Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [38]
‘It's fake!’ Tommaso immediately shouted in one ear, as if he'd been bursting to say it for the last few minutes, indeed as if it had been his first thought the moment he'd set eyes on the necklace and had only been waiting for some sign of gloating from his friend to be able to hit back at him with this remark.
Pietro raised the hand that held the necklace, thus lifting Tommaso's arm too. What do you know?’
I know that you'd better believe what I'm telling you: they always keep their real jewels in the safe.’
Their big tough, wrinkled hands felt the necklace, turning their fingers between one string and the next, slipping their nails into the spaces between the pearls. The pearls filtered a soft light, like dewdrops on spiders' webs, a wintery, morning light that hardly convinces you of the existence of things.
‘Real or fake …’ Pietro said, 1, as it happens …’ and he was trying to provoke a hostile attitude towards whatever he was about to say.
Tommaso, who wanted to be the first to take the conversation that way, realized that Pietro had got in before him and tried to regain the upper hand by showing that he'd already been developing his own train of thought for some time.
Oh, I pity you,’ he said, with an air of irritation. The first thing I…’
It was clear that they both wanted to express the same opinion, yet were looking daggers at each other. They both shouted, in unison and as fast as they could: ‘Give it back!’ Pietro raising his chin with the solemnity of one uttering a verdict, Tommaso red-faced and wide-eyed as if all his energy were engaged in getting the words out before his friend.
But the gesture had excited them and aroused meir pride; appar-endy good friends all of a sudden, they exchanged satisfied glances.
We won't dirty our hands!’ Tommaso shouted. ‘Not us!’
‘Right!’ laughed Pietro. ‘We'll give them a lesson in dignity, we will.’
We,’ Tommaso proclaimed, ‘will never hoard their trash!’
‘Right! We're poor,’ Pietro said, ‘but more gentlemen than they are!’
‘And you know what else we're going to do?’ Tommaso's face lit up, happy to have finally gone one better than Pietro. We won't accept their reward!’
They looked at the necklace again; it was still there, hanging from their hands.
‘You didn't get the licence number of the car, did you?’ asked Pietro.
‘No, why? Did you?’
Who would have thought?’
‘So, what to do?’
‘Right, a fine mess.’
Then, in unison, as if their hostility had suddenly flared up again: ‘The Lost Property Office. We'll take it there.’
The fog was lifting; no longer a mere shadow, the factory turned out to be coloured a deceptive pink.
‘What time do you think it is?’ asked Pietro. ‘I'm afraid we'll be clocking in late.’
We'll be fined,’ said Tommaso. ‘The same old story: those folks live it up and we pay up!’
They had both lifted their hands together with the necklace that kept them together like handcuffed prisoners. They weighed it in their palms as if both about to say: ‘Well, I'll let you look after it.’ But neither of them did; each had the highest possible opinion of the other, but they were too used to arguing for either to concede a point to the other.
They must get back on their bikes again fast, and still they hadn't tackled the question: which of them was to keep the necklace before they could hand it back or in any event take a decision as to what to do? They went on standing there without saying a word, looking at the necklace as if it might somehow answer the question itself. And it did: whether in the skirmish or when it fell, the hook that held together the four strings of pearls had been damaged. A tiny twist and it snapped.
Pietro took two strings and Tommaso the other two, with the understanding that whatever was to be done with them would be agreed on together first. They gathered the precious things