Difficult Loves by Calvino Italo

Author:Calvino, Italo [Calvino, Italo]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-08-08T05:00:00+00:00

SLEEPING LIKE DOGS

Every time he opened his eyes he felt the acid yellow light of the big arc lamps in the ticket office glaring down at him; and he would pull up the lapels of his jacket in search of darkness and warmth. When he'd lain down he had not noticed how hard and icy the stone tiles on the floor were; now shafts of cold were infiltrating, coming up under his clothes and through the holes in his shoes, and the scarce flesh on his hips was aching, squashed between bone and stone.

But he'd chosen a good place, quiet and out of people's way, in that corner under the stairs; so much so that after he'd been there a little time four women's legs came high over his head and he heard voices say, "Hey, he's taken our place."

The man lying down heard, though he was not properly awake; a dribble was oozing from a corner of his mouth onto the bent cardboard of the little suitcase that was his pillow, and his hair had settled itself to sleep on its own, following the horizontal line of his body.

"Well," said the same voice from above the dirty knees and the spreading bell of the skirt, "let's put our things down. At least we can get our bed ready."

And one of those feet, a woman's in a boot, prodded his hips like a sniffling snout. The man pulled himself up on his elbows, blinking his stunned and aching pupils in the yellow light, while his hair, apparently taking no notice, stood straight up on its own. Then back he dropped, as if he wanted to thump his head into the suitcase.

The women had taken the sacks off their heads. A man now came up behind, put down a roll of blankets, and began to arrange them. "Hey, you," said the older of the women to the man lying down, "move up, you can get underneath, too, then." No answer; he was asleep.

"He must be dead tired," said the younger of the two women, who was all bones, with the fleshy parts almost hanging as she bent down to spread the blankets and prop the sacks of flour underneath.

They were three black marketeers, on their way south with full sacks and empty tins; people whose bones had grown hard from sleeping on the floor in railroad stations and traveling in cattle cars; but they had learned to organize themselves and took blankets with them, to put underneath for softness and above for warmth; the sacks and tins acted as pillows.

The older woman tried to slip a corner of blanket under the sleeping man, but had to raise him a bit at a time because he never moved. "He must really be dead tired," said the older woman. "Maybe he's one of those emigrants."

Meanwhile, the man with them, a thin man, had got between two of the blankets and pulled an end over his eyes. "Hey, come down here; aren't you ready?" he said to the back of the younger woman, who was still bending down arranging the sacks as pillows.

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