JК
The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 209 из 286He was telling our story, the story of his listeners, and we trusted him because he described exactly what we were doing, all of us, the local pharmacist and even-Stevens said-the cop on the corner, who knew the score and was biding his time. That was what he said, and if he was not lying about that, we could trust him about the rest. We all knew, even us kids, that his report was propaganda, too, but we were drawn to an understated propaganda, without heroic phrases and calls to death. Colonel Stevens made the words we were fed each day seem excessive.
I do not know why, but I saw this man-who was nothing but a voice-as Mandrake: elegant in his tailcoat, his neat mustache only slightly more grizzled than the magician’s, able to turn every pistol into a banana.
After the colonel finished, the special messages began, as mysterious and evocative as a Montserrat stamp, for the Partisan brigades: Messages for Franchi , Happy is not happy , The rain is past , My beard is blond , Giacomone kisses Muhammad , The eagle flies , The sun also rises…
I see myself still adoring the Fiji stamps when suddenly, between ten and eleven, the sky starts buzzing, and we turn out all the lights and run to the window to await Pipetto’s passage. We heard it every night, at more or less the same time, or that was how legend had it by then. Some said it was an English reconnaissance plane, some, an American plane that came to drop packages, food and arms for the partisans in the mountains, perhaps not far from us, on the slopes of the Langhe.
It is a starless, moonless night, we cannot see lights in the valley nor the silhouettes of the hills, and Pipetto is passing above us. No one has ever seen him; he is only a noise in the night.
Pipetto has passed, everything has gone as usual again this evening, and we return to the radio’s last songs. Out in that night bombs might be falling on Milan, packs of German shepherds might be chasing the men Pipetto helps through the hills, but the radio, with that saxophone-in-heat voice, is singing Up there at Capocabana , at Capocabana the woman is queen , and she reigns supreme , and I picture a languid diva (maybe I had seen her photo in Novella ) . She glides softly down a white staircase whose steps light up at the touch of her feet, surrounded by young men in white tailcoats who tip their top hats and kneel adoringly as she passes. With Capocabana (it was actually Capocabana, not Copacabana), the sexy singer is sending me a message every bit as exotic as that of my stamps.
Then the transmissions end, with various anthems to glory and revenge. But we must not turn it off now, as Mamma knows.
I do not know why, but I saw this man-who was nothing but a voice-as Mandrake: elegant in his tailcoat, his neat mustache only slightly more grizzled than the magician’s, able to turn every pistol into a banana.
After the colonel finished, the special messages began, as mysterious and evocative as a Montserrat stamp, for the Partisan brigades: Messages for Franchi , Happy is not happy , The rain is past , My beard is blond , Giacomone kisses Muhammad , The eagle flies , The sun also rises…
I see myself still adoring the Fiji stamps when suddenly, between ten and eleven, the sky starts buzzing, and we turn out all the lights and run to the window to await Pipetto’s passage. We heard it every night, at more or less the same time, or that was how legend had it by then. Some said it was an English reconnaissance plane, some, an American plane that came to drop packages, food and arms for the partisans in the mountains, perhaps not far from us, on the slopes of the Langhe.
It is a starless, moonless night, we cannot see lights in the valley nor the silhouettes of the hills, and Pipetto is passing above us. No one has ever seen him; he is only a noise in the night.
Pipetto has passed, everything has gone as usual again this evening, and we return to the radio’s last songs. Out in that night bombs might be falling on Milan, packs of German shepherds might be chasing the men Pipetto helps through the hills, but the radio, with that saxophone-in-heat voice, is singing Up there at Capocabana , at Capocabana the woman is queen , and she reigns supreme , and I picture a languid diva (maybe I had seen her photo in Novella ) . She glides softly down a white staircase whose steps light up at the touch of her feet, surrounded by young men in white tailcoats who tip their top hats and kneel adoringly as she passes. With Capocabana (it was actually Capocabana, not Copacabana), the sexy singer is sending me a message every bit as exotic as that of my stamps.
Then the transmissions end, with various anthems to glory and revenge. But we must not turn it off now, as Mamma knows.