“Something had hit me in the face …” the voice of the old man is faint now, but it seems that one can hear again the voice of a boy who is fleeing among the bushes, beyond the sea, in a land of crazy, feverish, fierce Latins.
“Unu fustixeddu de modditzi1, a large lentisk branch, securely tied to a picket barely in turn fastened to a horse hair … you brush lightly against it … and it springs in your face … two faccis nieddas2, dressed in a scale armor like the Byzantine, and with pointed helms, tumbled down … and then Lussurgiu, the blacksmith, hit them on the head ‘a smemoriadura’3 with the iron mace and knocked them out like two steers. The brain of one of them was spilling out from his eyes and nose … the other one, just a boy, was only stunned … and grandpa said he was the guy we needed …”.
Thus they dragged him by the feet … they cut off the head and hands of the other guy and put them in a basket together with some leaves, just in the way one does with figs, so that flies wouldn’t eat them too quickly …”
The boy who had hoped to get away is woken up with some kicks and a rubbing with nettle, a bucket of water is too precious to be wasted in this dusty plain, and as he opens his eyes he sees many leather- and iron-bound feet and spear tips under his nose, and once more drums rolling inside his head, now as in the previous dream, when he was fleeing among the bushes, or in the present dream, when he’s seeing endless hordes of warriors wearing horned elms, or perhaps the warriors themselves have horns on their heads because what’s seeing are not helms, but iron heads of unspeakable demons, horrible results of some pagan magic rite, magic as old as the stones of this hostile land … madness madness madness … but a heavy hand grabs him by his hair and forces him to look on “Mira, facci niedda, s’urtima cosa ki bisi, e bai, bai a du contai in Thuniss…hommini ki beniri innoi po gherrai nexidi cosa sua…mira…”4.
An endless forest of spears, shaking horns, surrounded by clouds of dust and by fires, smoky fires and drums and shrill flutes “s’urtima cosa ki bisi”5, then the knife thrusting inside the eye sockets, ripping out the eyes, taking away his eyesight forever.
The old man is breathing heavily, writhing in terror, as if he were living again through the moments which he has already seen so many times in his dreams, in many endless restless nights which left him exhausted and covered in cold sweat at the first light of dawn, when he had to lead the prayers. The gray-clad man bends toward him, lowering his voice: “Grandpa sent the young man back, after having plugged the bloody eye sockets with tar pitch and salted water, together with a negro whose tongue – but not eyes – had been ripped off … they plugged a tar-soaked cloth in his mouth to stop the blood, too … and they tied their ankles together, the blinded man and the muted man, they hung on their back sheep-skin bertulas6 filled with the heads of the other guys and they sent them back to the beach, to tell the horror which they had found in Monte Acutzu … and he told me that for years to come the faccis nieddas did not show up around … they feared the rage of the demons that had massacred so many of their men. Many helms and many spears, many fires and many drums, just a few warriors … a staged scene as the last thing that a terrified boy would see … a nice practical joke for the brigantes7, don’t you think so, holy man?”
“Unu fustixeddu de modditzi1, a large lentisk branch, securely tied to a picket barely in turn fastened to a horse hair … you brush lightly against it … and it springs in your face … two faccis nieddas2, dressed in a scale armor like the Byzantine, and with pointed helms, tumbled down … and then Lussurgiu, the blacksmith, hit them on the head ‘a smemoriadura’3 with the iron mace and knocked them out like two steers. The brain of one of them was spilling out from his eyes and nose … the other one, just a boy, was only stunned … and grandpa said he was the guy we needed …”.
Thus they dragged him by the feet … they cut off the head and hands of the other guy and put them in a basket together with some leaves, just in the way one does with figs, so that flies wouldn’t eat them too quickly …”
The boy who had hoped to get away is woken up with some kicks and a rubbing with nettle, a bucket of water is too precious to be wasted in this dusty plain, and as he opens his eyes he sees many leather- and iron-bound feet and spear tips under his nose, and once more drums rolling inside his head, now as in the previous dream, when he was fleeing among the bushes, or in the present dream, when he’s seeing endless hordes of warriors wearing horned elms, or perhaps the warriors themselves have horns on their heads because what’s seeing are not helms, but iron heads of unspeakable demons, horrible results of some pagan magic rite, magic as old as the stones of this hostile land … madness madness madness … but a heavy hand grabs him by his hair and forces him to look on “Mira, facci niedda, s’urtima cosa ki bisi, e bai, bai a du contai in Thuniss…hommini ki beniri innoi po gherrai nexidi cosa sua…mira…”4.
An endless forest of spears, shaking horns, surrounded by clouds of dust and by fires, smoky fires and drums and shrill flutes “s’urtima cosa ki bisi”5, then the knife thrusting inside the eye sockets, ripping out the eyes, taking away his eyesight forever.
The old man is breathing heavily, writhing in terror, as if he were living again through the moments which he has already seen so many times in his dreams, in many endless restless nights which left him exhausted and covered in cold sweat at the first light of dawn, when he had to lead the prayers. The gray-clad man bends toward him, lowering his voice: “Grandpa sent the young man back, after having plugged the bloody eye sockets with tar pitch and salted water, together with a negro whose tongue – but not eyes – had been ripped off … they plugged a tar-soaked cloth in his mouth to stop the blood, too … and they tied their ankles together, the blinded man and the muted man, they hung on their back sheep-skin bertulas6 filled with the heads of the other guys and they sent them back to the beach, to tell the horror which they had found in Monte Acutzu … and he told me that for years to come the faccis nieddas did not show up around … they feared the rage of the demons that had massacred so many of their men. Many helms and many spears, many fires and many drums, just a few warriors … a staged scene as the last thing that a terrified boy would see … a nice practical joke for the brigantes7, don’t you think so, holy man?”
(continues)
(previous)
1 Unu fustixeddu de modditzi a small lentisk branch
2 Faccis nieddas blackfaces
3 a smemoriadura with memory-erasing effect
4 Mira, facci niedda, s’urtima cosa ki bisi, e bai, bai a du contai in Thuniss…hommini ki beniri innoi po gherrai nexidi cosa sua…mira… Look, blackface, the last thing you are going to see, and go tell it in Tunis, ... a man who comes here to wage war doesn’t know what he is doing.
5 s’urtima cosa ki bisi The last thing you are going to see
6 bertulas pannier
7 brigantes brigands
