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domenica 7 febbraio 2016

A Night with the Dead - (Fun read!)

A Night with the Dead


Amazon UK

Pordo lived in Tre Colli, he was a pastor and a smart joker. When he invented some of his funny stories he also created a fitting script, so for several years to follow, both in village plazas and homes, wherever there was a fireplace that gathered people, his pranks were know and told by almost everyone.

One evening in late August he went together with Jacopino (whose nickname was "Trombone"*, because on Friday he started drinking a jug of his wine, and boasted of having emptied it before it was over a week) to pay their last respect to a villager in the chapel of Castelmaggiore cemetery. This man was a Jacopino distant relative. At that time, when someone passed away it was customary to leave him in an open coffin, all night long, before he was buried the day after.

The locals didn’t like to go to cemetery at night. That’s why Pordo and Trombone volunteered to do a good deed. While the two companioned the deceased, they began to talk about this and that, until sky darkened and all around became black as the pitch Trombone used, for he was a cobbler.
Trombone was a good man, but not very smart, and he also had the misfortune of being stingy. So both because he was a miser and he was poor, to spare his shoes soles he filled them with well aligned steel nails. When he walked, he sounded like Tonino-the-carter’s mule, because of the noise of iron. However, the nails he put in his costumers’ soles were of soft iron: they lasted less, so shoes had to be resoled more frequently. But this was the maximum level his cunning could reach, and it did not go beyond.

«Jacopino - said Pordo to his friend - did you see that yellow fig tree beyond the wall of the cemetery? It is loaded with ripe figs! Why don’t you go there, for stretching your legs and eating a couple of good figs!»
«I can’t do it. It’s too dark over there!», replied his friend.
«Bloody hell! Have I to tell you everything? Take this candle for making light!», Pordo exclaimed, standing up straight and leaning with his back to the wall of the chapel, two meters far from the open coffin. Then he put the lighted lamp in the cobbler’s hand; Jacopino didn’t need to be told twice, took it and went to get those figs.
Pordo followed the flame out of the corner of his eye until he saw it no more. Quick and slippery as an eel, he took off the dead from the coffin and leaned the corpse against the wall, in the same spot where he was leaning before. Then, without thinking too much, he laid inside the coffin and waited quite and still for the return of his friend.

Trombone came back after fifteen minutes, his mouth still chewing, his waistcoat back pocket was of full of figs. The candle had been blown out by the wind, which got up in that moment; they heard thundering and sometimes lightning bleached the sky. Although he couldn’t see well and often stumbled, Jacopino came back to the chapel. Between a lighting and the other, while it was going to rain, as soon as he got inside he said to Pordo that those figs were good and sweet. He added that the day after he probably would have diarrhea, because he had eaten too much.

While talking, Trombone touched him. He was cold as ice, so Jacopino was terrified and jumped back in fright. He said two curses which darkened even more the sky, and could kill again all the dead buried in that cemetery. He shouted: «He's dead too! And now, what am I doing here all alone?»
His legs were shaking like leaves in the wind; that tremor greatly increased when a shaky and distant voice, that seemed to come from the underworld, said: «If he cannot eat those figs, give them to me!»
Have you ever seen a rocket, one of those shot during St. Ranieri’s festival fireworks, Pisa’s patron saint? Trombone ran out of the cemetery, like a donkey whose tail was on fire. It seemed he was wing-footed. He jumped all the steps outside the exit gate, and turned down the hill in a headlong rush. The nails under the shoes made sparks against the paved lane stones. He arrived like a comet in Piazza Verdi, with a trail of fire coming out from under his feet. Diarrhea did not wait the day after and it wasn’t provoked by the figs: The poor man was so scared he couldn’t even lower his pants. He was sick for several days, he wasn’t brought to Volterra’s madhouse for a hair’s breadth. The situation lasted until Pordo went to see him with a nice bottle of red wine made in Campo. He poured him a glass and while he was drinking, he told him everything. Trombone listened to him, then he stood up and tried to punch him ... but he did not hit him because he preferred to drink all the wine with Pordo. Then, completely drunk they fell asleep together, sitting on cane chairs, their head resting on the kitchen table ...

The story was told again and again, like many others, to have fun and spend winter evenings in front of fireplaces, or summer ones, under arbors or the starry sky full of fireflies.

The end

* Trombone comes from the verb “trombare”, which in Pisano, the dialect spoken in Pisa, means to pour wine from a container to another using a pipe, called “tromba”.

© Tiziano Consani (ebook - Narcissus.me P.C. - April 2014) Written in Pisano: “Le storie di Pòrdo”




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