A few days before our departure I saw Fabrizio, as I came out of school, chasing his father’s sheep through the late winter mud and slush of via San Giuseppe. He looked frailer and thinner than he had in the fall; but he was still in his knickers and cap, swaggering as he walked, wielding his sheep stick like a sceptre. I waited at the top of the steps until he’d rounded the corner at the edge of town, so he wouldn’t see me; but later that afternoon, tending the sheep down in the Valley of the Pigs, where the snow had all melted, I looked up to see him coming towards me from the direction of the cemetery. He came up without saying a word, plucking a stem of dead grass to chew and lowering himself cross-legged onto the ground beside the rock I was sitting on.
‘My father says it’s no use sending someone like me to school,’ he said finally. ‘He says I’m as stupid as a mule. The only way you can make a mule understand is with a whip.’
He stretched out his legs on the damp grass and leaned back on his elbows, holding his body with the studied nonchalance of a young man.
‘Rompacazzo sent me home because I threw a stone at a rat and made a hole in a bag of wheat. Pom! across my face, just like my father. He says, “Ma che sei, scimunoit?” ’—Fabrizio put on the thick accent of Rocca Seccans—‘ “ma che sei, impazzoit?” My father wanted to crack my skull.’
He spit out a piece of chewed grass, then sat up again and rubbed his goose-pimpled calves with his palms.
‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to know matematica to stick a seed in the ground, my father says. E quella maestra’—Fabrizio bloated his cheeks and lifted out his arms, making a jogging motion like a fat person walking—‘quella maestra gave me a pain in the ass. “Fabrizio” ’—taking on the teacher’s falsetto—‘ “tell me, Fabrizio, ma chi sono le tre persone in Dio?” Addio, quella porca!’
The sun had begun to set already, hovering cold and red just above Castilucci. A gust of wind whipped down sharply from the snow-covered upper slopes of the mountains, rattling the bare branches of an old apple tree nearby. A bird let out a few solitary notes; I searched for it amidst the tree’s branches but could not make it out.
Fabrizio was holding a cigarette out to me. I hesitated, then took it, leaning forward towards Fabrizio’s proffered match.
‘In America everybody smokes like chimneys,’ Fabrizio said. ‘Sometimes you can’t even see where you’re going because of all the smoke.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said suddenly.
Fabrizio cocked his head and looked at me oddly, squinting because of the sun.
‘I was only making a joke,’ he said finally.
He picked up a clump of dirt and slowly crushed it in his fist, the dirt trickling in a fine powder onto the pocket of his knickers. When a small mound had formed he leaned forward and blew gently into the centre of it, the dirt retreating from his smoke-filled breath in an ever-widening circle.
‘When you go to America,’ he said, ‘you can write me a letter and tell me what it’s like. When I have enough money you can call me over.’
But I didn’t know what to say to him, didn’t know if I wanted to write a letter to him or call him over or even if I could; and I didn’t know why I was angry at him now for coming to talk to me, as if he’d been the one who had done something wrong to me.
‘We have to go home,’ I said. ‘It’s going to get dark.’
‘You promise to send me a letter? No joking?’
‘Sí.’
He set his cigarette down on a stone.
‘Then we have to make it good. Spit into your hand.’
‘Why?’
‘Just spit, you’ll see.’
I spit into my palm. Fabrizio took my wrist and brought my hand towards his mouth; before I could pull away his tongue had lapped up the gob of spit cradled there.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘It’s to make us brothers,’ he said. ‘Like we had the same blood. A person can never hurt someone who has the same blood. Here, you now.’
Fabrizio wiped his gritty palm on his knickers and spit into it.
‘Go on,’ he said, holding his hand up to me. ‘It’s only spit. Your mouth is full of spit all the time, it’s the same thing.’
But when my tongue touched against Fabrizio’s wet palm I felt myself beginning to retch. I closed my eyes and lapped the spit up quickly, trying to shunt it off to my cheek, hoping to spit it out again when Fabrizio had gone; but my stomach lurched again, forcing bile up into my throat, and I swallowed deeply to quell it.
‘It’s done,’ Fabrizio said, grinning. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his jackknife, the one his uncle had brought him from America. ‘I want you to take this. That’s to make sure I’ll come to stay with you.’
In all the time I had known Fabrizio he had never gone anywhere without his jack-knife; it had seemed like a part of him, like his knickers and cap, as inseparable as a finger or toe. I could not have imagined him giving it away, any more than I could have given away my lucky one lira coin.
‘Grazie,’ I mumbled, taking the knife awkwardly in my hand. I ran my thumb over the smooth silver casing.
‘Don’t lose it,’ Fabrizio said. ‘You have to give it back when I come.’
He had not really given me the knife, then. It could be the same thing with my coin—I could get it back from him later, if I gave it to him now. But Fabrizio had already picked up his cigarette and stood, brushing dirt away from the seat of his knickers.
‘I have to go,’ he said, starting away. ‘I have to get the sheep out of the pit before it gets dark.’
When he had already begun to grow dim in the twilight, he turned in mid-stride to wave.
‘Ho, Vittò!’ he bellowed out. ‘Buona fortuna in America!’
He was almost half way to the cemetery now; but I had taken my one lira coin out of my pocket, held it cradled in my palm.
‘Fabrizio!’ I called out.
He turned again; but he did not wait for me to speak.
‘Don’t forget to send me a letter!’ he shouted. ‘Numero tredici, via Giovanni Battista!’ He turned and walked on, stopped a moment to grind his cigarette butt into the earth with his heel, half-turned to wave again, then dipped his hands into his back pockets and disappeared finally in the darkening twilight.