By Basilio Scalas
When we decided to get married, in 1980, we had no big plans. It just seemed natural to imagine that our life would have been better living it under one roof together.
With a great deal of effort from my family and my modest contribution, we had the roof on our heads.
More precisely, it was the attic on the ground floor, which our optimism had left without coverage, hoping to build another storey, which would have completed the house like our neighbours did before.
I was sixteen when I met her, and I fell in love with Anna.
I was twenty-two and was a late summer evening.
I left the usual friends, I felt like an injustice the approach of daily abandonment from her.
Without thinking, I told her that the time had come to get married. The words gave way to that unprecedented thought, but when after the goodnight kiss, before turning the corner of the driveway at home, she turned to greet me with a gesture of her hand. That was the moment that I understood that bachelor life would end soon.
In the company of friends, after dinner, we kept up the late hours talking as usual. While waiting for the developments, I kept that secret to myself, chasing away the idea that I was betraying them a bit like an annoying fly during the summertime.
I had escaped the military thanks to the prison with the conditional I had to do. Was the price to help so many people to have the right as workers in a place where Capitalism comes creating so much confusion. Deindustrialisation had transformed thousands of workers into integrated workers.
Assemini by inertia continued to grow and five large official disco clubs, plus a half dozen of clandestine, transformed it into the (“media called…”) “Las Vegas of Sardinia“
.
The peasants who had not become building contractors turned into greenhouse growers. Also in the meantime, the schooling rate remained the lowest in Sardinia.
After a year and a half of layoffs, I felt my career as a worker was over. The small bonus to which those who renounced state assistance were entitled, together with some personal savings, became the capital to change direction.
So I open, in the half portion of the house that I had intended to use: Il Musicofilo.
The first and only store in Sardinia of jazz and improvised music, as the sign outside, said.
Giving more importance to the mission of bringing jazz to the kingdom of the “disco music“, than to the real chances of success, once again, I started doing a job without knowing the profession. However, precarious, Anna had a more reassuring role in the regional administration. Without taking into consideration the idea that we could safely live together, we communicated our decision to close friends and relatives.
The times of the bureaucracy decided that the first possible day would be December 16th.
So two boys of the same zodiac sign, on a cold Tuesday, regardless of astral recommendations, committed themselves before the law of man to take care of each other for as long as possible. In the descent from the town hall stairs, the seriousness of the ceremony had given way to liberating laughter, as after passing a particularly stressful exam.
When even the last of the sixteen guests left the house, a veil of sadness took hold of us.
A hug dissolved a slight cry to greet the life that had been until then.
The first light of dawn, filtering through the blinds, dispelled the nostalgia and convinced us that the difficulties of life as adults could wait.
Sleep surprise us in the same embrace, as happens to children.
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