The two damsels ignored them this time around too, sitting motionless as before. Crestfallen, the two mongrels sat down with their backs against the crumbling yellow wall of the temple, partly in shadow and partly in moonlight.
‘‘Which one would you like to plow,” Begalone asked, “the blonde or the redhead?”
“Both.”
“Not asking for much, are you?” said Begalone.
“Double or nothing,” Alduccio explained gaily, “because if I take just one, the other girl will get jealous.”
“They’re waiting for a cash customer,” Begalone muttered.
“Well, what of it? Can’t we be waiting to ball around too?” Alduccio said optimistically.
“Want to give it a try?” Begalone asked after a moment.
“Let’s give it a try,” said Alduccio. But neither of them moved; they stayed there, talking quietly and snickering, their knees pulled up to their chests, their bottoms planted in the dirt, their cowlicks and the tips of their shoes touched by moonlight. But when the two girls at last exchanged a few words with each other, the two boys took heart and began to kick up a little verbal dust.
“Hey, give me a smoke,” said Begalone loudly.
“When we’ve smoked this one, that’s all she wrote,” said Alduccio, lighting the cigarette.
“There’s more where that came from.”
“Yeah, but unless you pay for them, you better hook them off a blind man.”
“Boy, it’s hot,” Begalone said, gasping. “It’s enough to split a turtle’s ass! You know,” he added after a moment, “I’m dying in this heat.”
“Yeah?” said Alduccio.
“Let’s take a dunk in the fountain,” said Begalone.
“You out of your mind?” Alduccio was amused.
“I’m not kidding,” Begalone said disgustedly.
“Ah, fuck off,” said Alduccio with a laugh.
The two girls had a fit of the giggles.
“Come on, Aldo!” Begalone shouted.
They rose to their feet in the shadow, and jokingly began hastily unbuttoning their shirts. They slipped them off, and threw them to the ground, back into even deeper shadow. In their undershirts and with their long hair, they looked like Samson and Absalom. So as not to lose their balance while pulling off their pegged pants, they sat down once more.
“Let me take my shoes off first,” said Alduccio softly, feeling sentimental about his new shoes, and talking like a man who’s getting ready to horse around a little all by himself. He took off his shoes and gave them a toss. At last, they both slipped their undershirts off their black, sweaty chests, and were dressed in nothing but their shorts.
“Get a load of this build, buddy,” said Begalone, sticking out his chest.
“Solid as a truck,” said Alduccio.
“Two-bit whores, two-bit whores ,” Begalone sang, gathering up the clothes that they had tossed around for the hell of it. He tied them into a bundle with the belts, and slipped them under his arm. Ready for their a a, they moved out of the shadow, paused a moment in the full splendor of the moonlight, and then began to run through the flower beds, yelling and screaming. They threw the clothes down by the chain that encircled the fountain, scrambled up onto the basin, which was at least three feet off the ground, and stood upright on the fountain’s edge.
“Jesus, I’m shivering already,” said Begalone, twisting up his mouth and hunching his shoulders.
“Go on, it’s warm,” said Alduccio.
“Yeah, warm as soup all right,” said Begalone, balancing himself with his toes curled on the fountain’s rim like a monkey’s. Alduccio gave him a shove, and he fell into the water like a sack of potatoes.
“Christ, what a belly-whopper!” Begalone said, coming up, his head streaming with water.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” said Alduccio, and he took a plunge that sent the water sloshing from the basin to pour down the marble pedestal beneath the fountain. Begalone was singing at the top of his lungs, his head and shoulders raised above the water.
“Hey, shut up, you nut!” Alduccio said. “If a guard hears you, it’s our ass.”
“Watch this, the drowned chicken,” said Begalone. He sank beneath the surface, and came up again half-drowned, wiping his face madly, his hair all over it, stiff as bristles and longer than Mary Magdalene’s.
“You want to do things in a big way, but you don’t have what it takes,” said Alduccio, laughing. In three minutes, they had soaked the pavement, flower beds and all, for ten yards around.
“Hey, I’m getting out,” said Begalone.
“Me too,” cried Alduccio. “I ain’t getting pneumonia if I can help it.”
They clambered up onto the basin’s edge again, their shorts sticking to them, transparent, took one more header, and then crawled out of the fountain.
‘‘Jesus,” said Begalone, his teeth chattering.
Dripping as they were, they picked up their clothes and started to run across the mowed lawn, hurdling the low bushes. They raced along laughing, trying to warm up. Then they took the steps of the temple in two jumps, went under the colonnade, and passing behind the two girls, went into the shadow to slip their clothes on again. They started to slap each other around a little. The girls hardly bothered to notice, uninterested, or smiling scornful little smiles.
“Come on,” said Begalone, “let’s wring out these shorts.” Laughing, their teeth still chattering, they drew back a little farther, around the curve of the temple, slipped off their shorts and started to wring them out. As always when dressing after a bath, Begalone was overcome by a wave of sentiment. “Never, never before—have I loved you as 1 love you now,” he sang, his wet shorts over his shoulder, pulling on his socks. But while the boys were quietly getting dressed, the two turtle doves took off. They walked up toward the river, each with a book in her hand, wide pleated skirts floating in the bright moonlight. Still half-undressed, and holding his pants up with his hand, Begalone went over to the steps where the girls had been sitting.
“Hey, you beauties!” he yelled.
Alduccio too, also half-naked, came up, put his hands to his mouth like a megaphone, and yelled loudly: “Look at those lovely tomatoes!”
“Come on,” he said, “let’s get dressed and go pick them up.”
The girls were already at Monte Savello when Alduccio and Begalone, their clothes sticking to their wet bodies, caught up with them.
“O.k., let’s see how you make a woman,” said Begalone, as they hurried after the two chicks, who were walking along calmly and briskly.
“Damn them, look how they’re running,” said Alduccio, who was moving as if his feet were hurting him. “Why don’t you talk to them?” he said, panting.
“Yeah, sure, weak as I’m feeling,” said Begalone, sounding even more exhausted.
“You’re such a great pick-up artist, say something to them, for Christ’s sake.”
“Balls,” said Begalone disgustedly.
Meanwhile, however, the two girls turned onto the quay, walked up to a car that was about thirty feet long, got in, started up the motor, and took off.
The two young toughs were left leaning against the guardrail, all tired out, looking like a couple of plucked turkeys.
“You look like a beggar,” Alduccio said after a moment, glancing at Begalone and bursting out laughing. “And you look like you’ve been in solitary,” said Begalone. “Shit, we’ll never make out tonight, not at this rate,” he went on.
“Yeah, well, with a hundred and fifty lire in your pocket, what do you want?” Alduccio sadly smoothed out in his pocket the hundred and fifty lire stolen from Caciotta. “Let’s go get a drink in the Cerchi,” said Begalone. “We’ll draw lots for it.” “Idiot!” said Alduccio, striking two fingers against his forehead. “And then I suppose we walk back to Tiburtino.” “For Christ’s sake,” Begalone burst out, “you mean we can’t pick up another hundred and fifty lire somewheres? You can’t find a clown with a
little money on him around here?” “When are we going to find him, next Christmas?” asked Alduccio. “Fuck, what do you want to bet we find him?” said Begalone. They turned down toward the Ponte Garibaldi, looking like a pair of hungry wolves. By the urinal on the hill above the bridge, on the Via Arenula side, an old man was hunched up against the low wall. Begalone went inside to take a leak, and then went over to lean against the wall too—Alduccio was already there. They stood there without talking for a little while. Then Begalone fished a cigarette butt from one of his pockets, and leaning courteously toward the old man, he said, ”1 beg your pardon, would you have a match?” In five minutes’ time, they’d gotten fifty lire off him.
They got another hundred by the Ponte Sisto, off an old man who was carrying a sack under his arm. He started in whining piteously, enough to bring milk to an old woman’s tits. Begalone decided it was time to cut the comedy. He said, “We’re dying of hunger, son-of-a-bitch, we haven’t had nothing to eat since morning.” The gentleman gave them a hundred lire to buy four buns with, and they immediately took off by the Via dei Giubbonari. They walked along swiftly in the direction of the Campo dei Fiori. They were in deep discussion. “Well, are you a man too?” Alduccio said angrily. “Will you listen to him!” Begalone cried, stopping in the middle of the street and thrusting out his hand toward him. “Who got the money, you or me?” “O.k., so what?” said Alduccio. “Nothing at all,” said Begalone. “I find the money and he gets huffy about it. You idiot,” he added, striking two fingers against his nose. But at that moment they came to a barbecue place. Begalone said, “Fuck it!” and went inside. They bolted down three meatballs each, and when they came out again, they were exactly where they had started. But since they were in the swing of it, they kept at it, walking apart down the Via dei Giubbonari. When they reached the end of the street and turned into the Campo dei Fiori, Alduccio gave Begalone a nudge, and with a gesture of his head and a sleepy, knowing look in his eye, he pointed out a queer who was walking ahead of them giving them long looks every now and then. “We’ve made it now,” said Begalone. The man, walking slowly for a while and then speeding up for a while, turned into the Campo dei Fiori, then turned to the left among a crowd of kids who were playing in the wet piazza with a ball made of rags; he stopped for a moment by the opening in a public urinal, and looked around. Begalone and Alduccio examined him thoroughly. He was pretty well dressed, wearing a fine shirt and handsome sandals. Undecided, the queer went on toward the Piazza Farnese, and then up again to the Campo dei Fiori by a dark little street—and so on, two or three times running. He went around and around through those streets like a mouse drowning in a bucket.
“Hey,” said Begalone, coming forward, “what the hell are you doing here?”
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Riccetto, lowering his eyes to take in Begalone, Alduccio, and the joker they had in tow.
“Give me a light and cut the crap,” said Begalone, coming close to Riccetto with a cigarette in his mouth. Riccetto held out his own lighted cigarette to him, without shifting his position an inch, but simply dropping his eyelids a bit, since he was a little higher up than Begalone and the other two. He was sitting on the guardrail of the quay-side street, one leg swinging back and forth and the other pulled up against his chest.
“What, you got a date with somebody?” Begalone asked.
“Date? What date?” said Riccetto.
“Just an idea,” said Begalone.
Alduccio and the other man were keeping very quiet.
“He likes Alduccio,” said Begalone, snickering, but a little envious. In any case, the other man was giving Riccetto the once-over as he purposely sat in that provocative posture, his legs apart.
“You looking at me?” Riccetto said to him.
He smiled. ‘‘Yeah,” he said, half shy and half putting it on.
“Oh,” said Begalone, suddenly affable and gracious, as if he had only just noticed something he’d forgotten, “meet my friend.”
Riccetto let the leg that was pulled up to his chest slip down, and stuck out the hand that had been holding it toward his new acquaintance. The man shook hands with him, flashing a finishing-school smile. “Pleased to meet you,” he said, alluding to the pleasure he expected to have in the future if all went well, and looking up and down at the dispenser of that pleasure, who sat there calm and unruffled, as if he were ready to burst into song.
“You’re looking at me,” Riccetto said, taking in the glances.
The queer pretended he’d been caught out, feigned an embarrassed smile, with the suggestion of a dare about his pale mouth, and the tongue inside it darting around like a snake’s. He put a hand to his throat, nervously fingering his open shirt-collar, as if he wanted to protect himself from the damp of the night air, or as if to modestly conceal God knows what from the sight of the boys.
“You’d like him, huh?” said Begalone.
“O.k., so I’d like him,” said the fairy, shrugging and pretending to be annoyed.
Alduccio began to get restless, feeling somewhat slighted. “What do you say we go?”
“Where you going?” the queer asked, drawling the words.
“Down by the river. Let’s go,” said Alduccio. They were at the railing on the quay-side between the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Garibaldi.
“You out of your mind, baby?” said the queer in a hurt voice.
“Come on,” Alduccio insisted. “Let’s go on down by the stairway and under the bridge and do our business.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” the fairy said, waving his hand and shaking his head, with an expression on his face that showed he was dead-set against it.
“Why the hell not?” Alduccio went on heatedly. “Where you going to find a better place? We don’t have to take a half-hour over it. Two minutes and good-by. We just make out we got to take a leak, and who’s going to bother anybody down there?” As Alduccio spoke, the queer paid no attention to him. All smiles and showing his teeth, he went on contemplating Riccetto—sometimes looking deep into his eyes and sometimes you know where. When Alduccio fell silent, the queer remembered him again, and he said drily and abruptly, as if the whole business were now beyond discussion, “No, I’m not going down there.”
And he smiled again at Riccetto, casting sheep’s eyes at him.
“Jesus, what an ugly bastard you are,” said Riccetto.
Alduccio took the offensive again. “Well, what do you want to do then?” Begalone backed him up too: “Say, let’s not waste any more time, buddy-boy!” The queer was fiftyish, but he was trying to make himself look at least twenty years younger. He went on clutching his shirt collar close to his chicken-breasted little chest, like a man who’s worried about his health. “O.k., let’s go,” he said condescendingly to the two boys.
“Yeah, you say let’s go, let’s go, but you don’t move!” said Alduccio.
Almost nobody ever came down between the Ponte Sisto and the Ponte Garibaldi any more, but Riccetto remembered what used to go on around there back when he was a kid just after the war. There used to be at least twenty young boys sitting on the rail the way he was now, ready to sell themselves to the first comer; the fairies used to come by in bunches, singing and dancing around, all plucked and peroxided, some of them still very young and some of them old men, but all acting crazy, not giving a damn about the people walking by or riding by in the trams, loudly calling out one another’s names— “Wanda!” “Bolero!” “Railroad Rosie!” “Mistinguette!”—as if they were hailing one another from a great distance, running up and kissing one another delicately on the cheek, the way women do so as not to spoil their make-up. And when they were all assembled in front of the boys who were sitting on the rail and watching everything with mean looks on their faces, the fairies would begin to dance, some sketching out a ballet step, some doing the cancan, and as they went on horsing around, every now and then they’d scream, “We’re free, girls! We’re free!”
In those days you could go
down the stairway and on the muddy flats covered with scraps of dirty paper under the Ponte Sisto or the Ponte Garibaldi you could do whatever you had a mind to, and no problems. Sometimes the paddy-wagon would come around, and everybody scattered, but afterward everything would start up again just as before. Tonight, Riccetto wasn’t there looking for business; he was just passing the time, feeling nostalgic.
“Tell you what, I’ll show you a good place,” he said, moved by an excess of Generosity.
The fairy set the mask of his fixed smile even tighter, throwing little sidelong glances in every direction, but feeling that he was a brilliant success, like a model being photographed with her shoulders bare. In fact, he made the same gesture that women make, tossing his hair back, and he started off, a little bit bowlegged, ready to follow Riccetto wherever he might lead.
Riccetto made them take the number 44 bus and ride up to the section where he used to live when he was a kid. They got off at the Piazza Ottavilla, which used to be practically out in the country when Riccetto had lived around there, and then they turned down to the left along a road that hadn’t been there before, or had just been a path going along through broad fields with clumps of reeds ten feet high and willows here and there, as if growing on the slopes of a valley; but now there were buildings here, already completed and tenanted, and more buildings going up. “Let’s go on a ways,” said Riccetto. They went on, and beyond the last building sites they came to a path that led to Donna Olimpia, passing first through the yard of an old tavern that had an arbor, full of drunks. They walked past it, but the little path ran only a short way beyond, for just after the fields that were now all built over with houses, there was a new street, and a number of buildings here and there along it, either completed or still under construction. Immediately on the left the slope of the Monte di Casadio plunged down, the slope where Riccetto used to spend the whole day when he was a kid. Now they walked in that direction, and when they came to the very edge of the hill that fell away beneath them almost in a sheer drop, they found themselves facing the Ferrobedò. It lay at their feet at the bottom of a valley bathed in white moonlight. Beyond it, against a background of whitish clouds, you could see the great semicircle of Monteverde Nuovo, a black mass of jagged buildings, and to the right, beyond the Monte di Casadio, the roofs of the tall buildings of Donna Olimpia.
The Ragazzi Page 20