Isolina was reading a magazine of sentimental romances. "No," she whined, "you begin by killing it and skinning it, and then I'll watch how you cook it."
"What a help!" her mother said. "I don't have the heart to kill it. But I know it's a very easy matter; you just have to hold it by the ears and hit it hard on the back of the head. As for skinning, we'll see."
"We won't see anything," the daughter said, without raising her nose from the magazine. "I'm not hitting a live rabbit on the head. And I haven't the slightest notion of skinning it, either."
The three little ones had listened to this dialog with wide eyes.
Their mother pondered for a moment, looked at them, then said, "Children…"
The children, as if by agreement, turned their backs on their mother and left the room.
"Wait, children!" their mother said. "I wanted to ask you if you'd like to take the rabbit outside. We'll tie a pretty ribbon around his neck and you can go for a walk with him."
The children stopped and exchanged looks. "A walk where?" Michelino asked.
"Oh, a little stroll. Then go call on Signora Diomira, show her the rabbit, and ask her if she'll please kill it and skin it for us. She's so good at that."
The mother had found the right method: children, as everyone knows, are caught up by the thing they like most, and they prefer not to think of the rest. And so they found a long, lilac-colored ribbon, tied it around the animal's neck, and used it as a leash, fighting over it, and pulling after them the reluctant, half-strangled rabbit.
"Tell Signora Diomira," the mother insisted, "that she can keep a leg for herself! No, better the head. Oh, she can take her pick."
The children had barely gone out when Marcovaldo's room was surrounded and invaded by orderlies, doctors, guards, and policemen. Marcovaldo was in their midst, more dead than alive. "Where is the rabbit that was taken from the hospital? Hurry: show us where it is, but don't touch it; it's infected with the germs of a terrible disease!" Marcovaldo led them to the cage, but it was empty. "Already eaten?"
"No, no!"
"Where is it then?"
"At Signora Diomira's!" And the pursuers resumed their hunt.
They knocked at Signora Diomira's door. "Rabbit? What rabbit? Are you crazy?" Seeing her house invaded by strangers, in white jackets or uniforms, looking for a rabbit, the old woman nearly had a stroke. She knew nothing about Marcovaldo's rabbit.
In fact, the three children, trying to save the rabbit from death, had decided to take it to a safe place, play with it for a while, and then let it go; and instead of stopping at Signora Diomira's landing, they decided to climb up to a terrace over the rooftops. They would tell their mother it had broken the leash and had run off. But no animal seemed so ill-suited to an escape as that rabbit. Making it climb all those steps was a problem: it huddled, frightened, on each step. In the end they picked it up and carried it.
On the terrace they wanted to make it run: it wouldn't run. They tried setting it on the edge of the roof, to see if it would walk the way cats do; but it seemed to suffer vertigo. They tried hoisting it onto a TV antenna, to see if it could keep its balance: no, it fell down. Bored, the children ripped away the leash, turned the animal loose at a place where all the paths of the roofs opened out, an oblique and angular sea, and they left.
When it was alone, the rabbit began moving. It ventured a few steps, looked around, changed direction, turned, then, in little hops and skips, it started over the roofs. It was an animal born prisoner: its yearning for liberty did not have broad horizons. The greatest gift it had known in life was the ability to have a few moments free of fear. Now, now it could move, with nothing around to frighten it, perhaps for the first time in its life. The place was unfamiliar, but a clear concept of familiar and unfamiliar was something it had never been able to formulate. And ever since it had begun to feel an undefined, mysterious ailment gnawing inside itself, the whole world was of less and less interest to it. And so it went onto the roofs; and the cats that saw it hopping didn't understand what it was and they drew back, in awe.
Meanwhile, from skylights, from dormer windows, from flat decks, the rabbit's itinerary had not gone unremarked. Some people began to display basins of salad on their sills, peeking then from behind the curtains, others threw a pear core on the roof-tiles and spread a string lasso around it, someone else arranged a row of bits of carrot along the parapet, leading to his own window. And a rallying-cry ran through all the families living in the garrets: "Stewed rabbit today"-or "fricasseed rabbit"-or "roast rabbit".
The animal had noticed these lures, these silent offers of food. And though it was hungry, it didn't trust them. It knew that every time humans tried to attract it with offers of food, something obscure and painful happened: either they stuck a syringe into its flesh, or a scalpel, or they forced it into a buttoned-up jacket, or they dragged it along with a ribbon around its neck… And the memory of these misfortunes merged with the pain it felt inside, with the slow change of organs that it sensed, with the prescience of death. And hunger. But as if it knew that, of all these discomforts, only hunger could be allayed, and recognized that these treacherous human beings could provide, in addition to cruel sufferings, a sense-which it also needed-of protection, of domestic warmth, it decided to surrender to play the humans' game: then whatever had to happen, would happen. So, it began to eat the bits of carrot, following the trail that, as the rabbit well knew, would make it prisoner and martyr again, but savoring once more, and perhaps for the last time, the good earthy flavor of vegetables. Now it was approaching the garret window, now a hand would stretch out to catch it: instead, all of a sudden, the window slammed and closed it out. This was an event alien to its experience: a trap that refused to snap shut. The rabbit turned, looked for other signs of treachery around, to choose the best one to give in to. But meanwhile the leaves of salad had been drawn indoors, the lassos thrown away, the lurking people had vanished, windows and skylights were now barred, terraces were deserted.
It so happened that a police truck had passed through the city, with a loudspeaker shouting: "Attention, attention! A long-haired white rabbit has been lost; it is affected by a serious, contagious disease! Anyone finding it should be informed that it is poisonous to eat; even its touch can transmit harmful germs! Anyone seeing it should alert the nearest police station, hospital, or fire house!"
Terror spread over the rooftops. Everyone was on guard, and the moment they sighted the rabbit, which, with a limp flop, moved from one roof to the next, they gave the alarm, and all disappeared as if at the approach of a swarm of locusts. The rabbit proceeded, teetering on the cornices; this sense of solitude, just at the moment when it had discovered the necessity of human nearness, seemed even more menacing to it, unbearable.
Meanwhile Cavalier Ulrico, an old hunter, had loaded his rifle with cartridges for hare, and had gone to take his stand on a terrace, hiding behind a chimney. When he saw the white shadow of the rabbit emerge from the fog, he fired; but his emotion at the thought of the animal's evil bane was so great that the spatter of shot fell a bit off the mark onto the tiles, like hail. The rabbit heard the shot rattle all around, and one pellet pierced its ear. It understood: this was a declaration of war; at this point all relations with mankind were broken off. And in its contempt of humans, at what seemed, to the rabbit, somehow a base ingratitude, it decided to end it all.
A roof covered with corrugated iron sloped down, oblique, and ended at the void, in the opaque nothingness of the fog. The rabbit planted itself there on all four paws, first cautiously, then letting itself go. And so, slipping, surrounded and consumed by its pain, it went towards death. At the edge, the drainpipe delayed it for a second, then it tumbled down…