Invictus. Cristiano Parafioriti

those words over and over in his head, yet he could not make any different sense of them.

      Why not invite him earlier, when he had confessed to thinking of her all the time? Why run away like that and then throw that mysterious invitation at him instead?

      He didn’t understand, but he wanted to believe that this was a clear signal that she wanted to meet him. Besides, what could poor Ture do? He had never had a woman, and so they were a completely unknown universe to him.

      He could only wait for her to the fountain and hope to talk to her openly this time.

      Ture arrived at the fountain early. He hid in the shade of a vine and watched the women passing by. When he saw Rosa emerge from the path, he was startled. He waited a moment, saw that she was alone, and realised that he had been right. From that moment on, every word could change his life, and his palms began to sweat again. To kick this off, he decided to take the situation head on and approached his cousin. He didn't even have time to say a word that the young woman shoved a pitcher into his hands.

      Ture understood the meaning of this sudden gesture: in his frenzy to meet Rosa, he had not even thought of creating an alibi for himself in the eyes of the people who came to the fountain. Instead, that pitcher protected them. Although they were first cousins, as the children of two sisters, the situation could arouse suspicion.

      It was Rosa who broke those initial moments of silence.

      “I’ve been thinking about you since last year’s harvest, Ture Pileri! It’s been thirteen months!”

      Ture’s eyes widened in astonishment, he went back in his mind to that harvest, but nothing came up, no particular memory of those days, nothing that would remind him of that little girl who was about to become a woman.

      Ture was bewildered by this revelation, and he didn’t even realise to take the filling amphora out from under the spring. He did not realise that time had passed so suddenly that the water, gushing out, soaked his shirt up to his sleeves.

      “And why did you wait all these months to tell me that, Rosa?” “To be honest, if you had chosen my sister, I would never have told you. I would have suffered, but I would have got over it. Lia likes you, but then that evening, right here, she understood that she was unrequited and, reluctantly, she is putting her soul at rest. At first, I didn’t want to tell you anything anyway. I didnt want to hurt my sister, but when you told me that today…”

      “What I told you today at San Nicola is the truth! I want to be honest with you, and I’ve been honest with your sister. I’m not interested in her and, until that evening at the trough, I wasn’t interested in you either. Then, I don’t know, since your words that time you are in my head. I’m not good with words, you know, but that’s how I feel, and you can’t imagine how much I prayed that I wasn’t wrong today when you said that thing about the dirty shirt to your father and the trough.

      Rosa, who had been rinsing and rinsing the clothes all the time, stopped for a moment, looked around, and, realising that they were alone, hugged Ture, who seemed taken aback by this gesture. She kissed him on the cheek.

      An almost embarrassing smile formed on his lips, but he didn’t even have time to wrap his arms around her when she was already back on the washing line.

      Ture thought back to the story of the little dove and his sister’s words – A little dove, if you try to catch it, flies away!

      “My father loves you,” Rosa resumed. “You know, he has never believed what they say... I mean, in the story that you dodged from the war. He says that Zi Peppe Pileri did well and that he would have done the same thing for his son!

      Ture did not want to change the subject and, focusing back up, asked: “Are you going to tell Lia?”

      “I do not feel like it yet. Moreover, it’s too soon.”

      “Are we engaged then?” Ture asked, lowering his gaze.

      Rosa smiled. She was only sixteen, but she seemed much wiser than her cousin in matters of the heart. So she answered him with gentle eyes: “How naive you are, Ture Pileri! Tell me, are you always good at imitating the call of the doves?”

      Her cousin smiled. Rosa’s last question had relieved him of his embarrassment. He put his hands over his mouth and began to imitate the cry of the birds.

      It was time to go home, so Rosa put the wet clothes in the basket while Ture emptied and filled the pitcher for the last time and offered to accompany her to the first houses of San Basilio.

      There they said goodbye, and after he had kissed her on the cheek, his hand lingered on her face. He followed Rosa with his eyes until he saw her disappear down the street, then walked home.

      He returned to San Giorgio very excited, tempted whether or not to tell Concetta. He took off his boots and went inside. As soon as he closed the door behind him, however, he felt a strange tension. Everything was eerily quiet.

      Concetta hugged him, almost knocking the breath out of him.

      “What’s happened?” Ture asked, puzzled.

      “My son,” his mother answered, “they say a postcard has arrived for you in the village.”

      “Postcard? What postcard?”

      His mother, drawing all the strength she could from her heart, said: “The war, Ture. They called you to go to war!”

V

      Ture skipped dinner, dismissed his family with a brief wave of his hand, and had Concetta bring him a basin of cool water to wash his face.

      He was about to stand again when he saw that, in the meantime, he had been surrounded by Santo, Betta, Nino, and Calogero, his younger siblings, who tried to comfort him with their candid innocence.

      Ture dried his face, moved the basin of water aside, and held Calogero, who was not yet three years old, in his arms. He kissed him on the neck as he always did and then knelt and hugged the other three, trying to hide the tears that welled up in his heart.

      Concetta and Sina, his other two sisters who were already girls, made up the bed for him, so their brother, leaving the little ones, spread his arms and held them close to him. Then he got ready for bed.

      Hardly a half-hour passed before his mother joined him. Ture couldn’t sleep while his other brothers in the room had already fallen asleep, so the woman, under the light of a small candle, quietly approached her son’s bed and, in a quiet voice, tried to reassure him.

      “Your father says he will find a solution,” Nunzia said.

      “My dear mother, I want to be honest, when I did the medical examination in Tortorici, I felt in my soul that my time had not come. I don’t know why I had this feeling. It wasn’t only the fact that my father had found me the recommendation to be exempted. I was calm. I thought, If war is in my destiny when it comes, it comes. Then my time had not come, but now, I know that I must leave. I felt it somehow, but not right now, when…” Ture cleared his throat. As vulnerable as he was at that moment, he didn’t want to reveal to his mother what had happened only a few hours before with Rosa. Rosa! Those moments of happiness seemed so far away! Within that one day, things that would happen in a lifetime had happened.

      How could he tell her now? He was already struggling with words. How to look her in the face and say, “My beloved, I must go to war”?

      He thought about all these things, losing himself in his mother’s sad eyes. Then he caressed her gently.

      “It will be as God wishes, mother. Please, don’t worry!”

      A tear ran down the woman’s cheeks. She kissed her son on the forehead and let him rest for the night.

      When the dim light of the candle left the room with his mother, Ture felt the weight of the world on him.

      So much for ‘Gnura Mena!

      All the jinx of the world had hit him now that