Soul of the Border

by Matteo Righetto

  “Here!” he said to his daughter, holding it out to her.

  She sat up and gladly took it. “What about you?” she asked him.

  “First the holy water,” he said, lifting the half-litre bottle of grappa to his mouth. “In an hour, we’ll go,” he added, once he had taken a swig, and immediately put some tobacco in his mouth. “We’ll get to the border tomorrow night. It’ll be hard, so for now rest a little.”

  How many times had he talked to her before? Jole wondered. She felt suddenly happy, but also scared. Her father was vigilant, mistrustful. The customs men could be anywhere. After a few moments, she felt reassured. With him, nothing could happen.

  Having finished the last mouthful, she let down her hair and lay down again on her back.

  The morning wind gently moved the branches of the trees above her, and between the patches of sky opening and closing beyond the branches she caught sight of a pair of sparrowhawks circling slowly in search of prey.

  From a pocket, she took the little wooden horse—her goodluck charm—and laid it on her chest, between her breasts.

  She felt her eyelids getting ever heavier. An ant crawled over her neck, making her itch, and she flicked it away with a finger.

  Then she fell asleep.

  PART TWO

  1

  WHEN SHE WOKE, the first thing she saw was the branches above her, the foliage of the trees swaying between the earth and the sky. The branches were bigger than the last time, as were the trunks of the trees that supported them: ashes, alders and oaks partly stripped by the Alpine autumn.

  Without getting up, she raised her head and back and propped herself on her elbows and forearms. The little wooden horse fell from her chest, darker and more worn than before.

  Three years had passed. Three years since she had fallen asleep in this very spot. Three years since she had been here the first time, with her father. Three long years since she had become a smuggler. In all that time, many things had happened and many other things had never happened again.

  Since that first journey of hers in 1893, Jole had learnt a great deal about tobacco smuggling. Just as she had learnt a great deal about how to barter tobacco for metals and metals for food. That time, three years earlier, she and her father had managed to earn a pig, three sacks of flour, six capons and a few lire, spent by Augusto on potatoes, corn and chard. Returning to Nevada from that first expedition, she had felt like a real woman. That day, she was sure she had for ever thrown overboard all her fears, the insecurities of her soul and her youth. She had felt suddenly grown-up, even though she was barely fifteen.

  Now she was eighteen and her father was no longer here.

  She lay still, looking up through the branches at a deep-blue sky, just like the sky that day. She closed her eyes and breathed in as much air as possible through her nose.

  She gathered two pine cones from the ground and played with them, holding them in one hand.

  It was 29th October 1896.

  She thought about the last time she had seen her father. How could she have imagined then that she would never again be able to clasp him in her arms?

  He had left at the age of forty-two and everyone had waved goodbye to him just as in September we wave goodbye to summer, knowing perfectly well that after autumn, winter and spring it will return in all its splendour and warm our skin and our hearts. But that had not happened.

  His wife and children had waited for him in vain for days and weeks, but he had not returned.

  Agnese had prayed day and night, hoping that her husband had merely been the victim of an unforeseen setback. She was sure he would reappear sooner or later. None of them left to go and look for him: that would have been pointless. On the one hand, they were waiting for him to come back by himself, counting on his strength and on the power of fate and their prayers; on the other, they could not abandon the fields, because in his absence, if they wanted to eat, they needed to toil twice as hard as before.

  Then the first snow had arrived and the mountains had been buried under a white blanket metres deep. The paths had become impassable, putting paid to any idea of going to look for him. And together with the grass of the meadows and the bushes on the edges of the woods, their hope of seeing him again was also buried. Above all, of seeing him alive.

  One day the following spring, a shepherd passing through Nevada had told Agnese, who had aged in a short time, that just under a year earlier he had heard about a man resembling Augusto De Boer. According to what he had been told, the man had been killed by Austrian border guards. Nevertheless, Agnese had never lost the insane hope of embracing her man again and had continued to pray to all the saints every day that God granted the earth.

  Of all this Jole was thinking again, three years later, in the middle of her journey as a solitary smuggler, lying amid the autumn colours, hidden in this wood overlooking the Brenta Valley from the side opposite Nevada. Her sister and brother, who were now thirteen and ten, would have liked to come with her, just as she had done with their father, but Jole was steadfast and unmovable: she would go alone.

  Either alone or she would not go.

  And since she knew the way and had already risked her life three years earlier, they had yielded in the end and let her go. She needed to do it because they were hungry. There had been famine that spring, and things had been really bad for the De Boers. The family had managed to hide several dozen kilos of tobacco from the king’s customs men and Jole had persuaded her mother to let her go. Agnese had lost a husband and had no desire to lose one of her daughters, too, but faced with Jole’s stubbornness and the pangs of hunger in her own stomach she had come around to the idea. And so Jole had prepared herself to leave alone, in her father’s footsteps, to do what he had taught her to do, what he had left her as an inheritance.

  Still half lying, looking up at the sky, she thought again about her departure, the preparations, the emotion she had felt. She looked at her horse Samson, three-quarters a Haflinger. The animal was forced to move his muscles constantly to repel the horseflies tormenting him. He was bigger, stronger and more beautiful than Hector, and he would be perfect for this journey.

  He was a workhorse, small and rather squat, and had been entrusted to her a year and a half earlier by the foreman of the marble quarry where she always went to admire these animals. He had injured one of his forelegs and was of no more use at the quarry.

  “We have to send him to the slaughterhouse,” the foreman had told Jole.

  She had tenderly approached the horse. “Give him to me, I’ll take care of him.”

  “Oh, yes, of course you will!”

  “When he’s recovered, I’ll bring him back to you.”

  The foreman had thought it over for a moment and then, moved by compassion for this girl who had come there every week since she was a child out of a love of horses, had exclaimed, “Take him away, if you can get him to move. Do it before I change my mind!”

  Slowly she had returned home with the horse and had made a place for him in the shed. He was beautiful: hazelnut and chestnut, with a blond mane and tail, just like Jole’s hair. Fascinated by that mane, she had christened him Samson.

  She had treated him every day with compresses and medicinal ointments made from wild herbs and resin, and within a few months he had completely recovered and had even begun to gallop again, a little at a time.

  The preparations for departure had been anything but hasty or rushed. Her father had taught her to consider every single detail of the journey, to avoid the risk of getting into situations that could have been avoided with a little foresight. And so Jole had prepared everything with care and attention during the week preceding her departure, leaving nothing to chance.

  She had collected just the right quantity of tobacco from the various hiding places, weighed it, obtained water, fitted and filled all the bags and cases in which the tobacco was to be hidden during the journey, let the horse rest and feed more than usual, wrapped pieces of Morlacco and Bast
ardo cheese and sopressa salami in thick sheets of paper, put dried beans and potatoes in small jute sacks, checked her boots, and dug out two large blankets, two rucksacks, a few ropes, a large steel canteen, a rough hemp sheet and a lantern. She had hidden the eighty kilos of tobacco—in leaf, powder and shag form—partly among the things she had loaded on Samson’s flanks and partly in her own clothes. Last but not least, she had gone to the shed, opened an old oakwood chest and taken out St Paul, the Werndl-Holub rifle that had lost its brother.

  She had learnt to shoot during the year of her first journey. It had been her father who had taught her to fire with his rifle, that St Peter he always carried with him on his smuggling expeditions and which had disappeared along with him and his mule.

  2

  NOW, IN THIS WOOD that was the first halt on her new journey, thinking again about the past but above all about the future that awaited her, she got to her feet and stooped to pick up her little wooden horse, which had fallen on the infinite cloak of leaves that carpeted the undergrowth. She tied her hair, which in the last three years had become much longer, tied her old red kerchief around her neck and put on the broad-brimmed straw hat that had been her father’s. Last but not least, she grabbed the rifle and put it over her shoulder, just as a gust of wind sent dozens of leaves swirling through the air.

  At that moment, Jole heard the loud whistle of the steam locomotive coming from the Sugana Valley, perhaps from Grigno, much further down. The railway had been inaugurated a few months earlier and had already begun to clatter back and forth from the border down to the valley.

  With her hat tilted forward and the rifle over her shoulder pressed against her rucksack, she went to Samson, stroked his muzzle and mounted him in one confident, accurate bound. On her Haflinger, she was more beautiful than ever, and it seemed as if nothing could ever stop her.

  “Ya!” she said softly, and at this command Samson set off again.

  Even though she had a clear memory of the route she had taken with her father, she knew that her journey would not be at all easy, since every step would hide a thousand pitfalls.

  “Ya!” she repeated.

  And, riding bareback, she left the smell of sad memories in that place, along with her own smell: Jole, the young smuggler.

  3

  SHE ENTERED THE WOOD very slowly, constantly looking around, alert to any possible threatening presences. She knew that at any moment she might encounter Italian customs men, wild animals or criminals ready to do anything to prey on wayfarers and smugglers.

  She wondered which of these three misfortunes might have befallen her father but could not answer her own question, since she considered him cleverer than any customs officer, stronger than any natural adversary and more ruthless than any brigand who might be encountered in the forests.

  The sun had been up for a couple of hours and was now starting to lick the ridge of Mount Grappa, spilling its golden rays over the north side of that sacred mountain.

  She veered east and then north-east like a fugitive, never leaving the thickest part of the wood, concealed by the vegetation, camouflaged like a viper lying in the undergrowth.

  She almost never stopped, except to check possible signs of other people having passed that way or to get a better sense of direction, choosing routes impossible to spot or discover from any other position. Leaving the northern slope of Mount Grappa behind her, she saw the valley of the Cismon ahead, and at this point, in order to continue the journey, she had to make up her mind to leave the dense wood of black hornbeams, mountain maples and lindens and cross first a birch forest and then some meadows and pastures that stretched for several kilometres in the direction she would have to follow. This was a delicate moment, because, although Jole had skilfully positioned herself more than five hundred metres above the village of Arsiè, there was a real risk that someone might see her from there. Before coming out into the open, she dismounted and tied her horse to the base of the trunk of a thick birch. She reconnoitred the area for a radius of about a hundred metres then went back to Samson, who was almost impossible to make out among these dappled trees.

  Everything was fine, and she felt ready to continue, but first she walked her horse to the edge of the wood, where the birches thinned out and gave way to the autumn meadows. There she let him graze for almost an hour, during which she stretched her legs and gathered some chanterelles and parasol mushrooms sticking up from a patch of moss a few paces from her. She cleaned them with the knife she had in her belt and put them in one of the leather bags tied around the horse’s flanks.

  After a while she thought she saw something move, not so far away, in the meadow, something like a large shapeless black patch that had appeared suddenly and immediately vanished behind a grassy rise. Alarmed, she took out her rifle in two rapid moves. Then she lay down on the ground and aimed at the rise, waiting to get an idea of what it had been.

  Holding the barrel straight, head and shoulders still in a firing position, she felt her heart pounding. Her anxious breathing might make it hard for her to aim. She lay there motionless for a few seconds, her rifle still trained on the spot where she had glimpsed that black, indistinct thing moving. Seconds that seemed like minutes, minutes that seemed like hours.

  All at once, that big dark shadow came out into the open, making a terrible racket. Heaving a sigh of relief, Jole lowered St Paul. It was only a big wood grouse, which promptly raised its tail feathers and began emitting shrill, threatening cries.

  Without hesitating for too long, since she knew that some specimens could be aggressive, Jole went back to Samson, untied him and immediately resumed her journey, leaving the woods and the grouse behind her and at last reaching the open spaces that would lead her to her goal.

  For a few hours, she climbed a long pastureland plateau made up of green hills carpeted with millions of purple autumn crocuses. The sky was clear and the sun beat down on Jole’s neck and on the coat of her horse, who went on, metre after metre, without ever complaining, even though his body was lathered in sweat.

  4

  SHE LEFT FONZASO behind her, remaining constantly at altitude and always alert to the possible presence of customs officers or royal soldiers. In these meadows she came across hares, francolins, partridges and young roe deer in the company of their mothers, and none of them seemed frightened by her passing. She actually had the impression they were somehow welcoming her to this place. Under the strong midday sun, the autumn colours were bright and bold and she could not help admiring them, forgetting for a moment what she was doing and the reason she was here for the second time in her life. But then she remembered the time she had passed this way with her father.

  Their journey had taken place at the end of September, and the autumn had not yet been so ablaze with colour. She recalled the words he had said to her when they had come through here: “You see those over there? They’re the Vette Feltrine.”

  Jole had followed the direction of his gaze until her eyes came to rest on those peaks.

  After a few moments he had resumed speaking. “Jole, this journey has only one rule: not to come back as you left. Return home different!”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “A professional smuggler is like the wind. He mustn’t show himself, mustn’t let himself be caught and must always be ready to change direction.”

  Jole had smiled, and her father had put a handful of tobacco in his mouth and started to chew it slowly.

  Samson was proceeding at a steady pace, rocking her gently to right and left. Jole slightly lifted the brim of her hat, almost completely uncovering her forehead. She looked at the grey, rocky peaks emerging between the hills in front of her and recognized them.

  I have to reach them by tomorrow morning, she thought, then climb almost to the top of Mount Pavione, where the border with Austria is, and go down again on the other side, beyond the border.

  Her lips and mouth and throat felt dry. Samson was thirsty, too, and as time passed his tongue
had become very large and thick. Without thinking, Jole grabbed the canteen from the horse’s flank and raised it to her mouth. Unfortunately, it was no longer so fresh: they needed to find a stream. After another half hour, instead of slowing down with fatigue and thirst, Samson began gradually to increase his pace and to quiver, almost to tremble, as if something, some brute force, was urging him to keep going forward. Jole realized that he had scented water, and she went along with him until he started to move ever more rapidly and before long reached a trickle of water that ran down a slope and soon turned into a small stream.

  Jole dismounted and filled her canteens further upstream. Samson drank his fill and then together they withdrew behind a little wood a short distance away. They rested a little and Jole ate some salami and Morlacco with black bread, then thought seriously about resuming her journey.

  Just then, she heard voices coming from the wood.

  Listening more intently, she recognized them as Italian voices.

  She stroked Samson’s muzzle. “Quiet now,” she said, and the horse relaxed.

  She tied him to a tree and took a few steps in the direction of the voices, careful to remain under cover. At first she just about made out the sound, but then other details gradually came into focus. They were men, four of them, perhaps five, and they were laughing and joking. She hid behind an oak at the edge of the wood and tried to identify them.

  After a few moments, she knew who they were: customs officers.

  Her hands felt sweaty and her heart was in her mouth. She watched them for a moment, her hand tight on the little wooden horse she kept in one of her pockets. Then she saw that, luckily, they were heading towards the opposite side from where she was and were descending towards Fonzaso.