The Hero's Way

by Tim Parks

  So there are moments when fear is collectively overcome; one group’s bravery inspires another’s. The trick is to capitalize on those moments, because they don’t last. Courageous today, people may be craven tomorrow; putting your life on the line day after day is exhausting. At the point we’re at on our long retreat from Rome, Garibaldi was already thinking of the 1848 revolutions as a missed opportunity, already talking of having to wait ten years or more for a similar wave of popular feeling to offer a second chance. Yet a glimmer of hope remained that the people of Tuscany might be persuaded to go back to the barricades. There was a large liberal community in Florence, and in other Tuscan towns. He thought it worth a last throw of the dice.

  The night of 16 July 1849 gives us a chance to see how Hoffstetter reacts to fear. Garibaldi had led the main column out of Ficulle towards 4 p.m., leaving the German in charge of the rearguard. There was concern that Aristide Pilhes and his company of cavalry had still not rejoined the group, nor sent word. Garibaldi headed north and west back down into the main valley, the broad Val di Chiana. However, at the village of Carnaiola, while it was still daylight, he turned east, along the bank of a small river, as if planning to climb into the Apennines in the direction of Perugia. Five miles on, he crossed the river and under cover of darkness and thick woodland turned back due west towards the Tuscan border, pitching camp before midnight under heavy rain at the tiny borgo of Salci.

  It was the first rain of their march. In Ficulle, Hoffstetter had forty cavalry, twenty infantry and orders to make them as visible as possible while there was still daylight, for the benefit of the French to the south, then to leave as soon as it was dark. Pilhes did not show. The night was black. The men had strict orders to move in silence, since the enemy might be close. None of them knew the area. ‘We were entirely in the hands of our guide,’ Hoffstetter worried, ‘who could easily have led us back to Orvieto without our realizing.’

  Down in the valley the land was flat, criss-crossed by ditches and canals. There were no houses and no cover. In the distance, bonfires lit the night. Hoffstetter was convinced they were Austrian campfires. The guide assured him it was something the peasants did in August, for the fields. At a bridge they were joined by a second guide. The rain began to fall, a torrential summer storm. The ground turned to mud. Uncannily, the fires burned on. And despite the rain the men were tortured by thirst, not having found anywhere to drink in the dark. It had been another scorching day.

  Now a third guide was to join them near a farm with three houses. Hoffstetter thought the buildings would offer some protection in case of attack. He could not believe the Austrians would not take advantage of their being exposed as they crossed the valley. And of course the houses would have water. He ordered the men to knock, quietly, but the peasants wouldn’t open up. The doors were barred. The men began to shout. ‘We only want water.’ Nothing. Hoffstetter had them smash the windows. Now there were voices from upstairs. ‘Just wait while we get dressed.’ The men waited. The rain was pouring down, the night pitch black, their guides uneasy. Still the peasants didn’t open their doors. A man’s voice called that he couldn’t find his trousers. ‘Just hang on.’

  Convinced an attack could come at any minute, the German lost patience. ‘Get some straw,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s burn this hovel down.’ Immediately, the farmhouse door opened and a man appeared saying he always had trouble finding his clothes in the dark. ‘Have pity.’ Realizing now that they meant him no harm, he was suddenly euphoric. ‘Forget water, everybody, let me bring you wine.’ But the men wanted water. And Hoffstetter wanted to get moving. If he missed the appointment at Salci he didn’t know where Garibaldi was going next. No sooner were they marching again than a mule loaded with rifles collapsed in the mud and got tangled in its halter. Panicking, the creature brayed so loudly half the countryside must have heard.

  ‘We walked on exhausted under the relentless rain,’ Hoffstetter concludes his account. ‘I had brought with me the owners of the three houses, threatening their families that if the enemy followed us they would never see their loved ones again. Many of the horses stumbled over bushes and fell into ditches, betrayed by riders so sleepy they couldn’t keep their eyes open. We reached Salci at one thirty, drenched to the bone.’

  I had looked forward to somehow sharing this unhappy drama. Instead we had one of our most idyllic mornings, and at exactly 6.54 a.m. I took what became for us the iconic photo of our entire trip. Having set off before dawn we were in a narrow lane down in the valley with open fields of sunflowers on both sides. The plants were shoulder high, thousands upon thousands of them, all lifting and turning in regimented synchrony towards the point ahead to our right where the sun was topping the ridge in a brilliant dazzle. I was walking a few yards behind Eleonora and took a photo on the move of her striding into this sunflower sunrise. How it happened I’m not sure, but the picture is at once brooding and golden, and her posture, thrusting forward with her poles, conveys a kind of quiet boldness. There is not a shred of fear in it.

  We chose to pass on Garibaldi’s diversion up the river and back down again. Even without that we had a thirteen-mile hike. Again we crossed over the autostrada and under the high-speed railway, moving easily westwards on chalky tracks through brush and copse, beside sluggish irrigation canals. There was not a single hill to climb this morning, and towards ten a lawn opened up to the left of our track and we found a handsome pile of brick battlements, a tower, a spire, a grand arched gate and a smart red sign with the legend, BORGO DI SALCI.

  It is empty, abandoned. No one has lived here for thirty years. But back in the 1840s, Salci was emblematic of that vocation for fragmentation that has dogged Italy since the fall of the Roman Empire. With a cluster of buildings around a single piazza and just three hectares of land wedged between Tuscany and the Papal States, Salci was an independent duchy. Before Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1804, it had minted its own money, recruited its own army and applied its own border tariffs.

  We went under the arch into the big square piazza, closed on all sides but for the narrow gate we had come through. There was no one around. There is no paving, just grass. The buildings are half noble palazzi, half old farmhouses. There is a round brick well, a peeling church facade, a pretty loggia and a white stone shield with a coat of arms. The whole atmosphere would be one of romantic decay and pleasant rural calm were it not for the bright red signs shouting from every doorway. VIETATO L’ACCESSO. FABBRICATO PERICOLANTE. No access. Building unsafe. One somewhat smaller plaque announces:

  PILOT PROJECT AWARD, EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

  Year 1990, Projects presented 1138, Winners 26, Italy 3

  Salci contribution, 118,000 ECU

  We sit in the shade of the well to eat a peach and contemplate this information. Bureaucrats in Brussels waded through 1138 projects, in order to select 26. Meaning 42 projects were set aside for every winner. Endless documentation. Thousands of hours of work. They then shelled out a trifling 118,000 ECU (the virtual currency that later became the euro) presumably to keep Salci from falling down. Looking around, it’s obvious that at least ten times that amount has been spent to preserve this state of decrepitude. Similarly, on the tiny road over the plateau from Todi to Orvieto, we saw a plaque recording a European contribution of €40,000 for a project that must have cost millions. Yet only the EU gets to broadcast its benevolence. No doubt a condition of the award.

  Of course every power uses patronage to consolidate loyalty. The rector did it at our university, the Austrian Empire did it, so it’s hardly surprising to find the EU doing it. And it works. One of the fascinating aspects of the Brexit debate was the number of British people who spoke enthusiastically of EU financing for this or that local initiative; it made them less eager to return to a more independent state. Similarly Austrian patronage made the authorities of many towns in central and northern Italy less eager to push for Italian unity. But in both cases – the EU and the Austrian Empire – all patronage was amply paid
for by local taxes. Italy was a net contributor to the empire, as it is now to the EU.

  ‘Surely, though,’ Eleonora reflects, ‘Garibaldi would have been a Remainer, wouldn’t he? He was an internationalist. Proud to be a citizen of four or five countries. He fought for the French against the Prussians in 1870.’

  ‘He was the only general on the French side to win a battle, two in fact, against the Prussians. But he was fighting for the right of the French to govern themselves.’

  Opposite the well, on the wall to the left of the stone gate, the inevitable plaque reads, ‘16 July 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi rested here, hounded by the enemy’.

  That same day the enemy, Konstantin D’Aspre, was contemplating the imminent return to Florence of Grand Duke Leopold II, whose state the Austrians had retaken for him after the revolution of the previous year. It was important, D’Aspre agreed with Field Marshal Radetzky in Monza, that the duke wear an Austrian military uniform for the celebration. And the Austrian flag be flown.

  We weren’t hounded by anyone but couldn’t stay the night in Salci because there is no accommodation. Eleonora wondered what was the point of spending money on the place if nothing was to be done with it. Indeed. We pressed on and, forty minutes later, beside our chalky track, found a sign in Italian and English that read, ‘ANCIENT BORDER. PAPAL STATE, GRAND DUCHY OF TUSCANY’.

  Palazzone

  Hoffstetter raves about Tuscany.

  Surprising indeed is the difference between Tuscan and Roman villages. While the inhabitants of the latter would scamper away terrified at our approach, or stand there staring at us amazed and awkward, in Tuscany people come flocking joyfully to greet us, bringing us wine along the road and offering themselves as guides. In short, we seem welcome. Anyone who has had occasion to observe the Roman villages west of the Apennines, then all at once to arrive in Tuscany, will soon agree that a military government does not corrupt people as profoundly as a regime of priests.

  What changes did we notice in Tuscany? Certainly, if the word picturesque didn’t exist, you’d have to invent it for Tuscany. It is incorrigibly beautiful in an entirely reassuring way. The landscape has nothing of the savage harshness of Lazio or Umbria. Every photo is a postcard. The vineyards and fields are more carefully tended. One is grateful for well kept paths, well kept verges. Each low hilltop boasts its charming clump of cypresses and cedars half-hiding, half-framing some tower, farmhouse or chapel. You can understand why tourists flock here. Everything is perfectly composed: an English dream of quaintness in a Mediterranean climate.

  We were walking through rich agricultural land with discreetly opulent villas, tastefully renovated farmhouses, sparkling swimming pools. And people were indeed more friendly. They waved to us from behind the wheels of expensive cars. It’s a curious little side-to-side wave that I don’t recall seeing before in Italy. As if they were all members of an extended royal family acknowledging your dutiful admiration. A man on a horse appeared, the first horse and rider we had seen. It was a handsome chestnut animal, glistening in the sunshine. The rider, in his early forties, had shiny boots and spurs, a big man, well fed and bare-chested, sporting a leather Tuscan cowboy hat. Sweat trickled off a tanned paunch. He smiled complacently and waved that wave, turning into a stone gate and trotting away down a private avenue of shady cypresses.

  Tuscany was less attractive when it came to booking accommodation. In Ficulle, Eleonora had had long phone conversations with various holiday farms and gated villages along Garibaldi’s route.

  ‘At that price no, mia cara. No, no, no. We might find you a buchetto [a little hole] for a hundred and fifty, but . . .’

  Eleonora explained that in two weeks on the road we had never paid more than ninety-five.

  ‘But where have you been, mia cara?’ the woman demanded. ‘Oh Lazio! Oh Umbria. Per favore!’

  For days to come Eleonora would mimic the contempt with which this well-to-do lady had pronounced the names of these unfashionable poverty-stricken regions.

  ‘Tuscany,’ the proud woman had declared, ‘is a different world, mia cara. A different world.’ And she gave an example. ‘If an apricot in Umbria costs fifty cents, in Tuscany you can be sure it costs a euro.’

  How many times and with how many variations would we repeat this formula in the days to come!

  ‘If a cedrata in Umbria costs two euros, in Tuscany you can be sure it costs six.’

  ‘If a Cinquecento in Umbria costs a thousand euros, in Tuscany you can be sure they drive a Porsche Cayenne.’

  And so on. With occasional mia caras thrown in.

  ‘If in Umbria they want a pound of flesh, in Tuscany, mia cara, you can be sure they bleed you dry . . .’

  But eventually we do manage to find a reasonably priced place, a couple of miles to the west of our route, in the village of Palazzone, where we arrive, after just six hours walking, towards midday. Immediately, turning into the main street, we’re amazed how different it feels. The stone is the same as in Ficulle. A pleasant pinkish brown. With no stucco. The architecture is the same. But everything here is sharper and neater. The flagstones have been swept Swiss clean and are all laid perfectly flush. The walls are all rigorously pointed. Wherever there is a straight line – the vertical edge of a wall, the horizontal passage of a gutter or cable – it is straighter than in Ficulle. Not to mention Vacone or Mentana. Everywhere you look, it seems someone passed by ten minutes before with a vacuum cleaner.

  On a table in the street, outside a pretty café, we read the Tuscan newspaper La Nazione and learn that a Moroccan was stabbed with a penknife in Florence, but was unwilling to tell the police who attacked him or why. That two Bulgarian women were arrested for stealing the backpack of a Japanese man at a café in the Mercato Centrale. Florence again. It seems only foreigners generate news. Needless to say, on the front page of the paper Salvini is doing all he can to stop another boatload of Africans landing on the southern Italian coast.

  In Palazzone foreigners are of a different kind. As we eat, a big BMW with German plates draws up in the empty street some three yards from where we’re sitting. It doesn’t look out of place among the old rural buildings. Years of expensive advertising have got us used to the vision of luxury engineering in picturesque surroundings. But the driver has left his engine on. A diesel engine.

  Time passes.

  ‘What would Greta say?’ Eleonora asks.

  ‘He’s keeping his engine on because he needs the air conditioning,’ I observe.

  ‘He’s waiting for someone, perhaps,’ Eleonora guesses.

  Meantime, our bruschetta doesn’t taste so good in the presence of diesel fumes.

  One complains less these days. It’s fear again. But today the garibaldino spirit is with me. I jump to my feet and go to the car.

  The driver is middle-aged, clean-shaven, wears a white shirt. At first he doesn’t notice me. I have to stoop to the window. Now it winds down. I feel the cool air flowing out and he no doubt the hot air drifting in. Unthinking, I address him in Italian. ‘Could you turn your engine off, please, if you’re going to be here for a while? We’re eating.’

  Like so many Austrian soldiers in 1849, the driver doesn’t speak Italian. He looks blank. I repeat the request in English. He frowns, doesn’t say anything, but buzzes down all the windows and turns the engine off. I return to my seat.

  But now the atmosphere is poisoned by a certain unpleasantness. He is sitting there stony faced, just a couple of yards away.

  ‘I’m beginning to feel violent,’ Eleonora observes.

  ‘Like when someone won’t open up their farmhouse to give you a glass of water?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  At last a woman steps out of a door opposite. She’s smartly dressed in white skirt and red blouse, with a big straw hat on blonde hair and an elegant leather handbag under her arm. The BMW’s windows buzz up. The engine starts, the woman climbs in. And you realize that this old Italian house, once humble, now immaculately spr
uced up, is occupied, perhaps owned, by foreigners. This is why, or one of the reasons why, the whole area feels so different from the area around Ficulle. It’s being turned into an international leisure park. When your old relatives pass away in southern Tuscany, there is no problem finding a buyer for the property. Walking towards B & B Madonna del Carmine, we get a little confused with the street plan, which doesn’t seem to correspond to our app. Seeing a young man jogging despite the intense heat we ask the way. In Californian English he says, ‘Sorry, I don’t speak Italian.’

  The Biancolini family on the other hand are born and bred citizens of Palazzone. ‘In 1992 our parents left their jobs to build our future,’ write the brother and sister who now run the B & B on their website. The old folks realized, that is, that the future for natives of the area was that of catering for tourists.

  They do it beautifully. Our room is spacious and comfortable, the terrace balcony full of flowers, the garden shady and fragrant. There’s a small swimming pool. You can lounge beside it, popping into the restaurant for an ice cream whenever you want. As darkness fell, we were the first at the tables under the pergola. The Biancolini brother, in white shirt and fancy black and purple waistcoat, served us with a curious irony, a wry twist to his lips. Every servility seemed very slightly overdone, or acted out, as if he were only playing at being a waiter – the waistcoat was a costume – and our roles might easily be reversed, him the lord and us the servants.

  ‘You wonder if it’s really generosity,’ Eleonora reflected, ‘or whether deep down they actually resent having to depend on you.’

  ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Right.’

  But the garibaldini did care. The burning question for them over the next few crucial days would be, were the people of Tuscany really on their side, or was their hospitality just a show?