The next day my friend and I went by car to Verona. It is a beautiful old Italian city. Not far from the city, two small boys stopped us. They were selling strawberries that looked very nice.
“Don’t buy them,” our driver said. “You will find better strawberries in Verona. And these boys...” His face showed that he did not like them.
Their clothes were poor and not very clean. But as we looked at these two thin children with their long hair and serious dark eyes, we wanted to know more about them.
My friend spoke to the boys. They told him that they were brothers. Nicola was thirteen, and Jacopo, the smaller one, was almost twelve. We bought their strawberries and then went on to Verona.
The next morning, as we came out of our hotel, we saw the two boys again. They were in the city square, cleaning people’s shoes. They were very busy, but they said “Hello” to us like old friends.
“I thought you sold strawberries,” I said.
“We do many things, sir,” Nicola answered.
He looked at us with his dark eyes. “We sometimes take people around the city and show them places of interest.”
“All right,” I said. “You can take us. Come on.”
As they took us around the city, I looked at the boys. They were only children, but they were very serious, and everything they did, they did well.
One night I saw them again in the city square. Nicola was sitting on the ground under a tree, and Jacopo was sleeping on the grass. It was already the middle of the night.
“Why aren’t you at home in bed?” I asked. Nicola looked at me in his serious way.
“We are waiting for the last bus,” he said. “We shall sell all our newspapers when it comes.”
“Must you always work so much?”
“Yes, sir, we must,” answered the boy, and I decided not to ask any more questions that evening. I said good night and went to my hotel.
The next morning, when Nicola came to clean my shoes, I asked him, “You and Jacopo work very much. You don’t buy clothes, and you eat very little. How do you spend your money?” The boy did not answer. He looked at the people in the square. Then he said, “We have plans, sir.”
“Well,” I said, “we are leaving Verona on Monday. Can I do anything for you before we go?”
Nicola began to say “no,” but his brother stopped him. “Every Sunday,” he said, “we go to a village not far from Verona. We usually go there by bus; but tomorrow, sir, could you take us there in your car?”
My driver did not work on Sundays, but I answered, “I’ll take you there myself.”
We left Verona early the next morning. I thought the boys wanted to visit one of the poor little houses down the road. But suddenly, in front of a fine big house, Jacopo said:
“Please stop here, sir. We shall not be long here, sir. Not more than an hour. There is a small café in the village where you could wait.”
The boys went into the big house. I waited a few minutes and then went up to the door and rang.
A woman came to the door. I saw that she was a nurse.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I have just brought two small boys here.”
“Ah, yes,” she said with a smile. “Nicola and Jacopo. Please, come in.”
We went past a number of large rooms, and I could see that they were hospital rooms. We looked into one of them.
The two boys were there. They were sitting near the bed of a girl who looked about twenty years old. She wore a beautiful silk blouse. It was easy to see that the boys were her brothers — she looked so much like them. I saw some flowers on the table near her bed, and a dish of fruit and some books.
When we walked back, the nurse told me the story of my two young friends.
“Nicola and Jacopo have no other relatives, only their sister Lucia. Their mother died when they were very young. Their father, a famous opera singer, died in the early years of the war, when Verona was bombed. After that, the boys and their sister lived in the streets because their house was bombed too. When the enemy came, the boys began to carry information to the commander of the army that was fighting to free Verona. The boys lived in the mountains, but their sister was here in the city. When the war ended,” the nurse said, “the boys came back to Verona to find their sister. She was very ill. They brought her here and asked us to take her. Now she is going to get well, and she will sing like her father. Every week the boys come to pay us. I don’t know what their work is, but I know that they do it well.”
I thanked the nurse and went out into the street. Soon the boys came out too. I took them back to the city. They sat near me, looking very serious — these two gentlemen of Verona.
