by Frank Wynne
Eleven o’clock came. Someone switched on an electric torch, the signal to those aboard the steamship to come and collect them. When the torch was switched off again, the darkness seemed thicker and more frightening than ever. But only a few minutes later, the obsessively regular breathing of the sea was overlaid with a more human, more domestic sound, almost like buckets being rhythmically filled and emptied. Next came a low murmur of voices, then, before they realized that the boat had touched the shore, the man they knew as Signor Melfa, the organizer of their journey, was standing in front of them.
“Are we all here?” asked Signor Melfa. He counted them by the light of a torch. There were two missing. “They may have changed their minds, or they may be arriving late … Either way, it’s their tough luck. Should we risk our necks by waiting for them?”
They were all agreed that this was unnecessary.
“If anyone’s not got his money ready,” warned Signor Melfa, “he’d better skip out now and go back home. He’d be making a big mistake if he thought he could spring that one on me when we’re aboard; God’s truth, I’d put the whole lot of you ashore again. And, as it’s hardly fair that everyone should suffer for the sake of one man, the guilty party would get what’s coming to him from me and from all of us; he’d be taught a lesson that he’d remember for the rest of his life—if he’s that lucky.”
They all assured him, with the most solemn oaths, that they had their money ready, down to the last lira.
“All aboard,” said Signor Melfa. Immediately each individual became a shapeless mass, a heaving cluster of baggage.
“Jesus Christ! Have you brought the whole house with you?” A torrent of oaths poured out, only ceasing when the entire load, men and baggage, was piled on board— a task accomplished not without considerable risk to life and property. And for Melfa the only difference between the man and the bundle lay in the fact that the man carried on his person the two hundred and fifty thousand lira, sewn into his jacket or strapped to his chest. He knew these men well, did Signor Melfa, these insignificant peasants with their rustic mentality.
*
The voyage took less time than they expected, lasting eleven nights including that of the departure. They counted the nights rather than the days because it was at night that they suffered so appallingly in the overcrowded, suffocating quarters. The stench of fish, diesel oil and vomit enveloped them as if they had been immersed in a tub of hot, liquid black tar. At dawn they streamed up on deck, exhausted, hungry for light and air. But if their image of the sea had been a vast expanse of green corn rippling in the wind, the reality terrified them: their stomachs heaved and their eyes watered and smarted if they so much as tried to look at it.
But on the eleventh night they were summoned on deck by Signor Melfa. At first they had the impression that dense constellations had descended like flocks onto the sea; then it dawned upon them that these were in fact towns, the towns of America, the land of plenty, shining like jewels in the night. And the night itself was of an enchanting beauty, clear and sweet, with a crescent moon slipping through transparent wisps of cloud and a breeze that was elixir to the lungs.
“That is America,” said Signor Melfa.
“Are you sure it isn’t some other place?” asked a man who, throughout the voyage, had been musing over the fact that there were neither roads nor even tracks across the sea, and that it was left to the Almighty to steer a ship without error between sky and water to its destination.
Signor Melfa gave the man a pitying look before turning to the others. “Have you ever,” he asked, “seen a skyline like this in your part of the world? Can’t you feel that the air is different? Can’t you see the brilliance of these cities?”
They all agreed with him and shot looks full of pity and scorn at their com-panion for having ventured such a stupid question.
“Time to settle up,” said Signor Melfa.
Fumbling beneath their shirts, they pulled out the money.
“Get your things together,” ordered Signor Melfa when he had put the money away.
This took only a few minutes. The provisions that, by agreement, they had brought with them, were all eaten and all that they now had left were a few items of clothing and the presents intended for their relatives in America: a few rounds of goat-cheese, a few bottles of well-aged wine, some embroidered table-centers and antimacassars. They climbed down merrily into the boat, laughing and humming snatches of song. One man even began to sing at the top of his voice as soon as the boat began to move off.
“Don’t you ever understand a word I say?” asked Melfa angrily. “Do you want to see me arrested?… As soon as I’ve left you on the shore you can run up to the first copper you see and ask to be repatriated on the spot; I don’t give a damn: everyone’s free to bump himself off any way he likes … But I’ve kept my side of the bargain; I said I’d dump you in America, and there it is in front of you … But give me time to get back on board, for Crissake!”
They gave him time and enough to spare, for they remained sitting on the cool sand, not knowing what to do next, both blessing and cursing the night whose darkness provided a welcome mantle while they remained huddled on the shore, but seemed so full of menace when they thought of venturing further afield.
Signor Melfa had advised them to disperse, but no one liked the idea of separation from the others. They had no idea how far they were from Trenton nor how long it would take them to reach it.
They heard a distant sound of singing, very far away and unreal. “It could almost be one of our own carters,” they thought, and mused upon the way that men the world over expressed the same longings and the same griefs in their songs. But they were in America now, and the lights that twinkled beyond the immediate horizon of sand-dunes and trees were the lights of American cities.
Two of them decided to reconnoiter. They walked in the direction of the nearest town whose lights they could see reflected in the sky. Almost immediately they came to a road. They remarked that it had a good surface, well maintained, so different from the roads back home, but to tell the truth they found it neither as wide nor as straight as they had expected. In order to avoid being seen, they walked beside the road, a few yards away from it, keeping in the trees.
A car passed them. One of them said: “That looked just like a Fiat 600.” Another passed that looked like a Fiat 1100, and yet another. “They use our cars for fun, they buy them for their kids like we buy bicycles for ours.” Two motorcycles passed with a deafening roar. Police, without a doubt. The two congratulated themselves on having taken the precaution of staying clear of the road.
At last they came to a roadsign. Having checked carefully in both directions, they emerged to read the lettering: SANTA CROCE CAM ARINA—SCOGLITTI.
“Santa Croce Camarina … I seem to have heard that name before.”
“Right; and I’ve heard of Scoglitti, too.”
“Perhaps one of my family used to live there, it might have been my uncle before he moved to Philadelphia. I seem to remember that he spent some time in another town before going to Philadelphia.”
“My brother, too, lived in some other place before he settled in Brooklyn … I can’t remember exactly what it was called. And, of course, although we may read the name as Santa Croce Camarina or Scoglitti, we don’t know how the Americans read it, because they always pronounce words in a different way from how they’re spelled.”
“You’re right; that’s why Italian’s so easy, you read it exactly how it’s written … But we can’t stay here all night, we’ll have to take a chance … I shall stop the next car that comes along; all I’ve got to say is ‘Trenton?’… The people are more polite here … Even if we don’t understand what they say, they’ll point or make some kind of sign and at least we’ll know in what direction we have to go to find this blasted Trenton.”
The Fiat 500 came round the bend in the road about twenty yards from where they stood, the driver braking when he saw them with their hands out t
o stop him. He drew up with an imprecation. There was little danger of a hold-up, he knew, because this was one of the quietest parts of the country, so, expecting to be asked for a lift, he opened the passenger door.
“Trenton?” the man asked.
“Che?” said the driver.
“Trenton?”
“Che trenton della madonna,” the driver exclaimed, cursing.
The two men looked at each other, seeking the answer to the same unspoken question: Seeing that he speaks Italian, wouldn’t it be best to tell him the whole story?
The driver slammed the car door and began to draw away. As he put his foot on the accelerator he shouted at the two men who were standing like statues: “Ubriaconi, cornuti ubriaconi, cornuti e figli di …” The last words were drowned by the noise of the engine.
Silence descended once more.
After a moment or two, the man to whom the name of Santa Croce had seemed familiar, said: “I’ve just remembered something. One year when the crops failed around our parts, my father went to Santa Croce Camarina to work during the harvest.”
As if they had had a rug jerked out from beneath their feet, they collapsed onto the grass beside the ditch. There was, after all, no need to hurry back to the others with the news that they had landed in Sicily.
THE POISONOUS RABBIT
Italo Calvino
Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Italo Calvino (1923–1985) was an Italian journalist, short-story writer, and novelist whose whimsical and imaginative fables made him one of the most important Italian fiction writers in the twentieth century. Admired in Britain, Australia and the United States, he was the most-translated contemporary Italian writer at the time of his death. Using the battlename of “Santiago”, Calvino joined the Italian Resistance and, for twenty months, endured the fighting in the Maritime Alps until 1945 and the Liberation. His parents were held hostage by the Nazis for an extended period; three times they mock executed his father in front of his mother. After moving to Turin, he often humorously belittled this choice, describing it as a “city that is serious but sad”.
When the day comes to leave the hospital, you already know it in the morning and if you’re in good shape you move around the wards, practising the way you’re going to walk when you’re outside; you whistle, act like a well man with those still sick, not to arouse envy but for the pleasure of adopting a tone of encouragement. You see the sun beyond the big panes, or the fog if there’s fog; you hear the sounds of the city; and everything is different from before, when every morning you felt them enter – the light and sound of an unattainable world – as you woke behind the bars of that bed. Now, outside, there is your world again. The healed man recognizes it as natural and usual; and suddenly, he notices once more the smell of the hospital.
Marcovaldo, one morning, was sniffing around like that, cured, waiting for them to write certain things in his health insurance book so that he could leave. The doctor took his papers, said to him, “Wait here”, and left him alone in the office. Marcovaldo looked at the white-enameled furniture he had so hated, the test-tubes full of grim substances, and tried to cheer himself with the thought that he was about to leave it all. But he couldn’t manage to feel the joy he would have expected. Perhaps it was the idea of going back to the warehouse to shift packing cases, or of the mischief his children had surely been up to in his absence, and especially, of the fog outside that made him think of having to step out into the void, to dissolve in a damp nothingness. And so he looked around, with a vague need to feel affection towards something in here; but everything he saw reminded him of torture or discomfort.
Then he saw a rabbit in a cage. It was a white rabbit, with a long, fluffy coat, a pink triangle of a nose, amazed red eyes, ears almost furless flattened against its back. It wasn’t all that big, but in the narrow cage its crouching oval body made the wire screen bulge and clumps of fur stuck out, ruffled by a slight trembling. Outside the cage, on the table, there was some grass and the remains of a carrot. Marcovaldo thought of how unhappy the animal must be, shut up in there, seeing that carrot but not being able to eat it. And he opened the door of the cage. The rabbit didn’t come out: it stayed there, still, with only a slight twitch of its face, as if it were pretending to chew in order to seem nonchalant. Marcovaldo took the carrot and held it closer, then slowly drew it back, to urge the rabbit to come out. The rabbit followed him, cautiously bit the carrot and began gnawing it diligently, in Marcovaldo’s hand. The man stroked it on the back and, meanwhile, squeezed it, to see if it was fat. He felt it was somewhat bony, under its coat. From this fact, and from the way it pulled on the carrot, it was obvious that they kept it on short rations. If it belonged to me, Marcovaldo thought, I would stuff it until it became a ball. And he looked at it with the loving eye of the breeder who manages to allow kindness towards the animal to coexist with anticipation of the roast, all in one emotion. There, after days and days of sordid stay in the hospital, at the moment of leaving, he discovered a friendly presence, which would have sufficed to fill his hours and his thoughts. And he had to leave it, go back into the foggy city, where you don’t encounter rabbits.
The carrot was almost finished. Marcovaldo took the animal into his arms while he looked around for something else to feed him. He held its nose to a potted geranium on the doctor’s desk, but the animal indicated it didn’t like the plant. At that same moment Marcovaldo heard the doctor’s step, coming back: how could he explain why he was holding the rabbit in his arms? He was wearing his heavy work coat, tight at the waist. In a hurry, he stuck the rabbit inside, buttoned it all the way up, and to keep the doctor from seeing that wriggling bulge at his stomach, he shifted it around to his back. The rabbit, frightened, behaved itself. Marcovaldo collected his papers and moved the rabbit to his chest, because he had to turn and leave. And so, with the rabbit hidden under his coat, he left the hospital and went to work.
“Ah, you’re cured at last?” the foreman Signor Viligelmo said, seeing him arrive. “And what’s that growth there?” and he pointed to the bulging chest.
“I’m wearing a hot poultice to prevent cramps,” Marcovaldo said.
At that, the rabbit twitched, and Marcovaldo jumped up like an epileptic.
“Now what’s come over you?” Viligelmo said.
“Nothing. Hiccups,” he answered, and with one hand he shoved the rabbit behind his back.
“You’re still a bit seedy, I notice,” the boss said.
The rabbit was trying to crawl up his back and Marcovaldo shrugged hard to send it down again.
“You’re shivering. Go home for another day. And make sure you’re well tomorrow.”
Marcovaldo came home, carrying the rabbit by its ears, like a lucky hunter.
“Papà! Papà!” the children hailed him, running to meet him. “Where did you catch it? Can we have it? Is it a present for us?” And they tried to grab it at once.
“You’re back?” his wife said and from the look she gave him, Marcovaldo realized that his period of hospitalization had served only to enable her to accumulate new grievances against him. “A live animal? What are you going to do with it? It’ll make messes all over the place.”
Marcovaldo cleared the table and set the rabbit down in the middle, where it huddled flat, as if trying to vanish. “Don’t anybody dare touch it!” he said. “This is our rabbit, and it’s going to fatten up peacefully till Christmas.”
“Is it a male or a female?” Michelino asked.
Marcovaldo had given no thought to the possibility of its being a female. A new plan immediately occurred to him: if it was a female, he could mate her and start raising rabbits. And already in his imagination the damp walls disappeared and the room was a green farm among the fields.
But it was a male, all right. Still Marcovaldo had now got this idea of raising rabbits into his head. It was a male, but a very handsome male, for whom a bride should be found and the means to raise a family.
“W
hat are we going to feed it, when we don’t have enough for ourselves?” his wife asked, sharply.
“Let me give it some thought,” Marcovaldo said.
The next day, at work, from some green potted plants in the Management Office, which he was supposed to take out every morning, water, then put back, he removed one leaf each—broad leaves, shiny on one side and opaque on the other—and stuck them into his overalls. Then, when one of the girls came in with a bunch of flowers, he asked her, “Did your boy-friend give them to you? Aren’t you going to give me one?” and he pocketed that, too. To a boy peeling a pear, he said, “Leave me the peel.” And so, a leaf here, a peeling there, a petal somewhere else, he hoped to feed the animal.
At a certain point, Signor Viligelmo sent for him. Can they have noticed the plants are missing leaves? Marcovaldo wondered, accustomed always to feeling guilty.
In the foreman’s office there was the doctor from the hospital, two Red Cross men, and a city policeman. “Listen,” the doctor said, “a rabbit has disappeared from my laboratory. If you know anything about it, you’d better not try to act smart. Because we’ve injected it with the germs of a terrible disease and it can spread it through the whole city. I needn’t ask if you’ve eaten it; if you had, you’d be dead and gone by now.”
An ambulance was waiting outside; they rushed and got in it, and with the siren screaming constantly, they went through streets and avenues to Marcovaldo’s house, and along the way there remained a wake of leaves and peelings and flowers that Marcovaldo sadly threw out of the window.
