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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 206 из 286He would never let me takeone because, he said, anyone caught with them got shot. That was how I learned of the Ardeatine massacre, in Rome. "Our comrades stay up in the hills," Gragnola used to tell me, "so these things won’t happen anymore. Those Germans, they should all be kaputt !"
He would tell me how the mysterious parties who made themselves known through those broadsheets had existed before the advent of Fascism, then had survived clandestinely, abroad, with their top leaders working as bricklayers, and sometimes they were identified by Il Duce’s henchmen and flogged to death.
Gragnola had been a teacher, I did not know of what, in trade schools, going to work every morning on his bicycle and returning home in mid-afternoon. But he had to stop-some said because he was devoting himself heart and soul by then to the Partisans, others murmured that he was unable to continue because he was consumptive. Gragnola indeed had the look of a consumptive, an ashen face with two sickly pink cheekbones, hollow cheeks, a persistent cough. He had bad teeth, limped, was slightly hunchbacked, or rather had a curved spine, with shoulder blades that jutted out, and his jacket collar stood apart from his neck, so that his clothes seemed to hang on him like sacks. On stage, he always had to play the bad guy or the lame caretaker of a mysterious villa.
He was, everyone said, a well of scientific knowledge and had often been invited to teach at the university, but had refused out of fondness for his students. "Horseshit," he later told me. "Yambin, I only taught in the poor kids’ school, as a substitute, because with this foul war I never even graduated college. When I was twenty they sent me off to break the back of Greece , I was wounded in the knee, and never mind that because you can barely tell, but somewhere in that mud I came down with a nasty sickness and I’ve been spitting up blood ever since. If I ever got my hands on Fat Head, I wouldn’t kill him because unfortunately I’m a coward, but I would kick his ass until it was out of commission for what little time I hope he has left to live, the Judas."
I once asked him why he came to the Oratorio, since everyone said he was an atheist. He told me that he came because it was the only place he could see people. And besides he was not an atheist but an anarchist. At that time I did not know what anarchists were, and he explained that they were people who wanted freedom, with no masters, no kings, no state, and no priests. "Above all no state, not like those communists in Russia where the state tells them even when they have to use the crapper.
He would tell me how the mysterious parties who made themselves known through those broadsheets had existed before the advent of Fascism, then had survived clandestinely, abroad, with their top leaders working as bricklayers, and sometimes they were identified by Il Duce’s henchmen and flogged to death.
Gragnola had been a teacher, I did not know of what, in trade schools, going to work every morning on his bicycle and returning home in mid-afternoon. But he had to stop-some said because he was devoting himself heart and soul by then to the Partisans, others murmured that he was unable to continue because he was consumptive. Gragnola indeed had the look of a consumptive, an ashen face with two sickly pink cheekbones, hollow cheeks, a persistent cough. He had bad teeth, limped, was slightly hunchbacked, or rather had a curved spine, with shoulder blades that jutted out, and his jacket collar stood apart from his neck, so that his clothes seemed to hang on him like sacks. On stage, he always had to play the bad guy or the lame caretaker of a mysterious villa.
He was, everyone said, a well of scientific knowledge and had often been invited to teach at the university, but had refused out of fondness for his students. "Horseshit," he later told me. "Yambin, I only taught in the poor kids’ school, as a substitute, because with this foul war I never even graduated college. When I was twenty they sent me off to break the back of Greece , I was wounded in the knee, and never mind that because you can barely tell, but somewhere in that mud I came down with a nasty sickness and I’ve been spitting up blood ever since. If I ever got my hands on Fat Head, I wouldn’t kill him because unfortunately I’m a coward, but I would kick his ass until it was out of commission for what little time I hope he has left to live, the Judas."
I once asked him why he came to the Oratorio, since everyone said he was an atheist. He told me that he came because it was the only place he could see people. And besides he was not an atheist but an anarchist. At that time I did not know what anarchists were, and he explained that they were people who wanted freedom, with no masters, no kings, no state, and no priests. "Above all no state, not like those communists in Russia where the state tells them even when they have to use the crapper.