The Fireflies of Autumn

by Moreno Giovannoni

  ‘Suddenly, who arrives but Nilo, with his pants down around his ankles, struggling to keep them up as he runs through the crowd, breathless for more than one reason. He stops in the middle of the road and starts shouting at everyone to go and collect their carts, to get them out of there, because Father Palagi will be enraged. By the way’ – here Bucchione broke character – ‘why should that lazy vagabond of a priest be enraged about anything, given that he enjoys a blessed existence living off the fat of the land?’

  The listeners nodded and he resumed the story.

  ‘Well, Nilo said to ’Nibale and the other grief-stricken victims who had gathered in front of Gino’s house on the corner, “You had better get your carts out of there because when the reverend wakes up and sees a fleet of wagons in the courtyard at the front of his church, he will censure the lot of you at Mass in front of everyone next Sunday, and might even excommunicate you!”

  ‘His listeners heard this but it took some time for them to understand the meaning behind what he had said. They looked at Nilo and the pants he was holding up with both hands. Why was he losing his pants? What did the carts and the church have to do with Nilo’s pants? They looked at him and they looked at one another.

  ‘You see, Nilo had been up, so to speak … up … up … for an all-night vigil! An all-night vigil with the perpetua, the priest’s housekeeper, who is not so old as to be incapable and not so young as to object!’

  The listeners roared their approval and several of them slapped Nilo on the back, leaving large bruises. One missed and struck him on the head, knocking him to the ground. He got up quickly and dusted himself down because he didn’t want to miss the rest of the story in which he was a protagonist.

  ‘There was no need to ask Nilo what he’d been up to. Everyone knew. They were just happy that their carts had turned up because Nilo had been up.’

  The assembled audience cheered their approval and then arguments broke out among different factions about the merits or otherwise of ’Nibale’s and Merigon’s contrasting philosophies of the cart and Nilo’s impure acts. The discussion kept them occupied for the rest of the evening. Nilo, Merigon and ’Nibale took it all in good humour. They were secretly delighted to be the protagonists of one of Bucchione’s stories, even though he had decorated it a bit more than necessary.

  So the sun came up and went down again.

  …

  On the third day Zena wondered aloud whether they couldn’t just stay there forever. Then they spent several hours clearing the Babbling Brook of tree trunks and boulders. This improved the water flow, reduced the noise and made the raging torrent more like an actual babbling brook, although it had not been entirely tamed.

  When Beo ran down the hill again for more information, the carabinieri told him that the last of the Germans had retreated during the night and the Americans had followed, so the danger was over and they could all go home. This was a shock. It took him an hour of wandering in circles outside the police station to gather his wits. Finally one of the beautifully uniformed officers pointed him back in the direction of Compito and gave him a shove.

  When he reported back to the Sanginesini at the old mill, they became silent, stared at the ground, cleared their throats and kicked at the dirt floor until they all disappeared from view in a cloud of dust. This led to more throat-clearing.

  They decided it was too soon for the fighting to be over, that the Germans couldn’t possibly have left. The carabinieri clearly had it wrong. Maybe it was a few Germans from somewhere else and a small American patrol that had driven past. They decided it would be safer to wait.

  As the sun began to set, Bucchione disappeared for a few hours. Morena and Paolo were hiding in a tree, his mother, Teresa, was busy tending to his demented father, his wife sat in her usual stultified fashion, staring into space, dreaming of béchamel sauce, and his sister Gemma was making sure everyone was happy. No one noticed he had gone.

  The widow Pasquina’s house was outside the glade and further down the hill, hidden in a copse of willows. All you had to do was stand outside her door and she would come out before you knocked and immediately ask you in, offering you a bowl of wine, which you gratefully accepted. You would drink several bowls and she would have a sip or two to keep you company. You told her whatever it was that was troubling you, as if she were a priest and this was a kind of confessional. Then she would strip you naked and take you to her bed.

  Afterwards she filled a tub from a cauldron of water that was hanging from a chain above the fire and washed you, feeding you grapes, walnuts and goat’s cheese as she poured hot water over your head and shoulders, easing from your limbs the painful weariness of your life. She was a rich widow and did not take payment for her services.

  …

  As the night of the third day approached, to relieve some of the boredom the children asked Beo to tell them the story of the linchetto, which they’d heard a thousand times before but of which they never tired. They asked Beo and not anyone else to tell the story because there was a suspicion that he was in fact a giant linchetto himself, skinny, jittery and skittish, with a pointed head. Beo enjoyed this small moment of fame and did nothing to persuade them he was not what their imaginations said he was.

  This time, even the men and women gathered around the glow of thirty-two campfires, huddling with their children under blankets, prepared to hear once again a tale they always marvelled at. Once Beo had calmed down the crowd of noisy, wriggling children by threatening to call the babào to eat them, he began.

  ‘Ragazzi, everyone knows that Genesius had a son who was called Tista. What is Tista short for?’

  ‘Giovan Battista!’ came the united cry, which they went on to repeat until it became a chant. ‘Tista! Tista! Tista! Tista!’

  ‘Shhh,’ Beo hissed.

  ‘Well, while Tista was in America, his wife Ancilla worked like a man and raised the children on her own – that is Vitale, who is over there, and his two sisters, who are hiding somewhere. She could work a field like her husband, hitching the same cow to the same plough and turning over hectares and hectares of soil. On long summer nights she would attach the cow to the barroccio and go to Verciano with little Vitale and his two little sisters to visit relatives. They allowed her to fill a large wooden vat carried on the cart with brown liquid perugino from their cesspit. In Verciano, Ancilla filled the vat on the cart using a getto, a bucket with a long wooden handle, which she lowered into the cesspit to collect the brown liquid. By four o’clock in the morning she was back in the fields below Villora spreading the rich fertiliser, as her children slept under the driver’s seat.’

  At Beo’s mention of sleep, some of the children yawned.

  ‘One night on the way home in the dark, under a big August moon, they were wearily making their way along the bottom of the long, low hill at the end of which Villora sits, both a little perched upon, and a little submerged in, ancient moss and soft burial soil.’ Beo said the words ‘ancient moss and soft burial soil’ in such a way that the children shrieked in surprise and fear.

  ‘… As I was saying … as they were going along sottomonte, which is the side of the San Ginese hill, Ancilla and the three children saw a green light dancing around, left and right and up and down, in the middle of the road. From a distance, except for the colour, it was a tongue of fire much like in the paintings of the Holy Spirit in the sacristy up at the church. As they came nearer they saw a little man, about thirty centimetres tall, who did not flinch but glared at them and suddenly charged at the cow in what seemed an attempt to frighten it. The cow took little notice, being used to these linchetti, who often pestered her and her companions in stables all over the Tuscan countryside. As you know, throughout the night peasants everywhere hear their animals complaining with moos and squawks and grunts …’

  ‘Moo moo!’ shouted the children. A ripple like a soft wind on water ran through the crowd at the physical excitement of the children and the sighing of the happy watching parent
s.

  ‘As we Tuscans know, the linchetti, those little pests, dart in and out of the straw and from behind wood stacks and piles of hay. The contadini, the farmers, know what is going on and aren’t concerned, unless the noise from their stock becomes excessive. Then the farmer whose cow is heavy with calf or who has been poorly and down on her food will run to the stable for fear the animal will miscarry or get a fright and die.’

  ‘Oooooh!’ came the sound from the audience, halfway between a sigh and a moan.

  ‘Having failed to excite the cow, the tiny goblin shot straight up in the air. Ancilla said it reminded her of the squirt of water at the village fountain whenever a mischievous boy stuck his index finger in the spout. The linchetto just as quickly descended, braked and landed softly on her head, where he sat with his legs crossed, ruffling her beautiful long black hair with his thin gnarled fingers. Vitale and his sisters cried and hid under a sack.’

  Everyone looked for Vitale in the crowd and laughed, pointing their fingers at him, and if they were close enough they slapped him on the back and elbowed him in the ribs.

  ‘Then, with one hand Ancilla held the cow’s rope and, cursing her absent husband, with the other she took a swipe at the linchetto with her fist, which seemed to pass right through him. However, having achieved his purpose, which was to make a nuisance of himself, the green thing zigzagged away up the hillside, zoomed into the sky, paused, flipped over onto his head and dived into the earth, vanishing in the soft soil and leaving behind a puff of dust in the moonlight. His disappearance brought a magical stillness to the moonlit swamp and the familiar hills of San Ginese.’

  ‘Aaaaahhh …’ The children let out all the air they had been holding in their lungs.

  ‘Later that day, after she had spread the perugino over the corn field and given the children their breakfast of sweet barley coffee and milk with bread, Ancilla told her husband Tista’s parents, Genesius and Teresina, about the incident. Good Tuscan peasants that they were, they scarcely raised an eyebrow, and the rest of the village also took it in its stride, as word quickly spread among its one hundred and twenty inhabitants that while Tista was in America and Ancilla was having to do the work of a man, she and her three children had met a linchetto at the foot of the San Ginese hill on the way back from Verciano in the middle of the night, under a big August moon.’

  Beo took a deep breath. The children yelped their approval, clapping and cheering, as did the mothers and fathers and everyone else, and pretty soon they were chanting, ‘Ancora, ancora, ancora!’

  Beo took a bow.

  Bucchione quietly read his list of vegetables to himself.

  So the sun came up and went down again.

  …

  On the fourth day Bulletta, who was a storyteller, as you know, wondered aloud whether they couldn’t just stay there forever.

  ‘Mah!’ he said.

  And Zena replied, ‘What does that mean, mah?’

  Bulletta: ‘When you are tired of living, you say mah!’

  Zena: ‘But only if you are very old and have seen so much that you have reached a point where you are confused, because your head is full to overflowing with all you have seen and you are unable to put it into any kind of order.’

  Bulletta: ‘Mah means that you don’t know anything anymore. That everything is as good or as bad as anything else. I am saying, we might as well stay here.’

  Zena: ‘But some people also say ormai. Which means, “What is the point? At this stage nothing matters anymore, it’s too late.”’

  Bulletta: ‘Exactly! Which is not so different from mah! In fact they are so close in meaning that for emphasis some people prefer to say, Mah! Ormai! That’s what they would say if they were determined to stay here and never go back to San Ginese.’

  A group was formed to discuss how this might be possible, but the conference encountered several major philosophical hurdles, and they decided to postpone the debate until further notice.

  Everyone else woke up, ate and went back to sleep. Bucchione carefully studied the plans for his proposed vegetable garden.

  So the sun came up and went down again.

  …

  On the fifth day Bulletta and Zena and a few of the other men went hunting for migratory birds flying south from Russia. The birds were looking for Africa, where the winter was not as harsh, but found the Sanginesini waiting with their double-barrelled shotguns instead. When migratory birds encountered fog or other bad weather on the Italian peninsula, they would veer right and approach Africa through Spain. Unfortunately there was no fog or other bad weather. The Italian autumn and winter that year were mild, so the birds flew straight over the hills of Compito, and the hunting group brought back eighteen thrushes, seven fieldfare (a type of thrush), eleven chaffinches, nine crows and twenty-four blackbirds, which were plucked, cleaned, hung up to mature, and roasted and eaten with polenta in a rich tomato condiment the next day.

  If you study the taxonomy of birds, you realise how beautiful the Italian names of birds are. Here are just a few examples: tordo (a migratory bird, weighing less than 100 grams, light in colour), merlo (black, also weighs less than 100 grams), cesena (grey, weighs about 120 grams), fringuello (a colourful 20-gram combination of red and yellow), cornacchia (a 500-gram nasty pest of a bird).

  As they were cleaning the birds, they teased one another.

  ‘Sodo here, he’s so economical he comes to Nedo’s bar and sits and waits, doesn’t order anything. Nedo goes over to him, wipes his table and asks him if he wants something to drink, and Sodo shakes his head. He’s always waiting for someone to offer to buy him a coffee.’

  Sodo threw a half-plucked crow at the speaker. ‘What about you, Dolfo? Remember the potato seeds you brought back from America? You told us, “I sowed them in the terrace above and they sprouted in the terrace below.” As if that is possible! You must have been drunk that day!’

  Dolfo, who was from Cecchini, was sensitive to criticism of any kind. He was particularly thin-skinned about his marriage and the behaviour of his wife. She never helped him with any of the work in the fields. When he went out to load hay onto his cart, he would take a ladder with him. Other men had wives who would stand on top of the load and arrange the hay as the husband threw it up with a pitchfork. Dolfo would toss a few forkfuls of hay onto the cart and climb up the ladder to arrange the load. Then he would climb down, throw some hay up, climb the ladder again, and so on.

  Next the group turned its attention to Treccia, who was described as a trasandone, which means he was a very untidy person. His wife, Giorgia, despaired. They laughed at him because he loved lying in bed and would go to bed wearing his stable clothes. He said whoever had invented the bed should be given a national award. The rest of the time he would squat in the dirt at the front of his house picking up pebbles and small sticks that he would roll around in his hands. He had very strong knees, which made him an excellent squatter, even in old age.

  After this they worked quietly around the fire to finish preparing the dead birds for the next day’s meal.

  Other Sanginesini sat together talking. In a corner two brothers whose mother had died recently were arguing. One was always talking about her while the other wanted him to stop because it revived his grief every time her name was mentioned. The former believed he had existed because he was in his mother’s thoughts, and now that she was dead he had to find another way to exist. Thus mothers gave life to their children and kept them alive by thinking of them.

  Nearby, three women who had been to France to work as wet nurses exchanged tales about the men of the house, who had often participated in their offspring’s feeding sessions, demanding a share themselves and attaching themselves to the breast. Having a wet nurse in the house meant the men could continue to bed their wives, who would not sleep with them if they were breastfeeding because they believed that congress curdled the milk. The breastmilk of young Italian women was considered the best, better than the French and the German. The bre
astmilk of young Italian women was wholesome and had a sunny disposition. The women were laughing and seemed quite pleased with their experiences.

  It was dark outside now. When it is dark, when it is night, you should stay inside. Only robbers and whores go about at night, the saying goes.

  The night can also be a lonely time, lonelier than the day. As was usual in those days, even back in the village, in the evening the Sanginesini would sit, talk and keep one another company late into the night, for fear of the loneliness that is the lot of all human beings. This has already been mentioned, but it is good to repeat it to prevent it ever being forgotten.

  Bucchione showed his list of vegetables to Beo, who was astonished.

  So the sun came up and went down again.

  …

  After their midday meal on the sixth day, Beo said, ‘We could stay here forever, what do you think? These Compitesi sure know how to eat and drink, eh? They’re not sick of having us here either, and with any luck they won’t be anytime soon!’

  Then Sodo, in an unusually philosophical frame of mind, responded with, ‘Più boschi giri, più lupi trovi,’ suggesting the world was full of wolves, and the more forests you visited the more wolves you encountered. He was shouted down and told to be quiet. It was his way of saying they might as well go home because every place in the world was the same and every place had its dangers. But clearly no-one wanted to hear about it. Even Sodo regretted it as soon as he said it because he didn’t really believe the old mill was just another forest and that it was full of wolves. He was very happy to be there.

  Nedo, who was only good at making coffee and serving liqueurs and glasses of wine, and was considered a mezza mestola – half a bricklayer’s trowel, not renowned for his erudition – said, ‘Fortunato chi ha il cappotto caldo! Fortunate is he who has a warm coat!’