The Life Story of a Sculptor: ‘E Pluribus Unum’

By Mafalda Vinciguerra

My book is not an ordinary story. It is the life story of an exceptional young artist that was born in the same area of Tuscany, Italy that gave birth to Leonardo da Vinci of Mona Lisa fame, Michelangelo of the David and the Sistine Chapel ceiling and Giacomo Puccini of La Boheme and Tosca.

The young Artist Sculptor, full of art, music, love and great expectations, goes to give his love and skill in a different land with different culture and different people the British.

The young artist is a genius, but he is not understood by the people he meets. He sees things, he experiences things and he tells them. The reader should suffer what he has suffered. And only because he was not living in the land of his birth he was treated as a foreigner even after fifty years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499092059

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Mafalda Vinciguerra.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4990-9204-2

                eBook          978-1-4990-9205-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Copyright 1961, 1970, 1981, 1984, 2013 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.

All the names and places in the story of this book are true. But some names and places have been changed.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/19/2015

Xlibris

800-056-3182

www.Xlibrispublishing.co.uk

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CONTENTS

Foreword

The Work Contract

Migraine

WWII - The Nazis

The Soup

Ydward

STOCKEN EAST

His Heart Attack

The Cruise

Golf Khristine

House in Italy

The Mercedes 200

Peter Alpino

Rick Mall

John Tickering

The Senior Society

Out Last

Handicap

El Broomer

Jorg Steren

AGM

Captain

The Power

Barry Beverly

Golf Rules

The Chap

Roy Sisco

The Ball Drop

Jack Sizemore

KolIn Sauser

Charly Balk

Galileo

COMPUTER PRINTOUT

The Placing

The OOB

The Card

Head

The Train Engine Tale

Cut-Off Date

Happy

Moving the Ball

The Ferrari Sport Car

The Jaguar S Type V6 3000

The MOT

The State Pension

The Golf Car

The tale of ‘Man His Son and the Horse’

Nick Santis

The Mercedes 200

The Last Skins Game

Champagne and Caviar

Spaghetti

His invented Tales

One more tale from the sculptor

Who or What made The Sculptor…The Sculptor

The Electric Shock

Marking the Card

Donald Egor

‘Errare Humanum Est’

The Sculptor Original Works of Art

To the memory of his mother.

She gave true love.

Foreword

This book is about a sculptor and will tell the story of his life and the experiences he have learned in his everyday life as a sculptor, a lodger, a worker, an artist, a customer, a student, a driver, a citizen and a golfer.

It is a compelling story; wonderfull and gripping story of family life, of commerce and greed; set against the backdrop of World War 2 and life in a new country; vividly chronicles his vicissitudes through a more intimate scale full of drama and pathos.

The story points up with heartbreaking detailed clarity; how history repeats itself, tragically, shockingly.

The stories in the book are not simple stories; they should be classified as adult’s stories; stories that are part of our life and cultures; the reason is obvious to any casual reader, the frailties and vanities embodied by the human protagonists offer an accurate portrait of society.

The pithy truth of each story’s moral serves not only as a dramatic punctuation mark, but as a timely remainder of the immutability of human nature.

The Sculptor

The gifted sculptor, ‘E Pluribus Unum’ (out of many, one), was born in Carrara where the white marble comes from; and he began working with modeling clay at an early age, thus exhibiting the talents that have since burst into full flower.

This boy will become a fine sculptor,’ his uncle Bruno said, himself a sculptor and an artist looking at the boy aged four making shapes with his clay. At the age of seventeen he got his diploma of sculptor from the School of Marble in Carrara. He also attended the Academy of Art and completed a four-year course in just three years. During his third year, he was named the outstanding artist of his class. At his first sculpture exhibition he won a silver medal and with it he received an invitation to the national exhibition in Rome where sculptor Henry Moore was also exhibiting. In the same year he received a contract as a sculptor to go and work in Great Britain. The Sculptor left his native land to go to England and exhibited at the Bestcroft art gallery in Stonyend-on-Sea Essex. Statues are his specialty, and he has been commissioned to do a great numbers of these for the last sixty years.

The Sculptor was well qualified by training, natural gifts, and past performance to create memorials and other sculptured work of distinguished quality for the ‘Lapidei’ business round the world.

The Sculptor have always considered in his sixty-five years of artistic activity in his business; the sculpture not as an economic end, but as a manifestation of his own personality.

When the Sculptor first came to England bus drivers or conductress who left people at bus stops in the rain and in the cold insisting, sorry, full up when there were empty seats inside the bus; drove him mad.

But what prompt the conductor to say ‘Sorry, full up’ when he knew empty seats were still there?

Was it because of the kind of job he was doing that made him think that he was in command and he wanted to show to everyone that he had power? O simply made a mistake? In the mind of The Sculptor he was a man without honour; the story will take the reader to meet others persons who used the same attitude.

The Sculptor would protest in behalf of the people left out on the pavement and tried to make sure at least some of those people out in the rain would come inside the bus to take up the empty seats around him, but it was all invane; the bus was gone and the people did remain outside in the street and in the pouring rain.

All of The Sculptor’s protests were done in vain.

Maybe it was because these kinds of people think they have power and turn a deaf ear to reason.

‘Felix Corpora Ars Virescit

(Happy art the body strengthen.)

The Sculptor

When the Sculptor popped into this world the sense of right came with him. When the midwife held the boy by his ankles and smacked his bum, he did not cry, he yelled out a sound of ‘bellaaa!’ ‘Is he talking already?

What is he talking about?’ the midwife exclaimed!

She was the first person who did not understand properly what the future sculptor was saying. You, the reader, will know the others as you continue reading. I have gone over a bit of old ground, but it is all part of this story.

I can now bring you up to date with a better understanding of The Sculptor’s life than before. One can do many things when one is retired—walk the corgi dog Samson as The Sculptor did so often before the dog died.

Tend the garden, watch television, listen to music, visit relatives, or go on holiday or play golf. It also gave him time to look back and seek reasons for some things that have happened in his life. There isn’t a logical reason for everything. Some of it has to be down to chance, luck—good and bad—or fate.

The Sculptor was never during his life about now; he was always about tomorrow; or, more accurately, the day after tomorrow.

The Sculptor had always had within his character an independent spirit. He was a serious, sophisticated man, with an extraordinary ability to be able to do almost everything, yet willing to be completely preposterous silly. He thought it was part of his charm, but most of the people he had met had never understood it or wanted to understand him;

‘Spend your money! You will not be able to take it with you when you go!’

That was always the people reaction in watching him working harder and harder for his future. They; the people around him; could never be able to see that The Sculptor was in the enviable position of having everything that he wished to have, when he wanted to have it, for himself, not for them. In Italy as a young student The Sculptor was dreaming with open eyes for the time when as soon as possible he could have had enough money in the bank to be able to live ‘of rendita’ income; without the need to work any longer. The Sculptor did reach his goal at the age of fourty two.

As a student he was saying already then that if one would have had a good horse, a Thoroughbred horse in his stable at home, one would not mind doing the walking.

All the people that The Sculptor knew at that time preferred to live in very modest houses with hardly any furnishing and no books at all; but they wanted to have a new car for themselves only affordable by them in the never-never HP repayments. ‘Nobody will see how I live but they will see my new car’ was their attitude.

They maybe wanted to show to The Sculptor and to others that they were better off than what they really were.

The sculptor does not mean to be disrespectful to anyone he is just very observant and he likes to tell things to the people straight, diplomacy is not his style, truthfulness is, and it was this truthfulness attitude that maybe made people assume that The Sculptor was a ‘know all’ and they did therefore understood him wrongly.

The Sculptor was never a know all he is someone who having found himself in situations were he could clearly been able to see something that was indeed there; but that other human being didn’t see, it was like him having a ‘sixth’ sense that told him in an istant; that what was happening there in that moment was completely wrong.

The Sculptor’s wish is to sharing these happening with the reader in his very original style. Should he have kept silent? Should he have gone to the grave still maintaining the ‘forgive’ and the ‘forget’ attitude that is maintained by some; and without telling the full story of what happened? One can be truthful; or one cannot be truthful; ‘To be or not to be’ as Shakespear wrote; it is always the question. Ai posteri l’ardua sentenza. Posterity will be called in judgement.

Over the years, The Sculptor was always asked, ‘When did you come to England?’ Or, ‘Why did you come to England?’

But The Sculptor really never knew why the people wanted to know only these two questions.

Now he knows the reasons why? And he will want to tell them.

Recontair

I had the idea of writing his ‘memoirs’ in a book format while he was on holiday in Egypt.

But he had kept a diary all his life; because he was in a way fashinated by what the people could do and could say; and he always recorded it for posterity.

The Sculptor has we know was born in the land of ‘the sole mio’ and always he liked to have the pleasure that one gets by the warmth of the sun. At the age of 60, The Sculptor was looking to have more of the winter’s sun then the summer’s sun. The Sculptor always loved to have an all year suntan. And he was looking forward to do a month of sun-bathing holiday in January to February away from the cold and damp weather in England. So he went to the Algarve for a few years.

The Algarve in the south of Portugal was good to him because he could play golf there as well, but in January and February the wheather there was not hot enough for him.

The Sculptor was looking really for the sun from the ‘tropic’, and the nearest tropical sun to England is in the Red Sea Resorts in Egypt.

The first time The Sculptor went there, it was at the Radisson Hotel and Resort at El Quseir in the Red Sea. The five-star all-inclusive service there was excellent and the food was fantastic. Swimming in the crystal-clear water of the Red Sea and in the blue water of the three swimming pools every day and getting a tan under the very hot sunrays, it was all like being in paradise already.

The following year, The Sculptor was back in the Red Sea, but this time at the Dessole Piramisa Hotel Resort at Shal Hasheesh Resort complex near Hurghada bigger and better than the Radisson.

Unfortunately the year was when the Egyptian people decided to get rid of their president Mubarak. The Piramisa complex was extraordinary; they had real colored marble everywhere. The lobby was so vast and had enormous marble columns. The complex was very large with his four large restaurant self-service and six à la carte restaurants.

The complex was so large that one had about 14 feet of space or more between one sunlounge bed and the next. It was very individual and no one would go near one if one did not want to.

The Sculptor did become friendly with a Russian family around the poolside; they all spoke English and The Sculptor had millions of questions to ask them about life in Russia.

The father Victor and the mother Noryna asked The Sculptor about life in Italy, and the teenager girls wanted to know about life in England. Victor told The Sculptor that the schools in Russia are closed in the winter’s months so that is why they all go on holiday in the sun. Victor insisted for The Sculptor to go with him and his wife to drink the aperitif at twelve o’clock midday of vodka and Coke.

In Italy The Sculptor would have had a ‘Campari’, but the vodka and Coke was very good too.

While sunning on the beach, The Sculptor met Joac a German gentleman with his younger Russian wife Galina. Joac worked in the USA for twenty years and his English was very good, Galina was also speaking good English as well.

They met every day at the seafront restaurant for their four p.m. cappuccino and cake. Their conversation was friendly and instructive about any topics and they talked to each others and to The Sculptor with the same understanding as if they were friends since childhood.

Unfortunately their friendship was abruptly cut short when the Egypt uprising got very frightening indeed and the German and Russian governments requested that all their citizen (over 600 Russians and 250 Germans) at the hotel to return immediately back home.

Planes were sent and all the Russians and Germans left in the heights of their holiday. The Italians, fortunately for them, had already all left and the Italian government had stopped all flights to Egypt.

Joac and Galina wanted to stay, they had still two weeks of holiday paid, but they could not.

The Sculptor said good-bye to Joac and kissed Galina while she was crying and they gave each other appointment to be together in Egypt the following year and they did so.

The rest of the holiday makers there; only forty-six of them including The Sculptor had been informed by the Saga representative to get ready to be transferred to another hotel complex nearby because the Piramisa hotel was closing down.

Without the Russian tourists the hotel could not afford to stay open. So all of them had to pack their bags and move to another hotel, but still in Egypt. Why did the British government decided to have their citizen to remain in trouble-torn Egypt while all the other countrys were taking their citizens out?

The Sculptor had been resident in England for over fifty years now; working and paying the income tax in England; even if technically ‘Italian’ by the law of the country he was British.

So all the British tourists there now of course could get closer together like a kind of a refugee group. They could see and talk to each other now while before they were lost among the crowd of Russians and Germans tourists.

The Russians, the Germans, and the Italians tourists were here on holiday with their family and children.

The British tourists were all very old mostly single pensioners. Their holiday here for them was organized by the ‘over 50s’ travel agent SAGA and of course all the tourists were old and mostly single ‘We are all British tourists here now.’ And we are glad to be now without the noise of those Russians and Germans foreigners.

All of us we could not sleep because of them always swimming in the pool at midnight; and all of them being drank every single night. This was the general comment among all of them. The Sculptor had to disagree.

His room was right on top and looking down to the largest of the swimming pools and he never heard any drunken noise during the night. Instead now The Sculptor’s sleep was troubled because he was thinking about the Egyptian revolution and why he was still in Egypt in this worring time.

All the others British tourists there never gave it a thought. ‘We are British let us stay here with the British’ was the general attitude. The Sculptor was asked: ‘what nationality are you?’ The Sculptor was most surprised by this question, because he was with them at London Gatwick Airport,

he was on the same Thomas Cook flight to Hurghada, he was on the same bus that SAGA organized to take them from the airport to the hotel, he is now not only at the same hotel but also uses the same private SAGA’s lounge and he was at the same table for the special welcome dinner only reserved for the British SAGA’s clients.

The more appropriate question would have been to ask The Sculptor: Where do you come from in England? The Sculptor would then have told them that he lives in Mouth-on-Sea that he is a sculptor that he have four sons born in England and that he has a business that has just celebrated the gold anniversary. But no! The question asked to The Sculptor was: What nationality are you? Never for a moment must have crossed their mind that The Sculptor could have been a British Citizen? No! They did prefer to assume The Sculptor to be more likely an emigrant. So The Sculptor told them that he feels European; a member citizen of the twenty-eight EU group of nations, but if you don’t like it, I will tell you that I am a real British one among you lots, because for the last fifty-four years, I have chosen to be British and chosen to live in Britain, a country that I love.

For you, it was only a kind of an accident; the accident was that your mother was in Britain at the time when you were born, mine as it happened was in Italy at the time, and so I have been born Italian.’ This is what The Sculptor always says when asked. Did his British mates like The Sculptor’s answer? He doesn’t think so. But he could be wrong. But The Sculptor is always right.

The British are the only people in the world that are always looking to stay with other British when they are abroad.

‘We do not like foreigners’ is the common ‘cry’ of the British people not all of them of course. ‘I am not a foreigner,’ The Sculptor say: ‘I am Italian.’ ‘Henri over there is French, he is not a foreigner’, ‘Otto also over there is German, he is not a foreigner’, ‘Victor there by the pool is Russian, is not a foreigner’.

The Sculptor always say this but the British would not understand him. ‘What is he talking about?’ It is always what they say. And as The Sculptor heard that said to him before, he did repeat again, ‘bellaaa.’

Martin Luther King had a dream in his life; his dream was that people should not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

The Sculptor had a dream too. His dream is to see the creation of a true Jerusalem among the European countries where everyone will not be judged by their nationality but by the content of their character and all be brothers of the United State of Europe and the word foreigner will not be mentioned anymore and all the people will live in a new and true Jerusalem.

"The Sculptor will not cease from his mental fight.

Nor will his pen sleep in his hand;

Till we have built the United State of Europe in

our green and pleasant land."

But some people did insisted and wanted to know: ‘How come you came to England?’ And then quickly they would go off near the safety of another British person, as soon as The Sculptor started to tell them his story of why he came to England. ‘Oh! You do blow your own trumpet. Don’t you?They say and then leave.

The Sculptor did considere himself lucky to have met there one day during his holiday a gentleman called Norman, a very educated person; Norman was an English teacher who had an Eastern-born wife, and he was always with a book on his hand and his wife a book on her hand too.

After their first meeting Norman made sure that he and his wife would have a talk with The Sculptor every day: "you are a very interesting person, full of humor, kind, gentle, intelligent, and very direct, one out of many, E Pluribus Unum, we can and very much like to converse with you." Norman said to The Sculptor.

‘Thank you very much, Norman, you are very kind, and of course you are a good listener, and I am a very good talker’ The Sculptor said. ‘But I don’t understand why the other British persons here don’t show me the same respect, and offer me the same attentions that you do. Are they all racists?’ The Sculptor asked Norman. ‘No Norman said:’it is because you are very straight and very direct, you are a recontair. Their education is very limited they have never read a book in their life and could not listen or have a deep conversation with you.’ The Sculptor was and remained in Norman’s mind as the only person of complete honesty that he had met during those long years studying and teaching and honesty enhanced for The Sculptor by the fact that he was also so vulnerable.

The new year came and The Sculptor was again on holiday there in Egypt with Joac and Galina and writing his memoir. In February of the following year The Sculptor went back to Egypt at the same Fort Arabesque Hotel Resort and Spa and Villas for four weeks’ winter sun holiday, different British tourists where there but it looked like the atmosphere were the same. After a week or so, the waiter named Mohamed that served all the turists with

Drinks around the swimming pool, sun lounges and tables asked The Sculptor: ‘You are Italian, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes! I was born in Italy; but I live now in England. Why are you asking me this?’ The Sculptor said to Mohamed; ‘Because I see that you are sitting with the English! Why are you sitting with the English? I don’t understand why, you as an Italian; will want to stay among the English; because we here know that the English don’t like the Italians; but we here in Egypt think that the Italians are better people! We in Egypt prefer the Italian best!’ added Mohamed. ‘How do you know that the Italians are best?’ The Sculptor asked him.

‘Well, for a start, the Italians never say anything bad about any of the other tourists here! The English do! Secondly the Italians spend more money at the hotel shops and give more money in tips and don’t complain about anything, the English do complain about everything and don’t tip.’

In the hotel of course all the working staff there spoke fluently Italian, English and Arabic and they also were good observers too. The Sculptor had to tell Mohammed that he is part of the English tourists there and he would be feeling out of place even more if he would be sitting with the Italians.

The Work Contract

The Sculptor was a 21-year-old professional sculptor when he left his birthplace town of Carrara where the white marble comes from in Tuscany, Italy, on Sunday, in the month of August at 6.30 p.m. August is the hottest month of the summer in their fantastic Versilia beach that is called Marina di Carrara.

The sand there is the best in the world it is so rich of iron that the marble quarry owners use it to cut the block of marble in slabs by mixed the sand with water. As a young man, The Sculptor was still sunbathing on the hot sand in this lovely beach at 4.00 p.m. that day; two hours and thirty minutes before the time of the train, but in the end time waits for no man and The Sculptor’s time to go to England had arrived and he had to go.

The Sculptor was asked if he would like to go and work in England as a monumental sculptor.

The offer was been made by a millionaire in GB pound English-Irish man the owner of the Monumental Firm, a company that was making and selling memorials headstone and marble statues nationwide in Great Britain. He was in need of a young sculptor with experience.

The place to go looking for one sculptor was Italy’s City of Marble Carrara; he was told; so he went there. The words went around the city of Carrara and the name of The Sculptor was mentioned everywhere.

The Sculptor had already worked at that time on many big memorials; among others; the memorial for Eva Peron (Evita) the wife of Argentina’s dictator Peron and the Guglielmo Marconi memorial’s obelisk (Marconi invented the radio) and even though only 20 years old this sculptor’s skill and experience were unsurpassed. The request for his work permit was issued in GB.

The notice for his employmen had to be published for six months’ duration; in all the offices of employment in Great Britain. If a sculptor would have been found in GB, his permit to go and work in England would have been denied. Of course no sculptor was found in GB and our sculptor got his permit and his contract for working in England.

The Sculptor’s contract was for so much money that he thought he was a kind of a modern footballer.

The permit was valid for one year duration and The Sculptor waited and waited because it was the year of the Rome Olympic and he would have like it very much to stay in Italy for it. But then he decided that he would go at the end of the summer. If The Sculptor would have waited until November, he would have had to go for his compulsory, at the time but not anymore Italian military service. But because he had a contract of work abroad the Italian government waived the Military Service for him for the duration of six years and plus the Italian government gave him a free passport as well; that why The Sculptor has an Italian passport even today; it is still free for him! ‘Ciao, Italia,’ bye, bye Italy; he said.

The train for England was the Rome Express; it would go from Rome direct to Paris-Gare de Lyon station. From there he had to be able to transfer himself to Gare du Nord station where then the train to Calais and Dover-London-Victoria would start from. This was a worry for him and to his family, because not speaking proper French The Sculptor could have found the transfer in Paris by taxi or metro difficult. So his family asked an experienced man that they knew, Mr Focy, to advise them. He had business in England as a marble agent and had travelled to England many times before.

Mr Focy told The Sculptor that if he would purchase a ‘first-class train ticket, all of his problems would be solved, because the first-class carriage of the train would be transferred from Gare du Lyon station to Gare du Nord station by the French railways personnel, without the need for the first-class passengers having to move. Oh! Well, worth paying the extra money then! He thought.

But it was a wrong decision the money could have been saved, here is how!

The first-class ticket on those days was very expensive three times the cost of a second class and The Sculptor’s family found it hard to raise the money, but they had to do it and they did it for the peace of mind of all of them as a family. It was though The Sculptor first time and the last time he would be travelling first class on that’s journey! As soon as he got to the La Spezia train station in Italy The Sculptor found out why.

The Rome Express train was not stopping at his local Carrara-Avenza train station; on those days.

The formation of the carriages of the Rome-Express was made up at the station at La Spezia; and clearly shown beyond glass for the benefits of the international passengers, so everyone could wait at the right spot on the platform of this very long train. The Sculptor could see and realized then that his carriage Rome-Calais was formed in two sections, one half first class and one half second class. So even with a second-class ticket, The Sculptor would have been transferred by the French railways personel to the Gare do Nord station once arrived in Paris. No need for him to have paid the extra money at all! Also The Sculptor had learned quickly that the people who think of themselves ‘I know’ don’t really know anything’!

The Sculptor went back home for Christmas that year with a second-class ticket and did the transfer in Paris in the first-class carriage without paying a penny extra.

Even if one would have find the carriage Rome-Calais, or Calais-Rome to be first class only as The Sculptor did find it one year, he could still do the Paris transfer free by jumping on that carriage once arrived in Paris.

‘Was it easy to do it, or not?’ As he said, the sculptot was only a 21-year-old young man experiencing the world. First lesson learned: Be smart and make yourself a fortune.

His mother kissed him with tears in her eyes at the station when the train arrived and gave him the last recommendation: ‘Stay always near the ladys during your travellings.

Going to England was for The Sculptor a kind of an avventura—adventure. And he did not appreciate at the time the suffering of a mother who sees her son going away from home to a distant land away from the real love, mother’s love, father’s love, brother’s love, family love.

The Sculptor’s mother and his father made lots of sacrifices to maintain him at his studies until the age of 21; his family where not rich, his father was a skilled carpenter but they lived in their own apartment in a big house built by his grandfather.

It was expected in Italy at that time that a son would repay financially his family once he was on a fully paid job. The Sculptor made the promise that he would send back to his family in Italy part of his weekly pay; forgetting that the most important things was not the money, but the ‘been near the fire’ meaning that if someone is very cold or is feeling cold, he has to go near the fire to get warm.

The one person who is the nearest to the fire, the warmer he will fill.

It is a kind of a parabola invented by The Sculptor. Be near the fire (your family) the nearest you are to your family, the best help you will have. The more distant you are from your family, the more problems you will have to face by yourself; The Sculptor soon discovered it to be very true.

The Sculptor’s grandfather’s name was Angelo! Yes! He had the same name Angelo, and the Sculptor was named after him because the boy was the first of the family’s grandchildren.

Angelo as a young man was looking forward of going to England, happy and full of expectations in the land of Robin Hood and King Richard, the Lion heart.

Angelo had full confidence on his skill as a sculptor and remembered the words of one of his sculptor’s teachers at the art school: ‘Learn the skill, boys, and the world will be your oyster; any one of you can go anywhere in the world to show your sculptures work and you don’t even have to speak the language of the country either; your skill will be doing the talking for you’.

Also the reassuring word of the Trotini’s brothers, who had a sculptor work studio and from time to time they would call Angelo to go there to finish or give the last touch to the statues that the studio were making.

They had been in England many times before and had these words for him: ‘Angelo, we are very sorry that we are losing you. You are going to work in England but we are sure; you will be a success there. We have been in England ourself many times and we have found it out; that people in England needs to have only one eye to be able to do very well in their life.

And you not only have got two very good eyes, you Angelo also do have your sculptor’s eyes!’Still for a man with The Sculptor’s kind of ability and skill, our sculptor should have gone instead to work in the United States of America.

Giorgio Vernazza, a boy two years beyond The Sculptor’s class at his school, went to America.

The Sculptor met him in Carrara during his summer holiday and Giorgio told him that he had made enough money in three years working in the USA as a sculptor in the state of Vermont to afford to buy four apartments in Italy and practically retire and live out of income (rendita) for the rest of his life.

Journey to England

The Sculptor first class train to England was expensive, but the train’s carriage was very comfortable and had very few passengers. One was an English old lady, who spoke better Italian than The Sculptor was speaking English. She was returning back to her London home after holidaying in Tuscany visiting Pisa and Florence. ‘Are you going to visit England?’He was asked by the lady. ‘Oh! No! Madam, I am a sculptor from Carrara in Tuscany and I have been offered a job there,’ The Sculptor said to her. ‘Oh! Very well’The lady said. ‘Where will your place of working be?’ she asked. The Sculptor wasn’t so sure, he knew that it was near the seafront, east of London. To make sure he took out his work-permit documents and handed it to the lady. She had a quick look and then, ‘Weir-on-Sea!’ she exclaimed, ‘Not Weir-on-Sea! There is nothing there in Weir-on-Sea. It is only a little fishing village, and there in that place, my dear young man I am sure you will have not a great future. A young and handsome man like you leaving a beautiful country like Italy, a sculptor, an artist, from Tuscany, the land of Michelangelo, Raffaello, Botticelli, Leonardo, Giotto, and yours and you are going to leave it all beyond so young and full of great expectations for going to work and to live in England’s Weir-on-Sea?! I will advise you that England will not be able to give you the same kind of living that Italy does. You will be better off stopping at the next station, and get on the next train back home to Italy,’ she said. The lady was very sincere and honest and The Sculptor liked her spirit very much. But in fact, she did not know and The Sculptor did not know aither that in fact Weir-on-Sea was only the address of the firm’s registered office and it took The Sculptor two years before he could go and see Weir-on-Sea for himself. The house The Sculptor went to live in was in fact located in Mestre -on-Sea and the family who took him in as a lodger was an English family.

His Birthplace

The Sculptor was born in the house that his grandfather had built. His grandfather had five children—four boys and one girl. The Sculptor was the first of his grandchildren he was born on Christmas day and he was named after his grandfather Angelo. The house his grandfather built was a very large one. It included the bakery, the food shop grocery the wine shop ‘Cantina’ and the restaurant. When The Sculptor was born, three families lived there in the three apartments, his grandfather and his wife Anini Lina, his uncle Ergio and his wife Driana, his father Mando, his mother Tina, his brother Nelson, and himself. During World War II the bombardment by the Allied forces was very intense. The city of Carrara was on the front line. The Army of Nazis Germany made a stand near Carrara trying to stop the advancing American army. Carrara been the world capital of the marble industry, made public air-raid bomb shelters built out of great-size block of marble one on top of another, only a narrow tunnel at the bottom was left where the people could go and shelter as soon as they could hear the air-raid sirens sounded. The Sculptor was 4 years old, but he could hear the sounds of the airplanes bombers arriving minutes before the sirens sounded. Time and time again The Sculptor would warn his mother. ‘Mum! Mum! ‘The bombers, the bombers are coming! Quick, let’s run to the shelters,’ The Sculptor would say. ‘No! No!