by Tim Parks
‘Just don’t go there,’ Eleonora repeats.
Fortunately, the rain is easing. We can leave. A few hundred yards on, crossing the new bridge that replaced the old, we look down into a steep drop where a muddy stream runs through thick vegetation, but of the great stone arch across which Garibaldi led his long column of men, mules, horses, carts and cannon 170 years ago, there is no sign.
Le Murene
Nettare la camicia. Wash your shirts. So began one order of the day. The General wanted his men clean. Obediently, we make this our first task every time we reach our destination. As soon as we’re through the administrative preliminaries and have the door closed behind us, no matter how tired we are, it’s clothes off and into the sink. They’re so grimy. Our socks in particular are full of burrs and seeds and itchy arrows of dry grass that spear their way through the aerated fabric of the trekking shoes to tickle and torment the feet. Today, following our adventures in the military zone, it takes a good ten minutes to get all nature’s fertile stickiness out of the thick wool. Then ten more to wash and rinse everything thoroughly. And ten more again to find the wherewithal to hang everything up to dry, maybe on coat hangers dangling from window catches or balcony railings, or over the backs of chairs, or on the points of trekking poles wedged between bits of furniture. More and more, what we imagined as a holiday feels like a military operation. But at last we’re ready for dinner, and in for a very different experience from last night’s. With no pretensions to paradise, this place calls itself Le Murene – The Eels.
Once again we’ve had to change plans to suit the availability of accommodation. There was nothing in what Trevelyan calls ‘the remote Poggio Mirteto’, where Garibaldi’s men are now safely camped. But there was the even more remote Le Murene, a couple of miles before Poggio. It’s an agriturismo, a holiday farm. Not gated opulence, but a place to bring your children to discover the joys of goats, geese, pigs and sheep, and to enjoy some rustic cuisine. Strictly biologico.
Of the last stretch of walk on that long rainy day I remember only endless peaches glowing luminous red under stormy skies in the orchards along our path. And to the left, beyond the Tiber, the strange form of Monte Soratte, an isolated mountain that rises 2300 feet straight out of the plain and looks like a triangle with the top half removed, or like Siamese volcanoes joined by a long horizontal ridge. It looms there, lonely and glum amid the rain clouds, and will remain there for much of tomorrow, always on our left, in the west. Behind and beyond that mountain, Garibaldi’s returning horsemen informed him, the French army had now realized its mistake and turned north, presumably intending to intercept the column at some point. The rebels would have to hurry.
We hurried, because it was already late in the afternoon, and found as always that a steep hill had to be climbed through thick woods to arrive at our goal. ‘The storm has blown away everything,’ the young woman who greeted us complained at once. Chairs and sunshades were scattered every which way. The terrace was awash with mud and wet leaves. Even the three big black-and-white goats seemed to be shaking their heads over it all. Our hostess was clearly upset that we should see her beautiful farm in this state. And no, she was sorry, but the restaurant wasn’t open; they’d had a big party for Sunday lunch, which was upset by the rain, but we were the only guests this evening and she had to be off home soon. We must go to Poggio Mirteto to eat.
Eleonora explained our situation.
‘On foot!’ She was astonished. ‘Twenty miles in that rain!’
She took pity. She took interest. She was someone, she said, who wished people could be more involved in the land. She would leave us some leftovers in the conservatory, she said.
It was perfect. This low glass structure ran the length of the farmhouse and featured two long tables, each with twenty and more places. On one our landlady had left a litre of ice-cold water, a full carafe of sparkling wine, a basket of fresh bread, a platter of local cheeses, a bowl of fruit and a dish of cooked vegetables: aubergines, zucchini, peppers.
Why do I like this kind of food so much more in the end than the fancy fare of Paradise? We just felt so happy to be there. And how cheering to discover, dipping into Hoffstetter after dinner, that if our holiday sometimes seemed like a military operation, the garibaldini’s military operation could sometimes seem like a holiday. Here is the German talking about their evenings.
Garibaldi ate a frugal meal to which his close staff were always invited. Usually it was at this time that citizen deputations would come from nearby towns and Garibaldi would talk to them with extreme politeness, gleaning from them with great guile news of every kind; in return he would give them fake news about where we were headed and what we planned to do. Then, if he wasn’t too tired, the entertainment would go on late into the night with the General telling stories about his past. One evening he recounted this adventure from his American life . . .
‘Once I found myself after several fierce cavalry battles with just 400 infantry and 400 cavalry. We were attacked by an enemy much stronger than ourselves and after some ferocious fighting we were routed. I escaped into some woods with just 400 men. My wife had been fighting on the left side of the battle and it all went wrong for her. Her hat took a bullet, then her horse was shot from under her and she was taken prisoner and tied up. But during the night, while the enemy was sleeping, the courageous woman was able to wriggle out of her ropes, grab a horse and take off. Some cavalrymen came right after her, but she plunged into a wide river and, grabbing the horse’s tail, managed to make it to the other side despite all the shots they fired after her. Yes, signori, my wife is a valiant woman,’ the General wound up, reaching out a hand to her and sending her a warm look. Her face lit up with joy and pride.
We also felt moderately proud of the day’s achievements. Albeit upstaged by Anita. And relieved not to have to think of the death of 400 companions.
DAY 5
6 July 1849 – 29 July 2019
Le Murene, Poggio Mirteto, Cantalupo, Vacone – 16 miles
Poggio Mirteto
Poggio means hill and turns up in many Italian place names – Poggio Bustone, Poggio Catino, Poggioreale, Poggibonsi – so we knew what to expect. However, at the top of this hill, steep as ever, in a pretty central piazza, there was a surprise waiting, something that moved me quite unexpectedly and reminded us of a huge difference between the garibaldini’s journey and ours: we know where they are going and how it will end. They had no idea.
Realizing our shoes would take time to dry and with a promise of breakfast at seven, we had made a late start. Hopefully the heat would not be a problem after such a deluge. At 6.30 the view from our balcony was yellow sunshine over an ocean of dense vegetation and wisps of white cloud lying in the Tiber valley below. The landscape had been rinsed clean by the rain. We felt lucky.
But we were wrong about the heat. By nine the temperature was already touching thirty. As ever the walk turned out longer and more complicated than we imagined. Map and territory never seem to match. So our ten o’clock coffee felt well deserved. Hoffstetter, who never missed a chance to drink a proper coffee, talks of there being just one café in Poggio Mirteto, whose owner, he was delighted to discover, was Swiss and could speak German to him.
We found a number of cafés around Piazza Martiri della Libertà and chose the smartest, with white tables and yellow sunshades, partly because I wanted to find relief in the bathroom. But there was no lock on the door. I didn’t feel I could sit there with no lock. Check, Eleonora suggested, to see if there’s a piece of string. I went back through the café’s elegant lounge and, sure enough, in the bathroom there was a string attached to the handle. Pulling it tight, to keep the door shut while I sat, I had time to reflect that all my reading on Garibaldi had produced just one mention of such issues: while captain of the steamship Piemonte, on his way to land in Sicily in 1860, the General was seen sitting with his backside over the stern rail dropping his business directly into the deep.
After our coffees we wandered u
p and down Piazza Martiri della Libertà, which is actually more of a street opening up into a tree-lined oval than a square. But it’s all expensively paved and laid out, with a garden and war monument, pretty facades and awnings, a baroque church and a lovely old town gate complete with vigorous yucca tree thrusting out of its masonry at ground level. This nobly named but actually rather modish piazza is set off by decidedly poorer surroundings: narrow alleys crisscrossed with drying laundry and old folks in slippers smoking on doorsteps.
I was ambling back and forth, taking photographs, reminding myself to push my phone deep in my pocket each time I put it back, when I looked up and saw, beneath the blue shutters of an open window, a white stone plaque. Twisted wire cables sagged across the top, and a water pipe ran up the left-hand side. It said:
In this house of the Lattanzi family,
ANITA GARIBALDI,
from 6 to 7 July 1849
was lovingly welcomed
and found rest and solace.
In her heroic heart,
together with the throb of motherhood,
the dream of Rome lived on.
And perhaps, like the light of the setting sun,
she foresaw her death.
Why these words hit me with such force, I have no idea. For a few seconds it was as though the figures we were shadowing, and above all the brave woman Garibaldi had talked about at dinner last night, were right there behind that shuttered window. I had only to push open the door – yes, it was ajar – and I could call to her up the stairs. ‘Anita! Don’t go on. Have your baby here in this pretty house where these kind people will look after you.’
Then my eyes fell on the last line of the inscription, in smaller letters: Poggio Mirteto – nell’anno Garibaldino X dell’era Fascista – heroic year ten of the Fascist Era. Which is to say, 1932. The plaque was part of the Fascist attempt to appropriate the Garibaldi story, to the point that the word garibaldino had become a synonym for the embattled heroism Mussolini always encouraged – ‘Better one day lived like a lion than a hundred years like a lamb.’ The Duce had had those words engraved on every 100-lire coin.
Garibaldino year ten. I stared at the inscription and shook my head. How disorientating it is when one layer of history lies over another, evoking and distorting it. There was nothing Fascist about Garibaldi, or the martiri della libertà who died for the Risorgimento. Fascism was the opposite of liberty. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling there was something heartfelt in this tribute to Anita. Perhaps, like the light of the setting sun, she foresaw her death. Below the plaque, by the door to the house, a sign in fashionable Euro-English, read BARBER SHOP.
The garibaldini, who notoriously wore their hair long, arrived in Poggio Mirteto at 10 a.m. The men camped on the slope; Garibaldi had a sun shelter built for himself with poplar branches. He thought it best to stay close to the men. Anita was given a dress by the Lattanzi family and continued to work on sewing a tent for herself and José. The mayor’s wife had food sent to the soldiers’ camp – including ‘the most exquisite fruit, in particular some big black figs’. She even came along to serve at table ‘in the politest possible way’. How jolly it all sounds. But all afternoon Garibaldi was focused on making sure enough pack saddles and baskets could be found for his mules. And the column was on the road again at 2.a.m. From front to back it was three miles long.
Cantalupo
Mixing long marches and short. Setting out at different times of the day and night. Leaving a rearguard far behind or sending an advance guard far ahead. Joining the main road in full view of any spies, only to leave it again an hour later. Taking longer paths where shorter ones were available, or splitting the column over parallel paths. Ordering 6000 rations when there were only 4000 men. Camping over large areas with no discernible order. These were Garibaldi’s methods for keeping everyone guessing. But he did at last confide to Hoffstetter that their immediate goal was Terni, thirty miles to the north, because in Terni he was intending to meet up with an Englishman.
Ex-British army, settled in Siena, forty-year-old Colonel Hugh Forbes wore a white top hat, shaved carefully every day, and was a fervent supporter of the Italian national cause. In 1848, together with his twenty-year-old son, he had fought for the Venetians against Austria; in 1849 he moved south to the Roman Republic, which assigned him a force of 900 men to garrison the strategic town of Terni. With the fall of the republic in Rome, these men, a mix of Swiss volunteers and ex-papal soldiers, were at a loose end. It made sense to join forces.
So from Terni onwards, Hugh Forbes will join Ugo Bassi, Ciceruacchio and Anita at the head of the column. I suppose, as an Englishman myself, it’s good to have a compatriot as company, though Forbes is not the kind of Englishman I usually feel comfortable with. Where Garibaldi has little interest in rank, Forbes is obsessed by it, especially his rank. Where the General is always sensitive to the reactions of the local populace, Forbes demands people obey orders, in particular his orders. The citizens of Terni will be glad to see the back of him; he lives in the most expensive hotel in town and expects others to make sacrifices. But whatever we think of Forbes, when the Austrian hussars burst into the picture, when the bullets fly and the sabres swing, this prickly Englishman will be right there in the thick of it, risking his life and his white hat. For liberty. ‘A courageous and most honest soldier,’ Garibaldi remembered.
The road to Terni leads straight up a long valley, but the towns on the way are on hilltops either side. Garibaldi’s men needed to climb up to them, because they had wells, and water – there is no river in this valley – and for safety too. The French army was now only a day’s march over the hills to the west, the Spanish army a day’s march over the hills to the east. The nightmare scenario was a coordinated attack, and the point of maximum vulnerability was the small town of Vacone, halfway along, since immediately south of Vacone there is a valley opening out to the west and immediately north a valley opening to the east. Vacone is where we plan to spend the night, if only we can find a bed there. There are few places to stay near Vacone, our websites tell us, and they are all fully occupied.
I have positive memories of the small town of Cantalupo, because this is the first time I feel comfortable, even happy, with a steep climb in blazing sunshine. Not only are we getting used to the heat, but we are growing stronger. I now raise my eyes to walls high above and do not feel daunted. But we are both suffering from sunburn on our thickening calves. A long tunnel of tall feathery bamboo, the elegant canes leaning in from both sides of the road, provides the sort of delicious shade where you can stop and apply some cream. At one corner, an enormous grey-green agave plant seems to be waving tentacles to grab you. Aside from the puddles left by yesterday’s rain, there is definitely a different feel to this morning’s walk. We have finally escaped Rome’s orbit. Even at the Gran Paradiso, the metropolis was still exerting its pull. Now it has fallen away. We’re in the heart of the heart of the country.
At the heart of the hilltop pile that is Cantalupo we find Piazza Garibaldi, where the only place open at 1.30 is Bar Garibaldi. The town is deserted, paralyzed by the day’s blue dazzle. The barman is forlorn. The piazza somehow combines the chic and the cemeterial. All the palazzi and even the church have been freshly stuccoed, pink or beige. The white stone paving is new and rigorously swept. Carefully trained oleander trees have been arranged at regular intervals and massive white concrete pots are lined up in perfect symmetry, sprouting other trees, young as fresh graves. The five or six shops all have the same regulation cream-coloured awning, so that between CARNI SALUMI FORMAGGI on one side and MICKEY MOUSE, GIOCATTOLI, EDICOLA, CARTOLERIA on the other, the sign ONORANZE FUNEBRI – Funeral Directors – looks entirely reassuring. Just another shady doorway where you might take refuge from the sun.
The barman brings out our drinks and decides to help us find a place for the night. He makes four or five phone calls but draws a blank. When I ask him why his café is called Bar Garibaldi he says it’s because the
Piazza is called Piazza Garibaldi. He doesn’t know the hero passed this way. Very likely a myth, he says. He doesn’t know of any way to walk to Vacone except along the main road and won’t believe that our app might know paths that he doesn’t. But it does. When I show him the little screen he peers and frowns and scratches his ear.
Big tech knows more about your neck of the woods than you do; that’s the truth. The local may not be quite as dead as the wayfarer, but you can’t help smelling decay in the air in Cantalupo. Turning the piazza into some kind of decorous memorial – just three years ago, the barman tells us – has only given an impression of expensive embalming. ‘They wanted to encourage young people to value their home town,’ he says. ‘Because so many are leaving.’
Vacone
‘Magnificent,’ enthuses Hoffstetter, ‘is the road from Cantalupo to Terni. Enormously rich in wine.’
It doesn’t look quite like that as we start to wind our way down the hill. Perhaps wine production is concentrated elsewhere these days. The landscape spreads out like a vast uneven quilt where each section is a little hill, some with castles on top, or villas, or villages. There’s a patchwork of colour too – woods and fields, wheat and pasture. But the patchwork only occasionally corresponds to the quilting and the hills. The overall effect is of intricacy, density and movement. A rich smell rises off the soil, dry and honeyed. Filling your lungs, you feel drawn in.
Meantime it’s mid-afternoon and we still have nowhere to stay. But we do have full water bottles, topped up at the fountain in Cantalupo. We carry about a litre each and are learning to drink regularly. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty and then gulp it; it will go down the wrong way and you’ll splutter and cough. Garibaldi’s men were not so lucky. Few had bottles, and when they did they couldn’t carry more than a pint or so. ‘We were marching in the most oppressive heat, and found not a drop of water all day long,’ Hoffstetter recounts. ‘Those who have walked along these roads,’ Trevelyan observes, ‘from fountain to fountain, will realize what the army must have suffered when the usual springs were dry.’