Читать книгу Berto's World: Stories - R. A. Comunale M.D. - Страница 3

I am now more than three-score-and-ten years old—but once I was a boy.

My name is Robert Anthony Galen, M.D., retired.

I was born Roberto Antonio Galen. Save for the whimsical stroke of an immigration official’s pen on Ellis Island, it would have been Gallini, my father’s given name in the old country.

I live now with my friends at the Pennsylvania mountaintop retreat called Safehaven. The three of us—Bob Edison, his wife Nancy, and I—await the winding down of our lives on a mountain blessed with the magic of love and the vagaries of memory. We feel the sere chill of the one visitor we cannot turn away. The Bone Man will come to each of us at his whim and in due time.

But for now I sit in my room and stare out the window overlooking the mountain vista, and I remember. I remember the boy I once was and the people I loved. In that distant past I roamed my world as a child—a child named Berto.

I am an old man now. I easily fall asleep at my little desk and I dream. I dream of being that young boy once more. I dream of Berto’s world.