He's only 10 years when Aurelio's brother left for the front ...
... these are her memories:
SIGNS OF WAR:
The long lines of Austrian prisoners faces destroyed by hardship.
The night I went with my father in the hall of the Prefecture to read the press from the front.
The anguish that you see on the faces of all the route of Kobarid.
Women dressed in black, stuffed with shoes, fled their homes destroyed by war, wandering in the small town with dazed eyes and mouths with a speech that told incomprehensible despair.
The beautiful face of a girl ended up in the hands of a Friulian beef dodger.
The tragic columns of trucks carrying armed soldiers and sacks of potatoes ...
sore mouth and the tears of my mother's thinking Aurelio still at the front.
My clothes made of gray cloth and puttees that turned me around the legs to replace socks unavailable.
The long, tiring queues at the shops to bring home a pound of pasta or flour.
The rare letters Aurelius, with the stamp of Valdobiadene Pederobba, as well as the red of the complaint.
The dark face of my father because of the difficulties in the work.
The dismay at the sudden deaths of relatives.
Long days of fear and hope.
And finally:
The crackling of a thousand, ten thousand flags for the win.
I stuck carnations in gun barrels of soldiers marching.
The loss of the officers returned to their homes, still in uniform, turned from a cafe to another without knowing what to do.
The smell of barracks together with that I heard a hairdresser in the currency of Aurelius, the day he returned.
All memories alive, imbued with pathetic nostalgia, and the millenovecentodiciassette millenovecentodiciotto.
- Taken from THE HORSE METAPONTO (autobiography published posthumously in 1998).
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