The last time I went to Piombino is when Richard's parents have returned from Elba. There was also my mother with us at the time, always smiling despite the disease and the black lady at the door. During the trip, like a thousand other times, I speak to Richard in that city, its meaning in my life, his role as a symbol for me and for our history. The story of a family, like so many others. The story of a working class family that built the future of a daughter on his shoulders and hands of a father coming down, every single day, in that shadow fiery, dusty, disgusting, convinced that his efforts would bring progress and redemption. The workers there take their children to replicate their fate and perhaps these young workers as they came down to clean those tanks they thought that their efforts would serve to give a different fate for their children. When I look at the hands of my father, I focus on their strength and ruggedness. Hands are fine, worm-eaten from work, strong and thick. Then I look at mine: well-kept nails, calluses, which marks an excessive use of the pen, the skin soft, smooth, sweetened cream. I note that my fingers have avoided to take upon himself the weight of manual work and who are only trained to type on this keyboard, writing my thesis, to publish my book, to prepare lessons to my children, to express my emotions. My hands have been lucky enough to be softened only by caresses and they have not been aged by stress. But tonight while I watch, as if the saw is in its turn. And 'as if my eyes hallucinatory ingrandisse fingers, extend your palm, the back raggrinzisse. Because of their delicacy hides the roughness of those fatherly and tiredness of his craft. Because today the privileged feel of using a head instead of your hands for a living, does not stop me feel figlia di quella storia, di volere appiccicati addosso i vestiti di fabbrica di mio padre, di vedere le sue mani nelle mie. E di sentire la mia anima squarciarsi ancora una volta di fronte a quelle morti, accatastate l’una sull’altra nel tentativo di strappare un compagno ad una fine sicura. Stasera i miei pensieri sono per Pierluigi, Bruno, Daniele e le loro famiglie, le mie emozioni sono accordate sul loro dolore e sul loro lutto, sulla fierezza di venire da lì e di sentirmici attaccata nonostante io non abbia nessun segno visibile di questa storia.
“Hai conservato a lungo un corpo teso, veloce. E’ frutto del lavoro manuale, anche se il termine non è esatto, non è nelle mani la fatica. Preferisco chiamarlo Working back, there is accumulating stress. At night in bed on the ribs resent the tons that I have passed on him. Hands do not pain to work, but a back that has been bent or under load all day is just a bundle of nerves sore. So I call back work. Over the years the frequency of fatigue entered the blood, the vein takes the shots required, the body conforms to the effort to adjust. In those hours I can receive thoughts, there is a time for them under the breath, in the sweat. Pass words on the road, notes that I hold in mind and make me company. Suddenly a worker on the site under a sustained attack on the one hand, not a joy. E ' vent of a thought came out of the smooth strokes while shoveling rubble or mortar attacks with quick wrist shot .... "
Erri De Luca, Vinegar, rainbow
0 comments:
Post a Comment