Multiplying Report 4

The fifth day "It was early morning, they call me to the window, they tell me Francesco they want to kill you...". It was early morning and inside myself I was humming this song, which had nothing in common with that moment except the morning hour; yes, perhaps death accompanied that pedalling of mine, but not a true death, I did not believe in it, but rather one of another nature, the one that cannot be touched because it is impalpable, the one that has always accompanied the man who is not afraid of it. Death as a place that produces, and is produced by, transformation. But I did not yet know what of me would die, and what would be reborn, but how to stop a process that was by then beginning, how to glimpse all this in my simple pedalling. To Siddhartha, among the Samanas, three things were taught: to fast, to think, to wait.

To me, what has my life taught? The cool morning delighted my journey; from the main road my curiosity slipped into those more hidden lanes that were not permitted to me. The western coast looked at the castanets far off from me; who knows what will become of that hill sheer above the ocean that in its time was dear to me. But there was no time for memories; the sun by now at eleven made the climb disproportionately hard. The spring was wrapped in trees that told of the life that had been around it; the coolness that place provided was enormous, almost unreal; I refreshed myself undisturbed for several hours. I was walking through the streets of that anonymous village (S. Francesco d'Aglientu) when I glimpsed a blacksmith's shop; his cordiality far surpassed the hardness of his trade.

He presented me his whole museum; ancient deeds showed themselves to my eyes; the alchemical secret of transformation was there before me; there everything was no longer the origin; the hammer, when it struck the red-hot metal, caressed with great mastery the forms that would result from its creative action. I took my leave, marvelling at his understanding; I too, deep down, was accomplishing a miracle similar to his, but neither of us was able to understand it. To anyone who had asked me why I was pedalling in that way, I would have answered in a thousand ways, and each time differently, but few asked me, and many wondered about it. I continued on my way; some men were gathering cork, stripping it from the plants; at the end of the descent I found myself with a flat tyre; I stopped near a farm; on the pillars of the gate bulls' horns hung like a trophy.

I was immediately let in; few questions and much poor courtesy; I quickly resumed my journey. The stroll through that village gave me a fine craving for ice cream, but more than tasting my cone I savoured that coming and going of pretty girls in search of a husband; the garden opened out as a terrace over the sunset behind the Valley of the Moon. The moon, beautiful companion, dear moon, loving moon, hateful moon, murderous moon, goatish moon, moon close to my dreams, moon far from my loves, wise moon, western moon, moon that can do nothing. Moon of my life. For that night too I could rest.