by Dario Fo
‘Who took these?’ she asked in bewilderment.
‘My men had been stationed for a couple of hours in the garden. They had heard the rumour that the gang would turn up at the Polish woman’s villa to settle accounts.’
‘So why didn’t you intervene to set me free and get my boyfriend out of the clutches of those villains? You just stood there and watched while they beat him to within an inch of his life.’
‘No, no,’ said the sergeant. ‘We weren’t just watching. We managed to take quite a lot of photographs through the window of you being beaten up, and if we’d have arrested them that night, we’d have missed the chance to catch them with the cocaine! Think about it: for assault they’d have got a maximum of a couple of years, but for drugs they’re looking at a minimum of another ten. OK, we let them knock you about a bit, but now you can breathe freely for a good twelve years. You are as free to enjoy your lives together as chaffinches in spring.’
‘Thanks, sergeant, but seeing as you’ve gone this far, you don’t think you could put his mother, the Pole, inside as well?’
The sergeant gave a raucous laugh. ‘You’re not just a pretty face. You’re sharp-eyed and smart as well. But heed my advice. Keep well away from drugs if you want to live a long and happy life.’
CHAPTER 17
The Bindula Boys
Bindula is a dialect variation of the verb abbindolare, which means ‘to make fun of someone’. The Bindula boys were a group of idle smart asses, unsurpassable champions of the practical joke, totally ingenious in the diabolical capers they could think up and pull off.
They used to devise all manner of trickery at the expense of any poor simpleton in the valley or beyond. They had no regard for anyone, no pity for man or beast, but their favourite victim was an ex-soldier with the Arditi, known as ‘Pacioch’, a candid, credulous nincompoop. He looked like a tree trunk from which daisies might sprout: the classic, good-natured booby; the ideal scapegoat, in other words, for those good-for-nothing charlatans.
One of the leaders of the gang rejoiced in the name of Gratacu (Itchy-arse), the local word for a nettle. One day he was visiting a friend who ran a junkyard for cars above the town. In the workshop, they were dismantling an old car, a facsimile of the famed Bugatti, with the intention of using only some pieces and scrapping the rest. They had already removed the sides, including the doors, pulled out the dash board, hauled away the lid of the boot and stripped the engine down to a few bolts. The sight of the remains of that car gave Gratacu an outrageous idea: he asked his friend to lend him that wreck, just as it was, for half a day. Then, with the help of two fellow Bindula, he busied himself reassembling once more the glorious automobile. They put the engine to one side, then, like the master craftsmen-tricksters they were, the three of them made use of a roll of fishing tackle to secure each part to a rope under the chassis: they then let out the various lines, pulling them together and tying them up behind the boot. In other words, they had just stitched together the entire chassis.
Now that the trap was laid, they set off pushing the car, which was now held together by pieces of string, down the hill to the harbour, in front of the chalet housing the Mira-Lago bar. When they were in sight of the chalet, the two Bindula boys squatted down behind the boot and made it roll into the piazza. Gratacu was inside the car, pretending to drive.
When they reached the bar, all the customers got up in amazement to have a look at a vehicle which was a museum piece. The supposed driver got out and called over to Pacioch, who was quietly sitting outside, like a somewhat dim-witted cat.
‘Would you do me a favour, if it’s not too much trouble…’
Pacioch jumped to his feet at once. To be of service to one of the Bindula boys was for him an honour beyond compare.
‘There’s no water in the radiator, and the whole thing nearly seized up. Would you be good enough to go into the bar and ask for a bucket of water?’
The poor booby rushed off in a state of excitement. It was rare for them to show so much faith in him! He came dashing back with the pail of water and found the bonnet already up. Gratacu seized hold of the bucket: ‘Thanks, I’ll see to it, but if you could close the door for me. I’ve gone and left it open, and for goodness sake, it’s a very valuable, delicate car, so go easy, eh?’
Pacioch did his best to proceed as gently as possible, but as he pushed the door, it slammed shut with a loud bang. Behind the boot, the two accomplices pulled the trip wire: they tugged the lines fixed to the various bits of the car so that the whole structure crashed noisily to the ground. The doors collapsed, the dashboard was hurled into the air, the bonnet flew off and ended up on top of Gratacu. The swine let out a despairing groan and flopped to the ground as though dead. Like two jacks-in-the-box, the other pair suddenly appeared from behind the now-ruined car, making a great display of terror and horror: ‘Christ in heaven, Pacioch, what have you done?’ asked one.
‘Did you toss in a bomb?’ demanded the second.
Poor Pacioch was devastated. The customers outside the bar joined in. ‘Oh, what a disaster!’ was the cry.
‘I don’t know,’ stammered Pacioch, ‘I only closed the door … very gently.’
Some went over to help Gratacu, who was still playing the part of a recently expired corpse. When he came round, Gratacu went into a rage and attacked Pacioch like a bolt from a catapult. ‘You bloody fool, don’t you realise you have just wrecked a jewel fit for any collection? We had only borrowed it for an hour. Now who’s going to pay for it?’
One of the tricksters screamed, pointing at the inside of the bonnet: ‘Look, the engine’s gone! It’s disappeared!’
Everybody started poking around. A boy pointed his finger at the huge plane tree. ‘It’s up there in the tree! It’s got caught up between two branches.’
It is unnecessary to state that the organisers of the whole trick had put it there before the event.
‘Would someone like to tell me,’ interjected one of the group of friends, ‘what on earth kind of blow this creature must have delivered to shoot an engine up as high as that? He’s a force of nature. He has the muscles of a wild beast. We should only let him walk about with two circles of iron around his arms to restrain the propulsive strength of his biceps. Otherwise he’d be a public menace.’
Poor Pacioch looked about like a lost soul, swallowed hard in mortification … then quickly made up his mind.
‘All right, tell me where to go to get these two irons attached.’
‘To the blacksmith’s,’ came the chorus of reply. And so they all accompanied him in procession to the blacksmith’s to see him fixed up with real irons, which, as luck would have it, were all ready … and just the right size!
CHAPTER 18
Wedding in the Coptic Rite
A month went by and Stumpy was released from hospital. His mother, under the pretext that he needed time to recuperate, took him to Ascona in the Canton of Ticino, where the father’s side of the family had a house. He did not stay there as much as three days before making his way back to Porto Valtravaglia. He arrived on his motorboat, the one which had caused him to lose his hand. She, as beautiful as any pharaoh’s wife, had been there on the quay for God knows how long waiting for him. The boat moored, he jumped out, put his arms round her and led her off on a wild dance: round and round they went, and the upshot was that both of them ended up in the lake. All the folk on the foreshore rushed over, but the two re-emerged laughing, waving their arms and spraying water over all those who had come to help.
However, Stumpy’s mother would not hear of her son getting together with ‘that Egyptian whore’. Right reason or none, she was out to dissuade him. To begin with, she sold the villa to German tourists so as to force her son and his girlfriend to move out. Stumpy had always depended on his mother for cash, so how was he to make ends meet now? All that was left to him was his motorboat, and he offered his services to a company which transported goods and passengers. Nofret found a job as a waitress i
n the restaurant-hotel down by the harbour, and together they rented a cottage nearby. I often met up with them, and they were very happy. They wanted to organise a grand wedding, but they were in no position to do so. Stumpy was still married to a woman from Lugano, even if they had been separated for more than five years. Divorce was legal in Switzerland, but he was an Italian citizen, so it would have been invalid in Italy.
One Sunday they invited all their friends, who were legion, to the square facing the harbour. We children were also asked along. They had decided to celebrate a fake wedding, with a ceremony in the Coptic rite. A Greek glass-blower and his entire community turned up, including an austere man dressed in a red tunic and tube-like hat with a circular form at the top. The Greek group, women included, were in folk dress and had brought various instruments with them – trumpets, violas and accordions. They started singing in tones which had a certain resemblance to Gregorian chant.
The bride was wearing a very high-necked, subtly plissé dress, which came down to her feet like a colonnade. He had on a dark suit which was not unlike an evening suit.
Emotion ran high throughout the whole ceremony, during which everybody held candles and rang bells. A few women could not hold back their tears.
They had laid out a big table on the square by the lakeside, and served a gargantuan meal offered by the fishermen. In the midst of the celebrations, even the parish priest came along to embrace the newly-weds, even though they had been united by his rivals. I have always thought that priest was a man of unusual spirit! The brass band struck up a waltz, and the piazza was transformed into a gigantic ballroom.
At sunset, the whole gathering accompanied the bride and groom down to the quay where the motorboat, now adorned with flowers, awaited them. Nofret and her Rizzul jumped in at the same time, and, with a great waving of hands, off went the boat. The band struck up a quick-tempo paso doble. ‘A pity the Polish woman could not have been here,’ someone remarked. ‘I bet she’d have been in tears as well!’
We were moving away from the harbour when we heard a loud bang, and turned to look out over the lake. The motorboat reared up, seemed to take off, then plunged prow-first into the water and sank. It vanished from view. The fishermen rushed to their boats, another motorboat was put out and in a few minutes they were at the spot where the disaster had occurred. A boy dived in from the rescue vessel … the fishermen came on the scene, and some of them, too, went into the water. They pulled them out, put them on the boats, the doctor arrived … one of the Greeks had gone to fetch him. The boats moored. Nofret and her beloved were laid out on the grass, one beside the other. The doctor had a strange implement with him, a kind of suction pump with which he sucked out all the water the two young folk had ingested, but it was all to no avail.
We all stood around petrified. The parish priest knelt down, gave a blessing and said a prayer. The two corpses could not be moved until the on-duty magistrate in Luino arrived. We all stood around in silence. People arrived from nearby villages, and a large circle formed. One of those who had just come on the scene began to whisper some form of comment, but he was asked to be silent.
The sun was setting. The shadows on the square lengthened into interminable shapes. Some sobs were heard, and there were many who could not hold back tears.
CHAPTER 19
At Grandfather’s
At the age of fourteen, I was admitted to the Brera Academy after a very exacting selection process. Out of the one hundred and fifty applicants, only forty passed the examinations.
During the Easter holidays I went to stay with my grandparents in Lomellina. On arrival, I was astonished not to be met by the usual swarms of midges and mosquitoes. No wonder! It was only March and the onset of those hellish insects was still some time off. On the other hand, at nightfall, the croaking of the frogs rose up, only to end quite suddenly with a succession of splashes as they plunged into the canals and waterways. It was not for nothing that we were in Sartirana, a name which means ‘Leaping Frog’.
I could scarcely recognise my grandfather’s farmhouse when I got there. The climbing plants clinging to the columns of the arches under the quadrilateral portico were in bloom. There were dashes of colour on the walls of the stables and wood-store as well, and all that’s before we got to the orchard! As soon as I went with Granddad Bristìn on donkey back onto the bridge over the canal, the orchards appeared before us, laid out like an enormous chessboard of an infinite number of mosaic tesserae in an impossible perspective. The larger and smaller pawns were the fruit trees which had produced blossoms galore. My grandfather savoured my amazement in silence, then whispered to me: ‘Don’t just look with your eyes, look with your nose too.’
‘Look with my nose?’
‘Yes, smell, listen to the scents and perfumes.’
‘Ah yes, I hear them. They’re very good.’
‘Always be aware that you must know how to read smells and scents. For example, come over here, under this cherry tree. Sniff gently, breathing softly. Listen, it has an almost salty aftertaste … this one over here is also a cherry tree, but it has a sweeter scent, it’s almost rounded and is more intense than the other one. And do you know why? Because the first tree shed its blossoms too early, and so got a chill. The other wasn’t in such a hurry to bloom and so avoided the problem!’
‘And you can understand that from the scent?’
‘Certainly, and from the scent I already know what the fruit will be like: the one that the frost got to will have its fruit late and thin, but the second ones will be plump, full and beautifully scented. It’s the same with people. If a baby gets a serious illness, it needs time, care, food and warmth before it recovers, and you can tell from its smell when it’s not at its best.’
‘So why do doctors never smell you when they come to see you?’
‘Because they’ve forgotten ancient medicine. In the Salerno treatises that taught doctors how to go about examining a patient, it is written: “Feel the skin and muscles from head to toe, listen to how the blood is circulating, test the skin with the fingers to discover where it is sweet, damp or where it is dry and above all smell, guess the humour, the salted, the bitter, where it is pleasing and where it emanates odours … which is a way of saying where it stinks.”’
‘Really! How much you know, Granddad! Did you ever study medicine?’
‘No, but I’m a curious old soul that’s never easily satisfied with the notions books and academics try to palm you off with. Look, it doesn’t matter whether you are talking about trees, potatoes, flowers or tomatoes: if an apple is bitten by an insect or infected by a virus, it immediately reacts by changing smell, even before its appearance changes. It’s a sign it gives you gratis. It’s the same with a man or a woman. His or her pleasing smell doesn’t just inform you that they are in good health, it also tells you something about their mood. If they give off a whiff of perfume, it means they are experiencing some emotion, that perhaps they like you and you can be happy with that, and if then you feel a thrill or your heart starts beating faster, you can be sure that in the same way you’ll be sprinkling your own message of contented scents in the air!’
‘And everyone will be aware of it? All you have to do is sniff around?’
‘Unfortunately not. If a man falls in love and looks into his girlfriend’s eyes, he might notice that she’s pale or that she’s flushed, that her palms are damp with perspiration because of the emotion, but he won’t listen to her smell, he won’t hear it because we have lost the sense of smell. We have been castrated of this basic sense.’
I was astonished. ‘What a shame! And it’s too late to do anything about it?’
‘Well, you know … by practising with method and, above all, with constancy, maybe a remedy can be found.’
‘Sniffing exercises?’
‘Exactly. Training to use your nostrils on everything and every person, as the animals do. A dog that meets you sniffs at you. If he doesn’t like your smell, he goes off in disgust and
you can count yourself lucky if he does not pee on you as well.’
‘Granddad, you’re making a fool of me! So you’re telling me that to get my sense of smell back, I’ve got to become a dog! I’ve got to go on all fours, sniff the legs and maybe even the backside of people I meet!’
Grandfather laughed heartily. ‘Congratulations! A great parry. In any case, I advise you to try it, without going over the top. You’ll acquire a splendid culture that way.’
‘A culture on stinks?’
‘Yes. Did you never wonder why women, and nowadays some men too, dose themselves more and more in perfume?’
‘To cover body odours and rancid sweat.’
‘Don’t exaggerate. It’s true that spraying yourself every so often with a delicate perfume can produce a pleasing effect: it is excess that does the harm. It’s a concealment born of distrust of the products of our own excellent glands. Professor Trangipane told me that as early as the eighteenth century, bewigged noblemen discovered they emitted odours according to their states of mind, and that these signals were clearly decipherable and legible by the nose. So, to prevent other people from using their smell to find out character, personality, emotions and hypocrisy, which has an especially stomach-churning smell, they preferred to cancel all smell with doses of perfume.’
‘Granddad, are you telling me that if I exercise properly … all I need is one good sniff, and no one will be able to put one over me?’
‘Absolutely right! Everything in nature has a language: people’s way of gesturing, gesticulating, their way of walking, of sitting down, of shaking hands … their way of using their voice and articulating words … everything is an encyclopedia of invaluable signs. It’s as though you were to pull people’s clothes off and see them naked, as they really are, with their buttocks and prattle exposed to the winds.’
