In elementary school, I felt like an outsider in a small Alpine village. I wasn’t originally from there, struggled to speak the local dialect, and—worse still—earned good grades because my parents were educated. The other children were mostly farmers or, at best, from poor backgrounds.
When the bell rang for the end of class, my classmates could think of nothing better than beating me up. God might not have been merciful in placing me there, but He made up for it by giving me the gift of speed. Thanks to that, I escaped more often than not.
Eventually, word spread that the son of the valley’s only fisherman was a remarkably fast runner and was coming to challenge me. A fisherman in a mountain valley occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder. In fact, he might not even have reached the ladder.
People also said that the boy smelled bad and was mean and violent. I was confident I would win, but when I faced him at the starting line, I understood this race wouldn’t be simple. He appeared older than me, and his appearance filled me with concern. He had straight, jet-black hair falling in greasy bangs over his forehead. His skin was pale beneath a layer of sunburn and freckles. What others called a mean expression seemed to me, above all, frightened. His clothes were patched and dirty, and he did give off an unpleasant, almost wild odor.
Maybe I also caused him to feel a different kind of worry. This was more than just a race; it represented a social conflict: the lawyer and teacher’s son versus the fisherman’s.
The children gathered around us, divided into two camps, cheering for one boy or the other, driven by instinct or by conversations they had overheard at home.
I’m not exactly sure what occurred. Right after the start, we began jostling each other, driven mainly by insecurity and mutual fear. About twenty meters from the finish line, still running neck and neck, he lost his footing and fell into a mixture of cow and horse manure—the kind that, in those days and in that place, livened up the streets. The manure didn’t significantly alter his natural smell, but symbolically, it became unbearable for the children cheering for him. I didn’t push him on purpose, but I can’t claim complete innocence either.
As I wrestled with feelings of guilt as a bourgeois, misfit, and somewhat hypocritical child, a fierce fight erupted between children from opposing groups. The adults managed to stop it only with a flurry of slaps, as was customary back then.
Meanwhile, the fisherman’s son—now called Enrico—and I started speaking softly to each other. We formed a friendship without ever discussing who was to blame or who had pushed whom. Probably, we knew we were both at fault and no longer cared about who was faster.
