A Very Italian Christmas. Джованни Боккаччо

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Pasqualina punched, kicked, and slapped the little girl. Canituccia struggled to try to shield herself from the blows, shrieking without crying. When Pasqualina grew tired, she gave the child a shove and said in a hoarse voice:

      “Listen, smart-ass, I only let you live with me out of charity. If you don’t leave now and go look for Ciccotto in the countryside, and if you don’t bring him back home, remember that I’ll make you die on the street like the daughter of a bitch that you are.”

      Canituccia, who was still shrieking from the beating she’d just been given, hoisted her ragged skirt—made out of red cloth—and set off barefoot toward the road for the church of the Blessed Virgin. As she walked, she looked to her left and right in the hedges and in the farmers’ fields, calling to Ciccotto in a low voice. She had lost him on the way home: she hadn’t realized that he wasn’t following her any longer. But in the dark of night she couldn’t see anything. Canituccia walked on mechanically, stopping every so often to look around without being able to see. Her bare feet, which had turned a deep burgundy red in color from a whole winter’s worth of cold, no longer felt either the ground beneath them, which was growing icy cold, or the stones over which she stumbled. She was not afraid of the night or the lonely countryside: she just wanted to get Ciccotto back. All she could hear were Pasqualina’s threats not to feed her if she didn’t bring him home. She felt a gnawing, intense hunger that was twisting her stomach into knots. If she brought Ciccotto back, she’d eat: this was her one and only thought. So she called and called to him, walking fast between the tall hedges, a tiny speck of motion in that nocturnal calm:

      “Here, Ciccotto! My darling Ciccotto, where are you? Come to your Canituccia! Ciccotto, Ciccotto, Ciccotto, come to Canituccia! If I don’t bring you home, Mama Pasqualina won’t give me anything to eat. O Ciccotto, o Ciccotto!”

      She came out onto the main road that leads to Cascano, to Serra, and to Sparanisi. In the gloom of night the road shone white, and the desolate child’s little shadow cast strange, distorted figures on the ground. Her voice grew weary. She began to run wildly now, calling to Ciccotto with all her might. Twice she sat down on the ground, defeated and in despair: and twice she got up and started to run again. Finally, in Antonio Jannotta’s field, she heard something like a small grunt, then something like a little gallop, and Ciccotto came to brush up against her feet with his snout.

      Ciccotto was a pinkish-white piglet, rather chubby and round, with a gray spot on his back. Canituccia shouted with joy, took Ciccotto in her arms, and started back with the last strength left in her young legs. Laughing and talking, she hugged Ciccotto to her chest to keep him from escaping, while the piglet, with his short legs dangling in the air, grunted contentedly. Canituccia started to run, thinking that she’d once again be able to eat. From afar she spotted Pasqualina’s figure at the gate, and when within earshot Canituccia shouted to her:

      “I found Ciccotto, I found my darling Ciccotto.”

      She soon reached Pasqualina and triumphantly handed the piglet over to her. In the darkness, Pasqualina grinned. They went back into the house and Ciccotto was put into his pen, where he ate and immediately fell asleep. Breathing heavily, Canituccia watched everything that Pasqualina did. The little girl too was hungry, like Ciccotto; she followed Pasqualina into the kitchen, looking at her with big wild eyes that were unable to ask. Then Canituccia sat down on the raised edge of the hearth, without saying a thing. The peasant woman had taken her place on the bench and returned to her rosary, praying in a passionless monotone. Canituccia, doubled over in order not to feel the spasms in her stomach, followed the prayer with her eyes. She was no longer able to think at all: she was just hungry. Only a half hour later, when she had finished reciting the Salve Regina, did Pasqualina get up, open the cupboard, cut a piece of bread, put a few cold leftover beans on a little plate, and give Canituccia her supper. Still seated on the raised edge of the hearth, the girl ate hungrily. She had a small head, with a tiny white face full of freckles and frizzy hair that was a little bit reddish and a little bit yellowish, with some dirty chestnut brown mixed in for good measure. Her head was in fact too small, and set atop a scrawny body. She wore a white cotton shirt that was all patches, a waistcoat made of brown lightweight canvas, and a piece of red cloth as her skirt, held up at the waist by a short strand of rope. Her skinny legs showed, as did her bare, thin neck whose tendons looked like taut cords. Canituccia ate with a spoon made of blackened wood, and afterward went to drink from the bucket.

      The peasant woman had taken up her distaff and was spinning.

      “Get to bed now,” Pasqualina said to the girl.

      Canituccia opened the door of the pantry, where the apples were kept. She threw off her red skirt, lay down on some wretched straw bedding, pulled a rag made from an old yellow bedcover over her feet, and fell asleep. As she sat there spinning, Pasqualina thought about Canituccia with a certain diffidence. Her little servant was the illegitimate offspring of Maria the Redhead, as she was known. With her flaming hair and carnation-red lips, Maria had first sinned with the cobbler Giambattista. But he had gone off to become a soldier, and Maria had become the lover of Gasparre Rossi, a local gentleman. Then he too deserted Maria, although it was said that Candida—nicknamed Canituccia— was his daughter. There was no doubt that Maria, after a month at Sessa, had left Canituccia and gone off, some said to Capua while others said to Naples, to work as a prostitute. Gasparre hadn’t wanted to take care of the abandoned child, so she grew up in the household of Pasqualina and Crescenzo Zampa, who were sister and brother. But the girl’s white face, all dotted with freckles, reminded Pasqualina of Maria the Redhead. Pasqualina—a thin and virginal spinster with bony red hands, yellow teeth, and coal-black eyes, who had never married because her brother had refused to give her a dowry—trembled with hysterical terror at the thought of Maria the Redhead’s amorous follies, and didn’t trust her little bastard child. So the next day, fearful that Canituccia would lose Ciccotto again, Pasqualina tied one end of a rope to the piglet’s foot, and the other end around the girl’s waist, in order to keep them together. Following Canituccia, Ciccotto leapt about in his haste to get to pasture. They spent the day together in the field, looking for the first spring grasses and weeds. Many times Canituccia coaxed Ciccotto to a spot where she’d seen grass growing that he might like; sometimes Ciccotto dragged Canituccia toward a green field. At noon the girl ate a piece of bread. They wandered together through the spring afternoon until dusk fell, and separated only when back at home, where Ciccotto went right to sleep and Canituccia, after having gulped down cold chicory soup, or a few chickpeas, or a bit of pork rind with bread, also retired for the night. Pasqualina was surely no greedier or fiercer than other peasant women, but she herself was not so well off and ate only a bit of meat on Sundays. Sometimes she beat Canituccia, but no more often than the other peasant women beat their own children.

      Later on, in summer, Canituccia and Ciccotto were together for longer stretches of time. They left at dawn to search for corncobs, figs, and the first windfall apples, and Ciccotto had grown big and strong, while Canituccia was still skinny and weak. Sometimes Ciccotto ran too fast for the girl, and she felt herself being dragged along behind him over the cracked dry ground, worn out beneath the burning summer sun.

      “Wait, Ciccotto, wait for me, my dearest!” she would say, exhausted.

      Then Ciccotto would go to sleep and the girl would lie, with her eyes closed, on the ground along the furrows where the wheat had been harvested, sensing the blazing sun beneath her eyelids. She would get back up on her feet again, dazed, her cheeks red and her tongue swollen. By now there was no longer any need for the rope, because Ciccotto had become obedient. Canituccia had gotten a long stick with which to herd the pig and keep him from ending up under the wheels of the carts going along the main road. They would head back home in the evening, with Ciccotto coming along slowly and Canituccia a little ahead of him, driven by the insatiable hunger gnawing at her stomach. Once they tried to steal some sorbs in Nicola Passaretti’s field, but the sorbs were terribly bitter and Nicola thrashed her like a little thief. Even worse, СКАЧАТЬ