Loe raamatut: «The Smile Of The Moon»

Surprise visit

The following morning…

Oswald got up early this morning, he and Karl must have gone to the fields to make hay, I could tell from his empty bed, we sleep in the same room.

Waltraud, now a young woman, sleeps in her own room instead.

Mamma Barbara comes to wake me up, but I’m already awake and can’t wait to get up, I don’t know why but in summer as soon as I see a ray of light I’ve got to get up and go outside.

Normally I’m not a sleepyhead, I toss and turn before getting up, just like our football teams when they try to stall the game at the end of the first half.

In my mind, I can see mamma Barbara’s breakfast perfectly: a large, huge, white, crunchy, thickly sliced loaf of freshly baked bread, nice and soft, with butter and homemade jam, and obviously our cows’ fresh milk with some Ovaltine.

It’s a bright sunny day, the view’s spectacular, the August sky as clear as it can be, maybe we’re getting close to the end of the month, the first days of September are approaching.

Barbara cheerfully says to me:

‘Grandma’s coming to see us today, I’ve waited until now to

tell you, I wanted to make sure it was a surprise.’

‘Really? That’s amazing, grandma’s visiting from Bolzano, I

knew it was going to be a great day, I could tell when I

peeked out of my eyes and saw the sunrays shine as far as

the bedroom.’

I wasn’t expecting that, it’s a real surprise, usually when grandma comes they tell me some days in advance, while this time…

About every fourteen days, often on a Sunday, but also during the week, on Tuesdays for example, our house and my heart are decked to their best, as soon as I finish breakfast I run to the bus stop to hug her as soon as I can.

If she’s on time, she arrives at 10 in the morning, I always look forward to this moment. I see the bus arriving, I jump up and down impatiently, it gets closer to the stop, it stops, a friendly and intriguing noise, a whistle from the opening doors tgssschhhh and then they shut tgssschhhh toc.

The bus struggles a bit to start up again with a big smoke, suddenly grandma’s silver hair appears and her sweet and charming smile wins me over as if it was a lover’s, it’s a childlike joy.

She always brings something for me, but she herself is the best present possible. When we return home, I help her carrying her bag and I fill her in with the latest news. We climb a mild slope, and after the first bend we can already see our house. It’s so beautiful to walk hand in hand on the dirt road while Mamma Barbara waves at us in the distance.

When I’m between them both and I hear them discuss or talk about me, about the pranks I pull with Oswald and the other kids, I feel like in a circle of sensations and pathos, coming to a close in that very moment I’m experiencing.

Grandma and mamma Barbara have become very close friends. Barbara always says every time grandma comes to visit us it’s like a holiday for her too, she won’t do anything for the whole day apart from spending time with me and her.

During the week there’s a lot of work to do here between the house, the family and the stable, but at least for a day she can rest for a bit and take a break from the country life routine.

For grandma’s arrival, Mamma Barbara always cooks some traditional Alto Adige dishes which are so good, as well as traditional desserts such as strudel. They talk for hours on end, they have so many things to share with each other, it’s as if they are in a confessional. I believe having the chance to speak with a trustworthy and understanding friend such as grandma also works as a safety valve for mamma Barbara. After all, grandma has lived through both World Wars and seen it all. Her stories and anecdotes, which she describes with enjoyable intensity and emphasis, intrigue me too, I have a hunch I’ll be hearing these tales again and again.

Looking at them with attention while they speak, I notice they have the same soft cheeks and the same sweet smile, kind of hardened by their intense lives. Some faces are like books, you can almost read a person’s impressions and characteristics without a word from them, but for a child it’s better to hear adult people calmly talking all around them, it’s like music.

It gives you a certain sense of security, it’s like an invisible blanket wrapping you inside, it’s like love, you unconsciously record the voices and the many undefinable sensations.

I feel like there’s a strong bond with grandma, it’s as if she’s my guide, a channel between two worlds, the first is mamma Barbara’s, the second is grandma Anna’s, who for four years now has been coming up to see me every two weeks.

At my age of four I’ve never asked myself whose mother she was, if she’s my paternal grandmother or… she certainly can’t be my maternal grandmother, since Barbara’s not her daughter.

Papa Karl has his own mother, she’s already almost ninety and she lives near us in the town, she looks after the chickens and the many cats we have.

Our holiday slowly draws to a close and starts getting tinged with melancholy, as soon as evening arrives grandma must go back home to Bolzano.

I’d never want to hand her cloak, if only I could stop her from leaving:

‘Couldn’t you just stay over for some more days?'

‘I’d gladly stay here with you, but you know I have work to

do in my fields and in my garden and my son is waiting for

me too. Just wait and see, I’ll be back soon, two weeks will

fly by.’

As I walk with her at the bus stop I receive her last advice and I tell her some of my wishes for our next encounter.

Now I give her a small kiss and I hug her long and hard, she slowly walks up the bus’s steps while I follow her with my gaze, half amused, half blue. As if in slow motion, I enjoy every instant of her departure, then she sits next to the window and I wave her goodbye. The bus starts up with its usual black smoke, but now it’s going downhill. I wait until I see the bus disappear between the hairpin turns and the tunnels, and I stay motionless, listening to the bus’s rumble disappear in the distance.

With that clumsy noise still in my ears I head home full of hope for her next visit, and at any rate happy since I’m running back to mamma Barbara.

Happy times always pass the fastest, as soon as you start enjoying them they’re already over. When I open the garden gate the smell of tomatoes freshly watered by mamma Barbara envelops me. The sunflowers are all turned towards the end of the valley, where the sun’s already set, all of them looking towards Bolzano as if they were also following grandma’s homecoming.

In the kitchen the cakes’ smell is still hovering and tickling my appetite, the toy grandma brought me is on the table, I pick it up carefully and take it to my room. I’m hungry and the soup’s already on the table and we eat supper together.

The following days pass by tranquilly, the usual routine, until the weekend, Saturday that is.

Some people have come to visit us, an elegant lady, Giuseppina, accompanied by two equally elegant men. They must be mamma Barbara’s friends, even though it doesn’t look like she knows them, the encounter’s very informal.

Anyway, they’re nice and pleasant, especially one of the two men who’s very cheerful and tells lots of jokes, it must be his thing. The lady’s brought me a beautiful present, a battery locomotive that is now running fast across the living room, it’s got a light on the front making a sound like uhhhhhuuuuuu uhhhhuuuuuu.

It’s as if it’s mad with joy, when it touches an obstacle it turns around and carries on regardless, I like it, I’m so fascinated by this toy that I almost can’t stop listening to its sound.

They’re drinking coffee with mamma Barbara, and they’re talking, about me as well, after all I’m the youngest in the family. The lady often smiles at me and I smile back, she’s kind of mysterious, it’s almost like at some point her eyes are going to reveal a secret to me.

When these nice hours in the company of our guests are over, it’s time to say goodbye to them, the lady almost starts to cry, maybe it’s because she felt nice here with us.

She’s sorry to leave, as lots of people have been time and time again around here. When they’ve left, Mamma Barbara hugs me tight and kisses me on the forehead, she’s also happy they’ve come to visit us.

‘You know, I’m always happy when someone pays us a visit

us and I can offer them something good and we can have

some company. That lady already came once, you know,

with her brother and a friend.’

I couldn’t remember them obviously, I must have been too young, so Barbara takes out some photographs in which we are together, the elegant lady is holding me in her arms. In another picture I’m sitting on a small red pedal tractor, with a little red coat and a white woollen hat.

Then she shows me some more photographs, in which I’m walking with a smartly dressed gentleman, we’re going hand in hand on a dirt road in the middle of the fields.

I know that place, it’s near home, on the hill full of walnut trees and the wild pears that taste sour when you eat them, like wood. If they aren’t ripe and they have no ‘red cheeks’ they’re impossible to eat.

In another picture I’m in the middle of the field, I’m picking flowers with a nice lady, she’s smartly dressed, her hair styled.

Barbara explains to me that:

‘This lady’s name’s Miriam, she’s come to visit you with her

husband Remo. You picked flowers for her and then you

brought some for me too, do you remember?’

‘Yes, vaguely, but I can’t remember much.’

On the border of the photograph there’s a date, ‘July 1973’, they’d come to celebrate my birthday, I was only three then, now I’m four already.

It was summer, it’s clear from the brightness and the light emanating from the photograph, typical of the month of July, and also from the fields full of grass and in bloom.

In yet another photo I’m sitting on a bench under a walnut tree as I’m taking a picture with a toy camera of the photographer, who must’ve been either Miriam or Remo.

I must say I feel lucky, the older I get the more the people who pay us visits bring me presents, even though I don’t know any of them apart from grandma Anna.

There was only this one time, I remember it was last year, when grandma and a man had come to visit us in his car, a beige Fiat 127. I didn’t know who the man was, his clothes were nice, he was kind of thin, they wanted to take me for a ride with them. I didn’t want to, I refused to get in the car, it was too hot, it felt like an oven, I was afraid they would take me away. I started puking and crying and who knows what else, poor grandma. She was sitting on the front seat and she was keeping me in her arms, so she had to endure all the eventual consequences. She tried to cheer me up but who knows what she must’ve thought, the man bought me a toy rifle to make me feel better.

Luckily it was a toy, otherwise I could well have gone on a killing spree, then they sat me down on the back seat, at least there was some more space, the heat made it all sticky.

I’ll always remember the black plastic seat’s sunburned smell, I was in my shorts and I was sweating, whenever I tried to stand up I could feel the seat’s lining pasted on my back, as if they’d glued me onto it.

The little trip had shaken me a little, perhaps because grandma usually came alone, while that time she’d arrived with that man in his car. Ringing like an alarm bell, I had the feeling they’d come to take me away, it would have been an awful shock.

Yet, later that afternoon we’d come back home to Barbara instead, I got off the car with my rifle in hand, then we said goodbye to grandma and the man. When I saw them leave in the beige Fiat 127, I felt nostalgic, I was sorry I had puked in the car and cried so much, after all they’d just come for a visit. In the end I was happy, but the doubt they were trying to take me away was still present in me.

In a short time, I met many different new people, always good and kind to me and Barbara, they must really like me, even though I don’t know them at all.

When you’re little, adults always think that many things go unnoticed or stay apparently insignificant, but actually a child is like a sponge, it absorbs everything, sometimes even subconsciously. All the perceived information and intuitions get pieced together, adding up to a mosaic which is almost never going to be truly completed.