Cari amici di letture, il mio silenzio, in questi giorni è due to the fact that I was struggling with big decisions. When I think are silent. In these days has materialized the possibility of a transfer to Holland, from August prossino. Before you make the right decision I had to deal with the usual fears that arise on the eve of great change: the inertia, the habit, nostalgia and laziness. Then the decision was made, and then "we start!
I will keep you updated in recent months, and I hope that, once in Holland, this blog will become a bridge to Italy to continue to dialogue and share ideas.
In the meantime, I submit a reading, it is the incipit of a novel that I blend in the head. If you are curious please leave a comment and maybe I will continue to write "live blog", and with your help.
Thank you so much and always be loyal!
THE HOUSE OF THE SNAIL
The nephew
This is the story of an abandoned house, once full of life as the shell of a snail. If some of the houses with the passage of time look like empty shells, others show bright and brittle bones. They're buildings, damaged, transparent, waiting to collapse or to recover.
The house of my uncle Armando de Tortona is a huge empty shell, a succession of cold rooms and corridors, creaking doors and windows. The keeper, who came to the great wide open peeling door, opened curtains of dust and let in the light from the tax toothless.
He said that everything has remained intact, the lawyer did not allow anyone to enter, waiting for the heir, my decisions. There is much to throw, he added impatiently, old stuff, good to put on weight in mice. Has led me along a corridor and indicated on the bottom of the room with red velvet, the study of the lands of Don Armando Prata Principato Ultra, then walked away whistling, it's all there behind shouted before disappearing behind another door .
the room with red velvet
At sunset the sun turns red along the corridor. It seems un passaggio segreto. A questo punto dovrei aprire la porta ed entrare nello studio che conserva i volumi preziosi di mio zio, l’alchimista Armando de Tortona, nato in quella stessa stanza quasi cento anni fa, da donna Eleonora de Tortona, altissima e ossuta, che lo partorì con un ruggito da leonessa macchiando di sangue le pareti di velluto dello studio.
Eleonora aveva occhi nerissimi, come i miei. Lo zio Armando, invece, era un bambino gracile, quasi trasparente, dagli occhi verdastri come quelli di una palude. La madre lo aveva allattato per quasi cinque anni portandolo attaccato al seno quasi dappertutto, come una pagnotta di pane avvolto in uno straccio: sempre vicino quando si recava al mercato o quando ricamava lenzuola per corredi di females ever born. One day Armand gave a bite on the nipple of Eleanor, leaving a bloodstain on his chest expanded purple instantly, just like a rose bloom. That day she stopped breastfeeding.
Armando age of six he could read and write, knew the names of a large number of medicinal plants and tiny creatures. The mother had covered with precious cloth cover of a notebook, had given him a box of pins that he used them for his collection of insects: butterflies, moths, small holes and creatures of the night. All that ended the book in linen, embroidered sheets between pages reminiscent of a bridal bed.
The garden is now a vegetable garden that mangy compared the farm, lush and generous, embracing the back of the house. There were rows of 'table grapes, pear and apple, apricot and peach trees, rare shrubs. There were red berries on the boundary wall and Armando used to collect continuously for an ointment that was experiencing: he had discovered that small red beads of the bush, the birds poisonous when swallowed mistaking them for raspberries, minor illnesses were cured of stray dogs and Smelly Cat.
The story goes that my great-aunt, Lady Eleonora, one evening after dinner for the event had tasted a sweet jam, one that Armando was coated on the surface of cough, dog covered in ticks that had followed him to the house scratching like a madman. The waitress Marisa
swore he would not have seen her enter the kitchen, said the jar was tightly closed on the last shelf of the pantry with a white label and the word purple which said: "jam to cough." Armando went out that evening in the garden to make sure the dog had enough fresh water for the night. He was sure that the jam of red berries would have brought a great thirst. For this he had tied to a pole, to prevent escape and drowned in a creek to the desire to drink. Cough was standing with his hair sticky and the nose next to a big bucket filled with water that Armando's for the umpteenth time. Marisa
he used to go just before sunset to fill the tub for bathing woman Eleanor evening. At that time of the study, which years ago had brought the little tub, is red because of the velvet that covered the walls. It was her husband, Don Alberto, one evening at sunset, to ask the servants to prepare a bath in that room.
Albert and Eleanor Eleanor's husband was a man of passion and quiet that no one contradicted. He made a few requests but you always get what he wanted. He had green eyes like those of Hogarth, but in them we could see strange flashes of red flames.
Eleanor had gone up Mount of the Virgin, barefoot and with his head covered, imploring the Virgin Mary who gave it to him. She sat on the stone seat of virgins, had sung with red hair loose and her eyes closed. And the Virgin had heard. He continued to dream, to desire it until one evening he had met by chance at Triggio, near the fountain where the laundresses at end of day the men stopped to water the horses. She was sixteen and it was very high, something unusual in those days. The fountain, the girl and her future husband had talked about horses and gallop, sheets and clothes, saddles and skirts. Eleanor became his wife in three weeks. Alberto fell in love with his black eyes that drank l’anima, del suo corpo d’ossa che scricchiolavano senza rompersi in un abbraccio che gli bruciava il sangue.
La gente in paese spettegolò e qualcuno arrivò a dire che Eleonora aveva fatto bere ad Alberto il sangue del mestruo. Solo così – dissero le lingue male - si spiegava la completa infatuazione del giovane rampollo della famiglia dei Tortona, nobile e arida, proprietaria di terre e poderi in tutta la regione, per una ragazza insignificante e povera come lei.
La dote di Eleonora non fu mai mostrata. Venne chiusa in una cassapanca di legno pregiatissimo e chiaro, tutta intagliata a mano, con disegni misteriosi di uccelli e fiori misteriosi. Il marito l’aiutò a sistemarla ai piedi del grande letto nuziale. But soon they decided to place it in the studio, where Albert and Eleanor spent long hours reading and conversation.
Don Alberto had a passion for botany, and among those red velvet walls had enclosed the most popular books with the names and properties of all plants. It was said that he planned to write a book on flowers and Eleanor to help him catalog the species that constantly discovered. But everything in that room at sunset turns red and hour the waiter filled the bathtub with warm water and perfumed for Albert and Eleanor they did before the bathroom and then love.
Albert and Eleanor is a portrait, the author is unknown and untalented, for their eyes chose the black and green trivial. Lacks the depth to the picture of the secrets of Eleanor and the flames in his eyes green Alberto. They seem to couple common but the truth is that never were husband and wife only. The portrait was commissioned by the mother of Albert, the old woman Matilda, who had a habit of hanging on the walls all the faces of his old family in the hope of seeing one day appear cheerful face of a young girl from the look and mild thin lips like her. But Donna Matilde Tortona and all before her, never saw the birth of daughters. Only male: born in the rooms of this huge country house, the little gray and transparent as Armando. Then through the years became strong, thanks to 'exercise and hours spent on horseback, outside, at a gallop on the family lands. It was so that Armando and his father before him, discovered his passion for horses, flowers and plants. Donna Matilda, on his deathbed, had shaken the hands of the young Eleanor, imploring her to give birth to a girl. There were only three weeks and never knew if he succeeded.
come to light in the bath of warm water and fragrant Eleanor's body was hung like a leaf in a pond. You could see the bluish veins on the swollen belly, between her legs and the hair looked like seaweed hands at your sides seemed brilliant tiny fish in search of light.
The evening bath was prepared with meticulous care by the housekeeper, the old Marisa The origins of which nobody could remember. One day Eleanor, with her fingers while crocus flowers embroidered on the linen tablecloth yellow resting on the belly of six months, asked Marisa if she had children and if he had ever helped a woman give birth. Marisa said that all the servants had children and that all uses have helped other women to give birth. But then left the room without another word, and Eleanor did not ask anything more. Marisa
heat water in a large pot blackened by smoke, the fire. From a distance, seemed intent on a sacred rite, but it was only water for the evening bath Alberto ed Eleonora. Alla fontana, ogni sabato, Marisa scendeva a lavare il bucato; era uno sciabordio di lenzuola, asciugamani, federe e camicie da notte. La domenica si rifacevano i letti con le lenzuola profumate di sapone dove all’alba gli sposi si addormentavano esausti tra ricami e aromi. Marisa alla fontana non scambiava parole con nessuno, ma una volta si lasciò sfuggire un sospiro mentre toglieva le lenzuola sporche dalla cesta. Una donna lì accanto, dai seni cadenti e la voce di campana, disse alle compagne che la vecchia Marisa sospirava perché sentiva il profumo dell’amore - Che c’hai, Mari’? Nostalgia de li tempi passati?- ma Marisa aveva continuato a lavare con gli occhi bassi, limitandosi a zittire le lingue male con il gesto di chi allontana mosche da una pietanza, per non dividerla con nessuno.
La luce che entrava nello studio al tramonto era speciale. Ben lo sapeva il bisnonno di Alberto don Antonio de Tortona, che aveva fatto costruire il casale dopo aver sposato una donna minuta e gioviale, Isabella Monticchio, che gli aveva portato in dote una grande quantità di bestiame e una terra su cui lasciarlo tranquillamente a pascolare. Don Antonio aveva detto a Isabellina, così chiamava sua moglie, che delle pecore non sapeva che farsene ma quella terra, così lussureggiante e piena di sole, era l’ideale per costruirci la loro nuova casa. Nel giro di pochi mesi don Antonio aveva progettato, insieme al cugino astronomo, la casa dei sogni: stanze luminose and each in a different light, such as changing the face of a large sundial. His study was the room of sunsets, where all the males of the family would be locked up to study, and imagine when it was the turn of Don Armando swim and love.
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