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The children were always on the lookout for entertainment. It could be anything and nothing: a dead snake, fighting dogs, fighting people, someone drunk going home and his wife shouting at him. The children were spectators of everything. There was a lot of teasing. There could sometimes be cruelty, tears too, but the beauty of it was that it would pass. Next day, friends again. It was up to the children, parents did not get involved and because it would not be pondered over, it was of the moment. You were what you were, you did what you did, as long as there was no blood, all was well. This applied even more to older children, children of the girl’s age were all still innocent – in the outer circle looking on with big eyes, taking it all in.

Fontitune was a sleepy village on the side of a mountain but sometimes it felt like a highway. If they wanted to go to the high mountains, people from Picinisco would pass through it. Woodcutters would pass through with their mules, groups of women would pass in the morning, returning late in the day with sacks full of mountain herbs on their heads, which they would sell at the Atina market. In the autumn they would go to gather snails, big white ones, then it would be mushrooms. For these women, the money they earned this way would be the only cash they would see.

One time, an old grey bent man came into the village. By the time he reached the girl’s house he already had a tail of children following him. He shouted from the bottom of the steps, “Missus, come and see, help an old man to live!” He had on a pole the dried-up body of a fox. “See,” he said, “one less pest to eat your chickens.” The girl’s mother was not at home so her nonna came out to have a look. Nonna looked at the fox and laughed. “Hey, old man, that fox looks like the same one as last year,” she said. The old man opened his mouth to reveal his toothless gums and laughed too. “Hey Missus,” he said, “with this great misery, who has the strength to chase foxes?”

The girl’s nonna went into the house and reappeared at the door asking the man if he had eaten, was he hungry? “I am always hungry, Missus,” he answered, “and so are the ones at home. What can you do, with this great misery?” The grandmother came out, in her apron she carried six eggs, a chunk of bread and a small round cheese. She put the eggs in the man’s basket, and also the bread and cheese. The man said: “Per l’anima dei tui morti” (may God reward your dead for your good deed). Serafina joined the other children as the man made his way through the village.

Sometimes a man would come to sharpen knives and axes, anything that needed sharpening in fact. He would sit on his contraption and treadle away with his feet, like he was working a sewing machine. The children would watch as the sparks came off his grinding stone. Again, he would receive payment in kind, very rarely money.

One very hot afternoon, the girl was on the terrazza. She could hear a crowd of children coming down the road. “It’s Gughiermo,” they were shouting. The girl went to the gate to see what there was to see. This man, Gughiermo, was bounding down the road, behind him his mule loaded with wood. Gughiermo had gone to the forest to get firewood for his family. He was going home but he was going at such a rate he was almost running. His eyes red and bloodshot, he looked like a madman. The children knew what was coming next; they had seen this before.

As soon as he got to the fountain he let go of his mule and put his head and as much of his body as he could under the fountain. He would splutter and groan, come out from under the water and shake himself like a dog. He would do this again and again, sometimes he would shout to the children and chase them away. The children would laugh and scatter and regroup to peer at him. Eventually Gughiermo would calm down, sit and rest. He would refill his flask of water, take a last cooling dip, take his mule and go home. The children all went their own way. The show was over for today. The girl walked up to her house. Her mother was on the terrazza, she had been watching Gughiermo as well. Serafina’s mother looked sad. The girl asked her mother why she was not laughing. Her mother explained to her that it is not nice to laugh at people. Gughiermo had a problem and could do nothing about it. “What’s wrong with him?” Serafina asked. Her mother explained: “He has a disease, he does not sweat like you and I so when he gets hot, he gets really hot. To find some relief he has to do what he does.”

One man that the children really liked when he came to the village was the scrap metal man. He did not come often because there really was not much trade for him. Metal was rarely for scrap. The reason the girl and the rest of the children enjoyed his visits was that as soon as it was known he was in the village, the children would scamper home and beg for any old scrap, a fork or a spoon, an old pot, a lid, anything at all. The children would take this to the scrap man and he would give them a small toy, a whistle or a mouth harmonium. One time he gave all the children bubblegum, a thing the children had never seen before. They chewed like crazy, blowing bubbles all day long. But these days were rare, most of the time, in the village there were just the villagers.