His emotion didn't prevent him from peering down among the little ripples of the stream. And there, his stubbornness was rewarded! A flicker, the unmistakable flash of a fin at the surface, and then another, another stilclass="underline" such happiness, he could hardly believe his eyes. This was the place where the fish of the whole river assembled, the fisherman's paradise, perhaps still unknown to everyone but him. On his way home (it was already growing dark) he stopped and cut signs on the bark of the elms, and made piles of stones at certain spots, to be able to find the way again.
Now he had only to equip himself. Actually, he had already thought about it: among the neighbors and the personnel of his firm he had already identified about ten dedicated fishermen. With hints and allusions, promising each to inform him, the moment he was really sure, of a place full of tench that only he knew about, he managed to borrow, a bit from one, a bit from another, the most complete fisherman's outfit ever seen.
Now he lacked nothing: pole, line, hooks, bait, net, boots, creel. One fine morning, in a couple of hours-from six to eight, before going to work, at the river with the tench-could he fail to catch some? And in fact, he had only to drop his line and he caught them; the tench bit, without any suspicion. Since it was so easy with hook and line, he tried with the net; the tench were so good-natured that they rushed headlong into the net, too.
When it was time to leave, his creel was already full. He looked for a path, moving up the river.
"Hey, you!" At a curve in the shore, among the poplars, there was a character wearing a guard's cap, and giving him an ugly stare.
"Me? What is it?" Marcovaldo asked, sensing an unknown threat to his tench.
"Where did you catch those fish there?" the guard asked. "Eh? Why?" And Marcovaldo's heart was already in his mouth.
"If you caught them down below, throw them back right now: didn't you see the factory up there?" And the man pointed out a long, low building that now, having come around the bend of the river, Marcovaldo could discern, beyond the willows, throwing smoke into the air and, into the water, a dense cloud of an incredible color somewhere between turquoise and violet. "You must at least have seen the color of the water! A paint factory: the river's poisoned because of that blue, and the fish are poisoned, as well. Throw them back right now, or I'll confiscate them!"
Marcovaldo would have liked to fling them far away as fast as possible, get rid of them, as if the mere smell were enough to poison him. But in front of the guard, he didn't want to humble himself. "What if I caught them farther up?"
"Then that's another story. I'll confiscate them and fine you, too. Above the factory there's a fishing preserve. Can't you see the sign?"
"Actually," Marcovaldo hastened to say, "I carry a fishing pole just for looks, to fool my friends. I really bought the fish at the village shop nearby."
"Then everything's all right. You only have to pay the tax, to take them into the city: we're beyond the city limits here."
Marcovaldo had already opened the creel and was emptying it into the river. Some of the tench must have been still alive, because they darted off with great joy.
SUMMER
14. Moon and GNAC
The night lasted twenty seconds, then came twenty seconds of GNAC. For twenty seconds you could see the blue sky streaked with black clouds, the gilded sickle of the waxing moon, outlined by an impalpable halo, and stars that, the more you looked at them, the denser their poignant smallness became, to the sprinkle of the Milky Way: all this seen in great haste; every detail you dwelt on was something of the whole that you lost, because the twenty seconds quickly ended and the GNAC took over.
The GNAC was a part of the neon sign SPAAK COGNAC on the roof opposite, which shone for twenty seconds then went off for twenty, and when it was lighted you couldn't see anything else. The moon suddenly faded, the sky became a flat, uniform black, the stars lost their radiance, and the cats, male and female, that for ten seconds had been letting out howls of love, moving languidly towards each other along the drainpipes and the roof-trees, squatted on the tiles, their fur bristling in the phosphorescent neon light.
Leaning out of the attic where they lived, Marcovaldo's family was traversed by conflicting trains of thought. It was night, and Isolina, a big girl by now, felt carried away by the moonlight; her heart yearned, and even the faintest croaking of a radio from the lower floors of the building came to her like the notes of a serenade; there was the GNAC, and that radio seemed to take on a different rhythm, a jazz beat, and Isolina thought of the dance-hall full of blazing lights and herself, poor thing, up here all alone. Pietruccio and Michelino stared wide-eyed into the night and let themselves be invaded by a warm, soft fear of being surrounded by forests full of brigands; then, GNAC!, and they sprang up with thumbs erect and forefingers extended, one against the other: "Hands up! I'm the Lone Ranger!" Domitilla, their mother, every time the light was turned off, thought: "Now the children must be sent to bed; this air could be bad for them; and Isolina shouldn't be looking out of the window at this hour: it's not proper!" But then everything was again luminous, electric, outside and inside, and Domitilla felt as if she were paying a visit to the home of someone important.
Fiordaligi, on the contrary, a melancholy youth, every time the GNAC went off, saw the dimly lighted window of a garret appear behind the curl of the G, and beyond the pane the face of a moon-colored girl, neon-colored, the color of light in the night, a mouth still almost a child's that, the moment he smiled at her, parted imperceptibly and seemed almost to open in a smile; then all of a sudden from the darkness that implacable G of GNAC burst out again, and the face lost its outline, was transformed into a weak, pale shadow, and he could no longer tell if the girlish mouth had responded to his smile.
In the midst of this storm of passions, Marcovaldo was trying to teach his children the positions of the celestial bodies.
"That's the Great Bear: one, two, three, four, and there, the tail. And that's the Little Bear. And the Pole-Star that means North."
"What does that one over there mean?"
"It means C. But that doesn't have anything to do with the stars. It's the last letter of the word COGNAC. The stars mark the four cardinal points. North South East West. The moon's hump is to the west. Hump to the west, waxing moon. Hump to the east, waning moon."
"Is cognac waning, Papà? The C's hump is to the east!"
"Waxing and waning have nothing to do with that: it's a sign the Spaak company has put there."
"What company put up the moon then?"
"The moon wasn't put up by a company. It's a satellite, and it's always there."
"If it's always there, why does it keep changing its hump?"
"It's the quarters. You only see a part of it."
"You only see a part of COGNAC too."
"Because the roof of the Pierbemardi building is higher."
"Higher than the moon?"
And so, every time the GNAC came on, Marcovaldo's stars became mixed up with terrestrial commerce, and Isolina transformed a sigh into a low humming of a mambo, and the girl of the garret disappeared in that cold and dazzling are, hiding her response to the kiss that Fiordaligi had finally summoned the courage to blow her on his fingertips, and Filippetto and Michelino, their fists to their faces, played at strafing: Tat-tat-tat-tat… against the glowing sign, which, after its twenty seconds, went off.
"Tat-tat-tat… Did you see that, Papà? I shot it out with just one burst." Filippetto said, but already, outside the neon light, his warlike mania had vanished and his eyes were filling with sleep.
"If you only had!" his father blurted. "If if had only been blown to bits! I'd show you Leo the lion, the Twins…"
"Leo the lion!" Michelino was overcome with enthusiasm. "Wait!" He had an idea. He took his slingshot, loaded it with gravel, of which he always carried a reserve pocketful, and fired a volley of pebbles, with all his strength, at the GNAC.