[New-Poetry] Working stories

[Anny Ballardini]

Several years ago they asked me to open a reading point in the tourist
resort where my parents lived and where I was living. I will spare the
details (worth some interesting fiction, at least that is the way I write
fiction) and after a year or so, the reading point had become a sort of
after school meeting point for the kids of the place where they could do
their homework, and ask me to help them. The reading point depended on the
main library in a village some 30kms away. In the said library, quite a big
structure on two floors, built thanks to the legacy of a man who had spent
his life working in the States, was managed by a librarian (an old Marxist
who had opened the original library with his own books), a diabetic (a 22
year-old girl, niece of the mayor who kicked the pc to switch it on [I'll
never forget that], and received the job because she suffered from diabetes)
and a 55 or so year old handicapped man who could barely walk.

The librarian had recently been appointed President of the cooperatives, was
also a free-lance journalist, and was not able to cope with the amount of
work. He sort of asked me if I could help him out. Which is what I did. I
worked my eight – nine – ten hours and during the lunch break (some 2 or 3
hours) I stayed inside the library trying to find the books the diabetic put
on the shelves to move them to their right places. She did not know the
alphabet and letters like j – k – w – y – x could be found anywhere.

Nobody ever paid me for this extra-work. Finally there were the elections
and the village was not able to elect a new mayor. In cases like these, the
government sends an official representative until the people of the place
are able to elect someone. The State Official asked me about my salary, and
it is thanks to him that I started receiving some money. Some six seven
months went by, when the Librarian told me that it was time for him to
retire, and besides that, he was not able to follow his many activities any
more, that he was going to resign and to suggest I should be the director,
seen the quality of my work and dedication.

After a couple of days I received a letter by the new mayor, he was thanking
me for all what I had done, reminded me that in over a year I hadn't taken
the 33 days holiday I was supposed to take, and concluded by saying that my
service was thus terminated. The library was closed. In Italy when public
institutions need to employ someone they have to call for "Public
competitions" which are open exams for public offices. According to Law they
were forced to call one, they did six months later, as soon as my name
appeared on the list of the candidates, the examination was postponed. This
happened twice. I finally came to live here in Bolzano. The new chosen
Director was (guess guess) a relative of the new Mayor, and guess how many
people started working at the library, twelve instead of four, as we did
when I worked.

-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080909/2ed0b31a/attachment.html