As tears go by

// 19 Longarone

The valley was surrounded by steep silent mountains. The dam was looming over everything. It was no more a dam, also, if it looked like. Its basin was full of rocks, and fallen off the mountain soil; the spilling water was just a minimum part of the mixture. In the air there was a strange silence like in a cemetery. Actually, the place was a graveyard, also if the towns had been rebuilt and the jobs were thriving. It was eleven in the morning. The raw and cold air pinched her skin. The main drag called via Prati was the backbone of a network of streets and turnoffs full of warehouses, hangars, concrete silos and other facilities storing wood, sand, and gravel. The bottom of the valley was split in two by a river running on a white-washed rocky bed. She studied the yard in front of her. It was full of snow. No footprints in it. In a corner, a white van. It had no wheels and the windshield had disappeared. It was just a clunker. In another corner, a rusty dumpster full of waste. Years of waste. None had touched it. Some yellow grass, killed by the cold, grew out. The sign on the roof was dirty and a letter was missing, but it was still readable: "(F)alegnameria Da BIZ". She blew air through her pursued lips. Didn't expect that thing. Tears filled her eyes. It was like to be alone in the sea again, without the life raft. Her mind raced a solution, but didn't find any one. Then she saw a movement in the corner of her eye. A guy walked out from a nearby gate. Then a woman followed, and another one. They were workers clocking out. Heading downtown. Anastasya ran to the last worker and greeted her. The woman looked at her with big sweet eyes and fair thin hair. She greeted Anastasya too, and kept walking because she told her she had to get in the bus on the "statale", the main street. Anastasya followed suit. They started to chat in Russian. The woman was from Moldova. Her name was Galina. She was friendly and open-minded. She lived in Cimolais, the other side of the dam, for ten years. Anastasya asked her about the carpenter's shop. Galina giggled. It closed down two years before. She told her the old carpenter had drank himself to death. His only son went to live abroad. They had two workers, one fell to death from a roof; the other one, Svagna, drank his time out in a joint in a nearby hamlet, Igne. "Do you want to speak with him? His name is Moreno Svagna, but everybody calls him – Conte Negroni -, his favourite drink. Offer him a Negroni and you will make him happy and chatty like a bird."

They crossed the statale paying attention to the trucks and cars barrelling down.

Galina giggled. "I know he is still alive and kicking because in the early afternoon he sits here at the bus station and buttonholes all the bystanders, especially women. Get that direction and you'll find yourself in Igne. There is just one bar. Here my bus coming. Luckily we worked only four hours today. Nice to speak with you in Russian. Here they are all sad and silent all the time, and mostly they don't like foreigners. You can read it in their eyes. Pakà sistrà."

Anastasya waved hello, doubled back and headed towards Igne.