The Bee and the Mulberry Tree

The orphans load the caisson.

Natàlia: 'I'm going'.

Lucia: 'I'm coming too'.

Germana: 'Me too.

A look at the house, at the old ones.

"What if they kill each other?"

"If they kill themselves, they don't do a penny of damage".

"...".

"Then, however, there's Primo... downstairs."

"Right.

"...".

"You left him the phone?"

'Of course'.

They iron and bind everything - scrap metal, furniture, black sacks - shrouded in exhaust smoke. Natàlia in first position. Germana mounts the side - metallic clangour of the door. Lucia is missing. She is left - last - in the hall. She takes a big breath, plugs her nose and activates, one after the other, the three self-emptying canisters of insecticide, enough for the disinfestation of ninety cubic metres. He runs outside. He slams the door behind him. With the urge to flee, he climbs up onto the caisson, crouches down among the rubbish.

Knock knock, on the glass.

Off we go.

The ramp downhill.

The mumbling of the shaky muffler.

The rumble under the dark vault of Madonnella.

A cheerful march.

A mischievous breeze.

***

So. We are alone.

The venomous haze is dissipating and this room looks ghostly empty without all the junk we had, by now, grown accustomed to. Yes, we are indeed alone, my dear Damian.

Come, come closer... don't be afraid.

Keep me company.

Let us face it.

Careful leaning out. Give me your hand.

The courtyard - the farmyard - seen from up here appear to be just what they are: a terrace. You can sense their not being part of a field, but of a rocky coast, enclosed upstream by this house and on the sides by small walls and rustic buildings that mark the property, or the passage, with the communicating vegetable gardens; made of the same stone on which they rest, some tufa and brick waste at the corners, and covered, if need be, with sheets of Onduline. But opposite, on the outer side of this handkerchief, the emptiness beyond the parapet is complete. One is seized with dismay, until the intellect becomes accustomed, after so much anguish, to the faculty. One's gaze plummets - oh ohh - but immediately rises again!

It was a soft fall, on grassy bushes. Rolls. Rollings. The millenary hills have stretched out, comfortable surfaces: eroded the roughness, widened the sides, filled the valleys, they let themselves be climbed over without excessive fatigue. Neither jolts nor jolts or surprises. The rhythm is that of a wide, regular stride: a little momentum and, from summit to summit, you find yourself at the level. A river - a Tiber not yet blond.

Hot. Dishevelled. You catch your breath.

Elbows on the ground, lift your back a little. Dazzling light. We squint around. The shadow, the dark silhouette of the Cimini Mountains, dark and distant, only touches our feet. Between us and these specimens of the Antiappennino laziale runs too much space, too many leagues. On the gentle Amerino hills the sun rises and sets.

Primo - the honest neighbour - bustles by the old tree. For a good hour he has been working around it, with hacksaw and scissors. He cleans the tree from the thicket of lignified shoots. Without haste.

For the third time he moves the ladder, searches for support on the ground - among the prunings and weeds - he puts the last rung on the trunk, shakes it, checks the firmness of the support, puts the visor on his forehead. And up he goes. One last peg is missing, then the trunk will be completely shaved. He saws the largest branches flush: half from one direction, half from the opposite. One hand supports the fall. The blade cleans the wound of those that have given way, shaken by their own weight. Then he puts his hand to the scissors, for the thinner ones. They are very numerous. They fall at the first blow, one after the other to the monotonous, reassuring rhythm of the spring.

Tac. Tac. Tac. The tree is naked.

What remained was a dulled plank, whose lumpy shadow, in the middle of the courtyard, shifted like the rod of a sundial. Arthrotic. Disproportionate: wide at the base and top - little or no tapering in the middle; and folded in on itself, full of scars, and open wounds.

It no longer supports anything but the memory of the weight borne. The memory of the body.

"Naked female kneeling, bent, crushed on herself and totally moulded by the hand of weight, whose load sinks into all her limbs like a never-ending fall (...) And she holds as one holds the improbable in a dream, with no possibility of release. And its bending and yielding is still a bearing, and as soon as it is overcome by the near exhaustion that will force the body to lie down, this lying down will also be a bearing, an endless bearing. Thus is Caryatis'.

Thus Rilke on Rodin.

So this mulberry tree, this house, these women.

Primo finished, put the ladder away. I put away the scissors. With the scythe he now clears the biggest branches. He cuts them to size. For chimney and stove. Stacked dry, under the cellar roof. Of the remainder he has prepared bundles: sorted by each size of wood. Tied with string. Side by side. Ready for every kind of fire: lighting, roasting, heating.

He is sweating on his forehead, on his cheeks. He wipes with his back. He puts his cap back on - a checked cap. He looks around.

At the drinking fountain. Move the net. The chicks cluster around the trousers, pecking at the fabric, the work boots. It has been three days since they have been in the house, and apart from the two losses we have already sadly reported on, the remaining ten seem to have doubled in volume. There is a stubbornness, a fury, in the way they claim to be fed, fattened.

First: one hand under the plastic cinnamon, on the face, on the neck, on the hardened folds. Handkerchief. Cotton.

Some chickens take a leap: the golden plumage is already no more; the first feathers - more tenacious, more dull - have replaced it.

A pinch on the knee.

"Ajo!"

In the container at the base of the hopper there is only a remnant of floury feed.

The man goes through the small door of the stall - his cap touches the moth-eaten beam - he comes out with a bucket. Wheat, corn, soya, sorghum, peas. Sprinkled, abundant, with his hand.

The chickens seem to have gone mad. The fragments, the broken ones, disappear at a glance. Then follow the barely larger grains. Some end up in the beak and are then spat out, far away.

Half an hour later there was nothing left but some whole corn; stubborn.