Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories Read online

  ‘In the tram and then where?’

  ‘In the tram. Do you mind?’

  We get on the tram. ‘I can’t tell you any stories,’ I say, ‘because I’ve got this gap. There’s an empty chasm between me and everybody else. I wave my arms about inside it but I can’t get hold of anything, I shout into it but no one hears: it’s total emptiness.’

  ‘In those situations I sing,’ says Ada Ida, ‘I sing in my mind. When I’m speaking to someone and I get to a point where I realize I can’t go on, as if I’d got to the edge of a river, my thoughts running away to hide, I start singing in my mind the last words spoken or said, and putting them to a tune, any old tune. And the other words that come into my mind, I mean following the same tune, are the words of my thoughts. So I say them.’

  ‘Try it.’

  ‘So I say them. Like the time someone bothered me in the street thinking I was one of them.’

  ‘But you aren’t singing.’

  ‘I’m singing in my mind, then I translate. Otherwise you wouldn’t understand. I did the same that time with that man. I ended up telling him that I hadn’t had any candies for three years. He bought me a bag. Then I really didn’t know what to say to him. I mumbled something and ran off with the bag of candy.’

  ‘I’ll never manage to say anything, speaking,’ I say, ‘that’s why I write.’

  ‘Do what the beggars do,’ Ada Ida says, pointing to one, at a tram-stop.

  Turin is as full of beggars as a holy city in India. Even beggars have their special ways, when asking for money: one tries something and all the others copy. For a while now lots of the beggars have taken to writing their life stories in huge letters on the pavement, with pieces of coloured chalk: it’s a good way of getting people interested enough to read and then they feel obliged to part with some change.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘maybe I should write my story in chalk on the pavement and sit down beside to hear what people would say. At least we’d look each other in the eyes a bit. But maybe no one would notice and they’d walk all over it and rub it out.’

  ‘What would you write, on the pavement, if you were a beggar?’ Ada Ida asks.

  ‘I’d write, all in block capitals: I’m one of those who write because they can’t handle speaking; sorry about this, folks. Once a paper published something I’d written. It’s a paper that comes out early in the morning; the people who buy it are mainly workers on their way to the factory. That morning I was on the trams early and I saw people reading the things I had written, and I watched their faces, trying to understand what line they were up to. Everything you write there’s always something you’re sorry you put in, either because you’re afraid of being misunderstood, or out of shame. And on the trams that morning I kept watching people’s faces till they got to that bit, and then I wanted to say: “Look, maybe I didn’t explain that very well, this is what I meant,” but I still sat there without saying anything and blushed.’

  Meanwhile we’ve got off the tram and Ada Ida is waiting for another tram to come. I don’t know which tram I should get now and I wait with her.

  ‘I’d write this,’ says Ada Ida, ‘in blue and yellow chalk: Ladies and Gentlemen, there are people whose greatest pleasure is to have others urinate on them. D’Annunzio was one such, they say. I believe it. You should remember that every day, and remember that we are all the same race, and not act so superior. And what about this: my aunt gave birth to a son with the body of a cat. You should remember that things like that happen, never forget it. And that in Turin there are people who sleep on the pavements, over warm cellar gratings. I’ve seen them. You should think about all these things, every evening, instead of saying your prayers. And you should keep them in mind during the day. Then your heads won’t be so full of plans and hypocrisy. That’s what I’d write. Keep me company on this tram too, be sweet.’

  I don’t know why but I went on taking trams with Ada Ida. The tram went a long way through the poor suburbs. The people on the tram were grey and wrinkly, as though all grimed with the same dust.

  Ada Ida insists on passing remarks: ‘Look what a nervous tic that man has. And look how much powder that old woman’s put on.’

  I found it all upsetting and I wanted her to stop. ‘So? So?’ I said. ‘Everything real is rational.’ But deep down I wasn’t convinced.

  I’m real and rational too, I thought, not accepting, thinking up plans, meaning to change everything. But to change everything you have to start from there, from the man with the nervous tic, the old woman with the powder, and not from plans. And from Ada Ida too who’s still saying, ‘Keep me company just till there.’

  ‘It’s our stop,’ says Ada Ida, and we get off. ‘Keep me company just till there, do you mind?’

  ‘Everything real is rational, Ada Ida,’ I tell her. ‘Any more trams to catch?’

  ‘No, I live round that corner.’

  We were at the end of town. Iron castles rose behind factory walls; the wind waved scraps of smoke at the lighting conductors of the smokestacks. And there was a river tucked in with grass: the Dora.

  I remembered a windy night by the Dora, years ago, when I walked along biting a girl’s cheek. She had long, really fine hair and it kept getting between my teeth.

  ‘Once,’ I say, ‘I bit a girl’s cheek, here, in the wind. And I spat out hair. It’s a marvellous story.’

  ‘Here,’ Ada Ida says, ‘I’ve arrived.’

  ‘It’s a marvellous story,’ I tell her, ‘but it takes a while to tell.’

  ‘I’ve arrived,’ says Ada Ida. ‘He must be home already.’

  ‘He who?’

  ‘I’m with this guy who works at RIV. He’s fishing mad. He’s filled the flat with fishing rods and artificial flies.’

  ‘Everything real is rational,’ I say. ‘It was a marvellous story. Tell me what trams I have to get to get back.’

  ‘The twenty-two, the seventeen, the sixteen,’ she says. ‘Every Sunday we go to the Sangone. The other day, a trout this big.’

  ‘Are you singing in your mind?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Just asking. Twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirteen.’

  ‘Twenty-two, seventeen, sixteen. He likes to fry the fish himself. There, I can smell it. It’s him frying.’

  ‘And the oil? Are your rations enough? Twenty-six, seventeen, sixteen.’

  ‘We do swaps with a friend. Twenty-two, seventeen.’

  ‘Twenty-two, seventeen, fourteen?’

  ‘No: eight, fifteen, forty-one.’

  ‘Right: I’m so forgetful. Everything is rational. Bye, Ada Ida.’

  I get home after an hour in the wind, getting all the trams wrong and arguing by numbers with the drivers. I go in and there are peas and broken bits of plate in the passage, the fat secretary has locked herself in her room, she’s screaming.

  The Lost Regiment

  A regiment in a powerful army was supposed to be parading through the city streets. Since the crack of dawn the troops had been lined up in parade formation in the courtyard of the barracks.

  The sun was already high in the sky and the shadows shortened at the feet of the scrawny saplings in the courtyard. Under their freshly polished helmets, soldiers and officials were dripping with sweat. High up on his white horse, the colonel gave a sign: the drums rolled, the whole band began to play and the barracks gate swung slowly on its hinges.

  Beyond you could see the city now, under a blue sky crossed by soft clouds, the city with its chimneys shedding wisps of smoke, its balconies with their washing lines bristling with pegs, glints of sunshine reflected in dressing-table mirrors, flyscreen curtains catching the earrings of ladies with their shopping, an ice-cream cart complete with sunshade and glass box for cones, and, tugged at the end of a long string by a group of children, a kite with red paper rings for a tail which skims along the ground, then lifts in jerks and straightens against the soft clouds in the sky.

  The regiment had begun to advance to the beat of the drums
, with a great stamping of boots on the paving and rattling of artillery; but on seeing the city before them, so quiet and good-natured, minding its own business, the soldiers felt indiscreet somehow, intrusive, the parade suddenly seemed out of place, it struck a wrong note, people could really do without it.

  One of the drummers, a certain Pre Gio Batta, pretended to proceed with the roll he’d begun but in fact only skimmed the skin of his drum. What came out was a subdued tippety-tap, but not just from him: it was general; because at exactly the same moment all the other drummers did what Pre did. Then the trumpets came out with no more than a sighed solfeggio, because nobody was putting any puff into it. Glancing about uneasily, soldiers and officials stopped with one leg in the air, then put it down very softly, and resumed their parade on tiptoe.

  So without anybody having given an order, the long, very long column, proceeded on tiptoe with slow restrained movements, and a muffled, swishing shuffle. Walking beside those cannons, so incongruous here, the artillerymen were suddenly overtaken by a sense of shame: some tried to pretend indifference, walking along without ever looking at the guns, as if they were there by purest chance; others stuck as close to the guns as they could, as though to hide them, to save people from such a rude and disagreeable sight, or they put covers over them, capes, so that they wouldn’t be noticed, or at least wouldn’t attract attention; others again assumed an attitude of affectionate mockery towards the things, clapping their hands on the gun carriage, on the breech, pointing at them with half a smile on their lips: this to show that they had no intention of using them for lethal purposes, but just meant to give them an airing, like some grotesque gadgetry, huge and rare.

  This confused feeling had even penetrated the mind of Colonel Clelio Leontuomini, who had instinctively lowered his head to his horse’s, while the horse, for his part, had begun to put in a pause between each step, moving with the caution of a cart horse. But it took only a moment’s reflection for colonel and horse to recover their martial gait. Having made a rapid assessment of the situation, Leontuomini gave a sharp order:

  ‘Parade step!’

  The drums rolled, then began to beat a measured rhythm. The regiment quickly regained its composure and was now tramping forward with aggressive self-confidence.

  ‘There,’ the colonel said to himself, casting a quick glance over the ranks, ‘that’s a real regiment on the march.’

  On the pavement a few passers-by stopped to line the road, and they looked on with the air of people who would like to be interested and maybe even take pleasure in the deployment of so much energy, but are troubled by a feeling they don’t really understand, a vague sense of alarm, and in any event have too many serious things on their minds to start thinking about sabres and cannons.

  Sensing these eyes on them, troops and officials were again overtaken by that slight, inexplicable uneasiness. They went on marching with their rigid parade step, but they couldn’t rid themselves of the idea that they were doing these good citizens a wrong. In order not to be distracted by their presence, Infantryman Marangon Remigio kept his eyes down: when you march in columns your only concerns are keeping in line and keeping in step; the detachment can take care of everything else. But hundreds and hundreds of soldiers were doing what Infantryman Marangon was doing; in fact you could say that all of them, officials, ensigns, the colonel himself, were advancing without ever raising their eyes from the ground, faithfully following the column. Proceeding at parade step, their band at their head, the regiment was thus seen to veer to one side, leave the paved road, stray into a flowerbed in the park and push on determinedly trampling down buttercups and lilacs.

  The gardeners were watering the grass and what did they see? A regiment advancing on them with eyes closed, stamping their heels on the tender grass. The poor men couldn’t think how to hold their hoses without directing them at the soldiers. They ended up pointing them vertically upwards, but the long jets fell back in unsuspected directions; one watered Colonel Clelio Leontuomini from head to toe as he too advanced bolt upright, his eyes closed.

  Showered with water, the colonel jumped and let out a shout:

  ‘Flood! Flood! Mobilize for rescue!’ Then immediately he pulled himself together, regained command of the regiment and led them out of the gardens.

  But he was a bit disappointed. That shout of, ‘Flood! Flood!’ had betrayed a secret and almost unconscious hope: that a natural disaster would suddenly occur, without killing anyone, but dangerous enough to call off the parade and give the regiment a chance to do all kinds of useful things for people: building bridges, organizing rescues. This alone would have soothed his conscience.

  Having left the park, the regiment was now in a different part of town, not in the broad avenues where they were supposed to be parading, but in an area of narrow, quiet, winding lanes. The colonel decided he would cut through these streets to get to the square without wasting any more time.

  An unusual excitement reigned in the area. Electricians were fixing the streetlamps with long portable ladders and lifting and lowering the telephone wires. Surveyors from the civil engineers were measuring the streets with ranging rods and spring-wind tape measures. The gasmen were using picks to open up big holes in the pavement. Schoolchildren were walking along in line. Bricklayers were tossing along bricks to each other, shouting: ‘Hey up, hey up!’ Cyclists went by with stepladders on their shoulders, whistling hard. And at every window a maid was standing on the sill washing the panes and wringing out wet cloths into big buckets.

  Thus the regiment had to proceed with its parade down those winding streets, pushing their way through a tangle of telephone wires, tape measures, stepladders, holes in the road, and well-endowed schoolgirls, and at the same time catching bricks in flight—‘Hey up! hey up!’—and avoiding the wet cloths and buckets that excited maids dropped crashing down from the fourth floor.

  Colonel Clelio Leontuomini had to admit he was lost. He leaned down from his horse toward a passer-by and asked:

  ‘Excuse me, but do you know the shortest way to the main square?’

  The passer-by, a small fellow with glasses, stood for a moment in thought:

  ‘It’s complicated; but if you let me show you the way I’ll take you through a courtyard into another street and you’ll save at least a quarter of an hour.’

  ‘Will the whole regiment be able to get through this courtyard?’ the colonel asked.

  The man shot them a glance and made a hesitant gesture:

  ‘We-ell! We can try?’ and he led them through a big door.

  Lined up behind the rusty railings of the balconies, all the families in the building leaned out to look at the regiment trying to get into their courtyard with their horses and artillery.

  ‘Where’s the door we go out through?’ the colonel asked the small fellow.

  ‘Door?’ the man asked. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t very clear. You have to climb to the top floor, from there you get through to the stairs in the next building and their door goes through to the other street.’

  The colonel wanted to stay on his horse even up those narrow stairs, but after two landings he decided to leave the animal tied to the banister and proceed on foot. The cannons too, they decided, would have to be left in the courtyard where a cobbler promised he would keep an eye on them. The soldiers went up in single file and at every landing doors opened and children shouted:

  ‘Mummy! Come and look. The soldiers are going by! The regiment is on parade!’

  On the fifth floor, to get from this staircase to another secondary one that led to the attic, they had to walk outside along the balcony. Every window gave on bare rooms with lots of pallet beds where whole families full of children lived.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said the dads and mums to the soldiers. ‘Rest a while, you must be tired! Come through here, it’s shorter! But leave your rifles outside; there are kids here, you understand…’

  So the regiment broke up along the passageways and corridors. And in t
he confusion, the small fellow who knew the way could no longer be found.

  Came the evening and still companies and platoons were wandering through stairways and balconies. At the top, perched on the roof coping, was Colonel Leontuomini. He could see the city spread beneath him, spacious and sharp, with its chequer-board of streets and big empty piazza. Beside him, on their hands and knees on the tiles, were a squadron of men, armed with coloured flags, flare pistols and drapes with flashes of colour.

  ‘Transmit,’ said the colonel. ‘Quick, transmit: Area impracticable… Unable to proceed… Awaiting orders…’

  Enemy Eyes

  Pietro was walking along that morning, when he became aware that something was bothering him. He’d had the feeling for a while, without really being aware of it: the feeling that someone was behind him, someone was watching him, unseen.

  He turned his head suddenly; he was in a street a little off the beaten track, with hedges by the gates and wooden fences covered with torn posters. Hardly anybody was around; Pietro was immediately annoyed that he had given way to that stupid impulse to turn round; and he went on, determined to pick up the broken thread of his thoughts.

  It was an autumn morning with a little sunshine; hardly a day to make you jump for joy, but not one to tug the heartstrings either. Yet in spite of himself that uneasiness continued to weigh him down; sometimes it seemed it was concentrated on the back of his neck, on his shoulders, like eyes that never let him out of sight, like the approach of a somehow hostile presence.

  To overcome his nervousness, he felt he needed people around him: he went towards a busier street, but again, at the corner, he turned and looked back. A cyclist went by, a woman crossed the road, but he couldn’t find any connection between the people and things round about and the anxiety eating into him. Turning round, his eyes had met those of a man who was likewise turning his head at the same time. Both men immediately and simultaneously looked away from each other, as if each were seeking something else. Pietro thought: ‘Maybe that man felt I was looking at him. Perhaps I’m not the only one suffering from an irksome sharpening of sensibility this morning; maybe it’s the weather, the day, that’s making us nervous.’