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A MAN AND HIS LANTERN By
Annamaria "Lilla" Mariotti I
arrived in the small island of San Pietro by ferry in a windy afternoon of the
month of June.
San Pietro (St. Peter) is a small island on the southwestern coast of
Sardinia (Italy) and its main road, crossing the island fron north to south, is
12 kilometers long, less then 10
miles ! ! The
eastern coast is lined by white sandy beaches, while the western coast is a
continuous rocky cliff, and it is on one of these rocks that the Capo Sandalo
Lighthouse stands.
While
we were climbing the 124 steps of the stair inside the tower Bruno told me his
story. He is nearly born in a
lighthouse, he entered his fist one when he was four.
His father, a former seamen during WWII, got the new job as a lighthouse
keeper when he left the service in 1945. Then
the little boy started to go around Italy into the different lighthouses where
his father was sent, many on the
mainland, but some in remote small islands where sometimes, during the storms,
they had to wait even 15 days before to receive help and food.
When Bruno reached the age to go to school sometimes, when on the
mainland, he had to walk from five
to six kilometers every day to go to school.
When he grew up, Bruno started to look for a
job, different from that of his father, but the only one
he could find was as a lighthouse keeper.
Bruno though that this was his destiny and accepted it. Now, after so
many years, he is happy of his decision and, like his father, he has been
running around Italy in different lighthouses until he reached, in 1972,
the Capo Sandalo Lighthouse, where he lives since then.
When
we reach the lantern room Bruno shows me proudly the Fresnel lens and the 1000
Watt halogen bulb that he handle kindly, like
if it was a precious air-blown Murano glass.
He loves this lighthouse like a person of his family and takes care of it
like of a child. Even if the lighthouse was built in 1864 and shows the signs of
the passing time, it is a beautiful building, standing on the top of a precipice
leaning on the sea, where it lights
the route of the big ships going from North Africa to Gibraltar.
I
ask if he does not feel too alone in this corner of the world, on a windy rock,
and he answers that he is happy here, in this small paradise.
He speaks slowly, a few words, then a long silence, intermittent words
like the light of his lantern He
says that a person become like this living in a lighthouse, he is never in a
hurry. Bruno
has a family that he loves deeply, but they live in the nearby town of
Carloforte. The children have to go
to school and he likes that they feel more comfortable of what he was then he
was a child. He does not feel
alone, he goes to see them every time he can and during the summer his wife and
the children join him in the lighthouse. Bruno
shows me the old rotating mechanism that before the electricity reached the
island in 1980 had to be worked by hand every four hours, but now everything is
authomatized, and also if short work is needed, he every day climbs the stair
and goes inside the loved lantern room, where he stops, cleaning everything and
looking outside, at the sea, the rocks, the beautiful environment.
He says that to stay in this lantern room is like to be on the top of the
world. I can understand how
does he feel, because I feel like if I have climbed not only the 124 steps, but
the Mount Everest itself.
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The
next day I met Bruno Colaci, the lighthouse keeper, a 58 years old hearthy and
austere
