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Giovanni David Piras
Lead petals
www.quellidized.it
Lead petals
Copyright © 2012 Zerounoundici Edizioni
ISBN: 978-88-6578-171-5
Cover: Image Shutterstock.com
Lead petals it is a work given birth by the imagination of the author. Possible references to people or really done happened they are purely casual. Nevertheless the places, the customs, the customs, the descriptions, the signs and the historical events belong to the truth of that period.
The concentration camp of Pertzogiu, that according to the news it was found where the actual airport of Fertilia rises, near Alghero, best man in a lot of lists of reference on the Nazi fields of the second world war. On his/her use however don't be had certain information and all of this that it concerns him/it it is for a long time an enigma irrisolto; there is who strongly doubts even of his/her real existence.
The system of piecework, invented by the engineer French Charles Bedaux, in the mines of Montevecchio you/he/she has been introduced in the temporal phase in which the novel develops him. Nevertheless, for demands of the history, the author is taken the license to anticipate this event of a few years.
In fascist epoch it was given us of the" you" and not of the" her", but, not to create confusion in the reading, is maintained inside the dialogues the" her" of our days.
The engineer Filippo Minghetti, Alberto Castoldi, Giovanni Anthony Sanna and his/her daughter Zely, further to other memorable figures of the fascist period they have really existed, but none of the actions from them finished in the novel it is corresponding to episodes of testified life, make exception the documented news that esulano from the plot of the book. The author Giovanni David Piras has chosen to preserve the original nominatives of these characters, imbuing so the history with a strong territorial characterization that only an archaic and mysterious island as Sardinia can give. All the other characters belong to its creativeness.
In this alone game in appearance unbalanced, in which the reality mixes him and continually overlaps to the imaginary one, the pivot is crystallized around which wheel the whole plot: the suffering of whom has lived to that time in the mines. IT IS THIS THE MOST TANGIBLE ASPECT OF EVERYTHING: THE TALLEST RELATIONSHIP OF THE DESPERATION HUMAN Á. WHAT REFERENCE SHOULD BE MADE ALWAYS FOR MEASURING THE FELICITÀ OF AN EXISTENCE.
1
January 1937
Obscurity had dragged with itself a penetrating dampness, of those that numb the bones up to the marrow. The wood, mute and dismal, it compressed the two sides of the path. The tops of the corks seemed to hang the a verse the others, giving life to a dark tunnel of which the end could not be imagined. Only the impetus of a stream notched the taciturn character of the night. The solitary silence of the deaf ones reigned, sharp as the smoke of leccio that was emitted by the chimney pots of stone of the houses, only presence of life in the winter evenings of Montevecchio.
«There is at the most here a meter of water!»
That voice vomited by the stony throat of the Linas mountain shattered the quiet. In that instant Emilio took the path, but he/she didn't hear the warning, it was still distant.
It was cold. Gasps of vapor were emitted by its mouth, raising himself/herself/itself in the dark as you signal of smoke Indian. The job overall that he/she wore it was of a thin fabric that could not defeat the imminent frost. Later a few times would be seemed him to be himself/herself/themselves lost in a banchisa. To the awakening, the countries would have been of an arctic whiteness. Only in appearance dressed up with Christmas suits, pierced through in reality by knives of ice destined to tear the idea of that mantle of snow. Sometimes the early-morning frosts were so consistent to be allowed that the frailty of his/her/their children passed above puddles of water without grazing its frozen surface.
Emilio inserted him the hands in pocket before the cold tore him every remnant of sensibility. During the winter months, deep breakings covered him hands and lips, bleeding in continuation as stigmate; torturing him/it more than the blows that you/he/she had taken in youth from his/her father. When he bared, its body seemed the statue of Christ brought around in the procession of holy Friday.
Bushes that were moved, were moved with uproar.
Emilio was crushed by a shiver. By instinct it refolded the neck among the shoulders to protect himself/herself/themselves from a cold that the most red-hot fabric would not even have succeeded in mitigating: a cold coming from the soul.
Silence, had been only perhaps a wild boar.
It reacted to the numbness and he shifted, a little convinced in truth, but it did him/it. Its feet were swollen as the breasts of the cows to the morning. They didn't ache him so that when to eight you/he/she had run after in the middle of the German thorn the most stubborn sheep of the flock that tziu Boreddu had given on consignment him. The animal had trespassed the pastures of Boreddu and you/he/she was inserted to ruminate in a field of cauliflowers. Did that ground belong to Humerus Gallus, did some good that first shoot and then he/she asked" who is?"
Emilio had raced fast afoot barefoot on the German thorn and cursed to narrow teeth. To every footstep you/he/she was seemed him to stamp on one of the porcupines who raided the fruits of the degenerated perastro. When you/he/she had reached the sheep it was furious. You/he/she had picked her up to kicks in face so so many times that the beast had finished his/her days chewing the grass with the gums.
Now, not very distant from him, about twenty men they formed a human chain. They threw a big rope that lost him on the eyelash of a ditch to work. The breaking created him in the mountain was deep more than eight meters. «Oh, hoist! Oh, it hoists!» it articulated the group to every sharp tug. To the rope it was suspended the sergeant Podda, that almost weighed seventy kilos. The small body that held narrow to its breast, weighed at the most instead winds of it,: it was the carcass of a five year-old child remained to I release in a meter of water for two days.
The face of the sergeant emerged from the crack. It sustained those bare lower case letters with a torn embrace. A gold chain with hung the crucifix it fell from the head penzolante of the child, it bounced twice on the walls of the hollow, tinkling and shining in the air. Before withdrawing himself/herself/themselves in the water, the reflexes of the gilded sweaters struck marshal Pietro Troise's eyes, that it almost felt pain in the contrast among its addicted pupils to the darkness and that lightning of light that it blinded as a welder.
Ranieri Scintu and Calistru Puxeddu grabbed for an arm the sergeant and they threw him/it out of the hole. Water dripped him from the sleeves but the insistent ticking that he/she was heard they were its teeth that beat for the
cold. It abandoned with care the body of his/her/their child to earth, forgetting himself/herself/itself that by now the dead body you/he/she could not complain for an abrupt manoeuvre anymore. Tito Espis, Paulu Vaccargiu and the rest of the components of the human chain for an instant felt their heart change rhythm and almost to halt himself/herself/themselves. You/they would have preferred to get by the eyes rather than to see how death could reduce a creature.
«The dead body there are not doubtful it is of Giuseppino Masala» it announced the sergeant melting himself/herself/itself.
The marshal Pietro Troise scrutinized hypnotized that corpse of as soon as five years, that you/he/she preserved only the cinders some life. Giuseppino Masala was of a surreal pallor, faded by the death as a glass of watered black wine. You/he/she had disappeared two days before, after having estranged from his/her father Emilio, a miner of Guspini that filled with the carboys of water in the source of he/she Knows it will Lose. A setter to the pursuit of a hare was fallen in the same ditch. Helium Siddi, in the attempt to recover his/her dog, you/he/she had made the grisly discovery among the mountains that the village of Montevecchio encircled. And the suffering, that for a long time to Montevecchio it gave less escape of the haemorrhagic fevers, was now ready to infect Emilio. Years back if ill n'era also the marshal, yet you/he/she had not served him to develop the antibodies of the immunity, and it still suffered.
A man from the aristocratic air drew near to the body, you/he/she was the doctor Saints. His/her white moustaches and parish priests, united to a bombetta headgear, did him/it more English to appear how Italian. You inserted a monocle lens in the orbit of the right eye, that endowed with a more acute sight. You/he/she had received him in gift from a junk dealer to whom you/he/she had succeeded to take care of an ugly pneumonia. You bent on the dead body to examine him/it. The body was swollen because of the rigor mortis and slimy for prolongs her/it exposure to the water. Those of Giuseppino were limbs that spoke of a brief existence and without remorse, that you/they would never have known the sore of the time and ignored the emotions that life knows how to give; at times sweets as the strawberries, at times to love as the wild almonds, but always ready to differentiate the men from the ocean and from the mountains, that old as the world a weeping neither a smile they are never granted.
The doctor raised again the head. «It has both the broken legs!»
On the place there were threatening shepherds, agriculturists and some itinerant. In unison they stared at him/it petrified. They were men dressed of rags fathers of family that saw in Giuseppino the themselves children.
«It has to accidentally be fallen. Making a flight of eight meters was inevitable that its legs broke him» it still added the doctor.
Shook Troise the head and it covered him the eyes, a hand placing himself/herself/itself on the forehead. Giuseppino was fallen breaking himself/herself/itself the bones. You/he/she had felt an inhuman pain. It was still conscious on the fund of that accursed hole. You/he/she had perhaps howled, petrified, without nobody felt him/it. You/he/she had perhaps tried to go up again seizing himself/herself/itself to the rock with the fingernails. Perhaps it was dead of fear, with the feeling to have been abandoned; and plain pian dark had devoured the light.
In the hands there were not the fingernails anymore, torn by the stones that Giuseppino had scraped off up to the last breath.
That thoughts perceived in the mind of everybody, branding to fire their conscience. The tears of Troise broke the banks. «Holy Christ, was only five years old!»
The doctor shot on individuals' crowd hedged in around the body, words exploding as they were pellets. «With the broken legs you/he/she has not succeeded in throwing him on and that meter of water has done him/it drown. You/he/she has tried to hold the head out of the water in every way, the torn fingernails don't do whether to confirm him/it.»
Luigi Zedda, a very tied up miner to the father of his/her/their child, tried to cover him the ears not to feel. The words of the doctor captured the feelings more angosciantis.
Among the bystanders there were no women, only men. They sobbed in silence, trying not to notch their sexist pride with the weakness of a weeping. You/they would have broken everything to discharge their frustration but in the discourses from inn it didn't have to exist an incentrato of it on their femminucce skirts. What you/they had seen would have accompanied their nights for so much time. In the instants that the sleep precedes, with the head supported to the pillow, you/they would have made the accounts with him same and with the hidden torments behind the daylight.
The sergeant was now wound by a cover of orbace that had him I bring Didu Zara, one of the most shaken, that you/he/she trembled as if a dog had infected him/it with the cimurro.
Made invisible by euforbie, lentischi, corbezzoli and myrtles, the hollow you/he/she was filled with the water piovana. «There is at the most here a meter of water!» you/he/she had said the sergeant. A shabby measure to be imagined but enough to kill Giuseppino.
The doctor premises the abdomen of his/her/their child and from the mouth you/he/she squirted a surge of rotten water. «I don't believe that there am the necessity of an autopsy. The causes of the death seem me evident» it announced staring at the marshal.
Troise nodded with the head without confirming that gesture with the words. It lined up the look with the sergeant. «Podda, goes to look for Emilio. I regret it, but someone will also have to lend him to this torment. You communicate the disappearance of Giuseppino.»
Those words pierced the sergeant as the sharp horns of Achille, a bull that nobody had ever succeeded in calming down. You/he/she had given up also trying us his/her master, Giaccheddu Gessa, after having also put again us first the balls and then his wife.
Podda puffed scrutinizing the fund of the hollow and wondered what words you/he/she would have used for telling to a mother and a father that their only child would not have returned anymore to house. Giuseppino was dead to alone five years, with few milked sheep and so many picconates still from sferrare in the mines. For a parent you/he/she would have been a punishment atrocious way of living knowing not to have succeeded in protecting a child.
«If I/you had had the money to make to be him/it to house!»
«If I/you had never brought him/it to take the water!»
«If I/you had known that you/he/she would have gone so, I would not even have never it conceived!» his/her parents would be repeated for the whole life tearing to pieces himself/herself/itself from the pain. You/they would have had to thank for that five years of intense love lived with Giuseppino instead, rather than one hundred years serenely lived without ever having him/it known. Unfortunately that only instant in which you/they would have understood not to have their child anymore could freeze under the icebox of the suffering and to last up to the eternity.
The sergeant became entangled more still to the cover of orbace: the assignment that had to perform paralysed him/it more than the icy water of which its uniform was soaked.
A caress of wind grazed Emilio. It marveled, you/he/she would have sworn that the clear sky and the rigid temperature could not conceive the company of the north wind. For now it concerned only a breeze.
You shout next, indistinguishable.
Some outlines, cleared by the yellowish light of the lamps, they appeared and they disappeared among the leafy branches of the leccis just upset by the wind. Emilio opened wide the eyes and swallowed with sacrifice the saliva.
It was around for the woods from almost two days and you/he/she had seen only imprints of foxes and wild boars. Of his/her child there was not even the odor of ovine dung that imbued the suits of it after the visits to the sheepfold of tziu Boreddu. He didn't like at all that swarm of people, it made him presage the irreparable one. It the footstep, walking graceless among the bushes; by now it was out of the path.
The marshal Troise saw him/it serve capolino as a ravine and had an instant release that didn't even give him the time
to think. Whispering in agitated way said: «holy Christ, is Emilio. You immediately cover the body of Giuseppino. A father cannot see this fool.»
The sergeant Podda wriggled him from the warm embrace of the orbace and abandoned the cloth on the body of Giuseppino.
The marshal sketched a smile, then you/he/she turned him doing himself/herself/itself I meet to the unlucky miner. «You are fortunate sergeant, I will talk me to Emilio.»
The face of Emilio was illuminated by a cone of light coming from those that seemed the lighthouses of an automobile. The noise of the motor with the gear in neutral made company. It had the eyes spiritati. Its face revealed everything: he/she already knew what had happened but it faked not to realize hoping to awaken elsewhere himself/herself/themselves with a bump in head and the light stomach as the yellow and black philanderers that fluttered in spring of it.
The marshal lowered the look fixing the shoes cobbled of the miner. "This is not poor, but dead people of hunger", he/she thought after having seen to sprout the alluce from the sole of Emilio.
«Hi, Emilio!» he/she greeted him/it, then the hand tightened him. It was cold as the sea of Piscinas of that times.
In front of the anterior chest of the automobile, erect as statues of marble, the rings of the human chain by now loose they observed benumbed the conversation.
Emilio stentava to loosen the taking from the hand of the marshal, that warm and rigenerante gave back flow to its hibernated blood.
«You have found again Giuseppino?»
Troise, its eyes were shiny. «Yes, we have found him.» The face of Emilio became expressionless; you/he/she had already noticed the gathering of people and their tomb silence.
«My child is dead, you/he/she is not so?»
The marshal was spiazzato from that so sincere question and strabuzzò the eyes. It placed a hand on the shoulder of the miner and there was no necessity of further confirmations. Emilio he left go beating violently the whirlbones on the ground. Didu Zara turned the face feeling pain for him. The knees of Emilio were ended against a spike of granite, anything else other than it bones German.
Emilio was thrusted a fist in mouth to contain the moan that he/she craved to go out. «I can see him/it?» he/she asked with mixed words to verses that seemed the braying of a donkey.
Troise made a grimace of disappointment. From the stream vapors that thickened him in a banchiglia of opaque fog whirled.
«No! If I can advise you, believe me, it is better of no. You would torture yourself seeing him/it, remembered of your child from alive. Don't leave that its corpse image torments forever yourself destroying all the beautiful memoirs. I know well that this happens!»
The dark skin of the sky was stormed by gilded freckles that him specchiavano in the crack of the death. Emilio the face covered him with both the hands. «I want to see at least where dead is, as it is dead» it shouted raising the tone of the voice.
Troise. The man that had before it was a manikin that stirred without control. «You come, I accompany you.»
They reached the edges of the ditch. Emilio didn't even see him/it, you/he/she was assembled on the bundle of orbace that the sergeant tried to screen with his/her figure. Took Troise Emilio for an arm and it tried to drag him/it away from the body of Giuseppino. «We go, Emilio, leaves alone, I show you thing has happened.»
But the destiny had implacably decided that the times were by now mature. It armed the hand of the wind entrusting to disclose him/it to Emilio the body of his/her child. A sudden gust got depressed on Montevecchio, also forcing the trees to stoop himself/herself/themselves to see from near the death. An edge of the white cloth waved in the air, inflating himself/herself/itself as the sail of a vessel. Another gust and the cloth you/he/she was swept away; it went to strand himself/herself/themselves among the tallest branches of the corks.
The dead body of Giuseppino exhibited him with rawness in front of the incredulous eyes of his/her father. It was swollen. A pair of short pantalonis in fustagno and a cotton giacchetta, reduced to a heap of dusters, they left the filthy manines and the barefoot footsies open. The left leg was unnaturally refolded in more parts and the skin it seemed a lot of jute full of dust of bones. Under the knee of the right leg, the meat had a deep laceration that splinters of tibia and fibula spit out. A viscous and whitish substance, mold, lined perhaps its face but not the eyes: blacks and depths as the galleries that Emilio had picconato for a life whole, immovable and expressionless, mantled by the pupils. Two dark globes similar to the eyes of a shark.
A whimper got up toward the moon becoming a dirge of desolation. It was the weeping of a father the desperation of Emilio.
Faces lacerated with hands among the hair assistettero to the pang of a destroyed man. Emilio took in arm the dead corpicino of his/her child and cradled him/it, howling and bathing him/it with his/her guilty tears. A distraction. Then a meter of water. You/he/she had been a solo they put and meaningless meter of water to kill him/it.
The following day, to the center of the humble stay of house Masala, the dead body of Giuseppino was extended inside the small stuffed white coffin with some pillows of reddish velvet. You/he/she was sustained by four stools impagliati. A lame belief hung toward the door of entry. Some candles without logic had been systematized for the room. Around Giuseppino there was so much people and someone had also lifted the transparent veil to touch him/it a last time.
A few times back, Emilio and his/her wife Maria you/they had been able him/it to see alone. You/they had washed him/it with warm water and a small bit of soap. You/they had used delicacy, love, repeating a ritual finished hundreds of times when Giuseppino was a newborn in bands. The white mold that the face covered him had gone away with one rubbed energetic. After that it seemed the usual Giuseppino, only some fattened up by the swelling, for this you/he/she was decided not to close the coffin during the funeral vigil. You/they had dressed him/it with cotton pantaloni, long, to cover his/her unswathed legs and a shirt of white silk that you/he/she had used only for two marriages in life. The shoes had been forced to ask her to the brother of Emilio. Giuseppino possessed only a pair of it, old and unusable to wander in the aldilà.
For the whole time both had remained of side to them child, incapable to look at himself/herself/themselves in face and to perceive in the eyes of the other the deepest desperation. Perhaps really for this, Maria, after the long silence of reflection, you/he/she had opened the eyes of his/her/their child. It hoped to find something different in comparison to the dark that the look of his/her husband was taken. But you/he/she had seen only the void in that eyes that stared at her/it and they seemed to acknowledge her. It was only a fictitious perception: Giuseppino didn't see anything else other than the angels.
In a village where the average was of you are or seven children for family, the consorts Masala had chosen to make to know only the hunger and the poverty to Giuseppino. Yet you/they would now have given heart and soul to be able to cry on the shoulders of the blood of their blood. The suffering for the disappearance of Giuseppino would have been indelible, but the happiness of power however to love another child would have mantled as a slim nebbiolina the dark stone of the pain; that nebbiolina had been swept before forever away five years, when the decision not to conceive other children had taken the semblances of the wind.
Before andar by you/they had cried and courage to look at himself/herself/themselves in the eyes was finally lavished in their intimate. Unlike Emilio, Maria had not seen only desperation. There were also sweets memoirs to guard to key inside of itself, ready to be taut out in the glumness that would have disseminated his/her old age. In the terrestrial life the torture for the death of a child would never be been able to fade away but the memoirs could make him/it less oppressive.
Emilio and Maria had kissed Giuseppino. That last contact with the skin of their child had been a torment. Maria had fainted and you/he/she had risked that the coffin fell her I set. Emilio trembled of pain an
d anger. It tightened the fists up to stick himself/herself/themselves the fingernails in the palms of the hands. To close the coffin and to confine forever Giuseppino in the dark an uncle would be occupied, for them you/he/she had already been to see too much it so: corpse and cold, dormant of a deep sleep but apparently ready to awaken himself/herself/themselves.
They did to less less than pay a prèfica to cry the dead one, they were enough it shouts her acute of whom had wanted him the whole good of the world.