Authors: Carlo Sgorlon
I felt a violent tug at my heart for the kidnapping of the children (I too, I too might end up in a passing Gypsy caravan, since Maddalena left me alone so often!) But that was not all! It seemed that there was something incomplete about the sequence of events, something left unsaid that imagination had to supply. I was convinced that sooner or later in their peregrinations the children following the Piper would come upon exceptional and fantastic things, like a Never-Never Land, a place of eternal merrymaking where no one ever took off carnival costumes, where toys and lemonade were handed out free. If I thought about that place I would feel a more intense melancholy, a more anxious uncertainty than when Maddalena went out to go to parties in unknown villages.
Notwithstanding the shivers of fear provoked by that story I would still feel toward the children a sentiment that resembled envy.
Every now and then Maddalena would remind me that when I was alone I should close the doors and windows and not open them to anybody for any reason. I would promise but as soon as she was gone, all resolutions would evaporate and I would let myself go with the flow of things. I would run across fields of corn and alfalfa all the way to the stream, or indeed to where the
magredi
began, and wander about with my heart in tumult, in the prey of an inexplicable panic, as if I were a wild rabbit. Or else I would remain for minutes at a time staring at a single faraway tree in the midst of the grass, watching it disappear into the fog, or at a patch of brambles or a clump of thistles in bloom.
Other children rarely came to our house, partly because they had a superstitious terror of Maddalena. If she happened to be there they would begin to look at each other uneasily, as if they had ended up in a wolf’s den. Hence in my solitude the cycle of experiences was always more or less the same.
I had learned whatever I knew of the world largely from books, which I read with a savage tenacity, diving into them like a sponge fisherman dives into the sea. I never put them down before I finished them, not even to eat or sleep. Hours would pass without my noticing and when I arrived at the last page I would throw the book aside with a sort of satiety, my head still full of a crackling succession of events that had held me by their invincible spell; I would look around surprised, as if I had been caught in the tangled cane-brake of a magic reality. I was usually extremely tired and I had to struggle to once again make contact with the world.
A world that seemed changed. It would have become a stage where anything at all could happen. If all at once the Pied Piper of Hamelin were to appear at the door with his medieval tunic and his eyes full of ambiguous malice, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Any more than I would be if I had suddenly seen the sun obscured by a dirigible that might land in the meadows behind the house or in the
magredi.
I had seen one sometime back, as it disappeared beyond the mountains (perhaps it had lost its way) and from that moment I had never ceased imagining the landing scene. Everything would really begin with the darkening of the sun. I would go to the window and see the vast elongated shape of the flying ship, very low, low enough to brush the tops of the trees; I would hear the hum of the propellors and the motors, muted despite their nearness. From the cabin many hands would be waving to greet me and to try to tell me something.
I would begin to run as fast as I could over the soft grass and the blackish stones of the
magredi,
as the dirigible was coming down. Inside...inside I would see Andrée, wearing sunglasses because of the glare of the snow and ice, Andrée, with his ropes and hatchets. He would tell me in labored and charming Italian, “We need a cabin-boy up here, a quick youngster who knows what he is about, to keep the expedition’s equipment in order — someone to take notes and make us a good cup of coffee. What do you say, boy? Want to come?”
Yes, I had been waiting for a day when something like this would happen. I had read a great deal about Andrée. I would imagine him on the polar ice, tiny and dark in the midst of the frozen sea, with its crevices and its white pinnacled towers; he was always locked in a struggle with the elements. I could even hear the howling of the wind, the shrill cries of the petrels, the sounds of the polar bears and seals. Above him was the North Star, motionless as a lamp in a lighthouse, its cold and bluish light visible through a ragged hole in the clouds.
Andrée’s major preoccupation wasn’t the cold, hunger and storms. It was something else: would he succeed in reaching the Pole? From my reading I had in fact derived the strange conviction that the Pole was as unattainable as a mirage. To get there you had to travel on foot for thousands of miles across an island of ice which was drifting on the whitish waters, driven by winds and currents. Andrée was marching toward the Pole with his sleds and Eskimo dogs, laboriously plotting his route by the position of the stars (I knew that up there a compass became a useless instrument), anxious and fearful that he might miscalculate and not achieve the great purpose of his existence because of a banal error in arithmetic.
But there was more. Perhaps his trek was all in vain because while he was going toward the Pole the island of ice was travelling in the opposite direction at a faster rate than he was moving. This was a very serious matter. I wondered if Andrée had thought of it and at the same time I tried to see if there might be any solution.
In fact someday I myself might become a polar explorer.
As for Andrée, I could believe anything about him, except that he was dead. They hadn’t been able to find him because somebody like him could only be devilishly unpredictable: they had been looking for him in the wrong places. He had of course taken shelter inside some crevasse or a cavern carved out by the frost, away from storms; he was living on the flesh of polar bears and petrels and keeping warm by burning fat.
But one day (I was certain of it) Andrée would reappear in some part of the world, his hair white, his beard grown very long, his skin burned by the glare off the snows, as unreal as a ghost. Or else he would fasten a message about his existence to the foot of a bird, one of those migratory species I used to see that passed in autumn and spring, then disappeared toward the mountains.
From my house these mountains were visible at a distance of twelve or, at the most, fifteen kilometers. However, they marked the limit of the world that had been granted to me. Beyond them began the unknown, a mythic territory; who could tell how or when I would be able to reach it. Hamelin, for instance, was a city located beyond the mountains. I would stare at them for a long time from the terraces of my house or from the branches of a tree and it seemed to me that their outline was a drawing that alluded to something. On clear days and right after a rain I could see on two of them the white strip of road that zigzagged upward, sending me a mysterious invitation....
I managed, I don’t know how, to pass my elementary school exams. About grammar and arithmetic I knew almost nothing, but perhaps the teachers were impressed by the incredible composition I had written before their very eyes (“Describe a trip you took”), and they scrutinized me constantly during the oral not knowing whether to laugh or be serious, thinking of my dramatic account of a passage through Lapland from Tromso to Murmansk. In a wave of euphoria Maddalena hastened to enroll me in the subsequent schools but I refused categorically to attend. I had decided I would run away from home sooner than go to boarding school. She didn’t insist. After all there wasn’t enough money and besides she didn’t want to be separated from me. School, however, continued to be the last of my thoughts. I always had a hundred things to do.
In the attic there was, among other things, a carpenter’s workbench with numerous tools, which I had learned to use with a certain skill. I had already made myself a windmill, a miniature sailboat and a tiny cart. But as I was making toys it clearly crossed my mind that this wasn’t a serious activity — it was a child’s game and there was something temporary and even humiliating about it. I even went as far as to try to make a wooden sextant, based on a drawing I found in one of the Dane’s books. But the undertaking soon proved to be too difficult, replete with too many obscure details and I had to give up. Thus I fell back on a project to make a whaler’s harpoon.
I worked on it for several days. The long polished wooden lance was ready and I was finishing the point, for which I had used a scissor blade dug up in the garden. A few turns of the grindstone had given it a splendid shine. One evening, trying to figure out a way to insert the blade in the wood, I tied it to the lance tightly with the string and picked up the harpoon, a heavy handful, and began to brandish it. I threw it at a wash table and it stuck almost into the center, quivering in sharply audible vibrations. An intense atmosphere formed around me, took hold of me, and carried me off. The attic floor became the deck of a ship caught up in the pursuit of a school of whales off the coast of Greenland. Those weren’t raindrops coming through the tiny attic windows, they were droplets of sea spray; there was no more odor of dust and mildew, only the salt air, the smell of ropes and dried herring, the eternal fare of the common sailor. The red rays reflected off dirty windowpanes were those of a fiery sun going down into the sea off the Labrador coast.
I had just read
Moby Dick
and for me it was the most beautiful of all the books I knew. Every page had been a discovery that multiplied the world, an opening of curtains on topsy turvy landscapes, a free fall into a whirlpool of enthusiasm even though I hadn’t understood everything and was forced to skip many passages. The miracle began with the first line. The moment I read, “Call me Ishmael...,” I felt oddly ashamed that my name was Giuliano, just Giuliano. Ishmael was a real name, a grand name, and possessing it meant being sure of a privileged destiny full of promise. I didn’t want to be Giuliano, I wanted to be Ishmael. In a way I was. I felt as if I had already lived Ishmael’s experiences. I had already been a harpooner on the
Pequod
; I had already climbed the main mast of several whalers and shouted many times, as I sighted a pod of whales,
“Thar she blows!”
Yes, I was certain of it....
Between throws of the harpoon I seemed to hear at intervals a squeaky cry from the direction of the stream. It sounded like a fox or some animal I didn’t know. Bit by bit I stopped being Ishmael and the attic once more was just an attic. I kept quiet, expecting the noise to fade away, as if it too was the result of a caprice of my imagination. I heard the repeated blows of someone sharpening a scythe, the buzzing of grasshoppers and cicadas. It had stopped raining and besides it was even hard to understand where the few drops that had fallen could have come from, since the sky was almost completely clear with only a few tattered white clouds.
I climbed up to the belvedere. From the village side there was still a glimmer of windowpanes on fire, as if all the children had set about flashing messages with mirrors and with a sudden twinge of anguish I realized how distant Ontàns was, how isolated our house and how Maddalena and I were alone and far away from the world. Just beyond a field or two and a few rows of trees the solitary steppe began, with its few patches of brambles, acacias, poplars and isolated hornbeams, black against the red of the sunset; a few kilometers farther the immense
grave,
the gravel floodplains, of the Meduna could be discerned. And Maddalena, where did she go when she disappeared in that wilderness? What did she do? Why did she leave me alone so often?
The cry was repeated but this time I got the precise idea that it was a signal. Someone was circling our house, wanting to communicate with us, or at least reveal his presence. I remembered that it wasn’t the first time I had heard calls from that direction. On those occasions Maddalena had gone and furiously closed the windows and doors on the ground floor.
I slipped out carefully and began to search where the trees were thickest, creeping through the alfalfa and between the bushes. I tried to make as little noise as possible, because I had arrived at a definite conviction: a pace or two from the house something mysterious was going on and I had to discover it. Perhaps some danger threatened Maddalena, and she was too trusting and imprudent to defend herself....
I began anxiously to ransack my memory for a useful trick among those I had learned from my disorderly reading, some possible trap or ambush for the sender of the signals. I managed to remember something but nothing suitable. I would have needed knives, nets, bamboo canes and so many things already prepared and prearranged, while I actually had absolutely nothing. I was caught between two contradictory feelings, the conviction that the signal was coming from a dangerous being and the vague sympathy that was already driving me forcefully toward him, as always happened when I encountered someone I didn’t know.
Reality itself, in its complexity, seemed attractive and adventurous, full of vague enigmas and surprises that had been reserved for me and awaited me as if they had been hidden in strongboxes to which I alone possessed the keys. But I also felt that these things were very far away, that to reach them I would have to cross a vast no-man’s-land full of woods, gravel river beds, hills, mountains....
As I was looking intensely into the bushes I saw something moving just beyond them. I lunged forward headlong, with a sense of triumph, until a dark and speeding object crashed into my forehead.
I felt a burst of painful poppings in my ears and from one intensely throbbing point a wave of dizziness spread out through my whole head. I got up staggering but decided at once to sit down; I felt a touch of nausea and a warm trickle was running down my cheek.
Fortunately, my shoulders were being supported by two sturdy hands, while a hoarse and gentle voice was saying: “What are you up to, you crazy kid.... You’re spouting blood like a fountain.... Come on, let’s take you to the stream; at least we can wash off that cut!” The man lifted me up on his back and to be able to hold me there, he must have had to call on all his strength. I felt a little better after he had bathed my forehead with cool water, even though the buzzing in my ears continued. I had run into a post half hidden by the bushes.