Lead Petals

by Quelli di ZEd

  24

  Some days were departed from the visit of the Duce. To Montevecchio the things were taking back their natural course. Ciccitta Marongiu had started over marking in his/her calendar the scorregges of the others, the lance-corporal Ignazio Martis touched the culo of the grading machines, Antioco Perra sharpened knives, his/her brothers Tuveris got drunk him to the circle of the dopolavoro and they looked for scabs for road. All as before.

  Anguish held tightened the slipknot that that morning had wound the neck of Emilio. Maria was imposed, once so much. You/he/she had pretended that Emilio visited and put hand to the grave of his/her child, become by now a stone devoured by the musk. Maria visited every Saturday the grave of Giuseppino and deposed some fresh flowers withdrawing those wrinkled. With Emilio you/he/she had otherwise gone. From when it was dead Giuseppino it tried repulsion to the alone idea to visit him/it and to depose some flowers in his/her grave. Pushed by Maria, you/he/she had also tried to do him/it, more than once. It reached few meters from the great wall of surrounded that contained the cemetery and it jammed in front of the rugginoso gate. The memory of that Sunday of November cast him against him, preventing the last footstep to complete him.

  To Giuseppino quite a lot things were allowed: to assist to the preamble of the greatest party that every family waited for one whole year you/he/she didn't show up among those. That fifteen November would be killed the sow.

  In an angle of the courtyard, seminascostis from the tree of fig trees, four walls of raw bricks and two sheets of plate wanted to be a porcilaia. Giuseppino had climbed on a chair impagliata and from the window of the kitchen it watched the sow of over two hundred kilos. The animal rolled him in the mud of his/her enclosure, delaying with the belly to the insù as a pup waiting for little darlings. Emilio had thrown a bucket of acorns inside the porcilaia. Giuseppino had seen him, as before you/he/she had seen him follow the sow with a big club how first you/he/she was leaned to the tree of fig trees. The animal was penetrated in the hut shaking his/her curled tail; to his/her shoulders, the anxious shade of the jailer.

  A low thud, dry.

  Giuseppino was huddled hearing that noise and you/he/she had disappeared under the windowsill of the window.

  A smothered grunt, mean in truth, a kind of hoarse moan interrupted by the blade of a knife.

  Giuseppino had raised again the head and you/he/she had been petrified in front of the blood that from the hands of his/her father.

  The evening you/they had butchered the beast separating the parts to preserve sottosale from those perishable that had to be consumed in few days. In a terracotta basin you/they had picked up some kilos of meat chopped mixed tattered of fat. Before proceeding with the butchery, Maria had prepared the supper frying the brain of the sow. The year before, the pig was male and you/he/she had been castrated for time, to avoid that the meat took taste of piss and foul smell of excited beast. Giuseppino had eaten the fried testicles of the pig believing they were flowers of pumpkin.

  In the house it dominated the corpulent odor of the oil of lentischio. The oil of olive was stuff for rich. Maria picked up the black berries of the lentischio and made us the oil. A drop all it took is flooding every food with a resinous taste of it.

  Giuseppino had remained apart during the first phases of the slaughter house. It observed in detached way those skilled hands to work the meat: to mince her/it, to crush her/it and to mix her/it with the fat. You/he/she was not even shifted when Maria had delivered among his hands two envelopes filled with the order: a piece of heart, one of lung, one of lard and some beefsteak. Giuseppino would have had to bring the order in the houses of Dino Pani and Luciano Madau, families that when they killed their sow they never missed to deliver theirs of order. The preceding year, Giuseppino had made the jumps of joy when his/her mother had delivered him the envelopes in hand. For a hour you/he/she had been free to turn alone for Guspini doing the great one. But that day had not even smiled. Emilio had noticed that something worried his/her child. In front of the fireplace you/he/she had deposed a crossroad of juniper on two chairs and you/he/she had put you to dry the thinnest guts of the sow. «From the one po'di seeds of anise to Giuseppino» you/he/she had told then Maria.

  Giuseppino had strabuzzato the eyes and you/he/she was felt important; it was to have involved in the preparation of the better thing of the world: the sausage.

  «I will put the garlic and the salt in the basin. You Giuseppino you will add a fist of seeds of anise and mother it will mix I mix him. Is it all right?» Emilio had asked him sketching a smile.

  Giuseppino had tightened both the fists. It was enthusiastic and it skipped about. «Yes, dad!» Its eyes shone of happiness, it dealt with its first apprenticeship of the sausage.

  Emilio threw the chopped garlic and the salt in the meat; Giuseppino added the seed of anise with excitement, fierce to be able to belong to the matters of the great ones. Maria soaked I mix him with a glass of white wine and you/he/she turned the meat to amalgamate her/it barehanded. To the next day, when the meat would have assimilated the tastes of the seasonings, the dry guts are have been filled giving form to the sausages.

  Giuseppino had allowed to fall from his/her hand the seeds of anise. «Dad, has killed you the pig?» you/he/she had asked with a thread of voice.

  Emilio and Maria had exchanged a surprised look. At the end, Emilio had responded with sincerity. «Yes, Giuseppino!»

  Giuseppino had bent the head, shunning the face of his/her father; it contemplated the seeds of anise on the table, them you/they had not killed anybody. «To the mass, Mr. It uses you/he/she has told her/it that who kills it ends to the hell.» Its voice had a tone of resignation.

  Emilio had included where you/he/she was going to protect the discourse of his/her child. Maria had smiled and had looked at the face worn out of Giuseppino.

  Emilio had decided to explain the things with delicacy. «In the chiesetta of Santa Barbara Mr. It uses you/he/she has told her/it correct things but it didn't refer to this.»

  Giuseppino had arched an eyebrow in inquisitional form, perhaps that discourse was too much great for its five years.

  «You see, Giuseppino, God has created the gazelles to give to eat to the lions, you/he/she has created the bugs to give to eat to the birds, and you/he/she has created the hens, the rabbits and the pigs to give to eat to the men. Life goes so, the nature goes so, this calls food chain.»

  «But Mr. It uses it tells her/it that also the animals macaws creatures of God!» you/he/she had beaten Giuseppino as a little fellow.

  Emilio was become serious. «Really because the animals are a gift of God we don't throw away anything of it.»

  Giuseppino had been doubtful on that answer. «Nothing, nothing?»

  Emilio had added another pinch of garlic minced in the basin. «Nothing, nothing!»

  «But I don't succeed in chewing the bones» the small one had whined.

  Emilio and Maria had laughed at taste for that innocent verification. Emilio had taken in arm Giuseppino. «The bones we salt her and we use her for insaporire the pasta and beans that you like!»

  The face of Giuseppino was deformed in a grimace schifata. «It is not true that the pasta and beans I like so much.»

  Emilio if the era narrow strong and he/she believed to have shut the argument. You was wrong and the nth questioning had arrived. «But if everybody is born for giving to eat to somebody else, is the man born for giving to eat to whom?»

  Emilio had prevaricated, attending that Maria came in his/her suffrage. You/he/she had been an attended useless. Maria had widened the braccias, you/he/she ignored whether to say and she preferred to continue the mixture of the seasoned meat, rather than to pronounce some idiocies.

  Emilio had finally responded trying to be convincing. «The man is not born for giving to eat to someone. God has created him to his/her image and similarity and you/he/she has chosen to put him/it to head of everybody, to pact that behaves well.» In
that instant you/he/she was seemed him the most correct answer. Hardly two months later, I approach to the death of Giuseppino, you/he/she had understood the deceptive nature of those words: the man was born for giving to eat to the worms and him you/he/she had chosen not to make visit to his/her child because every time that you/he/she had drawn near to the cemetery you/he/she would have had the impression to perceive the miasma of the death. Inside the white coffin putrefied by the damp earth there were the ossicinas of his/her child, spolpate from the worms.

  You/he/she had also thought of him that same morning, but Maria was almost started crying for begging to give him/it one refreshed to the grave of Giuseppino. You/he/she had succeeded in winning the sense of nausea that oppressed him/it and you/he/she had crossed the gate. The shade of the cypresses made still that less hospitable place. File sghimbesces of graves pursued and then they overcame that of Giuseppino. Emilio there had been an only time in the last four years, for the funeral of his/her child, but he/she remembered well the exact point of the burial. Octave line to the left.

  While it was proceeding, it scrutinized the heaps of earth that signalled the graves. A lot of they possessed only a wood cross without registrations, others they showed off headstones of marble with dedications in memory. You/he/she had wondered how come the men had decided to bury his/her own darlings. They perhaps believed that in the moment of the resurrezione for God it was directly simpler rimpastare their rests from the earth virgin.

  To the funeral of Giuseppino you/he/she had participated an immense crowd: many miners, a lot of poor people, so many normal families, few aristocrats, any executive of the mines. But thing there was then of so strange. The poor men, the ignorant persons, in general common people were incapable to disguise the feelings behind a face of circumstance and you/he/she had chosen to greet a last time Giuseppino, portion of their existence.

  The rich ones, the presumed intellectual, the people privileged by the life had concealed in the house instead and you/he/she had contrived some excuse to justify his/her own absence. Giuseppino Masala was extraneous to their clan and was worth less than a hour of time for his/her funeral.

  You/he/she had come on the grave. A dollop of earth semidistrutto from tracks of shoes was appropriated to the feet of a headstone of stone. There, under, Giuseppino was buried. The epitaph engraved four years before it was very simple: aloft the writing Giuseppino Masala; as soon as below the dates of birth and death: 30/10/1931. 03/01/1937. Emilio and Maria would have liked to make to engrave a dedication for their child, something as" Giuseppino you will be always in our hearts", or" Wait us for angel of mother and dad." You/he/she had been impossible. The epitaphs were paid in base to the number of letters it engraved on the headstone, and not to leave a grave that had only the date of birth you/they had been forced to ask a loan between friends and relatives, to imagine himself/herself/themselves if you/they could afford a" In memory they set."

  Now in that tomb registration overhung by the musk you/he/she could be read only halves the name": Giusep"., the rest of the incision had disappeared, as if, later as soon as four years, the world he was forgotten of Giuseppino and medium the musk you/he/she was trying to cancel the last traces of that brief existence. Emilio had been run over, almost senseless, from that sight that it gave him a feeling devastante, atrocious and painful.

  "No, of you I have not forgotten, small my", you/he/she had thought. You/he/she had knelt and you/he/she had cried, asking for forgiveness Giuseppino for that four long years when you/they were not more visas. With a comb you/he/she had succeeded in sweeping away the musk. Only a small dark stain was escaped the purge, but with the rays of the sun you/he/she would have disappeared together with the damp. With the same care of a child intent on the beach to create a castle of sand, had given back vigor to the heap of earth that announced the grave. The hand was kissed and you/he/she had placed her on the name of his/her graven child on the headstone, then you/he/she had left the cemetery.

  Now Emilio delayed in front of the building of the direction, in one of the few stains of sun that the great pines of the park granted in the shade. You systematized the collar of the job jacket, from which he was infiltrating one I blab in spring. In front of the entry of the hospital, a nurse of half age swept the dust from the staircases. Shifted Emilio him lazily from the sunny street handkerchief. To lowered head and with the hands inserted in the pockets of the jacket him it allowed to involve from the lukewarm shade of the pines. It crossed avenue Littorio. On the right they played again the bells of the chiesetta of Santa Barbara. They were you are her of the afternoon. He/she succeeded in perceiving the church for an instant, dominated to the shoulders from the building of the direction. It didn't dare to go over: that place his/her child remembered too much him and for that day you/he/she had exhausted the giacenzes of tears to pour to his/her sense of guilt.

  «Emilio!»

  Emilio stopped him. That thin voice was him family; it came from the inside of the church.

  «Emilio!» He/she anchors that voice, this time less low.

  It entered the church. You/he/she had forgotten the paintings that the walls with abstract images and figures of saints. Dipped the point of the fingers in the font of marble and it made him the sign of the cross. It was a gesture that had completed for more than twenty years, on Sundays. This time had completed only it for a revival of habit, he didn't want to have more nothing to whether to do with God and the church. You looked around but he/she saw only five wood benches ordered in line in front of the altar. The pavement to black and grey pictures seemed a chessboard of which Emilio made part: a pedestrian, at the most an infantryman, but not of some one king. The statue of holy Barbaric it aroused respect and signoreggiava to the center of the altar, as soon as behind a white baluster.

  «Emilios, are here!»

  Emilio followed the source of the voice and found again him in front of the tabernacle. A terrace of marble raised the niche to the same level of the altar and an outline of which you/he/she could glimpse only the shoulders it attended him/it sat in that point.

  When Emilio resurfaced from the chiesetta of Santa Barbara his/her eyes they were possessed and they fixed the void. You/he/she had perhaps seen a ghost or worse: the devil.