The Oath
(... Someone touch Cain!)
— I spoke a little while ago with Don Nicola, and he told me that he is expecting you on tomorrow afternoon, at four o'clock! — my wife Olympia tells me, just back from Mass.
— Eh..., hmm..., is it really necessary that I go and talk to a priest? What do I tell him? — I answer undecided.
— You go there..., and tell him everything; unload to him everything you have inside, and you will see that you will come out more serene, and your rancor will end; his words will be able to cheer you up, and above all reassure you, as happened to me, after I told him about our current condition. He is a holy man, you know, and with him, it is like talking to Jesus our Lord; you will see that, in the end, with his words and his fraternal advice, he will be able to lighten your soul; and it is what we both need, to return to living peacefully, now that we are elderly; please, go there! — she finishes.
— Okay, as you want..., tomorrow I will go! — I answer, not convinced, but more to keep her happy, than anything else.
«The next day, I enter the church, a few minutes before the agreed time. The church is small, is on the outskirts, and is dedicated to the Madonna Del Carmelo; quite far from the inhabited center of my village, Saviliano, but quite close to the farm that was owned by me on the Serralonga plateau: where my family and I lived for many years. Taking to attend this parish, more for the short distance than anything else, Olympia had had the opportunity to meet the parish priest, Don Nicola, being fascinated by the simplicity of her ways and by the spiritual transport that she induced with her homilies; and I began to frequent it too. The church is empty, except for a lady who prays, sitting at the first pew, and another who, seeing me, comes to meet me and asks me: — Do you have to confess?
— No..., but I have an appointment at four with Don Nicola! — I reply promptly.
— Don Nicola is confessing someone...: in the meantime, take a seat here! — she tells me, pointing to a chair placed outside the entrance to the sacristy. Before the woman goes away, I tell her: - If you have the chance, let him know that Frank Studiante is here, thank you.
— Now I can not, but as soon as the person who is confessing comes out, I tell him! — she reassures me; and then going to sit next to the lady who is praying, and starting to talk to her. Several minutes later the door of the sacristy opens, and a gentleman comes out; the man smiles at me, "You must have been absolved of your sins!" — I think, responding to her smile. Immediately afterward the lady enters, and leaves almost immediately going directly to speak with the other, who, despite having resumed praying, makes a gesture of annoyance on hearing what is reported to her, and comes back to me: - Can enter! — she tells me, and then closing the door behind her. The sacristy, I've never entered in one in my life, has all the features of a professional studio; the desk is placed in the center of the room, with a black leather executive chair on one side, and two for guests on the other; a crucifix and a photo of the reigning pontiff hanging on the wall behind; the computer turned on, put in stand-bay; a wardrobe with four doors, two of which with smoked glass, a sitting area in brown leather on the turned on, put in stand-bay; a wardrobe with four doors, two of which with smoked glass, a sitting area in brown leather on the other side, and a hanger on the side of the front door: an office...: as I had that, in the years of my activities. Don Nicola, a small man with a beard and hair both short and white and wearing a chasuble and stole, is sitting at his desk, reading what, at first glance, seems to me to be his breviary. Hearing me enter and close the door, he looks up and smiles at me; a reassuring smile appears on his face, which I see it in his eyes too. Over the years, I have learned to understand immediately what these fantastic organs transmit, looking at you.
— Good evening, Don Nicola! — I say entering.
— Good evening, Frank! — he replies kindly, and then: - We haven't seen each other for quite a while! If I'm not mistaken ... it will be at least four Sundays since I don't see you at mass; what is it, you don't get along with Jesus anymore? — he tells me, approaching me and warmly shaking my hand.
— I have the impression, Don Nicola, that Jesus has forgotten me: and for a long time! — I reply him, immediately regretting such a statement.
— He does not forget anyone, Frank! He was waiting for you, and today he is coming to meet you. Perhaps you did not understand it, but it is He who wants to listen to you, through this poor priest who stands in front of you, and that is why..., that you are here!
— This meeting was He who wanted it: and through your wife, Olympia, who is part of his plan! — he says, inviting me to sit in front of him, in the sitting room.
— Olympia..., without her, I don't know how I would have done don Nicò! With his help..., I managed to overcome very difficult moments for me: painful periods, studded with facts at the borders of human endurance! Without her, a sensitive and correct woman, ideologically honest, and her faith — one open book, she had called her a sincere friend of hers — perhaps I would have committed rash gestures! — I say sitting down.
Don Nicola is still wearing the stole, and he asks me: Do you want yours to be a confession?
— No..., don Nicò! I need to talk..., and with someone who has no qualms about listening to me: necessarily even for hours; my story is long, don Nicò, and the result is the miserable condition in which Olympia and I find ourselves today. Not so much that of an economic nature, mitigated in part by the just sufficient pension, but by that of being, despite everything, and in spite of ourselves, left without the contacts and affections of that part that remains of my original family: my siblings.
— I know, I am informed; Olympia spoke to me about of you two, pain, especially yours, Frank, and I am here to listen to you; for the time..., what will be necessary. And in fact, foreseeing it, a little while ago, to the lady I was supposed to confess I made her bring my apologies: begging her to postpone until tomorrow.
— I must necessarily start from afar, don Nicò, because everything is linked; if I compared my story to a long chain, and removed one link from the center, the chains would become two, shorter, and the whole story would lose all dramatic importance; many sad situations, we have been forced to live for a long time, don Nicola, and to endure.
He nods positively and, taking off his stole, invites me to tell.
*****
« I add must have fallen asleep again: I was traveling from all night long, when, once again, a loud metallic screech woke me up. The train was slowing down: I also noticed, it, from that characteristic noise, that Thun... Thun..., that was heard when the wheels of the carriage, in the direction of that I was indirectly sitting, passed over the void between one rail and the next; the speed of the convoy was decreasing in intensity, and the time elapsed for the passage over the next void gradually increased. We were passing through a tunnel, which, apparently, seemed to me quite long, but which could also appear so due to the slowing phase of the convoy. The carriage had its lights on, and there was no other traveler in my compartment. I got up, looked around, checked that my small suitcase was where I had placed it, and looked out into the corridor. Two other travelers, perhaps also awakened like me by the same noise, had left their compartment and were standing in the corridor. They were two young men, perhaps immigrated to the north of Italy, who were returning home for vacation. Two latecomers, I thought, since we were at the beginning of August, and the holidays had already started for several days: precisely since the big companies in the north had closed. The working period in Italy, as you know, is conditioned by large companies that all of which close from the first day of the month; and all over the country, for everyone, the holidays start from that day: again today.
« On a moving train, it is not easy to remain standing, if you do not lean against the compartment wall or place your hands on the window. And I had leaned on that. We were still in the tunnel: and the train's speed dropped further. I didn't know where we were at that point of the journey, and I didn't even know if the train was slowing down for technical reasons, or because it was nearing a stop. I lit a cigarette: my favorites of the time, the Supers without filter. After a first puff, and before putting it back in my pocket, I checked the functioning of my lighter, a Ronson, which hadn't ignited the first time. The corridor of my carriage, second class, was on the right side with respect to the direction of travel, and so I thought that if the train was traveling along the Jonian route, as soon as I left the tunnel I would see the hills; and if it had been on the Tyrrhenian route, the sea. And that was what I wanted to see. At last a reflection began to be seen, and shortly after, when the tunnel was finished, I saw the sea. I was delighted to see: it calms and immense, of a dark blue, darker than my Adriatic. The two travelers already in the corridor were joined by five or six other travelers; one of whom, placed by my side, anticipated that in a short time Sicily would be seen. I looked at my watch: it was six o'clock and the sun was already high; just twenty minutes, according to the timetable, the train would arrive at the station of Villa San Giovanni, and then be ferried to Messina. »
— Here is don Nicò: that city was my destination.
« I was going to visit my brother Pasquale, an officer in the army. My brother is older than me: I am the second in a brood of six. It was our father, who proposed this to me; the previous month I had completed my high school diploma, and, so he, as a reward, proposed that trip to me: "Since your brother Pasquale he takes leave of the military, in three days, why don't you go there... so that you can come back together?" he had told me. I did not make me repeat it twice; I accepted immediately, and, running to the travel agency, I bought the train ticket for Messina. In second class, don Nicò: the money was very little. It wasn't the first time I went to see my brother; I had already gone twice, and always on my father's initiative. Don Nicò..., I never asked for anything, I never did!
« The first time, I went there when he was a troop soldier in Palmanova, in Friuli, and the second time almost a year later, in Ascoli Piceno, where he was attending the course of Cadet Officers. I had already, as a kid, discovered that I liked to travel, especially if alone. Traveling alone still allows me to observe, and memorize better, everything that my gaze has the opportunity to notice: from the landscape, to the crops and agglomerations of the territory that one passes through, to the people who travel with me or whom I meet in the places I visit. I am especially interested in their behavior of people, signs for me of their culture that is more emancipated than mine, or not. Traveling with your eyes open, as my father used to say, means this for me: emancipating your own culture; and it should apply to everyone. Just as then: I looked at the sea, without neglecting to observe the other travelers. Even today, I am not interested in people as such, since I soon forget them, but their stories and their behaviors and their education: those remain in my mind, and I treasure them.
« Of the first time, that I went to my brother, I remember that at the Bologna station, when my carriage was hooked up to the train to Venice, three women entered and sat down in my compartment; one in her fifties, and the other two young girls. Resumed the journey, after the usual pleasantries about the destination and the weather and the duration of the same, up to the destination, my own, I started to smoke, watching the countryside, flat like the Tavoliere di Capitanata, flow by, and the woman began to talk about work. At a certain point that woman, with her story, attracted my attention: in a compartment of a railway carriage, despite all the good will, it is impossible not to listen. She was telling the two girls and me, too, about the hard work she had done when she was a girl, in the mid-fifties, of the 1900s. She had worked in the rice fields of the Vercelli area as a picker, together with dozens of young women, for sowing, for the cleansing and finally for the harvest: and continues to do so again; and indeed, she said, that she was returning home after the harvest season. "It's hard work, especially when weeds must be pulled out, because you have to stay in the water up to the knee, and you have to stay bent; the back it suffers even if you are young!" she said. Finally, "And then there were always some assholes of men who, on that position, made not very polite appreciations. Fortunately, now, with the introduction of herbicides the work is outdated, and we are left with only the appellation of mondina!". Her speech ended, and a faint smile crossed his face. I resumed looking at the countryside, which ran fast; the panorama interested me, as still does today: to fully evaluate all that Mother Nature has created, and she has made available to us.
« A Palmanova, with my brother we saw each other only in the evening during his free exit, and together with two other fellow villagers, who were also soldiers. That time, I slept in an inn run by Dalmatian refugees; the room was cold and unheated, and the sheets were frozen. I still remember, today, how frozen those sheets were. I spent the days, three, visiting the places, until even came to visit the shrine of Redipuglia. In the huge and majestic shrine, one hundred thousand Italian soldiers of the Third Army, who died in the First World War, are buried, together with their Commander: Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, Duke D'Aosta. »
— Sixty thousand of those heroic soldiers are unknown, don Nicò!
« Slowly climbing each of the huge steps that make up the Shrine, I was able to read many names, so it seemed to me, of southern origin: of that part of Italy, which, had it not been for unity, not have participated in the carnage, and his young sons would not remain innocent victims of an enemy, which most of them didn't even know. I moved with the utmost respect, as the place demanded, thinking of how many of those boys of my age who had sacrificed their young lives, and who lay there forever. Up, at the top of the Memorial, there is a small museum in which various and innumerable relics are kept, that in that tragic period were in common use to those unfortunate boys: weapons of various kinds, bayonets, spoons, mess tins, gas masks and more. One in particular struck me: a bicycle used by cyclists Bersaglieri. That means, they needed to move quickly on the roads to reach the front, or any other place of confrontation; finished the roads, or the paths with these passable, the bicycle was folded, and everyone carried it on his shoulders. A helmet also caught my attention: which had a hole in the front. It was not difficult for me to imagine the effects, and the consequences on the head of the soldier he was supposed to protect. A peaked cap and red headdress, with silver brigadier's general ranks, warned the visitor, or so it seemed to me, that some of them had also remained in the field. As I walked away, and thinking of the pain of the mothers of those unfortunate men, I made up my mind not to forget them. We must not forget them.
« The second time, in Ascoli Piceno; the weather was still summer, and I only stayed there a little over half a day. I arrived early in the morning, and in the evening I had already left. In that barracks, the environment was very different from that of Palmanova: there, the soldiers were all officer cadets. At the door, the picket officer, to whom I had introduced myself, kindly made me sit in the waiting room, and immediately sent a soldier from the guard to call my brother. Pasquale arrived almost immediately, exchanged a few friendly words with the officer, and, with permission already in his pocket, we went out.
"Why didn't you salute the Lieutenant?" I asked him amazed.
"He is an officer of Complement, and he is a friend; he is a recommended, son of a big shot in Rome; and then, in three months, I too will be Second Lieutenant like him!", he replied.
"Here: all are recommended, as well as you!", I observed, with only the spirit of truth.
We had a laugh, and closed the subject.
In the meantime, I thought: "Who knows if when it's my turn, I'll have I too will have a recommendation that allows me the same thing!".
The uniform that Pasquale wore was that of an infantry soldier: long-sleeved shirt and khaki-colored trousers, tie and beret with the infantry frieze; that he was an official pupil, was indicated by the initials A.U.C. in golden metal, applied on both the shoulder straps of the shirt. From the phone booth of the driveway of access to the barracks, we called a taxi and drove to the city center.
« In the People's Square, a square in the center of the city, while we were sipping a coffee, sitting at the table of a very trendy bar, Pasquale told me that right there, a first time in July and a second time in August, the Quintana Tournament took place every year: he had already witnessed both events.
By showing him my interest in knowing, he continued, "The tournament is a historical re-enactment of medieval origin: a parade of various characters in period costumes, complete with flag-wavers, drums and trumpet sounds, followed by a knightly tournament: a sort of equestrian joust!"
Urged, not before having lit a cigarette, he resumed, "It is a competition between knights, who on horseback, and with lance in rest, must take turns hitting a target placed on the left arm of the Moor!"