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Stefano ( protagonist of Il carcere, novel written by Cesare Pavese, 1949 )
is an antifascist North Italian engineer confined to a little town by the sea in
South Italy. He arrives there towards the end of summer and what seems a sort of
“invisibility” of young women strikes him. The only girl he falls in sometimes
is a bare – footed servant who carries water with a terracotta amphora similar
to her, similar to that used by Stefano to drink in torrid afternoons. Torrid
afternoons that he spends alone in the half – light of his miserable slum,
clasping an amphora and dreaming of that bare – footed girl. Her face is dark
and goatish, her hips are meagre and strong. Stefano clasps a slim and dark
amphora and drinks a water that tastes of goatish: a wild and sweet taste which
reminds him of the girl who carries water. She lives in a grey – stone house
similar to others in town: houses silent and apparently dead, all windows always
closed. But the girl’s one has something different: a window always open, a
window decorated with geraniums which, thanks to a perspective effect, seems
full of sea. Stefano noticed this window just arrived in town: a bright
rectangle so sharp and intense as a prisoner’s sky. Since bare – footed girl
uses an external step – ladder linked to this window to go in and out the house,
Stefano in his dreams framed her in this window of sea and geraniums. One day,
chatting at the tavern, he discovers her name: Concia. Autochthones consider
Concia just a goat, a mean sexual instrument that everyone can carelessly use;
only Stefano, the foreigner, sees Concia’s deep identity. She is the life force
that makes sky, sea and geraniums breaking through dead houses. She is water,
but not tasteless and colourless water. She is water that has no fear to be
contaminated for fecundating dryness. |
