It's Tuesday.

Two Mario

Mario headed the sound too. He stood up and listened intently. The noise of the shuttle rattled off into silence. From the streets above came the quiet murmur of the late traffic. There was a noise of rustling nothingness in the station. Still Mario listened, straining to catch the mysterious sound… And there it came again.

It was like a quick stroke across the string of a violin, or like a harp that has been plucked suddenly. If a leaf in a green forest far from New York had fallen at midnight through the darkness into a thicket, it might have sounded like that.

Mario thought he knew what it was. The summer before he had gone to visit a friend who lived on Long Island. One afternoon, as the low sun reached long yellow fingers through the tall grass, he had stopped beside a meadow to listen to just such a noise. But there had been many of them then—a chorus. Now there was only one. Faintly it came again through the subway station.

Mario slipped out of the newsstand and stood waiting. The next time he heard the sound, he went toward it. It seemed to come from one corner, next to the stairs that, led up to Forty-second Street. Softly Mario went toward the spot. For several minutes there was only the whispering silence. Whatever it was that was making the sound had heard him coming and was quiet. Silently Mario waited. Then he heard it again, rising from a pile of waste papers and soot that had blown against the concrete wall.

He went down and very gently began to lift off the papers. One by one he inspected them and laid them to one side. Downnear the bottom the papers became dirtier and dirtier. Mario reached the floor. He began to feel with his hands through the dust and soot. And wedged in a crack under all the refuse, he found what he’d been looking for.

It was a little insect, about an inch long and covered with dirt. It had six legs, two long antennae on its head, and what seemed to be a pair of wings folded on its back. Holding his disc as carefully as his fingers could, Mario lifted the insect up and rested him in the palm of his hand.

“A cricket!” he exclaimed.

Keeping his cupped hand very steady, Mario walked back to the newsstand. The cricket didn’t move. And he didn’t make that little musical noise anymore. He just lay perfectly still—as if he were sleeping, or frightened to death.

Mario pulled out a Kleenex and laid the cricket on it. Then he took another and started to dust him off. Ever so softly he tapped the hard back shell, and the antennae, and legs, and wings. Gradually the dirt that had collected on the insect fell away. His true color was still black, but now it had a bright, glossy sheen.

When Mario had cleaned off the cricket as much as he could, he hunted around the floor of the station for a match box. In a minute he’d found one and knocked out one end. Then he folded a sheet of Kleenex, tucked it in the box, and put the cricket in. It made a perfect bed. The cricket seemed to like his new home. He moved around a few times and settled himself comfortably.

Mario sat for a time, just looking. He was so happy and excited that when anyone walked through the station, he forgot to shout “Newspapers!” and “Magazines!”

Then a thought occurred to him: perhaps the cricket was hungry. He rummaged through his jacket pocket and found a piece of a chocolate bar that had been left over from supper. Mario broke off one corner and held it out to the cricket on the end of his finger. Cautiously the insect lifted his head to the chocolate. He seemed to smell it a moment, then took a bit. A shiver of pleasure went over Mario as the cricket ate from his hand.

Mama and Papa Bellini came up the stairs from the lower level of the station. Mama was a short woman—a little stouter than she liked to admit—who wheezed and got a red face when she had to climb steps. Papa was tall and somewhat bent over, but he had a kindness that shone about him. There seemed always to be something smiling inside Papa. Mario was so busy feeding his cricket that he didn’t see them when they came up the newsstand.

“So?” said Mama, craning over the counter. “What now?”

“I found a cricket!” Mario exclaimed. He picked the insect up very gently between his thumb and forefinger and held him out for his parents to see.

Mama studied the little black creature carefully. “It’s a bug,” she pronounced finally. “Throw it away.”

Mario’s happiness fell in ruins. “No, Mama,” he said anxiously. “It’s a special kind of bug. Crickets are good luck.”

“Good luck, eh?” Mama’s voice had a way of sounding very dry when she didn’t believe something. “Cricketers are good luck—so I suppose ants are better luck. And cockroaches are the best luck of all. Throw it away.”

“Please, Mama, I want to keep him for a pet.”

“No bugs are coming to my house,” said Mama. “We’ve got enough already with the screens full of holes. He’ll whistle to his friends—they’ll come from all over—we’ll have a houseful of cricketers.

“No we won’t,” said Mario in a low voice. “I’ll fix the screens.” But he knew it was no use arguing with Mama. When she had made up her mind you might as well try to reason with Eighth Avenue subway.

“How was selling tonight?” asked Papa. He was a peaceful man and always tried to head off arguments. Changing the subject was something he did very well.

“Fifteen papers and four magazines,” said Mario. “And Paul just bought a Sunday Times.”

“No one took a Musical America, or anything else nice?” Papa was very proud that his newsstand carried all of what he called the “quality magazines.”

“No,” answered Mario.

“So you spend less time playing with cricketers, you’ll sell more papers,” said Mama.

“Oh now now,” Papa soothed her. “Mario can’t help it if nobody buys.

“You can tell the temperature with crickets too,” said Mario. “You count the number of chirps in a minute, divide by four, and add forty. They’re very intelligent.

“Who needs a cricketer—thermometer?” said Mama. “It’s coming on summer, it’s New York—it’s hot. And how do you know so much about cricketers? Are you one?”

“Jimmy Lebovski tole me last summer,” said Mario.

“Then give it to the expert Jimmy Lebovski,” said Mama. “Bugs carry germs. He doesn’t come in the house.”

“Mario looked down at his new friend in the palm of his hand. Just for once he had been really happy. The cricket seemed to know that something was wrong. He jumped onto the shelf and crept into the matchbox.

“He could keep it here in the newsstand,” suggested Papa.

Mario jumped at that idea. “Yes, and then he wouldn’t have to come home. I could feed him here, and leave him here, and you’d never have to see him,” he said to Mama. “and when you took the stand, I’d bring him with me.”

Mama paused. “Cricketers,” she said scornfully. “What do we want with a cricketer?” “What do we want with a newsstand?” said Papa. “We got it—let’s keep it.” There was something resigned, but nice, about Papa.

“You said I could have a dog,” said Mario, “but I never got him. And I never got a cat, or a bird, or anything. I wanted this cricket for my pet.”

“He’s yours, then,” said Papa. And when Papa spoke in a certain quiet tone—that was all there was to it. Even Mama didn’t dare disagree.

She took a deep breath. “Oh, well—” she sighed. And Mario knew it would be all right. Mama’s saying “oh well” was her way of giving in.“But only on trial he stays. At the first sign of the cricketer friends, or if we come down with peculiar disease—out he goes!”

“Yes, Mama, anything you say,” said Mario.

“Come on, Mario,” Papa said. “Help me close up.”

Mario held the matchbox up to his eye. He was sure the cricket looked much happier, now that he could stay. “Good night,”he said. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Talking to it yet!” said Mama. “I’ve got a cricketer for a son.”

Papa took one side of the cover to the newsstand, Mario the other, and together they fitted it on. Papa locked it. As they were going downstairs to the trains, Mario looked back over his shoulder. He could almost feel the cricket, snugged away in his matchbox bed, in the darkness.