Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino

the other end of the line, the hawk was folding its wings and dropping like a stone. From the open bolt floated the good smell of gunpowder.
    They gave him some more cartridges when he asked for them. Lots of men were looking on now from the bank behind him. Why, he thought, could he see the pine cones at the tops of the trees on the other bank and not touch them? Why was there this empty distance between things and himself? Why were the pine cones—which seemed part of him, inside his eyes—so far away instead? Surely it was an illusion when he aimed the gun into the empty distance and touched the trigger and at the same second a pine cone dropped in smithereens? The sense of emptiness felt like a caress—emptiness inside the rifle barrel continuing through the air and filling out when he shot; the pine cone up there, a squirrel, a white stone, a butterfly. "He never misses once, this kid," said the men, and none of them felt like laughing.
    "You come with us," said the commander. "If you give me a rifle," replied the boy. "Well, of course." So he went.
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    He left with two cheeses and a haversack full of apples. The village was a blotch of slate, straw, and cow dung at the bottom of the valley. It was fine to leave, because there were new things to be seen at every turn, trees with cones, birds flying from branches, lichen on stones, all at those false distances, the distances that could be filled by a shot swallowing the air in between. He must not fire, though, they told him: these parts had to be passed in silence, and the cartridges were needed for the war. But at a certain point a hare, frightened by their steps, ran across the path amid waves and shouts from the men. Just as it was vanishing into the thickets, a bullet from the boy stopped it. "Good shot," even the commander said, "but we're not out hunting here. You mustn't fire again even if you see a pheasant." Not an hour passed before more shots rang out from the file of men. "That boy again!" cried the commander furiously and went up to him. The boy was laughing all over his pink-and-white apple face. "Partridges," he said, showing them. "They rose from a thicket." "Partridges or grasshoppers, I told you. Give me that rifle. And if you make me angry again, you go back home." The boy grumbled a bit; it wasn't much fun walking along unarmed; but if he stayed with them there was always a chance of getting the rifle back.
    That night they slept in a shepherd's hut. The boy woke up as the first light was showing in the sky, while the others were asleep. He took their best rifle, filled his haversack with cartridges, and took off. The early-morning air was mild and bright. Not far from the hut was a mulberry tree. It was the hour when the jays arrived. There was one; he fired, ran to fetch it, and put it in his haversack. Without moving from the spot he tried another target; a squirrel! Terrified by the
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    shot, it was running to hide at the top of a chestnut tree. Now it was dead, a big squirrel with a gray tail, which shed tufts of hair when touched. From under the chestnut tree he saw a toadstool, red with white spots, poisonous, in a meadow lower down. He pulverized it with a shot, then went to see if he had really hit it. It was a lovely game going like this from one target to another; perhaps he could go around the world doing it. He saw a big snail on a stone and aimed at its shell; when he got to the place he found only the splintered stone and a little iridescent slime.
    So he gradually got farther and farther away from the hut, down among unknown fields. From the stone he saw a lizard on a wall, from the wall a puddle and a frog, from the puddle a signpost on the road with a zigzag on it and below it ... below it were men in uniform coming up with arms at the ready. When they saw that boy with a rifle smiling all over his pink-and-white apple face, they shouted and aimed their guns at him. But the boy had already picked out some gilt buttons on the