italo calvino books

She's the last descendant of a ruined family! Where does a child run when he is being chased? The days were growing longer: with his motorbike, after work, Marcovaldo set to exploring the river along its course before the city, and the little streams, its tributaries. Bored, the children ripped away the leash, turned the animal loose at a place where all the paths of the roofs opened out, an oblique and angular sea, and they left. Signor Rizieri came to Marcovaldo's house looking for him; he had another old man with him, Cavalier Ulrico, who dragged one leg and wanted to start the treatment at once. The Marchesa's voice became almost a scream, as if she wanted to drown out the sizzle of the oil in the pan, which came through the window along with the aroma of fried fish. ", "Then that's another story. "Look! The rabbit followed him, cautiously bit the carrot and began gnawing it diligently, in Marcovaldo's hand. "There's a herd of cattle passing in the street. He had a spare nose: a pepper, and he stuck it into the snow man. It so happened that a police truck had passed through the city, with a loudspeaker shouting: "Attention, attention! In those hours, a cat that peeped in at a window was always welcome company, and a guide for new explorations. ITALO CALVINO (1923–1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century's greatest storytellers. The boys were so excited they couldn't sleep anymore, and they made plans for the future. At that moment he saw the bridge; and from the statues and lamps that adorned the railings, from the breadth of the arches that touched the sky, he recognized it: he hadn't realized how far he had come. "In a modern neighborhood like ours, a mouse-nest like this… it should be forbidden…", "Why, I picked my apartment precisely because it overlooked this little bit of green…", "Green, hell! As he eats, he thinks: "Why am I so happy to taste the flavor of my wife's cooking here, when at home, among the quarrels and tears, the debts that crop up in every conversation, I can't enjoy it?" He went and looked at the moon, which was full, big above trees and roofs. The children imitated their parents. And his family, with their carts, came after him. But he too was expecting his son's return evening after evening, though, unlike the boy's mother, he wasn't thinking of the schedules of trains and buses: he was listening at night to the footsteps on the street as if the little window of the room were the mouth of a seashell, re-echoing, when you put your ear to it, the sounds of the mountain. They came in bunches, some talking in loud voices or laughing, sticking those canes into the grass or carrying them, hung by the curved handle, over their arm. Signora!" It's been a week… It's been a month… The weather must be bad…" And she could find no peace, even though having one fewer at table every day was in itself a relief. What kind of a present could you give him? Work ended at one and they were all off until Monday. He dispelled the obsession of garbage and slept. Marcovaldo bent to touch the sand, crushed it in his palm; it was wet, a mush, a mire: even where the sun had formed a dry and crumbling crust, an inch below it was still damp. "Hurry," Marcovaldo said to his three boys, "take the jars, go and catch as many wasps as you can." There was no telling whether the city hidden under that mantle was still the same or whether, in the night, another had taken its place. and the spools of colored string spun like tops, the sheets of flowered paper fluttered their wings, enfolding purchases in little packages, and the little packages in big packages, bound, each, with its butterfly knot. Michelino asked. When Marcovaldo reopened his eyes, after being stunned, the courtyard was completely cleared, with not even one flake of snow. The three little ones had listened to this dialog with wide eyes. But they didn't know where to put it; nobody wanted it at home. But the few shadows and lights his eyes could discern refused to form any known image. He proceeded along paths, among the clumps of willows, riding his motorbike as far as he could go, then-after leaving it in a bush-on foot, until he reached the stream. "Excuse me for asking: but who's forcing you to stay?" Now it was at the very edge of the hollow in the trunk, and Michelino was about to lower the jar on it, when he felt two other big wasps fling themselves on him as if they wanted to sting him on the head. He looked for a path, moving up the river. From the tins of oil it was no longer the golden juice of the olive that flowed, but the fat of old mules, cleverly distilled. Their trunks were very very slender, erect or slanting; and their crowns were flat and outspread, revealing the strangest shapes and the strangest colors when a passing car illuminated them with its headlights. The plant, after that impetuous effort of growth that had involved it as long as the rain lasted, was virtually exhausted. Prisoner night and day of those horrid beasts! ", "How can she feed the cats when she doesn't have food for herself? "Gianfranco is so clever. "That's the way!" After the bridge there were the falls. Michelino was overcome with enthusiasm. ", "Don't they get fined if they trample the lawns?". From this fact, and from the way it pulled on the carrot, it was obvious that they kept it on short rations. There, after days and days of sordid stay in the hospital, at the moment of leaving, he discovered a friendly presence, which would have sufficed to fill his hours and his thoughts. "I worked like a mule," he said, and spat on the ground. "I won't have even an ounce of this powder in my house!" They headed home. The man stroked it on the back and, meanwhile, squeezed it, to see if it was fat. "I was looking at a flight of woodcock…" he said. Marcovaldo heaved a sigh of relief, settled on his uncomfortable perch, and resumed work. Marcovaldo found himself suspended in a space impossible to imagine: at times, up above, red and green lights appeared, arranged in irregular figures, like constellations. "Good evening!" He saw the sky charged with sunlight, the low summer clouds passing. "Of course. At work or in the café Marcovaldo heard them discussing these things, and every time he felt something like a mule's kick in his stomach, or a mouse running down his esophagus. It was the hour towards sunset. You'll catch something, in this moonlight!". The neighborhood kids soon realized what Michelino and his brothers went out hunting for all day, and immediately those papers, to which none of them had paid any attention before, became a sought-after booty. "Because I'm not the Human Relations Santa Claus, after all; I'm the Public Relations Santa Claus. Italo Calvino was a writer who remained true to himself by restlessly seeking change. The voice became a whisper, as if to confide a secret. At that, the rabbit twitched, and Marcovaldo jumped up like an epileptic. "Why is there a stairway without a house over it?" I only wanted to tell you, in case you didn't know, that the trout was stolen from me, by that cat, and I'm the one who caught it. With the excuse that I didn't have a work-contract, what did they pay me? In Marcovaldo's house that evening they had burned the last kindling, and the family, all bundled in overcoats, was watching the embers fade in the stove, and the little clouds rise from their own mouths at every breath. "Do we own a laundry or a bank?" A man, really a man, with his arms open, dressed-it seemed-in a yellow overall, was waving two luminous little disks like the kind station-masters wave. With a fake beard, as usual." her mother said. The rabbit turned, looked for other signs of treachery around, to choose the best one to give in to. And all of a sudden, about three hundredweight of snow fell right on top of him. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy, the Cosmicomics collection of short stories, and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler. That is very different." the children asked. Say thanks for the cherries. "I don't mean to trouble you. And he gave his consent. There, now it was as if he lay on the bank of a stream, with the woods above him; he slept. "Go back! They locked me up in here to punish me, because I wouldn't eat it. Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. In one place, the panels of one wall had been dismantled; there was a ladder set there, hammers, carpenter's and mason's tools. As a traffic cop, his face purple, wrote name and address in a notebook, Marcovaldo sought again with his eyes those wings in the sky; but they had vanished. If I found a way to drop a line from up here and make one of those trout bite, Marcovaldo thought, I couldn't be accused of theft; at worst, of fishing in an unauthorized place. At this area the aisles of many departments converged, and from each opening one of Marcovaldo's children appeared, all pushing carts laden like freighters. ©2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In the midst of the room, directly under that pane, there was a little glass fish-tank, a kind of aquarium, where some fat trout were swimming. Now it was approaching the garret window, now a hand would stretch out to catch it: instead, all of a sudden, the window slammed and closed it out. the children asked every minute. But even though he had thought about this, when he opened the window in the morning, he couldn't believe his eyes: the plant now filled half the window, the leaves had at least doubled in number, and no longer drooped under their own weight, but were erect and sharp as swords. To launch their products, they distributed through all the mailboxes of the city similar coupons, which entitled the recipient to larger and larger free samples. The healed man recognizes it as natural and usual; and suddenly he notices once more the smell of the hospital. A great bowing and scraping of doormen, attendants and flunkies, and the chairman, Commendatore Alboino, came out of the main entrance. Then, after a series of exchanges and negotiations, they reached an agreement: an organized system of hunting was more profitable than helter-skelter grabbing. ", Isolina was reading a magazine of sentimental romances. "We're let out on a pass, before taps… We go to bed early… Obviously, we can't go beyond the grounds…", "This is part of the sanatorium. asked his wife, who slept with one eye open. "What are we going to feed it, when we don't have enough for ourselves?" And so, what with angles, niches, junctures, posts, Marcovaldo's route followed an irregular pattern; several times he thought the wall was ending, then discovered it continued in another direction; after so many turns he no longer knew what direction he was headed in, or rather, on which side he should jump, if he wanted to move down to the street. With all these provisions at their disposal, Marcovaldo and family could have spent the winter there, never coming out. A carrot!" They barely looked up. To approach the words, Marcovaldo climbed up a no-parking sign. Count them! The moon suddenly faded, the sky became a flat, uniform black, the stars lost their radiance, and the cats, male and female, that for ten seconds had been letting out howls of love, moving languidly towards each other along the drainpipes and the roof-trees, squatted on the tiles, their fur bristling in the phosphorescent neon light. Marcovaldo, who had abandoned his line at that moment to run and grab the fish, saw it snatched from under his nose, hook and all. Marcovaldo inquired. "If you're good, you can come and watch your Papà taking presents to people," he said, straddling the seat of the little delivery wagon. An empty suit of armor is the hero of this witty novella set in the Early Middle Ages by the acclaimed author of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. "Leo the lion!" It was time to go back. Are you the one who's been throwing that snow there? ", "She hates cats. And Marcovaldo was delirious, vainly pursuing with his nostrils' imagination the fragrance of a rose arbor. About a hundred yards beyond the bridge, the riverbed made a drop; the barge would drop down the falls and overturn, and he would be smothered by the sand, the water, the barge, with no hope of emerging alive.

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