half a cigarette from his pocket, and when they had gone a little way farther along the path that climbed the slope to the Via Tiburtina, he lit up. “Hey, wait!” Riccetto called at that moment, seeing them going off. The three boys turned part way round and stopped for a moment; they were undecided whether to wait or not. “Let’s wait for him,” Genesio said in a low tone, still frowning, and without even looking to see what his brothers were doing he sat down cross-legged in the dust, smoking, his eyes lowered.
Riccetto dressed calmly, pulling on one sock after the other and taking time out to sing a little and shout at the boys who were taking racing dives and headers. Finally, after putting his clothes on backward two or three times, he was ready. He rose to his feet, and step by step, moving his shoulders lazily, he came up to the three boys from Ponte Mammolo who were waiting for him, and making a sarcastic gesture with his head, he said, “Let’s go.” They walked in single file along the path by the Aniene, went up the high bank where it very nearly overhung the Via Tiburtina, and went onto the bridge.
Riccetto, in his polo shirt, took the lead, plump, shining from his bath, still walking like a tough. He was feeling gay, and he sang, his eyes full of sarcasm, his dripping trunks swinging from his hand. The three boys followed him—Genesio by himself, his skin the color of licorice and his coal-black eyes looking crafty, and the others trotting along behind like puppies, as if they were forming a procession with Riccetto in the lead. They turned out of the Via Tiburtina to go up by the Via Casal dei Pazzi, which ran among the flat expanses of cultivated fields with their zigzag furrows, small factories painted with whitewash, construction sites, and the stumps of houses. There was no one about, and all that could be heard beneath the sun that was cooking the fields and the asphalt of the road was Riccetto’s voice as he sang.
The workmen who were excavating to lay sewer-pipe along the Via Casal dei Pazzi—since election time was at hand —were sleeping on their backs, stretched out in the shadow of a low wall. ”Hey, look!” cried Mariuccio in his little bird’s voice, leaning over to look down into the pit where the line from the winch hung motionless. Borgo Antico hurried over to look, equally impressed by the depth of the hole. Genesio glanced down at it sourly. “Hey, let’s go,” said Riccetto, seeing the three lingering behind, busy observing the separate pits, each with saw-horses around it, along the length of the road.
“Your ass has had it when your old man sees you,” Riccetto called brightly, moving one hand energetically up and down.
“Who pays any attention to him?” asked Genesio hoarsely.
“Yeah, yeah, just gossip is all,” said Riccetto mockingly, still shaking his arm. He was alluding to the beatings that the three boys caught every day from their father, who was an ill-tempered, drunken peasant. Riccetto knew him well, because he had been working with him as a laborer at Ponte Mammolo since spring. They turned into the Via Selmi, leaving behind the line of fenced-in pits stretching out of sight in the sunlight.
“He’s going to give you a fat lip!” Riccetto went on, enjoying himself.
‘‘Oh, yeah?” Genesio said, wounded to the quick, and not at all anxious to accept Riccetto’s predictions. But he had no good arguments handy, and Riccetto took advantage of the fact to have a good time.
” ’Specially if he’s had a drink,” he went on in a pathetic voice, “he’ll pick up a great big stick and you’ll be seeing technicolor all right.”
“Oh, dry up,” said Mariuccio, who was still too little to say fuck you to Riccetto, and he looked up uncertainly at him. “Oh, yeah, you’re joking now, but you’ll be crying pretty soon,” Riccetto said.
“Oh, dry up,” Mariuccio said again, undecided whether to take it as a joke or get angry. Riccetto began to hum a tune, as if he had forgotten about the three brothers. Then, “I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes!” he said merrily, twisting his mouth and drawing his head down between his shoulders as if to avoid a rain of blows.
“Oh, dry up,” Mariuccio repeated angrily. Genesio kept silent, taking a last drag from a cigarette that was reduced to a smoldering butt, kicking at the pebbles of the Via Selmi, which was sunken among tiny shriveled kitchen gardens, half-abandoned houses, and rutted fields.
“Here we are,” Riccetto said mockingly as they came down the road and approached the Pugliese’s house, one-storied and without whitewash. But they were building onto it and it was surrounded by scaffolding, while there were piles of dark-colored sand on the trodden earth of the garden, and a quick-lime pit. None of the two or three workmen was still on the job. Riccetto, walking in the lead, came forward calmly. Pugliese had just been dealing with his wife, and he was seated on the steps, the blood showing in blotches beneath the skin of his face, his eyes glaring and shining like a dog’s. The three boys, having caught sight of their father from a long way off, were keeping their distance among the stone-piles by the roadside and the tumbledown walls, expecting an outburst. But Riccetto went into the garden, calm and good-humored, took a comb out of his hip-pocket, dipped it in the fountain, and began to comb his hair, beautiful as Cleopatra.
“The dogs! The dogs!” Roscietto cried, coming out from under the bank of the Aniene, a whole flock of boys behind him. Zinzello, the carter who combed his hair straight back, and Miccia, with two grown dogs, male and female, w
ere coming along the path from Tiburtino. When they reached the bend in the river, while the dogs went dashing about in the stubble, they undressed, took soap out of their pockets, and walked into the stream to wash, chatting together.
They paid no attention to the little boys or to the older boys. Both Zinzello, with his stony face, and Miccia, who was already running to fat, a beard rimming his well-nourished cheeks, had started to sing, the cold water running down their backs the whole time, and they took no notice of the boys playing with their dogs.
Armandino’s dog had begun to snarl but kept some way off, his tail laid along his ribs, turning so as never to present his wet flanks directly to his two colleagues as he curled up into a ball or stretched out.
All the boys, including Piattoletta, had gathered around them.
“He’s scared shitless,” said Roscietto jeeringly.
“Ah, he’s only a pup,” said Sgarone, taking the dog’s side.
“Pup, what do you mean, pup, you dope,” said Roscietto resoundingly. “He was born before I was.”
Armandino clucked his tongue and raised his brows in a gesture of sympathy. “He’s not even a year old yet.”
“So what?” said Roscietto. “Does he have to be scared of another dog?”
“Where do you get that scared stuff? You give me a pain,” said Armandino.
He went over to the dog, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him toward the other two dogs, who were snarling and had begun to circle around in the stubble.
He bent over his dog, and began to urge him on furiously, so softly he could hardly be heard, his mouth dripping spit.
“Get ’em, Lupo! Get ’em, Lupo! Get ’em!”
Lupo was trembling from the sound of the low voice that scarcely reached his pricked-up ears. His chest was thrust forward, and his whole body was vibrating like a running motor. Suddenly Armandino let him go.
All the boys were watching, hardly saying anything. Of Zinzello’s two dogs, the male was the smaller and skinnier, and seeing Lupo being encouraged and egged on by his master, he beat a lazy retreat toward the middle of the field, turning now and again to snarl and bark.
But the bitch was a terror. Skinny, black, sharp-nosed, scabby-tailed, slant-eyed, she stood motionless as a statue, waiting for Lupo. Coming up at full speed, Lupo stopped dead in his tracks, barking madly at her.
She waited a moment, listening to him balefully, among the shouts of the boys. Then she turned away and took a couple of steps to go off about her business, with an air that plainly said, “Let me get out of here, because if I don’t there’s going to be a massacre!”
Moving off, she turned now and again, her head stretched along her skinny shoulder, her eyes dull, dark, and mottled with red.
“Get ’er, Lupo! Get ’er!” Armandino whispered, still bending to the dog’s ear, while the boys egged him on too, yelling like apes, raising a clamor that could have been heard all the way to Tiburtino. Lupo, in his innocence, darted after the bitch, who was still keeping quiet, barking his head off and whining.
“It seems to me like you’re pushing it just a little,” she appeared to be thinking, and she stopped. “It really does.” And a moment later, “Why, you little jerk!” she howled, losing her patience suddenly. The howl was so ferocious that Lupo stopped, and it even intimidated the boys. The bitch turned halfway round, and looked darkly at that clown Lupo, who started to back away.
“What did I tell you, Sgarò?” said Roscietto.
Armandino bent down lower still. “Get ’er, Lupo! Get ’er! Get er!” he said, very nearly trembling himself. Lupo plucked up his courage, suddenly forgetting his fear, and began to bark again, even more threateningly and incautiously than before. “Here’s where I came in,” the bitch seemed to be thinking. “You slut, you two-bit whore, what do you think you’re staring at?” Lupo yelled in fury. “Trying to impress me or something?” The bitch was still silent. “If you don’t say something quick,” Lupo threatened, “I’ll knock your goddamn head off!”
“Ain’t you a little sweetheart, though!” said the male dog, butting into the conversation.
“Yeah?” asked Lupo, taking a swipe at the other, who slipped away. “What does that little creep want with me?” The bitch let out a growl. “Shove it up your ass!” Lupo yelled.
“That does it,” said the bitch, “I’ve had it up to here, you know what I mean?” She turned to face him squarely. “You may do your damnedest,” she howled ferociously, “but I’m going to straighten you out if it means thirty years in Regina Coeli!”
“They’re going to tear each other apart!” said Sgarone, but he hadn’t gotten the words out before the two dogs were at each other, their hind legs planted on the ground and their forelegs drawn back to their chests, their muzzles gaping open and their teeth bared to the gums. Growling the whole time, they tried to bite each other behind the ears, and between bites they howled so loud that the noise drowned out the boys’ shouting. Lupo rolled over in the stubble, raising a cloud of dust, and the bitch was on top of him, snapping at his throat. But Lupo got up again and after jumping backward, leaped on her from almost his full height, waving his forepaws as if he were drowning. They howled and writhed, mad with rage. But at the height of the battle, Zinzello came up from the bank and whistled. Immediately, as if her rage had magically evaporated, the bitch ran up to him, followed by the other male dog, running swiftly, jumping, wagging her tail, submissive and almost joyful. Zinzello cursed at the boys, and when he had finished speaking his mind, he went back to soaping himself, taking the dogs with him. Lupo was hurt. “Look at those slashes!” said Tirillo loudly, astonished. “Just look at those slashes!” They all bent over Lupo, whose neck was nearly hairless; there were swollen red bites with black edges here and there among the black hair plastered against the skin. “Jesus!” said Sgarone, in the same astonished voice. “Let’s throw him in the water,” said Roscietto, and they all went down the bank, pulling the dog along with them.
Meanwhile Caciotta was coming up along the shore where the older boys were playing cards and every now and then looking over to see if they could spot the janitor’s daughter at a window in the factory walls, so they could give her a hard time, bare-assed as they were. Caciotta looked around and said, “Now, where have my clothes gone to?”
“O clothes, where are you?” he sang out, as high-spirited as usual.
“You going already?” asked Alduccio.
“What’s there to hang around for?” asked Caciotta, looking for his clothes among the bushes and clumps of reeds.
“Let’s go for a swim again, come on,” Alduccio cried. “Uhuh,” said Caciotta.
“Forget him,” Begalone told Alduccio, giving him a nudge. Caciotta had found his clothes and was turning them over in his hands, looking at them.
“Who’s been at these things?” he said to himself. “Beats me.”
“What, is somebody around here going through people’s pockets?” he asked out loud.
“Oh, no!” Sgarone called sarcastically.
“If I catch anybody going through my pockets I’ll kick his head in,” Caciotta said cheerfully.
“What a man!” said Begalone from down by the shore, in response to that. Caciotta began to put on his socks and his shoes, singing meanwhile:
“Two-bit whores, two-hit whores ...”
“Hey, Caciò,” said Begalone, “Claudio Villa’s got nothing on you.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Caciotta, breaking off his song, and then starting right in again.
“Console yourself by singing,” said Alduccio.
“I’ll console myself all right,” said Caciotta.
“Two-bit whores, two-bit whores ...”
Why shouldn’t I console myself? What, I gotta ask permission from somebody before I can sing a song?
“Two-bit whores, two-bit whores ...”
Now we get dressed, and then we take a stroll, and then we go catch a flick.” While he sang and chattered to himself, h
e drew on his socks and shoes, and then he unfastened the belt that he had buckled around the bundle of clothes.
“You’re going off to the flicks, but you don’t say nothing about inviting your friends, right?” said Begalone.
“You clown, all I got’s a hundred and fifty lire.”
“Sure, sure, have it your way,” said Begalone.
Caciotta started to sing again, “Two-bit whores, two—” He broke off suddenly. He was silent for a moment, and then he came forward holding his clothes, white as a corpse.
“Who stole the money I had in my pocket?”
“Hey, jerk! You looking at me?” asked Begalone.
“Who was it?” Caciotta insisted, his face pale.
“I’m sure the guy that did it will tell you,” said Zinzello, going off with his dogs, shaking his head.
“Let’s see what’s in your pockets,” said Caciotta. Begalone jumped to his feet in a rage. “Here, you stupid bastard, take a look!” He picked up his pants and threw them at Caciotta, who caught them and went through each pocket carefully, not saying a word. Then he looked through Begalone’s shoes and socks.
“O.k., what’d you find?” Begalone yelled.
“Found your fucking ass,” said Caciotta.
“I’ll give you a kick in the head in a minute,” said Begalone. Caciotta went to look through Alduccio’s clothes, and then one by one through those of all the little boys, but he didn’t find a thing. He dropped them in the dust, not looking at anybody. God knows how many weeks it had been since he’d seen a hundred lire and felt as good as he had this afternoon. He dressed in silence, deep in thought, and then took off. There were more cars going by on the Via Tiburtina now, though the sun, already low, was still burning hot above the sooty clouds piling up over Rome. The shutters were being raised at the Silver Cine, and here and there among the buildings of the district, far-off voices and noises began to be heard. Alduccio and Begalone went for another swim, and then they took off too. The little boys were the last to leave the river.
The Ragazzi Page 17