by Dario Fo
It would invariably happen that after a bit my young hillside companions would turn up at the station porch and shout for me from under my window. ‘Dario,’ my mother would alert me, ‘these little beasts of friends of yours are here. Want to go with them?’
She would need to repeat it over again. I was so absorbed in the paper before me that even the shrillest train whistle would pass me by.
‘Sure you don’t want to go, my darling crackpot?’ she cheerfully repeated. ‘Do you want me to tell them that you’re not too well, or that you’ve got a bit of a temperature?’
‘No, no,’ I replied instantly. ‘If you tell them I’m sick, they’ll make a fool of me for a week: “Ooooh, poor little diddums.” Could you not say they’ve taken me to Switzerland for cousin Tullia’s wedding?’
‘Her wedding! What are you talking about? Tullia’s only twelve.’
‘All right,’ I said, trying to make amends, ‘could the bride not be her sister Noemi … she’s grown up.’
‘Yes, but she’s about to become a nun.’
‘Well, then, say she’s given up the veil to marry a captain in the Swiss Guards.’
‘The Pope’s Guards?’
‘That’s right. A nun can’t just throw herself at the first man who comes along!’
* * *
Switzerland often cropped up in our conversation, in part because my father’s sister and her husband and daughters, Tullia and Noemi, lived on the far side of the lake, in the rich lands of the Canton of Ticino. There was another cousin as well, the older son, who represented all that I wanted to be when I grew up. Bruno was his name and he was a champion footballer, a goalkeeper with Lugano, organist in Lucerne Cathedral and had been recently selected as representative of the Helvetic Republic to the Italian Government in Rome. And if that was not enough, he was also engaged to a beautiful young woman whom he brought every now and again to visit us. Among all his uncles, Pa’ Fo was his favourite. They were more or less the same age. They spoke between themselves about politics, but they did so in a hushed voice: if they ever got so heated they could no longer keep their voices down, Mamma sent them outside. ‘Go for a walk along the lake because as they say in Sartirana (and here she would revert to her own dialect): Light talk glides soundlessly over the water, but heavy talk sinks.’
As soon as Bruno and my father were off the scene, I would do all I could to attract the attention of Bedelià, Bruno’s fiancée. Her long neck, her soft hands, her Madonna-like fingers and above all her perfectly rounded breasts drove me crazy! When she lifted me onto her lap, I felt my cheeks flush and my whole being grow faint. Yes, I may as well admit it: ever since I came into this world, I have always liked women and they have always made my head spin. On those occasions when I have been with a radiant woman like Bedelià, with that scent of flowers and fruit emanating from her skin … Oh God, what raptures! In her arms, I gorged on her scents with the unrestrained greed of an addict.
My mother too was every bit as fresh and beautiful as Bedelià, and maybe even more so. After all, she was only nineteen when she had me, but a mother is beyond all comparison. My mother’s scents made me drool, brought on some desire to suck at her breast and a yearning to cling close against and inside every curve and crease of her body. In her arms there was neither wind nor heat. Her warmth melted every fear: I was indeed in the belly of the universe.
But to come back to Bedelià, every time that she and Bruno left, I was downcast and silent for a whole day. They set off by boat, and we would accompany them down to the pier. Their journey was short, only to the other side of the lake, where Brissago faced us. I would stand on the passageway leading to the mooring point, following the boat as it grew hazy, leaving behind a foamy wake which dispersed as the craft became smaller and sank into the distance. But it never disappeared. In fact I could see it moor on the far shore of the lake.
Once the police sergeant lent me his binoculars. When I put my eye to it, I saw the boat and the Swiss wharf come towards me. I got Bedelià too in my sights. Then I turned my eye to the roofs and houses. ‘Lucky things,’ I exclaimed, ‘they live in the midst of all that chocolate and marzipan.’ You see, ever since I had arrived in Pino Tronzano they had convinced me that over there, in Switzerland, everything was made of chocolate or almond paste and that even the roads were coated in nougat! The one who first fed me this lie was the telegrapher in the station, who offered me a square of chocolate with the words, ‘Life’s not fair! Here are we nibbling miserable, tiny squares of chocolate and there they are over there, bloody Swiss, with chocolate to throw away, even onto the roofs of their houses!’
‘Onto the roofs?’ I said.
‘That’s right. Can’t you see the dark red roofs they’ve got? That’s because the tiles are made with crushed chocolate.’
‘Chocolate tiles! Lucky things.’ And I swallowed enough saliva to flood my system.
That bastard of a louse of a telegrapher passed the word to the signalman, customs officers, the policemen … each and every one of them was in on the joke about a chocolate-coated Switzerland.
‘That’s why,’ those swine told me, ‘the other side is called the fat shore. If you’re good, I’m sure one day Pa’ Fo will take you there. Have you got your passport? You haven’t! Ah well then, you’ll not be going.’
Since I had fallen head-first for this tale about the land of milk and honey on the other side, even my mother, not wanting to disappoint me, joined in. ‘Bruno’s coming to see us next week, and he’s sure to bring you a lot of plain chocolate.’
My father had already got in touch with my cousin’s father, so when Bruno arrived in his usual boat, I was standing waiting for him on the pier, near to fainting. He and his girlfriend got off, carrying a large packet. At the customs booth, the officer made them open it. I was peering in from the gangway but I couldn’t see what was in the parcel. The customs officer, raising his voice, let them pass with the comment: ‘It isn’t really legal, but just this once we’ll turn a blind eye…’
The couple were finally on dry land. I was so excited and curious to find out what the parcel contained that I almost failed to greet the splendid Bedelià. In our house, up at the station, the surprise was revealed. When the paper and packing were removed, there appeared a large, slightly curved tile, entirely of chocolate!
‘I pulled it off my roof,’ said Bruno slyly, ‘and it’s for you, little crackpot. Don’t eat it all at once.’
I was so astonished that I could hardly breathe. ‘Can I give it a lick to taste it?’ I said uncertainly, and every last one of them chorused: ‘Of course. Lick away!’
‘God bless Switzerland,’ shouted Mamma.
* * *
A full year passed before I was able to cross the lake to Brissago. I was just five, and was as excited as a grasshopper in spring. When the parish priest in Pino spoke to us in religious education classes about Adam and Eve and the Earthly Paradise, my thoughts went to Switzerland, or more precisely to the Canton of Ticino: there in the Swiss Eden lay the abode of the elect, while our side was the home of the sinners, doomed to eternal punishment!
My mother was very cautious in feeding me information about our next journey to the Promised Land. ‘Maybe … in a few days…’ was as far as she would go, ‘if they manage to get the boat back in service, then we’ll take a trip to see uncle and aunt … perhaps.’
That night I dreamed they had once again suspended the ferry service: my father was standing on the gangway in a state of uncontrollable rage, as happened to him on his bad days. He pulled around him an embroidered blanket (the one from the big bed in our house), raised his arms to heaven as though he were Moses, and declaimed at the top of his voice: ‘Cursed lake, open up and let us pass, for the Promised Land awaits us.’
And wham! A high wind arose, the waters started to bubble as though in a great cauldron and … a miracle!… sucked upwards by the wind, the water spiralled towards the heavens and divided in two, causing the Red Sea – sorry,
Lake Maggiore – to open, whereupon the entire family, followed by the people of Pino Tronzano, Zenna and Maccagno, made their way across, chanting and singing, while the customs officers shouted after them despairingly: ‘Halt! Come back or we open fire! It is forbidden to cross without passport and visa.’ No one paid the slightest heed. Even the peasants and shepherds from the uplands with their cows, sheep and goats made their way across.
‘No, no goats! That’s not allowed,’ the police yelled.
The goats in reply fired off little pellets of shit as round as bronze billiard balls, and went on their way, wagging their tails behind them. What can I say? I was already dreaming in cinematic terms.
A cry of ‘Wake up, wake up!’ from my mother stopped me from completing that biblical dream. ‘We’re late, get up. The boat’s here in a quarter of an hour.’ I was in such a state that I put my trousers on back to front, put both socks on the one foot, spilled the coffee cup on top of the cat and even forgot to stick the paint brushes and paper into my bag. ‘Hurry up, hurry up.’
The siren from the boat tying up at the mooring was answered by the whistle of a train emerging from the tunnel. The station water-pump groaned. We were at the quay.
‘Careful on the gangway. You’re OK?’
‘All aboard.’
‘Cast off.’
I went to take my place at the prow. Mamma came up to me and whispered: ‘My little darling, I’ve got a bit of bad news for you.’
‘What sort of news?’ I asked, without taking my eyes off the Swiss coast as it rushed towards us.
‘The roofs in Brissago are not chocolate any more.’
‘Whaaaaat?’ I screamed in disbelief.
‘Yes, darling. The Swiss government made them change the whole lot. The order had to be carried out at once because all the children had been chewing the tiles so furiously that they were making the roofs leak … holes all over the place. So every time there was a downpour, the houses flooded and the inhabitants got colds or pneumonia, not to mention the fact that greedy children ended up in bed day after day with shooting pains in their stomachs.’
‘How could that be? Chocolate doesn’t give you a sore stomach.’
‘It all depends. If the tiles are old and as rotten as those ones…’
‘Rotten chocolate! But the tile that Bruno brought me wasn’t old.’
‘But that was from a new house.’
‘Oh well, then, at least his roof is safe.’
‘I’m afraid not. A couple of nights ago, some thieves stole the lot.’
I burst into tears of despair. ‘Damn them!’ I called down curses in silence. ‘God damn all thieves of fresh chocolate roofs and bring down on them a landslide of old cocoa, rotten marzipan and boiling vanilla!’
I could not be consoled.
* * *
At the quay in Brissago, Aunt Maria, whom I had never seen, Uncle Iginio Repetti and my two cousins were waiting for us. I was in such a state that I did not even deign to greet them with a glance, not even a cursory ciao. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Aunt Maria, genuinely concerned. Mamma made her a sign to desist. ‘A tragedy. I’ll explain later,’ she whispered under her breath.
On the way to their house, we passed a cake shop whose windows were groaning with piles of chocolate bars. Noemi, the elder of the two cousins, had gone ahead and was coming out of the shop with an enormous lump of chocolate. When she offered me some, I accepted the offer but with a severe, disdainful look which said: ‘If you think for one moment that you can fob me off with a square of dry cocoa, you’ve got it wrong.’
My uncle and aunt’s house was on the lakeside. It even had a private harbour with a long, narrow boat, a yawl. Mamma and I were given a large room with a balcony. My God, what lodgings!
I immediately asked if it was possible to go out on the boat. In Pino I had been allowed every so often onto the customs men’s motor boat, but that yawl was of a different class. To say its balance was precarious is putting it mildly. You couldn’t move an inch in the boat without it immediately rocking about crazily.
They lowered me on board first: the two sisters jumped in right after me, the yawl overturned and all three of us ended up in the water. ‘Damn it all! I’m only five and I can’t even swim.’ To make matters worse, the yawl fell on top of me and I found myself trapped inside the hull, as though under a lid. I knocked, shouted, drank in gulps of water, and somehow, I’ll never know how, managed to grab hold of the bar of the seat. I heard Noemi screaming; ‘My God, the boy! Where has he ended up?’
Her sister replied: ‘He’s not in the water. I’ll bet he’s stuck under the boat, inside the hull.’
My uncle dived in. Together they managed to get the boat upright, and I came back to the surface, still clinging onto the crosspiece. I was spluttering like a flooded engine.
My God, life is hard in bloody Switzerland!
* * *
That night I had nightmares which made me toss and turn about in bed I don’t know how often. Just as well I was in the arms of my mother, who every time I moved gave me a kiss and dried the perspiration which had soaked me through and through. ‘All right, it’s nothing,’ she reassured me. ‘Never mind these bad dreams. You’re not in the water any more, little darling, there are no more lakes or boats. Go back to sleep.’
It didn’t work. As soon as I got back to sleep, water came at me from all sides. The rain was lashing down, the rivers were overflowing and bursting their banks, the water in the lake was high and rising until it seemed ready to flood onto the shoreline and submerge the station, dragging the trains beneath the waves. My mother was fleeing, holding me in her arms, climbing up the steep path which leads to Pino and on to Tronzano. Pa’ Fo was somewhere behind us, balancing on his head the huge copper tub we used as a bath … It might come in handy as a life boat. This recurring dream, or nightmare, was derived from an experience I had lived through the previous year, when a real cataclysm had made the water rise to the highest levels ever recorded. It seemed that the water, rising inexorably, was determined to swallow us all up.
When I awoke the following day in Switzerland, I was almost surprised to find that my bed was not floating on the waves. A bit dazed, I went down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee only to find on the table a huge paint box, a clutch of brushes and a sketch pad to paint on. They were not children’s toys but professional material, real painter’s equipment.
‘Are these for me?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Yes,’ replied my uncle, with a laugh.
I hardly recognised him. He was dressed as a soldier: green uniform with red edgings, boots and hat complete with visor. ‘Uncle, are you off to war?’
‘No, it’s my ordinary uniform. Didn’t you know? I am a sergeant in the town gendarmes.’
It was only then that I noticed the pistol in the holster of his belt. ‘Are those yours too?’ I asked, pointing to a trombone and a rifle with a bullet-holder displayed on the wall.
‘They are. I play in the police band, and this is my official rifle. Don’t ever touch it.’
He then picked up the paint box and emptied all the paint tubes onto the table. ‘See how lovely they are. They are from the Le Frank firm, a famous brand. When I was your age, I always dreamed of having paints like these. Did you know that I still paint sometimes? Have you every tried painting with colours and brushes like these?’
As he spoke, he squeezed tube after tube onto a big plate, showing me how to prepare a palette. He dipped his brush into the burnt sienna colour, handed it over to me, filled a cup of water and, setting it down on the table on a piece of cardboard, issued the peremptory order: ‘Right, then. Let me see if you really are the infant prodigy they say you are.’
It is easy to imagine the outcome. In my excitement I splashed paint left, right and centre. My idea was to depict the previous day’s incident with my cousins falling into the water, the boat capsizing and me ending up underneath, flailing about desperately. Instead, disaster upon disas
ter, nothing whatsoever of the story emerged from the hotchpotch on the page. A queue of onlookers formed, peeping over my shoulder. The whole family was there, including my mother and four gendarme colleagues of my uncle’s, all arrayed in uniform with their trumpets and trombones. They vied with one another in their enthusiastic comments on my artistic skill. ‘He’s a real artist! I’ve never seen a monster like that.’ ‘What is it, Noah’s Ark?’ ‘No, it’s the naval battle of the Malpaga family against the Borromeos.’
At the time I was sure they were churning out these flattering words only to please me, but a dozen years later, when I was already a student at the Brera Academy, I went back to visit Uncle Trombone (as everyone called him), and happened to see that painting hanging on a wall. They had even gone to the trouble of having it framed. I realised then that it was a fine piece of work. It looked like a Kandinsky! Who knows how I would have preened myself if I had been aware of that earlier but, both fortunately and unfortunately, candour and consciousness never take up residence in the same person at the same time.
* * *
In any case, that first week in Switzerland was unforgettable. I had the luck to be there during the festival of the Free Cantons. An assembly of people in period costume gathered in the piazza: first came those in gold and blue embroidered tunics playing the part of the tyrannical dukes, behind them in the procession the German soldiers, then the noble ladies and finally the patriotic rebels led by William Tell and his son. In the centre of the square, against a wall decorated with a bas-relief motif to signify a portal, stood a small boy with an apple on his head. William clutched a cross-bow, aimed it at the boy but a woman shouted: ‘No, my son, nooooo!’ It was the boy’s mother who obviously had little faith in the much-heralded accuracy of her husband. The point of that scream, I learned years later, was to distract the audience’s attention momentarily from the boy with the apple on his head. Taking advantage of that brief loss of concentration, the portal with the boy in front of it swung on its own axis. The real child disappeared, and a dummy of the same dimensions, same costume and face as the boy appeared in his place. Only the very smartest saw the trick, and at five years I was not even an apprentice smarty. In a flash, William Tell fired the arrow, piercing the apple, yells from an ecstatic public, end of show. ‘But what does it all mean?’ I asked my mother, who before the performance had tried to recount to me the sequence of historical facts. ‘It’s an absolute outrage,’ I exclaimed in indignation. ‘It’s always us children who end up in the middle of these things! The Baby Jesus is born in a stinking stable, with the roof falling in, no heating or stove, so he’s got to make do with the breath of an ox and ass. Herod, who knows why? wants him dead, and so goes off and slaughters all the children in the country as though they were goats. God Himself, just to teach poor Isaac a lesson, orders his father to chop off his head with an axe. Are we supposed to be impressed if He changes his mind and comes out with a “Stop right there! It was all a joke, a godly joke!” And to crown it all, this apple on the poor Swiss boy’s head, so that if Tell’s aim is out, his head is going to be split open. It’s him, the boy, who is the real hero but nobody even remembers what he’s called. The feast is in honour of his father, the idiot who put on the bet in the first place.’