words by Pierangela Zandanel
In Italy we have never seen a funeral like this. Books everywhere, hundreds of friends smiling and telling anecdotes as funny jokes. A huge black-and-white picture of the deceased on the beach, overlooking his beloved sea.
Yes, there is the coffin, there is also the guard of honour, but over the coffin a tin of cigarettes Turmac – his favourite ones - and a pile of books: Pinocchio, in multiple editions, the Betrothed of Manzoni, the Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino. And upstairs, a festive cocktail with ham, Tuscan salami, cheese and wine.
This is the funeral party wanted by Carlo Fruttero – one of our best writer, journalist and translator, author of many anthologies - imagined and represented as the most poignant and unexpected news.
In the library of Castiglione della Pescaia –the small town where he lived for years and had become an honorary citizen - there is all the pain and the dismay at the loss of an extraordinary writer, albeit in an incongruous form of irony. "Unique, unrepeatable, one piece” said Fabio Fazio – Tv presenter and Fruttero’s good friend.
Carlotta and Federica, Fruttero’s daughters, wanted their father to be remembered as he was: a lively mind always zapping through the books, even in his bed room turned into a library.
That's why even in this last goodbye the books are close to him: to let him carry on his zapping and not be bored on that after-life he had so often imagined.
