Hearing mention of the Gorge, everyone said, What, do we look crazy, in fog like this, how come that Talino fellow can’t do it-things of that kind. But the damn priest, after reminding them that Talino was eighty and could not come down from San Martino even on the sunniest of days, added-and I say it was in revenge for the frights we boys from the Oratorio had given him: “The only people who know how to get through the Gorge, even in fog, are your boys. Seeing as they learned that deviltry for their roguish ends, let them for once use their talents for the good. Bring the Cossacks down with the help of one of your boys.”
“Christ,” Gragnola said, “even if that’s true, what would we do once we got them down, keep them in Solara so that on Monday morning they can be found among us instead of with you, so that then they can burn our town instead?”
Among the group were Stivulu and Gigio, the two men who went with my grandfather to make Merlo take the castor oil, and it was clear that they too had connections to those in the Resistance. “Calm down,” said Stivulu, the sharper of the two, “the Badogliani are as we speak in Orbegno, and neither the SS nor the Black Brigades have ever laid a hand on them there, because they stick to the high ground and control the entire valley with those English machine guns, which are fantastic.
From here to Orbegno, even in this fog, for somebody like Gigio who knows the road, if he could use Bercelli’s truck, which has got headlamps on it made special for fog, that’s a two-hour trip. Let’s go ahead and say three because it’s already getting dark. It’s five now, Gigio gets there by eight, he warns them, they come down a little ways and wait by the Vignoletta crossroad. Then the truck’s back here by ten, let’s go ahead and say eleven, and it hides in that cluster of trees at the foot of the Gorge, near that little chapel of the Madonna. One of us, after eleven, goes up the Gorge, gets the Cossacks in the rectory, brings them down, loads them into the truck, and before morning those fellows are with the Badogliani.”
“And we’re going through all this rigamarole and risking our necks for eight Mamelukes or Kalmyks or Mongols or whatever, who were with the SS up until yesterday?” asked a man with red hair, whose name, I think, was Migliavacca.
“Hey buddy, these guys have changed their minds,” Gragnola said, “and that’s already a fine thing, but they’re also eight strongmen who know how
to shoot, so they’re useful, the rest is horseshit.”
“They’re useful for the Badogliani,” snapped Migliavacca.
“Badogliani or Garibaldini, they’re all fighting for freedom, and as everybody’s always saying, the accounts will be settled later, not sooner. We’ve got to save the Cossacks.”
“You’re right, too. And after all, they’re Soviet citizens and so belong to the great fatherland of socialism,” said a man named Mar-tinengo, who had not quite kept up with all the turning of coats. But these were months when people were doing all sorts of things, like Gino, who had been in the Black Brigades, and one of its more fanatical members, then ran off to join the partisans and returned to Solara wearing a red neckerchief. But he was impulsive, and came back when he should have stayed away, to meet a girl, and the Black Brigades caught him and executed him in Asti one day at dawn.
“In short, it can be done,” Gragnola said.
“There’s just one problem,” said Migliavacca. “Even the priest said that only the kids know how to climb the Gorge, and I wouldn’t involve a kid in such a delicate situation. Questions of judgment aside, they’re likely to go around blabbing about it.”
“No,” said Stivulu. “For example, take Yambo here, none of you even noticed him, but he’s heard everything. If his grandfather heard me saying this he’d kill me, but Yambo knows the Gorge like the back of his hand, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders, and what’s more he’s not the kind to wag his tongue. I’d stake my life on it, and besides everyone in his family is on our side, so we’re not running any risks.”
I broke out into a cold sweat and started to say it was late and I was expected at home.
Gragnola pulled me aside and rattled off a slew of fine words. That it was for freedom, that it was to save eight poor wretches, that even boys my age could be heroes, that after all I’d climbed the Gorge many times and this time wouldn’t be any different from the others, except there would be eight Cossacks coming down behind me and I would have to be careful not to lose them along the way, that in any case the Germans were way over there waiting at the base of the road like dumb-asses with no idea where the Gorge was, that he would come with me even though he was sick, because you cannot turn your back when duty calls, that we would not go at eleven but rather at midnight, when everyone in my house was already asleep and I could slip out unnoticed, and the next day they would see me back in my bed as if nothing had happened. And so on, hypnotizing me.
Finally I said yes. After all, it was an adventure I would later be able to tell stories about, a Partisan thing, a coup unlike any of Flash Gordon’s in the forests of Arboria. Unlike any of Tremal-Naik’s in the Black Jungle. Better than Tom Sawyer in the mysterious cave. The Ivory Patrol had never ventured into such a jungle. In short, it would be my moment of glory, and it was for the Fatherland-the right one, not the wrong one. And no peacocking around with a bandolier and a Sten gun, but unarmed and barehanded like Dick Fulmine. In short, all my reading was coming in handy. And it I did have to die, I would finally see the blades of grass as stakes.
But since I had a good head on my shoulders, I immediately set a few things straight with Gragnola. He was saying that with eight Cossacks in tow, we risked losing them along the way, and so we should get a nice long rope to tie everyone together, as mountain climbers do, and that way each could follow the next even without seeing where he was going. I said no, if we were roped together like that and the first one fell, he would pull everyone else down with him. What we needed were ten pieces of rope: each of us would hold right to the end of the rope of the person in front of us as well as the end of the rope of the person behind us, and if we felt one of them falling, we would immediately let go of our end, because it was better one should fall than all of us. You’re sharp, Gragnola said.
I asked him excitedly if he was going to come armed, and he said no, in the first place because he would never hurt a fly, but also because if there were, God forbid, an engagement, the Cossacks were armed, and finally, in the event that he was unlucky enough to get caught, they might not put him up against the wall right away if he were unarmed.
We went and told the priest we were in agreement, and to have the Cossacks ready by one in the morning.
I went home for dinner around seven. The rendezvous was for midnight by the little chapel of the Madonna, and it took forty-five minutes of brisk walking to get there. “Do you have a watch?” Gragnola asked. “No, but at eleven, when everyone goes to bed, I’ll wait in the dining room where there’s a clock.”
Dinner at home with my mind aflame, after dinner a show of listening to the radio and looking at my stamps. The trouble was that Papà was there too, because with the fog he had not dared drive back to the city, and was hoping he would be able to leave in the morning. But he went to bed quite early, and Mamma with him. Did my parents still make love in those years, when they were in their forties? I wonder now. I think that the sexuality of our parents remains a mystery for all of us, and that Freud invented the primal scene. I cannot imagine them letting us see them. Though I do recall a conversation my mother had with some of her friends, near the beginning of the war, when she was not much past forty (I once
heard her say with forced optimism: “Besides, life begins at forty”): “Oh, in his day my Duilio did his part…” When? Until Ada was born? And then they stopped having sex? “Who knows what Duilio’s doing behind my back, alone in the city, with the company secretary,” my mother sometimes joked with my grandfather. She was kidding. But might my poor Papà have held someone’s hand during the bombardments, to lift his spirits?
At eleven, the house was immersed in silence, and I was in the dining room, in the dark. Every now and then I would light a match to check the clock. At 11:15 I slipped out, heading through the fog toward the little
