Paolo Cognetti - The Eight Mountains

First, though, we needed to discover its source. Towards the August bank holiday we had already gone beyond the territory of Bruno’s uncle. There was a large tributary which provided the Alpine farmsteads with water, and a little way after this fork a rudimentary bridge consisting of a few planks of wood provided a crossing. After that the river narrowed and presented us with no further difficulty. I understood from the thinning out of the tree cover that we were getting to a level of two thousand meters. The alders and birches disappeared from the banks, all other trees giving way to the larch; above our heads was that world of rock and stone that Luigi Guglielmina had called Grenon . At this point the bed of the river lost its usual appearance—that of something excavated and shaped by the water—becoming instead nothing but scree. The water literally vanished beneath our feet. It escaped beneath the stones here, amidst the contorted roots of a juniper.

This is not how I had imagined my river ending up, and I was disappointed. I turned towards Bruno, who was climbing a few steps behind me. All afternoon he had been keeping himself to himself, lost in his own thoughts. When this mood came over him the only thing I could do was follow after him in silence, hoping that it would pass.

But as soon as he caught sight of the spring he snapped out of it. He had sensed my disappointment at a glance. “Wait,” he said. He signaled to me to keep quiet and listen, and looked at the scree at our feet.

That day the air was not still, like it was at the height of summer. A cold wind blew over the tepid stones and, passing through the fading plants, carried away soft clusters of seeds and set up a rustling in the trees. By listening hard, together with this rustling I could hear water gurgling. A sound different from the ones it makes above ground, deeper and more muffled. It seemed to be coming from beneath the scree. I understood what it was and began to climb again to follow it, searching like a dowser for the water that I could hear but not see. Bruno let me go on ahead, already knowing what we would find.

What we found was a lake hidden in a basin at the foot of the Grenon. It was circular and at two or three hundred meters across was the largest that I’d ever seen in the mountains. The marvelous thing about Alpine lakes is that you never expect them, while climbing, unless you know already that they are there—that you don’t catch sight of them until the very last step over a ridge, at which point the view suddenly opens up before your eyes. The basin was all scree on its sunlit side, and as you moved your gaze gradually towards the shadows you saw that it became covered at first by willows and rhododendrons, and then by more woods. In its middle was this lake. Observing it, I was able to understand how it had been made: the ancient avalanche that could be seen from below, from Bruno’s uncle’s pastures, had sealed the valley like a dam. The lake had been formed above the dam, collecting the water that ran off from the surrounding snow, before resurfacing downhill, filtered by the scree, becoming in the process the river that we knew. I liked the fact that it was born in this way. It seemed to me an origin worthy of a great river.

“What’s this lake called?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Bruno said. “Grenon. Almost everything’s called that around here.”

His previous mood had returned. He sat down on the grass and I remained standing next to him. It was easier to look at the lake than to look at each other: a few meters in front of us a large rock emerged from the water, like a small island, and it was useful to have something to fix my gaze on.

“Your parents have spoken to my uncle,” said Bruno, after a while. “Did you know about that?”

“No,” I lied.

“Strange. I don’t understand what’s going on at all.”

“About what?”

“About the secrets you have between you.”

“So what did they talk to your uncle about?”

“About me,” he replied.

Now I sat down next to him. What he was about to tell me came as no surprise. My parents had been discussing it for some time now, and I had not needed to listen behind doors in order to discover their intentions: the previous day they had suggested to Luigi Guglielmina that in September we should take Bruno with us. Take him to Milan. They had offered to take him into our home, and to enroll him in a college. In a technical or professional institute, whichever he preferred. They were thinking about a trial year: if Bruno wasn’t happy with the arrangement he would be able to give up and return to Grana next summer. If on the other hand it all worked out, then they would be happy to keep him with us until his graduation. At that point he would be free to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

Even in the account of this given by Bruno I could recognize the voice of my mother. Happy to keep him with us . Free to decide. The rest of his life.

I said: “Your uncle will never agree to it.”

“Oh but he will,” said Bruno. “And do you know why?”

“Why?”

“For the money.”

He dug around in the ground with a finger, picked up a pebble and added: “Who’s going to pay for it? That’s all that interests my uncle. Your parents have said that they’ll take care of everything. Board and lodging, school, the lot. For him it’s a real bargain.”

“And what does your aunt say about it?”

“It’s fine by her.”

“And your mother?”

Bruno snorted. He threw the pebble into the water. It was so small that it made no sound. “What my mother always says. The usual. A big nothing.”

There was a layer of dried mud on the rocks on the bank. A black crust showing the level the lake had reached in spring. Now the snowfields that fed it had been reduced to gray stains in the gullies, and if the summer were to continue it would end up by making them disappear altogether. Without the snow, who knows what would happen to the lake.

“And what about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Would you like to?”

“To come to Milan?” said Bruno. “I haven’t a clue. Do you know that ever since yesterday I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like? And I can’t do it. I have no idea what it would be like.”

We remained in silence. I, who knew only too well what it was like, did not have to imagine anything in order to be opposed to the idea. Bruno would have hated Milan, and Milan would have ruined Bruno, just like when his aunt washed and dressed him up and sent him around to us to conjugate verbs. I really could not understand why my parents were going out of their way to turn him into something that he wasn’t. What was wrong with letting him graze cows for the rest of his life? I was unaware of the selfishness of this thought, that it wasn’t really concerned with Bruno, with his own wishes and his future—but only with the use I could continue to make of him. I was thinking of my summers, my companion, my own experience of the mountain. I hoped that, up there, nothing would ever change—not even the charred shacks or mounds of manure lining the road—that he should stay the same, always, along with the piles of manure and the ruins, frozen in time and awaiting my arrival.

“Well, maybe you should tell them,” I suggested.

“Tell them what?”

“That you don’t want to go to Milan. That you want to stay here.”

Bruno turned to look at me. He raised his eyebrows. He had not expected such advice from me. Although he may have been thinking the very same thing himself, coming from me it did not seem right. “Are you crazy?” he said. “I’m not staying here. I’ve spent my whole life going up and down this mountain.”