floor, the splintered table, seemed tohave grown strangely distant and mute, as if guarding some secret about themselves. Over my grandfather’s face a film had formed, tangible as stone, which he retreated behind like a snail into its shell, staring into space as if my mother and I were not there. My mother reached out suddenly once to fill his glass while we ate; in her movement there seemed some ghost of a hidden message, struggling at once to reveal and conceal itself, and I thought for a moment she was about to speak. But she turned quickly back to her plate and we ate on in silence. Later I lay awake in bed waiting for her footsteps on the stairs, wanting to go in to her in her room; but a long time passed and she did not come, and I drifted finally into sleep.
VII
On my seventh birthday my mother and I walked hand in hand up to the high road, in the cool damp of early morning, to catch the bus into Rocca Secca. The sun was just rising over Colle di Papa, round and scarlet, sucking in dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. The wheat in our region ripened in a slow wave which started in the valleys and gradually worked its way up the slopes through the summer, like sunlight emerging from behind a cloud, and of the highest villages it was sometimes said that they harvested in September and planted in August, sowing their new crop between the still uncut stocks of the old; and though down close to the river the fields had already been ploughed brown, around Valle del Sole the harvest was only just beginning, small bent figures dottingthe countryside now, felling their wheat with short quick pulls of their scythes.
The bus into Rocca Secca was actually a small battered truck, the back fixed up on three sides with splintered planks for seats and covered with a dusty canvas. The truck, owned and operated by a small, swarthy entrepreneur called Cazzingulo (a nickname meaning ‘balls in your ass’—what usually happened when you rode in his truck), plied the road between Capracotta and Rocca Secca, collecting and discharging passengers en route, rolling to the rhythm of the road. Cazzingulo didn’t follow a schedule you could measure on a watch—he never left his point of departure until he had a full load, full by official standards, which didn’t mean he couldn’t fit in another eight or nine passengers after he’d passed the police checkpoint on the edge of town—but somehow the peasants always sensed when he would be passing, as if they could feel premonitory tremors in the earth. It was only a few minutes after my mother and I reached the main road that a cloud of dust rounded the curve of a slope, and Cazzingulo’s truck appeared in the middle of it.
‘Oh, Cristí!’ Cazzingulo knew everyone in the region by name. ‘Rocca Secca! Special today, the little boy rides for half price if he sits on your lap. And you ride for free if you sit on mine.’
About a dozen passengers had already been crammed into the back, their feet resting on the handbags and produce hampers and grain sacks that filled the small corridor between the seats, their knees jammed up against their faces. But after some jostling and muttered curses and a shout up to Cazzingulo about his greed and the suffering of peasants, a patch of bare wood appeared finally on one of the benches, and my mother eased herself onto it. I wedged myself between her legs,clutching her knees and crouching unsteadily on a sack of onions; then the all clear was sounded and the truck took off with a lurch, leaving a swirl of dust in its wake.
Rocca Secca claimed to be the site of ancient Aquilonia, a Samnitic fortress town from before the time of Christ. The Samnites, a fierce mountain people, had been the first to settle our region, riding down from the north along the ridge-line of the Apennines on the great ox the gods had given them. Their imposing cities, Aquilonia,
VII
On my seventh birthday my mother and I walked hand in hand up to the high road, in the cool damp of early morning, to catch the bus into Rocca Secca. The sun was just rising over Colle di Papa, round and scarlet, sucking in dawn’s darkness like God’s forgiveness, the mountain slopes slowly changing from a colourless grey to rich green and gold. The wheat in our region ripened in a slow wave which started in the valleys and gradually worked its way up the slopes through the summer, like sunlight emerging from behind a cloud, and of the highest villages it was sometimes said that they harvested in September and planted in August, sowing their new crop between the still uncut stocks of the old; and though down close to the river the fields had already been ploughed brown, around Valle del Sole the harvest was only just beginning, small bent figures dottingthe countryside now, felling their wheat with short quick pulls of their scythes.
The bus into Rocca Secca was actually a small battered truck, the back fixed up on three sides with splintered planks for seats and covered with a dusty canvas. The truck, owned and operated by a small, swarthy entrepreneur called Cazzingulo (a nickname meaning ‘balls in your ass’—what usually happened when you rode in his truck), plied the road between Capracotta and Rocca Secca, collecting and discharging passengers en route, rolling to the rhythm of the road. Cazzingulo didn’t follow a schedule you could measure on a watch—he never left his point of departure until he had a full load, full by official standards, which didn’t mean he couldn’t fit in another eight or nine passengers after he’d passed the police checkpoint on the edge of town—but somehow the peasants always sensed when he would be passing, as if they could feel premonitory tremors in the earth. It was only a few minutes after my mother and I reached the main road that a cloud of dust rounded the curve of a slope, and Cazzingulo’s truck appeared in the middle of it.
‘Oh, Cristí!’ Cazzingulo knew everyone in the region by name. ‘Rocca Secca! Special today, the little boy rides for half price if he sits on your lap. And you ride for free if you sit on mine.’
About a dozen passengers had already been crammed into the back, their feet resting on the handbags and produce hampers and grain sacks that filled the small corridor between the seats, their knees jammed up against their faces. But after some jostling and muttered curses and a shout up to Cazzingulo about his greed and the suffering of peasants, a patch of bare wood appeared finally on one of the benches, and my mother eased herself onto it. I wedged myself between her legs,clutching her knees and crouching unsteadily on a sack of onions; then the all clear was sounded and the truck took off with a lurch, leaving a swirl of dust in its wake.
Rocca Secca claimed to be the site of ancient Aquilonia, a Samnitic fortress town from before the time of Christ. The Samnites, a fierce mountain people, had been the first to settle our region, riding down from the north along the ridge-line of the Apennines on the great ox the gods had given them. Their imposing cities, Aquilonia,
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