The Smile Of The Moon. Klaus Zambiasi

on my head. But in a couple of year it’ll be my turn as well.

      In the night a loud siren wakes us up, and I don’t mean a fish woman, wooooooooo woooooooo woooooooo, it goes on and on, it must be 2 in the morning.

      It’s the firefighters’ siren, we all go on the balcony to see if we can find anything in the dark of the night.

      There’s an acrid smell in the air, a fine soot is floating in the air, dancing and settling right in front of us, on the balcony’s railings.

      The fire is close, very close, too close, we can feel the heatwave. Looking left, we see the extremely tall flames rising almost to the sky, mercilessly and glowingly burning down the wood, I can hear the beams creaking and cracking like bones.

      It’s our barn that’s getting incinerated, the firefighters’ wailing sirens and flashing lights come to our aid, roads all around the valley get coloured in blue, yellow and red.

      It’s almost like a pinball, or a club with multicoloured lights, our greatest concern is to save the cattle in the adjacent stable from the flames.

      The stable and the animals are how we earn our bread, they’re how we make a living, without them we’re finished.

      Luckily it starts to rain hard, it’s like a divine help from heaven, at least people are not in danger.

      I get so anxious looking at all those blue lights come to help us, I get emotional, I look at our faces and I can’t hold my tears.

      At first glance, it could look like a spectacle in nature, like the eruption of a volcano in the deepest of the night. I, Barbara and Waltraud stay at home, Karl and Oswald go with the firefighters to see the state of what’s left and examine what’s happened.

      After a few hours, the fire’s put out, but there’s a persistent, unforgettable smell penetrating into the house, even though we made sure to shut everything. Poor Karl, after so many sacrifices it must be sad for him to see part of his work go up in smoke in less than an hour. They’ve come back inside in the morning, so they can rest a little and recover from the shock, luckily I managed to fall asleep again for a few hours.

      It’s morning now, it’s not raining anymore, there’s a little sunshine trying to cheer us up, showing us all that’s left of our barn.

      In the afternoon mamma Barbara asks me to bring Karl and Oswald some newspapers and food. They’re busy on the disaster site with some professionals.

      I’d prefer not to go because I’m a little scared after all that fire in the night, what if it’s still there, what if it starts again when I arrive.

      But on the other hand my sense of adventure incites me to go see for myself what happened, if the cows and the sheep are still in one piece or if they’ve been roasted as in a country fair.

      As I cautiously get nearer, Oswald comes towards me, I give him the newspapers and the food, he must be hungry.

      I still haven’t understood what the newspapers are for, actually they don’t look like newspapers, they’re more like magazines I think.

      I look up towards the roof which doesn’t exist anymore, there’s nothing left but the skeleton of the larger wooden beams, pitch-black and eaten-up, looking like a coal structure made by an eccentric and misunderstood artist.

      Waterdrops are still hanging here and there, undecided whether to fall to their doom or not, as if afraid of heights. The acrid smell of varnished, burnt, wet wood’s still very much present in the air, it’s a smell I’ll remember forever.

      This has certainly been the most shocking event of my short life, it’s waken us in the middle of the night. Days go slowly by, I don’t know what they’ve decided to do, whether they want to build a new barn, or if they have another solution. Next time grandma comes I’ll surely have something to talk about.

      It’s been two weeks already since grandma Anna’s last visit, but now she’s probably slightly postponed her next trip because of the fire.

      Days and weeks pass, but no news from grandma yet, and this worries me, so I ask mamma Barbara:

      â€˜When will grandma come? She hasn’t come in a long while.’

      â€˜I really don’t know, I haven’t heard from her yet, we

      happened to have a chat some time ago, but she couldn’t

      tell me when she was going to come.’

      â€˜I hope nothing bad happened in the meanwhile.’

      â€˜As soon as I hear something I’ll let you know, don’t worry,

      she must’ve been busy with the fields, the crop.’

      The kids that were with us in the summer have all left, as usual they’ve only stayed for two or three weeks at most, Oswald and Waltraud are at school from morning till early afternoon. Karl’s busy the whole day with the stable, in the afternoon he takes a nap for a few hours on the sofa.

      So in the morning it’s always just me and Barbara, either at home or, when she’s got work to do, in the garden. The sunflowers’ heads are down now, the seeds are all ripe in their circles, embedded within the pale-yellow petals.

      I often go play outside in the morning, sometimes I go snooping around our house. One of our neighbours has a beautiful garden, where I enjoy going for walks and smelling the scents of the various plants and flowers that grow there.

      The owner lets me in whenever I like, the entrance is a black wrought-iron gate, full of strange ornaments, spirals, roses and other flowers.

      A narrow pathway marked by thousands of white pebbles leads me around, there are iron arcs all along the way, covered by vines and big roses of many different colours, red, pink, white, yellow. As I pass by them they give off an inebriating scent, it’s like a journey across various fragrances, there are also exotic plants and palms.

      On the sides, every now and then, I encounter tiny statues, cheerful dwarves, chalk fawns, little fountains and water features. I feel like in a fairy tale, I wish I could stay here forever, I sit on a bench swinging my legs for a bit, and I think again about the possible reasons why grandma hasn’t come yet.

      Usually, Saturday’s the day Barbara gives me a full bath, in a plastic tub on the kitchen table.

      Today’s Monday, and it’s morning, I know we don’t have to go anywhere in particular. I leave the fairy garden, I try to shut the gate but the handle doesn’t work well.

      Maybe it’s because the owner has put too much varnish on it, so it gets stuck a little and can’t go all the way, so I simply push it back against the frame and leave it unlocked.

      I’ve even managed not to get dirty, I’ve only gone for a walk and I’ve sat on the clean bench for a while, so I don’t even need to wash.

      I call Barbara to tell her I’ve arrived:

      â€˜Mum, I’m coming, is lunch ready?’

      I can’t hear her reply, I enter by the gate, I close it calmly, it too doesn’t shut too well, it’s a little rusty. I open the front door and I get in, I take off my shoes, mamma Barbara comes towards me from the kitchen, she kneels down and hugs me.

      She takes me in her arms and kisses me again and again:

      â€˜I know you love me, but is something wrong?’

      â€˜I’m just happy to hug you, I’ll always love you.’

      It has kind of taken me by surprise, I’ve gone out in the courtyard to play for a while, I could feel in her hug that something was off.

      In her cheeks I can