All In Mid-August

by Nunzia Castaldo

  ***

  Emiliana

  13 August, Saturday morning

  Since the time when his dear women became ill, Emiliana had not even slept a full night. Now recognized any noise at night, in the street and to the flight of stairs. His housemates were unaware of his presence indifferent torment. The waiter who took a shower to return to the two about the guy who came home from the disco followed by a trail of foul-smelling smoke, at four o'clock, the damper Barber, about six o'clock, the collection of waste, shortly after. Almost without realizing it, had stopped in the evening to go to bed. She lies on the couch in front of the window and fell asleep to the sound of classical music or the words of a film in black and white.

  Unable to sleep for a few hours. Allow her to forget the tragedy. She called them moments of normalcy. In those moments you felt it was before everything happened. Some days were returning from work. Sometimes I was about to call on the phone and Mary only in that moment he realized that this would never have been possible. Mary was no more. She could no longer listen , advise and even scold her for her statements always a little over the top. Silence, sadness without remedy, loneliness. He began to talk to her. And he dreamed, in familiar gestures.

  Could see her in the kitchen to turn over crispy fries, or with floured hands of pasta or pizza. Sometimes in his sleep, he was not dreaming Emiliana his mother, but Mary was talking to her, to warn, to anticipate, almost wanting to protect others from suffering. The first time this happened was in the morning when he died. Emiliana not slept in days , was at her bedside for hours, going back and forth from the hospital , all work breaks. Now no physiological parameter could give her hope, but she was hoping for a miracle. Emiliana out of the room, sitting in armchair, felt his chest suddenly in the air. She rushed into the room. The nurse checked the regularity of the oxygen mask. She knew that death would not really separate.

  She was now in the habit of waking up suddenly in the middle of the night and at dawn he could only close my eyes. That night was very hot and she had taken the sofa on the terrace. She could see a few stars over the fog of sultriness. First, from the same point, she saw myriads now, between light pollution and muggy, it was no longer possible. His eyes were already towards the lights: the dawn of thirteen. Number and date of death of the mother. Emiliana could not with the intention to drive away the shreds of lived that tore his gaze toward the dawn. Mary went in and out of different hospitals in eighty-five days of ordeal. Blood under his bed materialized in front. That blood Emiliana had cleaned up quickly, while the ambulance carried away, Mary. Then the traces of dried blood reappeared again, when he had to vacate the apartment. He saw the gestures of his mother. They were always measured. Emilia and Emiliana, in the same condition, they would have screamed. Mary, no. Drip into a vein, day and night.

  She was able to shut excruciating pain, to replace them with words of love for everyone. Shreds of the speeches were returning to the ears, "Mom, what are they doing!" " Emiliana, leave it alone, they are all nice to me, they do what they can, I told you that there was nothing to do "." Mom! Mom" "Emiliana not cry, thinking of you, you're young, I 've lived my life with joy. " Here, Emiliana was crying. The moisture fell on the shoulders. The miracle, yes he had asked for his mother, and why good people like her could not die like this. Now corollaries of procedures related faced by the intimacy. Days of work, hospital, nights without sleep. She had the measure of his own solitude. Four hours waiting to speak with one of the doctors who treated Mary, only to be told that within two hours or less had to take it away. Just so she said: "He's wasting my time, I have to take care of the sick."

  The mother on the couch in the hallway, waiting for the ambulance to come and take her home for the last time. The acquaintance, who phoned shortly after the burial, not to ask as if he drew, but to tell her that he had made the cabal, and had won five hundred thousand pounds per batch. Mary would have been glad to have brought luck even with his own death, Emiliana not. A noise interrupted the memories stirred. She looked down at a bat clinging to the railing in front of a hole in which the spotlight on the terrace. It was black, small frail. She slipped into the hole and disappeared. Not made repellency. She loved animals, and every now and then some being in the sky was to keep her company. She had already hosted a couple of swallows. She saw the parent outside of the nest and the baby on board, then disbelief, she saw the precise moment when the parent pushed the baby out in a vacuum, with a wing beats. The chick hovered in a very short flight and inaccurate. Yet he was moved now, remember. The aurora rose rapidly, but she had not finished basking. More painful scenes. Memoirs due. She saw his mother in the morgue, including a dozen bodies of the day, on the cart, covered with white cloth. His lean face, the hollow temples and orbital bones uttered not impressed, but the profile, yes, the sides of the mouth, bent down, and an expression of acute suffering. His mother was no longer able to hide the terrible physical pain, as well as the strength of his life. Emiliana was not the person who loved to pity, but the stress immediately had marked, she thought that was no longer the person before. She was certain, the funeral of his mother was the only nice moment. Decent, thoughtful, polite. The Passionist father of the Charterhouse gave a sermon balanced and strong. A Father unknown to them. He was professional and polite even the owner of the funeral home. He gave her the discount. Two funerals in three months, in the same family, were rare. Fortunately. She was intelligent, she understood that it could not go on for much longer. She had to fight back, but did not know how. The rays of the sun by now exceeded the shingles and the sill. She yielded to sleep there on the terrace, while repeating the verses of a her poem: "The dawn is my blanket. How long hands me a hug. I caress. The dawn is my night. His warmth warms me. And I fall asleep. Finally ...