"Pozzis, Samarkand" protagonist.
Alfeo Carnelutti was born in Pers di Majano, not far from Udine, on December 9, 1944. From his father Guglielmo he inherits the nickname - “Cocchetto” as a child, “Cocco” as an adult - and the love for motorcycles. On an old Moto Guzzi, father and son go hunting in the woods around Pozzis, the mountain village where Cocco will return many years later, to stay. At the age of 24, Alfeo has already gained work experience as a bricklayer working in Switzerland, France and Libya. He returns to Italy in '69, following Gaddafi's coup d'état. He tries building a family: two marriages, 4 children. He gets married for the first time at 26, and it lasts 5 years. He marries a second time twenty years later. "You could say that every twenty years I fuck up.” It is the 70s, with the myth of the American biker culture, which Cocco's friends imported to their home, together with a good deal of pacifism, parties, Harley, BSA, Matchless and modified Triumph bikes. Motorcycles remain his great passion: he opens a small workshop and travels around Europe by participating in the international sidecar cross championships. In 1980 a serious accident during a race in Germany forces him to hospital for a year and a half in the emergency surgery ward, where he develops Crohn's disease. Released from the hospital in 1982, he decides to change his life. He loads three goats into his wrecked Renault 4 and settles in Pozzis, which has meanwhile become a ghost town. He begins a new life as a hermit: he occupies an abandoned house, lives without running water and electricity, cultivates the fields, breeds goats and makes cheese. In 1987 he organizes the first Cocco Meeting, a "lawless" motorcycle rally where the only currency is the ‘Cocco dollar’, a banknote which depicts Cocco instead of George Washington.
In 1999 he is accused of the murder of an Albanian prostitute. He immediately pleads guilty, but the story he tells raises doubts even among the judges, who finally sentence him to ten years in prison: the minimum sentence, as all the attenuating circumstances were recognised. With good behavior he only serves eight years. Fresh out of prison, Cocco leaves for China, planning to get married a third time. He returns to Pozzis with his wife, who leaves him after a few months.
On 8 September 2018 he leaves for Samarkand on his old Harley-Davidson. He returns to Pozzis 52 days later. He resumes building motorcycles and cutting wood to prepare for the cold Carnic winters...
