The snake is not fast moving in the chilly morning, but it manages to keep pace with Signora Divino, following her back to her yard. She turns and sees it. “Acka!” She says some other words, too, words no one should hear, they are so ugly. She picks up the snake and drags it back into the yard of Casa Rosa and says, “Avanti, avanti!” She spits at the snake to show she means business corporate.
I drop a pinecone from the tower and it lands on the Signora’s head. It does not hurt her, but it makes her mad. She shakes her fist at the air and says some more ugly words.
Later in the morning a banana peel flies over the hedge from the Divino yard into our yard. You do not do this in Switzerland. You do not make garbage fly around.
Next comes a rotten apple. Splut! A soft fig. Splut! Two pieces of salami. Suh. Suh.
I am just getting ready to toss a pinecone when Zola zigs out of the house and yells into the bushes. “Stop that, whoever is doing that! Stop it right now!”
Another fig. Splut.
Zola, she surprises me, she turns into a bull cow and blasts through the bushes, and I have to float fast so I can see her lean toward Vinny and say, “Listen, you piffling toad, you keep your garbage in your own yard, you hear me?”
The piffling toad steps away from her and says, “Non capisco! Ha!” He doesn’t know what she has said.
This makes Zola very mad. She says, “You capro! You porco! You gallo!”
I guess she does not know the word for toad. Instead, she has called Vinny a goat, a pig, and a rooster.
Vinny says, “Pomodoro means tomato!” Then he runs into his grandmother’s house and slams the door.
Zola Pomodoro stares at the door. “Nuthead!”
Hairs and Feets
YOU WON’T BELIEVE this, but there are peoples who pay money to other peoples to wash their hairs and even to paint colors on their toes. Is really! And in the same world of peoples there are other peoples who have to crawl in the dirt scrounging for a measly piece of garbage to eat. I am not fabbagrating! Don’t get me started.
At night I swish in the heads of the peoples with the clean hairs and feets, showing them the peoples crawling in the dirt, but in the morning when the clean peoples wake up they have already forgotten. I think maybe it is my fault that they forget so quick and so it is my fault that there are peoples who have to crawl in the dirt. I am not knowing enough. What are the other angels doing?
The Matter Urgente
I AM LEANING OVER the balcony of my tower watching Signora Divino gather fat orange slugs in her yard. She is wearing her sturdy black shoes and her plain black dress and over the top of the dress is a pink bedjacket. This is shockful because Signora Divino only and always wears black to show that she was once a married lady but now her husband is dead. But here she is with the pink bedjacket. Signora Divino does not wear pink and peoples do not normally wear bedjackets outside.
It is while I am wondering about this pink bedjacket that Zola clabbers up the winding steps to the tower and says—without any politeness of hello or ciao—“Angel! You have to do something about the kids in the barn!”
I do not like it when peoples tell me I have to do something. It makes me want to not do the something. I pretend I am not hearing today.
“Angel! Why haven’t you done something about the kids in the barn?”
I pretend I am studying the cobwebs under the roof. Zola, she is all orange and yellow and turquoise, with three skirts and a blouse and a shawl and a purple ribbon wound around her ankle and green feathers in her hair. I glance at Signora Divino, gathering slugs in her pink bedjacket. The pink bedjacket does not appear so strange now.
“Angel!”
Zola is not going to let me alone, I can see. I am not stupido.
“What barn?” I say. “What kids?”
“On the path up to Montagnola,” she says. “That ancient barn.”
“What ancient barn?” All the buildings here are ancient, but there are no barns left in the village.
“On the path going up the hill. Across from the pink house. On the right. Up—you know—up there.” She wivvles her arm toward the path and the hill.
“Oh,” I say. “That shid—shad—shed broken thing? That used to hold chickens? That thing?”
Zola gruntles, not very happy. “I don’t know what you call it or what used to be there, but I’m talking about the kids that are there now.”
“What kids?”
“Angel! You’re supposed to know everything!”
I am? This is a little shock to me. No, it is a big shock. Because I am not knowing many, many things.
Zola does not look too happy with me. She says, “There are kids there, living there, in that dark and dirty and cold place. A bunch of them. Eight or ten. Maybe more. They’re skinny and hungry and dirty. It is extremely tragical.”
“Why are they living there?”
“Angel!” Zola holds her head in her hands as if I am giving her a very big headache. “That’s what I’m asking you. You’re supposed to know these things. You’re supposed to fix these things.”
Know and fix? How does Zola know these things? Why does she know them and I don’t? I am not feeling so good.
A Puzzlement
I FLOAT RAPIDO UP to the shid-shad-shed which used to hold the chickens of the family Polterini and before that many long years ago the chickens and very nasty rooster of the family Zucchini, and before that—well, I am only saying that I have been around a long time and I know exactly this place Zola is talking about, and I would know if there were childrens living there, especially if the childrens were skinny and hungry and dirty. I do not like peoples to be hungry. Especially I do not like them to be hungry when other peoples give money to someones for painting their toes.
But this is Switzerland, and childrens should not go hungry here. I think it is against the law. So it is impossible what Zola says, right?
And see? The shad is empty. No childrens. When Zola arrives, I say, “Empty.”
“Are you sure?” Zola scrambles over the fence and up the hill and peers in through the straggly wire fencing. “They’re probably out scavenging for food,” she says.
I make a snort sound, which Zola does not like.
“Angel, you are disappointing me!”
What? This hurts my feeling.
Zola is standing with her hands on her hips and giving me a muddy look. “Angel! Come back when it is dark. You’ll see.” Zola runs down the path. I think she’s supposed to be helping Mr. Pomodoro get the school ready for students from all over the world who are going to be nice to each other and make the world peaceful.
I wonder how they think this is going to happen, the peaceful part. I have been watching peoples a long time and they get mad at one another very easily. They are not calming down.
At night I return to the chicken place, not expecting to find anything except maybe some snakes and bats, but to my surprisement there are kids there, about eight or nine of them, skinny and dirty. They are huddled in a corner under one torn blanket and they are gnawing at a loaf of bread. The youngest one, maybe he is five or six years old, is sniveling. “Mama,” he whimpers. “I want Mama.”
“Zitti!” says a bigger kid. “Somebody’ll hear you and then we’ll all get carted off to jail.”
This makes the youngest cry harder. I float over and beam warm beams down on them. Poor little things. No mamas. Cold. In the dark.
I am being confused. Where do they come from? How long have they been there? Why haven’t I seen them? I am not knowing what to do.
Vinny Explosion
THAT NIGHT I do not sleep. I float here and there and far up in the mountains where the goats are closing their eyes and leaning against each other. I float past the huts and meadows and bridges and streams. I peer in the chicken shads and the pigpens. There are chickens and pigs there. No childrens. The childrens are in the huts and casas with their mamas and papas where they belong.
The next morning I whiz south, b
ack to my tower in the Ticino. The tower is sitting in a cloud. It is the misty driplets that come some mornings and wrap around the village so that all you can see around you is the white cloud. You cannot see the mountains opposite, you cannot see the houses on the hillside or even the roads or the lake down below. The sounds are miffled, as if a big scarf is wrapped around the village.
When I float through the house, I see Mr. Pomodoro in a baggy robe standing in front of the mantel, staring at the photo of the little boy. Mr. Pomodoro’s hair is in bed mess and his shoulders are aslump. He puts his finger on the photograph in such a tender way that you can see his heart is very big for this little boy. I float back to my tower to wonder about the boy.
It is so quiet, quiet, until Vinny bangs on a metal bucket and his grandmother, Signora Divino, shouts at him to shut down—“Zitti! Zitti!”—but he keeps on banging. Then Zola joggets out of her house and bellows into the hedge, “Stop that racket, you artichoke!” But the artichoke doesn’t stop, and Zola pushes through the gate and grabs the metal bucket and throws it into the pond of frogs.
Signora Divino hobbles out of her house in her pink bedjacket (again!) and says many ugly words to Zola in Italian and Zola says them right back at her, even though I do not think Zola knows what they mean.
Signora Divino is molto insulted that Zola has spoken to her in this rude way. “I tell your father!” Signora Divino threatens.
“I have no father,” Zola says. “I am an orphan and my name is Fillipa Millipa.”
I am thinking angels should not be having headaches, but I am having one, very pounding one.
Zola shouts up at the tower, “Can’t you do anything about these morons?”
I wish Zola would not be talking to me like that, out in the air. Signora Divino and her grandson, Vinny, glance up at the tower and then at each other and then at Zola. They do not see me.
Zola says to Vinny, “If you want to bang on something, why don’t you bang on some drums?”
Vinny stamps his foot like a horse and makes his neck very straight like a goose. “I do drums,” he says. “Molto years. Molto good.”
Zola presses her small hand to her heart theatrically. “I most sincerely doubt that,” Zola says, and she leaves, which makes Vinny even madder, because he is left with only his grandma to give the show-off to.
Zola zips right up to the tower. “Angel! Where were you last night? And what are you doing about the children in the chicken barn?”
This Zola is a lot bossy.
Il Beasto
I FORGOT TO SAY about il beasto. First, I tell you that I am in peace with the birdies and the froggies and the toads and the kittens and the puppies and the lizards, all of those creatures, just like I am in peace with the mountains and the trees and the flowers, but let’s not get too mushy. I tell you that so you know that I am not like the peoples who hate everything and complain all day short or long. Those peoples are sad.
Il beasto is the dog of Signora Divino: a bitsy poky dog you might accidentally step on, a barking, nippy-snappy noise macchina. The noise is bigger than the dog. The noise makes you want to kill it.
Like this it goes, just when you are enjoying the air and the mountains of view: arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf. Then it stops and you are so happy for the quiet that you could cry. But you are only happy for a minute because there it goes again: arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf, arf.
Peoples in the village try to tell Signora Divino that the dog’s arf ing makes them crazy in the head, but Signora Divino is without enough ears. She says, “What? I can’t hear you. What?” And so people stand there barking like the dog and she says, “Whatsa matter with you?”
Zola and Mr. Pomodoro are not happy with the arf, arf, arf of Signora Divino’s beasto. They want to kill it.
Zola stands on the balcony of her bedroom and shouts down at the arf ing beasto: “Be quiet! Shut up! Stop it! I’m going to kill you!”
Mr. Pomodoro stands on the balcony of his bedroom and shouts down at the arf ing beasto: “Be quiet! Shut up! Stop it! I’m going to kill you!”
And Signora Divino, without enough ears, gathers slugs in her garden and brings them and the snakes into the yard of our casa when she thinks we do not see.
Mr. Pomodoro
I AM NOT SURE what to make of Mr. Pomodoro. Because he is so tall and linky and rubbery, he seems sometimes like a boy, knocking into tables and doorways, his big muddy boots clomping on the tile floors. He will smile one minute and frown the next, squinch his nose, tilt his head left and then right, scrunch his mouth.
Other times, he appears more like a man: He spreads books and papers and archno-techno drawings on the table and makes notes with his sharpened pencil. “Mm” and “ah” and “erm,” he mumbles. He tapples rapidly into his dimputer, tapple, tapple, tapple, pauses, looks up, ponders the ceiling, resumes tappling.
When Zola wanders in and out, he is offlivious to her. She seems accustomed to this. He is not ignoring her, exactly. It is more as if he can only do one thing at a time. I think maybe she enjoys the freedom. I don’t know why I have that impression; maybe it is because she does not seem sad or miserable or in any way unhappy.
Today, for instance, Mr. Pomodoro finishes his reading and tappling, turns off his dimputer, stands up, and goes to the bottom of the staircase. He listens and then he climbs the stairs and clomps down the hallway, stopping at each room and briefly gazing in.
At Zola’s doorway, he sees her sprawled on the floor with her feet up on the bed, a stack of paperback novels beside her and one in her hand, which she is reading. On the cover is an island with a single palm tree and footprints in the sand.
Mr. Pomodoro stretches his rubbery mouth, cracks his knuckles, says, “Well, then,” and moves on down the hall. I don’t think they are mad at each other, Zola and Mr. Pomodoro. It is more as if he does not know quite what to do with this colorful child and is relieved that she is content to be on her own.
Downstairs again, Mr. Pomodoro unpacks a few things from one of the many boxes stacked by his desk. He unwraps a small photo, smiles at it, takes it to the mantel, and places it beside the one of the boy. It is a photo of a young woman, maybe twenty. Mr. Pomodoro presses a finger to her picture and then turns to the little boy’s picture and does the same.
I am about to float on up to my balcony when I notice Mr. Pomodoro return to his desk and open one of its deep drawers. I slap my headfore! What I see inside reminds me of a tale Zola told me. When was this? I don’t remember. Before the shad problem.
We were up in the tower, me and Zola, smashing figs. We watched her father as he packled in the garden below. Zola says, “Angel, Angel, I will tell you about a boy. Would you like that?”
Truly, I have no grand interest, but it is a lazy day and so I say, “Tell away.”
Zola licks fig juice from her fingers. “There once was a young boy with nine brothers and sisters. His family lived in a crowded, crumbling house at the bottom of a hill. There was never much food to eat in that house with all its children, but one day his father brought home a box of chocolate-covered cookies. Have you ever eaten a chocolate-covered cookie, Angel?”
“Me? No, no, I don’t eat cookies.”
“Oh, but they are supremely delicious!” Zola says. “So the papa of the young boy brought home a box of chocolate-covered cookies, and he proudly set them on the counter and went upstairs to wash.”
“Uh-oh,” I say, because I know this is not a good thing. I can see what is coming. I have been around awhile.
Zola puts her hand out dramatically, as if she is stopping the wind. “Now the little boy knew not to touch the cookies. He knew that his papa would later open the box and allow each child to take precisely one cookie. Oh, Angel, how the boy longed for those cookies. He could hardly bear that he wou
ld have just one. He wished his father had never brought home the box at all. It was too awful to think of having to wait for the cookie, just one cookie, and that would be all.”
At this point, Zola sighs and pauses, contipilating the sad situation. “Oh, Angel, the little boy snatched the box of cookies and fled to the basement and ate the cookies, all of them. He could not stop himself. They were so good, so perfectly delicious, so, so, chocolate.”
“I knew it, Zola. I knew he would eat those cookies.”
“Yes, Angel, yes. Later, the boy confessed, of course, because he was an honest boy, and he got a whipping.”
“I was afraid of that, Zola.”
“Yes, well. That is that. But now the boy is a man, and in his house he has a desk, and in his desk is one deep drawer, and in that one deep drawer he keeps mounds of chocolate: chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate cookies! So many chocolates!”
“I understand this, Zola.”
“Angel, any time of day or night he can select a chocolate something, but he does not make a pig of himself. Why do you think he keeps all those chocolates hidden in the drawer when he does not gobble them up?”
“Ah, Zola, ah. This I have seen! So many peoples have the secret drawers—or sometimes closets or boxes—and they have the little somethings in them. I am not talking about collections, like coins or knickle-knackles. I am talking about stashings of food or strange things—like Signor Rubini, you know him? The square man from up the hill?”
Zola presses her fingers to her lips. “The one who sits on the red bench, with his wool cap in one hand and his cane in the other?”
“Yes, yes, that’s Signor Rubini. He has a secret drawer, and in it he has dozens and dozens of pairs of navy-blue socks! Is true. He cannot wear so many, but he needs so many because when he was a child he was always cold, especially his feet, and now he has the secret stash of socks for, for, how you say? For insurance, maybe?”