We might walk on to Monterosso afterwards. Couldn't
I manage it?
To be sure I could. And the very next day. But the place seemed a long
way off and the country absolutely wild. I said:
"You will have to carry a basket of food."
"Better than bricks which grow heavier every minute. Your basket, I
daresay, will be pretty light towards evening."
The name of his natal village, a mere hamlet, has slipped my memory. I
only know that we moved at daybreak up the valley behind Levanto and
presently turned to our right past a small mill of some kind; olives,
then chestnuts, accompanied the path which grew steeper every moment,
and was soon ankle-deep in slush from the melted snow. This was his
daily walk, he explained. An hour and a half down, in the chill twilight
of dawn; two hours' trudge home, always up hill, dead tired, through mud
and mire, in pitch darkness, often with snow and rain.
"Do you wonder," he added, "at my preferring to be with you?"
"I wonder at my fortune, which gave me such a charming friend. I am not
always so lucky."
"Luck - it is the devil. We have had no news from my father in America
for two years. No remittances ever come from him. He may be dead, for
all we know. Our land lies half untilled; we cannot pay for the hire of
day labourers.
