The Smile Of The Moon

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.

What you don’t expect…

Playing in the town with the other kids, I often realize I’m somewhat too protected, as if I was living in a surreal world. Oswald and Waltraud seem more at home, they’re more accepted by the others, I feel a bit different, like a beloved guest.

A couple of days ago, while we were in the street discussing rules on how to play or setting down a plan, I and Oswald mentioned ‘Barbara, our mum’.

One of the others randomly pops up and almost mockingly says:

‘What are you talking about, she’s not your mother.’

At first I didn’t register that sentence, I thought he was joking. Maybe he didn’t mean to be nasty, children often unwillingly say the truth, he may have simply wanted to correct me.

I pretended to play along, as if I already knew, as if it had always been clear to me. Oswald got annoyed and after a while we went back home, it was late for dinner as well, the sun had long set.

Sometimes, when I’m sad and feeling down, and to be honest that doesn’t happen very often, but when it does I become even more sensitive and insecure.

So I look for mamma Barbara’s affection, and trying not to be too direct, I ask her:

‘You love me mum, right? You’re my only mother, I don’t

have any other mums, do I? I want to stay with you

whatever happens.’

‘Yes, I love you too sweetheart, we all love you here, don’t

worry, I won’t send you away for sure.’

To me Barbara is my mum, she’s even more than a mum, all my family here, my places, all the kids that have shared this ‘family’ of ours with me. Now they’ve all left, I’ve been here forever, with Oswald and Waltraud, I hope I’ll be able to remain here for a very long time.

I now live with the fact that probably I’m not Karl and Barbara’s natural son, they could have adopted me, or I may have been left in their care like the others, who knows?

And who knows where my natural parents are, who they are… Actually, I don’t want to know, this is my family, end of the story.

I perceived hints every now and then, I’m lost in a crowd of questions but I don’t lose heart, I try to behave as if nothing happened. All my family’s love helps me not to think about it.

Almost every Sunday we all go on the Alpe di Siusi1 with Karl’s car, a yellow Opel Kadett, it looks like a flan, even more so when the engine bonnet’s warm and it really feels like it’s just out of the oven.

The Alpe di Siusi is beautiful, I like the Haflinger horses with their white mane, and seeing the cows and horses in the wild gives me a sense of freedom. Horses are my favourite animals, with their melancholy eyes. It feels good to see them having fun on the mountain in the summer, after all it’s sort of their holiday.

Here it’s full of nice cabins and huts, fields and hills, endless rises and slopes, we can see the Sciliar’s Santner peak, we’re about five thousand feet above sea level.

We go on long walks from one cabin to another. Karl often meets people he knows and friends with whom he stops to chat.

I, Waltraud and mamma Barbara sit on the grass for an afternoon snack, Oswald smells the cheese and the salamis and joins us.

What surprises me about the Alpe di Siusi are the many bends you need to go through to get here, but in the end the prize is worth it. You get on the plateau and it looks like there’s a green carpet everywhere, with a thin, healthy air, you feel like you could fly.

3 TN: Italian name of the Seiser Alm.

Back home from our trip, after a whole day in the outdoors, a quick dinner and then to bed, at least for me. Karl and Barbara watch some TV, Oswald and Waltraud finish their school homework. Luckily I don’t have to go to school yet, I wouldn’t like to stay closed in a room for hours with an artificial light on my head. But in a couple of year it’ll be my turn as well.

In the night a loud siren wakes us up, and I don’t mean a fish woman, wooooooooo woooooooo woooooooo, it goes on and on, it must be 2 in the morning.

It’s the firefighters’ siren, we all go on the balcony to see if we can find anything in the dark of the night.

There’s an acrid smell in the air, a fine soot is floating in the air, dancing and settling right in front of us, on the balcony’s railings.

The fire is close, very close, too close, we can feel the heatwave. Looking left, we see the extremely tall flames rising almost to the sky, mercilessly and glowingly burning down the wood, I can hear the beams creaking and cracking like bones.

It’s our barn that’s getting incinerated, the firefighters’ wailing sirens and flashing lights come to our aid, roads all around the valley get coloured in blue, yellow and red.

It’s almost like a pinball, or a club with multicoloured lights, our greatest concern is to save the cattle in the adjacent stable from the flames.

The stable and the animals are how we earn our bread, they’re how we make a living, without them we’re finished.

Luckily it starts to rain hard, it’s like a divine help from heaven, at least people are not in danger.

I get so anxious looking at all those blue lights come to help us, I get emotional, I look at our faces and I can’t hold my tears.

At first glance, it could look like a spectacle in nature, like the eruption of a volcano in the deepest of the night. I, Barbara and Waltraud stay at home, Karl and Oswald go with the firefighters to see the state of what’s left and examine what’s happened.

After a few hours, the fire’s put out, but there’s a persistent, unforgettable smell penetrating into the house, even though we made sure to shut everything. Poor Karl, after so many sacrifices it must be sad for him to see part of his work go up in smoke in less than an hour. They’ve come back inside in the morning, so they can rest a little and recover from the shock, luckily I managed to fall asleep again for a few hours.

It’s morning now, it’s not raining anymore, there’s a little sunshine trying to cheer us up, showing us all that’s left of our barn.

In the afternoon mamma Barbara asks me to bring Karl and Oswald some newspapers and food. They’re busy on the disaster site with some professionals.

I’d prefer not to go because I’m a little scared after all that fire in the night, what if it’s still there, what if it starts again when I arrive.

But on the other hand my sense of adventure incites me to go see for myself what happened, if the cows and the sheep are still in one piece or if they’ve been roasted as in a country fair.

As I cautiously get nearer, Oswald comes towards me, I give him the newspapers and the food, he must be hungry.

I still haven’t understood what the newspapers are for, actually they don’t look like newspapers, they’re more like magazines I think.

I look up towards the roof which doesn’t exist anymore, there’s nothing left but the skeleton of the larger wooden beams, pitch-black and eaten-up, looking like a coal structure made by an eccentric and misunderstood artist.

Waterdrops are still hanging here and there, undecided whether to fall to their doom or not, as if afraid of heights. The acrid smell of varnished, burnt, wet wood’s still very much present in the air, it’s a smell I’ll remember forever.

This has certainly been the most shocking event of my short life, it’s waken us in the middle of the night. Days go slowly by, I don’t know what they’ve decided to do, whether they want to build a new barn, or if they have another solution. Next time grandma comes I’ll surely have something to talk about.

It’s been two weeks already since grandma Anna’s last visit, but now she’s probably slightly postponed her next trip because of the fire.

Days and weeks pass, but no news from grandma yet, and this worries me, so I ask mamma Barbara:

‘When will grandma come? She hasn’t come in a long while.’

‘I really don’t know, I haven’t heard from her yet, we

happened to have a chat some time ago, but she couldn’t

tell me when she was going to come.’

‘I hope nothing bad happened in the meanwhile.’

‘As soon as I hear something I’ll let you know, don’t worry,

she must’ve been busy with the fields, the crop.’

The kids that were with us in the summer have all left, as usual they’ve only stayed for two or three weeks at most, Oswald and Waltraud are at school from morning till early afternoon. Karl’s busy the whole day with the stable, in the afternoon he takes a nap for a few hours on the sofa.

So in the morning it’s always just me and Barbara, either at home or, when she’s got work to do, in the garden. The sunflowers’ heads are down now, the seeds are all ripe in their circles, embedded within the pale-yellow petals.

I often go play outside in the morning, sometimes I go snooping around our house. One of our neighbours has a beautiful garden, where I enjoy going for walks and smelling the scents of the various plants and flowers that grow there.

The owner lets me in whenever I like, the entrance is a black wrought-iron gate, full of strange ornaments, spirals, roses and other flowers.

A narrow pathway marked by thousands of white pebbles leads me around, there are iron arcs all along the way, covered by vines and big roses of many different colours, red, pink, white, yellow. As I pass by them they give off an inebriating scent, it’s like a journey across various fragrances, there are also exotic plants and palms.

On the sides, every now and then, I encounter tiny statues, cheerful dwarves, chalk fawns, little fountains and water features. I feel like in a fairy tale, I wish I could stay here forever, I sit on a bench swinging my legs for a bit, and I think again about the possible reasons why grandma hasn’t come yet.

Usually, Saturday’s the day Barbara gives me a full bath, in a plastic tub on the kitchen table.

Today’s Monday, and it’s morning, I know we don’t have to go anywhere in particular. I leave the fairy garden, I try to shut the gate but the handle doesn’t work well.

Maybe it’s because the owner has put too much varnish on it, so it gets stuck a little and can’t go all the way, so I simply push it back against the frame and leave it unlocked.

I’ve even managed not to get dirty, I’ve only gone for a walk and I’ve sat on the clean bench for a while, so I don’t even need to wash.

I call Barbara to tell her I’ve arrived:

‘Mum, I’m coming, is lunch ready?’

I can’t hear her reply, I enter by the gate, I close it calmly, it too doesn’t shut too well, it’s a little rusty. I open the front door and I get in, I take off my shoes, mamma Barbara comes towards me from the kitchen, she kneels down and hugs me.

She takes me in her arms and kisses me again and again:

‘I know you love me, but is something wrong?’

‘I’m just happy to hug you, I’ll always love you.’

It has kind of taken me by surprise, I’ve gone out in the courtyard to play for a while, I could feel in her hug that something was off.

In her cheeks I can see a concern for something sad and melancholy, she can hardly hold her tears, she smiles at me:

‘Now, let’s eat something, then we’ll get dressed. You must

go with Karl, he’ll drive you to a place.’

‘And where is that, I want to stay here, I don’t have to go

anywhere, are we driving to the ice-cream shop?’

‘Yes, you could get an ice-cream, but I don’t know about

later.’

I don’t eat much and neither does she, we aren’t hungry anymore, she clears the table and gets the bath tub.

Things are getting serious, it’s not even Saturday, I’m not dirty, and she’s preparing the tub on the table for a bath.

I’m scared, it’s fishy to put it mildly, I try to act normal and say to her:

Mum, I’m going out to play again, I’m not hungry anymore.’

Everything starts looking misty and blurry, no, it’s not raining outside, it’s raining on my face, big, warm teardrops as big as peanuts.

I can hardly speak among sobs, she replies:

‘No, you can’t go out now, you’ll be late, I’ve got to wash you and dress you up now, Karl’s going to take you to Bolzano.’

We hug tightly without letting go, her tears are wetting my shoulders, they’re getting soaked with a mother’s love.

Sitting in the yellow tub, Barbara scrubs my shoulders with a sponge. She takes it on my face and on my eyes too, to clear the tears away, she manages to smile at me, her every move over me is a caress saying goodbye.

I can’t understand what’s in store for me yet, but I’m sure it’s nothing good, I think that sad moment I never wanted to face has finally arrived.

I must leave what for me is my family, my whole world.

It’s clear to me that, like the other small children, I’ve been here in their foster care for almost five years, and now the time has come to go to Bolzano or who knows where.

We leave home with a bag that Karl puts on the backseat, the bag’s not too big and this makes me hope I’ll be back soon, it’s a slight chance but I gladly cling on it. We say goodbye to mum among tears, when I get in the car, I can’t look at our little house anymore.

I spend the entire trip to Bolzano harbouring the wish I can stay away only for the day and come back home with Karl in the evening.

During the trip, both I and Karl stay mostly silent, some sparse words every now and then, he’s not a chatterer but I know he too isn’t in the mood to talk much.

When I manage to catch some breath, I ask him some explanations:

‘Where are we going in Bolzano? Are we going to grandma’s

place?’

‘We’re going to Bolzano, you’ll have to stay there now, your

father’s waiting for you.’

I’m quietly thinking: my father? I thought you were my father, Karl, if Barbara is my mother, oh but she’s not, is she?

We arrive in a small town near Bolzano, we go down a lateral lane, Karl parks his yellow Opel Kadett on the left of the lane.

He tells me to wait in the car, he’s going to ring the house bell which can be glimpsed among the branches of a tall fir.

I think to myself that it would be a good occasion to run away back home, but that wouldn’t be fair to Karl, I could never do that.

I understand that this is the last time I’ll see him too if he’s going to drive away leaving me with strangers.

The nostalgia is smarting already, it feels like a lump in my throat, I’d really like to run, I could open the car door and hide in the boot, so that Karl, unable to find me, would take me back home with him.

There he is, he leaves through the gate and gets back in the car:

‘There’s no-one home, a gardener has told me they’re all in

the fields, let’s go check there.’

We go through the fields, there’s plenty of trees full of yellow and red apples, so, so many, but I don’t really care about them now.

We turn to the left, we slowly proceed on a road full of holes and mud, we stop the Opel Kadett. Karl takes my bag from the backseat, I don’t want to get out, I’m frightened.

Karl says hello to a man, grandma’s smile appears behind him, she hugs me and strokes me.

‘Hi grandma, finally we see each other, you haven’t come

around lately, did you have work to do?’

‘Yes darling, I couldn’t come to see you, but I knew we

would meet here now.’

Thank God she’s here, at least I have someone I can stay with, I don’t know any of these people.

Karl comes closer and says goodbye, he’s a mountain man and he doesn’t show many emotions, but even if he’s hiding it, I know he’s sorry he must leave me here and go back home alone.

He’s so good, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, he’s always so calm, it breaks my heart to see him start up the car and drive off.

I shy away the whole day, always keeping aside and close to grandma. Sitting on the ground, I watch her picking carrots, aubergines and tomatoes.

This distracts me a little bit and makes me feel less abandoned next to her, the man who has greeted us is grandma’s son, he’s the owner of the beige Fiat 127. Now I remember, I recognize the car next to the cabin, this must mean mister Remo is my father.

I don’t really believe it, I already have Karl, now Remo too, two fathers, I don’t know… Everybody’s busy here, picking apples, apricots, plums, grandma’s picking many vegetables and there’s Remo’s partner as well.

She’s Miriam, the beautiful woman with the nice hair who had come to see me with Remo for my third birthday, when they brought me a toy camera. The photos Barbara showed me, where I’m picking flowers for her and for Miriam.

Evening comes, the sun’s been set for some time now, I feel a cool breeze on my legs, I’m still in my shorts, and I’m dirty with soil. How I wish I could take a bath in Barbara’s tub, I already miss it so much. I think I’ll have to stay here for a while, if that man, Remo, really is my father, then that’s exactly what this all means. I’ll never return to Barbara and my family again. Tonight, when everyone’s asleep, I’ll convince grandma to take me somewhere else or I’ll run away alone, I’m not sure yet.