From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus

Author:Milena Agus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa

Never mind about papa and grandfather, even though she loved them, and they would miss her terribly. She consoled herself with the idea that the two of them were a unit: they were always talking, a little ahead of her when the three of them went out, and at the table they chatted to each other while she washed the dishes, and when papa was little he wanted his father to say good night, and read him a bedtime story and give him all the reassurances that children need before going to sleep. Never mind about Cagliari, about the dark, narrow streets of Castello that unexpectedly opened to a sea of light, never mind about the flowers she had planted that would flood the terrace of Via Manno with color, never mind about the laundry hanging out in the mistral. Never mind about the beach at the Poetto, a long desert of white dunes beside clear water that, no matter how far you walked, never got deep, while schools of fish swam between your legs. Never mind about summers in the blue-and-white striped bathing hut, the plates of malloreddus with tomato sauce and sausage after swimming. Never mind about her village, with the odor of hearth fires, of pork and lamb and the incense in church when they went to her sisters’ for holidays. But then the fog became denser and the top stories of the buildings seemed to be enveloped in clouds and you had to practically bump into people to see them, for they were mere shadows.

In the next days, in the city still shrouded in fog, grandfather took her by the arm, and on his other side held papa by the shoulders, who in turn gave his hand to the smaller cousins, so that, attached to one another, they would not get lost and could still enjoy the things that were close up and never mind those which the fog made invisible. A strange cheerfulness had come over grandfather, ever since grandmother had stopped looking for the case di ringhiera. He kept making jokes, and at meals they all laughed, and the attic didn’t seem so squalid and cramped anymore. And when they went out, tied together like that, even grandmother, if she hadn’t had that nearly heart-stopping longing for the Veteran, would have been amused by grandfather’s jokes.

On one of those days he became obsessed with the idea that he had to buy her a nice dress, one that was worthy of a trip to Milan, and he said something he had never said before: “I want you to buy something beautiful. Really beautiful.”

And so they stopped to look in all the finest shop windows, and papa and the cousins grumbled because it was very boring to wait while grandmother tried this and that for the mirror, indifferently.

By now, in fog-wrapped Milan, there was less and less likelihood of meeting the Veteran, and grandmother didn’t care at all about the dress, but they bought it anyway,

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