Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

C describes Sardinia’s mountainous interior as ‘purgatory’; there’s nothing there, apparently, just sheep, rocks and trees, and heaven forbid that you run out of petrol. On the map it’s mostly blank space, with small settlements linked by kinking roads marked in white – all the yellow roads, the big ones, run around the outside of the island.

But C is from the coast, so biased against his hick country cousins. He is taking me to Mamoiada to see their strange carnival. There is some question about whether this is advisable as a blood feud is raging in a nearby town, and three men were killed last month.

Of course when we arrive it doesn’t look Godfathery at all; just a rather ordinary little town – low, dry-stone walls, old houses of stone and new ones of breeze blocks, one cafe with communist posters and another painted bright orange, lemon trees brightening up shabby yards.

The men of the town have turned out in their traditional costume of dark velvet suits, sturdy shoes and flat caps. The equivalent outfit for women is a black and white dress with a bonnet, apparently, but nobody is wearing it. In Asia, it’s always the women who wear traditional dress, while the men are in cheap modern clothes; in Italy it seems to be the other way around.

Carnivale takes place all over Italy, but is everywhere different; in sophisticated Venice, for example, it is a time for peacocking in delicate porcelain masks. Here, appropriately for the setting, it is more pagan and gnarly.

A few dozen men dress up and parade as ‘Mamuthones’. They wear sinister, black wooden masks with hooked noses, beetle brows and pointed chins, and a shaggy sheepskin coat. All down the back of this coat bells face out like barnacles on a rock, with a big bell at each shoulder giving the wearer the look of a muscular hunchback. These are the negative figures, or bad spirits.

The positive figures, the ‘Issahadores’, walk in front. Here they come, looking rather dandyish in delicate white masks, red jackets and white trousers. They carry lassoos which they use, with some skill, to loop girls in the crowd. The girl either takes the lassoo off or lets herself be gently pulled in and kissed on the cheek.

They target any girl with a camera. A lady on a balcony is lassooed; she tosses the rope down but is re roped by another Issahadore, and by the time she has dealt with that, the first has re-roped her – much to the crowd’s amusement. I imagine this part of things was once a bit more full-on but what I saw was all very polite.

Though these guys are technically the leaders they seem pallid compared to the glowering menace of the bell wearers. The Mamuthones parade in two lines, and every three steps make, in unison, a lop-sided jumping stamp, to ring the bells. A shiver of excitement tinged with trepidation passes through the crowd. The men come forward, pounding their pagan beat – those bells do not tinkle but toll, a great dolorous thump, and the beetle-browed masks look doleful and remorseless.

Thump! The crowd parts and they come through it like an invading army, and the big bells on the shoulders of their bristling coats look like armour. Thump! The eyes deep behind the mask look straight ahead. Step, step, step, thump! – and the shaggy troops pass by.

Many of the locals are in fancy dress, as clowns of witches or so on. Lads ride around on horseback, messing about like boy racers. Their whips, says C, are made of stretched and dried bull penises. Some of the young people are very beautiful – to me the sight of very attractive people in rural backwaters always looks incongruous, and tinged with pathos, though I guess that is my big city prejudices.

C takes me to a house serving refreshments and we sit by a fireplace eating toasting pecorino cheese. The local wine is thick and strong and dry – apparently only wine made on the plains can be sweet – it seems appropriate. A woman is told about me and says, ‘Oh you are a writer! Come and tell everyone about our festival! And’ – pointing at the mildewed walls and open door – ‘our fine houses and our air conditioning!’

We try to go to the little museum but are told to come back in a few hours as the directors are having serious discussions. All of Italy seems to be having serious discussions. The government has just collapsed; I saw the Italian parliament on TV and it looked like a football crowd faced with a disputed penalty – guys shouting, scuffling, waving scarves. Carlo’s town does not have a mayor thanks to local disagreements; it does not have a carnival because of arguments over who should pay. Italy is in crisis, apparently, suffering a malaise brought about by political and economic stagnation – and everyone has an opinion about what needs to be done, and no one can agree.

Trying to be encouraging, I suggest that Ireland’s economic miracle could provide a model. ‘Everyone tells us about Ireland,’ he replies, ‘but here in Sardinia no way forward is possible, because we cannot work together; we have a saying: ‘one hundred Sardinians makes one hundred chiefs.’’

As if to illustrate his point, it turns out that the paraders have argued, and split into two camps, and instead of going through the main street together, they go one after the other, as two separate groups.

Never mind; in the evening, after they’ve hit the bars, they go back up the street together in a fug of drunken camaraderie. So maybe that’s the answer to Italy’s problems; get them drunk and hit their heads together.