Albergo Centrale

"Do you like looking for porcini mushrooms?". The question seemed unreal, at ten o'clock in the evening, in the central bar of Santo Stefano, while the snow settled softly under the street lamps of the deserted square. A world of fairy tales, and that very little question of the season. But so I met Gino Buzzo Piazzetta, one of the many extraordinary characters that the Comelico makes to bloom. With blue eyes and a slightly hollowed face, one never knew whether he was joking. In reality his scale of values ​​was very personal, with steps that only mountain people can perceive. [...] The place is almost an obligatory passage between the valleys of the Pádola torrent and the Piave: but it had also been defunct with Gino the appointment would have been a must. [...] He met him at dawn or late at night, always intent on glazing glasses, absorbed in strange thoughts, his serene face. Even when there was no one in the hotel, even when it seemed that Santo Stefano was asleep under the snow, as it once was abundant. I was up there for just a day; interrupting the polishing of the last crystal he asked me how it was the most natural thing if I loved to look for mushrooms ... Then he began to talk about hunting roe and gatherings with the Alpini, remembering what, a few months before, he had participated and the next to which he would go, along with the group of Comelico. Therefore, three loves in the order of importance, but in recent years had placed the hunt in the queue. The passion was more than anything else a pretext to stay in the company, hear the hound dog at work on the prairies, then in the evening to discuss with friends. It was the years, or the natural evolution of taste, the last roe had let him go ... "It was a head like I've never seen!" She walked calmly, regal I would say, she looked at me almost in her eyes, "How could I pull him?" In short, he made me feel sorry, I could not kill such a noble beast! " Naturally the friends had scolded him, ignoring the storm of feelings that had hit him. "I almost felt sorry for it, but if you run in front of you, then it's a target, you're afraid of missing it, when is it?" "I killed deer." That was not true either, and he knew all the times that the beasts "had made him sorry ..." ...

Mario Ferruccio Belli, The Friend of the People, September 8, 1990 - N. 35