Orsigna VALLEY IN THE DARK FOREST.
Tiziano Terzani
Exciting stories of witches, ghosts and spirits among the rocks, woods and old houses in a charming small village in the Apennines in Tuscany, without history and no heroes. A few residents, but a lot of humanity and wisdom. It is a beautiful tribute to the land where Terzani has put its roots. But it is also an article in which the poetry and the ethics of the Florentine writer are revealed in an absolutely crystalline. The witches were three. They sat high in the branches of the walnut tree next to the fountain. Confabulation is laughing. Ettore first heard only their voices, then, straining their eyes are already accustomed to the darkness of the night to come home after playing cards with friends, recognized. He wanted to escape, but the witches had recognized him and stopped him the oldest with his curse, "Hector, did you see what forget it. If you ever leave a word of mouth, just die. "Years passed and Hector never said anything to anyone. Then one day I was in Calabria to make the coal with the neighbors and that the speech during the dinner, he fell on the witch, and that the walnut tree, the fountain and the bar seemed far away, he was to open the heart. "I've seen the witches ...». And he names. The next morning, while at work, a load of wood he was inexplicably wearing Hector and there remained dry. This was one of the first stories I told when I got to Orsigna. I was a kid, I was coming from the city to vacation and wanted to learn to behave and to respect the taboo of the mountain. Every forest, every ravine, every rock seemed to have one and their names seemed made just for people not to lose the memory of their origins, as well as crosses and Madonnas placed along the paths and the tomb was a plan selve.La that a woman, to challenge the belief that there was around us a spirit, a winter's night he wanted to cross. From the womb had fallen spindle as spinning wool, that had been planted in the snow blocking the skirt, she had felt like being pulled by an invisible hand and the morning had found stiff, scared to death. Ditch the throws of an age where he said he does not believe in ghosts than had been thrown down the cliffs. The going was where the devil the devil, who lived in the valley Orsigna - in the old days called "the dark wood" - he had supported for the last time on foot, fleeing before the Madonna, who came to liberate the people from damnation eternal. On that piece of land still does not grow a single blade of grass. Those places, with their legends told by old, I was fascinated. Fifty years have passed, I was in the meantime in the corners strange and distant world, but I have not freed from enchantment and Orsigna, with its two hundred "souls," as the people here still call it, is my belly on the earth. "Orsigna, 806 meters above sea level sea, "says the sign at the beginning of the country. Florence is only 75 km away, but the road that comes to us today does not go anywhere else and you know the secret of a curve on the old, dull Porrettana open to seeing, unexpectedly, every time as a rediscovery, this valley airy in a semicircle of mountains whose colors mark the passing of stagioni.Al contrary Abetone, Maresca, or Gavinana San Marcello, countries that are known in the Tuscan Apennines, Orsigna never had a his reason to boast. There has never happened anything history, no one has ever stopped anyone famous. The only headstone in the country is on the facade of the church, with the names and photographs of a dozen glazed guys here, who died in the Great War. The closest that a "great" was ever arrived at five kilometers when the Carducci had to stop at the station Pracchia because of a fault in the locomotive of the train that took him to the Baths of Porretta.Io Orsigna I was there for the first time in 1945, led by my father, who had been a young man, when, for skiing, there used to be piles of fencing shoes. We got to walk on the trail. It was not a true vacation spot, and found easy to rent a room. Dall'Azelia we stayed for a few years, the mailman, then by Filide, a pastor that any husband who had died had inherited something and whose house was one of the best of this summer I was there to Badar paese.Ogni sheep with kids my age, looking for mushrooms, berries to gather, watching the sunrise from one of the peaks, all under two thousand meters, but all - for me - very high. The Orsigna was my school life. Here I did the first dance, I had my first love, early fears, first dreams. With my first savings bought the field where I had sent the kite and the stones of the river we made a house like those of others, only the doors and larger windows. The thought of that place m'รจ served as a compass in my wanderings in the world and when my sons grew increasingly in other countries, I wanted to put in the memory of the roots and the smell of a house which then bind childhood nostalgia, I set them, as a rule of the family, to spend two months each year to Orsigna. There was in this wild valley with his people without history - except that of a great affliction - no glory - except the one of the legends of which they felt protagonists - a measure of humanity that I wanted the children to learn and bring inside. Strange people that Orsigna! Even their names impressed me when I arrived. The men were named Ahasuerus, Emerald, Antimo, Elio; Sedomia women, Elis, Fortunata. To me, Florence, it seemed strange that they did not know well who were their ancestors. Some said it came from a company in which a gentleman of fortune, potendoli not pay, had given the estate in the valley. From here the names of family: Venturi, Caporali and that of a tenement called witzerland. Others said that the origin of the smugglers who were in this valley and inaccessible border area between the lands of the Pope and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, to avoid paying the duty to Gabbellette (a place called just that) and crossed the mountains in a rough called, not surprisingly, the Free Port. Certainly, in this valley, dark chestnut and beech trees, the orsignani, far from towns - Florence and Pistoia - which were suspicious, had grown up free and full of pride. They lived in their small villages scattered along the coasts of the mountains, and even the Church, as is still called the country itself, there were only for the Mass, to play cards, drink and buy salt and matches . The rest were making for themselves. were shepherds and sheep and chestnut threw everything they needed. Even the doctor we were only at death. Alighiero could block the blood of a wound by reciting a mysterious formula, Ubaldo - that still lives - with a formula, it marked the shingles. The orsignani were people who had time. With a blade of grass in his mouth, stood for hours on top a hill to watch the flock with all the leisure to think and be quiet. I seemed to know just how the human mind. From every little event seemed able to bring out the archetype with the ease in which, slowly, I learned to recognize the greatness. They were, by necessity, great observers of nature and always pulled from the great lessons and a sense of balance that is reflected in giving life, sometimes only a name and a legend, every stone, every ravine. Growing up I learned to appreciate more and more. I went top of the world to try to understand something, they, not knowing how to read or write, remaining there, but of doing every little capital, a large constructed s'eran know, I thought. Alighiero came back from Vietnam and that war had seen her only once when the Germans had come to burn a village in the valley in retaliation for a partisan attack, seemed to know much more than me. And maybe that was it. I had seen a great light for a moment, he had seen the slow flow of things in their entirety. The Chinese have a nice expression to describe how I lived - and still alive - "Look at the flowers from horseback." That's right: in 25 years in Asia I have seen so many flowers, sometimes extraordinary, great, but from a horse, always running, always at a distance, without much time to soffermarmici. The orsignani have seen a few flowers, perhaps small, but There have been close, have seen them bloom, grow, die. And the extraordinary life cycle have become experts. And free, even death. This is a place where so many people committed suicide has run as do not want to depend on the designs of anybody, even those on the top of their Creator. The Nunziatina, my neighbor a few years ago, jumped from the window to go and take to the cemetery the grave that had been set free along with that of her husband. He had heard that another woman was taken to a hospital in the country and knew that if one died before her, she would have lost the place where he wanted to be buried. The orsignani lived in a world of their own, with their rules, and the city All refused. Even the explanation of the name of the place. Orsigna, according to historians, was the fact that the valley, mentioned in documents of the year one thousand, was full of bears (hence the two that are in the arms of Pistoia), but as the name would orsignani to do with a princess Orsini (Orsini?) exiled here to atone for a 'do it with love. " His guards were protected by armor and large only when stripped to sunbathe on one of the hills you could see that they were beautiful girls. That place is still called the naked. "There it feels," he told the orsignani, pointing to the ruins of a place called The Castle (one of the princess?), But at most could have been a group of miserable hovels of stone. I was quietly trying to hear the lamentations of the ancient Orsini, but could not. "We want you to have the second hearing and second sight," said guide them, a tiny little old me was a friend. He had them all under those seconds. He lived in a house of black smoke, but he was a born poet, and regularly won races in which contrast, in front of a carboy of wine, various poets of the country are challenged to sing, alternating rhymes, one defending the virtues Women's notice, other than the blonde, the qualities of a sun, the other those of the moon. Today, no one sings more contrast to Orsigna. Over the years many things have changed here too. She came around the fireplace and television in the evening, there are more people in conversation. The majority of the pastors took to the floor Oei their sons have become citizens. Yet many of them return, refer to the old houses, to go back to mushrooms, to see the sun rise from the tops and dancing in the streets the only monument of the country, a small marble of Christ with open arms. I always go back and I increasingly wonder if, after such a long way made elsewhere, in the midst of so many different people, always in search of another, in search of exotic, in search of a meaning which is all'insensata life, this valley is not much more after all the place, the place more exotic and more sensible, and if, after so many adventures and many loves, for Vietnam, China, Japan and now India, Orsigna not - if I'm lucky - my true love last.
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