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Conti/Fusco 91
giant standing behind him. I had imagined him not very tall, but
thin. Instead, he was more stocky than short. He had on a light brown
gabardine suit with an ivory shirt and a serpentine bright green tie.
His feet were clad in white shoes with cinnamon-red perforated
tips. His head, perfectly bald, was tucked down a little between his
shoulders and his right eye was covered by a black band.
“Alalà! Welcome, men of the sea!” he greeted us, in a thin voice
with a slightly singsong cadence. Then, holding out a wooden bowl,
he said, “Give your alms for the poor!”
He handed over the bowl, into which a few coins had dropped,
to the bearded giant and then shook everybody’s hands and inquired,
caressing my cheek, who was this “blond little white boatswain.”
Then he invited us to admire the “fateful prow”, which just
a few hours earlier some shipyard workers, come from Venice, had
finished installing on its base among the cypress trees. There began
our tour of the Vittoriale with brief stops at the Schiavoni Court, the
Arengo, the Orchard, the Lake of the Dances, the Valley of
l’Acquapazza or Wild Waters, and the Valley of l’Acquasavia or
Wise Waters. At the end of the tour, which lasted about two hours
and during which, from time to time, the Bard caressed my cheek,
we found ourselves once again in front of the “Priory.”
Now my faithful uskoks will accompany you to your lodgings,”
D’Annunzio said. “But this evening I expect you at my mess, for a
modest ration. Alalà!”
“Alalà,” the “detail” echoed. Then, a bit timidly, my father inquired,
“May I bring my son this evening as well?”
“Not only may you! You must!” responded the Imaginator.
“How could we ever do without the auspicious presence of our blond
little white boatswain?”
The table we sat down to a few hours later was not a dinner
table. It was a kind of altar, on which plates and silverware occupied
the bare minimum of space, surrounded by relics and objects
of mysterious significance. Propeller shards, statuettes in bronze and
silver, ecclesiastical chalices, shreds of damask, satin, and brocade,
daggers of all shapes and sizes, aviator helmets, a dozen or so among
them of oriflammes, pennants, and streamers, phials of colored crystal,
a machine-gun ammunition belt with all its bullets…I looked
around at all that bric-a-brac with my mouth hanging open. Was I
dreaming or what? No, because I could feel D’Annunzio’ s hand –
he’d insisted that I sit beside him – touching my hair as his singsong
voice asked me, “Do you like them, my little boatswain, all