“Belli, eh?” demanded Rocca.
“Ma si!” agreed Fabio, lifting Gian-Luca higher in his arms, whereupon Gian-Luca burst into tears.
“Oh, poor—oh, poor—” he sobbed wildly.
“Ma che!” exclaimed Fabio, genuinely astonished, “what is the matter, piccinino?”
But Gian-Luca could not tell him, could not explain.
“Can it be the little goats?” inquired Fabio incredulously. “But do not cry so, my pretty, my lamb, they cannot hurt you, they are dead!”
“Ecco!” roared Rocca in his voice of a corporal, “Ecco!” And producing some fruit drops from his pocket he offered them to Gian-Luca.
But Gian-Luca turned away. “Oh, poor—oh, poor—” he wailed, until Fabio, shaking his head, carried him home, still weeping.
“No doubt it was the heat,” he told Teresa afterwards. “I thought he might be feeling the heat.”
IV
I
At about this time Gian-Luca developed his first real signs of temper. This may have been due to heredity, of course, but Teresa certainly contributed. It struck him one day that even a goddess could not be quite indifferent to devotion; the thing to do, therefore, was to worry her with love, and Gian-Luca acted accordingly. He evolved the idea of climbing into her bed, and when ordered to desist, cried loudly. He constantly followed her round the house, never very far from her heels, like a puppy, or running just ahead in the region of her toes until she fell over him. If she went into her cash-desk Gian-Luca would be there, squatting by her stool; if she went into the shop to help Fabio with the serving, out would come Gian-Luca like a jack-in-the-box, and she would find him clinging to her skirts. But these signs of devotion were only a beginning, there was more, much more to follow, for Gian-Luca decided that he wanted to be petted continually, all the time. Not an evening now but he would sidle up to Teresa and stand there waiting to be petted; sometimes he would reach up and gently stroke her arm; once he got as far as stroking her cheek. When this failed to elicit the proper response, he would hurl himself into her lap. She would say: “Gian-Luca! What are you doing?”—not crossly, but in a voice of surprise; and then, while he still clung, her thin arms would go round him and her hands would continue their knitting on his back, he would hear the clicking of the needles. Fabio would call him.
“Come here to Nonno, caro.”
But Gian-Luca, would reply: “I want Nonna!”
And at that, as like as not, Teresa would put him down: “Run away, Gian-Luca, Nonna wants to go on knitting.”
And when he made to clamber on her knee again, she would shake her head and say: “No, no, Gian-Luca.”
One morning he gallantly offered her his jam on a half-consumed slice of bread and butter.
“Please eat my jam, Nonna.”
“No, thank you, Gian-Luca.”
“Please, Nonna.”
“But I do not want your jam, my child. You eat it, it is nice cherry jam.”
Of course he knew that it was nice cherry jam, that was why he wanted her to eat it. She never allowed herself butter and jam, and this pained him as unworthy of a goddess.
When she told him, as she often did, to run away upstairs, he now invited her to follow: “You come, Nonna.”
“No, I cannot, Gian-Luca, I must go and help in the shop.”
“Oh, please.”
“Do not worry me so, Gian-Luca.”
And then he would begin to cry. His crying would reach Fabio, who would hurry from the shop to see what was happening in the parlor, and he and Teresa would argue in Italian in order that Gian-Luca should not know what they said; but as Rosa had been busily teaching him Italian, their little ruse was often unsuccessful. He understood enough to know that Fabio sympathized and considered that he ought to be petted, and, or course, at this discovery would come yet more tears, the rather pleasant tears of self-pity.
“Dio!” grumbled Rosa. “You nearly five years old, and yet you cry and cry like a baby; you soon will be all washed away with your tears—Gian-Luca will be melted, like the sugar.”
The thought that he might melt like the sugar was attractive; he now took much more interest in the sugar in his coffee. If he could melt away before Nonna’s very eyes! “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he sobbed in a kind of ecstasy, choking himself with his tears.
“You shut it!” scolded Rosa, who was again nearing her time, and whose Mario was making her jealous with a barmaid. “You shut it up at once, you make such dreadful noise, I think my poor head split in two!”
But well launched, Gian-Luca found it very hard to “shut it,” for his crying would become automatic; a series of chokings and gulpings and coughings that went on independently of any will of his.
Then one day he made his most stupendous effort; he had sixpence, and with it he bought a bunch of flowers. He carried them with unction, using both hands in the process.
“Why you want?” demanded Rosa who felt cynical and cross.
But Gian-Luca would not answer that question.
Nonna was not in the shop on his return, she happened to be knitting in the parlor. He approached her very slowly with the offering extended; his face was rather red and his breath came rather fast. Nonna looked up.
“For you!” said Gian-Luca. “I bought them myself—”
And he waited.
“Thank you,” said Nonna. “What very pretty flowers—it was kind of Gian-Luca to buy them.” But she did not even smell them, she put them on the table and quietly returned to her knitting.
Still he waited. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen, no rapture, no expressions of delighted gratitude, no clasping, and no kissing of himself. There lay the fading flowers, and there sat Nonna, knitting, and there stood Gian-Luca, always waiting … Then suddenly he broke, something went snap
