by Dario Fo
‘Three “fresh” companies arrived to relieve us, and the survivors among us, numbed and dazed, went down to the town below, where they had set up services and lodgings behind the lines, and from there the wounded were moved to hospital. I received treatment too. I had some shrapnel in my shoulder, and they took it out just like that … with me standing upright, without anaesthetic … there was enough “sleeping portion” only for the most serious cases. They put three stitches in me and sent me on my way. It was there that I met Gigi Briasco, my cousin from Leggiuno. He had been in the army for three years, which made him a veteran. They were treating him for a “bang on the head”, as the men said, in other words a bad fracture of the skull. I was going to embrace him but he held me back: “Steady, Felice! My stomach’s like patchwork embroidery … I got a full blast of Drapen roses!”
‘I waited till they patched up his head and we went down together to where they were dishing out the grub. There was a queue as far as you could see.
“Come on, let’s go to the officers’ mess.”
“You’ve been promoted?”
“Of course I have. I’m a sergeant. But it’s not the rank that gets me in. It’s this nonsense.” He had on his shoulder a gold-embroidered circle with a dagger and a bomb bursting into flames.
“What’s that?”
“It’s the emblem of the Arditi.”
“Did you join up with that lot?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes, third company, Arditi battalion. It’s the only way to save your hide.”
“You must be kidding. What do you mean? Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself an easy number.”
“No way. I’m still risking my skin. It’s my job to go over the top at night-time, in the open, snip through the barbed wire, defuse the mines the Krauts have been planting left, right and centre … in other words, clear the ground our lads will have to cross the next day when they launch the attack. But once we’ve done our work, we crawl back into the trenches and get sent back to a base away from the front … those of us that have made it back, obviously.”
“Exactly, and how many would that be? How many manage not to get shot by snipers, blown up by booby traps or caught by machine gun fire when flares leave them exposed?”
“This is true,” my cousin admitted, “but tell me something, Felice. Am I right in saying that less than half of your company is still alive after six days here? Now take my lot. There are one hundred and twenty of us in all, of whom around fifteen copped it in the last three months, and we’ve taken part in about twenty operations. Do your own sums and you’ll see the advantages: there’s no doubt that what we’re doing in the Arditi will give you pains in the balls like nothing you’ve ever felt … every time you get back from an operation, you’ve got an ache in your arse that stops you doing a shit for three days … things sticking out of you … bits of wire that ripped your skin … but it still all adds up in our favour. We’re going to make it home with our hide intact, some more intact than others, but for you lot, the poor bloody infantry, it’s worse than being on a shooting range in a fairground … three balls a penny! So far, it’s gone OK for you, Felice, but it’s not exactly easy to pull out the winning ball in the raffle every time. It’s like being in a casino … look at it any way you like, the banker always wins in the end. The croupiers are the generals, the owners of the casinos are the king and the manufacturers of the transports, cannons and bombs. They’re the ones who spin the wheel and they’re playing with our lives. Get smart, raise the stakes if you want to bugger death.”
‘So that was it. My cousin Briasco had convinced me. The very next day, I went off to join up with the Arditi. Panic attacks, crawling about like a lizard, holes all over my body, but I made it. Unfortunately the right number in the raffle didn’t come up for cousin Briasco, and he was left there. My mother’s sister received a solemn encomium and a silver medal, but they never brought his body back.’
I was deeply moved by my father’s story, and stayed silent for a while, then said: ‘But tell me, Papà, why do you still wear all these decorations on your jacket?’
‘They’re trinkets, but they’re like lightning conductors. It’s thanks to them that I haven’t been reported or suspended, and even that I escaped arrest a couple of times. In my line of work, I come across any number of high and mighty Fascists who are fanatical about this goddam regime, and who drone drearily on about the “glory of the faith and the ideal”. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and every time I end up sniggering at them. So what do I get from them? “Mind your tongue, or I’ll report you.” “Come on you bunch of wankers,” I tell them, “want to report these as well?” and I puff my chest full out and shove my collection of honours, including the Arditi badge and the solemn encomium, in their face! Once I dropped my trousers in front of a blustering Fascist lady to show her my injured leg and silver knee-cap, and even gave her the Fascist war cry – Eia, Eia, Alalà! Who do you think’s going to take the chance of dragging a haul of trophies like that before a court?’
At which point, I started laughing out loud.
From that day on, every time someone came to our school to recite a eulogy to the regime or to deliver a panegyric on the sacred martyrs of the fatherland, I could not help seeing my father on the platform, his trousers around his ankles, jumping from one foot to the other, showing off his wounds and his silvery knee. He does not wear underpants … his privates are adorned with a garland of merrily ringing medals.
It often happened in class that the teacher or someone else would interrupt the talk and yell at me in a highly outraged tone: ‘You, boy … what do you mean by that idiot grin?’
‘No, sir,’ I would reply, lying through my teeth, ‘it is not a grin. I was just trying to hold back the emotion!’
CHAPTER 11
The Mystery of the Amorous Statues
A beautiful eighteenth-century villa, surrounded by a park with a river on one side, stood facing the lake on the outskirts of the town. Here and there stood clumps of woodland – oaks, silver firs and beeches. Statues in the Palladian style depicting nymphs, satyrs and various gods had been placed among the trees to give a spurious impression of randomness. In the villa lived the owners of the glassworks. The park was enclosed by a long fence around the entire perimeter.
The keeper in charge of the life of the trees was called Serene, surname Weather. His brother’s name was Cloudy, indisputable proof of the madness of the town. He was a registered gardener with all his diplomas in order and had previously worked on the Borromeo family’s island, the Isola Madre. He was a quiet man, but he too one day went mad and was carried off in the usual padded van to the mental hospital in Varese. The fault lay with a passionate love affair which had broken out among the statues in the park. Absurd? A pata-physical hyperbole? It may be, but for Serene, who had no idea what pataphysics were, it was a tragic business all the same.
I was fond of that gardener so, once a few weeks had passed, I went to visit him in the hospital in Varese together with Giuda and Tajabis, two friends who were both a bit older than me. Serene seemed tranquil enough, as would be expected of someone of that name, and appeared both very happy to see us and keen to confide in us about what had caused him to lose his mind. In the visiting room, he started talking: ‘It all began with the creepers growing so wild and thick over the statues in the park that you could hardly make them out. The owner ordered me: “You’ll have to get rid of those creepers, otherwise they’re going to break the statues to pieces.”
‘Armed with scythe, secateurs and saw, I started to clear the creepers away, but gently because you have to be careful not to scratch their skin. Among the statues, there were some copies of Roman originals, but there were so many branches and leaves over them that it was impossible to make out if they were male or female. I started hacking away at the shrubbery at the base, and the feet were the first to emerge. It’s hard to tell the sex of a statue from its feet. Working my way up, I liberated the legs … long … deli
cately carved … certainly female … or maybe Apollo, which is more or less the same … the only difference is at the join in the legs, and the lyre.
‘And in fact it was him, the god of music, with his outsized guitar. Stark naked, except for a strategically placed loincloth … although it was not much good, since you could still make out his thingummy in its entirety … small and discreet. The gods never need to overdo things.
‘The second statue I set to work on was a female. Beautiful she was, pushing up through wisteria and trailing plants. Snip, snip, and legs like columns appear … pubic region … thighs … buttocks … magnificent! Carrying on up, the stomach and tits emerged. My hands were shaking as I revealed those two lovely curves. She seemed to be breathing. Finally the neck and face, mouth and eyes began to peep out … she smiled and looked at me … at me!… as if to say “Thank you for rescuing me!”
‘So I said to myself, am I mad? What’s come over me? I felt I wanted to caress her all over, and I ran my fingers and hands over those cheeks of hers, so soft as to make me go all fluttery. Who knows what goddess she was? Perhaps she was a nymph … yes, she must be a nymph.
‘I was standing there in a state of enchantment when my eyes happened to drift over to the right and I saw Apollo staring at me, or more precisely gazing at the nymph. What’s going on? I hadn’t even noticed that his face was turned in this direction. I went up to him, took a look at the join of the neck and touched it. It was warm, in fact it was burning as though the stone had been twisted. Must be because of the friction with the branches which I had just cleared away. I look back over at the nymph; she had one hand over her breasts … and she seems to have turned away a little, as though she were embarrassed at the too intrusive stare from Apollo. Come on! That’s enough! I’m going off my head. This is turning into a nightmare. Time to get on with freeing the next sculpture, the third.
‘It’s much easier now. I know how to go about it. I clear away creepers as though shearing sheep. Here we go, torso emerging … another male … but this time there’s an animal tail … it’s all tangled, as you would expect if you found a statue under layers of ivy and fungus. There’s no way of knowing what kind of posture it was supposed to have … Ah! Got it! Once I clear away the bulk of the branches, a quadruped emerges. Is it a man on horseback? No, it’s a centaur.
‘Muscles taut and tense, a fine chest, and underneath the hindquarters, a grand piece of equipment … proud and erect … horses have no sense of measure. In addition, this quadruped is holding a bow with an arrow ready for firing, the whole structure set in bronze. As though by chance, the nymph turned to face the centaur, and the look of the man on horseback seemed fixed on the woman’s eyes. Statuesque love at first sight? I’m going off my head.
‘It’s getting dark. I go home, but I’m back the following morning. God in heaven, no sign of the centaur! On the ground nearby there’s only the quiver with two arrows … nothing else. Want to bet someone has stolen it? There’s a furrow on the grass, as though someone has dragged it along the ground. I follow the track and it leads me to the stables … door wide open … horses missing … I look around. Thank God, they’re all down there drinking at the pond. I go to round them up. Sweet Christ, there’s one in the water, drowned. Where did all that blood come from? A headless horse? No, it’s the centaur decapitated!
‘I trip over something … what’s my axe doing here? I hear someone shouting. It’s Signora Lazarini calling for me. Her voice comes from over beside the statues. I go running down and see the master beside her. They are extremely upset. The Apollo is lying on the ground with a bronze arrow stuck in his chest. The statue of the nymph is still upright but her arms are raised in the air in a gesture of despair and triumph, and in her left hand, she is holding an arrow.
‘“Who is responsible for this disaster?” The Signora’s tone is menacing. “Whose iron club is this?” She picks it off the ground, extracting it from Apollo’s tightly locked fingers. “Don’t tell me it’s part of the statue. Apollo with a club!”
‘“No, the club is mine, Signora, and so is the axe which has smashed the centaur in two. But I know nothing about it … and don’t ask me what she’s doing, the nymph I mean, with a bow in her hand. And I don’t know why she has her arms in the air either, because earlier on they were down at her sides, I’m sure of that. And she had one hand over her breasts, turned slightly this way … yes, there’s no doubt about it, somebody moved them during the night. These sculptures couldn’t have moved by themselves. Who put the bow in the nymph’s hand? It belonged to the centaur who is now at the bottom of the lake with no head.”
‘The master and his lady stared at me incredulously, then bombarded me with questions. “Excuse me if I make so bold, but in my view a real tragedy has occurred. I had noticed right away how they stared at each other, her and him … the half-horse … with real lust! And above all, you should have seen the miserable face that Apollo had on him … glowering like nothing so much as a statue of jealousy! I could swear it, it was him, Apollo, who smashed the centaur, and then the nymph, beside herself with jealousy, took revenge by firing arrows at him.”
‘The master burst out guffawing. “A tragedy of love and jealousy between statues!”
‘But I say, “Don’t you go believing that I’m responsible for this whole business all by myself. Apart from the fact that you’d need a tractor to drag that blessed statue of the centaur down to the lake … and no, I did not touch the tractor. The trunk of the centaur is on the tractor? I know nothing about it. No idea! You want to drive me crazy. So is this all some kind of joke? Not for me it isn’t!”
‘Insults, sniggers, threats, and it’s me that ends up in the madhouse. They’re off their heads, every last one of them.’
CHAPTER 12
The Overhead Cable
Like all children in this world who live in the country, we in Porto went on fruit-pilfering expeditions in orchards and farms. The point of stealing fruit was not to satisfy hunger but to test our courage in the face of the danger of having a potshot aimed at our backsides, as they do with toads. The local peasants were pitiless: if they caught you making off with their fruit, they fired at you with rifles loaded with salt … and it was painful!
My brother Fulvio and I were part of a gang where an obligatory rite of passage was risking your neck, whether by diving head-first into the lake from the rock face in the Caldé quarry, or by taking suicide runs on the trolleys which sped along the railway lines down to the loading point for the abandoned furnaces …
The craziest thing we got up to was undoubtedly speeding along the overhead cable constructed for moving bundles of wood down from the uplands: an iron or copper cable was put up by the wood-cutters to run from the Corveggio Alps, at a height of eight hundred metres, down to the ramps in Tramezzo. The tree trunks and bundles of timber were attached to rollers which rattled down the cable and crashed into enormous buffers at the foot … the impact was to say the least violent!
The first one to suspend himself from the rollers was Manàch, the son of a wood-cutter. With one hand he grabbed hold of a steel hook and with the other he gripped one of the runners and off he went as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
All the rest of us were down in the valley looking up, holding our breath, in suspended animation, our eyes clouding over. He came down at top speed. When he got close to the buffers at the bottom, he tried to slow down … Good Lord, he’s going to crash into the wooden planks, he’s going to be jelly! But Manàch knew what he was doing and tightened his grip on the steel hook to make it act as a brake … now he’s hanging on to that alone. The friction on the wire is giving off as many sparks as a soldering iron. Bloody hell! He’s not slowing down enough. He’ll be pulped!
No, look, he’s braking. He’s still at speed when he gets to the buffers but there is no crash. Our whizzing hero throws his legs in the air to soften the blow while, as pale as shadows, we all let out a yell. I fall full length to the ground
. ‘Now it’s the turn of you lot,’ sneers Manàch.
We do our calculations. First off should be Bigulòt, son of a fisherman. He chooses a less steep and risky descent. He makes it! He wobbles a bit … shaves the top of a few chestnuts trees, takes a couple of whiplash blows in the face but holds on … the final bang is not too bad.
The boy ahead of me starts off well but halfway down scrapes along the top of a gigantic, very high elm tree. He did not have the strength to raise his legs and body, so gets into a tangle with the foliage but holds on and comes through, but when he gets to the destination, he is covered in cuts and scratches: face, arms and legs all bleeding. A dip in the stream, and he’s as right as rain.
Now it’s my turn and I am just a little anxious. In comparison with those fearless spirits, I feel like a wet sponge but, goaded by pride, I work up my courage. I had heard Manàch and Bigulòt making sniggering remarks about my more or less non-existent chances of coming out in one piece. I had the one advantage, only one, of having been able to observe with great care all the other descents. I had noted that each one had almost instinctively used his feet, or rather his boots, to drag along the cable and reduce speed. Having mastered that detail, I tie two hooks, one for each foot, with pieces of string to the soles of my boots.