Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [36]
The man goes over to get his coat from a peg and puts it on. Without his green visor, his face seems even sadder and paler for a moment, then it's in the shadow again as he pulls his hat brim down over his eyes. ‘And you know what I think?’ he says, leaning down, voice hushed, Tm sure he did it on purpose!’
He stands up, thrusts his hands in his pockets. We two have never met, never known each other,’ he mutters to Paolino.
He turns and heads for the door with a gait that wants to be upright but comes out crooked, and he's humming: ‘La donna e mobile…’
A telephone rings. ‘Hello! Hello!’ It's Signora Dirce's voice. Paolino runs over to her.
Tes, yes, SBAV here. What's that? What's that? Where, Brazil? Fancy: they're calling from Brazil. Yes, but what do you want? I don't understand… Know what, Signora Pensotti? They're speaking Brazilian, do you want to hear a bit too?’
Calling at this hour, it must have been a customer from the other side of the world who'd muddled up the time difference.
Paolino's mother grabs the receiver from Signora Dirce's hand: ‘There's no one here, no one, understand?’ she starts shouting. ‘You can call to-o-mor-ro-ow! There's only u-us here no-ow! The cleaners, understand? The cleaners!’
The Queen's Necklace
Pietro and Tommaso were always arguing.
At dawn the squeaking of their old bicycles and the sound of their voices — Pietro's hollow and nasal, Tommaso's husky and sometimes hoarse - were the only noises to be heard in the empty streets. They used to cycle together to the factory where they worked. From the other side of the shutter slats you could still feel the sleep and the darkness weighing on the rooms. The muffled ringing of alarm clocks began a sporadic dialogue from one house to the next, becoming denser in the suburbs, until finally it merged, as town merged into country, into a back and forth of cock-a-doodle-doos.
Busy as they were arguing at the tops of their voices, the two workers didn't notice this first stirring of daily sounds: anyway they were both deaf; Pietro had been a little hard of hearing for some years now, while Tommaso had a constant whisde in one ear that went back to the First World War.
‘That's how things are, old friend,’ Pietro, a big fellow of sixty-odd, uncertainly balanced on his wobbling machine, thundered down at Tommaso, five years his elder, but smaller and already somewhat bent. ‘You've lost faith, old friend. I know myself that with the way things are today having kids means going hungry, but tomorrow you never know, you never know which side the scales might come down, tomorrow having kids could mean wealth. That's how I see things, and righdy so.’
Without taking his eyes off his friend, yellow bulbs opening wide, Tommaso let out sharp cries that would suddenly turn hoarse: ye-ess! What's got to be said to a worker starting a family is this!: bringing babies into the world you're only adding to poverty and unemployment! That's what! That's what he's got to know! I'm telling you. I've said it before and I'll say it again!’
Their discussion this morning was on the general question, does an increase in the population favour or damage the workers? Pietro was optimistic and Tommaso pessimistic. Behind this conflict of views lay the marriage planned between Pietro's son and Tommaso's daughter. Pietro was for it and Tommaso against.
‘And anyway, they haven't had kids yet!’ Pietro suddenly came back. ‘All in good time! That's all we need! We're talking about an engagement, not about kids!’
Tommaso yelled: ‘When people marry, they have kids!’
‘In the country! Where you were born!’ Pietro came back. He almost got his wheel caught in a tram rail. He swore.
‘Wha-aat?’ Tommaso shouted, pedalling ahead.
Pietro shook his head and said nothing. They went on in silence for a while.