Читать книгу Ties - Roberta Mezzabarba - Страница 7

Angelica was a good-natured woman.

Her temperament reflected her appearance. She was slender, almost frail, her hands were delicate, her tiny rosy nails were perfect like little rose petals. She saw the world with her sky blue eyes and a pure heart.

It was often difficult to put an age on her. At times she looked like a young and helpless fawn that was taking her first unsteady steps, but she also looked like a tall column of an ancient temple, overbearing, steady, a silent witness to events occurred over thousands of years.

Her husband Filiberto and herself lived in a magnificent house overflowing with stucco decorations, paintings done with dark colours, heavy curtains that hung in loose folds, ornaments that could have told themselves the history of almost all their ancestors.

They were leading a quiet life, almost too perfect.

Angelica loved her husband. He was not very demonstrative but he tried to please her in every possible way. Filiberto showed his love for his wife on various occasions but there was one instance when she really appreciated what he did, and that was going back twenty years.

It was a dark night and the moon was incredibly big. A pregnant woman knocked at their door, she looked frightened. She was holding a ragged bundle; you could hear the cries of a baby coming from it.

«Take care of this baby, please… his mother… can’t… she left him… she is dead. I don’t have the strength to knock at another door. I am going to have my baby soon… Please, look after him, his only fault is to have been brought into this world… somebody will surely be very grateful to you. His name is Guglielmo. Please, promise me one thing…. never tell anyone about what has happened tonight… never.»

None of Angelica’s pregnancies could ever reach full term: it seemed that her body could not bear the burden of a new life. That strange visit, on that strange night was for her a divine message embedded in the sky.

After the arrival of baby Guglielmo, Angelica realised that the time had come for her to stop trying for a baby. She was physically and mentally exhausted… Surely, she thought, Guglielmo was a reward, a bonus, a treat to relieve her from the painful awareness of being unable to have children.

Angelica took the little bundle from the arms of that stranger, without saying a word, unaware of what had gone on nine months back, nor that very night. The stranger went off in the night, plodding along because of the weight of the new life that she was carrying. Before disappearing completely from their sight, a strong contraction came on and got her to fall to the ground. She was looking for the door which was still open. In the dim light you could see the woman wearing a long beige nightgown with the baby in her arms, still wrapped around the rags he was born in, and of the man with his dark and thick moustache who was standing beside her, with a suspicious expression on his face.

Angelica pleaded with her husband to take the woman to the hospital. The man helped her up from the ground and coldly escorted her to the car to drive her to the hospital and leave her there. Filiberto had picked up something not quite right off that woman who had showed up at their door with the baby. Her wife had looked at him with such a pleading look that he could not deny her the happiness to raise a child.

From that night on, they did not hear anything about that woman. Abiding by the woman’s instructions, they told everybody that they had adopted the baby, thanks to very influential acquaintances.

Filiberto was a high ranked army officer. He was reserved, always sticking to the rules, to every rule of this world, wearing an English moustache that separated his thin lips from his pointy nose. His relationship with his son had been, since the beginning, a very quiet one.

He wished he had a recruit to train, this was probably because he knew no other way to interact with people. Guglielmo on the contrary had an outstanding personality, at times he was a little insubordinate but could not keep his vital energy inside a military uniform which would have forced him to an endless sequence of ‘yes sir’.

There was no disagreements.

They never had a face to face confrontation, however it was evident that Guglielmo and his father were not very close. His hatred for army life and all its formalities would certainly have disappointed his father’s expectations, who was accustomed not to be contradicted, never.