‘So that was it. My cousin Briasco had convinced me. The very next day, I went off to join up with the Arditi. Panic attacks, crawling about like a lizard, holes all over my body, but I made it. Unfortunately the right number in the raffle didn’t come up for cousin Briasco, and he was left there. My mother’s sister received a solemn encomium and a silver medal, but they never brought his body back.’
I was deeply moved by my father’s story, and stayed silent for a while, then said: ‘But tell me, Papà, why do you still wear all these decorations on your jacket?’
‘They’re trinkets, but they’re like lightning conductors. It’s thanks to them that I haven’t been reported or suspended, and even that I escaped arrest a couple of times. In my line of work, I come across any number of high and mighty Fascists who are fanatical about this goddam regime, and who drone drearily on about the “glory of the faith and the ideal”. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and every time I end up sniggering at them. So what do I get from them? “Mind your tongue, or I’ll report you.” “Come on you bunch of wankers,” I tell them, “want to report these as well?” and I puff my chest full out and shove my collection of honours, including the Arditi badge and the solemn encomium, in their face! Once I dropped my trousers in front of a blustering Fascist lady to show her my injured leg and silver knee-cap, and even gave her the Fascist war cry — Eia, Eia, Alalà! Who do you think’s going to take the chance of dragging a haul of trophies like that before a court?’
At which point, I started laughing out loud.
From that day on, every time someone came to our school to recite a eulogy to the regime or to deliver a panegyric on the sacred martyrs of the fatherland, I could not help seeing my father on the platform, his trousers around his ankles, jumping from one foot to the other, showing off his wounds and his silvery knee. He does not wear underpants … his privates are adorned with a garland of merrily ringing medals.
It often happened in class that the teacher or someone else would interrupt the talk and yell at me in a highly outraged tone: ‘You, boy … what do you mean by that idiot grin?’
‘No, sir,’ I would reply, lying through my teeth, ‘it is not a grin. I was just trying to hold back the emotion!’
CHAPTER 11. The Mystery of the Amorous Statues
A beautiful eighteenth-century villa, surrounded by a park with a river on one side, stood facing the lake on the outskirts of the town. Here and there stood clumps of woodland — oaks, silver firs and beeches. Statues in the Palladian style depicting nymphs, satyrs and various gods had been placed among the trees to give a spurious impression of randomness. In the villa lived the owners of the glassworks. The park was enclosed by a long fence around the entire perimeter.
The keeper in charge of the life of the trees was called Serene, surname Weather. His brother’s name was Cloudy, indisputable proof of the madness of the town. He was a registered gardener with all his diplomas in order and had previously worked on the Borromeo family’s island, the Isola Madre. He was a quiet man, but he too one day went mad and was carried off in the usual padded van to the mental hospital in Varese. The fault lay with a passionate love affair which had broken out among the statues in the park. Absurd? A pata-physical hyperbole? It may be, but for Serene, who had no idea what pataphysics were, it was a tragic business all the same.
I was fond of that gardener so, once a few weeks had passed, I went to visit him in the hospital in Varese together with Giuda and Tajabis, two friends who were both a bit older than me. Serene seemed tranquil enough, as would be expected of someone of that name, and appeared both very happy to see us and keen to confide in us about what had caused him to lose his mind. In the visiting room, he started talking: ‘It all began with the creepers growing so wild and thick over the statues in the park that you could hardly make them out. The owner ordered me: “You’ll have to get rid of those creepers, otherwise they’re going to break the statues to pieces.”
‘Armed with scythe, secateurs and saw, I started to clear the creepers away, but gently because you have to be careful not to scratch their skin. Among the statues, there were some copies of Roman originals, but there were so many branches and leaves over them that it was impossible to make out if they were male or female. I started hacking away at the shrubbery at the base, and the feet were the first to emerge. It’s hard to tell the sex of a statue from its feet. Working my way up, I liberated the legs … long … delicately carved … certainly female … or maybe Apollo, which is more or less the same … the only difference is at the join in the legs, and the lyre.
‘And in fact it was him, the god of music, with his outsized guitar. Stark naked, except for a strategically placed loincloth … although it was not much good, since you could still make out his thingummy in its entirety … small and discreet. The gods never need to overdo things.
‘The second statue I set to work on was a female. Beautiful she was, pushing up through wisteria and trailing plants. Snip, snip, and legs like columns appear … pubic region … thighs … buttocks … magnificent! Carrying on up, the stomach and tits emerged. My hands were shaking as I revealed those two lovely curves. She seemed to be breathing. Finally the neck and face, mouth and eyes began to peep out … she smiled and looked at me … at me!.. as if to say “Thank you for rescuing me!”
‘So I said to myself, am I mad? What’s come over me? I felt I wanted to caress her all over, and I ran my fingers and hands over those cheeks of hers, so soft as to make me go all fluttery. Who knows what goddess she was? Perhaps she was a nymph … yes, she must be a nymph.
‘I was standing there in a state of enchantment when my eyes happened to drift over to the right and I saw Apollo staring at me, or more precisely gazing at the nymph. What’s going on? I hadn’t even noticed that his face was turned in this direction. I went up to him, took a look at the join of the neck and touched it. It was warm, in fact it was burning as though the stone had been twisted. Must be because of the friction with the branches which I had just cleared away. I look back over at the nymph; she had one hand over her breasts … and she seems to have turned away a little, as though she were embarrassed at the too intrusive stare from Apollo. Come on! That’s enough! I’m going off my head. This is turning into a nightmare. Time to get on with freeing the next sculpture, the third.
‘It’s much easier now. I know how to go about it. I clear away creepers as though shearing sheep. Here we go, torso emerging … another male … but this time there’s an animal tail … it’s all tangled, as you would expect if you found a statue under layers of ivy and fungus. There’s no way of knowing what kind of posture it was supposed to have … Ah! Got it! Once I clear away the bulk of the branches, a quadruped emerges. Is it a man on horseback? No, it’s a centaur.
‘Muscles taut and tense, a fine chest, and underneath the hindquarters, a grand piece of equipment … proud and erect … horses have no sense of measure. In addition, this quadruped is holding a bow with an arrow ready for firing, the whole structure set in bronze. As though by chance, the nymph turned to face the centaur, and the look of the man on horseback seemed fixed on the woman’s eyes. Statuesque love at first sight? I’m going off my head.