History (109 page)

"They're all gone!" Bella announced to him without delay, "there's nobody here . . ."

"All gone . . ." Useppe repeated, more serene. But in the space of a breath, quite a diff expression appeared on his face. He forced a smile, which turned out rather a wretched grimace, and said, turning his eyes away, not looking at Bella :

"I . . .
fell down
. . . didn't I?"

In reply, Bella attempted to distract him with some hasty licks. But he rejected her, withdrawing himself, and he hid his face behind his arm :

"And now," he moaned, with a sob, "they saw me . . . them too

. . . now . . . they know . . ."

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He moved, uneasily. Among other things, he realized he had wet himself (a usual eff common in such convulsive fi s). And he was worried by the shameful idea that the Pirates had noticed.

But already his little eyes were blinking, overcome by the drowsiness that always followed the attack. In the little hollow a westerly breeze was blowing, gentle as the breath of a fan, and the afternoon was so limpid that even the lengthened shadow of the hut mirrored the sky's color. On the river, the rustle of the Pirate oars had disappeared into the void; and it was here that Bella let herself go in an exhibitionistic release, celebrating with a great bark the en terprise of the trench, according to her own per sonal version. To Useppe, who was falling asleep meanwhile, that solitary canine anthem arrived confused, as the violet-blue of the air was confused among the threads of his lashes. And perhaps to him it seemed that a legendary blare was running over the field amid an unfurling of fl

The ignorance of dogs, truly, is often foolish to the point of mania; and the shepherdess, according to her visionary psychology, was giving, of today's events, the following interpretation :

T H E D E F E A T E D W O L V E S H A V E R E T R E A T E D I N F L I G H T , A B A N D O N I N G T H E S I E G E O F T H E H U T A N D T H E E N G A G E M E N T E N D E D W I T H T H E S E N S A T I O N A L V I C T O R Y O F U S E P P E A N D B E L L A .

After having barked this news to the four winds, Bella, sated and

spent by her emotions, fell asleep in turn, next to Useppe. When she stirred, alerted by her usual natural clock, the sun was much lower in the west. Useppe was sleeping profoundly, as if in the heart of the night, his mouth half-open in a regular respiration, and his pale little face colored with pink towards the cheekbones. "Wake up! It's time to go!" Bella called him; but Useppe barely raised his lids, showing his eyes veiled with sleepi ness and rejection, then promptly closed them again.

Bella returned to her urging, though with some remorse. And she insisted, trying also to shake him with her paw, and to tug at his shirt with her teeth . But after having turned over two or three times with an expres sion of repugnance, in the end he pushed her away, kicking almost franti ca : "I don't want! I don't want!" he exclaimed. Then he sank back to sleep.

Bella remained seated there a little while, then she stood on her four paws, torn by a dilemma. On the one hand, a peremptory instinct ordered her to stay here beside Useppe, while, on the other, a no less irremissible determination obliged her to go back home to Ida on time, as she did every evening. It was during this very interval that back in Via Bodoni Ida woke at last from her prolonged sleep.

538 H I S T O R Y
. . .
. . .
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What had happened to her today was incongruous and unusual : to take such a long afternoon nap. Perhaps it had been the accumulated insomnia of these last nights that had betrayed her. Her sleep had been very pro found and, surp calm, uninterrupted, like a girl's. Only in the last stage did she have a brief dream.

She fi herself in the company of a little kid, outside the gate of a big dock. A large, solitary ship is about to sail, and beyond it spreads an open ocean, absolutely calm and cool, of the charged blue color of morn ing. Guarding the gate is a man in uniform very authoritarian, and with a jailer's manner. The kid could be Useppe, and could also not be he; how ever, it is certainly someone resembling Useppe. She is holding his hand, hesitating at the gate. They are a poor couple, in beggar's clothes, and the guard drives them off because they have no ticket. But then the kid, with his dirty, clumsy little hand, rummages in his pocket and digs out a minus cule gold object, whose nature she can't identify: maybe a small key, or a pebble, or a shell. It must, in any case, be an authentic pass, because the guard, after barely glancing at the kid's hand, promptly, though reluc tantly, opens the gate. And then she and the kid, delighted, board the ship together.

Th
was the end of the dream and here Ida woke.
She
sensed at once the house's abnormal silence; and fi the rooms deserted, she was overcome by an incoherent panic and rushed down to the door of the building, dressed as she was. As usual, for her afternoon rest, she had

stretched out on the bed in her clothes. She was wearing her litt
i
e house

dress, worn and greasy, with sweat-stains under the arms, and she hadn't even combed her hair. On her feet she had hastily slipped her clogs, which made her gait more awkward than usual, and in her pocket she had her change-purse with her keys.

The concierge said she had seen no one go by : true, it being Sunday, she hadn't spent the whole time on duty in her cubbyhole . . . But Ida didn't stop to hear her out, fl herself at random into the street, and calling Useppe loudly through the neighboring streets, like a wild woman. If anyone questioned her, she answered, with fevered tone and gaze, that she was looking for a little boy who had gone out with a dog; but she rejected all advice or help, resuming her search alone. She had the sure sensation that, in some part of Rome, Useppe was lying in the grip of an attack, perhaps even hurt, perhaps among strangers . . . In reality, for some time now, all Ida's fears were coagulated in a sole terror, situated in the center of her nerv and her reason : that Useppe might
fall.
Every day,

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in leaving his cage open, she fought an exhausting battle against the
grand mal:
that it might keep far from him, at least in these happy summer fl of his, and not humiliate him among his great honors of a young male at liberty . . . And today, here, Iduzza's extreme fear was coming true: the evil had taken advantage of her sleep, to insult Useppe treach erously.

Outside the neighborhood of the house, the fi itinerary that instinc tively occurred to her was the route towards the famous
forest
on the river, of which Useppe had so often boasted to her. According to the child's infatuated explanation, it seemed to her that, from Via Marmorata, the path continued along Viale Ostiense, as far as the square of the Basilica

. . . And she set off along Via Marmorata with the febrile insensitivity of someone running in a pursuit: so intent on her impulsive direction that the city's movement whistled around her, invisible. She had covered about two thirds of this street, when, from the end, boisterous and fervent barking greeted her.

Tortured by her own dilemma, Bella had resolved suddenly to make a dash home to call Ida; but in galloping towards Via Bodoni, she felt as if cut in two : for meanwhile she had been forced to leave the little sleeping Useppe all alone in the hollow. Now, this meeting with Ida in the street seemed a downright magical event to her.

Between them there was no explanation. Ida picked up from the ground the leash Bella had dragged after her, and she allowed herself to be led by the dog, in the certainty they were going to Useppe. Naturally, with her crazy, hopping gait, hindered further by the clogs, she was a torment for Bella, and every so often, the dog, in her natural impetuosity, gave her some impatient tugs, as if pulling a cart. Finally, when they reached the uneven terrain along the river, Ida dropped the leash, and Bella began to trot ahead, stopping now and then to wait for her to catch up. Though anxious to arrive, Bella didn't seem sad, but rather lively and encouraging, and so Ida's apprehensions about Useppe's condition were somewhat calmed. Too dazed to distinguish her surroundings, Ida sensed, neverthe less, as she passed them, a kind of luminous spoor, with the prints every where of her little son, who had so boasted of these places to her. The hours he had spent here animated the surroundings feverishly, like a fl

of colored mirages. And his little laughter and chatter returned to greet her, thanking her, in chorus, for the beautiful days of freedom and trust enjoyed down here . . .

The question : "what will I fi in a little while?" pressed urgently on her nerv centers, weakening her to the point that when the dog urged her to hurry with a bark that clearly meant, "He's here!" she was almost about to fall. After disappearing from her sight for a moment, the dog had

540 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 47

climbed back up to summon her from a dip in the ground, and this call, really, sounded triumphant. Leaning over the hole, in her turn, Ida felt her heart open again, because Useppe was standing there, at the entrance of a hut, hailing her appearance with a little smile.

In Bella's absence, in fact, he had waked up, and on fi himself there alone, he had perhaps believed every had abandoned him, be cause you could still sense a certain anxious trepidation in his smile. More over, to defend himself against possible invaders or enemies, he had armed himself with a reed, which he grasped fi in his fi refusing to let go of it at any price. He seemed more dreamy and unremembering than ever; but a little later (in the present whims of his memory) the Pirates' assault came back to him. He then made a hesitan t little search of the hut, and laughed with satisfacti seeing all was safe: there had been no fi or devastations. Coming home that evening after the cinema and the pizzeria, Scim6 would fi his little bed ready and waiting for him as usual ( the old bald shepherd's thefts could be replaced, later, through the munificence of the arcane Faggots ).

With confused and delighted chatter, Useppe displayed his personal satisfactions to his mother. "Don't say anything to anybody, eh, rn was all she managed to understand. In the sunset light, the child had rosy tinged cheeks and blissful, transparent eyes. But on the point of heading home, he displayed a sudden repulsion. "Let's sleep here tonight!" he proposed to his mother, tempting her with that special new seducer's smile of his. And he gave way, resigned, only after Ida's horrifi beseeching. It was obvious, however, that in his exhaustion and sleepiness, he couldn't stand on his feet. He was unable to walk by himself, nor did Ida have the muscles to carry him in her arms. In the little purse she was carrying, with her keys, luckily she also kept some change, enough for tram tickets home from San Paolo; but meanwhile they had to reach San Paolo. And here Bella came to their aid, off the support of her own back to the family.

They walked together, huddled close to one another: Useppe astride Bella as if on a pony, his head leaning against Ida's hip, as she held her arm around him to keep him erect. When they had gone only a few steps, as they were passing the outside of the tree tent, Useppe was already nodding, half-asleep; and it was only here, fi that he relaxed his grip on the reed and dropped it. The sun was setting, and a company of birds had assem bled by appointment up there over the tent, in the top branches. I pre sume they belonged to the starling family, which has in fact the habit of gathering in family groups towards evening, to hold concerts together. Useppe had never been on the scene at such a late hour, and this great concert was a novelty for him. What he heard of it, in his drowsiness, I

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can't say; but the surprise must have pleased him, because he uttered a fleeting laugh of amusement. And this evening's concert was, in fact, comi cal in character : one of the choristers whistled, one warbled, one trilled, one pecked at the air, and then they imitated one another, repeating each other's notes, or else mocking other classes of birds, even the voices of cocks or baby chicks. Such, precisely, is the special virtuosity of starlings. And the Bella-Ida-Useppe group proceeded so slowly that this evening concert followed them a good part of the way, accompanied by the sub dued sounds (from grass or river) of early evening.

At San Paolo, Ida and Useppe, with some outside assistance, were hoisted onto the tram, while Bella, with great commitment, ran after the vehicle on foot. Seated amid the crowd, in the twilight, Ida had the im pression that Useppe's body, asleep on her lap, had become even more tiny, minute. And suddenly she remembered the fi tram journey she had made with him, bringing him home, a newborn infant, from the San Giovanni quarter, residence of the midwife Ezekiel.

Later, also the San Giovanni quarter, like San Lorenzo and the fash ionable neighborhoods around Via Veneto, had become a place of fear for her. The universe had become more and more restricted, around Iduzza Ramundo, since the days when her father used to sing
Celeste Aida
to her. From San Paolo to Testaccio the distance was not long. At every stop, Bella, from outside, assured Ida of her own presence, making some leaps towards the window, almost touching it with her nose. Seeing that nose, the passengers inside, around Ida, laughed. In her race with the tram, Bella

won. Ida found her already waiting, festive, at their stop.

The most toilsome journey was the climb up the stairs, fl after fl , until they reached home. The concierge must have been at supper in her back room down below. With her usual shyness, Ida asked no one's help. They proceeded in their ascent, the three of them, clinging together, as they had before along the bank of the Tiber. Useppe asleep, his locks falling in his eyes, allowed himself to be carried, unawares, only uttering a little mumble from time to time. The news broadcast was already over. Through the windows open onto the courtyard a program of popular songs echoed from the radios.

After her long afternoon sleep, Ida remained awake much of the night. The next morning, and also the following day, she was obliged to go to school; then, at last, the real closing-day would come. Meanwhile, how ever, tomorr morning it was necessary to consult the doctor again, as agreed, and perhaps to face an examination by Professor Marchionni. Ida knew such an examination repelled little Useppe as much as it did her, and she already felt a double fear of it. She saw herself and Useppe again crossing the hospital corridors, which now became for her a livid and