Diamond

Diamond

  Finding the way out

  By

  Nunzia Castaldo

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  PUBLISHED BY

  Diamond

  Finding the way out

  Copyright © 2014 by Nunzia Castaldo

  Cover design by Loris Periani

  Thank you for downloading this eBook. It remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author. Quotes used in reviews are the exception. No alteration of content is allowed. If you enjoyed this book, then encourage your friends to download their own copy.

  Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  "Diamond Finding the way out" is a story told in the first person, in the rapid unfolding of events that disrupt the existence and force the protagonist to find a way out, without which, his life will remain without the most important thing: giving and receiving love.

  Thanks for reading. I hope enjoyed the story

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  Diamond

  Finding the way out

  Chapter 1

  At the beginning

  I met Eleana on a warm late summer day.

  In June, I was a graduate gemologist and I had aroused the admiration of the Committee. I was able to propose solutions for jewelry designers combining tradition and modern practice of carving the diamond. The teacher a few weeks before had said: "The profession of gemologist is art that goes beyond the technique and you are the best."

  My friend Verter had come to reinforce the concept, he works as a surgeon at a private clinic in the city, but he is an inexperienced tourists fond of precious stones; he said to me: "You don't survive still for some time without your stones " and remembered our trip to search for colored stones.

  He said that he had admired me when, between as many difficulties and hardships, I persisted however to look for the particular stone, without giving in to the blandishments of the first bidders. It was true. I felt really satisfied when I handled and observed under a microscope gems dreaming of one day perform the best cut of rough stone for to blow up all the light of perfect gem, this desire gave me a jolt of passion as when you conquer a beautiful woman rebel.

  My grandfather had introduced me to the world of gems; he was the architect of my passion and desire to collect them. I was sad because he was no longer alive to celebrate with me, just that he had spent to do so it became my job.

  He told me: "Silvio, you are the sole heir and know that your father will do anything to keep you, but you do not listen to him." He insisted: "Study and leaves Bologna go into a world center for diamonds."

  I knew it would be difficult to change my future already planned behind the counter of the jewelry family, but I did not conform to the life spent between the house and shop, and about relationships between market rules, including competition and budget problems. I defended my decision until the last to perfect abroad in a major center for cutting, but I could not convince my father. He wanted me to work in jewelry store for a year as a contribution to the costs that I had to deal with.

  I went to the jewelry immediately after the summer holidays every Monday afternoon and I was not too depressed dedicated to the creation of a plaque enameled frame watermarked. I had already prepared the model with a lot of writing: "Rhodes jewelers since 1919." I liked the activities embedding, selection of stones and chiseling.

  Thus, in the afternoon, from behind the glass wall that separates the lab from the store, sitting at desk, I was standing between engravers to engrave metals, clamps and spindles, batsman and a lantern, and tried to distract the watchmaker Victor load the ringing of the pendulum with a large key that at every turn issued a crash sorting a nuisance exaggerated. The ornamental clock: a tall cabinet with the mechanics 'box at the top and the pendulum and weight clearly visible at the bottom, my grandfather had bought it and had it placed in the external window.

  I was determined to asked he how he'd rebuild the anchor, mindful of what my grandfather told me that he knew how to do it and that he had been one of the few capable of repairing antique clocks on which no one could put more hands.

  I was there on the point protruding from the bench to talk to him and instead caught a glimpse of a profile in the middle of the glow of the outside, so I moved towards the entrance, make out a slender body, a smiling face and in a moment I felt a leap to the heart.

  I put a hand on shoulder to Victor like saying: "I'll take the customer" and I approached the girl who had dazzled me more than the light, however she did not deign to look, he approached him and placed his lips to the side his mustache and a voice that came to me warm and harmonious, said to him: "Hello dad, remember that we have an appointment with Eriberto?".

  I remembered suddenly that I have already met her that she was a brunette girl with a long ponytail down to her waist. It was an afternoon I saw her walk into the store with her little hand close to her father and saw again how he reciprocated with security, and how that gesture I had aroused jealousy; remembered that he was silent with his eyes down, and I saw again teenager while I pretended not to have understood his name and forced her to repeat it again.

  I said "Hello Eleana" and I could not add more. I was confused by different sensations, invested by the heat rose to his chest to the shine of her eyes diamond blacks. She pursued her lips and responded with a "Hello Silvio" full of meaning such as "I'm speaking to the son of jeweler" and stepped aside from his forehead a tuft of hair around the face blackberry arranged in loose curls along the shoulders.

  I felt uncomfortable, I decided to get away for a while and leave them, but I could not look away from her, from her lovely figure of burnished leather facing the light-assertion in skintight white. I looked at her and enticed me his ways simply polite.

  I approached again in questioning glances and final sentences. I heard Victor: "Back you and Eriberto in an hour." She stared at me again tilting her head to one side and slipped through the door. It seemed to me that perhaps he understood my embarrassment and perhaps made her smile, my model of golden-rimmed glasses too classic but I liked it for the air to be intellectual and consistency with dark blond hair, or maybe for my thinness or for his long arms out of the cuffs or maybe it was not as I thought and it was just the result of my character touchy easy to resent.

  Upon his return, I wanted to talk a few moments between we but I remembered I was with some discomfort that we would also Eriberto, who did not know, but I was sure I heard his voice vibrate the name in letters full of affection and sympathy.

  I watched Victor back to the workbench and I followed him with the desire to tell me about her and them, without revealing my true intentions. I expected to know and in the meantime I did not know where to start, I realized that I was never interested in him. Suddenly I felt my mouth dry in the heat of the laboratory for the cigarette he had lit with a Zippo clutched in his hand with a gesture that seemed borne of respect and similar to that between my fingers was holding the blue diamond, and instinctively I began the conversation just from that lighter.

  I said: "It's true American?" Even though I do not smoke I knew that he had become an object of worship. He stared at me with soft eyes and swaying his head he replied: "The U.S. military had it in the war, but I had it by an Italian military". He added: "The flame is lit even when the wind blows."

  I figured an obvious answer, but not so personal and I could not hide my embarrassment, luck that at that time my father came in and Victor said to him: "Did
you tell your son in time of war?" "You know how kids are; they do not want to hear about risks that we have going on!"He replied without suspicion or reserve.

  I found myself irritated that my father did not made me a partaker of his life without even trying to know what I thought about it and jealous of his dialogue with Victor strict understanding that I had rarely seen him do, and only with those estimated with sincere confidence. I was struck to the heart of my affections, and it was not the first time, and I was always a challenge. I told him bitter: "Risks, do not complain if are not yours." "Do it to tell him what happened." He told me hard.

  Victor was sitting at the counter with a watch on the plate of work, the monocle in his eye and the tips of the tweezers tight on the barbell. He said: "You ask me to tell, I do not know if I can remember those times so far." I saw him place the tweezers into the dish assembly; pull out another cigarette from the pack. My father: "Come on, you see that Silvio is curious" I understood that he wanted me to know something but I could not explain what might be.

  Victor took off the lens, pointing one elbow on the bench, resting his forehead on the palm of the hand between the dull sound spread in alarm clocks to repair. He told me: "The wars are so ugly." I saw his eyes were moist of compassion as repudiation of cruelty as his face was colored red and marked left me impressed. Meanwhile, my father was sitting in a corner, in the chair for clients, and he lit his pipe. I, however, I felt embarrassed.

  "Okay" said Victor with sad eyes. "My mother stayed at home, did not have the strength to accompany me, only my father did, and I took with me the thought of the whole family, and from that day I did not see anyone." He added: "I spent many months in the sweltering heat of Africa, between the dunes and the sand mixed with the food, until one day unfortunately we were reorganized and landed in Albania."

  I have followed with curiosity every word that came out from the slow heavy breathing: "We went walking for about forty miles a day, until we got to the border with the first lines on the Greek combat zone; we were a few guys of twenty, twenty-two years to the maximum."Always with an eye to the little gear embedding, he continued to talk: "They took us to a ravine; night, day, always on the alert, sleeping with clothes."

  I listened his voice spread into the air from under the gray mustache and get into eddies and convolutions in a chaotic motion as the smoke of his cigarette without a filter that was sizzling on the old lighter. "The cold or heat enveloped us in an atmosphere of only pain and fear, and this was passed; now that is story, but every minute was an eternity, and yet there was always a glimmer of hope."

  I saw the spark and then the flame several inches long. I laid eyes over the window and the flame of battle seemed to me. The war was for me a history book, a film in black and white, now he would open a depth of reflection. I sat next to Victor who had a hand wrist watch and I saw him give the office by crown.

  My father interrupted him to say that fortunately he had not been sent there. Victor said: "At one time we were overwhelmed, we were just sixteen friends, sixteen soldiers, one was wounded in the fighting, we heard a crash and a voice ... to say the last word, perhaps invoking the mother ... there was ..., I had to raise his hands, presenting the white flag: a rag attached to the barrel of a gun."

  He continued: "I will never forget the eyes of the sergeant told us that at the time of surrender - For you the war is over, despite the fact that you are prisoners - hugged me and gave me this lighter."I moved in the space marked by plumes of smoke.

  He said: "Well, the war went on to make his disasters" he continued: "We came to Athens after so many kilometers on foot, spit in the faces of the people who watched us pass, there were also some women who were crying seeing us in those conditions, perhaps thinking of their loved ones who were on the front and that they did not know anything."

  He had got up and went to the old grandfather clock from the floor, I could not understand how I could look at putting in time at that moment I seemed to see a kind of smile that protruded from his mustache. I could see him with the eye at his wrist watch and ear to the chimes and small oscillations.

  He said pointing to my father: "At this point, you know the story too." So they told me that he and Mario were known prisoners on a cattle truck that brought them from Athens to Corinth. He continued: "They took us in the back, we crossed the Aegean sea to the island of Crete, spent about eight months in captivity, we were lost in that island; Greeks were only a few remained; one day the bombs obliterated both they and many of us prisoners."

  I knew the true character of Victor, over the only aspect in which I had always understood, the watchmaker that my father had taken. Instead, I touched his humanity. His words dragged me insistently. I found myself meditating between peals of cuckoo clocks and rhythms. The fate had proved to be benign with him. In conclusion he said: "This is also in the past, I can tell." My father considered that the only good thing it had been the birth of their friendship, but asked him to tell again and he did it with certain nervousness.

  Victor said: "It was a winter day, the agitated sea, a few of us were boarded and departed, we stood on the shore, not knowing when they would return to pick us up, all night in the open, in the storm of wind, the Zippo flame was everything I had."

  "Then the navigation was terribly dangerous, then a ship was torpedoed ahead of us, and I then I said goodbye to everyone and I took deck thinking - I will not move from here, I do not want to return prisoner, descend down into the depths with the ship. Was then that you walked into the cabin with a military."

  My father fumbled the combination to the safe and pulled out a bag of coarse cloth and we followed him with his eyes amazed and intrigued. He told us: "That soldier had shown me a rough stone that he had acquired in Africa, as I said, when we risked being torpedoed, we were all seized with fear, he began to pray and then suddenly told me that he made a vow, if we had saved, I would have donated, I thought no more about that story, you make a lot of promises when you are afraid of dying, however, one day, I got this."

  The extracted and gave me. My blood spit in my temples and my heart was pounding. I saw Victor smile. He was devoid of any form of envy sprung, or offensive to not have known before; I was thwarted by anger over how long my father had been able to keep his secret, and I went up resentment thinking that he knew my interest and at the same time I was extreme happiness and I saw nothing but the time where I could carve and polish that wonderful gift of nature.

  I did not even have time to imagine, that he took away from me, placing it in the safe hands and said to me: "It will be yours and you can do whatever you want, of course, when I will died." I had a stone and I would have made a diamond, maybe even large with a bit of luck, and I will to wait? I had been dismissed with a horrible statement. It seemed to me that my father was playing with my feelings, and belittled me as gemologist and I could not accept it. I was about to shout "Keep you your stone!" I was ready for a scene, then the light suddenly lit up inside me: sow Eleana and my mind is lit up.

  I paid attention to the boy who was with her and his words "hello grandpa" and I felt like every time I am jealous for no reason. I walked up and I said, "Hello Eriberto, I did not know that Victor had a grandson." "Yes," he replied, "and well from twelve years" and he laughed smugly. Eleana looked at us in silence with joyful expression, and I was reassured, I felt serenity and soften the anger that I had taken. I declared: "What do you say if tomorrow we were at the ice cream shop on the corner of the porch?" We shopped in the halo of sunset reflected in the windows with a similar light in his eyes. Victor looked at us questioningly. She replied, "Okay" without stopping her smile.

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