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  8

  The big heat had formed a damp cloak that suffocated Montevecchio. The air was so damp that glued you the suits I set as resin of pine.

  The marshal Pietro Troise didn't succeed in resting. To be able to breathe was forced to hold you open wide the taxes of his/her room. The abnormal moon kept amused with its senses, preventing to convince him eyes and body that the night was still to horse of the stars. You leaned the hands behind the nape crushing her above the pillow. It felt the sticky hair that drenched him/it. In the nights when he/she didn't succeed in taking sleep he/she always thought about his/her wife. You/he/she would have liked to embrace her/it and to tell her of as his/her daughter had become strong, of as it boldly faced the illness. It lengthened the arm on the empty plaza of the matrimonial bed and it grazed the covers of satin imagining to caress Barbaric. With that thoughts he/she was dozed off. If only you/he/she had been together with Barbaric, you/he/she would have abandoned the life to eternally fluctuate in the limbo of the dreams.

  A scrunch. Of release Pietro sat him on the bed giving refreshment to his/her moist back of sweat. That noise could belong to a dream but you/he/she was seemed him real: it originated from the room in Geneva.

  They followed instants of silence.

  Still extended the ear in restless way. A deaf thud frightened him/it. You convinced to get up for checking: the dreams, when he is you wake up, they don't make noise. It opened the drawer of the comodino and it extracted a packet of cigarettes and his/her gun. It went out of the room and it slowly advanced in point of feet, with the upright hair on the moistened skin. The door of the room in Geneva was half-open. That of Mrs Loi was totally closed and the ronfatis that crossed the threshold testified that he/she blissfully slept. Pietro pushed the door of the room in Geneva and remained of stone: there was no anybody stretched out in the bed of his/her daughter.

  In distance, in the dark of the clearing that extended him over the villa, the he/she was heard to break himself/herself/themselves of bushes under the weight of something or someone. Pietro nailed the shoulders to the wall and lengthened the neck to perceive from the window. The moon succeeded in disclosing only halves its contracted face, the rest he/she was protected from the shade. Dressed with his/her delicate negligee of celestial silk, Geneva walked in direction of the wood. Pietro unriveted from the wall and stuck out him from the window more than you/he/she was able, sustaining his/her body with the firm braccias on the windowsill. The fleeing reflexes of the celestial silk that he/she wore Geneva sparkled as falling stars in the night of san Lawrence. Pietro saw to disappear his/her daughter in the wood, swallowed by tenebrous fauci between oaks and secular lecci.

  "Thing us ago my daughter around in the wood to this time antelucana?" he/she wondered. An only fear invaded its thoughts: Geneva could be in danger. There was not an instant to lose.

  You dressed to the quick one with the first suits that happened him to draught: the pantalonis of the uniform, black with red gangs, a sweater of his/her summer pajamas, grey with some bottoncinis on the collar. It had the ruffled hair and the bulgy eyes for the sleep. His was the aspect of a ragged crazy person. It put back the gun in the comodino to aim a preserved hunting rifle in the ciclopico closet of his/her room. In the room in Geneva it turned all upside-down and it rummaged in the drawers up to when it found one of his/her stockings. The takings and it went out to the quick one in the courtyard. It revolved a shed for the utensils in which it also stacked the firewood for the winter. Pipizziri, the hunting bastard that the baker Momo Muntoni had given him, you/he/she wagged the tail and you/he/she lifted him on the back legs. It was almost strangled with the collar extended by the chain, that granted his deceptive liberty of a two weeks of meters. Pietro stooped toward the beast and unhooked the chain from the collar of skin. The dog yelped and skipped about as a grasshopper for the gratitude. Pietro made him sniff with care the stocking in Geneva. Taken a cigarette by the packet and if the turned on with a match; it made a definite pull and it held back the smoke more than the usual one in the bellows, then from the nose it postponed him/it in the air ingrigendo the figure of his/her dog. «You go, beautiful, hands me from her, I pray you!»

  Pipizziri still yelped and as a rocket sbrecciò the wall of bushes that you/they preceded the great wood. Pietro tried to hold the footstep of the animal that, you/he/she gradually released the souvenirs of foliage that as memory of the façade was brought, behind. The moon was vivid but not enough. Pietro found difficulty in to follow Pipizziri: that dog raced as if you/they had set on fire him the tail. Luckily its heat left at least traces of broken branches.

  Pietro incedeva from about twenty minutes when he stopped spiazzato. In that point the dog had not left signs of his/her passage. It knelt and taken a fist of damp earth. «Before, Pipizziri, where are you ended?»

  Lit up another cigarette. He/she remained in knee to observe the wood. It tried to focus himself/herself/themselves isolating the heartbeat that by now hammered him the eardrums as a drill. That rhythm prevented him from gaining a sound, a rustle, something that could reach the sudden one in his/her suffrage.

  It was really a rustle to arouse him/it. It aimed the rifle at the bush of broom from which originates. It frantically did him/it, without knowing from who or from thing it had to look at himself/herself/themselves. With the heart that now a red woodpecker was become, you/he/she approached the finger index to the trigger of the powerful weapon. The sweat irrigated his eyes making them overflow of burning.

  Going out of the bush of broom as a splinter, with some unpredictable releases to zig-zag, a hare he made prank of him.

  Pietro abandoned the position of draught and him you/he/she allowed to fall the rifle on the knees. Taken back breath. A red woodpecker started to dig his/her nest in an oak; that sound confused him with the palpitations of Pietro. The zone was infested by that red woodpeckers. The mine of Piccalinna had taken the name proper from the assonance among the hits of pick of the miners and you pecks at her some woodpecker on the trees. It beats the wood: Piccalinna.

  Pietro started again standing and made some footstep. It felt an express metallic release and you/he/she was crossed by a painful sharp pain to the foot. You allowed to escape a moan but it didn't howl. You/he/she had made to go off a trap for the wild boars. You/he/she had been taken only of graze but the sole in leather of his/her boots it seemed nibbled by the mice. You freed the foot cursing the bastard that had systematized that trap. The poachers would have been a little enthusiastic the next day. It was for a long time that Pietro chased out the the assassins of bucks, mufloni and wild boars season. It suspected of Isaccu Garreas, that organized the whole year base snacks of meat to the fire and black wine in his/her uliveto. Pietro didn't have tests but the following day you/he/she would have made a capatina in the uliveto of Isaccu however and if you/he/she had found something. better not thinking about the point in which you/he/she would have made him go off the trap.

  You heard a bark; it was Pipizziri. Pietro squeezed together the rifle to the breast and started to race. It widened the compass of his you stride for avoiding to fall in pernicious traps of bushes. It troubled and its breath wandered in the air for hundreds of meters, transported by the secluded silence of the wood.

  He/she anchors a bark, this time nearbyer. It stamped on the branches trying to make himself/herself/themselves road. It removed a tangle of thorny blackberry, correct that little that would have allowed him of incedere. He/she finally saw the brown down of Pipizziri to few meters from him. The dog was immovable and with the face you/he/she aimed a direction. It held the upright tail and the leg anterior right refolded along the same side. That ladylike laying blurted the inarrivabilis ability of its trainer that, without the help of potions, from a bastard base you/he/she had succeeded to produce an elegant by-product and from the magnificent smell. Making silence bent him on the dog and he/she embraced him/it. Pipizziri reciprocated licking him the face.

  «You are good
beautiful!» it whispered Pietro, the face cleaning himself/herself/itself with the sleeve of the pajamas.

  Under of them, the clearing stepposa separated him from the densest brushwood. Pietro heard the foliage whisper; you/he/she didn't deal with the push of the wind. Timidly, from the opposite part to his, the outline in Geneva appeared. Pietro stretched on the damp ground of the hill, in prone position, concealed by the stately oaks you testify some time that was. He/she succeeded in clearly seeing the features in Geneva. How much beautiful was kissed by the weak rays almanacs. Its black hair glowed the light as a spellbound mirror. "But as you/he/she has done to come from the opposite slope of the wood?" it was about to wonder Pietro. Those last words still died him in mouth before being pronounced. He/she was interdicted with the open mouth and the shelled eyes; it stared at the creature that had appeared without notice in the wood. He/she saw the strong shoulders of that being that, shaken him by the numbness, it advanced aiming Geneva. It defrauded instantly the rifle from the sure one. Its hands trembled and it were complicated to hold under draught the target.

  The being had the thick build of a man. Only a pair of old pantalonis of velvet covered him/it. The back was naked. The peculiar game of lights among the moon and its skin of sweat put him in prominence the muscular fibers of the back. These were symmetrically propagated to dull angle, from the narrow plinth of the sides to the mighty shoulders; few distant from the being compared to the striped muscular bands of a colt. That body was perfect. Hair shone of proper light and they sparkled as they did those of Geneva. Pietro imagined that from a moment to the other on that sculptural back, forming a depth tear in the skin, they would be blunt two great white wings, feathered wings, angel wings. The angel tightened Geneva to itself making to disappear her/it under his/her impetuous embrace.

  Disturbed, Pietro loosened the pressure of the index on the trigger. You asked if instead it were his/her daughter an angel and that being a messenger come by the sky. The creature turned him showing him the face and that thoughts they dissolved him in a lightning.

  Pietro started and tried for the first time that feeling that anybody to Montevecchio he called with his/her true name: reluctance. The creature in the wood was Lucio, the sordomuto from the deformed face. It is in the imaginary one of Pietro, the whites wings of angel became ax wings of bat skin, attached to a demon from the infernal face.

  Distant from the looks of everybody, two eyes jumped in the shade of the bushes: somebody else had seen everything. You/he/she could be a poacher or who knows who. There was the risk that soon, to Montevecchio, everybody knew that the future bride of Daniel Minghetti if it did her/it with a crippled and dirty miner.

  Pietro believed to be alone in the wood. He/she thought about Daniel Minghetti. He/she thought about Phillip Minghetti. He/she thought about seeing himself/herself/themselves a relationship been born by the deception. He/she thought that if you/he/she was jumped out be rumors for years of that scandal. He/she thought about the pact stipulated with the engineer: a pact that if broken you/he/she could cancel the liberty in Geneva, the hope of taking care of his/her illness his/her desire to live.

  That fears increased for him the pressure on the trigger. An uncontrollable quiver crossed his arm and it was sure that you/he/she would have been able to make to jump the brains to the sordomuto. But it was not sure that the betrayal toward Daniel Minghetti was connected with that unstoppable anger. The point was another: his/her daughter could not be with that monster. It owed to have taken from his/her grandfather Bernardino in to choose him a horrendous companion. How had her passed for the mind to make only himself/herself/themselves graze from that to be repugnant? Geneva was sick and that animal had exploited his/her weakness, Pietro was certain of it. If Geneva had to risk to die for love, you/he/she would have had to do more it for something.

  It was furious. The hate toward that" thing" taken to instill him in his/her mind and he forgot that Lucio as all the Christians, only guarded inside of itself the guilt of the original sin but you/he/she had paid for this any other man of Montevecchio. It forgot that also Lucio in his/her breast possessed a pulsating heart. It forgot that that boy from the amorphous face could feel some feelings. But an idea gave him aversion overcoming the whole rest: it was the fear that that beast had already made the love with his/her daughter. It tried the terror that Lucio could love Geneva more than Daniel Minghetti, more than himself and perhaps any other to be present in the world.

  It grinded and it slowly made to slip back to the the trigger. He represented the law and you/he/she could invent him any history and you/they would have believed him. That homicide would have passed unpunished. A bark of the dog frightened him/it really when its finger premises until after all the trigger. A deafening shot made to flutter with uproar all the birds that the trees filled. The little balls of the cartridge lost him in the void of the night.

  Lucio and Geneva were tightened even more strong and their afraid looks scrutinized the hill. Pietro stepped backwards crawling with the terror to be seen. When it was certain to be protected from the trees, he/she jumped standing and takings to race homeward. To his/her daughter you/he/she would have hidden all of that night. Pipizziri had prevented him from shooting Lucio, but perhaps you/he/she had also saved his/her liberty. and the love in Geneva.