by Tim Parks
His name was Sante. ‘From Todi?’ he cried, wiping oily hands on a rag and inviting us to ignore the ABSOLUTELY NO ENTRY sign on his barn. ‘Todi! We thought you were walking from Orvieto.’
He led us through the barn, then outside between low cages – rabbits, tortoises, guinea pigs – past aromatic pens – piglets, ostriches, geese – beside more spacious paddocks – donkeys, lamas, sheep and long-horned cows. Meantime, dogs and cats, ducks and hens, ran free through a scatter of farming tools, tables, benches, barbecue trays, bikes, snaking yellow hosepipe, shrubs and bushes and vines and ivies and of course plump terracotta pots with lavender, agave, rosemary.
‘You have your work cut out,’ I said.
‘Haven’t had a day’s holiday in fifteen years!’
A yellow house appeared across a thirsty lawn. But Sante wanted to show us the view. Beyond the building, the lawn sloped down into a field and a fabulous panorama opened up. Somewhat below, five miles across the wooded valley and still contained in the ring of its medieval walls, the city of Orvieto simmered atop a perfectly round hill, the remains of an old volcano. You could make out the big cathedral, a slender bell tower, a fortress. It was a view to die for. A vision.
But now Signora Ernesta has arrived. At once you know who’s boss. Lean and light, with a boyish, bespectacled face under a tousle of short white hair, she talks ten to the dozen. She says it is all too easy to die from a wasp sting. Anaphylactic shock. Sante had to be taken into intensive care a couple of years ago. ‘We nearly lost him.’ She usually bakes a cake for all her visitors, she says, but has just had a hip replacement. ‘There’s too much to do!’ She hobbles headlong, full of nervous energy.
Leading us up the stairs to their flat, which is at the top of the house, she points to the ostrich eggs that she paints with sunflowers and poppies. And the pebbles, the gourds, the goose eggs. We are given two pebbles turned into ladybirds. She gives all her guests a pebble, she explains. ‘How long ago was the sting? Do you like my guinea pigs? You’re still in the danger phase, I fear.’
There are cages in the middle of the kitchen. On low tables. Two guinea pigs and a chinchilla. I have never seen a chinchilla before. It looks like a giant Topo Gigio. Eleonora is trying to be polite. She has a gut loathing for all rodents. A lamp has been made from a painted ostrich egg. Signora Ernesta turns it on. She has talent. ‘So difficult not to break the shells!’ she wails. Every horizontal surface is crammed with cactus plants. Every inch of the walls is papered with drawings of flowers. Attached with Sellotape and pins. A shelf overflows with documents, files, pencils. A row of painted mugs over the fireplace. A row of painted flowerpots round the walls. I get the same anxious feeling I have in the crockery sections of department stores. We still have our packs on.
Ernesta is talking about how they set up the farm. How they love animals. They want people to experience the countryside. It’s hard to find replacement ostriches. Or lamas. ‘Could we buy some food from you?’ Eleonora asks. ‘O carissima, why didn’t you say!’ She rushes round picking up eggs, pasta, bread, zucchini, plums, a big bottle of ‘Sante’s beer’.
There are four or five flats. Ours is on the ground floor with a French window leading straight onto a terrace. It’s where the dogs like to sit. They won’t go away. Eleonora is irked. Using the needle provided by the dead mother-in-law in Terni, I dig out the sting. It’s in deep. It takes time. On her stomach on the bed, Eleonora shrieks. ‘Imagine it’s a bullet, Gustav.’
‘The hell with Hoffstetter!’
A dog noses open the door and patters into the room. It has a limp, like its mistress, and a nervy, incontinent look about it. ‘Get that thing out of here,’ my beloved yells, ‘before I shoot the beast.’
DAY 11
14 July 1849 – 4 August 2019
Poggio Boalaio, Orvieto – 5 miles
Orvieto
Every day Eleonora receives an email asking her to review the place we stayed at the night before. Since her mother runs a B & B, she knows how important such reviews are and writes them dutifully, erring for the most part on the side of generosity. So far she’s given nine or even ten out of ten to everyone. Watching her do this, marvelling that she’s willing to take the time to answer all the questions, I wonder what kind of review Garibaldi would have given for the hospitality his men received in Orvieto.
Having arrived late in Prodo, the General was back in the saddle before dawn, checking out the surrounding countryside with his aide-de-camp. When a shepherd wouldn’t respond to their call but scuttled away between the rocks, Hoffstetter drew his pistol. Garibaldi told him to put it away. ‘We don’t speak German, do we?’ he called to the man, rather comically given the company he was keeping. ‘We’re not out to tax you or to steal your sheep. We’re on your side. Your countrymen.’
Soon enough half a dozen shepherds appeared. ‘The General always got the best out of these encounters,’ Hoffstetter observes. ‘In no time at all people were falling over themselves to tell him everything they knew about the enemy.’
But the shepherds couldn’t tell them whether the French were in Orvieto yet. It was midday before one of Müller’s men arrived to say they would not be in the city until the following morning. Meantime, there was an execution. A soldier had gone into a peasant’s house, threatened the family with his gun and stolen a chicken. Says Hoffstetter. Belluzzi, who is always afraid we will think Garibaldi too harsh, adds that the man raped a young woman in the house. The General had no hesitation. ‘Evviva Garibaldi!’ the soldiers yelled as the shots rang out. ‘You can be sure,’ Hoffstetter comments, ‘that those who yelled the loudest were gnawing on a stolen chicken themselves. Every day it is clearer that not all the men who joined us are of the best, and this wandering around the countryside isn’t helping.’
‘It is so admirable, isn’t it,’ Belluzzi tries to put things in perspective, ‘that men inspired by love of their country, subject themselves to every sort of suffering for their cause, driving themselves on without ever a bed for the night or the chance to wash themselves or their clothes.’ How frustrating, then, ‘when they find themselves rejected, despised, derided because a few villains have brought disgrace upon them’. He quotes a letter from Major Migliazza, commander of a party of cavalry that had stayed behind to keep an eye on the Spanish. Migliazza writes that he’s been wasting days chasing groups of deserters using their guns and Garibaldi’s good name to take food and horses. He’s recovered a mule and some munitions sold illegally and consigned five culprits to the authorities in Acquasparta. ‘My men wanted them shot, but I wouldn’t.’
It must have been frustrating too, when, after four hours’ march from Prodo down to the banks of the river Paglia beneath the walls of Orvieto, Garibaldi heard from his advance guard that the authorities in the town had closed the gates and wouldn’t let him in. A delegation of Orvietani arrived and explained that they were willing to bring bread and meat, but with the French arriving . . .
‘Garibaldi received the delegation in silence,’ Hoffstetter records. ‘He didn’t deign them a single word.’ Afterwards, he sent cavalry to find which of the three gates could most easily be broken down with their cannon.
Our morning was easier. With a room already booked in central Orvieto, we treated ourselves to a late breakfast and didn’t leave till after seven. The day’s walk was short and simple. An hour downhill. Then across the valley – over the river, under the autostrada, under the high-speed railway – then another hour uphill. Easy. All the same, starting when the sun is well up is harder. You have no momentum to take into the heat. You feel you can’t breathe, you’re short on energy. Looking up at the walls rising huge and solid from the volcanic rock eight hundred feet above, we stopped a moment and saw there was a funicular railway. A bright red carriage was sailing up the steep gradient with immense ease. Should we?
No.
Both Hoffstetter and I had extremely positive experiences once we actually got into Orvieto. As evening fell he had sc
outed round to the northern gate, which seemed the easiest to attack. But on a whim – ‘drawn by the lure of forbidden fruit’ – he decided to ride right up to the gate. Surely they wouldn’t shoot. ‘Who goes there?’ yelled the guard. ‘One of Garibaldi’s officers,’ the German replied. And the gate opened at once. The guard started apologizing. Actually the gates were only pulled to, he said, not bolted. They didn’t mean any offense. ‘Orvieto is a beautiful city, a really Italian city,’ Hoffstetter comments. And he rode in up cobbled alleys, ‘sure to find himself a nice café’. Minutes later he was surrounded by boys fighting for the honour of holding his horse while he sipped his espresso and smoked a cigar.
The only disturbing thing was that the streets weren’t lit. The authorities had imposed a blackout. But now people began to gather round the German and shout, ‘Evviva Garibaldi!’ The lights came on. The ice was broken. Another delegation was sent down to the river and this time simply begged Garibaldi and his officers to come up to town. Which they did. Now the place was ablaze with lamps and torches. And Garibaldi said he would overlook their earlier discourtesy in return for ‘a small contribution in money’. When the General got back to camp, Hoffstetter remembered, ‘I’d already been asleep three hours.’
As soon as you’re inside the thick old walls of Orvieto you see what the German means by ‘a very Italian town’. The city is more luminous than Todi. The mix of reddish stone and pink and ochre stucco creates a lively atmosphere. All along the main thoroughfares there are tables and benches against the walls, pleasantly shaded under white awnings. You’re in an antique sitting room open to the sky.
In one of the first cafés a young man encouraged us to try his torta a testo. A testo is a cast-iron or terracotta cooking dish with a lid specially made for baking torte, which can be sweet cakes or salty pastries. The torta a testo looks like a little white pizza with a scattering of goodies on top, vegetables and cheese. But my young man earnestly explained how utterly, but utterly different this Umbrian speciality was from mere pizza, thanks to the use of fresh yeast, energetic kneading and the many hours that the pasta is left to settle before baking, not to mention the magic of the cast-iron testo.
There was no way out. We had to try it. And he was right, it melted in the mouth, saltiness wonderfully cut by the citrus sharpness of an icy cedrata. We chatted. We talked Garibaldi. I told him how the good citizens of Orvieto, ashamed of their initial coolness, took Garibaldi’s men all the food that the French had pre-ordered for their arrival. Thousands and thousands of rations. Of torte a testo perhaps. He laughed and asked me where I was from.
We were at the till. It was time to pay. I smiled him a wry smile. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘surely, it’s obvious where I’m from. Isn’t it?’
He shook his head. ‘Verona? Trento?’
Out in the street I punched the sky.
Eleonora was laughing. ‘How deaf does the guy have to be not to hear your accent?’
Once free of our bags, we walked round the walls of the town to get the lie of the land. It’s surprising how few gates there are to the world outside, how high up and closed in you feel. Garibaldi had set guards at the southern gate, where the French were expected to arrive. Müller with his party of cavalry was just a mile or two ahead of them, shepherding the enemy along almost. Over to the east, the way we came this morning, there were cavalry patrols up on the hillside and another group of men who had stayed in Prodo. They were waiting for Aristide Pilhes, commanding fifty or so cavalry, left in Terni as a distant rearguard. Then Luigi Migliazza, who took a group of cavalry north from Terni through Spoleto and Foligno right up to the walls of Perugia to give the Austrians the impression the column was headed that way. One of his men was shot dead by monks as they rode past a monastery. Also Raimondo Bonnet, who took another cavalry party north from Todi, pushing beyond Perugia towards Lake Trasimeno.
All of these men and their companies of cavalry were now expected to catch up with the column for the march into Tuscany. Though as soon as he was back, the valiant Müller would be sent off again, this time due west to the Tyrrhenian Sea, to create the impression that the General was planning to escape on a ship, perhaps from the port of Orbetello. Sometimes I’m agog at how much Garibaldi is keeping track of, how many things Hoffstetter is finding time to write down.
They didn’t waste any energy visiting churches of course. But in the end it’s the Orvieto duomo, more than the panorama of endless hills, that suddenly gives me a sense of the enormity of the General’s task and the power of the forces opposing the Risorgimento.
Enter any Italian town and you soon come across a road sign with a list of the local churches. Santa Maria Annunziata, Santi Apostoli, San Francesco, San Giovenale, La Madonna del Velo, Abbazia dei Santi Severo e Martirio. Invariably it will be a long list, rich with allusion, history and myth. San Giacomo all’Ospedale, San Lorenzo de’ Arari, Santa Maria dei Servi. The arrows beside the names point in every direction. Sant’Agostino this way, Santo Stefano that, Sant’Andrea the other. The Church is ubiquitous, its buildings striking and captivating. For every plaque to Garibaldi and his brave crew, there are countless monuments to bishops, cardinals and popes, all of them implacably opposed to any political change.
The Orvieto duomo is also breathtakingly beautiful, a miracle of collective vision and individual craftsmanship. To anyone arriving from whatever point of the compass, it rises massively above the rest of the city, drawing the visitor to the central square, where it dwarfs everything in sight. At once you understand that it is an object spread across time, across centuries, styles, trends, tendencies. Romanesque, Gothic, Siennese, Florentine. It absorbs them all. Its whitish-pink stone hosts sparkling gold and turquoise mosaics; huge bas-reliefs are thronged with arms and legs, necks and shoulders; there’s a magnificent rose window and an army of Apostles alert in their niches; winged and horned animals launch themselves into the air; right in the centre, a bronze lamb stands precariously on the apex of a triangle.
What can one say? Change here is merely accretion, greater and greater density. Century after century. More and more confident affirmation. More and more wealth. More and more beauty. More and more power. Uncannily, the whole enormous pile seems about to lift off from its volcanic base into the blue summer sky. It is so graceful, its columns so slender and as if twined with ivies thirsting for light. Its three great triangles above the arched doors, then again three smaller slenderer triangles above those, draw the eye up to heights that bristle with ornamented spires and gesturing figures. And everywhere there is narrative, everywhere symbol, everywhere meaning. Founding myths. Messianic prophecies. Suffering and sacrifice. Mother and child. Sin and redemption. Heaven and hell.
How utterly, overwhelmingly convincing this must have seemed to the peasants of centuries past. And not only the peasants. How much more present and important than a ragged band of men with an unlikely political project. Unity? What did that mean? Freedom? To do what? And even if for some perverse reason you hated the Church, nevertheless how unmovable it must have appeared, how invincible. To argue with the force that created the Orvieto duomo you would have to argue with history, with God.
At the entrance, a great stone font tells you there is never any lack of water for the faithful. Inside, in the airy vastness, with its kaleidoscope of frescoes, amid altars, tombs, saints, candles and relics, you know at once that the only possible response is submission, devotion. On your knees! As we gaze at painted miracles around the walls, a French woman invites her young daughter to kneel before the Virgin, put her hands together, bow her head. ‘Oui, comme ça.’ Both woman and well-groomed child enjoy the thrill of worship.
‘We’d better go,’ I tell Eleonora, ‘or the enemy will be at the gates.’
Directly opposite the duomo is the civic museum. Here, as in Todi, horses and warriors ride around rows of Etruscan amphorae. ‘Departure of the hero on his chariot’, says a typical caption. Sharp black shapes raise swords against bright orange backgrounds
. Or there are lovers. Men and women twining together. One vase has fighting on one side, lovemaking on the other. Another mixes the two. ‘Duel between a warrior and an Amazon’, says the caption. But step to the window that looks out across the square and the only thing you can see is the great facade of the duomo: the saints, the Apostles, the gold and the blue.
How hard it is to find a steady position between two such compelling visions, how difficult to bring all of reality into a single frame.
Late afternoon, we follow the walls to the north of the city to take a look at tomorrow’s route. A broad valley bakes in bright sunshine, with steep slopes east and west. Leaning out from the wall, you feel hot air rising from below. There’s a brooding, dark green intensity to it all. We’ll be headed to the little town of Ficulle, lost in a haze of hills to the north. A good defensive position in case the French try to attack.
The morning after his city revels Garibaldi waited a dangerously long time before getting his men on the move. He wanted to gather in Pilhes and Migliazza with their hundreds of cavalry. There was a rumour that Migliazza had been killed. But then he turned up. Likewise the rearguard from Prodo. But no Pilhes. Nor Müller. Still the General waited. Then someone reported that many of the men were fording the river to sneak into town for some fun. Garibaldi ordered an immediate departure.
It was mid-afternoon. The hottest moment. Hoffstetter and most of the cavalry stayed back to round up the partygoers and stragglers. ‘So I was two hours behind the main column,’ he writes. ‘And we were barely a mile out of town when the French arrived. Major Cenni, behind me, almost fell into their hands.’
The French, however, finding there was nothing left for them to eat, did not have the energy, after their steep climb to the city walls, to launch themselves straight down again after the well-fed figures disappearing in the distance. Anyway they were nearing the limit of their sphere of influence, the Tuscan border. To move north was to risk a clash with the Austrians.