Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [40]
Suddenly, standing opposite him on the other side of the table, he saw Pietro, come to say hello before going back to work. The big man stood in front of him twisting a toothpick in his mouth and closing one eye in an exaggerated wink. Seeing him there, well fed and fancy free — or so it seemed to Tommaso
— while he was swallowing forkfuls of boiled and quite insubstantial cauliflower, the older man went into such a rage that the aluminium plate started to rattle on the zinc table as though there were spirits about. Pietro shrugged his shoulders and left. By now the last workers were likewise hurrying out of the canteen, and Tommaso, greasy lips sucking on a soda bottle full of wine, dashed off too.
The workers' reaction to the Great Dane when it came into the director's waiting room - they had all turned to the door with a start thinking it was Dr Gigi Starni at last - was, on the part of some, welcoming, on the part of others, hostile. The former saw the dog as a fellow creature, a strong free thing kept prisoner here, a companion in servitude, the latter as merely a lost soul of the ruling class, a tool or accessory, a luxury. The same contrasting attitudes, in short, that workers sometimes manifest with regard to intellectuals.
Guderian's reaction to the workers, on the other hand, was one of reserve and indifference, both to those who said: ‘Beauty! Come here! Give us a paw!’ and those who said Off, scat!’ With just a hint of combativeness in the way he sniffed lightly here and there and wagged his tail slowly and evenly, the dog began to do the rounds of the company: the freckled, curly-headed Ortica — the one who knew everything about everything, who was barely in the waiting room before he had his elbows planted on the table and was browsing through some ad magazines left there, and who, on seeing the dog had looked him up and down and said everything there was to be said about his breed age teeth fur
- wasn't deigned so much as a glance, nor was the baby-faced Criscuolo, who, his gaze lost in the distance as he sucked on a dead cigarette, made as if to kick the animal. Fantino, who had pulled his crumpled paper from his pocket, a paper forbidden in the factory (he felt himself protected here by a sort of diplomatic immunity and so was taking advantage of the wait to read the thing, because when he got home in the evenings he immediately fell asleep) saw the dog's smoky snout with its glinting red eyes appear above one shoulder and instinctively, though he didn't often let things frighten him, folded over a page to hide the name of his paper. When he got to Tommaso, Guderian stopped, went down on his back paws and sat there with ears pricked and nose raised.
Although not the kind to start playing with pets or people, Tommaso, perhaps responding to a certain awe on finding himself in this brightly authoritative environment, felt the need to offer a few bland overtures, such as a click of the tongue, or a soft whistle, which, in his deafman's inability to control it, immediately came out as extremely shrill. In short, he tried to reassert that spontaneous trust between man and dog reminiscent of his farmboy's youth, of rustic animals, meek droopy-eared bloodhounds or hairy snarling barnyard mongrels. But the social gulf between the dogs of his past and this one, so glossy and well clipped, so much his master's creature, was immediately obvious to him, and intimidating. Sitting with his hands on his knees, he moved his head in little sideways jerks, his mouth open, as if silently barking, urging the dog to make up its mind and shove off, get lost. But Guderian sat still, at once motionless and