The Path to the Spiders' Nests by Italo Calvino

Author:Italo Calvino [Calvino, Italo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141889597
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Under the trees of the wood the ground is thick with chestnut husks and dried up pools full of hard leaves. In the evenings layers of mist spread between the trunks of the chestnut trees and shroud their bases, covered with the reddish sheen of moss and the bluish marks of lichen. The encampment can be sensed before it is reached, from the smoke rising above the tree-tops and the faint singing of a chorus, growing louder as one goes deeper into the woods. The hut is made of stone, two stories high, the lower storey with an earthen floor for animals, and the one above, made of logs, for shepherds to sleep in.

Now there are men above and below, sleeping on piles of fresh bracken and hay; as there are no windows through which the smoke of the fire on the ground floor can escape, it curls round under the slate roof and burns the eyes and throats of the men forcing them to cough. Every night the men crouch round the fire, lit under cover in case it is seen by the enemy, and crowd up together, with Pin in the midst of them, lit by flickering flames and singing away at the top of his voice as he used to in the tavern in the alley. The men look rather like the men of the tavern too, sitting there with hard eyes and splaying elbows, though they are not gazing resignedly into purple glasses; their hands are on the barrels of their weapons and tomorrow they will be going out to fire them against other men; against the enemy!

It is this that makes them different from others, this that gives Pin a feeling new to him, that he has never felt before; it’s their having enemies. In the alley there was shouting and rowing and insulting between men and women going on night and day, but there was never this bitter longing to meet the enemy, a longing which keeps these men awake at night. Pin does not yet realize what it means, to have enemies. To Pin there’s something as disgusting as worms about all human beings; and something good and warm, too, which draws him to their company.

But these men can think of nothing but the enemy; they’re like lovers; when they say certain words their beards quiver, their eyes glisten, and their hands stroke the barrels of their rifles. They do not ask Pin to sing songs about love or comic songs that make them laugh; what they want are songs full of bloodshed and violence, or others about prison and crimes which only Pin knows, or others so obscene that they have to be shouted out with hatred. Yes, these men fill Pin with more admiration than any others ever have: their stories are all about lorry-loads of men slaughtered and spies executed naked in ditches.

Below the hut the woods straggle off into strips of meadow, and there, it is said, spies

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