“What are you staring at?” Nerone would grumble. “Dio! One would think that you knew me by now! Is it that you find me so handsome a fellow? Or is it that you look at something beyond me—and if so what do you look at?” Gian-Luca would flush with embarrassment; conscious perhaps, that in staring at Nerone his eyes had merely sought an object to rest on while his thoughts were busy elsewhere.
At this time in his life he was very full of thoughts—almost as full as he had been when an infant—only now the thoughts were more definite and hard; they came striking at his brain like so many pebbles; he could almost feel them as they struck. Two thoughts in particular had begun to obsess him; the thought of his father and the thought of his country. No one at home ever mentioned his father, he might never have had a paternal parent—he began to think this was very strange. Certain awkward questions that he could not answer were occasionally asked him at school; the boys wanted to know if his father was dead, and if he had been an Italian.
Gian-Luca knew a little about his mother, but nothing about his father, and since every other child appeared to own a father, he supposed that he must have owned one, too, and further that his father must naturally be dead, otherwise why had he never seen him? Very well then, that was settled; his father must be dead, but he wanted to ask Fabio what to call him; a name was a very great assistance, he felt; it helped you to visualize the person—meanwhile he invented a name for his father, and after a little it became so familiar that it sounded quite true when he spoke it.
“My father was called Leonardo,” said Gian-Luca, in reply to a question at school one day.
“Then you’re an Italian,” was the prompt retort. “What’s the good of pretending you’re English!”
And this was another thing that worried Gian-Luca, he had pretended to be English—a kind of betrayal of something or someone in order to appear more like his schoolmates. This betrayal of his would haunt him at night when he lay in bed waiting for his pictures; they very seldom came now, which also disturbed him; his nights were just sleep, or those hard-little thoughts that struck against his brain like pebbles. He often heard Nerone inveighing against Fabio, for what he called “the desertion of his country.” But Gian-Luca could never understand what he meant; who could be more Italian than Fabio? Did not Fabio eat pasta and drink good red wine that came in big cases from Italy? As for Gian-Luca, it was only when at school that he ever thought of being English; he was lonely at school, they left him out of things—and moreover they called him “Macaroni.”
Fabio had taken to remarking lately: “You grow so very English, Gian-Luca.”
And Teresa would say: “You speak now as they do, you will soon have a Cockney accent.”
“That is not so,” Gian-Luca would protest. “I do not like their ugly accent.”
Nerone would pity him: “Poor Gian-Luca, you have no Church, what a disaster!”
But this fact did not worry Gian-Luca in the least, what he wanted was a country, not a Church.
“If I am English I cannot be Italian,” he argued, bewildered and distressed, “and yet if I am English I am like the other boys—then why do they leave me out of things?” He finally decided that he hated the English who always left him out of things. In spite of this, however, he made colossal efforts to model himself on their pattern; he longed with the unfailing instinct of youth to be like his companions at school. He yelled, he shoved, he kicked out his boots; if the other boys swore, Gian-Luca swore too. Whatever they did, he would follow suit, hoping against hope to win their approval. But although they liked him, it was only as a stranger who had suddenly appeared within their gates; his grandfather sold queer, outlandish foodstuffs, while Gian-Luca himself had been heard to speak Italian—enough in all conscience to set him apart as a kind of unnatural freak!
Gian-Luca grew an outward crust of indifference, which however, did not deceive them; they suspected that underneath it he was soft, and they prodded to find the softness. He still disliked passing Rocca’s shop, and this they quickly divined. They went out of their way to make him pass it whenever occasion offered. Rocca, these days, had relays of kids all hanging with their heads to the pavement; he was even more prosperous than he had been, a fact that he attributed entirely to the kids—he said that they had brought him luck. The boys made a habit of punching the kids for the pleasure of seeing them swing, for the pleasure also of laughing at Gian-Luca, who invariably turned a little pale. But one day Gian-Luca, in a kind of desperation, doubled up his fist and punched too. He punched until Rocca came out to protest, and even after that he still punched.
“Take that! And that! And that!” he spluttered, panting and white to the lips.
“Look at young Macaroni!” applauded the boys. “Go it, young Macaroni!”
Then Gian-Luca turned on them like a thing demented: “Beasts!” he yelled. “How I hate you—you beasts! Porci! Sporcaccioni!”
And naturally after this incident there was a coldness between Gian-Luca and his schoolmates.
II
That winter Gian-Luca decided to speak to Fabio regarding his two greatest troubles. Fabio could tell him about his father; he could also reassure him about
