RETURN TO FONTAMARA
311
other. Thus the
cafoni
did not deem it necessary to honor this event
by bringing out of hiding the trumpet which before Fascism they had
used for summoning the village to meetings to talk over some collective
action. Under Fascism the trumpet had been carefully concealed; now
the Communists want this symbolic trumpet, declaring themselves its
legitimate inheritors. But how can they be the legitimate inheritors
when, for reasons of their own, they have deemed it expedient to come
to terms with the Tarocchi family? Therefore, after having briefly re–
appeared during an ephemeral and anarchic occupation of the disputed
land, the trumpet once more is placed in hiding.
"And how long will it be before it comes out again?" the ex-Com–
munist Stella at the end of the book asks Lazzaro, the leader of the re–
sisting
cafoni.
"How am I supposed to know?" Lazzaro answers.
"It
doesn't depend on me. Maybe in one year, or twenty, or five hundred."
But Stella is not accustomed to trust things that endure. "Have you
never thought," says Lazzaro, "that something guides the path of ants
underground and the flight of birds from one continent to another?"
"Are you really sure there is something?" Stella demands. "I am not
sure at all." "It seems to me," Lazzaro answers, "that it's not so im–
portant to know it with certainty. Even he who doesn't know, goes
where he has to go...."
This is the conclusion of the book, the moral of
A Handful ot
Blackberries,
the moral of Silone's return to Fontamara. And it is easy
to say that the moral is not a new one. Silone, however, speaks not for
the "knowing" but as a peasant to peasants. For him it is far more
important to rediscover the meaning of ancient "commonplaces" than
to discover novelties. His search is for what endures. As for that which
changes, Silone would not concede that very much has changed in the
world since the coming of Christ, except the desiccation of his "good
news" and the hope of a new revelation.
(Translated from the Italian by Joseph Frank)
