Every now and then Serenella would point to a flower and say in a low voice, “That one,” and Giovannino would put the barrow down, pluck it, and give it to her. Soon she had a lovely bouquet.
Eventually the gravel ended and they reached an open space paved in bricks and mortar. In the middle of this space was a big empty rectangle: a swimming pool. They crept up to the edge; it was lined with blue tiles and filled to the brim with clear water. How lovely it would be to swim in!
“Shall we go for a dip?” Giovannino asked Serenella. The idea must have been quite dangerous if he asked her instead of just saying, “In we go!” But the water was so clear and blue, and Serenella was never afraid. She jumped off the barrow and put her bunch of flowers in it. They were already in bathing suits, since they’d been out for crabs before. Giovannino plunged in—not from the diving board, because the splash would have made too much noise, but from the edge of the pool. Down and down he went with his eyes wide open, seeing only the blue from the tiles and his pink hands like goldfish; it was not the same as under the sea, full of shapeless green-black shadows. A pink form appeared above him: Serenella! He took her hand and they swam up to the surface, a bit anxiously. No, there was no one watching them at all. But it was not so nice as they’d thought it would be; they always had that uncomfortable feeling that they had no right to any of this and might be chased out at any moment.
They scrambled out of the water, and there beside the swimming pool they found a Ping-Pong table. Instantly Giovannino picked up a paddle and hit the ball, and Serenella, on the other side, was quick to return his shot. And so they went on playing, though only lightly tapping the ball, in case someone in the villa heard them. Then Giovannino, in trying to parry a shot that had bounced high, sent the ball sailing away through the air and smack against a gong hanging in a pergola. There was a long, somber boom. The two children crouched down behind a clump of ranunculus. At once two menservants in white coats appeared, carrying big trays; when they had put the trays down on a round table under an orange-and-yellow-striped umbrella, off they went.
Giovannino and Serenella crept up to the table. There was tea, milk, and sponge cake. They had only to sit down and help themselves. They poured out two cups of tea and cut two slices of cake. But somehow they did not feel at all at ease, and sat perched on the edge of their chairs, their knees shaking. And they could not really enjoy the tea and cake, for nothing seemed to have any taste. Everything in the garden was like that: lovely but impossible to enjoy properly, with that worrying feeling inside that they were only there through an odd stroke of luck, and the fear that they’d soon have to give an account of themselves.
Very quietly they tiptoed up to the villa. Between the slits of a Venetian blind they saw a beautiful shady room, with collections of butterflies hanging on the walls. And in the room was a pale little boy. Lucky boy, he must be the owner of this villa and garden. He was stretched out on a chaise longue, turning the pages of a large book filled with figures. He had big white hands and wore pajamas buttoned up to the neck, though it was summer.
As the two children went on peeping through the slits, the pounding of their hearts gradually subsided. Why, the little rich boy seemed to be sitting there and turning the pages and glancing around with more anxiety and worry than their own. Then he got up and tiptoed around, as if he were afraid that at any moment someone would come and turn him out, as if he felt that that book, that chaise longue, and those butterflies framed on the wall, the garden and games and tea trays, the swimming pool and paths, were only granted to him by some enormous mistake, as if he were incapable of enjoying them and felt the bitterness of the mistake as his own fault.
The pale boy was wandering about his shady room furtively, touching with his white fingers the edges of the cases studded with butterflies; then he stopped to listen. Giovannino’s and Serenella’s hearts, which had returned to a regular beat, now pounded harder than ever. Perhaps it was the fear of a spell that hung over this villa and garden and over all these lovely, comfortable things, the residue of some injustice committed long ago.
Clouds darkened the sun. Very quietly Giovannino and Serenella crept away. They went back along the same paths they had come on, stepping fast but never at a run. And they went through the hedge again on all fours. Between the aloes they found a path leading down to the small stony beach, with banks of seaweed along the shore. Then they invented a wonderful new game: a seaweed fight. They threw great handfuls of it in each other’s faces till late in the afternoon. And Serenella never once cried.
Dawn in the Bare Branches
It doesn’t usually freeze around here, except that in the morning the lettuce heads awaken numbed and slightly pale, and the earth has a gray, almost lunar crust, which responds mutely to the hoe. In December, little yellow leaves begin to color the ground at the foot of the trees, and gradually cover it like a light quilt. Winter is more a transparency of air than cold, and in that air hundreds of red bulbs light up on the skeletal branches: persimmons.
That year the small orchard was like a suite of balloon sellers, their wares suspended in the air: nine on that forked branch, six on that crooked one, up there at the top there seemed to be some missing, but maybe it was the empty space where the leaves had fallen; the ones toward the south were redder, they would ripen first. Every morning, like that, Pipin il Maiorco surveyed his eight trees, checking to see if any fruit was missing, weighing with his eyes the load on the branches, mentally converting the load into money, imagining the money hanging on the bare branches in place of the fruit: greasy, fluttering hundred- and thousand-lire bills, and not, unfortunately, disks of silver and gold that would have sparkled in the branches.
Better to have coins than paper—coins could be buried in a small jar at the foot of a wall instead of moldering and getting eaten by mice. But silver or paper, the circuit always ended there, in money; it could turn again, be transformed into phosphate, into cyanamid, become juice of the earth, a force climbing up through the roots, the sweet juice of tomatoes, bitter of artichokes: then, inevitably, it got back to money.
“Cheer up, Maiorco, you’ll see, once the war’s over, how high Italian money will go!” It was Saltarel speaking, the Venetian who lived up in the houses in Paraggio; he was passing along the mule track while Pipin was hoeing the terraces above. He stopped hoeing and turned his short dove-gray beard toward him: “You serious, Venetian?” The other started laughing scornfully and speaking Venetian, explaining what use the money would serve; Maiorco remained crouching on the ground, disappointed, making bewildered gestures of protest. You could understand the phylloxera that sickens the vines, the fly that shrivels the olives, the snail that makes holes in the lettuce, but money—what beast could gnaw the government money to make it worthless? Already threatening the harvests were woodworms that ate the roots, cochineals and snails on the leaves, beetles in the flowers, caterpillars in the fruit; nothing was missing but that mysterious beast that could ruin the richest harvests, protected by countless attentions, when they had already been sold—when it came to the money! The “Venetians” were poor wandering folk, émigrés from those parts in the years of the crisis, people who would all sooner or later end up in the city as street sweepers, like the “Neapolitans,” that is, the Abruzzesi, their cronies: that was why they talked like that.
There were already too many beasts that inserted themselves between Pipin il Maiorco and the fruits of his land, and the most insidious was a beast against which insecticides and poisons were of no avail, a nocturnal beast with the hands of a man and the gait of a wolf: thieves. The countryside was swarming with thieves: vagrants without land and without work. Someone had certainly passed through the persimmons during the night: a stranger, trampling the rows of garlic. Pipin examined the trees branch by branch, uneasy. There, on the fifth tree, an entire full branch was broken, hanging down—so that someone could pick one fruit, from a branch covered with still-unripe fruit. “Throne of God!” M
aiorco shouted, raising his fists at the houses of Paraggio, high up on the hill, a row of one-story mold-colored houses—like the cork villages in the crèches—which looked as if they would have tumbled down into the valley if only he had shouted a little louder.
Pipin il Maiorco went to Paraggio holding the broken branch like a walking stick, with all the persimmons attached, and he pounded it hard on the ground so they would hear him. Saltarel’s wife came to the door, red-faced, toothless: “Have you already cut down your Christmas tree, Pipin? Careful, you need a pine, not a persimmon.”
The tips of Maiorco’s mustache vibrated like a cat’s. “If I catch whoever is coming to my land to steal my persimmons,” he said, “I’ll shoot him! Tonight I’ll load the gun with salt pellets!”
The oldest of the “Venessia” came out: Cocianci.
“As long as you’re there, put some oil in, too, Maiorco,” he said. “That way you’ll have a salad.”
And all the Venetians, in the doorways of their hovels, began sneering at Maiorco as he went off cursing.
* * *
If only they had been red enough to pick and allowed to ripen in the house; but no, they had to be left on the trees, at the mercy of those people who had the vice of stealing in their bones, like hunger, who tore off branches and then, having taken a bite and finding the fruit bitter, would trample them on the ground.
They’d have to stand guard over the persimmons at night, with a gun: Pipin would be there from sunset to midnight, his wife would relieve him from midnight to dawn.
Pipin and his wife lived in a soot-covered cottage decorated with braids of garlic, and with rabbit cages around instead of vases of flowers. Bastianina la Maiorca worked as hard as her husband, turning the earth with a pitchfork after he had broken it up with the hoe; both had faces and arms the color of the turned earth: she scruffy, in a dress that looked like a sack, her feet in heavy boots; he shoeless, a tattered vest over his bare chest, as downy as a cactus, his beard and mustache like a small gray dove set on that harshly lined face.
The terraces where the persimmons grew were beyond the mule track, in a damp, shady place above a stream. Maiorco got there at dark with his muzzleloader, with which forty years earlier he had hit a fox. In the dark the trees seemed like enormous birds roosting on a single leg. Observing the fruit-laden branches within range of his gun, Pipin felt a sense of sweet security, as of a child with a toy under his pillow.
The rushing of the stream gave texture to the silence; distances, in the dark, were only the barking of far-off dogs. As the ear adapted, sounds of laughter and songs could be heard coming from the houses of the Venetians, in Paraggio; as the eye adapted, you could see the glow of the lighted fires of the evening gathering. The Venetians sang and danced at night: Cocianci’s fat granddaughter began dancing with her skirts in the wind while all the men beat time with their hands. Then old Cocianci, still seated, embraced her around the thighs: so many disgusting things happened at night, among the Venetians. Saltarel got drunk and beat his wife every night, saying she was a mare, and his wife would never go to the police to show her bruises. At a certain hour, as the songs faded, the Venetians came out, creeping toward Maiorco’s terraces: here they all were on the wall above, jumping down on him; Cocianci’s fat girl, thighs bared, began dancing before him, while the old man stole the persimmons. Stop: it’s trouble if you start in with a waking dream—right away you fall asleep. Keep eyes and ears alert, rather: the wind rising through the reeds by the stream could be a thief approaching. No: up there the songs and laughter continued, everything was deserted and still.
Pipin felt terribly alone sometimes, on those bits of land of his, amid the creatures, creatures above, below, and all around that wanted to consume the countryside with him in it: underground was a mass of worms, on the ground were mice, in the sky only swallows; then tax collectors, speculators in fertilizers, thieves. Before the earth he felt a vague sense of impotence, as if he could never possess it completely, as when one dreams of possessing a woman and can’t. A big black grindstone, the earth, which breaks down and transforms everything, whose mysterious juices rise from the soil up through the roots, to swell the persimmons at the tips of the branches with sugar and tannin; a grindstone of soil continuing on and on infinitely, still his, into the center of the world where the other pyramid of earth begins of the other Pipin Maiorco, Pipin Maiorco of the antipodes. Pipin Maiorco would have liked to sink into the earth with his whole body, breathe it, carry into it all his money in a jar, and his house, all his things, the rabbits, his wife: then he would feel safe. He would have liked to live underground, in the warm dark earth that he dug deep into with the hoe. But these were thoughts of a sleeper: he was sleeping.
The moonless night seemed to be halted in the middle of time. Would midnight never arrive? Maybe his wife hadn’t waked and would leave him there till morning. Pipin shook himself; he walked under every tree to look at the fruit, as if while he was half asleep it could have been stolen from right under his nose. But maybe, as his gaze moved from the first to the second, to the third persimmon tree, a monkey was steadily jumping from tree to tree, putting the fruit in a sack, unseen. A hundred monkeys were hidden in the branches, disgusting monkeys, hairless, with the sneering face of Saltarel, who mocked him.
Look, a light was approaching over the fields: was it real or was it a trick of the monkeys? Should he wake up or shoot them? “Pipin! Pipin!” The voice of his wife, soft. “Bastiana!” It was the change of shift, she was arriving with the lantern; Pipin handed her the gun and went off to sleep.
The Maiorca carried the gun like a soldier, walking back and forth along the terrace. She had yellow eyes, at night, like an owl: even if the devil had come to scare her she would know that it was a bush. Suddenly she saw a stone hopping along the path. She touched it with her foot: it was soft, like flesh. A toad, it was: they looked at one another for a while, the woman and the toad, then it continued in one direction and she in another.
* * *
The next day Bastianina said that the second shift was harder and that that night she was entitled to the first. Pipin agreed; she came to wake him at midnight and threw him out of bed. On the way, as he was closing behind him the gate that opened into the persimmon orchard, Pipin heard footsteps on the mule track: who was wandering around the countryside at that hour? It was Saltarel.
“Maiorco, you’re waiting for the owl at this hour with the gun?”
“For the owl, yes,” answered Pipin, “the owl that steals my persimmons.”
So they know it, he thought, and they won’t come tonight.
“But where are you coming from at this hour, Venetian?”
“From buying oil. Tomorrow we’re going with Cocianci to Piedmont and we’re bringing down rice.”
They had started working the black market, the Venetians.
“Good luck, Venetian.”
“Happy hunting, Maiorco.”
If he listened intently from the persimmon orchard, everything was silent. Even in the houses of the Venetians, not a light or a voice. Saltarel wasn’t beating his wife tonight; but maybe at that moment old Cocianci was in bed with his fat granddaughter. Pipin thought of his own still-warm bed, with Bastiana snoring. They wouldn’t come that night, they knew he was standing guard, and in the morning they were to leave early for Piedmont. There: Pipin would go home to sleep—quietly, so as not to wake his wife—then as soon as dawn broke he would come and take a look.
He went home, slipped very softly between the sheets, beside his wife, who would have snored even if a horse had climbed into bed. But he couldn’t sleep; what would happen if he didn’t wake at dawn and his wife found him in bed? And if other thieves had come? Suddenly he wondered if he had left the gate open: Saltarel had seen him close it, the Venetians wandered around all night like cats, if they found it open they would know that he had left. Pipin couldn’t close his eyes: it was torture to stay in bed like that, unable even to turn ove
r for fear of waking his wife, while the thieves walked all over his land. But why didn’t he get up, why didn’t he go see? Already the sky was starting to lighten; at the first cockcrow he would get up. But listen, on the mule track, the sound of footsteps coming down: who in the world, at that hour? Cocianci and Saltarel certainly, setting off for Piedmont. Footsteps that were almost running, heavy: they must be laden, laden with containers of oil, laden with baskets of persimmons just stolen, which they were going to sell in Piedmont! Pipin jumped out of bed, grabbed the gun, went out.
The gate, closed; he breathed. Approaching the orchard, however, he couldn’t see the red of the fruit; there were other trees in the way, reeds, olives. Now, turning the corner around this wall, here he would be able to see, he would be reassured. He rounded the wall. There was a sensation of emptiness. His beard and mustache, that small gray dove, spun around as if they were about to take flight from his mouth. In the livid air of dawn the trees raised a spiderweb of bare branches to the sky. Not a fruit was left hanging. “Throne of God!” the man shouted, shaking his fists at the orchard.
* * *
At home the Maiorca was getting up.
“Pipin, did you have a good guard shift?”
Pipin sat on a stool with the gun still over his shoulder, head bent.
“What’s wrong, Pipin, why don’t you answer?”
Pipin was silent, he didn’t lift his head.
“How much do you think persimmons are going for this year, on the market?”
Last Comes the Raven Page 3
