After the military service carried out in the most prestigious port of Italy in Porto, the few months of disengagement had passed between the pages of the numerous texts for the competition by Officer Commissioner of the Navy and the usual evenings with friends.
Well, winning the competition I had at least a job and a bit of personal gratification, having managed to emerge from the magma of unemployment after only a few months of inactivity. In the end, even for the Navy and not just for the university, I did not have to be that bad. The same benevolence was reserved to me after the year spent in the Academy, for the military and professional training course, although to my advantage there was certainly the fear, typical of all bureaucracy, of departing from the judgment of the predecessors. In a country where we go forward for recommendations, touching the "head of class" could mean being an enemy of his august and patron saint, although, for what concerns me, mine had the same name used by Ulisse with Polyphemus.
Now, however, I was at my first service destination, my first real boarding!
I had the first demonstration of my inexperience when, to change a light bulb of the on-board housing - or "dressing room", in the marine jargon - I had called the Marshal "Cargo Chief", nothing other than His Excellency " chief storekeeper ", the supreme being of the high and low voltage.
Presenting himself, late, with the grimace of someone who speaks to you with respect to the degree inversely proportional to the person's esteem, he reported with the irony that the old man uses with the recruit “he could also call the Commander, maybe he is interested in having an account of the state of the bulbs in his dressing room ”.
That time I needed to keep in mind that in all communities there is a system of division of roles and authority that, if you do not learn at school, it is good to learn as soon as possible, in the live lessons, interactive and interdisciplinary that it gives you life.
The ship, the beautiful school ship of the Italian Navy, "the most beautiful ship in the world" as is often indicated by the media (for sailors simply "il Vespucci"), during the period in which I arrived on board was making the final touches in the salon of beauty, as befits beautiful ladies.
In fact, in the four to five months between one campaign and the other, the ship was entrusted with the care of carpenters and skilled mechanic masters to resume appropriate forms and shouts, as with ladies of rank, which make you understand that, of course, time can not be imprisoned, but it can still undergo some precautionary measures.
In spite of the shining beauty of spring and summer, during the months of maintenance, the ship was dirty and slammed, while still letting it see its potential as an enchanting lord. At that time, the staff was condemned to hard work and no immediate complacency, at least until April, when the ship began to sail again, for the setting of the new crew.
As an older Navy ship, it was also the flagship of the Commander in Chief. So, sometimes - and more and more frequently, with the approach of the beautiful season - people were asked to redo the make-up, fully decorated, for some ceremony.
The official colleagues - scoundrels! ... but said with sympathy - they had not delayed to insert me in the "turn of scarf", of inspection officer. Entrusted to the care of the senior officer of the shift, I had received few but significant directives: "you make yourself Monday and Wednesday with me until eight in the evening, then on Friday you start alone. At 8 in the morning the flag-raising takes place (the commands are "flag-raising!", "Vault!", "Re-enter!") At sunset the flag-bearer ("ammainabandiera!", "In bando!", "Re-enter!") . You must inform the headquarters of the Chief in charge about the precise and careful time, which as an older ship all settle on you. For the crew breakfast at seven, lunch at half, dinner at seven. I got it?"
Here, all here, my complete delivery.
My first "solo" guard saw me as a companion of a reduced crew, for the Christmas license, and of a heavy and continuous rain. Most of the day I passed it, then, under deck, apart from the ceremonies of raising and lowering the flag, but only because to do it indoors I would have to raise and lower the flag using the Christmas tree.
The next guard fell on the day when the chief admiral in charge had arranged, on his "ship, holy mass, with Christmas greetings and exchange of the usual" courtesy of use. "
In the absence of the ship's captain, the command stick had ended up in the hands of the second commander (commonly known as "the Second"), a small Genoese mustache with the air of the tombeur de femme a little "I wish but I cannot ". As head of the shop on board, he had made conspicuous purchases of gadgets of poor quality, objectively ugly, indeed of an ugliness inversely proportional to the beauty of the owner of the shop from which they were bought and which, no doubt, employed his ascendancy as incentive to purchase.
That day, therefore, the most beautiful ship in the world could use the work of the least sailor inspector in the world, so little salty to avoid even the salt at the table.
The activity of an inspection officer, for those who had the good fortune of counting little or nothing in the economy of the ship, could also be considered a restful activity. Not having much to do in ordinary occupations, the service could also be considered an excellent excuse to escape the little and generally very diluted, work to do. The dismantled and cared-out unit, in fact handed over to the experience of the contractors and the arsenal workers (which the city calls "arsenalotti"), could become the stage on which to entertain recruits in the tales of the naval campaign just ended or, alternatively, a well-heated place, suitable for hospitality, in which to find a corner in which to curl up and rest. For the officers, then, a comfortable place to sit in the most beautiful circle in the world, the "official square", was always there and the beautiful comfortable armchairs were always available to receive even a little gallon.
The repetitiveness of life on board made the unpredictable an extremely remote fact and the warm routine, even if immersed in the cold waters of the north, provided an excellent viaticum for eyelids ever more inclined to close. However, it wasn't like that for me. In a Navy that still made cash the sovereign means of payment, being the on-board cashier involved a considerable burden and did not allow the rhythm and attention to be loosened, also because, once the cash came out of the cash register, by mistake, the money they would not have come back, except by passing, as a kind of monopolies, by the way of my pockets. Thus the service of inspection officer was transformed into a small variant of ordinary work in which, in addition to being available for administrative needs, I also had to be, for that day, the lightning rod of the ship and the perpetual object of the incazzature of the Second because - obviously - if something was wrong as it should have gone, the responsibility did not fall on who the services had to organize them (ie himself) but on who, maybe a few minutes before, had received a bunch of keys, a sealed envelope , together with the privilege of wearing the traditional Savoy blue scarf, until eight the following day. Ultimately, the day - as far as I was concerned - became a terrible imitation of the "games without frontiers" in which the competitor practiced an apparently simple operation, but with various handicaps, such as a greasy and slippery background, buckets of water cold on him, sudden pitfalls, and so on. At the very least, to silence the handicaps deriving from having to constantly close and reopen the cash register because it is called upon to carry out important general supervision activities ("Comandà has arrived nu 'pack' and carabiners. What a facem? Chiamamm or 'nostromo?" - answer - " But no, what do you say ... let's call the doctor ... ") my handicap was to prevent the scarf from getting stuck in every possible corner of the administrative office, where the cashier was and what, much more risky, to avoid getting soaked in frequent passages on deck, due to the frequent and unexpected service calls.
Among these, the clear call of the loudspeaker "the inspection officer in the second commander's dressing room!"
I close the cash register, with disappointment, because interrupting the recordings meant that I had to resume an undigested work and always left at the bottom, out of sincere distaste. I put the documents paid in the safe, I close everything (... porcamiseria, the scarf is stuck in the safe!), I close the office and I introduce myself to the "second":
Commander commands!
Listen, in an hour the commander in chief will arrive with the guests ...
Yes, commander, it is on daily deliveries.
Well, let me know if the Sheikh is outside.
Commands, Commander! (expression of stupid, hidden to not always seem what never knows an accident of what happens around him) ...
Every now and then, I said to myself, the chosen profession can present that bit of extra adventure. If I had chosen the profession of sailor, in order to live a less sedentary life and a little more as a privateer, one reason had to be there and, occasionally, some little taste of adventure, to arrive. Great emotions were about to break into my life and this had to be a first modest taste.
After having fine-tuned the beautiful uniform, I looked out over the barcarizzo's platform, peering into the distance (say a hundred yards) trying to see the Mercedes or limousine parade that certainly would have preceded the arrival of the Arab prince. No question (which would have solved the problem without trailing) on what a Muslim sheik did at a Christmas ceremony in the cold of La Spezia and arriving before the admiral, from whom he should, instead, be accompanied or, at least, received?
It is good that Pope Woytila, with the meetings in Assisi, had started a closer ecumenical dialogue, the atmosphere of relaxation after the cold war is fine, everything is fine, but what the hell! So ... look at five, look at 10 minutes ... you can't see anyone. "The inspection officer in the commander's dressing room in second!" - the loudspeaker thunders.
Commands, commander. I was out here.
Finally. Then?
So what, commander? I would come to report as soon as I saw the cars, commander.
The machines of what?
Of the guests, commander.
But the guests will arrive in half an hour. What have you been doing so far?
I've been on the barcarizzo to execute your order.
My order, which one?
To tell you when the sheikh came.
The description of a laugh is always a problematic fact, worthy of prolonged and assiduous studies, such as those, perhaps less intense, of the experts who have dealt with the interpretation of Lisa's smile. We all know how to laugh, but none of us would be able to describe, if you could see it in a snapshot, your face, your grimaces, in the act of laughing. Every description, even the most accurate, would always leave you unsatisfied. Imagine the pain you feel, even physically, in trying to interpret someone else's laughter. The radio commentators succeed in making the idea of the actions they see unravel on the playing field, to the listeners who, through their voices, make their imagination guide, each one interpreting the image described in his own way. I will try to do the same exercise.
The second raised his left mustache in an incredulous expression, made even more explicit by the fact that he could not open his mouth in the typical "funnel face" that all unbelievers assume, because the right side of the mouth housed a Tuscan medium (lit). Then, a cigar on the right, a lip and a mustache slightly raised to the left, a look intent on observing my eyes, which initially expressed the pride of those who expect to be decorated in the field, but who slowly decline downwards, like those of those who , freeing himself from a light, light bisognino, on any street milestone, he realizes only while two carabinieri are arriving on horseback that the stone is actually a tombstone, that the lawn around is instead a well-kept garden and that on the stone there is no stone it is no distance in kilometers, but it is reported, in gold letters, the inscription "To the father of the Fatherland - sacred place".
Summing up the sequence ... look at me ... look at the cigar ... look at me ... look around (looking for witnesses or a possible elf spirit or the camera of "jokes aside") ... look at me. Cigar and looks. Looks and cigar. Growing frowning of the forehead, cigar and look, I begin to make a moderate backward movement, cigar and look ... attention! Hand with a cigar, a shadow of a bib on the right corner of his lips and, slowly, like the rotor of a biplane from the Second World War, pride of the national autarkic industry, slowly ...
Wow ... Wow ... Wow Wow ... Wow. Uahhahahahaha.
At this point the sergeant of the antecedent secretary command arrived, who had understood, in his consummate cunning of a man accustomed to the gossip of the General Staff, that it was a matter of fact juicy for the comments of radio prora ".
Meanwhile the commander continued his Uahhahahaha (with the accent, which is more cool) ... Uah Uah Uah hahaha ...
Time seemed to stop. The ship seemed to me a forest of ears stretched to suck every moment of that coarse laugh. I think that even the cranes of the military port stopped their loads in the void, the carabinieri at the entrance circulated the incoming and outgoing vehicles, making the gesture of those who only asked for silence. An infinite time condensed in the few seconds that passed between the last Uahhà and the voice of the commander who wondered
but is this the inspection officer? This one waited for the sheik to arrive with the car in procession! Barmy! (I fear that at that precise moment even the earth, to contribute to maximum silence, stopped rotating on its axis)
I did not know where to look anymore. I chose to look through the windows of the warehouse that could be seen through the porthole of the dressing room.
The "sceiccco" is the red and blue striped tent that had to be mounted on the quarterdeck! But who sent this to us? - he turned to the marshal who seemed to take notes with his mind to be transcribed on an invisible notebook and who, to the question, winked with the face of someone who shuns responsibility.
The god of the commissioners, after having had fun behind my shoulders, turned to pity and wanted to send me some help. I felt a reddish reflection and I came with a calm, relaxed, aint but firm.
Commander commands! The tent has been mounted for half an hour, as can be seen from its own porthole. Are there any other commands?
Silence.
Body at attention, heel strike. Behind and away, while in my head resounded, but with my own voice the words "Fool! Fool! Fool!"
Giuseppe Sfacteria
