F&L, story of an electoral mystery

In 1976 Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, out of friendship with Ugo la Malfa, agreed to run for election on the Republican party lists, with the agreement that if they were elected they would resign to make room for real politicians. There was no need, because they each got a thousand preferences. On the other hand, they devised a booklet for the electoral campaign, a mocking thriller entitled “The secrets of the Chinese washerman”, where detectives MacFruttero and O’Lucentini investigated the murder of Lira, an «optimistic girl still full of life», wandering among characters such as Lam Alphey known as Malphy, O’Fanfagnan, Honest Zack, Babyface Berlinguer and don McCattin. Then as now, something else was needed for the polls, certainly not the irony and elegance of two smiling and stinging writers, authors, among other things, of a journalistic saga collected in a fundamental Trilogy of the cretin.

When social networks and even the Internet did not yet exist, and therefore the tools available to their object of (bitter) analysis were much more limited, however, they already identified its “prevalence” as a human type. A prevalence with ancient roots. «To define imbeciles, certainly not rare – they observed with philological accuracy – the old Piedmontese used a lively combination of words: that, they said, is a proud ciula. Where “fiera” stood for “conspicuous”, “exceptional”, “admirable in its kind”, as recorded by Tommaseo. No one could have imagined that over time a variety of ciula would grow, literally, shamelessly, disastrously proud of it». They wrote a large part of the trilogy, or at least they thought of it like many other books, in Turin where they both lived, but also in dialogue between the pine forest of Roccamare, where Carlo Fruttero spent his holidays, and the “cabane” that Lucentini had built in France, near the forest of Fontainebleau.

Now Alberto Riva tells us in detail also human and cultural, in “Last summer in Roccamare” (Neri Pozza), that enchanted and somewhat mysterious pine forest in Castiglione della Pescaia, which was for many years a literary and even somewhat mythical place. In addition to Fruttero there were his two great friends, Italo Calvino and Pietro Citati, who went there in the summer, lived, worked and died there; they are buried among rosemary in the small cemetery of Castiglione, overlooking the sea. But they weren’t the only ones in the villas hidden by the Mediterranean pine forest that dotted the large subdivision decided in the 1960s, about two hundred houses built starting from 1963 with criteria of respect for the environment. It was (is) a small paradise, a place for intellectual holidays, where intellectuals and artists have met over time, but also Romano Prodi, and Fellini or Scarpelli, or for example a Roger Moore there by chance, brought by Carlo Fruttero to repair the car, but strictly incognito, in the workshop of a friend who had understood everything.

It was the background on which Calvino built “Palomar”, and Fruttero & Lucentini their perhaps most misunderstood and yet irresistible novel, “Enigma in place of the sea”, where the characters reveal the nicely reworked features of the inhabitants of both the pine forest and Castiglione. Riva retraces it between the essay, the interview and the narration, also going up and down the Maremma and the Tyrrhenian coast, going as far as the grim refuge of Cesare Garboli in the woods of Vado di Camaiore or descending towards Punta Ala and the ‘island of Giglio where, let’s say, it happened that a fishing boat hired as needed for the ritual trip to Montecristo (strictly forbidden, you can’t dock, but Pietro Citati had managed to obtain authorization – Mentioned in this was terrible, he managed to overcome every obstacle) had to land on the way back among the luxury boats of the rich and powerful, exhibiting a somewhat ragged crew and above all a small crew of young hippie sailors who had smoked a lot of marijuana; and still you could smell it.

Among the posthumous discoveries there is also the postman of Citati: and it would be a good title for a novel, he observes, obviously thinking of the famous “Neruda’s postmanby Antonio Skarmeta. His name is Saul Bacci, and for years he went back and forth by car, bicycle or even on foot to do his job. Obviously he also went to Villa Castellaccia, in the interior of the Maremma, which for forty years was the retreat of the critic and writer (he later moved permanently to Roccamare). And he was startled each time in front of the large library, which Citati gladly let him consult. Moreover, he says, at least in the early years at least there was no radio in that house, he brought the news himself: as if to realize the paradox of Ennio Flaiano regarding Marshall McLuhan’s famous theory according to which the medium is the message. As is known, the writer concluded ironically that from now on “we will read the postman”. But he did not imagine that Citati would have done it.