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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.
"Come and see, come and see what I’ve found... I went to the field where pumpkins grow, this morning, and I was scared. Come, come and see yourself..." insists Angel, a peasant, in a panting voice.
It’s a sultry afternoon at the end of August. The red sun is setting.
I’m tramping on the muddy ground, unwilling to follow plump Angel who is moving forward with a swing. At the end of the pathway the pumpkin plantation stretches out. There are large pools on the ground and the air is saturated with damp.
We walk amidst the rough pumpkin leaves which bring about a noise like crumpled papers.
"Where are we getting to?" I ask lazily.
"We are nearly there" Angel snorts. "It must be right here, or a little further on... Now, there it is! Look."
Two pumpkins with the colour of fire, huge and deformed are on the ground among the leaves.
"Do you really think these are pumpkins? That’s stuff to take pictures of! That’s stuff to talk of on newspapers..." Angel cries out.
"Well, yes, maybe..."
"This is stuff unbelonging to this world, to be sure!"
"Humph, don’t tell tall stories, now ..."
Then I make for home unmindful of what I’ve just seen and with the promise to come back with a camera.
A couple of evenings later, on my way home from work, I found myself in the vicinity of Angel’s house. He’s in the kitchen-garden again and calls me with a wave of his arm. I dismount my bicycle and reach him near a little aubergine plot.
The drying-houses throw a deep cold shadow. The apple-trees stretches in front of me are shrouded in mist. There are heaps of rotten poles. A straw-stack is wet through.
Angel is beside himself tonight :
"I’ve found another one, and that’s even bigger!"
"Well, I haven’t got any time at all, now..."
"It is a monstrous thing, I’m saying! Follow me!"
We make our way down the pathway towards the pumpkin plantation. The sky is as grey as lead, with the exception of a reddish patch down there westwards. Angel’s boots sink into the mud and my shoes are completely wet as I’m treadding the grass.
When we catch sight of the pumpkin plantation Angel stops for a while. Then he firmly makes his way through the tangle of the foliage going westwards. We draw near the two pumpkins we saw a few evenings ago. Now they seem even redder and bigger. Angel doesn’t mind them, he goes further on, mumbling :
"This morning I pushed on across the field in order to look for the ripe ones and I saw..."
He stops short. There’s a huge pumpkin over there, as red as hell.
We cautiously draw nearer as though it might represent a danger for us. The pumpkin has grown up to our groin. It’s huge and deformed, halfsunken into the ground.
"It must weigh at least ten quintals" Angel states. "Who knows whether it’s fit to eat."
"Humph, I don’t think so, I don’t know..." I don’t know what answer to give either. I never saw the like of it.
"It’s really extraordinary, incredible" Angel whispers, "who knows what the Genes of these vegetables look like..."
Strangely enough, I feel uneasy there in that lonely place, in the middle of that pumpkin field and I must go away.
* * *
What came next was another rainy week, full of gloomy days.
One late afternoon, with a yellow and pale sun, I’m on my way home after a heavy work-day at the editorial office. Old Angel is in his kitchen-garden again, and as soon as he sees me he oddly waves both arms to me as an invitation for me to stop. But I’m too tired and I shout to him that I would come and see him some other day.
The evening after there is Angel calling me again with gestures I am unable to decipher. But I am in a hurry and I shout to him that I can’t stop.
During the first days of October Angel keeps off the kitchen-garden, where everything is rotten and at sixes and sevens.
One evening at about the end of the month, in Autumntime, when the countryside is bespattered with mud under layers of dead leaves, I stop to say hallo to Angel.
In the low kitchen room by the fireside there’s only his ninety years old, plump and leg-palsied mother. In her harsh voice she tells me that Angel left :
"One morning he went to the field to pick up the pumpkins and sell them at the market... He never came back, ever since. Perhaps he has preferred to live in town on his own, thus leaving me completely alone... I beg you, go in search of my son and tell him to come back..."
My breathing is quickening and I’m shivering with cold.
Maybe it’s too late now, to search for Angel.
JULY 1992
“I wanted to go and see my aunt Sofia at Guast, but the road is flooded farther away”, with these words I address the peasant who’s hoeing the ground.
“Yes, the river overflowed two nights ago. You’ll have to go Batorcolo street, then along Arzarin, Cason Street… quit a long detour”.
" “Ah! The Batorcolo area! Can that short cut behind the dove-cot be taken at present?”
The peasant looks askance at me and his face twitches:
“You don’t mean you intend to go that pathway, do you? Woe going the witches’ pathway!”
“That’s nonsense. Witches don’t exist”.
“I’ve lived for sixty years in this native country of mine… and I’ve seen… I’ve seen…”.
The man shows himself thoughtful, undecided about whether he had to say more or not.
Then he lowers his eyes and resumes work as before.
I say good-bye to him and go along the narrow, sloping and dusty road that ends by sinking into the level ground among the dried maize cultivations. The little road gets narrower amid the willow-trees rows. The sun creates orange spots in the ditches.
On the ground is a burnt circle with hen feathers scattered all over the place. Two red paper hearts are hanging and swingling from the branches of a willow-tree. Two names ^Corinne and Paul^ are written on the paper with coal. On the ground are some candle-ends as well as intertwined bark strips.
A little farther away somedy is making strange movements as if he or she were dancing. It’s a girl adorning an unpretentious little altar made of wood.
“Hallo. What are you doing round here?” I ask her.
The girl gives a start of surprise followed immediately afterwards by a sigh of resignation:
“It was a love knot… but it wasn’t intended for you… Well. It doesn’t matter” she adds in the attitude of talking to herself.
The sky is a fete of lights and the clouds look like bride’s veils. The girl has got long, dark-brown hair and she’s wearing a nice, white and pink low-necked dress. As she bends to pick up the flowers, her breasts are shown a little. At that she looks at me and gives a mischievous smile. Round her neck is a little necklace coming down as far as her navel, with an odd engraving at the end of it: a few T-shaped lines intertwined with an 8.
“What is it?” I ask her, as I stretch my hand out to it.
“It’s a Wicca amulet”.
Then, growing frightened, she draws back a little and is about to go away.
“I’ve never met such a girl as you before. Please, stay a little longer”.
“No, must go now… not for this once…, sometime… maybe…” she hardly whispers and then gets away quickly.
As I move along, I turn my eyes to the little, nimble silhouette of hers and see her running away and becoming smaller and smaller over there, at the end of the dusty road. My eyes also follow the girl in the distance when she leaves the main road and disappears in the path behind the dove-cot.
When I arrive at the branching soon afterwards, I have a moment’s hesitation, then abruptly bring myself to follow her and advance along the Witches’ Path.
A grassy, narrow, sloping pathway meanders through the robinia bushes. Some huge, lumpy and worm-eaten stumps crookedly tower on both banks of a ditch full of water. Among the couch-grass and the stramonium bushes a delicate tangle of convolvulus is thriving.
I do feel I oughtn’t to pass by here, but the love inside me is like a disease.
I can’t see the girl any more now. The fog is falling down. A thoroughly unnatural fog is spreading like heavy fumes over the valley. After a few steps, it completely closes in upon me. Fog in August? How come?
I’m moving forward through those damp fumes making my clothes stick to my skin and lessening my sight. Up in the sky, the disk of the sun fades little by little and becomes dark all through its lower half.
Now I’m walking in the darkness falling on the countryside. All of a sudden I sight a light, over there, at the end of the pathway.
Some dry twigs are burning among the stones. Near the fire is an old woman doing something incomprehensible. She’s got a stick in his hand with which she’s drawing strange signs in the air.
I get near her from behind and, albeit it’s next to impossible for her to notice, she abruptly turns to me as if she had perceived my presence.
She’s a slim, bowed with age woman, her hair is untidy, her black clothes are ragged. Her mouth is toothless, her nose is hooked. Through her low-necked clothes I can sight her wrinkly breasts and an amulet shining at the end of a short necklace: a T intertwined with an 8.
I turn my eyes away from her in disgust and then I see something move in the darkness of the open country. There are some other old women bending forward to the ground to pick herbs, roots or to draw signs on the ground.
After a while, I turn on my heel and run back to the path stumbling along in the hollows of the ground.
When I arrive at the main road soon afterwards, the fog is already clearing and the light of the day is back again. As I keep walking, the fog completely rises and everything becomes again as before.
When I get to my aunt’s house, I see the setting sun red and burning behind the maize fields. Only the clouds in the evening sky have profiles of old witches.
OCTOBER 1992
As I am walking along the pavement, one afternoon, I meet with a family friend of mine, the old maid Ms Louyse. She’s minite, meagre and has protruding check-bones. Round her neck she wears big necklaces and keeps her face covered with a layer of powder in order to hide her wrinkles.
Louyse looks a bit fretful this time and gesticulates quite excitedly. After saying hallo to me, she tells me she needs my help and asks me to take her to her house. There’s been something worrying her over the last lapse of time; yet, I can’t at all understand what the matter is with her.
Through a gate we get in a cobbled, back courtyard, where I see a rusty water pump in a corner, over there. The house is sited on the right and its main front faces east. An outer staircase provided with banisters leads to a little terrace, where the entrance is to be found. The whole façade is completely covered with the thick tangle of a centenary ivy cobweb. The ivy has grown up to the eaves gutters and partly covers the upstairs windows, too.
Louyse marshals me into a cold, small room with her rapid step. Inside, the cast iron stove is out and a console-table stands out in the floor of white and black tiles.
In the kitchen we find her sister Lynda, a tall and slim woman wearing spectacles and a wool shawl. She hardly ever goes out and devotes herself entirely to the housework. Lynda isn’t so talkative and seems less interested in this affair.
I follow Louyse along the corridor where she gets a big key out of her pocket and opens a door.
We enter into a bedroom completely furnished with twentieth-century furniture. The room is cold and faintly illuminated by a sconce-lamp. Louyse pushes the shutters and, as I see she’s having difficulty in opening them, I offer to help her. I push, too, but I can’t open any wider. The ivy tangle outside has excessively thriven and prevents the shutters from being opened. Moreover, the other window has completely jammed.
"Right here did my sister use to sleep" Louyse is telling me, "but she thought that the room was quite unfavorable for her health, that’s why she chose to sleep at the back of the house. I myself settled down in here in her place, but I could not stay for so long... Now we keep the room closed as well as the lumber-room near here, equally facing east."
She pauses a while, then resumes talking in a lower voice :
"When it gets dark, noises can be heard in this room; sudden, shrill screechings. At certain nights a hissing sound can be heard, just like a furious wild beast’s. One moonlit night, I came in here and opened the window. There was a snake out there... It was black, dreadful... a horned snake..."
I listen to Louyse’s words without breaking her off. Then I promise to come back that very same evening in order to realize the noises personally and understand what it’s all about.
When I am outdoors, in the courtyard, I stop and have a look at the ivy cobweb. I draw nearer and move the leaves with the hand. There’s a tangle of branches all through it and some of them are as big as poles. Have some beasts been finding shelter in the very middle of it, in here, for all this time, possibly?
That night there I am knocking at the two sisters’ at the appointed time. In the kitchen, Louyse prepares me a cup of tea and tells me of her family’s vicissitudes. Then she takes me to the east-facing room and leaves me alone.
I sink into an armchair and wait. I look at the clock on top of the marble bracket. It’s striking nine and ten. I hope I will have not to wait too long. On my right is the bed and a piano furnished with two branched candlesticks. The armchair I am sitting in has got a border of white lace. There’s dead silence in the room, I close my eyes and little by little fall asleep...
I wake up with an oppressing sensation of cold and malaise. There seems to be lack of air in here. I feel quite weak and hear a faint hissing sound in the distance.
I try to rise a bit, but what I’m seeing just takes my breath away!
The floor is covered with a thick fume spreading up to under the bed on my right.
I suddenly draw back my legs into the armchair and am literally paralyzed at the sight of what is going on.
The fume is moving, creeping along, then becomes less thick. The hissing sounds from without become shriller, while the fog-like thing concentrates near the window first, then flows on to the outer wall again and seems to be sucked in by the wall itself.
I eventually spring out of the armchair, get a candlestick and rush to the window. Outside, by the moonlight, the dark cobweb is vibrating and hissing as though it were a living being. Then, little by little, the swingling of the ivy cobweb calms down and everything is back to normality with the leaves simply being stirred by the night wind.
I wait a few minutes to take breath, then go out of the room, bolt the door and step through the corridor. Once in the kitchen, I see the pendulum-clock strike midnight and thirty. Louyse is still up and knitting. What I’m showing her must be a stricken face, since she’s looking at me visibly worried without asking me anything.
"Perhaps we’d better not go in there for some time. Here is the key... If you agree with me, tomorrow we will be pulling the ivy down to find out what is behind it..."
Without saying a word she nods assent with her head and then I go away.
The next morning, I get to her house accompanied by a couple of peasants, two friends of mine. Louyse and Lynda are very afraid of what we might find under the creepers and shut themselves up into the house before we start work.
We carry a wood ladder and other tools. By using little sickles and pruning-knives fixed to a stick we little by little get the upper hand of the ivy and pull it down. It’s a rather slow work because the creepers are both hard and thick. We pull out entire pieces of the ivy tangle complete with leaves, branches and flakes of dry plaster. We work very scrupulously until lunch-time. We have a break to eat bread and salami being given to us by Louyse, then we go back to work again.
By the afternoon we have accumulated heaps of branches and leaves in the courtyard. Now the ruined plaster and the bricks of the façade are visible again and only some shoots are left here and there. As a precautionary measure, we also cut away those last ones and pull them down.
The dark night is already falling on the courtyard and we have still not found anything. Louyse goes out to look at the bare façade. She really likes the work we’ve done, but she is still dissatisfied. She is afraid that something may still be hiding, nestling into the ivy pile.
Before it gets dark, we take a bottle of petrol, sprinkle all that brushwood with it and set fire. Blue and red flames are now flickering, then the big pile catches fire entirely giving off cracklings and smoke columns.
On the days that follow I go back to pay the two sisters a new visit. I learn with pleasure that the work we have done hasn’t been in vain, as nuisances in the house are once and for all over.
Even after months, when I meet with Louyse along the pavement, she confirms that the house has always been quiet ever since.
Because we have found no animal at all and the mystery is still unsolved, there are three suppositions I can think of : or it’s been just a series of coincidences and suggestions. Or we have destroyed the animal by setting fire to the ivy pile. Or what we had to deal with is a rare case of vegetable vampirism. That’s to say, the creepers absorbed the psychic energy away from those living in the house.
NOVEMBER 1992
In the afternoon of a grey Autumn day I’m cycling in the vicinity of the farm of my friend Ambrose. A low and inclined wall encloses the farm-house all around. A few crescent-shaped bricks are on the ground, fallen from the top. Since I have quite a lot of spare time I decide to pay a short visit to the owner. I get in through the main gate.
The house is a wide, gloomy, old 15th century building. It’s got a stone arch door, bulging railings and a small bell-tower up there on the roof.
As I’m gaining the entrance of the kitchen, I meet with Mr. Ambrose, an old man as solid as an oak, and woody accordingly.
"Hey, Mr. Ambrose! I chanced to have to pass by here, thus I’ve come to pay you a brief visit. How are you?".
"Ah!, my rheumatics!, my friend. I’m afraid my youthdays are over for good. Now I can hardly climb the stairs. By the way, since you’ve just reminded me of my infirmity, I’ve got a favour to ask you. Here, get a candle and fetch me four wine flasks down there in the cellar, if you don’t mind at all".
I need to go beyond some storerooms illuminated by a grey light coming in through high northwardly windows, to get to Mr. Ambrose’s cellar. There are a few broken sulphur bags on the ground and a pair of bellows. And shelves with a good few lines of onions and garlic. And lots of worm-eaten bung-holes and corks. An ice-box, a pasta-press, a coffee-grinder... All the stuff is under layers of dust and cobwebs.
I get to a stone stairway that leads me downstairs to a heavy wooden door with two bolts. I pull the bolts and push the door half-open. Then I light the candle and get into the cellar.
The cellar is dark and gloomy with a mouldy arch ceiling made of bricks. Only few beams of faint light filter through a couple of narrow ground-level windows, darkened by railings, gratings and cobwebs.
On going beyond the last step, I slowly lodge my feet on the floor of beaten earth, holding the lit candle up. Stagnant water is in the middle of the place. There’s a row of huge vats on the low supports all along one of the walls. There are tens of casks heaped on the ground at sixes and sevens, some of them are smashed, and a few demijohns.
I get near a wooden shelf with rows of bottles and flasks. I pull the wanted flasks down, two at a time, put them on the floor. While turning, I see a white motionless shape down there at the bottom of the room. I don’t decide to climb the stairs back all at once, since I’m pushed forward by curiosity. Then I go and have a look at it.
The bottom of the cellar is even darker and I move forward cautiously, holding the candle high ahead of me. When I get there, I finally see what’s happening.
The bricks corroded by dampness are covered with big white nitre spots. The spots have made up some strange patterns and figures. I get nearer to have a better look at them.
What I see is some devillish figures of skeletal, very ugly old men. Naked and swollen bodies with heads of scorpion, of mole, of mule, avidly thrown onto dreadful deeds.
What kind of wonder is this on earth?
Hosts of terribly wicked ferocious beings. Misshapen beings. Monstrous beings that taint everything through their ugliness and evil. That’s a hideous spectacle of evil indeed, that seems to be drawn out of Hell’s paintings by Bosch.
I turn my back to all that and take the flasks away, two at a time. When I reclose the cellar door, I cannot help thinking of the supernatural visions that have shaped down there...
* * *
It’s a clear, windy March afternoon. The sun thaws the land and illuminates the old farmhouse walls, upon which lizards warm themselves. The last snow spots last longer in the ditches and along the walls that look north.
Again, I’m cycling in the vicinity of Mr. Ambrose’s farm and I decide to pay him a visit to inquire after him and to know how he has been getting on all winter long.
He receives me in the kitchen that smells of soot, where the sun graciously enters through the open windows. We talk a little about the weather, the winter, the events that took place through the year . Though, I cannot resist asking him soon afterwards :
"Do you want me to bring you some wine from the cellar, just to spare you going up and down the stairs?"
He looks at me openly surprised but allows me to do so : "It’s very kind of you, thanks. Just a few flasks will be all right".
It was that very moment indeed that I was waiting for and that I was at the same time afraid of. At last the chance to go downstairs, to the cellar, is being given to me once more.
I rise to my feet, get the candle, go across the big rooms that are awfully cold as they look north, and go downstairs. I pull the bolts and while I’m opening the door I feel rather uneasy, though being won by wild curiosity. I step to the bottom of the cellar at once ; as I’m slowly moving forward, the candlelight dispels the shadows.
The nitre spots are still there, but everything is more indistinct now. The figures are no more recognizable. Most probably I’ve seen but illusions last time I got to the spot.
What remains of the previously seen Devils is a mere mess of confused and boiling shapes. A flow of decomposing bodies. A shapeless heap of heads. The Devils have lost their hideous features at last, they have melted down to a chaotic magma...
Yet, the nitre has created other different figures on top of all that. Mighty bearded men and glamorous women like Goddesses. Beings of extraordinary beauty and might who make gestures of divine authority. The lower Devils seem to have been nullified, defeated by these new superior apparitions.
On leaving the cellar with the wine flasks in my hands and arms, strange thoughts are coming across my mind. I won’t be able to tell anybody what I’ve just seen.
Maybe I’m the only one to have borne witness of the many battles between Devils and Gods that are being taken place in many faraway places, here and there, of the universe. Perhaps, this time, the battlefield has just been an old wine-cellar.
DECEMBER 1992
One summer afternoon, as I’m going across the downtown square, I meet with the wonted party of friends at the tavern.
Life isn’t easy for anybody, to be sure, and the four of us seemed to have faced more difficult situations than the ones people have commonly to deal with. But the most misfortune-tossed of us all seemed to be Max. Well-built and face-drawn as he is, he was lying on a chair with a newspaper before his eyes and polemizing, as usual, about life, love, unfairness...
"Lucy went off, like this, and for good. This story is over now."
He gives a long sigh, then resumes to speak :
"Well, there are so many women in the world, I will surely find one comforting me sooner or later.. But it is a matter of starting from the very beginning and I’m getting old... I don’t quite feel like buffooning or running after young girls..."
He abruptly stops speaking. Quite a few wrinkles plough his broad forehead foreshadowing the coming of his baldness. He’s becoming nervous, he’s fidgeting in the chair while ransacking in his pockets. What he gets out is a handful of red amulets fastened together to a string and he handles them to make some signs in the air in the direction of the street.
"That’s a real bird of all omen, a bearer of ill-luck" Max says in a whispering voice.
I turn and see a slim bearded fellow coming wearily forward from the other side of the street. He’s wearing a pair of dark-coloured trousers, a shirt, a tie and a jacket carelessly hanging from his shoulders because of the pretty hot weather.
My friend Petèn turns, too, but has a smile at those words:
"Not at all, that’s absolutely trifles. I know that man and he’s only a poor devil, neither more nor less than we are. He once bulked large. Ah! Very much so! He was a manager I can’t remember now for what Corporation... soon afterwards he lost his job, his health, his house... His wife ran away from home together with somebody else... Now he’s done for. He’s used to walking up and down the village and looking for somebody who treats him to a cigarette or a glass of wine. He goes and stays at a alms-house for the night".
A week later I meet Max again, dark and depressed. It’s a rainy afternoon and he’s standing under shelter of the shed of a coal-store.
"So have I lost my job, into the bargain... " he says disconsolate.
"Oh, I’m so sorry..."
"That was foreseeable! Things were not good any more, there was very little work. Moreover, my partner was dishonest... Our joiner’s work-shop is now closed..."
Once in a while, I hear in the silence the heavy rain beat against the plates. And then there is the thin old fellow again turning up from behind a lane corner, wearing a black mackintosh and walking along the opposite side of the street.
Max becomes dismal at recognizing him and sinks into his obsession again :
"There he is. Whatever the weather may be like... Look at that face of his... Look at that beard of his. He’s something masked. He’s not real, I tell you! He’s not a man in the flesh, that guy. Tell me he is sham. Tell me he is made of screws and wires..."
One late night I am going back home. In front of the Peace Café I meet Max once again, more and more polemizing, more and more nihilist, more and more negative...
"Something fiendish has happened, something vampire-like, something catastrophic..."
Then Max comes out with these words, as a reply to my interrogatory look :
"Today he has said hallo to me! For the first time has that man said hallo to me!!!"
"Well then. I can’t see the strange side of it, if there is any. He has showed himself polite and..."
I stop talking since I realize he’s flying into a fury. Max’s neck is swelling, his face is turning as red as a beetroot :
"... Possible that you can’t understand? But that’s so, you can’t understand a damn thing, goddam!!! I don’t even know him! I don’t even know his name and he has taken the initiative to say hallo to me!..."
One early morning the four of us are gathered together in our friend Petèn’s living room. Max appears darker than usual. His words are grave, broken off by long sighs :
"They’ve driven me out of the house... I hoped I could retrieve those credits, instead..."
"Well, don’t let it get on top of you now. You can stay at my home for the night" Petèn comforts him.
Max winces with pain while adding in a dull voice :
" It’s his fault! I have always known that. Every time I met with that bearded man things got worse and worse. He’s a real Jonah and he wants my ruin. I feel I, too, will come to the same bad end as he has come to, there in the street to beg for a cigarette or for a glass of wine..."
At that very moment the door bursts open. Max jumps off the chair and breaks out with a desperate cry :
“THERE HE IS!!!!”
The threshold door frames the bearded man’s smiling face:
"Hallo everybody. Good day Petèn."
Then the man draws back, closes the door and makes for the street again to take up his daily walks.
Max’s ashen face drops at a blow out of strain and terror. Everybody keeps silent after such an incident.
On getting over the shock Max relaxes a bit, sinks deeply into his armchair but he feels empty as it happens after a big effort. In the silence his words sound low, calm and inexorable :
"That was merely a warning... But one day, I am sure, he will call for me and make me follow him in his ill-luck. He is patient. He does have time. He never gives up. He keeps going round me, every time closer and closer, till he taps on my shoulder one day and asks me to set forth with him..."
JUNE 1993
At about two in the night the party at my friend Rinus’s is going to an end and Barbara asks me to take her home. I put my coat on and take the girl by the hand.
When outdoors, I am thoroughly astonished. It’s a February night. A tiny, very white moon illuminates the frozen, stiff countryside. The warm and noisy merriment we’ve just left behind seems a faraway event by now.
The countryside is still and lifeless under the moon, as if it were vitrified in the vice of winter. We begin to cautiously step forward along the gravelled road.
"Did you enjoy the party? My grandma also makes merry every full moon..." Barbara whispers and her breath condenses to steam before her mouth.
We are slowly walking side by side in the luminous and silent countryside, where even the rolling by of time is slowed down. At this time of night I have got the sensation I am in an unreal world. The puddles are iced mirrors. I realize that Barbara is leaning on me and I seem to be living in a dream. Perhaps it’s the spirits I’ve drunk that do me this.
Beyond a little bridge over the river the narrow road runs along a wide stretch of newly pruned apple-trees.
Under the moon the short trunks of the apple-trees appear dark and twisted. The branches are skeletal, threatening, spiked, elbow-like bent, forked...
I realize that Barbara is holding tight to me now. Her body is soft and warm and she whispers :
"Keep me close to you. I am afraid... At night, my grandma sees people running after one another among the apple-trees..."
We go on walking. In the silence only the rhythmical noise of our steps can be heard.
We sight the first houses of the hamlet at last. Shapes of dark, bent shadows surmounted by the chimney-pots. The chimney-pots are still and seem to be lying in wait. They’ve got bizarre, conical, crooked, spiked shapes...
Again, Barbara’s excited voice whispering by me :
"I feel cold. In the nights like this my grandma sees people coming out of the chimney pots..."
Once in the shade of a house, we stop before a door. Barbara fits the key. The clicks of the lock are like hammer-strokes. When the door is opened, she turns to me :
"Well, bye-bye now" she says. She kisses me gently, then gets in.
I take my way home, but after a few steps I hear the door open again and there is Barbara calling in a low voice:
"Wait a while. I wanted to ask you..."
I turn and wait. She resumes to speak in an even lower and trembling with fear voice:
"... No. Nothing. Next time... possibly..."
Then she shuts the door again.
SEPTEMBER 1993
Seated under the bower of a country tavern I’m eating bread and nuts and looking at the dying summer.
It’s a September evening. The orange sun is setting behind the fields full of stubbles and I feel deeply sad and blue in front of such a sight. It’s every year during the Autumn months that I have this feeling of intense existential suffering.
There are but three or four silent peasants under the wistaria pergola, for it is getting dark and chilly. Somebody, maybe a drunkard, is talking to himself :
"Since I was young I’ve always had a great passion ..., but life, circumstances..."
I get some more beer just to dispel my gloomy thoughts and loneliness. Long after the man resumes to speak in his hoarse and dull voice :
"I woke up one morning with the sensation that something had changed. Time never went by before I was twenty years old. Life was slow, seasons seemed to be eternal and the days endless. After I reached my twentieth year of age, time began to fly faster and faster..."
I raise my head at these words in the direction of my fellows. There are now two or three shadows under the pergola, in the faint light of dusk The man who has just spoken must be the plump one wearing a hat and sitting by fence of the bowling-green. After a while the man recommences to mumble :
"…Scenes of my bygone life cross at times my mind like flashes... My shop work, my engagement, my wedding... I thought that the pressing of events would calm down, that I would hopefully have a little more time... I was wrong. The changing of many a job, the moving to a new house, the first-born child... It’s then that life became a fire, a whirling, a harvester-thresher machine that takes up events, pieces of life..."
The other peasants are all off. Only him and I stay a little longer, under the dim pergola. The night has become humid and sultry. The moon is rising east, red, nebulously outlined, and the voice resumes to recount :
"... I was over forty when family discords, marriage splitting followed closely... Years went by with the speediness of a bird... At the time years did fly five at a time, months were weeks and days hours. Forty-five, fifty, fifty-five years old... At such a pace I was certainly bound to rush and fling my arms round death’s neck and I was frightened at the thought of death..."
I’m turning my head now and looking at the man who’s already become a dark shadow. Through the illuminated windows there come an incessant buzz mingling with a glass jingling and I long for entering the tavern. But I remain seated to listen :
" I was to do something. I realized that time was my true enemy. I had to find out a way to slow down time speed... Then I began to strive for a solution to the problem. I read Dunne, Hinton, Roberts... I found out that time is neither constant nor even. There are places and times either delayed or anticipated. I also found out that time is made of bends, springs, jumps, pauses... At this point I got it : the dancing old woman..."
" What have you found out?" I ask him.
The man rises to his feet and staggering a little, then comes and sits down at my table.
"Oh that’s simply what I call the phenomenon".
In the meanwhile night has fallen and it’s getting cold. The moon rises in the sky and turns little and white. The man is seated beside me now. He goes on talking and I can smell his breath of wine :
"It is necessary to enter into the state of conscience of the fourth dimension to shift about through time. Or to enter into the fifth dimension to get out of time. Or into the sixth one to let the probable variants take place... I did come very close to the solution of these problems..."
He pauses again. I hear the noise of a crumpled sheet of paper in the dark. The man draws a pack of cards out of his jacket and unfolds them in front of me.
"Look at this mandala. It’s the psycogram of temporal perceptions..."
In the yellowish light coming in through the windows I can see so many diagrams like a net or a curved cage. There are so many ellipses placed the one into the other within the prolonged lines in the eight-like figure...
"Try to eye the lines by the help of your finger."
Since I hesitate, the man takes my hand and lays it on a card. His is a big, rough and warm hand.
I move my finger along spirals, arabesques, skeins of ellipses... My eyes stare and sink into elliptic whirls and turn, turn round...
I sometimes seem to perceive that the complex web is formed by different and parallel graphs. Yet, every time I get to the intersections I find out I am always in the same position. The voice of the man in the dark wants to suggest me something :
" I know what’s happening to you. Keep calm, refuse thinking. You must wish for exactly the contrary to what you want to attain if you want to manage to get over it."
I patiently try once more running the diagram but unsuccesfully and I am about to give up.
Something suddenly happens.
The drawing becomes confused. I seem to be rushing backwards along a passage and to be seeing the coming images get smaller before me.
Then it grows dark in front of me. But I see the images of my past days running away sidelong. When I try hard to fix my eyes on them, these images slow down. But at the same time the halo of the dark side before becomes larger, to such a point that my seeing was obscured. I can’t tell how many times this phenomenon repeats itself...
When I raise my head I am semi-lying down on the top of the table. I am stunned and my head aches.
With great difficulty I stand up and have a look around. Nobody is any more there. The tavern is closed, the moon has disappeared . A storm is coming and I go back home.
Days go by and I always think of the words of that man.
Time elapses, death is approaching. I must hurry up if I want to meet the plump, hat-wearing man again.
I suppose he has perhaps by now solved his problem of time entirely. Maybe, I will also be able to take advantage of his finding.
SEPTEMBER 1993
One summer evening, on taking my after-dinner walk, I go along and shave the bank of a drain of the village before advancing into the deep country. From behind the window of a farmhouse old woman endowed with a big nose is knitting. At some distance a hen is wandering around. A little girl wearing a pair of white knickers is playing by herself in the farmyard.
August is sculptured inside the country. Even the houses I have left behind look different, smaller and more colourful. Strong strange scents are conveyed by the wind off and on, which can be smelled solely in the August evenings. The dry aroma of maize and that of sunflowers, which is oily. The moist smell of the river...
It’s a heavenly evening with fairy-tale sunset. The red sun turns huge, immense. A flock of crows is flying over the stubbles.
In a corner of the field, over there, I see a long-haired girl on her own. She’s lighting a few candles inside a circle of flowers. Her grave, precious face looks like that of a Goddess.
Like a disease, I am seized with the love for her all of a sudden. Love is a little death, I’m sure it is. Then I stop and stare at her from a distance, hidden behind a tree.
The flowers and the lit candles are in bright sunshine. The sunset sky is a lake of pink light with isles of azure clouds.
Near there, under a clump of limes, are some droll cardboard shapes. They represent grotesque persons ... The sky is a blood lake growing darker and darker in a clot.
Now the girl is intoning a low, vibrating, resonant, guttural sound... A ^Mmm^ prolonged to infinity, in various tonalities... Dragon-shaped clouds are lengthening in the sky.
The girl keeps on sing-songing and as she’s doing so she doesn’t seem to be any more alone... The timbre of this buzz-like noise lowers, then intensifies, vibrates with more frequency; she seems to be at a point getting close to something, a revelation, a solution, which never turns up, though... Blades of mist are rising from the ditches and creeping along the ground. There’s a damp and warm atmosphere. Westerly, the mist turns red and invades half the sky.
The sing-songing continues, like an invocation, and, to the rhythmical accompaniment of that sound, the mist seems to be boiling, to be taking monstruous, fantastic shapes.
I would like to go away from that place, but I am bewitched and stare at the spectacle. I see a whirl of restless shapes. The shapes rise from the ground, then silhouette themselves in grotesque figures. The figures then blend at a fast pace, change, vanish, repeat themselves into new ones...
I feel quite impotent in front of such a phenomenon I’m looking at for the first time. I strongly wish to run away, but I dread to move, I’m afraid I may be noticed...
But I finally manage with an effort to turn my back and run away as far as I can.
While rushing away, the thought of where to go and take shelter seizes upon me. I remember at that very moment my friend Martin living not far from where I am, so I deviate and go that way.
Martin is a student of folklore and local traditions. When I arrive at his little house I’m still trembling with fear and in a sweat, whereas he is comfortable and quietly seated in his little room crammed with books, and smoking a pipe.
"Hello. Have you come here on foot?" Martin asks me raising his head.
"Yes I have."
"You look upset. Have a seat. What’s the matter with you?"
"It’s an odd evening..." I dare say.
Martin stands up and steps to the window to open it wide. In the summer evening I see the twilight colouring the clouds with magical lights and making the sky westerly turn into a feast of Gods.
"This is the very evening when people celebrate Lammas here..."
"Lammas?" I ask.
"The celebration of light, the feast of harvesting, the great sabba..."
Then Martin goes on talking in a lower voice :
"This is the very evening the Spirits of Nature show up ..."
He pauses a while before going on :
"Of course. But you are skeptical and you don’t believe these things."
SEPTEMBER 1993
My dog Whisky and I keep to ourselves and sleep in the stable during the nights of the ending year. In this period there’s a pregnant cow and the master doesn’t absolutely want to run the risk of suffering last year’s incident, when a calf died for lack of help.
The night of December 30th there I am, as usual, in the stable, lying on a folding bed, and I wake with a start. The cows are fretful and bellowing. The dog is barking. It must be past midnight as temperature always falls at this time. Through the windows the icy wind from the north comes in, so I get some rags and straw and begin to stop up draughts.
As I’m doing so I hear a hard knocking at the door of the stable and I seem to hear someone call out. Who might it be at this time of the night?
The farmhouse is isolated. Outside the country is walled up by darkness and fog. The dog is furiously barking. The cows have become rather fretful now. I hear the knocking over and over again and get close to the door to check.
When I open I see an old man wrapped up in a cloak and wearing a long grey beard. The man holds a bag in one hand and stands leaning on a stick.
"I’m a beggar... I’ve seen the lamp lit... I’m looking for a place where I can stay overnight..."
After a moment of hesitation I let him in. The man plods towards a heap of straw and sits down. He leans his back against a pole, gets some bread out of his bag and starts eating. After he has finished, he remains still, his gaze lost in the void.
I’d like to ask him where he comes from and why he’s on the way just at this time of the night, but I restrain myself. I seem to see that my old guest is asleep and dare not disturb him.
Instead, he himself turns his head to me after a few minutes and tells me in a low voice:
"There are very beautiful worlds... and very colourful... with pleasures a thousand times superior to those of earthly life... In these worlds men make their dreams, their desires, all their unthinkable requests and all their wishes come true..."
The words of the man sound pretty odd in the poor setting of the stable; the walls are dripping dampness, the lamp hooked to the pulley of the central pole is blackened by soot and cobwebs. But the old stranger doesn’t seem to mind these things and resumes to speak :
"They are glowing worlds made of a thin matter vibrating at a faster pace. They are worlds inhabited by beings gifted with a deeper, vaster, more sharing conscience. A conscience very different from ours ; a conscience so different from our poor endowment of perceptions and memories..."
"What nice yarns you are able to spin, grandpa" I smile.
"They are not stories. I have seen these places I’m talking about! Every time I am ^in between the worlds^ I can see them".
Now he rises to his feet in the middle of the straw heaps. He’s tall, bearded and looks like an ancient God :
"... But above these worlds I begin to perceive other, even higher, worlds of unimaginable, astonishing beauty. I’ve only caught a glimpse of these new superior worlds where light is a thousand times brighter and matter is even thinner and vibrating faster. In these new worlds mind creates forms, lights, sounds and communicates directly with the Gods’ minds..."
As the night goes by, I end by being enthralled by the fascination of these strange worlds, too. Little by little I’m plunging into the atmosphere evoked by the words of this singular spirit-traveller.
It’s almost dawning. Just a few moments ago has the old man stopped talking . He moves a little away to look at the faint light coming in through the windows. A few minutes later he steps to the door and goes out.
I rise to my feet, too. I run to the window and see him go away.
The old man walks slowly leaning on his stick; he’s heading for the light of the new day.
DECEMBER 1993
Copyright by Bissoli Sergio