My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) by Dario Fo Read Free Book Online Page B

thinking has insinuated itself, alongside a story-teller’s taste for paradox, into my DNA, so that I constantly find myself torn between rational rigour and the most weird surrealism.
    When I was a boy, this predisposition manifested itself in the enjoyment I felt in taking hold of a stone and trying to modify its shape with chisel and club. I got the same sensation from kneading clay.
    The many moves that my father was forced to make brought us to Oleggio, near Novara. Nearby there was a kiln alongside a brick and tile factory, and that’s where Fulvio and I spent a large part of the day. We won the confidence of the manager, who not only taught us the techniques of mixing and baking but also let us work on the potter’s wheel used for shaping vases. It was a truly magical game: the wheel was not only for vases, flasks and bowls, but if you had the technique to manipulate it correctly, you could adapt it to produce more complex forms, like a head or even a torso with chest, stomach and buttocks.
    However, to my enormous distress, we had to move on from Oleggio as well. In fact I had to go by myself since my mother was expecting another child (who turned out to be a girl), and could not cope with both Fulvio and me. So, to give my mother peace during her pregnancy, I was dispatched to my other grandfather in Lomellina, in Sartirana.
    The nickname of the Sartirana grandfather was Bristìn, which means ‘pepper seed’. It did not take me long to find out the reason for that ‘title’: my grandfather’s comments and jibes stung the tongue and stomach of anyone who had to swallow them.
    I was really annoyed at having to stay who knows how long in that flat land without so much as a hill in sight … swarms of insects that bit you, clouds of midges that got up your nose and a huge marshland that they called rice fields.
    But when I got to Grandfather’s farm, my mood changed instantly. The first thing that met my eyes was a spacious portico skirting the wall of the house, where bunches of fruits and vegetables by the thousand hung from the arches. The whole thing looked like majestic decorations for a major feast. A huge cart horse stood in the centre of the yard. I had never seen a horse of such dimensions, one which could have easily passed for an elephant. Next to him an agile and graceful mare was performing caracols by herself, to the annoyance of a donkey which was kicking out, although more as part of a game than in anger.
    An orchard with vegetable patches and an incredible variety of fruit trees opened out on the far side of the canal which cut through the farm. Grandfather Bristìn took me by the hand and together, astride the donkey, we crossed the wooden bridge over the canal. The first thing that came into view was a plum tree but, incredibly, different coloured plums, yellow, red and blue, were hanging from each branch. My grandfather explained that it was a ‘multiple transplant’, and was his own work.
    I had never seen the like! It could have been an enchanted scene in a fairy story. A long ladder was propped against the trunk and Grandfather encouraged me to climb up: ‘Go on, climb up and try one. See how each one has a different taste from the one next to it.’
    And it was true. First I bit into a dark plum, and beautifully scented, red juice squirted over my face. When I tried others on other branches, I found that the yellow plums had a delicate, sweet pulp, the red ones seemed to have been dipped in rosolio, while others again were swollen and fatter with a harsh, bitter flavour. The most succulent were the tiny yellow ones which hung in bunches and had a soft stone that you could chew. I was astounded when I came across a large branch with reddish-yellow fruit … incredible: an apricot transplant on a plum tree!
    â€˜You’re a magician, Granddad! When I tell them all at school, nobody’s going to believe me. They’ll tell me