Two of my friends got sprains, one almost killed himself and skinned the palm of his hand badly trying to stop his fall, but by the end of it we were the only people in the world who knew how to climb the Gorge. One afternoon we risked it: we climbed for more than an hour and arrived out of breath, emerging from a dense thicket at the very base of San Martino, where between the houses and the precipice was a walkway with a wall along it to prevent the locals from falling over the precipice in the dark. Our path reached the wall at the very point where a gap opened, a breach, wide enough for us to slip through. Beyond that was a lane that ran past the door to the rectory, then opened right into the church piazza.
When we burst into the piazza, they were in the middle of a game of blindmans bluff. A masterstroke: the blindman could not see at all, of course, and the others were jumping here and there in their efforts to avoid him. We launched our munitions, hitting one kid directly on the forehead, and the others fled into the church seeking the priests aid. That would suffice for the moment, and back down the lane we ran, through the gap, and down the Gorge. The priest arrived in time to see our heads disappearing into the shrubs, and he hurled some terrible threats at us, and Durante shouted "Hah!" and clapped his left hand against his right bicep.
But by now the San Martino boys had wised up. Seeing that we had come up the Gorge, they placed sentinels at the breach. It is true that we could get almost right up to the wall before they were aware of us, but only almost: the last few meters were in the open, through blackthorn scrub that slowed our progress, giving the sentinel enough time to raise the alarm. They were ready at the end of the lane with sunbaked balls of mud, and they launched them at us before we could gain the walkway.
It seemed a shame to have worked so hard learning to climb the Gorge only to have to give it all up. Until Durante said, "Well learn to climb it in the fog."
Since it was early autumn, there was as much fog in those parts as a person could want. On foggy days, if it was the good stuff, the town of Solara disappeared beneath it, even Grandfathers house disappeared, and the only thing that rose above all that gray was the San Martino bell tower. Being up in that tower was like being in a dirigible above the clouds.
Already on such days we would have been able to get as far as that wall, where the fog began to thin, and those kids could not spend the whole day looking down into nothing, especially once darkness had fallen. And when the fog really got bullish, it spilled over the wall and flooded the church piazza.
Climbing the Gorge in the fog was much harder than climbing it in sunlight. You really had to learn every step by heart, be able to say such and such a rock is here, watch out for the edge of a dense thorn thicket there, five steps (five, not four or six) farther to the right the ground drops suddenly away, when you reach the boulder there will be a false path just to your left and if you follow it you will fall off a cliff. And so on.
We made exploratory trips on clear days, then for a week we practiced by repeating the steps in our heads. I tried to make a map, as in the adventure books, but half my friends could not read maps. Too bad for them, I had it printed it in my brain and could have traversed the Gorge with my eyes closed-and going on a foggy night was essentially the same thing.
After everyone had learned the route, we continued training for several days, in the thickest fog, after sunset, in order to see if we would be able to gain the wall before they had sat down for supper.
After many test runs, we attempted our first expedition. Who knows how we made it to the top, but we did, and there they were, in the piazza, which was still free of fog, shooting the breeze-because in a place like San Martino either you hang out in the piazza or you go to bed after eating your soup of stale bread and milk.
We entered the piazza, gave them a proper pelting, jeered them as they fled to their houses, and then climbed back down. Going down was harder than going up, because if you slip going up you have a chance to grab a shrub, but if you slip going down you are finished, and before you come to a stop your legs are bleeding and your pants are ruined forever. But we made it down, victorious and exultant.
After that we risked other incursions, and they were unable to post sentinels even when it was just dark, because most of them were afraid of the dark, on account of hellcats. We who attended the Oratorio could not have cared less about hellcats, because we knew that half a Hail Mary would basically paralyze them. We kept that up for several months. Then we got bored: the climb was no longer a challenge, in any weather.
No one back home ever learned the story of the Gorge, otherwise I would have received a thorough thrashing, and whenever we went up after dark I would say that I was going down to the Oratorio for a rehearsal. But everyone at the Oratorio knew, and we peacocked around because we were the only ones in the whole town who had mastered the Gorge.
It was noon on a Sunday. Something was happening, everyone already knew: two German trucks had arrived in Solara, searched half the town, and then taken the road up toward San Martino.
A thick fog had settled in early that morning, and daytime fog is worse than night fog because it is light out but you have to move around as if it were dark. You could not even hear the church bells, as if that gray worked as a silencer. Even the voices of numb sparrows in the tree branches came to us as if through cotton wool. Some guys funeral was supposed to be held that day, but the people in the procession would not venture onto the cemetery road, and the gravedigger sent word that he would not be burying anyone that day, lest someone make a mistake when lowering the coffin and cause him to fall into the grave himself.
Two men from town had followed the Germans to find out what they were up to, had seen them make their way slowly, headlamps on but penetrating less than a meter, as far as the beginning of the ascent toward San Martino, and then stop, not daring to go on. Certainly not with their trucks, because they had no idea what was on either side of that steep incline, and they did not want to roll off some precipice- they may even have expected treacherous curves. Nor did they dare to attempt it on foot, not knowing what was where. Someone, however, had explained to them that the only way up to San Martino was by that road, and in that weather no one could possibly get down any other way, because of the Gorge. So then they placed trestles at the end of the road and waited there, headlamps on and guns leveled, so as not to let anyone pass, while one of them yelled into a field telephone, perhaps asking for reinforcements. Our informers said they heard him repeat volsunde, volsunde a number of times. Gragnola explained at once that they were certainly asking for Wolfshunde, that is, German shepherds.
The Germans waited there, and around four in the afternoon, with everything still a thick gray but also still light, they caught sight of someone coming down, on a bicycle. It was the parish priest of San Martino, who had been taking that road for who knows how many years and could even come down using his feet as brakes. Seeing a priest, the Germans held their fire, because, as we later learned, they were looking not for cassocks but for Cossacks. The priest explained more with gestures than words that some fellow was dying on a farm near Solara and had called for extreme unction (he showed them the necessaries in a bag attached to the handlebars), and the Germans believed him. They let him pass, and the priest came to the Oratorio to whisper with Don Cognasso.