My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) Read Online Free PDF

feet and sang a few notes in a voice as powerful as a trumpet, then launched into a rhymed routine, waving their arms about and doing a few shuffling dance steps. The girl on the violin joined in the song, and Bruno, not to be outdone, produced from somewhere an incredibly guttural, mellow, black man’s voice.
    In no time, everyone in the stalls was swept along by the singing. Gradually, even those highly reserved Swiss folk were raising their arms and swinging them about in imitation of the gospel singers in the transept: they were clapping their hands, stamping their feet and singing along to the various refrains. I certainly had no idea at the time, but I was present at one of the first jazz and blues events in Europe.
    They say that as children our senses are as receptive as photographic plates: every colour, every tremor of emotion is imprinted with unbelievable depth and precision. That event must have affected my way of hearing music, leaving it inscribed not merely as a sequence of notes and rhythms but as a ritual gesture and collective action.
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    When, a week later, I returned to Pino, my mother asked me what had happened to me. I launched into an account of what I had seen – of my song in German, the horse enraged by the bees, and when I got to the jazz concert I tried to reproduce the sounds by shaking my arms and legs like a grasshopper.
    â€˜My little darling,’ my mother said in genuine concern, ‘are you sure they didn’t drug you? Were you bitten by a tarantula or bewitched in some way? Calm down, take a deep breath and above all don’t tell a soul around here about the anarchist exiles who were playing and singing with the Negroes. It’s dangerous!’
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    It is 1932, I am six years old and have to go to school. My brother Fulvio was two years younger than me, but it was unanimously agreed that he gave proof of extraordinary intelligence. At four years, he could read and write like a child twice his age. In addition, he was liable to come out with witticisms and observations that left people gasping.
    The primary school in Pino was nothing special: there were only three classes, and to carry on with their schooling, pupils had to go to Tronzano, some six hundred metres higher up. In Pino there was only one teacher in charge of ten boys and seven girls. Her name was Sister Maria, a nun in the order of Saint Vincent, and she wore a white headdress tied under her chin. For me, she was like the Great Earth Mother: generously built, majestic, gentle and filled with tenderness towards everyone. She never raised her voice nor her hand to any of us, not even when we fully merited a slap on the cheek or a kick on the backside. I was bewitched by Sister Maria, the more so since I was her favourite, even if she concealed it. Perhaps I behaved like a real teacher’s pet, always turning up with some flowers which I had picked on the hillside. Once I arrived with a little rabbit which I had dragged out of the compound, but on another occasion I went right over the score: I brought in an ugly, filthy stray dog.
    On each occasion Sister Maria let out squeals of joy, and seemed as delighted as a little girl. And let us say nothing about her expressions of amazement when I showed her one of my paintings. She frequently encouraged me to draw or paint in class, and did her best to get all my classmates involved.
    Our school was housed in the old, medieval town hall. Outside, in the corridors, they were freshening up the paint on the walls, and the painters had left tins of oil paint in a cupboard. One of the girls happened to bring a couple of brushes and one of these tins into the classroom and, while Sister Maria was briefly out, she started to do a painting on a wall. The rest of us were shocked. ‘Messing up the walls like that. You’re going to catch it when Sister Maria gets back!’
    Sister came in just at that moment,