the fords of streams.
Impatient, on the contrary, as if made nervous by the looming city, the cowherds wore themselves out in brief, futile dashes along the side of the line, raising their sticks and bursting out in broken, guttural cries. The dogs, to whom nothing human is alien, made a display of nonchalance, proceeding with noses erect, little bells tinkling, intent on their job; but clearly they too were uneasy and restless, otherwise they would have allowed themselves to be distracted and would have begun sniffing corners, lamp posts, stains on the pavement, as is every city dog's first thought.
'Papa,' the children said. 'Are cows like trams? Do they have stops? Where's the beginning of the cows' line?'
'There's no connection between them and trams,' Marcovaldo explained. 'They're going to the mountains.'
'Can they wear skis?' Pietruccio asked.
'They're going to pasture, to eat grass.'
'Don't they get fined if they trample the lawns?'
The only one not asking questions was Michelino, who, older than the others, already had his own ideas about cows, and was now intent simply on checking them, observing the mild horns, the withers, and variegated coats. And so he followed the herd, trotting along at its side like the sheep dogs.
When the last group had passed, Marcovaldo took the children's hands to go back to sleep, but he couldn't see Michelino. He went down into the room and asked his wife: 'Has Michelino already come home?'
'Michelino? Wasn't he with you?'
'He started following the herd, and God only knows where he's got to,' Marcovaldo thought, and ran back to the street. The herd had already crossed the square, and Marcovaldo had to look for the street it had turned into. But that night, it seemed, various herds were crossing the city, each along a different street, each heading for its own valley. Marcovaldo tracked down and overtook one herd, then realized it wasn't his; at an intersection he saw, four streets farther on, another herd proceeding along a parallel, and he ran that way; there, the cowherds told him they had met another heading in the opposite direction. And so, until the last sound of a cow-bell had died away in the dawn light, Marcovaldo went on combing the city in vain.
The captain to whom he went to report his son's disappearance said: 'Followed a herd of cows? He's probably gone off to the mountains, for a summer holiday, lucky kid. Don't worry: he'll come back all tanned and fattened up.'
The captain's opinion was confirmed a few days later by a clerk in the place where Marcovaldo worked who had returned from his first-shift holiday. At a mountain pass he had encountered the boy: he was with the herd, he sent greetings to his father, and he was fine.
In the dusty city heat Marcovaldo kept thinking of his lucky son, who now was surely spending his hours in a fir tree's shade, whistling with a wisp of grass in his mouth, looking down at the cows moving slowly over the meadow, and listening to a murmur of waters in the shadows of the valley.
His Mamma, on the contrary, couldn't wait for him to return: 'Will he come back by train? By bus? It's been a week… It's been a month… The weather must be bad…' And she could find no peace, even though having one fewer at table every day was in itself a relief.
'Lucky kid, up in the cool, stuffing himself with butter and cheese,' Marcovaldo said, and every time, at the end of the street, there appeared, in a light haze, the jagged white and gray of the mountains, he felt as if he had sunk into a well, in whose light, up at the top, he seemed to see maple and chestnut fronds glinting, and to hear wild bees buzzing, and Michelino up there, lazy and happy, amid milk and honey and blackberry thickets.
But he too was expecting his son's return evening after evening, though, unlike the boy's mother, he wasn't thinking of the schedules of trains and buses: he was listening at night to the footsteps on the street as if the little window of the room were the mouth of a seashell, re-echoing, when you put your ear to it, the sounds of the mountain.
One night he sat abruptly up in bed: it wasn't an illusion; he heard approaching on the cobbles that unmistakable trample of cloven hoofs, mixed with the tinkling of bells.
They ran to the street, he and the whole family. The herd was returning, slow and grave. And in the midst of the herd, astride a cow's back, his hands clutching its collar, his head bobbing at every step, was Michelino, half asleep.
They lifted him down, a dead weight; they hugged and kissed him. He was dazed.
'How are you? Was it beautiful?'
'Oh… yes…'
'Were you homesick?'
'Yes…'
'Is it beautiful in the mountains?'
He was standing, facing them, his brows knit, his gaze hard.
'I worked like a mule,' he said, and spat on the ground. He now had a man's face. 'Carrying the buckets to the milkers every evening, from one cow to the next, and then emptying them into the cans, in a hurry, always in a worse hurry, until late. And then early in the morning, rolling the cans down to the trucks that take them to the city. And counting… always counting: the cows, the cans, and if you made a mistake there was trouble…'
'But weren't you in the meadows? When the cows were grazing?'
'There was never enough time. Always something to be done. The milk, the bedding, the dung. And all for what? With the excuse that I didn't have a work-contract, what did they pay me? Practically nothing. But if you think I'm going to hand it over to you now, you're wrong. Come on, let's go to sleep; I'm dead tired.'
He shrugged, blew his nose, and went into the house. The herd was still moving away along the street, carrying with it the lying, languid odor of hay and the sound of bells.
AUTUMN
11. The poisonous rabbit
When the day comes to leave the hospital, you already know it in the morning and if you're in good shape you move around the wards, practicing the way you're going to walk when you're outside; you whistle, act like a well man with those still sick, not to arouse envy but for the pleasure of adopting a tone of encouragement. You see the sun beyond the big panes, or the fog if there's fog; you hear the sounds of the city; and everything is different from before, when every morning you felt them enter-the light and sound of an unattainable world-as you woke behind the bars of that bed. Now, outside, there is your world again. The healed man recognizes it as natural and usual; and suddenly he notices once more the smell of the hospital.
Marcovaldo, one morning, was sniffing around like that, cured, waiting for them to write certain things in his health insurance book so that he could leave. The doctor took his papers, said to him, 'Wait here', and left him alone in the office. Marcovaldo looked at the white-enameled furniture he had so hated, the test-tubes full of grim substances, and tried to cheer himself with the thought that he was about to leave it all. But he couldn't manage to feel the joy he would have expected. Perhaps it was the idea of going back to the warehouse to shift packing cases, or of the mischief his children had surely been up to in his absence, and especially of the fog outside that made him think of having to step out into the void, to dissolve in a damp nothingness. And so he looked around, with a vague need to feel affection towards something in here; but everything he saw reminded him of torture or discomfort.
Then he saw a rabbit in a cage. It was a white rabbit, with a long, fluffy coat, a pink triangle of a nose, amazed red eyes, ears almost furless flattened against its back. It wasn't all that big, but in the narrow cage its crouching oval body made the wire screen bulge and clumps of fur stuck out, ruffled by a slight trembling. Outside the cage, on the table, there was some grass and the remains of a carrot. Marcovaldo thought of how unhappy the animal must be, shut up in there, seeing that carrot but not being able to eat it. And he opened the door of the cage. The rabbit didn't come out: it stayed there, still, with only a slight twitch of its face, as if it were pretending to chew in order to seem nonchalant. Marcovaldo took the carrot and held it closer, then slowly drew it back, to urge the rabbit
