The Chosen One

By Simone Roncucci

An accident at Auschwitz extermination camp will lead Conrad on a supernatural tour through Italian history, from Gladiators until Nasiriyah.A tour involving himself in everlasting memory of our heros.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Release date: Apr 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9788866187776

Book preview

Simone Roncucci

THE CHOSEN ONE

To those who have suffered firsthand

the unfolding events of history

§

The leather suitcase on his bed was waiting for more clothes: a whole wardrobe to take with him for that visit to Auschwitz, awaiting Conrad early the next day, at dawn.

That should be everything, he thought to himself as he rested one knee on his carryall, his companion which had come along with him on many adventures. He was getting set to close its hard zipper, which had become slightly rusted and worn over time.

The classic closing sound of the zipper reminded him of his stomach growling when he was hungry. It was already 8:00 p.m. in that Tuscan farmhouse too big for him.

Conrad Palet was about a forty-five year old man, 1.75 meters tall, with a scruffy beard, who loved wearing jeans, tennis shoes, weathered raincoats, and a large black wool hat to make the black silhouette more mysterious.

Having become too noisy, the farmhouse where he lived, which belonged to his parents, became his hiding place from the world at the time of their death,

He went into the kitchen: the fire was crackling in the fireplace along with the wood stove where he was finishing cooking bread and mushroom soup on a very old aluminum pan. It was a recipe that had been handed down through many generations.

It was his favorite dish his mother made with tender loving care for Sunday lunch. After a long week of work in town, having to wake up early in the morning, she would prepare delicious dishes, bringing her family together on that day when they would all meet, that day of rest, with not only Conrad’s parents, but also with his brother John, a few years older, who lived overseas in New York together with his family.

Conrad took a cloth napkin to remove the pan from the heat.

The delicious smell of steaming soup pervaded the kitchen. He sat on a woven straw chair, poured a glass of wine, and put a piece of fruit next to his plate and began eating his meal.

He had a light dinner for a very-much-needed refreshing sleep. Conrad often participated in organized visits to places where history had marked humanity’s destiny and dreams since the beginning of time. He was a real history lover, whose enormous curiosity sometimes made him a sinister and mysterious character.

The day after, he had to wake up early in the morning for a long trip to Poland, to a place exactly sixty kilometres from Krakow: Oświęcim, Auschwitz in Germany.

After finishing his dinner and rearranging the table, he sat facing the fire for a moment to allow his food to digest: the weight of the larger burning logs crushed the smaller ones’ will to burn, the fire lighting up the kitchen with an amber-red glow, where Conrad, entranced by the fire’s power and heat, had dozed off, allowing his mind drift off to a superior pale blue white aura, which made his thoughts light like clouds on the horizon.

He felt a shiver on his shoulders. A cold feeling surprised Conrad like thunder on a summer night.

He woke up. The almost-extinguished fire greeted the kitchen, shattering its own dreams of lighting up the room like waves crashing on rocks.

Aching to find a comfortable position in the woven straw chair, Conrad stood up awkwardly to head toward his bedroom. It was late. I’d better get to bed, he thought.

The bedroom, filled with sounds of the light switch making a lot of noise, appeared: a precious king-size wooden bed with a bas-relief floral motif, two bedside tables decorated identically, a wardrobe and a dresser, on which his nearest and dearest yellowed photos and various objects lay.

He undressed, lying down on the mattress and covered himself with the quilt, which would warm him during the nights like a little bird in its own nest.

Fatigue engulfed Conrad’s body: thoughts, as fast as cars running on the endless asphalt of a highway, crowded his mind, stirring strong emotions within him, making his heart beat faster. Moonlight filtered through the glass window, illuminating the bed rumpled by Conrad’s continuous tossing and turning.

Then suddenly, everything vanished.

Those thoughts and emotions ceased to run through his mind, now it seemed as if they were suspended in mid-air. That night, Conrad had ethereal but dark dreams. Voices, his mind heard many voices, but he had no clue what they said then nor where they came from.

That ethereal but sadly dark world, those voices which he breathlessly heard, were an integral part of that dream, which had forcefully rekindled his formerly dormant emotions.

A gust of wind slamming a shutter startled Conrad awake: darkness was still there, wrapped around everything: the bed, the room and himself.

He reached out his hand to turn the light on: everything around him seemed to awaken; the soft light penetrated into the most hidden corners of that room, exploding like a bomb of pure energy

He got out of bed without even moving the ruffled sheets, which also appeared to be as ruffled about the strong wind as he.

The shutter slammed again.

He got up uneasily, and for a brief moment, everything seemed to be spinning. His heavy eyelids had to get used to lightening themselves up even in spite of themselves.

Limping and propping himself up on his hands, Conrad went to the living room where, again, the shutter remembered his presence.

He opened the window: the wind shook Conrad, waking him up even more. The trees’ branches, swayed by nature, seemed to greet him; a plastic bottle left on the doorstep rolled around restlessly on the bare ground, knocking against things randomly and resuming its frantic pace; the moon, illuminating the distant horizon and creating shadows and sinister figures, was watching Conrad in silence: a silence so strong that it verged almost on irritation.

He only heard the sound of the wind. But that did not bother him at all. Quite the opposite.

He clenched the shutter tightly, shutting it decidedly. The second sound he heard was the window closing which seemed to want to leave out the shutter, which now seemed to thank it for no longer being harassed by the fury of the elements.

Coming back to his room, Conrad suddenly felt very thirsty.

He headed for the kitchen, and after turning the light on, he took a glass and headed for the tap. He filled it with cool water, and with an imprecise but fast sip of that liquid, perhaps a bit too cool for that time of night, he made an end to that transition to terrestrial life.

He left the glass upside down to dry, turned the light off and went to his room. The bed, as bare as it was, seemed to be older than it was. He lay down decidedly while the light ceased to hide in the corners of the room.

Leaning on his side, Conrad fell back to sleep, to his dream enveloped in darkness.

The next morning, a rooster crowing and the distant sound of a bell tolling marked the dawn of a new day.

He opened his eyes. The orange-red dawn had chased away the darkness; he got up, stretching his arms out by his sides to touch the walls of his room from where he was.

He went into the dining room, and after artfully placing the wood in his stove and preparing coffee in the moka pot, he went into the bathroom for a quick shower which completely woke him up.

Once the coffee was ready, he removed the moka pot from the heat, took the dry glass, and poured the steaming black liquid into a cup.

He put a little bit of sugar in it and opened the window to see outside; he saw the branches, now motionless, which had greeted him during the night. They welcomed turtle doves and nightingale couples happily chirping to greet the dawning of a new day.

He lowered his gaze, contemplating how transparent his coffee was. There, where the bottle he had just finished rolled around aimlessly during night lie only dried and ruffled leaves.

He felt a slight sense of sadness and regret in his heart for no longer having the company he had had during night.

Besides, everyone has a destiny.

He took one last sip of coffee and went back to his room to dress. He carefully closed the windows, and once he made the bed, he took his suitcase he had packed the night before. As he was leaving, he heard the lock ping as usual, signaling a period of solitude in the house.

He left.

After opening the garage door, he got in his car: it was a old faded red Fiat 500 owned by his father, but still running, boasting some sprints along with a vigorous muffler noise.

He turned the engine on and after putting it in gear set off to his hometown railway station.

Those going on the trip to the Auschwitz concentration camp met at the station. At least once a year, loving history and the events which marked it, he planned a visit to those places where history had left its indelible traces.

That trip to visit Auschwitz, a place where, more than any other, human madness exceeded all limits.

At half past six o'clock, once they had all met, the rattling train whistled its imminent departure to Poland.

Conrad went inside the station along with his adventurous

companions who were mostly fifty-year-olds and some

young school guys, waiting for the coach doors to open.

Suddenly, the sound of tires allowed him to see inside his coach. Once he went up the stairs three steps and turned left, he looked for his place among rows of seats side by side in pairs, facing each other in blue velvet. Lateral windows looked out onto the interior of the station, overlooking the passengers boarding the train; a long and narrow corridor leading, through a door, to other coaches.

Once he found his place, he placed his suitcase on the luggage rack and sat in a seat beside the window, as there was nobody in front of him. He stretched out his legs, ready to enjoy a relaxing trip. After a few moments while a ticket inspector was checking the tickets, torn by the person in charge of the trip, the train began to move: the landscape began to change showing first distant roads and then hills dotted with forgotten trees.

I think I’ll nap for a bit Conrad thought. He sat more

comfortably in his seat, closed his eyes and fell asleep, rocked by the moving train. He fell into a slumber different from usual: the welcoming, rocking train coach reminded him of when his mother cuddled him as a child in front of their lighted fireplace and the crackling wood burning in the kitchen.

A sweet life taking him back to too many years before.

The sudden darkness of a tunnel sank Conrad’s dreams into a

Dantesque-like hell. First, the dry twigs of the trees and the darkness within the tunnel seemed to warn him to go back, and then, the dim and soft lights inside the coach vaguely resembled a cemetery light.

It really seemed like the gateway to hell.

Then, the white light of the steppe and its endless-nothingness stretches appeared.

Conrad was awakened by a slight jolt of the train. He stood up, propping himself up with one hand, stretched his aching back and took his suitcase.

Slowly the group began to pour out of the coaches.

The group of friends felt a pang in their hearts: behind them, the train after a long trip, and in front of them, the concentration camp.

All of a sudden, they felt like new deportees, though nobody could perfectly understand what those Jews felt firsthand.

They moved toward the camp entrance where the sentence Arbeit macht frei meaning Work makes you free could be read on the wrought iron gate.

Suddenly, off in the distance, they saw a small figure with a wiry, knotty body approaching them, stroking his thick, burly mustache. That typically-Nordic thin face of his belonged to their

tour guide in the journey back in time to remember and relive the extermination camp horrors.

Their guide, Fryderyk, introduced himself to the group leader, speaking perfect Italian, refined through years of university study in Italy.

He distributed some brochures and guides in Italian and English to each participant, where interesting points, restrooms

and exits were briefly described through many illustrations.

Thus began their guided tour.

First of all, the guide told them there were two Auschwitz camps: Auschwitz one and Auschwitz two.

The difference was that Auschwitz one was where the Nazis

opened the first camp for men and women, where they performed

the early experiments with Zyklon B to kill the prisoners, where

they killed the first transport of Jews, where they carried out the

early criminal experiments on prisoners, where most of the

shootings were performed, and where the Block 11 main prison and the main office of the commander were located. Hence the camp administration planned further expansion of the concentration camp.

Regarding Auschwitz two: in Birkenau everything was made on a large scale. Here the Nazis built most of the machines of mass destruction with which they killed about