Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

THE WIND, ENTERING A town from far away, brings unaccustomed gifts, of which only a few sensitive souls become aware, such as sufferers from hay fever, who sneeze because of the pollen of flowers growing in other regions.

     One day a gust of wind dropped spores on a stretch of flowerbed alongside a city street and fungi sprouted. No-one noticed them but the labourer Marcovaldo, who took the tram from just that spot every morning.

     This Marcovaldo had eyes that were not very well adapted to town Life: posters, traffic lights, shop windows, neon signs, public notices - although specially designed to attract attention - never caught his eyes, which seemed to be wandering over desert sands. On the other hand, a leaf turning yellow on a bough, a feather caught up on a tile, never escaped him; there was never a horsefly on the back of a horse, a worm-hole in a table, the peel of a fig squashed on the pavement, which Marcovaldo did not notice and did not reflect upon, observing the changes of the seasons, the longings of his soul and the wretchedness of his existence.

     Thus one morning, while he was waiting for the tram that took him to the firm where he worked as an odd-job man, he noticed something unusual by the stop, in the strip of barren crusted soil that followed the line of trees flanking the street: here and there, by the roots of the trees, it seemed as though little protuberances were swelling up which in some places had burst through and allowed roundish objects to emerge from under the ground.

     He bent down to tie his shoe and looked more closely. they were mushrooms, real mushrooms, that were sprouting in the very heart of the town It seemed to Marcovaldo that the grey and miserable world that surrounded him had suddenly become generous with hid den riches, and that he could still expect something from life be sides the hourly wage provided by his contract, the emergency fund, family allowances and the bread subsidy.

     At work he was more absent-minded than usual. He thought to himself that while he was there unloading parcels and crates, in the darkness of the earth silent, slow mushrooms, known only to him, were maturing their porous pulp, absorbing subterranean juices, breaking the crust of the soil. “One night of rain would be enough,” he said to himself, “and they would be ready to pick.” And he couldn’t wait to tell his wife and children about his discovery.

     “Listen to me,” he said during the meagre midday meal. “Within the week we shall be eating mushrooms! Fried mushrooms! Take it from me!”

     And to the smallest children, who didn’t know what mushrooms were, he ecstatically described the beauty of all the different kinds of edible fungi, the delicacy of their flavour and how they should be cooked; this drew his wife into the conversation, although up to then she hadn’t taken his story very seriously.

     “Where are these mushrooms?” asked the children. “Tell us where they grow”

     At this question Marcovaldo’s enthusiasm was reined in by a suspicious thought. “If I tell them the place, they’ll go and look for them with the usual gang of kids, word will get round and the mushrooms will end up in other people’s pots.” Thus the discovery which at first had filled his heart with universal love now imbued it with the mania of possession, enclosed it with a jealous, suspicious fear.

     “I’m the only one who know where the mushrooms are,” he told his children, “and mind you don’t let on about them.”

     The following morning, as he approached the tram stop, he was full of apprehension. He bent down over the flowerbed and saw with relief that the mushrooms had grown a little but not much, they were still almost completely hidden by the earth.

     He was bending down like this, when he became aware that there was someone just behind him. He straightened up quickly and tried to look unconcerned. It was a roadsweeper who was watching him, leaning on his broom.

     This roadsweeper, within whose jurisdiction the mushrooms were growing, was a lanky youth wearing spectacles. His name was Amadigi and for a long time Marcovaldo hadn’t liked him, he didn’t know why himself. Perhaps he was irritated by those glasses that scrutlnised the asphalt of the streets in order to eliminate all trace of natural objects.

     It was Saturday; and Marcovaldo spent his free half-day wandering with a casual air round the vicinity of the flowerbed, keeping an eye from a distance on the road sweeper and the mushrooms and reckoning up how long it would take them to grow.

     That night it rained. Just as peasants wake up and jump for joy at the sound of the first drops after months of drought, so Marcovaldo, alone In the whole town, sat up in bed and called out to his family:
“It’s raining, it’s raining.” He sniffed the smell of wet dust and fresh mould that came in from outside.

     At dawn - it was Sunday - he ran quickly to the flowerbed with his children and a borrowed basket. There were the mushrooms, standing erect on their stalks with their heads held high above the still soaking-wet soil “Hurray” they shouted and started picking them as fast as they could.

     “Daddy, look how many that man has taken,” said Michelino, and his father looked up and saw Amadigi standing beside them, also with a basket filled with mushrooms under his arm.

     “Ah, you’re picking them too, are you?” said the road sweeper. “Then they really are good to eat? I’ve picked a few, but I wasn’t quite sure ... There are even bigger ones further along the street. Right, now I know, I’ll go and tell my relations who are along there arguing whether to pick them or leave them.” And he hurried off with long strides.

     Marcovaldo was left speechless: even bigger mushrooms, which he hadn’t known about, an unexpected harvest that was being snatched from under his nose. He remained for a moment almost petrified with anger, with rage, then - as sometimes happens - the collapse of his private ambitions was transformed into a generous impulse. “Hey, you lot, do you want to fry yourselves some mushrooms this evening?” he shouted to the people gathered at the tram stop. “The mushrooms are growing here in the street! Come with me! There are enough for everyone!” And he went off on Amadigi’s heels, followed by a retinue of people with umbrellas over their arms, because the weather was still damp and uncertain.

     They found enough mushrooms left for everyone, and in the absence of baskets they put them in their open umbrellas. Somebody said: “It would be nice to have dinner all together:” But everyone took his mushrooms and went back to his own home.

     But they soon met again, that very same evening in fact, in the same hospital ward, after the stomach pump that had saved them all from being poisoned, though not very seriously, because the quantity of fungi eaten by each one was very small.

     Marcovaldo and Amadigi were in adjoining beds and scowled at one another.