Teresa sat very still; her empty hands were folded, they did not strike, nor did they rescue. When she spoke she did so gently, and quite without emotion:
“Gian-Luca, you will go at once to bed.”
He looked up at her: “I hate you! You do not love my flowers—you do not kiss me, not ever—”
“You may take away your flowers, I do not want them now,” she told him. “I find you a very naughty child.”
And that was all—she found him a very naughty child—he was conscious of wanting her to hit him. If Nonna would not kiss him, then he wanted her to hit him; he wanted to try and make her hit him. Words, heard, but half-forgotten until that moment leapt from him, he screamed them at her: “Vipera! vipera! Vecchia strega!” And screaming still, he waited for the blow. But Nonna did not strike, did not raise her eyes or voice—she merely raised her finger and pointed to the door. And Gian-Luca, exhausted now in spirit, mind and body, left her and went stumbling upstairs to put himself to bed.
II
It was just as well, perhaps, that the following winter Gian-Luca had to go to school, for though beaten in his one supreme contest with Teresa, he still clung to the hope of imposing himself upon her, if not by one means then by another. Thus it happened that his active and versatile mind concocted quite a new scheme; the scheme was simple, it consisted in the main of becoming extremely naughty, and in this, it must be said that Gian-Luca succeeded beyond his own expectations. Just as his weeping had become automatic, so now did his naughtiness; once launched he found it difficult to stop, and scrape followed scrape with such startling rapidity that even Teresa had to put down her knitting in order to interfere; and in this lay Gian-Luca’s miniature triumph; Nonna no longer ignored him.
The shop was a fruitful source of mischief, there were so many things you could do. For instance, you could dip into the huge jar of pickles and consume large quantities of onions and gherkins, after which—with an effort—you could make yourself sick, an arresting form of disturbance. Then, of course, there were the cheeses; the hard, manly cheeses could be surreptitiously bitten; the more feminine kind that swooned on wooden platters, could be prodded or partly consumed by the tongue. Salame, when eaten in course brown chunks, was an almost infallible cure for digestion, and the essence of peppermint that Nonna administered, when properly sweetened and diluted with hot water, was really rather in the nature of a treat—you sipped it out of a spoon.
And then there was Rosa. Rosa, grown cross, could easily be induced to make scenes. One could always torment Rosa and Rosa’s watch, especially the watch, which was very ornate. If, as sometimes happened, she would take it off while she swept and forget to put it on again, it was almost sure to attract your attention, and then—well, you naturally wound it up, whereupon it had a habit of stopping. This suggested that you might not have wound it enough, so you wound it again with more vigor—
Rosa would scream: “Mascalzone! birbone! I tell Nonna, you see if I not tell Nonna!”
And as this was precisely what you hoped she would do, you laughed, not in malice but in pleasure.
When it rained, as, of course, it did constantly—you could dart away from Rosa and plump into a puddle. There was also Rosa’s Berta who grew uglier every day, and whose yells when pinched were most gratifying.
Then would come the longed-for evenings when Nonna would look grave, and when Nonna would say:
“Come here, Gian-Luca.”
You went at once, and standing very still beside her knee, you tingled with excitement and pleasure at the sound of her voice, retailing all your sins. Nonna might remark upon the fact that you were smiling:
“There is nothing whatever to smile about, Gian-Luca.” Nothing? There was everything! You were smiling because Nonna had at last been brought to recognize your sins. The more you sinned the more you swelled with pride and self-importance, the more you knew that you were brave. With this knowledge of your prowess came a knowledge of yourself, a very soul-satisfying knowledge. In your mind’s eye you saw Nonna being rescued from a dragon, and you were her rescuer. Once rescued, how she wept on you for love and gratitude! With what humbleness she kissed you, and with what timidity she asked to be allowed to hold your hand while crossing streets—
There was just one thing, however, that you simply could not do—you could not pass Rocca’s, the butcher’s; and this, while it figured in the list of your sins, had nothing at all to do with sin. It bewildered you a little, you yourself were not quite clear as to why you felt so tearful at the thought; you would shut your eyes, because a dragon-slayer never cried, and then up would come the picture of those goats! Rosa would try persuasion, she might even apply force—no good, you simply could not do it. You kicked and screamed and finally lay flat down on the pavement, but—you did not pass Rocca’s the butcher’s.
“You wicked, you do it all on purpose!” blubbered Rosa, distracted
