The Path to the Spiders Nest- Italo Calvino
“…reach the enchanted land where al the inhabitants were good.”
The story unfolds with Pin, a young, errant adolescent. Living with his sister who is fighting her own battle of survival by the only means available to her, herself. Known as the ‘dark girls of long alley’, her name is not mentioned till the very end. It was not required perhaps.
Pin sees his sister’s room as one that “seems filled with mist…with objects surrounded by muzzy shadows.” It is always partially seen, partially comprehended, partially lived.
He doesn’t have much memory of his childhood. Pin remembers his father and mother vaguely, “mine was nice too”, he recalls. Often his memory and imagination of memory become amorphous.
Pin is in the constant company of adults. A world he cannot quite fathom. A world which is perplexing, with its talk about women, wages and war. A world in which he is treated as a child but cannot quite be one. “A child in the world of grown-ups, always treated as an amusement or a nuisance.” He is brash in the adult world. Loud. Insolent. Mouthing words and phrases he has picked up from the men at the tavern and sailors. His cocky bravado masquerades his child’s heart, training it to speak in the only language he has been able to master. Pin is thus always isolated. From the world of children because he dwells in the world of adults and from the world of the adults, simply because he is a child!
In his children’s world, Pin discovers the magical nests of the spiders. A world where he escapes to when his sense of lack of belonging becomes too deep and dark for the young heart to hold.
Pin’s story unfolds in many ways. Embroiled in the world of war of adults, which he cannot quite comprehend, he becomes a part of larger conflicts and emotions. The elusive war of love, tthe war of prison and ammunition, killings and patriotism, duties and survival, of betrayal and companionship. As Pin becomes aware of these, he also becomes more aware of his loneliness and want to break away from it. He fully confronts his loneliness when he loses his pistol, “it was the last thing Pin had in all the world…he is alone in all the world.”
‘The Path to the Spider’s Nests’ is a tale of a child’s view of the world. The hypocrisy, the bitterness, the make belief, the desperation, the hunger, the fight for survival, the love and loss, the war and the many reasons to fight it, the politics of war and the collateral damages. The narrative brings forth the bewilderment and the questions. Pin’s perception acts as that voice of conscience- questioning the totality of all. It brings this ambiguity to the forefront in Kim’s reminiscence as well. “Everything must be understood both in history and in men’s minds; but there is still a gap between one and the other…where collective motives become individual motives.”
Pin tells a larger story of loss other than the loss of a childhood. It tells a story of lost innocence, purpose, camaraderie, patriotism and fighting for a cause. It brings to the surface the cracks of the society that adults often attempt to unsee or ignore. But Pin, being a child views them without the coloured vision of reason, logic, fault and adulthood.
The path to the Spiders nests, is not just a child’s story, but is one of adults too. A story of longing, to be understood, to be valued, to have a hand to hold, “a soft calming hand, a hand as comforting as bread.”
This is Italo Calvino’s first novel, written at the age of 23 in a few weeks in December, 1946.