At Vaprio, I sometimes ate with a farmer and his wife, in their tiny stone farmhouse. They did not complain, yet they slept on mats, ate meat now and then, worked from dawn to sundown, shivered through the winters, saved florins in a clay pot. Their hands at mealtime were the hands of old people and yet they were not old.
In the Vaprio region the people have to pay exorbitant milling fees, pay to use a common oven or wine press. Fishing rights have been stolen. For a few gentlemen there may be no wood for winter; for many others there may be no wood at all. Some want a civil war to put them on their feet.
At Vaprio, I recall a child of nine or ten: I saw her often on my visits there: she reminded me of that festa, in May, in Florence, when I fell in love with my own Beatrice, when I was eleven or twelve years old. My Beatrice was beautiful, her features delicately formed, her behavior gentle and agreeable, full of candid loveliness... I thought of her as my angel.
In those days, in Firenze, I often passed Dante’s home: his wooden door had a bronze knocker, a simple braided ring. I used to imagine knocking and saying:
“Is Dante Alighieri at home?”
I expected a housekeeper to reply:
“He’s been dead a hundred and fifty years, you fool!”
I would have dashed off, laughing.
Cloux