My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) (4 page)

‘Who said Switzerland was an Earthly Paradise? It's a terrifying place.'

To make matters worse, the horse was stung by those ravenous bees, got excited, neighed as though preparing for a lance-at-the-ready charge, pawed the ground twice and set off at full gallop! Uncle did his best to restrain him, but who could restrain the bees? They came after us as far as they could but after a time had to give up, allowing our champion to slow down, even if he still kept his neck arched and trotted like a great victor.

I would never have expected such warmth of greeting from my cousin who was standing waiting in the front of the church with some friends and … Bedelià and several other girls. Almost all splendid girls but – needless to say – none who could stand comparison with her!

‘Why are we going to church?' I asked.

‘It is a very special church, where they give concerts, and there are some Italian musicians there. Come and I'll introduce you. They are all exiles.'

‘Exiles. What does that mean?'

‘It means they all had to flee Italy to escape imprisonment.'

‘Ah, just like the men who hide in the carriages at Pino. Refugees, in other words.'

‘Exactly. The very same. These particular ones are all anarchists.'

Obviously I had no idea what ‘anarchist' meant, and that was not the time to ask for explanations. We were late, and the concert was about to get underway. I took my seat in the best place in the world – Bedelià's lap, where the chair back and headrest were her breasts!

The musicians were warming up, and Bruno was seated at the piano. There were guitars as big as a man (called double-basses), great twisted trumpets (the saxophones), drums with plates and metal tambourines (percussion), and then trumpets more or less identical to those in the gendarme band. The musicians also included two black men with a curious guitar and a woman with a violin. Bedelià explained to me that that the violin was called ‘hot' and that the round guitar was a ukulele.

‘When are you coming back to see me on the other side of the lake?' I asked her.

‘I'm afraid it's going to be a bit difficult. The Fascist government has made our government withdraw Bruno from the embassy because of his somewhat subversive ideas.'

I was on the point of asking her what ‘subversive' meant, but the concert was beginning, so silence and attention.

I had never heard music like that before. At first, it seemed to me like an off-key racket, or like the high-pitched trumpet sounds that clowns make, but then I found myself beating my hands to keep time. A ramshackle harmony was emerging from it all, and I was enjoying it.

‘What do you call this music?' I asked Bedelià.

‘Jazz, and the one they're starting is the blues. They'll start singing in a minute.'

The two black men got to their feet and sang a few notes in a voice as powerful as a trumpet, then launched into a rhymed routine, waving their arms about and doing a few shuffling dance steps. The girl on the violin joined in the song, and Bruno, not to be outdone, produced from somewhere an incredibly guttural, mellow, black man's voice.

In no time, everyone in the stalls was swept along by the singing. Gradually, even those highly reserved Swiss folk were raising their arms and swinging them about in imitation of the gospel singers in the transept: they were clapping their hands, stamping their feet and singing along to the various refrains. I certainly had no idea at the time, but I was present at one of the first jazz and blues events in Europe.

They say that as children our senses are as receptive as photographic plates: every colour, every tremor of emotion is imprinted with unbelievable depth and precision. That event must have affected my way of hearing music, leaving it inscribed not merely as a sequence of notes and rhythms but as a ritual gesture and collective action.

*   *   *

When, a week later, I returned to Pino, my mother asked me what had happened to me. I launched into an account of what I had seen – of my song in German, the horse enraged by the bees, and when I got to the jazz concert I tried to reproduce the sounds by shaking my arms and legs like a grasshopper.

‘My little darling,' my mother said in genuine concern, ‘are you sure they didn't drug you? Were you bitten by a tarantula or bewitched in some way? Calm down, take a deep breath and above all don't tell a soul around here about the anarchist exiles who were playing and singing with the Negroes. It's dangerous!'

*   *   *

It is 1932, I am six years old and have to go to school. My brother Fulvio was two years younger than me, but it was unanimously agreed that he gave proof of extraordinary intelligence. At four years, he could read and write like a child twice his age. In addition, he was liable to come out with witticisms and observations that left people gasping.

The primary school in Pino was nothing special: there were only three classes, and to carry on with their schooling, pupils had to go to Tronzano, some six hundred metres higher up. In Pino there was only one teacher in charge of ten boys and seven girls. Her name was Sister Maria, a nun in the order of Saint Vincent, and she wore a white headdress tied under her chin. For me, she was like the Great Earth Mother: generously built, majestic, gentle and filled with tenderness towards everyone. She never raised her voice nor her hand to any of us, not even when we fully merited a slap on the cheek or a kick on the backside. I was bewitched by Sister Maria, the more so since I was her favourite, even if she concealed it. Perhaps I behaved like a real teacher's pet, always turning up with some flowers which I had picked on the hillside. Once I arrived with a little rabbit which I had dragged out of the compound, but on another occasion I went right over the score: I brought in an ugly, filthy stray dog.

On each occasion Sister Maria let out squeals of joy, and seemed as delighted as a little girl. And let us say nothing about her expressions of amazement when I showed her one of my paintings. She frequently encouraged me to draw or paint in class, and did her best to get all my classmates involved.

Our school was housed in the old, medieval town hall. Outside, in the corridors, they were freshening up the paint on the walls, and the painters had left tins of oil paint in a cupboard. One of the girls happened to bring a couple of brushes and one of these tins into the classroom and, while Sister Maria was briefly out, she started to do a painting on a wall. The rest of us were shocked. ‘Messing up the walls like that. You're going to catch it when Sister Maria gets back!'

Sister came in just at that moment, took one look at all those smug faces and said: ‘Not a bad idea! Why don't we paint the whole room?' We looked at her dumbfounded. ‘Dear, dear, Sister Maria has gone off her head.'

The first girl, with a look of triumph, got on with splashing colour on the classroom wall. A moment later, each and every one of us, like crazed ants, attacked the walls, brandishing brushes dipped into the paint tins we had thieved.

*   *   *

That winter, it snowed more than usual, so to get to school we had to put on skis. My brother Fulvio and I had learned to use those contraptions fairly quickly, but these were not the kind of skis that people are familiar with nowadays. They were wooden boards, roughly cut and attached to the boots with belts and rudimentary fasteners. They were not intended for sporting purposes, but only to allow us to move about without sinking in the snow. The ski poles were staffs of ash with two little circles of wickerwork fixed onto the bottom.

It took real talent to move with skis like those, but all of us in the valley must have had an abundance of it, since we managed to hurtle down some of those breathtaking slopes without breaking our necks.

Towards February, when no one expected it, there was a tremendous snowstorm which left a covering of snow a metre deep. The lorries could no longer get through, and the railway, too, was blocked. There was a snowslide between the two Zenna tunnels and the snow made the road to Luino impassable. The only way to get about was by skis or sledge. As children, we had no idea what it meant to be completely cut off. It was not even possible to reach the Swiss side or the Luino shore from the lake. A north wind stirred up huge waves, causing the police motor boat to slip its moorings one night, crash into the cliff and sink.

For us the whole business was a godsend. The need to ski everywhere, the opportunity for endless snowball fights and the adventure of finding ourselves completely cut off made us feel as though we were marooned on a desert island. The people in the valley were not unduly worried, since the grocer had supplies enough for three or four days. The butcher had access to as many sheep and goats as he could wish, and the smugglers now had a free hand. The customs men on the border posts were not able to move with any agility on the snow-covered peaks, but the shoulder-boys with their home-made skis, even when they were weighed down with baskets packed with cigarettes and other contraband goods, could manage the circus turns needed to make it across the steep mountain slopes.

That very week the rumour began to circulate that the sergeant in charge of the
carabinieri
station had been relieved of his command and ordered to move to ‘another location'. Someone had snared him in the bird-trap, as the saying was, in other words, someone had written a letter to the head office in Luino accusing the poor officer of being in cahoots with the smugglers, and of turning a blind eye to the continual cross-border movement of subversives and common criminals wanted by the authorities.

A miserable stab in the back. Most people in the town were convinced that the whole squalid business had been orchestrated by the officer in the customs force, others that the report came from the vice station-master who came from Maccagno every day to relieve my father. ‘He's a fanatical Fascist, that one,' Pa' Fo always maintained. ‘Yes, but he'd better look out,' my father's assistant would reply. ‘People are liable to slip under a train, especially with all this snow about!'

A few days later, the council workers managed to clear the tracks, and a tractor with a snow plough got through on the provincial road. We were once again free, the more's the pity.

This meant that they could now arrange the removal of the
carabiniere
sergeant: the same story of dismantled furniture, the same stove slipping off and breaking apart. The officer's wife was extremely sad: she embraced my mother and all the women in the town when they went down to say goodbye. Even Nanni, their son, the leader of our adventures and games on the hilltops, was upset and struggled to hold back his tears. I too felt a tightness in the pit of my stomach which almost bent me double.

But I knew that of all the family, the one I would miss most was Nanni's little sister, Beatrice, who shared my bench at school … with those big black eyes of hers … the one who always stole my rubbers … who messed up my drawings … who put ink on my nose, but who held my hand on the way home to the station and who went happily sliding along beside me until we ended up rolling together on the grassy verge of the road, giving each other big hugs. Often as we rolled head over heels we would bump heavily into things but then would help each other back to our feet. I would put my arm round her waist, to help support her … and she would kiss me lightly.

It may be that we manufactured those accidents deliberately, or maybe they were completely fake! ‘But now that Beatrice is going away, who's going to roll home with me through the fields?'

CHAPTER 2

The Anarchists Depart

Quite unexpectedly, with the first ferry after the resumption of service, we saw Bruno arrive alone, without Bedelià. What had happened? Kisses, embraces … I hoped at least for a box of chocolates, but nothing was produced. My first thought was: ‘Something has gone wrong here!' Bruno and my father communicated in low, intense whispers.

The following day, as soon as Bruno had set off for home, my mother took me aside and said to me softly: ‘My darling, Papà wants you to do him a big favour. We have to get a letter to one of those friends you met in Lugano … you remember that church?'

‘Oh yes, the one where they played and sang the black music.'

‘Good for you. You'll have to join Bruno over there, and I'll stitch a letter into your jumper. The police will definitely not bother about you.'

‘All right!'

‘You won't be afraid…'

‘No, not at all.' I drew my knees together so as not to let her see that they were knocking with fear. The next day they took me down to the pier, where I was entrusted to the care of the ferry captain. During the crossing, I stayed seated with a blanket over me.

‘Why don't you go upstairs with the other children?' asked the head sailor. ‘Is something the matter? Not feeling well?'

‘It's not that. If I'm upstairs I feel like vomiting. I get seasickness.'

‘What a pity. Someone who lives on the lake and who cannot even go out on a boat,' said the sailor.

Bruno was there waiting for me on the wharf at Brissago. He gave me a hug and together we went to get the coach for Bellinzona. The anarchists were already preparing to move out. The Italian government had made a complaint to the Swiss authorities because they had allowed subversives to set up home there, on the border. They had to pack up, get out of the Ticino and even out of Switzerland. My cousin was enraged and I heard him curse: ‘Great country, this! All neat and tidy, the cleanest cesspool in Europe. They bow and scrape to every arsehole who farts out orders at them!'

From the conversation, I learned that was not the first time the anarchists had been forced to undergo that kind of violence. Around forty years earlier, in the days of the famous anarchist Pietro Gori, a large number of refugees had been forced out of Lugano. The king and government of the day had pressurised the Swiss parliament into denying those subversives the right of asylum.