And Guglielmo knew how to make one, even though he was not the owner of the piles he built, he was only a labourer. His boss had men and piles in various villages on the border between the Bellunese and the Trentino, and every now and again he would make a tour of inspection to see how the work was going and pay his workers. And he had become rich on charcoal, unlike his labourers, who were always on the move from wood to wood like old ogres, trying to earn a little bread.
The charcoal was useful to everyone: in the villages, to the Austrians, to the factories making bells and cannon, and now that they were building new railways it was also needed for the locomotives.
But making a charcoal pile was not at all easy, even for Guglielmo, who had experience to spare. For some time now, the boss had been after him, and he had to do a good job.
He had cut the trees when the moon was on the wane, had divided the timber, had reduced it to lengths of about a metre, and after letting it dry for two weeks had transported it to the jal: the clearing where he would build the pile. The space he had chosen this time was perfect since it was away from draughts and on permeable soil. At this point, he had put the wood down in a circle, breaking the thickest timber to make it easier to burn. He had stuck three wooden poles in the ground, each two and a half metres high, holding them together with two rings formed of brushwood and small branches. It was during this phase of the work that Jole had appeared.
And even as Jole slept, the charcoal burner continued his work without wasting a minute, lighting the clearing with four torches.
He arranged the thickest wood around the three poles, then the thinner wood, in such a way as to leave the central hole free to accommodate the fire. He packed the wood as tightly as possible, closing up all cracks, and late in the night the pile at last assumed its characteristic conical shape. Then he covered it with spruce branches, topsoil and dry leaves, with the aim of insulating it.
Towards morning, just before dawn, tired but satisfied, Guglielmo lit his sacred fire.
As he moved the torch closer, his eyes seemed possessed, as if there were something magical in this gesture, as if this were a mystical and in some ways devotional ritual for which he had been preparing himself for days and at which he would have to officiate constantly for another two weeks, before cooling the pile by covering it with earth and proceeding to the stockpiling of the charcoal obtained.
With the torch in his hand, he felt like an old pagan priest. With a pole, he made two openings in the pile to create the necessary vents and then set fire to the wood in the belly of the gigantic pojat, as he called his creation.
8
THAT NIGHT Jole dreamt about the first time her father had let her use the rifle.
It was the spring of 1893, and she was just a few weeks from her fifteenth birthday. They had gone down through the forests and oak woods of the Brenta Valley and had stopped in a little clearing on the mountainside, a few dozen paces from the river, so that the shots would be covered by the sound of the current.
“Here!” he had said, holding out St Peter.
She had taken it with trembling hands and had realized that the rifle was cold and heavy. At such close quarters, its smell of iron and old wood was much stronger.
“Look how I hold it,” Augusto had said, taking it quickly from her hands, “and do as I do.”
He had shouldered St Peter, taken position, aimed at a granite rock some thirty metres away, then checked that his daughter was doing the same. Then he had given her back the weapon and gone to her to improve her posture.
“The right elbow has to be lower and the legs apart. Keep your feet solidly on the ground.”
Then he had shown her how to load and immediately watched her as she did the same.
“Go on, fire at the rock!” he had said encouragingly.
Jole was tense, her hands were sweaty and the rifle seemed to weigh as much as the entire trunk of an old chestnut tree.
“Take a deep breath and fire!”
Jole breathed in, then held her breath and aimed.
She had concentrated on the violent noise of the river a few paces below them as it constantly broke on the stones sticking up from the bed. All at once it had seemed to her as if that insistent noise contained all the gunshots and all the bad noises in the world, including people’s cries of pain and the desperate weeping of children. She had thought that by pressing the trigger she would put an end to that strange impression, that sinister, somewhat childish sensation. She had counted mentally to three and fired, immediately falling to the ground because of the rifle’s powerful recoil.
Despite the noise of the river, the roar had echoed across the wooded slopes of Mount Grappa and the plateau.
Unperturbed, Augusto had bent over her slightly and said, “You can only fall the first time, the second you have to keep standing.”
With the smell of gunpowder still lingering in the air, Jole had got to her feet and asked, “What about the rock? Did I get it, Papà?”
“The rock, no. But you almost killed me!”
9
BY THE FIRST LIGHT OF DAWN, the charcoal pile was already lit, although it would be a few days before a steady flame from the top, like a volcano erupting, would announce the start of the carbonization process.
Getting up, Jole stared open-mouthed at that smoking volcano just a few dozen metres from her, of which there had been not even a hint the previous evening.
She looked for the charcoal burner and saw that he was busy cooking polenta on the fire. He seemed exhausted but satisfied. He looked at her and she waved to him. He replied with a smile and turned his eyes to the pile, as if to say, “Not bad, eh?”
They did not waste much time in conversing. They drank something together, and she ate a corn biscuit the man offered her. Then she resumed her journey, going back into the woods and riding Samson in the direction of Mount Pavione.
10
IT WAS A VERY HARD ASCENT, at first because the forests of black pine, spruce and silver fir surrounding the slopes were dense and tangled, and then because, when they reached the pass, the climb became all the more dangerous due to the swamps and bogs that had formed as a result of the persistent late-summer rains. Samson was having difficulty advancing, his legs sinking dangerously into that muddy earth, and Jole did not dare dismount, as it would have been impossible for her to walk in such terrain.
They advanced slowly in this way for four hours, while a flock of crows kept following them, cawing constantly, calling other birds that flew down and watched the girl and her horse struggling.
When at last the ground became hard and stony, Jole heaved a sigh of relief and the crows flew off, disappointed perhaps.
Jole and Samson proceeded with more confidence, tackling the first part of a large scree, even though the effort of the climb was starting to wear away at the horse’s muscles and at that altitude the sun was beginning to scorch.
“Ya!” she cried in Samson’s ear, urging him forward. To avoid tiring him too much, she undertook a zigzag route, going in and out of the thickets of Swiss pine, as if following imaginary bends.
The scree on which they were was burning hot, and she hoped that all the vipers in this heap of stones were already hibernating, because if Samson were bitten, she might have to say goodbye to this adventure.
The higher she climbed, the frailer, weaker and more vulnerable she felt.
The border is just behind there, on the north side, she thought. We’re almost there. But that’s why we have to watch out for soldiers.
She knew perfectly well that because of its proximity to the border this area might be patrolled and monitored by customs officers, both Italian and Austrian. She realized that what she was confronting was certainly the most dangerous phase of the journey, as well as the most laborious.
All at once, when they were about halfway up, the sky started to cloud over rapidly. Within a very short time, it was completely overcast. Samson managed to scent a little stream that descended fr
om the peaks and made its way between the white boulders surrounding them. So they stopped and both drank, stocking up on as much water as they could carry with them.
Jole took off her hat and drank in frantic gulps, then wiped the sweat from her forehead. She noticed that the temperature had fallen: a stiff breeze stung her temples and the skin of her neck beneath the sweat-soaked kerchief. Almost immediately, the breeze became a wind and then a squall.
It was a strange, treacherous wind, as sudden as it was unstable. As it lashed the rocks and stones and low clumps of grass, it produced a sound that resembled a battle cry, a terrible, mysterious voice from some hidden lair in the sky, a warning to whoever happened to be on that rock face.
At that moment, she remembered passing this very place with her father, and she recalled that on that occasion, too, a great wind, the same wind that was now hampering her progress, had flung itself upon them without mercy, its loud, ominous voice echoing.
“It isn’t a wind like any other,” her father had said with a frown.
Jole had remained silent because she knew that when the skin of her father’s face creased in that way it meant that he was about to say something essential and mysterious. She had looked at him with respect and waited for him to say more, and he did.
“It isn’t a wind like any other,” he had repeated. “It’s the legendary soul of the border, an ancient spirit at least as old as this mountain, a spirit that blows hard and moves from century to century following the borders of men.”
Remembering her father’s words now, Jole shuddered.
She looked up at the summit of Mount Pavione, then down at the ridge to the west, two hundred metres lower than the peaks.
“That’s where we have to pass, Samson. That’s our crossing place.”
To regain all her strength, she thought again about her father and about her family, who were still at home, counting on her, on her strength and determination.
She remembered her departure, and her mother’s eyes, as clear, bright and watery as the last ice on the April meadows.
“Mamma,” she had said, mounting Samson, “I’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”
“Be careful, Jole.”
In those three years, her mother had grown as thin and dry as the branch of a larch. Antonia and little Sergio had clung to Jole’s legs, on either side of the horse, as if they did not want to let her go.
“Please be careful,” her sister had made sure to say, clasping her tightly.
“Of course I will, don’t worry.”
Sergio had given her a pinch on the thigh and made her jump.
“Ouch! What are you doing, you little devil?”
“Think of me always!”
Jole had smiled, lifted him onto the horse, ruffled his hair and given him a kiss on the brow.
She had promised them that she would make it through and would keep her word.
The wind was driving even harder now, and a gust almost blew away Jole’s hat, so she folded it and put it in one of the dozens of bags Samson was carrying on his flanks together with the tobacco and everything she needed for the journey.
She looked at the sky, trying to work out what was in store for them, then at the surrounding area, her sight as sharp and attentive as that of a golden eagle. She did not see any unusual movements or any indication of the presence of customs men. In her own way, she felt lucky. She got back on Samson and said, “Not long now, my friend. From up there, we’ll be able to see our goal, and if all goes well we’ll be there by tonight.”
They kept advancing, Jole trying to kill time and fatigue by thinking of her objective and of all the sacrifices she had had to make in eighteen years to obtain something good.
She recalled her mother’s sympathetic voice, her sister’s perpetually bright, kindly eyes, her little brother’s daydreaming.
“Think of me always!” he had said a moment before she left.
“Now go, you stubborn De Boer!” her mother had said encouragingly. “Go before I change my mind and make you get off that horse!”
Climbing towards the summit of Mount Pavione, she took from her pocket the little wooden horse she and Sergio had carved for fun and squeezed it in her right hand as if she could get it to enter her flesh, her blood. At this difficult moment, as Samson advanced beneath her step by step, she started crying. She felt more than ever a De Boer, aware that however little she had had in her life, that little had only been thanks to the strength of her nearest and dearest.
At last, after two hours, Jole and Samson reached the crossing. They stopped at the highest point and sheltered behind a rocky spur.
Jole looked out over the north slope and pointed to a spot ahead of her.
“Look down there,” she said to Samson. “The border is just beyond those pines! You can see the Noana and Primiero Valleys and the Val Canali. Mining country. Copper and silver. That’s where we’ll be tonight.”
11
SHE STAYED THERE as little time as possible, just long enough to drink and let Samson get a little of his strength back. A few minutes later she began to descend, walking beside her horse and holding tightly to the reins, given how steep and perilous the descent was. The wind was still blowing, violent and unceasing, and its whistling sounded like premonitory howling, but she continued walking, planting her feet one at a time on the crumbly terrain of the slope. Her boots beat against the white, dusty stones of the scree, causing bruises and blisters on her toes and putting her rudimentary footwear to a hard test.
The descent grew ever steeper and it struck Jole that a journey on which she only had to climb, however hard, would have been preferable.
She cursed these sharp stones that were making her ankles and knees and hips ache. Samson, on the other hand, was proceeding more securely and firmly: it was not as difficult for him as for someone who had thin human legs instead of four powerful animal ones.
Jole stopped and looked up, even though the wind, mixed now with dust, lashed at her eyes. She saw that the patch of Swiss pines was now straight ahead of her and she resumed walking. At that moment the squally wind whispered something that sounded like a harsh, threatening sentence, but when Jole and Samson at last reached the pines, it suddenly abated. The air grew still, as if paralysed beneath the rays of the sun, which now once again peeked out from behind a blanket of high, thin clouds that quickly melted away.
That disturbing voice had vanished. The soul of the border had suddenly stopped its merciless blowing.
Jole looked around. As far as she could tell, she had just crossed the border.
Further down, beyond the canyon of the Noana Valley, some of the villages in the Primiero Valley now looked bigger and more distinct. She looked behind her: the summit of Mount Pavione was high and again remote, since she had already done quite a lot of the descent. She heaved a sigh of relief and felt her hips and knees, rubbing them gently, then sat down on a round rock and took off her torn, dented boots, which were full of white and grey dust finer than cornflour.
She massaged her feet, first one then the other. They hurt a lot and she saw that there were many blisters.
Then she looked up at the surrounding mountains.
To her right, she saw for the first time the stunning beauty of the Pala range.
It held her spellbound.
She closed her eyes and said a prayer to the Madonna, more out of habit, a way of warding off bad luck, than out of genuine devotion. She loosened her hair, then tied it again and put her hat back on her head.
After a while Samson tried to attract her attention, nudging her left shoulder with his muzzle. Alerted, she tried to figure out what it was he was trying to tell her.
Just when it seemed to her that everything was calm, she spotted some men in military uniform over to her right, at the foot of the scree. She crouched and made Samson get down, too. The possibility that the Austrian customs men had seen them, or might see them, was quite remote, but it was best to keep still, not say a word, and try to
work out what they were doing, hoping above all that they would soon go away. Hidden amid the low, aromatic branches of the mountain pines, Jole and Samson watched the movements of the soldiers: they might be Zollwache, the fearsome border guards. They had to remain in that position for nearly an hour, during which Jole took the opportunity to eat a little cheese, have a few sips of water and, above all, air her feet and treat the blisters with pine resin. She noticed that there were dandelion flowers around her, so yellow and beautiful compared with the angularity and greyness of the surrounding stones.
She picked one and looked at it carefully.
How beautiful they are! she thought, losing herself for a moment in the geometry of its petals. This flower grows everywhere and always, on the plains and in the mountains, in every season of the year except winter, when the meadows are covered in snow. It’s the true symbol of nature and freedom.
Then she looked further, below and above her, and saw that yellow dandelion flowers were strewn all over the scree, both before and after the border, a clear sign that, unlike men, they did not recognize any borders.
All at once she saw that handful of men slowly climbing the north side of Mount Pavione.
When she was certain that they were quite high up and so much to the side of her as to make it impossible for them to see her, she put her socks and boots back on, got Samson up and resumed the descent. She had cramps in her buttocks and legs and her feet burnt like two beechwood logs thrown into the mouth of a stove.
They passed close to a group of ibex, placid and impassive, and further down saw some chamois turning frantically, dislodging stones and causing at least one genuine landslide. An hour later, at the base of the enormous scree, they came to a place called Val dei Salti, and immediately after that reached the first larches and the first conifers, widely spaced as if they did not want to make friends with each other. Then the slope became less steep for a while, before once again plunging towards the valley. Jole got back on Samson and rode into a large forest of silver firs, a forest so airy and clean as to seem a labyrinth stretching to infinity.
Soul of the Border Page 6
