Free My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) by Dario Fo Page A

someone who guffawed, who reacted uncomfortably to the irony or who took it all badly, he was sure to become the target of the whole routine. The same treatment was reserved for any spectator who seemed slow-witted or could not keep up with the comic action. Anything could be used to move things along, to bring them to life or to involve everyone in the narration. In brief, they managed to make the fantastic down-to-earth, and vice versa.
    It is quite true that not all the story-tellers conceived narration as theatre, nor did I at that time link the two genres: in particular, I was not yet able to take in the vital difference between recounting and performing, and I was absolutely convinced that theatre-making had all to do with acting, the presence of several actors, scenery, sound and lighting effects … in short, with organised magic. Only much later, when I had already acquired considerable experience of the stage, did I realise that story-telling had been the mechanism which had encouraged me to express myself in epic-popular form. But this is a topic which merits a deeper, more detailed treatment which we will perhaps be able to dedicate to it elsewhere.
    However, I was completely conscious that reality as seen by the story-tellers on the lake was reality seen through a distorting mirror, and that it was proposed by each of them using markedly differing narrative techniques and approaches.
    For example, Galli – a poacher by profession – presented tragic tales with the nonchalant air of a man who analyses the details of a disaster without being fully aware that he is talking of the disaster itself. Then there was another who spoke quietly, almost flippantly, while he was fishing. His name was Dighelnò, a dialect name equivalent to ‘Don’t Tell Him’.
    He settled down in his place at the harbour, set up his fishing rods while the children gathered round nagging him to tell us one of his absurd tales, but he remained where he was, not uttering a word, distractedly staring at the floats of his fishing lines as they bobbed up and down on the water. Then, under his breath, without warning, he would come out with three or four words which had no sense at all. ‘When the wind blows in winter, the minnows get an itch in their arse.’
    We would stare at him in amazement and he, still looking out over the lake, would turn his rod in the direction of the island of the Malpagas and go on: ‘Look over there, you see that dark blue line in front of Cannero Castle? That’s a current strong enough to sweep away even the police motor boats.’
    And this was his way of introducing, without preamble, the story of an extraordinary fishing expedition of which he was sole protagonist and witness. ‘Have you ever seen a line being pulled in with hundreds of bleak, chub and whitefish wriggling at the end of it?’
    â€˜No, never,’ we chorused in reply.
    â€˜Ah well, I’ve had the honour of witnessing this spectacle. It happened right here on the quayside, one day at dawn. I was on my own, with no one for company except my rods and lines. I had been slaving away all night, getting them into good order. I had ten or so rods, four or five of them more than seven feet in length. I lashed three of the biggest ones together, hoisted them up like a mast, stuck onto the top of this mast another two rods, then another two, and so on until I had one huge shaft at least thirty metres long. The problem then was how to cast the line with a rod that size! A line at least a couple of kilometres in length, with over two hundred hooks. So what was I to do with that line? I had an idea: I laid out the line of yarn all along the street which starts at the church and goes right down until it nearly plunges into the lake. I got my brother’s lorry and stuck the enormous rod right in the middle, with poles arranged around in a pyramid shape to hold it in place. As soon as I’d fixed up