Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories by Italo Calvino

copy. For a while now lots of the beggars have taken to writing their life stories in huge letters on the pavement, with pieces of coloured chalk: it’s a good way of getting people interested enough to read and then they feel obliged to part with some change.
    ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘maybe I should write my story in chalk on the pavement and sit down beside to hear what people would say. At least we’d look each other in the eyes a bit. But maybe no one would notice and they’d walk all over it and rub it out.’
    ‘What would you write, on the pavement, if you were a beggar?’ Ada Ida asks.
    ‘I’d write, all in block capitals: I’m one of those who write because they can’t handle speaking; sorry about this, folks. Once a paper published something I’d written. It’s a paper that comes out early in the morning; the people who buy it are mainly workers on their way to the factory. That morning I was on the trams early and I saw people reading the things I had written, and I watched their faces, trying to understand what line they were up to. Everything you write there’s always something you’re sorry you put in, either because you’re afraid of being misunderstood, or out of shame. And on the trams that morning I kept watching people’s faces till they got to that bit, and then I wanted to say: “Look, maybe I didn’t explain that very well, this is what I meant,” but I still sat there without saying anything and blushed.’
    Meanwhile we’ve got off the tram and Ada Ida is waiting for another tram to come. I don’t know which tram I should get now and I wait with her.
    ‘I’d write this,’ says Ada Ida, ‘in blue and yellow chalk: Ladies and Gentlemen, there are people whose greatest pleasure is to have others urinate on them. D’Annunzio was one such, they say. I believe it . You should remember that every day, and remember that we are all the same race, and not act so superior. And what about this: my aunt gave birth to a son with the body of a cat. You should remember that things like that happen, never forget it. And that in Turin there are people who sleep on the pavements, over warm cellar gratings. I’ve seen them. You should think about all these things, every evening, instead of saying your prayers. And you should keep them in mind during the day. Then your heads won’t be so full of plans and hypocrisy . That’s what I’d write. Keep me company on this tram too, be sweet.’
    I don’t know why but I went on taking trams with Ada Ida. The tram went a long way through the poor suburbs. The people on the tram were grey and wrinkly, as though all grimed with the same dust.
    Ada Ida insists on passing remarks: ‘Look what a nervous tic that man has. And look how much powder that old woman’s put on.’
    I found it all upsetting and I wanted her to stop. ‘So? So?’ I said. ‘Everything real is rational.’ But deep down I wasn’t convinced.
    I’m real and rational too, I thought, not accepting, thinking up plans, meaning to change everything. But to change everything you have to start from there, from the man with the nervous tic, the old woman with the powder, and not from plans. And from Ada Ida too who’s still saying, ‘Keep me company just till there.’
    ‘It’s our stop,’ says Ada Ida, and we get off. ‘Keep me company just till there, do you mind?’
    ‘Everything real is rational, Ada Ida,’ I tell her. ‘Any more trams to catch?’
    ‘No, I live round that corner.’
    We were at the end of town. Iron castles rose behind factory walls; the wind waved scraps of smoke at the lighting conductors of the smokestacks. And there was a river tucked in with grass: the Dora.
    I remembered a windy night by the Dora, years ago, when I walked along biting a girl’s cheek. She had long, really fine hair and it kept getting between my teeth.
    ‘Once,’ I say, ‘I bit a girl’s cheek, here, in the wind. And I spat out hair. It’s a marvellous story.’
    ‘Here,’ Ada Ida