"Very well. He never receives and never sees anyone, because of his pain." And so. That pain that will never pass because he will never be able to forget papa.
I can never forget it. Since a group of men had taken him in the middle of the night from one of our peasants' houses near San Michele - and for three days Gianfranco had searched for his body, then found it on the river bed of the Tagliamento - papa had come to me every night. Every night he came out of a great light to come towards me smiling and I threw myself into his arms happy: "I knew it, I knew you are alive!" I screamed. And the awakening was bitter.
I saw him smiling and happy again as when he left Venice, shortly after the Liberation. He had been killed by extremist elements so that he did not discover that part of the aid in food and money he had offered for the partisans hidden in the mountains had instead been sold for their personal gain; and above all because, with the intent to take power, they aimed to terrorize and neutralize the population by eliminating the problematic characters.
I only discovered how important and esteemed my papa was when I read the newspapers that talked about him, when foundations were created in his memory. I had already noticed that he worked a lot from an early age because he was always in a hurry. I discovered that he had various activities when I stopped to read the words of the various certificates of merit hanging in his study. "How do you manage to become the head of so many different professions, papa?" I asked him. "It's not difficult: just don't waste time" he smiled. "With so many jobs, who knows how much you earn!" I said. He looked at me surprised, almost saddened: "Thank God I already taught you how to live well. It would not be fair if I agreed to be paid to serve the State, the community. It is my duty to serve them" and I was ashamed of my earlier words.
No comments:
Post a Comment