Travels With My Ass

The following chronicle is compiled from information contained in letters I received from my old friend and one time comrade in arms, Salvatore Delasino, and latterly from his notes and diaries, found among his effects after his death, which his widow Della Delasino graciously permitted me to borrow.  You will find therefore that the narrative though not epistolary, consists of long passages told in the first person by Delasino himself in his journals (in which I have taken the editorial liberties of correcting spelling, grammar, syntax and so on, while adhering strictly to factual content).  The central part of the text was written by me from the many notes, usually very informal jottings, which I found among my friend’s papers, as well as the letters I received from him during the period I describe.  I have attempted to develop the information in these latter papers into a cohesive, comprehensive, and I hope “readable” narrative, using the third-person, omniscient, and in some cases the dramatic (dialogue) point of view.  Per Aristotle’s maxim, there is a beginning, a middle, and an end.

However it is presented, and I take full responsibility for any failures or inadequacies of the book as a whole, after having known the man as a soldier in his earlier years and after having read what he recorded of the last half of his life I became convinced that his story should be told. If the reader finds the book disappointing certainly that should stem not from the events themselves--which are among the most interesting and entertaining, one even could say enchanting, of any that I have ever come across in my long and varied life--but rather in their portrayal by a somewhat enfeebled retired professor of English who has just passed the anniversary of his eighty-fifth birthday.

Charles Tagliaferro

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Prologue

In the small hours of the morning on December 28th 1908, thirteen year-old Francesco Delasino was tumbled from his narrow bed by a stupendous shock which shook his family’s ancient stone house to its very foundations.  As his eyes flew wide open Francesco noticed faint blue-green emanations of light dancing about his small room at the top of the house.  After that first cataclysmic tremor and as Francesco sat on his bed trembling with fear the spectral light show vanished and the aftershocks began.  And then, between the rumbling successive shuddering jolts, he heard Guido screaming.  Barefoot and clad only in his nightshirt he ran down the stairs, out into the cold inky tumultuous night, and on to the stable.  He fell several times along the short way as the earth continued to shift under his feet.  As Francesco unfastened Guido’s worn and frayed halter and put his arms around the little donkey’s neck he could see the animal’s eyes rolling in terror.  For the next few minutes, which to Francesco seemed an eternity, boy and beast remained huddled together, terrified and silhouetted in the battered door frame of the dilapidated stable, as Francesco, himself frightened half out of his wits, tried through chattering teeth to reassure the little beast who was virtually beside himself with an incomprehensible dread.

Not much later, after the world seemed to have recovered its senses, the boy’s father found them there.  Short of threatening physical force Salvatore Delasino could not coax his son to leave Guido and return to the house; finally, with Guido between them, they went back, to a ground-level room which had a dirt floor.  Francesco spent the few dark hours which remained of the night huddled in a corner with the still-trembling animal.  Later in the day the boy and his still skittish Guido helped clear away some of the debris from the vicinity of the house....