Lead Petals

by Quelli di ZEd

  28

  When to Montevecchio it rained it did him/it to I hijack. It was the last downpour before three or four months of scorching sun that you/he/she would also have dried the fig trees of India. In the second floor of the hospital, Lucio was extended in the bunk of the room number twelve. Pipes, tubicini, mask, flebo and needles gave him an anxious aspect. It was attached to a marchingegno that, thanks to a box similar to the present television in the room of the mirrors in the guesthouse, traced a flat line. A crazy named Hans Berger, in 1924, you/he/she was gone out with an absurd history: the wetware had an electricity that could be recorded. At first all had derided him/it but now every hospital to the state-of-the-art one he was endowing with that amazing gadget the electroencephalogram. It is to Montevecchio he/she was wanted to be always the first ones in everything. A rhythmic sound articulated the heartbeats and a kind of knapsack of air he inflated and it deflated replacing its bellows: they were progress of the medicine. The body of Lucio he was preparing for following the flat line of electroencephalogram in the place in which was run away the mind, a mysterious place that, unlike all the other places of which nothing is not known, infuse trust rather than to arouse fear; a region of the sky that the men call heaven.

  The environment lacked some usual odor of alcohol that impesta every hospital. The rain drummed on the glasses of the windows straining downward as snakes of crystal. The skin of Lucio was color spun sugar, sweet as its spirit. A long body that the bunk of the hospital strove him to contain; the its fifty of foot stuck out in full from the extremity. Red hair was a fall of petals on the pillow. The mask covered him both the harelip and the deformed nose. To look seemed him/it really an angel come by the sky, as if the era imagined in the wood the marshal. There were no traces of the monstrosity that had tortured him/it for the whole life.

  The machinery that verified its heartbeats sent forth a strident sound. Then stronger and repetitive. The wagon of the death had come and the clogs of the horses crackled invisible as the rain that beat on the glasses of the windows. The scythe was about to reap to Montevecchio. Lucio was ready to die, without arousing the interest of anybody or almost. Because the men mind only the death when it touches who is nearby him or who has completed from alive something to remember. Lucio had not been born beautiful as a superstar, you/he/she had not been born rich and you/he/she had not been given him an intelligence out of the commune: as if whoever possessed these dowries you/he/she had made great things to deserve her to him. They always plots the praises of beautiful men or that you/they have effected great discoveries. He/she is not thought only even for an instant that, perhaps, with those dowries given by God you/they would have been able to still effect about ten of it of more sensational discoveries. The life of a man been born poor in reed, with the great brain as a walnut, that succeeds in honestly building him a family and way of living, it is worth how much that of a noble. A man the life if he/she builds alone her but always tied up to of the ties that have so many names: character, spirit, strength, intelligence, haughtiness, cruelty and street talking; its decisions will always be driven by these obligations that they are not chosen. Lucio had always thought her this way. He didn't have guilts neither for his/her aspect and neither for the poverty, yet if the you/he/she was felt I set for a long time. When you/they had shot his pain you/he/she had been less intense.

  The life that you/he/she had always taken from Lucio, really now ch'egli was found at the last gasp, definite to give. The line traced on the box of the electroencephalogram started. It became the sketch of the mountains performed to pencil by a child.

  «If it will get by?» he/she asked a voice that originated from the corridor.

  «Yes, if it will get by, but I don't know it will be I satisfy» another voice responded.

  «As it would be?» he/she decidedly asked the first voice in more marked tone.

  «You will see, you will see and you will understand!» the second voice responded, now compunta.

  The elderly ones sustained that the dying persons, just before to exhale the last breath, they repurchased an instant of revival and they felt well him how come before then, a song of the swan.

  Another discharge on the line of the electroencephalogram. A sudden reflusso of life forced Lucio to open the eyes.

  And he/she saw him/it. In the bunk opposite to his there was a man that once had had a face. Now it was a scribble of skin sewn by the points; the nose torn of clean; an empty orbit; the burnt scalp and the mouth crossed by a fissure that it reached the neck. Lucio scrutinized that destroyed face and perceived something that salivates from his stomach. It was what all to Montevecchio you/they had tried when they saw him: the reluctance.

  The only remained eye set in that grotesque face opened. Lucio saw his/her unmistakable color and immediately recognized him/it. Only Daniel Minghetti possessed honey of acacia to the place of the eyes. The voices that first you/they were unraveled in the corridor they belonged to the ingegner Minghetti and to the doctor Saints, and they spoke of his terrible accident of auto.

  Lucio succeeded in touching himself/herself/themselves the face and felt soft skin without seams. In comparison to the man that had of forehead, its deformities were meaningless. You/he/she was wound by the exciting feeling that had dreamt to try for the whole life: to feel himself/herself/themselves beautiful. Its face had a blessed but sharp expression. The same face what you/he/she had hired Daniel Minghetti when in car with Geneva you/he/she had seen him/it climb in the wood. A face that smiled, or it derided better.

  The fantastic feeling, epic, dreamt since the birth to feel himself/herself/themselves attractive, it made to believe in Lucio to already have died. Perhaps its heaven was so: to be reputed beautiful with the same face what from alive you/they had considered all vomitevoles the revenge of its face. If Geneva had been able to see him/it in a world where all were reduced as the man that had of forehead, you/he/she would be embarrassed for being beside a very beautiful man. It was this the prize of Lucio, him that you/he/she had been condemned by the same men that had continually judged him/it.

  A terrible sharp pain crossed his heart as the blade of an arburesa. The sound of the gadget became harassing. Now it was afraid not to know what you/he/she would have found. It was afraid to wander in the dark to the endless one, alone; it feared that in the day of the resurrezione you/he/she would not have been able to find again Geneva. It was simply fear to die. A white light dazzled him/it and a heat pervaded adorante its limbs. It was well, relaxed, and the fear had disappeared. Someone, beyond the light, you/he/she had told him that you/he/she would have gone to a place where there would have been no distinctions between Hebrews and Germans, among poor and rich, among ugly and beautiful. A place where aspect and the souls there was not you/they would have had the whole same diaphanous form.

  The last image that flowed in front of its eyes was the face in Geneva. A frame that hoped accompanied him/it up to the day when riabbracciatis would be him. The machinery: pip-pip-pip-pip-pip!

  The eyes didn't see light anymore but they were open. The last puff of life was emitted warm from its mouth, losing himself/herself/itself in the sky as one smoked of pure soul.

  Its body was extinguished, forged with what you/he/she had made to turn its existence and that of all those people whom had to whether to do with the mines. His had been a thick physicist as the lead: a metal, whose name evokes hardness but that instead you/he/she can be grazed with one scraped off of fingernail or made a thin foil with an alone hit of hammer. It was dead with a physicist that seemed indestructible, only in appearance. Instead its soul was of zinc, and you/he/she had wound the heart with a hermetic wrap that had prevented the feelings, good and you win, to escape. You/they had always put him/it in front of the love and to the suffering. Lucio had a lead body and a soul of zinc, and you/he/she would have had forever them.

  Daniel took back completely knowledge. You felt strange and he/she saw the things that surrounded him/it as if t
he same observing from a binoculars with the too narrow lenses. The legs ached him and in more it realized to have a plastered arm. With the healthy hand the sheet removed him and almost vomited. Its burnt legs were wound in impregnate bands of its malodorous blood. It contemplated the man that lay in front of him and it grinded. It was Lucio, the man that Geneva had brought away him, and he/she remembered him everything. The marshal had gone their home to tell the confession of Emilio Masala; his/her father had ordered him not to see Geneva anymore again; then the accident had arrived.

  Lucio seemed to stare at him/it with a face covered by the mask of the oxygen. Its eyes had a pleased expression, satisfied. They were eyes that sneered.

  There was at that time a lightning. A thunder devastante waved the glasses of the windows, that the rain of back was shaken. Another lightning and the light that invaded the room allowed Daniel of specchiarsi in the taxes. A spine-chilling cry reached the engineer and the doctor that fell him in the room.

  Lucio was dead. Daniel is sat on the bed that tried to get out of himself/herself/themselves that mask of torn hide with the fingernails of the healthy hand. The engineer saw his/her child and the face covered him for the torment. Daniel be lives, without going crazy, aware every day of his/her repugnant and mindful aspect of the shining beauty that belongs him. The gold filaments that you/he/she had had for hair and the amber gems that had been its eyes had disappeared, stolen actually at the end of the days from its sloth. You/he/she would have lived melting himself/herself/itself in front of old photos. Envying Lucio that had ended to suffer while he had just started. With that thunder, the curse of the monster of Montevecchio had freed the one and you/he/she had taken possession some other.

  Geneva walked fast toward Montevecchio. His/her father had disappeared and Lucio fought for living in a hospital bed, so he/she believed. You/he/she had stopped raining from few minutes and the clouds him you/they were opening, granting the twilight. When you/he/she was gone out it still rained and now its suit was rotten. It clinged her I set as a second skin. It emerged from the path that it brought to village you Rule and it was found in front of well San Antonio. It breathed to work and it was her impossible to break the breath. Filthy of mud up to the knees, it kept on walking without minding the puddles of water that it stamped on. It was afraid to find himself/herself/themselves in an alone hit without anybody to love and that it loved him. He/she didn't cry, anguish had crystallized her the tears, preventing that they went down. Its hair seemed feathers of bird drenched in the oil. He/she saw an auto that approached to her. It dealt with the alpha romeo of the doctor Saints. The doctor extinguished the motor and descents. Geneva saw his/her melancholy face and the words that the doctor said they were only the confirmation of what she already knew. «I come from the hospital. Lucio is dead! It turns the news that has been your father to shoot him and that has already arrested him/it!»

  The eyes in Geneva saw the spirits. Its face could not be defined. You/he/she had imagined some death of Lucio but not that you/he/she had killed him/it really his/her father.

  It collapsed with the earth knees, inside a puddle that squirted her the suit and the face of mud. You turned scrutinizing the horizon with the tears that loosened him. The tower merlata of the well seemed a face of stone. Its caditoies dashed away the water of the rain, and they were eyes that you/they cried; eyes that in the background crimson of the sunset they shedded tears blood.

  The doctor gently threw on Geneva. «We go, Miss, I bring her/it to house.»

  Geneva climbed in car without speaking, it limited him to dry the tears. Perhaps its life was lost.