Climbing On Mirrors

Chapter 4: Nonnetto

Adriatic Coast, Italian Peninsula ≈ 1799-1840:

His name had been Francesco, though he’d never been satisfied to stay in anyone’s company long enough that they might learn it.  More often than not, they called him Il Girovago, for in truth that’s what he was, a wanderer. For me, he was Nonnetto, grandfather, and yet he and I held no common lineage.

 “For most men” He once told me, “One day is the same as the next! The rising sun is a burden. Each new day means only that they must once again break their backs, toiling away at the same miserable chores. Why? Thy do this in the hopes they’ll be rewarded! Rewarded with what? With enough money to survive another day, and do it all again over again?!!”

 Then he’d laugh, his voice tumbling upon the peals; his face a leather tangle of road weary flesh. To him, the conundrum of the common man was at once the greatest comedy and most somber tragedy ever written. 

 “They wait for death to set them free, but I am not so patient.” He’d whisper, bending down to greet my eye. The earthy fragrance of tobacco, which he wore, seemed to waft from his body like a thing alive, embracing me in sweet, phantasmal tentacles.

 “What do I need from life but my fiddle, and a few ears to play it for?”

 With that, he’d tickle the coquettish strings with his fingers, caressing them with the bow, and coax out a jaunty tune. The fiddle spoke only joviality, but I knew his words were only a half-truths. He had eventually been ensnared in the brambles of man’s world, saddled with my mother and me to provide for. Still, there had been a time when he had lived only by what the Italian countryside provided.

 He was an old man when I had known him. I had been born on the very cusp of his journey’s end. Yet had it not been for the scant few years we knew one another I wonder at what manner of beast I might have been allowed to become.

 His life, like so many lived before him, has now been stricken from human recollection. He never achieved the great wealth or acclaim that might earn him a place of honor amongst his own kind, and thus few kept him alive in their words. To the Fatine however, my people, he is still the subject of ballads and legends wistfully told. This is but one of those many.

 When he was young man, he would play his fiddle by light of the moon. He’d play till his fingers bled on the strings, puffing upon his pipe like some bemused dragon. He stopped only to watch the indigo night give way to pale azure dawn, then burst into the carmine flame of sunrise. Though he played for his own hearts contentment, he was never without an audience.

 The Fatine, entities of the natural world mankind had forsaken, listened intently. At first they remained guised in their glamours, untrusting of human kind. In time, curiosity drew them closer, into the comfort of shadows, where his eyes could scarce make them out and theirs never left him. 

 They would reward his performance by leading him through the rustling of leaves or snapping of twigs, to places where the forests and fields gave fruit. The Fatine will never take without giving something in return. As he travelled, so did word of him, from one Fatine tribù to the next, each gracious to reward for his gift.

 Some part of him had come to sense the presence of their many eyes upon him, their eager ears drinking up his songs, their naked feet tapping in time. When at last they became bold enough to reveal themselves, he simply offered a tip of the cap with his bow, all the while never breaking the rhythm of his song. Once their unwitting minstrel, this solitary man was now welcomed into their fold as an equal. He dined in their hallows, and danced in their halls as few of the mortal world ever have before.