The Skin Read Online Free PDF

Velazquez's dwarfs. The foreheads of these female dwarfs are scored with the same deep wrinkles as furrow the foreheads of the horrible old women portrayed by Goya. Nor should this Spanish analogy be thought arbitrary, for the district is Hispanic in character and still alive with memories of the long years when Naples was subject to Castilian domination. There is an air of old Spain about the streets, alleys, houses and mansions, the strong, sweet smells, the guttural voices, the long, musical laments that echo from balcony to balcony, and the raucous strains of the gramophones that issue from the depths of the dark caverns.
    Taralli are little cakes made of sweet pastry; and the bakery halfway up the steps of the Pendino, from which at all hours of the day there emanates the appetizing smell of fresh, crisp taralli, is famous throughout Naples. When the baker thrusts his long wooden shovel into the red-hot mouth of the oven the dwarf women ran up, stretching out their little hands, which are as dark and wrinkled as the hands of monkeys. Uttering loud cries in their raucous little voices they seize the dainty taralli, all hot and steaming, hobble rapidly to different parts of the alley, and deposit the taralli on shining brass trays. Then they sit on the doorsteps of their hovels with the trays on their knees and wait for customers, singing "Oh li taralli! oh li taralli belli cauri!" The smell of the taralli spreads all through the Pendino di Santa Barbara, and the dwarf women, squatting on their doorsteps, croak and laugh among themselves. And one, a young one perhaps, sings at a little window high up, and looks like a great spider poking its hairy head out of a crack in the wall.
    Bald, toothless dwarf women go up and down the slimy stairway, supporting themselves with sticks or crutches, reeling along on their little short legs, lifting their knees up to their chins in order to mount the steps, or drag themselves along on all fours, whimpering and slobbering. They look like the little monsters in the paintings of Breughel or Bosch, and one day Jack and I saw one of them sitting on the threshold of a cavern with a sick dog in her arms. As it lay on her lap, in her tiny arms, it seemed a gigantic animal, a monstrous wild beast. Up came a companion of hers, and the two of them seized the sick dog, the one by the hind legs, the other by the head, and with great difficulty carried it into the hovel. It seemed as if they were carrying a wounded dinosaur. The voices that ascend from the depths of the caverns are shrill and guttural, and the wails of the dreadful children, who are tiny and wrinkled, like old dolls, resemble the mewling of a dying kitten. If you enter one of these hovels you see, in the fetid half-light, those great spiders with enormous heads dragging themselves across the floor, and you have to take care not to crush them beneath the soles of your shoes.
    Occasionally we saw some of these dwarf women climbing the steps of the Pendino in the company of gigantic American soldiers, white or coloured, with moist, shining eyes. Tugging them along by the trouser-legs, they would push them into their lairs. (The white soldiers, thank God, were always drunk.) I shuddered when I visualized the strange unions of those enormous men and those little monsters, on those high, vast beds.
    And I would say to Jimmy Wren: "I am glad to see that those little dwarfs and your handsome soldiers like each other. Aren't you glad too, Jimmy?"
    "Of course I'm glad too," Jimmy would answer, furiously chewing his gum.
    "Do you think they'll get married?" I would say.
    "Why not?" Jimmy would answer.
    "Jimmy is a nice guy," Jack would say, "but you mustn't provoke him. He flares up easily."
    "I'm a nice guy, too," I would say, "and I'm glad to think that you have come from America to improve the Italian race. But for you those poor dwarfs would have remained spinsters. By ourselves, we poor Italians couldn't have done anything about it. It's