• Rating:
I'm standing there, twenty steps in one direction and twenty in the other, bundled up beyond words, wearing more wool than a sheep before shearing. My hands are frozen, despite having put on my gloves after leaving them for a long time on the radiator before going out: after thirty seconds outdoors, with the first gust of wind, it feels like being naked, and my face, let's say my eyes, nose, and cheeks, everything that doesn't fit under the winter cap that also covers my ears, hurts with every blast.
The helmet rhythmically hits my butt with each step, perfectly out of tempo with the bayonet that hits the front of the belt, striking and accentuating, swinging on my rear, the situation I'm in: ten degrees below zero, a medium-sized Italian army barracks somewhere in Piedmont, in the mountains, guarding the motor pool, early eighties. A 20-year-old assault rifleman, army of the Republic, NATO battalion always ready to deploy, three field exercises a month, guarding one day on and one day off, never even time to put the Fal in the armory, as soon as service ends it's off to march, preferably at night. Even the Carabinieri in their service Alfa cars, when they meet us in single file as we come out of a forest onto the highway at four in the morning, with faces blackened by burnt cork, weapons in hand and helmets with broken feathers, eyes stunned by the cold, shake their heads and mutter amongst themselves that there are crazy people in the world, but none like those from Pinerolo...
I look up, the sky is clear, a deep blue, and distant, pulsating stars, half a moon that seems to mock me, they're the same as last summer in Sestri Levante, it seems to say, remember, you were making out with your girlfriend on the beach, you looked like an octopus, hands everywhere, from the outdoor bar came the notes of her favorite song, you remember, "Eye in the Sky," you remember, right, and look where you are now.
Look where I am now, I let out a curse under my breath, but it's so cold it returns to my teeth without echo, dry. Ten fifteen, but my god, only a quarter of an hour has passed since the start of the shift, I can't make it. I lean on the Fal hanging on my front, I take shelter a little behind the wind, between an ACP truck and an open-top Campagnola, it'll be the driver's problem who tonight forgot to close the cover, tomorrow he'll find an icicle shaped like a seat under his behind, damn Venetian slacker.
Then I hear it: at first extremely faint, almost imagined, then a bit stronger. Here we go, the fever is coming back like yesterday, damn, now I hear music like on the beach in Sestri.
No, I can distinguish it from here, it's music, it's the pioneer sergeant, on the other side of the barracks, who turns off the canteen jukebox at ten and turns on the stereo, playing the music he likes and no one can bug him. For an hour he has the exclusive on the music heard at the canteen, then at eleven it closes. Go say something to that two-meter tall Valdostan who speaks so little, growls orders and asks you the lineup of Pink Floyd while you run with arms raised with the Fal above your head, just to take the piss, except that I and two or three others know the lineups "that matter" and he laughs under his unkempt beard...
And he knows his stuff, the sergeant, this is Alan Parsons, damn it, this is "Sirius," the track that opens "Eye in the Sky," of course, we're already at the guitar solo, I've missed half the track because of this damned wind but now I'm positioning myself so I can hear it better, albeit from a distance, and enjoy the end of the track and the beginning of "Eye in the Sky," mixed in such a way as to make it a single piece, but we're talking about Alan Parsons, Beatles and Pink Floyd, Procol Harum and Roy Harper, what's missing?
The track isn't exactly cheerful but, perhaps it's the depression caused by the unhappy moment, perhaps the sadness of this place, it seems even more heartfelt, stirs something in my throat when the six-note refrain of electric piano starts, and it reaches the verge of tears, especially when the volume rises and the refrain begins.
It seems that tonight the canteen stereo is crying for me, for my measly one meter eighty-five for seventy-five kilos, for my duty in the Alpini, for my K rations eaten in twenty seconds while marching, without stopping, for my magazines filling the pouches on my camouflage, for my frozen feet in the Vibrams, for the two bottles of terrible but strong cordial that I'll soon chug, unfailingly.
And for that summer evening in Sestri Levante, even for that, when I didn't suspect the existence of the sergeant, the cordials, the twenty-round magazines, and the Energa grenades, god of rookies.
Now, almost forty years later, I accidentally hear "Sirius" again, in the car, on the sunny seafront, between a child licking an ice pop while crossing and an indomitable runner under the sun at thirty-two degrees Celsius, and I wait like the Good News for the moment it blends into the next track, I try to concentrate on the piece, banish the thought but it's no use, it brings back memories of the frozen Fal and the sergeant's shout, one morning at six, as we ran on the frozen assault course, asking me if I knew the name of the Doors' bassist. And after, without losing the rhythm of jumping over tires, I shouted to him that the Doors never had a bassist, he burst into a curse and shouted at me "But this too, you know, bastard... you've avoided twenty push-ups on the ice..." amidst the envy of the companions who suspected not the existence of the Doors, sure that twenty push-ups on the ice they wouldn't avoid even if they dropped dead there, in the darkness of six in the morning, in a medium-sized Italian army barracks somewhere in Piedmont, in the mountains.
Rock is necessary in life, no kidding, tell my father, tell him. With regards from the sergeant, my girlfriend, and Alan Parsons.
Loading comments slowly
