9
Some German soldiers garrisoned the carriage one that conducted to Ingurtosu the other village of miners that rose just before the sea of Piscinas. From a few days it turned the news that French could try a proper unloading on the coasts of Piscinas. A state was established by and large allerta.
To Montevecchio the German armed forces were a palpable presence. The village was the crossroad necessary for the seas of the west. To reach the hinterland disembarking from the green coast was owed for strength to cross the village. The proximity of the airport of Trunconi, to Villacidro, some kilometer after Guspini, facilitated the garrison of Montevecchio from the Germans. The airplanes arrived from Comiso, in Sicily, and in the port villacidreses were supplied of bombs and fuel before unloading the devices on the ships English that from Gibilterra they aimed at Malta.
The German soldiers were very mistrustful with Italians and they often shifted the proposals of friendship. With the Italians, they otherwise behaved instead. Some university ones, in prevalence you give birth some executives of the mines, they succeeded in loosening some the ice that wound the soldiers. Someone of the boys, thanks to his/her studies, he/she spoke German and English. Gavino Firinu, conversed for example of the, more and of the less with the Germans that sometimes manifested their desire to escape from the register, always after having received the crismis from his/her own officers. Gavino gossiped and then it told what was said with the, in prevalence the loving histories that had been born between the Germans and some girls of the village. Once, not to slander that Genoveffa Salis was made to climb on from a German officer as a foolish mare, you/he/she had pretended from her to ride equally.
Pietro saw some jeeps parked on the wrong side. They obstructed big part of the road. It with the motorbike in front of the place of block. The fuoristradas brought in the counters the Nazi insignias: black cross hooked only on white background and in the back chest a black cross. A colonel recognized the policeman uniform of Pietro and greeted lifting the right arm with the open hand. It was Michael Basthuberr, a young altoatesino that belonged to the German army and he/she spoke very well Italian. Among the German soldiers the legend that Basthuberr was a spy fluttered, but nobody believed it really.
Pietro answered to the regard lifting in turn the right arm and leaving the left one to check the handlebar of the motorbike. You granted a half smile, in his/her mind it was still clear the image of his/her daughter that he/she was embraced with the sordomuto in the wood. You stopped close to the colonel staying in saddle to the motorbike.
A soldier made to threateningly go off the bolt of the rifle. They took away the some smothered laughters. Basthuberr incinerated his/her company with the look. It lifted a hand to order to the buffoons to stop her/it with their jokes. The soldiers stopped laughing, they already thought about the wash of head by now imminent.
«It has to excuse my troop, marshal, was playing only» you/he/she said Basthuberr launching the nth occhiataccia to his/her men.
Pietro leaned out and showed the soldier that had tried to play him the joke: a boy from the beardless face and the blonde hair. «I don't doubt of it, colonel Basthuberr, but you tell that boy that I turn armed also me but to his/her difference usually joke few.» Then the shoulder belt of white skin systematized him and from the lining it extracted the gun. «Bang!Bang!» it exclaimed shaking on and down the weapon toward the blonde greenhorn.
The soldier swallowed the saliva and disappeared hidden from its fellow soldiers, leaving behind of itself a wake that he/she knew about fresh excrements.
The soldiers wore the classical military green uniform with the helmet. Basthuberr instead, in spite of the big heat, showed off the grey uniform from colonel, with the military beret and the red band with Nazi cross on the left arm.
«I can offer her a coffee to make to forgive me, marshal?»
Pietro accepted. Germany had not boycotted as Italy the foreign products and when they wanted a coffee they didn't have to worry himself/herself/themselves to go to grind bowline or acorns. A soldier positioned the coffeepot above a small fornellino from camping.
«How it proceeds, colonel Basthuberr?»
Basthuberr widened the braccias twisting the mouth. «As always. There are of the blow ones every day and they toss us on one side to the other, almost always uselessly.»
«I understand!»
The gurgle of the coffee that escaped interrupted the conversation. The perfume was exceptional. A soldier poured the hot liquid in two steel cups by the use. They drank the coffee to the German, sweetened with sugar of reed. Pietro found him/it delicious. They also made a pair of pulls of cigar. Basthuberr came well compensated to leave that the flocks of the shepherds of Villacidro pastured in the neighboring fields to the airport of Trunconi.
«I now have to go, colonel Basthuberr!» It redelivered his/her cup and he/she greeted making to beat the heels with the lifted arm. Basthuberr and his/her men answered in unison to that regard. «Talk to you soon, marshal!»
Pietro pushed the accelerator of his/her motorbike. While it was darting free he/she thought about the Germans. He/she wondered if they had the same ideas of their dictator or as if everybody the soldiers only performed the orders not to be shown as traitors of the country. After that thought it grazed him/it a more troublesome doubt: it was not surer than Italy you/he/she had seen us correct allying himself/herself/itself to Hitler and Germany. Foolish thoughts, were said.
It extinguished the motorbike Guzzi in front of the place of the wine cellar: a big building that to his/her inside it picked up numerous departments. It entered an intruder becoming in the great room crowded only with women. The most greater part of them, more than flour or civraxu would not have been able to purchase. On civraxu it was the black bread of the poor men: great, round, crushed and above all economic. Is civraxus of tziu Angelinu Peddis, the baker, in the years you/they were become famous to also reach the weight of two kilos and a half. Because of the rationing that imposed at the most centocinquanta grams of bread for person, tziu Angelinu had been forced to see again I mix him of his/her breads. They weighed at the most now a kilo and a half, hangs saleable to the numerous families. To sell one of the old civraxuses a family it would be taken of almost winds people. A hard number to also be reached for Macciocci Pisu, one that was busy few other after supper whether not to always go to sure hit and it already had fourteen children.
The other types of bread, gotten with flours and more expensive workmanships, they were proper commodity for the pockets of the servants, you fill to duty from their engineers and employees.
The place of the wine cellar was enormous and endowed with a long bench that before the war and of the rationing provisions you/he/she had been loaded of balances and pots of glass containers of everything: from the sott'olios to the jam and from the pickles to the rotten cheese with the worms. Of all of this the balances remained only. Behind the bench, for all of his/her length, it extended him a ledges shelf that had known flour sacks and of sugar, vegetables, long and short pasta, sweets, wines, liqueurs and soaps; but it now appeared thin, with some flour sack, three or four bottles of wine and two types of bread.
When the women saw Pietro, they stopped instantly whispering. They certainly spoke of the wedding of his/her daughter. Pietro didn't mind you as, you/he/she was normal that in such a narrow community the voices flew as the wind.
«Marshal is what you/they say?» Ciccitta Marongiu pursued him/it a widow of the mine that tightened a baby of few days in arm. You/he/she was given suffered by to do after the death of his/her husband and it assisted an old man to live. To get that place was said that you/he/she had worked a lot of mouth and legs but not to race and to speak. The baby that tightened in arm spits to Agenore De Cortes, the child of the old one to which Ciccitta rinsed the culo; just as it was the mother-in-law of the paralytic Sisinnio Zoccheddu, but with different satisfactions decidedly. Ciccitta Marongiu was so linguacciuta that he/she knew everythi
ng about everybody. People thought that you/he/she was also marked in the calendar how many scorregges played from the mandolin of its fellow townsman.
Pietro fixed the barefoot feet of the gossiper with an absorbed face.
«It depends on what you/they say» he/she answered, without dissuading the eyes from that feet zozzi.
You seemed disorientated by that answer. «Behs, say that his/her daughter Geneva is officially engaged with Daniel Minghetti.» and it made an instant of break, as him same deciding whether to I give or The leads the question that beat him in head. «. And they also say that to brief they will get married him. It is not so?» it finished.
Its words had succeeded to tacitare the present people in the place of the wine cellar. All exclusively attended the alms of an answer.
Pietro puffed. «Even you would like that it was not so.» It launched a grim look toward all the bystanders. «You would do well to make you your business, once so much.» And it turned the shoulders leaving that swarm of people to settle amazed. It was nervous. It feared that someone could discover what was combining his/her daughter; you/he/she could not allow him/it.
Ciccitta Marongiu twisted his/her nose adunco. When Pietro turned, she had made him the evil tongue. For that time you/he/she would not have annotated anything on his/her calendar.
Genoveffa Manca pointed out the greater black bread. «Giovanna you give me that civraxus?» In his/her house they were in twelve.
The order, Giovanna Nieddu, a good girl that worked hard without never complaining about himself/herself/themselves, weighed on civraxu. Taken a pencil and he/she annotated in it enrolls her/it some rationing the kilo and a half of bread for the family it Misses. It delivered the civraxu wound in an envelope of paper. «Ago four coins!»
Genoveffa Manca was immovable. In the palm of his/her open hand two coins sparkled only. «But up to yesterday I paid two coins!» You/he/she was surprised and embarrassed.
Giovanna made spallucce. «I regret it, Genoveffa, but the direction has still increased the prices.»
Genoveffa tightened the two coins with anger. «But I don't have nient'altro. We are at the end of the month and we wait for the salary of Venanzio!»
Giovanna was sorry. «I would give him/it for you, Genoveffa, but if I do him/it they discount her/it to me the difference.»
«Accursed! This is to steal. They are not ashamed to steal from poor people as us?» it shouted raging Genoveffa.
Giovanna thought that Genoveffa was right but it didn't tell him him. It feared that someone could make the spy in direction. and then goodbye job.
Genoveffa showed her/it. «You don't say anything, you?»
The face of Giovanna moistened and a strong heat went up again from her stomach to the ears. He/she didn't know as to behave him anymore.
«Genoveffa is right! But Giovanna doesn't have anything to do with it nothing» he inserted Pietro removing from the embarrassment the order, that resumptions his usual colored earth.
Pietro patrolled the pockets and threw out two coins of Montevecchio. You/he/she had had her to the plain earth of the building of the direction, in the office of change. It tossed her making to circle her up in the air and it seized again her with a hold of fist decided, almost same capturing a fly in flight. In the shops of Montevecchio you/he/she could exclusively be purchased with the coin of Montevecchio. The office change served really to replace the liras with the local coin. Benito Di Isanto, the employee of the office change, approssimava always the accounts for defect and it happened to be himself/herself/themselves in hand some coin in less. To find again only him of it one more than the correct equivaleva to see that paralytic of Sisinnio Zoccheddu to dance on ballu sardu to braccetto with his/her mother-in-law Rosa Piscedda.
Pietro scrutinized the rags with which the women and their barefoot feet were dressed tortured by the stones. You disdained to the place of the gentlemen of the mines. Taken the hand of Giovanna and on the palm it put us the two coins. «Holds, today I offer me for Genoveffa.»
Genoveffa for a little it didn't start crying. «Thanks, marshal! I don't know what I would have done without her. My boys work as slaves yet we cannot even allow there the bread» he/she sobbed.
The production in the wells was almost jammed but in the carpentry he was manufacturing the chairs for the theater of Cagliari. In the chemical laboratories rather than to separate the metals with the cyanide lipsticks, perfumes and polishes they were manufactured for shoes. The flower to the buttonhole was the foundry, that guaranteed the war restocking with the lead and the zinc, paid scentedly.
Pietro was irritated. «Christ santo,voi miners' families you should make to feel you. You cannot always suffer without complaining you!»
Genoveffa bent the head. «If one speaks, later the day is without job!»
Pietro felt the anger that strangled him the guts. It was certain that the executives pocketed some small in less than when the war didn't rage, of certain they didn't starve however. Yet, with the stratagem of the stockjobbing, scarnificavano the already shrunken salaries of the miners. In the shops they made the prices to them liking, also drawing earningses from that activity. It was a situation that Pietro ache it digested and could have greater powers you/he/she would have let that usurers spit blood, understood Minghetti. «I understand you! But you will see that when this war will be ended they will change so many things.»
Genoveffa and Giovanna smiled. "The marshal is really a brav'uomo", they thought in unison.
Pietro pointed out one of the deep baskets in which bread kind was divided for kind. «Gives me two of that sandwiches color gold!»
Giovanna Nieddu taken an envelope of paper and it inserted you with parsimony the two sandwiches. That was good bread that cost an eye of the head. If it were her fallen to earth a solo of that sandwiches you/they would have escaped part of his/her daily pay. It looked at Pietro and smiled without betraying the apprehension in to handle that commodity. «Here to her, marshal! Eight coins» it said with evident gratitude to have removed her/it from the claws of Genoveffa Manca.
Pietro paid and abandoned the wine cellar leaving together with his/her money an aura of hope that wound everybody less that Ciccitta Marongiu.
In the park, balillas dressed of black marched in paramilitary formation, driven by the teacher of the elementary ones. The tambureggiamento of their footsteps spurred the sparrows that were raised in air. The pines from the tall points, that the idea of cathedrals gave, were bare of their company. The balillas turned the angle of avenue Littorio and they disappeared. Pietro followed them with the look, appreciating the discipline of that the teacher had succeeded in transmitting to of his/her/their children as soon as eight or nine years.
It climbed on the motorbike and it departed sgommando. It felt like escaping from all that problems: his/her daughter's epilepsy, the atrocious memory of his/her wife, the war and now that accursed night in the wood that had put to risk all of his/her projects.
It brought the tablet accelerator and it burned avenue Littorio; it took the slant that conducted to Guspini between so many tornantis and few rectilinear. In those insane runs he/she succeeded in turning away himself/herself/themselves from the world forgetting himself/herself/itself of everything, even to have been born. The motorbike and he existed only. It bends to the right and it bends to the left, rectilinear and then intersection. It knew to memory that road and it crossed her/it without fears, unaware that would have been enough him to peck at with the wheel a pebble to hurl in air and to make an ugly end. But after all if you/he/she had not been out some of head you/he/she would never have bought a motorbike. and you/he/she would never have been to policeman.