Black amidst the dusty glare of a breathless August sun, a third-class hearse stopped in front of the pulled-up door of a new house on one of Rome’s many new streets, in the Prati di Castello district. It could have been three o’clock in the afternoon.

All those new houses, for the most part not yet inhabited, seemed to be looking through their empty window openings at that black carriage.

Made so recently to welcome life, instead of life – here it was – they saw death, coming to prey right there.

Before life, death.

And he had come slowly, at pace, that chariot. The coachman, falling to pieces from sleep, with his hairless hat slung crookedly over his nose and one foot on the front mudguard, at the first door that seemed to him to have approached in sign of mourning, had given a tug on the reins, stopped the handlebars of the block brake, and had lain down to sleep more comfortably on the box.

From the door of the only shop on the street, a grimacing, sweaty, sanguine man, his shirt sleeves rolled up on his hairy arms, peeked out of the greasy, crumpled lattice curtain.

– Pss! – he called, addressing the coachman. – Ahoy! Over there…

The coachman bowed his head to look down at the flap of his hat resting on his nose; he loosened the brake; he shook the reins on the horses’ backs and walked past the grocery store, without a word.

Here or there, to him, it was the same.

And in front of the gate, which was also pulled up by the house further on, he stopped and went back to sleep.

– Donkey! – muttered the grocer, shrugging his shoulders. – He doesn’t realise that all the gates are pulled up at this hour. He must be new at this.

So he really was. And Scalabrino didn’t like that job at all. But he had been a porter, and had quarrelled first with all the tenants and then with the landlord; a sacristan at San Rocco, and had quarrelled with the parish priest; he had been a coachman in the square and had quarrelled with all the shed-owners until three days ago. Now, finding nothing better in that dead season, he had lodged himself in a funeral parlour. He would have quarrelled with this one too – he knew it for sure – because he could not suffer bad things. And then he was unfortunate, that is. It was enough to see him. His shoulders on end; his eyes like a flap; his face yellow, like wax, and his nose red. Why red, the nose? So that everyone would take him for a drunkard; when he didn’t even know what wine tasted like.

– Enough!

He had it up to his throat, of that filthy life. And one day or another, he would have his last good fight with the river water, and good night.

For now there he was, eaten by flies and boredom, under the scorching blaze of the sun, waiting for that first load. The dead man.

Or did he not emerge, after a good half hour, from another doorway at the end, on the other side of the street?

– May the Lord strike you down! … (to the dead man) – he exclaimed between his teeth, rushing with the wagon, while the gravediggers, panting under the weight of a miserable coffin dressed in black muslin, threaded at the hems with white ribbon, sacredly protested:

– May the Lord strike you down! … (to him) – You’ll catch an accident – And that they hadn’t given you the number of the door?

Scalabrino turned away without a word; he waited for them to open the door and put the load into the wagon.

– Pull away!

And he moved, slowly, at pace, as he had come: still with his foot raised on the front wing and his hat on his nose.

The wagon, naked. Not a ribbon, not a flower.

Behind, a single companion.

She wore a black, quilted mass veil draped over her face; she wore a dark, shaved muslin robe with yellow flowers, and a light-coloured parasol she had, bright in the sun, open and slung over her shoulder.

She accompanied the dead man, but shielded himself from the sun with the parasol. And he kept his head down, almost more out of shame than out of grief.

– Happy strolling, ah Rosì! – shouted the scruffy grocer behind her, who had gone back to the shop door. And he accompanied the greeting with a booming laugh, shaking his head.

The companion turned to look at him through the veil; she raised her hand with the half-glove of thread to give him a nod of greeting, then lowered it to take up her robe from behind, and showed off her shabby shoes. She had the half-gloves of thread and the parasol, however.

– Poor dear Bernardo, like a dog,’ someone said loudly from a house window.

The grocer looked up, continuing to shake his head.

– A professor, with only the servant girl behind him…. – shouted another voice, an old woman, from another window.

In the sunshine, those voices from above rang out in the silence of the deserted street, strange.

Before turning, Scalabrino thought of proposing to his companion to hire a car to make it quicker, since no dog had come to queue up that mortal coil.

– With this sun… at this hour…

Rosina shook her head under her veil. She had taken an oath that she would walk with her master to the entrance of Via San Lorenzo.

– But what does the master see?

Nothing! Oath. The car, if ever, would have taken her, up there, to Campoverano.

– What if I pay you for it? – insisted Scalabrino.

Nothing. Oath.

Scalabrino chewed another imprecation under his hat and followed at pace, first to the Cavour bridge, then to Via Tomacelli and Via Condotti and Piazza di Spagna and Via Due Macelli and Capo le Case and Via Sistina.

Up to this point, as much or as little, he kept up, alert, to avoid the other cars, the electric trams and automobiles, considering that no one there would make way for and pay respect to that mortal coil.

But when, having crossed Piazza Barberini at a steady pace, he took the steep Via di San Niccolò da Tolentino, he put his foot back on the mudguard, lowered his hat again onto his nose and went back to sleep.

The horses, anyway, knew the way.

The rare passers-by stopped and turned to aim, between amazed and indignant. The coachman’s sleep on the box and the dead man’s sleep inside the wagon: cold and dark, the dead man’s; warm and sunny, the coachman’s; and then that one companion with the little light umbrella and the black veil pulled down over her face: the whole of that mortal, in short, so quiet and alone, at that hour, burnt, really made one’s arms fall off.

That was no way to go to the other world! Badly chosen day, hour, season. It seemed that that dead man there had disdained to give death a suitable seriousness. It irritated. The coachman was almost right that he was asleep. And so had Scalabrino continued sleeping until the beginning of Via San Lorenzo! But the horses, as soon as they had passed the steep slope, turning into Via Volturno, thought well of advancing a little; and Scalabrino awoke.

Now, to wake up, to see a lanky, bearded gentleman standing on the pavement on the left, with big black glasses, draped in a grey suit, grinning, and to feel a large bundle of paper arrive in his face, up his tuba, was one and the same thing!

Before Scalabrino had time to recover, that gentleman had thrown himself in front of the horses, had stopped them and, making threatening gestures, as if he wanted to hurl his hands, having nothing else to hurl, he shouted, shouting:

– Me? Me? scoundrel! scoundrel! scoundrel! father of a family? father of eight children? scoundrel! scoundrel!

All the people in the street and all the shopkeepers and patrons rushed around the wagon, and all the tenants of the neighbouring houses looked out of their windows, and other curious people rushed in at the clamour from the next streets, who, unable to know what had happened, were panting, approaching this one and that one, and stood on their toes.

– But what was that?

– Um… it seems that… it says that… I don’t know!

– But is the dead man there?

– Where?

– In the wagon, is he?

– Uhm!… Who’s dead?

– He’ll get a fine!

– The dead man?

– The coachman…

– Why?

– Well… it seems that… he says that…

In the meantime, the lanky grey gentleman continued to shout at the window of a café where he had been dragged; he claimed the envelope that had been thrown at the coachman, but it was still hard to understand why he had thrown it at him. On the carriage, the cadaverous coachman, his myopic eyes squinted, put his tuba back on and answered the city guard, who, amid the hubbub and commotion, was taking notes in a notebook.

Eventually the wagon moved through the crowd that made way for it, shouting; but as it appeared again, under the light umbrella, with the black veil pulled down over its face, the only escort – silence. Only a few brats whistled.

What had happened?

Nothing. A small distraction. Until three days ago, Scalabrino, dazed by the sun, woken up suddenly, had forgotten he was on a hearse: it seemed to him that he was still on a hearse, and, accustomed as he had been for many years to inviting people to use his wood, when he saw that smiling gentleman standing there on the pavement, he waved to him if he wanted to get on.

And that gentleman, for a small sign, all that noise….

 

 

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