Notes

The timid sun skulked behind the hills, its thin fingers crawling over the misted meadows. As if layered, the landscape reclaimed itself bit by bit, forming a rich tapestry of colour. The sloping vineyards bore their precious fruits and the River Ceno, with its scales of sapphire, meandered around the foot of the promontory. Built into the rocky face of the promontory, was the Bardi caste. It stood in solitude behind stout walls over its forgotten gem; the depleted mountain folk and their weightless lives.
These people, like the birds that sprang from the red roofs, had an admirer. He sat far below on a half rotten bench, to the edge of the square of weathered stone. His glassy eyes of faded blue, looked up from leathered sockets. He sat, hunched over a cup of warm coffee which he clutched in spotted hands that were so riddled with arthritis that the fingers 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 to form a grimy yellow that gathered like crust around the nails. The steam hit his nostrils, overcoming him with melancholy. For there was a time long ago when he would run across this palazzo as a child, laughing giddily, with the same scent of fresh coffee from the Piccolo bar 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 an apparition, withered with decay.
He looked longingly across the palazzo, 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.
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, affronted. When his eyes finally met mine, my gut wrenched sickeningly. For those clouded pools, looked at me with indifference.
He nodded ever so slightly. All at once my emotions seemed to surge forward. Choking like bile, bitter frustration surged up my throat until I forced it back down again, guilt taking its place. Remembering my role, I donned a welcoming smile like a mask.
He gave a miserable grunt as if I had rudely intruded on some private world of his.
“Not a way to greet a friend now,” I offered leniently.
The old man snorted. “Friends. I have no friends here.”
“Perhaps you have forgotten. Or perhaps you haven’t been looking hard enough.” I took a seat next to him.
He turned to me, a heavy frown upon his face. “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 a village clung to the mountains like a meek child, cowering away from the world that seethes around it. And the people! They are no less ignorant of the bloody hell outside their valley. They forget, but not me.” He gesticulated with a bent claw, envy burning in his eyes. “And so they look at me, a stranger returned; a blemish ready to infect them.” In his petulant rage, a fit of shuddering coughs seized his words. I took a seat beside him.
I waited for him to regain his cracked breath. “You just wish that you could share their ignorance. But you can’t wish away an entire life, wipe it clean as if it were a table top cluttered with marbles. You carry what you pick up, or what is placed on your shoulders. Or do you want to shake me away to?” The silence grew palpable between us. Inside, I was cursing myself for being so rash, for letting my mask slip. The highest act of selfishness would have been to confuse him. And yet my pulse raced hopefully as he looked at me with blank eyes.
He lowered his head pitifully, hunched his shoulders further and dug his chin into his chest, attempting to hide the tears that stung his cheek. As he spoke, his voice cracked with longing. “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, but I wanted to hear it anyway.
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, like a whisper on the wind.
“He seems like a clever man then.”
He gave a sniff and his lips curled into a thin smile. “Of course. He gets it from me.”
“You can’t remove your troubles completely. But you can share the load. Please, let me in. Just let me have them.”
He made no attempt to hide the tears now, but allowed them to sway like banners down his face. For the first time in his long life, he spoke. He entrusted to me all the shameful secrets and bore on me, all the horrors that could never be unseen. He entrusted to me, all of his greatest desires and most intimate moments and took pride in recalling his mark upon the world; his wife and family. For the next few hours, I do believe that I was his catalyst.
Long after, when he had finished his story, we both sat silently, pondering together. His hunched shoulders had opened up, unburdened once more. “I can run again.” He whispered faintly. Then, his whisper became a shout, so ardent that my heart seemed to bond to it, beat to the same tone. 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 glowingsapphire 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 gently. 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 the sun burned bright and bountiful.
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.
“I can 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. 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 found immense comfort in the contented smile upon his still face. In those dying moments, he had 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 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 baring 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 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.
Write a note in this area. It's really easy to share with others. Click here ...