A protagonist was shocked to find the city he had cherished so much in ruins just a decade after he left it and returned to it to reward it with his services as a surveyor
Belina 1962
The ancient town of Belina was a safe haven for victims of wars and riots. It’s streets were carved out of the mountains with stones from the largest quarry in the state. The people were widespread in diverse cultures and believes. Street was filled with innocent men, caps on their black coats, square shaped white beards and aluminium suitcases in hand. They were all particular about files, documents, money. The women were gravely adorned in their loose fitting smocks, high heeled shoes that bludgeoned the stony earth beneath them. they were concerned with exactly what they were known for globally. baking, cooking, filling every street with the smell of dough, mashed potatoes and hash.
Every street corner had a coffee house where I just relaxed and looked into an open view of either the Arctic sea or the Jellybean mountains. The salty taste of the wind rising from the sea in its glory thrilled me and sizzled my square shaped jaws. as for the mountains, the downpour of jackals on its crazy crevices had just got me mused. The marshlands of Belina was sandfilled to capacity to provide massive land space for its inhabitants and the flooding tourists that barraged it throughout the year. The governor was simply kind and welcoming.
He served the people. He wasn’t served like the emperor of Rome where I came from. It was still the same Italy. But I had wondered why these two cities were distinct from each other. I had seen it this morning when a train from the eastern city of Napoli stormed the station. It heaved and sighed angrily at the tracks, billowing venomous carbon into the eye air of the winter. The horns so deafening it sounded like the call for judgement. Napoli was torn apart. The communist and the Fascist couldn’t live together in harmony. The people had suffered heavy taxation, extinct resources, and depleted family lives which they enjoyed before independence.
President Francolini wanted to have the whole of Naples to himself. An embodiment of greed and satiation. A man of the movement of the communist state had taken it upon himself to be a thorn in the flesh of the tyrannical governance. Olivera Calderone. Fiery blue eyed like the sky above my head, dusty, chestnut hair, lean hands I could never imagine could handle a gun with finesse, and a six feet figure that was the only indomitable force that made the rich steel country a living hell for Davide Francolini. He was a go getter and a sharp shooter. he came face to face with all targets. anyone his way! would be as good as stone. The world was run on his own rules.
He refused to cower, nor be intimidated with money as his fellow countrymen. Those of the category that could neither fight the terror, nor give up their dignity and honesty, where the ones welcomed into the beautiful city of Belina this morning – most of them were old farmers, with their straw woven hats, kids that flooded the whole street causing the dust to rise in unrest. I was moved with tears of compassion, to the kind heart of the man of the people. Roberto Grassi. The highly esteemed governor of Belina, came with his five man entourage on foot. No cars. No sirens. Just the feet of justice and equity, to welcome the people into the cottages already made for them. That was the difference Belina made from the far East of Rome.
The migrants were all installed into their new homes. Registered into a land filled with culture, honesty, transparency all Roberto incorporated.
Makes me reminisce signing those code of conduct forms myself. It felt so good. Here I come Belina, to behold what good you had in stock for me.
Belina 1972
Rome had its reforms. Olivera's men fought ceaseless to purge the evil from it. I had seen him, fleeing from cave to cave. That was the only way for survival. Whenever he killed a Blackshirt man, Davide Francolini's enforcements of power and will, he’d place a tag on them ‘This is for my wife' His beautiful wife, Isabella Consolata, was deadlier than her husband in the pursuit of peace and tranquility for Rome. She had saved and covered up her husband severally from being captured. That was why she was the main target for sexual abuse and assassination. She had survived six gunshot wounds coupled with countless rape attempts from Francolini's Blackshirts.
But that day, she was betrayed by the only friend she had. Francesca had been her cover from her fugitive runs from Rome's tyranny until she handed her over to raped by a Blackshirt. This time She got pregnant. She was disappointed that her own son would belong to a Blackshirt. Those devils that stunk than hydrogen sulphide. But I was too beautiful for her to dispose.
I could remember her looking at me with brave blue eyes. eyes full of nostalgia. that I was awesome and made her a mother. but also grieved from the fact that my father, Philippe Cantini, the on whose soul lay Francolini's prowess is my father. not Olivera Calderone. During the riot at that time, she only had one mission to accomplish. To take down the filthy Blackshirt who moaned and groaned in pleasure as he rode her beautiful skin, destroying her core of affection, and stained it with evil. Evil as black as their uniform. She gunned him down before his lofty truncheon could clatter a pregnant woman in the market who held on to him for carting away her wares which she lived on.
A colleague had inflicted a gunshot wound in retaliation. I was nine at that time. She took me to the blackshirts wife; crimson blood oozing out of her leg, Take good care of him, I need to see a doctor at the mountains. she ordered. And that was the last I saw of my jewel. The one I called the iron Isabella Consolata. My Mother.
I had gone to see the Calderone city. The new dawn that was proclaimed. Naples was back to live. I had now become an architect from the university. The career I loved the most. I was left aghast at the gory sight before me when I came back to Belina. To appreciate her for giving me reasons to live again, to ask my step mother, signora Vernice for forgiveness and reveal to her the circumstances surrounding the greatest event in her life that closed heart to love and kindness. the death of her husband - Philippe Cantini. I wanted to say 'Gracie' to Belina by surveying her rocky emblems for the proposed new face of Belina.
All I saw was the coffee shop where I once found solace torn down. The women never stopped weeping at the remains of the Roberto Grassi piazza. Roberto Grass had been punished and killed for his coalition of forces with Olivera Calderone It felt like a dream I needed to wake up from. I doused my bleary eyes in water, and lifted my face as if to see the Belina I had left a decade ago. It dawned on me that it was no more. It was a shadow now. Extinct. my step mother? migrated to New Orleans. I couldn't travel. there was work to do in Belina for my courageous step father. so I wrote her the letter. the one that would heal all her wound. the one that would set me free from guilt.
Strange mixture of ancient and modern information makes this not really historical fiction but some some amalgam of histories and situation. Not sure of the last line, because I saw an old guilt in the story by you, the narrator.
Belina is a town in Poland and is not ancient having been created in the 15th century.
Neil Armstrong played the Dissolution of America Card After His Return From Space-- the Military Dishonor Card. He had a very messy DIVORCE after a military Platoon Experience for his wife and family.
The history of four terrorist organizations in the Balkan and a general introduction to terrorism and freedom fighting. Also includes essays about religious co-existence in the Balkan and about pathological narcissism as a precursor to terrorism.
