The lovers, p.1
The Lovers, page 1
Epigraph
As I traveled, I came to believe that people’s desires and aspirations were as much a part of the land as the wind, solitary animals, and the bright fields of stone and tundra. And, too, that the land itself existed quite apart from these.
—Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
1. A Little Restaurant
2. The Lovers
3. The Cop
4. The Avalanches
5. An Evening of Wind
6. The Felled Wood
7. Babette and the Airplanes
8. Hair
9. A Cat and Two Blackcocks
10. The Gas Pump
11. An Empty House
12. In Another Country
13. A Hospital in the Valley
14. The Outlaw
15. The Mountain Man’s Daughter
16. Songlines
17. A Postcard
18. Old Wood
19. An Outpost of Humanity
20. The Loggers
21. Bonfires
22. The Night Owl
23. A Marsh
24. Two Hearts and a Hut
25. A Rescue
26. A Letter from Babette
27. The Lost City
28. A Hangover
29. A Pile of Stones
30. The Bivouac
31. Avalanche Fences
32. The Apple Harvest
33. The Potato Field
34. A Rekindling
35. The Wood Auction
36. The Larches
Dreams of Fontana Fredda
Acknowledgments
A Note from the Translator
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
A Little Restaurant
Fausto was forty years old when he took refuge in Fontana Fredda, looking for a place to start over. He had known those mountains since he was a boy, and his unhappiness when he was away from them was among the causes, or perhaps the cause, of the problems with the woman who almost became his wife. After the separation he rented a place up there and spent a September, an October, and a November walking the trails, gathering wood in the forest, and having dinner in front of the woodstove, savoring the salt of freedom and chewing the bitterness of solitude. He also wrote, or at least tried. In the autumn he saw the herds leave the mountain pastures, the larch needles turn yellow and fall, until the first snows, when despite having reduced his needs to the bone, the money he had put aside ran out. Winter presented him with the bill of a difficult year. There was someone he could ask for a job in Milan, but it would mean going down there, picking up the phone, settling the unfinished business with his ex. Then one evening, just before resigning himself to doing just that, he happened to open up before a glass of wine, in Fontana Fredda’s only meeting place.
From behind her counter Babette understood perfectly. She had also come from the city, and she still had the accent as well as a certain elegance, though who knows when and how she got there. At some point she had taken over a restaurant in a place that offered no clientele between seasons apart from construction workers and cowherds, and she had christened it Babette’s Feast. From then on everyone called her that, no one remembered her name from before. Fausto made friends with her because he had read Karen Blixen and picked up on the reference: the Babette of the story was a revolutionary who, after the Paris Commune had failed, wound up working as a cook in a Norwegian village full of bumpkins. This other Babette may not have served turtle soups, but she tended to take in strays and seek practical solutions to existential problems. After listening to him she asked: Do you know how to cook?
So at Christmas he was still there, wielding pots and pans amid the kitchen’s smoke. There was also a ski slope in Fontana Fredda; every summer there was talk of closing it and every winter it somehow reopened. With a sign down at the crossroads and a little artificial snow blown across the pastures, it attracted families of skiers, and for three months a year transformed the mountain men into chairlift operators, snowmakers, snowcat drivers, and rescuers in a collective masquerade that he now took part in, too. The other cook was a veteran. In a few days she taught him how to degrease kilos of sausage, stop the pasta from overcooking with cold water, stretch the oil in the deep fryer, and how stirring the polenta for hours was a waste of effort, you just let it simmer there on a low flame and it would cook by itself.
Fausto liked being in the kitchen, but something else began to attract his attention. He had a small window through which he would pass the plates into the dining room and watch Silvia, the new waitress, take orders and serve the tables. Who knows where Babette had found her. She was not the kind of girl you would expect to find among the mountain men: young, cheerful, with the air of a world traveler. The sight of her carrying polenta and sausages seemed a sign of the times, like the flowers blossoming out of season, or the wolves that were said to have returned to the woods. Between Christmas and Epiphany they worked tirelessly, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and they courted each other with her hanging orders for him on the corkboard, and him ringing the bell when the dishes were ready. They kidded each other: two plain pastas, the chef’s special. Plain pasta is off the menu, he said. The dishes and skiers came and went with such speed that Fausto was there scouring the pots when he realized it was dark outside. Then he stopped for a moment, the mountains came back to his mind: he wondered if the wind had been blowing or if it had snowed up above and what the light had been like up there on the wide sun-drenched plateaus above the tree line, and if the lakes now looked like slabs of ice or soft, snowy basins. At eighteen hundred meters it was a strange beginning to the winter, with rain and snow, and in the morning, rain melting the overnight sleet.
Then one evening, after the holidays, with the floors damp and the dishes dried and stacked, he undid his cook’s apron and came out for a drink. The bar at that hour slipped into a mode in which it quietly ran itself. Babette put on some music, left a bottle of grappa on the counter, and the snowcat operators came in to look for company between one pass over the slopes and the next, leveling the holes and bumps made by the skiers, hauling the pushed-down snow back up, and milling it where it was frozen to make it granular, up and down on their treads for long, dark hours. Silvia had a small room above the kitchen. Around eleven o’clock, from the bar, Fausto saw her come down with a towel around her head and drag a chair up to the woodstove to read a big book in the warmth. He was struck by the thought that she had just gotten out of the shower.
In the meantime he listened to the chatter of this snowcat driver they called Santorso, like the patron Saint Ursus of Aosta and the grappa distillery. Santorso was talking to him about grouse hunting and the snow. About how the snow was late that year, the snow so precious for protecting the burrows from frost, and about the problems a winter without snow gave to partridge and black grouse, and Fausto liked learning so many things he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t even think of losing sight of his waitress. At one point Silvia took the towel off her head and started combing her hair with her fingers, bringing it closer to the stove. Her hair was long, black, and straight, and there was a lot of intimacy in the way she combed it. Until she felt she was being watched. She looked up from her book and smiled at him with her fingers in her hair. The grappa burned Fausto’s throat like a boy’s first drink. Shortly after, the snowcats returned to work and Babette said good night to those two, reminded one or the other to put the croissants in the oven early in the morning, took the garbage bags away, and went home. She was happy to leave the keys, liquor, and music there, so her restaurant could encourage friendships even when she was gone, a little Paris Commune amid the Norwegian ice.
2
The Lovers
That evening she was the one who took him upstairs. If it were up to him they would have first had to wait for the thaw. The only heat in Silvia’s room was what came from the kitchen, so the ritual of undressing was a bit rushed, but for Fausto, slipping into bed nude, next to an equally nude and trembling girl, had something moving and marvelous about it. He had been with the same woman for ten years, and for six months with his own insipid company. Exploring that body was like finally having a guest: he discovered that it was a strong, solid body below, sturdy thighs, skin smooth and taut; above, it was spiky with bones, little breasts, full of ribs, clavicles, elbows, and then cheekbones and teeth that would collide with him when Silvia got a bit rough. He no longer remembered the patience it took to understand another person’s tastes and make them understand his. But it was offset by his hands full of burns, cuts, detergent abrasions, and scars from the damn slicer, and in the end he found a certain correspondence in caressing her with them.
What a nice smell you have, he said. Like wood smoke.
You smell like grappa.
Does it bother you?
No, I like it. Grappa and resin. What is it?
It’s the pine cones we put in the grappa.
You put pine cones in grappa?
Yeah, stone pine. We gather them in July.
Then you smell like July.
Fausto liked that idea, it was his favorite month. The thick and shady woods, the smell of hay in the fields, the gurgling streams, and the last snow up above, beyond the screes. He gave her a July kiss on that beautifully protruding clavicle.
I like your bones.
I’m glad. I’ve been carrying them around with me for twenty-sev
Twenty-seven? They’ve got a lot of mileage.
Yeah, we’ve been around the block.
So tell me. Let’s hear where your bones were, say, at nineteen.
At nineteen I was in Bologna, studying art.
You’re an artist?
No. At least that’s what I figured out. That I’m not an artist, I mean. I was better at partying.
In Bologna, I can believe it. You hungry?
A bit.
Should I go get something?
Yeah, but only if it’s quick, I’m cold already.
Back in a flash.
Fausto went down to the kitchen, looked through the refrigerators, passed the small window at the back, and saw the snow cannons firing along the slope. Each cannon had a beacon illuminating it, so the slope above Fontana Fredda was dotted with these fireworks, jets of water spray that froze upon contact with the air. He thought of Santorso leveling piles of artificial snow in the dark of night. He went back to the room with bread, cheese, and olive pâté, slipped under the covers, and Silvia pulled him to her immediately. Her feet were cold.
He said: Let’s try again. Silvia at twenty-two.
At twenty-two I worked in a bookstore.
In Bologna?
No, in Trento. I have a friend from there, Lilli. After Bologna she went back home to open her own place. I’ve always liked books and by then I was done with college. When she asked me to come up I didn’t give it a second thought.
So you worked as a bookseller.
Yeah, while it lasted. But it was a good time, you know? It was in Trento that I discovered the mountains. The Brenta Dolomites.
Fausto cut a slice of bread, spread the olive pâté on it, and added a piece of toma cheese. He wondered what it must have been like to discover the mountains. He brought the morsel toward her lips but stopped in midair.
So tell me, what are you doing under Monte Rosa?
I’m looking for a refuge.
You, too?
I’d like to work in a refuge on the glacier. For the summer, I mean. You know any?
Yeah, a few.
Can I have some of that cheese?
Fausto extended the slice of bread and toma, Silvia opened her mouth and bit into it. He inhaled her hair.
A refuge on the glacier, he said.
You think I can find one?
Why not? You can try.
Stop sniffing me.
You smell like January.
Silvia laughed. And what does January smell like?
What did January smell like? The smoke of a woodstove. Dry, frozen meadows waiting for snow. The nude body of a girl after a long stretch of solitude. It smelled like a miracle.
3
The Cop
Santorso enjoyed not only the evenings when he drank, but also the mornings after. Not when he drank too much, so that he felt sick, but enough to carry the tail end of a bender into his waking hours. He would feel like getting up early and going out for a walk, and in those walks his senses were clouded in one way and sharpened in another, as if in the general opacity of the world, certain details became more vivid. The first was the water from the fountain: outside the house he washed his face and took a cold sip. Fontana Fredda, as the name would suggest, actually had several “cold fountains.” At one time they were all troughs for livestock, water that flowed summer and winter at the same temperature, getting there from the glaciers by mysterious and underground routes. Both the water and the village sprang out of a wide terrace that ended abruptly, then dropped down five hundred meters to a wooded slope; uphill it rose more gently in a series of summer pastures. Now the pastures were silent and deserted, the dry stacks for manure empty, the bathtubs turned over in the meadows. Under the uniform gray sky, Santorso saw that a veil of snow had remained in the shaded areas, and nocturnal passersby had left their tracks on that veil. The paw prints of a hare among the fir trees, of a fox curious about the closed cowsheds. The hooves of a deer venturing out of the woods up to the paved road, attracted by the salt scattered over the frost. Still no sign of wolves. In the autumn they had been sighted just two valleys away, so he was sure they would come, or maybe they were already there but on their guard, studying the situation. Where the snow vanished, the stories stopped, like the things he only half knew. His father had a rule that he always tried to follow—never come back from the woods empty-handed—and that morning he picked some juniper berries, filled the little pocket of his hunting jacket with them.
It was Wednesday and there would be very few skiers on the slopes. He passed by the restaurant, but Babette hadn’t arrived yet. There was only the cook, or rather that cook who wasn’t a cook, working in the silence of the kitchen. When he heard the door, he went out to the bar and said hello.
Coffee? he asked.
You’re Fausto, Santorso said. Actually no, you’re Faus.
Faus?
Yeah, Faus, like false cook.
The cook laughed gladly. He filled the espresso compartment, turned the handle, and said: Sounds perfect.
Looks like it’s gonna snow, Faus.
About time.
Babette came in with the sack of bread and the newspapers. She left the newspapers at the bar and took the bread into the kitchen. After her came the old dairy farmer who lived in one of the houses below. It was a beautiful time of the morning, between eight and nine, when the skiers had not yet arrived and the old people of Fontana Fredda stopped by Babette’s, and there was talk of hay and milk, of wood supplies, of the snow in the past, when it piled up to the balconies. Fausto made coffee for himself, too, and Babette replaced him at the counter. Santorso glanced at her, raised his chin, a private code between them. She snorted, took the bottle of brandy, and poured a dash into the cup.
So, any wolves come? the farmer said.
Let ’em come, Santorso said. Everyone’s welcome here.
I’m warning you, they touch just one of my animals and I’ll go out there with my rifle.
Good.
You think I’m kidding.
No, no, I believe you.
And then what’ll you do, arrest me?
Me? I am on leave, I don’t arrest anyone anymore.
The girl, the new waitress, came down, too. She took an apron from under the counter and tied it around her waist. She poured herself a glass of water from the tap and drank it in one gulp, then she poured herself another. You’re really thirsty, Santorso thought.
Fausto said: What do you mean, on leave?
I used to be in the Forestry Corps.
A forest ranger? But aren’t you a hunter?
One doesn’t exclude the other.
Imagine.
The girl filled a tray with glasses and went to set the tables. As she passed by, she touched Fausto’s hand, and Santorso would have preferred not to notice. He didn’t like the affairs of humans. He preferred those of wolves, foxes, and grouse.
I’ll put on the polenta, Fausto said.
You’re hunkered down pretty good, go for it.
You said it.
Au revoir.
Santorso finished his coffee, left a coin on the counter, and said goodbye to Babette, who was already doing something else. For the old farmer he didn’t waste even a nod. Outside he took a breath and thought: Someone got laid here tonight. And then: What a beautiful smell when the snow comes. With the taste of coffee and brandy in his mouth, he lit a cigarette and at that point started thinking about what to do with his morning.
4
The Avalanches
Now it was really snowing. In a couple of days it would blanket the gardens, woodsheds, manure piles, and chicken coops. It was a thick, wet snow that didn’t look like January snow, and it came with a wind that blew it sideways, encrusting the tree trunks and outdoor tables of Babette’s Feast. Not many orders came in, and since there was a shovel next to the door of the restaurant, at three on Sunday afternoon it was Silvia who remembered to go out and start shoveling the small terrace.
She was struck by Fontana Fredda’s transformation. The agricultural landscape she had found in December—countryside, only more rugged and wooded—had been transformed overnight into a boreal landscape. She looked at the road, where cars pulled out of their parking spots with clumsy maneuvers, fishtailing slightly. The stiff-footed people returning with skis on their backs. Not much snow fell where Silvia had grown up, and she wondered if her mother had ever seen what she was seeing, whether she would like it or not, feel protected or threatened. She watched the snowplow go by and clear the road up to the bend after the restaurant, forming a pile a couple of meters high. Then it turned around and Silvia understood how that barrier, in winter, became the border of civilization: she would be venturing into that white expanse beyond it at her own risk, and she got the urge to go see what it was like. That virgin snow attracted her more than the ski slope.
