History (77 page)

Lacking any resource, as she did, she could fi no solution except to leave him alone in the house, closing the door and double-locking it. And entrusting an extra set of keys to the concierge, she begged her to go up and have a look at him at least once late every morning. In exchange for this serv Ida would give private lessons to a granddaughter of hers, who came and visited her almost every day.

So once more Useppe had to spend his mornings in prison, as at San Lorenzo in his infancy. Afraid that, looking out, he might fall, his mother took care even to lock the windows with some hooks at the top ( where he couldn't reach, not even standing on a table) . Luckily, winter was now coming, when there are fewer temptations to go outdoors or look out of windows.

With this new necessity Ida also incurred various extra expenses. First of all, she applied for a telephone, which, however, because of "technical diffi could not be promised her before the period of February March 1947. Also, recalling how much Useppe had enjoyed the music at Pietralata, to distract him in his loneliness, she bought him an almost new wind-up gramophone at the market. At fi she had thought of a radio, but then she did without it, seized by the suspicion that, turning on the adult programs, he might Jearn nasty things from it.

She complemented the gramophone with a record, personally chosen from a series for children. It was one of those then in use, at 78 rpm. And it contained two children's ballads set to music, suitable for the family : "The Little Washer-Woman" and "My Dolly's the Prettiest of All." The latter, a kind of madrigal in honor of a doll, concluded her praises with the verses :

She looks exactly like our queen, Out riding with the king.

3 8 3

The old concierge, lively though she was, found the climb to the top fl too toilsome, so she preferred to send up her granddaughter, who was often in Via Bodoni helping her. The girl's name was Maddalena, but she was called Lena-Lena by Useppe. Not infrequently, early in the morning, she could be encountered on the stairs, intent on giving the steps a hasty washing with a wet rag; or else she was seen sitting in the lodge, momen tarily substituting for her grandmother. Keeping still in there was a sacri fi for her, however, since she preferred movement; and she didn't the least mind running up to Useppe's in the morning. She was a little girl of about fourteen, who was as a rule quite cloistered in the family; and she lived not far away, at San Saba, having arrived from the interior of Sar dinia. She had a plump little fi with short legs, also plump; and black hair, kinky and excessively long, which grew upwards, compensating for her very short stature, and making her look like a country hedgehog (or porcu pine) . She spoke an incomprehensible language, all full of u's, which sounded foreign; still, with Useppe, she managed somehow to make herself understood. He would let her listen to his record, and in return she would sing to him, in a harsh, high voice, some Sardinian dirges, all with u, of which he understood not a word; but the moment she fi he would say to her "again!", as he did after Ida's Calabrian songs.

On certain days, Lena-Lena, required to perform other duties, couldn't come; and the old concierge came in her place. After struggling up all those stairs, she had to go back down at once, so as not to leave her lodge abandoned. She preferred to turn up rather early in the morning, when Useppe was still asleep, and after having taken a look at him, she would leave again without waking him. It happened then that Useppe, on getting up, would wait in vain for some visit; and in these cases, during the morning, from the courtyard below, you could discern his form up there behind the panes, intently watching to see if Lena-Lena would fi appear from the courtyard. If he then continued hoping also for the arrival of
someone else,
we don't know. As a rule, when noon had struck, he could again be seen at his sentry-post, waiting for Ida.

Generally, on the days when she was free, Lena-Lena would go up to see him between ten and eleven, when he had just got up. For some time he had been waking later, because Ida, after an interval of many months, had resumed giving him in the evening the pills that the doctor had recommended to help him sleep. In fact, after the parenthesis of the good season, his nights were again uneasy; indeed, at present, among his noc turnal disturbances there was one in particular which defi even the medicine's eff It was a short-lived but fairly violent convulsion which caught him, usually, when he had just dozed off as if the undefi object of his anxiety were waiting for him just on the other side of the barrier of

3 8 4 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 46

sleep. Even his features displayed the amazement, and the repulsion, of someone at a sudden, frightening encounter, during which he nevertheless went on sleeping, retaining no memory of it. And every evening, alert beside him, Ida kept watch over that sort of rendezvous, which awaited him, unknown to himself, with a fi mechanical punctuality.

1l1e doctor, consulted again, prescribed a calcium cure for him : eggs, milk, and walks in the open air: "This boy," she observed, "isn't growing enough." And in fact, during the summer, Useppe had grown an inch or so in height, but his weight hadn't increased. To examine him, the doctor had made him undress, and in its nakedness his dark little body showed the bones of the sternum and the frail little shoulders, from which his tiny head nevertheless rose with that young male's special boldness which was naturally his. Among other things, the doctor asked him to show his teeth, thinking that his present nervous disorders might be the prelude, perhaps, to the loss of his baby teeth, which in certain cases, she said, provokes an actual crisis of growth. And he promptly opened his mouth wide, clean and pink like that of a month-old kitten, with the two tiny rows in which you could see the bluish gleam characteristic of baby teeth. Looking at them, Ida thought again of how good he had been, growing them all regularly, right in the midst of the war, without bothering anybody.

"When the fi tooth falls out," the doctor said to him gravely, "remember to hide it somewhere in the house, for when Sora Pasquetta comes by. She's a relation of Santa Claus, and in the place of the tooth she'll leave you a present." For him, since he was born, there had never been Santa Clauses or Father Christmases or wizards or fairies or the like; but he had heard some rumor of their existence. "How will she get in?" he asked carefully. "In where?" "Where! In our house!" "Don't worry. She's like Santa Claus, she comes down the chimney!" "Eh . . . but our chim ney's narrow . . . she'll get through, will she? She turns little?" "Of course!" the doctor confi "she can shrink or grow, and get through any place she likes!" "Even a pipe like this?" (Useppe, with his fi widened in a circle, demonstrated more or less the width of the fl in Via Bodoni ). "Absolutely. You can count on it!" And Useppe smiled, re assured and triumphant at such an authoritative guarantee.

The day that she drew her November salary, Ida went to buy him another record for his gramophone. Remembering his taste for dance tunes at Pietralata, she shyly consulted the salesman, who furnished her with
a
swing number, all the rage. And this novelty at fi had a great success at home, where "The Little \Vasher-\Voman" and "l'v Dolly" were immedi ately relegated to the rubbish. 1l1e gramophone from today on was used

385

only for the new music; and as was to be expected, at the first notes Useppe promptly started dancing.

This new dance, however, was also to be considered a symptom of the course of those days. There were no longer the leaps, the somersaults, and the various improvisations with which our dancer performed at Pietralata among his friends. Now his body executed a single rotating movement, which he started with his arms wide, until a wild and almost spasmodic rhythm seemed to overcome him. In certain cases, he didn't stop this whirl until he had reached the point of blindness and dizziness; and then he sank back to rest against his mother, repeating, exhausted but blissful : "Everything's spinning, spinning,
rn
. .
.
" Or else, in other cases, with

out interrupting the wheel of his dance, he would slow its pace, at a certain point, and then his body, turning, would tilt to one side, with its two arms fl loosely to that same side, and his face would assume
a
funny expres sion between amusement and dream.

These sounds and dances took place in the kitchen-which was the only
living room
of the house-and more readily at the hour when Ida was cooking ( "to keep her company"). But the new pastime's success was truly ephemeral. The third day (it was Sunday morning) Useppe, having ener getically wound up the gramophone, about to put on the record, gave up the idea. He remained there, frozen, in an absorbed or puzzled air, and he made certain little movements with his jaw, like someone chewing a bitter morsel. As if looking for an escape route, he withdrew to the corner by the sink, and there, to one side, he emitted a confused stammering in which Ida, not without amazement, managed to distinguish cl the name CARULINA. From the days of their farewell, when he still called her
Uli,
Useppe had never mentioned her in his talk, and perhaps this was the fi time, ever, that he pronounced her name fully and correctly ( even rolling the R strongly, in his concern to say it right) . This reminiscence, however, the moment it fl up, seemed to drop away from him. And in a diff ent, shouting voice, he addressed Ida :

"Ma? Maaa? . . .
"

It was a dazed question, but also a demand for help against some obscure aggression. Then a brusque impulse agitated him; and unexpect edly he went and tore his precious swing record from the gramophone and fl it on the ground. His face was fl shed, and he was shaking; and when the record had broken on the fl he even began to stamp on it with his feet. But rapidly, in this action, he released his amorphous wrath; and he looked on the ground again, with the dismay of someone discoveri a crime committed by others. He crouched down by the shards of his record, and with tender, moaning tears, like a baby's crying, he tried to piece them together!

386 H I S T O R Y
. . . . . .
1 9 46

Ida was quick to promise him a new record for the very next day ( had she been a millionairess, she was ready to buy an entire orchestra for him); but he thrust her aside, almost hitting her: "No! no! I don't want!" he shouted. Then, standing, in the same bitter act of refusal, he pushed away the wreckage with his feet; and as she was picking up the pieces and throwing them in the garbage, he put his fi to his eyes to see them no more.

His mother was gripped by the painful feeling that behind this eccen tric disorder that slammed him aimlessly here and there, inside him some crucial knot was twisting, which no one could loosen, or fi the ends of, and he least of all. Without peace, he had now gone to the window to peer down from his habitual sentry-post into the courtyard; and even from behind, looking at the dimple of his thin neck between his rumpled curls, you seemed to glimpse the worried expression on his face. That he was secretly cherishing his eternal expectation of his brother was, for Ida, be yond doubt (nor was it anything new, of course). But since, in his new morbid condition, he was silent about this disappointment, Ida avoided reminding him of it, as if it were taboo.

". . . Isn't Lena-Lena coming today?"

"No, no. Today's Sunday. I'm here at home. Aren't you glad?" "Yes."

In one of his unpredictable changes of mood, he ran to her and kissed her dress. In his upraised, festive eyes, however, the next uneasy question was already appearing:

"You . . . you're not leaving, eh, rn

"Me! Leave? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER would I leave my Useppe!" The little man heaved a sigh, of satisfaction and of unresolved doubt. And his pupils were diverted, meanwhile, by the steam of the pot, which rose towards the fl e:

"\Vhen's
she
coming?" he inquired, frowning.

"She? \Vho?" ( Ida imagined he still meant Lena-Lena, or Carulina ). "That lady that comes down the chimney, ma! The one that's kin to

Santa Claus! Didn't you hear the doctor lady?"

" . . . ah, of course . . . But don't you remember what she said? You have to wait till your fi new tooth comes in. When you feel one of these beginning to come loose, that's a sign it's about to fall out, and then that lad\· comes to take it."

Useppe touched his incisors with his fi er, curious to see if by any chance they were loose. "Ah, it's early yet," his mother quickly explained to him, "you're not old enough. Maybe in a year."

A ringing of bells was heard above them, announcing noon. The

3 8 7

Sunday morning was cloudy, but warm. Through the closed window, from the courtyard came the shouting of the kids of the building, roughhousing, waiting for their mothers to call them to dinner. Ida would have been pleased to recognize among the other voices also her Useppe's, as she used to in the days when they lived behind the curtain in the big room. And more than once she had tried sending him down into the courtyard, to play with the others. But always, peeping out of the window, a little later, she had seen him down there, in some corner of the wall, all alone to one side; and observ from above, he looked like a poor foundling, cast out from society. "Useppe!" she then called to him impulsively, fl open the window. And raising his eyes towards her, he would come fl from the courtyard, to run up to her at home. As before with his schoolmates, so now, it was he really who segregated himself from the others (and with some of his gestures, putting his hands forward as if to thrust them away, or drawing back, looking at them with wide, bitter eyes, he actually sug gested the image of an elementary being who, sensing some virulent germ in his blood, wants to protect the others from contagion ).