“Well, you can’t win every time.”
My father came back with the panting dog. He was cursing.
“Missed by a fraction of an inch. This close. A big one. Did you see him?”
“Not a thing,” Baciccin said.
I slung the gun over my shoulder and we started on our way down.
The Master’s Eye
“The master’s eye,” his father said to him, pointing to his eye, an old eye, without lashes, between wrinkled lids, round as a bird’s eye, “the master’s eye fattens the horse.”
“Yes,” said the son, and remained sitting on the edge of the rough wooden table, in the shade of the spreading fig tree.
“So,” said the father, still holding his finger under his eye, “go to the grain fields and keep a watch on the mowing.”
The son’s hands were buried in his pockets. A breath of wind ruffled the back of his short-sleeved shirt.
“I’m going,” he said, and stood still. The hens pecked at the remains of a fig trampled on the ground.
Seeing his son surrender to indolence like a reed in the wind, the old man felt his fury increasing from minute to minute: he dragged sacks out of the warehouse, mixed fertilizer, let orders and curses fall on stooping men, threatened the chained dog whimpering under a cloud of flies. The master’s son didn’t step aside or take his hands out of his pockets; he stood with his gaze on the ground and his lips set to whistle, as if disapproving of such a waste of energy.
“The master’s eye,” said the old man.
“I’m going,” said the son, and, in no hurry, he went.
He walked along the vineyard path, hands in his pockets, scarcely lifting his heels. His father watched him for a while, standing, legs apart, under the fig tree, his big fists clasped behind his back; several times he was about to shout something at him, but he remained silent and went back to mixing fistfuls of fertilizer.
Walking, the son looked again at the colors of the valley, listened again to the hornets buzzing in the orchards. Every time he returned to his village, after months spent idling in distant cities, he rediscovered the air and the deep silence of the land like a forgotten recollection of childhood and, at the same time, with remorse. Whenever he came back to his land it was as if he were expecting a miracle: I will return and this time everything will have a meaning, the strips of green sloping down the valley of my farm, the unchanging gestures of men at work, the growth of every plant, of every branch—a frenzy for this land will seize me, too, like my father, until I am no longer able to part from it.
The grain grew on some terraces above a steep rocky bank, where it struggled to thrive, a yellow rectangle in the middle of the gray wasteland, with two black cypresses, one above and one below, that seemed to be standing guard. In the grain were men and the movement of scythes; little by little the yellow disappeared, as if annihilated, and, underneath, the gray reemerged. The master’s son climbed up the bare bank by way of the shortcuts, a blade of grass between his teeth; from the terraces where the grain grew the men had certainly seen him coming and had commented on his arrival. He knew what the men thought of him: The old man is mad but his son is a fool.
“Hello,” said U Pé as he arrived.
“Hello,” said the master’s son.
“Hello,” said the others.
And the master’s son answered, “Hello.”
There: everything there was to say between them had been said. The master’s son sat down at the edge of the terrace, hands in his pockets.
“Hello,” another voice said, from the terrace above: it was Franceschina, who was gleaning. He said again, “Hello.”
The men reaped in silence. U Pé was an old man with yellow skin that fell in wrinkles over his bones; U Ché was middle-aged, hairy, and thickset; Nanin was young, a lanky redhead; he was wearing a sweaty shirt, and a sliver of bare back appeared and disappeared at every stroke of the scythe. Old Girumina, crouched on the ground like a big black hen, was gleaning. Franceschina was on the higher terrace and was singing a song from the radio. Every time she bent over her legs were visible up to the backs of her knees.
The master’s son felt ashamed to be there standing guard, straight as a cypress, idle, in the midst of all those workers. Now, he thought, I’ll tell them to give me a scythe for a moment and I’ll have a go. But he remained quiet and motionless, gazing at the ground bristling with the hard yellow stalks of the cut grain. Anyway, he wasn’t capable of swinging the scythe, and would have made a poor showing. Gleaning: that he could have done, women’s work. He bent over, picked up two stalks, threw them in old Girumina’s black apron.
“Be careful not to trample where I haven’t harvested yet,” said the old woman.
The master’s son sat down again on the side, chewing a piece of straw.
“More this year than last year?” he asked.
“Less,” said U Ché, “every year less.”
“There was the freeze in February,” said U Pé. “You remember the freeze in February?”
“Yes,” said the master’s son. But he didn’t remember.
“There was that hailstorm in March,” said old Girumina. “You remember March?”
“It hailed,” said the master’s son, still lying.
“In my opinion it was the drought in April,” said Nanin. “Remember the drought?”
“All April,” said the master’s son. He didn’t remember anything.
Now the men had started discussing rain and frost and drought: the master’s son was out of all this, detached from the doings of the land. The master’s eye. He was only an eye. But what’s the use of an eye, just an eye, detached from everything? It doesn’t even see. Certainly if his father had been there he would have buried the men in curses, he would find the work badly done, slow, the harvest ruined. He almost felt the need of his father’s cries for those fields, as when you see someone shoot and feel the need to hear an explosion in your eardrums. He would never shout at the men and the men knew it, so they continued to work lazily. But certainly they preferred his father to him, his father who made them work hard, his father who made them sow and harvest grain on those steep banks, made for goats—he was one of them, his father. He wasn’t, he was a stranger who ate off their work; he knew they despised him, maybe hated him.
Now the men had resumed a conversation begun before he arrived, about a woman of the valley.
“So they said,” went old Girumina, “with the priest.”
“Yes, yes,” said U Pé. “The priest had said to her, If you come I’ll give you two lire.”
“Two lire?” said Nanin.
“Two lire,” said U Pé.
“So,” said U Ché.
“What will two lire from then get you now?” asked Nanin.
“A mess,” said U Ché.
“Damn,” said Nanin.
They all laughed at the story of that woman; the master’s son smiled, too, but he didn’t really understand the meaning of those stories, the loves of bony, mustached, black-dressed women.
Franceschina, too, would become like that. Now she was gleaning, on the highest terrace, singing a song from the radio, and every time she bent over her skirt rose, exposing the white skin at the backs of her knees.
“Franceschina,” Nanin shouted, “would you go with a priest for two lire?”
Franceschina was standing up on the terrace, with the bundle of stalks hugged to her chest.
“Two thousand?” she cried.
“Damn, she says two thousand,” Nanin told the others, bewildered.
“I don’t go with priests or with bourgeois types,” cried Franceschina.
“With soldiers, yes?” shouted U Ché.
“Not even with soldiers,” she answered, and went back to picking up stalks.
“Nice legs, Franceschina has,” said Nanin, looking at her.
The others looked, too, and agreed.
“Nice and straight,” they said. The master’s son looked, too, as if he h
adn’t already looked before, and gave a nod of assent. Also, he knew they weren’t nice legs, they were muscular and hairy.
“When are you going for your military service, Nanin?” asked Girumina.
“Damn it, they want men who’ve already been declared unfit to pass the medical exam,” said Nanin. “If the war doesn’t end they’ll call me, too, even with a weak chest.”
“Is it true that America has entered the war?” U Ché asked the master’s son.
“America,” said the master’s son. Maybe now he would be able to say something. “America and Japan,” he said, then was silent. What else could one say?
“Who’s stronger, America or Japan?”
“They’re both strong,” said the master’s son.
“And is England strong?”
“Oh, yes, it’s strong, too.”
“And Russia?”
“Russia’s strong, too.”
“Germany?”
“Germany, too.”
“And us?”
“It will be a long war,” said the master’s son. “A long war.”
“At the time of the other war,” said U Pé, “there was a cave in the woods where there were ten deserters.” And he pointed up toward the pines.
“If it keeps going a while,” said Nanin, “I say we’ll end up in the caves ourselves.”
“But,” said U Ché, “who knows how it will end.”
“All wars end like this,” said U Pé. “Those who have have.”
“Those who have have,” said the others.
The master’s son, chewing his straw, began climbing up the terraces, up to Franceschina. He looked at the white skin at the back of her knees when she bent over to pick up the stalks. Maybe with her it would be easier; he would imagine he was courting her.
“Do you ever go to the city, Franceschina?” he asked. It was a stupid way of starting a conversation.
“Sometimes I go on Sunday afternoon. If there’s a fair I go to the fair, otherwise to the movies.”
She had stopped working. That wasn’t what he wanted: if his father had seen! Instead of keeping an eye on things, he was getting the women to talk on the job.
“Do you like going to the city?”
“Yes, I like it. But basically when you come home at night what have you got. Monday it starts again, and those who have have.”
“Yes,” he said, biting the straw. Now he had to leave her alone, otherwise she wouldn’t go back to work. He turned and went down.
On the terraces below, the men had almost finished, and Nanin was tying up the sheaves in the tarp to carry down on his back. The deep sea facing the hills was beginning to turn violet on the side where the sun set. The master’s son looked at his land, all stones and hard stubble, and understood that he would always be desperately estranged from it.
Lazy Sons
At dawn my brother and I are asleep, faces buried in the pillows, and already our father’s hobnail tread can be heard as he moves around the rooms. When he gets up, our father makes a lot of noise, deliberately perhaps, and he sees to it that he has to go up and down the steps, in his cleated boots, at least twenty times, never for any reason. Maybe this is his whole life, a waste of energy, a great useless exertion; and maybe he does it as a protest against the two of us—we get him so angry.
My mother doesn’t make any noise, but she is already up, too, in the big kitchen, poking the fire, peeling things with those hands that become blacker and more scarred all the time, polishing glasses and furniture, jabbing at the laundry. This, too, is a protest against us, her doing housework always in silence and managing it all without any maids.
“Sell the house, and we’ll spend the money,” I say with a shrug when they start pestering me about how things can’t go on like this. But my mother continues toiling silently, day and night, till there’s no telling when she sleeps; and meanwhile the cracks in the ceilings widen and lines of ants trace the walls, and weeds and brambles keep growing higher in the rank garden. Soon nothing will be left of our house but a ruin covered with vines. In the morning, however, Mother doesn’t come and tell me to get up, because she knows it’s no use anyway, and that silent attention to the house crumbling around her is her way of persecuting us.
My father, on the contrary, is already flinging open our window at six o’clock, in hunting jacket and puttees, and yelling at us: “I’m going to take a stick to you two! Bums! Everybody works in this house but the pair of you! Pietro! Get up if you don’t want me to hang you! And make that gallows bird of a brother, Andrea, get up, too!”
In our sleep, we have already heard him approaching; digging our heads into the pillows, we don’t even roll over. We protest now and then with grunts when he doesn’t let up. But he soon goes away; he knows it’s all useless, this is all a play he puts on, a ritual ceremony, a refusal to admit defeat.
We grope our way back into sleep; most times my brother hasn’t even waked up, he’s become so used to this and he doesn’t give a damn. Egotistic and insensitive, that’s my brother: sometimes he makes me mad. I act the same way he does, but at least I understand that it’s not right, and I’m the first to be discontent. Still I keep on, though with anger. “Dog,” I say to my brother Andrea, “you dog, you’re killing your father and mother.” He doesn’t answer: he knows I’m a hypocrite and a clown, and nobody’s a bigger do-nothing than me.
Ten, maybe twenty minutes later, my father’s at the door again, in a stew. Now he uses a different method: kindly, almost indifferent invitations, a pathetic farce. He says, “Well, who’s coming to San Cosimo with me? The vines have to be tied.”
San Cosimo is our farm. Everything is drying up and there’s no manpower or money to keep it running.
“The potatoes have to be dug. Are you coming, Andrea? Well? Are you coming? I’m speaking to you, Andrea. We have to water the beans. Are you coming?”
Andrea raises his mouth from the pillow. “No,” he says, and goes back to sleep.
“Why not?” My father continues his farce. “It was all settled. Pietro? Are you coming, Pietro?”
Then he explodes again and calms down again and talks about the things to be done at San Cosimo, as if it were understood that we’re going. That dog, I think of my brother, that dog, he could get up and give the poor old man some satisfaction, at least this once. But I myself feel no urge to get up, and I make an effort to be immersed again in my sleep, by now disturbed.
“Well, hurry up. I’ll wait for you,” our father says, and goes off as if we were now in agreement. We hear him pacing and fuming downstairs, preparing the fertilizer, the sulfate, the seeds to be taken up there; every day he sets out and comes back laden like a mule.
We are thinking he’s already gone when he yells again, from the foot of the stairs: “Pietro! Andrea! For God’s sake, aren’t you ready yet?”
This is his final outburst; then we hear his hobnailed footsteps behind the house, the gate slams, and he goes off along the path, hawking and spitting.
Now we could have a good long sleep, but I can’t manage to doze off; I think of my father, burdened, climbing up the track spitting, and afterward at work, in a rage with the tenants who steal from him and let everything go to rack and ruin. And he looks at the plants and the fields, where the insects gnaw and burrow all over, and at the yellowing leaves and the thick weeds, all the work of his life that is falling to pieces like the sustaining walls of the terrace that crumble more with every rain; and he curses his sons.
“Dog,” I say, thinking of my brother, “you dog.” Then I prick up my ears and from below I can hear something clatter to the floor, a falling broomstick. My mother is alone in that enormous kitchen, and daylight is just brightening the windowpanes, and she is slaving for people who turn their backs on her. As I am thinking this, I fall asleep.
It’s not yet ten o’clock when Mother starts yelling from the stairs, “Pietro! Andrea! It’s ten already!” She sounds very angry, as if she were irritated by somethin
g extraordinary, but it’s the same every morning. “Awright . . .” we yell back. And, awake by now, we stay in bed another half-hour, to become used to the idea of getting up.
Then I start saying, “Come on, Andrea, wake up. Let’s get up, all right? Andrea, come on, start getting out of bed.” Andrea grunts.
Finally, with a lot of huffing and stretching, we’re on our feet. Andrea walks around in his pajamas with an old man’s movements, his hair all disheveled and his eyes half blind, and he’s already licking a paper to roll a smoke. He smokes at the window, then begins to wash and shave.
Meanwhile he has started grumbling, and little by little the grumbling gives way to singing. My brother has a baritone voice, and though in company he is always mournful and never sings, when he’s alone, shaving or taking a bath, he strikes up one of those cadenced tunes of his in a grim voice. He doesn’t know any songs, so he always comes forth with a Carducci poem he learned as a child: “On Verona’s castle strikes the noonday sun . . .”
I’m getting dressed on the other side of the room, and I act as chorus, joylessly, but with a kind of violence: “And the green Adige flows murmuring into the open country . . .”
My brother continues his chant to the end, not overlooking a single stanza, as he washes his head and brushes his shoes. “Black as an old raven, and with eyes of coal . . .”
The more he sings, the more I’m filled with anger, and I also start singing fiercely: “Ill luck is mine, and an evil beast has bitten me . . .”
This is the only time we make noise. Afterward we’re quiet for the whole day.
We go downstairs and warm up some milk, then dip bread into it and eat noisily. Mother hovers over us and talks, complaining, but without insistence, about all the things that have to be done, the chores that could be performed. “Yes, yes,” we answer, forgetting immediately.
As a rule I don’t go out in the morning. I stay home, dawdling in the halls with my hands in my pockets, or I arrange my library. I haven’t bought any new books for some time: it would take money; besides, I’ve lost interest in too many things, and if I started reading again I’d want to read everything, and I don’t feel up to it. But I keep arranging the few books I have on the shelf: Italian, French, English; or else by subject—history, philosophy, fiction—or else I put all the bound volumes together, with the fine editions and the shabby books elsewhere.
Last Comes the Raven Page 5
