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  I spent the last day preparing the hut for the winter. In the vegetable garden overrun with weeds I scattered the ash from the fireplace. It probably wasn’t much good as fertilizer, but it seemed like a fitting thing to do. It was like picking up the larch that had fallen in the spring and returning it to the mountain. With a few shovelfuls of soil I filled the hole in the ground where I used to light my fire outdoors, and stacked the remaining wood under the balcony. I brought in the saw, scythe, spade, and rake. Then I washed my hands in the ice-cold fountain and gave a last look around. The place was once again as I’d found it—only Lucky, who had not been there then, stared at me without understanding. Are you ready for the city, I asked him, you unfortunate creature? In his life to date he had yet to lay eyes on a leash or pavement. We’re going to have to cure each other, you and me, I told him. Perhaps you’ll teach me how to make my escape with the aid of the first car that passes.

  At lunchtime Gabriele arrived and said: I’m not very good with goodbyes. Neither am I, I replied. Well then, goodbye, he said. He no longer had the huts; he was working on the ski lifts. They were dismantling the seats, oiling the gears, and tightening the bolts in anticipation of the coming ski season. He moved away on his tractor, with Lupo biting the front wheels as he always did, barking and getting in the way—as if to say stop, where are you going, go back. Instead Remigio threw me out of the house when I went around to say goodbye, pretending that he had important things to do, then shortly after, writing a message to apologize because he was sad and had not been able to give me a farewell embrace. I understood well enough.

  I had not been up to the mountain for a while; in the morning it was covered in a crust of ice. So I took advantage of that sunny afternoon and set off with Lucky immediately after lunch, climbing quickly because I knew that I had only a few hours left before dark. Then it was like crossing the finishing line and keeping the tape. Reaching the ridge and discovering again, after so many months, an unknown aspect of it, taking a route I’d never taken before. Then going down the other side and reaching a meadow burned by ice. Peering through a window in an alpeggio now closed for the winter, the plates shelved with the jars of conserves, the look of someone having just tidied up before leaving. Studying the mountain and choosing a beautiful line to take—beautiful for those who know the beauty of going where there is no path, crossing high up on the routes of the chamois. To go beyond the abandoned burrows, the split tree trunks, the larches burned by the fall, crossing scree by leaping from boulder to boulder among the bare rhododendrons. Bathing your face and hands in a stream. Tasting the October bilberries, the plants now divested of foliage but still heavy with fruit as sweet as raisins, dark and shriveled after nights of frost.

  I used to do this as a child—one last look around to say farewell to the mountain. I would write some notes and hide them in broken rocks, in the split bark of trees, so that my words would still be there after I’d gone.

  Now we must go, I said to Lucky. It was time to go back down. I already knew all the dreams that I would have that winter.

  More from the Author

  The Eight Mountains

  About the Author

  Paolo Cognetti was born in Milan in 1978 and is a graduate of the Civic School of Cinema in Milan. A passionate reader of American literature, especially short stories, he has published two short story collections, Manuale per ragazze di successo (Manual for Successful Girls [2004]), Una piccola che sta per esplodere (A Small Thing About to Explode [2007]), and a book of linked stories, Sofiasi veste sempre di nero (Sophia Always Dresses in Black [2012]). Since 2004 he has spent several months a year in New York, his spiritual heartland, where he developed his feature-length film The Wrong Side of the Bridge, a journey among his favorite Brooklyn authors. In 2010 he published with Laterza the nonfiction work New York e una finestra senza tende (New York Is a Window without Curtains), followed by Tutte le mie preghiere guardano verso ovest (All of My Prayers Face West [2014]). He is also the editor of the anthology New York Stories (Einaudi, 2015). He divides his time between the city and his cabin six thousand feet up in the Italian Alps, and loves to travel.

  His first novel, The Eight Mountains (Einaudi, 2018), won the Strega Prize in Italy and is currently being translated into thirty-nine languages. He has written a great deal about the places to which he has traveled. His latest passion is for Nepal, about which has written in Senza mai arrivare in cima (Without Ever Reaching the Summit [Einaudi, 2017]). In 2017 he established with some friends a festival of art, books, and music in Estoul, in Valle d’Aosta, where he lives for six months of the year. He also intends to open a mountain refuge as a site for cultural activities and artists’ residencies.

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  ALSO BY PAOLO COGNETTI

  The Eight Mountains

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  Copyright © 2013 by Cart’Armata edizioni Srl

  English language translation copyright © 2019 by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell

  Originally published in Italy in 2013 by Terre Di Mezzo Editore as Il ragazzo selvatico

  This edition published in agreement with the Author through MalaTesta Literary Agency, Milano

  Excerpt(s) from PERIODIC TABLE by Primo Levi, translated by Raymond Rosenthal, translation copyright © 1984 by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

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  Interior design by Jill Putorti

  Cover design by Tyler Comrie

  Cover paintings © Justin Wozniak (front cover); © Getty Images (back cover)

  Author photograph © Niko Giovanni Coniglio

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9671-3

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9673-7 (ebook)