“This is ready” says Tekné pointing at the Littorina n. 2, the same that that morning of October 1935 galvanized the special correspondent of the newspaper Roma (only the littorio sign is missing from the front); Seium hits with a fist an Ansaldo of 1929 and states: “not only she is ready to work, she is working” ; Tekné does not give up the last word: “She will work when there will be the rails”, and seems disappointed toward the people that are working hard along the track, too slow to climb with sleepers and rails from Massaua up to the plateau.

Tekné does not accept as an excuse for the delay the big rain of the last autumn, that has sweeped out two sections of the freshly made track, neither the border conflict blown up in May with Ethiopia, that brought the bombs over Asmara .
Another story difficult to understand, this war; old soldiers of the independence war have left for the front without making questions, without complaining. As if the bizarre time machine that decides the eritrean plateau history had decided to recall into life the bataillons of “ascari” [native soldiers associated with Italy] that were going to the massacre in order to give an italian king, that they had never seen, some more kilometers of stones and of ground.