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To Montevecchio the only fruits that it gave the earth had the ferrous taste of the lead and the zinc. The ground was hard as the life and as the heart of the men. You hoed, you hoed and you hoed anchor, but under the stone there was stone, and under of that other stone. As the reality: a stone is shunned and finds even more another big before. That metallic and annoying clangor of the pick that strikes the rock the same sound that produces the heart of the men picconato from the ferocity of the existence without never softening never disappears.
To Montevecchio they grew Mediterranean stain, firewood trees, some fruit tree, then nient'altro. To receive the gifts from the nature was necessary to go down downstream.
For the inhabitants of the zone September meant vintage. Not that year: the vineyards, had been tormenting for the uncertain time, you/they had actually procrastinated the maturation of their grapes at the end of October. The vintage of the few survived grapevines it happened in family way and, to rotation, the harvest of the grape effected him in all the belonging vineyards to the relative. They made exception the possessiones of Bastiano Sabiu, enormous expanses with endless file of grapevines. Vineyards whether to be worked, over that of brothers, uncles and cousins, they required the employment of a conspicuous number of workers to payment. The family of Bastiano from generations possessed the only sandy grounds of the zone. Of certain, for that vintage Meleddu Talloru had not been recruited, that before the year had passed halves the time to empty its bladder mysteriously become deep as a crevasse and the other half to eat more grape of how much it didn't bring in shoulder of it.
Sat on a trunk of eucalyptus to the base, Emilio amused him doing himself/herself/itself rotate the pruning scissors among the fingers. It brought her with itself every year, despite you/he/she had never used her. For the cut of the grape they were more proper and fast the small hands tapered of the women; the men were relegated to a more masculine job: the transport of the full baskets of grape.
The first lights of the morning dyed the sky of greyish. Maria walked among the rows of the vineyard to make himself/herself/themselves an idea of how much grape there was to pick up. The vineyards of Bastiano were found in the countries of Launaxis, in the outskirtses of Guspini. Emilio scrutinized about twenty people to invade the vineyard, there were also some children. It was all people that took advantage of the vintage for rimpinguare the wallet. To finish before evening be starts toward the six and thirty, there was to almost pick up grape for centocinquanta long rows two hundred meters each. A line of eucalyptuses confined with the stradina that flanked the vineyard and all the workers they deposed their lunch to the shade of that trees.
Bastiano arrived. Is sat above a cart that drove maneuvering the reins attached twos oxen united by the yoke. I approach to him other carts they arrived hauled by oxen and someone by the horses. They also made their appearance some motocarrozzettes. The most greater part of that means they were driven from his/her brothers, children and cousins, an army.
Luigi finally arrived also. It brought an old undershirt tied in head to serve as bandana. «We are ready?» churches skipping about and shaking the fists for air. It mimed his/her idol, the same of a whole nation: the boxer Primo Carnera, that in the trentatré first Italian champion of the world of the maximum weights was become, sweeping away the American Jack Sharkey.
Emilio inflated the cheeks and leaked the air. «I have never seen so so much grape all together. This year the base treatment of sulphur has limited the mildew and the sparrows you/they have combined less troubles of the usual one. We will have to sweat her to us all those twenty liras» it hissed seeing Bastiano that drew near.
Bastiano wore some short pantalonis and a shirt to pictures rolled up until above the elbows. It was seventy years old and his was everything anything else other than a lean body. He/she still worked as a mule and it had a strength spropositata. The elderly ones told that from young he/she succeeded in lifting some barrels of two hundred liters wine. His was the stumpy physiognomy of a fat man, with the face pienotto that succeeded in camouflaging the deep wrinkles. Its legs were trunks of tree, its forearms had the long and smooth hair as the mantle of a collie and they were so big that risked to overcome the circumference of the thighs of Emilio. «Hi, boys! You immediately departs, otherwise we risk of it stuffed to rub from the dark. The baskets are in my cart!» it said Bastiano with his/her ogre voice. It opened the last two buttons of the collar of the shirt putting in evidence a lock of hair salt and pepper.
The workers took the baskets that had been built weaving the reed as one spiked. You worked in couple. Emilio put on with his/her wife Maria, Luigi with a beautiful dark girl that wore a flowers negligee; its name was Graziella, but all called her/it Lella. The last two rows that preceded the vineyard of Peppe Sabiu the brother of Bastiano occupied.
Emilio inspected the ground and found the cippo that delimited the vineyard of Bastiano. Considering that Bastiano and Peppe were brothers, for scorporare the vineyards, that belonged to an only great vineyard before being inherited, had done to less less than sacrifice some rows of grapevines to erect a border of fig trees of India or brambles. That idiot of Concapeddi to divide his/her vineyards from those of his/her/their cousin Spolladeddu, was killed instead, for a whole winter hoeing two rows of grapevines. The fig trees of India had flourished in that empty space, but Concapeddi had not calculated that in the zone where its vineyard resided, when it blew the wind it did him/it of east. The thorns of the fig trees of India got up with the breeze and they struck its vineyard. Instead Spolladeddu was found again with the entire back and the well separated vineyard: to him the east brought at the most some drop of sweat. In the days that the vintage preceded, Concapeddi went to pray twice a day in the church. He/she asked to the Lord not to make to blow the east, not to be forced to vendemmiare covered by a sheet up to the hair, to protect himself/herself/themselves from the thorns.
After the descriptive stone, the rows were only loads of leaves. The rotation of the vintage had passed first from Peppe Sabiu that year.
Maria and Lella pruned some of the webbed leaves among the greatest and they stuffed the fund of the baskets. To the whistle of Bastiano the workers started to cut the full-bodied clusters of red grape. Emilio and Luigi went together unloading the grape in the carts parked behind the eucalyptuses. You crush from the weight of the grape and sticky surrenders from the must, the webbed leaves they remained you glue to the fund of the basket. They succeeded in bad way in limiting that the must drained from the intersections of the reed. The carriers held a rag on the shoulder on which the basket was loaded. The must strained on the neck and on the breast however, the suits and annoyingly making the sticky skin.
To regular intervals, among the rows they detached long reeds hammered to earth with the points that acted from crutches for the carcasses of the crows. «How come you hang the dead crows?» he/she asked incuriosita Lella to Bastiano, that was giving of there to verify that the carts of which it prepared were enough to contain that mountain of grape.
«First I used the scarecrows. The first day the crows are to the wide one. The second they draw near and they study him/it. The third one goes even more him near. The quarter they climb him on the braccias and the fifth one the cacanos on the straw hat.» For years the crows had destroyed his/her vineyards.
Lella and Maria laughed. «You have never thought about replacing the straw hat with a latrine?» Lella sneered.
Bastiano nicchiò, then an incipient laughter removed from him the breath.
«I have found a solution better than the latrine. I shoot to a pair of those bastard and I hang her to the reeds in beautiful sight. It will seem you strange but it works. I believe that also to them arouses fear to see that end can do coming to bleed my vineyard.» Lella made a disgusted grimace.
«And when they begin to stink they hold distant also the young thieves» it added Bastiano.
The workers proceeded without shifting the wor
k. To approach the laboriousness of Bastiano was an illusion: the basket was filled and traveled up to the carts with the same speed with which the other ones completed that operation in couple. «Forces, snails! We are tomorrow also there night of this footstep» it teased them.
In past, once reaches the years" - shutter", you/he/she had decided to give a lesson to the young fellow of the country. You/he/she had taken to enroll himself/herself/themselves every year in the games organized for the celebrations of holy Barbaric. You/he/she had won for nine consecutive years the first prize to the competition of the wheelbarrows, obviously serving him as conveyor and not from momentary, and saving so the back of his/her companion and the wheels of the utensil. When proud it showed the packages of eggs and the flour sacks received in prize, the youngest boys were bite the hands. They wondered where it found that whole agility a middle aged man with the belly of a pregnant woman a nine months and the big head as a barrel. Bastiano was not bald but the joining of its hair was very particular and departed from halves the skull. His/her brothers picked around it up. «Bastiano, you don't suffer from baldness! God has given you the correct hair to cover a head of normal dimensions. Where hair misses you it is because God had not foreseen that your head became as the watermelon that you/they grow to Mussolinia,» and in that zone of reclamations there were news that spoke of cinquantacinque fruits kilos.
Bastiano laughed us on and answered: «I will also Have the big head but starting today my dispensation is big even more, with fresh eggs and flour sacks. You retry next year. Rather, if you give in advance me the prize I don't enroll me, so you save the face» it gloated. It was still temutissimo to the games.
Lella made to circle with mastery the pruning scissors. With a dry hit chopped off the cluster that directly fell in the basket. «How come I see so a little around you to Montevecchio?» Luigi asked her with his/her scoundrel smile.
Lella blushed. Emilio and Maria looked at sottecchi and they snickered. Lella cut another cluster with malice. «Perhaps because don't open well the eyes. I am always there!»
Laughed Emilio the basket loading himself/herself/itself in shoulder. «One to zero for Lella and ball to the center!»
They transported the nth basket. Emilio unloaded him/it, instead Luigi remained with his leaned on the bank of the cart. «Lella is really beautiful! Ago also rhyme.»
Emilio gathered the occasion for a wisecrack. «Bella or ugly it doesn't do difference, so much your bird the eyes it doesn't have them.»
Luigi quadrated the fondoschiena of Lella that was bent for chopping off a cluster of grape from a low branch of the grapevine. «But the master of the bird the eyes it has them, and what you/they see is good stuff.»
Emilio provoked him/it. «You should try us Luigi. You are not tired to make the scapolone?»
Other unloaders came for emptying their baskets. Luigi unloaded leaving the passage free and preceding Emilio him still directed toward the rows. «You are right, Emilio, but with this history of the war. soon that letter of advice will become to certainty and The wills be sent to the front, The feels him/it to me!»
Emilio frowned him. «And with this? Lella would wait for your return as they will be all the other wives.»
«I don't want to make to suffer other women besides my mother.» It knelt and it wound with his/her hand a knotty trunk of life; the webbed leaves softly titillated him the face as it desired they made the hands of Lella. With a knife it cut a cluster devastated by the mildew and it threw him/it to earth, then it crushed him/it sinking him/it in the sand.
«I believe that you are afraid to build you instead a solid relationship» Emilio accused him/it.
Luigi, Lella that smiled reciprocating the look to distance looking. «You are perhaps right you. I am afraid to create me a family because I don't intend to force my wife and my children to a life of difficulties. Mistake?»
Emilio heard the rumor some children that helped his/her mothers to fill the baskets with the grape. It inhaled the odor of the vineyard and it was rubbed the fingers feeling the dust rough that dissaldava the must from the skin. After all to the rows it had the feeling to see Giuseppino that ran after him with the other children: how many times you/he/she had done him/it before falling in that meter of water. It bent the head and he/she answered: «I am not anybody to tell you if you are wrong or you do well not to make you a family. I tell however you that the joys and the pains when they are lived in company they have another taste. The family helps. When it is dead Giuseppino, if we were not helped to story with Maria there. and with you, that by now belong to the family, we would be dead from the pain. He/she anchors today it is so difficult.» And you/he/she was crushed by the emotions. Some tears ruled him the face and from the chin they dripped to earth the white-light of the sand darkening. Luigi put an arm around his neck. «Before, friend, not to think of us and let's enjoy us this beautiful day in calm. You/he/she has been a pleasure for me to know that you consider me one of your family!»
Emilio was rubbed the reddened eyes and dried the tears with the shirt. «Yes, Luigi, goes and let's not think not of us more.»
To half forenoon they stopped him all and they refreshed him with a cluster of grape Italy, nougat and good person, with the big and green grapes as sour medlars. Bastiano on purpose grafted her/it to eat her/it to meal and that type of grape it escaped to the spremitura for the wine. Bastiano made to taste to everybody as good that that had put under spirit the year before had come. Eccome to be good was him/it, but it was so soaked of grappa that could not be granted us more than two or three grapes, always that he/she was not wanted to slip to earth you intoxicate after being him sgolati to sing" hurray tziu Bastianu."
To midday, Maria and Lella they reached halves the their according to spin. For accustomed people to the sacrifice as Emilio and Luigi, to transport the baskets from the beginning of the rows had been a game. Now however work started to make himself/herself/themselves feel, because they had on the legs varied kilometers with thirty kilos in shoulder, I crossed in a sandy ground that swallowed the feet as mobile sands to every footstep. «Go to lunch! He/she eats!» it howled Bastiano. Its words gave relief to the carriers that were shaken of back the baskets almost throwing them to earth. Emilio arched him seeking relief for his/her back.
«We are to good point!» it exclaimed pleased Bastiano with the voice arrochita from the preceding cries.
They camped out under the trees of eucalyptus, in a carpet of oval leaves gilded by the time that crocchiavano when you stamp on. They dealt with the trunks and they systematized some square stones to form a circle. The lunch, was constituted as usual by a piece of stale bread dampened by the butter and some of the last slices of sausage. Prisms of light infiltrated him among the ample stramatures of the trees and they reflected him on the mantle of gilded leaves.
Luigi took a seat above a stone, of side to Lella, surrendering her trunk more comfort. «Thanks, Luigi, is very kind.»
Luigi the takings the hand and it drew near with the lips to his/her ear. «If will give the possibility of it, I intend to be kind more and more with you! Is it all right?»
Took Lella the dark red color of the bovale that Bastiano he was pouring in front of them. Finding an unusual courage for a woman, it drew near to the ear of Luigi and it whispered a half declaration. «You don't know from what aspect that you do him/it!»
Luigi had a wince of pleasure and smiled at her with sweetness, shaking the hand he anchors her.
It sing-songs her prolonged of a bird it broke the romantic atmosphere. They turned all to understand from where that obstinate song originated. It was a pubùsa or upupa for the continental ones: white, black, orange and with a beautiful crest in evidence.
«If Bastiano sees her/it it makes an ugly end!» it said Luigi observing the abdomen pronounced of the man.
Emilio confirmed. «You have reason, September and October they are dangerous months for upupe and foxes.»
The upupa was a v
ery beautiful bird that in spite of its figure fatata stinked terribly, more than the quail: the dirtiest bird that could be found in the countries. Ache smelled the whole year but, as the fox, for one period of about two months that coincided with the vintage, this stench disappeared.
Luigi snickered. «There am many eaters of foxes and upupe and they don't live in the country of Quartu!»
«Then it is true that to Quartu they eat the dogs!» it said Emilio. «I don't know him/it, Emilio, but if I were you I would not go to be a dog-catcher there. I believe that you would not capture many of it!» ironizzò Luigi, making pivot on the gossip that in Sardinia the inhabitants of Quartu were devoured the dogs. But if someone was taken he/she intrigues her/it to analyze the boiled ones and the stew cooked to Montevecchio in the months of September and October, you/he/she would have found less dainty meats of those of the duck and the kidskin; types of meat that to do misses I he/she waits for him/it they stinked the whole less less year that in that two months.
Bastiano raised a cloth that protected a basket. «Before, you eat. If we want to end before evening it will be better that you are in strengths!» It tilted the basket toward the workers to show its content. There was bread done in house and cheese pecorino that its definite perfume emitted in the air. Bastiano cut the forms of cheese in equal portions; Luigi lent him a hand doing as many with the bread. It was everything offered by Bastiano and his/her wife Cinzia, good people.
Emilio observed his/her children that tasted the cheese licking himself/herself/itself the moustaches: as they were beautiful while they were appeasing their behind hunger of years. All proceeded for the best. It missed only a thing, and all waited for him. «Luigi, doesn't this year tell us any joke?» Bastiano pricked him/it.
Luigi picked up the challenge and got up standing tightening his/her portion of bread and cheese. «No, this year I have decided to tell you an episode that is really happened me.»
Lella withdrew him. It found strange that Luigi told to all of his/her things, you/he/she would have preferred that told only her to her, in private.
Luigi started to speak. «Before the war, two beautiful foreign they knocked to the door of my house, they were witnesses of Jehovah.»
Emilio had noticed Lella to shut the jaw as soon as Luigi had observed the two beauty foreign. It gave a push with the elbow to Maria that the mouth covered him not to let a giggle be escaped. Also Luigi furtively looked at the sulky face of Lella. You turned for not making to be seen by her snickering. «They told me to want to enter for speaking to me and to try to convert me to their religion» it continued, it intentionally coughed then for creating the correct atmosphere. «To that point you/he/she had come me a question spontaneous and definite to do him her": But is it true that you you testify of Jehovah you make the alone love on Thursdays"?»
Bastiano the face covered him with both the hands hello to scompisciarsi from the laughters. Instead Lella chewed bitter and inside of itself it was furious, Luigi's question at two o'clock foreign you/he/she had been impertinent.
Luigi continued had a good time by the situation. «They looked me you surprise, then one responded me": Sì, is true, we make once a week the alone love, the Thursday"» it Detached an edge of cheese for then to give a bite to the bread. «I looked her and did I ask both": That day is today?" Them, thinking that I was stupid, they made a grimace, then they answered": Today it is Monday"!» it made Luigi talking to the full mouth. It rotated with a turn, risking to make to be escaped bread and cheese, and its turn almost finished in knee with a tense hand for a bow. «Then overhauls Thursday that we speak of it, I told him.» His had been more than an allusion.
The laughters made to escape the upupa. The gilded sea of dry leaves roared crushed by feet shaken that they danced to suon of laughters. Bastiano, feeling the end of the story, bread and cheese you/he/she had spit for not suffocating him and he/she anchors he/she didn't succeed in abandoning the bent posture. «Too strongly, Luigi, really troppu togu. They make the alone love on Thursdays. And then overhauls Thursday!» it screamed gratified Bastiano.
Luigi felt the hair to throw to the shoulders. You/he/she had been Lella. «You have had really the courage to do what you have told?» it questioned him/it in accusatory tone. It had the drivel to the mouth.
Luigi challenged her/it. «Because? Don't you believe it?»
While it was being about to let loose himself/herself/themselves the first scene of jealousy among the two, Bastiano it intervened, that widened an arm to point out all the presents. «Lella, leaves alone, Luigi tells every year of these histories, but I derives only from his/her imagination. You see, it makes us laugh all and us we are happy.»
Lella still mortified Luigi with the look. «Tziu Bastiano says the truth?»
Luigi encircled her life. «Some that yes. beautiful my!»
The cheeks of Lella reddened him; laughed, embarrassing himself/herself/itself to have tried so so much jealousy for a man that was not even its. For Luigi it started to try a fiery passion and the release of anger after his/her story it was the test of it.
To the one and half they started over cutting the grape. Whitish wads were entangled in the tops of the Linas mountain, contaminating the blue of the clear day. They worked to maddish rhythms and the six in the evening they concluded the vintage. Bastiano settled his/her debt getting heavy of coins the tense hands. Emilio and Luigi, after having received the pay, they sprawled him on the cover of dry leaves. His/her children were already in underpantses and tzia Cinzia Sabiu it washed their feet with some contained fresh water in a pitcher. They howled happy and they got excited with impatience. They attended to jump above the full carts of grape for the operation de him accaccigatura. Bastiano inspected the carts to verify that the waxed cloths, set to line the fund and the banks, duty you/they were systematized to and they didn't allow the must to drain to earth. It lifted an arm. «You are ready?»
A yes periodic it emptied the bellows of his/her/their children.
Bastiano lowered the arm. «Then street!»
The bystanders saw his/her children compete for catapulting him on the carts. They jumped on the grape squirting juice red blood from all the parts. Their faces were mud's masks deformed by the happiness. You accaccigatura was not a symbolic phase merely used for making the babies you participate some vintage. That pressure of excited feet crushed the grapes of grape emitting the must. To bring to grind a quantity of grape as that of Bastiano cost almost as the same grape. The feet of his/her/their children had as only price instead the bread and cheese eaten to lunch.
Visible to the banks of the banks, where grape was less heaped up in comparison to the center of the cart, the must reached shortly the level of watch. It was necessary to stop the little one to avoid that the juice overflowed to earth. Between a complaint and the other his/her children were lowered one to one. His/her parents grabbed them under the armpits to bring them to earth. Luigi looked at those nice scoundrels and laughed together with Lella. From the feet to the navel they seemed to be fallen inside a pentolone of hot water. More on, some isolated stain gave the idea to be the result of a beating. Emilio didn't have anybody to make to go down from that carts. Franco was too much small and was home with his/her/their grandmother. Instead Giuseppino was dead: puddle of a liquid color must, very less dessert. A denser liquid: blood.
The disease of the evening infected the last cyclamens of light of the sunset weakening the country of Launaxis with a piressia of darkness. Oxen, horses and motocarrozzette shifted him greeting the estate of Bastiano Sabiu. The carts were full of grape and must. Now he/she didn't remain but to leave everything in the hands of the teachers of the wine, hereditary from centuries of a precious ability handed down of father in child. A part of the must would have been boiled and sacrificed for doing he/she knows sapa, the principal ingredient for the sweets of tzia Cinzia. On November eleven you/they would have ascertained the quality of the wine instead, because as it said the old proverb: to san
Martin the whole must is wine.
Bastiano made to flow along the reins an arc of skin that broke him on the back of the oxen producing a gun. The animals lazily started to advance bringing himself/herself/itself behind their loaded cart of must and grape.
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