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Authors: Nino Ricci
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the
tomolo
and Giardini’s gesture people saw now an oracle, the prediction of their own town’s declining fortunes.
Compared to other towns in the area, Rocca Secca was filled with life—mule carts and motor cars, men in suits and women in high-heeled shoes, coloured awnings over sidewalk restaurants, shop windows crowded with posters. But still a shadow seemed to loom over the town, as if all the pomp and display had been carted in only moments before your arrival, put on for your benefit, as if you had only to turn your back and the glitter would fade, the wind whistling through empty streets. In neighbouring towns Rocca Seccans had a reputation as people whose surface smiles hid a meanness of spirit. ‘Ho,
signó
,’ a friend from Rocca Secca would call out to you, ‘have you eaten yet?’ And if you had he’d say, ‘That’s too bad, I was just going to ask you over,’ and if you hadn’t, ‘Then go home and eat.’
Only the market in Rocca Secca seemed real, at least honest in its transience: after all, it
had
been carted in, by peasants and traders who had hitched up their carts in the dead of night to be ready at their stalls by dawn, and by afternoon it would be faded and finished, the noise and colour gone, the stalls boarded up again until the following day. It was at the edge of the market that we disembarked on my birthday, at that hourstill in full swing, the din of it, the shouts and laughter, the clatter of coins, reaching us under our canvas as Cazzingulo’s truck pulled up to a stop on a small side-street. It had been many months since I had last been to the market with my mother; for a long time now she had preferred to make her trips into Rocca Secca alone. But as we threaded our way through the market street, jostling for space with goats and carts and thick-set town women come for the day’s provisions, many of the traders called out to me by name, remembering me from my previous visits.
‘Oh, Vittò! Look how big you’ve gotten! And handsome, too, like your mother.’
‘It’s his birthday today,’ my mother told them. ‘He’s come to collect his gifts.’ And this would be good for five or ten lire, the coins collecting hard and tinny in my pocket as we made our way through the market.
But the market seemed more than usually oppressive today, the street too narrow, the crowds too thick, the large-boned women of Rocca Secca jostling against me without seeing me, caught up in their haggling. The traders, after their moment of attention, would turn back quickly to my mother, leaving me to stare up at great pyramids of cabbages and tomatoes and onions piled precariously atop sloping shelves. Beneath the shelves chickens cackled wildly in wicker cages, poking their beaks through the gaps to pick at scraps that had fallen to the ground. Rivulets of grey water trickled between the cracks in the cobblestones, giving off a strong sewer stench.
‘
Mamma
, I want to go.’ My mother was talking in a low voice to an older man I didn’t recognize. He towered above me tall and husky, dressed oddly in Sunday clothes, white shirt and tie, though his sleeves were rolled up over his forearms and the upper buttons of his shirt were undone, dark hair curling upthick and matted from his chest.
‘Here,’ my mother said, turning to me, ‘I’ll get Luciano to carry you piggyback. He can buy his vegetables later. You don’t open till noon,
vero?
’
‘But by then all that’s left here is what they feed to the pigs,’ the man said. ‘My wife will break my balls if there’s as much as a bruise on an olive.’ But he smiled and gathered me up in his sinewed arms, then lifted me effortlessly onto his shoulders, his upper arms gripping my calves.
‘I’ll bet you can see the whole world from up there, eh Vittorio,’ he said.
From above the market looked like a sea or a river, waves of bobbing heads shored in by the sloping roofs of corrugated tin that covered the market stalls.
‘How do
tomolo
and Giardini’s gesture people saw now an oracle, the prediction of their own town’s declining fortunes.
Compared to other towns in the area, Rocca Secca was filled with life—mule carts and motor cars, men in suits and women in high-heeled shoes, coloured awnings over sidewalk restaurants, shop windows crowded with posters. But still a shadow seemed to loom over the town, as if all the pomp and display had been carted in only moments before your arrival, put on for your benefit, as if you had only to turn your back and the glitter would fade, the wind whistling through empty streets. In neighbouring towns Rocca Seccans had a reputation as people whose surface smiles hid a meanness of spirit. ‘Ho,
signó
,’ a friend from Rocca Secca would call out to you, ‘have you eaten yet?’ And if you had he’d say, ‘That’s too bad, I was just going to ask you over,’ and if you hadn’t, ‘Then go home and eat.’
Only the market in Rocca Secca seemed real, at least honest in its transience: after all, it
had
been carted in, by peasants and traders who had hitched up their carts in the dead of night to be ready at their stalls by dawn, and by afternoon it would be faded and finished, the noise and colour gone, the stalls boarded up again until the following day. It was at the edge of the market that we disembarked on my birthday, at that hourstill in full swing, the din of it, the shouts and laughter, the clatter of coins, reaching us under our canvas as Cazzingulo’s truck pulled up to a stop on a small side-street. It had been many months since I had last been to the market with my mother; for a long time now she had preferred to make her trips into Rocca Secca alone. But as we threaded our way through the market street, jostling for space with goats and carts and thick-set town women come for the day’s provisions, many of the traders called out to me by name, remembering me from my previous visits.
‘Oh, Vittò! Look how big you’ve gotten! And handsome, too, like your mother.’
‘It’s his birthday today,’ my mother told them. ‘He’s come to collect his gifts.’ And this would be good for five or ten lire, the coins collecting hard and tinny in my pocket as we made our way through the market.
But the market seemed more than usually oppressive today, the street too narrow, the crowds too thick, the large-boned women of Rocca Secca jostling against me without seeing me, caught up in their haggling. The traders, after their moment of attention, would turn back quickly to my mother, leaving me to stare up at great pyramids of cabbages and tomatoes and onions piled precariously atop sloping shelves. Beneath the shelves chickens cackled wildly in wicker cages, poking their beaks through the gaps to pick at scraps that had fallen to the ground. Rivulets of grey water trickled between the cracks in the cobblestones, giving off a strong sewer stench.
‘
Mamma
, I want to go.’ My mother was talking in a low voice to an older man I didn’t recognize. He towered above me tall and husky, dressed oddly in Sunday clothes, white shirt and tie, though his sleeves were rolled up over his forearms and the upper buttons of his shirt were undone, dark hair curling upthick and matted from his chest.
‘Here,’ my mother said, turning to me, ‘I’ll get Luciano to carry you piggyback. He can buy his vegetables later. You don’t open till noon,
vero?
’
‘But by then all that’s left here is what they feed to the pigs,’ the man said. ‘My wife will break my balls if there’s as much as a bruise on an olive.’ But he smiled and gathered me up in his sinewed arms, then lifted me effortlessly onto his shoulders, his upper arms gripping my calves.
‘I’ll bet you can see the whole world from up there, eh Vittorio,’ he said.
From above the market looked like a sea or a river, waves of bobbing heads shored in by the sloping roofs of corrugated tin that covered the market stalls.
‘How do
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