"Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts." Benito Mussolini (Italian dictator, 1883-1945)
"Da' la bambina a me'," l'uomo ha ditto. "Damela!" I reread what I had just written in the leather-bound notebook my Nonno had recently given me for my fifteenth birthday, so that I could write down all the stories he told me, and then crossed it out. Although I understood enough of his country's dialect to understand the tales he told, I would not be able to relay the words on paper exactly how he said them. I started again.
"Give me the baby," the man said. "Give her to me!" He pointed to the baby girl, who was swaddled in dirty stain-riddled rags, and with the other hand, pressed his shiny shotgun into the temple of the younger man who was cradling the sleeping baby in his arms. The two men stared into each other's eyes challengingly, but when the gunman rotated the safety lever with his thumb, sweat poured down the other man's face, and he uttered despairingly, "I can not! She is all my wife and I have left in this world. You have already taken all our money and assets, our respectability, and our wedding rings, all for the sake of your Duce's collection, what do you want with a child?"
He took a step backward, but the gun's barrel stayed pressed to his temple as the gunman walked forward, and his back was now pressed against the wall. He was cornered and started yelling out to his wife, Evalina, who was sleeping in the next room. The gunman ferociously put his hand over his victim's mouth, silencing him, and whispered, "you know that my beloved wife cannot bear children. It's all that she asks for and yet God will not deliver her wishes, so it is I who must take matters into my own hands."
With that, he leaned towards the now whimpering man, kissed his cheek, and determinedly took the baby, cradling her in the nook of his left arm. His other hand firmly pulled the trigger, and the piercing sound of the gunshot awoke the sleeping baby, her wails echoing in the bare room. As her father slumped to his death, quietly dying on the stone floor, the one who had taken his life looked down at him and said "goodnight, my cousin," then turned and ran out into the starry night.
YOU ARE READING
Crimson Feathers
General FictionGeorgina struggles to cope with the rage that she feels after uncovering her true family history, not wanting to disturb her family's stable sense of belonging. Should the past stay sacred? She delves back in time to war torn Italy to try and unders...
