He stopped. He felt a strange inner craving, compounded of hunger and fear, which he could not allay. He searched his pockets: he was carrying a little mirror, the memento of a woman. Maybe this was what he wanted: to look at himself in a mirror. In the little piece of murky glass an eye appeared, red and swollen, then a cheek, the beard caked with dust, then his parched, chapped lips, his gums redder than the lips, then the teeth . . . Still, the man would have liked to see himself in a big mirror, see himself whole. To run that little piece of mirror over his face and see an eye, an ear did not satisfy him.
He went on. I haven’t encountered the minefield so far, he thought. By now it must be another fifty paces, forty . . .
Every time he set his foot down, feeling the ground beneath him hard and steady, he heaved a sigh. One step is taken, another, and another. This slab of marl seemed a trap, but, no, it’s firm; this clump of heather isn’t concealing anything; this stone . . . the stone sank two inches beneath his weight. “Gheee . . . ghee . . .” went the marmots. Go ahead: the other foot.
The earth became sun, the air became earth, the “gheee” of the marmots became thunder. The man felt an iron hand grasp him by the hair, at the nape. Not one hand, a hundred hands seized him, each by the hair, and tore him head to foot, the way you tear up a sheet of paper, into hundreds of little pieces.
Seen in the Cafeteria
I knew immediately that something would happen. The two looked at each other across the table, eyes expressionless, like fish in an aquarium. But it was clear that they were strangers, mutually unfathomable, two animals unknown to each other, each studying and distrusting the other.
She had arrived first: she was an enormous black-garbed woman, certainly a widow. A country widow who had come to the city on business, that was how I immediately placed her. Such types also come to the cheap people’s cafeterias where I eat: wholesale or retail black marketeers with a taste for economy left from when they were poor, who, every so often, remembering that their pockets are full of thousand-lire notes, have a burst of extravagance that inspires them to order tagliatelle and steak, while the rest of us, skinny bachelors who eat with a meal ticket, gaze enviously and down spoonfuls of soup. The woman must be a wealthy black marketeer; seated, she occupied one side of the table and was pulling out of her bag white rolls, fruit, cheeses carelessly wrapped in paper, and spreading them out on the tablecloth. Meanwhile, mechanically, with black-rimmed fingers, she was picking off grapes and bits of bread and putting them in her mouth, where they disappeared in a quiet chewing.
It was then that he approached, saw the unoccupied seat with a corner of the tablecloth still uncluttered. He asked, “May I?” The woman looked at him fleetingly, chewing. He asked again, “Excuse me . . . May I?” The woman spread her arms and let out a grunt, her mouth full of chewed bread. The man thanked her by tipping his hat and sat down. He was a tidy, threadbare old man in a starched collar, wearing an overcoat although it wasn’t winter, and with the wire of a hearing aid dangling from his ear. Immediately, at first sight, one felt uneasy for him, for the courteousness that was visible in every gesture. He was certainly a fallen aristocrat, who had tumbled suddenly from a world of compliments and ceremony into a world of shoving and fists in the side, where he understood nothing, as he went on bowing amid the crowd in the people’s cafeteria as if at a court reception.
Now they were facing each other, the newly rich and the formerly rich, animals unknown to one another: the woman broad and short, with big hands resting on the tablecloth like the claws of a crab, and a movement like the breathing of a crab in her throat; the old man sitting on the edge of his chair, elbows squeezed to his hips, gloved hands stiffened by arthritis, and small blue veins bulging in his face, as on a rock eroded by lichens.
“Pardon my hat,” he said. The woman looked at him with the yellow of her eyes. She understood nothing about him.
“Pardon me,” the man repeated, “if I keep my hat on. There’s a little breeze.”
The large widow then produced a smile in the corners of her mouth—which was coated with an insectlike down—almost without moving her facial muscles, a swallowed smile, like a ventriloquist’s. “Wine,” she said to the waitress passing by.
At that word the gloved old man blinked: he must have had a liking for wine; the veins at the tip of his nose testified to long, serious drinking bouts, like a gourmet’s. But he had surely had to give up drinking long ago. Now the large widow was dipping pieces of white bread in a glass of wine, and was chewing and chewing.
The old man with the gloves must have suffered some moments of shame, as if he were courting a woman and were afraid of appearing miserly. “Wine for me, too!” he said.
Immediately he regretted having said it, thinking that he might use up his pension before the end of the month and would have to fast for days and days with his coat on in the cold of his garret. He didn’t pour the wine into the glass. Maybe, he thought, I can give it back without touching it, say that I lost the desire, and not pay for it.
And he really had lost the desire, along with the desire to eat; he stirred his spoon around the tasteless soup, chewing with his few teeth, while the large widow gobbled forkfuls of buttery macaroni.
Let’s hope they’ll be quiet now, I thought, and one or the other finishes soon and leaves. I don’t know what I was afraid of. They were both monstrous beings, charged with a mutual and terrible hatred under that lazy appearance of crustaceans. I imagined a fight between them, monsters slowly tearing each other to pieces in the marine depths.
Already the old man was almost besieged by the widow’s food, scattered in its wrappings all over the table: confined to a corner with the tasteless soup and two thin rolls he’d got with the meal ticket. He was about to pull his rolls even further toward himself, as if fearing that they would get lost in the enemy camp, but with a wrong move of his gloved, stiffened hand he knocked a piece of cheese and it fell on the floor.
The widow was enormous in front of him: she sneered.
“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .” said the gloved man. The widow looked at him the way one looks at a new animal; she didn’t answer.
There, I thought, now he’ll shout Enough! and tear off the tablecloth!
Instead he bent over and made some clumsy gestures under the table in search of the cheese. The large widow watched him for a while, then, almost without moving, dropped one of her enormous paws to the floor, pulled up the piece of cheese, wiped it off, brought it to her insectlike mouth, and swallowed it even before the old man in the gloves had reemerged.
Finally he got up again, pained by the effort, red with confusion, his hat askew and the wire of the hearing aid crooked.
There, I thought, now he’ll grab the knife and kill her!
Instead he seemed unable to find a way of consoling himself for the poor showing he was convinced he’d made. And a wish to talk possessed him, to discourse on anything, just to dissipate the uncomfortable atmosphere. But he couldn’t say a word that didn’t originate in that discomfort, that wasn’t an apology.
“That cheese,” he said. “Really a pity . . . I’m sorry . . .”
Humiliating him with silence wasn’t enough for the large widow; she wanted to really crush him.
“It’s very important to me,” she said. “In Castel Brandone I have rounds of that cheese like this,” and she made a gesture. But it wasn’t the breadth of the gesture that struck the gloved old man.
“Castel Brandone?” he said, and his eyes sparkled. “I was a second lieutenant at Castel Brandone! In ’95, for the shooting. You who are from there surely know the Counts Brandone D’Asprez!”
The widow no longer merely sneered: she laughed. She laughed and turned around to see if the other diners had noticed how ridiculous that man was.
“You won’t remember,” the old man continued, “you certainly won’t remember . . . but that year the king came to Castel Brandone for the shooting. There was a reception at the castl
e of the D’Asprez! And it was then that the incident I’m going to tell you about took place . . .”
The large widow looked at the clock, ordered a plate of liver, and resumed eating in a hurry, without listening to him. The old man in the gloves understood that he was speaking only for himself, but he didn’t stop: he would have made a bad showing if he’d stopped, he had to finish the story he’d begun.
“His Majesty entered the hall, which was all illuminated,” he continued, with tears in his eyes. “And on one side were the ladies in evening dresses, who curtseyed, and on the other all of us officers at attention. And the king kissed the hand of the countess and greeted this one and that. Then he approached me . . .”
The two small carafes of wine were next to each other on the table: the widow’s almost finished, the old man’s still full. The widow absentmindedly poured wine from the full carafe and drank. The old man, although in the heat of the story, noticed: there, now there was no longer hope, he’d have to pay for it. And maybe the large widow would drink it all. But it wouldn’t be polite to point out the mistake, maybe she would be upset. No, it wouldn’t be polite.
“And His Majesty asked me, And you, lieutenant? Just like that, he asked me. And I, at attention: Second Lieutenant Clermont De Fronges, Majesty. And the king: Clermont! I knew your father, he said, a fine soldier! And he shook my hand . . . He said exactly that: a fine soldier.”
The large widow had finished eating and stood up. Now she was digging in her purse, which she had placed on the other chair. She was leaning over, and above the table you could see only her rear end, the enormous rear end of a fat woman, covered in black fabric. Old Clermont De Fronges had before him that large, moving rear end. He went on speaking, his face transfigured: “The whole room, chandeliers lighted, mirrors . . . And the king shook my hand. Bravo, Clermont De Fronges, he said to me . . . And all the ladies in evening dresses . . .”
Theft in a Pastry Shop
When Dritto got to the place where they were to meet, the others had already been waiting some time. There were two of them, Baby and Uora-Uora. The street was so silent that the ticking of the clocks in the houses could be heard. With two jobs to do, they’d have to hurry to get through them by dawn.
“Come on,” said Dritto.
“Where to?” they asked.
But Dritto was never one to explain about any job he was going to do.
“Come on now,” he replied. And he walked along in silence, through streets empty as dry rivers, with the moon following them alongthe tramlines, Dritto ahead, gazing around with those restless yellow eyes of his, his nostrils moving as if they were smelling something peculiar.
Baby was called that because he had a big head like a newborn baby and a stumpy body; also perhaps because of his short hair and pretty little face with its small black mustache. All muscle, he moved so softly he might have been a cat; there was no one like him at climbing up walls and squeezing through openings, and Dritto always had good reason to take him along.
“Will it be a good job, Dritto?” asked Baby.
“If we bring it off,” answered Dritto—a reply that didn’t mean much.
Meanwhile, by a devious route that only he knew, he had led them around a corner into a yard. The other two soon realized that they were going to work on the back of a shop, and Uora-Uora pushed ahead in case he was left as lookout. It always fell to Uora-Uora to be lookout man; he longed to break into houses, search around, and fill his pockets like the others, but he always found himself standing guard on cold streets, in danger from police patrols, his teeth chattering in the cold, and chain-smoking to calm his nerves. Uora-Uora was an emaciated Sicilian, with a sad mulatto face and wrists jutting out of his sleeves. When on a job he always dressed up in his best, God knows why, complete with hat, tie, and raincoat, and if forced to run for it, he’d snatch up the ends of his raincoat as if spreading wings.
“You’re lookout, Uora-Uora,” said Dritto, dilating his nostrils. Uora-Uora took off quietly; he knew Dritto and the danger signal of those dilating nostrils, which would move quicker and quicker until they suddenly stopped and he whipped out a revolver.
“There,” Dritto said to Baby. He pointed to a little window high off the ground, a piece of cardboard in place of a broken pane.
“You climb up, get in, and open for me,” he said. “Be sure not to put on the lights: they’ll be seen from outside.”
Baby pulled himself up on the smooth wall like a monkey, pushed in the cardboard without a sound, and stuck his head through. It was then that he became aware of the smell; he took a deep breath and up through his nostrils wafted an aroma of freshly baked pastry. It gave him a feeling of shy excitement, of remote tenderness, rather than of actual greed.
Oh, what a lot of pastries there must be in here, he thought. It was years since he had eaten a proper piece of pastry, not since before the war perhaps. He decided to search around till he found them. He jumped down into the darkness, kicked against a telephone, got a broomstick up his trouser leg, and then hit the ground. The smell of pastry was stronger than ever, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Yes, there must be a lot of pastries in here, thought Baby.
He reached out a hand, trying to feel his way in the dark, so he could reach the door and open it for Dritto. Quickly he recoiled in horror; he must be face-to-face with some animal, some soft slimy sea thing perhaps. He stood there with his hand in the air, a hand that had suddenly become damp and sticky, as if covered with leprosy. Between the fingers had sprouted something round and soft, an excrescence, maybe a tumor. He strained his eyes in the dark but could see nothing, not even when he put his hand under his nose. But he could smell, even though he could not see; and he burst out laughing. He realized he had touched a tart and was holding a blob of cream and a crystallized cherry.
At once he began licking the hand and groping around with the other at the same time. It touched something solid but soft, with a thin covering of fine sugar—a doughnut! Still groping, he popped the whole of it into his mouth and gave a little cry of pleasure on discovering it had jam inside. This really was the most wonderful place; whatever way he stretched out his hand in the dark, it found new kinds of pastry.
Suddenly he became aware of an impatient knocking on a door nearby; it was Dritto waiting to be let in. As Baby moved toward the sound, his hands bumped first into a meringue and then into an almond cake. He opened the door and Dritto’s flashlight lit up his little face, its mustache already white with cream.
“It’s full of pastries here!” exclaimed Baby, as if the other did not know.
“There isn’t time for pastries,” said Dritto, pushing him aside. “We’ve got to hurry.” And he went ahead, twisting the beam of his flashlight around in the dark. Everywhere it touched it lit up rows of shelves, and on the shelves rows of trays, and on the trays rows of pastries of every conceivable shape and color, tarts filled with cream that glittered like candle wax, piles of sugar-coated buns, and castles of almond cakes.
It was then that a terrible worry came over Baby, the worry of not having time to eat all he wanted, of being forced to make his escape before he had sampled all the different kinds of pastries, of having all this land of milk and honey at his disposal for only a few minutes in his whole life. And the more pastries he discovered, the more his anxiety increased, so that every new corner and every fresh view of the shop that was lit up by Dritto’s flashlight seemed to be about to shut him off.
He flung himself at the shelves, choking himself with pastries, cramming two or three inside his mouth at a time, without even tasting them; he seemed to be battling with the pastries, as if they were threatening enemies, strange monsters besieging him, a crisp and sticky siege which he must break through by the force of his jaw. The slit halves of the big sugared buns seemed to be opening yellow throats and eyes at him, the cream horns to be blossoming like flowers of carnivorous plants; for a horrible moment Baby had the feeling that it wa
s he who was being devoured by the pastries.
Dritto pulled him by the arm. “The till,” he said. “We’ve got to open the till.”
At the same time, as he passed, he stuffed a piece of multicolored sponge cake into his mouth, a cherry off a tart, and then a brioche—hurriedly, as if anxious not to be distracted from the job at hand. He had switched off his flashlight.
“From outside they could see us clearly,” he said.
They had now reached the front of the pastry shop, with its showcases and marble countertops. Through the grilled shutters the lights from the street entered in streaks; outside they could see strange shadows on the trees and houses.
Now the moment had come to force the till.
“Hold this,” said Dritto, handing the flashlight to Baby with the beam pointing downward so that it could not be seen from outside.
But Baby was holding the flashlight with one hand and groping around with the other. He seized an entire plum cake and, while Dritto was busy at the lock with his tools, began chewing it as if it were a loaf of bread. But he soon tired of it and left it half eaten on the marble slab.
“Get away from there! Look what a filthy mess you’re making,” hissed Dritto through clenched teeth; in spite of his trade he had a strange respect for tidy work. Then he couldn’t resist the temptation either and stuffed two pastries, the kind that were half sponge and half chocolate, into his mouth, though without interrupting his work.
Last Comes the Raven Page 15
