I often used to go there, on weekend afternoons, with my brother-in-law Giuseppe, an entomologist, as the surrounding fields were apparently well stocked with insects. It was an excuse to get into the country for a breath of fresh air.
I may say that the hideous building’s state of repair had impressed me the first time I saw it. Its decrepitude could be seen in the very color of its bricks, in the rough repairs, the various beams acting as supports. The back wall was particularly horrifying, blankly bare, with a few small irregular openings more like loopholes than real windows; for this reason it looked higher than the façade, which was lightened by rows of windows. “Don’t you think that that wall’s leaning at an angle?” I remember asking my brother-in-law one day.
He laughed. “Let’s hope so. But it’s just your imagination. High walls always give that impression.”
One Saturday in July we were out there on one of these walks. My brother-in-law had with him his two daughters, little girls at the time, and a colleague from the University, a Professor Scavezzi, a pale boneless man of about forty whom I had always disliked for his hypocrisy and condescension. My brother-in-law always said he was a positive well of knowledge and a very worthy person besides. But I thought he was a fool: this seemed to me proven by the fact that he treated me extremely high-handedly just because I was a tailor and he was a scientist.
When we arrived at the Baliverna, we went behind it along the wall I have described; here there was a wide stretch of dusty ground where the boys played soccer. There were no boys that day; just women with children sitting in the sun at the edge by the grass verge at the roadside.
It was early afternoon and the only sound from inside the tenement was that of an occasional voice. The sun shone on the gloomy expanse of the wall, though without sharp brightness; poles protruded from the windows covered with piles of drying washing, which hung as lifeless as flags on a still day; there was not a breath of wind.
In the past I had been a keen mountaineer; and while the others were looking for their insects, I felt a sudden desire to climb up the great expanse of wall: the holes, the jutting-out edges of some of the bricks, the bits of old iron embedded here and there in crevices between bricks, all offered convenient holds. I had no intention of climbing to the top. I simply wanted to stretch my limbs, to exercise my muscles. Rather childish, admittedly.
Without difficulty I climbed about six feet up the support of a big door which had been walled up. As I reached the lintel I stretched out my right hand toward the series of irradiating rusty iron spikes, shaped like spears, which closed in the lunette (in the old days, perhaps, the cavity had housed the image of some saint).
I managed to grasp the point of one of them and pulled myself up on it. But suddenly it gave way and broke. Luckily I was only about six feet off the ground. I tried, though in vain, to hold myself up with my other hand. I lost my balance and fell backward to the ground, landing on my feet unhurt, though with a sharp jolt. The broken piece of iron fell down after me.
Almost immediately afterward, behind this iron spike, another one broke: it was longer than the one I’d broken at first and had been placed vertically so as to meet a sort of corbel above it. It must have been a sort of prop, an attempt at repairing a weak point. Without its support, the corbel too—a slab of stone about the width of three bricks—gave way, though it didn’t actually fall; it hung there precariously.
But that was not the end of my involuntary act of demolition. The corbel was supporting an old pole, about five feet in height, which in its turn helped to support a sort of balcony. Of course it was only now that I noticed all these flaws in what at first sight had merely been a vast expanse of wall. The pole was simply wedged in between the two projections; it was not actually fixed to the wall. Seconds after the displacement of the corbel, the beam fell forward, and I only just had time to jump backward and avoid being hit by it. It fell to the ground with a thud.
Was it over? To be on the safe side I moved away from the wall, toward the others who were about thirty yards away. All four were standing, looking in my direction: but it was not me they were looking at. They were staring at the wall above my head and I shall never forget the expressions on their faces. Suddenly my brother-in-law shouted: “My God, look at that, look at it!”
I turned around. Above the balcony, but farther to the right, the great wall, which was solid and regular in that section, was swelling like a piece of stretched material pressed sharply outward. First a slight shudder crept through the whole wall; then a long narrow weal appeared; and the tiles began to break apart, like so many rotten teeth; and then, amid showers of dusty rubble, a dark crack appeared.
Was it a matter of seconds or of minutes? I simply don’t know. But while it was happening—it sounds crazy to say so—from the depths of the building there came an ominous rumbling, not unlike a bugle call. You could hear the dogs howling for miles around.
At this point my memory provides me with pictures of a whole series of simultaneous events: myself running as fast as I could to catch the others up who were already some way away; the women by the roadside who
