The Watcher and Other Stories Page 13

  I turned into a path. Broad meadows were crisscrossed with lines, at eye level, and on these lines, piece after piece, was hung the laundry of the whole city, the linen still wet and shapeless, every item the same, with wrinkles the cloth made in the sun, and in each meadow this whiteness of long lines of washing was repeated. (Other meadows were bare, but they too were crossed by parallel lines, like vineyards without vines.)

  I wandered through the fields white with hanging laundry, and I suddenly wheeled about at a burst of laughter. On the shore of a canal, above one of the locks, there was the ledge of a pool, and over it, high above me, their sleeves rolled up, in dresses of every color, were the red faces of the washerwomen, who laughed and chattered; the young ones’ breasts bobbing up and down inside their blouses, and the old, fat women with kerchiefs on their heads; and they moved their round arms back and forth in the suds and they wrung out the twisted sheets with an angular movement of the elbows. In their midst the men in straw hats were unloading baskets in separate piles, or were also working with the square coarse soap, or else beating the wet cloth with wooden paddles.

  By now I had seen, and I had nothing to say, no reason to pry. I turned back. At the edge of the highway a little grass was growing and I was careful to walk there, so as not to get my shoes dusty and to keep clear of the passing trucks. Between the fields, the hedgerows, and the poplars, I continued to follow with my eyes the washing pools, the signs on certain low buildings: STEAM LAUNDRY, LAUNDRY CO-OPERATIVE OF BARCA BERTULLA, the fields where the women passed with baskets as if harvesting grapes, and picked the dry linen from the lines, and the countryside in the sun gave forth its greenness amid that white, and the water flowed away swollen with bluish bubbles. It wasn’t much, but for me, seeking only images to retain in my eyes, perhaps it was enough.

  The Argentine Ant

  Translated by Archibald Colquhoun

  WHEN WE came to settle here we did not know about the ants. We’d be all right here, it seemed that day; the sky and green looked bright, too bright, perhaps, for the worries we had, my wife and I—how could we have guessed about the ants? Thinking it over, though, Uncle Augusto may have hinted at this once: “You should see the ants over there... they’re not like the ones here, those ants...” but that was just said while talking of something else, a remark of no importance, thrown in perhaps because as we talked we happened to notice some ants. Ants, did I say? No, just one single lost ant, one of those fat ants we have at home (they seem fat to me, now, the ants from my part of the country). Anyway, Uncle Augusto’s hint did not seem to detract from the description he gave us of a region where, for some reason which he was unable to explain, life was easier and jobs were not too difficult to find, judging by all those who had set themselves up there—though not, apparently, Uncle Augusto himself.

  On our first evening here, noticing the twilight still in the air after supper, realizing how pleasant it was to stroll along those lanes toward the country and sit on the low walls of a bridge, we began to understand why Uncle Augusto liked it. We understood it even more when we found a little inn which he used to frequent, with a garden behind, and squat, elderly characters like himself, though rather more blustering and noisy, who said they had been his friends; they too were men without a trade, I think, workers by the hour, though one said he was a clockmaker, but that may have been bragging; and we found they remembered Uncle Augusto by a nickname, which they all repeated among general guffaws; we noticed, too, rather stifled laughter from a woman in a knitted white sweater who was fat and no longer young, standing behind the bar.

  And my wife and I understood what all this must have meant to Uncle Augusto; to have a nickname and spend light evenings joking on the bridges and watch for that knitted sweater to come from the kitchen and go out into the orchard, then spend an hour or two next day unloading sacks for the spaghetti factory; yes, we realized why he always regretted this place when he was back home.

  I would have been able to appreciate all this too, if I’d been a youth and had no worries, or been well settled with the family. But as we were, with the baby only just recovered from his illness, and work still to find, we could do no more than notice the things that had made Uncle Augusto call himself happy; and just noticing them was perhaps rather sad, for it made us feel the difference between our own wretched state and the contented world around. Little things, often of no importance, worried us lest they should suddenly make matters worse (before we knew anything about the ants); the endless instructions given us by the owner, Signora Mauro, while showing us over the rooms, increased this feeling we had of entering troubled waters. I remember a long talk she gave us about the gas meter, and how carefully we listened to what she said.

  “Yes, Signora Mauro.... We’ll be very careful, Signora Mauro.... Let’s hope not, Signora Mauro...”

  So that we did not take any notice when (though we remember it clearly now) she gave a quick glance all over the wall as if reading something there, then passed the tip of her finger over it, and brushed it afterward as if she had touched something wet, sandy, or dusty. She did not mention the word “ants,” though, I’m certain of that; perhaps she considered it natural for ants to be there in the walls and roof; but my wife and I think now that she was trying to hide them from us as long as possible and that all her chatter and instructions were just a smoke screen to make other things seem important, and so direct our attention away from the ants.

  When Signora Mauro had gone, I carried the mattresses inside. My wife wasn’t able to move the cupboard by herself and called me to help. Then she wanted to begin cleaning out the little kitchen at once and got down on her knees to start, but I said: “What’s the point, at this hour? We’ll see to that tomorrow; let’s just arrange things as best we can for tonight.” The baby was whimpering and very sleepy, and the first thing to do was get his basket ready and put him to bed. At home we use a long basket for babies, and had brought one with us here; we emptied out the linen with which we’d filled it, and found a good place on the window ledge, where it wasn’t damp or too far off the ground should it fall.

  Our son soon went to sleep, and my wife and I began looking over our new home (one room divided in two by a partition—four walls and a roof), which was already showing signs of our occupation. “Yes, yes, whitewash it, of course we must whitewash it,” I replied to my wife, glancing at the ceiling and at the same time taking her outside by an elbow. She wanted to have another good look at the toilet, which was in a little shack to the left, but I wanted to take a turn over the surrounding plot; for our house stood on a piece of land consisting of two large flower, or rather rough seed beds, with a path down the middle covered with an iron trellis, now bare and made perhaps for some dried-up climbing plant of gourds or vines. Signora Mauro had said she would let me have this plot to cultivate as a kitchen garden, without asking any rent, as it had been abandoned for so long; she had not mentioned this to us today, however, and we had not said anything as there were already too many other irons in the fire.

  My intention now, by this first evening’s walk of ours around the plot, was to acquire a sense of familiarity with the place, even of ownership in a way; for the first time in our lives the idea of continuity seemed possible, of walking evening after evening among beds of seeds as our circumstances gradually improved. Of course I didn’t speak of those things to my wife; but I was anxious to see whether she felt them too; and that stroll of ours did, in fact, seem to have the effect on her which I had hoped. We began talking quietly, between long pauses, and we linked arms—a gesture symbolic of happier times.

  Strolling along like this we came to the end of the plot, and over the hedge saw our neighbor, Signor Reginaudo, busy spraying around the outside of his house with a pair of bellows. I had met Signor Reginaudo a few months earlier when I had come to discuss my tenancy with Signora Mauro. I went up to greet him and introduce him to my wife. “Good evening, Signor Reginaudo,” I said. “D’you remember me?”

&
nbsp; “Of course I do,” he said. “Good evening! So you are our new neighbor now?” He was a short man with spectacles, in pajamas and a straw hat.

  “Yes, neighbors, and among neighbors...” My wife began producing a few vague pleasant phrases, to be polite: it was a long time since I’d heard her talk like that; I didn’t particularly like it, but it was better than hearing her complain.

  “Claudia,” called our neighbor, “come here. Here are the new tenants of the Casa Laureri!” I had never heard our new home called that (Laureri, I learned later, was a previous owner), and the name made it sound strange. Signora Reginaudo, a big woman, now came out, drying her hands on her apron; they were an easygoing couple and very friendly.

  “And what are you doing there with those bellows, Signor Reginaudo?” I asked him.

  “Oh... the ants... these ants...” he said, and laughed as if not wanting to make it sound important.

  “Ants?” repeated my wife in the polite detached tone she used with strangers to give the impression she was paying attention to what they were saying; a tone she never used with me, not even, as far as I can remember, when we first met.

  We then took a ceremonious leave of our neighbors. But we did not seem to be enjoying really fully the fact of having neighbors, and such affable and friendly ones with whom we could chat so pleasantly.

  On getting home we decided to go to bed at once. “D’you hear?” said my wife. I listened and could still hear the squeak of Signor Reginaudo’s bellows. My wife went to the washbasin for a glass of water. “Bring me one too,” I called, and took off my shirt.

  “Oh!” she screamed. “Come here!” She had seen ants on the faucet and a stream of them coming up the wall.

  We put on the light, a single bulb for the two rooms. The stream of ants on the wall was very thick; they were coming from the top of the door, and might originate anywhere. Our hands were now covered with them, and we held them out open in front of our eyes, trying to see exactly what they were like, these ants, moving our wrists all the time to prevent them from crawling up our arms. They were tiny wisps of ants, in ceaseless movement, as if urged along by the same little itch they gave us. It was only then that a name came to my mind: “Argentine ants,” or rather, “the Argentine ant,” that’s what they called them; and now I came to think of it I must have heard someone saying that this was the country of “the Argentine ant.” It was only now that I connected the name with a sensation, this irritating tickle spreading in every direction, which one couldn’t get rid of by clenching one’s fists or rubbing one’s hands together as there always seemed to be some stray ant running up one’s arm, or on one’s clothes. When the ants were crushed, they became little black dots that fell like sand, leaving a strong acid smell on one’s fingers.

  “It’s the Argentine ant, you know...” I said to my wife. “It comes from South America...” Unconsciously my voice had taken on the inflection I used when wanting to teach her something; as soon as I’d realized this I was sorry, for I knew that she could not bear that tone in my voice and always reacted sharply, perhaps sensing that I was never very sure of myself when using it.

  But instead she scarcely seemed to have heard me; she was frenziedly trying to destroy or disperse that stream of ants on the wall, but all she managed to do was get numbers of them on herself and scatter others around. Then she put her hand under the faucet and tried to squirt water at them, but the ants went on walking over the wet surface; she couldn’t even get them off by washing her hands.

  “There, we’ve got ants in the house!” she repeated. “They were here before, too, and we didn’t see them!”—as if things would have been very different if we had seen them before.

  I said to her: “Oh, come, just a few ants! Let’s go to bed now and think about it tomorrow!” And it occurred to me also to add: “There, just a few Argentine ants!” because by calling them by the exact name I wanted to suggest that their presence was already expected, and in a certain sense normal.

  But the expansive feeling by which my wife had let herself be carried away during that stroll around the garden had now completely vanished; she had become distrustful of everything again and made her usual face. Nor was going to bed in our new home what I had hoped; we hadn’t the pleasure now of feeling we were starting a new life, only a sense of dragging on into a future full of new troubles.

  “All for a couple of ants,” was what I was thinking—what I thought I was thinking, rather, for everything seemed different now for me too.

  Exhaustion finally overcame our agitation, and we dozed off. But in the middle of the night the baby cried; at first we lay there in bed, always hoping it might stop and go to sleep again; this, however, never happened and we began asking ourselves: “What can be the matter? What’s wrong with him?” Since he was better he had stopped crying at night.

  “He’s covered with ants!” cried my wife, who had gone and taken him in her arms. I got out of bed too. We turned the whole basket upside down and undressed the baby completely. To get enough light for picking the ants off, half blind as we were from sleep, we had to stand under the bulb in the draft coming from the door. My wife was saying: “Now he’ll catch cold.” It was pitiable looking for ants on that skin which reddened as soon as it was rubbed. There was a stream of ants going along the windowsill. We searched all the sheets until we could not find another ant and then said: ‘‘Where shall we put him to sleep now?” In our bed we were so squeezed up against each other we would have crushed him. I inspected the chest of drawers and, as the ants had not got into that, pulled it away from the wall, opened a drawer, and prepared a bed for the baby there. When we put him in he had already gone to sleep. If we had only thrown ourselves on the bed we would have soon dozed off again, but my wife wanted to look at our provisions.

  “Come here, come here! God! Full of ’em! Everything’s black! Help!” What was to be done? I took her by the shoulders. “Come along, we’ll think about that tomorrow, we can’t even see now, tomorrow we’ll arrange everything, we’ll put it all in a safe place, now come back to bed!”

  “But the food. It’ll be ruined!”

  “It can go to the devil! What can we do now? Tomorrow we’ll destroy the ants’ nest. Don’t worry.”

  But we could no longer find peace in bed, with the thought of those insects everywhere, in the food, in all our things; perhaps by now they had crawled up the legs of the chest of drawers and reached the baby.... We got off to sleep as the cocks were crowing, but before long we had again started moving about and scratching ourselves and feeling we had ants in the bed; perhaps they had climbed up there, or stayed on us after all our handling of them. And so even the early morning hours were no refreshment, and we were very soon up, nagged by the thought of the things we had to do, and of the nuisance, too, of having to start an immediate battle against the persistent imperceptible enemy which had taken over our home.

  The first thing my wife did was see to the baby: examine him for any bites (luckily, there did not seem to be any), dress and feed him—all this while moving around in the ant-infested house. I knew the effort of self-control she was making not to let out a scream every time she saw, for example, ants going around the rims of the cups left in the sink, and the baby’s bib, and the fruit. She did scream, though, when she uncovered the milk: “It’s black!” On top there was a veil of drowned or swimming ants. “It’s all on the surface,” I said. “One can skim them off with a spoon.” But even so we did not enjoy the milk; it seemed to taste of ants.

  I followed the stream of ants on the walls to see where they came from. My wife was combing and dressing herself, with occasional little cries of hastily suppressed anger. “We can’t arrange the furniture till we’ve got rid of the ants,” she said.

  “Keep calm. I’ll see that everything is all right. I’m just going to Signor Reginaudo, who has that powder, and ask him for a little of it. We’ll put the powder at the mouth of the ants’ nest. I’ve already seen where it is, and we’l
l soon be rid of them. But let’s wait till a little later as we may be disturbing the Reginaudos at this hour.”

  My wife calmed down a little, but I didn’t. I had said I’d seen the entrance to the ants’ nest to console her, but the more I looked, the more new ways I discovered by which the ants came and went. Our new home, although it looked so smooth and solid on the surface, was in fact porous and honeycombed with cracks and holes.

  I consoled myself by standing on the threshold and gazing at the plants with the sun pouring down on them; even the brushwood covering the ground cheered me, as it made me long to get to work on it: to clean everything up thoroughly, then hoe and sow and transplant. “Come,” I said to my son. “You’re getting moldy here.” I took him in my arms and went out into the “garden.” Just for the pleasure of starting the habit of calling it that, I said to my wife: “I’m taking the baby into the garden for a moment,” then corrected myself: “Into our garden,” as that seemed even more possessive and familiar.

  The baby was happy in the sunshine and I told him: “This is a carob tree, this is a persimmon,” and lifted him up onto the branches. “Now Papa will teach you to climb.” He burst out crying. “What’s the matter? Are you frightened?” But I saw the ants; the sticky tree was covered with them. I pulled the baby down at once. “Oh, lots of dear little ants...” I said to him, but meanwhile, deep in thought, I was following the line of ants down the trunk, and saw that the silent and almost invisible swarm continued along the ground in every direction between the weeds. How, I was beginning to wonder, shall we ever be able to get the ants out of the house when over this piece of ground, which had seemed so small yesterday but now appeared enormous in relation to the ants, the insects formed an uninterrupted veil, issuing from what must be thousands of underground nests and feeding on the thick sticky soil and the low vegetation? Wherever I looked I’d see nothing at first glance and would be giving a sigh of relief when I’d look closer and discover an ant approaching and find it formed part of a long procession, and was meeting others, often carrying crumbs and tiny bits of material much larger than themselves. In certain places, where they had perhaps collected some plant juice or animal remains, there was a guarding crust of ants stuck together like the black scab of a wound.