Italo Calvino's Mushrooms in the City

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”

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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 knows 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 road
sweeper who was watching him, leaning on his broom.

This road sweeper, 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 scrutinized 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

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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.

Translated by Michael Bullock