I need hardly say the women laughed long and hard. They joined in the fun, and went off with the mushroom, pretending to fight over it.
Lucian of Samosata said: ‘Everything depends on the masters you have had. But watch out. Often you do not choose your masters, they choose you.’ My grandfather Bristìn had chosen me as his pupil in clowning when he put me on the back of that gigantic nag as though I were one of the seven dwarves.
* * *
But Bristìn was no mere buffoon. One day I discovered that his orchard was an academy of agrarian science. In addition to the transplants, he had accomplished incredible marriages between different species of tomato, peperone and cucumber.
‘You see,’ he explained to me, while taking a sharp knife to those vegetables as though they were the bodies of animals he wanted to cut open to show me their structure, ‘we’ve got male and female here, too, not to mention various hybrids. All of them, fruit and vegetable alike, are creatures like us. They are sensitive to fear and perhaps even pain, they feel attraction and repulsion among themselves just as men and women do. There are fruits which fall in love normally, and others which lose their head for creatures of another species. Even though I’ve tried my level best, I’ve never managed to get a persimmon and a papaya to join together in loving union!’
Professor Trangipane, who taught in the Faculty of Agrarian Science at Alessandria, was a frequent visitor, always accompanied by students who were spellbound by the practical lessons, spiced with comic turns, my grandfather imparted to them.
One day, while he was giving a lecture in the greenhouse, the sky all of a sudden turned black. Bristìn put two fingers in the corners of his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. His sons, fully aware of what was required of them, came running out of the carriage sheds. They stretched a covering, a gigantic fine-meshed net, out in a circle. Bristìn made sure everyone was involved in the operation, students and farm workers alike. Guy-ropes with pegs at the end hung down from high poles surrounding the greenhouse, and the net was laid along that line of poles. Following my grandfather’s orders, the men started to tug at the guy-ropes in twos or threes. The net was swiftly hauled up and pulled out like a circus big-top to cover the glass of the greenhouse and give it full protection. Bristìn and his sons hammered in the stakes at top speed and secured the bottom end of the cover to the ground. The whole set-up was hardly in place when a terrible wind, whistling through the mesh of the net, got up, followed by thunder and lightning and a hail storm which sent chunks of ice as big as eggs bouncing off the net as though they were tennis balls. Everyone else rushed for shelter under the portico, but Bristìn took me by the hand and dragged me inside the greenhouse: ‘Come and I’ll show you a sight you won’t forget even if you live to be a hundred.’
Under the glass, it seemed as though the world were coming to an end. As they struck against the net and bounced off it, the hailstones generated indescribable sounds, while the vibrating panes of glass produced howls which were in turns terrifying and entrancing. The flashes of lightning, reflected on the greenhouse glass, had their brightness multiplied as in a distorting mirror at a fairground.
When later at school I encountered for the first time the adventure of Dante’s Ulysses, strapped to the mast of his ship, awestruck and bewitched by the special effects of sound and light organised by the Sirens, I could not help connecting that magical situation with the spectacle I had witnessed as a boy inside that crystal nursery, where the storm performed for us a concert that presaged the end of the world.
‘You’re a madman, fit to be tied,’ screamed my grandmother with that thin voice of hers. ‘Don’t you realise what would have happened to you and that poor boy if the wind had blown the net away? The whole glass structure would have shattered to pieces and fallen on top of you.’
Bristìn, normally so strong and sure of himself, bowed his head before that fragile, delicate little woman. ‘Yes, you’re right, Maria. I was a bit thoughtless … in fact completely thoughtless. But to experience certain moments, you’ve got to take risks.’
CHAPTER 6. Back in Oleggio
After several months, Uncle Beniamino, the youngest of my mother’s brothers, was given the job of taking me home. As I was leaving, Granddad lifted me onto the back of that great horse, Gargantua’s stallion. ‘We’ll let him take you to the station!’
I took hold of the reins, but made no effort to manoeuvre with them. I had long since discovered that there was no point in pulling the reins up and down since the horse made up its own mind about where it was supposed to turn. For years, it had been padding at least three times a week along the same roads that led to the farms and villages where my granddad dispensed his chatter and wares. They had put one over me, but I refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing that I knew, and so I carried on unperturbed, mimicking the various actions of driving the cart.
Moreover, the horse responded to variations in routine only when its master gave orders with a shout or a jerk of the bridle. That was why on this occasion Granddad got up on the horse’s back beside me: our destination was the station, which was not part of the horse’s usual round.