They heard the shower fall, scattered, on the tiles of the roof opposite, on the tin of the drainpipes, the tinkle at the panes of a window that had been struck, the gong of a pebble plunging down on the metal shield of a street-light, a voice from below: "It's raining stones! Hey, you up there! Hoodlum." But at the very moment of the shooting the neon sign had turned off at the end of its twenty seconds. And everyone in the attic room began counting mentally: one two three, ten eleven, up to twenty. They counted nineteen, held their breath, they counted twenty, they counted twenty-one twenty-two, for fear of having counted too fast. But no, not at alclass="underline" the GNAC didn't come on again; it remained a black curlicue, hard to decipher, twined around its scaffolding like a vine around a pergola. "Aaaah!" they all shouted and the hood of the sky rose, infinitely starry, above them.
Marcovaldo, his hand frozen halfway towards the slap he meant to give Michelino, felt as if he had been flung into space. The darkness that now reigned at roof-level made a kind of obscure barrier that shut out the world below, where yellow and green and red hieroglyphics continued to whirl, and the winking eyes of traffic-lights, and the luminous navigation of empty trams, and the invisible cars that cast in front of them the bright cone of their headlights. From this world only a diffuse phosphorescence rose up this high, vague as smoke. And raising your eyes, no longer blinded, you saw the perspective of space unfold, the constellations expanded in depth, the firmament turning in every direction, a sphere that contains everything and is contained by no boundary, and only a thinning of its weft, like a breach, opened towards Venus, to make it stand out alone over the frame of the earth, with its steady slash of light exploded and concentrated at one point.
Suspended in this sky, the new moon-rather than display the abstract appearance of a half-moon-revealed its true nature as an opaque sphere, its whole outline illuminated by the oblique rays of a sun the earth had lost, though it retained (as you can see only on certain early-summer nights) its warm color. And Marcovaldo, looking at that narrow shore of moon cut there between shadow and light, felt a nostalgia, as if yearning to arrive at a beach which had stayed miraculously sunny in the night.
And so they remained at the window of the garret, the children frightened by the measureless consequences of their act, Isolina carried away as if in ecstasy, Fiordaligi, who, alone among all, discerned the dimly lighted garret and finally the girl's lunar smile. Their Mamma recovered herself: "Come on now, it's night. What are you doing at the window? You'll catch something, in this moonlight!"
Michelino aimed his slingshot up high. "Now I'll turn off the moon!" He was seized and put to bed.
And so for the rest of that night and all through the night following, the neon sign on the other roof said only SPAAK-CO, and from Marcovaldo's garret you could see the firmament. Fiordaligi and the lunar girl blew each other kisses, and perhaps, speaking to each other in sign language, they would manage to make a date to meet.
But on the morning of the second day, on the roof, in the scaffolding that supported the neon sign, the tiny forms of two electricians in overalls were visible, as they checked the tubes and wires. With the air of old men who predict changes in the weather, Marcovaldo stuck his head out and said: "Tonight there'll be GNAC again."
Somebody knocked at the garret. They opened the door. It was a gentleman wearing eyeglasses. "I beg your pardon, could I take a look at your window? Thanks." And he introduced himself: "Godifredo, neon advertising agent."
"We're ruined! They want us to pay the damages!" Marcovaldo thought, and he was already devouring his children with his eyes, forgetting his astronomical transports. "Now he'll look at the window and realize the stones could only have come from here." He tried to ward this off. "You know how it is, the kids shoot at the sparrows. Pebbles. I don't know how that Spaak sign went out. But I punished them, all right. Oh yes indeed, I punished them! And you can be sure it won't happen again."
Signor Godifredo's face became alert. "Actually, I'm employed by 'Tomahawk Cognac', not by Spaak. I had come to examine the possibility of a sign on this roof. But do go on: I'm interested in what you're saying."
And so it was that Marcovaldo, half an hour later, concluded a deal with Tomahawk Cognac, Spaak's chief rival. The children should empty their slingshots at the GNAC every time the sign was turned on again.
"That should be the straw that will break the camel's back," Signor Godifredo said. He was not mistaken: already on the verge of bankruptcy because of its large advertising outlay, Spaak and Co. took the constant damaging of its most beautiful neon signs as a bad omen. The sign that now sometimes said COGAC and sometimes CONAC or CONC spread among the firm's creditors the impression of financial difficulties; at a certain point, the advertising agency refused to make further repairs if arrears were not paid; the turned-off sign increased the alarm among the creditors; and Spaak went out of business.
In the sky of Marcovaldo the full moon shone, round, in all its splendor.
It was in the last quarter when the electricians came back to clamber over the roof opposite. And that night, in letters of fire, letters twice as high and broad as before, they could read TOMAHAWK COGNAC, and there was no longer moon or firmament or sky or night, only TOMAHAWK COGNAC, TOMAHAWK COGNAC, TOMAHAWK COGNAC, which blinked on and off every two seconds.
The worst hit was Fiordaligi; the garret of the lunar girl had vanished behind an enormous, impenetrable W.
AUTUMN
15. The rain and the leaves
At his job, among his various other responsibilities, Marcovaldo had to water every morning the potted plant in the entrance hall. It was one of those green house-plants with an erect, thin stalk from which, on both sides, broad, long-stemmed, shiny leaves stick out: in other words, one of those plants that are so plant-shaped, with leaves so leaf-shaped, that they don't seem real. But still it was a plant, and as such it suffered, because staying there, between the curtain and the umbrella-stand, it lacked light, air, and dew. Every morning Marcovaldo discovered some nasty sign: the stem of one leaf drooped as if it could no longer support the weight, another leaf was becoming spotted like the cheek of a child with measles, the tip of a third leaf was turning yellow; until, one or the other, plop!, was found on the floor. Meanwhile (what most wrung his heart) the plant's stalk grew taller, taller, no longer making orderly fronds, but naked as a pole, with a clump at the top that made it resemble a palm-tree.
Marcovaldo cleared away the fallen leaves, dusted the healthy ones, poured at the foot of the plant (slowly, so the pot wouldn't spill over and dirty the tiles) half a watering can of water, immediately absorbed by the earth in the pot. And to these simple actions he devoted an attention he gave no other task of his, almost like the compassion felt for the troubles of a relative. And he sighed, whether for the plant or himself: because in that lanky, yellowing bush within the company walls he recognized a companion in misfortune.
The plant (this was how it was called, simply, as if anymore specific name were useless in a setting where it alone had to represent the vegetable kingdom) had become such a part of Marcovaldo's life that it dominated his thoughts at every hour of the day and night. When he examined the gathering clouds in the sky, his gaze now was no longer that of a city-dweller, wondering whether or not he should wear his raincoat, but that of a farmer expecting from day to day the end of a drought. And the moment when he raised his head from his work and saw, against the light, beyond the little window of the warehouse, the curtain of rain that had begun to fall, thick and silent, he would drop everything, run to the plant, take the pot in his arms, and set it outside in the courtyard.