After the war, the village used to be inundated with refugees. They stayed three or four months under the care of the Red Cross; then they were packed off to somewhere more important. The only one who ever stayed was Solda.
Solda wasn’t a refugee, however; he was a vagrant. But that didn’t make any difference to Don Parenti who asked Sergio Guerra if he could put Solda up.
When Don Parenti asked you to do something you did it; he didn’t have to twist anyone’s arm. We all had deep respect for the old priest.
There was a shack on the edge of the Guerra property where he kept old tools. There was also a rusty old bed and a mattress. His older son, Franky would sometimes sleep there if there was trouble with one of the cows, but it wasn’t really fit for human habitation, so they rigged a light and put in a little stove that ran off a gas canister.
Solda wasn’t his real name, but everyone called him that in the village. “Where are you from?” they would ask, and he would reply. “Solda”. – Somehow the name stuck.
I looked it up once and found it was a small town in the Tyrol. In the other words, not a million miles away.
Of course, Solda wasn’t from the Tyrol. He didn’t look like or act like a Tyrolean who everyone in the community thinks are snobs (frankly I do not disagree). Though, he often wore a beret – slanted over his face. Solda was skinflint. His boots had holes in them, and he wore the same pair of shabby brown trousers with a piece of string to hold them up.
In actual fact, Solda was from Slovakia, which used to be – believe it or not – a part of this country. His Italian was very limited. But his papers were in order. He had a permesso or leave of stay, and for people around here who are sticklers for form that was what mattered.
Solda was a communal gardener by trade. But there’s no call for that kind of job in our village, so we got him to do odd jobs. Solda was none too bright, but he was always unstinting. If you were in a spot and needed an extra hand, he’d lend you his muscles in exchange for some wine and pasta. Though, mainly, he helped out on the Guerra farm alongside Franky and his cows.
Villages up here in the mountains are very tight little communities, people don’t get out and about. But there is no end of fantasy in their explanations – the ones that inevitably do the rounds of the bars in the piazza.
Solda has a screw loose. He’s got a piece of metal or bullet in his brain. They say he was born like it. The old women say a devil put a curse on him. Or he must have done something bad to end up like that. Murdered his mother or his sister or he kidnapped children. He has even been a contract killer for the communists.
When Don Parenti heard these stories, he used to scold the tellers and remind them that everyone was God’s children, even Solda.
“Solda is a communist,” they would reply.
“Nonsense,” said Don Parenti. “Solda is as a good anti-communist as me.”
Don Parenti was not wrong about that. I once had a conversation with Solda, if you could call what passed between us a conversation. Not so long ago there was something in the news about the Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. Solda stops me in the street to make a point of it. “The Russians are bad people,” he says. “What do you expect?” I say. “They’re communists.” “Bad people,” he repeats. “Yes,” I say, “they are our enemies.” There were tears in his eyes and he was tongue-tied. What had the Russkis done to Solda, or Solda to the Russkis, for that matter? Something bad I’ll wager.
Solda they said was a cry baby. He was always crying, I agree. Though I believe there was something wrong with his eyes. Was it conjunctivitis?
People thought of Solda as a stranger, and there is very important distinction in these parts – the distinction between stranger and foreigner. A foreigner is someone distant and remote and therefore to be respected, but a stranger is immediately someone to be viewed with suspicion.
Solda was fair game for the kids who would tease him mercilessly. In fact, I remember the Bruno boys – who are regarded as tearaways anyway – stuck a sign on his back. “Asino,” it read, “donkey”. When Bruno found out, he whipped them good and proper. We all thought he had done the right thing, even Don Parenti.
Of course, you felt sorry for Solda, but you still might want to be cruel to him. Us adults could not resist it sometimes. Solda’s thick, we would say when we were drunk after the harvest. What did his mother wish for when she gave birth?
Solda cannot read, signs his name with an S. He’s an illiterate fool, we say, but I say he knew how to read. Albeit slowly, squinting at the words. You would catch him at the back of the church, staring at the hymn sheet. He would hold it up to the light, as if his eyes could not focus on it. And sometimes he sang along, holding the sheet and crying, “Hallelujah!” He had a loud voice that would crack on the higher notes.
Yes, Solda was an oddball. I would not dispute it. Once Don Parenti asked him to help me paint the vestry. I wanted him to do the window frames, and I had bought some paint. The brushes were all bunged up from an old job, and I put them in a jar of turps. When Solda saw me doing this, he got really upset. “Sporco,” he says to me. “Not clean.” – “What’s not clean?” I say. Frankly, I did not understand what Solda was talking about. And often you didn’t. – Mind you, he still helped me paint those frames. Albeit reluctantly.
Not only Solda was strange, but he was also famous for his disappearing acts. He’d be gone for weeks on end. People would begin to worry and say:
“Have you seen Solda? Only I need him for a job. Where is that simpleton when you need him?”
Then he would turn up unannounced.
“Ho faime,” he says. “I’m hungry.”
Then, some fool decides to give him some food. And the whole merry process starts over again.
Why, one evening the summer before last, when everyone was out and about, he turns up in the piazza. He’s holding this cat. It’s a little cat. Not much more than a kitten. A tortoiseshell with a white nose.
“Sergio,” he says, turning to Guerra who was sitting at the bar, “can I have eggs?”
The cat used to follow Solda around. She would sit there purring and watching him work, which was nice to see. The women certainly cheered up when they saw Solda with his cat. In fact, Signora Schiappa, who contrary to reputation is not always an old boot, would smile and pat him on the back. “Bravo, Solda,” she would say, “Good boy, bravo.” And she used to give him extra milk and eggs.
About six months ago, Don Parenti died. He was an old man, and it was his time. God made sure of that.
Everyone in the village was upset, of course, and so too was Solda. He could not stop crying. In fact, I remember when the service was over, he was still sitting there when everyone had gone outside. “Solda,” I say, “what’s up?” – “Look,” he says “I can see him.” There he is looking – staring wildly at something above the altar. I’m thinking to myself:
Has he seen a ghost? – Or is it just that picture of Don Bosco?
Now you are going to say what is all the trouble about? -The new priest has yet to arrive from Rome, but somehow the lot has fallen to me, the sexton. Really it is embarrassing. I can’t say I am cut to be Don Parenti’s stand-in, or any priest for that matter.
“You better come quick,” they said. “Solda is in trouble.”
I got in Don Parenti’s old car and drove to the next village.
It turned out, Solda had got drunk and tried to smash up the piazza. The carabinieri had put him in the lock up to cool down.
When I went to fetch him, Solda started crying. Honestly, he looked a sorry sight.
“I kill Misha,” he told me, “I kill my cat.”
Don Parenti would have had the answer, but I didn’t. Some individuals are – as we say – sfigati – unlucky, cursed. They cannot put a foot right, or even left as the case may be. But your unlucky sexton did his best. I reasoned with the carabinieri and they decided to let Solda go.
But Solda did not want to come with me.
“Schemo,” I said, “Don’t be silly. Come home with me. Signora Bianchi will cook us supper.”
But Solda shook his head and started walking in the opposite direction from the car.
Cosa potevo fare? What could I do in the circumstances?
Three months have gone by, but I often think about Solda. I have faith, but doubts begin to weigh me down. I find it hard to get up and hold the service. I tell Signora Bianchi that there is something wrong with my back. “Nonsense!” she says. And she continues to bring my breakfast, and I continue to wish I didn’t have to get out of bed.
One day recently the farmer Sergio Guerra came to see me.
“We found Solda’s cat under a pile of rubbish and blankets in the shack,” he says. “We thought you should have it.”
In the spring, the new priest is coming, and I the imposter hope to have some peace.