History (32 page)

wi it," mingling with all those unknown people, seeming to announce: "Here I am! At last we meet again!" He hadn't yet been washed since the previous morning, and in that intrepid face, dirty and black with smoke,

1 5 9

the joy of his little blue eyes was so funny it made everyone laugh, even on that tragic fi day.

Afterwards, the promiscuous life in the single, huge common room, which was a daily torment for Ida, for Useppe was ali a festivity. His minuscule life had always been solitary and isolated ( except on the happy nights of air-raid alarms ); and now he had the sublime good luck to fi himself, day and night, in numerous company! He seemed positively in sane, in love with all.

For this reason, too, the other children's mothers forgave his remark able precocities, commenting on them without envy. Comparing him with their own children, they could hardly believe he was barely two years old; and, among themselves, they suspected that Ida was bragging on this score, feeding them a story. On the other hand, to confi m the kid's scant age, however, there were his unlimited ingenuousness and his physical dimen sions, still inferior to those of his contemporaries. Certain charity ladies had left there, as an off for the homeless, a pile of used clothing, from which his autumn wardrobe had been pieced together: a pair of long pants with suspenders, which Carull had taken in for him at the waist, but which elsewhere were far too loose, so that they looked like Charlie Chaplin's trousers; a cloak and hood of black oilskin, lined with red quilting, which feli ali the way to his feet; and a little blue wool sweater which, on the contrary was short on him (it may have belonged to a new-born baby) so that it always hiked up behind, exposing a bit of his back.

Moreover, Carull had produced two little shirts for him and several pairs of underpants from the headcloth of the old woman from Mandela; and with the scraps of a goatskin, stolen by her brothers from a tanner, she had fi him some footgear, the kind shepherds wear, tied up with string. It could truly be said that, among aU the guests of the room, Useppe was the poorest. Or rather, he was during the fi period : for, later, as we wili see, another guest arrived who, at least for a time, was even poorer than he.

Like ali lovers, Useppe had absolutely no sense of the inconveniences of that life. While summer lasted, the inhabitants of the dormitory were joined by mosquitoes, fl and bedbugs. And Useppe scratched himself above and below, performing true natural gymnastic feats, like cats and dogs, and grumbling only as a slight comment:
"
lies, lies,"
that is to say
fl
since he caUed aU insects fl

In the autumn, with its windows closed, when it was ti to cook, the room fi with a stifl smoke; and not bothering too much about it, he was content to wave his two hands now and then, saying : "Go 'way, smoke." These discomforts, in any case, were made up for by the wonders

1 6 0 H I S T O R Y
.
. . .
. .
1 9 4 3

of the room which, with the autumn rains, was always densely populated, off programs of ever-various novelty and attraction.

First and foremost, there were the twins. 1l other kids of the troupe, more or less his own age, displayed, in their way, a cert sense of superi ority towards those nursing infants. But for him they were such a fascinat ing sight that at times he would stand and gaze at them for whole minutes, in ecstatic amusement. Then, all at once, irresistibly, he would burst into certain joyous and incomprehensible speeches of his, convinced perhaps that to converse with those infants, an Ostrogoth language was required. And perhaps he was right, because they answered him with delighted gesticulations and special cries, so enthusiastic that, in producing them, they soaked themselves with saliva.

Seeing such harmony, the relatives one day suggested he should marr one of the pair. And he promptly accepted the proposal, grave and con vinced; however, when it came to making a choice, he hesitated between the two (and in fact they looked identical ), so there was general agreement on the solution of marrying him to both. The wedding was celebrated without further delay. Sora Mercedes was the priest and Giuseppe Secondo the best man.

"Useppe, do you take Rosa and Celeste as your lawfully wedded wives?"

"Ess."

"Rosa and Celeste, do you take Useppe as your lawfully wedded husband?"

"We do, we do," the two brides declared, through the mouth of the best man.

"I hereby declare you man and wi

And this said, as the hands of the bridal trio were solemnly joined, the offi Mercedes pretended to slip three imaginary rings on their fi Useppe glowed with fervor, but also with responsibility at th double consecration, which Carull approved with great contentment, in the presence of Impero, Currado, and the other kids, all witnessing open mouthed. For the wedding feast, the best man off two sips of a sweet ish liqueur of his own making; but Useppe, after tasting it duti didn't appreciate its fl at all and unceremoniously spat it out.

The failure of this refreshment, however, did not spoil the festivities; in fact, it aroused general laughter, which promptly released the bride groom from his gravity. And in an immense and radiant good humor, Useppe fl himself on the ground with his legs in the air, giving way to an unrestrained acrobatic celebration.

Another wondrous sight was the pair of canaries, before whom Useppe

1 6 1

would actually emit little cries of rejoicing : ". . . naries?" he would repeat, "naries??" But he tried in vain to understand their speech, sung or chattered.

"UB, what're they saying?"

"How should I know? They don't talk our language, they're for eigners."

"They come from the Canary Islands, don't they, Sor Giuseppe?" "No, Sora Mercedes. These are domestic. They come from Porta

Portese . . . the fl market."

"What're they saying, Eppetondo? Eh, what is it?"

"What can they say? Hmph . . . They say: cheep cheep, I'm skip ping here and you're hopping there. Does that suit you?"

"No."

"Ah, it doesn't suit you, eh? Well, then you tell me what they're talking about."

But Useppe, chagrined, could fi no answer to this.

Unlike the canaries, the cat Rosella would converse with no one. Still, when necessary she had a vocabulary of certain special sounds, which everyone, more or less, was able to understand. To ask for something, she said :
myew
or
mayeu;
to call, she said
mau,
to threaten
mbrooooh,
etc., etc. But very rarely, to tell the truth, was she to be found inside the building. Her owner Giuseppe Secondo had decreed,
When human beings are starving, cats have to live on mice,
and in consequence, she spent the greater part of her time hunting, expending dexterity and boldness, be cause the hunting grounds were treacherous. "You be careful," Giuseppe Secondo warned her from time to time, "there's that tavern not far away, and they roast cats there." And at present, so it seemed, even mice were in short supply. In fact, the huntress's body, beautiful in its feline elegance, during the last few months had grown thin and mangy.

According to general opinion, she was an underw sort, evil and untrustworthy. In fact, if you tried to catch her, she would escape; and when nobody was looking for her, she would come up unexpectedly, brush ing against one person or another, purring, but darting away as soon as you tried to touch her. Towards children, moreover, she harbored a special distrust; and if at times, distracted by her sensuality, she happened to rub up against one of them, he had only to make the slightest movement and she would promptly hiss at him with a fi air. And so Useppe, every time she condescended to graze him, held himself motionless, without breath ing, in the thrill of that diffi and fl sign of favor.

Another outstanding luxury of the big room, for Useppe, was the gramophone. He varied its songs to infi ity, and he would start dancing, not the monotonous and prescribed steps of the tango or the fox trot, but

1 6 2 H I S T O R Y
. . .
. . .
1 9 43

dances of instinct and imagination, in which he fi lost all restraint, drawing the other kids along with him in authentic feats, like a c�ampion. Among his premature abilities, his athletic talent was the most universally admired. You would have said his little bones contained air, like birds'. The supply of school desks that had remained in the room were all piled up, occupying a whole wall; and for him that pile must have represented a kind of adventurous cliff! He scrambled up as if on wings, to the top, springing and running, balanced on the highest edges like a dancer, to leap down all of a sudden, weightless. If somebo shouted to him from below: "Come down! You'll hurt yourself!" he, usually so prompt to reply, became deaf now and out of reach. Applause and encouragement-"Bravo! Go!" met with an equally carefree lack of response. He had no taste for showing off in fact, on occasion, he even forgot about the presence of others. You had the sensation that his body was carry him beyond himself.

In addition to the pile of desks, the room was cluttered on all sides with bundles, stoves, tubs, basins, etc. as well as sandbags for fi protec tion, and rolled-up mattresses. In the air, from one end to the other, ropes had been stretched, all afl tter with clothes and linen.

The entire surface, fairly vast, was an irregular quadrilateral, an obtuse angle occupied, with its adjacent areas, by The Thousand, who at night slept all in a mass on a row of mattresses pulled side by side. The acute angle was inhabited by Giuseppe Secondo, who, alone among all the people there, personally owned a wool mattress. He had, however, left the pillow at home, and used his jacket in its place, with, on top, his hat, which he put back on his head every morning, never taking it off not even indoors. He explained this habit by saying he suff from rheumatic arthritis. But the truth was that inside the lining of the hat he kept hidden, in smoothed thousand-lire notes, a portion of his private liquid capital, having distrib uted the rest, a part inside the lining of his jacket, and a part under the inner sole of his single pair of shoes, which at night he laid to rest beside him, under the blanket.

The next angle was Ida's corner. Unlike all the others, she had sepa rated it from the rest of the dormitory with a kind of curtain, made of sacks crudely sewn together and hung from a string. And in the fourth comer, at present uninhabited, a succession of transient guests had passed, of whom the only remaining souvenirs were two empty fl and a large sack of straw.

In this period, on waking in the morning, Ida rarely recalled having dreamed. But the few dreams she did remember were happy, so that it was all the more bitter to fi herself, on rising, in her present state of wretchedness. One night, she seems to hear again the cry of the fisherm heard in her childhood when she visited her grandparents during the sum-

1 6 3

mer: FAA-LEIU!! And, in fact, she fi herself in the presence of a turquoise sea, inside a calm and luminous room, in the company of her whole family, the living and the dead. Alfi refreshes her, waving a colored fan, and Useppe on the shore laughs to see the little fish jumping up above the surface of the water . . .

Then she fi herself again in a very beautiful city, such as she has never seen. This time, too, a vast blue sea is present, beyond immense seaside terraces where a vacationing crowd is strolling, happy and calm. All the city's windows have varicolored curtains, which fl ever so slightly in the cool air. And this side of the terraces, among jasmines and palms, extend outdoor cafes, where the people, reposing restively under bri beach umbrellas, admire a fantastic violinist. Now this violinist is her father, tall and regal, on a bandstand with a decorated railing : he is also a famous singer, and he plays and sings "Celeste Aida, forma Divina . . .
"

The reopening of the schools, which in her new refugee condition had worried Ida since the summer, was now indefi ely postponed in the city of Rome; and Ida's only activity outside the house, at present, was the diffi hunt for food, for which her salary proved more inadequate each month. Sometimes, from The Thousand, who, among other things, also carried on a contraband activity, she bought some pieces of meat, or some butter, or eggs, at high black-market prices. But she allowed herself these luxuries for the exclusive benefi of Useppe. She herself had grown so thin that her eyes seemed twice as big as before.

A strict division of property reigned in the room, so at mealtimes a true but invisible boundary was set up among the three inhabited corners of the quadrilateral. Even Useppe, at that hour, was confi in his own corner by Ida, who feared that the child, among the banqueting Thousand and Giuseppe Secondo intent on heating up his private cans, would invol untarily assume the guise of a mendicant. In that time of famine, even the generous became mean; and the only one who, every now and then, peered in at the sackcloth curtain bringing a taste of his dishes as an off was Giuseppe Secondo. But she, who continued to consider him mad, would blush in confusion at such off repeating : "No, thank you . . . excuse me . . . thank you . . . so kind . . .
"