The Fireflies of Autumn

by Moreno Giovannoni

  In the olden days Compito had the biggest church, presided over by the Head Priest of the district, so naturally it was where criminals were decapitated. A cage, hanging on a rusty chain from a pole that protruded through an arch at the top of the church’s belltower, swung slowly in the wind. The chain creaked as the cage swayed left and right while slowly spinning clockwise, then swayed right and left while spinning back the other way. In the cage they had once put heads that had been removed from their owners’ bodies in the piazza below, a warning to potential miscreants, malefactors and wrongdoers.

  The sun was about to set and the exhausted villagers were staggering backwards and forwards and from one side of the road to the other. They felt the burden of the day’s walk, especially after eating and drinking so much at Centoni. Occasionally someone in the column would drop to his knees and bend forwards to rest his forehead on the ground, and would be frozen until someone else delivered him a solid kick in the backside and made him jump up and stumble back into the line.

  Bucchione stopped in the middle of the road and waited. He seemed to be getting his bearings. Those immediately behind him walked into one another and toppled over, falling like dominoes, until eventually those at the back caught on and also stopped. The cage dangling high above their heads creaked again ominously. The path turned behind the tower and started to drop away quickly down the hill on the other side, then levelled out and continued running beside the Visona, which, now in full flow, was a torrent of thundering, boiling water, tumbling tree trunks, crashing branches and rolling rocks. They had found the Babbling Brook.

  The pause seemed to give them all new vigour, enough at least for one final effort.

  Bucchione moved off and they followed him through a natural archway formed by two monstrous plane trees growing a metre apart. In they went, single file, the men of each family group first, to make sure it was safe. It was like a giant’s lair under a canopy of ancient trees. Beo could have sworn one leafy colossus spoke to him in a deep breathy whisper: ‘Welcome, skinny toothless man.’ Leaping out of his skin, he spun around in a circle, surveying the territory. But there was nothing there.

  They had found the Enchanted Glade.

  Centenarian trees on each side of the torrent had made a roof where their high branches fused, up near the clouds. At first it was dark in the giant’s green house, but soon their eyes became accustomed to the dappled light (yes, light is always dappled in such places). The plane trees would normally be bare by now, but there were just a few leaves scattered about.

  The mill-house, its large wheel broken, lay abandoned, dusty and empty, like the villagers themselves, who were tired, grey and hollowed out from their journey. This would be their home for now. Once they had seen it was safe, the men called their families into the Enchanted Glade.

  The Sanginesini dispersed inside the derelict stone building, staking out little family plots, smoothing out their sacks of corn husks to lie on and rest aching bones. A few made a mattress out of their husband or father, who lay down on the ground with his wife and children and elderly parents on top of him, so that here and there dotted about the large room were small piles of people, chests and breasts rising and falling, breathing, snoring gently. The Sanginesini had three major aims in life: to work, eat and sleep with the people they loved. Although the work was suspended, their other desires were fulfilled.

  The local villagers brought in great cauldrons of bean soup to feed them all and woke them up. But after the feast at Centoni no-one was very hungry.

  In the bushes the fireflies glided about.

  …

  On the first day the sun got up late and so did the cavernicolous villagers, who moped around not knowing what to do with themselves now that they were away from their fields and their stables. Some even felt nostalgic for the exploding bombs; when Beo dared to say this Bucchione almost whacked him with the back of his hand, which he raised but left suspended in midair.

  Only Argante, who came from the hamlet of Cecchini, on the rise above the Speranza hill crossroads, fell into his usual routine, which was to sound the alarm. Argante was highly respected among his extended family and gave himself airs, but everyone else thought he was mad. He claimed he could hear American bomber squadrons taking off from the airfield that the Allies had built more than one thousand kilometres away, in Malta.

  At six o’clock in the morning he leapt into the centre of the large communal bedroom inside the mill and, his legs wide apart, arms raised, palms open, eyeballs protruding, he cried out: ‘Ragazzi, scappiamo, gli aerei son partiti! Everybody, run – the planes have taken off!’

  They all ignored him and someone threw a shoe, telling him to go back to sleep.

  The hours passed and they wandered about listlessly or slept and farted in their sleep as the beans from the night before worked their way through their intestines. For the midday meal the Compitesi brought them wooden platters piled high with slices of farinata, a polenta made from a thick soup of white beans, black Tuscan cabbage, carrots, celery and pigs’ trotters. They roasted the slices over open fires to make a crisp crust on the outside, leaving a warm softness inside, sweet with the beans and cabbage. On the roasted slices they sprinkled spicy olive oil.

  The Compitese wine was made from the grapes grown in the terraced vineyards they had passed on their way up the hill. It was mellow and friendly, but not too sweet. Even the children drank a splash with their water.

  Very soon after the midday meal all the Sanginesini were fast asleep again. They slumbered all afternoon and only stirred as the sun fell behind the mountain and the dappled light lost its dapple and the warmth left the world. They then lit fires and huddled around wrapped in blankets, telling stories about America and the men and women who had gone there and come back, including Tommaso, who on request stood and bowed and recited the famous words: ‘Your Honour, I did my duty. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  And naturally everyone roared their approval, laughing and cheering and clapping like excited children.

  The occasional explosion could be heard in the distance, but the time that elapsed between one bomb and the next grew longer and longer, so that by the end of the day they had almost forgotten there was a war outside the Enchanted Glade.

  Late in the day, Bucchione and a few helpers cleared some of the bushes away from the windows of the mill to let in more light. Bucchione was restless.

  Then, in the tradition of the veglia, which is a time when people stay awake together by the fire or, if the weather allows, in the courtyard, to talk and keep one another company, Bulletta told the story of Il Sasso, the foundation stone for what became Gino’s house on the bend, near the single lamppost.

  The Compitesi, who were less gregarious than the Sanginesini, shyly gathered around, after asking for permission to listen in.

  …

  ‘So, I will tell you about Il Sasso.

  ‘Beàno is a fragment of Villora, a lane about fifty metres long, which extends from Gino’s house on the corner past half a dozen houses to the courtyard in front of Bucchione’s house. In Beàno now live Lilì and her husband, Il Moro, with their sons Giovanni and Rinaldo, who are two really big boys, and Claudio Andolfi and his mother, Giraldina; his father, Ricciardo; and his brother, Vittorio, who is always scolding Claudio for not doing his schoolwork. Giraldina has large circles around her eyes and a beaklike nose that make her look like a benevolent owl. Two widowed sisters who dress in black live in the first house on the left and ride their cow-drawn cart everywhere. Next to Lilì lives Bucchione and his family, and we all know them. These are all good people.

  ‘So, this fragment of the village is known as Beàno and no-one can remember why. The village was already called Villora and its houses were not numbered and the one proper street that passed through it was nameless.

  ‘Anyway, one end of Beàno later became known as Il Sasso. In Beàno, on Gino’s land, along the line of the garden wall, where the single lamppost is now, stood a large tr
uncated pyramid-shaped stone. It was a feature of the village and the locals were proud of it, and possessive of it, in the same way some cities in Italy are proud of the relics of a saint, like the relics of Saint Mark the Evangelist in St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

  ‘The stone had earlier been cemented in place so that no-one could move it, because despite its enormous weight it had once been stolen. This is how it happened.

  In the old days the rivalry of the scattered hamlets in the village of San Ginese led to fist fights among gangs of young men. They also played pranks of epic proportions on one another.

  ‘One night, after there had been several physical encounters in the courtyards and streets over some insult one ruffian had uttered about the alleged lost virginity of another’s sister, the Cimaioli, who were from Lecci and Collina, stole the large stone from the Villoresi and dropped it down a dry well near the church at the top of the San Ginese hill. The Cimaioli did not try to hide the fact they had done it but boasted of their superiority and dared the Villoresi to retrieve the monolith.

  ‘It was again at night a week later that ten young Villoresi trooped off up to the well, carrying ropes and pulleys and long wooden poles. They tied one end of a rope to a tree, and Gino and Palle slid down into the well, landing in shallow mud. They used a broken wagon shaft as a lever to raise the boulder a few centimetres on one side so they could slip a rope loop under it. Then they repeated this with another rope on the other side. For good measure they strapped a third loop horizontally around the lower half, and then they climbed out. With the ropes threaded through large pulleys tied to a strong timber beam, the ten hauled half the night, lifting the boulder in its improvised sling a little at a time until it was freed from its damp prison.

  ‘They rolled the stone downhill to Villora in fits and starts, using a wooden beam as a brake. This was in late June, and tiny fireflies danced around them, lighting the way, while a large friendly moon smiled down on the party. The young men of Villora had won the contest, and pride had been restored to the village.’

  The entire population of the mill exploded, cheering and applauding, even the Compitesi, who had by now practically become naturalised Sanginesini.

  ‘On the corner where the haystack and the old stables were, that later became Gino’s place, they dug a hole and half buried the stone, pouring concrete around it to hold it in place.

  ‘There it remained until Gino smashed it to pieces to build the foundations of his house. That part of Villora soon had a new name so that what was once the far end of Beàno became Il Sasso, and that is what it is to this day.’

  A loud sigh filled the air, followed by some yawns, then more yawns, then some mumbles and a general hubbub of people talking about the weight of the stone, the size of the ropes, the names of the young men involved. Everyone felt satisfied because Bulletta had told the story well, and they felt renewed pride in their village.

  The little children with big round eyes and wide open ears had been hiding between the legs of the grown-ups as they listened to the story. Now their mothers and fathers told them to go to bed. ‘Hey, you! What are you doing there? Go to bed. It’s dark and it’s late.’

  The Compitesi said goodnight and went to their houses, through the archway, outside the Enchanted Glade.

  So the sun came up and went down again.

  …

  On the second day they slept until midday again. It now looked as if this would be the new pattern of life. When they were all awake and fed, Bucchione got some men to help him fix the roof of the mill house. This was the first work anyone had done for a while and it gave them satisfaction.

  Bucchione felt a desire to sow some vegetables suited to the time of year, so he made a list using the lead pencil and notebook he always carried: spinach, onions, lettuce, beetroot, radish, onions, carrots, cabbage, rocket, leeks, valerian, chicory, radicchio, endive and pink garlic. Alternatively, he could transplant garlic, onions, cauliflower, fennel, lettuce, chives, laurel, oregano, sage, thyme, mint and rosemary.

  The Compitesi, he was sure, would either provide the seeds or a few small plants. There was ample water from the Babbling Brook. All he needed to start a vegetable garden in the Enchanted Glade was a slightly sunny spot that provided plenty of protection from the extreme cold. It was still too early to make a decision about this, though. They had walked out of San Ginese thinking they might be absent for a week, but no-one knew what the war would bring. So he would wait.

  Beo ran back down the hill to the police station at the crossroads to ask if the two warring armies had passed, but the carabinieri said they hadn’t seen anyone or anything that looked like an army, let alone two. It was too soon to return home. The German artillery post was still entrenched at Castello, near the church, and the Americans were still on the Montanari hill. In fact, there were three explosions that day that came from the direction of San Ginese.

  After some initial discomfort, many of the villagers were becoming used to their new life. The men sat and played briscola and scopa, slapping cards down on the table defiantly with exclamations of jubilant victory: ‘Toh!’ And the reply would come: ‘Toh!’ Nara, the woman who was a man, smoked and played cards too. The feminine women chatted and the children played. Occasionally a fist fight would break out among the players over a hand of cards, but otherwise they were content and rested and certainly well-fed by the locals, who seemed to have an unending supply of food and wine. Even Argante had settled down and was no longer hearing aeroplanes in Malta.

  Iose had persuaded one of the local women to give her a saucepan and a small bag of flour and to bring milk every morning. Iose the Flour-Eater sat in a dark corner of the cavernous mill in front of a wood stove stirring the flour into the milk to make a thick white sauce, into which she threw some olives. She rejoined the others only after she had eaten. In this way she tried to hide her eating perversion from the others, but they all knew anyway.

  Small groups took to perambulating below the trees and along the torrent, venturing as far as the natural doorway they had crossed a few days before. They were afraid to venture outside, so turned their backs to the exit and marvelled at the beauty of their God-sent refuge and blessed Bucchione for having brought them there.

  To pass the time, on the night of the second day Bucchione decided to tell the story of the stolen carts. Everybody had heard it before, but there is nothing as pleasurable as hearing a story you already know, especially if it is well told, and Bucchione was one of the best tellers of tales in San Ginese. Some of the Compitesi, who were boring people and very often bored, again joined the Sanginesini in their encampment and settled down to listen.

  …

  ‘Well, you all know how many years ago the young men of Villora stole the barrocci (the carts, from the Latin birotium, meaning two-wheeled), which were kept in the stables, and hid them. The first time they did this, it took everybody by surprise and no-one knew what was happening.

  ‘It was on the eve of the May Day workers’ holiday. In the middle of the night twenty giovanotti (young men) visited barns and stables in the village and took away some carts. It took three or four of these delinquents to push a cart all the way up the hill, so overall five carts disappeared. You can imagine how hard it is to push a cart weighing four or five quintals one kilometre up the San Ginese hill.

  ‘To make it more interesting they took those that belonged to men who were most obviously proud of their carts, people like ’Nibale, Enoè’s son, whose stable is just past Lida’s place on the way down to Sucker’s. ’Nibale keeps his cart beautifully clean. All the metal bits are brightly polished and it has a nicely greased axle and shiny wheel hubs.

  ‘He also has a whole philosophy of life based on the way a man keeps his cart. A man’s attitude to his cart reveals a lot about him, according to ’Nibale. He says, “Tell me honestly, can you trust a man with a dirty cart? If your daughter wants to marry a man with a dilapidated cart, don’t you think she had better think again? After a
ll, if that’s how he looks after his cart, then who knows what treatment he dishes out to the cows, who will be pulling the cart, and to his women? And you know the old saying – get your cows and your women from your own village only. Well, what about making sure you have a local cart, better still one made by a familiar tradesman, so you know where she’s been and who with? Isn’t that just as important? Did any good ever come of a man whose cart was poorly maintained? Beware a man with a shabby cart! That’s what I say!”

  ‘’Nibale decorates his cows with red and gold pom poms on their noses. I have heard there are sacred cows in India that look like ’Nibale’s cows! Merigon, that tall skinny type over there, on the other hand, is unlike ’Nibale in every way. His carts are always dirty and poorly maintained. ’Nibale cannot bear to see a cart that is mistreated like that, or to hear its squeaky wheel. When ’Nibale hears the cart with only one squeaky wheel passing his house, he runs out into the street waving his arms about, and stands in front of the cow and implores Merigon to let him lubricate the wheel. Merigon refuses. And while everyone else who has a cow hitched to a cart uses two ropes to guide her along – one rope to pull her to the left and one rope to pull her to the right – Merigon is so thrifty that he uses one rope only to turn her head in one direction and then the other. Consequently, the cow is always confused about which direction she is to turn in and often just walks in circles.

  ‘Anyway, on the morning of the first of May, when the workers were marching in the cities all over the nation, the peasants of San Ginese got up at sunrise and went to work as usual. There was more than the usual bustle, though, out in the single street that runs straight through the heart of our village. The five contadini whose carts had disappeared, including ’Nibale, wandered around, forlornly leading their cows, halter ropes dangling limply; the men were bereft without their carts, stopping to ask other villagers, querying one another, knocking on doors, looking inside every stable in the village, standing stunned, blocking traffic, unable to comprehend what had happened.