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( Sergio Bissoli ITA – 63 RACCONTI SUPERNATURALI - tran. by G. M.)
Short stories on spiritism, witchcraft, the occult,
paganism, animism, the unusual and the mistery.
There I am going on a walk together with a childhood friend of mine one day of early April.
The wind is playing with the grass and my hair. The air is mild and is as drinkable as wine.
We are advancing into small wood expanses dispensing their moist and their rustling reception. Along the path we meet with eighty-years old Ector coming forward by bicycle.
"Oh, dear Ector, I am happy to see you again..."
"I’ve got no time, no time at all" carries on saying the old man while gesticulating by the hand. "The vines, I’ve got to finish the pruning..."
The wind excites a nice whispering of trees and brings us cool air and a variety of scents both from new leaves and from ponds the waters of which are ruffling in tiny waves.
On passing by the abandoned kiln we briefly halt to have a look at it. The place is completely neglected : all along the lanes, through the baking galleries and within the kiln stalks the wind rushes and howls in a modulated, unceasing sound raising dark dust.
The little house where wistaria grows is closed. The walls are now dazzling, now dark, owing to the big clouds going past the sun. Lonely huge clouds are running across the sky.
My friend says something on having a look at them, but his words disperse in the wind.
We call at the smith’s house and get in through the main gate after exchanging nodding consent. The court is obstructed with heaps of scrap-iron originating little red rust drainages. Echoing noises in the distance.
"Ehi, Septimus, only a few words and then we’ll be off."
We hear some hammer strokes and shouting voices from the first floor of a dilapidated building. A window bursts open at last and ends by banging against the wall. Some reverberating flashes come out of the house together with the smith’s head standing out over his leather working-apron :
"Not now! No, I’ve got no time right now! Come back one of these days..."
We go on along the pathway of the fields where daises are peeping in their white clothes among the yellow dandelion flowers. Some petals in the near orchard are dancing and falling like snow onto the rippling waters of the river.
The apple-trees are blossoming with white flowers and the whitish wool of dandelions stretches under them. And the white petals : now some are floating upon the waters of the river, now some are rolling on the grass, pushed away by wind gusts.
As we advance into the fields even more inwards, we get to the shepard’s house, where lines of black ants are hurrying along the walls.
The path bends in a view-hiding curve and then the next house appears.
The wind isn’t blowing any more. Now we hear it howling again beyond the shielding house.
It’s probably abandoned, it’s one of the many houses we find in the country-side. Who once lived in it? We have never come here before.
In the sunny court time seems to have stopped. Only the white clouds are wandering across the sky.
We remain in silence to look at the half-shut windows and at the vases of flowers lined up all along the walls.
"Maybe somebody does live in that house".
We are on the brink of going away when an orange-stripy pussy-cat runs up to us. She has sprung from underneath a rotten plank of the main wooden gate and she is following us.
We have a go at catching her, but unsuccessfully. The wind beyond the corner resumes assailing us and its force is such as to even disperse our thoughts.
On taking the next turn, since the puss is still following us, we decide to go back in order that the little creature keeps her place.
In front of the house we are having the same feeling as before, but a stronger one. Something has happened. Time here has stopped.
We draw nearer, but the half-shut windows, the dirty panes don’t allow us to catch sight of anything indoors.
"Perhaps an old woman lives here..." my friend says as he’s looking hard at a small half-illegible name-plate. He tries to slightly push the door under the vine, it’s merely ajar.
"Ehi in the house! Entry allowed?"
Silence. The pussy-cat is rubbing against our legs and purring.
It’s abandoned, I’m thinking, as I go in. And to my unpleasant surprise I find the inside dark and damp.
Then I notice a clothes-tree, a chair. No, maybe someone lives here and I call out again. We wait and listen to the howling of the wind and to its unceasing creakings outdoors.
There’s an uneasy calm in here. There is too much quiet and no signs of living people.
The puss has taken a door and we follow her.
A small kitchen with a marble table in it and two windows through which the outer light comes in.
"They have gone away and have left here everything that they didn’t want to take away with them. Let’s go upstairs".
A very steep staircase and then a scent of once loved things I can’t tell of any better.
"But there is somebody right here!" my friend ups and cries out in front of me and turns to step back, but I, too, will see. He lets me in and stops to end his saying off : "Or at least was there somebody only a moment ago".
A small bedroom. Everything is intimate, sweet-smelling, cosy. Some dresses hanging from a hook, frivolous and colourful dresses.
The scent is intense here, it impregnates the room like a presence. Some fair hair entangled around a long black comb placed on a shelf. An oval mirror, a pin-holder upon a chest of drawers.
And trinkets, little plush or glass dogs, furnishings : all this is attracting our attention in the room, as if they were as many toys. Curtains as soft as veils, a white dress badly disposed on an unmade bed.
"Let’s go away..."
But there is no door other than the one we have just passed through. The remaining floors upstairs are used as hay store.
"Let’s go away, she may come back at any moment."
Who? Yes, we can dodge meeting her if we leave at once.
It’s a day of April and perhaps she’s gone with the wind.
SEPTEMBER 1983
"There you are, you can place yourself down here" says the old man while climbing the steep stairs in front of me.
I get into a spacious, long, windowed room. At six in the evening, because all hotels are chock-full for the yearly village festival, I can well regard myself lucky for finding a place and staying in this farm for the night.
"Who slept here?" I ask.
"Nobody, the room was once used for fruit-drying. Over there in the corner there is a folding-bed with a few blankets."
I thank him and slip a few banknotes into his hand.
I am alone now, I put my head out of a window shielded by an iron-grating. The October sun, as yellow as a quince, is setting, low over there. Clouds of midges are dancing in the heat of the last sunbeams. The fields have an odd light and the bricks of the room are turning red under the golden light. Dust is all over the place. Goodness knows how long hasn’t anybody been in here.
I make the bed for the night, unfold the blankets and finally lay down to try it. And it’s all right. The blankets are dark and rough, the bedstead under the mattress is crooked, but that’s for sure better than nothing.
I’m thinking open-eyed of the tiring journey I’ve just taken, I’m making a programme for tomorrow. Meanwhile, as to how to spend the evening, I just feel like walking downtown and having something to eat, then back to bed and tomorrow, early in the morning...
I am suddenly woken up by a crash on the floor and there I am open-eyed soon afterwards. The large room is whitened by the moonlight coming through the big windows. It’s bitterly cold. Damn! I was so tired that I must have fallen asleep. What is the time now? It’s really too cold to get up, but I just can’t fall asleep again.
I keep lying. The moonlight coming through the big windows makes the spacious room bright, draws the distorted shadows of the iron-gratings, of the broken trellis-works, of the torn, dangling cloth bags. I’m counting the big rafters under the roof to manage to fall asleep. : one, two, three, four, five, six...
A soft scraping, as if somebody were scratching at intervals. Rats. Who knows how many of them there can be up here.
Now I hear a soft whispering. I stay motionless and prick up my ears. Dead silence.
Some more time goes by. I am looking around all over the room. The spacious long room is completely empty. I am looking at the pillars with their rows of bricks that little by little melt into the darkness, at the bent flooring which is also made of bricks, at the trusses formed by big wooden beams...
A low throaty mumbling is coming from the bottom of the room.
I jump and sit in bed. It’s perhaps the owner who has forgotten to tell me something. But how come, at this time of the night!
"Who goes there?" And my voice fades away into that wide room!
I get up and make for the windows. I have a look at the room which appears completely illuminated and empty. Then I go and check up the door made of badly squared wooden boards. I push the latch and look down the stairs. Pitch dark. I reclose the door and fasten the latch with a string hanging from a nail there. It’s too cold to renounce to stay in bed and I do so.
After a while the throaty voice echoes again at the bottom of the room.
I look in that corner open-eyed and hold my breath to listen. It’s a low slow indistinct grumbling. It just comes from that part which is opposite the door, over there, where there’s only a windowless wall. The mumbling grows louder and I distinctly see a tall, dark, male-like shade wearing a short travelling cloak and hat and stepping towards me. I am paralyzed wild with fear. By instinct I hitch up the blankets in order not to be hopefully noticed, not to be perceptible. But I realize I am in this way in a even greater danger and look again.
The shade is still there, a very distinct, dark-faced figure holding a parcel in his hands. On shaving past the window he shapes his own shadow on the floor. He makes for the door grazing right the end of my bed, and when he is very close I cannot help restraining myself from abruptly raising my body trunk. But I suddenly give up.
The shade moves forward and doesn’t seem to have noticed my presence. I take heart at being convinced I haven’t been noticed by the shade.
Another shade is now going towards the first one. Where has he come from? Everything takes place so quickly and in such blank silence. I can’t just perceive their noiseless moving and stepping, yet they behave the same way as true human beings do and they create their own shadows on the floor the same way solid bodies do.
They move together to a certain spot of the room.
I notice that the parcel carried by the first shade is placed in a certain corner, up there, and that it is also covered and hidden with bricks.
They’re working together and I in the meanwhile look up just to find a reference mark. I’m counting the beams... it’s right under the sixteenth one starting from the door.
When I look at the shades again I realize they have already disappeared and I can well think they have never existed.
I feel my heart beat and a cold sweat is dripping down my body. I take a deep breath to calm down. I have a try at closing my eyes some time later.
The grey dawn light comes in through the windows showing all the dreariness of the old barn. I suddenly remember what’s just happened and I rush to the wall to examine the spot under the sixteenth beam. There’s nothing to be seen. Just a wall made of old bricks...
But... the bricks, up there, are inserted in a quite different way from the rest of the wall all around. Every single brick all over the wall is kept together by mortar, but the internal ones are merely put down one by one and not intercaled. And the same applies to about half a square metre of that part of the wall.
When I go downstairs I find the old man feeding the poultry.
"Pretty chilly tonight, wasn’t it?" I say listlessly.
"Enough so".
"But I managed to have a sound sleep all the same. By the way, who lived once in that room?"
"Nobody, I’ve already told you the room was used for fruit-drying only".
"And then, why was there a folding-bed?"
"Ah, that bed, yes, a tramp used to come and sleep now and then..."
"A tramp?" I ask with interest. "Do you remember him well? Could you describe him?"
The old man looks at me with suspicion : "Well, he was a lean guy who loved festivals:"
"And when was he last seen here?" I ask.
"Oh. At least some forty years ago. But why are you interested in these things?"
"Nothing, sir. Simply out of curiosity".
Then I lead the man onto the subject of the festival, of the weather, and at last, after tipping him, I go away.
I’ve got the firm conviction that I shall come back sometime. The lean man was the ghost of the gipsy, and the other one, who could he be? Perhaps an acolyte of his. What did they hide that night in the wall? Gold, documents, or perhaps the exhibit of a crime?
These questions have remained unanswered. I did business at the festival and made acquintance with a girl who later on became my wife. We moved far from that village and business, home, family made years go by, without my realizing it.
I’ve never come back to that farm ever since. I haven’t got the slightest idea of which kind of excuse to think of, provided I can set foot in that barn again , up there.
But I’ve never forgotten that night. I do know that a secret is hidden into the wall of that barn, under the sixteenth beam.
OCTOBER 1988
I’m getting out of the railway station and make up my mind to go to my relatives’ house. A walk will make me forget my boring train trip and it is certain that I will recover my appetite. I haven’t called at these parts for four years and wish to see if these places have kept the charm they had in my youth days.
The road is lined by squat, disproportionate mulberry-trees and by very old willows. In the evening the scent of willow flowers is diffusing in the air. It’s an odd smack that has the power to evoke thoughts and memories of the old days.
The derelict houses of the village I have left behind my back appear dark against the red sky. Before it gets dark, I want to get to the next village, the bell-tower of which I can sight now and then.
The weather is changing for the worst. Dark clouds are rising like vapour at the end of the long road. A flock of rooks are taking off above me singing "rain, rain, rain".
I arrive at a dilapidated house. There’s a cross-roads and I am not certain which way to take. Farther on a bent man wearing boots is putting some snails into a bag.
"They are fit to eat, aren’t they?" I ask him.
The man raises his head : "That’s indigestible food."
"Excuse me, Am I in the right direction to St. Ann?"
"Both ways lead there..."
"Then this must be the shorter one" I deduce moving a few steps, but I stop immediately afterwards to listen to the sequel of his saying : "But if I were you I wouldn’t go that way..."
"But why? If I am to go to St. Ann which is on the east and this road leads to the east I can’t see why I should make a longer detour, considering that it’s going to rain".
"That is because you go straight to the devil’s tree, that way".
"What? Ah... Now I understand".
He’s probably referring to to one of those trees around which people used to celebrate the witches’ Sabbaths. I know that once it was a rather common custom in these parts.
"And what are they waiting for instead of cutting it down then?" I reply in a smile.
"A peasant looking for firewood has attempted to fell it and a paralyzed arm has just been his gain. And some woodsmen have had their four saw-blades overheated without managing to merely scratch it" he goes on in his dull voice.
Another flash in the sky. I haven’t got any more time to remain and to wait for the man to end telling his tales. Thus I say good-bye to the man and make for the shorter way.
Dampness has drenched everything. Crooked, spinning willows and pimply plane-tree stumps are along the flooded ditches. It’s clear that peassants don’t come this way very often ; just now it’s entirely invaded by weed. The narrow little road winds tortuously and disappears into the thick of vegetation. No houses in sight, but stretches of muddy fields only.
The sky is red along the river and silent flashes are visible higher above. An electric light is trembling amidst the swollen clouds. The clouds take odd shapes in this night : now the face of an old man, now two white crouched cats...
Endless, narrow, tortuous way. I continue to walk under the rainy sky, nearly hopeless that I’ll be able to get to my destination.
Another cross-roads, where I am to to find my bearings by sheer intuition. Perhaps, everything considered, it would be better if I had taken the other way, more practicable and safer. I am not afraid of the tree, I’m not here to damage it but only to get home before it starts to rain.
I’m grazing the long wall of a deserted farm-house and I suddenly see the tree. It’s a huge ash-tree, with a pyramid of candles placed at its feet. Some of them are lighted, all the others are not.
I stop in surprise. Then it’s not true that nobody there comes round here any more. Who knows how many people have come here of late. But what for?
The tree grows smack in the middle of a fork of four roads. My way must be the one on the right and I can’t avoid passing by the tree to get in it.
I make for the cross-roads slackening my pace.
It’s a very old, imposing ash-tree. On the trunk are hanging some coloured ribbons, glasses with flowers inside, strings tied in knots, magical symbols. The small flames of the candles are burning silently and emphasize the feeling of worship. Now I see why people shrink from the tree. As a matter of fact the presence of this tree in these desolate parts of the country does evoke suggestions and fears.
I am about to get under its branches when something absurd happens. The tree trembles and becomes phosphorescent at intervals. Its light-green colour stands out against the grey sky bringing about an odd effect of light.
I open and close my eyes many times over to dispel weariness. Now the first raindrops are falling.
Something is unexpectedly coming up the banks of the ditch and I stop almost wild with fear.
It’s a very charming girl. She welcomes me with a wave of her hands and beckons to me to draw nearer. Who’s she? Perhaps she knows me, but how is it possible? I brood over and over it as I resume to move.
She’s completely dressed in black and has got long, black-painted nails as well.
More by instinct than for fear I go across the field diagonally to get to the road and keep off her as much as I can.
Now that I feel safe I turn to have one more look at her, but I can’t see the girl any more because of the rain streaming down my face. Only the wind-shaken tree is towering over the whole scene, whereas a slanting, green and red-coloured rain is pouring down in the background, westwards.
I begin to run without turning, until I see an angel-shaped weathercock on the bell-tower of the village. Soon afterwards there I am entering my uncles’ home.
After dinner I join in all the family beside the fireplace and entertain them with the account of what I’ve just gone through.
Everybody keeps silent at first ; then, on abandoning the initial astonishment, my eldest uncle begins to speak and states that the whole business hinges perhaps on a young demented widow who wanders through the countryside now and then. Or have I really seen God Pan on that very spot where many a peasant say they have met with him?
I don’t really know what to think of that. I’m now inclined to maybe believe the second of the two suppositions.
OCTOBER 1998
I’m walking along the streets of the village, under the august skies scratched by storm scrawls. I meet with an old man and ask him whether he knows a good inn; he recommends me one called ^The inn of the apple-trees^.
"They will treat you very well there, just tell them that I myself have suggested you the place to go to, the inn-keeper is my son."
In this way we make friends and I have a stroll in his company till dinner time comes.
"Everything’s changed here, everything’s changed here" my casual street-companion keeps saying over and over again.
"I’ve been here many a time and I do like this place" I tell him while pointing at the wide street lined by lime-trees we are going along.
"I am a museum of memories. Ah! I remember when they planted these limes twenty years ago, and when the railroad ran through these parts first some sixty years ago."
"Excuse me, how old are you then?"
"Eighty four. Look, the street wasn’t so long as it is now. There was a wall in this very spot. And here there was a carriage gateway and beyond it a river flowed which has been canalized underground some time later. And a little bridge did hogback over the river..."
"And where did it lead to?"
"It led to the fields, of course. These houses hadn’t been built yet at that time and the people who now live in them hadn’t been born as well."
Good heavens, there I am wandering with my mind and sounding myself about the meaning of time. It gives me such an odd sensation to listen to such things, I have the impression I do have been living for a longer time.
He breaks off because of three young women and some children approaching. After the man and the newcomers have exchanged a warm welcoming and hugging, I continue to walk in their company.
The party however, as it grouped together, so it breaks up little by little. Grand-pa and the little boys take a by-way. Two women have in the meanwhile already come home.
I go some more way together with the third girl left behind. Her name is Sheena and she is very beautiful. She has got a moonlight complexion and her long hair is fair, smooth and soft.
By dint of talking about this and that we find out we have a lot in common. Sheena’s voice is very soft. The secrets she’s telling me bring some facts pertaining to her sad fate to my knowledge.
Fragile and insecure as she is, she got married very young to a brutal carter who has been unpardonably neglecting her to take to drink at taverns.
The afternoon spreads fragrances in profusion all around us. The sky is a silvery misted sphere in which shining scissors and locks are trembling.
She confides me the illusions of her youth days, she tells me of when she, as a young lassie, loved having a walk downtown and would dream of a better, different life.
As we met, so we part without saying good-bye to each other and aware we would never meet again.
At the inn I sip a vegetable soup. Although we haven’t fixed a date I feel that she’s waiting for me and that I will hopefully see her again.
I pay the bill and after a few minutes there I am walking down the streets again. I prefer going along a by-way not to be looked at.
Everything seems different. The dreadful evening is falling on the village like a small agony. The little children are playing in the street. In a court-yard a bearded man is playing a sad waltz with his harmonica. A little child is swingling on a swing to the accompaniment of that music. The man keeps playing and doesn’t seem to be willing to break off. Cats rub against walls and hedges.
Some light spots are created by the picturesque double-cupped street-lamps. The dark house and the church are sleeping in the darkness. The bell-tower with its holed weathercock rises dark against the red sky that seems to be hardly keeping a bicorn moon dangling.
A little girl is playing alone. She’s got fair hair and seems to be looking at me inquiringly.
I am wont to get to the square from the main street, whereas the church is on the left when coming from the alley. So, to get to the wide lime street...
I stay there a while to look at the four streets that don’t look the same any more when looked at from just here. Then I go beyond the church and straight on. A street full of bends and dangling lamps and low houses. But this is not the broad lime street. I turn and puzzled I take a few more steps. The little lone girl is looking at me and seems to be waiting for something.
I head for the other street. Well then, on coming from the left the wide street must be... I am surprised at how I am ready to lose my bearings when things I am familiar with are looked at from a different view. But what does it matter? The main point is to manage not to be late on the appointment. But will she really be coming to the date? And will she be coming alone?
A short way, closed at bottom by a grey building with a wistaria plant climbing up the gutter pipe.. This one, too, is not my wide street, the one that remains... that must perforce be the one I’m looking for.
The night has fallen and darkness makes the square huger, while the buildings appear farther off. I’m walking under the light isles of the street-lamps and am making resolutely for the street which is on the right of the church.
The first stretch of the way is illuminated by the light coming from the square, then the street ends up by sinking into darkness. I move forward to just find out where it may lead to, but I’ve got to perforce slow down. The ground becomes soft and grassy, I hear the crickets chirp and I sight the shadow of an obstacle ahead of me.
It’s an ivi-clad wall. I touch it stretching out my arms, then I go along it cautiously. On the right there’s a ramshackle door hindered by the shoots of creepers. The ground becomes hard in that very spot because of a pathway.
Where does it lead to? Where am I going to?
I try to distinguish the chirping of the crickets from other noises and I seem to hear gurgling waters.
The carriage gateway. The river beyond the wall. What kind of witchcraft is it on earth? I’m afraid I won’t be able to get out of the village which is shifting with time!
But what odd brain-wave am I having now? The little girls who played in the court-yard were very much like the women I met this afternoon. And the little girl alone in the square is... must know who she is!
I stumple to run back towards the safe lights of the square. The place is solitary. No one is there out and around now.
A gleam of logic thought suggests me the answer. She will have gone to bed. All the people must be at home at this time. It is enough for me to wait for... for what?
Though frightful and disappointed, I am to make up my mind. I rush to the main street, the one I went along so many times.
I’m running to the utmost. I’m afraid. I am afraid I will never be able to see the places I am familiar with again, the things I know well.
I meet with a man at first along the pavement, then with a woman, but I go past both of them without stopping. Quick, I must be quick, I must know by myself, I must see with my own eyes.
The red lights of the old chemist’s shop. The monotonous noise of fridges in the butcher’s shop, the candies seller’s little shop before the branching. Here I am at last. I feel reassured and let myself be carried by the inertia of my rushing forward. Then I finally stop.
Now I have to go along the same stretch of street again, this time the other way round, and to stop as soon as I notice something unusual.
I’m slowly walking along the pavement with a feeling of suspicion and strain. The old houses, the doors, the signs, the kerbstones : I am well familiar with this all.
I get to the square and try hard not to brood over what has just happened to me. I make for the wide lime street mechanically, without thinking it over, just as I used to so many times before this evening. I go beyond the church and the wide street appears noiseless, desert and badly illuminated, just as I remembered it was.
I walk up and down the street several times. I feel good now, I am calm and relaxed again.
I’m breathing the night scent deeply and am willing to let my mind loose to thinking.
I meet with some young couples. Sheena hasn’t come to this silent appointment. Or perhaps she’s come, but in another time.
NOVEMBER 1988
At the time I worked in a pastry shop. The pastry shop was run by two old spinsters, Alma and Wilma.
The room reserved for the customers was of course on ground-floor whereas upstairs, in the granary, there was the oven with the kneading tables and the big foodstuff boxes. Sacks of flour and sugar, baskets of almonds, milk and marmalade- cans heaping up all over the place and piling up on each other even along the staircase.
The room was spacious, low, dark and caught light through a skylight and through a few little windows on the floor level. My work consisted in doing a little of everything : I helped making the paste into a dough, put the stuff into the oven, handed the ingredients, did the cleaning.
The summer comes, quite hot indeed. In the pastry shop we had started the fans and drawn the curtains because of the flies.
One morning I am downstairs in the selling room, when I hear a scream and then Wilma’s histeric voice calling me.
I rush up the stairs and she’s pointing at some tiny black grains, upon the marble shelf. I touch and examine them. It’s mouse excrement, most probably. Where have they come from? The proprietress seems very anxious about it and wants me to place a few traps.
Two or three days later, the proprietress goes upstairs and finds the wafers we put to leavening last night are teeming with moths. They are long and hairy and seem very voracious, as well.
We spend the whole morning busy over picking up the wafers and throwing them into the garbage bins to avoid that the infestation propagates. It’s a massacring job. The sisters fill the bins up with the tainted wafers, I sweep and do the cleaning all around and kill the moths. We take all the boxes off the shelves to clean up and place them at the other end of the room.
Noon comes and we are still busy at putting all the things in their place. Any way, no more moths are in sight save a few of them we find hidden under the oven or along the stairs.
The next day things get worse. In the funnels, in the tureens and on the ladles a grey light and impalpable powder has appeared. A coating of dust has spreaded on the shelves and on the wooden paddles.
In the afternoon of the same day it’s ants that begin to come out. Wilma realizes it as soon as she gets into the laboratory and then calls me in despair.
Long rows of tiny ants are marching from the sacks of flower into the cracks of the flooring. She sends me for a bottle of alchool. Then she spills some of it onto the flooring made of baked bricks, all along the rows of ants and sets fire on them. An irritating smell propagates from the little, light-blue flames, which convinces her to stop doing it. Moreover, I take a lot of trouble to let her fully realize the danger of a fire breking out. Then she orders me to move the sacks and we accurately wash the floor with soda and water.
The morning afterwards we resume doing the cleaning and troubles did seem to be over at least for a week.
One very hot morning I open the door of the laboratory and an unbearable stink welcomes me. It’s indeed very much like the stench of decomposing flesh. Better tell the proprietresses. In the meanwhile I fling open the windows and bring the fans upstairs to dispel the bad smell.
After a while the old spinsters come upstairs : Alma looks sad, whereas Wilma shows very aggressive.
We move the sacks to find out what’s going on. We pull all the jars of pine-seeds, of vanilla, all the liquor bottles off the shelves, to see what is hidden behind them. But there’s nothing accountable for it. It’s just a few beetles and an old mouse carrion certainly unaccountable for giving all that stink off.
The same evening it’s soon time for me to go home has almost come and I am downstairs with Alma to serve the last client.
I’m wrapping up a parcel of small pastries when a shrill cry comes from the laboratory. We are astonished for quite a few whiles and look at each other. Then I hand Alma the ball of string, so that she can end the wrapping up whereas I rush upstairs.
A series of piercing cries and deadened strokes. My God, what is happening up there!
I fling open the door and I am about to throw myself into the spacious room but remain paralyzed because of a dreadful spectacle. Millions of little, black spiders are coming down the ceiling all over the place. Wilma tries and squashes as many of them as she can with her broom, but it comes out anything but easy! The floor is a black wave of moving spiders. Every object of the room seems to be turning out spiders, so that their sharp contours become completely indistinct. Wilma realizes that what’s happening is quite serious and yells me to go and call the fire brigade.
Everything takes place in a flash. When I’m back accompanied by two men in their service dress a desperate weeping is echoing in the shop.
Alma is pointing at something behind the door. We rush and see : Wilma is there, lying at the bottom of the staircase in a very absurd position. Her eyes are wide- open and she’s struck with terror.
A man rushes and calls a doctor, another one climbs up the stairs with me and we get into the laboratory with a presentiment of something even worse.
I am wonder-struck. Not even the slightest shadow of a spider. The laboratory appears in perfect order, everything is clean and a nice vanilla scent can is diffusing as well. I have a careful look all around to make sure everything’s all right and then we go back to help downstairs.
Meanwhile, the doctor has come and some curious onlookers are peeping in through the door. But it can’t be helped at all; Wilma is dead falling down the stairs.
During the next days I feel very close to Alma and call on her very often, because she’s always been good to me and I feel very sorry for her. The pastry shop is put up for sale and I’m given the charge of taking steps for the selling.
Some weeks later we go upstairs to the laboratory and fearing all the worst but to our great surprise everything is neat as before. Neither insects nor animals of any kind in sight. And even after a certain lapse of time don’t they turn up again. Yet, I’m sure I have seen the spectacle of the spiders haunting the place. Or had it just been a mere hallucination?
One afternoon that I’m talking with Alma, she confides me a secret :
"For over forty years has my sister Wilma been keeping on exterminating insects and other little animals. There were few of them at first. But the insects multiplied with time and the more she killed them, the more they came. Who knows whether or not insects have got a soul, too? Who knows whether or not it’s fair to kill them? What’s your opinion about it, Carl? Couldn’t all those spiders you’ve seen just be the ghosts of those my sister has killed?"
I say nothing. Everything is so strange. I don’t really know what to think of it.
NOVEMBER 1988
One day my friend went fishing and I’m setting out for the country-side hoping to meet him somewhere.
The air is sweet and sad. After the April rains the sky looks like a coating of solver. Spring is an unconscious beauty as well as youth.
Some big carts are slowly marching on and diffuse a scent of hay. I am passing by a yellow house surrounded by huge dark porches. Eight sisters lived here long time ago.
I cross a small bridge over a little stream rippling with tiny waves that look like as many thousands of tiny mirrors. The water resembles melting silver here and there.
Beyond the bridge the orchard is a joyous flowering. As I am little by little stepping forward I seem to be entering a fabulous world where a snow-like coat spreads over the trees covered with pink and white flowers.
A secular beech-tree dominates lonely in a glade. Its bark has been notched with love inscriptions, dates and names. I glance over some of them. There are dreams, anxieties, wishes behind these short words. There are hopes, expectations, illusions...
Two intertwining hearts with the inscription "Paul and Diana 1950 for ever". Will they have kept their love promise? Or will they have not wanted to? Or will they have just not been able to keep it?
Words such as "Corinne I love you" and a date. It’s all remains as a record to wonderful love stories which are over for ever. Who knows whether any of them have been carried out, probably not.
I seem at intervals to perceive a difficult breathing interposed by stifled bursts of laughter. Perhaps it’s only the blowing of the wind through the branches.
Love, in everyone’s youth days, is of unbounded proportions. Then, as time goes by, we get dull-hearted and are unable to retain a clear memory of it, unable to understand it any further.
Flashes of light like blinks through a glass, are visible over there in the middle of the flowers. I penetrate into the orchard to just find out what’s all about, but there’s nothing at all to be seen. The path stretches out as far as the next bend broken off by a foaming of soft whiteness.
The light in the orchard seems to augment its intensity maybe because of the white clouds spreading the sunbeams. One more blink over there, another one fainter and farther away.
A flash of light. I just move and the strange light suddenly disappears. Then I stop and patiently wait for the odd optical phenomenon to turn up again.
It doesn’t take long. There at the bottom, in the middle of the flowers, something semitransparent is waving. Now it looks like a thread of smoke, or a slanting beam, now a fall of tiny silvery dots...
When I just move everything vanishes. So long as I just turn and there is the very same phenomenon happening again, far off behind me and even more accentuated. On my right, too, I seem to sight these mysterious flashes now and then, hovering on the air, always moving. As I feel surrounded, I am frightful and look out.
I recognize very beautiful human features; angel faces are moulded and undone in less than no time, minute sinuous bodies, unorderly movements of their arms, hair, breasts... Very beautiful semitransparent creatures are indeed floating on the air in the orchard.
The finding makes me oddly dither. Fear has vanished all the more so because I notice their inconsistency and am aware that a single sudden movement or a trifle is enough to make them disappear.
Very beautiful, diaphanous creatures are wandering in the depths of the orchard. They look like semitransparent young women and girls who paly, run after each other, disregarding my presence there. When I try to get nearer, they move away and vanish behind the trees.
Then I stop and stare at one of them. The girl is dressed in white with flower wreaths intertwining her long hair. She is playing and dancing together with her companions. I sometimes seem to be looking at a faded photograph, then at some springing water, everything at last disappears and I see her again farther on.
The light in the orchard is fading away. The sun is lowering behind the trees leaving red, pink, yellow, lilac hues in the sky. As a contrast, the flashes become more intense but the features of the human-like creatures are no more recognizable.
At this time of the evening puddles create as many floodlights and I begin to indistinctly see the first illuminated windows of the near village. It doesn’t take long before being doubtful as to what I’ve witnessed in the orchard.
I slowly head for home. Handfuls of diamonds are shining on the waters of the river.
Life is not as we just expect it to be. If nothing remains indeed of human deeds, what can remain of dreams that are nothing but mere illusions?
Or, perhaps, nothing is lost, and life is made of dreams as well as real deeds. Made of brief, fleeting, yet everlasting, dreams.
DECEMBER 1988
A purple curtain full of folds and softly swollen with air here and there is cut through by blades of golden light. The june sunset is turning the sky into a fun-fair of lights and colours.
As a contrast, the small village festival secluded in the flat country looks like a miniature. I just chance to get there and I’m now treadding on the grass of a meadow in the middle of the crowd.
Stars made of sequins and paper strips are hanging in the air. The wooden horses of a carousel are turning round and round under rows of many-coloured lights. The phantasmagoric twilight colours are dissolving into touches of thick violet against yellow backgrounds.
The silence suddenly falls upon the fete and everybody remains motionless, in suspense. A small procession is coming forward further on : a few men carrying a throne of gilded wood.
There’s a little girl seated upon it, covered up with precious fabrics, flowers and jewels; she’s the belle of the feast and represents a heathen Goddess. Men and women are little by little joining in the line and the enlarging procession is now turning round the meadow.
The throne is put down near a pergola of little wild roses and the crowd parades before it. Humble offerings, corn ears, are being laid down at her feet, in exchange for being foretold their future or for being helped to fulfill their wishes.
The little girl symbolizing the Goddess of plenty has sometimes a murky look, sometimes she looks bored. The other little girls are looking at her with wide-open eyes.
The feast goes on noisier than before and all the people are eating, drinking or dancing in her honour. I sit down at table to have a sandwich among moustached peasants tinkling their plates and glasses.
A paralytic old man is drawing complicated signs in the dust by the help of a pointed stick. I look at those signs : they are spirals, concentric circles, ellipses... What on earth might they mean?
I resume treadding on the meadow.
In a corner the fortune’s wheel is turning and the numbered tangs decide at random the prizes to the players. The smiling horse-faced man is calling me :
"Come, this way please, sir, I’m sure you are about to just have your lucky night, sir..." his words get drowned into the din of the crowd.
I’m passing by the counters of the sweets and wine sellers and I’m going to visit a butterfly-show.
Four eccentric musicians have climbed the small slanting stage and are playing an out-of-fashion tune. One of the players, his hair coming out of his strange hat on just only one side of his head, is playing a mandolin. Another one, a very plump guy, with glasses and huge side-whiskers has got a guitar in his hands. The third one is ragingly blowing into his saxophone and shows a face as red as beetroot, and the last one, a meagre and sweaty chap, is banging the bass-drum. Once in a while they stop playing to have a drink from a wine flask.
I chance to meet a girl I like and invite her to dance. Then I dance with another one and with a few more girls...
Tonight Life, like a strong wine, is making my head turn and my mind is nothing but sparkling thoughts.
The lights have become brighter and seem to be acquiring more intensity as though they wanted to dispel the night back. A sudden cry of amazement rises from the crowd and everyone stops to just have a look at the sky. As panting and sweaty as I am, I also give up dancing and look up.
Strips of azure water-colour appear in the sky northward and red-spotted semicircles, like crowns of roses are standing out against a white background! ^Prodigy^ is everybody’s cry and a worshipping transport for the supernatural world is running through us all like a shiver.
The phenomenon in the sky fades away, it becomes so indistinct that the sky little by little grows dark again. The scent of straw is to such a point intense that it makes everybody feel giddy.
The festival goes on coloured and noisy.
The little girl seated upon the throne is smiling an enigmatic smile.
DECEMBER 1989
A blu-veined light is stagnating in the desert alley. The March sun is setting behind the buildings in stripes of yellow light.
The wind keeps blowing and brings puffs of smoke from the chimney-pots. I’m grazing the low grey houses and the cats are climbing up the roofs.
The alley winds sharply half-way and there’s a bent kerbstone. A hanging lamp is swinging and banging against the dried wistaria shoots. There are puddles of dark liquid along the pebbly pavement.
Night is coming. A violet mist comes down the alley leaving only the lurid light of the moon. A grey fog is coming forward hand in hand with the night and is mingling with the smoke creating a magic atmosphere.
A slender girl is leaning against the door of her house. She has got a bright face and long plaits and I feel spellbound and upset by her.
I stop to just get a piece of information and we end up by staying there almost all night together.
Her name is Lavinia and she’s a fabric sewer.
A full moon runs through the chimney-pots, climbs up the nearby church tower and illuminates the iron parts of the clock through its large windows. A white tiny dog is barking. He’s sniffing at the ground while going forward and brushing along the walls as if he were frightened. Then he suddenly rushes back giving painful yelps.
***
Lavinia has already entered into my life. The next nights I call on her quite often.
But one night I arrive late. I missed the train and I have perforce to wait for the very last coach to leave.
I’m terribly late. The clock of the church tower strikes midnight as I’m walking in the alley from the opposite end.
I suddenly see Lavinia from behind as I’ve never seen her before: she’s thin and she’s wearing a dress torn to pieces. She’s making strange gestures and shedding a black liquid from a bottle.
I stop to look at her skipping about and uttering hoarse words.
But the girl, since she notices me, stops doing it immediately afterwards. She pulls a wry, wicked face. She gives some shrill cries and ends up by bursting into tears. Then she rushes home slamming the door.
I slowly go back walking upon the black pebbles. Fog scarves are stagnating in the alley.
A waning, angry, witch-faced moon is peeping through the roofs of the old buildings.
JANUARY 1990
One evening that I can’t get to sleep I go out for a downtown stroll.
Along the streets the mimosa-trees diffuse their scent. As I’m walking I follow my thoughts and feel deeply despleased with my miserable artist’s life.
I chance to pass by a semideserted fun-fair area. It’s nearly time for the booths to close and the merry-go-rounds turn round and round unoccupied.
A sign covered with sequins is swinging in the wind : "The Hall of Mirrors". I buy a ticket with the change left and get in.
There I am soon afterwards looking at myself in possession of a meagre and thread-like body. Then of a fat, stout one and there I am turned into a small dwarf. At the next mirror I appear long-legged and upside down.
I begin to enjoy it. I go past a mirror where the image of my body is replicated three times, with my head upwards and downwards. Different mirrors send back a ridiculous and thinned image of me and force my face to horse-like and bat-like grimaces...
The owner, a bald little man, is nice, half artist and half crazy. He’s standing alone in a corner, then he suddenly draws near me :
"You have enjoyed it, haven’t you? I made those mirrors myself working the plates with the English emery."
I congratulate him as he keeps both talking and gesticulating :
"I’ve made mirrors that make goodlooking and mirrors that make ugly, mirrors that make look older or younger... I could just show you the whole world by means of these mirrors. Do you think you would like to? The world, with its lunacies, is worth seeing through these mirrors, don’t you agree?"
I smile at his proposal and he goes on :
"Come then, come this way. Don’t be afraid. There isn’t any danger".
He takes me to the bottom of a booth, then he bows and lets me in.
Though I haven’t made up my mind yet, I enter into a narrow large vertical case on the flooring of which is a clear surface run through by a slightly moving waterfall, so to speak. I cautiously go forward while keeping my arms stretched out. I go beyond a veil of water which doesn’t wet me, though. There’s bright light, there’s darkness, then light again. Space seems to be unrolling before me.
There I am in the open air. I am seized by a light fit of dizziness which obliges me to stop.
All the alley is shifting, I’m treadding upon something and getting into another dimension. For a few whiles have I been looking at the images of the two worlds placed one upon another, then the alley disintegrates as the other world is gaining consistency.
A ultramundane light illuminates the town. The sky is violet and the mountains appear red in the background.
The town has turned odd and absurd. The high, dilapidated and very ancient houses are all inclined and seem to be falling down.
The perspective has altered, everything is crooked, slanting and lenghthening. Through the sky breaches to the alleys the sunset light comes in. But the beams are conical and spiralized. Long dark shadows cut through the road by serrating it like wide-open abysses.
I’m slowly walking along the streets lined by rubber-like buildings and finally come to a square. Then I see a crowd of people standing still in the spot there and I seem to lose the light of my reason.
Worm-men, joint-men. Very bizarre creatures in the shape of bell-flowers.
My legs are no longer holding me up. Before I fall down I make a desperate effort to turn back and begin to run. I see the pavement sloping down in front of me but, on the contrary, I can step forward only thanks to an indescribable effort as if I were climbing a steep slope. The more the inclination goes down the more I have difficulty in climbing it. As I’m running at the utmost of my forces I hear at a point a voice very close to my ears.
"Pst. Pst."
I turn my head : two very bizarre beings are by my side. A man furnished with a trumpet-like nose and the other one with a prisma-shaped face. I stop running, since I realize my efforts are leading to no results and remain face to face looking at them.
The old man with the trumpet-like nose breaks the silence first. He doesn’t seem to be willing to assail me, on the contrary he looks sad because he feels he can’t help me.
"Are you a magician?" he asks me. His question leaves me astonished.
"No, I’m but a poor and hungry artist".
"Some of the people you call artists come at times up here and they are welcome."
After overcoming my fear I’m inclined to pay more attention to that couple of queer fish. The man with the trumpet-like nose has a friendly look, is dressed like a clown and he wears a funnel overturned on his head with a lit candle on top of it. He speaks my own language pretty well. As for his mate, since he has got the prisma-like face, it’s impossible to understand how he just may look like. They seem harmless, so I dare ask them some questions :
"What place have I come to, to Hell?"
"Not at all, you are in a parallel world. But come on, let’s have a meal together."
I start to walk with them, full of curiosity. I don’t know to what extent I can trust these strange cicerones, but I’d better stay with them. I could just learn some information helping me to get out of here. Moreover, I don’t need to flee while being in their company, so I can recover a little energy.
A high, narrow and yellow house. A slanting building full of protrusions, iron railings, blind windows. We go across a little wooden bridge and over a small stream to get in.
We enter into a spacious, semi-dark room, where other bizarre beings are seated at the tables. I have a look all around. The place is very obscure and the creatures are quite distant. Elbow-shaped ramifications start from the crooked, black-painted walls. A fat, short guy with a proboscis-like nose and a barrel-shaped belly comes over to us after a while.
"A glass of time".
"A dish of roasted elves" are my companions’ orders.
"The same to me, the same to me" I cry out taking care not to look him full in the face.
There I am soon afterwards facing a glass full of dense smoke and a dish of tiny creatures like red little shrimps. I have a taste of the elves that I hold too salty, though; but I am determined not to swallow the drink down.
"Who are those creatures?" I ask while pointing at the patrons seated at the other tables.
"They are creatures coming from a different evolutionary line".
"Are there many creatures from different proveniences?"
"Of course yes. There are many a creation. There are many a God."
" What are Gods?"
"They are beings coming from inferior creatures such as a man, a spider, a tree, a stone".
"How come God has been a stone? (may the Devil masturbate your brain)" I whisper.
His faint smile is very much like wind rustling through the leaves of an alluminium tree.
"Ah. Ah. Ah. Every creature can go up or down the evolutionary scale, properly according to his own maturity and to his own accomplishments. He who goes down may be born again as an animal, a vegetable, a mineral, a devil... He who goes up may be born again as a man, a genius, a saint, a God, as a still more powerful God..."
"What do Gods do?"
"They create universes and inferior beings".
"And God?, what is then God?"
"This is a relative word. God is but the being who is above another being. To an ant God is a dog. To a dog God is a man..."
"Which means do we have to see Gods?"
"Not all the beings of the evolutionary scale are visible. Those who are at a lower stage together with the ones at a higher stage are by no means perceptible".
"And what about artists? How are they to be positioned in the evolutionary scale?"
"Among all human beings they are at the highest level because they have been training to create fictitious universes. They will therefore be endowed with the actual power of creating in the other life and they will just be the Gods of their own works."
My friends, apart from their look, have turned out to be almost likeable. I am about to ask them some more questions when the man with the trumpet-like nose seems to have become impatient :
"Have your drink, otherwise we will go away from you."
I take the glass in hand. It’s thick, full of milky smoke and I dare not drink it.
"Quick, be quick" my fellows are stirring me up.
I haven’t made up my mind yet when the room is little by little getting darker and darker and my fellows smaller and smaller.
All the crowd of the monstrous beings are getting more and more minute, to the point they finally turn into tiny creatures and then into still tinier ones, midges, dust grains...
Dawn has come. The dust is dancing in the sunbeams coming through the broken shutters and I pause a little to look while lying in bed.
The sun is rising and it’s up to it for sure to dispel all nightmares and phantasmagories of the night.
MARCH 1989
Copyright by Bissoli Sergio