That was it! Matteo had the business acumen, and could be convincing - he managed to get by Don Zua not only to allow them, but at very good conditions. They discussed all the details down to the smallest point for hours. But in the end they had come to an agreement.
So the two boys had returned to Ziu Cosimu's. Thanks to his good offices they were able to buy a donkey and a cart, had loaded the child on it and nothing else, because they did not have anything besides the clothes they wore. But Rose had given them three small blankets and mattresses, a few pieces of home made soap and a roll of fabric, plus a basket full of food. Ziu Cosimu had also wanted to give the boys two of his old cloaks.
Once in Lula, with the little money that remained to Matteo, they bought some essential things to begin their new life. And then they took the road to the mine.
Renzino sat quietly and thoughtful in the cart and looked around at that landscape that was so alien to him, with his big eyes wide open. After a while he called Damianu and the young man turned to look at him.
"From here you cannot see the sea, though!" the child said with a bit whiny voice.
"No, you can not see it from here. But it is behind those mountains over there. We can not see the sea, but we know it is always there, even if we do not see it anymore," Damianu said with a sad smile.
"Just like Dad and Mum, then..." said the little one with a slight sigh of relief.
"Yes, just like your Dad and your Mum, Renzino. Just like them," Damianu confirmed.
They came to the farmhouse nestled between two large rocks, and saw that in front of it was a cart full of wooden planks and that three men were working - they were doing new fixtures, and building tables and benches for the interior. Don Zua had busied himself, without wasting time, as he had promised. Behind the farmhouse there were two masons who were repairing the oven. Two more were on the roof and fixed it.
The two guys unloaded their few belongings and took them to one of the two small rooms behind the kitchen. Then Damianu took Renzino's hand and led him to walk around the farmhouse while Matteo went to talk to the workers who were repairing the house.
"See, here we will make a beautiful vegetable garden, and here we will put cages for chickens and rabbits, and maybe there we can also make a little fold to keep a few sheep, if we have enough money," he explained to the child, "The more we are able to cultivate and breed, Renzino, the more money we can earn, do you understand?"
"Oh, look, there is also the well!" exclaimed the little one cheerfully. "We go to see it, Damianu?"
The boy thought that the well could be a danger to the child: "Later we'll go together. Come now, let's see the men who are making our house beautiful," he said.
"But... the house of Dad was more beautiful," objected the boy pensively.
"Our house is going to be beautiful also, Renzino, you'll see," said the young man, giving him a reassuring smile.
Still holding his hand, he went to the men and asked them to work immediately to make a lid for the well and close it with a padlock - he did not want Renzino to risk falling into it. He knew how the child, if indeed fundamentally obedient, seemed to know how to get into trouble, and when he and Matteo have to deal with the customers, they could not watch him constantly.
Matteo had also asked the men to build a shed for the donkey and the cart against the rock to the right of the stable. The two young men set to work to clean the inside of the farmhouse. There was a lot to do, but this did not frighten them. Shirtless, Damianu and Matteo worked hard, in silence, without ever losing sight of the child who, in his own way, was trying to be helpful, although sometimes he was more a hindrance than helpful.
Matteo, however, often let his gaze wander on the shirtless torso of Damianu, feeling mildly and pleasantly excited - he really wanted his companion. He wanted to pass his hands on the beautiful, not muscular but not flabby, well-defined and hairless chest. He wanted to touch him between the legs to test his manly consistency that he had already seen, but still never aroused. He wanted to kiss the beautiful, sensual lips, full but not plump. But above all he wanted to see his lovely smile no longer veiled in sadness.
Only the proximity of Ettore seemed to have had the power to make shine a special light in the beautiful eyes of Damianu . Would he ever succeed to rekindle that sweet and intense light? To make slightly bend up the corners of the mouth of his sexy partner in a happy smile? Could he ever think of him as his lover, his beloved?
In the evening, after having some food, they lay on the ground the three old mattresses they got as a gift and went to bed, tired but satisfied. The fact of having worked almost around the clock for themselves, for their house, had infused greater energy into the two young men .
"Already sleeping, Matteo?" asked Damianu at one point, and his voice rose lightly in the pitch dark that permeated the room.
"No, not yet."
"I thought... We should also make a pergola in front of the farmhouse, so when the weather is nice and warm, maybe the men would like to eat outside... What do you say?"
Matteo thought it was a good sign that Damianu thought towards the future, and new projects. "I think it is a great idea. There is enough space before the street. Yes, we can plant several stakes and make a lattice. What do you think of planting, to make the pergola? Vines? "
"No... They require too much care. I was thinking of wisterias. At this height they should still grow well. And I like the flower of wisteria," replied the young man.
"Yes, you're right. Wisteria it will be. We can plant one next to each post and in a couple of years, maybe three, they will form a beautiful canopy of leaves and flowers. Ten, fifteen plants should be enough. Do you not think?"
"Yes, maybe. The farmhouse will seem more beautiful, for those coming here. Have you thought about a name? A name for our tavern, I mean."
"No, not yet. And you?" Matteo asked, more and more pleased that his companion had thought of that too.
"No, not really. The names that came to my mind don't seem to fit, don't seem to me to be good."
"For example? Tell me some, Damianu," Matteo urged him.
" Matteo and Damianu... or... At the Three Dore, or The Farmhouse... Or... The Pergola, if and when we will have the pergola as well..."
"They all seem to be good to me. Why do you dislike them, Damianu?"
"I think of the men of the mine, when they will say to each other, let's go to... it must be a name that by itself already makes them want to come here, do you not think?"
"Yes, I understand what you mean. I think you're right. Something like: we go to our friends, you mean, or let's go home... right?"
"Yes, but it has also to be an original name, a less common one. But I cannot think of anything. Do you want to think about it too?"
"Sure, Damianu. But since you're the one who will prepare the food, I think that Damianu's could be a good name..."
"No, someone might not like the name, or even dislike me."
"How could someone not like you, eh?" Matteo responded instinctively, thinking that surely it would have given him a pleasant feeling to say, "let's go to Damianu's."
The young man didn't reply. But that sentence was spinning round and round in his mind, and also the sweet tone with which Matteo had said it.
"Sa Pinnetta, Damianu murmured in a pensive tone.
"What pinnetta?" Matteo asked, thinking of how many times he had quickly slipped into one of those temporary shelters of stone and thatch with some shepherd boy to have sex.
"The name. The men of the mine were almost all shepherds, before coming to work here. And for them the pinnetta was a shelter, a resting place where you take refuge, almost like a home away from home. What do you say? "
"Yes, I like it." Matteo replied thinking that he would like to bring Damianu into a pinnetta, to make love. "But there are no pinnetta around here."
"We can build one in front of the shed of the donkey, at the border with the road. We collect the scattered stones and build it up a little at a time - it will become the symbol of our tavern."
"Yes... it is a nice idea, we will build it, of course. And then... it will also bring back to their memory when they were kids, when they took refuge there with two on a sheepskin rug, in the dark, they were doing those enjoyable things."
"Are you serious? I did not know," Damianu murmured. "But you often went to the pastures. You know these things? Maybe … who knows how many times you did too..."
"Yes, I too," Matteo admitted.
"Also with that boy that you told me about?" Damianu's soft voice asked.
"No, not with him. He never came up to the pasture. I would have taken him gladly into a pinnetta, though, if only I could. If only he wants to come with me..." Matteo replied unconsciously passing to the present tense.
"Do you miss him?" asked Damianu.
"Yes, I miss him."
"Now he is far away..." Damianu said.
"This is not the problem... it is that he... he does not think of me. His heart is taken by another, as I've said," Matteo whispered not knowing whether to hope that Damianu understands or does not understand that he was really talking about him.
"That's right, you told me. But if that guy had said yes, you'd be... faithful to him?"
"Sure I would be faithful."
"And you would have brought him here with us?" asked Damianu.
Now Matteo did not know how to answer, without showing his cards too. Then, hesitantly, said: "I'd like to build a pinnetta and bring him in, yes. I would love to. A pinnetta for us alone."
They were silent, each lost in his own thoughts, until sleep caught Damianu first, then also Matteo.
Finally they opened the tavern and started their new job. They had to run all day long - as the men finished their shifts, they were willing to spend their free time at "Sa Pinnetta". The two young men, in their spare time, had begun to build the pergola and also to build the pinnetta, aided by Renzino who went around to collect the scattered stones that the two young men piled up skilfully and walled dry.
They had formed a circular wall, wide enough to easily accommodate two lying bodies. They cleared the ground and planted inside the pole in the centre that would support the cone of thatch. To the right of the narrow entrance they had also made a fireplace. Renzino was excited and happy.
"Damianu, who will live here?" asked the little boy.
"None. It just as a decoration that we do it."
"Too bad. I'd like to live there, once it's done," said the boy. Then he asked: "May I play in it?"
"Sure, Renzino."
"You, too, will play in it with uncle Matteo?"
Damianu thought about what Matteo had told him about the "games" that the kids were playing in a pinnetta and smiled inwardly.
"You will play in it the two of you too?" insisted the child.
"We're grown up people now, uncle Matteo and me," Damianu replied.
The young man wondered how it would actually be to do it with Matteo - he physically resembled Ettore :enough he was very well done, but as a person was quite different. And gradually Damianu had to admit, he was better than his brother. The memory of Ettore had not disappeared, but now he was less haunted by those memories.
Matteo had found an old water mill blade, a rectangle of wood that use and time had washed away, making the grain stand out. With a knife he had carved on it the name "Sa Pinnetta" and in the groove of the incision had poured a bit of red paint - he would hang it on the side of the pinnetta, once completed, as the insignia of their tavern.
As both the young men were able to write, they had also taken to draft for a few coins the letters that people wanted to send home, and that Matteo brought to the post office every time he went down to the village. The wives and families of the miners, who were mostly illiterate, would make the parish priest read them and then they read their answers to the men.
They had also made in a corner of the stable a counter that was like a small general store, where they sold to the miners snuff, chewing or smoking tobacco, bars of soap, clay pipes, small rectangular mirrors to use when they shaved, playing cards and other poor things that could be useful to the men.
Business was good. They managed to return to Don Zua Pisanu the money that he had anticipated, and now every month, they could also pay him a small sum with which, little by little, they would buy the farmhouse and the piece of land that surrounded it. The vegetable garden began to produce, and they also had started raising chickens and rabbits. The structure of the pergola was completed and the wisterias were gradually growing.
The pinnetta was almost completed; the perimeter wall had already reached the chest height of the two young men, and then was only missing the roof to finish it. It had taken a long time to build it, because they had little time to devote to it.
Matteo had noticed the slow change in his friend - he now seemed more serene, sometimes a rare smile emerged on his face, illuminated for a short while his eyes and Matteo felt increasingly drawn to Damianu and less capable of hiding his feelings.
The young and strong man sensed that Damianu was starting to feel something for him. Damianu was perhaps more skilled in hiding what he felt timidly blooming within himself. Or maybe he just was not yet fully aware of the change in his own feelings. One of the things that increasingly united the two young men and increasingly brought them closer, beyond their lives and working together, was their love and sense of protection towards Renzino.
Finally the pinnetta was completed. Matteo hung there the wooden board with the incised name. He also hung a fur curtain on the entrance, and put inside a rolled fur as a sleeping mat. Damianu prepared the firewood, arranging everything as if it was ready for use. The men of the mine liked the pinnetta, and little by little they furnished it - some of them built a shelf to put the forms of cheese, another gave a pitcher and an earthenware glass, another one brought from the barracks a spare old oil lamp.
One evening, after putting Renzino to bed and after the last customers were back to their barracks, Matteo and Damianu brought out two chairs and sat in front of the farmhouse, as they had got into the habit of doing before they too went to sleep.
"Tired, Matteo?" asked Damianu.
"A little, but you'll be also more tired than me. You never stop for a moment."
"No, not too much. I enjoy living up here. I'm glad I listened to you. It seems that life has finally taken another direction."
"Yes... and we are a loving family, after all. Renzino is also growing well, he seems happy, though he has no other children to play with."
"From an early age he has always been rather solitary. The only one who he always saw with pleasure was his father."
"And you, too," said Matteo.
"Yes, me too. And now he became attached to you too," Damianu replied, "You have taken the place of Ettore, in his life."
"Do you still think often of Ettore?" Matteo asked, a little surprised that after so many months, for the first time Damianu had pronounced that name again.
Damianu stood up: "Come for a moment," he said to Matteo.
He went to the pinnetta and stopped outside the narrow entrance. He turned to look at Matteo. In the dark attenuated by the moon in its first quarter, his eyes shone.
"I have forgiven Ettore... as you said that I should have done. Finally I have forgiven him. I can now think of him without my heart bleeding."
"Fine."
"And I feel better, as you said. There is only one thing missing to feel really good..."
"What?" asked Matteo and felt his heart beat like the bass drum of the village band at the feast of the patron saint.
"Why don't you bring that boy in the pinnetta... and you do with him what for too long you have wanted to do?" asked the young man with a soft voice.
"I do not know if he would come in there with me," Matteo replied uncertainly, but excited.
"Everything is ready in there. We put all the scattered stones together. You have just to light the fire, to unroll the fur... and take him in your arms. He will not say no... His heart is free, no longer a prisoner of memories."
Matteo took the hand of Damianu, pushed aside the sheepskin curtain and went with him inside the pinnetta.
"It's so dark in here..." he murmured.
"I put the tinder-box next to the fireplace, on the ground, on the right. Try to light the fire, Matteo. Then unroll the fur. I'm waiting here by the door."
Matteo thought he was dreaming. Groping, he found the fireplace, squatted and explored with his hands until he found the flint. He beat it repeatedly until he managed to turn on the bait placed under the wood and soon the first flames rose. At the tremulous glow, without turning to look at Damianu, he moved beyond the central pole and unrolled the fur. Then he stood up, turned and looked toward Damianu.
The young man was standing, motionless, next to the narrow entrance in front of the sheepskin that had fallen closing the passage. The flames drew from his figure moving shadows and from his eyes sparks of light.
Matteo walked up in front of his friend, took him in his arms and, a moment before laying his lips on those of Damianu, whispered in a voice full of desire: "I want you."
Damianu felt the burning lips of Matteo rest on his, the tongue of his companion search for his, felt his body shudder, then seek the strong erection of his companion with slight movements of the pelvis.
When their mouths broke away, Damianu murmured: "Take me, make me yours!"
"Do you really want to?" asked the handsome young man, moved.
"Yes, but on one condition, Matteo."
"Tell me."
"That it is forever . Be honest, please. If you do not feel like me, we still have time to get out of here."
"Forever, Damianu, forever. And only you and me, I swear."
"You will not leave me as Ettore did?"
"Never, never! Not by my will. For years I dreamed about this moment, Damianu."
"Years?" the young man asked in surprise.
"Yes, since I was seventeen and you fifteen."
"You have never made me realize…"
"At first I was too shy... and then I saw that you had given yourself to my brother. So I could not make you understand. And you would not have listened to me anyway, is it not so? You're not like I was; you would not give yourself to me after you had given yourself to my brother. But now I've changed, matured. Now I also want to be only yours."
Slowly he began to undress Damianu and the young man opened Matteo's clothes. The fire in the fireplace warmed the room and the two did not feel the cold of the night. But perhaps they would not have felt it anyway, because their bodies were burning with desire. Naked, they looked at each other and found each other beautiful. Their members were already hard and erect.
Matteo led Damianu to the fur and went down on it with him. They lay down and Matteo went on top of him and kissed him again, holding him in his strong arms.
"Take me, Matteo," Damianu whispered.
"Yes... later... First let me feel your whole body, all your desire."
They caressed, touched, and groped each other. Their bodies sought each other in a crescendo of pleasure and desire. They explored each other in a symphony of passion. They kissed, literally hungry for each other.
Damianu thought that Matteo was different from Ettore, less greedy of pleasure, although no less passionate. The long preliminaries in which, perhaps because of the haste of their secret meetings, Ettore had never lingered, were now causing an intense sense of pleasure in Damianu.
"Make me yours, Matteo," pleaded the young man, feeling that the desire in him and in his companion was reaching an intensity that he believed not to be any longer able to try avoiding.
"Yes... in a little while," his friend whispered, low and warmly.
Damianu thought that the waiting Matteo was making him undergo was almost a torture, but a wonderful torture. However, at some point he was no longer able to stand it. His legs wide apart and his ankles on the shoulders of his friend.
"Take me, please... I can not resist... take me, Matteo, make me yours." pleaded Damianu.
Matteo finally yielded to the persistent prayer of the young man that he loved and started to penetrate him.
Damianu thought he was in the same position in which Ettore had taken him that first time, on a May afternoon up there beneath the grave of the giant. And he thought that was fair - he would just restart in that way. In the cool October night, after several years, he was about to begin a new relationship and hoped that this time it would be even more beautiful than the first one.
The member of Matteo, although of good size, was less big than that of Ettore, and entered him, despite the long time he had not taken it, without causing him pain. He welcomed it in himself exhaling a long and tremulous sigh of pleasure. He saw the eyes of Matteo shine, his smile accentuated as he penetrated him in a single, calibrated, slow but vigorous push.
"Oh... Damianu!" murmured Matteo moved, when he was finally deeply within him.
"Yes, Matteo... I am yours."
"Yes, finally, you really are all mine," he said, starting to move back and forth in the hot and narrow channel.
"Yes, just so, Matteo!" the young man encouraged him, quivering with pleasure.
"I love you, Damianu!" whispered the strong and handsome young man, and began to beat in with increasing force.
"I love you too, Matteo. Now I can say it... I can tell you."
They made love for a long time, slowly but with passion, and Damianu liked this also. Ettore seemed to always be in a hurry. Perhaps he simply was not able to withhold his desire to graduate to it; maybe he was always afraid of being surprised by some family members; possibly he was not able to thoroughly appreciate the joy of their unions... Damianu would not have been able to say, but he did not care.
Finally Ettore was really part of the past. He would never forget him, he would always retain a little corner of his heart devoted to him, but from that moment Damianu felt he belonged, totally and forever to Matteo.
"I love you, Damianu," repeated his friend.
"Do not forget to repeat it, from time to time. Please."
"How could I? I wanted to be able to tell you for so long."
"Now you can, indeed, you have. I love you too, Matteo. And I too would have had to understand it earlier. But now at last I know."
At some point, the pleasure was so intense that Damianu felt he could no longer control it and poured all his warm seed with powerful jets, between their two bodies. This triggered the orgasm in Matteo also, who emptied himself in the soft, warm and narrow depths of his lover.
They lay embraced, panting slightly, relaxing in the sweet and full satisfaction of their post-orgasm, exchanging tender kisses and light caresses. Even this was something new for Damianu and extremely pleasant.
When they finally decided to get dressed, to the pale glow of the last embers of the fireplace, they both felt ecstatic. Hand in hand, they re-entered the farmhouse, and their feet seemed to almost not touch the ground, so much their souls and their hearts felt light.
On the door of their room, where Renzino was sleeping soundly, they shared a last kiss and at last they lay to sleep. They fell asleep feeling wrapped in a cocoon of intense happiness.