You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter into you long before it happens…
Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity.
Rilke
YOU CAN GET LOST IN TUSCANY without a map. Unlike the geometric grid of a South African landscape, where streets and roads cut straight across the countryside, here they meander and turn back on themselves and hesitate, passing by villages with strangely evocative names like Orgia and Saturnia, until you have no idea where you are going, nor know where is north or south, and barely can distinguish up from down. You feel disoriented. Lakes pass by on your left and disappear and a few minutes later reappear on your right. The roads wind steeply upwards around hairpin bends through woods of chestnut trees where wild boars and wolves have returned after half a century of absence.
It was the middle of winter when you left, i giorni della merla, the blackbird days as they call the bitterest, darkest days at the end of January. You found a bus, a corriera, to take you northwards, to Pitigliano, and then another on from there. You didn’t bother to ask what its destination was.
You didn’t talk, you and the boy. You bought two tickets, one for him and one for you, and you sat side by side on the hard seats looking out. You passed through the industrial outskirts of the city, and carried on past the lake of Bracciano under colourless skies with the smell of bonfires burning dead leaves and branches acrid in your nostrils. You don’t know about him but you didn’t see anything. The scenery passed in a blur. You were only aware of his small solid presence beside you on the bench.
First fallow wheat fields straggled along next to the road, interspersed with olive trees and vineyards that broke up as you began to rise into the hills and the woods closed in around you. The driver turned on the windscreen wipers as heavy raindrops began to splash themselves across the windows of the bus. The wipers seemed ridiculously small and only cleared a tiny section of the front windscreen. The windows soon misted up with the dampness so that shapes outside grew strange and contorted but neither of you tried to clear the mist from the glass. It reflected what was inside you – misty, dark, obscure. At last you reached the final stop and you alighted. It was still raining, but the clouds appeared to be clearing in the west. You watched as the bus turned heavily in the little square, took on board its new passengers for the return trip, and, with a honking of its horn and a cloud of exhaust fumes, disappeared down the valley. There was a bar with a few tables stacked outside and a faded poster advertising Algida ice creams, but the door was locked, with rotting leaves piled high against it. It clearly hadn’t been opened since the summer. Even the church was locked. You and the boy stood there. There was no one else around. You read the name of the village on the tattered bus timetable stuck on the notice board outside the bar – Serra. The fortress.
You wandered through the fortified village and stood for a moment high on the ramparts looking out over the forests, the valleys and gorges that reached to the horizon. It felt as if you were on the prow of a ship about to set sail into an ocean of brown leaves and spidery branches. You gazed out to the western horizon, where the sun was setting through black clouds. And then you lowered yourselves over the wall and dropped below the surface along a narrow path that wound its way downwards, you knew not where.
For days you walked through deep forests. Chestnut and plane and oak trees, deciduous trees, shady and soft, became your home. You shared this world with other shy silent creatures, foxes, ferrets, squirrels. One day a vixen accompanied you, curious, for several hours, trotting along parallel to you but a few arms’ lengths away, stopping when you stopped, watching what you watched. Sometimes at night you heard snorting and rustling in the undergrowth, but the animals kept their distance, and all you encountered was their feral smell in the path, or spoor in the mud. Once at night you caught sight of yellow eyes staring at you and you knew it was a wolf. You froze and after a few minutes they disappeared. You did not tell Ugo for fear of frightening him, but you did not forget those eyes.
– Hurry, hurry, you said to him. We mustn’t let anyone see us.
How long could you keep going? They were looking for you, you knew. You saw the newspaper headlines outside an edicola as you passed through a sleeping village by night. You saw your photographs side by side on the billboard, yours from your permesso di soggiorno, younger but recognisable by the deep haunted eyes and frown lines, Ugo’s school photo taken a few years ago when he was much younger. No one had loved him enough to want to take or keep pictures of him more recently.
You fled from field to field, eating what you could, escaping, avoiding farmhouses and villages. A turnip here, tomatoes there, crusts of bread left out for the cats on another. You filled your pockets with ears of corn on one farm, where the farmer was unwise enough to plant his crop far from the watchful ears of his dogs. You gathered the last of the chestnuts, which you roasted over the fire at night on sticks, and mushrooms and the few remaining blackberries and blueberries, and when there was nothing else you sucked on stalks of wild sorrel or long stems of grass which you found in the occasional clearings between the trees. After a few days you were both very lean and your arms and legs scratched and bruised.
When you came to a small hamlet, often abandoned, the pickings were more abundant – the last apples off trees gone wild, walnuts fallen to the ground but still cold and sweet, vegetables gone to seed – and there was no danger of being caught. You sometimes slept overnight in one of the tumbled-down houses, but you were anxious about vipers and spiders, and the sense of despair and futility and loss in these places where once families had lived and prospered made you want to move on, to travel forward. You did not know where you were going, except that you must move forward.
And one day you came to the sea, to a long white strand with long white waves that mimed and echoed its forms. The child and you traced lines on the sand with your fingers and played noughts and crosses. He beat you every time and laughed uproariously when he did. He asked you to draw him a picture and you made a face with eyes but he didn’t like that. He told you to draw him a dog and clapped his hands to see it. He asked you what its name was.
– Manfred, you said, it’s Manfred.
– Tell me about Manfred, he asked, but you couldn’t remember any stories to tell him and your mind just went blank each time you tried.
They were light-hearted days when you were still relieved at your escape, unconcerned about the future. You told each other stories as you walked, and sang songs and skipped stones off the sea. At night you gathered driftwood and made a little fire, and you hollowed out a soft shallow grave in the sand and lay down and sang lullabies until you fell asleep, and the stars above watched over you.
You came to a place where the cliffs rose up high and fell in a tumble of rocks into the sea, and you were forced inland if you wanted to continue. And it began to rain. The soft hushing sound of the rain, calling, inducing sleep, drowsiness, numbness in the brain, softening edges, smoothing, penetrating after so many days of enervating wind, of dryness and cracked, salty surfaces.
The shadow of an abbey fell across your path, with high solemn walls, an empty rose window above the altar, and no roof. The lead tiles that covered the nave had been used to make cannon balls for some war of dominion or other, perhaps the Napoleonic campaigns, perhaps something earlier, their significance long forgotten.
You stretched out on your backs on the grassy floor in front of the stone altar and gazed up at the night sky. You opened your arms wide on either side. Above you the universe was captured in the shape of a cross. Deep blue studded with sparkles of gold. Glowing, trembling with life, red stars, yellow, white, they sparkled in the cold brilliance of the night. You watched, transfixed, a star shoot across the heavens from wall to wall. You half expected it to bounce off the far wall and ricochet backwards and forwards, ever downwards
until it lay, vibrating, pulsating, gleaming on the tiny white flowers and grass that carpeted the floor of the abbey.
You came out at last, out of the low hills and valleys of the Maremma, forest-covered, with its steaming stinking sulphur springs, and radioactive mountains full of lead, and into the sloping wheatlands, the slow circles and bends woven by the plough over thousands of years. Where memory is held, is prized, is cherished, where the past is studied and revered, where history is in the bones of everything, where everything is named.
You sat on the edge of a lake, was it Bracciano, or Pitigliano, or even Trasimeno or Garda, and remembered the dry lakes of your childhood, the lakes of dust where there was no water. Just a borehole, a windmill, metal structure penetrating deep into the earth to tap into an underground stream, remnant of the waterways that once crisscrossed the plain. A bird soaring overhead. The dull, monotonous clanking of the borehole turned by the wind pulling up sullen brown brak water to the surface, unpleasant and salty to the taste, on the tongue; you had to be very thirsty to drink it, but one was always thirsty there. You remembered the place of your childhood, depleted, dry, barren.
A falconer stood at the edge of an open field, a bird on his gloved hand, hooded, like something out of a hieroglyph.
He waited.
The moment must be right. Then he slipped the hood off the bird’s head.
He watched as the slow yellow eyes blinked, then blinked again, black pupils exploring the sky. As if in slow motion the wings opened and the claws released their grip and the body rose into the air, heavily at first. The wings thrust down hard against the pull, the suck of the earth, and then it was away, soaring high above the trees.
The falconer let it run, knowing that to try to call it in at this point would be fatal; the bird’s will would be pitted against his and it would escape, probably for ever. He had to bide his time, allow it to stretch, allow it to sense freedom. Its own anxiety, not his, would bring it running back to check that he was still there.
When the falconer saw it return hurtling like an arrow towards him, he whistled pwee and gestured with his arm, and the bird wheeled and flew away again, but not so far this time. So when his shrill whistle came again pwee pwee the creature allowed itself to accompany him, to second him, to will what he willed, and it began to circle the field, at a distance first, far beyond the trees that bordered it, then the circles grew slowly tighter, smaller, the bird’s head turning from side to side, its eyes watching the man on the ground, intrigued, held in his spell, not dominated but enthralled by him. At last the man pulled a dove from his bag, a dove half stunned, barely struggling, and showed it to the falcon, held it aloft, high in the air on his hand. The falcon slowed, circling lower now, closer, watching carefully, turning its head from side to side to gauge its prey. The falconer held up the dove, and then launched it high into the air.
With a smack the falcon dived and grabbed it in mid-air with its talons then soared up to the clouds, up to the heavens, in triumph, flying fast, winging swiftly up, up, escape, and freedom so close. And then the whistle, pwee, and again and again, pwee pwee pwee. The falcon could smell the blood, the warm flesh close to its own. The yellow eyes half closed for a moment, then the master’s will took hold. The bird circled the field once more, and then descended and landed on his wrist and cast the dove at his feet. Ptui. It spat a few stray feathers from its beak, and then looked around shivering with wild eyes.
The man took the hood from his pocket and covered the bird’s head affectionately, stroking the bony skull through the suede with the soft cushion of his thumb. He clipped the chain back onto the ring around the legs, then fed the falcon a piece of meat from his pocket. Not the quarry, not the prey. That was for him alone, the master. The bird had to learn to subdue its will to his. The man could make no mistakes in this game of domination and submission.
You stood in the shade of the trees, with the boy bedside you, watching. When he had finished you pulled back against the trunk and waited until he had disappeared into his battered car and chained the bird to a bar in the back of the vehicle. When he had driven away and over the crest of the hill in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes you set off again across the field and into the woods.
At last you stop. You hadn’t planned it that way, but there is no other choice. Ugo hurt himself this morning and can no longer walk.
You knew these abandoned buildings were dangerous. The floor collapsed under his weight and he plummeted into the cellar, cutting his thigh open on a metal spike, a deep, jagged gash. You try to clean it as best you can, with water from an outside cistern, but you have no bandages or disinfectant. You find a bottle of wine in a storeroom and a demijohn of oil. You pour some of the wine onto the wound but you don’t think it will do anything. He does not even wince when it touches him. You tear off the sleeve of your blouse and bind that around his leg.
You are not sure whether he has just sprained his ankle or broken the bone. It seems to sit at a strange angle, but maybe he is just holding it like that because of the pain. He says he can’t walk any further.
You tell him he must get up. You pull him up and hold him under the arms for support, but he cries every time his foot touches the ground. You don’t know what to do. You pace up and down in despair.
But at last you are forced to give in and let him lie down again. You sit next to him for a while, but you keep thinking of dogs, of fierce dogs with snuffling noses, seeking, searching for you along the forest floor, tails wagging from side to side. But you know you will have to stop. You know you can’t go any further.
It is a tiny hamlet, just a cluster of houses surrounded by a high stone wall hidden in amongst the trees. It looks as if it must have been abandoned decades ago, perhaps just after the war when so many people moved to the cities in search of work, and now nature has taken over. Weeds grow everywhere in abandon. Fig trees have sprouted and grown in cracks in walls, nettles collected below, pushing aside the bricks and stones until the wall falls at last and the house collapses. Roots buckle the cobbled alleys. You wander from house to house. Bats and pigeons have nested here over the years, leaving mounds of excrement and sticks and feathers and broken shells and bones piled high and smelly on the worn faded linoleum-covered floors.
There is a small square in the middle of the hamlet, an open space where the houses open out into a tiny piazza with a little chapel at one end and a boarded-up shop at the other. You imagine people sitting out here on a summer’s night, talking and laughing and singing. It makes you feel very sad.
The main house looking on to the square is well proportioned, and is, like the others, built of grey river stones, but at one time it had been plastered and painted a warm ochre colour. It has withstood the assaults of nature better than the others. The rooms are dry and relatively clean.
The well in the square has a carved stone base depicting animals and flying birds around the rim. You drop in a stone and hear a clear plop as it hits the water. You put your head in and shout and the well shouts back again and again echoing your thin birdlike cry.
Pigeons roost on the wooden rafters of the little chapel or perch drunkenly on the faded triptych above the rotting altar. The roof has caved in, collapsed in one corner. Graffiti covers the walls beside the remains of a pew charred by the bonfire lit by vagrants passing through; they have also defecated in the corners. There are the half-visible remains of frescoes on the wall, eroded, eaten away by damp and mould. Rain has almost washed the colours off two walls most exposed to the weather, but the paintings are still visible on the more protected walls. You can just make out the faded outlines of some figures, barely human any longer. You can make out bodies, figures falling, but you know you will need to clean them up and find a light to see them properly.
Lush weeds grow in the portico. You grab hold of one and pull it up by its roots. It gives you great pleasure to do so. It feels like coming home.
You have decided you will stay here for a while. Even if the boy
weren’t hurt you need somewhere to take refuge. Here you can sleep in front of the fire for as long as you like. You collect some firewood and light a fire in the huge fireplace in the kitchen. Upstairs you find an old mouldy mattress. You empty out the damp feathers and fill it with dry leaves and put it in front of the hearth where Ugo can lie down. You struggle to open the shutters and they give way at last and the golden sunlight pours in. You lean out. From where you stand you can see out over the tops of the trees. You can hear church bells rising through the clear air from far away. You can see the sprawl of Florence far off below you in a brownish haze, and at its heart Giotto’s bell tower. There seem to be no other villages nearby but you are aware that curious woodcutters or shepherds might notice smoke coming from the chimney and come to see what is going on. But they would probably think it was just a vagrant who was passing through and wouldn’t bother to check. Or so you hope.
And in the night you hear footsteps, and the sound of someone coughing – it sounds like a man. You and the child hold each other tight in the dark. And in the morning he is sitting in the square when you get up, with his back against the wall, warming himself in the sun. He looks at you blankly when you try to speak to him. You ask him if he would like some water. He smiles but doesn’t say a word. Perhaps he is mute? He seems to see things that are not there and hears voices that only he can hear. He seems to understand when you speak to him in Italian, but he gets very confused, unable to do what you ask him.
When the sun is high he gets up and sets to work pruning the olive trees below the houses. He goes about the task with an easy rhythmic motion, as though it were something he had learned as a child. In the afternoon he returns and beckons you and Ugo to come to his house at the far end of the hamlet. Always in gestures. You follow him there. A woman stands framed by firelight in the doorway.
– Come inside, she says, your place is waiting.
The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself Page 15