Stage II · The Campanile
Five Ropes, Six Names
The tower of the pieve still stands, and the ropes still hang, though the bells they remember went to the foundries in a cart. Touch a rope and the tower will lend you its memory of the voice that hung there.
The requisition record, for those who like paper: Cassiano, cast 1712, the deep one. Maria, 1698, the far-carrier — you heard her two valleys over. La Piagnona, “the Weeper,” 1801, rung only for funerals. La Squilla, 1885, the little supper-bell. La Nuova, 1922, bought by subscription and never much loved. Five bells, five receipts, five empty beams.
Before the war, every evening at dusk, Nardo rang the Angelus — the old evening peal, in the order the village had used past all remembering. The children had a counting rhyme for it. The old women still know it:
THE EVENING RHYME
as the children of the parish counted it
Ring the Angelus as the rhyme remembers it — five strokes, in order.
The tower is listening.