At this point, he would introduce a kind of parable, naturally in dialect with a sprinkling of foreign words current in the Valtravaglia. ‘A gh’era un vegio mult tiempo passao chi-loga in lu Porto, ol me cuntava me’ per … l’es veretad, no’ sluz fabule sbergen…’
Halt! I see the readers’ eyes glazing over. So for pity’s sake, let us at once change register; and here follows the tale in a more simple, straightforward language. ‘A long time ago, an old man lived here in Porto … every word is true, I’m no charlatan with a baggage of yarns to spin. This old man had warned the inhabitants of Rocca di Caldé, which is just above the quarry at the port, that a crack had opened in the mountain and the village was sliding down towards the foot of the cliff. “Hey, watch out,” they shouted to the peasants and fishermen who lived lower down, “it’s caving in … get out of there!”
‘“Come on! Who says? Take it easy! The ground’s not moving.” And the people in Rocca laughed the whole thing off, made a joke of it: “Smart lot, them, eh? They want us out of here so they can get their hands on our lands and houses.”
‘And so they went on pruning the vines, sowing the fields, getting married, happily making love. They could feel the rock moving under the foundations of the houses … but they were not unduly concerned. “Normal process of settlement,” they reassured each other. A great section of rock broke off and crashed into the lake. “Look out, you’ve got your feet in the water!” they yelled from along the coast. “What are you talking about? It’s only overflow water from the fountains.” And so, bit by bit, inexorably the whole town slid down until it tumbled into the lake.
‘Splash, splash, plop, plop … houses, men, women, two horses, three donkeys … Unperturbed, the priest continued hearing a nun’s confession … “ego te absolvo … animus … sancti” … plooooop … Amen … Splaaaash! The tower went under, the belfry with the church bells disappeared … ding, dang, dong … plop! Even today,’ continued Caldera, ‘if you peep over the tip of the rock which still sticks out above the surface of the lake, and if at that precise moment there is a thunder and lightning storm and the flashes light up the bed of the lake … incredible!.. underneath you can just make out the sunken town with its houses and streets still intact and you’ll see them, the inhabitants of old Caldé, still moving about as if it were a live crib … and they’re still repeating, quite unperturbed: “Nothing’s happened.” The fish swim in front of their eyes and even get into their ears, but there they are stilclass="underline" “Nothing to be afraid of … it’s only a new kind of fish that has learned to fly. Certainly, it’s a bit more damp nowadays than it used to be,” they comment, and apart from that they go on with their daily lives without a shadow of concern about the disaster that has occurred.’
When I am on stage, I gladly and readily make use of this approach and technique for developing a story, not with the same themes but with similar situations and above all with a similar atmosphere: for instance, in the fabliau inspired by the texts of The Butterfly Mouse rediscovered by Rossana Brusegan, or in the apologue that I based on Lucius and the Ass by Lucian of Samosata, the adventure of the poet who goes in search of the impossible and arrives at a town in Thessalia inhabited by magicians and wizards. Each time I recount this metaphysical, hyperclassical fable, what is the image I seek to project? I am certainly not attempting to imagine to myself, or to make people imagine, the Hellespont, Samos or Thessalia. I am firmly rooted in my native place, in its streets, alongside Lombard rivers, among the woods which are familiar to me: the mountains, skies, waters are always those of the place where I listened to my first stories. It may be that it does not all come out clearly enough, but my universe of images is there. Similarly, when I talk of the Provencal mountains in Obscene Fables, of Javan Petro, of Icarus insulting his father Dedalus, even when I bring on stage the Chinese tiger and Tibet with its rivers and its vast caverns, or even in the despairing outburst of Medea or in the flight on the magic chariot, I never move far from the lake, the valleys and the rivers where I was born.
But I often tear myself away from the memory of these ‘tales’ to plunge into the texts of medieval codices and poets, a testimony of our more ancient roots, and each time I discover, not without some smug satisfaction, that there, in those writings, lie the roots of every fable I ever learned from my storytellers. Fables which are never pedantically reproduced but conveyed for our times with the ironic rhythms of a modernity which is, to put it mildly, astounding. Let one example suffice. It is the tale of a great hunting expedition, a wild, mythical hunt which took place year after year in the same valley. The hero of this great epic was presented from the outset astride his motor-bicycle, kitted out like a medieval knight. The hunter greets his friends and announces that this will be the final combat. One of the two must succumb that day: him or his prey. But who is this awesome prey? A snail!
But pause a moment. We are not talking about some run-of-the-mill, slithery mollusc. No, we are dealing with an epic, gigantic slug of the dimensions of a hippopotamus, a horrendous beast, a leftover from the Mesozoic age, which goes charging fiercely about in the three valleys between the slopes of Muceno and the forests of Musadino. The hunt was scheduled for the days when the chestnut trees were in bloom; scents to raise the spirits of any hunter and give him heart for the fight wafted abroad the length and breadth of the valley. So, off our hero set on his motorbike, rifle and spear at the ready, intent on seizing this snail which had escaped him for years both because of its extraordinary speed of movement and zigzagging abilities, and because of the slimy sludge the animal left in its wake as it fled. ‘There it is! Damnation! You’re dribbling your filthy mess right on the curve!’ The warrior brakes, wobbles, slides and rolls, but this time he manages to induce the snail to speed up beyond its abilities, so that it takes a tumble and rolls into a ditch. It’s done for. The hunter descends into the trench, sliding on his buttocks down the slope … he slays the still-breathing beast, chops it to pieces, loads his catch onto the motorbike, which groans under the weight of snail-flesh, and returns home. The whole town has good eating, or more precisely good gorging, for a whole week: enough portions of snail to make you sick!
Today I realise that this could have been a tale from Rabelais.
CHAPTER 9. The Discovery of the Body
I was no more than fourteen and I enjoyed a certain reputation among the many boys in Valtravaglia who put themselves forward as story-tellers. At that time, as I said a while ago, I had no idea of the ancient origin of those fables. I was repeating techniques and situations which had illustrious origins, blithely convinced they were the exclusive product of my fellow villagers.
I’ve already said that the travelling salesman, the fisherman, the billiards player, my grandfather Bristìn himself never dived straight into a story, but found some external pretext to let themselves be drawn into telling the tale, under the pretence that it was all happening in spite of themselves. Only many years later did I discover that getting into a subject by ‘cannoning off another ball’, as though by accident, was an established practice among commedia dell’arte actors from the time of the first Harlequin (Tristano Martinelli) right up to the classical Pulcinella of the Neapolitan songs. This was my first great lesson, the stamp of the true narrator: the opening of the tale must come about as though by chance.