The Dividing Stream Read Free Page B

a boy of this class, the question might seem personal.
    ‘‘Football,’’ Enzo muttered, his voice so husky now that it was almost inaudible. ‘‘I play in goal.’’
    ‘‘It looks as if football in Italy were a battle, not a game.’’
    ‘‘What?’’
    ‘‘Oh, nothing.’’ He couldn’t be bothered to repeat it. ‘‘Another cigarette?’’
    ‘‘No, thank you.’’ Enzo adjusted one of his ankle socks and then, with a deep sigh, brushed a bare forearm across his forehead so that it returned to his lap gleaming with a number of minute, golden beads of sweat.
    ‘‘Go on.’’ Max held out the packet.
    ‘‘Thanks.’’ But the boy fumbled for so long that in the end Max had to shake the cigarette into his own palm and then give it to him. ‘‘Thanks,’’ the boy repeated again.
    Max rose to his feet. ‘‘ Come out on to the terrace,’’ he said. ‘‘Come.’’
    They leant over the balustrade and were silent for a while, watching the crowds sauntering beside the Arno in the last fume of dusk. Max pondered and at last said in an Italian that was vitiated only by his use of the English open o : ‘‘ I suppose you’re unemployed.’’
    ‘‘Yes, unemployed.’’
    ‘‘For how long?’’
    ‘‘Two years.’’
    ‘‘And your family?’’
    ‘‘My mother works. Here.’’ He pointed down between his feet. ‘‘In the hotel laundry.’’
    ‘‘She probably pressed my shirt,’’ Max said. ‘‘ But the rest?’’
    ‘‘All unemployed.’’
    ‘‘And you can’t find work—work of any kind?’’
    The boy shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘‘Surely, as a labourer—a farm-worker or a builder or a road-maker——’’ Max pursued, submitting the Florentine to the kind of slow, logical cross-examination which always irritated his wife. ‘‘Surely——’’
    ‘‘I can’t do very heavy work, unfortunately. It makes my back worse. But even if I could, I’d probably not find anything. My father and my elder brother can’t find anything, and they’re much stronger than I am.’’
    ‘‘What unemployment benefit do you get?’’
    ‘‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’’ Max explained and the boy laughed: ‘‘Why, nothing, of course. My brother gets paid by the State, but he’s a mutilato di guerra . Oh, I have this.’’ His hand dived into his shorts and, after a certain amount of scrabbling, he produced a green card marked out in squares with numbers printed on them. He handed it to Max as if, in itself, it were an explanation.
    ‘‘What’s this?’’
    ‘‘My food card. I can get three free meals a week with it, not very good meals, just bread and a minestra , but it’s lucky because I’m not allowed to eat at home. Well, I do eat there,’’ he added with a smile, ‘‘when my father is out. But my father says that if I don’t work, I can’t expect to be fed. Not that he works.’’
    ‘‘And where do you sleep?’’ Max asked.
    ‘‘Oh, at home. He doesn’t mind that, because I share my brother’s room.’’
    ‘‘If you can’t do heavy work, how is it that you can play football?’’
    A deep flush covered the boy’s face at a question on which he had so often argued with his family, and Max thought: ‘‘Yes, I knew the story was all too glib’’; his attitude suddenly changing from complete credulity to a no less complete scepticism.
    Enzo put out his cigarette on the stone balustrade, and then carefully hoarded the stub in the breast-pocket of his shirt, before he answered. ‘‘Football is my only hope,’’ he said at last, with a slow, painful intensity, la mia unica speranza —my unique hope. The grandiose adjective ‘‘unique’’ made the announcement appear even more pathetic in Max’s eyes. ‘‘Perhaps in the end I shall be able to make money with my football—a lot of money. Next Sunday I’ve been picked to play in the Coppa di Toscana—it’s a chance, my big chance. My back hurts when I play, but somehow