My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) (11 page)

‘So I said to myself, am I mad? What's come over me? I felt I wanted to caress her all over, and I ran my fingers and hands over those cheeks of hers, so soft as to make me go all fluttery. Who knows what goddess she was? Perhaps she was a nymph … yes, she must be a nymph.

‘I was standing there in a state of enchantment when my eyes happened to drift over to the right and I saw Apollo staring at me, or more precisely gazing at the nymph. What's going on? I hadn't even noticed that his face was turned in this direction. I went up to him, took a look at the join of the neck and touched it. It was warm, in fact it was burning as though the stone had been twisted. Must be because of the friction with the branches which I had just cleared away. I look back over at the nymph; she had one hand over her breasts … and she seems to have turned away a little, as though she were embarrassed at the too intrusive stare from Apollo. Come on! That's enough! I'm going off my head. This is turning into a nightmare. Time to get on with freeing the next sculpture, the third.

‘It's much easier now. I know how to go about it. I clear away creepers as though shearing sheep. Here we go, torso emerging … another male … but this time there's an animal tail … it's all tangled, as you would expect if you found a statue under layers of ivy and fungus. There's no way of knowing what kind of posture it was supposed to have … Ah! Got it! Once I clear away the bulk of the branches, a quadruped emerges. Is it a man on horseback? No, it's a centaur.

‘Muscles taut and tense, a fine chest, and underneath the hindquarters, a grand piece of equipment … proud and erect … horses have no sense of measure. In addition, this quadruped is holding a bow with an arrow ready for firing, the whole structure set in bronze. As though by chance, the nymph turned to face the centaur, and the look of the man on horseback seemed fixed on the woman's eyes. Statuesque love at first sight? I'm going off my head.

‘It's getting dark. I go home, but I'm back the following morning. God in heaven, no sign of the centaur! On the ground nearby there's only the quiver with two arrows … nothing else. Want to bet someone has stolen it? There's a furrow on the grass, as though someone has dragged it along the ground. I follow the track and it leads me to the stables … door wide open … horses missing … I look around. Thank God, they're all down there drinking at the pond. I go to round them up. Sweet Christ, there's one in the water, drowned. Where did all that blood come from? A headless horse? No, it's the centaur decapitated!

‘I trip over something … what's my axe doing here? I hear someone shouting. It's Signora Lazarini calling for me. Her voice comes from over beside the statues. I go running down and see the master beside her. They are extremely upset. The Apollo is lying on the ground with a bronze arrow stuck in his chest. The statue of the nymph is still upright but her arms are raised in the air in a gesture of despair and triumph, and in her left hand, she is holding an arrow.

‘“Who is responsible for this disaster?” The Signora's tone is menacing. “Whose iron club is this?” She picks it off the ground, extracting it from Apollo's tightly locked fingers. “Don't tell me it's part of the statue. Apollo with a club!”

‘“No, the club is mine, Signora, and so is the axe which has smashed the centaur in two. But I know nothing about it … and don't ask me what she's doing, the nymph I mean, with a bow in her hand. And I don't know why she has her arms in the air either, because earlier on they were down at her sides, I'm sure of that. And she had one hand over her breasts, turned slightly this way … yes, there's no doubt about it, somebody moved them during the night. These sculptures couldn't have moved by themselves. Who put the bow in the nymph's hand? It belonged to the centaur who is now at the bottom of the lake with no head.”

‘The master and his lady stared at me incredulously, then bombarded me with questions. “Excuse me if I make so bold, but in my view a real tragedy has occurred. I had noticed right away how they stared at each other, her and him … the half-horse … with real lust! And above all, you should have seen the miserable face that Apollo had on him … glowering like nothing so much as a statue of jealousy! I could swear it, it was him, Apollo, who smashed the centaur, and then the nymph, beside herself with jealousy, took revenge by firing arrows at him.”

‘The master burst out guffawing. “A tragedy of love and jealousy between statues!”

‘But I say, “Don't you go believing that I'm responsible for this whole business all by myself. Apart from the fact that you'd need a tractor to drag that blessed statue of the centaur down to the lake … and no, I did not touch the tractor. The trunk of the centaur is on the tractor? I know nothing about it. No idea! You want to drive me crazy. So is this all some kind of joke? Not for me it isn't!”

‘Insults, sniggers, threats, and it's me that ends up in the madhouse. They're off their heads, every last one of them.'

CHAPTER 12

The Overhead Cable

Like all children in this world who live in the country, we in Porto went on fruit-pilfering expeditions in orchards and farms. The point of stealing fruit was not to satisfy hunger but to test our courage in the face of the danger of having a potshot aimed at our backsides, as they do with toads. The local peasants were pitiless: if they caught you making off with their fruit, they fired at you with rifles loaded with salt … and it was painful!

My brother Fulvio and I were part of a gang where an obligatory rite of passage was risking your neck, whether by diving head-first into the lake from the rock face in the Caldé quarry, or by taking suicide runs on the trolleys which sped along the railway lines down to the loading point for the abandoned furnaces …

The craziest thing we got up to was undoubtedly speeding along the overhead cable constructed for moving bundles of wood down from the uplands: an iron or copper cable was put up by the wood-cutters to run from the Corveggio Alps, at a height of eight hundred metres, down to the ramps in Tramezzo. The tree trunks and bundles of timber were attached to rollers which rattled down the cable and crashed into enormous buffers at the foot … the impact was to say the least violent!

The first one to suspend himself from the rollers was Manàch, the son of a wood-cutter. With one hand he grabbed hold of a steel hook and with the other he gripped one of the runners and off he went as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

All the rest of us were down in the valley looking up, holding our breath, in suspended animation, our eyes clouding over. He came down at top speed. When he got close to the buffers at the bottom, he tried to slow down … Good Lord, he's going to crash into the wooden planks, he's going to be jelly! But Manàch knew what he was doing and tightened his grip on the steel hook to make it act as a brake … now he's hanging on to that alone. The friction on the wire is giving off as many sparks as a soldering iron. Bloody hell! He's not slowing down enough. He'll be pulped!

No, look, he's braking. He's still at speed when he gets to the buffers but there is no crash. Our whizzing hero throws his legs in the air to soften the blow while, as pale as shadows, we all let out a yell. I fall full length to the ground. ‘Now it's the turn of you lot,' sneers Manàch.

We do our calculations. First off should be Bigulòt, son of a fisherman. He chooses a less steep and risky descent. He makes it! He wobbles a bit … shaves the top of a few chestnuts trees, takes a couple of whiplash blows in the face but holds on … the final bang is not too bad.

The boy ahead of me starts off well but halfway down scrapes along the top of a gigantic, very high elm tree. He did not have the strength to raise his legs and body, so gets into a tangle with the foliage but holds on and comes through, but when he gets to the destination, he is covered in cuts and scratches: face, arms and legs all bleeding. A dip in the stream, and he's as right as rain.

Now it's my turn and I am just a little anxious. In comparison with those fearless spirits, I feel like a wet sponge but, goaded by pride, I work up my courage. I had heard Manàch and Bigulòt making sniggering remarks about my more or less non-existent chances of coming out in one piece. I had the one advantage, only one, of having been able to observe with great care all the other descents. I had noted that each one had almost instinctively used his feet, or rather his boots, to drag along the cable and reduce speed. Having mastered that detail, I tie two hooks, one for each foot, with pieces of string to the soles of my boots.

My companions observe me with a kind of cruel irony. I take hold of one of the hooks which hangs from a runner, then of another … I let my body go limp … but at once begin to sway as though I were on a trapeze until I manage to attach the hooks sticking out of my boots to the wire of the cable. My invention works marvellously. I manage to control the speed with some ease. When I want to accelerate, all I have to do is release my foot-hold: to brake, I clutch more tightly. The boys following my progress from down below give up making a fool of me.

‘Oh, shitty-pants has got away with it. Good old tight-arse, you're an eagle!' they shout at me.

When I climbed down from the overhead cable, I was so excited and euphoric that I did not even notice that smoke was coming from my feet: the friction had caused the hooks to overheat and they were literally burning the soles of my boots.

When I got back home, I had a problem in explaining to Mamma how that disaster had come about: the two soles seemed to have been sawn in half.

CHAPTER 13

Gog

By doing portraits, I bought a dog. An extraordinary dog!

The idea of marketing myself as a portrait-painter had come to me in the last year of primary school while doing a drawing of my teacher. She was a youngish woman with a delicate face in which her almost almond-shaped eyes, thin nose and prominent lips stood out. Her neck was long, almost exaggeratedly so. I was very fond of her. When five years later I came across Modigliani's portraits at the Brera Academy, I exclaimed: ‘Oh, he must have known my primary-school teacher!'

That first portrait brought me some success, and I set out to do portraits of several of my school-fellows, male and female. I acquired a reputation: more than one enthusiastic parent repaid me with gifts, some in cash. Next it was the turn of the mayor's daughters, then the whole family.

A horse-breeder who had produced flat-racing and show-jumping champions at Besnate (near the lake of the same name) sent for me. I arrived at his estate complete with my brushes, paints and Fabriano albums, to be greeted by a great pawing of hooves which made the earth tremble. On the dressage ground not less than thirty horses were galloping past at high speed. Some were ridden by a jockey, others were running riderless in a pack. The breeder was very busy and did not even say hello. A girl of more or less my age, all ringlets and curls, who looked like Shirley Temple, came over to me: her name was Ornella. She then introduced Matilde, her elder sister, a mass of blonde curls: splendid! To top it all, three other sisters appeared, a total of five who, seen together, looked like the chorus of angels in a Benozzo Gozzoli painting.

Ornella introduced them one by one. I was worried and asked if they wanted me to paint them all: ‘Yes,' they replied in unison. ‘In order of age,' added Ornella. ‘I am the youngest, so it's my turn first.'

‘Don't worry. We don't expect you to paint us all in the same day!' continued Ornella. ‘You can take until tomorrow, working through the night if you need to!' With that, they burst out laughing all together.

To cut a long story short, I began by doing a sketch of Ornella's face. Never had I felt so insecure. The pencil had none of its normal fluency; it seemed to stutter … I had to rub out, start again … then towards the end, when adding the colour, I started to get to grips with the whole thing. I heard exclamations of amazement behind me. I had succeeded, but I was literally soaking with sweat. When I completed the first portrait, I realised that the breeder was standing among the onlookers. ‘Not bad,' was his comment, ‘very promising! If you were a colt, I would say it was worthwhile giving you a run-out on the track and keeping an eye on you!' Not all five portraits came out as I would have wished, but Gozzoli's angel chorus was quite satisfied.

The breeder, to let me stretch my legs and brain, took me to see the stables. As we moved from box to box, he pointed out his champions. On the round, we passed in front of a compound where half a dozen gigantic puppies were creating a din: they were all thoroughbred Great Danes. I was no great lover of dogs, but I was fascinated by that curious species of beast: the male moved around the compound with the elegance of an animal in a riding school. That evening, before I went home, the great horseman, his daughters gathered round him, was about to say goodbye, but with a certain embarrassment he blurted out: ‘I'd like to give you something, but I've no idea what to choose. I could give you some money, but it doesn't seem a good idea. How about a paint box and an easel?' I interrupted him. ‘Would one of those Great Danes cost a lot?' The breeder, who seemed to be posing for a group photograph with his whole chorus of angels, was caught on the hop. ‘I'm sorry, but those animals are all already spoken for.' Then he added hurriedly, evidently fearful that he would be contradicted by his daughters: ‘However, there is one, the least developed, maybe I could let you have that one…'

Another silence, then, like a high-pitched alleluia, the girls all came in with: ‘That's it! Gog is his!'

I was jumping for joy as we went back to the kennel. ‘There you are, the grey one with the white paws and the star-shaped patch on his face is Gog, and he's your very own!'

‘Papà says he is the worst of the pack, but it's not true. It's just that he's a bit shy compared to the others, who are a gang of delinquents!'