Thereupon the little black faces stir. They throw up their arms and stretch out their palms in supplication before the evil foreign eye that gazes down from the edge. And soon this gaze attaches itself to one individual; he shoves backwards and forwards, and five others do it with him, who can’t yet make out which one of them is the target of this long look; but the weak, fear-crippled mass of monkeys does not budge. Then the long, indifferent gaze nails its arbitrary victim; and at last it’s completely impossible to control oneself any longer, not to show either too much or too little fear: And from one moment to the next the lapse of self-control swells, while one soul digs into another till the hate is there, and the crack gives way, and without shame or poise a creature whines under torture. With the release of a scream, the others rush apart on down the ditch; they flicker dimly about like the damned souls in the flames of purgatory, and gather chattering cheerfully as far from the scene as possible.
When it’s all over with, the persecutor climbs with a feathery grip up the big tree to its highest branch, strides out to the very end of the branch, peacefully seats himself, and serious, erect, and ever so long, he stays like that without rousing. The beam of his glance glides over the Pincio and Villa Borghese; and where it leaves the gardens behind, there beneath it lies the great yellow city, over which, still swathed in the green shimmering cloud of the treetop, it floats, oblivious to all, suspended in midair.
On the beach they’ve dug out a little pit with their hands, and from a sack of black earth they’re pouring in fat earthworms; the loose black earth and the mass of worms make for an obscure, moldy, enticing ugliness in the clean white sand. Beside this a very tidy looking wooden chest is placed. It looks like a long, not particularly wide drawer or counting board, and is full of clean yarn; and on the other side of the pit another such, but empty, drawer is placed.
The hundred hooks attached to the yarn in the one drawer are neatly arranged on the end of a small iron pole and are now being unfastened one after the other and laid in the empty drawer, the bottom of which is filled with nothing but clean wet sand. A very tidy operation. In the meantime, however, four long, lean and strong hands oversee the process as carefully as nurses to make sure that each hook gets a worm.
The men who do this crouch two by two on knees and heels, with mighty, bony backs, long, kindly faces, and pipes in their mouths. They exchange incomprehensible words that flow forth as softly as the motion of their hands. One of them takes up a fat earthworm with two fingers, tears it into three pieces with the same two fingers of the other hand, as easily and exactly as a shoemaker snips off the paper band after he’s taken the measurement; the other one then presses these squirming pieces calmly and carefully onto each hook. This having been accomplished, the worms are then doused with water and laid in neat little beds, one next to the other, in the drawer with the soft sand, where they can die without immediately losing their freshness.
It is a quiet, delicate activity, whereby the coarse fishermen’s fingers step softly as on tiptoes. You have to pay close attention. In fair weather the dark blue sky arches above and the seagulls circle high over the land like white swallows.
Once there was a better time, when you rode a wood-stiff pony pedantically ever returning around the same circle, and with a short rod poked for copper rings held still by a wooden arm. That time is gone. These days the fishermen’s boys drink champagne mixed with cognac. And little swings hang in a circle on four times thirty little iron chains, one circle on the inside and one outside, so that as you fly side by side, you grab each other by the hand, leg, or apron, and shriek fiendishly. This carousel stands on the little square with the memorial for the fallen soldiers, next to the linden tree where the geese like to roost. It has a motor that revs up at the right time, and chalk-white spotlights over many little warm lights. If in the darkness you happen to grope your way closer, the wind’ll fling shreds of music, lights, girls’ voices and laughter at you. The orchestrion cries with a sob. The iron chains screech. You fly round in a circle, but also, if you wish, upward or downward, outward or inward, back to back or between the legs. The boys spur on their swings and pinch the girls where they can feel it, or tear the shrieking damsels along with them; and the girls also grab each other in flight, and then in pairs they scream just as loud as if one of them were a boy. So they all swing through the cone of light into the darkness and are suddenly thrust back into the light; paired off anew, with foreshortened limbs and black mouths, whizzing, bedazzled bundles of clothing, they fly on their backs or on their bellies or obliquely toward heaven or hell. After a very short while of this wild gallop, the orchestrion quickly falls back into a trot, like an old circus horse, then it paces and soon stands still. The man with the pewter plate makes the rounds but you stay seated or maybe switch girls. And unlike in the city, no ever-changing crowd frequents the carousel the few days it’s around; because here always the same ones fly from the advent of darkness on, for two to three hours, all eight or fourteen days, up until the man with the pewter plate grows tired of it all and one morning has moved on.
An acclaimed psychologist wrote: “. .
1 comment