Gian-Luca learnt that certain sounds were ugly, that they made you feel strangely disturbed and unsafe. He also learnt that some sounds might be soothing, as for instance when Mario and Rosa made it up with many soft murmurings and kissings. As the weeks turned into months he became all ears, he became a kind of reservoir for words. The words went filtering into him through his very skin, and finally emerged in one loud, triumphant vocable: “Gug!” said Gian-Luca, and then—“Gug!”
But “Gug” was not enough, gratifying though it was, it could only express Gian-Luca, and by the time Gian-Luca had known the world a year, he had come to realize that to make one’s presence felt one might have to express a few other things as well—a bore perhaps, but there it was. Gian-Luca looked about him for the next most worthy object, and wisely decided that four legs and a tail, to say nothing of a thoroughly soul-satisfying bark, had every right to his attention. “Dog!” said Gian-Luca, staring at the mongrel that wandered in and out of Nerone’s little shop.
“Doggie!” said Rosa, as one talking to an infant.
“Dog,” repeated Gian-Luca firmly.
“Poveretto!” wept Rosa to Mario that evening. “That his first word should be ‘doggie’ instead of ‘mamma,’ poveretto—what a world of misery we live in!”
“You would think so if you had my bunion,” grumbled Mario; then he kissed her, for of course a dead baby hurt far more than even the most virile bunion.
But though Rosa wept with pity, Gian-Luca did not weep; what the ear has never heard and the eye has never seen, the heart of one year’s beating cannot mourn for. In his vast self-satisfaction he walked towards the coal box, fell down, got up, fell down, and finally decided that Nature was not mocked, and that progress on all fours was the only mode of locomotion.
IV
Fabio was told the marvel, Gian-Luca had said “Dog,” and Fabio was thoroughly offended.
“Nonno, Nonno, Nonno!” he cried, pointing to himself. “Little Gian-Luca must say, Nonno!”
Gian-Luca eyed him kindly, he liked his funny hair, and reaching up he pulled it politely.
“Ecco!” exclaimed Fabio. “He is as strong as any giant, but all giants call their grandfathers ‘Nonno,’ don’t they Teresa? They say: ‘Nonno, Nonno!’ ”
Teresa looked up from a mound of pale grey knitting, then she dropped her eyes again without speaking. She was always knitting something in her spare time these days, knitting had become her obsession. She knitted in the shop, in her cash-desk, during meals, and at night she would knit herself to sleep. She knitted very fast, with a harshly stabbing needle, occasionally raising the needle to her head for a swift, proficient scratch between the stitches.
“Pearl one, knit two, pearl one,” murmured Teresa glancing at a book that lay beside her.
“Nonno! Nonno! Nonno! Say Nonno!” shouted Fabio, shaking a finger at Gian-Luca.
“Poveretto!” began Rosa, with her apron to her eyes, preparing to burst into tears.
But at that Teresa suddenly looked up from her knitting. “Basta e supera, you hear?” she said sharply; then, as though she had forgotten Rosa, “Knit one, pearl one, slip one.” Gian-Luca considered “Nonno” for some weeks before he finally said it, and when he did so he made a grave mistake; he applied it, not to Fabio, but to the wooden leg of Fabio’s friend and rival down the street. The leg had been particularly active for some time, Gian-Luca had heard it for an hour, and when its owner, balancing himself against the counter, had actually lifted it and waved it in the air—“Nonno!” screamed Gian-Luca, beside himself with pleasure.
It was very unfortunate that Fabio should have entered to buy some Macedonia at that moment. It was even more unfortunate that Nerone should have laughed, with something like triumph in his eyes. Fabio surveyed the group, thrust his hands into his pockets, and left the shop without a word.
“Ma che!” exclaimed Nerone, in an access of delight, “Ma che! I think him jealous of my stump!”
For fifteen years these two had behaved like ageing children; quarrelling, boasting, teasing, and loving—always loving—but quick to take advantage of each other whenever it offered.
“That salame—very bad, your place is going to pieces, Fabio. You naturalize yourself and then you sell us bad salame, the salame looks at you and then goes bad.”
“I do not sell bad salame—mine is the best in England. As for you, you talk and talk, then sell rotten cigarettes, all powder, one might as well smoke snuff.”
“You accuse my cigarettes, straight from Italy they come.”
“Teresa says they come more likely from the Ark. Teresa says I cough—‘That is Nerone,’ she says, ‘with his rotten Macedonia all dropping out one end.’ She says: ‘That is that old fox Nerone.’ ”
“Ah! So that is what Teresa says. Well now, tell me this my Fabio, you find tobacco in my smokes, is it not? What else do you find, beside tobacco?”
“The dust from the shop.”
“Oh, I find much more than that—oh, much more, in your salame.”
“And please, what do you find?”
“If I tell you you will get angry.”
“Not at all, I know my salame, he is prime.”
“Prime you say? Santa Madonna! Listen to him, prime he says! Very well, then, it is prime, but—I find a little worm. He looks at me, I look at him, he bows, I lift my hat. I have him in a tumbler, come and see!”
For fifteen years these two had played dominoes together, drinking Amarena in the evenings. When Fabio lost the game—as he nearly always did—Nerone would openly rejoice; if, however, Fabio won it, Nerone lost his temper, and that made Fabio happy for a week. When both their wives had been alive, before Nerone became a widower, they had managed to quarrel over them:
“My Lucrezia, what a
