Klaus Zambiasi - The Smile Of The Moon

But we all know how these things go, one more game, let’s play another, the rematch, the final… and so on, time flies. He fit in that context, at least until the news, the shocking news, reached him.

He doesn’t even have the strength or the courage to go back home – Remo can neither know nor imagine what’s waiting for him there.

A dear friend of his offers to put him up for that night, and the following too, should he need to. Remo gladly accepts: after all, friends are often an essential anchor one can cling onto for a little comfort at painful times like these.

Not far from there there’s a great bustle, some commotion, it’s hard to understand what’s happening, blue and red lights in the night. A white cloak blends into the crowd, almost like a spectator, staying and watching the scene and not knowing whether to vanish or to give up to their own conscience.

An elderly mother, incredulous and desperate, is trying to take care of her own young daughter, while a life is ending.

Four years and ninety days later…

Tears are shooting stars, fallen from a most hidden universe also known as our soul.

We seldom cry with joy, more often with sadness, in any case always emanating a strong emotion from ourselves.

Sometimes I’d do two opposite things at the same time, crying and feeling like laughing, unable to stop the tears even if I wanted to, the need to cry getting stronger and stronger. I wanted to explain to my childhood friends that nothing had happened, but in-between sobs I still felt like laughing.

I’m Joe, the youngest of the family, and I’m just four years old. Sitting on the balcony of the house, I’m keenly observing the stars in the August sky, dressed in intensely luminous cobalt blue.

Here in the mountains, three thousand feet in the air, this kind of landscape is charming, the stars are so bright I could almost grab them with my hands. The full moon’s shine softly kissing the Sciliar(2), a light but constant breeze blowing under my nose, scented by mown field grass dried by the scorching sun of the day. A magical trail tasting like freedom and wilderness. I believe this scent has both a relaxing and regenerating effect, in my case even therapeutic.

Up on the left, the belfry rises with its big onion dome, the symbol of our town, its lights inviting me in the distance, the country fair music diffusing in the darkness, mixing itself with the crickets’ and the cicadas’ call in the fields below.

I love the crickets’ chirp-chirp in the fields during summer evenings and especially nights, it makes me feel serene and peaceful. It’s almost like an open-air concert, like nature telling us it lives in harmony, and so do we within it.

It’s an indefinite sense of freedom and adventure that makes me wish I could sleep in the fields under the stars. But I’m afraid I’ll still have to wait for this wish of mine to come true…

I hear mamma Barbara’s feet coming, anticipated by the creaking of the dry, worn-out balcony wood…

‘Come inside, it’s time to go to sleep.’

‘All right, five more minutes, let’s watch the moon and the

stars together.’

‘Come sit on my knees’

and we tightly hug, my cheek onto her soft cheek.

Mamma Barbara is a sweet and caring mother, her cheeks are as soft as grandma’s. She really loves children and has a special touch with them, she impersonates motherly love, it fits her to a t. When I’m in her arms I feel enveloped in a blanket in which I find all I need. A hug often works better than most words or medicines, it can shake you and give you a sense of inner calm, it’s all a matter of your state of mind, of what your soul needs.

I live with my family in a small mountain farm at the feet of the Sciliar. We have various animals, cows, sheep, two horses, rabbits, chickens giving us what we need to live, and they’re looked after mainly by our father, Karl. Here in Castelrotto, life flows regularly, in full symbiosis with nature dictating its rhythm to the days. In the morning the sun rises caressing the tops of the Sciliar and hiding behind them, finally revealing itself in all its glory above the whole valley. In the evening, sunsets last for quite a lot, until the sun goes to sleep behind the distant mountain chains standing out in the skies of Bolzano and Merano.

I also have a brother, Oswald, who is seven, and a sister, Waltraud, who is ten, she’s the eldest. When my brother Oswald and my sister Waltraud come back from school and finish their homework we often play together, he’s like my guardian brother, Waltraud looks after me like a second mum, she’s of great help to mamma Barbara with the housework, just like Oswald is to papa Karl with the cattle in the stable.

2TN: Italian name of the Schlern.

To be fair I too lend them a hand, obviously it’s nothing more than a game for me, I ask a lot of questions, I’m very curious and fascinated by this rural world. Some days ago, while helping Oswald throwing hay from the barn to the stable below through the square hole which opens directly next to the trough, I fell into it, finding myself close to the cows munching their hay and looking bewildered at me.

In the summer months, like now in August, we spend entire days in the fields gathering hay. I mostly have fun, running and jumping across the rows of hay like a prancing colt. I often play with small frogs, sometimes I even manage to catch them and carry them in our home garden, but they always find a way to escape. I really like going with Karl on the motorized lawnmower, imitating the noise and the gestures and enjoying the smell of petrol which is an orange mixture looking just like orange juice syrup. Mamma Barbara soon runs out of patience at my imitations:

‘How much more are you going to last with that “nyu nyu,

nyu nyu”? Stop it please.’

And I’m sad I’ve annoyed her, so I keep doing it quietly or I simply mime it.

Our small house is simple, somewhat old but it’s just like a fairy tale house, Hänsel and Gretel, that kind of stuff.

With a balcony opening onto the perfumed fields below, the house is placed close to a tiny church and a small crossroads of tight streets, which could be called the town’s centre or square.

For us children, it’s the courtyard where we meet and play with the gang, since almost all of the inhabited houses are there. Some of our neighbours even have seven or eight children, we must be about thirty kids in total.

The barn and the stable are five hundred yards from there, and nearby we also have a small vegetable garden with beautiful flowers and a lot of sunflowers cared for by mamma Barbara, I obviously give her a hand, well, at least kind of. There’s also a creek which is a hoot to splash around in, every time I pass it by I want to drink all that fresh water and dive headlong from the small wooden bridge.

We can even hear its sound when the windows are open, and it’s a pleasing presence for the ears and the nose when I deeply breathe that fresh air at morning and at sundown.

And watching the thin mist lifting from the valley at the feet of the Sciliar when the sun is rising, like a theatre curtain at the beginning of a play.

A place like this offers an infinity of spaces for playing, arousing and developing your imagination and tickling creativity.

Like our belfry, which we consider some sort of headquarters: it has long been in disuse, but that isn’t a problem for us. We can climb to the top and enjoy the view on our territory from there or we can hide in it when we need to.