The Smile Of The Moon. Klaus Zambiasi

      It’s 8.03 pm on an April evening in 1970.The black and white TV atop the fridge in the town’s bar is broadcasting the national news on the first channel.

      Paul McCartney, in the middle of an endless array of microphones, has just announced during a press conference that the Beatles are officially splitting up, shocking millions of fans across the world and throwing them into a turmoil.

      It’s the first story of every national and international news, the scenes alternating between teenagers, young girls and ladies of any age, all desperate for the end of their idols’ band.

      The bar is dominated by cigarette smoke, with a couple of classical still lives hanging on the wall.

      There’s an old man, white-bearded and pipe in hand, looking like a sailor, and seeing him here, in a small town in the middle of the Dolomites, feels somewhat odd. He’s celebrating the latest victory of Gigi Riva’s Cagliari, about to win its first ever football championship. The ‘loyal regulars’ are playing cards and drinking red at their usual tables.

      An abstract and unexpected sensation sweeps through the air, some family men go back to their homes.

      The 8 o’clock news is also reporting about the American space shuttle Apollo 13, which has just taken off from the space station in Cape Canaveral, Florida on a mission to the moon. While orbiting in space, during the attempted moon landing, some technical problems hinder its arrival. The event is broadcasted across the world, keeping the viewers waiting with baited breath. Apparently, the three astronauts on board won’t be able to come back.

      They risk an awful end on live TV, unless they manage to repair their malfunctions and return in time, landing safe and sound on the Pacific Ocean.

      There must have been some strange and particularly hostile conjunction of stars these days in the April skies.

      That’s probably what Mr Remo also thought when they told him what happened at his house.

      He was there at the bar playing cards as usual; in theory, come dinner time, a good husband should be home with his family.

      But we all know how these things go, one more game, let’s play another, the rematch, the final… and so on, time flies. He fit in that context, at least until the news, the shocking news, reached him.

      He doesn’t even have the strength or the courage to go back home – Remo can neither know nor imagine what’s waiting for him there.

      A dear friend of his offers to put him up for that night, and the following too, should he need to. Remo gladly accepts: after all, friends are often an essential anchor one can cling onto for a little comfort at painful times like these.

      Not far from there there’s a great bustle, some commotion, it’s hard to understand what’s happening, blue and red lights in the night. A white cloak blends into the crowd, almost like a spectator, staying and watching the scene and not knowing whether to vanish or to give up to their own conscience.

      An elderly mother, incredulous and desperate, is trying to take care of her own young daughter, while a life is ending.

      

      

       Four years and ninety days later…

      

      

      Our small house

      

      

      Tears are shooting stars, fallen from a most hidden universe also known as our soul.

      We seldom cry with joy, more often with sadness, in any case always emanating a strong emotion from ourselves.

      Sometimes I’d do two opposite things at the same time, crying and feeling like laughing, unable to stop the tears even if I wanted to, the need to cry getting stronger and stronger. I wanted to explain to my childhood friends that nothing had happened, but in-between sobs I still felt like laughing.

      I’m Joe, the youngest of the family, and I’m just four years old. Sitting on the balcony of the house, I’m keenly observing the stars in the August sky, dressed in intensely luminous cobalt blue.

      Here in the mountains, three thousand feet in the air, this kind of landscape is charming, the stars are so bright I could almost grab them with my hands. The full moon’s shine softly kissing the Sciliar(2), a light but constant breeze blowing under my nose, scented by mown field grass dried by the scorching sun of the day. A magical trail tasting like freedom and wilderness. I believe this scent has both a relaxing and regenerating effect, in my case even therapeutic.

      Up on the left, the belfry rises with its big onion dome, the symbol of our town, its lights inviting me in the distance, the country fair music diffusing in the darkness, mixing itself with the crickets’ and the cicadas’ call in the fields below.

      I love the crickets’ chirp-chirp in the fields during summer evenings and especially nights, it makes me feel serene and peaceful. It’s almost like an open-air concert, like nature telling us it lives in harmony, and so do we within it.

      It’s an indefinite sense of freedom and adventure that makes me wish I could sleep in the fields under the stars. But I’m afraid I’ll still have to wait for this wish of mine to come true…

      I hear mamma Barbara’s feet coming, anticipated by the creaking of the dry, worn-out balcony wood…

      â€˜Come inside, it’s time to go to sleep.’

      â€˜All right, five more minutes, let’s watch the moon and the

      stars together.’

      â€˜Come sit on my knees’

      and we tightly hug, my cheek onto her soft cheek.

      Mamma Barbara is a sweet and caring mother, her cheeks are as soft as grandma’s. She really loves children and has a special touch with them, she impersonates motherly love, it fits her to a t. When I’m in her arms I feel enveloped in a blanket in which I find all I need. A hug often works better than most words or medicines, it can shake you and give you a sense of inner calm, it’s all a matter of your state of mind, of what your soul needs.

      I live with my family in a small mountain farm at the feet of the Sciliar. We have various animals, cows, sheep, two horses, rabbits, chickens giving us what we need to live, and they’re looked after mainly by our father, Karl. Here in Castelrotto, life flows regularly, in full symbiosis with nature dictating its rhythm to the days. In the morning the sun rises caressing the tops of the Sciliar and hiding behind them, finally revealing itself in all its glory above the whole valley. In the evening, sunsets last for quite a lot, until the sun goes to sleep behind the distant mountain chains standing out in the skies of Bolzano and Merano.

      I also have a brother, Oswald, who is seven, and a sister, Waltraud, who is ten, she’s the eldest. When my brother Oswald and my sister Waltraud come back from school and finish their homework we often play together, he’s like my guardian brother, Waltraud looks after me like a second mum, she’s of great help to mamma Barbara with the housework, just like Oswald is to papa Karl with the cattle in the stable.

      

      

       2 TN: Italian name of the Schlern.

      

      To be fair I too lend them a hand, obviously it’s nothing more than a game for me, I ask a lot of questions, I’m very curious and fascinated by this rural world. Some days ago, while helping Oswald throwing hay from the barn to the stable below through the square hole which opens directly next to the trough, I fell into it, finding myself close to the cows munching their hay and looking bewildered at me.

      In