The differences between us counted for less in the woods, perhaps because they were less evident there than elsewhere. They were wealthy young men from Milan, Genoa, and Turin. The less well-off lived in small villas high up in the valley, buildings erected in crazy haste at the foot of the ski slopes; the richest in the old-style mountain dwellings in exclusive areas, where each stone and every slate had been removed, numbered, and then placed back according to the design of an architect. I happened to go into one of these accompanying a friend who was fetching drink for the evening. From outside it looked like an old timber-built barn; inside it revealed itself to be the house of an antiques dealer, or a collector: virtually an exhibition of fine-art books, paintings, furniture, sculpture. And of bottles as welclass="underline" my friend opened a cupboard and we each filled a rucksack.
“But won’t your father be angry that we’re pinching his wine?” I asked.
“My father!” he replied, as if he found the very word ridiculous. We emptied the cellar and ran for the woods.
In the meantime my own father was mortally offended. He had begun to go to the mountains again, alone, getting up at dawn and leaving before we were awake, and sometimes during his absence I would take a look at his map in order to check on his latest conquests. He had started to explore a part of the valley that we had always avoided, since you could tell from below that there was nothing up there: neither villages, nor water, nor refuges, nor stunning peaks—only bare slopes that climbed steeply for two thousand meters, and an endless expanse of scree. I think he went there to cool down his disappointment, or to find a landscape that resembled his state of mind. He never again invited me to join him. From his perspective I had become the one who needed to go to him: if I was the one who’d had the courage to say no, then the onus was on me now to say sorry and please.
The time of the glacier came round again, our two days of glory in the mid-August holiday, and I saw him preparing the crampons, the pickaxe as severe as a weapon, the water bottle dented by all the knocks it had taken. He seemed to me like the last survivor of one of those Alpine expeditions, one of those soldier-climbers who went in the thirties to die in droves on the north faces of the Alps, blindly attacking the mountain.
“You need to speak to him,” my mother said that morning. “Look how hurt he is.”
“But shouldn’t he be the one speaking to me?”
“You’re capable of doing it; he isn’t.”
“But capable of doing what?”
“Come on, you know full well. He’s only waiting for you to go and ask to come with him.”
I did know it—but I did not do it. I went to my room, and shortly afterwards watched from the window as my father walked off with a heavy tread, his rucksack stuffed with metal gear. You don’t go up the glacier on your own, and I knew that in the evening he would have to resort to a humiliating search. There was always at least one person in his predicament in the refuge: he would go from table to table, he would listen to the discussions for a while, joining the conversation, and would eventually propose joining the group the next morning, despite knowing that nobody was keen to tie a stranger to his rope. At that moment it seemed to me like the perfect punishment for him.
I tasted my own punishment too, that summer. After much training on the monoliths, I went with two youths on my first real free-form climb. One of them was the wine thief, the son of the collector, a Genoese who was amongst the strongest in the group; the other was a friend of his who had started a few months ago, probably just to be with him, since he had not much passion, dedication, or talent for climbing. The rock face was so close to the road that we only had to cross a meadow to reach the point of attack, an overhang jutting out so far that the cattle used it to shelter from the wind and rain. We put our shoes on amongst the cows, then the Genoese handed me a harness and a locking carabiner and tied the two of us to the ends of the rope with himself in the middle. Without further ceremony he told the other boy to go safely and we set off.
He climbed lightly and flexibly, giving the impression of being weightless, and that his every movement was effortless. He did not need to feel around to find the right point of purchase, but just hit the mark every time. Every so often he unhooked a quickdraw from the harness, clipped it onto one of the bolts that marked the way, and would pass the rope through the carabiner; then he would plunge his hands into the bag of chalk, blow on his fingers, and start to climb again with ease. He looked very elegant. Elegance, grace, lightness, they were all qualities that I was so keen to learn from him.
His friend had no such qualities. I could see him close up, climbing, because when the Genoese arrived at the resting place he shouted down to us to climb up together, leaving just a few meters’ distance between us. And so, one pull after another, I found myself with his companion directly above my head. I had frequently to stop because my head was right beneath his shoes, at which point I would turn round to look at the world behind my shoulders: the fields yellowed at the end of August, the river sparkling in the sunlight, cars already miniaturized on the trunk road. The drop did not frighten me. Away from the ground, in the air, I felt good and the movements of the climb came naturally to my body, requiring concentration but not exceptional muscles or lungs.
My companion instead used his arms too much and his feet not enough. He clung close to the rock so was obliged to seek handholds blind, and he did not refrain from grabbing hold of a bolt when he found no alternative.
“You shouldn’t do it like that,” I told him, making a big mistake. I should have let him do it in whichever way he thought best.
He looked at me, annoyed, and said: “What do you want? Are you trying to overtake? You’re always pressing from down there.”
From that moment I had made an enemy. At the resting place he said to the other one, “Pietro’s in a hurry, he thinks it’s a race.”
I didn’t say: your friend is a cheat who hangs on the bolts. I understood that it would have ended up two against one. I kept my distance from then on, but the guy would not let it go: every so often he would make a crack at my expense, and my competitiveness became a running joke for the rest of the day. According to that joke I was running behind them, I would get to just below them and they would have to give me a few kicks to get me out from under their feet. The collector’s son laughed. When I reached the last resting place he said: “You’re going strong. Do you want to try going first?”
“Fine,” I answered. In reality I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, so that they would leave me in peace. I already had my safety harness and all the clips; we didn’t have to make any of the usual maneuvers required to exchange places—so I looked up, saw a bolt planted in a fissure, and set off.