Entering the little town one receives the impression that nothing
abnormal has happened there.
Truly few people are circulating in the streets, the shops are open,
women are standing at the doors of their houses, sewing, chattering,
while streams of children play in the sun. We go about the street which
bears the name of Cardinal Prisco. It is extremely quiet, almost asleep
in the meridian hours and we get to the Oratorio.
At the end of the road, between two houses we are surprised to see a
kind of fence made of wood and beams, in the shape of a cross. Is it a
barricade? No it is the barrier! On the other side there is lava.
There it is, in fact, the black enemy, there in the village, running
between two wings of houses, sneaking in a little lane, there it lies
dead without the strength to go any farther.
And this is only a little stream, but at a short distance, what vast
and imposing river. All the Oratorio square is invaded and submerged.
It is like a row of stormy waves, petrified as by a strange prodigy,
standing erect among the edifices. Here, and there on the crest, a
soldier, a sentinel appears. The image of S. Anna, the patron of the
place has been taken elsewhere to a house on the ground floor, in
Oratorio street, and the opened windows look like empty, while the
bells hang in a silence which will have no end. I turn to another side,
through a path the soldiers are opening. I pass between two lines of
infantry diggers, small creatures curved on the stones, in an audacious
and patient work.
They look and smile under the shade of their straw hats, and start
again to work.
How many days have they been there?
How long will they still remain? Who knows? They themselves don't
know it. And they bend on the fatiguing and tenacious work like brave
boys asking nothing for themselves, and they give all their fatigue,
strength, youth, happy in the hard striking of their picks, in the hard
digging of their hoe, singing softly the ritornelli, of their native
songs as if they were in their native villages beyond the mountains
working in the corn fields or among the vines.