Piccoletto

Potser coneixeu la història d'en Piccoletto de Renato Rascel, si és així us farà gràcia recordar-la, segurament hi trobareu alguna variant, per allò que té la tradició oral en els contes. 

La versió que aquí us deixo és un exercici d'anglès que consisitia en compartir les històries de la nostra infantesa. Sigueu benèvols amb les meves incorreccions. La vaig escriure fa una colla d'anys i espero que us agradi. Hi podrem trobar uns quants sentits, un d'aquests pot ser que dels bons amics rebrem, quan més ho necessitem, un bon cop de mà.


"Once up on a time, in Italy, there was a little man who was so little, so little, and black, that everybody took him for an african child. Nevertheless, he was not a child, but a man, and he was not black, but white.

He was little. That was truth!, and he went very dirty too. You will say: "Did not he wash himself?"
Yes, of course, he washed himself enough! Piccoletto -everybody called him Piccoletto- often washed himself. And if you had seen how he did it!... He always took a shower with a special soap. He rubbed his neck and his ears with pumice-stone, and... the nails..., -he was so careful that he washed them with lye and sand-paper. So, when he went out of the bathroom, he was as white as milk: he seemed new! But afterwards, Piccoletto went to work...and he became very very black again!

What happened? Nothing special, Piccoletto was a chimney-sweeper...He liked to be a chimney-sweeper.

Because, even though he was so little, he spended all the day on the roofs; on the other hand, the other people stayed on the streets, under him, alined like ants. And then he felt as a giant. And he liked it.

Being so high on the roofs, it was no possible to see if men wore their shirts clean and if they had washed  their face. A soft wind would have made them whirl like dust-flakes. A few rain would have smothered them at least three of them in each drop with no effort.

In this case, ¿ was it important to be worried about the own height if even all the stronger and taller men, seen from the roofs, became little?

Piccoletto, living always on the roofs, had met strange friends, exceptional friends. Mustafa, for example. He was a siamese cat that was always asleep: he spended the whole day sleeping. But nevertheless, he was clever, intelligent, above all...when he didn´t sleep. He was so clever that he correctly mewed in Italy to say something, even though he was siamese. What more do you want from a poor cat? Oh! And The eyes! He had a green eye and a red one. When Piccoletto asked him for something, Mustafa, who always was tired and whose laziness didn`t let him mew, answered with the eyes. When he wanted to say yes, he opened the green eye. And when he wanted to say no, he opened the red one. Like a traffic lights! After this, he got asleep again.

The other great friend of Piccoletto was very different: an eagle owl, the "teacher". Sometimes they met and talked during a pleasant time. The teacher had a very curious noise-voice that made him seem an old woman when he spoke. Sometimes he was a bit burdensome: do you know those eagle owls that begin to talk and they never finish? The teacher was one of them.

But on the roofs not everybody was friend of Piccoletto. The hanged clothing, for example, avoided him as if he was a plague. In the moment that Piccoletto came closer where clothing was, hanged clothing always did the same: she liked to be gone with the wind better than being touched by Piccoletto.

The wind! That was a real good friend! He quickly came down from the mountains, stretched on the city and began to do the mischiefs that were so funny to Piccoletto. He took a bed sheet, the most white, and he threw it on the ground, or he beat two doors with a puff, or he broke a pair of windows. And he scaped with the shirt and the colour-full dresses that the engineer of the second floor has hanged in the terrace.

He was very naughty , and a good friend of Piccoletto. When Piccoletto didn´t find work and the wind knew that, he run quickly, took off the hat of three or four chimneys and pushed the smoke into the heater-pipes in order to dirty the houses insides.

Then, when people were asphixiated, they called Piccoletto and he had work to do again. The wind was a good friend, wasn't it?"