Read The house at the edge of time Page 5


  One day I hope to also learn her/it me. Together with that other thing of the hands.

  13

  Afternoon of spread out clouds

  Afternoon of spread out clouds on the thread of the sky and rolled cats. I make around the wheel for the courtyard. It is a thing that impresses the adults. But it is easy. All it takes is putting the hands in line, for earth, one after the other, and the body turns alone. It is not difficult as the vertical one on the hands, that it is a whole fact of head of concentration. The wheel is a fun a lightness. I turn the whole courtyard, while the swifts turn around the roof of the house. Nobody costs me work. It is strange as the easy things can seem difficult and those difficult, easy. I mark him/it to me in an angolino of the mind, to remember to put him/it to me in the salvapensieri.

  Behind the garden, the family of the trailers applauds. I laugh, from far regard with a half bow.

  Between us there is the distance of twenty-eight footsteps, a basket field or a whale. Mujo makes me sign to be to look. Ago the wheel also him everything around his/her house, without hands, however. I also applaud. The others also begin. They attach with the music, they dance some dances ever seen before. There is also a boy greater than it plays with balls of fire tied together by a chain, him they do around him all.

  I sit on the floor me and I look.

  The boy makes to rotate the chain around his/her body. His/her torso naked spark to the light of the flames dancing, that turn him around the skin of the braccias and the legs without eating him/it to him. All of a sudden it is rather him, that he/she eats the fire inserting later immediately himself/herself/itself in throat a fiammella and risputandola in air. I would want to learn to also do him/it me, but I am sure that mother would not agree.

  Mujo meanwhile he is climbing on the smooth one of the house barehanded. It puts fingers among invisible cracks, braccia and legs laced to the eaves. It has the elastic body of a wild animal. With a last leap it arrives on the roof, it gets up standing on the tiles and divarica the braccias above the head, as they make the mountain climber that arrive in peak.

  "Here it is."

  It is the voice of Demetrio that crosses the courtyard with his/her sick chicken footstep.

  "You are careful" it declares sticking out the eyes out of the head "those know one more than the devil."

  I lift the shoulders and continuous to applaud. I don't understand because Demetrio has him so much with them. And I don't even understand because is said "to know more than the devil one of it." Should not you/he/she be said "to know more than God one of it?"

  Mujo meanwhile you/he/she has gone down from the smooth one some wall, making contrarily the run of before. It reaches the circle of his around the sputafuoco. They clap together the hands everybody and for an instant it is as if they were an alone person. I also applaud up to the end of the show, until the mangiafuoco any boy and everything it returns around the people he disperses. To lift me, support an earth hand, takes the push with the legs, I arch back the body to the and I climb drawing a kind of bridge. From the platform of his/her house, Mujo looks me. It smiles and ago the same thing contrarily. It lifts the hands above the head and it arches back him to the. It goes down plain, plain, to the rallentatore, until when its fingers don't touch earth.

  14

  I wake up myself with the voices of mother and grandmother

  I wake up myself with the voices of mother and grandmother that talk to the plan of under. They are low voices breakfast voices. Together with the odor of the coffee, I am a beautiful awakening.

  Today it is one special day: they come to reap the wheat.

  I jump down from the bed to castle with a new energy. I squirt in the corridor. In bath, there is a ladybird in the sink. I try to make her/it move, but that doesn't stir, you/he/she is still sleeping. I dress me without washing myself.

  I do plain, plain, grandfather also sleeps him as the ladybird. I lean out me to the door of his/her room. He/she dreams. In the sleep he/she trains the hands in the gesture of the pitcher of kites. When the wind will arrive, he will know what to do.

  I go down the steep wood of the staircases that scricchiolano to every step. Of under there are a cup of milk and two smiles that wait me. As when there was still dad. Two smiles, to start the day, is better than one. And three are better than two.

  The coffeepot bleeds some, but I pretends not to see her/it. I eat of run, I smear half jam to do before. A confusion, strains me the red along the fingers. I squirt out with the cup of milk in hand not to lose the arrival of the mietitrebbia, after being verifies me that the keys are to their place and that the handle regularly turns.

  Out it is a morning of foam of sciampagna. The grass of the lawn is still bathed dewy and the spread out cloths swing on the thread.

  Sat on the sidewalk of his/her house, there is already Lawrence. It smiles for saying good morning. Also he holds his/her cup of heat. His/her grandmother goes out to beat the carpets. It tells him that you/he/she must not sit on the floor, takes a chair, that stuff to have breakfast on the sidewalk as the bums. It also tells him that you/he/she must wash him does her/it, Zoe looks how beautiful makes cleaning up, her yes that you/he/she has washed for well this morning.

  The mietitrebbia is an enormous tractor. All yellow. You meets with the trees, almost it doesn't pass from the path. It steals a branch to the tiglio that has been being for fifty years there.

  "Fig tree" Lawrence says.

  Grandmother tells qualcos'altro instead half voice, while you/he/she is going to recover the maltolto.

  Lawrence and I fork the bikes, we pursue the yellow monster. From the path, we look at her/it shave the field as a razor. It swallows the ears and it spits behind her out of in yellow rectangles. Where it passes, stubbles tall ten centimeters and straw boxes remain only sowed here and there. You/they must be for some to dry there. Lawrence and I use her as you pave for building us houses for game.

  Along the bank, Demetrio pushes a wheelbarrow. It is a really strange type, that speaks few and above all it grinds the teeth. Its eyes are red as those of the rabbits and above all they are enormous. To see would seem that they are the eyes to go around the body and not the contrary. Grandmother thinks that you/he/she is not bad. It is alone that it easily becomes angry. But it is harmless. To the bad cow, the nature gives the short horns, grandmother says. I don't know her these things of cows and horns, however Demetrio seems me strange the same. To live alone in the last wagon of a house-train that doesn't depart probably makes never to become some crazy ones. His/her wife was also stranger than him. Tall almost two meters, square as a door. It went on and back for the fields the whole day. Once I have seen her stay in the middle of the path and, later, a yellowish roar has immediately gone down among her legs. I have understood that it didn't bring the underpants. When you/he/she has ended, you/he/she has taken back his/her road on the path as nothing happened. Some years it is dead ago, more or less to the epoch in which I supported the teeth on the table of the kitchen of Cackle Zampacorta. Since then Demetrio has become even more strange and everything that that does is to push his/her wheelbarrow before and back from morning to evening, nobody has ever understood for transporting what. You says around that I/you/he/she go on the bank to spy the couples that you/they are kissed of hidden. You also says that I/you/he/she am rich, that his/her wife and he have accumulated every sort of treasure and that, from some part in the middle of the country, a box there is buried full of gold dam with a padlock and nobody knows where is the key. I don't know if it needs to believe us. We say that, to see him/it, Demetrio doesn't seem really one that has the gold boxes hidden under earth.

  Lawrence and I keep on playing in the field the whole day. We return to the platform of the house-train to the sunset together with the swifts, braccia and legs scratched from the stubbles as from an army of cats. Grandmother us cuff above some reproaches and of oxygenated water. It burns. They prohibit us to return in the fields.

  15
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  Clean day as a sheet

  Clean day as a sheet. Day that makes to come desire to pedal up to the confinements of the world. I am tired to wait for the next movement of the teatrantis behind the curtain. I have decided to do me the first footstep.

  I enter to house of Lawrence but him him you/he/she is still dressing. There is Charles that smokes a cigarette in front of the typewriter. It says take a seat, Lawrence arrives. Perhaps trouble. He shakes the head: "The people as you never disturb." I would want to ask him thing it intends for "the people as me", but I am afraid to disturb and therefore I don't ask him/it.

  I take a seat me on the couch. He beats the fingers against the keys fast, fast, and on the sheet the whole sentence that had in the head comes out. I look around me. There is something different in this room. Above the television there was before a crucifix. There is now the poster of a gentleman with a hat in head and a trumpet among the fingers. It has a black overcoat, a black hat and also does her/it, to say the truth, is black. It is everything black except that for the white of the eyes, that they look you and they shine, and for the trumpet, that tipsy also her. I wonder me who this gentleman is everything black apart the eyes and the trumpet.

  "It is Miles Davis."

  Charles answers to the question that I have not done without lifting the eyes from the typewriter. At times the adults are of the true magicians.

  "The greatest trombettista of the history" it adds.

  Respect for well this Mails Devis, while Charles rereads to half voice what you/he/she has written and you/he/she supports the cigarette in unstable balance on the edge of a battery of books. I like these musicians that inflate the cheeks and they have a trumpet that shines among the fingers. This seems better here also of that other with the denture. One day I want to also have her/it to us me, a trumpet to be made to shine among the fingers.

  Charles extends me an album with the same photo of the poster and bottom the signature of Mails Devis, from that some different is written as you/he/she is pronounced, as all the names of the musicians.

  While I look, he returns to his/her sheet, a grimace with the lips, takes ago then from the table a white barattolino, it unscrews the hood and it throws out an always brushes white. With the varnish it covers the wrong black of the words, it makes him/it return immaculate. It steals us above to dry.

  "I hope really that one day invents a typewriter that allows to correct the errors before ends on the paper" it.

  They agree. This yes that it would be an invention, at all as the telephone that one is always had to bring in pocket and that it would be a nightmare.

  Charles says that some colleagues of his have some most evolved typewriters of his, with a kind of electronic screen, but they are not happy of it. So for now Charles is held his/her old Letter 22, even if the key of the R works badly. But the day will come that the typewriters will become more modern, it says, more "you civilize", and then he/she will buy a new of it.

  On the staircases I see to appear the skate of Lawrence + two legs of Lawrence + a face of Lawrence = a Lawrence all whole.

  I ask if it feels like making a bike ride. Today I want to push me at the edge of the world. That is I want to say up to the house, in which, many years ago, mother was born. And I have the whole intention to enter there inside.

  We pedal fast along the aquatic hand of the delta, we choose the longest finger and we follow him/it thin to arrive to the house. Now it is uninhabited, they are born only us the weeds. We cross a small iron bridge to horse of a channel. Then the road ghiaiata widens, it becomes a spiazzo.

  The house is a button in a buttonhole of poplars. We insert there inside as two unauthorized threads. The branches of the poplars rustle. Certainly that as house is imposing. Thick and all bricks redhead. Before, the lawn is tall of grass, but the circle of the well still distinguishes him, that was once a tub full of fishes of all the colors. And the stall is also seen with the horizontal iron bars on the arcades, where grandfather idled with the hands before climbing on in saddle to the horses.

  I go down from the bike and the support against the round trunk of a poplar. The air flies of birds, today. It is a beautiful day. And I am ready for the enterprise.

  I am in the tall grass and that disappears. I put also also the other and the lawn that he/she eats. I don't like the idea not to see what there is there under. Lawrence, that doesn't know yet that from great I will have a trumpet as that of Miles Davis and a denture as that of Chet Baker, he/she takes around me. It says that I am only a fifona, that according to him I don't even dare cross the lawn and to reach the door. Don't know with whom is speaking! I know him/it very well, as a lawn is crossed, me. I am the queen of the crossings. What does he/she know, Lawrence?

  You/he/she has not even ended the sentence that I/you/they am already upstairs of the house. Follow me shouting "waits, is dangerous!" but I don't already feel him/it more. I launch me in the adventure. Down, down, down, in the den of the Rabbit as Alice.

  It needs to recognize that I move me with a certain boldness, it seems that has not done anything else other than to enter precarious houses from when I/you/they were born. I have the feeling to be there been already straight. The spiders spy me from the angles while I am going around unmolested for those that once were the bedrooms. There is grass that grows, here inside. There is also a hen that he/she broods the egg. I try to individualize the room where mother was born from the descriptions that you/they have done me. I look to the right and to the left. I intrude me in each hole that I see, probably also in those that nobody has ever seen. Down, down, down, in the den of the Rabbit. I look for a sign of future.

  I don't find anything. Nothing interesting, means. I am about to return of under, when my ankle is harpooned by something brown. Cry. I make back a jump to the. Then I realize me that it is not anything. No snakes or vermiciattoli as I thought. It is only a bracelet. A leather bracelet.

  I draw near me plain, without making noise, as if the bracelet had the ears and you/he/she could feel me. I lengthen two fingers from the tall one. When I pick up him/it, I feel the shake. I let him/it immediately fall to the ground and I make back again a jump to the. I look for saliva to send down. I find her and I calm down me. I reapproach again me to the bracelet and with calm I pick up him/it for the second time. I turn him/it among the fingers. From a side it is rough, from the other smooth, almost shiny. It seems that you/he/she was written above something there, perhaps the owner's name, but it is everything consumed and he/she is not read anymore. I measure him/it on my wrist. It seems done he/she waits for for me.

  "Zoe? Six. you are alive?"

  I insert the bracelet in a pocket and return from Lawrence that it trembles worse after all to the staircases of that rabbit that has put me in hand grandmother. I hope that I/you/he/she don't also pee on him him.

  "You have. you have shouted he/she succeeds in hardly saying.

  I look at him/it with air of superiority, I don't tell him that it is a fifone because they are one Mrs.. Him continuous to repeat that it is dangerous what I have done, what could bounce me in head a tile or a piece of wall.

  "And then because you have howled?"

  I lift the shoulders, even if to the idea of the tile I have a shiver along the back. We go out in hurry of the house. Out they feel him some noises, as of sole of shoes in distance that you/they draw near. On the bank there is the outline of a man. It is a dreadful outline, gigantic. If we were in one of the histories of grandfather, this here it would certainly make the Ugly Dream of work.

  It shouts us against something.

  Lawrence and I howl as if you/they were skinning us alive, in the confusion we keep on meeting us the one against the other, then we succeed in forking the bicycles. The first street of earth that we find among the liquid fingers of the delta take, even if it doesn't bring homeward us. The main point is here is go suffered from. We pedal in hurry, more and more in hurry, while the continuous outline to howl us against somethi
ng incomprehensible. We pedal until it doesn't disappear to the horizon, until we don't lift the look and we see above of us the white belly of the gulls. I don't know well where we are ended, but on our heads badminton the wrong birds. It is not a good sign, he/she wants to say that we have gotten further too much there.

  Lawrence puts an earth foot. With two braccias it removes a curtain of grass in front of a road poster.

  "Of there" it says, pointing out toward right.

  "Of we put there there a life" I beat, after having examined the poster "better from this part here."