The Sleeping Nymph, page 15
“Why, are you scared?” said Blanca.
“I’m not scared. I just don’t enjoy having a dog wheezing onto the back of my neck.”
“Boohoo, poor baby.”
“It wouldn’t be so bad if his breath didn’t stink of death.”
“Stop that. We’re a team now,” said Teresa. “We must learn to get along.”
She was sure they would warm to each other eventually, but Marini was being difficult and growing increasingly aloof. Before they’d headed for the valley, they had stopped at his apartment so he could run upstairs for a change of clothes. That was when Teresa had spotted the young woman on his balcony. Teresa had been shocked: as far as Marini’s colleagues knew, there wasn’t anyone he shared his life with. He’d only had one romantic entanglement since his transfer, and that hadn’t lasted long. Teresa was curious to know who this mysterious guest might be and whether or not she might be the cause of his recent malaise.
The road wound its way uphill, flanked by lush woodland on one side and the Resia river on the other. The river’s emerald waters glistened in the sun and turned translucent as they twisted around pale rocks and gravelly beaches and wound their way beneath the odd wooden bridge. Up on the bluffs, they could see the occasional mountain shed peeking through the vegetation, while around them the Musi, Kanin and Plauris massifs soared into the clear sky. The tallest of these peaks reached an altitude of over eight thousand two hundred feet, but today they wouldn’t need to go anywhere near that height: the local settlements all hovered between the first layer of coniferous forests and the vegetable gardens slightly farther up the slopes.
Bovec is somewhere over there, thought Teresa as she looked east, five to ten miles through the woods, a distance Alessio Andrian would have had to cover while in a state of shock.
Who knows how many miles he traveled. He must have walked for days, going around in circles, lost.
A few hairpin turns later, the whole valley suddenly opened itself up to their gaze. It was a deep hollow, steep along the edges and lined at the base with wide expanses of forested moraines. There were very few meadows and no real plateaus. The far-flung settlements that formed the municipality of Resia consisted essentially of clusters of rooftops and church towers hidden among the trees: five towns and six hamlets for a total population of just over a thousand.
As soon as they spotted the first local road signs, Teresa understood why Parri had been so adamant that they mustn’t think of the Resian language as a dialect.
It had little in common with Slovenian. In fact, it seemed to have nothing to do with any language Teresa had ever heard before.
The administrative capital, Prato di Resia, became Ravanza. San Giorgio was Bilä. Gniva was Njïwa, with the nearby hamlet of Hözd. Oseacco was Osoanë. The sign that indicated the Resia river said Tavilïka Wöda.
Marini slowed down and came to a stop at a fork in the road.
“Which way now?” he asked.
Teresa rolled the passenger window down and tried to make out what the sign said, but she had no idea how to interpret its obscure combination of vowels and consonants. More pressingly, she had no idea which way to go. So far, they hadn’t run into a single human being. They weren’t far from the local highway that led to the border, yet Teresa felt as if they had crossed into some distant realm.
She had experienced this same sensation before—only a few months ago, in fact, in another forest very different from this one but just as imposing. The seasons had since moved forward, there were no frozen ravines, no piles of snow, and yet the feeling that they were being watched persisted as if there were someone there observing their every move. Nature, in her mysterious, unnerving way, seemed to be moving and breathing all around them.
“Switch off the engine,” Teresa said.
Marini complied and immediately the sounds of the forest were upon their ears like the exhalations of a massive organism playing host to their presence. Instead of the silence Teresa had expected, they heard a symphony of voices chorusing in perfect harmony, bound by a profoundly symbiotic connection: the whisper of verdant canopies, the rush of the river as it flowed over the rocks and its gentler gurgling farther up the slopes, where its course was slower, a sudden rustling among the nettles, the crackle of woodland creatures slithering in the undergrowth, a tremor of wind skimming the tops of the trees, lifting and bending their branches like a cresting wave. In that universe of echoes, even the light seemed to have its own sound: a low hum that curled over Teresa’s skin, skipped luminous across the water and warmed the shimmering pebbles.
But Teresa knew that the forest was also a place for secrets and revelations, for darkness and death, and that sometimes it hid the bones of those who had lost their way and never returned.
The scene left her in a temporary daze. In the city, one’s senses grew tame and accustomed to a faded version of the world, but here, every single organism—no matter how still and inanimate it appeared brimmed with vitality. The natural landscape of the valley was at once austere and majestic. What it lacked in exotic extravagance, it made up for with the unmistakable grandeur of its shapes and colors.
Teresa reluctantly ordered Marini to turn the engine back on and make for Prato, the largest settlement in the valley.
They followed the road as it twisted and turned uphill in endless sharp bends until another church tower appeared before them.
The sign at the entrance to the settlement—just a handful of homes along a main street—read Rośajanskë kumün. The buildings weren’t in the alpine style but looked fairly run-of-the-mill and were clearly of recent construction. Here, too, the 1976 earthquake seemed to have erased almost all traces of the past. Some of the facades were adorned with murals depicting the recent history of the local populace, images of mustachioed men wearing hats, thick suits and waistcoats, carrying what looked like chests of drawers tied to their shoulders with leather straps, a community of emigrants, knife makers, itinerant craftsmen who spent the winter months creating furniture in the dim light of their lamps and went out as soon as the snows melted to wander the world and sell their wares.
Teresa spotted an inn and gestured at Marini to park nearby. They had arrived at a street with an apparently unpronounceable name: Ta-w Hradö.
“This place is paradise,” said Blanca, stepping out of the car with Smoky by her side. “The air smells amazing.”
“All I can smell is dog breath.”
“Don’t be so irritating, Marini.”
“I’m only being honest.”
Teresa took Blanca’s arm.
“He’s just jealous,” she whispered into the girl’s ear.
They crossed a bridge over the turquoise waters of a rocky stream. Some children had gathered near a cluster of enormous limestone boulders and were skipping around and laughing. When they saw Teresa leaning over the parapet, they quickly scattered, abandoning their multicolored toy boats to the current.
The Fortune Tavern was an historic establishment, dating—according to the sign outside—to the year 1902. Its oak door opened inwards into a dimly lit interior. Inside, the air felt cool and refreshing against Teresa’s overheated limbs.
“Welcome,” the innkeeper greeted them as they stepped through the doorway.
The innkeeper was busy wiping vigorously at a set of tumblers and placing them in a row over the counter, so at first, they only saw her back. But when she finally turned around, they realized that she possessed an unconventional sort of beauty. She was wearing an ochre tunic that fell all the way to her feet, and it was impossible to determine her age; her perfectly white hair, pulled up in a high ponytail, contrasted with the smoothness of her skin and the determined arc of her eyebrows, which she had painted black. Her eyes were a deep blue that complemented her scarlet lips and the lapis lazuli ensconced in the silver framework of the large earrings hanging from her ears. On her hands she wore fingerless lace gloves. She was tall. She was, quite simply, majestic.
So far, they had only heard their hostess say one word, but it had been enough to reveal the unusual accent that marked her speech, which sounded like she had broken each syllable into its component parts before sewing them back together in her own personal, pleasing cadence.
They returned her greeting and sat on the stools at the bar. Smoky settled calmly and quietly between Blanca’s feet.
One of the other customers paid his bill and left, bidding the innkeeper farewell on his way out. Teresa thought she heard him say her name: it sounded like “Mat.”
“What would you like?” she asked them as she placed the departing customer’s money in the cash register.
They ordered soft drinks. It was past eleven in the morning now, and the only other patrons were two old men sitting in a corner with their heads buried in a game of cards. The tavern was rather unusual in appearance. The walls and the ceiling were paneled in a light honey-hued wood. Long strings of garlic hung from the rafters like celebratory bunting, in a nod to the area’s agrarian roots. A bulbous black cast iron stove held a bouquet of wildflowers bound with red and blue ribbon, the same kind that had been tied around the necks of the dozens of violins hanging from the walls. Some of these must have been antiques. Even more numerous were the photographs arranged in tidy rows beneath each instrument: portraits of men and women of all ages, and across several generations. There must have been over a hundred of these all around the room.
Teresa watched the woman working behind the counter. After she’d served them their drinks, she’d gone back to wiping the tumblers, her blue nail polish standing out against the kitchen towel.
“We saw some kids playing by the river on our way here,” Teresa began. “But I think I must have startled them. They ran away when they spotted me and their toys were swept off in the current. I’m very sorry.”
The woman laughed.
“Don’t worry. They’ll find them,” she said, turning around. “There’s a bend in the river a little way down the valley. We call it the gully. It’s where the river deposits anything it’s picked up along the way. Their toys will have washed up there already. But say, what brings you here? You’re not tourists.”
There was an element of curiosity in the woman’s tone, but it was tinged with something else, too, something less obvious and thus more interesting to Teresa: it wasn’t suspicion, nor was it annoyance. Teresa couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
“We’re interested in the history of the valley. We’ve heard a lot about your people,” she replied evasively.
The woman smiled cautiously in response. She wasn’t convinced.
Teresa studied the photographs on the walls, and Mat followed her gaze.
“Portraits of our musicians, the ones who are no longer with us,” she said in answer to the unspoken question. “This is our homage to the cultural heritage of our valley, a tribute to those who’ve passed on our ancient musical traditions. They’ve bequeathed us the art of the cïtira and the bünkula.”
“Is that what you call the violin?”
The woman briefly walked out of the room before returning with a musical instrument to show them.
“This is a cïtira, a modified violin. The bünkula is more like a cello. They’re traditional Resian folk instruments. You won’t find them anywhere else in the world. And the third ‘instrument’ in our music is the tapping of the foot. Have you ever heard one of our songs?”
Teresa shook her head.
“I haven’t, unfortunately. You said the instruments are modified. What exactly do you mean?”
“They’re especially crafted to mimic the sound of a kind of bagpipe, the dudy, that used to be played in the valley before the arrival of string instruments.”
“I gather your people are rich in idiosyncrasies.”
“You’ll see for yourselves if you ever come to one of our festivals. We have our own carnival, the Püst. Our dances are beautiful and very old.”
“How old?”
The woman’s expression now was one of delight mixed with pride. How many times must she have explained this to tourists?
“Thousands of years,” she said.
“And they persist in their original form, so to speak?”
“Entirely unaltered.”
“Where do people learn how to play the old way? Is there a school?” asked Marini.
“No school. The young learn by listening to the old. That’s the way it’s always been. Follow me.”
Mat took Blanca’s hand as if they had known each other for a long time and led them all to the adjoining room, a small restaurant area finished in natural stone. She was wearing a bell around her ankle, which jingled with every step she took and occasionally poked out from beneath the hem of her tunic. She took them to a wooden mannequin standing in a corner of the room, wearing what Teresa guessed must have been some form of traditional attire. It looked rather strange.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a traditional lipe bile maškire from our carnival. The name means ‘beautiful white mask.’”
The mannequin was female in form, and had been dressed in a costume composed of several layers of skirts and a fine blouse in gauze, held around the waist with a belt the same shade of red as the ribbons that festooned the hems of the dress. Little bells had been sewn into the fabric. But the standout feature was the cap, shaped like a low cylinder and decorated with paper flowers in a variety of colors.
“It’s really beautiful,” Teresa remarked.
The woman didn’t seem to hear. She was staring at the outfit, lost in thought.
“During the Püst, our white masks will dance from sunset on Shrove Tuesday to dawn on Ash Wednesday,” she said, speaking very slowly. “And they’ll light the fire in which the Babaz is to burn.”
Teresa felt Marini inching closer behind her but didn’t turn around.
“What’s the Babaz?” she asked.
The woman pointed at the ceiling, where Teresa saw hanging from one of the wooden beams an effigy made out of straw and rags. It was the size of an adult male and dressed like one, too, wearing an outfit similar to Teresa’s grandfather’s Sunday best. It even had a hat on, with human features painted onto the piece of cloth that served as its face. It was smiling, but its smile was stiff and melancholy.
Perhaps he knows he’s going to end up in flames, Teresa thought to herself.
“I’m the keeper of its ashes,” the woman continued. She went up to a sideboard and ran her hand over a row of terracotta vases. “The Babaz represents the old year, the cold and barren darkness of winter, the past with all its suffering and sin. My duty is to gather its remains while they’re still hot.”
“I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a ritual where it’s a male figure who ends up incinerated in a metaphorical pagan sacrifice.”
Their hostess threw her head back in laughter, exposing her pale throat. She must have been at least fifty years old, but time seemed to have stopped having an effect on her long ago, and only the occasional ripple across her face revealed glimpses of what she should, by rights, have looked like.
“We treasure our difference,” the woman replied.
Teresa caught her eye.
“Yes—more so, I gather, than people do elsewhere. Or am I wrong?” she queried.
The woman’s expression turned serious.
“You’re not wrong. It must be that we can feel it slipping through our fingers. But I suppose modern life is, by definition, a general bastardization of all things—and I mean that in the best possible way. Now, they want to take our difference away from us, erase it and replace it with something that isn’t ours, not in the slightest. I’ll never understand it.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve introduced a new law designed to protect minorities, but in practice it’ll wipe our culture out,” the woman explained, releasing a sigh that seemed to suggest it caused her physical pain even to talk about this. “They’ve grouped our culture with Slovenian culture, but we’re not Slovenians and never have been. I often wonder if some day in the distant past someone mixed up Slavonic with Slovenian and we’re now paying for their mistake. This law will engulf our most precious inheritance.”
“Engulf it?” said Marini, echoing her words.
The woman picked up a vase and ran her hand over it.
“It places an improper label upon our history,” she muttered. “Imagine if they told you your family had never existed, that your parents aren’t the people who brought you to life. Imagine if someone suddenly erased your ancestors’ past, stole it, handed it over to somebody else. They’re essentially telling us that our history isn’t real, that our language is a dialect. A dialect—can you believe it? Even UNESCO lists it as an endangered language.
“The Slovenians have always had designs on our lands, but we’ll never allow their plans to come to fruition. We’re Resians and we’re Italians. In that order. We’ve earned the right to be Italians. We’ve fought in this country’s every war, we’ve done our part in protecting its borders.”
She put the vase carefully back in its place and spoke no more. Her breathing had quickened; Teresa could hear it. This was something the woman cared deeply about, something that stole the air out of her lungs. Teresa wondered what it must be like to be so attached to one’s origins as to suffer this deeply when they were questioned.
“You were saying someone had made a mistake . . .” she prompted.
“Yes, a mistake with grave consequences. There are some among us—a handful at best—who’d prefer to live under Slovenian tutelage. And they’ve had their wish, thanks to an unconstitutional rule that’s allowed a small minority to surrender the rest of us—a thousand people, a whole valley and our history—into the grasp of a preposterous law.
“If you go to a museum now, you’ll see artifacts that had belonged to our ancestors marked as Slovenian, not Resian. Our dances and our songs, the likes of which exist nowhere else in the world, are described as being Slovenian. Do you see what they’re doing to us? They’re annihilating us. They’re erasing us.”
