The Path to the Spiders' Nests

by Italo Calvino

  ‘We’ll have to wait here till dark,’ says Red Wolf.

  Pin suddenly remembers himself hanging on the drainpipe and the sentries shooting, and goes into a cold sweat. Such things are almost more terrifying to remember than to live through; but you can’t feel really frightened with Red Wolf near. It’s wonderful to be sitting with him behind the water-tank; like playing hide-and-seek; except that there is no difference between the game and real life, and it has to be played seriously, which Pin likes.

  ‘Are you hurt, Red Wolf?’

  ‘Not much,’ says Red Wolf, passing a finger wet with saliva over his cuts. ‘The branches broke my fall when they cracked off. I had it all thought out. How did you get on, with that soap?’

  ‘Bloody hell, Red Wolf, you really are amazing. How d’you know all these things?’

  ‘A Communist must know everything,’ replies the other. ‘A Communist must know how to act in all situations.’

  He’s amazing, thinks Pin, a pity he can never resist showing off.

  ‘There’s only one thing I’m sorry about,’ says Red Wolf. ‘Being unarmed. I’d give anything for a Sten.’

  Sten; another mysterious word; Sten, Gap, Sim, how can anyone ever remember them all? But this last remark of Red Wolf’s has filled Pin with delight; now he can show off, too.

  ‘I’m not worried about that myself,’ says he, ‘I’ve got a pistol and no one else can touch it.’

  Red Wolf frowns at him, trying not to show too much interest.

  ‘You’ve got a pistol?’

  ‘Hm, hm,’ says Pin.

  ‘What calibre? What make?’

  ‘A real pistol. A German sailor’s. I stole it from him. That’s why I was put inside.’

  ‘Tell me what it’s like.’

  Pin tries to explain, and Red Wolf describes every existing type of pistol and decides that Pin’s is a P.38. Pin is enthusiastic; pee thirty-eight, what a lovely name, pee thirty-eight!

  ‘Where’ve you got it?’ asks Red Wolf.

  ‘In a certain place,’ says Pin.

  Pin has to decide now whether or not to tell Red Wolf about the spiders’ nests. Red Wolf is certainly an amazing fellow who can do all kinds of extraordinary things; but the place where spiders make their nests is a very great secret and must be kept among real close friends. Pin is not sure, in spite of everything, if he really likes Red Wolf; he is too different from all the others, grown-ups and boys too; he is always saying serious things and takes no interest in his sister. But in spite of that, if Red Wolf took an interest in the spiders’ nests, Pin would like him very much. Pin, in his heart, cannot understand why all grown-up men concern themselves so much with his sister, who has teeth like a horse and arm-pits full of black hair; but grown-ups never seem to talk to him without making some remark about her, and Pin has become convinced she must be important and that he himself is important because he’s the brother of the Dark Girl of Long Alley. But he is sure too that the spiders’ nests are more interesting than his sister and than all this male and female business, though he can never find anyone else who realizes it; if he did find someone he would even forgive a lack of interest in the Dark Girl.

  ‘I know a place,’ he says to Red Wolf, ‘where spiders make their nests.’

  ‘I want to know,’ replies Red Wolf, ‘where you’ve got the P.38.’

  ‘Well, it’s there,’ says Pin.

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘D’you want to know what spiders’ nests are like?’

  ‘I want that pistol.’

  ‘Why? It’s mine.’

  ‘You’re only a child, interested in spiders’ nests, what can you do with a pistol?’

  ‘It’s mine, hell, and if I want to I’ll throw it in the river.’

  ‘You’re a capitalist,’ says Red Wolf. ‘Capitalists argue like that.’

  ‘Oh, go and hang yourself,’ says Pin.

  Red Wolf says, ‘Are you mad talking so loud? If they hear us we’re done for.’

  He moves away from Red Wolf and they lie there in silence for a time. No, it’s hopeless, Pin thinks; Red Wolf has saved him from prison, but they can’t ever be friends. But he is frightened of being left alone, and this business of the pistol binds him with a double link to Red Wolf, so he mustn’t burn his boats.

  Now he sees that Red Wolf has found a piece of charcoal and is beginning to write something on the cement side of the water-tank. Pin also takes up a bit of charcoal and begins drawing dirty pictures; once he had covered all the walls of the alley with such dirty drawings that the parish priest of San Giuseppe complained to the Comune and had them repainted. But Red Wolf is intent on his writing and takes no notice of him.

  ‘What are you writing?’ asks Pin.

  ‘Death to Nazis and Fascists,’ says Red Wolf. ‘We mustn’t waste our time. Here’s a chance to do a little propaganda. Take some charcoal and write too.’

  ‘I have,’ says Pin, and points to his obscene drawings. Red Wolf is furious and begins to rub them out.

  ‘You mad? Fine propaganda that’ll make.’

  ‘But what’s the use of making propaganda here? Who d’you think will come and read anything here except lizards?’

  ‘Shut up. I thought of putting arrows on the water-tank, then on the wall, as far as the road. People will follow the arrows to here and read this.’

  This is another of the games which only Red Wolf knows how to play; they are very complicated and absorbing games, but they don’t make you laugh.

  ‘What shall I write then? “Long Live Lenin”?’

  Years ago in the alley there had been some graffiti which appeared regularly on a wall and went: Long Live Lenin. The Fascists would come and rub it out and it was back again next day. Then one day they arrested Fransè the carpenter and the writing never appeared again. People said Fransè had died on an island.

  ‘Write: “Long Live Italy”, “Long Live the Allies”,’ says Red Wolf.

  Pin does not enjoy writing. At school the mistress – how crooked her legs were, seen from under the bench – used to hit him over the fingers. The W for ‘Viva’ is very difficult to write properly: better find some easier word. Pin thinks a moment, then begins: A-R-S-E.

  The days are beginning to lengthen and dusk never seems to come. Every now and again Red Wolf looks at one of his hands; it acts as a watch; every time he looks at it he sees it getting darker; when he can only see a black shadow it will mean that it’s dark enough for them to come out. He and Pin have made up their quarrel and Pin has decided that he will take him to the path of the spiders’ nests, to dig the pistol up. Red Wolf gets to his feet; it’s dark enough now. ‘Are we going?’ asks Pin.

  ‘Wait,’ says Red Wolf, ‘I’ll go and have a look around and then come back for you. One is less dangerous than two.’

  Pin doesn’t want to stay alone, but he is also afraid of coming into the open without knowing what’s there.

  ‘Say, Red Wolf,’ he exclaims, ‘you won’t just leave me alone here?’

  ‘Trust me,’ says Red Wolf, ‘I’ll give you my word to come back. Then we’ll go and look for the P.38.’

  Now Pin is all alone, waiting. With Red Wolf no longer there every shadow takes on a strange shape, every noise sounds like a footstep coming nearer. It’s the sailor cursing in German at the top of the alley and now coming to look for him, naked except for his vest, and saying that Pin has also stolen his trousers. It’s the baby-faced officer with a police-dog on a lead, whipping it with the belt of the pistol. The face of the police-dog is like that interpreter’s with the rat-like moustache. They have got to a chicken-coop and Pin is afraid that it’s he himself who is hiding inside there. But they go in, and find the militiaman who took Pin off to prison, crouching down like a chicken, for some unknown reason.

  Then Pin thinks that a familiar face is peering into his hiding-place and smiling at him. It’s Michel the Frenchman! But Michel puts his cap on and his smile changes into a nasty grin; it’s the cap of
the Black Brigade with the death’s head on it! Now Red Wolf is coming at last! But no, a man with a light-coloured raincoat joins Red Wolf, takes him by an elbow and shakes his head, pointing at Pin, with a dissatisfied look; it’s Committee! Why doesn’t he want Red Wolf to join Pin? Committee points at the drawings on the water-tank, huge drawings representing Pin’s sister in bed with a German. Behind the tank there is a heap of manure. Pin had not noticed it before. Now he tries to scoop himself out a hiding-place in the middle of the manure, but as he does so he touches a human face; a man is buried alive in the manure, it’s the sentry with the sad face and the cheeks hacked about from shaving!

  Suddenly, with a start, Pin wakes up. How long has he been asleep? Around him now it is pitch dark. Why has Red Wolf not returned yet? Has he met a patrol and been captured? Or can he have returned and called him as he slept and then gone off thinking Pin was no longer there? Or perhaps there was a search for them both going on in the country around, and Red Wolf could not move a step?

  Pin comes out from behind the water-tank. The croaking of frogs seems to echo from the great wide throat of the sky, the sea to be a huge shining sword in the depths of the night. Being out in the open gives Pin a strange sense of smallness, not of fear. He is alone now, alone in the whole world. He walks off through the serried rows of carnations and of calendule, then makes for the higher slopes of the hills, to keep above the military area. Later he will come down to the river-bed and the paths which are his own.

  He’s hungry. The cherries are ripe at this season. Here’s a tree, far from any house. Has it grown there by magic? Pin climbs up into the branches and begins to pick the cherries carefully. A big bird takes flight almost in his hands; it was sleeping in the branches. Pin at that moment feels a friend of everything and wishes he had not disturbed it.

  When he has taken the edge off his hunger he fills his pockets with cherries and climbs down from the tree, then walks on again spitting out cherry-stones. Then he thinks the Fascists might follow the track of the stones and catch him up. But no one in all the world would be clever enough to think of a thing like that, no one except Red Wolf! Yes, if Pin leaves a trail of cherry-stones, Red Wolf will manage to find him, wherever he is! All he has to do is to drop a cherry-stone every twenty yards. There, he’ll eat a cherry the other side of that wall, then another past that old olive-press, and another after the medlar tree; and so on until he reaches the path of the spiders’ nests, But long before he has reached the river-bed the cherries are finished. Then Pin realizes that Red Wolf will never find him again.

  Now he is walking along in the bed of the torrent, which is almost dry, among big white stones and bamboos rustling like paper. Down at the bottom of the pools are sleeping eels as long as human arms, to be caught by hand, sometimes, when you drain water off. Where the torrent opens out in the Old Town, shut up now like a pine-cone, sleep drunken men and women satiated with love-making. Pin’s sister is asleep alone or perhaps in company; she has already forgotten him, no longer wondering if he is alive or dead. Lying awake, dying, all alone on the straw of his cell, is Pin’s master, Pietromagro, the blood turning yellow with urine in his veins.

  Pin has now reached his own area; there is the irrigation channel, there is the path with the nests in it. He recognizes the stones, he looks to see if the earth has been disturbed. No, nothing has moved. He scoops with his hands, with almost forced anxiety; touching the holster gives him a soothing sensation, like a baby feeling a toy under its pillow. He takes the pistol out and passes his finger over the hollows to take the earth out. Out of the barrel, very quickly, jumps a tiny spider; it had made itself a nest inside!

  It’s lovely, his pistol is, the only thing he has in all the world now. He grasps it and imagines he is Red Wolf, tries to think what Red Wolf would do if he had this pistol in his hand. But that reminds him that he is alone, and that he can’t go to anyone for help, neither to those double-faced incomprehensible men at the tavern nor to his traitress of a sister nor even to Pietromagro in prison. He doesn’t even know what to do with that pistol, nor how to load it; if he’s found with it in his hand they’ll certainly kill him. He puts it back in its holster and covers it with stones and earth and grass again. Now there is nothing left for him to do but wander aimlessly about the countryside. He hasn’t the slightest idea what to do.

  He begins walking along the irrigation channels again; in the dark it’s easy to lose one’s balance on them and put a foot in the water or fall on to the allotment beneath. Pin concentrates every thought on keeping his balance; it may, he thinks, hold in the tears pressing at the back of his eyes. But the tears well over and cloud his pupils and soak his eyelashes. First they flow silently, then pour down, while sobs hammer at the back of his throat. As he walks along crying like that, a big human shadow comes towards him along the channels. Pin stops, and the man stops too.

  ‘Who goes there?’ says the man.

  Pin does not know what reply to make, his tears are welling up more than ever and now he’s broken into deep, desperate sobbing.

  The man comes nearer; he is large and tall, dressed in civilian clothes and armed with a tommy-gun, and has a cloak strapped over his shoulder.

  ‘Hey, why are you crying?’ he says.

  Pin looks at him; he is a huge man with a flat face like one of those masks which spout water in fountains; he has spreading moustaches and very few teeth.

  ‘What’re you doing here, at this time of night?’ says the man. ‘Are you lost?’

  The oddest thing about the man is his cap, a woollen one with an embroidered edge and a pom-pom at the top, of some indistinguishable colour.

  ‘You are lost. I can’t take you back home, as I’ve nothing to do with any homes nowadays and can’t take lost children back to theirs!’

  He says all this almost in a tone of self-justification, more to himself than to Pin.

  ‘I’m not lost,’ says Pin.

  ‘Well, what are you doing wandering about here?’ says the big man with the woollen cap.

  ‘First you tell me what you’re doing.’

  ‘Fine,’ says the man, ‘you’re a bright lad, you are. As you’re so bright, why are you crying? I go round at night, killing people. Are you afraid?’

  ‘No. Are you a murderer?’

  ‘There, you see, not even children are afraid any more of men who go around killing people. No, I’m not a murderer, but I kill people all the same.’

  ‘Are you going to kill someone now?’

  ‘No. I’m on my way back.’

  Pin is not frightened of him, for he knows that some men who kill others are good guys all the same; Red Wolf is always talking about killing and yet he is a good guy; the painter who lived opposite killed his wife and yet he was a good guy; Michel the Frenchman has probably killed people by now and yet he will always be the same Frenchman Michel! Then the big man with the woollen cap begins talking about killing, in a sad voice as if he did it as a penance.

  ‘D’you know Red Wolf?’ asks Pin.

  ‘Of course I do. Red Wolf is one of Biondo’s lot. I’m with Dritto. How d’you know him?’

  ‘I was with him, with Red Wolf, and I’ve lost him. We escaped from prison. We shoved a barrel over the sentry. First they beat me with the belt of the pistol. I’d stolen it from the sailor who goes with my sister. My sister is the Dark Girl of Long Alley.’

  The big man with the woollen cap is running a finger over his moustaches. ‘Yes … yes … yes … yes …’ he says, trying to understand the story all at once. ‘And now where d’you intend going?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Pin. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to the camp.’

  ‘Will you take me with you?’ says Pin.

  ‘Come along. Have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘Cherries,’ says Pin.

  ‘Alright. Here’s some bread,’ and he pulls a piece of bread out of his pocket and hands it to Pin.

  They set off and walk
through an olive-grove. Pin chews the bread; a tear or two is still falling over his cheek and he swallows it with the bread. The big man has taken him by the hand; it’s a huge hand, warm and soft, and seems made of bread too.

  ‘Well! now, let’s see what happened … Behind it all, you said, there was a woman …’

  ‘My sister. The Dark Girl of Long Alley,’ says Pin.

  ‘Of course, behind all the stories with a bad ending there’s always a woman, make no mistake about that. You’re young, just listen to what I tell you. War’s all the fault of women …’

  Chapter Five

  Pin awakes to see such bright stretches of sky between branches of woodland trees that it almost hurts him to look up. It is day, a day serene and free, with birds singing.

  The big man is standing beside him rolling up the cloak which he has just taken off Pin’s back.

  ‘Quick, let’s be off, it’s day,’ he says. They had walked almost all night, clambering up through olive-groves, then scrub-land, and eventually into dark pine-woods. They had seen owls, too; but Pin was never afraid because the big man with the little woollen cap always held his hand.

  ‘You’re dropping with sleep, son,’ the big man had said, as he pulled him along behind him. ‘You don’t want me to carry you, do you?’

  Pin had in fact had great difficulty in keeping his eyes open, and would have sunk happily into the mass of ferns in the undergrowth till they covered him right over. It had been almost morning when they reached the open space near a charcoal burner’s hut and the big man said, ‘We can halt here.’

  Pin had stretched out on the coal-blackened ground, and watched, as if in a dream, the big man cover him with his cloak, then go to and fro with bits of wood, break them up, and light a fire.

  Now it is day, and the big man is pissing on the embers of the fire; Pin gets up and does the same beside him. Standing there he looks up at the big man’s face; he has not yet seen it properly in the light. As the shadows melt away in the woods and from his eyes still gluey with sleep, Pin keeps on making new discoveries about him. He’s younger than he’d seemed and his proportions more normal; his moustache is reddish-colour and he has blue eyes, his face is like a grotesque mask because of the gaps in his teeth and a flattened nose running across his face.