The little acrobat: a story of Italy

by Janie Prichard Duggan

Up and up, always a little higher up, the horses toiled with the house-wagon, as the road rose into the mountains. From the interior of the wagon came the sound of voices, mingled now and then with a complaining note, or an exclamation of pain. The travelers were very tired, and poor Pietro’s fever was rising with every turn of the wheels.

Several men and a sturdy girl of fifteen walked beside the horses in the powdery white dust. Behind the big wagon lagged a boy of eight or nine years. This was Natale,[1] a slight little fellow, with dusty lean legs and dragging feet. His light brown hair curled damply about his sun-browned forehead, and he wore an old, misshapen hat set far back on his pretty head. His loosely fitting clothes were dingy with dust but Natale did not mind, for, presently, they would come to Cutigliano, the old, old town on the mountain side, and there they would camp out on the soft, green grass. And Natale knew from much experience that nothing could clean the dust from travel-stained clothes so well as rolling down the grassy slopes of the chestnut woods, with Niero and Bianco as companions.

Of course the sun was hot; was it not always hot at noon of a summer’s day in the Apennines? But Niero did not complain, and why should Natale?

Bianco had tired of trotting along at Natale’s side, and at the last stopping-place, when Pietro had had a drink of water from the wayside fountain, the tired little black dog had begged to be allowed to ride, and had been willingly taken inside the wagon.

Natale never asked to ride in the wagon, unless he were very tired and sleepy. They were rather crowded in there even without him, for Pietro took up a great deal of room, now that he had to lie down all the time. Besides, the other children, good travelers as they usually were, sometimes grew quarrelsome and made the mothers and the grandmother angry. Natale did not like quarreling and loud voices, so he always preferred his resting times to be given him on the back of one of the horses. But now Tesoro and Il Duca were tired also, and they were so near Cutigliano, it did not matter if Natale did lag behind a little, always with big Niero for company.

Niero was a large, lean, white dog with a closely sheared body. About his neck, however, he wore a fluffy collar of long white hair, and bracelets of the same adorned his four paws, while his long tail ended in a tuft, having very much the appearance of a dishmop. Why this white dog should have been named Niero, meaning black, the clown who had also named the little black dog Bianco, white, could have best explained.

By and by, long after the gray church tower had come in sight and the red-tiled roofs of the town showed bunched together against the green of the wooded hillside, the travelers reached the arched stone bridge across the river at the foot of the mountain. Here the wagon made a halt before beginning the last steep climb to the town. Above, they could see the stone wall which was the boundary of the road winding by loops, one above the other, up the mountain side, but the town had now disappeared from view, so sheer was the rise of the chestnut woods.

This halt gave Natale time to come up with the wagon, and then he sat down with a tired sigh on a heap of mending-stones by the roadside, in front of the wagon door. His legs ached with weariness, but this was no time to think of riding, as even the women and all the children but Pietro must alight now, to relieve the horses in the last pull up hill. Natale watched them descend from the wagon one by one, by the steps one of the musicians placed at the door.

First came Nonna, the grandmother of Rudolfo and Tito and the five other children of the blond acrobat, Antonio Bisbini. She was not Natale’s Nonna, of course, yet everybody called her Nonna, and why should not he, who had no grandmother of his own?

Nonna carried Tito in her arms and led Rudolfo by the hand. Then came Tito’s mother, the three-months’-old infant, Gigi, in her arms, followed by Olga, who held little Maria by the hand. Next, Natale’s own mamá stepped down, glad to stretch her active limbs by walking, after nursing Pietro for so many tedious hours. Then the rest of Bisbini’s children scrambled out, aided by the music-man’s helping hands.