Lead Petals

  18

  They missed few days to Christmas. The icy air had an almost silky density. An imperceptible rain had concealed among the clouds, surrendering the stage to a storm of sleet that covered with a patina frozen all of this that incocciava. Emilio had abandoned the companions in the shed for the lunch. It had to hurry a matter for him superfluous but essential to said of his/her wife Maria. It estranged from the cardinal path inserting himself/herself/itself in the wood. The puddles of water were punctured by the bullets of sleet; they were produced small points that expanded him in you look for concentric becoming targets.

  Pietro tried to shun the puddles. He/she wore a brown passamontagna from which the lips and the nose, that leaked its so consistent breath to seem solid stuck out only, crystallized. Its profile was a coffeepot that emitted hot vapor.

  The grass burnt by the frosts in many points had taken the nuance giallorossa of the pistils of the saffron, that contained in their flowers violet they colonized hectares and hectares of the adjoining countries to the near country of St. Gavino. Some trees of rate shaded a strip of granite rock. It was to the shade of that trees that Emilio would have found what it looked for. It fished from the pocket of his/her overall a pezzuola of cloth. It knelt at the base of the trunk. Frozen water fell in more strong droplets from the branches of the trees and one of these it struck him/it on the naked skin, between the passamontagna and the collar of the jacket. It hollowed out the neck in the shoulders for the shiver. Waving the fingers caressed the dress of velvet color lawn that shade and damp you/they had plotted for the rock; it almost tried to like in the delicate contact with the dense layer of musk. Maria would have been satisfied: with that muscos you/he/she could put in scene the presepio. His/her presepio, not that of Emilio. He had stopped doing him/it when it was dead Giuseppino. With his/her ability in to work the wood, Emilio from a trunk of oak had carved Jesus child, the ox and the asinello. Maria and san Joseph they had a soul of beech tree. The kings magi and the pecorelles knew about eucalyptus. It was an ability that had painfully made a will manufacturing the coffin of his/her child. It hated the presepio and you/he/she had stopped attending the church. But every Christmas Maria kept on methodically systematizing those figurines. The happy moments perhaps remembered her in which together all discussed on as to prepare the statuettes. «Jesus child is better of here, the kings magi of there» you/he/she said Maria. And the contradiction of Giuseppino immediately arrived: «No, Jesus child is better of there, the kings magi of here!» Beautiful times that would not have returned anymore, he/she thought Emilio.

  For two weeks, until over the Epiphany, it was forced to see him/it every day that presepios. Maria systematized him/it on the base of the belief in the stay, just as you/he/she loved to make Giuseppino. The morning, when it got up and the floor of compacted clay was cold and stung its feet as a brush with needles to the place of the bristles, it unthread in front of the presepio trying not to lift the look. He/she didn't succeed us and the gangrene of the cold from the feet salivates taking himself/herself/itself all the legs.

  With a guspinesa it separated the patina of musk from the rock, bringing himself/herself/itself behind also a layer of dark soil that the thin roots not allascarono. It put back all in the pezzuola of cloth and it closed again her/it with a knot. Reentering to the well Amsicora wondered in heaven it made him the presepio; he/she wondered to Stalingrado his/her friend Luigi it had at least a fir to which to attach some colored little ball.

  Be, hours later the capstan stopped puffing. Another day of job if gone n'era. They were you are almost her of evening and an obscurity compunta you/he/she had thrown Montevecchio in the abyss of the night. You/he/she had stopped raining water and sleet but the sky you/he/she was still mantled by clouds brumali that hid the stars.

  Every Christmas proposed to Emilio the same anthology of circumstances. You/they would be dressed with the good suits of Sunday. You/he/she would have accompanied Maria to the mass in the chiesetta of Santa Barbara and him you/he/she would have remained to wait for her/it in the adjacent square. You/they would have exchanged fake wishes for the birth of a child that was not his: God's child, a God that instead you/he/she had been able to take him his of child. You/they would have had lunch in the saloon of house with the whole family of Maria, commenting the presepio, eating knows codra, pilloneddus to tacula and papassinus. His/her brother-in-law and he Michelleddu would be thrown on the codra, that being constituted by the interioras of the lamb it didn't like so much to the women. To say the truth, two native before, also to Emilio you/he/she had been disgusting ingest he/she knows codra. That time, rather than to prepare her/it in the house carefully washing and weaving the guts, for motives for time you/they had purchased her from Palmiru Loisi, a shepherd that to the light of the facts it had to consider the merda a prelibatezza. Emilio had bite a piece of codra perceiving a bitterish taste. Its language was become rough as if you/he/she had tasted an apple quince. You/he/she was raced to spit all in the courtyard. While the mouth freed him from that schifezza you/he/she had looked at earth, understanding instantly that that bitter taste as the poison was given by the grass of which the greenish merda of lamb was full that was about to swallow.

  Of plucked starlings, boiled in salty water and served in a bed of leaves of myrtle it was greedy Maria. It was necessary not to mistake the time of cooking de is pilloneddus to tacula, if he/she was not wanted to end to look for his/her own teeth in the middle of the bonelets of the birds. Five minutes in more and they became so hard whether to eat was them necessary to crush them with a hammer to soften its meat. Is pabassinuses put all of accord. A person that ate unwillingly them didn't exist. Manufactured with almonds, sapa and raisin, they were the specialty of Maria. He/she succeeded in creating them with the geometric shape of a perfect rhombus. It covered them of icing and it dusted us sugar's little balls. Put inside the baskets they made a figurone as centrotavola, but they didn't last too much time in exposure, the hands came soon to ransack.

  You/he/she would have been everything perfect if only you/they had not lived the Christmas pretending that the tragedy of Giuseppino was never happened and you/he/she had not grazed the integrity of the family.

  Emilio was around still really to give succession to the traditions that his/her wife pretended as the sex of Sunday. The preceding day had passed to house of Bastiano Sabiu and you/he/she had asked some gram of the sulphur used for treating the vineyards against the illnesses. It systematized a terracotta bowl under a stately tree of oak, that seemed the representation of the bellows in the books of school. The bowl contained some gram of dust yellow: the sulphur of Bastiano Sabiu. Turned on a match rubbing him/it to earth and it set the sulphur that emitted a whitish haze from the odor frastornante on fire. The cloud of smoke saliva toward the leafy branches of the oak, floating in the air as a toy balloon inflated with the helium.

  A deaf thud. Two deaf thuds. Three, four, five deaf thuds.

  An endless sequence of deaf thuds that you/they gave the idea of balls of snow cast to earth by the tall one of the oak.

  A decay of starlings, that you/they had believed to spend the night protected from the head of hair of the oak, lay to its feet. They beat for the last time the wings that, shake in a mute rattle, sparkled in front of the eyes of Emilio. And he for a throb didn't see dying birds but a crowd of butterflies that swarmed in the grass anymore before invading the air to the gun of his/her fingers. The smokes of the sulphur stunned the birds up to make to fall them unarmed from the tree. It was the good period for capture them because they started to stuff him of fat to face the long trip toward the countries of the European center-north. Emilio filled a whole knapsack of it. Together with the starlings there were also some pigeon and some sparrows. You/they would have been all right however: he/she knows Christmas tacula now there was. The tradition could continue.

  The date that Emilio hated came: on December twenty-five.

  The bells of the chiesetta of Santa Ba
rbara played rejoicing the ten and half of the Christmas day. Emilio and Maria, that it held the small Franco in arm, exchanged wishes with other families of miners. The day had gone as Emilio if the prefigured era. You/he/she had gotten up soon and you/he/she had tried uneasiness in front of the presepio. Jesus child was in the cave, more next to the ox that to the asinello, as he preferred Giuseppino. You/they had discarded a small package gift for Franco: a dog of roll sewn in bad way that seemed to have hurt closed again by the points; but for Franco that was only one year old you/he/she had been a very beautiful gift. Emilio had looked at him/it touched while it was tightening him to the breast that horde of old rags. It intended to often make some gifts to Franco, not as to Giuseppino, that had received a solo of it in five years, a white coffin.

  You/they had worn the good suits and you/they were made to give a passage in gig from Guspini to Montevecchio, from the brother-in-law of Maria. It was tradition that the families of miners listened to the mass in the chiesetta of Santa Barbara, a customary kind that he/she exorcized the accidents in mine during the following year.

  Don Usa it opened her/it both the shutters of the front door of entry. The air took to circular inside the small church already overwhelmed of people. A violet stole surrounded its neck swollen from toad, that a thin nose made still less fluorescent adunco. The white and gilded casula was taut around the opulent life, certifying that sometimes the priests preached well and they rummaged badly. Way of living soberly in poverty it properly was not attached with a quintal of weight, arrived for qualcos'altro rather than to want divine or for the air introduced by a presser. Don Usa he/she saw her/it Emilio and it smiled at him; he/she invited him/it with a sign of the hand to enter church. Emilio made to hang to the left the right head. You/they had already discussed on the motive for which the church didn't belong to its priorities anymore: to beg his/her child would not have given back him and a best man would not even have made him/it. It didn't have any intention to pretend. That weekly time of sermons could not assuage sufferings that you/they would be dissolved only probably together with the ashes of its body. If then one day had seen its convictions on the church again, of certain you/he/she would not have submitted its soul in the hands of that fat person of Don Usa it. In front of the pecorelles of his/her flock, kind those with the big breasts, an eloquent protuberance leaned out on the before of the casula of Don Usa it. It was so fat that, if there had not been that pointed signal that disclosed everything, people would have had difficulty to understand if its culo was before or behind. Mr. Massorgiu, priest in the church of san Nicolò to Guspini, weighed less than the half and was dark very sympathetic nervous system; and it masturbated didn't him in the sacristy.

  When it was dead Giuseppino, Emilio you/he/she was found to have to choose among to become still more Catholic or to stay in anger with God. You/he/she had chosen the second option that that didn't leave space to the faith of comfort. He would never have prayed for gracing him God, so that it treated well Giuseppino.

  For thirty years of his/her life you/he/she had felt to go out of the mouth of his/her father curses for all the saints and also for their more remote generations. His/her grandfather had made school. Yet Greek grandmother told him that Tainei had made the chierichetto up to the ten years. To seventy, Tainei had been as illuminated and you/he/she had removed the swearwords from his/her dictionary. It went to mass every Sunday and it also prayed to house; his/her best friend was become Don Massorgiu. You/he/she had also participated in a pilgrimage in the country of Gesturi, place in which a some Giovanni Medda had lived that you/he/she made him call monk Nicola. With the war, monk Nicola was transferred to Cagliari to help the paupers and to Gesturi you/he/she was said that you/he/she made miracles and that one day would have become holy. Tainei was involved as the gesturesis, that made him the sign of the cross and they turned on a candle under every tree of fig trees or lemon where there pits the suspect that had cacato among Nicola. From the experience of his/her father, Emilio had found a conviction. Faith has only two ages: the infancy and the old age. When Emilio was child it associated the good God, the Madonna and Jesus with the saints to his/her own dad, to his/her mother and his/her brothers. It didn't understand the meaning of" abstract entity", the word that his/her grandfather often used for defining him God. For him, God was a tangible form that protected him/it from everything and from everybody. It begged him/it not to be afraid of the dark anymore, or to receive a beautiful gift to Christmas. It begged him/it with his/her boyfriend Dameddu Serrenti to do yes that their mothers didn't put as snack anymore the beets. Beginning from the adolescence you/he/she had stopped praying and to go to the church. You felt young and strong; he/she believed to be able to live without the protection of anybody and you/he/she was forgotten of God. You/he/she had stopped going to mass, convinced that a priest could not teach him nothing on the family, considering that a family all of them the priests have never had her. It was not still now elderly but the story of his/her father had convinced that the old age and the ugly illnesses helped to repurchase the faith. The to draw near some death wakes up again in the men that necessity of protection that was had by children. You has need to believe in something that the imponderable one makes later less scary of the. You has need not to imagine him dissolved forever, or worse, alone to wander in the dark of the endless one, he/she thought. The very maltreated old age, after all it was perhaps the most beautiful age,; where all are wise, sincere and also religious, Emilio was said.

  «In the medioevo he/she believed him in the demon for ignorance, because it was easier to attribute to the malignant one the things that they didn't succeed in explaining!» it said Mr. Murgia his/her teacher of the elementary ones. Emilio agreed. But he/she wondered how come he/she anchors in that days, in which he/she believed him in God and they were attributed to him the good things of the life, and he never asked of whom the guilts were of those ugly, it reputed recovers us from that ignorance.

  «Nobody in the medioevo has ever seen the demon, as today nobody to the world can boast the privilege to have known God. If faith is had and he believes, you/he/she should be kept on making to put aside him/it from everything. I don't evidently have faith!» you/he/she had been the sentence that had told Don Usa to remove from her/it him him of I return.

  Don Usa it her/it, as if it heard again in that precise instant the same sentence of Emilio. It crossed the long central carpet that divided the two aisles and takings set on the altar. You made the sign of the cross. The mass started.

  Emilio sat him above a fence that delimited the square of the church. The front door had been open and the voice Mr. It uses boomed her/it up to him. There were all to that mass, but the big part of the people was forced to follow the function from the square.

  The sky was transparent and the sun embellished the day. The chirruping of the birds was mixed with the voice of Don Usa her, moulding

  a sonorous cocktail that infused peace and it flattered the eyelids to let him go. Closed the eyes and he/she was dozed off to joined braccia and with the head leaned on the left shoulder.

  After a hour, the ferment of the crowd aroused him/it, the mass was finished and tzia Adelia Corona exhibited him in front of him waving a letter as a fan. «Wishes, Emilio!»

  Emilio, stunned still, it bent him toward the woman and he/she kissed her/it on the cheek. «Wishes also to her, Mrs Adelia.»

  «I don't succeed almost anymore by now to move my old legs but the mass of Christmas in the chiesetta of Santa Barbara it is worth a few days of pain. And then I had to pray for Luigi.»

  «Any news on the subject?» Emilio pursued her/it.

  «I looked for you really for this. I have received an envelope from the mail carrier. I have opened her but I have not understood a lot there. You see, I am ashamed some to say him/it, but I don't know how to read.»

  Emilio felt a perfume of dissolved candle and you/he/she was pervaded by an ugly presentiment. The goose bumps lined its body as a sh
eet of icy silk. It had adocchiato the symbol stamped to the center of the envelope: there was a red shield to the silver cross shorn by the real crown, two ribbons to the knot of Savoia, the collar of the order of the holy Announced, two bundles littori and, in point, a list rolled up with the witticism" fert" in gold repeated three times. It dealt with the symbol adopted by the Italian empire after the ascent of the fascism: a compromise between the real lineage of the Savoias and the Duce Benito Mussolini.

  Emilio had already seen that type of envelopes recanti the coat of arms of the empire and it preserved an a little comforting memory of it. In the outskirtses of his/her house two are been delivered of it already. Vitalia Mocci, after having her/it open, you/he/she was not been able to exempt to howl and to throw himself/herself/themselves to earth tearing himself/herself/itself the hair; his/her child Mario would not have returned home with his/her legs, you/he/she would have done him/it inside a box of beech tree.

  If from small Emilio had gone to school to heat the bench, from adult a resourceful type was become and you/he/she had followed some lessons deprived by Pine cone Fois, teacher of the elementary ones and friend of his/her wife. For this it distinguished him from the ninety percent of the maestranzes, that was illiterate and as cultural apex possessed a cross for signature. Who knows then as they did in direction to distinguish the contracts the one from the other when it saw us a cemetery of crosses.

  «Gives to me, Mrs Adelia, will read her/it me for her.»

  The old one, position of hope, cedette the envelope among his/her hands. The eyes of Emilio flashed fast. It scratched with the fingernails the wax it lacquers that sealed the envelope, it unthread the letter and it opened her/it as an accordion. Its heart rolled as the drums struck during the descent of the riders in the equestrian merry-go-round of the Sartiglia. The mind was in tumult and the eyes they implored pity. If you/he/she had been possible you/he/she would have braked the time allowing to fluctuate him/it in the weary one in which the benefit of the doubt would never be been able to transform in the detriment of the certainty. He/she read the first line and a broom of joy it exploded in his/her breast.

  "Hi Emilios, are certain that you will be you to read this letter to my mother, because you always keep the promises and you will attend her/it as God it commands. To avoid equivocal I beg you not to directly read the letter to my mother. Read her/it you and skim her/it, I don't want to make to be her/it in punishment, so much won't acknowledge anything. As well you know, I am not cultured as you and to write would be me impossible, however I have known a nice journalist that writes for all the soldiers helping them to give news to his/her own darlings. It is not well seen from our German allies, perhaps because they tell me that he/she always writes the truth."

  Emilio him made account only at that time that you/he/she was crying and the tears were last on the letter darkening the paper of it.

  «Thing there is, Emilio, because you cry? Before, tell me him!» the woman implored him/it.

  Emilio tightened strong the letter and it turned aloft the look. «Luigi is alive and flourishing!»

  The old one the face covered him with the hands; then it also turned her the look to the sky and it lifted the braccias. «God you ringrazio!Oh, my Jesus Cristo of the cross expensive, dear!»

  "Here it is terrible, I see to die about ten companions every day and every time I think that the neighbor I will be me. I have always believed that the hell was a place of flames but, believe me, the ice and the snow of Stalingrado they would be all right for confining us of the damned however. Of lice, fleas and crab lice we are covered in every part of the body that has two hair. During the night the temperature goes down of forty degrees under him zero and we pisses there I set for heating us, also because throwing out the bird there would be the risk that falls for earth as a cylinder of broken ice. This is the war but it is not our war, it is the war of the powerful persons, that of common people as us they highly beat the coglionis."

  Luigi was alive, tired and tried but I live, and that was the only thing that you/he/she cared really. Emilio made a break and threw the breath. You felt an athlete dilettante after having raced the marathon. It was certain that now Luigi was not anymore so much fierce of his/her country.

  "When there is not the possibility to recover the dead bodies in the immediate one, we are forced to burn them to avoid the to spread of epidemics. The other night I have given fire me to the corpse of Sasà, a Sicilian boy with which I had tied in morbid way, and you/he/she has been terrible to see his/her face become black and to disappear among the flames. You are be liked as boy, you/he/she was gotten married and you/he/she already had three children, he dreamt to come with all of his/her family in Sardinia to work in mine to Montevecchio. I have asked to the chaplain of the army where he goes when he dies and you/he/she has answered me that each goes where you/he/she has always desired to go. I hope that there am up there a mine and that Sasà is working us waiting for riabbracciare his/her darlings. Today I wake up and I have felt in guilt, I don't have wife and children, you/he/she was perhaps destined to me that pellet, you/he/she would have been more correct."

  Emilio perceived in those words an increasing desperation, but they was not anything in comparison to the reality of the front and him it distantly was not able even to imagine that to which the soldiers were submitted.

  "To eat gives us a spit of watery soup with a piece of stale bread; once every two weeks a small shred of meat in box. Now the mine seems me what I ate here there in one day I see him/it in a week. But not to tell my mother nothing of everything that that has told you, tell her that I am well and that soon I will return home.

  When we make the turns of watch I close the eyes and I think about being with you in the shed for the lunch of midday. The chatters that we do among soldiers remember me that situation. To be awake and not to fall stunned for the cold we tell us jokes and histories of our countries. To a Milanese boy, naïvely I have said, that when it does I cool his/her nose it drains as the bird of the fishermen. You/he/she has not laughed at all and you/he/she is seemed me that it held the pout; I didn't understand because. After a few days you/he/she has asked me to face I last an explanation: it didn't go down him that people laughed thinking about his/her nose as to the cazzo of a fisherman. There I have understood that some of our adagios, out of Sardinia, they assume an offensive meaning, because people don't know their origin. I have told him that in the lagoon of Marceddì the fishermen enter naked to pick up the mussels in sea, and when they go out the part that finishes later to drip the water it is their bird. You/he/she has also laughed as a crazy person him and he/she didn't succeed in stopping. I would like to tell you one of my jokes on the Sardinians but I prefer to do him/it of person when there riabbracceremo. I now have to leave you because we are putting there in march. The Russian are of the big children of puttana, cunning and merciless, but I believe that they has the same idea of us and also between them there will be many fathers that won't return home. As I have told you before, it is the war of the powerful persons, of which you/they will go out defeated only the discards of the society as us. The only thing that makes me smile is the thought of Lella. Do they take me around here because I am always to speak of her and you/they have told me a strange thing": But do you know him/it that this Lella caca as all the other women?" I have thought there and I was never imagined me a woman that cacasse, it seemed me that you/they could not be able of it. Would you imagine her/it to you you, a beautiful girl as Lella that caca and fart? No! I don't believe it my friend. Lella caca butterflies and scoreggia aroma of incense.

  A strong embrace, strong to mother and one special also for you.

  Kiss me Lella, but without exaggerating; tell her that I always think her/it. I will hardly be able I will refer me alive, is well me, your Luigi."

  Emilio expired, you/he/she had held back the breath for the whole final part of the letter. Tzia Adelia threw him an arm. «Then thing says my Luigi? Don't hold me on the
thorns, Emilio.»

  Emilio felt him light, that letter it was a beautiful gift of Christmas. Smiled. «It says that it is well and soon it will return home,» then he/she read the letter, but it did well attention to the recommendation served him as Luigi: the old one didn't deserve to be in punishment and it was correct to use with good intentions some small lie.

  It told of a beautiful place where the war was made more to tavolino that on the field; a place where he/she ate in abundance and him he/she slept well; a place where the soldiers can live without the weapons and to confine himself/herself/themselves to of the sporadic turns of watch.

  Tzia Adelia Crowns by now he/she saw little but its hearing was perfect. He/she listened to those words enchanted, imagining Luigi with a beautiful uniform to eat meat of calf up to burst and to fall asleep blessed during the turns of watch. Who knows as the old one you/he/she would have reacted if you/he/she had known what was passing his/her child. and thing anchors it had to pass.

  Tzia Adelia dried the eyes with the white handkerchief, hoping for riabbracciare as soon as possible Luigi. «Emilio, thanks you for the joy that you have given me. I regret but I don't have anything to offer you for all of your favors.» And nothing had, considering that in two days you/he/she had eaten a thin fettina of stale bread with the butter and two roast faves that a neighbor had brought her.

  «Mrs. Adelia, doesn't worry him, gives The seem her to type that doesn't hold up him standing?» the churches Emilio with a smile. «Rather he/she knows, what I tell her, now her salt with us in the gig and him it passes a beautiful Christmas guest to my house.»

  «No, I cannot take advantage.»

  «It is not an invitation, it is an order. I have promised to Luigi that I would be taken me care of her as a child and I intend to maintain my word.»

  Taken back Tzia Adelia the handkerchief in hand and it still dried the eyes, then he blew the nose. «Thanks, Emilio, your wife is a fortunate woman!»

  Smiled Emilio as soon as, he/she thought that his/her wife getting married had not been at all it fortunate.

  They ate in stay. He/she knows codra, is pilloneddus to taccula and is papassinuses were fabulous. Together all commented the presepio. They spoke of Luigi. They laughed and they were well. And for once, after so many years, also Emilio appreciated the Christmas. The evening they brought tzia Adelia to house and they did it covers from Lella. They made her know that Luigi was alive and always thought about her.