Fumana

Her name is Fumana, which in the Po Valley means fog. She likes to lose herself in that pale sea that covers everything like a cloak, and she is afraid of nothing. Her grandfather, the rough Petrolio, knows this well, and at night he takes her to the marshes to fish for eels. Fumana grows up free and wild, but when she begins to become a woman, Petrolio has to ask Lena, the local “strigossa” (witch), for help. Lena teaches her many things, from how to roll out the dough for cappelletti to the secret words she uses to heal people. So, while Italy goes from one war to another, Fumana discovers her vocation. A story full of tenderness about bonds and the transmission of talents, about accepting one’s destiny but also about the tenacity in seeking one’s own path. Fumana likes the fog so much that sometimes, when she immerses herself in that opalescent white, it seems as if someone – or something – is waiting for her. She also enjoys fishing with her grandfather at night on the canoe paddle, a lantern lighting up the darkness of the marsh. And then, at a certain point, she also begins to like Luca: after swimming with him in the nuns’ pool, she returns home without really knowing what is stirring inside her, and why. The people of Voltascirocco still remember the night she was born, when it seemed as if the Adige River wanted to wash away the whole of Veneto. If you survive a disaster like that, with your mother dying in childbirth and your father perhaps fleeing to America to seek his fortune, it is because life has destined you for something. Fumana spends her early years with her grandfather Petrolio, in the still quiet of the outskirts of the village, among the canals full of frogs, eels and tench, exploring everything she can and pretending not to hear the judgements of others. But then childhood ends, and even the gruff Petrolio realises that he must do something, that his granddaughter is becoming a young woman: her encounter with Lena, who heals people with certain words, certain signs and certain herbs, will be the turning point. But accepting her gift – Fumana was “born with the gift” and therefore has prodigious qualities – may mean sacrificing everything else. Paolo Malaguti tells us an ancient yet still relevant story. A world lost between the river and the plain, between fishing and peasant magic, at the centre of which is a tenacious female character, grappling with the expectations of a closed, at times petty society and the desire to be herself.