A steady downpour descended from the skies. The big lamp over the boatman’s clubhouse, put there as a beacon for the dredgers which navigate by memory, in the dark, could hardly be made out through the raindrops bouncing off the main embankment alongside the river.
“Foul weather,” Vernizzi said.
“And no sign of a let-up,” Torelli said, without raising his head.
The two had been sitting facing each other over a game of briscola which showed no sign of reaching a conclusion.
“How high has it risen?” Vernizzi said.
“Twenty centimetres in three hours,” said the other, keeping his eyes on the cards.
“By morning the waters will have covered the sandbank.”
“And the current will be tugging at the moorings.”
There were games at all four tables, but play was more desultory than usual since the rain and the rising river were distracting the boatmen. At intervals they could hear the groan of the capstan at the nearby jetty as someone laboured to haul the hulls of the boats out of the river. The continuous dripping of the rain, splashing gently, sounding like a man peeing against a wall, was an undertone. It was the fourth day of rain, falling at first with the fury of a summer storm and then with greater persistence. Now a kind of mist was descending and a breeze was gently ruffling the surface of the pools of water outside the clubhouse. Old Barigazzi appeared at the doorway, his hat and oilskin running with water. A draft of cold air swept across the room, and behind the bar Gianna shivered.
“Did you put your stakes in?” Vernizzi asked him.
Barigazzi nodded, hanging up his dripping outer garments.
“It’s up another three centimetres,” he announced as he moved over to the bar where Gianna had already filled a glass for him. “If it carries on at this rate, it’ll be on the first of the floodplains during the night,” he said in the tone of a man thinking aloud. No-one said a word. No-one ever took issue with Barigazzi, who knew the river like the back of his hand.
From outside there came the dull thud of a wooden object crashing into something. Everyone jumped to their feet. It felt as though the river had reached the wall of the clubhouse and carried away the bicycles from the shelter next door. It was then that they noticed the massive outline of Tonna’s barge, square enough to resemble a sluice gate raised up on the surface of the water.
No-one had noticed its arrival, except for Barigazzi. “He’s come from Martignana,” he said. “With a cargo of wheat for the mill.”
Tonna was more than eighty years old, most of them spent working the river. Not long before, against the day when he would have to tie up for good, they had persuaded him to take on his grandson, but the boy soon got bored. Weary of the solitude, he had abandoned his grandfather, leaving him to spend his nights alone on the river.
“Water above and water below,” Torelli said, pointing to the barge.
“He must have blue mould on his jacket. He’s more at home in wet weather than Noah,” Vernizzi said.
“Have they finished pulling up the boats?”
“They’ve winched up four of them,” Barigazzi said, peering through the window, from where he could just make out Tonna’s barge. “They want to keep them close to the houses because they’re sure the water’s going to come right up to the main embankment.”
Barigazzi sat down, collapsing heavily on to a seat, and the others went back to shuffling the cards. It was around eleven o’clock, and in the club there was not a sound to be heard apart from the constant drip from the rafters. From time to time, the light swayed about. The barge was still moored to the jetty, its cables strong enough to withstand the swollen current. Dark objects passed by on the surface of the river. From their tables, the men could see the doorway of the look-out post, where a radio crackled. A volunteer from the club was doing the emergency shift. In such weather, the men would take turns all through the night. Every so often, someone would pick up the microphone to speak to the others on watch along both banks of the river. They exchanged information and forecasts about the flooding.
“Is it rising fast up there? What’s that you said? Already into the poplar wood?”
Barigazzi went back outside to check the stakes: an hour had passed. When he returned, a dark light from the jetty filtered in under the door.
“Is Tonna setting off now?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Vernizzi said. “He knows the river well.”
They all turned to look at the barge. The only light came from the cabin, but there was no way of knowing if there was anyone moving about inside.
“He can’t be going,” Vernizzi broke in. “He’d have put on his navigation lights fore and aft.”
The light went out and Barigazzi closed the door slowly on the incessant rain.
“What’s going on?” Gianna said.
“It’s coming up like coffee percolating, eight centimetres,” the old man said.
There was no reaction at all. Everyone’s thoughts seemed fixed on the light in Tonna’s cabin. The only one who appeared uninterested was Gianna, who continued to move among the tables in her working jacket, her upper body looking as though perched awkwardly on her thighs. “If we went down to take a look, he might well lose his rag,” she warned.
“He’s left the gangway down. Could he be expecting someone?” Torelli said.
“It’s always left down because of his grandson,” Barigazzi said. “He sometimes comes back at the strangest times.”
“Eight centimetres, repeat eight centimetres,” the shift worker shouted into the microphone. “And still rising there? That’s some flood. And it’s still raining. You what?… Have you sent word to the prefettura?… Did you say that we should get in touch with them as well?”
A car was coming along the embankment road and turned towards the clubhouse. For a few seconds, its headlights shone through the window, swinging round the walls one after the other. Moments later the door was opened and at the same time the light in the cabin of the barge came back on. Two men in uniform, evidently soaked to the skin, walked to the bar. They looked around nervously, feeling themselves under observation, until Gianna — with what sounded like an order — said: “Take a seat.”
They did as they were told. They took out a Flood Warning notice with instructions on the procedure to be followed in the event of the water coming up to the main embankment. “You might put this up somewhere,” one of them said.
Old Barigazzi jerked his head back. “You’ve been sent here to teach the fish how to swim?”
The men looked at each other uncomprehendingly: they were numb with cold and ill at ease.
“We’ll put it here, O.K.?” Gianna resolved the problem by sticking the notice to a board where the fishing calendar was normally fixed. She gave the adhesive a firm slap.
“Do you think we don’t know what to do?” Barigazzi said.
The two men sipped their grappa, but no-one in the room paid them any more attention. They were all watching the light in the barge, even though there was no sign of life in the cabin. A faint light was now falling across the prow, where TONNA in large letters could be made out.
The officers got to their feet.
“You do know the water is rising at eight centimetres an hour?”
“The emergency squad will attend to it.”
They seemed to be quite unaccustomed to the appalling weather and gave every impression of wanting to be on their way. Their trousers were drenched at the turn-ups, their light shoes were sodden and their overcoats were dotted with so many raindrops that they looked to be covered in frost.
Barigazzi scrutinized them, smiling complacently: “Well, you may as well know that nothing like this has happened for ten years, and the last time things didn’t go too smoothly.”
“The prefetto is ready to sign an evacuation order.”
“He can sign what he likes. We’re not evacuating. We’re not scared of the water. It’s better than the roads around here…”
Shortly after, the officers set off, going gingerly in second gear in the direction of the main road. Their headlights picked out the tumbling sheets of rain. Thousands of litres per second, reducing the land to a marshy waste, and under that slow curse the light in the barge cabin came on again.
“Either he’s having bad dreams or else he can’t get to sleep,” Vernizzi said.
“It’s that grandson of his,” Torelli said. “Maybe he’s just got back and the old man is bawling him out.”
“I doubt it.” It was Gianna who interrupted. “They hardly talk, they communicate through sign language. With this weather, I have an idea that the boy’ll be keeping well away from the river.”
“Well then, the old bugger’s got muddled. He’s setting off.”
“At this time? That means navigating all night in the fog.”
“And staying awake, like on guard duty,” Gianna muttered.
Barigazzi stared at her reprovingly. “The water’s high and that keeps you away from the sandbanks. There’s no traffic on a night like this. And Tonna knows what he’s up to.”
More than half an hour had gone by, so he went out again to check the stakes.
Meantime the radio continued broadcasting messages from up and down the river. “The tributaries are like torrents. It’s overflowing at some points. They’ve started evacuating? Where?”
In the room, they followed the radio, interrupting the game when some fresh item of news came through. A lamp flickered on the yard outside, before fading out. It was Ghezzi, leaving his bicycle in the shelter. “The lorry with the sandbags has arrived,” he came in to tell them. “The mayor has sent the officers around the houses to tell the families to prepare for evacuation.”
“He’s off his head,” Torelli spluttered. “Nobody’s going to move before the water is lapping around their front doors.”
“Well, Tonna’s cast off,” Vernizzi told them, looking out in the direction of the quay.
The barge looked even more imposing. At that moment, it gave the impression of light buoyancy, pitching slightly as it manoeuvred out into midstream, slipping slowly away from its mooring, straddling the current briefly as it hesitantly left the quay before getting on its way, carried effortlessly off by the flow.
“Still no navigation lights,” Torelli said, pointing to the cabin light, just visible in the seconds before the barge reached the middle of the river.
“Tonna’s getting on a bit,” Vernizzi cut him off sharply. “Did you not see the manoeuvre he’s just done? He wanted to rely on the wind to get him out and he nearly crashed his prow into the sandbank. He was saved by the flood.”
Nobody added anything and in the silence all that could be heard was the radio giving out more data on the water levels. “It’s coming over the floodplains… They’re going to have to open the channels to reduce pressure… They’re filling the sandbags…“
Everything alongside the river was in a ferment, while it itself seemed to be flowing peacefully in the night. There was no other movement apart from the incessant downpour. Barigazzi remained silent, his eyes fixed on the middle of the Po where the barge had moved off into the distance. Now he could see only its three-quarter outline and the light still shining in the cabin. The old man made a gesture of bewilderment or disbelief with his hand. The only sound was the unending crackling of the radio.
“He went off like a piece of wood tossed into the current,” Torelli said.
“It looked as though it was the current that carried him off,” Ghezzi said.
“A coypu burrow? Whereabouts? Letting water through? Is anyone working on it? You’ll need to place the sandbags where the embankment is lowest…” The radio dialogue went on, interrupted only by an electrostatic crackle.
“Tell him that Tonna has set off,” Vernizzi shouted to the boy who was operating the radio.
The boy picked up the microphone to let all the stations down the valley know that the barge would be passing. At that moment they became aware that Barigazzi was not there. Gianna made a gesture with her chin indicating the jetty. “He went out,” she said. “He’s away again to check his stakes.”
Torelli looked at the clock. “Is he checking them every quarter of an hour now?”
The sudden brightness of headlights told them that a car pulling a trailer with a boat hoisted on to it was passing along the muddy road under the main embankment, proceeding slowly, lighting up the raindrops as it went.
“Taking it home,” Ghezzi said.
“In weather like this, it’ll be more use in the back-yard than at the jetty,” Vernizzi said.
“He’s taking his time,” Torelli said, referring to Barigazzi.
“If he keeps going out to check and cut notches in them, all he’ll do is cause confusion,” Gianna said. “Another round?” She raised the bottle.
The Fortana was held aloft for a few seconds like San Rocco in a procession, but no-one replied. It was as if they had become aware only then of the oddness of Barigazzi’s absence.
“It’s a long time till dawn,” Torelli said, staring out at the impenetrable darkness. He was trying to imagine how far Tonna would have got on his journey down the river. He might already be at Casalmaggiore, and perhaps could see the lights of the dredgers swaying as they were buffeted by the relentless rainfall.
Barigazzi came back in without a word. He sat down and turned to look at the jetty where until a little while ago the barge had been.
“Any higher?” Vernizzi said.
The old boatman made no reply. He raised himself to his feet, supporting himself with both hands on the table, and then went over to the boy working the radio.
“Can you give the alarm with that, or is it better to use the telephone?”
The boy gave Barigazzi a puzzled look, deeply unsure of what to do next.
“Do you mean Tonna?” Torelli said.
Barigazzi nodded. “He set off as though he had hot coals up his arse. He threw off the gangplank sideways, and left a rope on the quay. I’ve never seen him do that before.”
“What did I tell you?” Vernizzi said. “That was not a manoeuvre, whatever else it was.”
“Nobody saw if he was working down there on the quay.”
Torelli stared out with the look of a man taking aim at bowls. “We couldn’t see him from here,” he said. “Not in this dark…”
“The rope looks to have been sliced through, cleanly, with a knife.”
“Keep a look-out for barge, already subject of warning,” the boy said into his microphone. “Danger to shipping: more than two hundred tons afloat… The way he cast off aroused suspicion… Tonna knows his business, but this time… Repeat, no navigation lights, only a cabin light, and in this weather… He set off without engine… Problem steering by helm alone…”
“If he bangs into the column of a bridge, he could bring the whole thing down,” Vernizzi said.
“If he gets stuck and the barge turns into a dam, the current will capsize him,” Barigazzi said. “The river’s really high now, and you need your wits about you.”
Vernizzi was on the telephone to the carabinieri, but the conversation sounded unduly laborious. “Maresciallo, I’m telling you I have no idea whether Tonna was actually on the barge. Certainly, you need someone who knows what he’s about, or else… We saw the light going on and off twice, then the barge moved into midstream… Was he there? Obviously someone had to be there… That’s right, the ropes were thrown ashore any old way…” He hung up almost in a sweat. “The maresciallo says there are only two of them on duty,” he informed the company. “They all go home for All Souls. He’ll alert the stations along the way.”
Ghezzi looked out at the enormous sheet of water and felt almost afraid. “Where will he be by now?”
“Maybe at the mouth of the Enza,” Barigazzi said. “If my boat were in decent shape, I’d go after him. Maybe I’d manage to draw alongside
…”
“I don’t think we’d find anything good,” Barigazzi murmured.
No-one spoke. The black waters of the swollen river were flowing ever more rapidly, and the sandbank in the middle of the river was all but submerged. It was hard to see far beyond the moorings, but in the liquid darkness the impression was that the great basin, altogether visible in the days of low water, was already overflowing. The water level was just below their line of vision. It was possible to observe the current from above only from the main embankment itself, and the town alongside the river, with a vast mass of water looming threateningly over the houses, gave every appearance of being already inundated.
Several cars arrived and a dozen or so young men came in to ask what had happened to Tonna. They listened, then made their way back out, letting in a gust of damp air. They would follow the boat from the embankment in their cars, they said they could go faster than the current. By now the barge had made the flood a matter of secondary interest.
“Yes, I’m here… Are you sure? He hit the railway bridge? A quarter of an hour ago?”
Silence fell. There was no need for the boy to repeat what he was being told. Everyone instinctively grasped the situation.
“It’s what I was saying. He hasn’t even got as far as Reggio,” Barigazzi spluttered. “The riverbed widens there and the water is more sluggish.”
“The way things are going, they must have sounded the alarm all the way downstream to Mantua,” Vernizzi said.
A couple of car doors slammed shut, and the vehicles set off at speed up the embankment. In the beam of the headlights, the rain looked to be heavier still.
“If there’s a hole in the hull…” Ghezzi said hesitantly, “Tonna’s done for. He’s food for the pike.”
“With all the wheat he has in the hold, they’ll be flocking down all the way from Piedmont.”
“It was only a bump,” Barigazzi said. “It’s a tough old craft. If it goes into a spin, he’s in big trouble. It all depends on the rudder. And on the grip of whoever’s on the tiller.”
“If it starts spinning, the game’s up. The first bridge he hits side on, he’s going to get jammed, and he’ll be pulled under,” Torelli said.
“With some bridges, you only need to nudge the prow against them. With all the weight that’s aboard, he’ll bring the columns down on top of him,” the old boatman said.
“He’s passing in front of the mouth of the Enza,” the radio operator informed them.
“Let’s hope the extra current doesn’t push him over to the Lombard side,” Barigazzi said, as he peered into the emptiness by the jetty.
The conversation drifted on, one guess after another, each man in his mind’s eye going over that stretch of water which Tonna would have reached by then. Beneath it all lay one more troubling thought, as insistent as the rain which continued to fall or as the current which dragged everything in its wake. Finally it was Vernizzi who gave voice to a doubt which seemed dictated by a will not his own: “But he set off in such a great rush, and with that crazy manoeuvre…”
There followed a long silence, broken only by the sound of water dripping from the roof beams, until Gianna said: “Maybe it wasn’t Tonna at the helm.”
“It’s most certainly not like Tonna to collide with bridges…” Barigazzi said, his voice trailing off.
No-one drew any conclusions. Everything was so confused. The telephone rang: it was one of the youths who had gone off in a car. “Every town is on the look-out and a lot of people have climbed the embankment to watch the barge careering past,” he whispered into Vernizzi’s ear.
“You saw it?”
“Yeah, a short while ago. It seemed out of control, swinging about crazily, sometimes listing to one side, but the current’s keeping it on course. You can see where the paint came off on the side where it hit the bridge.”
“Is the cabin light still on?”
“Yes, still on. When the barge comes close to the bank, you can see in, but it’s hard to make anything out. Somebody said they had seen a man at the helm, but I don’t think there’s anyone there.”
Barigazzi sat calmly, absorbed in his own thoughts, resting his head on his left hand, going over the course of the river as though he could see it from Tonna’s bow. He imagined where it was at that moment, he saw the bridges looming out of the night, dark skeletons afloat on the immensity of the current. The conversation on the radio broadly confirmed his hypotheses.
“The carabinieri have what?… Closed all the bridges as far as Revere? The only one open is the railway bridge? They’re ready to suspend all shipping?”
“He won’t knock into anything,” Barigazzi murmured, who seemed to be elsewhere.
“He’ll crash into the iron arches at Pontelagoscuro,” Vernizzi said. “But in that case it’ll be tomorrow around mid-day before we get to hear about it.”
Silence fell again in the room. And they became aware of the rain falling even more heavily on the tiles.
Barigazzi was shaking his head, in the manner of the horses in the Po valley. “He’ll never get near Ferrara. Tonna will avoid the delta in these conditions. He’ll stop before then.”
Meantime, the telephone had rung again and Gianna was in conversation with the young men who were tracking the barge. “When?… One or more than one?”
Ghezzi had moved over beside her and seemed on the point of grabbing the telephone from her hand.
“They say that in the light from the cabin they’ve seen some shadows moving about. Maybe more than one, but it seems they haven’t been able to identify Tonna,” Gianna told the room.
Barigazzi’s imagination was still fixed on the river, so wide midstream that the banks were out of sight, on the craft tossed about on the surface of the water as carelessly as a leaf, on the unending groan of the hull, on the blind drift of the barge as it was battered from all sides, on the darkness. He imagined crowds of locals standing like sentinels along the banks in the rain, greeting the little light on the river even if it was no more visible than a bicycle lamp slowly passing along the embankment road on a foggy night. He felt the sideways jerk of the barge every time it ran into a tree trunk or into a stretch of swirling waters, and felt too the list it took on for a time before righting itself and straightening in the fast-flowing current.
He would not be able to see a thing because there was zero visibility. The Luzzara curve is wide and bent like the bondiola sausage. That was the most hazardous point, especially if the barge were indeed in the hands of some novice who had taken over from Tonna. There the current and the deep waters could throw anyone off course. Sluggish on the surface, the water, following the channels in the sands, flows faster below and pushes against the embankment. Without an engine, it would be impossible to avoid running aground, except by making a pre-emptive manoeuvre 300 metres upstream, hugging close to the bank on the Lombard side and holding tight. With anyone lacking the expertise, the barge would crash into the embankment like a stake being driven into the ground.
“Tell them to go and wait for it at Luzzara,” Barigazzi muttered. “It’ll be there by three in the morning.”
But he spoke so softly that no-one picked up his words. A gust of wind and rain shook the windows. “The libeccio, from the south-west,” Vernizzi said. “Always a bad sign.”
The rain was getting heavier still, and now the beams were reverberating.
“Have you seen it go by?” the radio operator wanted to know. “What? It’s passing right now? Look and see if you can make out anyone in the cabin. No? The light is on, but the cabin is empty? Just a while ago, someone on the embankment told us there were signs of movement inside. Yes, yes. I agree. If Tonna were in charge, it would not be sailing this way. And would not have touched the railway bridge either. Tonna? Who can tell? Perhaps he’s on board or maybe it’s his grandson who has taken over… What do you mean, have we thought of that? Of course we have, but in this weather who could have seen him run away?… Yes, I know, he’s an old fox, but the whole business still looks funny to me…”
Everyone in the room at the boat club was listening in, but no-one spoke. It was as though they were listening to a dispatch from a war zone. After glancing at the clock, Barigazzi got up and went out. It was past his time for checking the stakes. From the doorway, he looked back and grimaced. For him everything was clear.
Ghezzi went over to the window to stare out. It was as though black ink was dropping from the sky. All that could be seen was the leaden water in motion with a cargo of flotsam and jetsam on the surface. Further on stood the poplar wood, a shadowy mass against the horizon, the only relief in a flat countryside.
“The water’s on the floodplain,” he said. He could not see it and was only guessing.
“Has been for the last half an hour,” Barigazzi said.
“We can only hope it flows slowly,” Torelli said.
“It’s rising constantly, so it’ll be gradual,” Barigazzi assured them. “It’s already knee deep in the poplars. The ponds will be overflowing.”
Each one of them imagined the water gushing out over the floodplain, like water bubbling over from a pot cooking cotechino at New Year.
“By now,” Vernizzi said, “it will have drenched the monument to the partisans below the embankment.”
“It’s just giving it a blessing.”
The radio croaked back into life. At Casalmaggiore, the river had reached the “alert” level, and the houses on the floodplain were being evacuated by the military. The elderly had been carried off, sometimes forcibly, in the firemen’s dinghies. People who had barricaded themselves on the top floor were putting up some resistance. It was not so unusual for the river to come calling every so often to wet the feet of those who lived along its banks.
The jeep driven by the carabinieri made its way along the road on top of the embankment and then turned down towards the boat club. The maresciallo came in, his overcoat dripping. “I’ve received the evacuation order for everything in the main embankment zone,” he announced. Including the club, it was clearly understood. No-one said anything, and the maresciallo took the silence as a challenge.
“Do you think that after seventy years on the Po, I don’t know when it’s time to jump over the embankment?” Barigazzi said at last.
The maresciallo looked along the row of bottles behind Gianna and realized what kind of people he was dealing with. If the river had not managed to scare them off, what chance had he?
“Go and see the people who bought the poplar wood. They might need advice from the prefetto. All you’ve got here are experts, or fishermen’s huts.”
The maresciallo’s frown expressed his annoyance, and he changed tack. He pointed at the radio. “Where is he now?”
Barigazzi glanced at the clock, then said, “He’ll be near Guastalla. But don’t worry. He’s not going to collide with the bridge, because the current there’ll carry him into the middle of the stream, just right for navigation.”
“My colleagues will shut it anyway.”
“They can do what they like. It’s only a matter of hours. Sooner or later you’d have to close it off because of the flooding.”
The man uttered a curse, but against a different target, the feast of All Souls, when everybody wanted a holiday, leaving him with an empty office. And then against the flood which gave him extra work when there were only two of them left on duty.
“Every year around All Souls the river swells up,” Barigazzi told him. “It too wants to remember its dead, and goes to pay them a visit in the cemeteries. It caresses the tombstones for a few days, shows the funeral chapels their reflections in the waters it has brought up from the riverbed. It stops off inside the graveyard walls, before settling back, leaving everything clean and sparkling.”
The maresciallo listened in silence to that unpolished elder, who could turn poetical when he was talking about his own world. He observed for a moment those hard-headed men whose lives had been spent on the banks of the Po and decided it would be a waste of his time talking to them or attempting to lay down the law. They reminded him of the fishermen in his own land, in Sicily. He set off in his jeep.
The clock above the bar struck midnight and Barigazzi continued travelling in his mind along the route taken by the barge. The current would flow more slowly where the river spreads out into the floodplain. Tractors and lorries had begun to move along the embankment road. There were carts loaded with furniture covered roughly with tarpaulin to protect them from the wind and rain. The leafless poplar trees were blowing about wildly at the wide curve in the embankment, behind the stone-crushing plant, where once the stables for the cart horses had stood.
“The partisans’ monument will be well and truly underwater by now,” Vernizzi said.
“Like a sea-wall at high tide.”
“The time will come when no-one will remember it any more and the river will carry it all away. Then the stone-crusher will crush it as well,” Torelli said bitterly.
“Tonna’s being carried off by the current right now,” Barigazzi said, as though talking to himself. He reckoned that, with the current as strong as it was, he would be just about at the mouth of the Crostolo.
Meantime the radio provided an accompaniment to their talk. “It went under the arches at Boretto quite smoothly?… As though Tonna were himself at the helm?”
“It’s done that so often it could manage by itself,” Ghezzi murmured.
The telephone rang, and Gianna repeated aloud what she was hearing.
“There’s not a soul to be seen in the cabin… The light is still on. It’s much weaker now?… The barge has swung round and started listing. It ran into a whirlpool?… And now has righted itself.”
“A marvel of a hull, that one,” Barigazzi said. “It can hold the current without anyone working the helm.”
“Once you clear the Becca bridge, you can go to sleep until Porto Tolle,” Vernizzi said.
Another silence, heads nodding in wonderment. Then Barigazzi said: “I don’t believe Tonna’s piloting that boat.”
He got to his feet and went out to check the midnight level on the stakes.
On the road on top of the embankment, there was more traffic than on a Sunday. The carabinieri, blue light flashing, drove up and down several times, escorting lorries and tractors. Inside the misted-up vehicles, there seemed to be mothers holding in their arms babies wrapped in brightly coloured blankets, and men with bags over their shoulders. Voices on the radio were recommending that some kind of surveillance of the empty houses in the villages should be organized.
“Another eight centimetres,” Barigazzi told them as he came back.
The radio operator asked for a line and communicated immediately the news that the river was a good three metres above low-water level.
“Did they say anything about Tonna?” Barigazzi said.
“He’s still midstream.”
“If that’s the case, by three he’ll run into the bend at Luzzara. Once he’s passed the bridge at Viadana, there’s no way he can move towards the Mantua bank without rudder and engine.”
“If he’s dead, it’d be better if he went down with the barge. It’s what he would have wanted,” Gianna said.
It was the first time anyone had voiced the notion of Tonna perhaps being dead, but the thought had come into each one’s mind.
“No barge can navigate four bridges on its own,” Ghezzi said, cutting short the discussion.
Once again it was the radio which broke the silence. The order had been given to pile the newly filled sandbags near the embankments and alongside old coypu burrows.
Barigazzi once again left the clubhouse, crossed the yard under the driving rain and climbed the embankment. The river had risen considerably in a few hours. The sandbank which separated the quay from midstream had been swallowed up, and the boats which were still tied up looked as restless as stallions. The town was afloat in a lake of lights oxidized by the wet weather. A few hours more and the fish would be swimming higher than the magpie nests. An immense pressure was building up against the embankment, stubbornly searching for some cavity. Barigazzi was making his way back to the club through sheets of driving rain, but first went back down to take another look at the stakes. The midnight marks were already deep underwater. The light from the club, battered by the driving rain, seemed like wisps of smoke or steam in the yard.
The old man shook himself in the doorway before going in, relishing the warmth within. The radio was talking about Tonna. “They’ve lost sight of it… The light is out?… You think it’s the battery?… Ah! It flickered out… And now there is nothing to be seen?
… The carabinieri have switched on floodlights near the Guastalla bridge. At other spots they’ve turned the headlights of their jeeps on to the river?”
“The final curtain,” Vernizzi said.
“Now they’ll turn their attention to the flooding.”
The telephone rang again.
“Yes, yes, we know that the light has gone out,” Gianna said. “You’re coming back? Barigazzi,” she said, looking over at him, “Barigazzi says it’ll run aground at the Luzzara bend… He says about three o’clock.”
When she had hung up, she explained: “They’re going to the Guastalla bridge to watch it pass under the floodlights, then they’ll wait for it at Luzzara.”
Barigazzi shrugged. “Now that the light’s gone off, they’ll leave him to his fate.”
The radio repeated the news several times with maddening insistence. “Tonna’s barge is making its way downstream. It’s holding to the middle, but it seems the hand on the tiller is not exactly up to it… Yes, yes, I am telling you, the engine’s not running.”
“Who believes it’s navigating normally in this weather?” Torelli was growing impatient.
“With no engine, the battery will run flat.”
“In just a few hours?”
“Tonna’s as mean as the drought in ’61. He uses batteries lorry drivers have thrown away.”
“He always lives in the dark or he uses the candles you put round coffins. As soon as it gets dark, he moors at the first place, gets off to have something to eat and then goes to bed.”
“What a cheery life! You can see why his grandson…”
“So the light kept burning all that time, down at the mooring…” Barigazzi said. He spun his hand round, all five fingers pointing upwards in a gesture suggesting some piece of machinery searching in vain for a plug.
“It’s not that difficult to work out,” Vernizzi said.
“No,” Barigazzi murmured, looking up at the clock. “In less than two hours we’ll know everything.”
They all looked up. The hands on the club clock were almost at 1:00.
The carabinieri returned. “I’ll say I haven’t seen you,” the maresciallo mumbled, as damp and swollen as a savoiardo biscuit dipped in Marsala. He was an unhealthy colour, whether from the onset of influenza or from suppressed rage.
“You’re just not used to this rain,” Barigazzi told the maresciallo, who gave him an evil look in return.
“Another nine centimetres. It’s coming up like Fortanina wine when you pull the cork,” the old man went on.
The radio operator passed on this news, and received equally alarming data in reply.
“At this rate, you’re going to have to sound the retreat in the carabinieri headquarters as well,” Barigazzi said. “But it won’t take much evacuating,” he said, staring at the only carabiniere, a shy young man accompanying his superior officer.
The maresciallo swallowed the grappa which Gianna had poured for him without waiting to be asked.
Barigazzi joined him at the bar. “It suits you fine to let your colleagues in Luzzara attend to this other business,” he said gravely.
“What other business?” came the surly response from somewhere under the officer’s helmet.
“This business of the barge.”
The officer’s face brightened. He was evidently relieved. “Why Luzzara?”
“It will get as far as that,” Barigazzi assured him. “Tell them at the station, if anyone’s still there.”
Vernizzi went out for a pee. “It brings good luck if you piss in the river,” he said. He lived in the town but he had never got used to peeing in a closed W.C. As he drew near the riverbank, he became aware of just how high the water had risen. There was someone at work with the winch at the moorings, trying to pull ashore a boat still riding at anchor. The clammy libeccio wind ensured that the rain drove into the side of his body.
“You’ve pissed yourself,” Torelli teased him when he saw Vernizzi come in with his trousers wet.
“Not at all. I’ve salted the sea.”
The radio announced that the barge was close to the Guastalla bridge.
“Call them and ask if they can actually see it,” Ghezzi instructed Gianna.
In seconds the woman was on the line. “Moving slowly… And the lights are still off, right? Ah, difficult to see. The cars have pointed their headlights where it sails in and out of view.”
Barigazzi imagined himself on the embankment, standing behind the vehicles whose headlights were resting on the surface of the water, picking out glimpses of the hull in the bobbing confusion of barrels, logs, dead animals, tree trunks.
“It’s going past?” Gianna was shouting into the receiver. “Are you sure? Too dark? In midstream… This bit has gone smoothly as well.”
Barigazzi looked up at the clock. “It’s all over now.”
The others looked at him, not sure if he was referring to the river or to Tonna. Probably both. Vernizzi remembered hearing his pee gurgle on the surface of the water scarcely a metre from where he had been standing.
“Gianna, start packing up,” Barigazzi told her.
The operator unplugged the radio in preparation for moving out. Everything that could be carried to safety was swiftly put into large boxes, making the club look in no time like temporary premises. Torelli manoeuvred the lorry into place in the yard and for a moment the lights played on the surface of the river without reaching the far shore. Then they started loading. In all the coming and going, the radios on both sides of the river continued broadcasting a litany which became a sort of rosary for all the wrecks dragged away by the current.
“What about the clock?” Vernizzi said.
“The water’ll never get that high,” Barigazzi said firmly, noting that it was a few minutes before three. “This is the epilogue,” he reminded everyone.
Then, in the almost bare room, silence fell. One bottle of white wine remained on a table. Gianna found some paper cups and shared the wine out among the company until it was all gone. A few more minutes of waiting passed, leaving them to listen to the rain hammering on the roof and to the incessant drip drip from the beams. At 3.10, the telephone rang. At the first tone, Gianna got quickly to her feet, but Barigazzi stopped her with a sign and made for the telephone himself. Without waiting for whoever it was on the other end to speak, and without even a “hello”, he said: “Has he run aground?”
The others watched him only nod. Then, slowly, as though in a trance, he put the telephone down. “There was no-one on the barge.”