'Offers! That's not all. Threats, intimidation, persecution… You don't know the half of it! Those contractors!'
'But she holds out. She's held out for years…'
'She's a saint. Without her, where would those poor animals go?'
'A lot she cares about the animals, the old miser! Have you ever seen her give them anything to eat?'
'How can she feed the cats when she doesn't have food for herself? She's the last descendant of a ruined family!'
'She hates cats. I've seen her chasing them and hitting them with an umbrella!'
'Because they were tearing up her flowerbeds!'
'What flower-beds? I've never seen anything m this garden but a great crop of weeds!'
Marcovaldo realized that with regard to the old Marchesa opinions were sharply divided: some saw her as an angelic being, others as an egoist and a miser.
'It's the same with the birds; she never gives them a crumb!'
'She gives them hospitality. Isn't that plenty?'
'Like she gives the mosquitoes, you mean. They all come from here, from that pool. In the summertime the mosquitoes eat us alive, and it's all the fault of that Marchesa!'
'And the mice? This villa is a mine of mice. Under the dead leaves they have their burrows, and at night they come out…'
'As far as the mice go, the cats take care of them…'
'Oh, you and your cats! If we had to rely on them…'
'Why? Have you got something to say against cats?'
Here the discussion degenerated into a general quarrel. 'The authorities should do something: confiscate the villa!' one man cried.
'What gives them the right?' another protested.
'In a modern neighborhood like ours, a mouse-nest like this… it should be forbidden…'
'Why, I picked my apartment precisely because it overlooked this little bit of green…'
'Green, hell! Think of the fine skyscraper they could build here!'
Marcovaldo would have liked to add something of his own, but he couldn't get a word in. Finally, all in one breath, he exclaimed: 'The Marchesa stole a trout from me!'
The unexpected news supplied fresh ammunition to the old woman's enemies, but her defenders exploited it as proof of the indigence to which the unfortunate noblewoman was reduced. Both sides agreed that Marcovaldo should go and knock at her door to demand an explanation.
It wasn't clear whether the gate was locked or unlocked; in any case, it opened, after a push, with a mournful creak. Marcovaldo picked his way among the leaves and cats, climbed the steps to the porch, knocked hard at the entrance.
At a window (the very one where the frying-pan had appeared), the blind was raised slightly and in one comer a round, pale blue eye was seen, and a clump of hair dyed an undefinable color, and a dry skinny hand. A voice was heard, asking: 'Who is it? Who's at the door?', the words accompanied by a cloud smelling of fried oil.
'It's me, Marchesa. The trout man,' Marcovaldo explained. 'I don't mean to trouble you. I only wanted to tell you, in case you didn't know, that the trout was stolen from me, by that cat, and I'm the one who caught it. In fact the line…'
'Those cats! It's always those cats…' the Marchesa said, from behind the shutter, with a shrill, somewhat nasal voice. 'All my troubles come from the cats! Nobody knows what I go through! Prisoner night and day of those horrid beasts! And with all the refuse people throw over the walls, to spite me!'
'But my trout…'
'Your trout! What am I supposed to know about your trout!' The Marchesa's voice became almost a scream, as if she wanted to drown out the sizzle of the oil in the pan, which came through the window along with the aroma of fried fish. 'How can I make sense of anything, with all the stuff that rains into my house?'
'I understand, but did you take the trout or didn't you?'
'When I think of all the damage I suffer because of the cats! Ah, fine state of affairs! I'm not responsible for anything! I can't tell you what I've lost! Thanks to those cats, who've occupied house and garden for years! My life at the mercy of those animals! Go and find the owners! Make them pay damages! Damages? A whole life destroyed! A prisoner here, unable to move a step!'
'Excuse me for asking: but who's forcing you to stay?' From the crack in the blind there appeared sometimes a round, pale blue eye, sometimes a mouth with two protruding teeth; for a moment the whole face was visible, and to Marcovaldo it seemed, bewilderingly, the face of a cat.
'They keep me prisoner, they do, those cats! Oh, I'd be glad to leave! What wouldn't I give for a little apartment all my own, in a nice clean modern building! But I can't go out… They follow me, they block my path, they trip me up!' The voice became a whisper, as if to confide a secret. 'They're afraid I'll sell the lot… They won't leave me… won't allow me… When the builders come to offer me a contract, you should see them, those cats! They get in the way, pull out their claws; they even chased a lawyer off! Once I had the contract right here, I was about to sign it, and they dived in through the window, knocked over the inkwell, tore up all the pages…'
All of a sudden Marcovaldo remembered the time, the shipping department, the boss. He tiptoed off over the dried leaves, as the voice continued to come through the slats of the blind, enfolded in that cloud apparently from the oil of a frying-pan. 'They even scratched me… I still have the scar… All alone here at the mercy of these demons…'
Winter came. A blossoming of white flakes decked the branches and capitals and the cats' tails. Under the snow, the dry leaves dissolved into mush. The cats were rarely seen, the cat-lovers even less; the packages of fish-bones were consigned only to cats who came to the door. Nobody, for quite a while, had seen anything of the Marchesa. No smoke came now from the chimney pot of the villa.
One snowy day, the garden was again full of cats, who had returned as if it were spring, and they were miauing as if on a moonlight night. The neighbors realized that something had happened: they went and knocked at the Marchesa's door. She didn't answer: she was dead.
In the spring, instead of the garden, there was a huge building site that a contractor had set up. The steam shovels dug down to great depths to make room for the foundations, cement poured into the iron armatures, a very high crane passed beams to the workmen who were making the scaffoldings. But how could they get on with their work? Cats walked along all the planks, they made bricks fall and upset buckets of mortar, they fought in the midst of the piles of sand. When you started to raise an armature, you found a cat perched on the top of it, hissing fiercely. More treacherous pusses climbed onto the masons' backs as if to purr, and there was no getting rid of them. And the birds continued making their nests in all the trestles, the cab of the crane looked like an aviary… And you couldn't dip up a bucket of water that wasn't full of frogs, croaking and hopping…
WINTER
20. Santa's Children
No period of the year is more gentle and good, for the world of industry and commerce, than Christmas and the weeks preceding it. From the streets rises the tremulous sound of the mountaineers' bagpipes; and the big companies, till yesterday coldly concerned with calculating gross product and dividends, open their hearts to human affections and to smiles. The sole thought of Boards of Directors now is to give joy to their fellow-man, sending gifts accompanied by messages of goodwill both to other companies and to private individuals; every firm feels obliged to buy a great stock of products from a second firm to serve as presents to third firms; and those firms, for their part, buy from yet another firm further stocks of presents for the others; the office windows remain aglow till late, specially those of the shipping department, where the personnel work overtime wrapping packages and boxes; beyond the misted panes, on the sidewalks covered by a crust of ice, the pipers advance. Having descended from the dark mysterious mountains, they stand at the downtown intersections, a bit dazzled by the excessive lights, by the excessively rich shop-windows; and heads bowed, they blow into their instruments; at that sound among the
