A different version of this quite short story has been published on the amazing anthology Userlands edited by Dennis Cooper for Akaschic books, NYC.
Honestly I always hated that version of my story, it came out all wrong because of a series of stupid personal reasons that got in the way, and I always regretted it especially because of all the other amazing Userlands authors that surround it with great pages.
Anyway. What follows here is a version of it I might consider now decent and final, and that I read with defective pronunciation at Bluestockings, NYC on March 22nd 2007.
Some of you reading this might be reminded of an old post on this blog which in fact was the original inspiration both for the first and second version of this very piece.

*

you weird people by corpodibacco

I know that the smile of the grocery girl is because of my mother, her crazy looks, untidy hair, her odd clothes, the strange hat, the jabbering. You all must be weird people, says her smile, putting those useless animals before yourself.
I cave in with my own phony smile. Like I'm not like my mother. Not to be confused with her. Not of the weird people.

Outside the grocery store dogs and people move about in the brown shadows of the trees, and the metal bodies of the parked cars shine dryly, the edges white-hot under the sun.
We move out into the light and I reach for the trunk, squinting, crate of carrots in my hands, warning the old man that the car is a mess, 'cause that's the way my mother keeps it. He says okay and starts to fight his way into it, moving empty bottles around, dried sheets of old newspapers torn to pieces, the snow chain case that will tumble against his feet every time we accelerate, various slabs of dried mud spatter all around the inside, including the seats. As we slam the doors the overloaded ashtray exhales out gray and white particles that flit between our legs.
Dogs share the car, I apologize to him. Would he appreciate it if I started blaming my mother for everything? I wonder. I am willing to. He repeats three times, No problem.

In two minutes we are at the pharmacy, a quiet door gaping out on a narrow lane abandoned in the shade. At the opposite end of the alley the village suddenly disappears, and the curvy hills shine in the distant land before the Italian sea.
The old man and I part ways with a wave and a grumble, but then he calls me from the other side of the road, and he says, the grocery girl, she's my daughter. She's a good girl.
In my paranoia I figure he has a scheme that I should marry her.
The round face of the pharmacist takes its time to scan mine. There's a priest-like morbid aura about it, eyes of repressed sexual desire in the gloomy colors of the store as he hands me back the prescription.

Later I stop by an abandoned lot along the road across the olive groves in the countryside. The landscape is marked by scattered trulli and modern cement angular houses half hidden by the green.
The cats flock over meowing and rubbing themselves against the edges of the low stone walls as I get out of the car. I have detailed instructions about where the cat food has to be dropped. The small bowls and the old aluminum pans, one for each cat, are important. The pecking order is important. My mother is crazy.

Back on the shattered road I think of her, and how it would be if she died. Because she's at the hospital I am entitled to this thought. As the road winds down the hill bordered by more stone walls, further into the land I am not familiar with, I imagine a funeral, words of condolence and affection exchanged, how I wouldn't cry, unable to, maybe later on, and how unsatisfactory the long awaited sense of liberation would be, secret joy for a new life that in the end doesn't come about.
I wonder if the disappointment produced by my imagination makes me a better person or is it that I am just unprepared, that there is no way to be prepared but to imagine, and be disappointed.

As the car jolts against the roots cracking the driveway, the eight dogs rush out of the house barking and howling against the fence to cheer for my approaching smell and figure. The wind is ruffling their fur, scraps of toys and rags are scattered in the yard, their animation is irrational and sweet. All my perceptions are now flattened out to a uniform complacent, absurd lack of criticism, as I mentally go through the returning-home procedures. One bone-shaped biscuit for each of the dogs, in a rigorous hierarchical order. Two biscuits for the biggest one. The oldest barks fiercely and runs across my legs. He knows he comes first.

Hours have gone by when I'm finally done feeding the dogs and the horse and cleaning the stable.
At this point outside it is quiet as inside, only residual puffs of wind are stirring the foliage and shaking the hanging clothes. At moments, there's the crunching noise of the horse chewing on the last bits of carrot scattered in the hay. That's when I feel how after all my mother was right, to come to live this far from everything, here where communities are remote lights out in the dark and being this far and invisible is the safest thing you're left with at the end of the day.

But then some of the dogs are barking from very far out in the field, possibly at a fox. They're too far to be called back. I mentally pray not to find the fox slaughtered in the field the next day, not to have to get the shovel and the black bag and be seen from across the field again, gleaning the fox remains strewn about the meadow, carrying the rolled up formless bag to the dumpster down the hill, carelessly tossing it as if it were no corpse. But the dogs continue to bark, excitedly.

At the flea market I always end up poking among old photos and postcards. Not that I usually buy anything. I just pass by and occasionally stop and look at the old portraits, and wonder: is that the same humanity I am part of?
All the faces and bodies in the pictures seem so different. What was phony back then, and what was sincere, and what was a caricature. Everything seem to be made of another material. Some of the ladies look like my grandma looked like, a little. But she was real. They seem to be invented by someone else. Some of the men seem to have bodies out of proportion, probably due to the unusual fashion.

Few days ago I was at the flea market of Bollate (Milano), located just next certain horrific "modern" projects that plague that lousy part of the town. There, just like in any other italian flea market actually, the pictures of the times of fascism were the majority. And not only pictures: statues, posters, memorabilia.
Mussolini and his acolytes were everywhere, in pictures and on any little thing from those times. Buttons, pins, boxes, the usual. And there were also other pictures, where no "fascist authority" was present but, in small details like a black handkerchief in a pocket, or a military hat, or a certain advertising in the background, or a certain way of the men to pose in front of the camera, everything still spoke about the times of fascism in Italy.

The times of fascism. That was when my miserable falling country manifested the will to make of its typical cowardice and its worse defects an implacable force. It happened that once and we are still thinking about it.
What was that force? it was a gigantic, inevitable, shameless, black Mafia that pervaded the country and screamed itself from the balconies and the bullhorns instead of hiding in the villas or at the outskirts of town. It sung songs, and wrote poems on itself, and celebrated its new order as if people had expected it for long, when in fact nobody had expected it. Like any other mafia, it brought injustice disguised by justice, and ferocious illegality by peace and order, lies by adamant truths. It got rid of all the other mafias because there ought to be only One-National-Mafia.
Then it faded away, leaving behind    the bare bones of a raided country,    starving, deadly wounded and corrupted forever and covered with shame.

And evidently it also left behind a stubborn army of nostalgic individuals that went on sharing the shreds of that propaganda for decades, passing on the mania to sons and nephews, until today.
Such were the memorabilia at the flea market: in the end, a nauseating collection of phony poses, of silly objects, of unintelligible dialogs of mysterious faces ornamented with propaganda chasing you away from the stalls, able to extend their rule over the past memories for absence of concurrence.

-- in picture, above: one of the few glorious almost-non-fascist pictures found at the flea market. Unless the little boy's hat is in fact the very fascist military d'annunziano alpine hat of his father.

Life at the old oil mill is not so dissimilar from life in a farm. At six, you are awaken by the dogs, to whom you're supposed to provide a morning biscuit. Differently from a farm, you can yell at them or throw them a shoe and turn on the other side, but this is not going to help much.
They try to wake you up until eight, when you finally give up, arise from bed and throw the biscuits at them in the usual precise hierarchical order. Eight biscuits, one apiece.

You have then to forage the horse, clean the paddock around hoping the black bastard doesn't kick you in the head. Right away, the dogs bark all around you to have their walk all around the lot, and you better go or else your breakfast would be hell.

Half an hour later you're back from the walk, but it's not time for breakfast yet, because now your crazy dogs have to eat. Again, otherwise your breakfast would be hell.
To fix lunch for these dogs takes a long time. From half to one hour, if you haven't cut and cooked all the vegetables already. Every dog takes his precise amount of food, a mix of rice, vegetables and turkey meat. You obviously don't want to think about bird flu during the process.

Then it's time for your breakfast, but it is also eleven already. You can't lose too much time on your tea, instead you better get on the Fiat Panda and drive to the nearby village to get the huge quantities of food required by your fellow animals. Stores and markets there close at 1 Pm and won't reopen until 5.

Hey, and don't forget on the way back to feed the stray cats!

As you get back, the dogs bug you until you give them the getting-back biscuit. After that, you have a little time for yourself, usually wasted staring blankly at nothing asking yourself moronic questions, or watching the most stupid afternoon shows on TV.

Around 2 Pm you take the dogs around the lot again, and right after that you lock them in the oil mill area and free the horse in the field, minding not to be crushed by his junkie need of carrots.
A young soldier, horse-lover from a nearby village, will come three hours later to pull him in the paddock again, clean him and some other stuff I can't really do. Your mother found him somehow through one of the friendship chains everybody shares here. He was in Falluja last year during the famous battle of the bridge but he doesn't talk much. He comes, look after the horse and goes. He's paid, but you bless him.

Anyway, before that, you must have noticed how the house should be cleaned. But you better do it fast, 'cause at four you have to start preparing the food for the dogs again. They eat at 6, but you probably have to cook meat and vegetables from the start this time, then the food must cool down.

As the soldier goes, you forage the horse again, start fixing your own dinner and crumble in front of the TV, as stupid and yelling and political as ever. A lot of half-naked beautiful bodies though.

The evening continues like this, with your remorses for not writing and blogging, and the laconic phone calls, until you go to sleep, and the dogs all around your bed constantly wake you up during the night, by snoring, running in and out, having bad dreams.

As I said, it is not dissimilar by a farm, but you don't produce any commodity nor goodies here. Only dog turds, horse turds. Lots of them.

-- In picture, above: Max looks at the sunset. Everything is beautiful around, and quiet.)

“No one truly exists in the real world because no one knows all that he is to other human beings, all that they say behind his back, and all the foolishness which the future will bring him”
(Delmore Schwartz)

The greengrocer girl hands me the crate of carrots, and I give in and say, they're for the horse. The girl says, a lucky horse and I cave in even more, saying, the horse lives better than we do, that's for sure. I immediately regret betraying my mother so easily but as long as I have to deal with them I need to be approved or accepted by these people, so different from me. We smile, and her smile says 'your mother is crazy, she looks crazy, with those absurd clothes, her crazy talk, I'd rather eat her horse or let him starve to death than feed him with so many carrots everyday. It's a shame to pay so much attention to animals. You weird people'.

(In picture: set of instructions. Following: details of the 'stray cats feeding' section)

I still need to know where the pharmacy Abate is. The three women present, all equally short, with dark eyes, short hairs, piercing gaze and mocking faint smile, fail to give me a decent explanation of where the pharmacy is located. One start her explanation, 'just go back the road you came from and turn left', 'you do the circle around the village', says the second as the other interrupts, 'you just go straight this way and turn right'. Finally a sixty or so old man who's idling in and out of the greengrocer's shop steps into the debate and settle: 'Abate Pharmacy? I'll bring him there. So he gives me a lift home'. He didn't even ask me, but it's fine because I just want to go.

I warn him the car is a mess, just as my mother keeps it. He says OK but I know he'll regret it. As we get into the car he has to fight with empty bottles, dried newspaper sheets tore to pieces, the yellow case of the winter chains that tumbles against his feet every time the little Panda accelerates, different layers of dried mud scattered around the place, seats included. The overloaded ashtray spurts grey and white particles flitting between our legs. Dogs share the car, I explain to him. He wouldn't appreciate if I start blaming my mother, even though I am quite willing to. He repeats three times, no problem.

As we arrive to the pharmacy, it becomes clear how much easy is to find the place and how near it is. The whole trip lasts not more than two minutes. This leaves me with the renewed amazement for the detachment from rational life those women have, and for the tedious, elaborated solutions their men find to simple problems, just to look busy as women do all the real work.
As I say goodbye to the old man he stops a second in the middle of the road and says, the greengrocer girl, she's my daughter. She's a good girl. I nod. In my paranoia I figure he's scheming I should marry her.

The round face of the guy pharmacist scans mine. His eyes say he likes me in a filthy unconfessed or repressed way, conveing whichever is his desire in the gloomy light of the store as he hands me the prescription. I thank and leave without making the mistake of glancing at him again.

On the road across the fields of Olives, in the countryside marked with trulli and modern sharp cement houses, I have to stop by an abandoned lot to feed a bunch of stray cats. As I step out of the car, they flock meowing and rubbing themselves against the edges of the old stony low walls. I have precise instructions about where to drop the food into different old dishes for different cats. This is also on the drawings my mother did as instructions.

At the old oil mill the dogs rush barking and howling against the fence to cheer my approaching smell and figure. My perceptions are blanked by a weight of complacent, absurd lack of criticism as I mentally go through the instructions regarding the getting back home. One bone-shaped biscuit for any of the dogs, in a precise hierarchical order. Two biscuits to the big one. The old Marcel barks fiercely and runs across my legs. He knows he comes first.