The Smile Of The Moon

Klaus Zambiasi

Table of contents

1  Title

2  Index

3  Dedication

4  The news

5  Our small house

6  Surprise visit

7  What you don’t expect…

8  Portobello

9  Smells like home

10  The longest night

11  The force of habit

12  The Campsite

13  Cavalleria rusticana

14  Sunday morning…

15  Weekend in the province

16  Magical Nights

17  The Nineties

Title

The smile of the moon

based on a true story

Klaus Zambiasi

translated from “Il sorriso della luna”

by

Giacomo Lilliù

www.traduzionelibri.it

Index

Dedication

The news

Our small house

Surprise visit

What you don’t expect…

Portobello

Smells like home

The longest night

The force of habit

The Campsite

Cavalleria rusticana

Sunday morning…

Weekend in the province

Magical Nights

The Nineties

Dedication

Your idea, your idea

Don’t give up, defend your idea!

Do you remember when you used to give birth to a song

And when hope had your eyes?

You’ll win, if you want to

But don’t let your years fool you!

Now there’s a reason why the sky is blue

Stop love, don’t let it go away…

‘La tua idea’ (1) – Renato Zero

I invoke the stars, eyes fixed up above

But everything has ran away, in the river of us

My desire is your image

The sweet countryside that once bloomed

Sitting in the middle of the night, I wish I could implore you

I trace your name on the earth, in your glow

We’ll love each other forever, even after we’re gone…

Sitting in the middle of the night, and the nature here

To remind me about love, adolescent upon me

We’ll love each other forever, even after we’re gone

Your body is thought, even after we’re gone…

Dedicated to my grandmother

1 TN (Translator’s note): ‘Your Idea’. The original Italian lyrics are as follow: ’La tua idea, la tua idea / Non mollare, ma difendi la tua idea! / Ricordi quando ti nasceva una canzone / E quando la speranza aveva gli occhi tuoi? / Vincerai, se lo vuoi / Ma non farti fregare gli anni tuoi! / Il blu del cielo forse adesso ha una ragione / Ferma l’amore, non lasciarlo andar via...’

The news

It’s 8.03 pm on an April evening in 1970.The black and white TV atop the fridge in the town’s bar is broadcasting the national news on the first channel.

Paul McCartney, in the middle of an endless array of microphones, has just announced during a press conference that the Beatles are officially splitting up, shocking millions of fans across the world and throwing them into a turmoil.

It’s the first story of every national and international news, the scenes alternating between teenagers, young girls and ladies of any age, all desperate for the end of their idols’ band.

The bar is dominated by cigarette smoke, with a couple of classical still lives hanging on the wall.

There’s an old man, white-bearded and pipe in hand, looking like a sailor, and seeing him here, in a small town in the middle of the Dolomites, feels somewhat odd. He’s celebrating the latest victory of Gigi Riva’s Cagliari, about to win its first ever football championship. The ‘loyal regulars’ are playing cards and drinking red at their usual tables.

An abstract and unexpected sensation sweeps through the air, some family men go back to their homes.

The 8 o’clock news is also reporting about the American space shuttle Apollo 13, which has just taken off from the space station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on a mission to the moon. While orbiting in space, during the attempted moon landing, some technical problems hinder its arrival. The event is broadcasted across the world, keeping the viewers waiting with baited breath. Apparently, the three astronauts on board won’t be able to come back.

They risk an awful end on live TV, unless they manage to repair their malfunctions and return in time, landing safe and sound on the Pacific Ocean.

There must have been some strange and particularly hostile conjunction of stars these days in the April skies.

That’s probably what Mr Remo also thought when they told him what happened at his house.

He was there at the bar playing cards as usual; in theory, come dinner time, a good husband should be home with his family.

But we all know how these things go, one more game, let’s play another, the rematch, the final… and so on, time flies. He fit in that context, at least until the news, the shocking news, reached him.

He doesn’t even have the strength or the courage to go back home – Remo can neither know nor imagine what’s waiting for him there.

A dear friend of his offers to put him up for that night, and the following too, should he need to. Remo gladly accepts: after all, friends are often an essential anchor one can cling onto for a little comfort at painful times like these.

Not far from there there’s a great bustle, some commotion, it’s hard to understand what’s happening, blue and red lights in the night. A white cloak blends into the crowd, almost like a spectator, staying and watching the scene and not knowing whether to vanish or to give up to their own conscience.

An elderly mother, incredulous and desperate, is trying to take care of her own young daughter, while a life is ending.

Four years and ninety days later…

Our small house

Tears are shooting stars, fallen from a most hidden universe also known as our soul.

We seldom cry with joy, more often with sadness, in any case always emanating a strong emotion from ourselves.

Sometimes I’d do two opposite things at the same time, crying and feeling like laughing, unable to stop the tears even if I wanted to, the need to cry getting stronger and stronger. I wanted to explain to my childhood friends that nothing had happened, but in-between sobs I still felt like laughing.

I’m Joe, the youngest of the family, and I’m just four years old. Sitting on the balcony of the house, I’m keenly observing the stars in the August sky, dressed in intensely luminous cobalt blue.

Here in the mountains, three thousand feet in the air, this kind of landscape is charming, the stars are so bright I could almost grab them with my hands. The full moon’s shine softly kissing the Sciliar(2), a light but constant breeze blowing under my nose, scented by mown field grass dried by the scorching sun of the day. A magical trail tasting like freedom and wilderness. I believe this scent has both a relaxing and regenerating effect, in my case even therapeutic.

Up on the left, the belfry rises with its big onion dome, the symbol of our town, its lights inviting me in the distance, the country fair music diffusing in the darkness, mixing itself with the crickets’ and the cicadas’ call in the fields below.

I love the crickets’ chirp-chirp in the fields during summer evenings and especially nights, it makes me feel serene and peaceful. It’s almost like an open-air concert, like nature telling us it lives in harmony, and so do we within it.

It’s an indefinite sense of freedom and adventure that makes me wish I could sleep in the fields under the stars. But I’m afraid I’ll still have to wait for this wish of mine to come true…

I hear mamma Barbara’s feet coming, anticipated by the creaking of the dry, worn-out balcony wood…

‘Come inside, it’s time to go to sleep.’

‘All right, five more minutes, let’s watch the moon and the

stars together.’

‘Come sit on my knees’

and we tightly hug, my cheek onto her soft cheek.

Mamma Barbara is a sweet and caring mother, her cheeks are as soft as grandma’s. She really loves children and has a special touch with them, she impersonates motherly love, it fits her to a t. When I’m in her arms I feel enveloped in a blanket in which I find all I need. A hug often works better than most words or medicines, it can shake you and give you a sense of inner calm, it’s all a matter of your state of mind, of what your soul needs.

I live with my family in a small mountain farm at the feet of the Sciliar. We have various animals, cows, sheep, two horses, rabbits, chickens giving us what we need to live, and they’re looked after mainly by our father, Karl. Here in Castelrotto, life flows regularly, in full symbiosis with nature dictating its rhythm to the days. In the morning the sun rises caressing the tops of the Sciliar and hiding behind them, finally revealing itself in all its glory above the whole valley. In the evening, sunsets last for quite a lot, until the sun goes to sleep behind the distant mountain chains standing out in the skies of Bolzano and Merano.

I also have a brother, Oswald, who is seven, and a sister, Waltraud, who is ten, she’s the eldest. When my brother Oswald and my sister Waltraud come back from school and finish their homework we often play together, he’s like my guardian brother, Waltraud looks after me like a second mum, she’s of great help to mamma Barbara with the housework, just like Oswald is to papa Karl with the cattle in the stable.

2 TN: Italian name of the Schlern.

To be fair I too lend them a hand, obviously it’s nothing more than a game for me, I ask a lot of questions, I’m very curious and fascinated by this rural world. Some days ago, while helping Oswald throwing hay from the barn to the stable below through the square hole which opens directly next to the trough, I fell into it, finding myself close to the cows munching their hay and looking bewildered at me.

In the summer months, like now in August, we spend entire days in the fields gathering hay. I mostly have fun, running and jumping across the rows of hay like a prancing colt. I often play with small frogs, sometimes I even manage to catch them and carry them in our home garden, but they always find a way to escape. I really like going with Karl on the motorized lawnmower, imitating the noise and the gestures and enjoying the smell of petrol which is an orange mixture looking just like orange juice syrup. Mamma Barbara soon runs out of patience at my imitations:

‘How much more are you going to last with that “nyu nyu,

nyu nyu”? Stop it please.’

And I’m sad I’ve annoyed her, so I keep doing it quietly or I simply mime it.

Our small house is simple, somewhat old but it’s just like a fairy tale house, Hänsel and Gretel, that kind of stuff.

With a balcony opening onto the perfumed fields below, the house is placed close to a tiny church and a small crossroads of tight streets, which could be called the town’s centre or square.

For us children, it’s the courtyard where we meet and play with the gang, since almost all of the inhabited houses are there. Some of our neighbours even have seven or eight children, we must be about thirty kids in total.

The barn and the stable are five hundred yards from there, and nearby we also have a small vegetable garden with beautiful flowers and a lot of sunflowers cared for by mamma Barbara, I obviously give her a hand, well, at least kind of. There’s also a creek which is a hoot to splash around in, every time I pass it by I want to drink all that fresh water and dive headlong from the small wooden bridge.

We can even hear its sound when the windows are open, and it’s a pleasing presence for the ears and the nose when I deeply breathe that fresh air at morning and at sundown.

And watching the thin mist lifting from the valley at the feet of the Sciliar when the sun is rising, like a theatre curtain at the beginning of a play.

A place like this offers an infinity of spaces for playing, arousing and developing your imagination and tickling creativity.

Like our belfry, which we consider some sort of headquarters: it has long been in disuse, but that isn’t a problem for us. We can climb to the top and enjoy the view on our territory from there or we can hide in it when we need to.

We are quite poor, but we get by, producing milk and selling a couple of animals every now and then. But money is never enough to provide for everyone, so mamma Barbara supplements our income by fostering children of all ages at home for periods between a couple of weeks and some months, often during summer.

Children in need of temporary accommodation or of a summer stay, many of them with problems at home, in their family, or with no family at all. Here they all can find shelter and especially love, which is what they need the most, waiting for their own situations to get better or to end up who knows where.

One could also imagine it as a parking lot, or a warehouse where lost parcels wait for a destination.

I remember a blond girl, Eva, who last year stayed with us for some time, she was so sweet, she had a problem with her hands. Her maternal grandmother had drinking issues, and once, sitting drunk in front of the stove, she had tried to warm Eva’s hands by putting them on the piping-hot plate, burning her palms.

So last year they took her here in the mountains to recover and escape from that situation.

Poor thing, she was my playmate at that time, we used to go play in the square, I had my favourite car, a pale-yellow beetle, and she had her dolls.

One morning we were sitting on the ground playing in the courtyard, we looked at each other and at a certain point our faces got nearer and nearer and we gave each other a kiss, innocent but full of affection, I remember it so well, I must’ve fallen in love.

The day after I realized I’d left my beetle on the courtyard floor: a car had run over it and squashed it, turning it into a convertible.

Some days later the girl had to leave, a woman and a man had come to take her away, I got very sad, I remember I thought ‘I’ve just got engaged, and she’s already gone.’

I hoped she’d come back one day, every day I’d go back and play with my beetle in that same spot, even if it was beaten-up it reminded me of the time we spent together.

Unfortunately, I’ve neither seen her nor heard from her since, I hope she’s all right now. It’d be nice to see her again one day, probably far away from here. You never know, so I kept hoping.

When one of our ‘siblings in adventure’ must leave to go back to their original family or somewhere else, it’s usually a sad moment for us. The longer they stay, the more we bond, and especially for mamma Barbara it’s hard to say goodbye to these unlucky children and let them go. She suffers a lot and she frequently cries, if it were for her she would keep everyone with her.

When that happens, I try to comfort her, it breaks my heart to see her cry, I can partly cheer her up, because we love each other. To be honest I must admit that even though it’s kind of tragic, I still see it in a positive light, at least I can remain here with her and our family.

To make sure that’s true I often ask her:

‘Isn’t it true that I can stay here with you and the others forever? I’ll cheer you up whenever you need, and you’ll do the same.’

She smiles melancholily, and replies:

‘Yes darling, what are we going to do around here if you leave too?’

Sometimes it’s also hard to share everything with the other kids, jealousies and envies spring up every now and then, but I think that’s normal, it’s a way to learn the rules of living together.

These places are so beautiful, I could never imagine having to leave someday. This thought really worries me, I often have a strange feeling, and when I think about it I’m afraid that, by mistake or just for a laugh, someone may come here and take me away, like in a nightmare.

But now I’m tired, I’ve got drowsy in mamma Barbara’s arms and I’ve fallen asleep on her knees and I no longer see the stars in the sky, I’ve taken them with me in my sleep together with mamma Barbara’s tender smile.

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.