The signorinas write a few more things in a big ledger and then walk with us to the door. When we go through to the other room, the three young men are still arguing about politics. Every two or three exchanges, the thin blond one yells something about “the problem of the south” or “national integration.” I watch Mamma closely to see whether she’s understood, but she looks straight ahead and keeps on walking. The blond guy turns to me just as I’m passing, as if to say: “You say something. Tell him, will you?” I want to say that it’s none of my business and that Mamma Antonietta is the one who brought me here for my own good, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, but, before I can open my mouth, Mamma Antonietta yanks my arm and hisses: “You little show-off. Now you want to stick your nose into this stuff, too? Shut your mouth and get out of here!”
So we walk on, the blond guy following us with his eyes until we are out the door.
4
BAD WEATHER HAS COME ALL OF A SUDDEN. Mamma hasn’t sent me out looking for rags, partly because it’s raining and starting to be cold. She hasn’t bought me any other fried pizzas, but she once made me a meat-and-onion pasta alla genovese I go crazy for. The nun hasn’t showed her face recently, and in the neighborhood they’ve gotten bored of talking about the train thing.
Since we weren’t doing so well at home these days, me and Tommasino went into business together. He wasn’t that keen to begin with. Part of him was disgusted and part of him was scared his mother would find out and send him on the train as a punishment. I told him that if Capa ’e Fierro managed to make money with stuff we found in the garbage, we would be stupid not to try. So that is how we started with the sewer rats. Our deal was that I would catch them and he would paint them. We had an upturned box as a stall at the market, in the corner where they sell parrots and goldfinches. Our specialty was hamsters. I had gotten the idea because I’d seen an American officer breeding them and selling them to rich ladies who weren’t so rich anymore. They would skin them and make fur collars for their coats, showing off and saving money at the same time. If we cut the tail off the sewer rats I caught and painted them brown and white with shoe polish, they looked just like the American officer’s hamsters. Business was going well, and me and Tommasino had built up a good clientele. We would be rich by now if one terrible day it hadn’t rained.
“Amerì,” Tommasino had said that morning, “if we make enough money, you won’t have to go up north with the Communists.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked. “It’ll be like a vacation.”
“A vacation for the chicken shit of this world, you mean. Guess where we’re going this summer? To the island of Ischia.”
At that very moment, the sky went black, and it started pouring with rain like I’d never seen before.
“Tommasino,” I said. “The next time you tell a whopper like that, bring an umbrella.”
We ran for cover under the cornice of a building, but the stall with the painted sewer rats was still there. Before we even realized, the shoe polish had been washed away, and the hamsters had been transformed back into rats. The ladies around the cages started screaming.
“Ew! They’ll give us cholera!”
We couldn’t run away because the ladies’ husbands were threatening to beat us up. Luckily, Capa ’e Fierro came along. He grabbed both of us by the collar and yelled, “Make that filthy shit go away right now. You and me will be having a good talk later.”
I was sure I’d get a good dressing down when I got home, but he didn’t mention the sewer rats at all. Then one day, when he came to the door to get down to work with Mamma, he took me aside before going in. He pulled on his cigarette so that all the smoke was inside his mouth and, before letting it out, he said, “It was a good idea. But the stall should have been in the covered market!” He laughed, and the smoke rings grew wider as they rose up into the air. “If you want to go into business, you need to come with me to the market. I’ll teach you.” He put his hand on my cheek, in what could have been a slap or a caress. It was impossible to tell. Then he left.
I was tempted by the idea of going to Capa ’e Fierro. If only to improve my business skills. But the police came and took him away. I think because of the contraband coffee. People in the neighborhood stopped talking about the painted hamsters, because they were too busy gossiping about Capa ’e Fierro in jail. I’d like to see him saying he’ll always be free now!
As soon as Mamma heard the news, she moved all the stuff away but for days, every time she heard a noise behind the door, she hid her face in her hands as if she wanted to disappear underground. Anyway, the police didn’t come to our house, and after a few days people had gotten bored of that, too. People always talk up a storm, and then they forget everything. Except Mamma, who hardly ever talks, but remembers everything.
One morning, when I’ve stopped even thinking about the trains, she wakes me before the sun is out and it is still dark outside the window, puts on her best dress, and combs her hair in front of the mirror. She lays out a set of clothes that are a little less worn-out than usual for me and says: “Let’s go, or we’ll be late.” That’s when I get it.
We start walking. Mamma in front; me behind. In the meantime, it has started raining. I play around leaping over the puddles, and Mamma boxes me around the ears, but my feet are already wet, and there’s still a long way to go. I look around to see if I can play my shoe game and win some more points, but today I don’t feel like it. I’d like to hide my face in my hands, too, and disappear for a bit. There are lots of other mammas with their children walking alongside us. There are some papas too, but you can see they don’t want to be there. One of them has written on a sheet of paper a list of instructions: what time his little boy gets up, what time he goes to bed, what he likes and doesn’t like to eat, how many times he poops, remember to use a waterproof bed sheet because he wets his bed. He reads the list to his wife, the kid dying of embarrassment in front of all the others, folds it in four, and puts it in the boy’s pocket. Then he has second thoughts, takes it out again, and jots down a quick “thank you” to the family that will be taking his son in, saying that, thank God, they are not in need, they would just like their kid to have a nice little vacation.
The ladies stride ahead defiantly, each with two, three, or four children tagging along behind. I’m an only child, since I didn’t make it in time to meet my big brother, Luigi. I didn’t make it in time to meet my father, either. I was born too late for everyone. It’s better this way, though, because this way my father doesn’t need to feel ashamed about putting me on the train.
We get to a long, long building. Mamma Antonietta calls it the Reclusorio. She says it’s a hospice for the poor. “What?” I say. “Weren’t they taking us up north so we could eat and drink? Now we’re at the hospice for the poor. Things are getting worse instead of better! Wouldn’t it be better if we just stayed home, on our street?” Mamma Antonietta says we’re here because, before they can take us north, they need to check us out to see whether we’re healthy or sick, whether we’re contagious . . .