Recalled to Life

By Uri Jerzy Nachimson

Life leads us to places and events that we could not foresee. But, there is a saying that God sees and laughs when you plan.
Giusy had good youth and hopes for a rosy future, a warm home, and a loving environment. Instead, the misfortunes that befell her led to a problematic confrontation with an exploitative and challenging world. Each time she raised her head, and it seemed that the worst was over, a new crisis came that fortified her to face the following situation. When she got into the honey trap that Rosanna had set for her, she did not imagine where it would lead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uri Jerzy Nachimson
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005876760

Uri Jerzy Nachimson

Uri Jerzy Nachimson was born in Szczecin, Poland, in 1947. Two years later, his parents emigrated to Israel. In 1966, he served in the Israeli army in the Northern Command for three years. He participated in the Six-Day War as a photographer in combat.As a freelance photographer, he wandered around Prague as crowds demonstrated in front of Soviet tanks. His travels to Egypt are the inspiration for his book, Seeds of Love.In 1990, he returned for the first time to Poland to seek his roots. He was deeply affected by the attitude of the Poles towards the Jews during and after World War II, and he started to research the history of the Jews of Poland. Thus, the trilogy was born: Lilly's Album, The Polish Patriot, and Identity.Uri's grandmother, Ida Friedberg, was the granddaughter of the Jewish writer A.S. Friedberg, editor of the Polish Jewish newspaper Hazefira, and the author of many books.In 2005, Uri moved to Tuscany, Italy, where he lives with his wife. While in Cortona, he wrote Two Margherita, Broken Hearts in Boulevard Unirii, Recalled to Life, Violette and Ginger, The Girl from Haukaloolloo, Isabella, In the Depth of Silence, and others.

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Recalled to Life

A Novel

By

Uri J. Nachimson

Recalled to Life

By Uri J. Nachimsom

Copyright ©2021-2022

No part of this material may be reproduced, copied, photocopied, recorded, translated, stored in a repository, transmitted or published by any means, electronic, optical, mechanical or otherwise. Commercial use of any kind of material contained in the book is strictly prohibited, except with the direct written permission of the author or publisher. All the characters appearing in the book as well as the plot and events are the author's imagination. The connection between the characters and existing people is highly coincidental. All rights reserved to the author © in all languages. Written in Cortona, Tuscany, Italy in 2021-2022.

Cover: A art work Ritratto di Donna by Giovanni Boldini, 1920 (Museo Boldini)

You may not end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you were meant to be.

(Jessica Taylor)

Chapter one

Mama Mia, what a beautiful girl. She placed the baby on Paula's breasts, and the little one immediately began to search for the nipple. Have you thought of a name yet? The midwife looked at the baby, who had just been cut off from her mother's umbilical cord, the mother, who was sweating and exhausted from the difficult birth.

She does not have to give her a name; at the institution, they will take care of that. Paula looked at the two women standing by her bed and whispered, I want you to name her Alba. It was just dawn, and it was pouring rain outside, hitting the room's window. Lightning pierced the sky, followed by a tremendous thunder that shook the building; so terrifying was the noise that the baby burst into tears, frightened from everything around her.

I assembled this scene in my imagination until I believed in it. I desired to understand why my mother handed me over as soon as I was born to an institution? I got the answers many years later when I was already an adult and searching for my roots...

I remember exactly everything that happened to me from the age of five, but everything that happened before has been erased, except for a few particular events that come to my mind as a vague dream. Whatever it is.

Paula is my biological mother; you already understood that, a member of a Catholic family of ten brothers and sisters from the small village of Scorzarollo on the banks of the Po River in the Emilia Romagna region of northern Italy.

At the age of thirteen, my mother became pregnant without knowing by whom, apart from the teacher, she fucked all the male children in the class. She finally ran away from home with a young man from the village where they lived to the big city of Bologna.

Life has not been easy for the young couple. At first, they lived in public parks. Then, they started stealing; they settled in the train station and stole the passengers' wallets, sometimes a camera or a wristwatch. Then they started breaking into shops and even houses. When Paula's stomach swelled to dimensions that made it difficult for her to 'work,' she abandoned her boyfriend and returned to her parents' house. Her father threw her out of his house on a stormy night. Their neighbors picked her up and called the social workers from the nearby town who brought her to a shelter where the birth started.

I was born prematurely but healthy in a natural birth. Paula, this is my mother, fed me for one whole night. The following day the two social workers came and separated me from her for forty-six years.

I grew up in a good family in the city of Bologna. My adoptive parents took me from the shelter the day after I was born. My father, Antonio, whom everyone called Tonino, was the manager of a local bank branch. He was a plump little man, bald from a young age; in fact, I always remember him with a shiny watermelon-shaped head, always smiling and his cheeks red from excessive drinking or high blood pressure. Even the doctors could not explain what killed him at forty, the drinking, or his high blood pressure. My mother Alicia was thin and shapely, a handsome woman by all means, and on the street, charming men turned their heads gazing at her, but she refrained from looking back at them, especially when Dad was around.

They did not name me Alba as my biological mother wanted, they called me Graziella after a grandmother I never knew, and I was not too fond of the name, so at the age of fifteen, when I got my first I.D. I changed it to Giusy. But I liked my last name Fiordibosco, which means forest flower, which sounds very romantic and has become significant in my life.

At that time, we lived in a condominium in the old town very close to Due Torri. The apartment was huge, and I had my own room.

At the age of five or a little more, I fell in love for the first time. It was with a cute kid who lived not far away, and we got to know each other in the nuns' kindergarten where I went for the two years before elementary school. Even though he was a snob, I really liked him, and he only talked to me when no other friends were around. No one knew I was an adopted child, nor did I share my secret with anyone. I do not remember precisely when I found out, but it came naturally when Dad spewed it out while having a conversation at a family dinner. I remember he talked about animals adopting the offspring of other animals that were preyed upon or abandoned like the woman who gave birth to you and could not raise you, so we took you, and now you are ours. The truth is that it sounded strange to me at first, but I thought to myself I was fortunate because who knows? Maybe my biological mother was very poor, and I would have suffered a lot; I would not have nice clothes and my own room.

So let's go back to Maurizio, the boy I fell in love with, but we were not real friends. Once, when we were playing in the sandbox alone, he suddenly came up to me and kissed me on the mouth and then spat, I just wanted to feel what it was like; I had no intention to become your boyfriend, he said. So yes, as you understand, love was one-sided and disappointing.

By the age of six, I already knew how to write, and my parents considered sending me to school, but the teaching nun objected and said I was not mature enough yet. What did she understand? She herself was not really grown up. Once she was asked why she has a wedding ring, she replied that she is married to God, does that sound like an evolved person to you?

Once, I noticed a woman standing outside the kindergarten for hours and watching us playing; I was sure it was my biological mother who wanted to kidnap me. I was scared and told my parents. After that, I never saw her again. Ever since my parents told me I was adopted, I have had these fears, but I kept them to myself.

Once when we were in the yard of the house where I lived, Maurizio wanted to compete with me, who could urinate farther; only then did I see that we had different organs for the first time. He was very curious about the way I urinated and laughed when I bent to do it. I admired him for being the smartest in the class, and I was happy every minute I could be alone with him; that way, he was just mine. But the love ended when we entered first grade in two different schools.

Chapter two

At the age of seven, I was a well-developed girl for my age, taller than most girls, and I started putting on makeup in Mom's bedroom when she went out to meet her friends for the bridge game she loved so much. Dad was utterly engrossed in eating and watching TV, and he did not care what I did.

The Italian teacher was a worldly hunk, his forelock fluttering like Little Tony's, my favorite singer. I would dream in class with my eyes open, and especially I liked his Neapolitan accent when he repeated the phrase Tutti Inseima, Uno Due Tre. When his character started appearing in my dream at night, and I felt him stroking my hair and bringing me strawberry-flavored lollypops, I knew for sure I was in love with him. He was twenty-seven, and I was seven. So what? At the age of twenty, I thought he would be forty; it already sounded better. I wanted to write him a letter and convince him to wait for me to grow up, but I was afraid he would make fun of me in front of all the students in class. Once during the break, Ilia, who was the most popular boy in the class, approached me and offered me friendship, and I told him that I was already in love and busy. Luckily he did not ask who? Not that I would have answered him anyway, he was just shocked, offended, turned around, and left. Ever since I refused him, my reputation has risen among the girls, and they have been fluttering around me like chickens.

But the truth was quite different; I was so sorry that I refused him with my great stupidity because when he announced that he was the boyfriend of Mina, sitting next to me in class, I cried all night out of jealousy.

And so my first school year passed, and the summer holiday arrived. Dad and Mom took me to Lago di Garda, to a small town called Salò, where I first heard the name, Mussolini. Dad explained to me that a king named Emmanuelle was in Italy, and Mussolini overthrew him and became a strong and authoritarian leader. There was a war, and the people did not want him as a leader. Some soldiers captured him and imprisoned him in the mountains, and the Germans came and saved him and let him escape. Then the soldiers caught him again and killed him, and at the end, they hung him upside down in Milan, and everyone passed and spat on him. But that does not belong in my story; I continue from the town of Salò, where we spent the whole month of August and where I also met Roberto.

When I went with Dad on a boat ride on Lake Garda, I saw a boy who was taller than me, and he wore a visor cap that read on its front Fate L'amore non la Guerra - Make love, not war. When we got back from the cruise, he was there with an older woman who I later found out was his grandmother. He looked at me and I at him, and neither of us dared to approach and start a conversation, so he took a handful of sand in his hand and threw it at me. Instead of yelling at him, I stood and smiled like an idiot, then he took another handful of sand and threw it at me, and this time he hit me. Without a second thought, I bent down and flew a ball of wet sand at him, but he bowed, and the ball hit his grandmother, who was sitting on a mat, so she fell on her back. We both burst out laughing, which made me wet my panties. Afraid he would see, I ran quickly to my hotel room.

The next day I met him at breakfast. He refrained from laughing when he saw me; I approached him and said, My name is Graziella; what is your name? He blushed like a beet and said in a whisper, Roberto, and then I asked him, How do you make love instead of war?

As I mentioned earlier, Roberto was shy, but he had a good head for pranks, and we truly enjoyed ourselves together. Therefore, I can conclude that I had a great summer vacation. I remember one evening we went to the lake; it was already dark, but the full moon illuminated the surroundings in pale light; we settled in the tall bushes that grew close to the water and peeked at a couple who made love on the beach. They were completely naked, but we could not notice the details; we saw that he was lying on his back, and she was sitting on him with her face turned towards his legs while his hands were holding her breasts. When she started moving her body and making sighs, we also began making sighs from the bushes, she stopped for a moment and looked toward us, but we kept sighing. She probably thought there was another couple nearby making love, so she continued screwing . After long minutes they changed positions, she lay on her back, and he got on top with her feet leaning on his shoulders. When it seemed to us that they no longer noticed our moans, we started throwing wet sand balls at them. At first, they did not respond, but when such a bullet hit the man's back, he stopped moving and lay down next to her as he raised his head and waited to see where from the next shot would come. Quietly we sneaked away from the bushes and returned to the hotel.

I studied a chapter on making love and realized that the stork does not play any role in having children.

On the last evening of our stay in Salò, there was a dance at the hotel. My parents appeared dressed in their best clothes; Dad wore a gray suit and a burgundy bow tie, which blended perfectly with his red cheeks. Mom looked like she came out of a Parisian fashion magazine, her face perfectly made-up and a dress hugging her shapely body calling attention to her sexy curves. Roberto's parents, who had brought his grandmother with them, looked very provincial and blended well with the other guests who did not take the festive evening very seriously. The loudspeakers played an Argentinian tango, and slowly the dance floor was filled with couples. Finally, Roberto and I realized it was our time to retreat. We got up at different time intervals and went out to the garden. I looked behind me and saw that no one was interested in us. Roberto suggested we peek at the couples lying on the lakeshore, and I offered him a game where we try on ourselves all the positions we saw during the week. We chose a dark and dry place as I was careful not to get my dress dirty.

You'll lie on your back, and I'll sit on you, he said.

Are you retarded? You have to lie down and I'll sit on you; otherwise it's not real, I replied.

Why can't I lie down? He asked innocently.

I realized he did not really understand what went into whom and in what pose it was possible, so I agreed to his offer. I lay down, and he sat down on my knees.

It hurts; sit forward, I screamed.

Then we will change, I will lie down, and you will sit on me, he replied.

Now that it was the proper position, I sat straight on his groin area, and then he screamed in pain and grabbed his testicles with both hands as he tossed me off him and writhed in pain. Then, I realized that I had crushed his balls when I dropped myself on him with all my weight.

We waited for about half an hour for him to calm down before we said goodbye and each retired to his room. After that, I never saw Roberto again, although we returned in August a year later to the same hotel that my parents and Mussolini loved so much.

On December 13, 1960, I turned ten years old. Life smiled at me. After the Prima comunione ceremony at the church, I had a party at home and received lots of presents. However, the most beautiful gift I received was from Dad. A few hours before the guests arrived, we found Dad lying on the carpet in the living room of our house with no pulse, not breathing. I ran like crazy and kicked the neighbor's door violently; frightened, he opened the door in his underwear, which he had just thrown on; I had interrupted the sacrament he was engaged in. I could not get a word out, so I grabbed him by his shirt and dragged him to our apartment. Dad looks more very dead. The redness in his cheeks was gone, and his eyes fell deep in their sockets. The neighbor bent down and pressed his mouth to my father's as if in a kiss while his panties revealed a fat, hairy butt. Despite the incredible tension, I burst into nervous laughter and had to run to the bathroom and wash my face with cold water. When I returned to the room, Dad had already opened his eyes and mumbled something vague.

All night Mom and I sat at his bedside in the hospital, and the next day he was released. The doctors advised my mother to keep him from getting fat and prevent him from using too much salt; he also received blood thinners and antihypertension pills. But, unfortunately, he hid from them the information about his drinking habits.

It has been a happy year. Dad took us to Paris, Rome, Naples, and we even visited Pompeii. We visited many museums and also saw a Luciano Pavarotti concert at the Verona Arena. Every vacation and weekend was meant for family fun only. Dad felt his time was near and tried to make the most of life. I was at the top of the world. Mom bought herself a new wardrobe in every big city we came to; she had about fifty pairs of shoes. Then, precisely at the age of forty, less than two weeks, from becoming deputy bank manager in Milan, we received a phone call to arrive quickly at the hospital. When we

Reviews for Recalled to Life

[dianajoelle695 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Is it a fraud story? I don't want to spoil the plot because any more words might cause a
spoiler. A book full of surprises, full of excitement and interest. I can only describe the
book as one of the best I have read recently.