Favola del castello senza tempo

It is the story of a boy, Dino, who chases a yellow and black butterfly that carries a skull on its back and goes into a black forest: he manages to tighten it in his fist and it is then, when he captured it and is about to allocate it to the captivity of a small box, that he hears her speak. The butterfly is called Atropo, belongs to the Night and tells him about the Timeless Castle, a sinister place inhabited by the Immortals, souls who escaped the universal flood and condemned to eternity, who play an eternal game of dice, joined in pairs, without being able to deceive their jailer, Time.

It is in this labyrinth of corridors and echoes that Dino is lost: in the fortress in which he has penetrated, made up of empty entrances, kitchens, alcoves, the space is narrow and vertical together with the objects that inhabit it: the sofas, the four-poster beds, the cupboards full of junk and hanging from one side. Everything overlaps everything, in the consciousness of a universal distortion: one\’s illnesses to collective calamities, the glowing blue of the sky to the air fenced by the walls of the great tower. It is up to him to declare aloud the three little words that can win the sentries, and guide the escape of the troop of larvae that is segregated there, wax silhouettes, dressed in white, numb in their repeated and periodic go to the same rooms. Three little words in dialect, which sound like the beginning of a nursery rhyme: Cugnu, cutugnu, bacalanzìcula.

Gesualdo Bufalino plays with dark atmospheres, composing a story of fear and mystery, interwoven with traditional elements which are strange and disturbing.