My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) (17 page)

‘Don Gaetano's ideas were slightly different from those of the bosses, that is from the landowners and mill-owners. He would often launch terrifying broadsides at them, even during his sermons, until one day someone laid a trap for him. He lived in a house attached to the church wall, so to get to the church all he had to do was climb a flight of stairs to the sacristy. One morning, he was coming down after mass but someone had had the bright idea of sawing off the first two steps. He fell down like a sack of potatoes. He broke his leg and femur, and was laid up in bed for I don't know how long. Every day, as soon as I got home from the fields, I used to go and keep him company. As a way of thanking me, he used to read a couple of chapters to me, and when he got tired I read to him. I can't tell you how much we read together: history, philosophy and even books of rational mechanics. And then novels, and we even read texts that were forbidden by the Vatican, for example, the edition of one of the gospels translated in the sixteenth century from the Greek to Mantuan dialect, and published secretly in Geneva. The translator was put on trial for heresy and burned alive.'

‘So explain this to me: why did you not become a priest yourself?'

‘Excuse me, did it never cross your mind that if your grandfather had become a priest, your mother would never have been born and you wouldn't be here listening to me?'

‘Ah! It was all to make sure that I was born! Thank you very much. Anyway, Granddad, to listen to all your subversive speeches, nobody would ever know that you were educated by a parish priest!'

‘Never judge anyone by the clothes he wears, my boy! In any case, I do not owe the whole of my education to him. Do you remember Professor Trangipane, the one who used to teach in the Faculty of Agrarian Studies in the University of Alessandria, and who came here once with his students? He and his lads used to come and see me here before you were born. They would turn up, determined not to stand any nonsense, and fire loads of questions on Applied Agronomy at me. For the sake of my
bella figura,
I had to master theory: I got my head down over the texts the professor got for me, as though I were doing exams.'

‘It's a pity you didn't, Granddad. You would certainly have got a degree.'

‘Yes, that's just what the professor said … but he always added that it would have been a crime. “Dear Bristìn, today you are a phenomenon. You are the only teaching peasant in the world. With a degree, you'd only be an ordinary professor!”'

CHAPTER 20

The Voyage of the Argonauts

When I celebrated my sixteenth birthday, I had already been attending the Brera for some years. I got up every morning at half past five, went racing along the lakeside without drawing breath and, keeping an ear cocked for the train from Luino as it appeared and disappeared in and out of the tunnels, I took part in a daily competition to see which of us would reach the station first. I lost the race only once, because of a mêlée at the finishing line: it was pitch black and I did not notice a gas pipe placed across the road.

I often jumped onto the train when it was already moving: my travelling companions would cheer lustily, and if I managed to get a foot on the running board, they would grab hold of me and pull me into the carriage.

The train normally had five or six coaches. The second-class one was divided into eight-person compartments, while the rest of the compartments were third class, that is, they consisted of the one open space. The young people preferred this one since it allowed us to mix together in a squash of males and females, students, young office-workers and a few factory-hands. They all got on in small groups at various stations until the whole train was crowded.

With a few friends from the Valtravaglia, I took upon myself the role of story-teller, and there were others who sang to the accompaniment of guitars or accordions. At Caldè, a complete brass band would often get on: the two who played the flute and the slide-trombone were studying at the
Conservatorio.
The upshot was that our coach rejoiced in the nickname of the
caravan de ciuch,
the drunkards' caravan.

Every so often I would desert that pandemonium and take refuge in another carriage to get on with some study, but I was not always successful. My companions would come looking for me, and often prevailed on me to tell them at least a couple of tales. At that time, my repertoire was somewhat limited, so to avoid repeating myself, I was obliged to invent more and more new adventures. I cast in a grotesque, ironical light famous historical enterprises, like the story of
Garibaldi and the Thousand,
when the boat remained moored at Quarto because three members of the expedition were missing. If we do not reach the full complement, we can't depart, was the nervous comment of General Giuseppe Garibaldi, because we can't really call it
The Expedition of the Nine Hundred and Ninety-Seven.
They decide to seize the first people who come along: two drunks, one called Nino Bixio and the other Santorre di Santarosa, and finally a man who had just escaped from the prison in Genoa.

It was in the same random way that there, in the third-class coach, other impossible tales, all pulled inside out, concerning Christopher Columbus, Ulysses and other epic heroes were conceived.

The
Odyssey,
in particular, became for me an inexhaustible storehouse of satirical, comic motifs. There was the dilemma of Ulysses, desperate to put to sea and get back home, and Poseidon on the look-out for him, peeping out from underwater in the belly of a whale. Poor aquatic pachyderm, forced to live open-mouthed, continually rocked by vomiting fits!

Right on cue, a storm rises and Ulysses is tossed onto another shore. There he is in the land of the Phaeacians, then in the arms of Nausicaa. When he gets on his way again, Poseidon pounds the calm sea with his hands, causing the waves to rise higher than the peak of Musadino. The ship breaks apart and this time the hero is thrown ashore on Aeaea, this time into the arms of Circe. He allows himself to be overwhelmed by passion and to get up to all manner of escapades with the greedy enchantress. His companions, meantime, transformed into filthy pigs, are bored and find their only enjoyment in watching Ulysses make a fool of himself with all his tawdry cavortings with that sow of a witch, Circe.

But it's clear that Ulysses had never had the slightest intention of returning home. He was more than happy with his round of non-stop affairs. The idea of going back to stony Ithaca, to a wife who spent every moment of her time weaving cloth, and to a flee-ridden dog that was always between his feet did not attract him one little bit.

The truth of it was that it was he who went in search of storms to hold him back, so much so that before setting off from a coast, he would go out of his way to make sure that the god of the sea was wide awake and in a bad temper with him. Indeed, when he realises that Poseidon is getting fed up with persecuting him, what does he do? He deliberately lands on the island of the Cyclops and upsets Polyphemus, who just happens to be Poseidon's son, gets him drunk and sticks a flaming stake into his one eye. What a swine he was, this Ulysses! You could have wagered that the boy's father, god of the depths, was bound to unleash every giant wave he could. But whichever way you look at it, is it conceivable that a skilled master seaman like Ulysses would have taken ten years to get away from the coasts of Sicily?

Ah yes, because, look at it this way, that was the island he was always manoeuvring around. He sailed close to every cliff, went up every inlet thereabouts and perhaps touched Tunisia, but only briefly.

When he returned to Ithaca it was only by accident. He was convinced he was on Zacynthus! ‘Damnation, here I am back home!' To avoid being recognised, he dressed up as a tramp, but the mongrel went and recognised him, so he gave him a such a kick that he killed him. ‘Papa, Papa!' exclaimed Telemachus, all sure of himself. Only Ulysses could dispatch a dog with one kick like that. ‘Yes, it's me, but not a word to your mother!'

‘Why?'

‘I don't trust her, she's got those suitors pressing her to get her into bed with them.'

‘But Papa, she hasn't done it with any of them.'

‘Well, you never can tell. Can you swear on the Bible?'

‘Please, Papa, don't bring politics into it.'

No sooner said than done. Ulysses bends his bow and skewers all those bastards of suitors. Only then does his wife recognise him. ‘Welcome home, my husband.' Hugs and kisses. Groans and languid sighs.

In no time it's dawn.

‘Very sorry, but I've got to go!'

‘Already? Did you only come for a change of underwear?'

‘I'm coming too, father.'

‘OK, but get a move on, because the ship is ready and waiting, and the wind is in the right direction. Bye, bye, my wife. Don't worry, I'll be back soon. In about twenty years.'

End of story.

*   *   *

As is obvious, I am only giving an outline of those stories I performed on the train journey to Milan. Every time I did them, I put in fresh twists, or improvised new vocal or mime acts. Often I was obliged to climb up on the bench in the centre of the carriage so that everyone could follow me. In short, the carriage of the Luino-Gallarate-Milan (Porta Garibaldi station) express was for years my stage, with stalls invariably sold-out and appreciative!

The spectators were not only young men and women, but also often included more mature, less regular travellers. Some, after a while, went away annoyed or displeased over certain lines they considered inappropriate, but for the most part the casual listeners who came along were unexpectedly enthusiastic. Among them was one singular, middle-aged gentleman who at times exploded in raucous, infectious laughter. The gentleman was Professor Civolla, historian and anthropologist of the University of Milan, to whom I referred earlier. One evening, returning home on my own later than usual, I found him alone in a compartment. He invited me to sit beside him and started firing questions at me. He knew I was studying at the Brera, and that I had had the finest
fabulatori
of the Valtravaglia as masters (apart from anything else, he himself lived in Porto), but he wondered what sources I had been drawing on for some of the grotesque motifs I had adopted to turn the original form of the situations I narrated upside down.

‘Well,' I replied, ‘I have only applied the parodying techniques I learned from the story-tellers in Porto when they wanted to trip people up.'

‘No, no,' he insisted, ‘I know these techniques too, I've grown up with them. I'm talking about the underlying paradoxes.'

I looked at him in some embarrassment, then admitted I had not understood the question. ‘Excuse me, professor, what do you mean by underlying paradoxes?'

‘They are the ones taken from ancient historical tradition … do you know Lucian of Samosata?'

‘No, who is he?'

‘An extraordinary poet from the second century, Greek obviously, the satirical author who brought the technique of paradox to its highest perfection. He would take an almost sacred story and toss it around a bit. Achilles, you're telling me he was a generous-hearted hero? Anything but; he was a hysterical, egocentric, mad criminal! A right bastard who was engaged to Iphigenia, the gentle daughter of Agamemnon, and then when the oracle at Delphi intoned: “Achaeans, if you want to conquer Troy you must slaughter like a goat the virgin beloved of Achilles”, what does Achilles, son of Peleus, do? He takes Iphigenia by the arm and, as though it doesn't matter a jot to him, escorts her to the sacred tree under which she is to be sacrificed!'

And he went on to tell me about Ulysses betraying his friend Philoctetes who had been bitten in the thigh by a poisonous snake. Poor Philoctetes with his injured leg turning gangrenous was convinced by the honest Ulysses to disembark at Lemnos, a desert island. He then abandons him like a marooned sailor, leaving him to his own devices and telling him to get with it! But, not long afterwards, Ulysses is informed by the oracle that without the infallible bow in the possession of that gangrenous, abandoned soul, the Achaeans will never manage to get the better of the Trojans. Countermand: back to square one. Ulysses returns to the island, dressed as a travelling merchant, tricks Philoctetes into giving up the bow and goes on his way.

In this way, one after the other, the professor drew me portraits of a series of heroes, queens, gods and goddesses whom at school they had given us as role-models, but who, once the commonplaces of rhetoric had been turned on their head, were made to appear, some more than others, like a band of swindlers, hypocrites and opportunists.

I was literally fascinated by Civolla's conversation. We reached our destination in no time but we were so engrossed by what we were saying, I in asking questions and he in recounting, that we almost missed our stop. As we said good night to each other, we promised to meet again a few days later. It was a Tuesday and promptly on Thursday I presented myself at his home in the Antico Cambio Palace. The professor lived in the attic flat, immediately under the roof, in a large single room which covered the entire area of the palace. There were tables piled high with papers and books, a book case which covered a whole wall, and four glass doors inset in arches which opened onto a big balcony. Without more ado, he let me see one of his most recent discoveries, the reproduction of a kind of map from the fifth century
AD
which showed the mythical voyage of the Argonauts. I felt myself drowning in a well of ignorance. Who were these Argonauts? What had they got up to, where were they from, where were they going?

The greatest talent of a teacher, according to Pliny the Elder, was never to let his own knowledge overburden the pupil's less well-stocked brain, and this was beyond all question one of Professor Civolla's gifts. As he showed me the map, he called my attention to how it was designed without regard for the actual alignment of the coasts and rivers. Everything was highly approximate. ‘Look, the position of Corinth is marked here, which is where the Argonauts are supposed to have set off from some four thousand odd years ago. And here is Pagasae, the port and shipyard where, according to the myth, the ship
Argo,
which gives us the name Argonaut, was constructed. The bards of this epic predated the tales of the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
by some considerable time. On the expedition, as you will certainly know, there was Jason in the role of captain, and, just to jolly things along, Hercules, who after one or two labours was taking a short vacation, the two Dioscuri, Theseus and a great number of other heroes employed to provide a bit of ballast. There was also Orpheus, the great musician and well-known enchanter of the Sirens.