This blog has, by now, almost four years, and in four years there were written words. Infinity. There are now things that are literally buried in it, and this evening I'm going to repeat, it belongs to its prehistory. I had originally written for the old blog no longer exists, and then slipped in here May 16, 2007, ie after only two days after opening of the 'Ekbloggethi.
writer, even if a purely amateur like myself, without any aspiration to be a right, but only for the sheer pleasure of it, not in my opinion the right to make aesthetic criteria or the rankings. I do not like at all the "analysis" is that even great authors have their works; typical case, the "Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. I do not like talking to him. The writer could, at best, make the pleasure more or less to have written a thing, and talk of memories that, after some time, this thing can generate. This thing that you will read, or reread, is one of those that I most like to have written. Tonight, just by chance and without any reason, is something I take a little 'homesick.
is a story that comes a bit 'by a song, a little' one mistake and a bit 'from the place where I lived when I wrote it: Switzerland. Strange place, where I was constantly in search of "grains de folie." The song is "Sally" Fabrizio de André, reasonably well-known episode in which De André, during a concert, I made a mistake by putting the text into the forest instead of the Swiss gypsies. I came to build on a short story, its title, the Germanic dialect that is spoken in these parts, means appunto "Gli svizzeri nel bosco". Stando allora lontano dalla Toscana, tendevo a scrivere usando parole e forme dialettali (ad esempio, "doventate" per "diventate"); non era un vezzo, ma una lieve forma di sopravvivenza. Vista l'ambientazione, la cosa può creare un effetto un po' comico, o fors'anche ridicolo; ma mi veniva così, allora.
Il Rheindurchbruch sulla Via Mala.
Kohlrabi, Re dei Topi,
de müüser syn chünig , aveva qualche problema di respirazione. Tutta colpa di quei maledetti copertoni bruciati da non si sa chi; il fumo denso gli provocava the uncontrollable coughing fits that made him spit out the brain and lungs. The fact was that he had to live in those woods, hunted by the police when they came looking for him on the Via Mala, far away from there, around him what little he had left the band, a bunch of aging, wrinkles, antiquated rifles, clothes torn to canvas. He had been the nickname of King, who had won when commanded by the attacks on cars that ventured bad place for those strangely shaped stones, Devil's Bridge, the tunnels dug into the rock, acuminatezze appalling.
He had talked so much, in the postwar years, the band of the Mouse King, when he was still Kohlrabi a tall young man more than six feet and a du 'arms are like oaks, is said to have learned the craft from his father, who had come alone to rob all the passengers of the coach of the St. Gotthard ambush on flicker with a fake gun made of wood, but so good as to seem ready to fire at any moment. Then she had an aggregate bandwidth, which in moments of gold in the mid 50s and early 60s, he could count on almost twenty fellows ready for anything. And there was never to take him to, those bloody, more and more daring, more and more arrogant, more and more in the nightmares of good citizens who wanted law and order. It was the Via Mala returned to live up to its name.
the band was part of Wilhelm Tell, who was not a nickname. His name was really Wilhelm by name, surname and Tell. Then there was Goldfischli Hartmann. Fish and hard man of gold, this volevan say his name and his surname, but for all it was only the Golden Fish,
d goldfischli even as we read about warnings of research in police stations and gendarmerie. The specialty of these two was easy, because there was not much finesse to be expected in these parts, if a passenger was rebelling, or trying to be clever, it stretched to blows. Then he cleaned up. Everything, except the machine or the bike so take half transport them the death penalty, and had never killed anyone. And how did lorsignori anger, that there had never escaped the dead because, as logic dictates, those who were robbed us they had to have something to be rob. Kohlrabi
the band was touched to learn a bit 'of English and French, German and even something normal, because the victims were doventate prefer the rich foreign tourists that climb that road attracted by
brochures agencies extolling "the wild and haunting beauty of the place." There was Pilar, who was not at all, as often happens in these stories, the woman of someone or more than one. It was a band like the others. He carried weapons like the others. Pulling punches like the others. He shared the spoils as the others. Judicial reports to be passed as the Meli
Pilar, because his family grew apples and pears, among other things, producing an excellent "birnel" but his name was Pilar Bergschänzli and that his exotic name to his father, devourer of novels adventures. He had taken over from the "beautiful Pilar" a story by Karl May, who was also, through no fault of his, the writer Adolf Hitler's favorite. Karl May dressed as a Native American chief in a famous image. And these were those who had remained with Kohlrabi in the forest far away, a rare lowland, on the edge of a dirt road by car faster, more powerful, more and more noisy. No one dared stop them, now that the years had passed and it was not nothing left nowhere to hide. Who would have thought that people would go to a mountain refuge in a flat?
It had sprung up in the plain houses, and roads, and electric and telephone lines and industrial buildings, only that piece of wood was left, though he was certain that, sooner or later he would be torn down to do something. There were fleeing arrived when the band in April 1968, was a betrayal by the police for smashes. He was one of the newcomers, an intellectual city of Zurich who, convinced of the revolutionary delle azioni della banda del Re dei Topi, aveva voluto unirsi per condividere quella che vedeva come una lotta contro il sistema borghese. A qualche commentatore non era sfuggito il quasi perfetto parallelismo con Régis Debray, l'intellettuale francese che s'era immischiato nell'avventura boliviana del Che Guevara, e che con le sue stronzate aveva contribuito non poco alla sua cattura, seppure un ben preciso tradimento non sia mai stato appurato. E così l'intellettuale zurighese, Karl Wolfschwanz, s'era accorto che la banda di Kohlrabi non lottava proprio per un bel nulla, ma rapinava. Che la vita era durissima, in clandestinità. Che Pilar non gliel'avrebbe data nemmeno se l'avesse implorata in usbecco. Che di notte faceva un freddo boia anche d'estate, to those shares. That healthy eating mountain had broken my balls after a month. And that in and its Kohlrabi, certain speeches care at the right ovverossia nothing.
There are already those who began to think about how to get rid of Wolfschwanz not hurt him when it hurt them and went to squeal to the police in Chur with the promise of impunity and with the comfort of a cafe and a plate of hot sausage with potatoes. He had noticed how those bastards in the name of the proletariat which is being fought. She had told all he knew, hiding places, habits, description, and the police, even a cold morning, he had closed the first Via Mala from both sides, and then she came in forze. Di ventisette membri della banda, ne erano stati catturati ventitré; tra di loro anche un italiano di Genova, uno di cui si diceva scrivesse canzoni e poesie, ma che era lestissimo di mano e che aveva saputo, pur nato marinaio, adattarsi a quella vita con sorprendente rapidità. Si chiamava Fabrizio; fu condannato a quindici anni di galera, ma evase dopo meno di un anno imbarcandosi poi con falso nome su un cargo inglese, la
London Valour . Di lui si son perse le tracce dopo il famoso naufragio di quella nave, proprio sul porto di Genova, a due passi da casa sua.
Quattro scapparono. Kohlrabi, il Re dei Topi. Pilar dei Meli. Il Pesciolino d'Oro e Gugliemo Tell. Non si sa come, qualche tempo dopo gli operai che, for maintenance, were emptying a pond at the foot of the Bernina, Rotensee (so called because its waters were colored red at times for the action of a bacterium), saw an arm sticking out slime. And then a leg. And then another boom. And a corpse that was identified with that of the fatigue that Karl Wolfschwanz, Zurich, a professional journalist for a newspaper right from which he had taken to railing against the enemies of the bourgeois state of epic writing articles against the French students and to encourage General De Gaulle. Rotensee Since then, the red lake, became the
Totensee , the lake of the dead.
had continued to run for months and months for the whole country, nascondendosi nei posti più impensati. Il Re dei Topi,
de müüser syn chünig , aveva mangiato topi assieme ai suoi; e Pilar scherzava chiamandolo cannibale, e Guglielmo Tell sognava russando, e il Pesciolino d'Oro voleva per la prima volta nella sua vita andare verso il mare, invidiando Fabrizio quando s'era diffusa la notizia della sua evasione dal carcere (al suo posto, in cella, i secondini avevano ritrovato un pupazzo impiccato a un chiodo, fatto con la paglia del materasso e con le lenzuola). Alla fine avevano trovato quel bosco quasi dimenticato. C'erano funghi. A dormire all'addiaccio erano abituati. Un giorno era persino arrivata una capra, perdutasi da qualche ovile o da chissà dove. E le armi si arrugginivano, time and rusted, and they had finally not even the fear of arrugginir'essi themselves, that perhaps they had forgotten them and believed them abroad or dead. One day, said the Mouse King to the other, we will return to the Via Mala. One day we will return there. We never returned.
And perhaps this story should end here, we should leave the Mouse King and his three companions in peace, to finish their lives as trees in the forest. Because the trees they had got talking, and that conversations were, and the trees and listened politely nodded with the foliage in spring and winter with the skeletal branches. Yes, we should end it right here if it were not for that little girl. He lived with his family in a chalet prefabbricata sulla nuova viabilità ad est del bosco. Cittadini incampagnati, i suoi s'eran ritrovati di nuovo quasi in città quando la zona s'era pian piano inurbata. La madre lavorava in un biscottificio della zona, mentre il padre scriveva recensioni televisive per la rivista
Teleschauer . E a forza di sorbirsi ogni sorta di programma, s'era appassionato all'opere del sapone e alle telenovelle americane, argentine, brasilere, messicane; la figlia, una bimbetta biondissima di sette anni, aveva deciso di chiamarla Sally dalla protagonista di
Febbre di passione , una telenovella colombiana che, una volta terminata dopo undici anni, stava proseguendo da altri otto con il titolo di
Vento d'amore .
As the only daughter of the couple, Sally was terribly spoiled, pampered, stuffed, antipaticissima. A real pain in the ass
fair-haired. But he also had the spirit of adventure and conflict of all children and most parents told her not to go play in the woods, the more she went there. In the forest, alternated to warn the father and mother, there were gypsies. And in addition to the gypsies were Islamic terrorists that they would put the burka and then they packed with explosives and blown up at a border crossing in the Gaza Strip. And in addition to Islamic terrorists were thieves, murderers and rapists. The shaven had finally that damned forest; the rest was a matter of little, and Zschokke Batigroup us they had already laid eyes on him for quite a Megacentre business when he felt so much need in that area where there were already other twenty-two. You do not play with the gypsies in the woods, they said, and she was always playing. Even if they were not gypsies, but four strange guys, three men and a woman who told stories even stranger in a dialect that Sally did not always understand.
Once he returned home, and the reproaches of his father, said he had met with William Tell. The father ran to the police to ask about him. And so Sally had fun with those people, who had taken almost to love her and that made her do what wanted, including climbing trees and getting dirty as a pigsty. They had prepared the dish of wood, with side dishes of mushrooms flavored with mushrooms and other fungi. Every now and then Sally, returning from the woods, stopped to greet a middle-aged whore who lived in a trailer with plate 44 of Nantes and who called himself
La Blanche Biche . That then, he told stories of strange, even for once to have been dismembered and eaten by dogs in his brother's dining room from the guests. The parents did not know which way to turn and began to smell something. In this forest there must have been to force someone. Have not been nor gypsies, nor Islamic terrorists, but it thieves or bandits sure, who else can live in a forest?
They got Sally to do the trick question, in which the child will not fall because his friends never taught her what he had to respond and she also strove to add lie to lie in, but with such naturalness that It all seemed very true. In the forest, "said Sally, I'm going to play tambourine with the trees because the ball bounces off a tree trunk to another and pursue it without letting it fall to the ground is a blast. And in the woods, "said Sally again, I go there because I met a golden fish and the Mouse King who tell me their stories, and it was all true, only parents they had not ever heard of. What satisfaction tell lies by telling the truth. There is not better. In the stories
Passaniti the early years, and we do not make any exception. He spent another five or six, maybe ten or twelve. Perhaps the past has passed today and has run pushed into the future. Who knows. And who wants to know. Sally had almost finished high school and had become one of those beautiful girls every day, those who meet in the street in intabarrate shirt or jacket. One of those that make a beautiful world without knowing it. He was always curious. Still unpleasant, but only with those who went though. She had put two or three guys who had discovered a most idiotic of the other. And because the parents had recommended to study for a solid and secure profession, and to enroll in science or economics bank, she had wanted to set a degree in Greek literature and reading in secret Hesiod, Euripides, Sophocles and Lucian, as if they were hazardous authors of banned books . He did not know anyone except his four friends in the woods every so often came with books and began to read, in Pilar particularly liked the
true story of Lucian, because it reminded her of her life and that a bad compagni.Fu prim'ottobre day that Sally, arriving in the woods with books and with the drum and found the Mouse King,
de müüser syn chünig , the Golden Fish and William Tell in tears. Where
Pilar? Asked. They said to her that she was dead. Who had found stabbed near a bridge, and that no one knew who he was. Sally dropped the books and the tambourine in hand. He asked where it was. They told her that police had taken away, perhaps to do an autopsy at the morgue. They told her that crying would never see her again. They told her they would cut to pieces. Sally came home running, his father watched the soap opera professionally
Even pigs like the mother in the corridor, was kissing the Polish plumber who was the lover of six years without his father if he had never noticed the slightest. He went to his room and took a backpack, put in the things he most cherished. Poi se ne andò e non disse neppure a sua madre che non sarebbe tornata. Del resto era già in camera a fare l'amore con l'idraulico. Suo padre era passato all'analisi di costume dell'ultimo reality show,
L'isola dei condannati , basato su un vecchio romanzo di Stig Dagerman, dove dei vip venivano rinchiusi all'Isola del Diavolo e costretti a vivere nelle stesse condizioni di Dreyfus e di Guillaume Seznec. Vinceva chi riusciva a evadere, ma già due calciatori, una top model e un cantante erano stati divorati dagli squali facendo schizzare l'audience a livelli mai visti prima.
Tornò nel bosco. E disse loro che era ora di raccogliere le forze e di riprendere il passo duro, quello di montagna. Lo dovevano a Pilar. Dovevano tornare sulla Via Mala. Dovevano insegnarle come si rapinano le automobili. E comprare delle armi nuove, ché quelle che avevano non servivano ormai più a niente. Si sentirono degli scricchiolii d'ossa e dei mugugni. Si sentirono degli
E se ci riconoscono, e se ci prendono ; ma Sally, nello zaino, aveva infilato pure la Smith & Wesson del padre nascondendola nella custodia delle commedie di Aristofane.
