North of Naples, South of Rome

by Tullio, Paulo;

  I am by nature gregarious, and, like a child, not very good at keeping discoveries secret – especially exciting ones like this. My wife recognizes this failing and begged me to tell no one in Gallinaro of our find.

  ‘Remember the skiing, and how we started a craze? They’ll all be down here if they find out and we won’t have it to ourselves any more.’

  It was hard, but I managed not to tell anyone. Occasionally we were asked where we spent the day. ‘Down at the Melfa,’ I would lie. One afternoon, lying sunbathing on the flat surface of a broken barrier, I noticed that where the water flowed out of our small pool, it passed through a gap downstream with high sides made of piles of river stones and broken concrete barriers. I decided to build a dam there and make ourselves a really good pool.

  Living in the Irish countryside has taught me over the years some useful skills – dry stone wall-building for one. My dam would be about 6 metres wide and as high as possible, constructed out of the white stones of the riverbed. My son and I began the construction by laying two lines of the biggest stones we could move across the gap about a metre apart. The space between the lines we filled with small stuff and gravel. It worked – the level rose by 5 centimetres. All this plan needed for success now was hard work. Two days into this hydraulic engineering project an Irish friend, Morrough Kavanagh, arrived for a visit on his way back to Dublin from Leipzig. With this extra pair of hands the dam rose majestically to just under a metre. Now we had a swimming pool, the best on the river. By this stage we had come to know the local bathers, who were encouraging and appreciative of our efforts, not least because it took the pressure off their pool.

  Unfortunately our dam became local news. People came to see it during construction and after we had finished. Within a week of completion it had become public property. We had to arrive early to lay out towels and impedimenta to stake our claim. After about two weeks of increasing popularity, we arrived one day to find about thirty teenagers with loud ghetto-blasters and six-packs partying in our pool. Reluctantly we forced ourselves upon our friends upstream.

  After a while we watched the intruders using the top of the dam as a diving board. The inevitable happened – it collapsed. Our Italian companions were outraged. ‘Delinquenti!’ they yelled. ‘Maleducati!’ A delegation was despatched in the shape of a five-year-old to find out what they thought they were doing. ‘These people spent a month building that, and you’ve destroyed it in a day.’ They seemed to be genuinely more concerned and angry than I was.

  The child came back and announced, ‘They say they’re not delinquents. They broke it, and they’re going to repair it.’ I’ll give them their due, they did try, but the rush of water through the break combined with their total lack of expertise with dam-building made it a hopeless task. I certainly felt no compunction to start again.

  We went back a few more times, but the level of water was down and, well, it just wasn’t the same. Occasionally, though, good things come from misfortune and this turned out to be one of those occasions. We decided to look for a new spot higher up the river. The water gets significantly cooler the closer to the source you go, but there is also more of it since there is no irrigation upstream. In the summer the Molarino looks as tame as a pussy cat, a quiet trickle gently flowing over its exposed stony bed. During the winter it is a wild torrent of white-water erosion. As a defence against this, gabions line the banks where the pressure is greatest and barriers like the ones downstream have been built, but taller and wider. There is a section of river where three of these form waterfalls 6 metres or so high, one after the other. We found El Dorado when we reached the upper one after a long walk from the road.

  This is precisely the area described by D. H. Lawrence in The Lost Girl, in the valley below the house that he had rented. It is a part of the Comino Valley that is still wild and overgrown. The area around the highest of these falls is densely forested and even in the hottest summers there is abundant greenery surrounding the waterfall. It looks like a huge sheet, cascading steely grey and foamy into a deep pool that is conveniently lined on one side by a sandy beach. By the time we had made this discovery, I had broken my vow of silence and our friends from Gallinaro had started to come with us. Despite the fact that Italians are not very good at immersing themselves in water whose temperature is below blood-heat, the place is so beautiful that even they succumbed to its charms. Once we had found this place, all thoughts of sea or swimming pools evaporated, all of us deciding that this was the ne plus ultra of bathing. It became even more attractive when, after some exploration, we found an old track that allowed us to get the car right up to the river.

  A new place to eat is an exciting discovery in Italy. We decided that here was where we should spend ferragosto, the August bank holiday that is traditionally spent picnicking in the great outdoors. Every year people sit around endlessly discussing their plans for the bank holiday, ideas are floated, and gradually loose groups form, vaguely committed to a particular idea. Vaguely is the operative word here; I have never yet been on one of these expeditions where the group assembled on the day bore any relation to the one that had arranged to be there.

  Small villages like ours are surprisingly democratic when it comes to parties or outings. It is assumed that anyone who hears of a planned event and who likes the sound of it is welcome to come along. There is no concept of invitation: if it is discussed in public, then it is public. This is entirely admirable and in the past I have behaved like this myself. This time, however, we were all concerned to limit the numbers out of pure selfishness and out of a desire to keep our discovery as much as possible a secret. Amazingly, when the day came, we were less than twenty.

  Being able to bring the cars meant that a full-scale picnic was possible. Tables, chairs, loungers, sun-beds, cookers, pots and pans were unpacked at the river. Tommaso discovered a plant with huge leaves perfectly shaped for a sun hat, effective but extraordinarily foolish to behold. Graziano carefully arranged the deckchairs in the shallows, so it was possible to take the sun with feet in the cool water. Cessidio arranged an expedition to gather firewood, since we had lamb to cook. Diodato found a spot in the river where he put all the wine, beer and fruit to keep it cool. Friends arrived gradually, each unloading more food and drink. By midday the adventurous amongst us had taken the first plunge and it was time to eat.

  At the open fire Cessidio presided over the lamb, carefully basting and flavouring it with his special blend of herbs. On the tables a magnificent array of gastronomic delights awaited. I sometimes think there is an unspoken competition among the women to produce the most mouth-watering food possible. If I’m right, I can only say it’s great to be a beneficiary. There was a wonderful dish of lambs’ kidneys and mushrooms, sweetbreads done in a kind of beurre blanc, fresh mozzarelle and ricotta, a deep-pan omelette, pizza rustica, stuffed aubergines, grilled peppers in strips marinated in olive oil and garlic, home-made prosciutto and salsicce, breads, salads and then, with a flourish, Cessidio’s ember-cooked lamb. Everyone had brought their best wine. Graziano had brought the one that had won a prize the summer before at the wine-tasting, and, not to be outdone, so had Nicola. Diodato, who sells wine, brought wonderful full-bodied reds from the Abruzzi. It was a feast that could hold its own with previous years, but the greatest improvement was the choice of place.

  No one was in a great hurry to move after the food, so we lounged in the shade drinking nocino, the digestivo made from walnuts which comes into its own after the sort of overindulgence we had just participated in. Even the children had slowed up and for a little while you could hear the cicadas and the occasional cow-bell across the valley. The hour allotted for digestion passed dreamily, as we each reflected on our good fortune to have eaten so fine a meal in such good company. Then it was time to swim again. It was Diodato who first discovered that you could get in behind the waterfall on to a ledge and then dive through the curtain of water into the pool. My wife was the only woman to swim. It is tempting to conclude
that Italian women have less sense of fun than their menfolk, preferring instead to sit on the banks and watch, rather than join in. It is true that the women we know are not much inclined to exercise, be it walking, sport or in this case swimming. It is also entirely possible that this is a local characteristic and not mirrored nationally, although I have noticed at the beach that the women tend to sunbathe rather than bathe.

  Since the discovery of this mountain pool only twenty minutes from our house, summer days have been transformed. We no longer dread the build up of heat in August and there is pleasure in finding something in Italy that you don’t have to pay through the nose for. On several occasions we have been enthralled by a pair of circling eagles overhead, riding thermals majestically. I’m hoping that the Italian predilection for fashion will not turn our river into the peopled mayhem of the swimming pools; we might just be saved by the belief held by many in our valley, that it can’t be good or fashionable if it’s free.

  Copyright

  First published 1996 by

  THE LILLIPUT PRESS

  62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill Dublin 7, Ireland

  www.lilliputpress.ie

  in association with Hamish Hamilton Ltd, London

  Copyright © 1996 Paolo Tullio

  ISBN 978–1–843512–51–6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.

  A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.

  The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from An Chomhairle Ealaíon / The Arts Council of Ireland.

  Set on 11 on 13.5 Monophoto Bembo