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The summer advanced, eccentric, among warm torrid and unexpected flashes in autumn. In that days the silicosi was brought away Mario Zuddas and Avelino Madeddu two boys that had not completed trentacinque years yet. Mario had four children. Avelino seven, and the greatest still had to make the confirmation.
In mine it was pierced to dry, without water that the dusts extinguished, and dusts went to calcify in the bellows bringing to a spine-chilling death. Together with the soul him present blood spit in almost all body. Who had the fortune to escape to that horrendous illness, in the most greater part of the cases it brought him behind a memory of the mine however. Many were deaf because of the strong bursts of the positions, others, handling the explosive, you/they were become some unusable monchis by the society. Efisio Olla had lost both the braccias. Its reward had been a letter of dismissal. You/he/she had committed suicide throwing himself/herself/itself to precipice on the rock-cliffs from the Spanish castle of Tower of the Pirates. That day the sea violated the battigia scattering its foamy seed. The foam climbed on the rock-cliffs and then he allowed to grab for the feet from the water, that brought back her. The body of Efisio had been dragged away and swallowed by the eddies that the tides formed on the verdigris hair of the sea. You/he/she had never been found again.
Nazareno Cuccu instead one were alone of the so many that had contracted the angioneurosi: an illness that because of the vibrations of the drills it destroyed the nervous system and it made a simple urination the most twisted enterprise of the world. In the last days in mine of Nazareno nobody placed side by side him more to him in the usual urinations of group. «You won't believe that I/you/he/she make me piss the feet from you. You will see that with those hands, to fury to wave you the pea, you will end up having an orgasm. After the third shaking he can already call saw» his/her companions told him to cheer him the moral one. He was mocked more than the others but his/her heart he/she cried heavy tears as the lead. To eat the watery soup was reduced to let from his/her wife to be taken and he/she didn't take in arm anymore his/her children for fear that you/they fell him to earth.
Raymond Puxeddu was one of the most unlucky. You/he/she had used for twenty years the drill. The model BBR was affectionately called by the mined pisitta he/she is known, the cat, because among the hands it twisted him as a feline inside a lot and it produced an identical sound to the toward of the cats in love. That name struck indeed in the sign, because as the cats they know how to extract the eyes with their claws, the drill was also able of to blind. Raymond, after years of constant exposure to the vibrations of the drill, had suffered a total separation of the retina. The loss of the sight to an eye had been the consequence. To stay himself/herself/themselves was a luxury that didn't belong to the world of the ragamuffins and it was necessary to persist for being able to guarantee a they put of bread stumpy to his/her own children. In little time Raymond had also lost the sight to the healthy, and cruel eye as a fair the dark arrives, I crush and inseparable actually at the end of the days. Raymond sometimes walked still for Montevecchio, helping himself/herself/itself with a baton smoothed of oleastro of those that the water diviner used for finding the water. You sat in the park in front of the building of the direction and it fixed the road. It and it almost seemed that its eyes kept on seeing. For one as him, that had loved the beautiful women to the point to commit follies to have her, it had to be a torture to try to imagine what you/he/she could not see anymore.
In every angle of Montevecchio there were stories of suffering that turned into illusion the happiness. Among all the histories particularly one moved to listen to her/it. The direction, pitied perhaps, you/he/she had been assuming for some years a boy sordomuto from the birth. They were in debt with him for the premature death in mine of his/her father, disappeared to alone twenty-seven years.
Lucio was a particular boy. Besides being sordomuto, also its aspect testified that mother nature had an open account with him. You/he/she had been born with the harelip and the nose crushed on the left part of the face. The deformed mouth never allowed its slanting teeth to find hideaway. And for the gums, so redheads to be seemed you brush of blood, the fate had not been dissimilar. Of beautiful things the Padreterno did so many of it, but when it decided to do of of it ugly it seemed to undertake more also himself/herself/themselves. To contemplate that face seminascosto from long red hair created uneasiness without reason for guilt, an uneasiness that nobody called with his/her true name": reluctance."
In mine Lucio preferred to work alone and the evening declined the company of the other miners. It hated to show his/her features more than the due one. You saw a little around and you/he/she had been sighted more than once to wander solitary in the countries during the night. What it did in his/her nighttime exits it was a mystery that the inhabitants of Montevecchio felt little like deepening. That boy from the mistrustful ways aroused them an unavowed fear.
The miners called him/it" Gnagno", between them. That nickname had given him for him Felicino Putzolu, a stupid at the last gasp that his/her mother would have derided also. Felicino had assisted to an attempt served as Lucio to purchase some bread in the place of the wine cellar, in the department I sell off provisions. You/he/she had come out a cacophony of incomprehensible verses that you/they had brought to that appellative of it. Nevertheless he was still to the search of whom dared pronounce that nickname in his/her presence. Felicino feared to silently do also it to his/her shoulders, as if he/she didn't believe until after all to his/her condition of sordomuto.
Lucio developed the duty of stoker. The group leader of his/her level had thought that not could suffer the burst of the explosive positions you/he/she would be found to wonder in that setup.
Now it was found in the well. It organized with care the explosive position that would have produced a passing stove from the level Yosto to the level Rolandi. It tried to create a circle of air that prevented the frequent voids of depth oxygen. Turned on the fuse connected to about twenty positions that the one would be exploded I approach to the other and runs to the shelter holding well tightened the lamp to carbide. You sheltered to the angle of the principal gallery that intersected him to duty. A blinding shine illuminated to day the whole level Yosto. The unbearable din of the burst forced the miners to open the mouth and to get stopped up himself/herself/themselves the ears with the filthy fingers workers. The wave of decibel risked to destroy their eardrums.
Emilio was distant from the explosion. I approach to the vibration he/she saw the dust shake off himself/herself/themselves however and to fall from the attic toward of him. By instinct shake quickly the head, despite the dust you/he/she had covered afoot afresh already it. Luigi was not with him. You/he/she had received an envelope sealed of the army and you/he/she went in barracks to ask lights. Emilio had not read that letter, even if it fed the suspicion that concerned a call to the front. From as Luigi you/he/she had described him/it, the symbol that brought the letter was unequivocally that of the empire.
After the brillanza of the explosive positions there was always the risk of landslides. The level Yosto had the fame to be one of the surest of the whole well Amsicora. The shipowners had propped the galleries with aces cylindrical and wood beams sustained to the base by big trunks of chestnut tree.
When the quiet prevailed on the echo, the eardrums of Emilio sent away that hiss that after the explosions it pirouetted as a flea in the ear duct. Extended the ear as you/they had taught him the elderly ones. Superstition said that the chestnut tree was the only sincere wood, because before breaking it was warned with some scrunches. Emilio didn't feel anything, apart his/her more sincere thoughts also of the chestnut tree: «What cazzata! At times the old men are wise, other times are naïve only!» He still went to the search of a wood type that broke him without having first scricchiolato.
Where the danger was considered tall, the engineers you/they had foreseen the use of beams in iron. All it took is asking to Sisinnio Zoccheddu if
the practice had worked. The sulfates corroded the metal and the only protection against the collapses the prayers they stayed, different from those addressed Foffo Dessì to the arganista. He could maneuver only the capstan not the landslides. And so Sisinnio, after having been buried I live from a landslide, now he/she lived paralyzed from head to toe. Before the accident you/he/she would not even have asked help to his/her/their mother-in-law if you/they had hung him/it to a tree of fig trees. Tzia Rosa Piscedda had never wanted him/it as I produce. «You have already done her beautiful to get married you to this corpse of hunger» it reproached his/her daughter Lucrezia.
Sisinnio would have pissed gladly her in front of that old bagassa, so much it was the contempt that tried for her. Instead it was now forced to have the culo and the testicles washed from that accursed, because his/her wife didn't have time anymore for him; you/he/she had to work for letting their children eating. It dealt with a humiliation that had made him lose the reason. Tzia Rosa already entered snickering in the room of Sisinnio, that stinked of stuffed pannolone of the only true signs of the life. If one doesn't throw out more nothing from the body is ugly sign: or it is dead or it is about to be him/it.
«You six cagatos I set today also?» tzia Rosa asked him with a hysterical giggle. Sisinnio closed the eyes because you/he/she could not cover him the ears. Tzia Rosa then the penis lifted him and let him/it revert on one side and from the other. «Oh, it doesn't work today even the knickknack. Sin, sooner or later Lucrezia will have to look for him another gun to play to watch and thieves» it said laughing more and more strong. Sisinnio, that succeeded in moving only the language and the eyes, tried to spit her in face but it didn't tell anything to his/her wife Lucrezia: it trembled to the alone idea of thing you/he/she would have made him Rosa when you/they had been alone, if he had blabbed something.
In conclusion, it was not true that the level Yosto was surer than the others. The shipowners periodically effected the mass in safety of the galleries in all the levels of the mine; that level had simply been assisted by the good star and you/he/she was created the legend.
Lucio escaped from the canton. It advanced to the blind one and it coughed with work. From his/her thoracic cage it went up again a hoarse sound.
Dust circled sharp pain in the air before falling asleep again himself/herself/themselves to the ground up to the following position. Lucio quickly shook the braccias crossing her more times to the height of his/her face. It tried in vain to send away that floury cloud. When the layer dissolved him, its eyes were pierced through by intense glare. He/she was amazed. Its vocal chords had not been projected to wave producing some sounds but its mind it had the ability to put black on white what with the words you/he/she was blocked him. "I don't believe in my eyes, this is quicksilver", he/she thought.
The explosion had brought a rocky wall to the light straripante of galena, the stone from which the lead and the silver were extracted.
To little distance, Emilio had started over striking the rock with his/her strong pick. That day the utensil produced only a big din and bounced without sinking. His/her air compressed pisitta was jammed in shop, in attended that in the foundry of well San Antonio was forged the piece of exchange of which it required. In the meantime it was found forced to the manual throw. He/she didn't succeed in transmitting strength in his/her hits; it was exhausted and inside his/her cart you/he/she had deposited only few stones of good mineral. It dried the forehead hello to desist. In front of his/her eyes the image of the small Franco appeared, shrunken and skeletal as a patient of spinal meningitis. Emilio had seen Zelia Brovelli, one neighbor of his, to die of spinal meningitis, and it still trembled remembering his/her bones that twisted him under the skin as runaway mice under a cover of orbace. It shivered, transferring instantly his/her residual strengths to the pick.
The village of Montevecchio was a narrow community that could not entertain the totality of the miners. The direction had made to depart the jobs for the construction of a hotel that this lack covered. Unfortunately the works, with the arrival of the war, they proceeded to rilento. Emilio was forced to cross every day the nine kilometers that separated Guspini, his/her country native, from Montevecchio. It got up every morning at four o'clock and, in the best of the cases, after the ten or twelve hours of job they waited him/it for other nine kilometers of drudgery. If then it were forced to take the trip of reentry together with Ernesto Oliva, a logorroico that also spoke to the sleep, besides the physicist it was also exhausted the mind. Whoever reentered with Ernesto it was not able whether to give credit to the words of Mario Spissu, that it told to end the journey with the balls that crawled him in earth, leaving a more useful furrow of the crumbs of bread of Pollicino, and at least there was not the danger to lose himself/herself/themselves.
The production of Emilio was halved, his/her family had more and more hunger and his/her body you/he/she was falling asunder as a decrepit hut. It was forty years old but it showed more at least winds of it. Ingobbito and thin already of constitution, with the job in mine you/he/she was still become more battered.
You folded up in before sustaining himself/herself/itself with the handle of the pick. The sweat from his forehead in constant way. It scrutinized the drops to slip away for then falling on the dusty ground and it was certain that remaining in that position would have given life to a puddle. It fixed the empty cart, then still the ground darkened by his/her sweat. «How much work at all!» tired gemette.
When it was about to arrange to the rocky barrier the nth tired hit, a hand it stopped him/it shutting with strength his/her arm. You turned of release and frightened to death it made him fall the pick.
Illuminated by the lamp to carbide, the ill-made face of Lucio it appeared in front of him terrorizing him/it. The body of Emilio still trembled and its eyes looked for protection behind the hands devastated by the calluses. The light emanated by the lamp to carbide was few more than soffusa but in the dark contour of the mine it was enough and it advanced for hurting its iridiums clear. You/he/she had shaken. «What you want?»
Lucio didn't respond, as you/he/she had always been serving for the day of his/her birth; impetuously it dragged him/it with itself. Emilio didn't oppose resistance. You/he/she would not be been able not to even escape that human vice if you/he/she had wanted him/it. Lucio was in strengths and had a double build in comparison to his: a titano of almost two meters with braccia and job legs. Closed Emilio the eyes and he allowed to transport as a pup of dog grabbed for the fur by his/her/their mother.
When Lucio abandoned his/her arm they were departed few instants. Emilio reopened the eyes and was inactive to open mouth. It was found in front of the wall rocky richer in galena that you/he/she had ever seen.
Lucio pushed one of the wagons cart along the rails placed to the center of the gallery; it positioned him/it in proximity of the zone in which the position was exploded. Gesticulating and producing some illegible verses made to understand to Emilio to start to load the mineral ones. Lucio was paid in base to the number of the stoves that succeeded in creating and you/he/she would not have earned more anything from that rich layer. You/he/she had thought that for a jobber to the throw as Emilio it was a good opportunity to put aside something in foresight of the periods of thin.
Emilio started to picconare with vehemence the new discovery. The galena jumped out to immoderate nuggets, able to return him the energies that he/she believed not to possess anymore. By now it was enough experienced to be realized that from that so fertile galena, for a lead ton you/they would be been able to almost get thirty silver kilograms an enormousness. Peppi Curreli would have eaten the hands from the envy and you/he/she would perhaps have stopped interviewing at the end of the day all to know if you/he/she had won the competition of the job contract.
In a few hours Emilio succeeded in crowding well seven carts wagon. It was radiant of joy because Franco would have eaten for at least three weeks from that load. Its skeletal image would not have torme
nted him/it for quite a lot time.
With a rope it hoisted all the seven carts on the strong shoulders of a mule. Electricity had not replaced entirely still the job animals in the mine. Before the war a diesel locomotive was experimented, also set aside immediately. Emilio if he/she remembered well it: you/he/she had been almost smothered from the gases of unloading and you/he/she had risked to die as the Hebrews in the fields of extermination. Of the company that that tragedy had grazed you/they had also made part Mario Zuddas and Avelino Madeddu. It was difficult to understand if a few years in more than life all the sufferings that the silicosi had brought to the two had been worth. Emilio went to make visit to Avelino first ch'egli it died. You/he/she had seen him/it erupt blood in the bed as if you/he/she had just bite a piece of raw liver of pig. Just as it made Janu Canoi, a balente emigrated by the Barbagia, that if it still devoured him/it warm accompanying him/it with one or two glasses of good pig blood. Avelino twisted him from the pain while its bellows tightened him as a plastic piece to the fire. In the room it seemed you/they had slit a hog. His wife, in the last days of Avelino, you/he/she had sent his/her children from a sister to Villacidro. You/he/she had preferred that his/her children didn't see the atrocious punishments that their father was suffering.
Emilio had embraced him/it and you/he/she was arranged on a chair of side to the bed.
«You remind yourself when the gas of the locomotive was about to kill all of us?» Avelino had asked him.
Emilio had sent forth a nostalgic sigh. «Some that I remember him/it to me!»
Avelino coughed and some rivulet of blood strained him from the angles of the mouth. «I am reformed not to be forever me dormant breathing that gases. Then it seemed me hot and terrible but I swear you that in comparison to what I am passing today you/he/she would be seemed me sweet as the kiss of the good night of my children.»
Emilio had dried the blood from his mouth with a handkerchief. It felt the eyes that were inflated, pressed by the affection for a companion of life that was about to leave him/it. You/he/she had been the last time when you/he/she had seen him/it.
The face of dispersed Avelino him in the endless abyss of the memoirs. Now Emilio scrutinized the poor mule to slowly put a leg in front of the other, dragging to work the enormous load and disappearing wound by the darkness of the gallery. The carts would be riaffiorati in surface thanks to the capstan and then conducted in the laveria" Sanna." In that place, a troop that between women and children it didn't admit virile intrusions, you/he/she would have effected the selection of the material. The rich stones would have been separate from those sterile to mad rhythm, without privileges for the workers children or for the one that guarded in womb the crop of the same virility that in the laveria you/he/she was not allowed, but that in the house it represented the law. He/she knew something Ann Lasio that, not to serve himself/herself/themselves discover pregnant as the lance-corporal that it checked her, you/he/she was had to sew a suit of two greater ransoms and to tell that you/he/she was eating as a sow. You/he/she had given birth at night and the morning was already in laveria hardly dragging the slingshot legs, so scosciate from the baby of five kilos that you/he/she would be passed in mean a motocarrozzetta there full of sarmento. All not to lose that job.
Even if you/he/she could not see him/it anymore, Emilio felt the clogs of the mule that it advanced to memory without baton and dog it drives. Every time it had a shiver in to ascertain the horrifying fate that touched to the mules. The animals, after one year of life, when by now they were able to sustain the exaggerated loads of the carts, you/they were lowered inside the wells. From that moment they didn't receive the warm kiss of the sun anymore. Their eternal abodes become the dowdy stalls of pagliericci and you prepare in the various levels of the mine. Without anymore the light, in little time the mules became completely ciechi. Emilio had seen hundreds of times their eyes to discolor up to become as the marbles of bone white that his/her children used to play to on canabi. After you are or seven years the mules died of silicosi, because being in the middle of the dusts twenty-four hours on twenty-four they contracted a lot her before the man. But those beasts spit only the blood, their soul was away already flight toward green lawns, putting aside himself/herself/itself the sufferings that only the man is able of to procure for the others: this liked to think about Emilio. The mules at the last gasp you/they were brought in surface and abandoned to their destiny in the middle of the fields: not because he/she was wanted to give a more dignified end to that animal wretches but only not to feel inside the well the unbearable stench of their dead body in decomposition. When it was dead Giuseppino, Emilio you/he/she had cursed. How could a good God pick up him a child of solos five years? Luckily you/they had done in time to baptize him/it, otherwise that good God would have denied also the entry in heaven to Giuseppino, that didn't have guilts. You/he/she would have confined him/it in the limbo without any trial, only because Adamo and Eva had given a bite to an apple. Then Emilio, even if it still felt grudge for God, you/he/she had stopped cursing. Seeing what the war was bringing and having every day to that to do with the bleak life of the poor mules had understood that him as all the other men, deserved him the misfortunes that were happened him.
"The men have the conceitedness to consider him the only ones to be able to feel feelings as the love, the hate, the suffering and the nostalgia. But in this life you/he/she is not given to know what you pass in the head of the animals" Emilio was said. Toti Pinna was chosen the dogs, Corudepedra the cats. They grew them, them sfamavanos, made them join; they decided all for them. When the pups of a cat or a dog, Toti and Corudepedra they arrived they took that that more it pleased them. The others, if he succeeded in finding someone whom they wanted, you/they were given. When this didn't happen, Toti inserted the pups inside a lot as garbage, then he/she killed them beating them to earth with all of his/her strength. Corudepedra was more resolved. Him the kitten he/she drowned them inside a tub of water. They made this whole solo because they didn't have the place to hold all of them, or only because they intended to hold only one of it. Emilio knew that, in the world, of Toti Pinna and Corudepedra us n'era one to every street angle.
"The mother of that pups could suffer as us! Could hate to have picked up us her his/her children! Could hear the nostalgia of his/her pups, that the soul devours her destroying her/it day after day!" They were these the considerations that you/he/she had done. «To the man captain the misfortunes and you/he/she should not be complained» it said. «Because God, that we consider the only being to us with the usual conceitedness superior, you/he/she could have the same conception that we have us some animals. He/she perhaps believes it some beings troglodytes that you/they know only how to eat, to drink and to pair off himself/herself/themselves, over whether to make himself/herself/themselves the war. He/she perhaps believes that we cannot do anything else other than to follow the instinct and when he/she takes to pick ago up it a dear person as a child him and enough, only because it feels like doing him/it. God doesn't think about creating us pain, he wants only close to itself that that more you/he/she attracts him/it of us; as they make the men with the animals: with the dogs, with the cats. and the mules.» They were these the deep thoughts that upset him/it. The remorse for the old mule gave him the impression to have the knotted guts. But there was of the anything else other than it didn't allow him to be happy after all until. You felt in guilt to have tried terror seeing the face of Lucio. Contrarily, the boy had made him an unimaginable gift. That extraordinary vein was a gift.
«A gift» it said Emilio, so faintly that it had the impression to want to hide to himself that word. The meaning of that hesitation didn't dissolve him. He/she was aground among the bristly folds of his/her throat. To think well of us, Emilio had never made a gift to the buonanima of his/her child. For Christmas Giuseppino it had the right to a double ration of sausage but at the end it never finished her/it and they ate everybody of it. For the birthday, Maria prepared him a small
cake of apples with an only candle to the center: an alone, indiscriminately for all the five birthdays. A good father avoided to consider gifts a piece of sausage and a tortina of apples with an only candle to the center. A father was kept to give to eat to his/her child, you/he/she had the duty to make him/it happy, you/he/she had the obligation to give his good possible life: with winds liras a day, good possible life had the features of a piece of stale bread and two spoons of watery soup.
The image of the small coffin white last rapids in front of the eyes of Emilio. Then it disappeared, fast as you/he/she had come, and it was enough to remember him that perhaps the only true gift done to Giuseppino was really that coffin. He/she remembered the night when its trembling hands had chiseled him; the anguish that the heart bursted him to every scratching of file; the tears that destroyed the job of its brush. In the room there was beside died Giuseppino. Emilio was skilled in to work every type of material, from the lead to the stone. Its familiarity with the wood had guaranteed to Giuseppino a more dignified funeral: the money saved for the coffin had been run over in flowers and epitaph. That coffin represented the only object that Emilio had ever done with his/her hands for Giuseppino that, joke of the destiny, had been able never to see him/it. Emilio had put us the whole possible attention and a beautiful job had come, out really a beautiful job, Giuseppino would have appreciated him.
Emilio was aroused by the hits of a hammer. It timidly drew near to the refuge you equip. Lucio was unriveting the cover of the wood scatolonis that you/they contained the positions for the following day. With a touch of hand on the back, Emilio attracted his/her attention. Lucio saw in the face of Emilio a certain emotion.
Emilio not smiled, was contracted. It looked for with some gestures to make to understand something to Lucio. The sordomuto kept on staring at him/it without having the least idea of thing they meant those gesticulations.
«Tonight I don't reenter to Guspini. Luigi gives a festicciola for his/her village birthday you Rule and I am guest from his/her cousin. Would it go you to come?»
Reading the labial one, Lucio grabbed the name of Luigi and made a sign of assent with the head, repeating in incomprehensible way the name.
Emilio lengthened the left arm and the breast grazing himself/herself/itself made to go on and down the right hand, as him same strumming a guitar. Lucio understood and smiled. «Slice! Yes, slice!» it exclaimed, that meant for him" party." It scrutinized with gratitude the smile that had sent away the austerity from the face of Emilio. It was the first time that someone of the colleagues gave him importance, even inviting him/it to a party. Laughed happy, then it shook the shoulders, he/she didn't know if you/he/she would have gone to that party, it was already so much being invites.
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