There was a palm tree in front of our house when we were children. I was ten years old. She lived too far away, up in the north. Her husband worked in a bank; they considered themselves superior to the family of a level crossing attendant. They never came to our house. The palm tree was cut down in compliance with an order from the transportation department that maintained it impeded the view of freight trucks and could cause an accident.
Who knows what kind of accident our palm could have caused, tall as it was, its fronds brushed against our window on the second floor. In any case, we had to cut it down. One evening at dinner, mama, who at times had great ideas, proposed writing a letter to the Minister of Transportation signed by the whole family, a kind of petition. It is written in her own hand on a page from my composition notebook which, by chance, when I was sent to Argentina, I brought along without even realizing it, without imagining what a treasure that page would become for me.
On the table, there are some glasses and a straw covered flask of wine. Mama is coming out of the house carrying a large soup tureen. She has barely entered the picture that Signor Quintilio has just snapped. She has entered by chance, was moving, and for this reason a little out of focus.
That year, I mean the year the palm tree was cut down, I was ten years old, it was definitely summer and the thing happened in October. One remembers well what happened when he was ten and I will never forget what happened that October.
But Signor Quintilio, do you remember him? He was the bailiff of a large estate about two kilometers from our house where in May we used to go to pick cherries. He was a small, nervous but cheerful man who was always telling jokes.
