7
Porto Valtravaglia
The school year had only just begun and Mamma had to take us to the head teacher to announce that since Papà had been moved yet again by the State Railway, her children would have to continue their education at Porto Valtravaglia. A week later, they unloaded our baggage, furniture and assorted odds and ends at the new station to which my father had been assigned.
An incredible town, this Porto Valtravaglia: standing on the banks of the lake and flanked by a river on either side. On the one side, a cliff as spiky and majestic as the Great Pyramid of Cheops. A lime kiln at the foot of the cliff. The port with fishermenâs boats, an ancient spinning mill, two engineering workshops and, last but not least, a glassworks with no fewer than five ovens.
The inhabitants of Porto Valtravaglia were nicknamed the mezarat, that is, the semi-mice, in other words âbatsâ, a name given to them because most lived and worked by night. It was a necessity: the ovens in the glassworks had to remain operational twenty-four hours a day because, as is well known, shutting them down and opening them up again meant a break in work patterns of around one week. In addition, to get the best results from the moulding and blowing of the glass amalgam, there is no choice but to work back-to-back shifts. The same was true of the workers at the lime kiln and of the fishermen who, as is known, have to drop their nets before dawn; it was also true of the near-historic community of smugglers who, here as at Pino, operated by preference in the hours of darkness.
So it was that in the town of the mezarat, the hostelries, the trattorias, the bars and hotels never pulled down their shutters. At the Bar Garibaldi on the harbour, they removed the shutters altogether, because what was the point of them? There was a great coming and going in those places at all hours: kiln journeymen waiting for the start of their shift kept company with other night birds, including the indispensable ornament of any such locality â all types of gamblers and idlers. Finally, lined up in an orderly file at various points, there were prostitutes of differing levels, casualness and cost.
But among this host of misbegotten fantasists, the ones who commanded greatest attention and respect were beyond all doubt the story-tellers and spinners of yarns.
There was no independent profession of fabulatore, or storyteller, and in fact these great talkers came from every almost every walk of life in the Valtravaglia, but there was no question, and we shall shortly see why, that the greatest number came from the ranks of the glass-blowers.
These story-tellers were the pride and glory of this new home of mine. You came across them in bars, in the piazzas, on the church steps, on the benches down at the harbour. Often they spoke of events which had occurred centuries and centuries previously ⦠but it was pure chicanery, that is, they borrowed mythical stories to deal with day-to-day life and with events reported in recent newspapers, adding a touch of satire and of the grotesque.
CHAPTER 8
Foreigners and Strangers
It is a curious fact that even today, more than sixty years on, anyone leafing through the pages of the Valtravaglia telephone directory will come across an unusually high number of foreign surnames. Here are some chosen at random: Gutierrez, Vankaus, Schumacher, Batieux, Besinsky. These are the grandchildren of the master glass-blowers who, towards the end of the nineteenth century, arrived at the factories of Porto Valtravaglia from all over Europe, each with his own speciality in casting, moulding and glass-blowing.
These vetradór, to adopt the dialect term, turned up in family groups with clearly differentiated values, trades and skill levels.
Inside each ethnic group, people obviously expressed themselves in their language of origin, but at work, in the factory, in the bars and on the street, communication was not in Italian
Porto Valtravaglia
The school year had only just begun and Mamma had to take us to the head teacher to announce that since Papà had been moved yet again by the State Railway, her children would have to continue their education at Porto Valtravaglia. A week later, they unloaded our baggage, furniture and assorted odds and ends at the new station to which my father had been assigned.
An incredible town, this Porto Valtravaglia: standing on the banks of the lake and flanked by a river on either side. On the one side, a cliff as spiky and majestic as the Great Pyramid of Cheops. A lime kiln at the foot of the cliff. The port with fishermenâs boats, an ancient spinning mill, two engineering workshops and, last but not least, a glassworks with no fewer than five ovens.
The inhabitants of Porto Valtravaglia were nicknamed the mezarat, that is, the semi-mice, in other words âbatsâ, a name given to them because most lived and worked by night. It was a necessity: the ovens in the glassworks had to remain operational twenty-four hours a day because, as is well known, shutting them down and opening them up again meant a break in work patterns of around one week. In addition, to get the best results from the moulding and blowing of the glass amalgam, there is no choice but to work back-to-back shifts. The same was true of the workers at the lime kiln and of the fishermen who, as is known, have to drop their nets before dawn; it was also true of the near-historic community of smugglers who, here as at Pino, operated by preference in the hours of darkness.
So it was that in the town of the mezarat, the hostelries, the trattorias, the bars and hotels never pulled down their shutters. At the Bar Garibaldi on the harbour, they removed the shutters altogether, because what was the point of them? There was a great coming and going in those places at all hours: kiln journeymen waiting for the start of their shift kept company with other night birds, including the indispensable ornament of any such locality â all types of gamblers and idlers. Finally, lined up in an orderly file at various points, there were prostitutes of differing levels, casualness and cost.
But among this host of misbegotten fantasists, the ones who commanded greatest attention and respect were beyond all doubt the story-tellers and spinners of yarns.
There was no independent profession of fabulatore, or storyteller, and in fact these great talkers came from every almost every walk of life in the Valtravaglia, but there was no question, and we shall shortly see why, that the greatest number came from the ranks of the glass-blowers.
These story-tellers were the pride and glory of this new home of mine. You came across them in bars, in the piazzas, on the church steps, on the benches down at the harbour. Often they spoke of events which had occurred centuries and centuries previously ⦠but it was pure chicanery, that is, they borrowed mythical stories to deal with day-to-day life and with events reported in recent newspapers, adding a touch of satire and of the grotesque.
CHAPTER 8
Foreigners and Strangers
It is a curious fact that even today, more than sixty years on, anyone leafing through the pages of the Valtravaglia telephone directory will come across an unusually high number of foreign surnames. Here are some chosen at random: Gutierrez, Vankaus, Schumacher, Batieux, Besinsky. These are the grandchildren of the master glass-blowers who, towards the end of the nineteenth century, arrived at the factories of Porto Valtravaglia from all over Europe, each with his own speciality in casting, moulding and glass-blowing.
These vetradór, to adopt the dialect term, turned up in family groups with clearly differentiated values, trades and skill levels.
Inside each ethnic group, people obviously expressed themselves in their language of origin, but at work, in the factory, in the bars and on the street, communication was not in Italian
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