After her mother had gone, Vere waited for a moment, then ran lightly to
the house, possessed herself of a dolce and a packet of cigarettes, and
went down the steps to the Pool of San Francesco, full of hospitable
intentions towards the singing boy. She found him still sitting astride
of the boat’s prow, not yet free of his reverie apparently; for when
she gave a low call of “Pescator!” prolonging the last syllable with the
emphasis and the accent of Naples, but always softly, he started, and
nearly dropped into the sea the piece of bread he was lifting to his
mouth. Recovering himself in time to save the bread deftly with one
brown hand, he turned half round, leaning on his left arm, and stared at
Vere with large, inquiring eyes. She stood by the steps and beckoned to
him, lifting up the packet of cigarettes, then pointing to his sleeping
companions:
“Come here for a minute!”
The boy smiled, sprang up, and leaped onto the islet. As he came to her,
with the easy, swinging walk of the barefooted sea-people, he pulled up
his white trousers, and threw out his chest with an obvious desire to
“fare figura” before the pretty Padrona of the islet. When he reached
her he lifted his hand to his bare head forgetfully, meaning to take off
his cap to her. Finding that he had no cap, he made a laughing grimace,
threw up his chin and, thrusting his tongue against his upper teeth and
opening wide his mouth, uttered a little sound most characteristically
Neapolitan--a sound that seemed lightly condemnatory of himself. This
done, he stood still before Vere, looking at the cigarettes and at the
dolce.
“I’ve brought these for you,” she said.
“Grazie, Signorina.”
He did not hold out his hand, but his eyes, now devoted entirely to
the cigarettes, began to shine with pleasure. Vere did not give him the
presents at once. She had something to explain first.
“We mustn’t wake them,” she said, pointing towards the boat in which the
men were sleeping. “Come a little way with me.”
She retreated a few steps from the sea, followed closely by the eager
boy.
“We sha’n’t disturb them now,” she said, stopping. “Do you know why I’ve
brought you these?”
She stretched out her hands, with the dolce and the cigarettes.
The boy threw his chin up again and half shut his eyes.
“No, Signorina.”
“Because you did what I told you.”
She spoke rather with the air of a little queen.
“I don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you hear me call out to you from up there?”--she pointed to the
cliff above their heads--“when you were sitting in the boat? I called to
you to go in after the men.”
“Why?”
“Why! Because I thought you were a lazy boy.”
He laughed. All his brown face gave itself up to laughter--eyes, teeth,
lips, cheeks, chin. His whole body seemed to be laughing. The idea of
his being lazy seemed to delight his whole spirit.
“You would have been lazy if you hadn’t done what I told you,” said
Vere, emphatically, forcing her words through his merriment with
determination. “You know you would.”
“I never heard you call, Signorina.”
“You didn’t?”
He shook his head several times, bent down, dipped his fingers in the
sea, put them to his lips: “I say it.”
“Really?”
There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She felt dethroned.
“But then, you haven’t earned these,” she said, looking at him almost
with rebuke, “if you went in of your own accord.”
“I go in because it is my mestiere, Signorina,” the boy said, simply. “I
go in by force.”
He looked at her and then again at the cigarettes. His expression said,
“Can you refuse me?” There was a quite definite and conscious attempt to
cajole her to generosity in his eyes, and in the pose he assumed. Vere
saw it, and knew that if there had been a mirror within reach at
that moment the boy would have been looking into it, frankly admiring
himself.
In Italy the narcissus blooms at all seasons of the year.
She was charmed by the boy, for he did his luring well, and she was
susceptible to all that was naturally picturesque. But a gay little
spirit of resistance sprang up like a flame and danced within her.
She let her hands fall to her sides.
“But you like going in?”
“Signorina?”
“You enjoy diving?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and again used what seemed with him a
favorite expression.
“Signorina, I must enjoy it, by force.”
“You do it wonderfully. Do you know that? You do it better than the
men.”
Again the conscious look came into the boy’s face and body, as if his
soul were faintly swaggering.
“There is no one in the Bay who can dive better than I can,” he
answered. “Giovannino thinks he can. Well, let him think so. He would
not dare to make a bet with me.”
“He would lose it if he did,” said Vere. “I’m sure he would. Just now
you were under water nearly a minute by my mother’s watch.”
“Where is the Signora?” said the boy, looking round.
“Why d’you ask?”
“Why--I can stay under longer than that.”
“Now, look here!” said the girl, eagerly. “Never mind Madre! Go down
once for me, won’t you? Go down once for me, and you shall have the
dolce and two packets of cigarettes.”
“I don’t want the dolce, Signorina; a dolce is for women,” he said,
with the complete bluntness characteristic of Southern Italians and of
Sicilians.
“The cigarettes, then.”
“Va bene. But the water is too shallow here.”
“We’ll take my boat.”
She pointed to a small boat, white with a green line, that was moored
close to them.
“Va bene,” said the boy again.
He rolled his white trousers up above his knees, stripped off his blue
jersey, leaving the thin vest that was beneath it, folded the jersey
neatly and laid it on the stones, tightened his trousers at the back,
then caught hold of the rope by which Vere’s boat was moored to the
shore and pulled the boat in.
Very carefully he helped Vere into it.
“I know a good place,” he said, “where you can see right down to the
bottom.”
Taking the oars he slowly paddled a little way out to a deep clear pool
of the sea.
“I’ll go in here, Signorina.”
He stood up straight, with his feet planted on each side of the boat’s
prow, and glanced at the water intimately, as might a fish. Then he
shot one more glance at Vere and at the cigarettes, made the sign of the
cross, lifted his brown arms above his head, uttered a cry, and dived
cleanly below the water, going down obliquely till he was quite dim in
the water.
Vere watched him with deep attention. This feat of the boy fascinated
her. The water between them made him look remote, delicate and
unearthly--neither boy nor fish. His head, she could see, was almost
touching the bottom. She fancied that he was actually touching bottom
with his hands. Yes, he was. Bending low over the water she saw his
brown fingers, stretched out and well divided, promenading over the
basin of the sea as lightly and springily as the claws of a crab
tip-toeing to some hiding-place. Presently he let himself down a little
more, pressed his flat palms against the ground, and with the impetus
thus gained made his body shoot back towards the surface feet foremost.
Then bringing his body up till it was in a straight line with his feet,
he swam slowly under water, curving first in this direction then in
that, with a lithe ease that was enchantingly graceful. Finally, he
turned over on his back and sank slowly down until he looked like a
corpse lying at the bottom of the sea.
Then Vere felt a sickness of fear steal over her, and leaning over the
sea till her face almost touched the water, she cried out fiercely:
“Come up! Come up! Presto! Presto!”
As the boy had seemed to obey her when she cried out to him from the
summit of the cliff, so he seemed to obey her now.
When her voice died down into the sea-depths he rose from those depths,
and she saw his eyes laughing, his lips laughing at her, freed from the
strange veil of the water, which had cast upon him a spectral aspect,
the likeness of a thing deserted by its soul.
“Did you hear me that time?” Vere said, rather eagerly.
The boy lifted his dark head from the water to shake it, drew a long
breath, trod water, then threw up his chin with the touch of tongue
against teeth which is the Neapolitan negative.
“You didn’t! Then why did you come up?”
He swam to the boat.
“It pleased me to come.”
She looked doubtful.
“I believe you are birbante,” she said, slowly. “I am nearly sure you
are.”
The boy was just getting out, pulling himself up slowly to the boat by
his arms, with his wet hands grasping the gunwale firmly. He looked at
Vere, with the salt drops running down his sunburnt face, and dripping
from his thick, matted hair to his strong neck and shoulders. Again his
whole face laughed, as, nimbly, he brought his legs from the water and
stood beside her.
“Birbante, Signorina?”
“Yes. Are you from Naples?”
“I come from Mergellina, Signorina.”
Vere looked at him half-doubtfully, but still with innocent admiration.
There was something perfectly fearless and capable about him that
attracted her.
He rowed in to shore.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Sixteen years old, Signorina.”
“I am sixteen, too.”
They reached the islet, and Vere got out. The boy followed her, fastened
the boat, and moved away a few steps. She wondered why, till she saw him
stop in a sun-patch and let the beams fall full upon him.
“You aren’t afraid of catching cold?” she asked.
He threw up his chin. His eyes went to the cigarettes.
“Yes,” said Vere, in answer to the look, “you shall have one. Here!”
She held out the packet. Very carefully and neatly the boy, after
holding his right hand for a moment to the sun to get dry, drew out a
cigarette.
“Oh, you want a match!”
He sprang away and ran lightly to the boat. Without waking his
companions he found a matchbox and lit the cigarette. Then he came back,
on the way stopping to get into his jersey.
Vere sat down on a narrow seat let into the rock close to the sun-patch.
She was nursing the dolce on her knee.
“You won’t have it?” she asked.
He gave her his usual negative, again stepping full into the sun.
“Well, then, I shall eat it. You say a dolce is for women!”
“Si, Signorina,” he answered, quite seriously.
She began to devour it slowly, while the boy drew the cigarette smoke
into his lungs voluptuously.
“And you are only sixteen?” she asked.
“Si, Signorina.”
“As young as I am! But you look almost a man.”
“Signorina, I have always worked. I am a man.”
He squared his shoulders. She liked the determination, the resolution in
his face; and she liked the face, too. He was a very handsome boy, she
thought, but somehow he did not look quite Neapolitan. His eyes lacked
the round and staring impudence characteristic of many Neapolitans she
had seen. There was something at times impassive in their gaze. In shape
they were long, and slightly depressed at the corners by the cheeks, and
they had full, almost heavy, lids. The features of the boy were small
and straight, and gave no promise of eventual coarseness. He was
splendidly made. When Vere looked at him she thought of an arrow. Yet he
was very muscular, and before he dived she had noticed that on his arms
the biceps swelled up like smooth balls of iron beneath the shining
brown skin.
“What month were you born in?” she asked.
“Signorina, I believe I was born in March. I believe I was sixteen last
March.”
“Then I am older than you are!”
This seemed to the boy a matter of indifference, though it was evidently
exercising the girl beside him. She had finished the dolce now, and he
was smoking the last fraction of an inch of the cigarette, economically
determined to waste none of it, even though he burnt his fingers.
“Have another cigarette,” Vere added, after a pause during which she
considered him carefully. “You can’t get anything more out of that one.”
“Grazie, Signorina.”
He took it eagerly.
“Do tell me your name, won’t you?” Vere went on.
“Ruffo, Signorina.”
“Ruffo--that’s a nice name. It sounds strong and bold. And you live at
Mergellina?”
“Si, Signorina. But I wasn’t born there. I wasn’t born in Naples at
all.”
“Where were you born?”
“In America, Signorina, near New York. I am a Sicilian.”
“A Sicilian, are you!”
“Si, Signorina.”
“I am a little bit Sicilian, too; only a little tiny bit--but still--”
She waited to see the effect upon him. He looked at her steadily with
his long bright eyes.
“You are Sicilian, Signorina?”
“My great-grandmother was.”
“Si?”
His voice sounded incredulous.
“Don’t you believe me?” she cried, rather hotly.
“Ma si, Signorina! Only--that’s not very Sicilian, if the rest is
English. You are English, Signorina, aren’t you?”
“The rest of me is. Are you all Sicilian?”
“Signorina, my mother is Sicilian.”
“And your father, too?”
“Signorina, my father is dead,” he said, in a changed voice. “Now I live
with my mother and my step-father. He--Patrigno--he is Neapolitan.”
There was a movement in the boat. The boy looked round.
“I must go back to the boat, Signorina,” he said.
“Oh, must you?” Vere said. “What a pity! But look, they are really still
asleep.”
“I must go back, Signorina,” he protested.
“You want to sleep, too, perhaps?”
He seized the excuse.
“Si, Signorina. Being under the sea so much--it tires the head and the
eyes. I want to sleep, too.”
His face, full of life, denied his words, but Vere only said:
“Here are the cigarettes.”
“Grazie, Signorina.”
“And I promised you another packet. Well, wait here--just here, d’you
see?--under the bridge, and I’ll throw it down, and you must catch it.”
“Si, Signorina.”
He took his stand on the spot she pointed out, and she disappeared up
the steps towards the house.
“Madre! Madre!”
Hermione heard Vere’s voice calling below a moment later.
“What is it?”
There was a quick step on the stairs, and the girl ran in.
“One more packet of cigarettes--may I? It’s instead of the dolce. Ruffo
says only women eat sweet things.”
“Ruffo!”
“Yes, that’s his name. He’s been diving for me. You never saw anything
like it! And he’s a Sicilian. Isn’t it odd? And sixteen--just as I am.
May I have the cigarettes for him?”
“Yes, of course. In that drawer there’s a whole box of the ones Monsieur
Emile likes.”
“There would be ten cigarettes in a packet. I’ll give him ten.”
She counted them swiftly out.
“There! And I’ll make him catch them all, one by one. It will be more
fun than throwing only a packet. Addio, mia bella Madre! Addi-io!
Addi-io!”
And singing the words to the tune of “Addio, mia bella Napoli,” she
flitted out of the room and down the stairs.
“Ruffo! Ruffo!”
A minute later she was leaning over the bridge to the boy, who stood
sentinel below. He looked up, and saw her laughing face full of merry
mischief, and prepared to catch the packet she had promised him.
“Ruffo, I’m so sorry, but I can’t find another packet of cigarettes.”
The boy’s bright face changed, looked almost sad, but he called up:
“Non fa niente, Signorina!” He stood still for a moment, then made a
gesture of salutation, and added; “Thank you, Signorina. A rivederci!”
He moved to go to the boat, but Vere cried out, quickly:
“Wait, Ruffo! Can you catch well?”
“Signorina?”
“Look out now!”
Her arm was thrust out over the bridge, and Ruffo, staring up, saw a big
cigarette--a cigarette such as he had never seen--in her small fingers.
Quickly he made a receptacle of his joined hands, his eyes sparkling and
his lips parted with happy anticipation.
“One!”
The cigarette fell and was caught.
“Two!”
A second fell. But this time Ruffo was unprepared, and it dropped on the
rock by his bare feet.
“Stupido!” laughed the girl.
“Ma, Signorina--!”
“Three!”
It had become a game between them, and continued to be a game until all
the ten cigarettes had made their journey through the air.
Vere would not let Ruffo know when a cigarette was coming, but kept him
on the alert, pretending, holding it poised above him between his finger
and thumb until even his eyes blinked from gazing upward; then dropping
it when she thought he was unprepared, or throwing it like a missile.
But she soon knew that she had found her match in the boy. And when he
caught the tenth and last cigarette in his mouth she clapped her hands,
and cried out so enthusiastically that one of the men in the boat heaved
himself up from the bottom, and, choking down a yawn, stared with heavy
amazement at the young virgin of the rocks, and uttered a “Che Diavolo!”
under his stiff mustache.
Vere saw his astonishment, and swiftly, with a parting wave of her hand
to Ruffo, she disappeared, leaving her protégé to run off gayly with his
booty to his comrades of the _Sirena del Mare_.