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* The hag represents death; the Chiesa della Morte, or Church of Death, is in the Via Giulia.
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Two carabinieri were taking in the splendid panorama from inside the empty, stifling bus. Men from the Campagna or from Salerno, running sweat like fountains, with their summer uniforms unbuttoned wherever they could be unbuttoned, their caps in their hands, their reformed hoodlum faces frozen in bored expressions, thinking disgustedly about all this fuss made over a kid with a couple of scorches on him. After the bus crossed the bridge over the Aniene at top speed, brushing by the seaweed processing plant, and came to a stop in front of an old tavern, they got off, moving at a leisurely pace; wiping the sweat away with their handkerchiefs, they prepared to walk all the way up the Via Casal dei Pazzi, which started below the tavern and stretched out endlessly to the horizon shimmering in the hot air. Way off in that direction, Ponte Mammolo, like an Arab town, had its white houses spread along the gentle curves of its fields.
Eventually the two carabinieri got under way, walking on asphalt that was softened by the heat, and when they reached the crossroads they took the Via Selmi and entered the district proper. But the boys they were after weren’t around. They weren’t in one of the last houses in the Via Selmi, half-built and half-unbuilt, with curtains where the window-sashes should have been, and women quarreling around the outside water faucet. And they weren’t playing with the other boys in the street or in the fields. If the two cops had known that, they could have spared themselves the hike. But how could they have known? And to think that if they had just taken a look around as the bus was turning onto the bridge, they would have seen the vegetable gardens just beyond the bend in the river where the gang of boys all went swimming, and might have spotted the ones they were looking for.
The ones they were looking for were in fact right there among the vegetable gardens, or rather in a kind of jungle of bushes, willows, and reeds between the gardens and the bank that fell in a sheer drop to the Aniene. Mariuccio, who was still so small that he hadn’t started school yet, was playing there quietly, squatting on his heels, stirring up a couple of ants with a stick. Borgo Antico was watching him, and Genesio was squatting down off by himself, smoking gravely. Seated by them was their little dog, Fido by name, and he too was caught in a moment of repose. He sat with his hind legs under him, his front paws planted vertically on the ground; every now and then he scratched under his front legs with one or the other of his hind ones. With his easy, almost elegant, manner he looked about him, far off to right and left, watching the whole scene, from the houses of Tiburtino to the bend in the river, and casting a calm eye occasionally on his three young masters, who were after all just boys compared to him, and had to be indulged a little when they acted dumb.
Suddenly, in the midst of his contemplations, he rose and went over to sniff at Mariuccio’s heels. “Here, Fido,” Genesio said, but without a trace of a smile. He took hold of Fido, who had run over to him at once, and set the dog between his knees, petting him. The dog contentedly let himself be fondled, half-closed his eyes, and seemed to sink into a half-sleep in which he could enjoy to the full the special treatment being accorded him by his favorite among the boys. And it was unusual, because Genesio, who was good-hearted and an easy prey to his own emotions and affections, poor boy, habitually kept everything inside, and spoke as little as possible so as not to give himself away. His younger brothers had caught on to him, and they always did what he said, though not at all out of fear, and occasionally, while following instructions most respectfully, they still took the liberty of kidding him a little. The dog was just about to drop off on his lap. All four of them were dead for lack of sleep that morning. It was their first day of freedom; close by in the dry grass, among clumps of crushed reeds, you could still see the lairs where they had slept like sparrows in their nests, or little rabbits. They weren’t the least bit sorry that they had left home. On the contrary, the two younger boys were perfectly happy; Genesio would look after everything. And Genesio was frowning, looking after everything, while they played with the ants.
“Let’s go,” said Genesio, getting up suddenly. As usual, without asking where or why, Borgo Antico and Mariuccio got up too, full of curiosity, waiting to see what would happen next. The dog ran about wagging his tail, pleased that things were stirring again. He ran back and forth, barking continually, the sound coming out of his open mouth with its lolling tongue. But the place that Genesio had in mind wasn’t very far off. For a while they followed the rugged curving bank of the Aniene, jumping from one hummock to the next among the stands of reed, as far as the Fisherman’s Rest and the dredge. Then, crossing the river on the little old cobblestone bridge, they walked back along the other bank, which was much more open and where there was a narrow path running among the leafless bushes, until they were directly opposite where they had been on the other bank, over by the swimming-place. Like the day before, the old drunk was singing all by himself, “Let me stick it in just a little waaaay . . .” under the arch of the bridge—a place he must have taken a liking to. There wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere in the large expanse blackened by fire, leaving charred wheat stubble all around; not even the four black horses were in sight. But then they heard voices, and in fact, at the foot of the bank by the water’s edge, where the ground was still dirty and ploughed up as it had been the day before, there were three or four swimmers who must have come up while the three brothers and Fido were going around the dredge. They chattered and moved about quietly in the still pure light, in which, however, a stench was just beginning to spread in the sultry air. They were stretched out in the dust, their legs apart, turning lazily every now and then, and their voices resounded in the quiet air, for there was little traffic along the Via Tiburtina, and the factory opposite them was closed.
One of the group was Caciotta. When Genesio and the other boys came up, he was saying nostalgically, “If only that song had been popular last year!”
The song in question was being sung by Zinzello, who, perhaps dissatisfied with his Saturday bath, had come down to give himself a good lathering again, this time without his two dogs. Behind a bush, naked and skinny as an anchovy, he was bawling out desperately with all the breath in his body, “Here I am in jail, and mother’s dying . . .”
“Why do you wish that song had been popular last year?” inquired Alduccio, who was there too, his eyes as red as two wounds for lack of sleep.
“Why?” said Caciotta. “Because when I was in Porta Portese last year, I could have been singing it.”
“You bet,” said Alduccio, grinning.
“Boy, how I would have liked to sing that song,” Caciotta went on in a tone of enthusiasm blended with pathos, “when I was in jail myself, you know what I mean? Christ! I would have sung it at night, before going to sleep.” And he began to sing it after Zinzello, with fervor, but they sang it independently, each more passionately than the other, Zinzello on one side of a patch of bare and garbage-littered bushes and Caciotta on the other.
“They really broke you when you were in jail, didn’t they?” asked Begalone.
“You looking for trouble?” asked Caciotta menacingly, breaking off his song for a moment.
“Well, fuck those guys, anyway,” Genesio muttered, frowning, and speaking as if to himself as he squatted a little above them on the crumbling edge of the slope. Mariuccio and Borgo Antico stared at him. It was the first time he had ever said the whole phrase like that. looking thoughtfully at his brother and sighing, Mariuccio said softly, “What would Mama do if she heard you say that?” Genesio turned one of his expressionless glances on him, and then went back to contemplating the Tiburtino hoods. The boys’ mother was a woman from the Marches who had married a mason from Andria during the war, God knows why. She drudged away all the time, poor woman, and led a life that was worse than an animal’s. But, as she told the neighbors sometimes at moments when she was catching her breath, she wanted the boys to act as i
f they had had a decent upbringing. At that moment, she was weeping, first because she had realized that her boys and their dog were no longer living at home, and then because she had had a visit from the carabinieri, who were looking for them. But the three boys, each of them her spit and image, inside and out, were too excited just then to spare any thoughts for her. “Hey, Borgo Antì,” Begalone called from the foot of the bank, “let’s hear you sing that song.”
“I don’t know that song,” Borgo Antico said quickly, his dark face hardening.
“That’s not true,” said Mariuccio. “He knows it!”
Begalone got mad. He came up and chucked Borgo Antico under the chin. “You’re annoying me,” he said. Then he added, a menacing look settling on his Arab features, “Sing it if you know what’s good for you.” Pulling a long face, his head sunk down to his knees, Borgo Antico began singing “The Prisoner” with all his might.
Aldo took advantage of the diversion to go off a little way, as if he wanted to take a nap. He stretched out on the grass, washed clean by the rain the night before and burned by the sun again today, belly down, his face on his crossed arms.
While Borgo Antico was singing, Genesio went down the bank without a word, and Mariuccio and Fido followed him, both sliding down the crumbling slope on all fours. At the water’s edge, Genesio stopped a moment, looking abstractedly at the river flowing before him at the foot of the walls of the processing plant, and at the white furrow cut by the flow from the sewer on the opposite bank. Then he began to undress slowly; Mariuccio and Fido, squatting on the ground, watched him respectfully. Carefully, he slipped off his trousers, which were stiff with sweat and dust, his shirt, pink undershirt, shoes, and socks. Slim, a bit skinny even, his shoulder blades sticking out a little, he stood there for a moment, almost naked. Not quite, because he wasn’t a shameless little bastard like the Tiburtino kids his own age. He was still wearing his shorts, keeping thoroughly covered, front and rear. “Here,” he said to Mariuccio, handing him his clothes, carefully folded and tied in a bundle with his belt. “No, wait a minute,” he said shortly. He unloosed the belt, undid the bundle, and took a butt from his pants pocket, and a comb. He lit the butt and as he smoked he combed his hair carefully, asking Mariuccio if the part was straight or crooked, and then gave himself a kind of wave effect over his forehead—black, shining, not a hair out of place. At last, handing back the tied bundle to his brother, he announced drily, as if he were not speaking of himself, “Going to swim across today.” Mariuccio looked at him for a moment, aware that something exciting was afoot. Then he began to yell in his puppy-voice, “Hey, Borgo Antì, hey, Borgo Anti!” Borgo Antico hastily sang the remaining words of the song, really stepping on it, and leaned over the edge of the bank without saying anything.
“Hey, Borgo Antì,” Mariuccio said hurriedly and gaily, “Genesio says he’s going to cross the river today.”
Borgo Antico waited in silence for a moment, and then came sliding down the bank on his bottom, right by the swimming-place of sun-baked mud.
“You crossing the river, Genè?” he asked gravely.
“Yep,” said Genesio, smiling a little, rather excited.
“Right now?”
“Not right now, later. I’m going to take a rest now.”
All three sat down on the black sand, and the dog, seeing them occupied with higher matters that he couldn’t grasp, couldn’t keep still a single moment, but ran from one to the other, nosing each of them in turn. Genesio, smoking gravely, kept silent for a bit, and then he said to his brothers, “Now, when we’re grown up, we’re going to kill the old man.”
“Me too,” said Mariuccio promptly.
“All three of us, together,” Genesio assented, “all three of us have to kill him. And then we’ll go live somewhere else with Mama.”
He spat his butt out into the water, his serious and candid eyes shining wetly.
“He must have beaten her up again this morning,” he said. He fell silent again until he could control himself, and then he said in his ordinary toneless, inexpressive voice, “When we’re grown up, we’ll show him all right.
“Now I’ll give it a try,” he said then, in the same tone of voice.
“You’re going to cross it?” the smallest boy asked excitedly.
“What do you mean, cross it? I’m going to practice.”
“You’re going all the way out to the middle?” Mariuccio insisted.
“Sure,” said Genesio. He rose and scrambled up the bank.
“Where you going?” Mariuccio asked, wondering.
“Farther down,” said Genesio, without turning around.
His brothers followed him up the bank and then back down to the water’s edge beyond the swimming-place, where Zinzello was finishing the soaping-up process, while, as if to spell him, another poor devil arrived, a balding man with a long beard that half-covered a face that seemed to have been burnt by a fever. It was Alfio Lucchetti, the uncle of that boy Amerigo from Pietralata, the one who had killed himself.
“Where’d all these jokers come from?” Zinzello asked good-humoredly. Alfio, who was still dressed, wearing pin-striped black pants, looked at him, shaking his head ironically, holding his rolled-up towel and soap against his side, a smile swelling out a jaw that was stubbled over with stiff hairs, his sideburns running down below his protruding ears from a head of hair that was combed in a youthful style, although a gray streak showed here and there. Genesio walked into the water, as though he had not been included in Zinzello’s remark. He paused for a moment, looking at the river. Then he waded in, his arms raised, till the water was up to his waist, and then he started to swim a quick dog-paddle.
“He’s practicing to swim across the river,” Mariuccio announced to the grown-ups, full of naive enthusiasm, looking up at them as if he were staring up at a couple of mountain peaks. But they were discussing their own affairs by now, and they didn’t even hear him. Genesio swam to the middle of the stream, where the current made little wavelets, flowing more swiftly and gathering up all the filth of the river—black streaks of oil and a kind of yellow foam that looked as if it were composed of thousands of gobs of spit. Then he turned around, let the current carry him down a bit while he rested, till he had floated past the swimming-place, and then he began to swim back to the bank. A little farther downstream, toward the bridge, he reached some thorny bushes that hung down over the water from the almost sheer bank.
Borgo Antico and Mariuccio ran toward him, not caring where they set their feet, slipping, falling, jumping up again out of the mud, up and down the slippery hump of the swimming-place. The dog followed after, barking, without knowing whether he was supposed to feel worried or pleased.
“Hey, Genesio! Hey, Genesio!” his brothers shouted at him, as if he were ten miles away.
“You didn’t do it, huh?” Mariuccio asked tremulously.
“You make me tired,” was all Genesio answered. He looked around in annoyance, darting a swift, ill-tempered glance about him. Then he said, without looking at them, “I told you I was practicing!”
Now that he’d given it a try, he studied the river again, silently estimating the distance. Beyond the far edge of the current, there was another ten-yard stretch to the opposite bank, where the white stripe plunging into the river marked where the flow from the processing plant had cut into the bank. Fido too began to study the situation, seating himself comfortably. He panted open-mouthed, shutting his jaws now and then to swallow, or licking himself. He respected his masters’ silence, wearing a slightly dejected expression. He looked as if some son of a bitch had given him one in the eye and swelled it up for him, because it was all white; the left eye had only a bluish ring around it. On that side, his ear hung down limply, while the ear on the other side was pricked up, alert to catch the slightest sound.
Meanwhile the boys sprawled out like hogs in the mud began to show signs of life. Tirillo went and posed, still as a statue, by the water’s edge, looking oh so weary, and
stretching. Then he was quiet again for a bit, head down, clucking his thick tongue against his palate, looking disgusted. “When’s that kid going to take the plunge?” said Caciotta, watching out of the corner of his eye so as not to have to turn around. “Don’t you know I was born tired?” said Tirillo resignedly, his eyelids drooping sleepily. Begalone had begun to cough so hard that it looked as if he would be spitting up part of his lungs any minute. “O.k.,” Tirillo called. And then, in a sudden burst of energy, “Who’s going to jump in with me?” “Jump in yourself, and fuck you too,” said Begalone between the spasms of coughing that were skimming off the stuff he had in his lungs. Tirillo lifted his arms with a yell, and did a swan dive, spreading out his legs with all the grace of a duckling. “What a ball-breaker!” Caciotta said, while Tirillo was still beneath the surface.
But just at that moment there was a great rumbling and racket that cut all further comment short. It sounded as if an earthquake were on its way. The noise came from the direction of Tiburtino, swelling along the Via Tiburtina and the shore of the Aniene. From over by the Via Tiburtina came a thunderous noise that sounded as if the roots of the earth were being wrenched loose, a very regular, monotonous thunder, in which now and then could be heard scraping and tearing noises like cries of rage, resounding and then dying away suddenly. It kept on, as if an enormous compressor were pounding away at all the arc of the horizon between the buildings of Tiburtino and the Pecoraro hill, crushing and grinding up everything in its path, like an artillery barrage. Nearer at hand, however, on the river bank, it looked as if a troop of monkeys and parrots had exploded out of the jungle, driven by a forest fire, all screaming at the tops of their lungs, and it wasn’t clear whether they were moved to make all that racket by terror or by transports of joy. It was an army of little boys, actually, amounting to half the child-population of Tiburtino, all running like crazy, wearing their good pants and waving the shirts and undershirts that they had stripped off as they ran. You couldn’t make out what it was they were shouting in chorus from one group to another, for in their mad dash they had scattered and dispersed all along the bank. But they were rushing forward together with the rumbling noise, and as the source of that uproar began to be identifiable, their shouts became clearer, too. “The bersaglieri! The bersaglieri!”* they yelled, as the ones in the lead poured into the swimming-place like a landslide, and it could be seen that they didn’t give a good goddamn about the bersaglieri, but that this was an excuse to raise a little hell.
The Ragazzi Page 23