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Street corner to the cross
He had pitched a tent in an unattended garden, what left wild around the ruins of the ancient cemetery of that disowned province, hidden to the most, because it did not appear even in international tourist guides.
It rose too much near well-known cities acclaimed by everyone like real pearls of wealth and culture. He sought an ancient crucifix, unique in its kind, a sort of nearly smiling and asleep Christ, to repaint it his own way, as he already did with his preferred comic strips and the famous pictures that had upset his life.
Violent emotions, confusion between sky and earth, a special oasis opened in front of him and captured him completely.
Capable he was seriously, Manolo, able to do and undo quickly elegant creations, with clean stroke, already virtually marked in some place within himself. Like a gift delivered in his hands by Spanish fathers without hard work, neither particular sacrifices, a true luck for him.
He started very young and already many noticed him, but not everyone liked him, indeed. Someone hated him openly, believing him little respectful in his special ravings of the masterpieces of the past.
He could make with the comic strips or his weird elucubrations, but it was not acceptable to see deforming classical works, considered the perfection itself.
Due to his skill he had easy orders, but then there were the ones who got angry to death of his job and did not want to pay it.
It did not matter up too much to him, since those were the days in which he chased his masterpieces on ancestors’ tracks loved like beautiful women.
In that so bare place, between people a little wretched, disjointed by their own origins, Manolo sought the purity of a powerful feature.
He stayed some days dangling between garden and cemetery, without going away more than little steps from his tent, like in wait.
It did not rain from weeks and the vegetation seemed to implore together with him a celestial gift, a signal from the smooth and total blue that gilded only in the evening between intense smells of burnt.
At last he decided to enter into the decrepit church of the cemetery that had a hole just under the bell tower and a wall collapsed almost completely.
It was not understood how the remaining walls had resisted, gangrened in their fight against the time.
The crucifix waited for Manolo below there, in a darkness cleared from behind, from an only red beam in the warmest hour of the day, when cicadas tried in their way to confuse the nature of the things.
He wanted to stay a long time alone to hear that fixed uproar with the silence of the dead around, he, therefore strong-willed, uncontrollable and corporal.
And he wanted more than any other thing to capture the carefree sleep of the Christ, therefore sure to awake soon towards the fresh Easter dawn, to seem that were taking a nap under the effect of the variable spring climate.
At his side other shy little figures slept calmly. He had not endured, his body was magnificently young, intact, therefore he had never been killed. A body without bleeding wounds, like some warrior of the comic strips, whose hurts are healed hurriedly, to hide with chastity the weak points in the ardor of the fight.
Cicadas started their soundtrack at a so precise time to make think to a big pendulum clock, hidden by someone between the leaves of the plane trees.
Manolo adored warmth, because it made drowsy spirit and body in an only ecstatic totality, just like at birth and death, like in love at the top of the feeling.
Manolo circumspect entered into the church, approaching himself slowly the silent Christ. Imagination ran away wild for the too much sultriness and resembled at sight of a tree branch blinking against the sun to an high window.
The smaller bell rang moved by the wind. The large one perhaps never had rung since it had been put up there.
The painter sat comfortable in front of the cross and began to paint a spouse who dressed up malicious, slowly, as he had to fix something not properly physical.
He imagined a shadow passing on lenses of his round eyeglasses. A bug, a leaf, who knows.
Christ was more and more absent, like an onlooker who does not want to be such. It was no more the one of the day before, it was dumb to the heart of the artist, disfigured by the human presence.
He imagined a statue of a woman that started to walk with him in the night. Then a cloud that as whipped cream was put down on her graceful head.
The landscape darkened every religious feeling, leaving in background the cemetery and in foreground the wild garden. Manolo understood that was the gift of the master of the crucifix.
Registry office
Since many years, I have no more an identity card that I always replaced with a solid passport, but it expired, I had to renew it. And just in this circumstance I have discovered I do not exist anymore.
When I introduced myself to the door of the competent authority for the innocent, obvious request, they watched me astounded, they asked me the identity card I did not have and then they said to me that passport did not guarantee my vague existence, because it was expired, therefore who was I? Nobody. At least I was able to drive a car, I owned a driving licence, nothing.
I should have again my own identity card, otherwise which would I renew?
More, supposing I succeeded in the arduous work, where would I go, in which continent would I have been going to live? According to them, better in Africa, where they let you enter even with old photos, or strange, without making such a fuss, the more what have they to do or to lose?
Or to Far East, where they seem more witty.
In the far assumption of renewing passport, the only important was that I did not dare to go to America, because there with the photo before boarding or slightly blurred, not enough realistic, I would be stopped at airport.
When I ventured to say that my renew was above all for this, in order to go there, they flew into a rage, asserting that it was impossible, that could not make it anymore, even if I clearly had again both passport, and identity card.
I thought then of how many tablets civil public employees swallow in order to resist so much job, in this country that is being changed inexorably into a nightmare, a deadly misfortune without aim.
I thought also that the General Registry Office was situated in the rooms of the old city lunatic asylum, where so long time were wandering lunatics in untied straightjacket, dirtying down spittle and tablets for horses.
Those walls guarded the worst secrets of the human being, things abhorred by animal and vegetable kingdom, things left there, repainted in too much haste by nurses and doctors, caretakers, employers newly engaged, and down, down, until here.
There were descendants, relatives, spiritual heirs. Along the corridor of the registry office fate came to me compassionately in aid in plumes of an old comrade of the high school who had gained advancement rapidly inside of the same room in which both we declaimed Aeschylus and Omero.
It had become high managerial of the registry office, assigned to the search of expired documents and electoral cards never used.
I found him well compared to other nearly unrecognizable fellow soldiers. It’s true he had straight nose remade and that before it was hooked, but as a whole he was identifiable, pale, sadly vain as usual.
I knew I should pretend admiration and delight to meet him, therefore he could not exempt himself offering to me his support for my passport.
We entered together into which was, after raving lunatics, the physics hall where they locked up me together with an ancient disowned lover. A hateful thing then, like the cards for the rendezvous hidden in the pockets of my coat, become tender wisecrack, pleasant conversation to negotiate an identity.
The leader gave a little order to a girl who did not want to work anyway, and that one began deal unwillingly with a showy laptop accustomed to other quite lighter tasks.
To the end was printed a card with a photo of mine many years before with below written “student”. The last identity recognized by everyone. I had really studied a lot!
And now, what did I risk to be?
I took my courage into my hands, and without asking the opinion of the director of the registry office, I suggested in an ear to that lazy girl my new identity, disowned for the most.
The girl was so such quiet that I could have said whichever.
To the falsely affectionate greetings, that man in unrestrained career smiled to me sarcastic, saying to me that sure I would vanished without leaving a trace for many, many years, and that he, goodness knows, could not have enjoyed my pleasant company.
The ability to lie shamelessly, saying the exact contrary, was one of the dowries that had carried him to the summits of his party.
While I am thinking about these facts, they are still waiting for my passport, a long and complicated matter. I am curious to see how it will end up.
Thinking again of the old companion of the high school, I realized that there are many people around like him. They are not bad to you, they were educated in this way, they could not be different.
They think they are right and that I am a degenerate, a wicked one. They cannot say but the most appreciate thing, that I am an ungrateful, since nobody never made anything for me.
And about what they made against me, they did not even notice.
Soubrette
Rosemary had a famous last name never abandoned, a last name she deserved like the first and, according to her, only wife of a famous comical director, who left her in the lurch after having betrayed her repeatedly, for a girl fifteen years old.
Mary was tall and blonde, eyes of an intense green and a body as Greek statue. She made an only mistake to rely magnanimity of the director who could make of her a star of the variety theatre.
She repeated with emphasis the d'Annunzio verses, she danced in Duse’s way and she sang quivering famous popular songs of all the world.
Today, even if younger than her husband, she would be more or less one hundred years old.
And it’s grotesque to imagine this chaste, tragic figure of the past century, clung to the draperies of velvet of the lounge, while the modernist husband wrote comedies to make laugh people on death and bad luck.
To figure the chanteuse crying hopeless for her life of prisoner, while the lacked pigmalione sought very more substantial consolations in any corner of the Capital.
There were husbands able to dedicate their time to the career of a wife, but, alas, that one had nothing else to do with her. That one wanted simply a beautiful bride to exhibit like companion of the great artist, a decoration able to churn out sweets and children, to gently entertain hosts and servants.
Secretly Rose danced and recited at home, pretending to be at theatre, while the awful wrote. And if she surprised him, flowers in vase, plates and glasses flew.
To the end the soubrette was sent like a postal package to Beirut, where she could make her adored occupation in a famous exotic stage a lot in rows in those years. In luxurious hotels, in pianobar and luxurious night clubs, over space platforms, in swimming pools illuminated day and night, always overcrowded of customers.
The life of Rosemary splits into two seasons. In the cold season she showed herself sparkling for all Beirut, admired, run-up by sheiks and Lebanese profiteers who treated her like a queen, threading blank checks under the tail of the piano in the vain hope to obtain some sinful favour, after the cantatas and the ballads.
In the warm season some nabob brought back her to Italy, to Capri, the closest point to Rome where she was still allowed to exhibit herself. She came back for a short time also to the capital, passing from a grand hotel to another, pursuing the infamous husband under the eyes of paparazzi, heaping insults and spits that never you would expect by such a lady. He called the police and the thing ended there, after paying the eventual damages caused by the passage of an uncontrollable cyclone.
When the coward died, he did not leave anything at all to her, and she knew by sure sources that the infamous had even cut off the high and thin figure of her from all the photos they made together.
Then Rose, by now in mature age, never treaded the boards as soubrette anymore, she stopped trotting to Beirut and returned to her beloved Rome, where exhausted the savings of a life.
She ended in a small house on suburbs, put on her hands by a governmental admirer, even to tease the dead husband.
I knew her nearly centennial, on the Ostia beach in white swimsuit and turquoise umbrella, because the sun must be taken only on the legs. Moreover pale yellow does not suit to the skin of a woman.
She slept all day, did not eat but at night, and very little. She danced, she sang, she rallied her ghosts.
When she was at home, she lived practically in the bathroom, to cure and make up herself with simple artifices, the ones beloved by grandmothers. Toilette was also the atmosphere where she held the only telephone of the house, to answer immediately to the little calls.
Rosemary then came to center, taking subways B and A, dressed like the lady she had been, between the laughs of borgatari and the admiration of someone of the center who knew her past.
She met me to take aperitif and tea at late afternoon, in the hall of the hotels where she had a long time lived, and where some old owner or affectionate waiter still courted her, compliments for the silhouette quite preserved.
Those cocktails cost the earth and she expected to donate even the tip.
She introduced to me as doctor of the mind, “After all they do not understand anything of art”, said to me.
But it in private praised me as poet: “praise, tributes to the poet! ”, said emphatic quietly.
She disappeared forever in a day when in Rome there was the Deluge. I went at the same time to our usual place for the rendezvous, that was one of the preferred churches by D’Annunzio. Naturally she had not been able to warn me that she would not have come for the green tea at Greek Coffee.
Of Rosemary remains to me a cassette that I must made duplicate before also that one end. No photos, she did not want.
Ingenuously I sought her wonderful little figure in net, in the website that the heirs allowed to make to the writer. Life, first disowned wife, not well specified name, uncertain origin.
And in the photo in Veneto you see only him, because she had been truly cut-off. Appeared only the plumages of ostrich of her irrepressible hat.
Charity
There was a lair of very aggressive mosquitos, annoyed by the long drought, that had infected the narrow store room between the dirty bath with broken drainage and a warehouse of second hand shoes and clothes, centennial blankets, ladylike purses of world war II, toys refused every Christmas by those dull children, spoilt, which are allowed yell and bother anyone, because in this way they will act also grown up, rich and powerful.
The good women of the parish reigned there uncontested, playing to act as great ladies of charity, while they folded dirty and unravelled clothes, with enormous transparent gloves not to take diseases.
They decided with long and polished conversations which to assign that lot of everything, and if there was not a soul to take it, they dragged them unwillingly to the recycling, in special containers, for which they perceived equally a small sum of money.
They did not throw anything. Matter to elect among them the chairwoman of a needy country.
By now the ladies pleased to pull three clergymen leg and a series of poor fellows selected to officially represent their category through the years, like they were a political party of the neediest parish of all the rich province.
The poor ones preferred by the housewives were naturally those of the local stock, but lately they must adapt to wretches who came from outside, little profitable who asked aid to become like their benefactresses. That’s sheer nonsense!
When an extra communitarian one was introduced, the popess of the group took care of him, a butcher who attended after school for elderly and spoke polished, slowly, like if with her were born again to the world another Galileo.
In primis she let settle the beggar directly within the lair of the striped mosquitos, in a chair close to the bags of the garbage left there opened since weeks.
Then she kept him the third degree, speaking like an inflexible judge of God on earth, specifying that if that wretch would eat, there would have picked off sometimes the remainders in exchange for bad looks and much humiliation.
Finally the doctor of the beggars lifted from her chair, embedded behind a table that occupied half store room, trying to exit without damages between the cabinet and the door of Pollicino.
Little after she reappeared with an envelope of the mall, filled up at less worst of expired food in offer. And fixed the next meeting, sighing satisfied from the good action discharged for score collection “Paradise is yours”.
Another hobby of the butcher in pension was the one to visit the art galleries to report it to the colleagues, to which she gave loose slight knowledge of culture taken everywhere from the guides or the dépliants that they supply free at the entrance of a vernissage like explanation of mysteries eleusini.
But then she added her opinion. “Mozart was only a child who worked for merit of the shrewd and honest father; and he ended badly for guilt of the depravation that seized the adult musician towards women”.
“And also Caravaggio, we say it in confidence, was lacking spirituality!”
You will sure understand without doubt that the poor woman had a certain confusion in head, that moreover disguised skilfully.
The great passion of the charitable lady was an actor who made everything, coming to be proclaimed “genius of the nation” without he had a precise art, but the one to speak of others and cover them with insults, trotting now on a foot, now on another one.
When the ladies folded the used clothes and packed them to let them sell in the street markets of East like fashionable goods, first quality, spoke of any argument like true intellectuals, but all opened their eyes wide, took notes to the conferences of the responsible of the center for the attendance to the poor ones.
Sometimes they instructed also some victim, between a pinch and another, without giving him even one coin, only spirit, Holy Spirit.
Ciompi, Carbonari, picciotti
They met together in secret at dawn, between the fog that is also at the height of summer to the edge of the forests over, towards the source of the river.
Nobody had to know. Like when they blew up a tower.
The rioters were exausted of the present days. They had to make something to change the senseless course of the events, at least to let see that still they were of importance, that they had couplers and supports, sincere estimative in the Capital, inside the governmental palaces.
Since several days some powerful one had already sped up their aid, because when the country is in poor health, it can be saved only by the hard hoof of the country mule, the slyness of the clerk of province who devises the best machinations to face the unbelievable, to overturn completely an extreme situation.
Here it was no more dealt than going against a factory of Indian cloths or declaring outlaw electronic Chinese games. Here it was dealt to save their own big markets, the beloved, huge goldmines of their lands.
They had infected every place of computers, had already starved half planet, but there they would have been stopped. They would not have put their hands on friends, relatives and favourites. They would have defeated the enemies by any means.
They needed to straighten things, an idea that got a grip, an amazing thing like the mirror for a primitive population that had never seen it.
Before coming along the sultry warmth, the Ciompi, direct descendants of the historical ragamuffins, threw themselves into a soccer game, but they began to quarrel, because everyone wanted to be at assault and nobody at goal or to the center of the playground.
Exausted the game, because impossible to play, the Ciompi gave themselves to the black magic, evoking the spirit of a great dead statesman.
At the beginning it seemed easy, but the work was revealed more arduous of expected, because the defunct politicians who did not want to have anything to do to return to this world were so many.
To the end lent himself the good spirit of a dead man killed by someone sat at the spiritistic table.
Pardoning as good Christian, he advised the bystanders to invent a versifier who could soothe the minds exasperated by deprivations. A character able to well pretend he was needy, a leprous like poor fellows to which fell as lot to maintain fat masters to the government.
“It is very difficult to invent a poet completely, but we will succeed in it, and he will be the greatest of every time, national, popular, boundlessly beloved”, said one of the Ciompi.
“But who will write his verses?” echoed another.
Question more than legitimate.
“Meanwhile, lets’ spread the rumour that he was born and grown among us. Then let’s begin to show him in any respectable opportunity, so they will accustom to his face. Let’s choose for him the best verses of the true died poets, so they cannot reply.
He will recite them pompous and the thing will go without saying. Here is the charmer of the troubled crowds”.
At last the sages committee chose the most tuning peg of the Ciompi, a man a little retarded who became in the twinkling of an eye inspired, for the most part being that already by himself.
Fortunately they were times so confused that transaction succeeded to perfection and for a little hungry people had to feed with their hands full, dreaming to become actors, writer of verses, apart from a soccer player or an attacker.
The invention of the Ciompi was admired at the point that the brisk little fellow became a national genius, acclaimed even by declared enemies, Carbonari, plotters of the north, who followed his example.
They in fact went at night to the local mental hospital and captured a woman with the moustaches draining a two-litre bottle of barolo.
From the internment card they noticed that she as young had been a well-set-up girl.
They made up her heavily, bejewelled her showily and explained her that she was destined to become a spiritual guide.
The poor woman did not seize what was happening, but she accepted on the flight, amongst other things to exit the lunatic asylum and act as a real lady.
She became very soon the feminine version of the fellow of the Ciompi, as well as her doctors explained her: “Poets are themselves inside. It is not important what is written”.
In the south another population began to demonstrate in public square to have its official representative poetry.
It was the powerful league of Picciotti, the cream of crime of the entire nation, with affiliates also in the center.
The picciotti toiled much less to have their own artists, because they were more clever and knew how to do quickly without pain. They at once proposed endured a list of names celebrated for the most aspired literary awards.
Names famous for dreadful crimes and fraudulent tricks to prejudice of the common patrimony, become in jail authentic poets, besides under police surveillance.
On the other hand the human mind hides unforeseeable secrets, mysteries, resources.
It was very effective to see a venerable person of the Ciompi to refine himself to such a degree to whimper every day in his solitary villa, at domiciliary arrest.
After an entire existence past behind tangles and extortion, placing reliable people in any power place, here Muses kissed him in forehead.
The venerable person became the best versifier, even more than rag-and-bone man and a Neapolitan colleague who versified from morning to night behind the bars.
Perhaps it is why we are used to say “land of saints, poets and navigators”, other but great men of the past or small people of the present!
Alinari photo
Had to be really pretty as girl that Piedmontese woman who invented a Portuguese origin and had married when she was so young a more than mature cinematography producer with a famous Florentine last name, directly inherited by a father so respected to have a statue in public square, streets dedicated everywhere like the Hero of the Two Worlds.
Last name well deserved by Anna Maria whose name was in more modest way, but she was thirty years younger than her spouse and she had an independent temper she paid as time passed with the ostracism and the avarice of the acquired billionaires relatives.
It was not a long time that she was married, when the son of so great father took to be consumed of cancer and the only person who stayed next was the healthy Miss. Nobody, until the poor devil died behind the sun setting at Pincio.
Anna Maria remained widow pennisless, in the wonderful attic of Via Margutta, with relics of the short roman vacation with the Florentine manager. The gigantic cine camera she covered with a cloth, the pictures she painted between one and another escape from an impossible history, in that Rome astride between war and peace.
In the eternal days of the disease of husband, above all in winter, Anna Maria painted nearly without lighting system, but the one coming down from loved hill.
She made a ten of pictures on the Way of the Cross of that licentious impenitent who adored life and women.
Besides, she painted still lives to order for the wealthy friends of the husband who paid her little or nothing.
When the manager died they disappeared all and the painter withdrew at home with two dogs picked up in the road, during her long wanderings outside from time.
She feared they would take away her house that was tempting to many. Then she hung some peremptory notices at the door, so they could dissuade ill intentioned customers. “Caution to the fierce dogs”, and "if someone will try to force, I will fire”.
Ingenuously Anna Maria thought it were enough.
She passed a period of black hunger, eating kilos of sugar, drinking too many beverages, excesses of which she paid the price in health quite well on in years. Then she started to receive a pitiable pension as invalid, when the legs began to be naughty.
Were the times when Anna Maria gave private painting lessons to bored squires who went there to boast to spend a couple of hours under Accadémie Française.
Some rich student probably estimated the attic, in case of death of the unlawful occupant.
She and her dogs smell the haughty schoolchildren, gave them the grade and if they suspected of someone, they sent him with kicks and howls down for the wide stairs of the ancient sixteenth-century palace, between shocked looks of the neighbours.
My god, that tremendous, dirty canara!
I met Anna Maria down in the road, old and fat like one of the two dogs, the female called “the shepherdess”, because of Scottish race and employee to the herds of sheep of the meadows.
The other dog was an impeccable hound, royal in gait like it lived at court with the Queen, except s when the poor beast yielded to the love raptus.
Then you needed to let it come down alone in the road and wait with patience for coming back to you at discharged ardour.
It had a glass eye that Anna Maria had made it to put on with a difficult operation, after coming under a car during one of the customary love raids.
Both beasts drank tea, camomile and together drank also red wine together with their owner, when they had chance.
Anna Maria let me go up, but she prohibited me to walk behind her shoulders, since she could hold me under surveillance since she toiled not little to go upstairs and every two steps she had to lean herself to the wall, because the stick was not enough to her, also the dogs stopped, one on a side, one on the other side.
After the first flight I adapted to that rhythm, waiting three steps above, with the feeling to be disrespectful to her.
The palace leavened as it had an infinite number of floors and we took nearly an hour to arrive to the attic.
I had all the time I wanted to ponder on the living conditions of the poor woman, while she hardly breathed to hard work and continued to look me over from head to foot with suspicion.
The wonderful attic so aspired by building speculators and unscrupulous profiteers was an immense stable with fodder for dogs, excrements, hairs, pens of pigeon entered from the broken stained-glass windows.
The painter slept over a sofa nibbled for affection by the beasts, under portraits of the suffering husband who in the extraordinary reddish light of the roman sunset seemed to follow every our speech.
She offered me some tea in two timeless cups and in the middle of that misery we played to be the women of a very particular nobility.
I asked her what she needed most, excepted money of which I did not abound. Then I was immediately elected daily escort of the dogs to the road.
Anna Maria held out until she could, until it was materially possible, also because she was unable to imagine another place where she could live outside from those ancient walls.
But arrived the horrible day in which she needed the cares of a hostel at the gates of Rome and they did not allow her to enter again into her house.
They will load me on the wagon, she said laughing.
Now I figure her keeping quick painting courses to the other hosts of the hostel, dealing them with conceited air, she, accustomed to the great world of Via Margutta.
She will have arranged the dogs near there and properly, so, from ground floor where she finds herself at last, she can go to them to watch the sky that is identical to the one of Pincio.
The train
At the last elections, the absolute always winners had to distribute more favours than usual, coming to decrease the free faith in the ideals of the golden age, when all blind believed to all.
Then were distributed more jobs from village to village, making rising a new urgency to lighten the life to the faithful. A personalized little train that accompanied them in the industrious days backwards and forwards.
This time the administration wanted to exaggerate in demonstrating to its electorate gratefulness and affection now and the years to come. It bought a special purple train, equipped by only two boxes, since for the few commuters workers it was more than enough. There was ample room for everybody.
The train inside had more operators than passengers, but this was part of the highest quality of the service. Three machinists, five controllers and two ushers meaning that, making few meters of railway at a snail’s pace, the train was equipped with two young men in livery like the ones of deluxe hotel lifts.
They came down to open the doors nicely and went back diligent until the next residence, depositing the passengers between greetings, slaps on shoulders, witticisms and jests.
Some time later ten cleaning women were engaged on shifts. Five assigned to the seats and five to the luxurious toilette much superior than the ones of other first class long way trains.
Everyone was felt in his hearth to thank God or someone for him, for the job and the train, two gifts of heaven in those dark times of other’s misery and job scarcity.
The train ran quickly in the middle of the landscape immortalized by painters, sung by famous poets all over the world, so that millions of person every year came until there, filthy foreigners, tedious, rowdy. Fortunately they travelled on other railroads, in super-fast trains. What a patience to gain a little money on the curiosity of those troublesome ones!
A bad day someone dared to divert the vandals from their wrecked trains and late on glorious local train, because one of those slowpokes of tin was really broken and there was no way to let it leaving again.
The foreigners invaded the two poor carriages benumbed for the scandal. They joined the queue to go to the toilette, they cursed at every stop, claimed the repayment of the ticket for excessive slowness of the convoy, they even asked an undercarriage bell-hop.
A furious handicapped claimed of being accompanied bodily, seen that the stations were not equipped for him.
The conductor and his assistants reunited themselves in cockpit for a big consult.
They should in any way save their train, using whichever means allowed by the local authorities, that is nearly all those were not possible to discover outside their territory.
They stopped the train to a decided station and announced that there was going to arrive a fast eurostar supplied by the railroads in substitution of that broken one.
The unlawful passengers came down full of suitcases and provisions for the night, that arrived swifter than the means of transportation.
Finally the train was again lively and cheerful, desert.
Little after they closed also the little station dispersed in the middle of the country, because the little man of newspapers and the one of tobaccos went home a few at a time.
It was summer and in the air fireflies spread as launched with invisible hands full, together with complain of the owl with round eyes and the faint rumbling of the older crickets.
The foreigners slept there and the morning after started on foot towards the nearer city with the hope to take again one of the larger trains.
Every man for himself
I
Three umbrellas sometimes open by themselves and speak over a long time, telling each other with wealth of details some episodes of their life together with their owners.
They go ahead therefore time after time, thinking to carry out an important, fundamental role, and until they are not satisfied never shut again within their respective guards.
One of the umbrellas is really a flowered stroll umbrella, with an handle more than old.
Suitable to repair from the sun, not to protect enough from the bad weather, it was stolen years ago in a store, indeed, more precisely was abandoned there by a forgetful owner, and a new owner took it for himself.
You will not believe to us, but a little umbrella therefore tender, refined, is expected to repair from serious troubles. It makes laugh only hearing it, but when it is very open, under there we just stay as a king.
For this more than valid reason the actual owner bewares of throwing it away, in spite of that very greasy and dirty handle, stained little by little in a way that could not be cleaned.
Another umbrella is a very common Scottish grid umbrella, with colours that can be bound together well with any worn tonality of cloths. A portable version is widespread.
It has a solid handle that seems the stick of blind people, but has the batons of the opening a little ruined, that is to say when it stays opened many time it is a little defective one to close itself, if it does not take furious blows.
Is with boundless pride that this umbrella non fine at sight protects from coquettish, nearly innocuous things.
The third umbrella is very large, luxurious, with printed on the most beautiful monuments of the various countries of the world. It is the umbrella of the great occasions to take on the flight. If you go under, you become irresistible, pleased as never before happened to you.
Even if it rains, it’s suitable to exhibit this umbrella that transforms the life of the one who has the good luck to open it. It is the umbrella that everyone would have.
II
There is always a wave of the sea that takes at last something for you. It is wonderful if comes after a night of full, humid moon, nearly cold, even if the full moon is over the sea of Sicily. You light a fire to warm yourself.
You have met someone that slept there near.
He raised from the sand, watched and now you are not able to close eye for him and for the full moon that makes nervous, receptive like animals, like plants.
You would have slept no more than three hours, you have pressure under zero, because in the day the air is hot, closes the nostrils, makes you faint.
You put yourself under the shower, you stay there, until your bones do not frost and you beat your teeth for the cold, as you had fever. You do not have reason to have fear, but what is going to happen to you.
You will tighten him platonically, feeling an unknown similitude. Then you will feel yourself as a shipwrecked, a human wreck tenaciously grabbed to something of strange, tenderly abandoned to the mysteries of cosmos.
Unforgettable revelation, a gravitational law, after the omen of that whitest shadow, blinding, the day before.
III
Usually he climbed the highest he could with a very powerful binocular, able to approach the beauty of a landscape far away.
Above all when he was in vacation, in reconnaissance of new places, never seen, he patiently sat time after time on a special point, from where he noticed the maximum of the horizon.
First he tried to capture here and there interesting shows, then he began to scrutinize in details, choosing subjects at pleasure.
It was just a little like the cat when it takes sight of a smaller animal, for example a snail, a caterpillar and stays there for hours, until that it falls asleep over it, dreaming to have eaten or lost them in the void.
That day, tired by a long turn, he fell asleep. When he awakened it was nearly night and there was nothing more to see.
Still dozed off he sought with his hands the binoculars, in vain.
He watched around irritated and at once understood that someone took advantage of his sleep to steal him the tool.
He watched over a long time in the environs, nothing.
Then he lost heart completely and forgot it.
While he came down towards the large enlightened square, he had suspicion he lost his binoculars by himself, but then he thought again of a theft.
Was enough a rustling of the wind, an unexpected song of a bird and he would have been aroused, surprising the thief while he was plundering. But he still had money.
Disconsolate, like hit from unexpected mourning, he sat on the first free chair of a restaurant in the dark side of the square.
While it read absentmindedly menu, two hands were put down light on his eyes, and a special voice whispered to his ear: “It was me to steal your binoculars, otherwise you would disturb me, when I would come down to my secret place”.
The escape
I
A little child breathless came down the staircases, rushing outside the main entrance of the college. Free escape, tasks executed for the next day, thoughts in head zero, feelings in the heart one only. A strong nostalgia of home, the friendly voices of a diligent maid and an excellent cook, his parents.
Mr count, the master, stroke him a compound of fear and incomprehensible anger. Were only few days they had committed the future schoolchild to the guard of the college on the hill.
The child was still too much small to understand that the gesture was a favour to the couple of faithful servants, to which the nobleman grew fond. With those little legs he traversed a couple of times the main street, until the two arc entrances, buying sweets at the usual place.
It was time to come back room, because the sun was disappeared behind the strict town hall and shortly after the diffused light of the half moon would be expanded on vineyards and through the olives.
He approached the main entrance slowly, nearly withholding his breath, like if it were felt in the air together with the heartbeat.
Someone passed hurry and did not notice him.
The main entrance was hardly half closed to let pass some latecomer. The child turned his shoulders to him and started to walk fast towards the greater arc, the one that opened to the alarming darkness of the fields, the most dangerous.
He did not notice how long he walked, but his feet hurt and the fields were ended in something more dense and bleak.
He still walked, until sleep swallowed him, sweat and frightened.
From his dreams under the dark oak, many years after, was born one of the personages most loved by the children all around the world.
What he saw in Val d' Elsa, from what he escaped, where he came back, you already know, while he, as adult, thought to invent it completely the first time.
II
He played in the dawn, in that hotel a little cold. A tower where broke out all the lightnings the sky had been able to find in its infernal workshops. The room was overflowed by beams of light and he more than once jumped from the stool in front of the piano to the icy pavement under the bed.
The little child warned a vague sense of anguish, even when the maid passed beside the doorl His steps resounded with the sound of a broken drum.
So young, so equipped he was one of the musicians most courted by the crowned heads of Europe, but nobody had never taken into consideration the idea he was a sublime artist, a composer, beyond that a valid executor.
He wished to play in the tower until the sunset, until would have come a carriage to take him to the place of the exhibition.
The fourteen-year child ran away shortly before the appointment to the turret and rambled alone for the city, until the dawn of the day after.
Then he came back to sleep, just where today there are two walled windows, in the small tower close to the Cathedral, but also to Santa Maria Novella.
III
He felt himself spied and never had not been previously a person with manias of persecution, being used to spy just him the life of the others for the job he carried out.
He woke up in the morning immediately noticed that his neighbours or the other beings with which he entertained essential trading relationships, were checking his timetables to slander around of his wretched condition of single man.
It was a natural reaction to his freedom, the great space he occupied every day, fact envied by the remainders of forced unions. It was a threat not even too veiled to his condition of pure platinum.
Being arrived from little to that place unique in the world, he tried to gather accurately information on the curious disease from which he felt himself plagued without warning.
He thought to other colleagues who lived in places similar to his, and what happened to them too.
One of them for example noticed he was such intoxicated by art works. The beauties in excessive doses would have on him the effect of a liter of red wine or two liters of clear beer or a Para religious ecstasy. In short, he stayed quiet for ten hours on end.
He heard of another colleague who had lived around there. He worked, worked and when he went out or simply opened the shutters was attacked by a sort of nostalgia of the icy native land.
He felt itself watched like from the guards of the tsar, a horrible feeling that made him a perfect idiot.
Imaginary illnesses came to him, seen that a true one he had acquired on his way, and the only way he found out to cure by himself was that one to describe an eccentric person who pursued a failure behind the other.
The aboriginal population therefore was moderated that suddenly lost their brain and swore, a thing that fills with disgust, added to the rudeness towards the foreigners, a certain air to Inquisition that we breathed everywhere. To the end we were scared by them like in front of unconscious monster.
A mysterious voice coming from the statues of the river yelled: “Run away you too, save yourself!”.
He left the lodging of Piazza de' Pitti hurriedly, even if paid the rent for other months.
One of the sides of the great palace was a carpet of shit and piss that in sunlight would have raised an unbearable stench also for that day.
God, why nobody ever cleaned up?
Walking for the last time along the river, the city seemed to him like a old lady of the twentieth, with a walking stick with two wheels and hooks to hang the expenses she gradually was making.
IV
And then I find myself still escaping from the place where I rested for a little, a small old and very sad house, full of falsehood, resentments never soothe, awkward attempts to imitate the other people's happiness, or to steal it with sneaky artifices.
House of witches disguised as deep blue fairies.
The night I had still ugly dreams. Then I stood up and sought a lucky charm, a protection in the air, a great mother which to resemble.
From computer came outside a tall lady very old painting calm in front of an uncontaminated nature.
I scrutinized the catalogue of her pictures and sleep came back to me without delays. I heard my snoring as truck driver.
I had entered into the world where it snowed and were ignited fires, children who ate cakes fragrant like fruit candies. It was holiday in the country. The great mother was to take a tea with her friends, who tried in vain to take her away from the tripod to take her outside.
Suddenly winter ended, spring flooded the fields of flowers. The great mother went out in the dawn and did not go home but when the sun went to bed like a fat hay-stack dog. I saw the yellow of the straw.
While she left her scenery for the next day, she prayed, so that still were granted to her another picture to paint.
I woke up again, and the witches had disappeared.
The goldsmith
For many time I had a species of adoption father, a roman gentleman who left his adored city for love of his older son, a scapegrace mixed up into bad circles in the Capital.
My roman father was an excellent goldsmith and was every day in the darkness in his secret workshop to shape the precious metal.
I could go as I liked, ringing a little outside bell, connected to the video camera. It was a system used to defend himself by the son more than people of the place, still little accustomed to thefts in jewellery shop.
Every visit of mine was received like if it had to be celebrated and to be enjoyed the mutual company, zesty stories of his Roman youth. He was a walk-on in American colossal and those popular of the old Italian, artisan cinema directors, of theatre, of soap operas.
He was able to daydream within those sceneries of his past time after time, if some customer did not turn up. Very unusual thing.
While he spoke, he worked quibbling with the ox hydrogen flame and protective glasses.
I saw the golden fire at distance, the tools of his trade carving on the fragments of yellow lava before they cooled off, taking a shape.
In Cinecittà, in the pauses of the set, the walk-on knew the love of his life, a bad Roman who was a costumier and earned much more than him in those times. Also the lady in issue became a mother of adoption for me, so cheerful, madly in love for her actor, and then in adoration of a sort of Cellini of the modern times.
It always went to end that it was late, and I was invited in villa for dinner, and if I wanted also to sleep. But I refused, because I would have extracted the eyes to his son and also to his daughter.
About the son we said enough and perhaps I would add that he was well acclimatized in the village between Umbria and Tuscany, to the point to become one of those presumptuous, gluttons and with no job sons of which the healthy, calm, politicized, acculturated Italian province is proud.
From morning to evening he had requests and claims towards his parents who also gave him plenty of everything, but money to commit crimes.
But now he, recovered his wits, wanted much more of them to act as generous intellectual with friends and dimwits his equals. And he was openly ashamed of his parents, like if they would been too ignorant for such offspring.
The daughter was not better than her brother, always behind the spoilt boys of this place, even ugly as green lizards, provided in official age of engagement. Screwball, touched by séances, she considered her mother too much clumsy fellow to speak with the spirits of house.
My putative parents were not acclimatized in this place, although the skill of the goldsmith and his innate sympathy, the refined lavishness that took him to squander a consisting patrimony to be accepted by the squires of the place and to enter in right circles of customers.
But it was like if they warned his diversity, the fact that it came from anything but experience of life and thought.
God, in order to appreciate, they appreciated lunches and suppers, but then they did not reciprocate and sneaked off in silence, considering the mystery of the enormous capital that the roman gentleman stored up in South America, it is unknown in which ways.
Between expenses of maintenance of the enormous villa, the ones for fake friends and degenerate sons, the goldsmith went in straits financially, thing moreover never mentioned with me, because he loved to laugh like always and with irony to enjoy the life.
I believe that also between them spouses they pretended to be always rich for some issue of character, optimism, delicate thoughtlessness.
He specially continued to be pleased behind his table of work, enraptured of every visit of mine, prolix as never in his youth of candidate actor.
Until the day in which he greeted me affectionately, because the villa was lost and the goldsmith laboratory sold to awful buyers.
Both vanished from my life, from moment to moment without notice. And after little in the village took to run weird rumours on an alleged collective suicide, from which would escapes both the sons as miraculously.
To these tragic gossips followed other most reliable ones, due to a short visit of the son to the friends of a time.
It seemed that the goldsmith it opened more than modest laboratory in the periphery of the Capital, reducing himself to sell jewels for communions, confirmations, baptisms and generic anniversaries, always abhorred thing in favour of free artistic inspiration.
Some backbiters spread also anecdotes on some presumed capital in South America, on the fact that not the son, but the goldsmith same had been a hardened delinquent and had to leave one time Rome, because he ran in big troubles with the law.
Then he was really a descendant of Cellini!
Sure the lady was right and to other I do not believe, because I live in a strange place, able not turn illegal the innocence and vice versa to follow like law the most absurd badnesses.
I trust on my instinct and what I see by myself, without interpreters.
I still remember the particular smell of the melting gold, the books on the golden art put in a delicious bookcase just at the entrance of the laboratory.
And I remember an exquisite couple of spouses, true gentlemen in the middle of the wretchedness of today. To take our hats off.
The joy of an eternal present like only the Romans are able to enjoy moment after moment, until the last breath.
The others will save their skin, but what a high price!
The roman gentlemen live, and sometimes they lose their lives, in province.
The classical dancer
She had danced all life, before knowing that eccentric war prisoner, who found himself so well in the winning Country, to decide to stay there and take up to the trade he wanted to make usually, the artist.
Generally similar loves end in tragedy, instead theirs was consolidated in reciprocal freedom. And she danced, and he performed gigantic works all around the world, halting usually in his country of origin.
When she stopped taking the stage, Irma continued to dance in her spaces, with the rigid discipline of always, because a true classical dancer is so all the life, even if in the end she hardly signs the perfect movements of her youth.
Her lover performed wonderful works in his spaces, and was capable to transform the ones he could have on his hand at least for a little time.
They did not even notice of the years that passed, amusing by themselves and in company, as wild adolescents.
He made her a particular portrait for one of the last anniversaries they spent together. Took a log of marine spruce and wrapped it with many coppers of ivy, apparently at random.
But for the ones who observed him nearer, that job seemed many different shapes. It changed both its face and its body continuously.
At the beginning Irma felt hurt, accustomed as she was to portraits of dancers, and of the world spinning around them, of the French teachers. But then she took it with her usual irony that distinguished her, watching the portrait secretly, when husband was not home.
The artist got sick and shortly before leaving her alone forever, was wrapped by nostalgia of the native country and made the terrible mistake to search the companions of his youth, the ones from which he escaped to chase his dream.
They were waiting for their opportunity. Someone had become medical officer in his place, another gave himself up to the critic and history of art, he and his entire family, but nobody owned a consistent patrimony like our artist, in spite of the sober life of province and the few vices.
In less than no time was created a city committee for the protection of the opera omnia of the master, acclaimed like the favourite son of the whole valley.
They gave him the sheds of two factories closed to put on the works he wanted, but then claimed nearly everything the artist had made, except the gigantic works, on which however they put on the copyrights.
In plain language they bought up everything our artist freely had left in every place where he operated.
The classical dancer remained to dance in silence, without music, because that seemed to her the mourning to wear, than the dark colors or cut hair.
She was in her house on the hill that her husband purchased in the land where he was born and where he went to die for nostalgia of the sods, the trees, the air.
She danced nearly to the darkness, watching sometimes the portrait dedicated to her, that was ended with all the rest in those latitudes.
The trunk was he, it could be looked by now clearly, and the climbing ivy was she, while she performed the bold steps of her beloved discipline with tenacious, metallic emphasis.
Unfortunately down in town hall they were already sharing out also this last slice of cake, without taking in any consideration the existence of a foreign spouse.
It is not known with what tricks the whole property of the artist ended to be managed by the art critic and his numerous family, like they were the closest relatives of the famous dead.
They tried to pass the wife off as like a foreign usurper, thief in her own home.
More Irma rebelled, more was described like a witch who had hatefully overwhelmed the divine master, given back at last to his faithful friends, in good hands.
The bailiffs arrived in the dawn and broke through the doors of the villa where the dancer gently slept.
In a moment she found herself again in the middle of the country, waiting for a taxi that could reach her to give back her to her native land.
In the anger of the moment she had fought tenaciously to keep at least her portrait, but in vain.
She felt still hurt at her arms and had some scratch due to the violent brawl.
In poor words they had lifted her up bodily e literally dashed in garden like a garbage pack. But was not this the hurt she felt.
Fortunately she had with herself the photos of master’s works and the hope that death could reunite her to him, again to play and amuse themselves like if nothing happened.
Irma died little months later and the native city of her husband celebrated with great shows, opening of the museum full-time, conventions and big banquets.
The portrait of the classical dancer towered lonely in an appropriate room without caretakers, because during the transportation from the villa to there happened somewhat weird facts and people feared.
Some workers disappeared and nothing was knew of them anymore.
Nobody noticed that the picture had grown of dimension, with wider log and ivy become a sort of cactus plant.
Then disappeared some university professors, some politician, a couple of journalists and the official critic of the museum, all persons who had to approach the work obtorto collo.
The pictorial material went out from the frame and became a big sculpture, as many other works performed by the master all over the world.
That material thrown there apparently randomly was beautiful, so much so that soon became the most visited work by the tourists, which nothing happened approaching to it.
Indeed, after the mysterious deaths of the last friends of a time, literally disappeared from the face of the earth as they were not never you exist yourself, the work arranged itself in dimension, therefore being able to remain in the largest room of the museum.
When I imagined it in dream, I saw in it a strong love able to exclude the outside and devour if that one were not appreciated by the couple. A couple of life and death.
The sect
Zone of Milan, ugly, of my infancy nearly adolescence.
I confess I was a poor countrywoman who dreamed a blue prince riding a big motor bike or driving an old electric blue Ford van that seemed to me in those times the end of the world.
The feelings bound to that van are in the memory so intense that for me no today cross-country vehicle will be able to ever compete with the decrepit Ford.
He on the van loaded the leather bags of his parents’ company and went to deliver them to the stores.
He was a vital wild boy, who went in pieces when the factory failed and his parents reduced themselves to sew the bags of other companies in a stinking garage. A little like Chinese today to make both ends meet.
From dandy spoilt boy, he turned to be the son of two honest workers who continued to love each other and were tenderness in their ingenuousness.
He changed and I took to hate him with all my heart, much before I had idolized him, above all because he hurt his parents. To buy his doses of heroin he stole them everything, until they were forced to send him away from home.
Before he was beautiful and changed into a scribble skin and bones. Even his greens eyes were like vanished, swallowed by the white of the orbits filled of heroin.
I hurt when I met him and then I changed friendships, quarter, everything.
But also Milan is small for such things. After a little I met him at the gallery, dandy, short cut, designed cloth. But he was so much strange.
His eyes where more lively than under heroin, but equally fixed and he laughed, laughed continuously without reason, like if now he took something other that obliged him to exhibit a frightful, uncontrollable happiness.
He offered to me a black chocolate cup of which I always have been greedy and he said me that I had to stop drinking such filth, that for my porcelain skin I had to eat a red apple a day, entire, with peel and seeds.
Then he began to do philosophical speeches on his past of bankrupt and the radiant present.
I congratulated with him for the enterprise. Then he told me that if I wanted, I could become an admired and successful and happening girl, through a special training.
Already the idea of that obligatory apple made me piss, because I thought to an ancient wise fable in which a girl risked to die poisoned just for such fruit donated her by an envious witch.
Red alarm! I refused, and he for spite went steady with one of the trainers of the famous course for successful minds, a woman much older than us, fat and turd.
One night he drunk, thing abhorred by the philosophers of the schism that was drawing crowds for Milan and environs, above all where people had money and invoicing ended to the wind, accompanied by strong senses of dissatisfaction and revenge.
Only the richest men became operative masters, those who had always money on hand. The others were left effective members of the immense choreographic and popular limbo.
Although under drunkenness, he still had those sneers plasticized that should mean to his neighbours optimism to the utmost.
He said me that he could come into my room like and when he wanted, because at the training course he had acquired special powers.
Then I realized that his brain was melt more than under heroin. There was a time where he could come easily to me, was enough to ask and the answer would have been affirmative, because he had a power much special, unique for me, not at all the sect!
At Rome, in one of those grey days in which politicians are crazier than the usual, the traffic is blocked, the time is infernal, the sect of Milan disembarked for precaution, because in those places it had ended under judicial inquiry, risking to celebrate the great career completed in jail, clearly even that renowned, famous.
A bald and rather round disowning, laughing at forty eight teeth, even if for regard the sect that follows even a philosophy of science I should have to write thirty-two, offered to me a handbill that invited me at the inauguration of the roman temple.
The thirteenth host
At the last funeral I went very well dressed, I felt well, I admired the flowers, the pain of the other persons I had seen some years before, and were transformed physically: of someone had to listen carefully when they were called by name, because they were just unrecognizable. I saw also all their embarrassment; they felt out of place.
The priest sang with a beautiful voice, but nobody helped him in his trills to God the Father. Slowly a ridicule sense of farce scattered in the small chapel of the cemetery.
Nearly all sneaked off from visiting me during the last few years, and now they were there, around me, affectionately collected. Many of them invented the excuse they preferred to remember me as young person, smiling, full of life; they could not sure imagine that also I would have preferred not to have the vision that appeared in front of me: my two sisters, one time beautiful sensual women, had turned into two bejewelled pig, with some panthered silk layer.
Not to speak then about the acquired relatives, whose stomachs seemed stuffed of foam rubber, and whose made up spouses, with whitened teeth, were gorilla badly tamed.
Would I be worsened, annoyed in my curious situation? I had never noticed directly how much they were ugly.
Before celebrating the funeral they had organized a lunch at home for twelve persons, a frugal, swift meal just to keep in good health in the event the ceremony had prolonged more than the due. The cat, not being a person, was not the thirteenth playing gooseberry under the table, therefore, the tranquillity reigned around the dining table. The hosts ate heartily, relaxed, although the tragic circumstance.
But also in this they greatly mistook, because I was there, and since noone of the dishes served was of my approval, I took to nibble something and drink a red beer next to the freezing.
I never had asked the meaning of the saying “thirteen on the table”; I think I day-dreamed a long time till now, when I understood it clearly.
The cat intercepted me at once; first he blew up its tail swollen like the one of a squirrel, but then, since it did not peck anything by the fellow guests, always with the swollen tail and a prudential gait, came in the environs to make up for ham and cheese.
I know that you would be reassured at this point by me, on my true present condition, but I have neither power, nor skill to make it.
Above all I am not at all sure of like it will be for you, because from alive they say and imagine many stupidities that do not match the truth.
Fact is that for me it went so, and is not pleasant to think disagreeable things of the persons with which you lived in youth.
Just as well that a country friend remembered that around my birthday I appreciate his chestnuts, the browns of forest, good!
He carried me plenty of them: and everyone thought with compassion that the poor fellow were in his stupid bag for the great depression.
François
Some year ago I managed a small sporting goods store, full above all of clothing and accessories, that ran quite well, before politicians and the ones for them decided of common agreement to empty everyone’s pockets, to maintain full theirs, the loungers chatterboxes blah blah blah.
One of my usual customers, become little by little a big friend, he was François, a boy of Casablanca, come there to try his luck. He was the most beautiful, the tallest and well done of the colony of Moroccans of the zone, kindest, always cheerful.
He sold at his turn brand glasses, all around the roads, and naturally he had palmed off many of them also to me of any firm.
I was his myth, the friend who had much money, at least in his imagination. I was flattered by his ravings, while really I found it difficult, I groped to succeed in paying the crazy excise men.
François had pockets full of cash every day, and acquired tracksuits, shirts, blouses, always paying after long negotiations to have discount in price, because he was so accustomed.
He amused a lot, it was part of our friendship. Perhaps the only thing he did not want to push in his head was the wandering existence of the fixed price, already discounted, and the too much complex concept that goods below cost were in remission, but also he was right.
When I said that I lost too much to give him to such a price, then he took it to the flight without making such a fuss, and he watched to me with the easygoing but solemn air, of someone who is devoted and considers you seriously a master.
In fact so he called me: “master”, “how are you, master? ”, “ok, master”.
I never asked from where came the cash of François, but sure not from sunglasses.
I knew women liked him so much: he was unavoidable with those eyes gilded black one and that perfect physicist.
Then from time to time I used him as model of the new clothes of apparel to introduce around; it was more effective and convenient of the usual advertising manifests.
Such task was extremely gratifying for him, so that he ended nearly always to fall in love of what he worn, and started the usual, long negotiations of purchase.
I imagined he retailed the goods, but it was not so, because day after day François flaunted the bought articles, washed and ironed.
When I had to close the small store and to run away, chased by the bandits of the place and environs like sheriffs of Sherwood, I lost contact also with my friend. We found again ourselves eventful in a pub of London drinking to remember or forget.
He told me how much were whores the women of my native city born, above all the wives of the leaders of the party, the rich women bored who fucked him for incredible attacks of pro-Arab populism.
Here is where he took all that cash!
For his excellent character he was able to even joke and to boast of that unpleasant fact.
“Master, I went like a horse, they could not complain!”.
At present he was with a possessed passée woman, a nuisance, but more housewife than the intellectuals; although he felt that he would escape very soon from the warm nest.
He asked me if I wanted to run away with him, but the undersigned still not felt it, it was too soon, he had not replaced the teeth had thrown down.
François left Casablanca very young, to maintain two wives he had then left; he wanted to take an European one, but free, not already married, or whore.
He realized that also for a darling like him that desire was a little difficult to realize; he began to drink and smoke too much, to lose hair on temples, to develop a paunch.
Leaving him, I felt him very brother of misfortune, because nobody wanted him for what he was; I was a good trader, and François would have been equally smart as vendor.
There was something that I could not swallow in our history of Stenterellos globetrotters who survived by our wits, of what we could find locally in the old continent.
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