Last Comes the Raven Read online

  “Leave them alone,” she said. “You mustn’t touch them.”

  “Male and female,” repeated Libereso. “They’re making tadpoles.”

  A cloud passed over the sun. Suddenly Maria-nunziata began to feel anxious.

  “It’s late. The signora must be looking for me.”

  But she did not go. Instead they went on wandering around, though the sun did not come out again. And then he found a snake, a tiny little snake, behind a hedge of bamboo. Libereso wound it around his arm and stroked its head.

  “Once I used to train snakes. I had a dozen of them; one was long and yellow, a water snake, but it shed its skin and escaped. Look at this one opening its mouth; look how its tongue is forked. Stroke it—​it won’t bite.”

  But Maria-nunziata was frightened of snakes, too.

  Then they went to the rock pool. First he showed her the fountains and opened all the jets, which pleased her very much. Then he showed her the goldfish. It was a lonely old goldfish, and its scales were already whitening. At last: Maria-nunziata liked the goldfish. Libereso began to move his hands around in the water to catch it; it was very difficult, but when he’d caught it Maria-nunziata could put it in a bowl and keep it in the kitchen. He managed to catch it, but didn’t take it out of the water in case it suffocated.

  “Put your hands down here; stroke it,” said Libereso. “You can feel it breathing. It has fins like paper and scales that prickle. Not much, though.”

  But Maria-nunziata did not want to stroke the fish either.

  In the petunia bed the earth was very soft, and Libereso dug about with his fingers and pulled out some long, soft worms.

  But Maria-nunziata ran away with little shrieks.

  “Put your hand here,” said Libereso, pointing to the trunk of an old peach tree. Maria- nunziata did not understand why, but she put her hand there; then she screamed and ran to dip it in the pool. For when she had pulled her hand away it was covered with ants. The peach tree was a mass of them, tiny black Argentine ants.

  “Look,” said Libereso, and put a hand on the trunk. The ants could be seen crawling over his hand, but he didn’t brush them off.

  “Why?” asked Maria-nunziata. “Why are you letting yourself get covered with ants?”

  His hand was now quite black, and they were crawling up his wrist.

  “Take your hand away,” moaned Maria-nunziata. “You’ll get them all over you.”

  The ants were crawling up his naked arm and had already reached his elbow.

  Now his whole arm was covered with a veil of moving black dots; they reached his armpit, but he did not brush them off.

  “Get rid of them, Libereso. Put your arm in water!”

  Libereso laughed, while some ants now even crawled from his neck onto his face.

  “Libereso! I’ll do whatever you like! I’ll accept all those presents you gave me.” She threw her arms around his neck and started to brush off the ants.

  Smiling his brown-and-white smile, Libereso took his hand away from the tree and began nonchalantly dusting his arm. But he was obviously touched.

  “Very well, then, I’ll give you a really big present, I’ve decided. The biggest present I can.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A hedgehog.”

  “Mamma mia! The signora! The signora’s calling me!”

  * * *

  Maria-nunziata had just finished washing the dishes when she heard a pebble beat against the window. Underneath stood Libereso with a large basket.

  “Maria-nunziata, let me in. I want to give you a surprise.”

  “No, you can’t come up. What have you got there?”

  But at that moment the signora rang the bell, and Maria-nunziata vanished.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Libereso was no longer to be seen. Neither inside the kitchen nor underneath the window. Maria-nunziata went up to the sink. Then she saw the surprise.

  On every plate she had left to dry there was a crouching frog, a snake was coiled up inside a saucepan, there was a soup bowl full of lizards, and slimy snails were making iridescent streaks all over the glasses. In the basin full of water swam the lonely old goldfish.

  Maria-nunziata stepped back, but between her feet she saw a great big toad. And behind it were five little toads in a line, taking little hops toward her across the black-and-white-tiled floor.

  A Ship Loaded with Crabs

  The boys from Piazza dei Dolori had their first swim of the summer on an April Sunday, when the blue sky was brand-new and the sun was young, carefree. They went running down the steep narrow alleys, waving their patched jersey trunks, some already in clogs clattering over the paving stones, most of them without socks, to spare themselves the nuisance, afterward, of putting them back on wet feet. They ran to the pier, jumping over the nets spread out on the ground and lifted by the callused feet of the fishermen, squatting to mend them. Along the rocks of the breakwater, the kids stripped, excited by that sharp smell of old, rotting seaweed and by the flight of the gulls trying to fill the sky, which was too big. Hiding clothes and shoes in the hollows of the rocks and setting the baby crabs to flight, they began to jump from rock to rock, barefoot and half naked, waiting for one of their number to make up his mind and dive in first.

  The water was calm but not clear, a dense blue with harsh green glints. Gian Maria, known as Mariassa, climbed to the top of a high rock and blew his nose against his thumb, a boxer’s gesture he had.

  “Come on,” he said. He pressed his hands together, held them out in front of himself, and plunged headlong. He surfaced a few yards farther out, spouting water, then playing dead.

  “Cold?” they asked him.

  “Boiling,” he yelled, and started making furious strokes to keep from freezing.

  “Hey, gang! Follow me!” said Cicin, who considered himself the chief, though nobody ever paid any attention to him.

  They all dived in: Pier Lingera made a somersault, Bombolo took a belly whopper, then Paulò, Carruba, and last of all Menin, who was scared to death of the water and jumped in feet first, pinching his nose with his fingers.

  Once in the water, Pier Lingera, who was the strongest, ducked the others one by one; then they all ganged up and ducked Pier Lingera.

  Gian Maria alias Mariassa suggested, “The ship! Let’s go on the ship!”

  A vessel still lay in the harbor, sunk by the Germans during the war to block access. Actually there were two ships, one above the other; the visible one rested on a second, completely submerged.

  “Yeah, let’s!” the others said.

  “Can we climb up on it?” Menin asked. “It’s mined.”

  “Balls. Mined!” Carruba said. “The Arenella guys climb on it whenever they like and play war.”

  They started swimming toward the ship.

  “Gang! Follow me!” said Cicin, who wanted to be the leader. But the others swam faster and left him behind, except for Menin, who swam frog-style and was always last.

  They reached the ship, whose flanks rose from the water, black with old tar, bare, and moldy, the stripped superstructures profiled against the fresh blue sky. A beard of stinking seaweed rose to cover the ship from the keel; the old paint was peeling in great flakes. The boys swam all around it, then paused a while below the poop, to look at the almost erased name: Abukir, Egypt. The anchor chain, stretched obliquely, swayed now and then with the jabs of the tide, its enormous rusted links creaking.

  “Let’s stay here,” Bombolo said.

  “Come on,” Pier Lingera said, already gripping the chain with his hands and feet. He scrambled up like a monkey, and the others followed him.

  Halfway up, Bombolo slipped and hit the water with his belly; Menin couldn’t make it, so two of the others had to pull him up.

  On board, they began wandering around that dismantled ship in silence, looking for the wheel of the helm, the siren, the hatches, the lifeboats, all the things there were supposed to be on a ship. But this ship was as barren as a
raft, covered only with whitish gull dung. There were five of them, five gulls, perched on a railing; when they heard the barefoot steps of the band, they took flight, one after the other, in a great flapping of wings.

  “Hey!” Paulò cried, and threw after the last gull a rivet he had picked up.

  “Gang! Let’s go to the engine room!” Cicin said. It would surely be more fun to play among the machines or in the hold.

  “Can we go down to the other ship, underneath?” Carruba asked. That would have been great: to be down there, all sealed off, with the sea around them and over them, like being in a submarine.

  “The one underneath is mined!” Menin said.

  “You’re mined!” they said to him.

  They started down a companionway. After a few steps, they hesitated: at their feet the black water began, rustling in the enclosed space. Standing still and mute, the boys from Piazza dei Dolori looked at it; in the depths of that water there was the black glint of colonies of sea urchins, slowly unfolding their spines. And the walls on every side were encrusted with limpets, their shells dripping green algae; the iron of the walls seemed eroded. And there were crabs teeming at the edge of the water, thousands of crabs of every shape and every age, which scuttled on their curved, spoked legs, and opened their claws, and thrust forward their sightless eyes. The sea slapped dully in the space of the iron walls, licking those flat crab bellies. Perhaps the entire hold of the ship was full of groping crabs, and one day the ship would move on the crabs’ legs and walk through the sea.

  The boys came up on deck again, at the prow. Then they saw the little girl. They hadn’t seen her before, though it was as if she had always been there. She was a little girl of about six, fat, with long curly hair. She was all sunburned, wearing only little white shorts. There was no telling where she had come from. She didn’t even look at them, totally concerned with a jellyfish that was lying on its back on the wooden deck, the flabby festoons of its tentacles spread out. With a stick the little girl was trying to turn it upright.

  The Piazza dei Dolori boys stopped all around her, gaping. Mariassa was the first to step forward. He sniffed.

  “Who’re you?” he said.

  The girl raised the pale blue eyes in her dark, plump face; then she resumed working the stick as a lever under the jellyfish.

  “She must be one of the Arenella gang,” Carruba said; he knew them.

  The Arenella boys let some girls come with them to swim or play ball, and even make war with reed weapons.

  “You,” Mariassa said, “are our prisoner.”

  “Gang!” Cicin said. “Take her alive!”

  The little girl went on poking at the jellyfish.

  “Battle stations!” Paulò yelled, as he happened to look around. “The Arenella gang!”

  While they had been involved with the girl, the Arenella boys, who spent their whole day in the sea, had come swimming underwater and silently climbed the anchor chain; now they appeared over the railings. They were short, stocky kids, light as cats, with shaved heads and dark skin. Their trunks weren’t black and long and floppy like those of the Dolori boys but consisted of a single length of white canvas.

  The battle began. The Piazza dei Dolori boys were thin, all nerves, except for Bombolo, who was a fatty; but they had a fanatical fury when they swung their fists, hardened by endless brawls in the little streets of the old city against the gangs from San Siro and the Giardinetti. At first the Arenella kids had the advantage, because of the surprise element; but then the Dolori gang perched on the ladders and there was no dislodging them. They wanted to avoid, at all costs, being forced to the railing, where it would be easy to dump them into the drink. Finally Pier Lingera, who was the strongest of the bunch and also the oldest and who hung out with them only because he had been kept back in school, managed to force one of the Arenella boys to the edge and push him into the sea.

  Then the Dolori gang took the offensive, and the Arenella kids, who felt more at home in the water and, being sensible, had no notions about honor in their heads, one by one eluded their enemies and dived in.

  “Come and get us in the water. We dare you!” they yelled.

  “Gang! Follow me!” yelled Cicin, who was about to dive.

  “Are you crazy?” Mariassa held him back. “In the water they’d win hands down!” And he started shouting insults at the fugitives.

  The Arenella boys began to splash water up from below; they splashed so hard there wasn’t a place on the ship that wasn’t wet. Finally they got tired of that and swam out to sea, heads down and arms arched, surfacing every now and then to breathe, in little spurts.

  The Piazza dei Dolori boys had remained masters of the field. They went to the prow; the little girl was still there. She had succeeded in turning over the jellyfish and was now trying to lift it on the stick.

  “They left us a hostage!” Mariassa said.

  “Hey, gang! A hostage!” Cicin was all excited.

  “You cowards!” Carruba shouted behind the other bunch. “Leaving your women in the enemies’ hands!”

  They had a highly developed sense of honor around Piazza dei Dolori.

  “Come with us,” Mariassa said, and started to put a hand on her shoulder.

  The girl motioned him to keep still; she had almost succeeded in lifting the jellyfish. As Mariassa bent over to look, the girl pulled up the stick, with the jellyfish balanced on it, pulled it up, up, and slammed it into Mariassa’s face.

  “Bitch!” Mariassa yelled, spitting and putting his hands to his face.

  The little girl looked at them all and laughed. Then she turned, went straight to the top of the prow, raised her arms, joining her fingertips, did a swan dive, and swam off without looking back. The Piazza dei Dolori boys hadn’t moved.

  “Say,” Mariassa asked, touching one cheek, “is it true that jellyfish make your skin burn?”

  “Wait and find out,” Pier Lingera said. “But the best thing would be to dive in right away.”

  “Let’s go,” Mariassa said, starting off with the others. Then he stopped. “From now on we have to have a woman in our gang, too! Menin! Bring your sister!”

  “My sister’s a dummy,” Menin said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Mariassa said. “Come on!” And he gave Menin a shove, pushing him into the water because he didn’t know how to dive. Then they all dived in.

  The Enchanted Garden

  Giovannino and Serenella were strolling along the railroad tracks. Below was a scaly sea of somber, clear blue; above, a sky lightly streaked with white clouds. The railroad tracks were shimmering and burning hot. It was fun going along the tracks, there were so many games to play—​he balancing on one rail and holding her hand while she walked along on the other, or else both jumping from one sleeper to the next without ever letting their feet touch the stones in between. Giovannino and Serenella had been out looking for crabs, and now they had decided to explore the railroad tracks as far as the tunnel. He liked playing with Serenella, for she did not behave as all the other little girls did, forever getting frightened or bursting into tears at every joke. Whenever Giovannino said, “Let’s go there” or “Let’s do this,” Serenella followed without a word.

  Ping! They both gave a start and looked up. A telephone wire had snapped off the top of the pole. It sounded like an iron stork shutting its beak in a hurry. They stood with their noses in the air and watched. What a pity not to have seen it! Now it would never happen again.

  “There’s a train coming,” said Giovannino.

  Serenella did not move from the rail. “Where from?” she asked.

  Giovannino looked around in a knowledgeable way. He pointed at the black hole of the tunnel, which showed clear one moment, then misty the next, through the invisible heat haze rising from the stony track.

  “From there,” he said. It was as though they could already hear a snort from the darkness of the tunnel and see the train suddenly appear, belching out fire and smoke, the wheels mercil
essly eating up the rails as it hurtled toward them.

  “Where shall we go, Giovannino?”

  There were big gray aloes down by the sea, surrounded by dense, impenetrable nettles, while up the hillside ran a rambling hedge with thick leaves but no flowers. There was still no sign of the train; perhaps it was coasting, with the engine cut off, and would jump out at them all of a sudden. But Giovannino had now found an opening in the hedge. “This way,” he called.

  The fence under the rambling hedge was an old bent rail. At one point it twisted about on the ground like the corner of a sheet of paper. Giovannino had slipped into the hole and already half vanished.

  “Give me a hand, Giovannino.”

  They found themselves in the corner of a garden, on all fours in a flower bed, with their hair full of dry leaves and moss. Everything was quiet; not a leaf was stirring.

  “Come on,” said Giovannino, and Serenella nodded in reply.

  There were big old flesh-colored eucalyptus trees and winding gravel paths. Giovannino and Serenella tiptoed along the paths, taking care not to crunch the gravel. Suppose the owners appeared now?

  Everything was so beautiful: sharp bends in the path and high, curling eucalyptus leaves and patches of sky. But there was always the worrying thought that it was not their garden, and that they might be chased away any moment. Yet not a sound could be heard. A flight of chattering sparrows rose from a clump of arbutus at a turn in the path. Then all was silent again. Perhaps it was an abandoned garden?

  But the shade of the big trees came to an end, and they found themselves under the open sky facing flower beds filled with neat rows of petunias and convolvulus, and paths and balustrades and rows of box trees. And up at the end of the garden was a large villa with flashing windowpanes and yellow-and-orange curtains.

  And it was all quite deserted. The two children crept forward, treading carefully over the gravel: perhaps the windows would suddenly be flung open, and angry ladies and gentlemen appear on the terraces to unleash great dogs down the paths. Now they found a wheelbarrow standing near a ditch. Giovannino picked it up by the handles and began pushing it along: it creaked like a whistle at every turn. Serenella seated herself in it and they moved slowly forward, Giovannino pushing the barrow with her on top, beside the flower beds and fountains.