A Small Place in Italy - Eric Newby

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without a shadow of doubt, that he, Attilio, and the old man in the mountains of twenty-odd years ago were not one and the same, I would have thought that when he said, ‘Adesso ricordo!’ he was remembering that time, whereas what he was presumably referring to was our brief encounter five months ago. I gave up. Two storytellers, both of whom could make things, both of whom were religioso, one of whom, possibly both of whom prayed by their bedsides, although there must be, I realized, whole hordes of little old men in Italy who do just that, were more than I could cope with. Eventually the whole thing was resolved when I asked Signora Angiolina if Attilio had ever gone away from home during the war. She said categorically no, he hadn’t. I was sorry I asked. Perhaps it would have been better if it had remained a mystery but short of having a sphinx on the premises at I Castagni I could hardly complain.

      Anyway I didn’t care. What he had just said to me gave me the same feelings of pleasure that I would experience in the future when Signora Angiolina said to me ‘Hai fatto bene!’ To be remembered by Attilio was different from being remembered by any Tom, Dick or Harry, or even General de Gaulle. He never enlarged on what he meant again. Now, however, to show where his sympathies lay, he attached himself, as it were, to our suite and prepared to walk with us in the procession.

      It was at this moment that the priest gave some kind of inconspicuous signal, but one that was sufficient to set the whole thing in motion, and we all began to move uphill with the priest in the van, flanked by the acolytes, followed by Christ nailed to the Cross and the two men carrying the black and silver banner flapping madly in the wind, and behind them the main body of whom I was certainly the only Protestant present, snuffling and sneezing, for a number of them had already contracted nasty colds, sometimes chanting, sometimes reciting the rosary or saying various Lenten prayers, but somehow contriving not to do all these at the same time, which would have resulted in pandemonium.

      The priest, although he looked rather old, was fearfully fit. He led us at what amounted to a trot into the teeth of the freezing wind and zoomed us through the winding streets and alleys, flanked by secretive-looking houses that made up Fosdinovo, mediaeval streets and alleys in which, this Friday afternoon, almost every house had at least one window with a candle burning in it, to welcome the procession.

      Some windows were draped in funereal Lenten black, others were less lugubrious with white lace curtains and some were positively jolly with flowers displayed in them. We passed an ancient Malaspina theatre that was no longer a theatre and a Malaspina Mint that was no longer a mint. It only minted fifty genuine coins in its entire history. The rest, which were exported to Genova and France, were all false.

      And there were shops, some of them minute, also illuminated with candles. Shops that sold wine, spades, handsaws and other ironware, hand-knitted socks with the natural grease still in them, and magazines giving the latest low-down on what was currently going on with the Grimaldis in the Principality of Monaco, events on which all Italy was hooked.

      And we passed a caffè from the windows of which some of the male occupants looked out on the procession with the curious, slightly derisory air with which men in Italy look out of the windows of caffès at religious processions. That is if they are agnostic, communist, or simply not taking part in the procession for their own private reasons, keeping, as it were, their cards close to their chests.

      That is also if they hadn’t got wives or mothers or grandmothers taking part in these processions. If they had, and if they had any sense and wanted a quiet life, they would keep a much lower profile and get on with watching TV, or playing briscola, a sort of whist, and not start looking out of the window with that superior expression on their faces.

      By now the wind was tremendous. At one point we came out on some ramparts below the Castello and there a savage blast caught the crucifix, bringing the bearers to their knees and almost throwing it the ground, which would have been a malaugurio – and forcing the men carrying the banner to furl it.

      Now we were rounding the foot of the keep of the Castello, a huge fortress in which Dante had been put up in 1306, while he wrote some stanzas of the Inferno, as he had apparently been, that same year, in the castle at Castelnuovo di Magra, the one we had seen the first time we had driven up the road from Caniparola, before making one of his mysterious disappearances from circulation. And as we were following this trench-like alley which ran between the dwellings and the walls, we could see the castle domestics looking down on us from overhead.

      From now on most of the processional route was downhill. The first and last stop was at the Church of San Remigio in the middle of the town, the principal church of Fosdinovo.

      Here the Crucified Christ was taken in, together with the now unfurled banner and followed by the rest of us, for the Adoration of the Cross.

      Now the priest sang Ecce Lignum Crucis (Behold the Wood of the Cross), removed his shoes and adored it, prostrating himself three times and finally bending down and kissing the feet on the crucifix. Immediately after this the rest of the congregation went up to the crucifix two by two and prostrated themselves, while a number of Improperia, tender reproaches of Christ to his people, were sung, such as Popule meus, quid feci tibi? aut in quo contristavi te? Respondi mihi. (My people, what have I done to thee? or in what have I grieved thee? Answer me.)

      The interior of the church was painted in a cold, bluish-grey colour, as cold as the air inside the church, and our breath smoked. Originally a Romanesque church, it had been destroyed by fire in 1600 and rebuilt as a baroque church by the Marchese Pasquale Malaspina with large numbers of magnificent side chapels, ornamented with alternating smooth and twisted Corinthian columns. It also had a barrel roof decorated with an abundance of frescoes but these were all destroyed in the fighting for the Gothic Line in the last year of the war when the town was bombarded.

      In it under a Gothic arch, high up to the left of the altar, near the presbytery, was the tomb of Galeotto Malaspina, feudal lord of the region – the Malaspina acquired the castle in 1340 – and he died in 1367. Wearing armour his effigy reclined on a marble tomb chest, its panels ornamented with bas-reliefs.

      Much higher still above the altar there was another marble effigy, carved by an unknown sculptor in the fourteenth century, the seated figure of San Remigio, patron saint of Fosdinovo, otherwise St Remigius, Bishop of Reims. Said to be the greatest orator of his age, on Christmas Day AD 496, he baptized Clovis, King of the Franks in the cathedral there, with the greatest imaginable pomp and ceremony, and the words, ‘Bow thy head meekly, O Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burnt and burn what thou hast adored.’ (The Sicambrian cohort of the Franks was raised by the Romans on the spot where Budapest now stands.) Some of the bones of the saint were kept in the church at Fosdinovo in a silver reliquary ornamented with branching candlesticks.

      For us this was the end of the procession. Now Christ was dead. We were all wet and cold but when I turned to offer Attilio a lift down the hill to I Castagni, he was nowhere to be seen and although I drove down several bends looking for him I failed to find him. He had simply melted away.

       SEVEN

      The following morning, Holy Saturday, the world had a more cheerful aspect – cold, clear and almost cloudless, everything wet and sparkling after the rain.

      There were even a few bold, migrant birds, some of which had the temerity to sing, making what would be, if they had any sense, only a brief touchdown in Italy before setting off for countries in higher latitudes whose inhabitants were more friendly to wild birds than the Italians who could only visualize them impaled on skewers and cooked.

      Good Friday had been winter, with foul weather, black vestments for the clergy and altars stripped of everything, including the Host.

      By comparison Holy Saturday was spring. Even Lent had lost much of its severity, with the clergy in violet and white vestments, white linen cloths spread on the altars in the churches, and grains of fresh incense set fire to by the priests with a flint outside the main door of the church, a fire that would subsequently be used to light the candles inside the building that had previously

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