Claiming Kin by Laura Marello

Author:Laura Marello
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Published: 2013-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Giulio runs when he works, not because the waitress, Helena, makes him hurry, or the barman scowls, or because the smoking men send him for drinks in a frenzy of urgency. He runs because to walk is too slow, because he refuses to fall behind the pace of this madness, because he feels, during his dizzy time in the Casino, that he must always run.

The barman laughs at him. “Slow down, Poverino,” he says. “Calm yourself, Pupo, little Doll Face; catch your breath. No one is chasing you. Who is chasing you? The police? Helena? Gamblers? Are you a hunted man, little Cabbage Head?” And when the barman begins to laugh, a rolling, tumbling laugh, his head thrown back, Giulio hurtles over the bar, and umph, like that, he scoops out another spoonful of ice cream. The barman only laughs the more. “In five years,” he says, “it will be the booze you’re swallowing, not the ice cream. At that rate, you will be a dead man.” But Giulio says no, he can’t be a dead man, because when he’s thirty he goes to America to see Andrea.

Tonight, Giulio ignores the talk. “The madonnas move their eyes,” the men babble. It is election day. The Wolf Man is prowling, lunging, stabbing. The men talk of the Wolf Man through the smoke curls. The Wolf Man has been out every night for the last two weeks. Will the madonnas spot the Wolf Man when he votes? The men laugh, gurgling, a fine thing to joke about the Madonna and the Wolf Man, they cross themselves, genuflecting for a moment on the sandy floor, tears forming in the smoke of their eyes.

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