The Wild Boy

by Paolo Cognetti

  Once on the ridge again I had a vision: I was in the midst of clouds, and a glimmer of sun suddenly appeared behind me. The sun projected a circular rainbow onto the clouds, and in the middle of this circle there was the shadow of a man. It took me a while to understand that it was me. I was tall and thin, with extremely long legs and arms that I waved in order to greet that double of myself, an alien suffused with light. The spectacle did not last long because almost immediately the sun dimmed and the air became electric. Right, I told myself, so now I’m about to have a shower. Inside the rucksack I had the spoils of my fishing trip, and during the run back I enumerated to myself all the recipes that I could imagine: baked trout, trout fried in lard, fillets of trout, soused trout, trout sautéed with local butter and wild thyme. I wanted to prepare a good lunch for my friends. When our half flag emerged from the fog, the first drops were already falling; in front of the refuge I opened the jar with the bait and freed the remaining grasshoppers before going inside.

  * * *

  With Andrea I shared my mornings, and something else besides. We were too similar not to recognize our similarity, and not to be a little unsettled by it, as when passing a shop window you are reflected in it, only realizing after a slight delay that it is you. Ours was not a physical resemblance, but one of personality, that is to say the similar ways we both were with ourselves and with others, a certain tendency toward idealism and a skin that was too thin for the rough and tumble of relationships, consequently leading us to have had great enthusiasms and great retreats from them. Silence and solitude provided a good temporary hiding place. Wine also helped, for as long as it did not become a problem. I already knew these things about myself, but it was the first time that I had seen them so clearly delineated in someone else. That it should happen up there, inside an old refuge, on the borderline between two valleys, gave our meeting the feeling of something prearranged. It could not last long, because nobody can endure the company of another self for long, or at least the two of us could not.

  He was born into the trade, that is to say he was the son of a caretaker of an alpine refuge, and the grandson of a mountain man he’d spent summers with in an alpeggio as a child. As a grown-up he had adapted to the times: in the winter he was a ski instructor in a French resort (with discos and pubs) at the foot of the slopes, and in this way he earned enough to live off of for the rest of the year. The refuge was not a job but a way of staying far away from the village that he had begun to feel was dangerous, of hiding in the mountains where instead, at least for a little while, he felt that he was safe. What these dangers in the valley were, it was not necessary to say. Better to take three months caretaking a refuge where nobody came.

  He was secure, but not happy. When our friendship was developed enough to confide in each other he told me that he couldn’t stand being in the mountains any longer. What do you mean? I said, convinced that the connection we had was based on an elective affinity for high altitudes. I was confusing roots with vocation—or perhaps Andrea, who had been born there, felt the same need as I did to freely choose his own place in the world: he wanted to leave for warmer climes, to Greece or to Sicily. He told me about the trips he used to go on in the fall, between the season of the refuge and the start of the skiing, on some beach in the south with the sun, white wine, the fish, the lemons. There was a girl included in these voyages to the happy isles. Andrea was intending to extract enough money from the wealthy American skiers that hired him in the winter to buy a little house by the sea with her—and to kiss goodbye to the refuge, the snow, and everything else besides. Something told me that he would succeed in doing this.

  * * *

  There was a peak nearby that belonged to him, to such an extent that it bore the name of his family, and it was the only one we climbed together. It happened just before my departure. That evening other friends from the village came and stayed overnight, and in the morning Davide put up a sign with the message GONE TO THE MOUNTAIN, then we shut the door of the refuge and followed the usual track. There are those who like to walk in groups, and those who almost without meaning to find themselves immediately on their own: I was drawn by the crest that I had already begun to explore, and headed for it. I saw that Andrea was also setting off below, along a road, disappearing between boulders among which he moved lightly, the two of us leaving the path to friends who walk in line. The crest soon began to demand my undivided attention. I got beyond the frozen avalanche I had gone down by the first time, and past the point from which I could see the lake that wasn’t there from above, obstinately insisting on keeping to the brink rather than taking one of the chamois tracks, easier prospects, that started on either side. In a few places I was obliged to use my hands, at first only to gain a hold and then to pull myself up, until I found myself astride the rock, with two smooth rock faces beneath my feet, asking myself whether I was not doing something idiotic. Then the climb became easier, a wide spine of wobbly flat slabs, almost a game of hopscotch choosing which rock to jump on. There was one last ledge beneath the summit, and it was there that I met up again with Andrea: he was going up a long gorge by himself and we came together by chance where the two ways crossed. We were more amused than annoyed by this, since some distance apart and without either of us watching what the other was doing, we had managed to keep exactly the same pace: a rare coincidence that neither of us felt the need to mention.

  He, however, had the foresight to bring a bottle, whereas I had not. He extracted it from his rucksack and uncorked it on the summit that shared his name, while the others caught up. We’d shared a few drinks together, but the last was the best: we wrote our names and the date in the summit book, and I was pleased that in a small notebook hidden at almost ten thousand feet they were inscribed close together. They were not carved into the rock, but for a few years up there the mountain would preserve them.

  Mists. And the thud of stones

  in the canals. Voices of water

  come down from the snowfields

  of the night.

  You stretch a blanket for me

  on the straw mat:

  with your rough hands

  you cover my shoulders, lightly,

  lest I catch cold.

  I think

  of the great mystery that lives

  within you, beyond your slow

  gesture; about the meaning

  of this our human brotherhood

  without words, amongst the immense rocks

  of the mountains.

  And perhaps there are more stars

  And secrets and unfathomable ways

  between us, in the silence,

  than in the whole of the sky stretching out

  on the other side of the mist.

  Antonia Pozzi, “Refuge”

  Crying

  It had been building for some time, and of all the unfortunate places it could have happened, I burst into tears, in the end, in the middle of one of the scree slopes that I loved so much. For almost an hour I had gradually been getting slower: I would climb a few paces, stop, bend down to catch my breath, look up toward the outline of the ridge and feel as if I had not advanced by even a single foot. How many had I already got over like this? Five or six massive rocky walls, judging from the route, in the hope that on the other side there would be a way of getting down without killing myself. Things had not always gone well for me. Twice I’d reached the top only to find myself looking out over a precipice, and consequently had to retreat and try to cross at another point instead. I had started to feel tired several hours ago, and now I was practically exhausted—with the rucksack straps gnawing into my shoulders and a feeling of nausea brought on by fatigue, altitude, and a discomfort that I had not experienced since childhood. It was in this frame of mind that I was confronted by a section even more difficult than anything I’d tackled so far. When I placed my hand on the rock face and tried to climb, I discovered that I had lost all agility. I slipped from a hold and landed lower down, sat without mea
ning to on a large flat stone. The pain registered soon enough. A lacerating pain in my hip and half-flayed leg, though it seemed that nothing had been broken. I lay down on the stone, using the rucksack as a backrest. It was then that I felt a sob rising in my throat, my eyes misting. Go on, cry, I thought, no one can see you. Lying on that stone I began to sob because I was tired, because I missed the others, and because I had no idea where I was.

  Already, at the height of August, summer was declining toward the precocious mountain fall. I had left the refuge early in the morning, but I wasn’t at all happy to be going away—so for the return journey I had decided to change route. It would be less melancholy, I thought, if I was to convert my farewell into an adventure. There was a village some six miles away, where when they celebrated their patron saint the shepherds shared the festivities with whoever went up there. In order to arrive there, according to the map, I would have needed to go down three thousand feet and then climb back up another thousand in a parallel gorge, but I had convinced myself that I could get there by remaining at altitude, finding a way of circumventing the mountain. Looking for shortcuts is a predictable enough way of getting into trouble. I had begun to cross a long detrital escarpment, with only the occasional tuft of grass or patch of juniper or rhododendrons, and the last frozen snow in the gullies. Time was its usual enigma. I would spend a long while enveloped in clouds that every so often cleared to let me study the way ahead. On my right I had a chain of peaks, and from each one an escarpment descended: the only thing was, I didn’t know how many there were, nor what difficulties they concealed. To work out where to cross I watched some chamois. I made out their movements from below, followed their footsteps on the ridges and the short, beaten tracks: vertiginous routes that cut the flanks of the mountain like high-altitude pistes, and which stopped abruptly where the chamois dispersed. So I was struggling up a slope, asking myself what could be on the other side, hoping for a plateau or a basin, only to get to the top of the crest and discover that I had another uneven descent in front of me, more uneven scree, another climb similar to the one I had just completed.

  It was penance for my sin of arrogance. Hours later, stretched out sobbing on that boulder, I could still see no end in sight.

  * * *

  Now I was watching the sky, envying the clouds that moved effortlessly from one valley to the next. I felt stupid, arrogant, dragged up there by an inane game: to get lost so as to see whether I was capable of finding the road again, escaping far away from people to find out whether somebody missed me. I had gone to the mountains with the idea that, if I stuck at it for long enough, at a certain point I would become transformed into someone else, and the transformation would be irreversible. In the event my old self was coming out in even more exaggerated ways. I had learned how to chop wood, to light a fire in a rainstorm, to hoe and plant a vegetable garden, to milk a cow, and to stack bales of hay; but I had not learned how to be alone—the only true aim, ultimately, of any hermit-like retreat. In this respect I felt exactly the same as on the day that I’d arrived. The skin on my hands had become thicker, my body had become sturdier and more resilient, but my spirit had not been toughened or reinforced: it remained as sickly and frail as ever. More than a hut in the woods, solitude resembled a house of mirrors; everywhere I looked I found myself reflected: distorted, grotesque, multiplied an infinite number of times. I could free myself of everything except him. Which is why, stretched out on that flat stone, I decided that my experiment had been a complete failure.

  * * *

  While I was feeling sorry for myself I saw an eagle circling directly above me. It was describing ever narrower circles, as if it was targeting something, and I instinctively suspected that I was the prey. I was lying down, motionless, and as far as the eagle was concerned I might well be dead already. If I had been dead, I thought, she would have overcome all inhibitions and flown down to feast. I had come across chamois and ibex before that had been filleted to the bone: their skeletons saddened me, but the thought that they had provided a meal for another creature was consoling. Given the choice, I too would like to have such an ending.

  Then I got up. Immediately the eagle regained height and moved away. I adjusted the straps of the rucksack, sealed the clasp of the belt around my waist. The injury I had was not too painful, and I knew that I still had some energy left. I detoured around the point at which I’d fallen and began to climb again with the same rhythm as before: two steps and a pause, two steps and a pause, without looking up any more, focusing only on where to place my feet.

  I did not realize that I was at the top of the ridge until I’d actually reached it, and from up there I could make out the village I was searching for. Ten or so sheltered huts, two or three hundred yards below me, with animals grazing in the surrounding fields. There was a vast copper cauldron on an open fire, and a man tending it. In front of a small white chapel a modest crowd had gathered, from which a song arose that somebody was accompanying with a trumpet. I don’t believe I’d ever been so happy before to see a mass and to hear church music. I took off my rucksack, lay down, and closed my eyes again, this time to enjoy the music in the sunshine.

  AUTUMN

  Season of Writing

  Return

  In the afternoon I was back in the hut. From a distance it seemed to be hiding between the trees, popping out in front of me as sometimes happens with people, when you turn a corner and bump into someone who’d been a friend in the past but wasn’t any longer, and you don’t know whether to embrace him or pass by with your eyes averted. I felt like this about the hut. An ibex skull that I’d found in June and called the god of Fontane was still surveying his kingdom from the windowsill. The meadows were only a little yellower, and the bowl I used for the dogs was lying upside down in the grass. Well at least they must have missed me a little, I thought. And the vegetable garden had felt my absence even more: invaded by weeds and devastated by some calf in search of a salad. His hoofprints were still visible in the soft soil. Rather more courteously, I took off my boots on the steps of the entrance and put down the stick by the side of the door. Once inside, I emptied the rucksack into the washing machine; while wandering over the mountains I had worn the same clothes over and over again for weeks, without any discomfort—but now that I was at home I smelled terrible. Later on while I was hanging out the washing, I encountered my neighbor the shepherd, who had come to apologize for his calf. He was very sorry about what happened, and even wanted to buy a box of vegetables for me by way of compensation, but I thanked him and told him to forget about it. The vegetable garden had not been a good idea from the start. I was not sorry to see it revert to grass.

  In front of the fire that evening I began to think again about the last few months. I contemplated the roof tiles, the outlines of wolves, bears, and owls in the knots and grain of the wood; I remembered the long spring, and I felt these things were as familiar as a childhood landscape. How many hours had this hut and I shared? I had run away from it precisely because it knew me so well and had witnessed the angst-ridden moments of my solitude. Now I had returned, bruised and a little stupefied from my August wanderings as if from a nocturnal escapade. I felt that there in the hut I had no reason to be ashamed of myself. It welcomed me back and invited me to rest within its walls. Or perhaps it was only the autumn that was just beginning.

  * * *

  In the morning I went for a stroll in the woods. I found juniper berries and bilberries to add to my grappa. The undergrowth was now punctuated with thick, yellow larch saplings, some of them like drumsticks in the clearings, a few fly agaric toadstools; it was as if the mountain, after a long incubation, had finally entered into the harvest season. I sat down with my nose in the air, observing the canopies of the trees, the play of sunlight between the branches, thinking about Rigoni Stern’s Wild Arboretum: I was living at higher altitude than he had done, up where there was no trace of beeches, ash, oaks, birches, the whole variety of trees that grew in the woods near to
his home. At eight thousand feet there are only four types of trees, the only ones that can survive the mountain winters, and I felt a sort of devotion toward them—as if they were the protecting saints of this environment. So I decided to begin my notebook with an acknowledgment of gratitude to Fontane’s little arboretum:

  I feel respect for the spruce, as for the inhabitant of a dark country. It lives on humid mountainsides and shaded valleys, where man does not build or cultivate the land. The humidity helps it to grow quickly: it has a light, spongy wood that’s suitable for insulating houses from the cold. My respect is a formal one—for a tree that I will never fully understand. I am troubled by its indifference to the changing seasons: an evergreen is like a face that never changes its expression. I am wary of its perfectly shaped foliage that makes it difficult to distinguish one specimen from another. The great swathes of spruce remind me of the forests of the North, of lakes, fjords, and snow. But one rainy August afternoon I took refuge beneath a spruce, and was grateful for that tree’s dense needles and for the soft, dry carpet beneath it that provided me with a kind of den.

  I admire the Scots pine as a type of pioneer. It is the first tall-growing tree to colonize areas of scree, the gorges swept by avalanches. The poor soil makes it a tree with an irregular and bizarre shape, each specimen different from the next, bent and contorted like the bones of elderly mountain folk. It is impossible to get from it wood for building with. It isn’t even suitable for burning in the stove, because the fumes from its resin encrust the pipe and end up setting fire to it. But that same resin perfumes the wood awakening from its hibernation. That smell reminds me of the South and of the sea: perhaps because other pines perfume the air of the Mediterranean scrub. So the Scots pine is a dream of sunshine in the snow-covered wood.