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The Little Giambattista

1

My name is Giambattista, I am ten years old and live in Cantello, a contrada di Valtorta, a small village on top of the Valle Brembana. Valtorta is formed by five quarters, scattered on the slopes of the Valley Stabina. Dress, with my parents, my seven brothers and paternal grandparents, in one of the oldest farms in the country. With noi, in the same house, also lives the family of an aunt. Uncle emigrated to France and we only see him at Christmas and in the summer. In all, we are eighteen people. On the lower floor of the farmhouse there is a stable and dairy, where we make the cheese. On the upper floor there is a kitchen, the bedrooms, a storage room and the barn. In the evening we gather in the barn to stay warm. We tell stories; I prefer those of fear. Sometimes we sing and my cousin plays the hurdy-gurdy (a kind of accordion mouth), or we tell jokes. My mother and my sisters sew and embroider the light of lümii (lights), while his grandmother and other elderly women quietly recite the rosary.

2

Once with my sister and two cousins ​​you got sick with bronchitis. We were in the barn a week, until there is dropped fever. To calm the cough they put on the chest of polenta made with oats which they bought in pharmacies. One day her aunt scolded us because we ate the polentine. My little sister was not able to heal, I luckily you. Here with us you get sick often, especially by children. In front of my house there is a porch under which passes the Iron Road. They often spend the caravans of mules overloaded: sometimes they stop to rest and eat something. On these occasions, the father stops to chat with caravan. It gives them something to drink and eat and exchanges of cheese or wine with dishes or utensils. Also coming from Switzerland traders who bring their goods to the nearby Valsassina. You do not always understand their language, but when Dad opens the fourth bottle between them they understand very well.

3

My day starts at five in the morning, when we have breakfast in the kitchen. Grown-ups are already up and bring us the milk milked in the barn. Usually eat polenta and milk and sometimes, if we have a lot of hunger, Mom also gives us the cheese. To eat, we all kneel around the forla (fire). For lunch and dinner there is always still the Parul (pot) with polenta and fiuri’ (liquid obtained from cheese whey). Sometimes you can even eat the flesh, but only when my father succeeds in catching a fox, a crow or some other animal. The meat is not always good, indeed it is sometimes very bad, but woe to protest, and then helps you feel less cold. Every now and then the dad takes us with him to hunt or to put traps and for us it is a time of great excitement. We build slingshots or bows with arrows and try to take something we, although with poor results. Once I spotted a hare and I cried to my father to shoot her. A moment later, he looked at me grimly from his stakeout, with the gun pointed where before there was the hare. For a moment I thought he wanted to shoot me. Since then, for many months I went only to hunt lizards.

4

The kitchen has a vaulted ceiling and, as a good part of the house, is all black with soot because we do not have a fireplace, but only a small hole on a wall. In this way we are warmer although, when we turn on the fireplace, the whole kitchen fills with smoke and there watery eyes. Then open the top half of the door, so the smoke comes out and we can begin to breathe again. The bottom is closed because the cold air does not enter that creepy. One Sunday my dad, which is a heavy drinker, is back from the tavern and went into the kitchen muttering a song. Did not realize that the bottom half of the door was still closed and we ended up doubling over and above the nose banging on the floor. Mom woke up and took him to bed saying a lot of words that we are forbidden to say. In the morning the dad's nose was all red and swollen and it was very funny, although no one has dared to laugh. Parents give the “can” and we must never disrespect. Also because when he drinks often gets bad.

5

Our neighbors have a frame, with which they make blankets of wool or of cotton fabrics. The mother and aunt go to help the women of the neighborhood to spin and weave, so they can make clothes for us. The new clothes but always go to the biggest, while us little we spend those used. At times I am the captain of clothes so full of patches that I have to be careful how I move and at school I am ashamed. The pants have signs rim that changes every time we pass them. My aunt says that you can know how old we are counting the number of the signs of the edges. The fabrics are the most beautiful of my big sisters, in the evening to get the embroider kit for dowry when they married.

6

After I tidied up the barn with his mother, I leave the house to go to school in Valtorta. I put on scarpei feracc, hooves with nails and often I have to run because I'm late. To get to town I must go down to the river, and back across the bridge on the other side of the pit. In all, more than three kilometers. My dad says that the bridge is there has always been above that there has passed the grandfather of his grandfather. D’estate, when there is no snow, it takes me less to get to school because I can go faster. If you are just late to run as fast as I take off my hooves, also because I'm afraid of breaking them.

7

In winter it takes me much more because with the snow it is hard and you risk slipping and falling in the creek. Sometimes I remove the hooves in the snow because they are uncomfortable, but after a while’ I have to put them back because I no longer feel my feet. Before arriving at the bridge hide their hooves into the trunk of a tree and I wear nice shoes that I carry in the folder. The bridge is the only connection between the streets and the houses of Valtorta, and many of my comrades must also proceed through their. Even Piero and Diego are often delayed. When we meet at the bridge do we race back along the trail to see who comes first in school. The last we usually take the sticks on your hands from the master, so for us surpass sgomitiamo and sgambettiamo. Sometimes I fall and I tear my pants or shirt, and so when I get home I take also from the mother.

8

The school is located in the center of Valtorta. In addition to shoes, in the folder I carry the notebook fair copy, the striped one and the squared, the primer and pencils that brought me this year Saint Lucia. I am lucky because I managed to get up to the fourth. I would like to do also the fifth but there is not enough money in the country and no one has arrived at the fifth. At least for this year, however, I will not have to work all day. When I will not go to school I will start working with my father in the barn and in the fields like my brothers. They are not happy because he takes all their money and not the remains almost nothing. He says that we are lucky because at least he had to leave to find work as many other Valtorta. The father is illiterate and the mother was able to attend the first and only learned to read from the holy pictures of the saints that they allow us to put

9

The school is one of the oldest houses in the country. Once upon a time there was the magistrate of Venice and some of the rooms on the ground floor were the cells for prisoners. Sometimes the teacher threatens us to lock ourselves in there if we do not do homework. The teacher is very strict, always has the wand under his arm and when he gets angry there by the hands. He always clean clothes and order, not like us who are dressed in rags and we know of smoke and stable. When we do not answer puts us in punishment and instead to send us home at noon, keeps us there until four without eating. The worst is that when I get home I still have to look after the cows and I feel weak because I have not eaten anything from five in the morning. At school, at least we do not have cold because each of us must take a piece of wood for the stove. In all, we are forty pupils and so there is always enough firewood. Above the school, the second floor, is the teacher's house. Once I entered because my mother gave me the cheese to bring. Inside there is a large fireplace, the biggest I've ever seen and the walls are white and not all black at home.

10

After school I have to go to the mill of one of my uncles to take the flour polenta. Near the mill there is also a mallet that produce nails and tools. If the flour is not ready I stop to look Silvano, the blacksmith, while working. With the large pliers takes a piece of iron in the embers in the furnace. The metal has a blinding white color that becomes a bright red. Then the hot iron goes under the hammer that beats him continually and slowly changes shape, while Silvano turns it quickly. When I look at it I try to guess which tool is realizing: a hatchet, un’ascia o una zappa? Then the red-hot iron ends up in the bucket of cold water and rises a cloud of hot steam that fills the room. Silvano is famous for its knives, very often traders and transporters of passage stop to buy one or to redo the wire to a blade. Silvano supports the blade on the surface of the large stone wheel wet grinding wheel, and in the dim light of the room will form a trail of sparks that reach the floor, bouncing on the floor as if they were alive. Every now and then, in the few spare moments, Dad let me help Silvano to bring coal to the furnace, so at the end of the season, if I worked hard enough, I give you a boxcutter. With this, the sera, I will build me a real bow, figurines of animals and boats to sail them in the streams.

11

Outside the hammer, instead of fire and sparks, it's all a game of water. The channel that carries the water is divided into a series of ducts wall units that drive the two wheels of the hammer mill and the. Sometimes Thomas, a mason who knows how to do a little’ of all, is to repair or adjust the machinery that has built himself. Then watch him while moving the levers that drive the gates that regulate the flow of water and the movement of the two wheels. A wheel drives the heavy club of the mallet and the big stone wheel of the grinding wheel. The same water passes through a wooden tube that draws air through the furnace, thus making the glowing embers. The other wheel moves the large horizontal wheel stone grinds the corn mill to crush barley and squashing. In the village Thomas built another mill and is building a hydraulic sawmill, that transforms the large trunks into planks. While he system I fill the machinery of questions and I'm always around, until he becomes impatient and threatens me to throw myself into the river.

12

When I get home with my siblings I have to help large to look after the cows or working in the fields. We have eight cows and in the summer there are others that my dad, to make some extra money, port together with our in pasture. My favorite cow is called Pasquina, because she was born on Easter night. This year we'll take it to the cattle fair of Valtorta. They all say that it is a beautiful beast and could even win the first prize. I hope not, because the dad would sell for sure. I remember when she was born Pasquina: not wanting to get out of the belly of the Celestial, la sua mamma, Dad has slipped an arm in the belly and pulled out the legs of the vitelline. Since she did not want to leave yet, Dad went in the barn, took a rope and tied my legs. Then he called his uncle and cousins ​​and mom and all together they started to pull the rope to get it out. The grandmother was praying in a corner because Dad said we could lose both the cow the calf. I had to keep changing the leaves to keep clean the bed of Celeste giving birth. Ad a certain point, the calf came out suddenly, along with a burst of water and blood. I am flabbergasted to watch until my father pulled me by the arm to make me go get more leaves clean. Then I put the bag in his hand clammy of the placenta to give food to the dogs. When I returned Celeste had recovered and was licking the little calf that was all wet and shivering, e fumava di vapore. It was then that her grandmother called her Pasquina to thank the Lord for having saved her and her mom.

13

The best moments are those when they send us alone in the forest to collect wood for the fireplace, or grass and dried leaves are used to feed the cows and to make them a bed in the barn. Every now and then, if we fill quickly panniers, ci avanza un po’ of time to play or to gather hazelnuts and chestnuts, or blueberries, the roots of sweet, the elder and rose hips to make jam. The most exciting activity is stealing apples or cherries from the trees of the farms nearby, that, plus, ci passa un po’ the well. I prefer games that are the cip (hide and seek), the world, the bowls with the stones of the stream, play with water or bathe in the pools. Every now and then we get into a little valley where there are mines of iron, which in summer are empty because we are working only in winter. In fine weather inside is too hot and humid and there are water infiltration. Some of my teammates after the third grade went to work in the mines with large. We enter all together trying to be brave and go far forward as possible. At some point you can not see anything and then we turn around and start running wildly screaming in terror, trying not to fall behind on their own. If someone is on our street is swept mercilessly.

14

In the evenings are always very tired and sometimes I fall asleep in the barn while we say the rosary. When we go to bed we all sleep together in one room with our parents. We small, to be warmer and because there is little room we sleep in a cot in four, ü Co, ü pe (head and feet). When you are in bed and I'm going to sleep I feel the breath of the mother, I do not see that day almost never, while with a kiss and a caress us the good night. Then I close my eyes and think back to the good times last summer, when I went for the first time with my father and my brothers to bring the cows in the pastures, where the grass is better. We walked all day and do not eat much, because we could take only a few things. But every day was an adventure and was sleeping outdoors in the evening by the fire. To warm up to me clutching Lightning, my favorite dog, with which his father holds together the cows. I had all the space I wanted and I fell asleep happy, watching the sun set behind the mountains on the other side of the sky sprouted the first stars.

The .. Ethnographic Museum of the Upper Valley Brembana