UBIK E XNAME NELLA TERRA DEI PADRI
Back to the roots.
It happened to Ubik and me to get together for a holiday in Lecce.
Lecce is a place i belong to. It is placed at the end of the railway, downsouth east, finibus terrae. One way you have the North, Italy and Europe, all the rest is sea and countryside.
It reminds me of Holland, somehow, because of the windmills, but mainly because of the flat land. They are very different offcourse, and Holland is a submarine society, but central, while Lecce is so far away, it is far away from everything. They call it Europe, but you can think of Northern Africa. As well, Greece is not far, and the local dialect is full of ancient greek and latin words.
Somewhere i will refer to Lecce as the town, elsewhere it will be a synecdoche. The entire is a land named Salento, which is part of a region called Puglia, which is a fragment of Italy, which is a big, beautiful mess.
The sun is always shining in here, but the first night, after a 10 hours driving no-stop from Milan, i had a terrible, realistic dream: in Lecce, because of the global warming, it was raining every single day, all day long. Especially on July. Everybody knew. I was trying to be optimistic, running from the bar to the newspapers shop. No way. Everybody was resigned: on July there is no sun, ever.
No problem, i was saying, i am used to the rain and the food is good here and the sea is there. But maybe, by mistake, there might be a sunny day…
Everybody nobbling.
I got up a bit nervous, then i opened the windows. The sun was there, full; i run around the house, to be sure that’s is really it.
Today we went to a very special, important and magic place for me, where i did not goto since i was five, or six or seven.
It is a little piece of land, we call it ‘fieu’, dialect for feud, medieval idiom for land, ground.
I had vague instructions to reach it, and i stopped at one entrance, in the middle of nothing. I wait for a bit, it is 42 degrees, i forward on the dirt road, and i see a small, colonial, purple house, between the olives. I am sure, that’s it, and that was the way in. I go back and enter. I get out of the car with the dog and a chair, willing to walk towards the house, which i cannot see anymore. I am a bit alarmed by a sign i see on the ground: a leg of pork, still full of meat, ready to be eaten. I don’t mind too much, i am worried for sure but i am in a mission. A big white dog start barking, running over me. While i realize i am scared, two others dogs, from two different sides, rush to help the first one. They all seem very nervous. My thirty kilos dog jumps on me, and i jump on the car. Shit, the chair is laying on the ground. Ubik is crying. i quickly sneak out and in in a sole move, and we drive the fuck away.
I go back to the spot i could see the purple building. Behind a mountain of trash there is another, smaller entrance.
That must be mine. I get off the carand i smell. A specific mix of eucalyptus, figs, lemon trees. I am hundred per cent sure, this is the place i was looking for.
This house used to be my grand father’s, who i never met. I feel like knowing him, since once i found, and red, his letters to my grand mother, and other writings. A life of thoughts, experiences, secrets, love.
When i was a child, this house was already abandoned, but we used to come family and cousins, spending days playing and picking vegetables, pears, tomatoes, rucola. Once upon a time, before i was born, thieves came, and stole everything. Everything means that the house, at the end of the day, was completely empty. No more furniture, clothes, cups and plates. When i was a child, on the state road towards Brindisi, you could still see a bidet, laying next to the carriage. It was from our house. Somehow, the thieves left it there. It stayed there for quite some years. Running between the trees, you could find pieces of paper and other objects from the house, hidden inside nature. I could imagine they were running, and something dripped out. A bidet, by chance.
I know when my grandfather was living, he used to go there very early, every morning, to take care of the trees with the farmer. He loved he could see, sitting on the toilette, the railway and the trains passing by, at the end of the view. He liked to be there alone with my grandmother, Rosa.
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