History (93 page)

When they reached the place of the rendezvous, they found Scim6 outside the doorway of his hut, as if he were waiting for them. Even before greeting him, Useppe almost breathlessly announced he had met, just a little while ago, a kid who was his niece, and he himself was her uncle! But Scim6 received this amazing news without being too awed by it. He him self, he said, was the uncle of several nieces and nephews ( children of his older brothers ), including a niece fourteen years old! "And my mamma," he announced further, "back at the village has a niece that's her aunt, too!"

And after this, frowning with the mental exertion, assisting himself in the calculation with all ten fi he set to explaining that his grandfather Serafi father of his mother, had about ten younger brothers, some dead and some living, and among these the youngest was an American (or rather an emigrant to America ). Time went by, and he was left a widower. Now, this same grandfather Serafi had, on his own, nine children :

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six girls and three males, and that meant his mother had fi sisters and

three brothers. And they were all married with children ( except three: a nun, and another li ttle sister who had died young, and another brother who was shot up ). And some had four, some seven, or three or six boys and girls, big and little, and all were nieces and nephews of his mother: and amongst them there was one named Crucifera, already grown up, a young woman.

Time goes by, and that American widower ( Ignazio by name), already nearly old, came back to the village to open a store. And one fi day he said : "How'm I going to manage here, without a woman?" and he took that young Crucifera, who, since she was already the niece of Scim6's mother, suddenly, having married the uncle, became also her aunt! The same Crucifera, moreover, Scim6's cousin, also became a kind of half grandmother to him, because she was the sister-in-law of his grandfather Serafi who was also her grandfather and everybody else's!

"Where is he now?" Useppe inquired. "My granddad's at Tiriolo."

"And what does he do?" "He treads the grapes."

Useppe asked no further information : especially since Scim6 wa$ dying now to show his guests the main thing: namely the famous medal of the Giro. He no longer kept it in the hole, where it was threatened by the damp, but at the bottom of the mattress cover that served him, as was seen, also as storage place for clothing and other things; and he had wrapped it also in a second protection of tinfoil, besides the cellophane.

It was, as far as I know, a little medal made to advertise a brand of tires, of very light metal, a gold-yellow color, and circular, bearing in the center the declaration : BARTALI the KING OF THE MOUNTAIN uses such and such tires, etc., etc., and around the edge the decorative legend
Giro d'Italia
1946-with other appropriate data (all hieroglyphics, obviously, for Useppe ). As soon as the double wrapping was undone and the medal appeared, Bella sang, celebrating it: "I've seen this before!" while Useppe inevitably blushed; but luckily, Scim6 neither understood Bella's speech nor was he, at the moment, observing Useppe, since he was occupied with examining the medal fore and aft, to make sure the damp ness hadn't damaged it too much. In fact, he didn't take his eyes off it even as he held it out to Useppe ( barely time for a quick look); and he hastened to rewrap it and put it back where it had been before. He continued, however, rummaging among the old newspapers and the rags that stuffed his mattress, surely having some other in teresting thing still to display. And in fact he first took out a varicolored little comb, the kind seen on stands selling American goods; then a shoe buckle with glass diamonds, found in the street; and then half a windshield wiper. He showed them the alarm

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clock that really worked; to tell the truth, it worked even too well (it was fast, but he could tell time by the sun ); and moreover, the Iatest novelty, a battery fl like the ones Useppe had seen with the partisans. He said this one lasted 200 hours! Actually it was at present without a battery, but the guy who had given it to him had promised to supply one very soon.

"Who gave it to you?" Useppe asked. "A FAGGOT."

The cicadas' nest proved an attraction, but mysterious. About sixty yards from the hut, behind the little hill, a tree grew, its trunk rather short compared to the grand height of its crown of leaves. One of its boughs was marked by a long cut, and Scim6 said that was a deposit of cicada eggs. Then, pointing out a little hole in the shifted earth at the tree's root, he explained that down there was a nest where the eggs went to be hatched. He further declared that he had discovered, the day before, a little cicada just hatched from the nest, at the very moment when, attached to the tree's bark, it was toiling its way out of its shell. Since he had to go into the city, he had left it there, still dazed and half stupid, waiting for the mo ment to learn to fl At present, however, along with the cicada, the shell had vanished : maybe some preying animal had stolen it, or maybe the wind had blown it away. And the cicada, having learned to fl by now, maybe lived up above in the same tree or in some tree nearby; and soon they would hear it sing, provided it was a male. Because only the males can sing; the females can't.

Useppe had heard the song of cicadas in the past, but he had never seen one. Both he and Scim6, however, agreed on not disturbing the earth of the nest, so as not to interrupt the hatching of other little new cicadas. In fact, according to Scim6, the one he had seen was a cicada scout, who had come up ahead, and would surely be followed by a numerous family of mute females and singing males.

And they went off to the banks of the river, where Scim6 wanted to have a swim, before going to the movies. Here Useppe had to confess, with regret, that he didn't yet know how to swim. And he remained on the shore, grief-stricken, while Bella and Scim6 splashed in the water.

Coming out completely naked, Scim6 showed Useppe his genitals, boasting that he was already a man : completely virile, so much so that, if he thought of certain things, for example of kisses in the movies or of his cousin-grandmother Cmcifera, he could even swell up. And Useppe, curi ous, decided to show him, in turn, his own little cock, to fi out how far he had progressed. Scim6 told him that he, too, beyond doubt was also a complete male, but he still had to grow. And Useppe then thought that, when he had grown, he would also perhaps be able to sing in a full voice, like the male cicadas.

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Scim6's body, scrawny and gawky, was marked by various scars, whose explanation he immediately furnished Useppe. One, the most recent, on the leg, had been given by an instructor in the Reformatory with a stick. Another older scar on his arm, almost at his shoulder, had been given him by one of his older brothers, aged twenty-one, hitting him with a mule harness. This mean brother, according to Scim6, was, of the whole family,

the most determin
e
d to keep him locked up with the reform-school boys.

The third scar, which marked his upper forehead, near the hairline, he had given himself, banging his head against the door and against the walls, when they had locked him up in solitary confi at the Reformatory Remembering this cell, Scim6 gave a kind of groan; his little face seemed to shrink still further, his eyes wide and staring. And suddenly fi with unexpected desperation, he fl himself down on all fours, slamming his head furiously against the ground, three ti in a row.

Now he had to leave. And Useppe, with regret in his soul, could already see him arriving at the pinnacled movie Palace, there to meet those creatures of mysterious splendor, givers of gifts, whose person, title, and everything, really, were incomprehensible to him. And fi though without admitting this ignorance of his, he moved in front of Scim6 and, swaying, ventured with a shy voice :

"Why don't you take me with you, to the Movies, to meet
the faggots?"

And he showed him that, buttoned up in a pocket of his overalls, he even possessed some change ( which Ida had given him before he went out, to buy himself an ice-cream cone).

But Scim6 shook his head protectively, and looking at him with a paternal eye, said:

"No, you're still too little." Then, perhaps to make his refusal more plausible, he added :

"And besides, they don't let dogs into the theater."

After which, seeing Useppe's disappointed expression, he lingered a few more moments with him. But he said at last, "I've got to hurry!" and to console him he solemnly promised:

"I don't have time today, but the next time you come here, I'll teach you how to swim."

"We'll be back tomorrow!" Useppe hastened to answer.

"Tomorrow's Sunday; the first show starts at three. But if you come early enough, I can start teaching you how to fl and do the dog-paddle." As he ran towards the hut, leaving the other two on the bank, his "smoker's cough" could be heard in the distance, making him stagger on his short legs. His departure cast a sad gloom over Useppe, which grew as the minutes passed. Even the company of Bella, who blinked at him

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aff with her understanding eyes, \\·asn't enough to console him. He thought again of Davide, whom he hadn't in the least forgotten, despite the new friendship with Scimo; and not feeling like staying on the river till evening today, he tugged at Bella's collar slightly, tempting her with the proposal: "Vvavide . . ." But Bella shook her head, reminding him that Davide had made no appointment with them; and if they went to him unannounced, they would be sent away, like the last time.

After Scim6's departure, Davide's unkept promise also came back to sadden Useppe's loneliness. A passing cloud covered the sun, and to him it seemed an enormous storm-cloud. Suddenly, from the opposite shore a boat was seen setting forth, the forms of several boys visible in it. With a start, Useppe said to himself: "THE PIRATES!" and rose to his feet, in battle position. He was determined to defend the tree tent and Scim6's hut against them at any price. But the boat went off to the south instead, fl the shore it had left; and a little later it was out of sight.

Useppe sat down again on the grass, his heart pounding. His sorrows of a moment before were becoming confused in a kind of formless pre sentiment not new to him, though unrecognizable every time it came back. Each return of his
grand mal
was a violence he underwent without witness ing it. Only, he sensed ahead of time an ambiguous signal, like the arrival, at his back, of a featureless mask behind which he felt was an empty hole. And then he was overtaken by a nebulous horror, as already half-blind, he attempted to set off without
a
direction, only to be struck down after two or three steps. This obscure execution, however, found him already uncon scious. And even that fi signal left only a vague trace afterwards, like a fragmentary theme heard somewhere, somehow, no longer remembered. Its notes emerge again from
something
that resembles a laceration . . . but they do not say what the
thing
is.

Sitting on the grass by the river, his heart still pounding, Useppe had the sensation of having already lived, in the past, another identical mo ment. There was no knowing when, perhaps in another existence, he had once found himself on a radiant shore, among fi dotted with merry tents, awaiting an imminent horror that wanted to swallow him up. His face contracted in a boundless rejection : "I don't want! I don't want!" he cried. And he stood up, as he had a little earlier, when he was prepared for combat with the Pirates. Against this other
thing,
truly, he had no way out, except an absurd fl And the one extreme avenue of escape off him, there at the moment, was the water of the river, which fl beneath his feet. His vision already blurred, Useppe fl himself down. At that point, the current was rather calm, but the water was well over his head.

A desperate barking echoed along the shore; and in a moment Bella was upon him, as he fl ndered in incoherent disorder, battered by the

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water like a poor little creature, of air or earth, wounded in the back. "Hang on, climb onto me," Bella pleaded with him, slipping promptly under his belly and thus keeping him afl as she swam towards land. In the space of two breaths, the rescue was carried out: in his soaked clothes, Useppe was again safe, on the edge of the fi

It may be that the sudden cold shock of the water blocked his attack at its fi onslaught. This time there was no scream, or loss of conscious ness, or that horrible cyanosis that disfi him. The only sign of this attack (partial or incomplete) was a trembling of all his muscles which racked him convulsively, as soon as he was on land, along with a tormented cry "No, no! I don't want! I don't want!" he went on repeating, while Bella hastily licked him, like
a
litter of puppies. Useppe fi transformed the weeping into a frightened little laugh; and he hugged Bella tight, as if he were in his bed at home, next to Ida. They fell asleep together, and the sun dried them.