The book of my life
NoonAugust 4, 2022 – 09:49 am
From there began the most beautiful years who wanted to become King of the Floridiana
from Antonio Sacco
Can I play with you?. It was my grandfather who told me to try. If you don’t ask him, you’ll always be watching, he told me while he was sitting on one of the many benches of the Floridiana. And I tried. I was brave, then … Also because I had just read The Boys of Via Pal, the first really my book, given to me for promotion from third to fourth grade by a kind lady who lived in the building in Via Cimarosa of which my father was the doorman. During the year she had been very interested in my scholastic path in the class of maestro Beghelli at Domenico Morelli in via Massimo Stanzione. To my chagrin she had managed to persuade my parents not to let me go to the urchins of the Belvedere, free to play football in the open space that accompanies the first meters of one of the oldest and most beautiful roads in Vomero. Antonio has to study, she told my parents that they thought exactly the same way… The excellent grades in the report card, especially in Italian and in history, geography and science had confirmed her that she was right. And that she deserved a gift: a book.
Here, after 55 years, I can say, even with some certainty, despite the many masterpieces read and loved, that I Ragazzi della via Pal, written by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnar between 1906 and 1907, is for me the book of life. That’s right, a novel read just before turning 9, with the blissful ingenuity of a child uprooted from his homeland, Cervinara in Valle Caudina, from the freedom to move without worries between furrows in the countryside, chestnut woods, streams and deposits. made of clay and catapulted between the buildings and streets of Vomero, a prisoner of a world that left no room for the desire to move, to play, to fantasize. And then, I was even denied that open space in Via Belvedere to avoid bad company …
In The Boys of Via Pal I found a story that belonged to me, albeit in a city thousands of kilometers away, with boys perhaps a little older than me as protagonists, to whom I joined the desire to defend their own space for games. What adults often deny to children when they build the buildings and do not leave the grass, as Adriano Celentano sang in the same year in The Boy of Via Gluck. Here, unconsciously or maybe not, just then I began to create my own cultural base made up of reading and listening, stories and music. The boys of Pal Street, many officers and only one simple soldier, the small and frail Nemecsek, have created their playground in an open space of building land where no houses have yet been built, they have made that land and the Rocky Mountains become the prairie. stacks of wood: children’s imagination has no limits. In Budapest at the end of the nineteenth century, the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the boys are militarily organized. At their command is the intrepid and wise Boka, very fond of little Nemecsek. When the rival gang of the Red Shirts, led by Ats and whose fearsome warriors are the handsome Pasztor brothers, decides to occupy the open space in via Pal to transform it into his kingdom, war breaks out. Made up of heroic acts and betrayals, of forays into enemy territory and defense. Little Nemecsek becomes the true protagonist of the story, the great but fragile hero who pays his courage with his life, suffering from pneumonia contracted after being thrown into a pond by the Red Shirts who had discovered him while watching their moves. Although seriously ill, escaped from home, during the last battle he throws himself on Ats, knocks him down, and makes his family win. the last act of courage, after a harrowing encounter with Boka, Nemecesek dies. And with him, however, the possibility of the boys to continue playing in the open space of via Pal also dies. Because Boka, distraught by the tragedy, reaches the camp and discovers that the owner of the land is soon to have a palace built. A blow to the heart, his entry into real life, that of adults who leave no room for the fantasies of the little ones.
Caged between the buildings and the streets of Vomero, I was lucky. I found my playground in via Cimarosa, not far from my house, in a real park: the Floridiana. I remember that I almost forced my grandfather to take me there and I found the green of Cervinara, large meadows, woods, fountains, a hill that could become Forte Alamo, even a theater that could be transformed into an arena for gladiators. And then many open spaces to play football, like the one on which those kids who I asked Can I play with you were having fun with, thanks to the reading of the first real book of my life. Of course it was forbidden by the adults, by the guardians of the Floridiana, and therefore it was even more beautiful to be able to play, hide the ball or have it thrown from the building that overlooked (and overlooks) the eucalyptus forest in which one of the budding footballers lived. Gianni, the boss, answered S, but go to the door. Thus began the best years of little Antonio who wanted to become King of the Floridiana. But that’s another story.
August 4, 2022 | 09:49
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