La storia di Bortolo Pezzuti
Andrea Polini| Original | L’11 novembre di ogni anno, in Canada, è il Remembrance day, il... |
| LA STORIA DI BORTOLO PEZZUTI Il freddo sui monti e sul lago il faggio sul fuoco in cascina sul monte alto e Cervera lenta si posa la sera è ancora tempo di guerra dadi tirati da un cieco decideranno la sorte giorno di vita o di morte ma qui domani è Natale con un foulard rosso al collo Bortolo scende al paese luci di festa già accese Bortolo ha diciott'anni come i ragazzi di fronte la loro divisa è una gabbia negli occhi non luce ma sabbia Alt una voce lo ferma ma non per dare un saluto cosa ti porti lì addosso togli quello straccio Rosso Bortolo che non capisce che chiede che vuole un perché ma la risposta è nel buio nel camion che lo porta lontano. Gelo nell'aria a Bolzano fa freddo di più che in casera neve sul filo spinato sulla baracca e sul prato là in fondo al campo una cella molto più nera e più fredda sangue sul muro e per terra chi è preso per caso e chi scappa ma è primavera sul lago inverno nel cuor della mamma Bortolo tenta la sorte via da quel campo di morte le guardie hanno mani callose come tuo padre o le tue use a spaccar la paghera alla falce e alla preghiera ma quelle mani e i vent'anni le coprono quelle divise non le bagna il sudore portano sangue e dolore dopo tre giorni di strazio scannato la notte di Pasqua finisce il dolore e la guerra la bocca riempita di terra | LA STORIA DI BORTOLO PEZZUTI And ceaselessly, night and day, the two Ukrainians, Misha and Otto, who are in the SS. In the cell blocks, as if they themselves were God the Ukrainians Misha and Otto reign supreme: they ignite everyone’s torments and when they summon everyone advances and when they speak everyone listens and when they are silent one and all wait and the frightened women stare at him they way a sparrow stares and an owl. Misha’s hands have a life of their own. He’s only twenty with a red forehead bald as a man of fifty, his round head, hair shorn off is inclined forward without a neck and the hands…the hands…those hands… covered with black marks and red hairs, with knotty fingers, long, thick and ending like the tongue of a bell, even while he sleeps, or does nothing at all, slowly, slowly, come evening, he clutches them into fists he rubs them, they make convulsed spasms, the nails turn purple, he cracks his knuckles and the red hairs stand on end. But, suddenly the fingers unfold, falling as if dead, exhausted, broken, the fingers shrink like dead snakes and this goes on constantly, day and night and everyone can feel their presence around their necks (…) A young blond Friulian whose mouth was small, red and girl-like: once tried to escape from the camp and he ended up in the black cell. For three days he implored Misha and Otto, three days spent shouting "I don’t want to die", for three days he cried for his Mamma. And in the night of the Easter vigil such noise was heard coming from that cell, it sounded like people in furious altercation and a suffocated cry that muted into a death rattle. But just after that, one could hear a sort of panting heavy and coarse and greedy as if it were caged beasts pouncing upon the raw meat thrown their way. It is Easter. In the morning. And he is on the ground stretched out hard as ice: eyes opened wide in a black face, his stomach naked, with the flesh torn apart and caked in blood. In the peace of Easter everyone is silent Immobile. Still as stone. And in the black cell The cry of Bortolo Pissuti was silenced as well. (…) Tonight the small Jewish girl died just like a candle made of tallow burnt down to the wick. Tonight Misha and Otto threw her in the coffin two huge, dreamy eyes and four poor little bones hidden by pale skin. And now in the coffin they are pounding nails and with every blow of the hammer a curse is nailed down (in the cells, every heart trembles and the nails are pounded into their brains). And before the coffin now they are singing funeral rites and litanies: "heiliges Judenschwein ora pro nopis, zum teufel Schweinerei ora pro nopis" Tonight the small Jewish girl died just like a candle made of tallow burnt down to the wick. On the day that she first entered the cell she was soft, lovely and ripe for love but in her face, full of fear, two eyes that blink with the pain and that sink in centuries of sorrow. They threw her upon the dirty table, and they abandoned her there, several days, until it happened one evening that Misha and Otto shut themselves in the black cell and they stayed there the entire night. And emanating from the cell for hours and hours the tired lament of a baby who is dying. From that night on, she never again spoke, from that night on, she never again ate. And there, huddled on the floor, mute, still, in the obscurity of the cell she is waiting for death to take her. She becomes ever more skinny and small, ever more large become her eyes. |
