next morning, while the sun gave its first touch to the bronze head of garibaldi, bertino tied on an apron and set to work in signor di bello’s shop, that peerless grocery whose small window and large door look tranquilly on the park of paradise. for a dozen years it had been known far and wide among italia’s children as “the sign of the wooden bunch.” the nickname came of a piece of carved oak simulating a bunch of bananas that hung before the door. in the early days of his business life the padrone had learned that the air of mulberry was singularly fatal to the real fruit that he put on show outside. it happened some days that as many as twenty bananas on one stem [pg 38]would evaporate, though all the others remained intact. it was always the ones nearest the ground that vanished. one evening it struck signor di bello that a violent chemical change in the exposed fruit would put an end to its mysterious disintegration. so he substituted the bananas of art for those of nature. the evaporation ceased straightway, but for two or three mornings thereafter certain small boys, on their way to the five points mission school, beheld with bitter disappointment the oaken symbol, and answered its grin of mockery with looks of blackest disgust.
those boys are workingmen now, and when they dream of the springtimes of childhood, they see giorgio di bello, paint brush in hand, giving a fresh skin of yellow to the make-believe bananas. it was a promise of vernal roses as sure as the chirp of a bluebird in the churchyard grass or the gladsome advent of simone the sardinian with his hokey-pokey cart. when the people saw him giving the bunch its annual sprucing up, [pg 39]they were wont to exclaim: “bravo! summer is coming. soon we shall have music in paradise.”
the morning of bertino’s début at the shop was a bright one of young june, and the baby maples of the park were showing their first dimples of green. it was the blatant hour when mulberry’s street bazaar is in full cry; when the sham battle fought every morning between honeyed sellers and scornful buyers is in hot movement; when dimes and coppers are the vender’s prize against flounders, cabbages, saucepans, calicoes, apples, and shoestrings, as the stake that fires the housewife’s tongue and eye; when stout-lunged hucksters cut the din with the siren songs their kind have sung for ages in the market place.
spick and span in the clean blouse of monday, signor di bello stood on his broad threshold ready for the day’s trade. he had just shown bertino how to convert the prosy doorway into a bower abloom with garlands of freckled salame, cordons of silvery garlic, [pg 40]clusters of cacciocavalli cheese; how to hang in the entry luring sheaves of wild herbs, strings of hazelnuts, and the golden colocynths that are—as all must know—an anodyne for every ill. to flaunt this ravishing group to the senses of the colony was bertino’s first duty of the day. that accomplished, he set out on either side of the doorway the tubs of tempting stockfish, the black peas of lombardy, parched tomatoes and red peppers, lupini beans in fresh water, ripe olives in brine, and macaroni of sundry types.
presently the foraging women, their blue-and-red-skirted hips wabbling under the weight of well-loaded baskets balanced on their heads, began to enter the shop. dexterously taking down their burdens and setting them on the counter, they called out their wants in the varied jargons of the peninsula. not only was signor di bello equal to them, one and all, but he could give back two raps in the haggling set-to for every tap that he received. when the morning had worn on, [pg 41]and the lay of the last vender had died out, he opened a small can of yellow paint, chose a brush from the stock, placed it in the hand of his nephew, and said:
“nipote mio, do you see the green spots on the boughs? well, it is time to give the bunch a new coat.”
bertino applied the colour, while his uncle looked on with fond and critical eye, for it was the first time he had intrusted the historic task to other hands than his own. before the finishing touch had been given he was called into the shop to hack off a four-cent chunk of roman cheese. a moment later bertino stepped back to survey his handiwork, the brush at heedless poise—mulberry’s sidewalks are narrow and teeming—when an angry voice fairly stung his ear:
“guarda, donkey! what are you about?”
he turned and looked into the blazing eyes of a tall young woman, whose full-flowered beauty startled him more than her [pg 42]words had done, and for the moment his tongue had no speech.
“clumsy dog! why don’t you look?” she began again, drawing out a gingham handkerchief of purple and putting it to her face. on her cheek, just where the flush faded in the rich tawn of her skin, was a spot of yellow—as strangely there as though some fool had tried to adorn a radiant blossom.
“but excuse me; a thousand pardons. i did not see you,” he blurted. “i did not see you, veramente, signorina—beautiful signorina.”
“bah!” she flung back. “where are your eyes, calf of a countryman?”
he watched her as she sailed away above the heads of mulberry’s little brown maids and matrons, and for hours afterward felt the spell of her massing black tresses, her proud step, and the rugged poetry of her plenteous line.
small matters these—a spot of fortuitous colour, flashing eyes among a people who are always flashing, and a mountaineer with [pg 43]youth in his veins thinking about a well-knit and warm-hued maid who has proved her fire with a blistering tongue. but in the light of all that has come and gone, that stain of yellow may not be wiped out from this record of the warring dilemmas that sharpened the lives of certain little people of the little world wherein we have set foot.
