She said yes.
With a companion like this, to reflect my moods and act as buffer
between myself and the world, I felt I could do anything. Already I saw
myself exploring those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of
work and output, poking my nose into municipal archives and libraries to
learn the history of those various quarries of marble, plain and
coloured; tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza and
Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his and the inscription
he left on the rock; speculating why the Romans, who ransacked the
furthermost corners of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little of
the treasures here buried; why the Florentines were long content to use
that grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [2] with its golden
streaks, was lying at their very doors....
The gods willed otherwise.
Then, leaving that hospitable dame, we strolled forth along a winding
road - a good road, once more - ever upwards, under the bare chestnuts. At
last the watershed was reached and we began a zigzag descent towards the
harbour of Monterosso, meeting not a soul by the way. Snow lay on these
uplands; it began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived we
took refuge in a small hut of stone and there opened the heavy basket
which gave forth all that heart could desire - among other things, a
large fiasco of strong white wine which we drank to the dregs. It made
us both delightfully tipsy. So passed an hour of glad confidences in
that abandoned shelter with the snowflakes drifting in upon us - one of
those hours that sweeten life and compensate for months of dreary
harassment.
A long descent, past some church or convent famous as a place of
pilgrimage, led to the strand of Monterosso where the waves were
sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a
signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a
soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background;
it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi
establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by
meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a
hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in its conch-shaped
basin....
All this cloudless afternoon we conversed in a flowery dell under the
pine trees, with the blue sea at our feet. It was a different climate
from yesterday; so warm, so balmy. Impossible to conceive of snow! I
thought I had definitely bidden farewell to winter.
Trains, an endless succession of trains, were rumbling through the
bowels of the mountain underneath, many of them filled with French
soldiers bound for Salonika. They have been going southward ever since
my arrival at Levanto.
Attilio was more pensive than usual; the prospect of returning to his
bricks was plainly irksome.
