NONNA
NATALE, as will have been discovered by this time, was an Italian
circus boy, a cheerful, happy little soul, who loved his “profession”,
and whose ambition reached to the giddy height of some day rivaling
even Antonio Bisbini in his wonderful trapeze performances. He loved
everything connected with the life he led,--the long slow journeyings
through his beautiful Italy, the camping out at night along the quiet
roads, the open-air loungings in some village through the sunny days,
until the evening should come and the oil lamps be lighted in the tent,
and the people come crowding in to see Arduina dance the tight rope,
and little Olga do her wonderful turns and twists on the carpet, and
to applaud Antonio and the clown and the horses, and--yes, and himself
too, little Natale, stiff as his short thin legs always were and
hopeless, as Arduina declared, in his bows and scrapes.
Besides the three musicians, there were two families in the strolling
company. Giovanni Marzuchetti was the clown, also the stepfather of
Paulo, Arduina, Pietro, Natale and little Maria, and husband of Elvira,
the black-haired mother of the five children. This man had no children
of his own but was kind in his rough, clownish way to Natale and the
rest.
It is not difficult to understand why Giovanni should have married
Elvira and her family, when it was known that the woman brought to her
husband a small fortune in the shape of her own wonderful skill as
a rider of horses, and the little ones as possible acrobats of the
future. They had been married for two years now, and if Giovanni had
counted largely upon his ready-made family for speedy reënforcements
in the “ring”, he must have become a little discouraged even by this
time. It is true that Paulo and Arduina were well trained in the art of
circus acting; but poor Pietro, the middle-sized one, who was twelve
years old, was always ailing and feeble. Sleeping out of doors in the
marshy regions had developed in his system a chronic fever which could
not be thrown off, even with the aid of Nonna’s assiduous doctoring,
and lately the weakness had settled in one leg and foot, threatening
permanent lameness.
Natale, who came next, was agile enough when running about on his slim
brown legs, but his funny stiff-legged somersaults and awkward antics
in the ring were matters of jesting among the whole troop. Poor little
Natale, who did so wish to be like Antonio Bisbini!
Lastly there was Maria, who was a mere baby and as yet only just
learning to stand upright on her stepfather’s head.
But Antonio Bisbini, the father of the other family, was the star of
the little troop of strolling players. Tall and lean and muscular, he
stood six feet two in his sandals. His blond hair and skin and strong,
clear-cut features gave him the look of some stern young Viking from
the cold forests of the North, yet this youthful-looking, ruddy athlete
was already the father of seven young children.
No one in the company, not even the clown, could hold a candle to
Antonio in looks or in graceful skill. Natale was sure that the noblest
and most beautiful figure in all Italy was that of Antonio Bisbini
as he would step forth from behind the tent-curtain, ready to thrill
the spectators about the ring. The flesh-colored tights clothing his
limbs showed to perfection their symmetry and grace, relieved by the
brilliantly spangled hip garment of black velvet and fringe, while the
proud glance of his gray eyes and the light tread of his feet never
failed to impress the beholder.
Antonio’s oldest, little red-haired Olga, tumbled and danced with all
a healthy child’s love of activity and applause, and Oh! how Natale
envied her the perfect “wheels” she turned, one after the other with
dizzying swiftness across the dusty strip of carpet in the ring. But
the rest of Antonio’s seven were as yet too small to be useful as
tumblers or dancers, and Nonna’s hands were always full, while their
mother did her daring dances in the air.
The three musicians, then, and Nonna completed this strolling band of
twenty, with the two horses, the dogs and the twisted-necked pony. Poor
Caffero had grievously hurt his pretty neck one day when very young,
while tied in his stall and leaping to reach his food from a manger
set cruelly high. Since then he had trotted painfully through three
years of going up and down the earth, with his brown head and long neck
twisted far around to one side without the power of righting them.
Caffero would have made a pretty part of the show had not this accident
befallen him. As it was, he was good for little but helping to guide
the house-wagon along the weary roads. Yet every one loved Caffero.
On the day of the arrival at Cutigliano the two horses Tesoro and Il
Duca were left in their stalls in the village stables during the whole
afternoon, while Caffero was brought down the steep village street
and allowed to graze in the public field. Nonna herself had gone up
for him with Tito in her arms, after the midday meal of polenta, or
thick mush of yellow meal, had been eaten. As the trio passed through
the narrow street of the village, many heads turned to wonder at the
strangers--the gray-haired woman, the bright-eyed child in her arms,
and poor Caffero, who always seemed pulling against the leading rope
and trying to twist his head after something left behind.
It was while Nonna, a little later, was tying Caffero’s rope to a
tree in the field that she spied the two dogs asleep in the sun near
the edge of the terrace. As Tito recognized them at the same time,
and called them in his baby voice, the grandmother added her summons,
and was rather astonished at their failure to obey. They bounded to
their feet, it is true, but instead of scampering to meet her, they
stood still, quivering with nervous excitement and waving their tails
in much perplexity. Then as Tito began to fret and belabor the air
with his fists, Nonna started swiftly toward the dogs with something
threatening in her gait.
But where were they, those lazy brutes, which a moment before had
defied her and then had promptly disappeared? A few more hasty steps
brought Nonna near enough to the edge of the descent to see both Niero
and Bianco crouching over Natale on the lower terrace. The boy had been
awakened by the sudden onset of his faithful friends, and lay looking
lazily upward as Nonna and Tito peered over at him.
“Natalino!” the old woman exclaimed, and, at the word, Natale scrambled
to his feet.
“I am ready! Where am I to go?” he asked hurriedly, preparing to creep
up the bank. But Nonna only laughed and reached down a helping hand to
the child, as he clutched at the long grass for support.
“Come and eat your polenta,” she said, when Natale stood at her side,
the dogs panting close by. “I suppose they have saved you a bite. Why
did you run away? Though, as for that, you were not missed in all this
hurly-burly of arriving. Now, Niero, stand on your hind legs and beg.
See, Tito is fretting for you to do it--”
“But we haven’t a bone or a crust of bread for him, Nonna,” Natale
pleaded. “See how sadly his eyes look at you. Giovanni always gives him
a bone.”
“There! take to your legs then, poor thing!” Nonna cried in a friendly
way to the hungry dog. “Perhaps to-morrow there will be a bone. Who
knows?”
Natale ran off toward the wagon, followed by the patient animals, who
perhaps were well assured that he was going to share with them his own
scanty heap of polenta.
The brown house on wheels leaned slightly inward against the stone wall
for security, as the hill’s incline was steep at this point. The door
opened directly upon the top of the wall, which formed a broad and
convenient doorstep, reached from the ground by a short ladder. About
the wagon and in the field close by everybody was busy.
The great canvas of the tent had been unpacked from the top of the
wagon, and the two women sat on the ground patching the holes and
thin places worn in it by long use. Some of the men were making trips
back and forth from wagon and field, carrying sections of board for
inclosing the ring. These were to be set up in their places by and by,
when Antonio should have finished marking off the circle on the grass,
with the hole in the center for the tent pole. There was nothing, as
yet, for the children to do but loll in the shadow of the wagon, asleep
or awake, and chatter among themselves.
As Natale and the dogs drew near, Elvira, the boy’s mother, looked up
from her stitching and clapped her hand to her forehead on seeing them.
“Natale! I had forgotten the child. Little pest, where have you been,
away from us all, and your dinner? One would think you had friends in
the town and had been taking your polenta in grander houses than ours
here.”
Natale replied to these mocking words with only a rather naughty shrug
of the shoulders, and went to sit down on the lowest step of the short
ladder against the wall.
“Give him his polenta, Arduina,” Nonna called shrilly from a little way
behind. “He was asleep, Elvira, all tired out with walking to-day as
much as any man among us. I keep my eyes open. Don’t scold the boy.”
“One would think my Natale your own grandson, Nonna,” Elvira replied,
laughing good-naturedly.
“All boys are as her own sons or grandsons,” Nonna’s daughter-in-law
interposed carelessly, as the old woman passed on with Tito, perhaps to
see that Arduina gave Natale his proper share of mush.
In Nonna’s big warm heart there was indeed room for the sons and
grandsons of those who were too sparing of motherly love and care for
their own. The gray-haired woman had long ago accepted this wandering
life for the sake of continuing near to her only son, Antonio, the
acrobat, and Antonio’s children. When her boy at the age of twenty-two
had given up everything that his mother thought of worth in the
world--home, a decent, quiet life in it, books, school, a career as a
priest--in order to marry Cara, a rosy, lithe-limbed rope-dancer out of
Egypt, he had found that his mother was not going to be given up along
with these. By and by, when the babies began to come every year or two,
Nonna came to be appreciated even by the fantastic daughter-in-law
given her by Antonio, while in the hearts of all the little ones Nonna
was--well, Nonna,--and therefore everything good and patient and sweet.
It was Nonna who cared for the ailing Pietro, who rubbed Natale’s stiff
ankles and elbows with an ointment of her own invention to limber
them up, who thought to tuck Olga’s long red hair out of the way when
practice time came and the curling locks would have teased the little
face and shoulders turned upside down and hindside before. It was Nonna
who nursed the babies and put them to bed while the mothers rode the
horses in the tent, and Nonna who led the poor pony about to “fresh
fields and pastures new”, and Nonna who instructed giddy-brained
Arduina in the simple mysteries of concocting savory stews out of next
to nothing, and how to make corn meal for ten do service as polenta for
twice as many. The little troop could not have done without Nonna, no,
indeed!