After they had finished eating, the mother stood up and went upstairs. Agostino thought the moment had come— it was now or never—to ask her for the money. He followed her and entered the bedroom behind her. She was sitting in front of the mirror at the vanity table and studying her face in silence.
“Mamma,” said Agostino.
“What is it?” she asked absentmindedly.
“May I have twenty lire?” That was the amount he still needed.
“What for?”
“To buy a book.”
“But didn’t you say,” she asked, slowly passing the powder puff over her face, “that you wanted to break your piggy bank?”
Agostino uttered a childish sentence. “Yes, but if I break it, then I won’t have any money saved up. I want to buy the book without breaking the piggy bank.”
The mother laughed affectionately. “You’re such a child.” She looked at him in the mirror for a moment, then added, “In my bag . . . on the bed, my change purse must be inside . . . you can take twenty lire and then put the purse back inside my bag.”
Agostino went to the bed, opened the bag, removed the change purse, and took the twenty lire. Then, with the two bills in his fist, he threw himself on the cot prepared for him next to his mother’s bed. The mother had finished retouching her makeup. She stood up from the vanity and came near him. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to read this book,” said Agostino, picking out at random an adventure novel from the bedside table and opening it to an illustration.
“Good boy, but remember to turn the light out before you fall asleep.” She made a few more preparations, moving around the room. Lying down with one arm under his neck, Agostino glanced at her. The confused sensation came to him that she had never been as beautiful as she was that night. Her white dress of shimmering silk threw into stunning relief the warm brown color of her skin. By an unconscious blossoming of her former self, she appeared at that moment to have regained all the sweet and serene majesty of her former demeanor, but with something more, intangible, a deep sensual aura of happiness. She was big, but she looked bigger than Agostino had ever seen her, big enough to fill the whole room. A white glow in the shadowy bedroom, she moved majestically, her head held high on a beautiful neck, her black eyes tranquil, intent beneath her untroubled brow. She turned off all the lights except the one on the bedside table and bent down to kiss her son. Agostino once again felt enveloped by a perfume he knew intimately, and brushing his lips against her neck he could not help but wonder whether the women, back at that house, were as beautiful or as sweetly perfumed.
Left to himself, Agostino waited about ten minutes for the mother to be far enough away. Then he got out of bed, switched off the lamp, and tiptoed to the next room. He groped around the desk by the window, opened the drawer, and stuffed his pockets with the coins and bills. After he had finished, he searched the drawer, long and wide, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, and he left the room.
On the street he started running. Tortima lived on almost the opposite end of town, in a neighborhood of caulkers and sailors. Although the town was small, it was still quite a distance. He took dark roads near the pine grove, and walking quickly and occasionally breaking into a run, he went straight until he could see the masts popping up between the houses of the sailboats moored at the dock. Tortima’s house was right on the dock, past the iron drawbridge that crossed the canal to the harbor. By day it was an old, rundown area, with rows of dilapidated houses and shops along wide, deserted, sunlit piers, the stench of fish and tar, green oil-slicked water, motionless cranes, and barges filled with rubble. But at this hour, the night made it look like all the other places in town, and only a large sailboat, looming over the sidewalks with all its sides and masts, revealed the presence of harbor waters deeply embanked between the houses. It was a long brown sailboat. High up, between the riggings, you could see the stars shining. The whole mast and hull seemed to be barely moving, in silence, with the ebb and flow of the canal. Agostino crossed the bridge and headed toward the row of houses on the opposite side of the canal. The occasional streetlamp cast an uneven light on the facades of the dilapidated houses. Agostino stopped beneath an open, illuminated window through which you could hear the sound of voices and dishes, of people eating. Bringing a hand to his mouth, he intoned a loud whistle followed by two softer ones, the signal agreed on by the boys in the gang. Almost immediately someone appeared at the window.
“It’s me, Pisa,” Agostino said in a low timorous voice.
“I’m coming,” replied Tortima, for it was none other than him.
Tortima came outside with a face flushed by the wine he had drunk, still chewing on a morsel of something. “I came by so we could go to that house,” said Agostino. “I’ve got the money here, enough for both of us.” Tortima swallowed with a gulp and stared at him. “That house . . . on the far side of the piazza,” Agostino repeated, “where the women are.”
“Oh,” said Tortima, finally understanding, “you had second thoughts. Good boy, Pisa. I’ll be ready to come with you in a minute.” He hurried off and Agostino stayed in the street, walking up and down, his eyes trained on Tortima’s window. The older boy made him wait for a while and, when he reappeared, Agostino could hardly recognize him. He had always seen Tortima as an overgrown boy in rolled-up trousers, or half naked on the beach or in the water. Now he was gazing upon some young factory worker in his Sunday best, long pants and jacket, white collar, tie. He looked older also because of the pomade he had used to smooth his naturally curly hair. In his neat but plain clothes, he revealed to Agostino’s eyes for the first time his qualities as a stolid city dweller.
“Let’s get going,” said Tortima, setting off.
“Is this the right time?” asked Agostino, running alongside him and crossing the iron bridge with him.
“It’s always the right time there,” replied Tortima with a smile.
They took different roads from the ones Agostino had followed on his way there. The square was not very far, barely two streets over. “Have you ever been there?” asked Agostino.
“Not to that one, no.”
Tortima didn’t seem to be in any hurry and moved at his usual pace. “Right now they’ve just finished eating and no one will be there,” he explained. “It’s the perfect time.”
“Why?” asked Agostino.
“You have to ask? Because that way we can choose whoever we like.”
“But how many are there?”
“Well, about four or five.”
Agostino wanted to ask whether they were pretty but he kept his question to himself. “How are you supposed to act?” he asked. Tortima had already told him, but since he was still haunted by a sense of unreality he could not overcome, he needed to hear it reconfirmed.
“How are you supposed to act?” repeated Tortima. “It’s easy. You go inside, then they introduce themselves. You say: Good evening, ladies. You pretend to make small talk for a while, just to give yourself enough time to have a good look around. Then you choose one. It’s your first time, huh?”
“Well, actually—” Agostino began, somewhat embarrassed.
“Who do you think you’re fooling?” said Tortima with brutality. “Don’t think you can tell me this isn’t your first time. Tell those fibs to other people, not to me. But don’t worry,” he added, with an odd emphasis.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry, I said. The woman knows what to do . . . let her take care of it.”
Agostino said nothing. The image conjured up by Tortima, of a woman who would introduce him to love, was pleasant and sweet and almost maternal. But despite this information, his disbelief persisted. “But . . . but . . . will they take me?” he asked, stopping and casting a glance at his own bare legs.
For a second the question seemed to embarrass Tortima. “Come on, let’s get moving,” he said with feigned indifference. “Once we’re there, we’ll find a way to get y
ou in.”
From a dirt road they came out into the piazza. The whole square was dark except a corner where a streetlamp illuminated with its tranquil light a large patch of rough sandy terrain. In the sky, right above the square, you might say, a crescent moon hung, smoky and red, cut in two by a thin wisp of fog. Where the darkness was deepest, Agostino spied the house, which he recognized from the white shutters. They were all closed tight and not a single ray of light shone through. Tortima headed toward the house confidently. But when they reached the middle of the square, beneath the crescent moon, he said to Agostino, “Give me the money. It’s better if I keep it.”
“But I—” Agostino started to say, not trusting Tortima.
“Are you going to give it to me or not?” Tortima insisted with brutality. Embarrassed that it was all in small change, Agostino obeyed him and emptied his pockets into his companion’s hands. “Now keep quiet and follow me,” Tortima said.
As they approached the house, the shadows grew softer, and the two gateposts, the driveway, and the doorway beneath the awning came into view. The gate was ajar. Tortima gave it a push and entered the yard. The door was also open a crack. Tortima climbed the steps and after making a gesture to Agostino to keep quiet, he went in. Before Agostino’s curious eyes appeared a small, completely bare entry-way, at the far end of which a double door with red and blue windowpanes glowed in the bright light. Their entrance had set off a loud buzzer, and almost immediately a massive shadow, like a seated person standing, was projected behind the glass and a woman appeared in the doorway. She was some sort of maid, corpulent and older, with a large bosom clothed in black and a white apron tied around her waist. She came out belly-first, with her arms to her sides and a bloated, grumpy, suspicious face beneath a knot of hair. “Here we are,” said Tortima. From his voice and demeanor, Agostino could tell that Tortima, usually so bold, was also intimidated.
The woman gave them a long hard look, and then, in silence, beckoned to Tortima as if to invite him in. Tortima smiled, relieved, and hurried toward the glass-paned door. Agostino started to follow. “Not you,” said the woman, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder.
“What do you mean?” asked Agostino, suddenly losing his timidity. “He can and I can’t?”
“I really shouldn’t let either of you in,” said the woman, staring at him, “but he gets in. You don’t.”
“You’re too little, Pisa,” said Tortima mockingly. And with a push through the double door he disappeared. His squat shadow appeared for a second behind the glass; then it vanished into the bright light.
“But I—” Agostino insisted, exasperated by Tortima’s treachery.
“Get out of here, little boy. Go home,” said the woman. She went to the door, opened it, and found herself face-to-face with two men on their way in. “Good evening, good evening,” said the first, a man with a ruddy, jovial face. “We have an agreement, right?” he added, turning to his companion, a pale thin blond. “If Pina is free, she’s mine. I mean it.”
“Agreed.”
“What does this kid want?” asked the jovial man, pointing at Agostino.
“He wanted to get in,” said the woman. A fawning smile was outlined on her lips.
“You wanted to get in?” the man shouted at Agostino. “You wanted to get in? At your age you should be home this hour of the night. Go home, go home,” he shouted, waving his arms.
“That’s what I told him,” the woman replied.
“And if we let him in?” remarked the blond man. “At his age I was already making love to the maid.”
“Who do you think you’re fooling? Go home, go home!” shouted the man, infuriated. “Go home!” With the blond man right behind him, he burst through the door, slamming it behind him. Before he knew what had happened, Agostino found himself outside in the yard.
Everything had ended badly, he thought. Tortima had cheated him, taking the money, and he himself had been kicked out. Not knowing what to do, he walked backwards down the driveway, gazing at the half-open door, the awning, the front of the house rising before him with its white shutters closed tight. He felt a searing sense of disappointment, especially because of the way the two men had treated him, like a child. He found the jovial man’s shouting and the blond’s cold tentative kindness no less humiliating than the matron’s blunt, expressionless hostility. Still walking backward, looking around and peering at the trees and bushes in the dark yard, he headed toward the gate. But he suddenly noticed that one whole part of the garden, on the left side of the house, appeared to be illuminated by a bright light that seemed to emanate from an open window on the ground floor. It occurred to him that through the window he would at least be able to get a glimpse of the house. Trying to make as little noise as possible, he worked his way toward the light.
As he imagined, it was a ground-floor window, wide open. The windowsill wasn’t very high. Slowly but surely, hewing close to the corner where it was less likely he would be seen, he approached the window and peered inside.
The room was small and brightly lit. The walls were papered with a gaudy floral pattern in green and black. Opposite the window, a red curtain, hanging by wooden rings from a brass rod, seemed to conceal a door. There was no furniture. Someone was sitting in a corner, on the window side. All you could see were his crossed feet in yellow shoes extended almost to the middle of the room: the feet, Agostino thought, of a man comfortably settled in an armchair. Disappointed, he was about to withdraw when the curtain was lifted and a woman appeared.
She was wearing a loose sheer sky-blue gown that reminded Agostino of his mother’s negligees. The gown, transparent, reached all the way down to her feet. Beneath the sheer material, the woman’s limbs, which took on the aquamarine tint of the fabric, appeared pale and long, almost swaying in lazy curves around the dark stain of her pelvis. Her gown, in a bizarre detail that impressed Agostino, parted over her chest in an oval neckline that dipped all the way down to her waist. Her breasts, which were round and heavy, protruded almost painfully, naked and tightly squeezed against each other. Her gown, which surrounded her breasts with a tightly pleated frame, then reconnected at the neck. Her wavy brown hair was loose and tumbled to her shoulders. She had a wide face, flat and pale, like a spoiled child, and a whimsical expression in her weary eyes and on the pursed lips of her painted mouth. With her hands behind her back and her breasts out, she emerged through the curtain and for a long moment, in an expectant pose, she stood straight and still, without saying a word. She seemed to be looking toward the corner at the man whose crossed feet could be seen in the middle of the room. Then, in the same silence with which she had come, she turned around, lifted the curtain, and disappeared. Almost immediately the man’s feet retreated from Agostino’s view. There was the sound of someone standing up. Frightened, Agostino drew away from the window.
He returned to the driveway, gave a shove to the gate, and went out into the piazza. He was feeling a strong sense of disappointment over his failed venture. At the same time he was gripped almost by terror at what awaited him in the days to come. Nothing had happened, he thought. He hadn’t been able to possess a single woman. Tortima had taken his money, and the next day the teasing of the boys and the impure torment of his relations with his mother would resume. It’s true that for a moment he had seen the woman he desired, standing in her sheer gown, her breasts naked. But he had a dark sense that this inadequate and ambiguous image would be the only picture of womanhood to accompany his memories for long years to come. In fact, years and years would go by, empty and unhappy, between him and the liberating experience. Not until he was as old as Tortima, he thought, would he be released once and for all from this awkward age of transition. But in the meantime he had to continue living in the same way. He felt his whole spirit rebel against the thought, like the bitter sense of a final impossibility.
Once he reached home, he entered without making a sound. In the doorway he saw the guest’s suitcases and heard voices in the living
room. Then he climbed the stairs and went to throw himself on the cot in his mother’s bedroom. There, in the dark, angrily tearing off his clothes and tossing them on the ground, he got undressed and slipped under the sheets. Then he waited, his eyes wide open in the blackness.
He waited a long while. At a certain point he started to feel drowsy and he really did nod off. All at once he woke with a start. The lamp was on, illuminating the mother’s back. She was wearing a negligee and had one knee on the bed, getting ready to turn in for the night. “Mamma,” he said immediately in a loud and almost violent voice.
The mother turned around and came near him. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is something the matter, dear?” Her negligee was transparent, like the gown of the woman at the house. Her body was also shaped like the other body, in vague lines and shadows. “I want to leave tomorrow,” said Agostino, in the same loud and exasperated voice, trying not to look at the mother’s body but at her face.
The mother, startled, sat down on the bed and stared at him. “Why? What’s the matter? Aren’t you having a good time here?”
“I want to leave tomorrow,” he repeated.
“We’ll see,” said the mother, discreetly passing a hand over his forehead, as if she was afraid he had a fever. “What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well? Why do you want to leave?”
Agostino said nothing. The mother’s negligee reminded him of the gown worn by the woman at the house, the same transparency, the same pale flesh, listless and within reach. Except the negligee was wrinkled, making it even more intimate and his glimpse of her even more furtive. So, Agostino thought, not only did the image of the woman at the house not act as a screen between himself and the mother, as he had hoped, but it had somehow confirmed the mother’s womanhood. “Why do you want to leave?” she asked again. “Don’t you enjoy spending time with me?”
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