Notes

The timid sun skulked behind the inky hills, its thin fingers crawling delicately over the misted meadows, sparking the world to vivid light. As if layered, the landscape reclaimed itself bit by bit from the clutches of night to weave a rich tapestry of colour. The sloping vineyards of summer green, bore their precious fruits and the River Ceno meandered gracefully around the foot of the blood red promontory, shimmering as the sun rose, like a great glass serpent with scales of sapphire. Built into the stout face of the promontory, was the Bardi caste. It were a grey giant of the old age that stood in solitude over its forgotten gem; the village and its depleted mountain folk. Folded away from the outer world, such folk skittered between tight alleys and buildings of hard grey stone, to their empty shops or weightless duties, forever oblivious of the world that seethed and crawled beyond their high hills. Birds sprang from the red tile roofs to sing their melodies, oblivious of their admirer, who sat far below on a half rotten bench, to the edge of a square of weathered stone. His glazed eyes of faded blue, highlighted with streaks of red, looked up in silent admiration from leathered, hanging sockets. He sat, hunched over a steaming cup of coffee which he clutched in spotted hands that were so riddled with arthritis that the fingers could barely make a fist, but stiffened into awkward claws. Looking down now at those claws, the man realised how time had somehow caught him in its relentless jaws along the way. He noted with regret, how the tips of his wrinkled fingers had been gradually stained by the long years of excessive smoking into a grimy yellow that gathered like crust around the nails. The sobering steam of the coffee hit his nostrils, overcoming him with melancholy. For there was a time long ago when he would run across this same square as a child, laughing giddily, with the same scent of freshly crushed coffee beans lingering in his nostrils as he made his way to the village market. The air would buzz with the hustle and bustle, and merchants from all around would call out, assuring passers by that their meat was the leanest or their fabrics the strongest. The memories called to him now like ghostly echoes across the silent square. He was no longer that boy, but a frail apparition whose bent body was withered with decay.
Towards one end of the wide square, a rickety looking bell tower sang in unison with the birds, its solemn chimes bouncing off the valley walls and back again, so that a thousand bells seemed to ring. He looked longingly across the cobbled square, at a local woman of a tawny complexion and copper hair, an early riser and the first to set up her stall, displaying a variety of cured meat. He understood her wary stare. This place had not changed, but he had. He was merely a stranger now, who the locals recognised but did not bother to talk to. In the 60 years since he had last stepped foot here, the outer world had corrupted him. It was a terrible thing to be treated like a foreign virus in a place that he so yearned to call home again. The sun clawed into the square and sent a glistening flash from the tears that now trickled softly down his cracked cheek. This would almost certainly be his last visit before life gave its final gift, and he intended to spend it hunched on a bench almost as broken as himself, watching the sun spark the village to life, and listening to the birds sing their early morning harmonies.
This of course is precisely where I found him, this man whose recognition I had so yearned for far too long. As I approached, he could not meet my eyes, his head shying away like an affronted pup. This disappointment was nothing against the debilitating gut wrench that was the result of his eyes finally meeting mine. For not once did I catch any glimmer of recognition within them, those clouded pools of unknown depths, so devoid of life and love. He nodded ever so slightly; one would not have caught it if one had not been searching. All at once my emotions seemed to surge forward. First a bitter frustration made its way up my throat and to my clenched teeth, choking like bile, but almost as swiftly, a far milder guilt neutralised it, as it always would. I swallowed it all down, and regained my composure, remembering my role as I donned a welcoming smile like a mask.
He gave a miserable grunt in reply, as if I had intruded on some private world of his.
“Not a way to greet a friend now,” I offered leniently.
The old man snorted. “Friends. I know no friends.”
“Perhaps you have forgotten. Or perhaps you haven’t been looking hard enough.” I took a seat next to him.
He turned to me now. A foreboding look came across his heavy brow. “You want to know what I see?” He inclined his head towards the square, and the people that were beginning to trickle in from the edges. “I see an insignificant village clung pathetically to the mountains like a child, cowering away meekly behind its walls of hill and rock. And the people! They are no less ignorant of the vile corruptive world that surrounds them. And so they look at me, a stranger returned. And they see in me a blemish that dares to infect them.” He would have said more if a fit of shuddering coughs had not seized him.
I waited for him to regain his breath. There was a flash of envy in his eyes. “It won’t get any easier you know. I see how you long to share their ignorance once again. But if you let go, get rid of your burdens, you still can.”
He hunched his shoulders further and dug his chin into his chest shamefully, in an attempt to hide the tears that stung his cheek. His voice cracked with emotion. “You remind me of my son. The silver tonged bastard had my head in knots so many times that I began to think he was right.
“Right, about what?” I already knew the answer.
He continued. Oblivious that I had even spoken. “He once told me exactly what you just had. Funny that.” For a moment, my heart jumped as something flashed in his eyes. Recognition. But it was gone, as swiftly as a fox fleeting in winter snow.
“He seems like a sensible man.”
“Of course. He gets it from me.” There was a pained smile on his thin lips now, as if it took all his strength to complete that simple gesture.
“Let go. Run,” I whispered.
He made no attempt to hide the tears now, but allowed them to sway like wild banners down his face. His hunched shoulders opened up as if he had suddenly been relieved of a heavy weight. “Aye,” he spoke in a rumbling voice so ardent that I found myself bound to it, as if it were contagious. “Run,” he repeated.
His laughter rattled in place of his cough and the cracks upon his face softened and pinked.
A young boy appeared in front of us. His dark hair fell carelessly on his brow, and sapphire eyes flashed amidst an olive face. He was smiling and held his hand out to the old man, beckoning him to come. The old claw reached out and engulfed the small hand gently and with warmth. He sprang from his bench with all the vitality of youth, and followed the boy through the square and out of sight, skipping as they went. Their merry laughter was carried away with the breeze, lost to the rumbling of the village as it awoke and the sun burned bright and bountiful in the sky.
That, at least, is how I imagine my father left this world, as It were in his head. I can only go by what I was allowed access to during that final hallucination of his. It is what I think he saw and believed to be true. His three year battle with Alzeimer’s had been as devastating for me and my family as it was exhausting, but as I see it now, his passing was a sweet relief, a pure mercy that only death could bring.
“Run,” he had whispered. And with those final words lingering on his fevered lips, he had clutched my hand in his, until slowly the embrace softened, and wavered to nothing as did the laboured rise and fall of his chest. His head sunk into his pillow, and he went limp. I thought not to call for the nurse, nor to disturb the other visitors that resided in the near clinical room at Gracepass Care Home. I only stared down at my father, Josepi Giovani Pini, and I contented myself with the smug smile upon his still face; it was a smile that could only come from finally laying to rest the burdens of one’s life so as to be finally content with oneself. In those dying moments, he believed that he was back in a small Italian village in the upper Ceno valley, not far from Parma. There, was held a time in his life which he had always called “completo,” absolute.
I like to imagine that he took that boy’s hand and found that he could run again and bound joyously through the bustling square on market day, then down below the castle and out onto fields of lilac, surrounded on all sides by sloping vineyards that held the hopeful fruits of spring. He would follow the glittering river path to find that as he looked to his side, the boy had gone. All of the constraints of an aged and battered body were but mythical shackles in some faraway nightmare that he had just awoken from; a nightmare that spoke of a war that would drag his village into a conflict that did not concern it, and a world corrupted by the sick spirit of man. He would leap forth from the ledged banking and into the enriching waters, suspended, forever blissfully naïve and content as a boy of 8.

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