Love and War in the Apennines (28 page)

I was on the Passo Coletta by nine fifteen and from it I could see the whole of the south face of the mountain and I could see the place where my cave was, about half way up it towards the summit, but then things began to be difficult. The next part, uphill through the woods to a farm, La Tosa, was everything that Francesco said it would be. There was no track, or if there was I never found it. The woods were dense, the ground was rocky and full of holes and there were a lot of brambles. Because of this it was ten o’clock before I reached the farm, a gaunt, lonely building which although it had obviously only recently been abandoned,
was already roofless, although the out-buildings were still intact and there was newly mown hay in the barn, which probably meant that it was the house rather than the land which had been abandoned. But there was no time to look; the fields were too far off, somewhere down the ridge to the west, and, at the moment I only had two aims, one of which was to arrive on the
crinale
on time to look over the other side of it before the sun set; the other, not to be benighted on it. It was here that I had my first rest, drank some water from the spring and refilled my water bottle which was already half empty, although it held a litre. All that day I was not hungry, only terribly thirsty.

I left again at about ten thirty and followed a track down towards the river which ran in a gorge that was so deep and narrow that although I could hear it I could never see it. Here, according to the map, I was a thousand metres above sea level, the lowest point on the entire journey, but now there was a long and murderous climb through forest to the top of a mountain called Monte Bosco in the heart of which the river rose, a climb of five hundred and fifty metres, and it was not until after twelve o’clock that I finally emerged on the screes that led to the summit.

All this time the track had run parallel to the gorge and close to the edge of it, but the gorge became more and more narrow as it got closer to the source of the river which was somewhere on the north side of the mountain, and the track bore away from it to the east to reach the summit. From it I could look down and see that the whole of the north face was hollow, like the cavity in an enormous tooth, except that it was densely packed with trees which completely hid the place where the river issued from the mountain. I thought what an impregnable, secret place in which to live it would be in the summer.

From here I moved up through a strange desiccated landscape
of pale, jagged rocks and long ridges bare of vegetation which sloped up to another summit, with white screes on it which were dazzling in the strong sun. This was Campo Cocuzza. Francesco had told me this meant the bald mountain, taking off his hat to demonstrate what he meant, displaying a bald pate surrounded by a dense thatch of white hair. What I was now crossing was the Pian del Orso on which, he had told me, long ago there had been bears. No wonder they had gone away and never returned. It was an awful, desolate, windy place. And behind Campo Cocuzza was the
crinale
, the main ridge of the main range of the Apennines, with two peaks rising from it on either side of a sort of saddle which was my destination.

I was tired now and I didn’t reach Campo Cocuzza until a quarter to one. The view was magnificent but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was to lie down out of the wind, which was terribly strong up here, and drink water. I wasn’t at all hungry and I just lay where I was without moving, except once to put on a sweater, until a quarter to two. Then I moved on up to the
crinale
through a chaos of rocks, and finally emerged from it on to the north face at a quarter to four in the afternoon after a journey of ten and three-quarter hours, and although I felt done in I had some slight satisfaction in knowing that although I should have arrived here at three o’clock, I had beaten Francesco’s schedule, which included four stops, by fifteen minutes.

The sun had already gone from the north face of the
crinale
and the wind was cold and gusting strongly. The peak to the left was over six thousand feet and I was tempted to climb it because it was absurdly easy, like climbing Box Hill, being nothing on this north side but a walk up a steepish slope entirely overgrown with myrtle with scarcely a rock to be seen; but so, equally, was the one on the right, which was only slightly less high and as I was
anxious to see a pass which Francesco had mentioned as lying beyond it and one of the few which were likely to be unguarded if I did have to cross over into Massa Carrara, I set off towards it as fast as I could go. Just after four o’clock I reached the summit on all fours, which was the only way I could get to it. I had expected the wind to be strong on the top but the force of it was indescribable. If I had stood up I would have been whisked away.

It was an extraordinary evening of a sort that is commonplace in the southern oceans but rare on land. A wind of force eight or nine was blowing from the south-west out of a cloudless sky and the setting sun was drenching everything in a blinding, yellow-ochre light. The view was stupendous. I could see the Alps from the borders of Italy and France right round to what must have been the Dolomites and to the left were what I recognised from having studied the map as the Apuan Alps, where the marble quarries were, weird soaring pinnacles all yellow in the sunset. Far away there was a river which flowed below another smaller range of mountains down to the Ligurian Sea and beyond the river there was a city which must have been La Spezia, already in shadow. The
crinale
was a cliff on its southern face, falling away thousands of feet to long ridges covered with oak and beech and chestnut. Beyond the valleys which separated them there were other, lesser hills and other valleys which were as formless as the sea after a storm; but lush, friendly country in which both olives and vines must surely flourish. With its great pinnacles of rock and long mysterious vistas it was landscape by Leonardo.

But what was in the foreground, below me on the ridge itself was something much different, by a different artist or artists, working in different centuries and recording something quite different, not the splendours but the miseries of life. This was a scene by Callot, or Breughel, or Goya, someone working in the time of the great troubles which afflict the human race.

I was above the pass, the one that Francesco had told me about, which the people used carrying salt over from Massa Carrara to the
pianura
and days later re-crossed carrying food in exchange.

The way up to it from the southern side was by a path just wide enough for two laden mules to pass one another without the one on the outside being pushed over the edge. It wound up round the flanks of the mountain to the summit of which I was clinging, from some invisible combe to the col on the Pass itself where a long pole which had been stuck in the ground was oscillating in the wind. And on this path, as well as laden mules, an endless column of men and women were moving slowly upwards to it, bowed down under the weight of enormous loads. From the valley on the northern side, in which it was already twilight, another column was moving up to it, similarly laden and over it and down the other side, so that there were two ant-like columns passing one another in opposite directions. The only point of contact they had was at the col itself, which was utterly bare, except for one of those little woods of dwarf beeches which had managed to raise itself as far as the ridge and which grew just beyond the actual crossing place. Here, some of them had off-loaded their packs and were huddled on the ground with their backs to the streaming wind. The ghastly, yellow light of the sunset, the dark figures, each of whom was enduring unimaginable fatigue from the great weights they bore on their backs, some of whom had children with them who were similarly loaded, the dark birds, choughs or crows, which hung on the wind above them uttering melancholy cries which rose even above the noise of the wind, produced an unforgettably melancholy impression. After I had watched the spectacle as long as I could bear to I went back down the north side of the
crinale
with some faint inkling of what total war meant to ordinary people. I wondered what they did when night fell. Did they continue to plod on, or did they bivouac by
the track under some kind of makeshift cover, or did they find shelter in some building lower down?

I went down the steep slope to the north in the gathering darkness, over an avalanche of stones, and eventually came out at the top of a great rolling meadow on the edge of which there were a couple of small, stone huts and a little labyrinth of stone pens, the
baracche
of the shepherds in their summer pastures, just as Francesco had said there would be, scattered along the mountainside at this level; but to me it seemed a miracle that I had found them.

One of the huts had a strange, primitive carving of a sheep over the lintel of the door, and in this one I decided to stay the night. Except that it was built of stone and the roof was much lower the interior arrangements were the same as in Luigi’s
baracca
at the Castello del Prato. The wooden cots were in good repair and there was a fireplace and a good stock of firewood.

The most important thing was to find water before it became too dark to do so, and eventually I discovered a spring which came out from under the rocks about a hundred yards away. Then, with the door closed, I lit a fire and cooked some rice, over which I grated some of the cheese that Wanda had brought me, and when I had finished this I ate a piece of hard sausage which had been intended for my midday meal at Campo Cocuzza but which I had been too tired to swallow. As long as I kept the door shut, which was a close fit, the fire was invisible from outside, apart from some sparks from the chimney, and soon the hut was as warm as an oven. It was a bitter night outside. The wind howled in the chimney but the fire drew well and all the time that I was sitting by it I thought of those long lines of people on their Via Dolorosa.

Here, at fifteen hundred metres, that night, winter set in. By the following morning the wind had gone to the north and it
battered at the door which the shepherds had made facing in this direction so that the hut would be cool on hot summer afternoons. Outside the grass was thick with frost and the spring had a glaze of ice over the pool among the rocks although the water still ran in it. Worst of all, for me, everything was enveloped in freezing cloud which reduced the visibility to not more than twenty yards. There was no question of returning to the
crinale
for another sight of the sea while this lasted; it was going to be difficult enough to find my way home.

I waited until nearly ten o’clock for the cloud to lift but if anything it got worse, and after a thin breakfast of acorn coffee and a hunk of very dry bread I set off on the return journey.

It was now, at the very beginning of it, that I made my first major error of navigation. Too lazy to climb the nine hundred feet or so to the peak on the
crinale
from which I had looked down on the Pass the previous evening, from where it would have been an easy traverse along the saddle to the ridge which would eventually take me home, I decided instead to skirt the base of the
crinale
until I reached it. And this I did, or imagined I had done when, twenty minutes later I climbed up on to it, and checked the alignment by my compass, as far as I could in such weather, and it was as it should have been at this point, approximately east-north-east.

Climbing up this ridge to the
crinale
, or what I thought was this same ridge, the previous day had taken me two hours from Campo Cocuzza, the bald mountain, and it seemed to me now, practically blindfolded by swirling cloud, that I would have to allow an equal amount of time for the downhill journey to it. I was therefore not particularly worried until close to twelve o’clock when I suddenly came down out of the murk, and found that I was not on the right ridge but on one which was more or less parallel to it to the west and divided from it by the deep, wooded
gorge of the river with Monte Bosco, the mountain in the hollow core of which it rose, far away above me to my right, its upper parts hidden in the cloud, and the deserted farm of La Tosa immediately opposite me, across the valley.

Looking at the map, which up to now had been impossible because the wind would have torn it to shreds, I saw what I had failed to see when studying it in the
baracca
, that the ridge I was now on did not extend right up to the top of the
crinale
as the one I had come by had, but petered out on the side of it at about sixteen hundred metres. The previous day I had been so absorbed in reaching the top before the sun set that I had not even noticed the existence of this other ridge.

I now made another serious mistake. Instead of going back by the way I had come and then going down the proper ridge I decided to go straight down the mountain side into the gorge and then climb up the other side to La Tosa by the path through the woods which I had already used the previous day. It was easy to succumb to this temptation. To go back meant at least two hours uphill and two hours down to Campo Cocuzza, if all went well; half an hour over the Pian del Orso to Monte Bosco, where I could quite easily go off course on the open ground in such thick weather, then down almost to the river bed and up again to La Tosa, perhaps two hours, six and a half hours altogether, at least four and a half of them in cloud. It would be pitch dark long before I got to La Tosa. Besides, here, a convenient track, obviously made by charcoal burners, led downhill through the forest. It was irresistible and I took it.

I entered the forest at midday. According to the map, here on the ridge, I was not more than a thousand feet above the river, perhaps less.

The track took me just far enough down into the forest to make the idea of turning back extremely unattractive; then it
expired in a clearing. I decided to go straight down the side of the mountain which was at an angle of not less then seventy degrees.