BocelliOnline

[Winnie]

The English translation of Andrea's book, La musica del silenzio, doesn't include his chapter 4. Perhaps some people might enjoy reading what he has to say in that chapter:

La musica del silenzio
Chapter 4
By Andrea Bocelli

I realize only now that I haven’t given Amos a family name. From now on I will imagine that he belongs to the Bardi family. In truth, at the moment nothing better comes to mind. To the patient reader who has the perseverance to reach the last page of this story, however, I solemnly promise to explain the reasons why I was led to give a false name to a person who actually exists.

I think it’s time to talk a little about Amos’s family—about his house and about his people. If it is true that we are the sum of our experiences and knowledge—as well as, of course, our own nature—if all this is true, I certainly can’t excuse myself from introducing you to those who lived alongside our little hero, who loved and helped him, and who participated in his battles and his suffering.

If I were a real writer, I would probably not resist the temptation to describe in minute detail the places where Amos passed his youth, if for no other reason than their objective beauty, a completely Tuscan beauty, pure and genuine—at least that is how they appear to my heart. Instead, no, I will not give into the temptation to venture into descriptions that a map and a pleasant excursion would render useless. I will say only that in September of 1958, Amos was born in Sterza, a little hamlet in the town of Lajatico, in the province of Pisa, about halfway between Volterra and Pontedera.

As I am about to speak of Amos’s house, a mysterious mental association makes me recall “La signorina Felicita,” that wonderful poem by Guido Gozzano in which he vividly depicts a big house immersed in the green of a beautiful countryside. The poem precisely describes signorina Felicita’s dwelling. It is a house of another era—with its “bulging grates, worn and bent” and its too-large parlors full of old knickknacks, of a thousand nearly useless objects. But it is a lively house, alive thanks to the simplicity and industriousness of those who live there: the servant with her clattering dishes; the signorina with her knitting needles, her needlework on her knees, and her subtle flirting; her good father, who often, toward evening, gathered around him “all the illustrious local politicians.”

I don’t know why, but Amos’s house—situated in open countryside right on the provincial road between Sarzanese and Valdera, shaped like an immense capital el of twenty-five by twenty meters, with a spacious open area in front shaded by two tall pines, a garden formed in the angle of the el, and a turret inhabited by pigeons—I don’t know for what reason this solid stone construction, built probably toward the end of the nineteenth century, always brings to my mind Gozzano’s celebrated poem.

Entering by the front door, one found oneself in a little hall that gave access to the kitchen on the right and a small dining room on the left. Opposite, a glass door led into a second, more spacious hall with other side doors. From these, one passed on the right into a sitting room that the family used as a dining room on special occasions and where Amos listened to his records as he walked around and around the table, stopping only to change the LPs. A door on the left side of the hall led to an area of rooms for clearing and serving. The first of these Amos came to call the darkroom. It was, in fact, a windowless place that held only a hallstand and an old cupboard: really and truly a refugium peccatorum. Opposite, on the other hand, were the stairs to the floor above, where the bedrooms and bathrooms were located, along with other rooms that were practically unused—including a pair originally intended as granaries.

Here, then, was a part of the building that on the ground floor remained unconnected to the living quarters. In those immense rooms below, the Bardi family sheltered a good part of their agricultural equipment: two tractors (a Landini and an Orsi) and an enormous threshing machine. Amos very much liked to go into this barn, turn the thresher’s big pulleys, and daydream about the mechanisms that put it into motion. The barn also contained an infinite number of small farm implements—spades, hoes, tools of every type—all constituting for Amos objects of curiosity and play.

Grandmother Leda—the beloved teacher of at least two generations of Lajatico children, who had abandoned teaching shortly after the birth of her grandson—and the wonderful Oriana truly had hard work restraining Amos and his younger brother, little Alberto, both of whom, together with the little boys from next door who were their inseparable playmates, formed a true horde of barbarians, according to Grandmother Leda, who expressed this opinion at the height of desperation. The poor lady could not stand to see her flowers destroyed by blows from a ball or endure the resounding protests of passers-by about what greeted them from the yard of the Bardi house: pebbles hurled by slingshots or toy rifles, strong jets of water from a hose that usually Amos’s father, signor Sandro, used to water the flowerbeds and, in the summer, clean off the courtyard in front of the house so that the family could eat supper outside. When the adults were not present, the hose was directed against cars or, worse, against two-wheeled vehicles.

Every evening after eight, however, Amos’s parents—along with his grandfather, signor Alcide, and the elderly aunt who had worked alongside signor Alcide to permit her sister to teach in the elementary schools—gave an accounting of the misdeeds of the boys under the command of Amos, who was the biggest, the instigator, the organizer of the most unpredictable mischievous tricks. Then everyone promised exemplary punishments if this or that deed were repeated, but the liveliness of some boys, you know, often has the best of the adults’ strictness.

Dr. Comparini, the retired head of a finance department as well as a colonel in the Italian army during the war of 1915-18, was perhaps Amos’s favorite uncle. He had already fired Amos’s imagination with stories, sometimes a little romanticized, about the life and vocal feats of the most celebrated opera singers of the century.

Every summer, Grandmother Leda and Amos left for a few days’ vacation in Antignano, a little village on the coast of Livorno where the Comparinis lived—Uncle Giovanni and Aunt Olga. These relatives, who, to be exact, were the aunt and uncle of Amos’s father because Aunt Olga was the sister of Grandmother Leda, were truly fond of the Bardi family. During World War II, they had boarded the good Sandro in their home for the whole period of his schooling while he studied for a diploma as a surveyor.

During the short sojourns with the Comparinis, Amos could enjoy the sea in the morning, along with his Grandmother, who didn’t let him out of her sight for a second. But the moments of true joy arrived in the late afternoon when Amos’s uncle called to him to come to his study upstairs and the child could finally enter the room that held such curiosity and mystery for him.

Within the military neatness of that room were more than 5000 volumes and various objects that were dear to the inhabitants of the house and also to Amos. The little boy remained enchanted, daydreaming in front of an old mortar shell—obviously defused—or a boar-skin rug on which the boar’s head remained, perfectly embalmed. It was in this room that the old uncle played records for his little nephew; it was here that he told stories and gave long readings. Amos very much loved to be read to and remained as if bewitched, engrossed, keeping all of his questions until the end.

Sometimes the women were also summoned, and then this family gathering from another time—with the uncle who read and explained, the women who from time to time made a few brief comments or were moved by the content of the reading—these gatherings, I would say, instilled in the child’s heart an infinite, ineffable sweetness, which is still a vivid memory today and the source of a vague nostalgia.

The uncle, other times, told Amos long stories about the war in which he had participated, and these stories so inflamed Amos’s imagination that he began to want to join the Italian army. The uncle therefore “enlisted” him as a private, promising him that a promotion would be awarded based on his conduct and, in general, his small progress in various fields. Quickly Amos obtained the rank of corporal, then of corporal major. On the occasion of a visit to the Bardi family at Christmastime, the uncle gave him the rank of sergeant. The learning of the first letters of the alphabet, which his grandmother taught him using a thick blue felt pen, paid off for Amos with the rank of sergeant major, while writing his name for the first time permitted him a further advance.

Meanwhile, the day was approaching for Amos to leave for boarding school, this being the solution to which his parents had resigned themselves to allow the boy to escape going to a specialized school. The boarding school would prepare him, through his learning the Braille system, to confront a regular school later on.

The imminent departure moved the uncle to pity, and Amos rose in rank again. On the actual day of leaving, the little schoolboy was read a letter from Uncle Giovanni announcing the news of another new promotion. In this way, Amos left home bearing inside of him the hope of returning soon as a captain—the rank that would follow his first good scholastic results.

Translation by Winifred Hayek