loomed lucid and crisp against the distant glow that opened up behind them. Sometimes a remote stripe of sun would blaze a trail to the southwest and briefly illuminate the hovering Pontine Marshes, which in a different light were hardly perceptible. Smoke rose from the olive groves below Olevano and even farther, toward Palestrina. The farmers tirelessly burned the clipped olive branches and fallen leaves. Occasionally a more slender, more dazzling beam of light burst from one of the yellowish veins in the clouded sky and fell like a finger, pointing diagonally onto a column of smoke, as if it were a sacrifice, chosen by a higher hand.
Heart
ON CLEAR DAYS in the first weeks of January, the village lay as if quarried from red stone in the light of the sun, which rose between the mountains behind the cemetery. From my veranda I watched it awake into a toy world, moved by invisible hands: windows opened, a garbage truck crept backward through the lanes, and small figures in blazing vests carried over the trash cans, emptying them into the barrel. Past the palm tree I looked down directly onto the greengrocer that opened its doors around this time. The Arab men arranged the displays, bright oranges slipping into my view of the gray lane. On a large cart lay a mountain of artichokes. In the courtyard behind the closed gate next to the greengrocer, broken plywood crates towered beside mountains of spoiled oranges, tomatoes, heads of green cabbage or lettuce, visible only from here above, a concealed pendant to the neat arrangements in front of the shop. The men, the stands with fruit and vegetables, the garbage truck—it all seemed to be part of a distant theater. Or an unusual theater, whose performances are viewed only from a distance. There was no audience up close.
Behind the village, hills ascended blue and gray, the highest ridge crowned with a row of parasol pines which from here below looked like an ossified platoon, scattered colossal soldiers of an army, perhaps, a rearguard bereft of all hope and any prospect of returning home, cut off from intelligence and provisions, standing exposed at this height to all harsh and bitter weather, lost in contemplation of the valleys. From up there they would have seen boulders, barren grasslands, Olevano in the distance, maybe the village on the right, the dark cemetery lodge on the left, between them the house on the hill—a different order.
As the sun rose higher, the red wore off and the village turned gray. I set out for the gray village, for the greengrocer where Arab men in black anoraks and gloves made calls over Arabic music playing on the radio, or spoke to one another in quarreling tones. They let the weight of their fingertips rest lightly on the scales when weighing the produce and always added a gift to the purchased goods.
I bought oranges and artichokes. The bag was light, but walking home my heart was always so heavy, I thought I wouldn’t be able to carry it back to the house. Again and again I stood still and stared, abashed by my weakness, up to the sky and the trees. In several conifers I discovered whitish clews in the forks of high-lying branches and twigs: bright gossamer, veiled spools, tapered downward slightly, chrysalides of remnant clouds, inside of which were perhaps rare butterflies maturing; they would hatch in summer and, spreading their wings in who knows what colors, alight, imperceptibly trembling, on the fornetti next to the perpetual lamps, their glow now dissolved by the glaring sun.
The heavy heart became my condition in Olevano. When I climbed up to the house, coming from the village. When I walked uphill, from the house to the cemetery.
I pictured a gray heart, light-gray with a cheap sheen, like lead.
The leaden heart grew entwined with all I had seen that took root in me. With the sight of the olive groves in fog, the sheep on the hillside, the holm oak hill, the horses that from time to time grazed silently behind the cemetery, with the view past the plain and its small, shimmering fields on cold mornings frosted bluish. With the daily smoke columns from burning olive branches, with the shadows of the clouds, with the winter-pallid thickets and violet blackberry vines along the waysides.
Pizzuti
AS DAYS PASSED, the signatures above the shop entrances and display windows began to form an accompanying text to the colors of cliffs and stone, tiles and roofs, to the grain and texture of things, which shifted with the light and weather. They suited the sounds of the words, with their slurred sibilants and broken-off syllables. There were three cobblers in the village. Two often stared idly over the chest-high partition-wall of their window display featuring shoe creams, brushes, shoetrees, and some old cobblers’ tools. The third worked behind a high shop counter, from a barstool. Customers and acquaintances never failed to appear before him. At times it became lively—the sound carried into the lane. High on the rear wall, practically at the ceiling, hung an old poster on which I thought I recognized, in addition to a warplane with the colors of Italy, the outline of Mussolini.
Every day I encountered the same faces, winter coats, and hats. I became acquainted with several rules of etiquette, such as not to touch the goods before purchasing them, how to politely order from the vegetable woman, and to always follow the recommendations of the cheesemonger, whose ever-smiling, chubby daughter sat on a stool at the register, making a great effort to add small sums. Only at the Arab vegetable shop, which had no name, was one allowed to touch the fruits and vegetables, to pick them up and put them back down again. This liberty must have led to the mass of spoilage behind lock and latch, which was visible only from my veranda.
Coming back from the village I passed by a bar, where even on the coldest days people sat out front on a bench. If the winter sun was shining this bench was especially well-placed, lying for several hours in the light, and so it was a popular meeting point. The people on the bench smoked and talked, some with drinks from the bar, the interior of which was barely visible behind fogged windowpanes. Perched between the smoking men was often a nervous girl, who had a baby carriage with her. If the baby cried she would jiggle the carriage forcefully, while passersby stopped and bent over the crying baby, and the smoking men on the bench laid their hands soothingly onto the blanket and mumbled pleasantly, cigarettes fuming between their fingers. If the baby did not settle down, the girl would stand up and rock the carriage back and forth in front of the bench, all the while talking in a hoarse voice and laughing loudly. She had short hair and dressed like a boy, in a beat-up leather jacket and heavy army boots. She begged the men on the bench for cigarettes. They were generous and complied, and she lit them hastily. Her hands were nearly blue from the cold and chapped, with gnawed nails.
Located across from the bench was a butcher. Meat was delivered in the mornings—almost every day I saw a delivery van parked there, with half-carcasses hanging inside. The delivery man shouldered a pig carcass and moved gingerly, stooped as if carrying a delicate, needy creature. The rear pig’s trotter dangled limp, yellow and rindy on the man’s back. After the pig, he carried a bundle of chickens into the shop hanging headfirst, and occasionally additional cuts of meat, as well. Once he was done with the delivery, in his stained smock he joined the smokers on the bench and lit a cigarette, though always at a certain distance. He bantered with the hoarse girl and seemed to be altogether witty—in his presence there was laughter. All the while the rear door of his delivery van remained open, and anyone could peek at the butchered goods inside. Back at the butcher’s, the delivered parts disappeared into the rear of the shop where, through a small window, positioned behind the meat counter, you could watch the sausage maker at work. The sausages from this butcher were famous and highly sought after, and day after day a vast amount of meat was pumped out of the grinder into long skeins of casing, which at fixed intervals an assistant fastened a few times with twine before twisting. Later these fastened bulges would be sealed with metal rings at the base of the sausage. The long sausage chains were then hung and looped several times around rods, just beneath the ceiling.
On the windows positioned barely above ground next to the butcher’s shop was written, in elegant letters: Onoranze funebri Pizzuti. A few steps led down to a door, which I never saw open. Nor did I ever observe light in these windows; it must have been dark down below, even by day. I imagined that these half-subterranean rooms were also damp
