26
The night had painted a picture of black cloth squirted with a brush soaked in the gold. Emilio was set to the fence that contained the parking lot of the hotel Francis Sartori. A lodging had been destined him and it was usufruendo of it from the following day to the visit of the Duce. Maria and Franco were to Guspini; you/he/she would have seen not them as soon as you/he/she had been him possible. An African wind waved the Italian flag, that giving some sudden sharp tugs crackled in the air as firewood to the fire. From the room cafeteria the shouting of the miners proliferated in the air. Emilio had not dined that night. The sadness had occupied the encumbrance of its stomach that you/he/she was usually destined to the food, a very small space for the truth. The preceding evening you/they had shot to Lucio. You/he/she had remained eight hours under the irons; at the end the doctor Saints you/he/she had come out of the operating room shaking the head and throwing to earth latex gloves and mask. «I have done all the possible, but it won't make her/it. Its weakened heart won't hold up the posthumous ones any operation, I give him a couple of hours of life» you/he/she had said.
But Saints you/he/she had made his/her accounts without calculating the physicist of Lucio, that hopelessly it looked for anchor to stay seized to that slender thread of life hello to break himself/herself/themselves. In the room number twelve of the hospital its body valiantly fought and refused to follow the mind that already if gone n'era.
«Where you have put the beret that I have given you?»
Emilio, hearing that voice, it turned him electrified. «Luigi! Luigi!» it howled with a baritone voice.
From the angle of the hotel Luigi came out. You held the finger staid index on the mouth to summon the silence. «You are crazy? Do you want to make to melt by chance me in the jail?» it whispered.
Emilio the runs meeting and he/she embraced him/it in tears. Its braccias sank in the void. The abundant suits covered a Greek syringe of ribs, able to play only music of broken bones with the touch of a hand. Luigi was a skeleton. The put in a ditch eyes and hooped by livid occhiaie and the leaning cheekbones as spikes of rock they frightened. The cheeks for a little they didn't connect him among them.
«My friend, believed not to see again you more. We have not had your news anymore. But thing you/they have done you?» It kept on touching Luigi here and there.
«You have not had my news anymore because I/you/they have escaped. Now I am a deserter!»
«But how many kilos have you lost?»
Luigi labored even to speak. «Twenty-five, thirty, would not know perhaps of precise» he/she answered troubling. «But would not you have something to put under the teeth, by chance?» it added.
«Wait here me!» Emilio squirted toward the room cafeteria. It came out from there with a beautiful white bread and some dadinos of cheese. You/they had been given only him because you/he/she had not dined.
Luigi was a sewer. You hurled on the food greedily devouring him/it. Emilio looked at him/it happy. "As it was beautiful to find again a friend" he/she thought. «Then you have escaped?»
Luigi swallowed the bit. In his/her bristly short beard crumbs of bread and cheese were deposited. «I was not able of it more, Emilio. The Germans kill only the people because it is Jewish, or Pole, or of color. They kill her because it is sick, because he/she doesn't think her/it as them. Every motive is good. I have seen things that cannot be told things that I will bring me inside the grave. I have just had the possibility of it I/you/they are melted her/it to me and thanks to a friend that I have in the harbor I have succeeded to return here.» His were the eyes of whom had veduto the hell.
«And now thing you have intention to do? If you stay to Montevecchio they immediately will find you.»
A gust of wind swept away the crumbs from the pantalonis of Luigi that, for an instant, you/he/she was tried to pursue her. «I have everywhere friends in Sardinia. "They will entertain us." I will often change setup and I won't be anymore of a week in the same place. Sooner or later this damned war will have to end.»
«Because you have said" they will entertain us"?»
Luigi smiled. «I have followed your suggestion to make me a family. I intend to bring Lella with me. Before coming from you I was from her, we have already spoken of it and you/he/she is prepared to follow me.»
«And your mother?»
Luigi shook the hands of Emilio. «You represent the last favor that I ask you. Up to when I cannot be me to take he/she takes care of me of her, I ask you to keep on doing him/it you.» It was the search of a promise.
«As I would be able not to do him/it! But it gives at least to find her/it, you would make her an immense gift.»
Luigi, that overcame Emilio of quite a lot centimeters, made him shade kissing him/it on the forehead. «Already fact, my friend, and I also know why my beret is not in your head. Thanks indeed!»
Emilio felt him proud of himself, after so much time.
Luigi had lost so many kilos but his/her joy you/he/she had been such. «For sdebitarmi I tell you one of my jokes. Do you know her that about the Sardinian that reenters from the war?»
«No, I don't know her/it. It also tells.»
Luigi threw downward the collar of the shirt and takings to tell. «A Sardinian reenters dead of hunger from the war and you/he/she is entertained by a Genoese friend. The guy despite the resistance of the Sardinian succeeds in inviting him/it for supper. They sits and the wife of the Genoese puts in table a pentolone of minestrone. The Sardinian if you/he/she is devouring him/it with the eyes but he/she remains of plaster when the friend pours him an alone spoon of minestrone. It starts us a second eating him/it to him and then he/she remains to attend of it of the other, that nobody pours him. After the usual resistance, the Sardinian is convinced to also spend the night from the Genoese. All sleep in the same bed, understood the wife of the Genoese. When the Genoese falls asleep, his wife pinches the Sardinian and stripping himself/herself/itself tells him": you now Take advantage of it that my husband sleeps, you will have so much desire of it after such a long war." The Sardinian looks at her/it and answers": you are right lady, now I go to the kitchen and I eat me the whole minestrone"!»
Emilio tried to smile but it was not able of it.
«Thing there is, Emilio? I believed it made to laugh. Perhaps in war I have lost I enamel him/it» he afflicted Luigi.
Emilio connected the hands. «You are not you, it is that the history of Lucio has upset me.»
Luigi twisted the lips. «Yes, I have known him from Lella what has happened. Really now that the good Lucio started to spassarsela as it is owed.»
Emilio knitted the forehead. «Spassarsela in that sense?»
«Just before to depart for Stalingrado, while I was systematizing some traps for wild boars in the wood, I have caught him to kiss him with the daughter of the marshal. If the ingegner Minghetti knew that his/her child is a cuckold!»
You/he/she had been therefore Luigi to place the trap that for a little you/he/she had not shorn a foot to the marshal Troise.
Emilio took to rave and in his/her mind they perceived inverted images and molts: nurses that walked back to the, reloaded Lucio in the stretcher and they brought him/it out of the hospital, in the auto of the sergeant. The balilla traveled in reverse to a maddish speed; now it was firm in the square and the body of Lucio it lay to earth. A big puddle of blood was reabsorbed while the skin of the dying person repurchased color. A bullet to lie soba came out of its heart and lost him in the brushwood. The tense reed of a rifle swallowed the pellet and in the air the odor of shot dust dissolved him, that plain pian lost color and intensity. A finger loosened the pressure on the trigger and there was an obsessed face behind the target, and it was that of Emilio.
Luigi called Emilio that didn't answer. The takings for the shoulders and it shook him/it with strength. «But what do you have? Did you seem possessed? I was about to call Mr. It uses to I give her/it you an exorcism.»
Emilio returne
d in itself. «You had never spoken to me of the history between Lucio and the daughter of the marshal.»
Luigi. «I have always made my business in as for women. For my cause there are here more horns to Montevecchio that in a basket full of snails. As who has discovered sometimes me and you/he/she is made his/her business, I have done the same with Lucio. I have not even told never you how much bagasse has made among the wives of the fellow townsman, if it is for this!»
Emilio nodded. «I understand, not to worry you!»
Shortly after they were greeted with the promise of rincontrarsi in that same place after two days.
Emilio got back home in the hotel. To the entrance there was the porter in blue uniform that, to judge from the accent, had to originate from the north Sardinia. The man is sat in front of a desk you/he/she posts to the left in comparison to the entry. You/he/she was systematizing a faldone of scartoffie and it had the air of one that didn't find him/it very amusing. From under his/her beret it cast a furtive but inquiring glance. Emilio unthread him before and greeted him/it with a sign of the hand. «Night!» it added then, perhaps reputing himself/herself/itself ill-mannered.
«Good night!» the porter answered, reassured by the possession perceived in his/her face a known face. Only to the recipients of the lodgings it was granted to enter, not to find himself/herself/themselves with rooms crowded with seven or eight unauthorized miners that you/they shortly would have of certain damaged the structure. Everything had to be in order.
Six meters you square they formed the room. The walls were candid and the prickly odor of the limes it still infested the environment. A small locker in wood gave the side to the bed of empty metal. Emilio was thrown to dead weight, bouncing on the rigid mattress, better of the pagliericcis of his/her house. It put on the hands behind the nape and it went to abandon on the pillow. The window was closed, but the howl of the wind filtered however, sour, ficcante and sharp. It hissed in the brain as the cries of a burnt heretic long live in the purifying fire. To this he/she thought Emilio: to the purifying fire that, as for the witches, you/he/she could also destroy his/her guilts. The guilt to have shot to Lucio, a man that had always shown good; the guilt to have done by instinct it, perhaps being wrong. And there was only now the fear to be able to cause, after Giuseppino, another died to Montevecchio.
The morning when you/he/she had visited the grave of Giuseppino had been difficult. The emotions had him/it sfiancato; the contempt for himself, the remorse for a child that there was not more and the anguish not to want to forget him/it you/they had been terrible. Then you/he/she had heard that voice in the chiesetta of Santa Barbara. You/he/she had entered and you/he/she was found before Daniel Minghetti.
«Emilio, has been being for so much time that I wanted to tell you him: your child is not fallen in the precipice, Lucio Figus has thrown him/it» Daniel had confessed him.
The hands of Emilio had opened so much that the thumb and the little finger had grazed the wrist. Its nerves were become ropes of violin and its face an ancient portrait of damned in the hell dantesco. «How you say a thing of the kind?» you/he/she had pretended to know.
«I can tell only you that if you want the confirmation of that that I am telling you, you don't have to do anything else other than to enter house of Lucio. There you will find the answers that you look for.»
If that meeting had happened in one different day, Emilio would have succeeded in analyzing him/it in shinier way. But his/her child's headstone devoured by the musk and the impression that all of him was forgetting of him you/they had pushed him/it to the deepest hate.
Few hours later, sure that Lucio was around as every night for the woods, Emilio you/he/she had irrupted in his/her miserable cottage. You/he/she had been paralyzed, puzzled and sure to be able to kill instantly it. Above the lame table of the kitchen, close to a big crack that it almost centered him/it, a gold chain with hung the crucifix it extended him for all of his/her length. It was the baptismal chain of Giuseppino, is goes lost in the day of his/her recovery, the only precious object that his/her child had ever had. Emilio could not be wrong and to exchange her/it for another. Behind the crucifix of that original the initials of his/her/their child were engraved there. You/he/she had picked her up with a release and if the era placed to a centimeter by the nose": G M" you/he/she was written behind the crucifix there. Giuseppino Masala.
You/he/she had knelt with the tears that blinded him/it. You/he/she had tightened the chain with strength and if the era leaned on the heart. A desolating cry was him vigorous in throat. At that time you/he/she had understood what it had to do: to aim the rifle and to rouse that hog of Lucio.
From the wood that the well overhung Amsicora you/he/she had shot showing the teeth. Before disappearing you/he/she had remained there, immovable, to see Lucio that knocked down to the ground and it lifted a cloud of dust; to see the stain of blood that grew under of him; to see that bastard that suffered. You/he/she had punished him/it, without knowing well if you/he/she had done him/it to avenge his/her child or more to make to pay him that five atrocious years when you/he/she had not passed a second solo without cursing him to have caused its death.
Yet, now, an unpredictable reflection upset him/it: if it were true that Lucio if it did her/it with Geneva, Daniel Minghetti you/he/she could have told a lie to get away middle without getting dirty himself/herself/themselves the hands, sure that the frustration of Emilio would be turned into uncontrollable hate.