for how I long to have them back, those summers
of sudden rifle shots up high in the hills
breaking the silence of the midday sun
of afternoons spent waiting,
of news that made the rounds in quiet voices:
the Decima retreats, the Badogliani
are coming down tomorrow, the roadblocks gone,
the road to Orbegno is impassable,
theyre carrying the wounded off in gigs,
I saw them going by the Oratorio,
Sergeant Garrani locked himself inside
the City Hall
Then suddenly the dreadful racket,
the hellish noise, the tapping on the wall
of the house, a voice in the alley
And the night, silence and occasional shots,
from San Martino, and the final sweeps
Id like to dream about those endless summers
that fed on certainty like blood,
about those days in which
Talino, Ras and Gino may have looked
into the face of truth.
But I cannot, for there remains
my own roadblock
on the road to the Gorge.
And so I close the notebook
of memory. By now theyre gone,
the clear nights in which
the Partisan in the woods
watched the little birds so they wouldnt sing,
so Sleeping Beauty could remain asleep.
These verses remained a puzzle. Evidently I had experienced a period that seemed heroic to me, at least as long as I saw others as the protagonists. While trying to settle all the inquiries into my childhood and adolescence, I had tried, on the threshold of adulthood, to call back certain moments of exaltation and certainty. But I was blocked (the last roadblock of that war fought outside my door) and I had surrendered in the face of-what? Something I could not or would not call back to mind, something that had to do with the Gorge. The Gorge, once again. Had I seen the hellcats there and had that encounter taught me that I must blot out everything? Or, since I was by then aware that I had lost the Contained Creature, had I turned other days, and the Gorge, into an allegory of that loss-thus explaining why I was putting away everything I had been, up to that moment, in the chapels inviolable coffer?
Nothing else remained, at least not at Solara. I could only infer that after that renunciation, I had decided to devote myself, already a student, to old books, to turn my attention to someone elses past, one that would not have anything to do with me.
But who was that Creature who, fleeing, had convinced me to file away both my high school years and my time at Solara? Had I, too, had my pallid little maiden, a sweet girl who lived across the hall on the fifth floor? If that was the case, it was just another song and nothing more, a song everyone has sung at one time or another.
The only person who might have known anything about it was Gianni. If you fall in love, and for the first time, you at least confide in your desk mate.
Some days ago I had not wanted Gianni to clear away the fog of my memories with the calm light of his own, but on this point I could call upon nothing but his memory.
It was already evening when I phoned him, and we talked for several hours. I began in a roundabout way, talking about Chopin, and I learned that in those days the radio really had been our only source for the great music for which we were developing a passion. In the city, it was not until our fifth and final year of high school that a friends-of-music society had been formed: from time to time it offered a violin or piano concert, a trio at most, and in our class there were only four of us who went, almost furtively, because the other rascals, though not yet eighteen, were always trying to get into the brothel, and they looked at us as if we were light in the loafers. Okay, we had shared some thrills, I could risk it. "In the third year of high school, did I start thinking about a girl?"
"So youve forgotten about that too, then. Every cloud has a silver lining. Why should you care, so much time has passed Come on, Yambo, think of your health."
"Dont be an ass, Ive discovered certain things here that intrigue me. I have to know."
He seemed to hesitate, then lifted the lid off his memories, growing quite animated, as if he had been the one in love. And indeed that was nearly the case, because (so he told me) up to that time he had remained immune to loves torments, and my confidences intoxicated him as if the affair had been his own.
"And besides, she really was the most beautiful girl in her class. You had high standards, you did. You fell in love, yes, but only with the most beautiful girl."
"Alors, moi, jaime qui? Mais cela va de soi! / Jaime-mais cest forc-la plus belle qui soit!"
"Whats that?"
"I dont know, it came to me. But tell me about her. What was her name?"
"Lila, Lila Saba."
Nice name. I let it melt in my mouth like honey. "Lila. Nice. And so, how did it happen?"
"In the third year of high school, we were still pimply boys in knickerbockers. The girls our age, sixteen or so, were already women, and they wouldnt even look at us. They would rather flirt with the college students who came to wait for them by the gate. You saw her once and were smitten. A Dante and Beatrice kind of thing, and Im not just saying that, because that was the year they made us study La Vita Nuova and clear cool sweet waters, and those were the only things you learned by heart, because they were about you. In short, you were thunderstruck. You spent a week walking around in a daze with a lump in your throat, not touching food, to the point where your parents thought you were ill. Then you wanted to find out what her name was, but you didnt dare ask around for fear that everyone would notice how you felt. Fortunately Ninetta Foppa was in your class, a nice, squirrel-faced girl who lived near you, and you had played together since you were kids. So when you ran into her on the stairs, after chatting about other things, you asked her the name of the girl you had seen her with the day before. Then at least you knew her name."
"Then what?"
"Im telling you, you turned into a zombie. And since you were quite religious at that time, you went to see your spiritual director, Don Renato, one of those priests who rode around on a moped wearing a beret, who everyone said was broad-minded. He even allowed you to read the books in the Index, since it was important to exercise ones critical faculties. I wouldnt have had the guts to go tell something like that to a priest, but you just had to tell someone. You know, you were like that guy in the joke who gets shipwrecked on a desert island, alone with the most beautiful and famous actress in the world, and the inevitable happens, but the guy still isnt happy and cant be content until he persuades her to dress up as a man and to draw on a mustache with charred cork, and then he takes her by the arm and says, Gustavo, youll never guess who I laid"
"Dont be vulgar, this is a serious matter for me. What did Don Renato say?"
"What do you expect a priest to say, even a broad-minded one? That your feeling was noble and beautiful and natural, but that you shouldnt spoil it by transforming it into a physical relationship, because it was important to remain pure until marriage, and therefore you should keep it secret in the depths of your heart."
"And me?"