The Hero's Way

by Tim Parks

  There must have been thirty of them. A little group walking together included three young women. Eleonora felt it was only polite to address them first in Italian, to give them a chance to show off what they knew. But they knew nothing. When we laughed and told them they had hogged all the decent accommodation in the area, they were relieved to hear English but astonished by our accusation. They knew no more of the area they were staying in than of the language they couldn’t speak. In a sense they had no idea where they were. They were specialists, archaeologists, or studying to be so, flown in from 4000 miles away to examine the artefacts of 2000 years ago. Much as Bueno and Anita had travelled 7000 miles to fight for freedom without speaking Italian or knowing anything about Rome, let alone Vacone or Horace. Garibaldi, it has to be said, spoke four languages fluently – Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese – and could get by in English and German. A citizen of the world, he called himself.

  Climbing up to Configni towards eight, an open door in a dilapidated grey facade invited us to poke in our noses and discover a tiny church. You would never have guessed. A fresco over the altar showed Saint Sebastian cheerfully resigned to his arrows. Perhaps, experienced soldier as he was, the saint sensed he would survive to die another day, another way. We will have a similarly astonishing tale of survival to tell towards the end of our adventure, and, for the record, back in South America Garibaldi himself survived a bullet that penetrated behind the left ear, crossed his throat and lodged under the right ear. Perhaps we are all rather hardier than we imagine.

  Configni is still, as Hoffstetter described it, a one-hostel town. The Osteria della Cuccagna has a bead curtain on the door to keep out flies. Inside, a quotation from Julia Child has been painted in sharp black calligraphy on the white wall, in English. PEOPLE WHO LOVE TO EAT ARE ALWAYS THE BEST PEOPLE. Can that be true? Outside, from our table, we can read other announcements, expensively inscribed on freshly stuccoed walls round the piazzetta. L’artista è un uomo. The artist is a man. Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore. I lived on art, I lived on love.

  Eleonora, whatever I sometimes think of her map reading, is enviably erudite and quickly identifies these as lines from operas, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci and Puccini’s Tosca. They have been put up, the café proprietor tells us enthusiastically, as part of the music festival held in Configni every summer, bringing much-needed business. ‘May the Singing of Birds Fuse With the Sweet Sound of the Oboe,’ one event is titled. To be held in the tiny Church of San Sebastiano.

  By now a pattern is becoming clear. To keep these small places alive – only 700 people now live in Configni – they must be transformed into centres of upmarket culture, their centuries-old stone and stucco prettily refurbished, their cracked paving replaced with quaint fans of porphyry. This at great public cost, encouraged by ex-residents now based in some nearby town but eager to preserve their or their parents’ birthplace as some sort of shrine or holiday home.

  Unlike the boldly lettered operatic announcements all around us, the plaque that tells you where Garibaldi stayed the night, on the wall of a house twenty yards from the café, is so faded as to be barely legible. Actually he didn’t stay the night here. He slept under linden trees at the top of the hill, ‘where we were horribly mistreated by the ants’, Hoffstetter tells us.

  Beyond the house is the area with the spring where the men and horses drank so thirstily. There’s a steep slope of palm trees, weeping willows, beech hedges, magnolias. Also an ugly monument to the war dead. From Saint Sebastian to Second World War partisans, there are no end of combatants, no end of monuments. Often you have to get close to see which war is being remembered. Here, in bas-relief, an angel with large round breasts gathers up a dead soldier whose tin hat did not save him.

  In respectful memory, we fill our water bottles from the fountain, standing in a thick patch of dandelions and columbine. Now all we have to do is walk the twelve miles to Terni, and we will at last have caught up with our heroes, sleeping in the same place as they did and on the same day of the journey.

  Stroncone

  ‘A good, wide road,’ Hoffstetter calls it. And it still looks good, though hardly wide by modern standards. The traffic is moving fast. Our app proposes crossing the valley from west to east and climbing to the town of Stroncone. It only adds a mile or so. It’s 9 a.m. We’re up for it.

  This walk is breathtakingly beautiful, back-breakingly arduous. First the downward slope through dusty pasture and thick copse, then a stream to ford, with slimy stones under your toes, then an old mule track to climb. Everywhere the ground is rutted and scored by the rain of two days ago. A hillside of deep dry grass must be crossed, but with areas of swampy mud. Huge puddles must be skirted. It takes time. The sun climbs faster than we can. At burning midday, in a lane sunk between high banks of bush and bramble, we stumble upon the miracle of a lavatoio, a spring channelled into long stone troughs for washing clothes.

  We take off our shoes and socks and sit on the edge with our legs in up to the calves. Again you’re aware how discomfort affords the intense pleasure of its alleviation. A plaque beside tells us that per fatale disgrazia – by fatal misfortune – in the flower of youth, Virgilio Giusti died here in 1948, aged eighteen. Italians love these sad memorials, flowers forever refreshed at the point where a foot slipped or lightning struck. There will be a name, a date, a few words. They spin a sticky web of sentiment across the landscape. For some reason Eleonora is convinced that the expression per fatale disgrazia, nel fiore degli anni hints at suicide.

  Uno dei Borghi più belli d’Italia, a sign boasts as we approach Stroncone. A borgo is a fortified medieval town or village. Vacone is a borgo. And Configni, and Cantalupo. There is now an official certification of i più belli, the most beautiful, which permits the borgo to display this sign. To attract tourism. There is even an official online ‘top-ten’ classification of the most beautiful borghi in each region. A beauty contest. We will be seeing more and more of these signs as we march through Umbria into Tuscany. I always feel sorry for the towns that applied for certification and were rejected. I wonder if the people of Vacone bothered. Or even knew about it.

  Stroncone deserves its award. A fairy-tale skyline of battlement and bell tower. A café – Bar del Castello – spilling onto a terrace with a stunning view back across the valley. Cheap sandwiches, cedrata in abundance. As we drink and eat and congratulate ourselves, blissfully unaware of the trial the afternoon has in store, a young man comes to sit at a table near our own and orders a beer. He is the only other customer. He is not Italian. Romanian perhaps. Or Albanian. Lean, tanned and unshaven, carrying a battered backpack. When the barman returns with a bottle, the stranger explains that he is looking for work. The barman sighs, shakes his head, talks about a restaurant some miles into the hills that just might . . . you never know. It crosses my mind that this young man is a wayfarer. Or a deserter. In the wrong century anyway.

  The afternoon’s difficulties begin when we find we can’t get out of Stroncone. Ten minutes of surreal disorientation . . .

  It should be so simple. The topography is obvious. The village is stretched, ribbon-like, along the side of a steep spur running north–south. What can go wrong if you know you have to head north?

  Your app.

  I suggest we walk down a narrow cobbled passage, parallel to the road and full of fascinating old bric-a-brac, coats of arms, water troughs. No sooner have we gone twenty yards than Eleonora tells me we’re going the wrong way. The app’s red line is striking off in a different direction. We walk back and forth, first to the square, then this way and that, up and down, trying to get blue and red lines to meet, me protesting that it’s obvious where we have to go, Eleonora shaking her head, the app creating fancier and fancier squiggles as we go round in circles. And of course the sun is hot, our packs feel heavy after lunch, and the third time we pass the tables of Bar Castello, arguing excitedly, I see our wayfarer raise an ironic eyebrow.

  ‘It’s gone mad. We’ll have to
follow our noses.’

  And we do. Beyond the maze of the town’s stone walls the red line calms down and starts to behave again. This wonderful piece of software that makes it possible for us to cross the Italian countryside without using busy roads is vulnerable to agglomerations of stone. Never trust blindly.

  Garibaldi of course had no app and didn’t rely on maps. In every place he came to, his first task was to find a guide to get him to the next place. It was hard to find these men, he complained – shepherds, woodsmen, hunters – because the priests warned them it was a sin. And when found it was hard to explain to them his unusual requirements, hidden paths one day, the fastest road the next.

  No sooner had a guide agreed to work for the General than he was placed under armed guard. He mustn’t talk with anyone. If he led the army into a trap he could have no illusions what his fate would be. On the other hand, for the whole length of the march this man would have the honour of Garibaldi’s company. In the 1890s Belluzzi tracked down a number of surviving guides. They had only fond memories of the experience.

  The Austrians and French, on the other hand, used maps. The Austrians in particular were proud of their meticulous military mapping. It was blind faith in their maps that would let them down when the chase was at its most intense.

  Terni

  Beyond Stroncone the road down to Terni turns out to be even more dangerous than the road in the bottom of the valley: narrow and fast, with tight bends and no place to walk. Again we plot a new route that stays in the hills to the east, dropping down into the big town only at the last.

  A steady climb is followed by a sudden plunge. Then the same again. Avalanches of sharp brown stones. Their jagged spikiness felt through our soles. We miss one turn, then another, and another. We backtrack. The sun at its zenith. Hawthorns, furze and gorse. Tiffs, irritations. We’ve arranged to meet the man who’s renting us a flat in Terni at three. We’ll never make it. We phone to tell him four. We phone again to tell him five. The water is running out. The path is still climbing. And plunging. Eleonora slips and goes down. It’s a wake-up call. A twisted ankle and our trip is over. How many of the garibaldini were limping or hobbling? At times, walking downhill, gauging boulders, roots and puddles, through sunglasses trickling with sweat, it seems the mental attention required is even more tiring than the physical effort climbing.

  ‘Long, ruinous marches . . .’ ‘The soldiers’ poor shoes began to break . . .’

  Still, what a pleasure, finally to reach a high ridge and for the first time look down, rather than up, to the place where we are headed, a brown and grey sprawl quivering in the haze where two valleys meet. There are even skyscrapers.

  A band came out to greet the garibaldini as they approached Terni. Crowds waved the tricolour. The men were led to the Carmelite monastery, just short of the centre, where a camping space had been prepared for them in the gardens. After which, on this occasion, they were allowed into town. Here is Hoffstetter.

  Since Tivoli we’d done nothing but wander around side roads and tiny borghi. Now it was a pleasure to stroll about spacious neighbourhoods, with big hotels and cafés, leading to lovely gardens outside the city walls. Terni has ten thousand inhabitants and is one of the Papal States’ prettiest cities. Burghers, peasants and soldiers mingled together and livened up the streets. There was no need to fear trouble at moments like this since intemperance with drink is almost unknown among Italian soldiers. They enjoyed the chance to sip a lemonade, or a coffee, or even a sorbet, to rest in the cool shops and admire the pretty girls. The General had decided on a day of rest here, much needed by both men and beasts.

  And by ourselves. Taking off my filthy socks and counting the new blisters the rough paths have brought, I feel I would have had to take a day off whatever the General decided. Eleonora on the other hand, who always gets the most vicious blisters when she wears smart shoes, has none at all. Only headaches from the sun and stomach cramps. No sooner have we showered than I hurry out to find a pharmacy.

  Pharmacies are places you can rely on in Italy. Rely on to be exactly the same from Turin to Trapani. A triumph of unification. The same bright white spaciously antiseptic atmosphere. The same studiously diligent staff in white coats. A hint of old-fashioned apothecary in the neat stacks of shiny wooden or steel drawers that climb the walls behind the counter. The same invitingly prurient images of flourishing young women rubbing anti-cellulitis creams into voluptuous thighs. Soft greens and blues dominate. There’s not a speck of dust. It’s a safe, expensive place. And there’s always a queue. Because Italian law does not allow you to buy even the simplest medicines – aspirin, Alka-Seltzer – in the supermarket or, God forbid, the tiny grocers of Vacone and Cantalupo. To live in a little borgo, however bello, is to have to travel to town for a pack of paracetamol. Protected and enriched by a thousand restrictive regulations, the good pharmacists can usually be persuaded to break the rules and sell you a prescription-only drug, if you insist. After all, they’re obliged by law to be graduates in pharmacy. People like to ask advice, explain their problems, at length. I arm myself with santa pazienza.

  Never did I imagine I would become a browser in the pedicure section, but here I am examining products for cracked heels, corns and calluses, toe-blister plasters, underfoot-blister plasters, bunions, warts. Feet are suddenly extremely interesting to me. Connoisseur status beckons. In particular I’m looking for tubular toe protectors. In vain. Seeing my perplexity, a young lady pharmacist putting the shelves in order comes to offer advice.

  ‘Of course the best thing is to rest your feet.’

  I explain that we have been walking a week and expect to be walking at least a couple more.

  ‘The Via Francigena?’

  When I tell her about Garibaldi, she is delighted. ‘Did he really stop here? In Terni?’

  It’s interesting how none of the six or seven people marooned in the queue seem upset by this leisurely conversation the pharmacist is enjoying.

  ‘There are two plaques in the main piazza,’ I tell her. ‘He stayed about forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Longer than most tourists!’ she laughs. Now she drops her voice and confides, ‘It’s awful isn’t it? Terni. I mean, for an educated person like yourself. From outside.’

  ‘In the early eighteen hundreds it was thought one of the prettiest towns in the Papal States.’

  She shakes her curls. ‘I really envy you your walk. I’d love to go away.’ And she reaches deep into the display where shiny little boxes dangle by cardboard hooks from chrome rails and pulls out a hidden product, which isn’t quite what I’m after, but almost. A silicon tube you can cut into toe lengths. It will have to do.

  My young pharmacist was right. Terni is no longer the jewel it was a couple of hundred years ago. Exploiting its favourable position, its millwheels and water supply and easy accessibility, the town became a major manufacturing centre after Unification, to the point of being described as the Manchester of Italy. Steelworks, guns, textiles, chemicals. Then in the Second World War it paid the price for that success when the Allies bombed it heavily, destroying much of the ancient centre. But there are still some noble buildings here and there, and spacious squares, and a good atmosphere in the streets.

  Certainly we struck lucky with our accommodation; all the more so since we’re staying two nights. We’re met by a brisk young man in a bright silk shirt who takes us up to the seventh floor of a 1950s building and shows us round a four-bedroom flat with two lounges and a huge terrace that runs the length of the building, complete with tables, garden chairs, loungers and a thousand plants.

  His mother will come and water the plants tomorrow evening, our host says. ‘Not to worry, she’s discreet.’ He speaks ten to the dozen, in a hurry to be away. ‘You’ll find cakes in the fridge for a snack.’ A heavy door with elaborate security locks clunks after him.

  The perfect host. Except, oddly, there’s no soap. Eleonora phones him. She doesn’t say we need something to wash our clothes.
‘We don’t supply soap,’ the young host tells her. As if it were corporate policy. But he will text us, he says, the address of a good restaurant.

  Rooting in our packs, we find some shampoo sachets salvaged from Paradise. Teabags from Villa dei Romani. We make tea – there’s a china teapot – sit out on the terrace, shaded by broad eaves from the blazing sunshine, enjoying a local cake with thick icing on top. Inside the flat, the furniture is upmarket 50s retro. Wall-fitted cupboards with doors designed to look a century old. Polished floors of red and white stone scattered with Persian rugs. It’s another flat left empty by deceased relatives. I imagine a student of mid-twentieth-century decor booking him- or herself into B & Bs all over Italy to produce the definitive report.

  And we go to bed. For two blissful hours. Then hobble to a restaurant. It’s an odd thing about blisters that once you’ve really got going they don’t seem too bad. But take a break and you might as well be walking on hot coals.

  Our host’s choice of restaurant is hidden behind a rundown farmhouse on the outskirts of town. Trattoria da Carlino. But it has a garden, and pink tablecloths. The place is busy, but a young waiter appears immediately and points us to a corner. A table of six is tackling full plates of steaming meat. ‘But there are vegetarian choices, signori.’ Penne con burrata e pomodorini for me. Ciriole alla ternana for Eleonora, which is to say, thick spaghetti made from semolina flour and served in a garlic and tomato sauce. There are mosquitoes too, round my ankles. But I manage to ignore them, discussing Garibaldi’s contempt when, on arriving in Terni, he found that the rich folk who supported the Pope had fled. He ordered that their property be confiscated for the use of the town council.

  Ruggeri provides this info. Perhaps Hoffstetter was too busy exploring the town’s cafés to notice. In the end nothing was confiscated because none of those in power in the town wanted to alienate the rich folk, who would surely be back. No one believed the revolution would last.