From a story by Ginevra Barbetti on Balsamic Borgo
The shy muzzle of my orange ‘77 Cinquecento, by now as broken down and uncomfortable as life itself, enters at nightfall into the metal arms of a gate as tall as a big Emilian boy in his prime. I am here to write, between Vezzano sul Crostolo and Montecavolo. At a crossroads of such names, memorable situations can only arise, you might say. In Albinea, to be precise, a long way from certain noises and smells that muffle you until you can no longer hear them.
And yet you have to step back, every now and then, to notice it again.
Meanwhile I see the stars again. So many only once, when I was 16, when the guy I liked took me on his wispy, shaky Ciao up to the highest hill in Florence to explain the Ptolemaic constellations to me. I was without my glasses, however, and could only see a leaden black cape. I still threw my arm upwards pointing at random stars with a fair amount of bravado: “This one what's her name? And that one over there?”.
Tonight, on the contrary, with my finger-thick lenses on my nose, I recognise those thousand fragments of light. I seem to have fallen between the lines of a Burnett book. I'm counting on meeting a rabbit in a bowtie with a moustache who tells me his business or maybe a toad who promises brilliant company, but only after a passionate kiss on the nose. Apparently there is a winged deer that if you close your eyes and think hard about it will take you to Reggio in the saddle to eat passatelli in broth. A gentleman with vermilion-red cheeks swore this to me this morning at the service station while I was getting gas.
I want to put my nose inside the pergola of old roses now. Here they have as many as the stars above my head. I ask for a lantern from the landlady, a dark-haired girl with a frank smile that smells so much like here. Her name is Cristina, and she carries a candle in her hand with her palm outstretched to protect the flame from the shifting air as she walks quickly towards me. She shows me the way to the garden. She tells me that each flower has its own story, a memory that has grown in the opportunity given by that strip of land fertile with scents and colours.
The light in some rooms is still on. The moonlight beats on the petals and creates a delicate and powerful poetry. I am reminded of my grandmother who used to say: 'Without bread yes, without roses never'.
It has become even more night. I climb the stone stairs and hurl myself at the bed. It is soft and fresh, it smells of cedar like the shelf next to it.
Between the cushions, Berta with the blue eyes, the Hungarian doll Cristina's father brought her back from a trip. Gertrude Jekyll is instead the name of the room. It is a tribute to the flowery spiker who occasionally, tired, leans on the first available arch to grow her comforting smelling roses.
So was the English writer, a brilliant and eclectic artist, who designed more than 400 gardens in the early 1900s. But that Jekyll, I am quite certain, must also have something to do with Mrs. Hyde and the strange case with Stevenson's signature.
Time for a hot shower, two eyes closed, and I ask him.
