The Wild Boy by Paolo Cognetti

Author:Paolo Cognetti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

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I went down in no hurry that morning, feeling hostile toward the place I was going back to. The hut, my collection of finds, the unused notebooks, the books. A small garret room so full of me, while outside the mountain offered itself, unexplored, in every direction. What did I need a house for? I would like to have followed the example of the shepherds of times past, who would wander from one pasture to another, stopping to sleep in the shelters provided by the rocks. I would sometimes come across these in my explorations: protruding boulders at the base of which the ground had been cleared and sometimes enclosed with a drystone wall. They had a name for these in the local dialect, which I had heard uttered by Remigio while we were haymaking. What is a barma? I’d asked him. A rock giving shelter when it rains, he’d replied.

Down at the hut it was midday, and a small family had spread a blanket on the grass in front of it. Two children were splashing each other in the fountain, the mother had taken out bags and containers, the father gave me the once-over with the kind of surly stare that men exchange when there is territory or family to defend. It’s possible that I was looking at him that way too.

Excuse me, is this private property? his wife asked me, rather more courteously.

No, no, I said, it’s for everyone, please stay.

Once inside I unhooked the rucksack from the nail on which it was hanging, stuffed a few items of clothing inside together with a waterproof ground sheet, a sleeping bag, a flask of wine, all the tins I had in the kitchen, and a lighter, a knife, strips of newspaper, a torch, two hooks, a pen, and a notebook. I wanted to push myself beyond the area I was familiar with, to discover what lay two or three days’ walking distance from there. I was setting off with that load—yet shutting the door behind me it seemed as if I was freeing myself of a burden. The burden, as usual, could be the hut or the people who in my eyes had profaned it, but it was much more likely that it was myself. What do we run from when we run away from home? So long, said the wild boy to the domestic double of himself, then turned his back on him and took the rising path.

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