Italo Calvino by Path to a Nest of Spiders

Author:Path to a Nest of Spiders
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-09T09:26:15+00:00

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here to warn them, and everything’s gone all right. But I twisted my ankle, the one that was so swollen when I fell that time, and now I’m lame.”

“You’re amazing, Red Wolf, you really are,” says Pin, “but you’re a swine all the same to leave me when you’d given me your word of honour.”

“Honour,” he says, “is due to the Cause first.”

Meanwhile they have reached Dritto’s camp. Red Wolf looks all the men up and down and replies coldly to their greetings.

“You’ve got into fine company,” says he.

“Why?” asks Pin, a little bitterly; he has grown fond of these people already and does not want Red Wolf to come and take him away again.

Red Wolf whispers in his ear. “Don’t tell anyone; but this is what I’ve heard. They send the duds to Dritto’s detachment, the cast-offs from the brigade. They may keep you here, because you’re a child. But if you like I can try and get you moved.”

Pin does not like the idea of being kept here because he’s a child; but the men he knows are not duds.

“Tell me, Red Wolf, is Cousin a dud?”

“Cousin is a man who has to be left on his own. He always goes round alone and is a good man and has guts.”

Pin would like to ask Red Wolf lots of other questions: “What about Mancino? Is it true he’s a Trotskyist?”

Perhaps, thinks Pin, he’ll explain what that means.

“He’s a Trotskyist, he’s an extremist, the commissar of the brigade told me so. You don’t agree with him, do you?”

“No, no,” replies Pin. Who knows? Perhaps Trotskyist means something degrading.

“Comrade Red Wolf,” exclaims Mancino, coming up with his hawk on his shoulder. “We’ll make you Commissar of the Soviet of the Old Town!”

Red Wolf does not even look him in the face. “Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder,” he says to Pin.

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