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

took one look at all those smug faces and said: ‘Not a bad idea! Why don’t we paint the whole room?’ We looked at her dumbfounded. ‘Dear, dear, Sister Maria has gone off her head.’
    The first girl, with a look of triumph, got on with splashing colour on the classroom wall. A moment later, each and every one of us, like crazed ants, attacked the walls, brandishing brushes dipped into the paint tins we had thieved.
    *   *   *
    That winter, it snowed more than usual, so to get to school we had to put on skis. My brother Fulvio and I had learned to use those contraptions fairly quickly, but these were not the kind of skis that people are familiar with nowadays. They were wooden boards, roughly cut and attached to the boots with belts and rudimentary fasteners. They were not intended for sporting purposes, but only to allow us to move about without sinking in the snow. The ski poles were staffs of ash with two little circles of wickerwork fixed onto the bottom.
    It took real talent to move with skis like those, but all of us in the valley must have had an abundance of it, since we managed to hurtle down some of those breathtaking slopes without breaking our necks.
    Towards February, when no one expected it, there was a tremendous snowstorm which left a covering of snow a metre deep. The lorries could no longer get through, and the railway, too, was blocked. There was a snowslide between the two Zenna tunnels and the snow made the road to Luino impassable. The only way to get about was by skis or sledge. As children, we had no idea what it meant to be completely cut off. It was not even possible to reach the Swiss side or the Luino shore from the lake. A north wind stirred up huge waves, causing the police motor boat to slip its moorings one night, crash into the cliff and sink.
    For us the whole business was a godsend. The need to ski everywhere, the opportunity for endless snowball fights and the adventure of finding ourselves completely cut off made us feel as though we were marooned on a desert island. The people in the valley were not unduly worried, since the grocer had supplies enough for three or four days. The butcher had access to as many sheep and goats as he could wish, and the smugglers now had a free hand. The customs men on the border posts were not able to move with any agility on the snow-covered peaks, but the shoulder-boys with their home-made skis, even when they were weighed down with baskets packed with cigarettes and other contraband goods, could manage the circus turns needed to make it across the steep mountain slopes.
    That very week the rumour began to circulate that the sergeant in charge of the carabinieri station had been relieved of his command and ordered to move to ‘another location’. Someone had snared him in the bird-trap, as the saying was, in other words, someone had written a letter to the head office in Luino accusing the poor officer of being in cahoots with the smugglers, and of turning a blind eye to the continual cross-border movement of subversives and common criminals wanted by the authorities.
    A miserable stab in the back. Most people in the town were convinced that the whole squalid business had been orchestrated by the officer in the customs force, others that the report came from the vice station-master who came from Maccagno every day to relieve my father. ‘He’s a fanatical Fascist, that one,’ Pa’ Fo always maintained. ‘Yes, but he’d better look out,’ my father’s assistant would reply. ‘People are liable to slip under a train, especially with all this snow about!’
    A few days later, the council workers managed to clear the tracks, and a tractor with a snow plough got through on the provincial road. We were once again free, the more’s the pity.
    This meant that they could now arrange the removal of the carabiniere sergeant: the same story of dismantled furniture, the same stove