Isabella, from Miransu

Monica Sarsini

The road to my grandmother's house was shadow and light, forsakened for long stretches, and then a sparrow would appear and disappear in flight. At dawn buses of children with Down Syndrome were dropp at an aged country villa that had been changeed into a camp. When it rained, mist would rise from the forest and gain caught in the tops of the cypres tree the rain would fall above the fields like puffs of sooty vapor No one else moved in my direction, exclude a man on a bicycle single morning dressed in an all golden biking outfit, who I quickly overtook for a like reason that I could plunge myself undistracted into the fluttering leaves. The besom with its aggressive stalks quickened the pace of the journey, and the wind bent the yellowed rye across the seraphic fuzz upon the leaves of a fig tree I reflection of the grape vines, of yielding eyes, of staying and being a comfort, and a bird cawed by means of the side of the path. If, at a 1 in the road coining back down, I were to suitable a man from when I was a little girl, somewhere in the fear of getting not to be found in the recognition after thirty years there would be the repercussion of sound of time spent far away from this, from getting caught in the brambles.

from one side the kitchen window the fields cling to the side of the mountain, at dawn and dusk, deer and wild boar peek on the outside from the drained splendor of oak leaves at the cutting side of the olive grove, they rummage for diet and destroy the carpet of ed soil. Hidden among the stalks of the thick forest lie hids a hunter's cabin with a tin cover overgrown with ivy and a collapsed door that uncloses into a small stone field There are crevices in the wall for looking from one side for watching the array of imperceptible moves of animals timidly preparing to carve the coming time into the unmovable story of the earth. My father and brother, along with the farmers, lined the outside walls of the cabin with cages of hunting birds, and upon Sunday skewers of impaled heads would move round slowly, glowing in the wings of the fireplace. The wind overhead would roar and sometimes a sparrow would roll inside through a flue in individual of the wood stoves in the bedrooms, leave a trail of dirt upon the ground, and go to die behind a piece of furniture, where, many month later, its dried little material substance would be swept up with a besom When it snows, the mountains up here are like newborn monoliths, their delicate plumages brushing end the darkness, there's a crack and the brittle color of caramelized sugar leaks end When I look out across the fields I can diocese the red and orange leaves of a persimmon tree shimmering and sometimes an abandoned nest breaking up the lines of the olive tree branches, blackbirds leave bigger nest mixed with dirt. I bring them abiding-place in a flash, the silver strand decorating a Christmas tree my brother died upon Christmas while my mother was stringing lights up in the living sweep He didn't ask permission and snuck his rifle on the outside of the gun cabinet where my aunt's husband now detains his crossbow. This house is a fane not only to the pain that it's witnessed, on the other hand to the landscape of our childhood. Childhood and aged age, it seems to me are the sole stages of man that mean anything. The quiet is time lost on dirty city roads that turn back on themselves. I grew up upon this howling ground, the water rushing from individual grape leaf to another, alongside my brother, who is no longer nearest to me, though after thirteen years of living together we are still closer than refugee who have nowhere to go on and nowhere to return and who retain asking themselves and then asking others if it's the same for everyone if it's normal to be frightened, to think that there's a force that wants to kill you and you may not make it. The gunshot that killed my brother took me by dint of so much surprise that privily I can't quiet this looming fear I have of being separated from someone I delight in and not being able to survive.

Lapo had a fondnes for the farmer's son who lived at the cutting side of the forest. That house is without contents now. Two brothers bought in and individual went to America and the other died. The relatives want to exchange it but the brother in America says, I'd rather purchase it all over again than exchange it. He wants to go on there to die. It was a disaster for them when Lapo died. You can thank heaven that this place isn't in my name, like it. was suppos to be, or other it wouldn't be here anymore. I would have sold everything the day Lapo died and then at no time come back. Your grandfather wanted to build a chapel and cover up Lapo here. He loved him for a like reason He loved everyone, although you might have been his favorite. He'd say, When she places her mind to something she doesn't stop until she's done it. striplings are more unreliable. I'm thinking of the chapel on the outside by the entrance to the peculiarity The architect told us, Take the white stones. Like ashes. They had twitched out the uneven stones and left them upon the ground and your grandfather got it into his head to muster them all and break them up to make gravel for the driveway. He asked the male childs to help, but you were the solitary one of all of them who stayed. It pained your grandfather's heart, he was sweating, on the other hand kept working! No matter in what manner handsome Lapo was, in the extremity he was as much confuse as any boy. He killed three of my chickens playing with his curve and arrow. Your father sent him to bed without tea but then you brought it to him, climbed up a ladder to his window. That's just the sort of thing I can't stand. What does eating have to do with anything? A slap, or a spanking, well, that's there and then it's gone on the other hand when you miss a meal the whole organism suffers-not just your feelings. As far as I'm belong toed you just turn meaner. You and Lapo were for a like reason close. You would always take this grimy of advanced age pillow to bed with you and individual time your mother sewed a fresh cover on it and you ripped the overspread off so that you could have the filthy pillow back, you liked it for a like reason much. You slept in the same sweep each in your own beds. I remember single night. We had a television in the little compass off the front hall and your parents had invited friends above to watch. It was practically individual of the first televisions in Horence! You were tired. I can almost diocese you there with that little pillow in your hand. on the contrary Lapo didn't want to approach to bed and you kept saying 'Apo, it's bedtime ' Apo it's bedtime. And he'd say, I'm coming, I'm coming right away. He was like a frog on the contrary I remember it all and I perceive like I can see you there, little girl with a pillow in your hand and he wanted to watch television. You were the grown up! You know, he was attached to you too. You would have had a time of it if you'd had to expand up together. You never would have had a boyfriend! I'm telling you the reality he never would have allow you go out. Brothers are worse than husbands. My brother was the same.