It struck me the other day, listening to Roberto’s story, that these peculiar stories only happen to those rare individuals whose presence in the world are like magnets not only to the rest of us, mere mortals, but to “things” in and around them, the collection of which one could bring together under the blanket definition of “facts”. These individuals seem to be the recipient of stories, people, conversations and circumstances that defy the normal range of human experiences. Roberto is such a man, while Matteo, his spirited companion, Sancho Panza-like, gets pulled along in his wake.
But now, let’s get on with the story: Roberto and Matteo, two homing pigeons from Milan, sometimes stop over on our side of the world. Beyond the kaleidoscopic images of South Africa - light, trees, feathers and wild furs - this land is an unlikely, confused piece of Africa which, I speculate, they also both love for its contradictions. As a result of that complexity, things are
happening here, as Roberto once told me over dinner. (this leads to me to ponder over the magnetic quality of this place. Its “metal” is no longer the old gold of Johannesburg, its metal is, to the magnet-men of this world, of another philosophical kind).
So Roberto and Matteo spent a couple of days in South Africa two years ago. They were offered the opportunity to spend a few days in Sabi Sabi, a nature reserve on the fringe of the Kruger Park, famous for the many leopards that roam the area.
On their way to the main camp, and as they had just entered the park, Roberto, upon taking note of the wild loneliness of the place, and applying to the landscape a tender European logic (“after all, this was like Lumbardian countryside, just less people ”), decided to stop for a comfort break, a need which had no doubt become fairly pressing by then.
As he stepped out of the car, positioned himself at a reasonable and comfortable distance from the road and found a suitable spot, as he calmly sniffed the pungent and characteristic smells of dry elephant grass and dungs, the by now invisible speckles of white dust that still hung in the air from driving on gravel roads, Matteo almost absent-mindedly undertook to immortalise the innocent humour of the situation by taking a photograph of the scene.
Matteo had a digital camera, and it took him a while to find a reasonably well-framed angle of the scene through the tiny screen of the camera. But he eventually managed to find one, which was about time because Roberto was halfway through with relieving himself. Once Roberto was finished, he went back to the car, and both drove off to spend a wonderful week-end in the reserve.
It’s only weeks later, when they went back to Milan and transferred the pictures to a bigger computer screen that they noticed something
peculiar in the photograph…
This almost impossible peculiarity triggered a whole range of simultaneous emotions among the protagonists, from wonder, amazement, laughter, to awe, and will do so for many generations to come.
Yes hindsight is a great joke teller, yet I can’t help thinking about what everybody well knows here :
“Leopards are considered to be more dangerous as “man-eaters” than lions or tigers. They will even enter a hut and drag out a victim which a tiger would not do. Half eaten bodies have been found wedged in trees (…) Never turn your back on a leopard.” (as reported in an article found on the Net).
What went through the mind of the leopard, we can only speculate about.
Note: Our little Matteo's finger points at the picture
