Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

By: Bikerider

Frozen mist hugs the snow-crusted ground obscuring the countryside, as I steer my rental car to the shoulder of the road and turn off the ignition. I sit quietly, collecting my thoughts and hearing only my own breathing. I burn my tongue, and my glasses fog, as I sip hot black coffee, thick as paint, that I brought along in my Thermos. I have come three-thousand miles in search of answers, but I know some of those answers will never be found. I look out and see the trail in the snow, the only evidence that I've been here before—twice, to be accurate, on each of the previous two mornings.

I zip up my jacket until I feel the cold metal against my neck, then I tug my hat down over my ears, the wool rough against my ears. Finally I push my fingers into the soft warmth of my insulated leather gloves. A warning buzzer comes to life as I push the car door open and step out into the frigid, early morning December air. Outside, the only sound is the ticking of the car engine as it cools. Brittle snow crunches under my boots as I walk around the car. As I bend between two strands of barbed wire, my coat is pierced by a barb, and the sharp metal scrapes against my cold skin. I shrug, and I hear my nylon jacket rip as I pull away. When I stand my feet are on the cleared frozen path made by my previous visits. I step on the bent strands of grass, frozen now that they have been exposed to the cold air. They crunch under my feet like dried twigs.

I look out onto what were once the grounds of one of the worst mental hospitals in northern Italy. It's the place where Mussolini sent his wife when she became an inconvenience; the place where sixty-years-ago impoverished people were imprisoned; and it's the place my grandmother spent the last fourteen years of her life—ignored and abandoned. The buildings are gone now, demolished and bulldozed into the hillside; but a spirit of ugliness remains. The whine of a gentle breeze against bare branches of sleeping trees is like the voice of a ghost longing to tell its story to someone willing to listen. Someone like me.

. . .

In nineteen-thirty-seven a crushing poverty had settled over northern Italy, veiling it in hunger and disease. World War II loomed, but its beginnings had already ravaged the country, destroying structures built to endure the test of time, not the trauma of bombs whistling from the sky. A hungry populace watched as powerful armies advanced through once well-maintained farms, turning fertile ground into muck and mire. At night, mothers' lying in their quiet beds hear the sobs of their hungry children while listening to the distant guns of war shouting out the insanity of the world around her.

My grandfather had already immigrated to America, but when Italy joined the Axis powers, he was prohibited from sending money to his family, as he had been doing for two years. My grandmother and her five children were left to fend for themselves at a time when life was being cheapened by war—no one would notice the loss of a lone woman and her children. As winter moved forward, crusting the land with frozen mist, people starved; some died of easily-cured diseases; and some were separated from their families due to poverty and ignorance.

On a cold Sunday morning in March my grandmother stoked the fire in the kitchen stove as the smell of burning wood stung her nose. The metal handle was hot against her fingers as she pushed the stove door shut. She wrapped a silk scarf around her head and felt the smooth material against her cheek , then she quietly walked out into the cold.

Santa Maria Del Assunta had served the residents of Bresimo for over one-hundred-years. Angela Emma Severino had found comfort inside the walls of this church for as long as she could remember. The church where she and her five children were baptized was warm, the air was steeped in the aroma of burning candles. The pews were full of people coughing and sneezing that morning, she tried to find a private place to sit . Communion had just ended, the taste of wine still strong on her tongue, and as Father Pietro walked to the altar the old wooden doors of the church burst open, a blast of cold air caused Angela to pull her scarf tight around her neck. Framed in the morning brightness that filled the open doorway, a man began shouting.

"Fume! Fire!"

All eyes turned toward the door as the man turned and ran. The men seated in the pews were the first to stand and follow him, then the women file out quickly, my grandmother among them. Father Pietro's long, black robes swirled over the white marble floor as he hurried past the empty pews and out into the bright cold air.

My grandmother ran when she saw the dark plumes of smoke roiling into the sky above her house—the house where her children slept. The acrid smell of burning wood stung the eyes of a group of women as they held her, preventing her from running into the smoking house. A long line of men passed buckets of water to each other to douse the flames. Within a few minutes a man named Gino, his face darkened with soot, came out of the front door and announced the fire had been extinguished. He turned and ushered the children through the door. The frightened children ran to their mother and surrounded her as she fell to her knees and hugged and kissed each of them in turn, then raised her eyes to the clear sky and thanked God for their safety.

. . .

It didn't take long before her neighbors, people Angela knew for most of her life, began to accuse her of setting the fire on purpose in an attempt to kill her children rather than watch them suffer. Her cries that it was an accident fell on deaf ears.

The authorities were called, and as my grandmother stood in the cold, filled with fear and stress. She staggered and then fainted, falling to the frozen ground. As she was tended to, the Carabinieri arrived and asked Father Pietro to help in taking my grandmother into custody. They waited at the Priest's house.

When she awoke her children were gone. "Where are my children?" she asked. And then looking around nervously, her eyes became wide with fear. "Where are my children!" she shouted.

"It's alright, Angela." A dark form hovered over her, his black robes hanging almost to the ground. His short, rotund body was silhouetted by the sun going down behind him. Specks of grey ash spotted his black hat. His face was pinched with concern. He lips formed a thin, straight line. "The children have been taken to safety," he said." Father Pietro put a cup to her lips; the fiery Grappa burned her throat as the strong liquor spilled into her mouth and she swallowed. Tears spilled from her eyes as she choked. She tried to speak.

"They are safe with me. Where are they?"

"They are with family, Angela. Come with me to my house. "

"Father, I have done nothing wrong." Seeing a group of her neighbors she shouted, "I have done nothing wrong, please help me." Father Pietro took her arm and helped her up. As she stood her shawl slipped from her shoulders and fell to the ground, revealing her thin white arms.

Her cries for help echoed through the valley below where there was no one to hear them. As Father Pietro led her away, her shawl remained behind in a dark silken heap on the snow-covered ground.

. . .

I step along the path in the snow, and as I walk around a pine tree, powdered snow falls from a branch and floats down my back and makes me shudder. I continue around the rise in the hill to the place on the old map that indicates the area where the hospital's patients were buried in unmarked graves. Here, on the southern slope, the sun has melted the snow and I can trace the route of my previous visits, looking for signs of old graves; an indentation in the ground, an unusual rise, stones that look out of place. I pull off a glove and wipe dead leaves from the ground, the warm scent of decay fills my nose. My fingers scrape against the rough surface of cold stones. I search and search but find nothing.

My eyes scan the desolate hillside and I shudder as the cold begins to seep into my body, and my resolve begins to ebb. But then I realize that today is the Winter Solstice; a day of rebirth—of renewal. Stiffening against my disappointment at finding nothing, I continue to search for my grandmother's grave.

. . . . .

Word Count: 1541. Entry for Talent Pond Flash challenge.

1541