C 'were twice under a bridge, flowing water in a green and cold, the other was filled with flat stones, smoothed, dried and colored coins of old geological ages.
Ugo fly fishing immediately downstream of the bridge, where the river was a small pit and deep, the water slowed down its flow after a cascade accelerated in low and narrow between two gengoni. The water was so clear that they saw the fisherman and the trout do not bite, they simply turn around the bait with great torment.
Hugh was not a big fisherman, so that if he had to live than it was fishing, he would have died long ago. Was to fish in this remote mountain stream mainly because he was trying to calm his inner sea that only the sounds of nature could still intact. The sound of flowing water on the round stones, the smell of musk that devoured gengoni fallen from somewhere, the lament the Cuckoo from some undetermined point in the old woods, the trails that sometimes resinous the wind carried under his nostrils, the bitter cold of the morning was that one with the surrounding silence, almost painful after a full week passed in the chaotic din of the city.
He had awakened early, quietly not to wake no one home, was still in his pajamas down to the bottom where he dressed as a fisherman wool long pants, corduroy shirt, sweater, corduroy pants at great cost, long rubber boots, oilskin jacket and wearing a red beret, unique and personal touch eccentric. He filled the pockets of the vest with everything you need for the day of a fisherman: cigarettes, lighter, and pipe tobacco, candy and ... warmer catalysts, took the box, ready to fish the night before and went on his old scooter towards the coveted goal. The vehicle suffered
climbing the switchbacks leading to the creek, the road became increasingly disjointed as they went up: big hole were filled with colored water as gymkhana obstacles to overcome.
Ugo breathed deeply, looked around as if it were distracted the first time that happened over there, all the curious, everything looked, but the road and every so often ended up in mailboxes around spraying the broth. Every hole was a goal that Ugo emphasized with a scream of joy bursting soon swallowed up among the branches of the forest that lapped the road, splashing water was like the explosion of a stage idol winner.
Ugo Ugo was happier and happier and had the Formichino suffering, but it was a mechanical means even more subservient to man without the possibility to reject out of hand as it did a bison as a runaway horse angry or mad. The control levers were firmly in the hands and feet of the man and answered mechanically, with a definite and unchanging relationship to its strength.
began the dirt road, where the earth had a pink color as the face of a Renaissance Madonna. Hugh felt inspired by romance and began to zigzag, but lengthening the journey by reducing the slope to facilitate Rumi puffing in the tube of the exhaust steam in a chimney encrusted. The wheels skidded on the smooth rocks finest, throwing the bigger ones back or side: every obstacle in their path reply with a sharp counterpoint to the plaintive sound of the engine packed and monotonous.
The sun was still below the mountains.
Hugh took out a cigarette without filter jacket pocket, lit the flame with parrying the gnarled hand, took a deep breath the smoke in my throat watching intensely purple float, trying to capture a suspected motorcycle. Not seeing him, he closed his eyes for a moment and then exhale all the smoke ... and something else. It was already stopped for several hours on the bed of the stream, his net was empty as well as the national package. Every now and then changed the fly, but the result was always the same, however, not angry, fishing was not for angry, but contrary to relax. According to his theory, and Hugh had several of those theories regarding various aspects of life and all original in their own way, take the fish was equivalent to a trouble: pulling it out could unhook, could be undersized and must be released, the hook could stick in the deep creases of the mouth, needed tools, she could struggle, had to stun him then dropping it on a big stone ...
was much better than bite. Of this hypothesis, on the other applicant had made a boast with friends at the bar and an insignificant detail at home.
After the pack of cigarettes went to the pipe, not until you have cleaned your mouth with some mint candy and licorice. To prepare the tobacco needed a break because they served both hands. Then he sat on the central pile of the bridge and passed the ignition during the rite, with clockwork precision the acceleration of 9:54, the same as in the past already at 6.14, while Hugh went down the steep and narrow path that connects the road to the creek with the load of work to do in the big city. Now it was almost empty when excluding the crew of the valley and some gossip that came back with a shopping bag filled. This
train was the only one left on that secondary line intended to be pruned sooner or later, but first had to fix the road. The train was the only contact between the nature of those places, as old as time, and the new industrial society just transplanted, including an unspecified era dominated by vegetation and animals and the times dominated modern man and his machines. Without that train Ugo could be the cave man who was fishing with his club (by the way would be a problem!) Or the Roman peasant who fished with the net of rope or the knight-errant who cross the river on his white horse mare, or the lout of all ages who drank in the clear spring, or simply his maternal grandfather with a white wig that in those places had been a forester at the time of the invasion Napoleon.
often dreamed of a cigarette and the other stories where the contours differed, but he was always the hero, the king Ugus, Emperor Hugh I (and last), the terrible bandit Brugo the brute, the general in command Ugorsky Austro-Hungarian troops, the famous artist Ugo Ughi passage in these mountains during a tour through the streets of Europe ...
One could safely say that Hugh to go fishing was like going to the theater, if you could do so without paying the ticket.
The train whistle, and above all the trembling of the pylon, but brought him back to reality, the divide between city and mountains, the inconsistency between actions and dreams, the industry and dense black smoke, the deafening noise of traffic, its stupid and repetitive work, its silly and meaningless life, equal to that of many others like him.
Ugo was a machinist in an engineering industry, which dealt with weapons and war equipment. It all began because his family had for generations a family of gunsmiths and then his father sent him to the school director to prepare for professional turner to work in the shop, but then his father died too early without being able to send to Hugh the difficult job . Then sought help from the uncles, even their skilled craftsmen, but the times were difficult and many children, that his grandson always walked further down the waiting list. They simply put next to the name, a good word for recruitment in the factory. Hugh was not cut out to the factory for many things he was not cut out for the truth, and that was for him as an assumption in jail and soon began to think about tax evasion.
Now after some years we can say that if he had not used however he was made a reason, the work was only a parenthesis in his life, a long period but then not longer than most parentheses most men devote to sleep. Hugh drew on this incident by stealing their sleep hours to devote to his passions.
Like all true dealer, was not a hunting rifle was to be considered a work of art rather than a simple weapon evolved relative of the sling and the rifle was to be exhibited in the rifle hanging on the wall, like a child care , stroked like a lady, but never consumed in the harsh and dangerous hunting. Then search for the contact with nature that had filled her childhood, not the left that the activity of fishing.
The sun was out in the open.
(continued)
