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Skill
When the first violent shake arrives nobody is ready to face up, it is not sure in schedule with what we are accustomed to face in the normal days, the ones beginning with an escape, continuing in a hurry and run away to the end. They slide away.
Not to lose the extraordinary show of every thing blowing up without limits, in a chain of incredible events, it is necessary to keep himself clear, enough to the cold, so to grasp a link or two. What will now write that child seated in the middle of the fields, at the northern periphery of the city? An euro, 1999 Liras to take a peep.
Three zeros are made, simply three strokes on the most important digit of the world, to enter into contact with Confraternita of Aid, the place where I work, in company of a thick rank of fellow soldiers of every nation, because confraternita has seats anywhere, and this is the seat of my home.
The others are here to help. They all call me Skill and also I grew fond of this name that is not mine. But the true one, clever the one who knows it. Skill is the name now and I had no others.
I was born not long time ago, not distant from here, abandoned here by a lady not convinced that maternity really was handy for her. Skill, genius with fast forefinger, who softly strikes 200 an hour on the keys of the computer with a single finger and with the others he pretends. Unknown pianist who pretends to accompany a great concert.
Sometimes I forget to eat. Some devout soul pays me for my work, but only once in a while, when he remembers and in approximate way regarding the number of hours I spend by day and night uninterruptedly.
I am in a country that cordially dislikes computers and net, as well as much loves refined chats.
When I get my pay-packet I celebrate with the fish of my Aquarius and give beer even to my cat that begins to skid, running in here and there for the house behind its preferred rag dolls: a space duck and a warrior with a black hood.
Not to be a gossip, but before they pay the salary to my fellow soldiers, because they raise their voices, are always threaten to paralyze the computer system of confraternita, if they don’t pay punctually.
It is a continuous strike until the misunderstanding.
I am quiet for my own business. This involves that I find myself little appreciated in my multiple talents; at least sure I possess a talent, being supersonic both to create and to destroy.
My life carries out all around the confraternita. I slump anyhow there, near the light of my computer, till someone of my colleagues does not withdraw me on, clapping hardly his hand on my shoulders.
Then I wince and relight myself, pardon, I restart I do not know if a new day or half of the previous one.
In my room there is an old colonel out of breath, operated at open hearth, assigned to the recording of the work of the others, great shipper of Christmas wishes and coupons for the allocation of economic lodgings and luncheon vouchers.
There is a Syrian who is a kind of encyclopedia and knows all there is to knowing on everyone, an Ethiopian who cares I do not know well of which international public relation and then down, down, coming down towards the lowest, an endless series of poor bastards with pin eyes and ass at the bottom of pants. One of them slightly better paid acts as master, but nobody pays attention to him.
Over us there are the true commanders in chief of Confraternita, in a fine palace just restored, a deconsecrated church of the times when religions still counted.
Anyone desires to visit the high stairs must be fortified of a special permission, wear in jacket and necktie if he is a man or with an onlooker red and white redingote if she is a woman.
Generally to high stairs they go only to protest for thin salaries, hoping in some increase from here to the eternity.
Go to the president his daring assistants, included drivers, cooks, cleaning and personal security staff.
They strongly complain; I forget also of this, always behind my work desk.
The masters sometimes stick their noses for a second into my lair and laugh sarcastic I don’t even know of what. But I don’t take offence and continue with passion, imperturbable to beat on the keyboard.
Outside the seat of the Confraternita there are hotels for sheiks, pubs for their women in burka, who suck everything with a special straw from under the heavy garments.
There is an embassy surrounded by the army, a big fountain to take a bath undisturbed, an enormous staircase from where it is easy to fall with the high heels; then all they pass prudently not to cut a poor figure, either for the altitude, or for the risk to remain under an altitude, as flat loaf.
Parade of beautiful women, defying the force of gravity, the retorts at big feet to be photographed, covered in sores inside and outside, but smiling to the entire world.
This place would not need attendance, enjoying the supreme reputation of place of the beautiful life, but who dies of hunger without money to breathe, comes everyday to us in Indian file, dejected for the shame of the rich Arabs, aboriginal, international. And it is always worse, with incredible rows of dead of hunger taking all the slope of the sweet life under the golden and jewelled windows.
A clear, irreversible decline: someone has written on the walls of the armored embassy “attack the decline”. I am not able to explain what it would say, but beat who is different from himself, thinking him responsible of his own misery. Yes, since people so-called docile act in this way, for fear and reverence of powerful figures. He doesn’t dare to think that they are the only cause of every misery. They always fear it.
Sometimes I come down till the statue of a faun of the antiquity and I watch it envious of its sarcasm, all that vitality that nobody has by now anymore in this cursed place, where someone comes to try his luck and finds the most devastating misery.
There is envy for who works within the Confraternita, because they don’t miss a warm meal to anybody of the employees and those who succeeds to enter here within.
At the crucial moment of many my thoughts always comes Mr. president, we must be silent, pay out respects.
He comes from a foreign country, took office a short time ago, gets not on still well here because before he was a strict manager, authoritarian still well, a kind of dictator.
He was elected by a patched up democracy, disguised somehow, accustomed to speak about religion and humanism, but lazy, eater free of charge, wilted by shady profiteers who invade every place.
The president has a black bow-tie he wears once in a year at the greatest festivity of the Confraternita, the one where the biggest booty is raked up around.
Perhaps my salaries go to help some victim in the world.
The scope of our organization would be to help the needy ones anywhere they can be found, without receiving any benefit, but for the purest pleasure to help fellows.
I do not know who founded this center and not even I care if in origin there were an ingenuous or a turd. At this point I don’t delude more myself on the human being and I bustle about, although I do not believe but to the hunger of my cat.
I take a train that goes every day in places where raping children is a consolidated habit and sanctified by the ones who has authority and hung the portrait of a nude child to the wall of the waiting room.
Every piece of the device was rigorously selected to hurt, to prevent to others to do well or to make anything.
Someone told me that probably president was a hunter of drug addicts and prostitutes, meaning that he eliminated them little by little, locking up them in a nursing home and leaving them there without provisions like targets of a target shooting.
When I am exhausted screwing up my eyes to the computer to broadcast every kind of human misfortune with relative humanitarian interventions, I have for long walks around the statue of a bearded little horseman.
Beyond is written that we are his boys and from him we had our origin, unity and freedom.
The statue has the stare and it is not very persuasive, but so history goes and the one of my country seems to be this from when I came into the world.
The roads around the statue are dedicated to a certain glassy little man, embalmed with movie camera to resume a four-star hotel, the fierce beasts of the equestrian circus, the human beasts disguised as clowns.
Near the garrison, the luxury of the days with the aperitif to open mouth, the dinners to the light of candle with street-walkers, at this point is smeared by the stink of excrements of miserable drunks.
It is a carpet of pisses no stop, a tremendous stench little steps from the golden sides of the bitter end shopping of panties and jewels for half naked shapely women within the big fountain.
The occupation grows old quickly the stars of cinema, slams them, smokes them little by little.
Quite soon their maids in bill will call the confraternita with trembling fingers, zero, zero, zero, helped my owner fallen in misfortune.
He will play the siren and my colleagues will enter in one of those palaces of luxury, foreclosed in the time by banks and crowds of suspicious creditors.
The rescuers will be armed with stretcher and syringes of every format, included a discharged shirt of rigid cloth like tents.
And a star of the past will end in the stables of the present, dealt with the care suit to the case. His portrait on the walls of the clinic, as it was carved forever between the great personages.
The office where I work is a sort of warehouse of brand new computers and rather old to scrap ones, those to which the undersigned is usually more fond, much to carry home entire pieces for memory.
Sometimes I let them work, I care of them as they were children for napkin change.
And they miraculously start again suddenly in the darkness, while I soundly sleep in the best half hours.
I have so many computers I could resell them, but those old ones like for the human beings, even if good something, nobody wants anymore on principle.
There is my friend with purple eyeglasses continuously swearing behind a brand new computer that never wants to connect with the misfortunes happening around, things of the other world, immediate aid, organized escape.
While my rather old computers quickly drive me to the heart of every catastrophe, they continuously tell me the statement of every nation of this planet under shock.
The confraternita cares directly of this: it gets money and then it helps when it can and when it wants, the ones it wants and the ones it can.
Besides, help yourself, and God will help you, as they usually say.
In the old photos of the secret archives there are scenes that today you cannot see anymore: children saved in the middle of the bad weather, pull away from hunger, thirst, diseases of poverty. Now photos of sacrificial children arrive to us, stuffed of explosive shirts and we cannot do anything or help those who are hit by the assassin children.
Little ones dying of poverty there are also now, but if they blow up they are simply less mouths to feed.
So it is, but who dies of misery fucks more, so he has more possibility to live. And it is also so.
From my outpost, in this association respected and acclaimed like one of the good pillars of humanity, I see all kind of tricks, but we know that the human encloses inside the opposite and what is good can easily turn into evil, only moving some key, striking the head against something of hard, and then calmly coming back to the good like unbroken.
I simply try to let you know what happens, I concentrate on the information, leaving to the leaders the choice of the aids, the representations.
I would feel myself in guilt choosing in front of the tragedies of my fellows, above all in the days in which I feel well. I inform and stop, I cross my fingers and try to think as little as possible.
Florinda and Tinca
The girl of the press bureau, international relationships came from a special old system community, between Indian Reservations supplied of the best liqueurs and several comforts and the region of the red khmer with special democratic permissions when it snowed, for the grape harvest, for some parade of regime.
She had been chosen carefully, after several vicissitudes, since belonged to numerous family, eleven brothers with lots of grandsons, hundreds of votes ready to be marked on the electoral cards. Quick power to buy jobs anywhere at least for three generations. Faithful family, enough ignorant, surely fideist, the best of the country, as little as possible for the executive roles of the confraternita. Florinda had known the world in her way, never having poked her nose outside her solid small farm. Later on she applied the same rule to confraternita: you always found it between your feet anything someone could do, either to the high stairs or to the underground ones.
Being a privileged, she had not to be a volunteer and to follow the long procedures to enter directly into the offices. She came, opened her suitcase and took to work, better, to watch comings and goings of the others who drank, ate, smoked, told dirty jokes on the misfortunes of this and that people, were connected secretly with pornographic sites at the end of day to forget bombs and complaints.
When was a baby, Florinda had been a theatre woman with the best national comic actors, making faces from the stroller and then pushing it into the scene when she was grown up.
She had then undertaken the career of painter, working with refined felt pen for the electoral posters, thing of great pride for her family, important recommendation for the confraternita.
Together with her dialect as reservist, she was smattering anyhow other neighbouring languages and with these powerful means she took to work hard to earn daily bread.
Disgusting the spiders and their luxurious dwellings, Florinda recovered the oldest photos from the secret archives, helping a dotty colonel to find again the historical memory.
Then she began to broadcast a special popular magazine then to send on line to support contacts with the true derelicts, those who nobody wants to see when he is attempt to squander his money like a great gentleman.
She cured I don’t know how a high manager of international relationships who jammed right in the middle of a flashing career and he didn’t want to speak with anybody in the world anymore.
Florinda found her way even to president’s heart who told her he was very rich, not having personally given anything to anyone, because he would have done on their death beds to buy a consisting posthumous glory.
The soldiers were enraptured by the little girl, made of her their mascot, giving her a camouflage uniform with written on “They are outside of every your concept” and a T-shirt with “el Niño”.
The niña had known the world also with television and cinema of teaching, certain boring like a sung mass movies. She couldn’t wait to run away from the room and go to imagine something else inside a kilo of tartlets with half liter of parental cognac.
Secretly, obviously, pretending that trots of the next morning were the first menstruations and that pantyhose was not blotted directly, since were not panties to seem without the two kilos put on the previous evening.
Florinda had attended the course of commitment theatre, the student meetings with secretaries who arranged which writing about in the school week, included poetries and dedications to someone, very strange reviews to compose on mysterious hostile countries. And she mute executed to please the masters and to be well accepted by everyone.
Then secretly she smoked and ate cakes, took tablets from relatives, muddling between sleep and death. Something seemed to her not to balance.
Her committed director acclaimed her, invited her to continue in her overwork and then he ran behind the most incapable persons, idler, provided they had money to put available. Persons of rich families.
Florinda addressed even to little kind men who put a hood overhead till to make it disappear completely, joining their hands around a round table, but nothing, without any result. She had to hold out, touching wood everyday at the numerous women’s committees risen to support the job of weak sex.
When she couldn’t stand waiting for things to fall into her lap she pierced as gruyere her left arm, simulating the invalidity of the limb to obtain a wretched pension, but then she didn’t succeed even in that hopeless enterprise.
Then it was clearly to her that alone she would not have gone but to morgue.
Instead through the family she could shelter at confraternita. Not bad really. Less than worse sure.
Her best friend, Tinca, went to bed with the son of a big shot, blackmailed the mother of the victim and made her stump up a job in an distant side of the country.
At the separation both Florinda and Tinca cried their eyes out. The other school friends joined the queue to pick up balls to the edges of the fields where the grown-up played, entering in campo they too with scattered sheets and suitcases. Everyone in travel towards lands around the confraternita.
At least once per year, preferably on summer, Florinda tried to change life, to put behind every certainty to go to live elsewhere, finding a boy, another family, a job that pleased her.
Pitilessly every attempt failed and the girl found again herself in gymnasium to drain, to put up records at the radio of the country, reciting in comic parts at the town theatre, crying at some funeral and getting themselves drunk at some patronal festivity.
To make the best of a bad job to preserve a role for the desert and foggy narrow roads.
She didn’t miss suitors, but she had horror to leave her odd ideas and get electric cooker, with sons and super capacious refrigerator.
Meantime many friends developed a good paunch, the bank account, ran behind meetings, enrolments, associations of every type and tendency, provided that there was a possibility of placing.
A councillor shot in forehead at rifle range, the wife of the mayor contracted an ugly disease, a senator changed sex, a deputy was cuckold for the nymphomaniac partner, an unionist got fed up his job and took into his head to act as artist. Foreseen, ordinary, nearly second-rate things.
The artists with politics ate every day, yes, but lost inspiration inexorably. This already happened before Florinda left her seat of family to be enlisted by the uncle in the confraternita.
Just arrived here she rambled from morning to evening from an office to another, till to fall like a horse for fatigue.
The city then seemed to her a troubled stage, where everyone felt to die, lose something and then took to struggle like possessed, pretending to be very involved by what they were doing.
They were all single and crowded one upon the other like insects never seen before. The confraternita was and remained her only shelter. Like a refugee. She didn’t say to anyone where she came from, because they would not understand, would not believe her.
She didn’t come from war front, her country was not a dictatorial one, at least so was printed in block capitals in its constitution exposed in the hall of the garrison.
A beautiful day also Tinca turned up, because she did not resist anymore between the arms of her obese and stinking a big shot.
She arrived at garrison together with much material for war front.
The girl quickly was mysteriously palmed off to press bureau with the assignment to write them an original article on how was the city one day and how it was now. Possibly without rhetoric.
She went to a concert in gallery with ghosts paid to churn their hands, to direct symphony concerts, to run about there together with dogs.
Tinca was good to blow up nimbly the most absurd chats. She went immediately to the place to account for the state of things, but she was so so dressed and nobody wanted to let her pass.
Then she entered into one of the stores by the side of the gallery strictly in white and black, plus T-shirt with teardrops with the big face of the Head of State.
Naturally she wore an extralarge one that chastely covered her till the feet. She entered and approached to piano player who was warming his public with a tiring presentation of what he was going to that would perform and never began.
A bored public, half foolish by sultriness, people that were there only to rest from burning sun and pee in communal free baths, surrounded by fun persons in yen of excellent business.
They were the best pickpockets of the zone, gathered there, within wallets, chasing there the ecstasy more or less false of listeners.
Tinca saw the first disgusted shadows enter into the gallery appeared her ah handsome man clothed in light colours, moustaches quite treated and very large hands.
He held by the arm a smiling little woman who seemed not to see the slaughter of the present times, attending not to let fall a wine bottle and round loaf of white bread just churned out.
Other shadows were threatening and made run away the small dogs to the leash of the ladies, children educated in excellent families.
A spirit took to float with the paint brush in mouth, an other smell aromatic tobacco from the sheets of a carefully sealed manuscript and took directly to fly over the bystanders.
Tinca knew only she saw it and she was happy to be there, to hear at last music scattering in the heart of the gallery.
She was euphoric to make that work, but she enjoyed it alone in silence.
In fact cunningly she did not tell the truth to anybody. She wrote for the newspaper of the garrison an innocuous article written on the vision of ghosts over the river of the eternal city, being accurately careful not to slander of the present and its masters. Tactically perfect.
Tinca was so engaged with no time limit and below cost enough gladly, since the feminine presence was lacking in the offices and had to be strengthened.
She could wait coffee, let smile workers rather struck dumb by the continuous misfortunes in which they were continuously present.
There was moreover the necessity to keep cheerful the backers of the confraternita, since their political meetings were so borings to take in a short time to a bulky psycho physiological decline.
Many of them began to abandon the palaces of the power fearing to get sick itself curious somatic diseases, after being beaten like chickens on the spit. There was something in the air like years ago, when they had exhibited the leaders to the depreciation of the squares, with the risk to make of them cannon fodder.
Still Skill
Sometimes I think over me. Well, the life is all here?
Running away from themselves, to rush around like possessed, dancing trescone without sweating too much, assisting to the worst misfortunes, surviving to every mask they get us put on.
Forgetting to have an equilibrium and upsetting themselves to such point to be invaded by other arrogant persons.
Or living always hidden, unknown even by themselves, by the many lies that are told. Accounts don’t balance at last.
We stay astonished watching our hands, watching everything outside ourselves like it were the first time.
Memory absolutely in disuse, unexplored route.
This is what I think of my life and the one of the others, where we pursue stupid things or we breathe according to right, but we look forward until some huge nonsense happen to upset at least a fixed timetable.
Then we will come back with open arms towards the lost paradise that before seemed to us the death row.
I wanted to change my daily existence I found extremely tedious, repetitive. Eighteen bulky years, a slice of afterlife’s cake.
I found myself in the right side in order to do good transactions according to the solar angles shot, with catastrophes to watch very far away, and dandies full of dough to stump up.
I helped myself drinking liters of coffee in order to keep open eyes, anxious for something that should happen, that probably it had already begun unbeknown to me like in a movie I had already seen goodness knows when.
Is there any powerful one that is poor too? I didn’t ask anymore quite a while the sense of nothing. If something else existed besides the fiction.
You dress well and then you find someone offering you chocolates, while another slips out your wallet. You dress badly and everyone treat you badly, without searching in you anything else, because nothing else interests them, not being in any doubt on the fact you are someone to eliminate quickly.
Whether anthropologists like it or not, this is.
The Reddish
Someone waked up one morning and decided that the seat of the confraternita was threatened by an attempt.
We ignored what kind, distressing prospect. Then armored entrances and staff armed to the teeth in defence of the offices appeared.
There it happened that one of our computer scientists, usually very quiet, nearly dumb, without warning took to speak an eccentric language that were pieces of multiple languages stirred each other randomly.
We maliciously thought that were due to the fact that the Reddish, so we called him for his thick mane of copper hair, was accustomed to read in odd moments between a site and another small cheap pocket dictionaries reproducing the main terms of the languages, included the rarest and disowned ones. At the end, from today and tomorrow, the Reddish wrapped himself like an unloaded carillon and there was not way to repair as best it could its broken pieces, sticking them together.
He spoke, he spoke, so that the war chaplain began to spread a rumour that he was frantic. But the Reddish far away from the drops of holy water smiled again, taking again to be like before very reserved.
However he had an only different expression, an unexpected rising of eyelashes, like he was in alarm. He made friends with the staff of the army and confessed to someone of them he was bored by now too much so blocked to his computers.
The Reddish was displeased to leave friends overburdened of intense activities also of him, but the taken decision was important for his mood.
Since he had decided to leave for war front he felt alive, nearly euphoric. Obviously he would have gone under the high patronage of confraternita of aid.
Armed to the teeth to defend the weakest people, to save them from the cruelty of the armed conflict.
The Reddish was a soldier defender, not of attack. So someone thought well to attack him and the Reddish came back to us in pieces after a terrible attack.
He was given back to us wrapped in the glorious flags of confraternita.
They maligned still to his shoulders on the curious language he took to speak shortly before being killed by a person who spoke a single language quite sufficient to get himself explode and send to cemetery various enemy soldiers.
The photo of Reddish still now is exposed in our offices, together with one of a hungry girl and a diva of silent movies remade in colour by the scalpel of a doctor of ours in exchange of lavish donations. But when he was alive he never had a woman, but only the nocturnal and diurnal light of his computers.
For their guilt they he went to be killed so far away in the most absurd place of the planet.
I really was very sick when I knew that the Reddish was no more. His black swivel chair is still there, while the computers were picked by a person with purple glasses.
When things go to me more wrong than the usual I think to the Reddish and I give the guilt of his death also to those computers, since they had been to teach him that the world was larger of our confraternita and spoke many languages, so many ones.
If he were stayed pretending to work or to work secretly seriously, still he would be there to see only beneficences, money and catastrophes of others.
I had myself to be withheld not to go inside the next room and destroy his computers, until it ended and I cried a little. Besides to speak that strange language, Reddish had told me about a recurring nightmare of its childhood, curiously reappeared shortly before going to the war. His body had become heavy, he was not able to raise it and on his room came a hostile presence from which he had to run away. He tried to call, but also his vocal cords were out of order, while he tried in vain to crawl with his carcass towards the handle of the door.
At the end he was invaded by the hostile presence and then he woke up suddenly. The nightmare of the Reddish clung mysteriously to my mind, with changes bound to general alarm on possibility of an attack to the garrison.
I was the only one to know what had to happen, because I had tracked it in net at three of night in one of the usual insomnias of the cat. I tried to communicate with the others, I struck on keyboard with heavy fingers and no letter did appear, while fatal time approached. I felt to die without dying.
This was the gift Reddish left me and during the day, when decreased anguish in front of the banal tasks of the job, I was proud of my secret as if it were not a nightmare, but a precious inheritance.
Asham
To carefully hold the accounts of confraternita in the most secret site where nobody could approach, not even the most cunning pirates, there was a thin like a bamboo pipe Syrian guy, tall like a 10 years old child not so developed who put his feet to the ground to walk in the most extraordinary way I had never seen. I always feared he could fall at any moment. Asham was his name and he lost weight even more in occasion of his festivity.
By all accounts he knew how to do proudly his occupation, never missing an opportunity to throw it in the rest of garrison’s face. For some fellow soldier Asham counted more than the president itself, to which the Syrian shamelessly insisted called them all possible boor names, hating him to such point to openly declare that if they had not do another one soon, he would blow up very gladly to kill it.
Everyone heard his speeches plainly and thought that sooner or later would happen something irrecoverable, but nobody of Salvation Army made up his mind to take part, thinking that it was others’ turn.
Asham therefore had the access to the capitals destined to help the needy, to those which remained unused, or the worse still forever frozen ones in the safes of confraternita.
There were earthquakes and wars of which nobody had acquaintance, because voluntarily jumped with feet together, with evident purpose to hide remarkable capitals.
They didn’t give a damn of the poor wretches stranded, disappeared from every newsletter: expired time, no misfortune, unmentionable thing for which someone risked to pass for hothead.
Asham was very skilful to mask the deep secrets, better than the great banks, money they withdrew outside at a convenient time for private uses of confraternita.
It was murmured of hidden powers commanding more than the presidency, infected continuously his site at every apparition on line.
In the last attack they had disguised as clown the master they had confined and it in the middle of a island burst little time ago. The assembly was rough, otherwise the personage would have been really credible.
The station
There is a small station towards the periphery of the eternal city trespassing to opened country, with spotted cows and big sheep nursing little lambs, grazing peaceful what they find: a true misery. It’s there that everyday apparently common persons journey, but knowing them more closely they astound you with always new masks to wear for the present times.
Last names of these subjects are not impressive like the nicknames they gave each other: Mar the Cuban, Corinne, Marino, Alina, Evil, Honourable, Puttano, Lex, Nape.
They arrive at the first lights of dawn to our garrison and go straight to the kitchen, staying there till late, till that everyone of us finished eating and drinking everything. Then they come back to take the train and the day after turn around again.
They have a very shabby appearance, but have to their shoulders special stories badly bound with the duties of the present.
The Cuban lived at Montreal before ending to peel potatoes; she taught a kind of creative writing, rounding out with token from VIP director in cultural crisis director.
Corinne and Marino were bureaucrats in a small village of the east swallowed in the landslide of a secular dictatorship.
Marino good mayor, they didn’t want him anymore on the way even as vendor of fruit juices.
His spouse applauded as court woman always in the middle of parties and revelries, ended to pack to leave searching another country where to live.
Now Marino is our gardener and Corinne fix menus of the masters to make them more appetizing.
Alina, Evil, Honourable are what is left of the power before the confraternita of aid.
Alina and Male attended forbidden beds together with Honourable, entering and exiting from the right rooms. They even succeeded to count more than the ones they stroked in private parts in certain situations. Puttano had directly been elected by people as their official spokesman, being half man and half woman.
Lex and Nape were one time the important judge and his faithful guard puppet, couple more than deadly to embed who journeyed for free in search of easy consents, sure ballots, extra gain.
Unfortunately it is little time that Mar missed, ended in amazing manner under the train, it’s unknown if for suicide or misfortune, poor girl. At garrison was proclaimed a sort of short mourning lasting just half hour, the time to eat and drink, crying to the memory of that beautiful girl.
At the station they put on a banner of condolences with the photo of the Cuban, then they removed everything and quickly forgot.
Bad time
Suddenly an incredible wind started blowing without any possibility to know when it would stop.
Our staff shut off walled up within the garrison, going out only to get provisions at the opposite market.
The president was left blocked at the high stairs together with his assistants, and some driver worried for the cars parked below that moved as dancing each other.
The curious thing is that everyone reacted his own way, but nearly all changed habits and behaviours.
Shifts were confused, timetables drove crazy and it was a restless coming and going, continuous, a collective sideslip. The work of garrison like pulverized.
One of systems-players took to say he had been reincarnation of king Attila, cursing everyone and wishing us any possible evil.
“You will perish as never you had come to this world”.
One of his neighbours of computer suffered it in evident way influenced by the unexpected malaise of the colleague.
He shelled a strange rosary manufactured in some not properly catholic country, but more like plaything of the moment than tool of prayers of believer.
“You will face everything you never resolved, playing the great game of coward”, Asham yelled, abandoning important correspondences. He smiled and explained he was doing it for the well of his friends, to amuse them, not to let them think to the evil.
The great game of coward was a delightful videogame in which were materialized within the screen the most evident fears like concrete images of persons jumping, running away from themselves, crushing obstacles and monsters of the route. Obviously everything was a blowing up.
To be sincere not many succeeded to survive in that tremendous battle seeming simple at the beginning to turn then into a collective slaughter of men and things.
Fortunately after someone awoke and liked better holding any fear for himself, as if nothing happened.
“Cursed Air” they screamed from high stairs, seeing themselves defeated by a breath of wind able to paralyze every short-term plan. “For a little bad wind” howled disconsolate in abstinence crisis of power.
The ones who plotted secretly were pleased in silence with delight, since they saw more and more approaching the end of presumed enemies.
Me, Skill, I know who is happy for the death of this president, nothing has to do with plotters, I only know. And what will be the end of garrison, will it be completely razed to the ground? And after?
I cannot do anything but watching. I am in alert together with the girls, maybe to save my skin.
The first attack left in net, with a falsely Chinese symbol perfectly introduced into section of letters to the master and took to systematically destroy its accesses becoming irretrievable.
Then we tried at night to move secretly the site to put it in safe, till we would not individualize a culprit, surely inner.
Trifles regarding the fears of something worse, probably a depistaggio of some idiot.
Air was driving crazy people of the garrison to the point that someone tried to run away, but he died not very far slammed against the walls of the sweet life.
They said us not spread rumours to avoid alarmism, because we should avoid above all that inquiries inside such prestigious international organ were opened.
The envious jackals sneered in the shadow.
Persons made ugly by hardships, pitilessly cracked by a secret leprosy were squashed to the income walls, asking to enter, but they let pass only some lost politician who didn’t remember even his own name. They booked him the most repaired rooms fearing that a rush of wind stronger than the others could carry out him forever, leaving to the rest the onerous task to continue governing crazies in the middle of the broken ruins.
Asham vanished, awakening in me a sure apprehension. I would like better to see him in front and not on shoulders.
Tinca began to spy on every room, every presence amusing herself passing the time so, to film the physical pollution of bigwigs who didn’t worth anything anymore. They remained dumb and depressed till the sunset, taking to speak agitated about night, with eyes outside.
Work of the confraternita of aid didn’t help more them and little remain in to be hardly able to stamp the card of entrance and exit, hoping it was useful to something.
They slandered of everything and everyone, that was the only clandestine occupation, plus systematic pillage of the enormous kitchens, of containers along the hall and some secret cabinet within the rooms of the high stairs. Very bad air around and it did not show to change direction.
I asked myself where we were going, without anybody really caring of anything, without anybody directing anything or performing precise orders. I seriously thought to run away, flying blindly to the open air, outside from that world.
The Big Party
“Skill still remembers how were the golden times of confraternita of aid”, they had written on the door of my office. “Skill at his computer has seen to all kind of tricks, but he resisted and will resist again”.
This was printed under the portrait of my first entrance in the local net, tenderness that now seemed never existing. To be sincere I never believed I should save some piece of world, but at the end, day after day, I was set down my work as a cat on its preferred pillow, watching every indecency at proper distance.
I made useful things for someone that was not necessarily president or turd on duty.
Also Asham, the girls will have believed in something as they liked and this let them live better.
An invisible hand arranged flowers under the photo of the Reddish, happy to be there and that he were died.
If I surprised someone under there it I would butchered him with paper knife. I had to control fierce attacks of anger, in solitude, in the middle of degradation of the most pure feelings.
And my mind came back on how was garrison in the times of annual Big Party returned for the never seen under the sun most nourishing fund raising.
There was a fantastic music on platform of the authorities, as if were possible for everyone to have a small slice of command, well-being, satisfaction. Everyone clearly heard notes of concert, many danced and seriously believed to save other human beings.
Well it seemed to be better helping than shooting, to assist than to blow up everything. We laboriously accumulated paper at the corners of the world, dreaming to get all work with the force of the mind, introduced directly within thin threads.
I spent carefree days playing to hit wastepaper baskets with paper balls of any dimension and color. My computer as true friend did the remainder.
Map on map I went enthusiastic where I wanted; and everything was clearly looked at, every small village, even traces of ghosts.
When current bounced I closed my eyes, thinking I was happy inside there. I got ready for the Party, recording the speeches of the ones who found funds; a lavish booty to distribute around.
With those good purposes, kisses inside mouth, smiles with close and whitened teeth, how was it possible to imagine this day?
Perhaps times seemed longer, perhaps also I as many others hoped to send back after my death wicked world.
The last Big Party was full of artists spiritually prepared for the occasion. With appetizing products for the most sophisticated palates. Delicious pictures of fruit and vegetables, prizes of hearts as soon as transplanted, moving and nostalgic musics dedicated to the deaths of hunger of the depressed zones. The singer with his trills enchanted the bewitching bejewelled under the platform of the Big Party and some knight slipped off their cheque blocks, writing over astronomical digits.
Then, with several passages from bank to country, from country to bank, at the end a bread piece in places a lot distant from there, perhaps would have arrived.
In a special room prepared purposely, they showed movies shot in the roads around the garrison, explained by a little man who ate beyond measure, having to fast for the rest of the year.
Right in the middle of projection, I saw a silent little guy who sneaked off with his girl very slowly from lime lights and closed at toilette a lot of time compelling the guests to a long hopeless row. I imagine he had the most serious reasons, urgent, unexceptionable.
Beautiful presences, swollen pockets, beautiful life anywhere, goodbye. What a pity.
In the sky there were already stars bringing bad luck, never seen before, possessed ill omen bad stars, with straight tail and the back arched by shudder. If some scientist had take care to watch at a glance the firmament, perhaps more people could be saved, but what was happening could not be noticed with the most sophisticated binoculars. Better rudimentary arm means, nothing but sophistries.
I danced fastened to the wall, while the president came up on the platform for the conclusive speech of the year, surrounded by makeup artists and prompters.
“Old boys! Economy is in pieces, art is no more, beauties of the past are encrusted by secular shit, but I am here. Nearly killing myself, but I am here”.
Spiteful monkeys pierced the balloons, took off wigs from the heads of the bystanders.
Still we could slander of funerals, bad, dotards and bogus, without the appetizing canapés turn to the wrong way to anybody. Indeed, the joy to be there was doubled for it.
And the days after the Big Party nobody had any desire to take care of victims, tragedies of the world to the hell, as if it were duty of other shifts.
I don’t regret my amusements at the wall of the laughs, even if now there is no more irony that could carry out elsewhere at least with mind.
Skill! Skill!
I was accustomed to hear suddenly yelling inside my ears for joke and I did not care, because I became deaf in a side for fault of the acoustic caps shot flat out.
Alarms lately followed each other so often that I was used also to them.
There were sabotages to the net quickly recovered, paper-bombs without victims at the high stairs, fights hand to hand at lower stairs, nearly always results of brawls, of indirect revenges for promotions of careers and wage-packets.
Nobody ended to lose his life, nobody signed claims, all regular.
Some choked roar of hall was covered carefully a second after. One morning they fired from the forehead window to the garrison, just grazed me and for the impression I fainted. Never happened to me, it was like a little coma. I entered inside the dimension that never was and I saw the death of the president, the end of the garrison, a earth of invisible like from the other part of the galaxy.
It was all soft, slow, without sound.
It was neutral to me, neither hostile, nor in favour, but I felt fear like in front of something I should not see.
“Skill, Skill, don’t die now when last turd time-servers of your country are going to perish, the ones who give trouble every time to the walls of the garrison.
“They pretend not to notice, don’t give in, but suddenly they will collapse with the palace. You must resist”.
I woke up myself at call of the jungle, I had still to ask, but I was not in time, because I returned between the alive, end of the story.
My mouth was cloying like I had eaten many candies at the idea of what would it have happened to the filthy idlers who watched disgusted down noses of the rest of the world.
“Skill. Skill! A man came in saying he is disposed to have his cake and eat it, but in exchange he would be called with the name of a great man of the remote past, an outstanding one”.
I asked if the great man agreed and all answered not, but we could not do otherwise:
Take it or leave it.
Posters smelling of camomile, with stale color, never seen before began to go out on the walls inside and outside the garrison.
Words were very soft: “we start again from zero zero zero”. “We seed and tomorrow we will collect”. “Today you decide for your future, come with us”.
And there were the convincing faces of some personages who seemed fix your eyes, hypnotizing you. In a lemon poster there was the engaged wife of a famous serial killer politically pawned reassuring the other women on their destiny.
Some children seeded little heaps of ground and laughed, because plants already grew.
“Even you with some additional electric shock, will buy with us the future” said bewitching the decrepit teacher of politics of the show indicating a chair with some strips of skin.
“Skill, Skill, you must help the man who will save us to go up the platform and record everything; then to send it anywhere to anyone”.
The little man painted his cheeks and the tip of the nose, began to swear like a trooper, never hears words so indecent, so obscene to make blush the maniac at the corner of the road exhibiting gladly his private parts.
I had no choice. I had to send any stupidity in net. At the end I was accustomed even to that.
1999 liras
I was to receive the urgent calls on the screen, zero zero zero, immediate connection with the garrison waiting for helping everyone urgently needed.
Hardly the employees to the kitchen, the girls, the Syrian and the ones of Salvation Army came from the small station.
On foot, because it was day of manifestations and wildcat strikes to well oil the new democratic course.
The curiosity is that in spite of the initial blasphemies, the little man who had to save his cake and eat it saved it really, because as soon as they saw him going up the platform everybody split their sides with laughter, watered and put the hands on bowel.
In the middle of this general euphoria the first violent shake arrived blowing up half garrison, a padded rumble, indefensible to the eardrum, sinister creakings of gears ruined forever.
A powerful hand removed my writing desk, the chair literally disappeared in the void.
The glasses, every shining surface sparkled in the penumbra of an incredible scene.
I thought that it was work of the demon, that it came from the afterlife if existed, because he was something neither of war, nor human, beyond.
Before coming another deflagration I noticed that my mobile played alone to fight, sending two message: “you are the master” and “you are died”.
The dusty computer worked well alone, changing at will sites and search engines.
The second roar was only of death, carried the certainty that would not have been a third roar, succeeding to arrange everything.
I saw flying in the most improper poses men and beasts, objects and splinters of disowned things. The leaders, their servants, the poor tramps passed over my head with wide-open jaws, swallowing microscopic dirty water drops.
Keeping cool, hidden in kitchen under an avalanche of chickens, frozen rabbits and potatoes to put into the oven, I was saving myself from the final fading.
A calendar or a banknote was put down in front of me, 1999 Liras or years. Too fast to understand what it was.
I woke up with the sign in forehead of a very large currency, sure of other times, a brown brand that difficultly would have been cancelled.
I had my empty bottles near the computer, it was deep night. I could hear Asham snoring close there like a camel leaked by the free lashes, tired, ready to bite.
Stink of human and beastly excrements came as usual from the road of the sweet life and the black and white sheiks.
Nothing had changed, president was there and to the first lights of the dawn the most tied up politician of the moment arrived to the garrison to have removed for free a wart by our plastic surgeons.
I had to quickly communicate the fact to the designer at the corner of the street, who was designing the portrait of the meritorious still with the indelible sign of acknowledgment. Alas, Skill! Wake up, didn’t you be in time to send anything or did it on purpose?
By now the wrong Ts-shirt have been sent to all the stores in the country.
Emergency
The usual nuisance begins again. Here is always an emergency.
For some earthquake they do not unfasten a Lira, for some war so much than less. But where go money that at the beginning are so many? I know that many decide to send funds after the end of the week, sighing at every taken decision.
Monks say that it’s all guilt of materialism and science, meaning that would perhaps someone had to come to this world always without any kind of needs and gat off very well, without getting on anybody wick, above all those who are already well in spite of all the rest. Would it not be easier sharing a little?
At least to try in some way. They knock to every frontier, attention, red alarm.
Within the continuous emergency a pleasant music of some old musician received like refugees much time ago sounds.
They are forced to play uninterruptedly to testify the justice of this world; they eat, God only knows how much, they empty kitchen, they make impression.
When they arrived they were thin, thin and today they would not renounce to anything to give it to someone else.
Ironic appears to me the face of Reddish greeting me from clouds and saying:
“Skill you see by yourself, that I could not remain there. These are times not mine, days for fools of planet. All idiots have gathered now, senseless days that don’t taste anything”.
If you come here, you know where to find Skill and the others.
Welcome in a very poor place, dirty, insidious, criminal, corrupted. But much artistic and tourist.
Try to remain alive, above all in head.
Pay attention to pocketbook and if you need something, surpassing the roadblocks, you come on the road of the sweet life, street of pleasures, to confraternita of aid. Excuse, there is another emergency.
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