Last Comes the Raven

by Italo Calvino

  “Go to Valkyria’s and ask ’em to lend us something to drink,” he said to the onion-faced boy. “Anything, even beer. And cakes. Hurry, now.”

  While this was happening, Jolanda had been pushed through the little door. Inside was a small room, curtained and clean, containing a bed all made up with a blue coverlet, a washbasin, and so forth. The giant began to turn the others out of the room, calmly and firmly, pushing at them with his big hands, and keeping Jolanda behind his shoulders. But for some reason or other all the sailors wanted to stay in the little room, and for each wave that the giant sailor repulsed another wave returned—​lessening each time, though, as some tired and stayed outside. Jolanda was pleased that the giant was doing this, because she was able to breathe more freely and also hide the straps that kept popping out of her brassière.

  Emanuele was watching it all: he saw the giant’s bands pushing the others out of the door, and his wife vanishing so that she must certainly be inside, and the other sailors returning again and again, in waves, with one or two less in each wave, first ten, then nine, then seven. How many minutes would it take the giant to succeed in shutting the door?

  Then Emanuele hurried outside again. He crossed the square in hops, as if in a sack race. There was a line of taxis in the rank with all the drivers asleep. He went from one to another, waking them and explaining what he wanted them to do, furious when they didn’t understand. One by one the taxis drove off in different directions. Emanuele went off in a taxi, too, standing on the running board.

  The noise woke Baci, the old cabman on top of his box, and he hurried down to see if there was any fare to take. He quickly grasped the situation, like the old hand at the job he was, clambered back on his box, and woke up his old horse. When Baci’s cab had gone creaking off, the square was left deserted and silent, save for the noise coming from The Tub of Diogenes in the middle of the rubble patch.

  At Iris’s the girls were all dancing; they were very young, with budlike mouths and tight jerseys molding their jutting breasts. Emanuele was in too much of a hurry to wait till the dance ended. “Hey, you,” he called to a girl dancing with her back pressed against a man whose hands were around her. The man turned toward Emanuele; he was a porter, with hair low on his forehead and an open shirt. “What d’you want?” he exclaimed. Another three or four stopped around him: boxers’ faces, breathing hard through their noses. “Let’s get out,” muttered Emanuele’s driver, “or there’ll be another row here, too.”

  They went off to the Panther’s place: but she didn’t want to open up since she already had a client. “Dollars,” shouted Emanuele, “dollars.” She opened then, wrapped in a dressing gown, looking like an allegorical statue. They dragged her down the stairs and pushed her into the taxi. Then they picked up Babilla walking along the seafront with her dog on a leash, Belbambin at the Traveler’s Cafe with her fox fur around her neck, and Bekuana at the Hotel Pace with her ivory cigarette holder. At the Ninfea they discovered the proprietress had three new girls, who were giggling away and thought they were being taken for a ride in the country. They were all loaded in. Emanuele was sitting in front, rather overcome by the uproar made by all those women crushed in at the back; the taxi driver was only worrying if the springs would hold.

  Suddenly a figure ran into the middle of the road as if wanting to be run over. He signed for them to stop; it was the onion-faced boy, laden with a crate of beer and a tray of cakes, wanting a lift. The door flew open and with a gasp the boy vanished inside, beer, cakes, and all. Off the taxi started again. Passersby stopped and stared after this taxi racing along as if it were going to an emergency room, with those screams and high voices coming from inside. Every now and again Emanuele heard a long squeak and said to the driver, “Something’s broken—​can’t you hear that noise?”

  The driver shook his head. “It’s the boy,” he said. Emanuele wiped the sweat from his brow.

  When the taxi pulled up in front of the Tub, the boy jumped out first, holding the tray above his head and the crate under his other arm. His hair was standing on end, his eyes were open so wide they took up half his face, and he hopped away like a monkey.

  “Felice,” he cried, “everything’s safe! I didn’t let them take a thing! But, oh, if you knew what they did to me, Felice!”

  Jolanda was still inside the little room, and the giant was still busy pushing sailors away from the door. But by now there was only one left who insisted on trying to get in; completely drunk, he kept bouncing back on the giant’s hands. When the new arrivals made their entry, Felice, wearily surveying the scene from the top of a stool, saw the sea of white caps part and a plumed hat, a shoulder covered in black silk, a fat haunch like a pig’s, a breast draped with artificial flowers, swirling up to the surface and vanishing again like bubbles of air.

  There was a sound of brakes outside, and four, five, six—​an entire line of taxis arrived; from every taxi emerged women. There was the Wriggler, with her lady­like hairstyle, advancing majestically, screwing up her shortsighted eyes; there was Spanish Carmen, swathed in veils, her face hollow as a skull, twisting her bony hips like a cat; there was old Lame Joan, hobbling on her little Chinese umbrella; there was the Black Girl of Long Alley with her black woman’s hair and furry legs; there was the Mouse, in a dress covered with the logos of cigarette brands; there was Milena the drug addict, in a dress patterned with playing cards; there was Lollypop, with her face covered with spots; and Ines the Femme Fatale, in an all-lace gown.

  Wheels could be heard crunching on the gravel: it was Baci’s old cab with the horse half dead; when he stopped a woman jumped out of there, too. She had a full velvet skirt trimmed with bows and lace, a bosom roped in necklaces, a black band around her throat, dangling earrings, a lorgnette, and a blond wig topped by a big romantic hat decorated with artificial roses and grapes and clouds of ostrich feathers.

  More waves of sailors had arrived at The Tub of Diog­enes. One was playing an accordion and another a saxophone, and women were dancing on the tables. Despite Emanuele’s efforts, there were still many more sailors than women, yet no one could reach a hand out without touching a bosom or a thigh that seemed to have got lost, since it was impossible to tell who it belonged to; there were legs in midair and bosoms knee-high. Velvety hands, creeping claws, sharply pointed red nails, quivering finger­tips, were groping at tunics, caressing muscles, tickling arms. And mouths met, almost flying through the air, and clung behind ears like clams; huge lips seemed coated with scarlet almost up to the nostrils. Innumerable legs were squirming everywhere, like the tentacles of some enormous octopus, legs sliding about and colliding with haunches and thighs. Then everything seemed to melt away in the sailors’ hands, and they found themselves holding a hat trimmed with bunches of grapes, or a dental plate, or a stocking wrapped around the neck, or a sponge, or a piece of silk trimming.

  Jolanda had remained alone in the little room with the giant sailor. The door was locked and she was combing her hair in front of the mirror over the washbasin. The giant went to the window and opened the curtains. Outside could be seen the dark naval area and the breakwater with a line of lights reflected in the water. Then the giant began singing an American song that went, “The day is over, the night is falling, the skies are blue, the bells are beginning to ring.”

  Jolanda approached the window, too, and gazed out into the darkness; their hands met on the windowsill and remained there motionless beside each other. The big sailor went on singing in his voice of iron, “Children of God, let us sing Hallelujah!”

  And Jolanda repeated, “Let us sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

  During all this time Emanuele was anxiously moving around among the sailors without finding a sign of his wife, pushing away the bodies of excited women who every now and then fell into his arms. Suddenly he was confronted by the group of taxi drivers, who had pushed in to get him to pay the fares shown on their meters. Emanuele’s eyes were tearful, but the drivers weren’t going to let him o
ff without paying. Now they were joined by old Baci, who was cracking his big coachman’s whip and muttering, “If you don’t pay up, I’ll take her away again!”

  Then whistles shrilled and the bar was surrounded by military police. It was the patrol from the Shenandoah with rifles and helmets. They turned out all the sailors, one by one. Then the Italian police trucks arrived and loaded up all the women they could lay hands on.

  The sailors were lined up outside the bar and marched off toward the port. When the police trucks laden with women passed them on their way, there was a great shout of greetings from both sides. The giant sailor, who was in the leading file, began singing in his resounding voice, “The day is over, the sun is setting, let us sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

  Jolanda, squeezed inside a truck between Lollypop and the Wriggler, heard his voice getting farther away and took up the song: “The day is over, the work is done—​Hallelujah!”

  And they all began singing the song, the sailors and the women, one group going toward the port, the other toward the police station.

  At The Tub of Diogenes Felice was beginning to pile up the tables. But Emanuele sat there slumped on a stool, his chin on his chest and his hat on the back of his head. They had been about to arrest him, too, but the American officer in charge of operations had made some inquiries and gestured for him to be left alone. And now he, the officer, had also stayed on, and there were only the two of them left in the bar, Emanuele drooping desolately on his stool and the American standing in front of him with his arms crossed. When he was certain that they were quite alone, the officer shook the plump man by an arm and began talking to him. Felice approached to act as interpreter, a broad grin on his stubbly cobbler’s face.

  “Tell him that you can get him a girl, too,” he said to Emanuele.

  Emanuele blinked his eyes, then let his chin fall on his chest again.

  “You to me, girl,” said the officer. “Me to you, dollars.”

  “Dollars! . . .” Emanuele mopped his face with his handkerchief. He got up. “Dollars,” he repeated. “Dollars.”

  He and the officer left the bar together. Night clouds were flying high in the sky. From the end of the breakwater the lighthouse was winking slowly, rhythmically. The air was still full of the song: “Hallelujah!”

  “The day is ending, the skies are blue, Hallelujah!” sang Emanuele and the officer as they strolled along in the middle of the street, arm in arm, in search of a haunt for an all-night spree.

  The Adventure of a Soldier

  In the compartment, a lady came and sat down, tall and buxom, next to Private Tomagra. She must have been a widow from the provinces, to judge by her dress and her veil: the dress was black silk, appropriate for prolonged mourning, but with useless frills and furbelows; and the veil went all around her face, falling from the brim of a massive, old-fashioned hat. Other places were free, there in the compartment, Private Tomagra noticed, and he had assumed the widow would surely choose one of them. But, on the contrary, despite the vicinity of a coarse soldier like him, she came and sat right there—​no doubt for some reason connected with travel, the soldier quickly decided, a draft, or the direction of the train.

  Her body was in full bloom, solid, indeed a bit square. If its upper curves had not been tempered by a matronly softness, you would have said she was no more than thirty; but when you looked at her face, at the complexion both marmoreal and relaxed, the unattainable gaze beneath the heavy eyelids and the thick black brows, at the sternly sealed lips, hastily colored with a jarring red, she seemed instead past forty.

  Tomagra, a young infantryman on his first leave (it was Easter), huddled down in his seat for fear that the lady, so ample and shapely, might not fit; immediately he found himself in the aura of her perfume, a popular and perhaps cheap scent, but now, out of long wear, blended with natural human odors.

  The lady sat down with a composed demeanor, revealing, there beside him, less majestic proportions than he had imagined when he had seen her standing. Her hands were plump, with tight, dark rings; she kept them folded in her lap, over a shiny purse and a jacket she had taken off to expose round white arms. At her first movement Tomagra had shifted to make space for a broad maneuvering of her arms; but she had remained almost motionless, slipping out of the sleeves with a few brief twitches of her shoulders and torso.

  The railroad seat was therefore fairly comfortable for two, and Tomagra could feel the lady’s extreme closeness, though without any fear of offending her by his contact. All the same, Tomagra reasoned, lady though she was, she had surely not shown any sign of repugnance toward him, toward his rough uniform; otherwise she would have sat farther away. And at these thoughts his muscles, till now contracted and tensed, relaxed freely, serenely; indeed, without his moving, they tried to expand to their greatest extension, and his leg—​its tendons taut, at first detached even from the cloth of his trousers—​settled more broadly, tightening the material that covered it, and the wool grazed the widow’s black silk. And now, through this wool and that silk, the soldier’s leg was adhering to her leg with a soft, fleeting motion, like one shark grazing another, and sending waves through its veins to those other veins.

  It was still a very light contact, which every jolt of the train could break off and re-create; the lady had strong, fat knees, and Tomagra’s bones could sense at every jerk the lazy bump of the kneecap. The calf had raised a silken cheek that, with an imperceptible thrust, had to be made to coincide with his own. This meeting of calves was precious, but it came at a price, a loss: in fact, the body’s weight was shifted and the reciprocal support of the hips no longer occurred with the same docile abandon. In order to achieve a natural and satisfied position, it was necessary to move slightly on the seat, with the aid of a curve in the track, and also of the comprehensible need to shift position every so often.

  The lady was impassive beneath her matronly hat, her gaze fixed, lidded, and her hands steady on the purse in her lap. And yet her body, for a very long stretch, rested against that stretch of man. Hadn’t she realized this yet? Or was she preparing to flee? To rebel?

  Tomagra decided to transmit, somehow, a message to her: he contracted the muscle of his calf into a kind of hard, square fist, and then with this calf-fist, as if a hand inside it wanted to open, he quickly knocked at the calf of the widow. To be sure, this was a very rapid movement, barely long enough for a flicker of the tendons; but in any case, she didn’t draw back—​at least not so far as he could tell, because immediately, needing to justify that covert movement, Tomagra extended his leg as if to get a kink out of it.

  Now he had to begin all over again; that patient and prudently established contact had been lost. Tomagra decided to be more courageous; as if looking for something, he stuck his hand in his pocket, the pocket toward the woman, and then, as if absently, he left it there. It had been a rapid action, Tomagra didn’t know whether he had touched her or not, an inconsequential gesture; yet he now realized what an important step forward he had made, and in what a risky game he was now involved. Against the back of his hand, the hip of the lady in black was now pressing; he felt it weighing on every finger, every knuckle; now any movement of his hand would have been an act of incredible intimacy toward the widow. Holding his breath, Tomagra turned his hand inside his pocket; in other words, he set the palm toward the lady, open against her, though still in that pocket. It was an impossible position, the wrist twisted. And yet at this point he might just as well attempt a decisive action: and so he ventured to move the fingers of that contorted hand. There could no longer be any possible doubt: the widow couldn’t have helped noticing his maneuvering, and if she didn’t draw back, but pretended to be impassive and absent, it meant that she wasn’t rejecting his advances. When Tomagra thought about it, however, her paying no attention to his mobile right hand might mean that she really believed he was hunting for something in that pocket: a railroad ticket, a match . . . There: and if now the soldier’s fingertips, the pads, s
eemingly endowed with a sudden clairvoyance, could sense through those different stuffs the hems of subterranean garments and even the very minute roughness of skin, pores and moles—​if, as I said, his fingertips arrived at this, perhaps her flesh, marmoreal and lazy, was hardly aware that these were in fact fingertips and not, for example, nails or knuckles.

  Then, with furtive steps, the hand emerged from the pocket, paused there undecided, and, with sudden haste to adjust the trouser along the side seam, proceeded all the way down to the knee. More precisely, it cleared a path: to go forward, it had to dig in between himself and the woman, a route that, even in its speed, was rich in anxieties and sweet emotions.

  It must be said that Tomagra had thrown his head back against the seat, so one might also have thought he was sleeping. This was not so much an alibi for himself as it was a way of offering the lady, in the event that his insistence didn’t irritate her, a reason to feel at ease, knowing that his actions were divorced from his consciousness, barely surfacing from the depths of sleep. And there, from this alert semblance of sleep, Tomagra’s hand, clutching his knee, detached one finger, and sent it out to reconnoiter. The finger slid along her knee, which remained still and docile; Tomagra could perform diligent figures with the little finger on the silk of the stocking, which, through his half-closed eyes, he could barely glimpse, light and curving. But he realized that the risk of this game was without reward, because the little finger, scant of surface and awkward in movement, transmitted only partial hints of sensations and was incapable of conceiving the form and substance of what it was touching.

  Then he reattached the little finger to the rest of the hand, not withdrawing it, but adding to it the ring finger, the middle finger, the forefinger: now his whole hand rested inert on that female knee, and the train cradled it in a rocking caress.

  It was then that Tomagra thought of the others: if the lady, whether out of compliance or out of a mysterious intangibility, didn’t react to his boldness, facing them were still-seated other persons who might be scandalized by that nonsoldierly behavior of his, and by that possible silent complicity on the woman’s part. Chiefly to spare the lady such suspicion, Tomagra withdrew his hand, or rather, he hid it, as if it were the only guilty party. But hiding it, he later thought, was only a hypocritical pretext: in abandoning it there on the seat he intended simply to move it closer to the lady, who occupied in fact such a large part of the space.