Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino Read Free Book Online Page B

underneath?" Carruba asked. That would have been great: to be down there, all sealed off, with the sea around them and over them, like being in a submarine.
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    "The one underneath is mined!" Menin said.
    "You're mined!" they said to him.
    They started down a companionway. After a few steps, they hesitated: at their feet the black water began, rustling in the enclosed space. Standing still and mute, the boys from Piazza dei Dolori looked at it; in the depths of that water there was the black glint of colonies of sea urchins, slowly unfolding their spines. And the walls on every side were encrusted with limpets, their shells dripping green algae; the iron of the walls seemed eroded. And there were crabs teeming at the edges of the water, thousands of crabs of every shape and every age, which scuttled on their curved, spoked legs, and opened their claws, and thrust forward their sightless eyes. The sea slapped dully in the space of the iron walls, licking those flat crab bellies. Perhaps the entire hold of the ship was full of groping crabs, and one day the ship would move on the crabs' legs and walk through the sea.
    The boys came up on deck again, at the prow. Then they saw the little girl. They hadn't seen her before, though it was as if she had always been there. She was a little girl of about six, fat, with long curly hair. She was all sunburned, wearing only little white pants. There was no telling where she had come from. She didn't even look at them, totally concerned with a medusa that was lying on its back on the wooden deck, the flabby festoons of its tentacles spread out. With a stick the little girl was trying to turn it upright.
    The Piazza dei Dolori boys stopped all around her, gaping. Mariassa was the first to step forward. He sniffed.
    "Who're you?" he said.
    The girl raised the pale-blue eyes in her dark, plump face; then she resumed working the stick as a lever under the medusa.
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    "She must be one of the Arenella gang," Carruba said; he knew them.
    The Arenella boys let some girls come with them to swim or play ball, and even to make war with reed weapons.
    "You," Mariassa said, "are our prisoner."
    "Gang!" Cicin said. "Take her alive!"
    The little girl went on poking at the jellyfish.
    "Battle stations!" Paulo yelled, as he happened to look around. "The Arenella gang!"
    While they had been involved with the girl, the Arenella boys, who spent their whole day in the sea, had come swimming underwater and silently climbed the anchor chain; now they appeared over the railings. They were short, stocky kids, light as cats, with shaved heads and dark skin. Their trunks weren't black and long and floppy like those of the Dolori boys, but consisted of a single length of white canvas.
    The battle began; the Piazza dei Dolori boys were thin, all nerves, except for Bombolo, who was a fatty; but they had a fanatical fury when they swung their fists, hardened by endless brawls in the little streets of the old city against the gangs from San Siro and the Giardinetti. At first the Arenella kids had the advantage, because of the surprise element; but then the Dolori gang perched on the ladders and there was no dislodging them. They wanted to avoid, at all cost, being forced to the railing, where it would be easy to dump them into the drink. Finally Pier Lingera, who was the strongest of the bunch and also the oldest and who hung out with them only because he had been kept back in school, managed to force one of the Arenella boys to the edge and push him into the sea.
    Then the Dolori gang took the offensive, and the Arenella kids, who felt more at home in the water and, being sensible,
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    had no notions about honor in their heads, one by one eluded their enemies and dived in.
    "Come and get us in the water. We dare you!" they yelled.
    "Gang! Follow me!" yelled Cicin, who was about to dive.
    "Are you crazy?" Mariassa held him back. "In the water they'd win hands down!" And he started shouting insults at the