I don't remember how it happened. Perhaps the few midshipmen who normally served as inspectors had been assigned to command for the arrival of a few personalities ... perhaps their number had fallen below the minimum level and they were expecting the new complement officers ... the fact is that, although I was an "elderly" vessel lieutenant and a representative of Maricommi Napoli, I "won" a day as an inspection officer at the Naval Base.
On the other hand even doing the inspection officer is a bit like riding a bicycle ... once you learn it's not so difficult to do it again ... and so, like a good "soldier militar", I used a scarf to the guardhouse .
Having detected the disemboweling ensign - who passed me the deliveries with the same respectful discomfort of a seminarian charged with reminding a bishop how to celebrate Mass - I discovered, with some relief, that I was not the only "senior" catapulted to the guardhouse.
Even the Petty Officer who would have joined me for the day, and whom I knew, was sufficiently ahead in his career and - in addition to the astonished disappointment for having been put on guard (I don't remember why he had always been exempt) - he exhibited his colorful theory on the mental faculties of those who had put him to work, at his age, "'o guaglione' e puteca" ("the boy from the workshop").
The day started well !!
I assured him that, even as an elderly person, I understood his discomfort and that he would not do anything more than what was foreseen by the deliveries; after which, having noted with pleasure that at least the service sailor had no particular claims to expose, I set out to face the day.
The latter took place quietly enough to allow me to read several times the voluminous collection of deliveries, consisting of a series of plastic folders, hooked in a binder and containing the usual typed instructions for the good performance of the service.
I also had time to read the interesting notes in pen affixed to the inside of the cover by all those who, having succeeded over time in the ungrateful task of the guard, had seen fit to leave to posterity a trace of their passage in the form of deep and illuminating thoughts of the type "5 ° / 68 is over" or "recruit you must die" or ... no, this is better not to bring it back (sin, however; it was vulgar but very funny).
Reading, I discovered, thus, that the disassembling seminarian had failed to tell me about a patrol to be carried out at 18.00, by the non-commissioned officer, to check the regular closure - with padlock and chain - of a gate that allowed access to the Naval Base from cliff placed behind the guesthouse.
I glanced at the clock ... it was about 18.00 pm and I informed the non-commissioned officer who set out for the patrol.
He returned after about an hour.
He approached me and, bending his lips down, looked at me and said "Mah!"
The expressed concept was too deep for it not to be discussed.
So I asked "What is it? Something wrong?"
"No, commissa ', everything is fine ... only that I lost a little time to find the gate ... but that ..." and here he raised his thumb, stretched his forefinger and quickly rotated the second along the its own longitudinal axis making the first one swing from left to right a couple of times.
"What does it mean?" and I also raised my thumb, extended my index finger and made the tarantella dance.
"That the gate is not there"
"What does it mean that the gate is not there?"
"Commissioner, do you know when something is there and when something does not fit in? And the gate is not there".
It seemed a joke and then I started with a tirade about the fact that if he did not want to do the patrol I did not care, that there was no seniority that he held, that the patrol was done even if it was a rupture of boxes - for the truth I used a sort of unrepeatable synonym, but the circumstances required it - and that ... when a voice behind me interrupted my reprimand (a little 'I was sorry because it seemed to me that I had started well).
"Good evening, captain" - at the time, the commissioners were calling us with the rank of the army - and then, to the marshal's address: "Ué, and what are you doing here?
He was a colleague of my watch-mate, who was leaving the base.
"U, hello ... eh, they put me on guard ... I was talking to the captain of this fact of the patrol at the gate on the cliff and I was saying that ..."
"The round? ... at the cliff gate?"
"And deliveries say so"
"No - turning to me, hurriedly - it happens ... and there's no need ... that ... the gate ... has not been there for a couple of years. problem to go through the trucks when they did the work and then they did not put it back in. Well, I say hello, good evening ". And he left.
It was too much, they clearly agreed to make fun of me!
"And so the gate is not there ?! - I exclaimed - and that's okay, I'll go see if I can find it" and left quickly and angry at the gate that, according to them, was not there.
When I reached the cliff I realized that I had arrived without encountering any gate. I made my way back, looking carefully, but without luck, the phantom gate that - to tell the truth - gave the impression of not being there.
I returned to the guardhouse with a step that, fast and angry, had turned into slow and disheartened.
To the questioning glance of the marshal I replied "crazy things, the gate is not there" and, while he was looking at me like "and what did I tell you?", I went straight to the guardroom desk to take the register of the patrols, open which I could read that, in spite of the overt absence of the gate, for a long time there was written, by the (self-styled) responsible for the guard, "performed patrol at the gate on the cliff side, nothing to report"
I reported the same wording on the register, specifying, in addition and for the information of the authors of the deliveries, that in the "nothing to report" was also included the gate of which the unequivocal and objective lack had been ascertained.
I later learned that - I do not know if as a result of this report - the deliveries had been changed with the indication that the watch in question was momentarily suspended.
Perhaps waiting for the gate.
