Page 24 of Lead Petals


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  The grass started to dry up him and the dust it got up in air as borotalco. The bugs made to noisily feel their goduria for the new season. Geneva is sat on the floor. The leccis and the Mediterranean stain hid its figure to the people that it had before. Eusebio Montixi, the stationmaster, wandered on the adjacent to gangway the platforms. Through the wide open door of the station it distractedly checked the suspended clock to the wall. The workers were busy in a braid of jute sacks. Their feet noisily stamped on the gravel, that served as bed to cross her of it of wood on which you/they sat the platforms. A locomotive idled about molt on the steel rails, he/she dozed before taking back its trip. Five wagons blackened by the soot completed that caterpillar mechanic. The workers crowded the wagons without killing him: there was still time before the train departed for the foundry of St. Gavino Monreale.

  Geneva was immovable to few about ten meters from the railroad. It held hold among the legs a small suitcase of skin from the rectangular form. To the inside there were his/her suits and some lira. His/her legs, to contact with the suitcase, they were sweaty. From a few days you/he/she was insinuated with arrogance a sticky heat. Immovable, in that position privileged Geneva succeeded in aloft village you Rule. The most elevated plans in the villas sprouted in the mountain. Of the house Troises were distinguished only the chimney pot and the tiles of the roof. Geneva scrutinized with retrospective melancholy that only bit of his/her memoirs. You/he/she would have been the last time when you/he/she would have seen that house, the Linas mountain, Montevecchio, Mrs Loi and, perhaps, his/her father. From the preceding evening a knot had become knotted her in throat and anchor now it labored to melt himself/herself/themselves. For all of his/her life you/he/she had not passed only a day distant from Pietro. Now you/he/she would have abandoned him/it, so, to the sudden one, without not even having gotten used him to the idea to do him/it. Even if Pietro had struck her you/he/she was impossible to hate him/it. You/he/she was happened later for the first time twenty years and then it was his/her father.

  The stomach in Geneva tightened him as a sponge squeezed by strong hands and its eyes a dike that labored to contain a thickened river, that kept on growing became. Before departing you/he/she would have liked to embrace him/it, to tighten him/it strong, to tell him that he/she loved him. Lucio had taught her that the words were not essential in the life of a man. You had understood him/it, you perhaps delay, but now the most beautiful memory that brought in the heart they were not caresses or words of affection, it was the low weeping and hidden of his/her father in the day when she had told him that soon you/he/she would be gotten married. Any word, only a weeping that expressed the pure feeling. Pietro would be him missed to be died. There would not have been any funeral but for Geneva it was as if it owed us to be. Within little his/her father would be dead, disappeared by his/her life, and you/he/she was worse still. After the loss of a dear person he atrociously suffers, then, with the time, pain is grown weak and leaves space to the memoirs. Beautiful memoirs for some, sad for others. But way of living knowing to ever have made the funeral to a father corpse is still a suffering more dilaniantes. Way of living knowing that from some part there is the person that is loved and to never be able her/it to see is worse whether to have murdered her/it.

  Lucio was away from Geneva; it was still in mine. You/they had decided that not to arouse suspicions they were had to complete all the daily actions, since if Pietro had suspected something you/he/she would not have hesitated to send in smoke that loving escape. Geneva waited for Lucio; he would have reached her at the end of the job. They had in mind to hide himself/herself/themselves in the wagons of the train commodities, in the middle of the sacks of cloth jute. Once reaches St. Gavino you/they would be organized for reaching Cagliari. From there, in a way or in the other, they intended to embark himself/herself/themselves, covertly if necessary, to reach the peninsula and to start a new life.

  From the day of the Duce, Geneva had concealed in the house. To Daniel you/he/she had not even granted an explanation, despite him you/he/she had obsessed her every day, knocking and howling in front of the front door of house. You felt that it was better to truncate the history of clean, the motivation it was superfluous. You/they were loved, but now you/he/she was ended. It was ready to run into his/her destiny. To die of epilepsy or to be confined to Pertzogiu it didn't frighten her/it. It was exhausted to run away from his/her illness that, contrarily he/she always knew, whether to find her/it; but it was tired even more to have to live secretly his/her love story, always careful not to let him escape too much a word of. "Enough with all this!" it was said. If death had arrived, you/he/she could be also at times gathering as a relief.

  It contemplated his/her wrist clock. They were you are her less a quarter of the afternoon. It missed by now few. Its heart fibrillated and she was impatient to start the escape and it was still more impatient than to conclude her/it in the best of the ways.

  The first miners left the well Amsicora. The square was clear of, the grading machines had abandoned from not too long it. From the shop the hits of hammer sferratis still felt him with ferocity on the anvil. The lampisteria was away prey of a you go of miners and the sun you/he/she was lowering.

  Lucio trafficked in the magazzeno. It organized the positions for the next day, positions that would be exploded without him. The green pantalonis of its overall showed two big dark medals on the thighs. To do to the quick one, Lucio used to clean himself/herself/themselves the hands rubbing her in that point. The jacket was raised for also the warm one. The white undershirt, rotten of sweat and dust, you/he/she had clinged to his/her voluminous breast. Wet hair fell on his forehead in messy way. Before going out of the well you/he/she was made a long turn. You/he/she had caressed the armors of chestnut tree as if they were the legs of a beautiful woman. Is sat in front of the carts wagon and you/he/she had observed them in every littleness. Its chest was dilated and deflated in anomalous way, exaggerated. You/they had been of the long sighs. Sad sighs. The well Amsicora for him was special: you/he/she had represented the shell of a snail, the place whether to conceal and to feel himself/herself/themselves to his/her ease; a place where nobody could say to have given more than him. It was a mine that his/her father was picked up but that you/he/she had looked for in every way of sdebitarsi, giving him a job, allowing to eat him granting him the loneliness that had gone for a long time seeking because of his/her malformation.

  By now the damp, the dust, the lead and the zinc belonged to him. In every region of the world in which would be run away, its bones would be numbed for the damp; dust would have reminded him that the bellows of a miner operate only for half; the lead would be last in its veins and the zinc you/he/she would have worked as a wrap preventing the other elements to leave its body.

  While it was going down, the metallic cage had jammed in its level of competence. It had to dispatch a last matter before abandoning the well. The walk clearing himself/herself/itself with the white light of the lamp, you/he/she had reached the stall of the level Yosto. Four battered mules undulated on the straw bed and they didn't succeed in being firm on the limbs anymore. One of them had the folded up legs and it scraped off the knees for earth, that you/they showed the alive meat besieged by the flies. It was the mule that had been transporting the explosive positions of Lucio for years. The animal trembled and made to rotate the head as if you/he/she were risucchiato in a vortex of water. His/her eyes ciechis fixed the void without beating the eyelids. It rambled. Few stayed him to live, or to suffer. Lucio if n'era realized from some days and without making to be seen by anybody had pushed him the carts of explosive, extinguishing her last sufferings of the animal.

  In silence you/he/she was bent on the mule and the neck had softly tightened him. The mule had stopped trembling, relaxed by the touch of hands friends, good hands. Lucio had kissed then it on the face, as soon as above the nostrils. The animal had perceived that you/he/she didn't deal with the kiss of Giuda. You/he/s
he was abandoned, clearing his/her nervous system. To his/her shoulders, Lucio had taken a big stone; with the tense braccias it perpendicularly held her/it to his/her body, above the head of the animal. You/he/she had looked upward, imagining to perceive the sky over the stone of the mine. You/he/she had asked forgiveness for what was to do and for what had already done: to exploit that animal poor man up to reduce him/it a heap of dead meat that dragged him staggering. With an abrupt hit you/he/she had smashed the skull of the animal killing him/it without making to suffer him/it. And if you/he/she had suffered, perlomeno had been the last time. His" Phillip" you/he/she would not have hauled carts anymore stracolmi and, if a reward existed for what you/he/she was done during a life, its eyes would have seen soon the light again.

  That day, even the scrunches of the capstan to Lucio sugary harmonies were seemed. Everything of the mine was seemed him beautiful as you/he/she had never seen him/it. If you/they had been with him, you/he/she would also have embraced the lance-corporal Ignazio Martis and the meurreddu Savior Piras.

  A lot of jute, filled helter-skelter with old pantaloni and some cotton sweater, attended him/it in the wood, camouflaged under the bushes of pungitopo. You/he/she had hidden him/it that same morning and before reaching Geneva you/he/she would have recovered him/it.

  Closed again the railing of the magazzeno sealing her/it with a padlock. You mailed an instant in the room capstans, correct the time to systematize the key together with the others, in the wood glass showcase to form of cottage. The presser Sullivan still emanated warmth and the locomotive remembered him that would have taken soon. The adjacent room, that entertained the capstans, was tall and a shop in which he was manufacturing the wagon of Polifemo seemed. The gigantic wheels of the capstan were suitable to be climbed on on that wagon.

  The last miners were climbed along the slope that brought to the road for Montevecchio. Lucio was really to the center of the square. Instead its thoughts had already reached Geneva. After having delayed for a long time, the threats of the marshal had forced him/it to take a decision. Now that you/he/she had picked her up, it didn't understand how come you/he/she had delayed so much. It loved Geneva and he/she didn't want nient'altro that her.

  The imponderable one frightened him/it. "Where you/they would have gone? Where would you/they have lived? Would you/they have been happy?" they were all questions that didn't give him truce. The love in Geneva had given him the strength to look over an indefinite future, that you/he/she could take some dangerous lapels, but that you/he/she could also reserve the most grandiose happiness that a life was able to give.

  Lucio took to walk, then smiled, projecting the face in Geneva in I break down him/it turquoise of the sky.

  The din of a shot echoed in the rocky walls that the hollow of the well contained Amsicora; quivering from the room capstans to the laveria as a beam of light imprisoned inside a casket made of mirrors. Then the darkest silence.

  The miners jammed along the slant. Someone an outline to earth. Some were immovable, petrified, paralysed by a remote fear. There was a man I pour again to the ground. It had the face crushed on the ground. The mouth was open, clogged of sand and dust. The language floated in an I mix reddish. Its blood had grooved the earth and you/he/she had succeeded in overflowing from the I get back principal that flowed sweeping away the dust; you/they were constituted hundreds of small rivulets that you/they flowed out with a contrary tide to some meters from him. That body was wound by a quiver, the same that had been a little before of the mule. A hole, big as the lemons of tzia Adelia Corona, made beautiful sight under the undershirt torn in the left shoulder blade.

  That man was Lucio.

  Some threatening ones fell him verse of him. Their breaths were troubled. Renzo Piredda stumbled in the anguish and ruinously fell, tumbling for about ten meters. Also the sky seemed to gain the gloomy aura that didn't shake him from their heads. The evening had brought a weak light and it gave to the miners of the lengthened shades, that reached before themselves the body of Lucio.

  «You/they have shot him!» Gianni Ariu shouted putting himself/herself/itself the hands among the greasy hair of the fat of the shop.

  «It has an enormous hole. You/he/she cannot have been a little balls cartridge to do this. You/they have shot him to lie soba, as if they had to shoot down a wild boar» it added Sandro Littera the miner that had addressed tzia Emilio Mariuccia Onali to make himself/herself/themselves àcua medal against him ogu liau of his/her child.

  In the meantime, blood was expanded to excess and it bathed the barefoot feet of Gianni Ariu. He skipped about gone crazy out of the puddle producing some verses between the schifato and the terrorized one.

  «You call the doctor!» it howled Sandro Littera, shaking rabbiosamente the hands toward those that if n'erano been fifty-fifty of the descent. «To your child had to touch, accursed cacasotto! Then yes that you would have moved!»

  Hurt in the pride the miners they left the slope and they took to race toward the hospital.

  The breath of Lucio was strangled, fragile and sfiancato, reduced to a rattle. Sandro dared turn the body to face insù, contradicting the rules of the first aid that categorically forbade to move the victims of serious accidents. «Porca bagassa!»

  In the left pettorale there was an identical hole to that on the shoulder blade. The eyes of Lucio were blocked; lost in a void that he went riempiendo with a strong sound, a scalpiccio of clogs of horses, that the wagon of the death transported.

  Sandro the mouth covered him to the sight of that face. It was ugly to say him/it but, with the deformed face and the language mixed of earth and blood, Lucio seemed a mythological creature that had just satiated his/her cannibal inclinations. «I believe that he/she knows lie soba has pierced through his heart and is gone out then of the shoulder blade.»

  Gianni Ariu covered with sand his/her feet in the attempt to send away the blood crust. «But who devil could have made a similar thing?» Shook Sandro the head and it widened the braccias. «I don't know him/it and I believe that we will never know him/it. He/she knows lie soba, if shot by a hunter of good aim, you/he/she can center the target up to two hundred meters distance. The bastard will be far now already and only God perhaps knows how much you post there are to Montevecchio to hide a rifle. The wood is full of weapons that the poachers leave in custody to the bushes.»

  Lucio was shaken more and more from strong tremors, similar to an epileptic crisis. Its breath became a hoarse foundation, light, next at the end.

  The paramedics came with a lot of delay. There was the alpha black romeo with the you look for red of the doctor head Saints of the group of auto. The marshal Troise, with his/her motorbike Guzzi, tailed him/it. The sun was almost disappeared entirely but it tried not to abdicate to the moon. That evening the queen of the night had decided to contend him the sky before the due one, placing himself/herself/itself to his/her side waiting for to be revered by his/her shining subjects.

  Sandro Littera and Gianni Ariu attended close to the body of Lucio and to slow down its progressive cooling you/they had covered him/it with some sack of cloth jute made up for to the laveria.

  The doctor Saints it was the first one to reach them, risking to fall in the descent and to make the same end of Renzo Piredda. Pietro came I approach. «Saint sky!» the doctor exclaimed.

  Pietro felt to pervade from a shiver. His/her daughter's lover, the man that risked to indirectly kill her/it, was extended to earth in a lake of blood. In his/her breast there was a big hole as an egg of goose that the heart had probably bursted him. An expressionless face didn't disclose if that image had upset him/it or spellbound.

  Saints it turned toward Pietro. «It pours under desperate conditions!»

  «I see well it!»

  «I believe that has shot him. The heart beats anchor, but if I have not studied literature rather than medicine, is certain that it will still do him/it for few.»

  «Thing can be made in a case as this?»
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  «You/he/she has lost a lot of blood. You/he/she cannot do her/it but I have the duty to try everything the possible to save his life. It needs to transport him/it in the hospital. I will submit him/it to a surgical intervention, if an only microscopic possibility exists, I have to try!»

  Cackles and lights proruppero on the slant that lowered up to the well Amsicora. A squadron of miners advanced fast. The crackle of their footsteps was announced by the shine of the lamps. If you/they had also held some pitchforks, you/they would be been able to move to Transylvania and to chase the the count Dracula. They looked for the assassin or they had the pretension to do him/it. Naïve and unprovided. There was also Felicino Putzolu what had forged the nickname Gnagno. They went to the search of the revenge for a man that them for first you/they had always despised and never approved, to the point to fear only it because sordomuto had been born and horrible to look. "That beautiful reason to condemn even more who the true sentence had received her with the birth!" you/he/she would have said Geneva. For many, that wisecrack of hunting to the guilty one was the only way of washing his/her own conscience. Only in front of the finished facts his/her own errors were realized. The time to make up for to the grimaces of disgust, to the takings around, to the search to avoid him/it there was not anymore. The last possibility was that: to look for a guilty and to feel himself/herself/themselves in peace with him same to have found him/it. You/they would have gone to a possible funeral with the rigid neck that a head sustained from the destroyed face. With the hands in pocket you/they would have said: «Mischineddu, was a good boy. We loved him all.»

  What an eccentric fact, of the corpses that cannot feel and to be offended himself/herself/themselves is had more respect that for the alive ones. When it speaks of a dead person, the impression is had not to refer to the same person from long live. Lucio from alive you/he/she had been so many things: monster, gnagno, joke of the nature, abortion and street talking. The alone perspective of death had transformed him/it in mixes, poor thing, unlucky. If it were dead really, it was probable that in the point in which you/they had shot him you/he/she would have been erect even a statue in his/her honor. Hypocrisy.

  «Holy Christ! Let's load him/it on sergeant Podda's balilla» it said Pietro, with an out voice as the sun defeated by the moon.

  They loaded him/it of weight, in four men. It was as to lift the bull hurt Achille. The mastodontic weight of the shot one had to have transfer from who had shot to whom had been stricken. The seats of the auto were of skin and they rejected the blood hijacking him/it on the carpet. The balilla driven by the sergeant jolted at the end of the slope and the miners they had to make aside himself/herself/themselves to the quick one not to be overwhelmed.

  A stretcher provided of small wheels and two nurses with the mask they attended the arrival of Lucio in front of the hospital. They knew about the operation, Pietro had anticipated everybody. The sergeant nailed the auto in front of the staircases of the hospital and descents shaking himself/herself/itself as a crazy person. The body of Lucio was pushed to insane quickness by the nurses. A wake of blood followed the stretcher and traced the run. Perhaps it was Lucio that was leaving him/it of intention. A trace to be followed for finding again the exit from that hospital of death, that you/he/she had seen in his/her history more men to go out transported in shoulder by others that not from his/her own legs.

  The door of the operating room been closed again with a scrunch. Now Lucio was in the hands of Christ. If you/he/she had been conscious you/he/she would have hoped that those of the doctor Saints had a crumb of the same powers. It was not necessary to wake up again a leper had been dying for days, you/he/she would have been enough to make to keep on beating his/her wounded heart.

  Geneva was session in the kitchen of house nervously nibbling himself/herself/itself the fingernails of both the hands, with the elbows leaned on the thighs. When you/he/she had not seen to arrive Lucio you/he/she had gotten excited. Dark arrives then to its shoulders as cold hands that the eyes cover you to the sudden one. Geneva had started to look around at himself/herself/themselves. Every small rustle was seemed her provoked by Lucio. Then the siren of the locomotive had leaked producing an acute sound; slowly you/he/she had stirred and you/they had also stirred the wagons. You/he/she had gotten further, you/he/she had finally disappeared. Lucio had not arrived. In distance, the smoke of the unloadings had fluttered full-bodied in the air. It was the hope that burned, you/he/she had thought Geneva. You/he/she had reentered to house.

  Now he/she heard the door of the porch that opened. It jumped standing and it recognized the shade of his/her father that directed him toward the bath. It followed him/it and he/she saw some blood on the parquet. The breath hid him in its bellows. «What this blood is?» it howled with a bewildered face. Pietro was immovable. Its uniform was dirtied of blood in the sleeves and in the breast, not to speak of the shoes. «You don't know anything of that that has happened?»

  Geneva quickly shook the head, more times, giving the impression to want to send away some impertinent flies.

  Pietro got out of the left shoe with the right foot. «Someone has shot to Lucio!»

  Mrs Loi, that eavesdropped from the door and it spied from the hole of the lock of his/her room, had a wince and for a little it didn't make him discover.

  The panic cut the tendons of the braccias in Geneva that collapsed along the sides and they dangled as suspended swings to a tree.

  It slowly slipped up to find himself/herself/themselves knelt. You folded up in before and it rubbed the face and the hands in the blood left by his/her father. It was blood of Lucio. «It is dead?» It was extended to earth as a busy Moslem in the salàt of midday.

  From when it was found to Montevecchio it was the second occasion in which Pietro felt him ask that question. The first time five years you/he/she was happened before, when Emilio Masala had asked him if his child Giuseppino was dead.

  «I have asked you if it is dead!» Geneva barked, without not leaving even him the time to organize an answer. This time it looked at him/it in the eyes.

  Pietro stared at her/it. Then it bent the head. «It is dying!»

  Geneva jumped standing with a sprinter release and it was him I set. It started to hammer him the fists breast closed. «Because? Because? You have been you, you didn't want us to love each other. Because? Because?» it howled breaking himself/herself/itself the vocal chords.

  Pietro was immovable with the wide braccias and him you/he/she allowed to strike from the fury of his/her daughter. The blood curdled that it had in the shirt, dampened by the tears in Geneva, he loosened and it seemed to start over flowing. Does her of Geneva it was the mask of a clown: I break down him/it white of his/her skin with nose and cheeks dyed of red blood. «Because? Because?» it kept on howling more and more with a voice arrochita from I strive him/it.

  Pietro's braccias plain pians were shut verse of her, up to

  to bandage her/it as a cover of orbace. A warm embrace, a father's embrace. Geneva sank his/her face on the breast of Pietro and stopped striking him/it.

  «You cry, my daughter, discharged also, dad doesn't feel what you say, he knows that you/he/she is the anger to speak.» It is Geneva he/she cried and he/she still cried.