A short story by Alessandro Franci, translated by Paolo Carnevali
I mixed reading and cigarettes in the shabby little room with 1950 decor. Outside the snow or the sober summer sun. There was a smell of disinfectant there, of rat poison, even of carbide if the workers had stopped for the night for a break, before resuming work in the tunnel.
I took the dead flies on the floor to the eaves of the tool building, I threw them on the canvas, and he ran greedily and made them into a skein of grey thread.
I read a book about the resistance in the Cisa area, right there, near the station, they killed some Germans. A pig escaped one autumn morning white with fog, his mistress came to ask me if I had seen him, he was the only one he owned, he was afraid that the Taro would drag him away. Once a dog got off the last train of the night. I slept in the adjoining room, it was accessed from the outside, it was practically the house on the floor above the station. The was dust and fluff, in a half-broken filing cabinet, we kept something: cans, flasks, pickles; there were porn comics, newspapers like “Novella 2000” and little else; I slept in a cot and before falling asleep I listened to the mice scamped behind the door, my colleague woke me up at 5.30 to change.
The toilet had to be cleaned well, it served us and the travellers, even if there were very few of them, the sink was after the toilet and if you closed the door you were crushed, in winter the pipes froze.
There was the disaster of Chernobyl and if it rained we tried to stay indoors as much as possible, we ate tins and sandwiches.
Alessandro Franci è nato nel 1954 a Firenze. Laureato in architettura. Nelle edizioni Gazebo ha pubblicato “senza luogo” (1985) “Delitti marginali” (1994) e “La pena uguale” (2009). Online per la Recherche.it gli e-book “Il fermaglio” e “La luna è nuova. Poesie 1980-86” (2012). Nel 2013 il romanzo “Il mese della luna” Ed. Ginko. Nel 2020 per la Società ed. Fiorentina “La fragilità dei pesi”. Presente in antologie e riviste.
Paolo Carnevali nato nel 1957 a Bibbiena (Arezzo). Pubblica “I dialoghi di Ebe e Liò” ed. Lalli (1984) dal cui testo è stata tratta una pièce teatrale. Nello stesso anno redige “Poetica Città” poetry-zine underground. “Trasparenze” ed. Tracce (1987) plaquette poetica recensita sul Manifesto (1988) e sul Corriere Adriatico(1990). Presente in Riviste e blog letterari. Redattore della rivista “L’Area di Broca”. Collabora con la rivista Pioggia Obliqua Scritture d’Arte come corrispondente da Londra U.K.
