Uncle Antonio and I walk through a patch of tall grass. I hear more echoes from the past.
Walking ahead of Giovà in a field of tall grass, his mother, whispers cautiously:
—The fieno needs cutting.
A quick, swishing sound startles them, then fades away.
—Che è, Ma?
—‘Na serpe. Fermu. Passa dellá. Scanzemuce.
The change to their route to avoid the unidentified snake, gets them closer to the little farm house. Giovà remembers the farm house and its favourite pastime. He is excited:
—Ma, vaio a giocà con la bomba—
The boy darts off bouncing through the tall grass like a hare. In a moment he has slipped away from his mother’s tethering hand and has reached the side of the farmhouse, or casittu. There he finds it, just as he left it the last time. It is mostly rusted; with spots of khaki, military paint still visible. The rear end of the casing of an American bomb still stands, as if impaled into the ground.
It had exploded years earlier, not far from the casittu, missing the railway bridge across the narrow valley near Rapelle, and destroying neighbouring houses. Instead of being blown up into shrapnel, this piece had remained intact. He spins the little propeller at the back, wondering what it is for, and imitates the engine roar of an approaching American Spitfire. Then, the high-to-low whistle of a shell dropped from the air, which he has never seen, and the explosion, which he has never heard but can easily imagine. His father had said they were like those botti at the end of the fireworks, on the feast of the Madonna delle Grotte.
The salvos marking the end of the fireworks echoed all over the valley and made the windows rattle. They felt like a punch in the stomach that didn’t hurt. Like that from his baby sister when he took chicken from her. He never could get enough of his mother’s roast chicken in a bed of potatoes, cooked with plenty of olive oil and generously sprinkled with rosemary needles.
This bomb was of the type that did not explode the moment it hit the ground. In the narrow valley separating Fallarino from Rapelle, the Americans had dropped several bombs only meters away from the targetted railway bridge, and missed every time. The little propeller that Giovà was spinning at the back of the shell served to arm the fuse, which would detonate the bomb after completing a certain number of rotations. This delay allowed the aircraft to reach a good distance, far enough to safeguard pilot and plane from being blown up to pieces along with the target. After the drop, the safety of the pilot’s was further ensured by rolling the plane to the vertical, so as to avoid flying into the sides of the narrow valley. The small fighters, loaded with bombs, got so close to the ground that they could clearly see the faces of the shepherds on the hills below.
On flying back to confirm the drop, Eugene, a young Canadian replacement pilot, saw that he had missed the railway bridge disastrously. Furniture and bedding had been blown to bits and were strewn all around. A woman wearing a white apron was running towards the destroyed house. Eugene saw that an enormous crater waited for her. Eugene climbed up to Giano once more, did a roll-over and nose-dived once more. The woman didn’t seem to notice his plane, or mind the pitch of the engine’s revolutions. She moved slowly as in a trance. She stopped several times to pick up and place in her apron. He could not tell what.
On a second and final nose-dive, Eugene thought of rocking the wings of his plane as a sign of peace.
The walls of the hills looked far apart from the air, but he knew this to be an optical illusion. At his speed the plane was not responsive and there was little room for error. His time to report to base was overdue so Eugene focused on approaching closer than before. He would regret his actions.
The woman no longer moved as if transfixed. A hand in a girl’s dress sleeve protruded limp from her small apron. The stump of a muddy foot finished the stack she carried in her apron, now crimson and soaked below her waist to her feet.
No comments:
Post a Comment