I am not in front of this shop window by chance, I am not a secondary character in the painting, I am its protagonist. I am the hungry young man. My parents live in the countryside in Brianza but they want me to stay in Milan, the big city, because here there is work and hope for a better life.
At home there are many of us, I have more than ten brothers. I own nothing, just these clothes and these rough shoes, the kind you wear in the country where everything is mud, earth and dust. I started out as an apprentice at a vintner's, I slept on a straw mattress near the barrels, I decanted the wine and made deliveries for little money. After a week the smell made me sick, but that was my fate. I ate little, meat was a mirage, bread a cup of milk. When it was good, the vintner's wife would give me an egg with butter and a slice of salami and then I would feel the luckiest guy in the world. I savoured the soft, mellow texture of the sausage and spread the egg yolk on the bread, half-closing my eyes, pretending to be a great gentleman, the kind you see at the Biffi café, with elegant, well-ironed clothes, bejewelled ladies full of feathers and warm fur collars.
To tell you the truth, these ladies look funny to me, they remind me of the guinea hens, the ones strutting around in country farmyards. Do you like my hat? It was the vintner's, last week it ended up under the tram near the Arco della Pace; his wife gave it to me as severance pay. The business closed and I was left without work, but I didn't lose heart. I have a dream, to eat sitting at Biffi's table at least once in my life. I want to feel my belly swollen, full of food, I want to have a glossy moustache from the boldness of a chop, like the gentlemen.
There they are, my next victims, their pockets full of coins, I wait for them outside the club while my empty stomach grumbles. I'm not in front of this shop window by chance, I was telling you, if they call me 'the spider' there must be a reason!
- The work: Emilio Longoni, Reflections of a hungry man (1894), Museum of the Biellese Territory (Biella)
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