"We came out, the wind was back behind us, we pezcaba the neck, kick us a tip. A major wave splashed us and I got the joy of running for a few steps. Don Gaetano was attached to the head wet beret. We were alone, ' or vient' had locked the city at home. I imagined deserted, with people who had fled, leaving the door open and the pots in the fire. I could go on all buildings , sit in the chair of the bishop and the mayor, live at the royal palace, up to the boat. Americans also had disappeared, leaving the empty carrier in the middle of the harbor. The idea tickled my nose. It lasted until I saw the wind come face to us. They ran in groups, with shirts, shorts and tennis shoes. We are very warm and they half-naked, citizens had disappeared, the Martians had landed. Don Gaetano and I looked at your feet to know if we were on the ground or by air. Run for us was a serious word.
One of us ran off to escape an earthquake, bombing. Running without being chased was like water without boiling pasta. We passed by concentrating on their movements, the wind blowing. - No may be true, Don Gaetano, this is a hallucination due to hot coffee.
- Go if any. They are the last people invented the world, the last to arrive. They do the war and cars. Is an enlarged children's village. If you ask them where they are, they reply that far from home. There. For them, it is we exist. Cross with us, go ahead and do not see us. They live here and not even see the volcano. I have read in the newspaper that an American sailor has fallen into the mouth of Vesuvius. It is not unusual, I had not seen.
Leaving the seafront between the lanes reappeared our crowd, dense and clueless. Moved the old insecure, for support, the children opened their arms to be carried away by the wind blows. There was clothes hanging, withdrawal to keep her in the gusts. Without sheets hanging on the top looked mottled sky puffy clouds, aromatic and fried pies.
- Hungry? - I asked Don Gaetano, casting an eye upwards.
had heard my thoughts on the cloud.
- Guilt of them are fried by vocation.
was the day of convalescence of happiness. Don Gaetano and `o vient 'were charged with the task of digesting me on Sunday. They were getting. So I learned that happiness is to forget the next day. Anna was not thinking. The bruising of the body was sufficient to account for the heating step to happiness. "
Erri de Luca, The day before happiness, translated by Carlos Gumpert, Mexico, Sixth Floor, 2010. ISBN 978-607778104-2
...
"Happiness is a" gift. " Has a before and after, possible to identify if you pay attention to the multitude of signs which reveals its name. Decode arrival is a real art. Don Gaetano, janitor of a building in Naples in the fifties, has the gift to hear the thoughts of people. It was he who, through their stories about the horrors of war and the heroism of the Neapolitan people, start with this art to the narrator of the novel, a young orphan of eighteen.
in Naples in 1950. At eighteen he entered the ranks of Lotta Continua, leftist political movement which was a leader in the seventies. After performing various jobs - truck driver, laborer, construction worker - bent for writing, becoming one of the most important Italian artists today. The day before happiness is one of his most recent works. "
Editorial , Sixth Floor
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