I should cry from unhappiness, tear my hair out in desperation... but my misfortunes yesterday were so numerous, and happened so unexpectedly all at once, that I can't think straight and feel sure I must be dreaming...
Let's take things in order
The thing which started my ruin was my passion for fishing.
Yesterday, as soon as I came back from school I took the fishing rod I'd made for myself the day before yesterday, and went into Venanzio's room, intending to fish in his washbasin to amuse him.
Unfortuanately, Venanzio was asleep, and he was sleeping in a most curious way, with his head tilted over the back of his armchair, and his mouth wide open, emitting a wheezing noise which ended in a kind of whistle...
So I changed my mind. There was a table behind the armchair, so I climbed up on it, and sat on a little stool and for fun, started to fish in Venanzio's mouth, holding the fishing rod above his head, with the hook at the level of his open mouth...
"What a surprise he'll get when he wakes up!", I thought.
Unfortunately, he sneezed. And when he sneezed, his head jerked, the hook landed on his tongue and he closed his mouth. By a simple fisherman's instinct, I pulled up on the fishing rod...
There was a terrible cry, and I saw, attached to the hook, a tooth with two long roots.
In that terrible moment, gripped by a sudden fear, I threw the fishing rod down, jumped off the table, and ran to my room.
After an hour, my brother-in-law arrived, followed by my sister who was saying "Take him back home if you must, but don't beat him!"
"Beat him? I could kill him!" said Maralli "No, no: but I want him to know what it has cost me to have him in my house for a week!"
He stood in front of me and said, with a calmness that frightened me more than if he had shouted like so many other times, "You know something? I'm convinced now that you will end up in jail some day, and I warn you right now that I won't be your defence lawyer. I've met some bad types in my time, but in your delinquent enterprises you display a mysterious resourcefulness I've never seen before. For example, how on earth did you manage to cut my Uncle Venanzio's tongue and rip out that tooth we found stuck on a curved needle with a bit of thread attached to it? And why did you do it? Who knows! But what you have to know is that my uncle wants to leave my house at once, because he says he doesn't feel safe here so, thanks to you, I risk losing a vast inheritance which, if it hadn't been for you, would certainly have been mine."