Dario Magnanini

Welcome to my Personal Web Page. You will find specific information about me in the bio-bibliographic note at end of Vol.II. This page will be of particular interest to lovers of literature, biography, general history, military history, and political essays.

As is well known, writers, poets, and scholars in every field, those not already known to wide audiences encounter enormous difficulties in having their works published on paper. And it is also well known to specialists in the trade, that those able to publish (I mean gratis or even with financial profit) belong for the most part to categories privileged by social position or by occupation (university barons, journalists, protagonists of social movements or sub-movements, political personages, etc.) and include many dedicated to serving people or organizations using very questionable, self-serving methods.
This has progressed to the point at which this situation, which could without much exaggeration be called a swindle or cultural pillaging or, in current slang, letteropoli, poesopoli, premiopoli, publicopoli, and so on, might lead excluded persons to maintain, not completely in error, that a total redesign of civilization is necessary, at least in the fields of literary and artistic culture. Unfortunately, what’s done is done (as always in all places and times), and at this point justice can’t be done to anyone.
But leaving that need aside, my friend Franco Fortini confided to me a few years before his death, that in the editorial field, we need to institute the figure of a "guarantor". We now note and proclaim with satisfaction that there exists today this new, extraordinary, electronic means, the Internet, which excludes no one. There are thousands of more or less disappointed writers, who can’t get their own voice to reach a public any wider that their own restricted circle of friends; thus there are thousands who could profit from this new means of communication. It’s understood that even this has its costs: not in money, but in the effort of learning the secrets of the art of information. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth the trouble.
I hope that more than a few will read this first book of mine, fruit of more than ten years of labor and research. Condensed as much as possible, it is the biography of a personage whose life was truly very interesting in many of its aspects, a person to whom I am tied by great affection and interest: my father.
To follow the war through the personal events of a soldier’s life, and to follow this soldier through the general events of the war: these are the goals of the first of the volumes I am presenting. They are complementary goals, established in accord with general and particular points of view present in every kind of writing, no matter what the specific situation. To these two functions must be added the presence of a third, who in some way acts as a unifier: the subject, the one who is writing, constantly superimposing something of himself onto the object.
This book is not a novel in the traditional sense of the term, but rather the container in which I’ve chosen to merge, with wide freedom, exposition of facts, ideas, and hypotheses more usually found in essays, narrations and descriptions like those in stories, and sometimes bits of poetry. I wanted to recount, describe, and extract the material before me: the collection of written and oral documents my father had left me. Which also explains the title.
It is now sixty years since my father put together a collection of memoirs about the First World War, which he entitled "Notes of a Quartermaster." Twenty years later he put his hand to a second volume, this time about the Fascist era and the second conflict as he had lived them, certainly not in a fascist or military uniform, but instead as a common civilian, or rather as a communist. The two documents cover a span of sixty years, enough to delineate a life, excluding only his last twenty: those of old age, with no biographical account because he devoted himself to studying his city and writing vernacular poetry.
Emilio’s life had been interesting. I would never dare to write a novel about my history, because I didn’t have a story, having always lived nailed to a desk. Except for a childhood spent in the semiconscious risks of war, during the subsequent peace, the ordinary flow of things and because of my aversion to any adventure that might overexpose me, nothing special had ever happened to me. The memory of my father’s stories and his documents stimulated me; in this work I felt obligated to match my different yet similar personality with his, to fill to the full the lacunae of my porous knowledge of his experience, including a certain weakness of affection of mine during the time of my infancy.
Emilio Magnanini was born in Venice on 28th August 1892 into a poor family of arsenal workers. His father was a mechanic at the Arsenale, his mother a housewife. He had earned his bread since he was eight years old as a errand boy, first in a lace shop, then with a smith, as letter-carrier, other humble jobs, finally obtaining employment at the Genio of the Royal Navy. As a boy, he had learned to know his city: lanes, shops, the artisans, the workers. From the autumn of 1914 to the spring of 1919 he was a soldier.
He was a participant in the Great War from its beginning to the summer of ’16 in the Trentino, then in Greece with an expeditionary corps of the Triple Entente. Having returned to his modest job, he discovered, through commonality and identification with the poor classes, the ideological might of anarchism, socialism, and finally communism, all this at a time when the exercise of the most elementary liberties was considered subversion.
In 1921, as the new proletarian movement was being born, he was the first secretary of the Venetian Federation of the PCd’I, the Communist Party of Italy. He was director of the periodical "The Echo of the Soviet," cited by Lenin along with "The New Order" of Gramsci, and of "The New Century", the weekly founded by Elia Musatti. Married to a Venetian woman, he had four children.
During the Fascist regime, he was persecuted and thrown into jail many times for the purpose of investigation and prevention, fortunately for short periods. On his own, he cultivated a vast area for a self-taught person, predominantly politics, economics, and poetry. From 1924 he was Procurator for the Coal Office in various places in Italy, for the Commercial Soviet Representative, a charge he left in ’33 to become Public Mediator in Mineral Coals.
He lived and worked in Venice, Rome, Genoa, and for the longest time, in Milan. Having moved back to Venice in 1961, far from politics and active commerce, he dedicated himself entirely to discovery of the present and past of his city, and to the poetic excavation of his memories. He died in Venice in 1976, and was commemorated for his antifascist past in a speech by senator and ex-mayor of Venice, G. Gianquinto.
Publications: 1) articles of a political-ideologic nature written in the decade of the 1910’s in anarchist leaflets directed by Enrico Malatesta, Ada Negri, Paolo Schicchi, Leda Rafanelli, and in Socialist periodicals like "Il Secolo Nuovo" and Communist ones like "L_Eco dei Soviet"; 2) "Il Prisma", ed. E. Magnanini, collection of Italian poetry published in Milan in 1936; 3) various articles of a professional nature on the specialized economic-commercial press in the post-war period; 4) "Questi xe i dogi...se ve piaxe", ed. Rebellato, Padova 1958, poetic sketches in Veneziano of all the Doges.

The Book. Rather, two books, because the writings he left pertain to two distinct spheres of experience: the Great War and Fascism. But neither sphere should stand on its own: the first could serve as an introduction to the second, but it is much more than that.
Thus I decided to compile two volumes, each complete in itself, but continuous with each other as well. I wanted to use this material as a unique occasion to construct something that, in addition to interesting me and pleasing me, would be the culmination of his evolutionary line: as if I were obeying a continuity that was not only genetic, but historical as well.
In other words, I wanted to make his work mine, to slip my personality inside it, sometimes in contradiction with his, to present his drama to the world: this drama (and here we are at its historic finale) which was like that of so many of his contemporaries: the completed drama of a Socialist of the Communist persuasion, facing progressive difficulties in that outside world, a world which little by little keeps pushing him to lose the enthusiasm of his early youth, to keep a low profile because of overwhelming external circumstances (the Great War), to increase the development of his thought and action (during the years of foundation of the Italian Communist Party), a world that obstructs him and forces him to be prudent (Fascism). Then finally he forces himself to reevaluate his political situation (World War II and the post-war period, because of the policy of renunciation of Communist Party) to the point where he’s covered with disappointment, even though he never, in any circumstance or at any time, felt defeated.
Emilio died a communist, although more in his heart than in his mind; his political beliefs went to the very depth of his being, as if part of his own body, with the coherence and honesty of one who does not accept compromises. If he could have lived until now, of what importance would be his disappointment? I suppose a jump from a communism that could come true to a communism that has proved to be impossible. What is to blame for the ideological catastrophe? The weakness of the ideology or the fallibility of the world? No one will ever be able to answer. Anyway, this problem exists with political idealism of any kind. With current methods of political science, we can show only that there is no demonstrable correlation between ideals and practice, just as none between the human and the divine. This lack of correlation is found both in individuals and in society. The cause is a mystery, as is the existence of mankind.
The essayist side of him: by this I mean those observations not specifically part of the narrations, which appear almost parenthetically at many places in the text. Here he points out terms and calls attention to their significance, mostly part of history, some witnessed by Emilio himself, which can thus be considered true historical contributions. From this point of view, keeping in mind that the facts narrated are whole truths, his writings seem to be new historic accounts.
As I’ve already said, I wanted to express myself freely, both in style and in meaning; so whenever I could, I digressed briefly upon this or that subject, the better to clarify facts and their implications. At times there are historical elements to develop, or concepts to explain, and even notes, which show up as remarks within the text itself, my having preferred this solution rather than burdening the work with long footnotes. Nevertheless, I’ve placed some short notes at the end of the document to clarify the meaning of a few historical-political terms and of words in dialect. I maintain that facts must never be separated from their meanings. As for this first volume I can cite as examples the observations contained in a few paragraphs about the concept of the simple professional function of "work" (see "Professional Mystique") or those on nationalism and internationalism (see "Fatherland and World") or the frequent historical references to a few events before the Great War, or to details in some of its chapters, like the Strafexpedition and in particular, Emilio’s testimony about the battle of Passo Buole or about that disastrous undertaking which, not having precise elements to use as identification, I’ve thought I might identify with the attempt of our infantry on June 30, 1916 to wipe out Fort Pozzacchio in Vallarsa (see "Two-way trip"); and still other eye-witness accounts, such as the never explained sinking of the battleship Leonardo da Vinci.
To compare Emilio’s testimony about military operations in Val Lagarina with historical and geographic certainties, among texts consulted these have been of help to me: the diary of the Austrian officer Karl Schneller published only in these recent years (Karl Schneller, "1916 ‹ Mancò un soffio", unpublished diary of the Strafexpedition, Gianni Pieropan, ed. Arcana, Milano 1984). Also useful: "Grande Guerra" (Carlo Meregalli, "Grande Guerra" - 15-18 dal crollo alla gloria, ed. Ghedina & Tassotti, Bassano del Grappa giugno 1996) and "Prealpi Venete e Trentine" (by Walther Schaumann - ed.Ghedina & Tassotti, Bassano del Grappa, maggio 1988). The description and the account of movements and operations in Valli Giudicarie of the 61st Reggimento Fanteria of the Brigata Sicilia (to which Emilio belonged) are perhaps an historical novelty, but not of particular importance; because in that sector, except for the taking of Mount Palone (and naturally, because the operations occurred more to the north in the zone of the Adamello), nothing important occurred.
On the other hand, I can sustain without a doubt the importance of the eye-witness accounts of our participation in the expedition of the Triple Entente into Greece, departed from Taranto on August 1, 1916, about which, as far as I can discover, no other texts nor informative material have been published. The only news reported in the history books, probably excerpted from the newspapers of the period, is that of General Cadorna’s intention to organize that participation (in Greece) as an alternative to the military expedition to Albania, heatedly proposed by foreign minister Sonnino (see "Storia d’ Italia, 1815-1990, ed. De Agostini 1991, on 16 October 1915).
The parade of Salonica, the marches into Macedonian territory, the description of the Italian camp of Zeitenlik, the suburbs and center of the Greek metropolis of that time, the state of the Russian encampment just after the March revolution, the descriptive narration of Venizelos’ coup d’etat, and the witnessing on September 1917 of the fire that burned the capital of Greek Macedonia, are the highlights of his historic contributions. [go to the beginning]

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Previous events

BEFORE CONSCRIPTION

Narrator: Today I’ve thrown myself into the beginning. My head was spinning under the weight of a ceremony to shape my will; I was asking so much from the abstraction of the past, from the darkness whom I call "tu". From the nothingness on which I am dependent, a participle, a speaking mouth, I have sought nourishment in the present. He has answered me, shown himself to be real. And I eat that abstraction that tastes of everything, I drink its western air smelling of blueberries and cover myself with its wind, observed by all the eyes in the sky, like an actor playing a part. [go back]

The One: You would want to integrate everything, to find the center of time. To understand, we must make distinctions and keep the names of yesterday, today, tomorrow. Every branch has leaves and lymph of its own, and what once had worth is only something to read about today. Today a nothing comes out of a something, carrying with it the impression of a point in time, a ring, a cloture, beyond which nothing else happens. Isn’t that the way it is?
That is not the way it is. There is a sense in the past, a concentration that goes beyond, the substance forming the thread that ties together times. Born from nothing, it returns to all things, moved by awareness of the infinite, by the infinity of awareness. It pervades things beyond concepts, their diversity, their equality...Thus you would want to distinguish thousands of differences among years that are more or less equal instead. I feel something that’s not a concept, not a division, but osmosis. It is the past teaching the present. And the present, the past. [go back]

Already, an Intermezzo: When together we recognize a new day and set off to work, owners of industries and poets, we are just as different from one another, poor rich good evil, each on his own track or on the spiral of chaos, and the work consists of not respecting each other. This is life, life as an anti-, if not yet completely motionless and perfect as a one. Clearly, things happen, people pile up, crash into each other. Actions and feelings are like that, and if they become spiral-shaped concepts, they fly off into the distance, thinking they’re expanding. Then, toward evening, not because of the convention of rest but because it’s dark, connections and relationships return. Everyone is involved with someone else, even if only with a book or TV. The industrialist is finished and the poet is beginning. Each turns to another in the evening and in the eternity of poetry. And we see ourselves equal, and together we lose ourselves in the behavior of the night. [go back]

Father and Mother: Son, a little of father, a little of mother, but neither one nor the other. Perhaps a cross X or a V, spreading ink and emotions. Stony words from father and mother, hard statues who on a divan become tender, mama and papa keeping us childlike and sweet. A little A and a little B, I am and I am not a synthesis, looking at everything that no logic can control. And also, he, the paternal grandfather, a socialist under glass, was never known by me, neither grandfather nor socialism. And she instead, grandmother, blind in old age, recognized by the sweet smell of her lap and kitchen. When I was born my cardboard chronicle was born, custodian of tiny objects, little body identical and at the same time differing from. And I am C, calcium of those bones and combinations. But I’m not speaking of myself but of the ring that binds us, and ties us to things. Nor of them. It’s not a question of biography: the prose has already taken everything in the cemetery, the poetry has passed through the bodies and is waiting outside. [go back]

The Son of Bepi…: A high place with a name. And he had liked drinking to the "engineer of the little crafts of the Royal Navy." But his skilled trade was lost in the white marble chest of drawers where everybody is collected into a single trade. The game of the labyrinth with a guide, "Let’s go see Grandfather!" amidst the curious marbles with dates on them, and the cold shock of the flowers. Awareness straightened me out like a stick, I, on foot in front of the idea of Grandfather and the resemblance of the photo: strange, as if my brother were in two places at once (I look like my mother, and I write as if my father were she who is writing). That way for a few baby years. Then, because you’re big, they don’t take you any more and you stop. You go back when you’re adult and alone: the labyrinth is no longer there and even the photo has disappeared, fallen down, swept away like a blame, and Grandfather remains a point on a line of high order, one after another, the succession of natural numbers. [go back]

…And of Maria Zanin: Housewife with a simple heart, illiterate according to the statistical records, but within the family, so many stories to laugh about on her big blue apron, always worn in the kitchen. Statue of Pope Sarto, twice as big as life; "He wasn’t so big when he baptized my son!"
With my little invisible fingers I showed her the kitchen tweezers in front of the veil of her cataracts, and she did not understand I was playing oculist. I had at least seen my grandmother in her worn housecoat, but I remember only the smell of her kitchen and an ancient warmth of knees, very faint, as if she were about to fail, and her eyes questioning the shadow of the tweezers I held, transfixed by the cold point of the play. [go back]

1892, Emilio Coincides… with the PSI, same year, same month, as in the old expression

"a singular coincidence": the stars like those who believe in them. And poor in appreciating subtlety, so that his idea of the sun was not distinct from that of the star in future deeds, because then the days of hunger were winning, the battle was the only thing he could call his: the bread pan on the wood of the table, the sickle and the hammer and a book always open in the kitchen. Objects held by every other family that was waiting. Proletariat, a hard life, all the day long. The story, which contains nights as well, is continued later in a different matter. [go back]

Rapport Overturned: When one is alive, contact is immediate and not completely real. It seems clear and easy like a cloud that breasts the sun. Thus, the presence (living side by side), honest, proud, a little egotistic, reflective, serious, responsible and other family adjectives. Family, enclosed tightly within its own strong symbols and internal script, more than communism. There was a rapport among us which stood in our midst and differentiated us each one from the other.
Later, too late as always, after the diamond of the star had cut the fragile father-son group, two real fragments had remained. Today there is contact with the absence, with the other part of the whole. And your life, to which two decades of death must be added, is now completely in my hands, and we are living it together in an relationship overturned, yet in flower, I as father and you as son, my offspring who has waited for a century before entering among these words. [go back]

And so "The Echo of the Soviets" Going on the trail (that is, but not to travel), everyone repeats his steps. Without asking, they baptize, serve mass, and marry. The parents shut inside the norm of least resistance trust the baby to the functionary and a sprinkle of benediction from future pope Sarto, irritated, the little head bent, and Mama, Papa, and baby take the shape of time.
A few years passed of which nobody knows anything, until at the seventh rotation he put on the hasty tunic and swung the slow thuribile alongside a priest without question. (Parish of San Martino). Finally, around the year Twenty-one, his fiancée imposes upon him the pact defined in the expression "to bring to the altar", and "if the eye of Moscow reached Venezia (Thus, the Echo of the Soviet), it would see the patience of comrade Emilio employed in this land of contradictions." A surrender forgivable under the weight of church and family, within the calm crowd of tradition. [go back]

1900, the Gamba Sisters: Venice went on, weary with its own microbes, organic canals, and a lower number of tourists. Almost every evening, proletariats and mosquitoes were leaving their shells near the lamps of the houses, the first to rest, the second to drown in small glasses of oil pressed against the ceiling. The children were taking off their smocks and chasing the summer’s sparse rewards.
As reward for his services, the priest finds the altar boy a place making deliveries for a prosaic lace shop named "Sorelle Gamba" in Mercerie dell’Orologio, two old maids in the shop and the third, a widow, at home performing the customary services. Besides the packages of lace-work, Emilio had to bring the noon meal to his employers. Sun and cats are dozing and separated in the vertical hour just above the lanes and the "campi". Having left with the basket out of proportion to his size, the boy trips on the steps of a bridge in front of the reader’s eyes. That day the cats had a party (Campo Santa Maria Formosa) and the eyes of the sisters sitting in the trattoria looked sadly down. [go back]

Symmetry of Illusions: Venice smelly working in the Arsenale, Port, Fishery. Every shop was living, discussing, and striking, encouraged by a people tired of bread and fish. The lower city was floating in love and crying aloud all these issues. Emilio had left for Milan with the Program. Now Emilio, who had returned old, when there was no longer equality in which to believe, dedicated himself to the channels of past deeds, dark green memories, disillusions in dialect; while the new generations, with no more artisans and poverty, sailed on words, squeezed guns, and aimed low inside the idea of death. 1968: The sons stretched out on a field of butter thought they were taking revenge on their fathers’ hunger. But he went on sitting at his poems, unearthing friends, drinking at inns odorous with truth. [go back]

"The New Century": The city would pause in the early shadow. Emilio would finish his work and pass along the twists of the "calli" and through open spaces of "campi" toward the confused milling of their inhabitants. One evening, in a passageway without alternatives, newsboys with new sacks were yelling a new name, with subversive contents. Five centesimi, but few slipped hand into pocket: the avid eyes of a few students, the tired eyes of a few workers.
"The devil’s paper!", the little old ladies crossed themselves on the steps, foreheads still covered from the afternoon mass. Police in civilian clothes and well-dressed passersby looked on with suspicion. Amused, Emilio counted the copies sold and thought of giving one to his father as a gift. Later, a tired boy with the pack of left-over copies, and the noisy cadence still ahead of him at this point, felt he was being watched. "Hey kid, this here’s for you, read and become a socialist!" Emilio already felt he was one. [go back]

"Chi del gitano…" My nine year old father worked in a proletarian hovel with other children like himself, and before he had opened the door to communism, he lived in the socialism of a forge with the task of climbing up a heap, lifting the edge of his pants and aging the irons every two or three hours for the coquetry of a young bride’s new bed or for a dismal gate. In that room for artisans in agreement he helped the owner’s rhythmical work, hammer and anvil, the troubadour’s friends, singing and pissing in a collective rhyme. [go back]

1904, Strike: One day in the humid heat of September, Venice was enclosed in the silence of a vase. The police had just fired in Sardinia and in the Trapanese, and no one was being allowed through. Pieces of marble were caressing thoughts of a strike. Empty counters at the market and the smell of hidden fish, searched for by elongated cats. Churches with barred doors. The so-called "Gold Mayor" under escort, and the journalists with a master of arms leading them, going to the newspaper with the foils.
Reality was a line of dead, at a time when the freedom of today was subversion, and only the police fired. But those actors were sound, the proletariat was already suffering without the killing, and on their heads they weren’t wearing the helmets of an overturned fairy-tale of a vanguard that shoots at the poor in order to get the most prestigious promotions for themselves. But respectable people, sacristans and little old ladies, how much fear because of that strike, of pure sea water and ideas hurled in the public assemblies, staggering, unrestrained, whose effect in Venice was that of making the liberals and the clerical-conservatives of the majority turn pale; and along the canals the hunger of the gulls, whiter than usual. [go back]

Enrico Ferri and the Carpenter: At this point Emilio put parish priest and mass aside, gradually smelling the wood of the sacristy less and less, until he stopped showing up to don the surplice. One day Bepi introduced him to the owner of a shop sweet with glue where they would bump elbows and rub arms in the damp odor of dry sawdust and temporary beams, and crush spiders in search of shelter in the walls. He is a young revolutionary under orders, who involved them in discussions without interrupting the work.
On that Sunday, before the silent Catholics went to vote, their hands folded, pushing the socialists out, he went with the workers to the school of San Provolo to hear breathing through three thousand mouths, the courtyard striped by a thousand points of ivy around Ferri, hung among red flowers and three flags. And this, long before anthropologists described the typical, old curve from revolutionary to reformist until he’s making a whore of himself, flattered by the King’s proposal (if I recall correctly, to make him a minister) with his "If the King would do me the honor..."
But that Sunday, three thousand sweaty people getting excited, dropping into the courtyard. Ferri is emitting sparks and the carpenter’s wide-open socialist mouth swallowed, and his ears opened at the thunder of the accusation: exploitation of women and children, those with the lowest pay of all! It was really him, that robust young athlete being looked at sideways through the eyes of Emilio, his helpers’ shoulders overburdened when he went to work, nothing left between his fingers but the smoke of a toscano.[go back]

Guglielmo II: The vessel is motionless, like a white decision in the darkness of the basin, excited by the light of the fireworks, and it leaves the long shape of power impressed on the row of people’s eyes. A modesty of thousands of shawls, dirty breeches and ears, hurrying toward the lanterns of the Imperial Orchestra, and enchantment is afoot: first, the studded helmets, then the pomp of the pleats of the aristocracy seated in colors in the first row. Moistened and stung with salt envy, nervous in the center are the middle-classes, and behind them, the people on foot murmuring in their own place, just as in a painting. This evening is the inauguration of musical politics. Among the marbles and waters of resounding Venice, everyone is celebrating the Triple Pretense. An anthem explodes and sticks in the sky where the half-moon is stopped in the east. The Kaiser disembarks, white as his ship. [go back]

"Norma": But with the fireworks the good mayor Grimani encouraged, without meaning to do it, William’s intimate conversations with the corset and soft fat of an illustrious noblewoman. So said Norma from her brothel, waving Musatti’s pen. At this point the nobility of Venice was compelled to fight a duel, giving the task to a certain count Brandolin against the editor of "The New century".
The Count pulled his wig down tight, the challenge took place and Marangoni got away with a small wound. But the overheated people, including the children (Emilio was in the center of the piazza, his cheeks excited) set off an uprising (shivers ran through the frightened aristocracy) and screamed perceptive indignation to the porticos and to the "Bewigged Assassins!" [go back]

Proletarian Venice: Venice lies stretched out in the midst of its brocades of stone glowing in the sun, or of its black lunar crusts, along with the virtues and defects of the men with whom she associates, subdivided into three constituencies: San Marco-San Polo, elegant with marbles and individualist; Cannareggio-Santa Croce, clerical in the cool, deep churches; Castello-Dorsoduro, hardworking and socialist, where worn out plasters, undershirts and aprons dress and make dirty the proletariat that stinks of wine and tobacco.

All cellars and mold, straw seats and smoke of "sardines in saor", [Note 1] Marxism clear through to its heart. While in Italy it is slowed by an opportunistic socialism dragged along by capitalists, Hebrews, and Masons, in Venice there is Elia, going through the poor districts, safe from the compromises that will force the whole Left to expiation. Thus in the churches and in the party, in the "calli" and in the entrances, the people stand together in the common odor of entering. [go back]

Elia Musatti: In his big hat shaped like a rag with a wide brim, in imitation, they would say, of Enrico Ferri, but more coherent than he was, and with all the charisma vocabulary could confer on him, founder of "The New Century" and of an entire generation of Venetian socialists, poet of the deeds of the proletariat, he sacrificed his patrimony to the cause.
I, who live by those words, separated from all, can feel the vacuum absorbing the distance that separates my pockets, full and in good repair, from the face of my father, lying in his poor "campi", listening to him, his eyes permeated with the need to move forward, always in company with someone or something: friends, flags, collectivism of the warm hearthstone: perhaps one could say, a milestone of the heart. [go back]

The Honorable TwentyThousandLire: A decaying Venice was still fervently alive in its workshops, quivering with its own scandals. "I have the proof in the drawer!" cried Alessandri, socialist and editor; and the indignant populace enjoyed believing the radical mason Fradeletto, a deputy of San Marco, man of letters and notorious honesty, corrupted with 20,000 Lire in the interests of an insurance company (and during the discussions he would quote from memory what he had phonographed at his writing-desk, while Giacosa at least was reading).
Venice had split into the colors of dawn and sunset, life and politics (the poets on their knees before words without a story line; they are silent and will remain silent), and the day struck, the day the tribunal was waiting for. Proofs were not presented. Under cloud of night the editor of "The New Century" had fled the country, and the people went back to squatting at their own work in the rain.
Then Alessandri, who used to say: "My watch always marks the hour of revolution!", reentered into the bosom of the people, neither he nor they sufficiently humiliated, and was elected deputy. When the monarchy took off everyone’s mask, he got Benito to enroll him into fascism. And to think that even his enemies thought he was a true socialist. That’s how the story goes, that’s how those poets go who don’t talk about it.[go back]

"Tripoli, lovely land...": At the roar of the cannon San Marco Square was sunny, holier than usual and blessed by every sort of authority. Today I felt the emotions through my flaccid belly, but those young monarchists were farting a haughty salty tricolor air, led by the flag-carrier Busetto. The young socialists without spectacles, in their Sunday jackets and armed with fists and International song, faced that bunch of students on Venetian ground. The police pretended it was fair and slapped the socialists, who pounded on the monarchists, who penetrated the virgin air of morning with howls. In the background, the sacred monarchy; on the peak, Busetto with his little ass and Raffaele Rapagnetta [Note 2] behind him. [go back]

A Second Period of Riotous Literary Fashion: After a dawn rosy as that little magazine "The Battle", Mr. Mussolini goes to an office redolent with ink and the people’s feelings, to whine to Paolo for food money. Paolo Valera, who loved the inanity of the crowd but knew nothing about the individuals whom formed it, gives him fifty centesimi for a restaurant in the belly of unknown Milan, where the jobless [Note 3] Benito could get rid of his hunger. That bandit, who hated the inanity of the crowd but understood well the persons who comprised it, already had millions of French francs plus those from the sugar industrialists, which the newspaper "Il Resto del Carlino" had pushed into his pocket. Thus, on the day after he had digested that charity meal, he activates the rotary press of "People of Italy."
Who happens to be so good as to love the abyss of vice and to hate bourgeois conformity. So again, after a few more dawns as rosy as the little rogue magazine, the pink dust of love for the common people became a band of blinding black dust behind the mysterious carriage of events, events not easy to be found, least of all by anyone who is searching. [go back]

Pacifism, Feminism, Reform: The ignorant swamp making up the map of Europe in the first decade of the century is beginning a curved movement toward its own salvation. Knowledge is bathed by the rich catalogue of "Avanti!" The proletariat drink from the Russian river, the Russians raise beautiful resorts in Italy. In the Venetian "campi" the women applaud Angelica Balabanoff; in the squares of Rome, men whistle at Nicholas II. In cool Switzerland, no to war, not even to a revolutionary one. Socialism is supported by the women and the women are for peace. But the Bolsheviks had hardened their hearts and swollen their brains: a half century later, at Milan, Emilio sees the shine of veneration which Angelica imparts at a meeting of Social Democrats launching insults at the astute dictatorship of the USSR. Emilio appreciates her and despises her too and is convinced that even with a policy of reforms, we are still halted by the quiet plaint of the poor, eternally attuned to their own poverty.
Maybe she wasn’t a real Marxist, but is a mature male with convictions against property more realistic than an old woman democratically in search of love for a certain welfare? Angelo Tasca comes to mind, the sanest of all the protagonists of Italian communism, struck by an ingenuous and silly verdict of Gobetti ("socialism of a man of letters, who superimposes upon modern society his dream of workers’ virtue, belonging to the middle-class, nourished by moderate habits in the tranquility of the house-garden"). Moderation which, as we know today, has only one alternative: dictatorship. [go back]

Anarchy: From on high, you realize that heroism too is divided into branches, and that within the quaking of the forests, as within a party, there are no unanimous convictions. Heroes as well as leaves, each falls from his position onto the earth’s passions. Anarchists, communists, fascists, each produces hopes of "the day not being far off (as an anarchist warning says) when the armed proletariat and militia mow down whatever exists of the middle-class, throne and altar."
They all want the same thing but in a different way, and they don’t know that the way is the thing, poor and justified when they raised the red and black flag next to the one that was all red, and they were all wrong and all right, shouting purposes, and certainly, even the Duce had had his red week in Marché when the carabinieri had fired much more often. And everyone, feeling the same thing, dehorned like goats; and then there were the masses to lead, without bread but with flags, and everywhere the infiltrators coming from the den of filth, the throne, and inside it the miniscule King with unheard of strength, the court, the carabinieri and the elite, imbued with the dominant style, really style stolen from style, false as that of the blocked poets.
Borghi, Malatesta, and others, with all the absurdity it took then. At the age of 13 Emilio was at the barricades with them and at 16 he wrote in Malatesta’s"Will", Schicchi’s "La Protesta Umana", Negri’s "Thought", Rafanelli’s "Black Scarf". Anarchy, mother of communism and fascism, degenerate and contrary children, full of willfulness, protests, and scarves, crowds of good men that made evil and finally became it. But Emilio saw reason in time and in 1911 joined the Socialist Youth, following the weighty steps of Serrati.[go back]

Lessons: In the layers of those memories you have left me, there is a growth of branches growing from the trunk of conviction, which can be cut away only by the hard stone of time: they shoot up from the ideology, a hungry beast difficult to chase from under foot, dense, dark with coagulated serum, entangled with the rocks’ encrustations of love. But the branches have lost the smell of earth and exploded into the sky, each in its own direction, not obeying the plan. Thus one departs, it is thought, from a unique whole, but every tiny point from that whole remains alone in infinity. The order of chaos is normal, like a well thought-out book, passing through us. There is only one true idea of earth, but its life forms are various, and the destinies who are killing us are foreign to it. Two generations and the world is new; the earth beneath our feet has changed, and future beliefs are budding. [go back]

G. M. Serrati: Switzerland. How much propaganda in the obstinate woods is resistant to the Socialist resin! In those chocolate landscapes everyone was put to the test, including Serrati who said he’d taught Mussolini to wash his face. History teaches us not to make predictions and not to believe too much in the outlook of others, but also that from our heap of defects a hero’s head can spring. With his eloquent beard (people went to public meetings as they do to the theater) and with his eyes that looked into the void of duty, the priest in the pupils, authoritative and authoritarian at his desk, Musatti led the ligurian Serrati from his sea to ours, and entrusted him with the Venetian socialism.
With his defective dowry as a great man, he was of a sanguine temperament, guilty of having angered Mussolini more than once, throwing him out of "Avanti!", following him like a shadow, demanding to debate with him (and in a theater, the soldier Emilio, during rounds, ran onto the stage to defend him from the angry Parmigiani, who wanted to kill him); and, finally, after the Milan electoral disaster of ’19, writing that a putrefied cadaver had been fished out of the Naviglio, which swore revenge with its decomposed lips. [go back]

That late October, ’26: Serrati had to find lodgings and had borrowed the money from a "trusted" companion (a captain of carabinieri in disguise). Then Antonio: "The parsley is killing the parrots!" And Giacinto: "Wherever I find him, I’ll slap him around!" Gramsci was standing immersed in the mist of a little wood, hidden by the trees and the comrades, and the leaves were falling tragically around them onto the insipid countryside of Sesto San Giovanni, one month before his arrest. Three by three, four by four they’d gathered to celebrate the revolution, around that thin voice which the fragile leaves were already commemorating. Close to you and to him a companion who didn’t inspire you was applauding every sentence, but Antonio, softened by the leaves moving, sliding over his thick head, liked him. Then, their hands cold, they walked a stretch of the fields together; until he was suddenly engaged by the Soviet Agency in Milan, where he was revealed, after having taken his victims, for the spy he was. You don’t want to tell me anything more, not even the name, except that the slim Antonio had his bad fortune because of those ingenuous leaves rolling down over the slopes of his excessive, honest, hair.[go back]

Dante, Patriotic Edition: While there was time for pleasure in war, when danger either excited you or forced you to be resigned, you asked for a book to fill your heart, which had been emptied by the trenches. It wasn’t Marx or Lenin, whose dangers at the front you already knew. In the hardened surroundings of Salonica the mail carrier corporal cried out a package, wrapped like delicate food. When the curious crowd of fellow soldiers reached you, your quartermaster colleagues who shared your weather and pain, they smiled in friendship. The red pocket-sized Divine Comedy sweetened your hours and left you alone with the injustice of the war, waiting to rejoin your comrades for something that would be just, but yet to be defined. Serrati’s secretary sent you his personal greetings, signed Ferrazzutto Buonaventura. [go back]

Patriotism: The century’s organized love, as full of rhymes as a forest infested with birds all demanding their own branches. Trap disguised for so many nests, in which every one of us is more or less a poor tormented bird. It eats and breathes into the forest of bodies the most uncultured concept of culture. It disguises itself, flies and sings the most, the most false and national word ending in "ism". Like a devil, you feel it’s real, like the devil, you feel it isn’t true; it seems like the breath of someone sleeping, whom you love, but who has a face like one on coins. In your beds it co-opts your children and makes them slaves of adjectives. Beneath the pillow is unsheathed the cock of a king, or of anything that waves in the wind, a fraud that still has so much history to make, and childrens’ beds to unmake. [go back]

Internationale: Time is the future, space is the height. Always. They are outside the sensual sphere of flesh and its consequence; instead they would like to climb like a gentleman up to the heart, to the mouth, to the high anatomies. Future humanity, new love, with the old Christian taste, but instead, hebraically enemy of the fatherlands. Abstract visage from the century’s other face, cancer insinuating into the brain, which answers it like a mirror. It really does make false children, false spheres of real tears which bathe real uprisings of false people. And while the tomorrows seemed to rise, yesterday everything will fall to the bottom, but today it falls to the ground. Given the reality of the dead, it is like an agent provocateur, a fraud we need, a paid guide who shows us the errors we’re crossing out, brings us back to the shelter of nations. [go back]

Private Intermezzo: A blackbird launches his voice before dawn and becomes suddenly quiet before first light. I’m searching for its sound with my ears, I’m investigating its silence with my eyes. People are walking in the streets, they lean their noisy confusion onto cheeks in the houses and insert themselves into the privacy of my bed. The external is observed by the face of the day, urged on by the sun’s impulses, sprayed by the sparrows’ voices, as intelligent as people who accuse. A game of hesitating fissures is transmitting life: we call it the rays of illusions, the global light of utopias. Shadow, indecision: the moment, the magical still movement is holding out. I feel inside of myself, my beak tilted in the warm wings. And I feel exposed, groped by everything. Is it I who pretend loneliness, or the day which pretends communion? [go back]

The Importance of Deeds: The ink which guides me labors, and I enjoy its labor, but without deeds it is water. Deeds run the risk of truth, words become reduced to a handful of ashes, and I am left, in vain, with the vague outlines of memories.But there are enough words to make the shelves concave; I don’t want to stir up their fire in the darkness of a drawer. Thus, deeds become memories. The most powerful come out through the chest, the more timid only come to mind, the more intimate hide. I would like to find all of them in the stew of my writings. [go back]

The Importance of Words: Things, with their massive bodies, throw themselves into the void of the hereafter. Deeds, after the sweat, wring themselves out and become dry. Nothing is left; only God knows how this is done; and man submits to it. And while we are growing, deeds are detaching themselves from our bodies and we lose them. The old pass through the dementia of their past. Everything lost, they must die in the center of their brain, and they are the living dead. Then, even death dies.
Thus, to write is to hold onto deeds, to fill again the air they’ve left with an unworthy but eternal substance, which looks on its own toward infinity. Neither alive nor dead, this substance acts with the overwhelming force of pleasure but without recompense, becomes sad without weeping, enjoys without laughing, hides within man but is not man; they call it "word", left on the tips of fingers we write with, we write from it, with it, by it, through it to recover the cloud of evaporated things, even though we risk losing ourselves along with it in the bottom of the ink, dissolving toward the top with the inanity of alcohol. To write, to compile, to have the courage of. Work, get into gear, rhythm of accelerating and braking, to dare with self control, to go toward God, remaining man. [go back]

Additional Information: Thus, we have seen: altar boy, lace-makers’ boy, smith, car-penter. Then, a serious, stable job. "Be it declared that Mr. Magnanini Emilio son of Giuseppe has served as an employee of this Organization from 21.9.1907 to 2.3.1914 in the position of Postal Telegraphic Agent". In seven years, he has learned the city like no one else, sheet by sheet, [Note 4] name by name, number by number, pain by pain, and all the forms of greetings and good wishes.
Finally, "By request (etc etc) he has lent his work at this office as a temporary copyist from 3 March to 31 July 1914." Signed by the head of the Autonomous Office of the Military Engineers for the Naval Command, Venice, 5 October 1914, just before leaving as a soldier. "In which period he showed good activity and zeal." [go back]

Before Conscription: Beast of burden, but his free time used in the chaotic depositories of knowledge; classics, romantics, and futurism, with its bad effects. Patriot, poet, and Venetian, close to desiring an autonomous Republic, but even more, pacifist in accord with the Internationale. Thoughtful, thinking reformist socialist but also anarchist humanitarian libertarian. A confused young man, like someone who comes out of a humble kitchen to discover an entire library. Wounded by hunger, social sorrow, political slogans; but also inclined to literature, a coagulum of ordered will among the disorder; and when one of these gets the upper hand of the others, the center of pain turns everything into love. Thus, notwithstanding pacifism, filial love, and love for his adored woman, he was content to become a soldier, enthralled by the future, unknown experience.
This is what it is to be healthy, capable of reacting because there’s something inside you, a factory of antibodies, and life becomes a succession of loves, the just loves of opposites. Then the years erect ladders for us to climb on, so that we mature. This means that time has passed, that we are old and have made our choices, right or wrong, but ever more one-sided and tired, until we lose the ability to change and can only take medicine.[go back]

Emilio was Convinced…t that he would overcome every obstacle. On March 25, 1912, in the full season of love between Italy and Germany (intrigues whose keenness escapes the youth) he was certainly convinced of it. That unusually dry, windy morning, walking with a socialist book in the Gardens, he was attracted by a crowd of soldiers and carabinieri in glowing colors. In that space of mild air, sparkling on the waves and bubbling on the shore, the diplomatic ritual of the encounter was unfolding. The colossal Wilhelm disembarked in his steel helmet, followed by the rachitic Vittorio Emmanuelle shadowed in the disrespect of a cloud and heightened by a white plume, which was tickling the imperial left ear.
Observing that inaugural scene of the Biennale and hugging his book almost as if to defend himself, Emilio experienced the feeling that he could overcome any evildoing ordered by those two. The Triple Alliance, [Note 5] put together by that superior art of cheating called diplomacy, was being uselessly consolidated on his shoulders and those of all Italians, celebrating every evening with concerts, torchlight processions, fireworks, revelries, and squawkings of soldiers with and without helmets, but with sturdy, unstable legs on rounds through the taverns of the city. [go back]

Every Kind: Emilio stood between the reflexive and the extreme, reform and revolution. Bravely, in a dream, he launched himself to where verbose points were extending traps and brambles and waves measured tens of meters, but in his mind he was standing firm on his own shore of the land locked lake.
Socialism, but which? Of the sea or of the lake? Europe, with all the events of its history, map, men, and ideas, held every kind, from international pacifism to militaristic nationalism. Weren’t those socialist parties that en masse approved the financing of the first world war? Even Hitler defined himself as a (national) socialist. And today, magic power of words, doesn’t even a Tony Blair define himself as a (labor) socialist, a descendent of the most imperialist power in history? Our government considers him to be deficient in knowledge of age-old crimes committed by the arrogant British Empire and of the more recent ones of America, who keeps millions of men under its savage financial yoke. Nevertheless, Emilio’s was always authentic socialism of ideas and of the heart: unfortunately that of deeds was still missing.[go back]

The Crust of Memory: He’s never taken notes, and after twenty more years of history, at the height of the fascist annoyance of ’37, a seductive habit from the past seizes him, as his internal desire for liberty moves him to remember both the big picture and some details. Immersed in faith in his own memory alone, coupled to a war without a diary, the facts break through the crust, and once outside, develop a strength of their own. Inside the noises, the silence; and under the rain, the weather is a continuous presence.
Departure from Venice at 18:00 on October 10, 1914 with the cardboard suitcase reinforced with a piece of string. With his other hand he checks the pocket that keeps the rain off his documents: ticket at military rates Venice-Parma, via Monselice-Suzzara, a few lire for the transfer and the pass valid for himself and two other recruits trusted to his care. Director to 61st Reggimento Fanteria, Brigata Sicilia, and completely satisfied by every remuneration till 11th of October (in military jargon). His first real voyage, twenty hours with many stops, under a mild neutral rain that doesn’t yet taste like war, preamble to long rains in the future. Arrival at Parma 14:00 hours, 11 October, under a driving rain. [go back]

Arrival at the Command: He gets off the train, welcomed in his loneliness by some flashes of lightning. The teeming rain distracts him from his melancholy. He asks his way and, skirting the city walls, followed by the two recruits, heads for the barracks. Emilio feels distant from his girl and close to a war that, outside Italy, is already growing. The windows of food remind him of the well-fed words of the Marshall of Venice: "You will eat truly hard cheese!", and with a half smile, entered the Command. Here he left his travelling companions, destined for elsewhere.
A long wait, preamble to future long waits. Spaziani, the Roman corporal, arrived with a kindly face, words of comfort, and a piece of paper: "IIIrd Battalion, 12th Company, Santo Spirito Barracks, Borgo Stalattiti, beyond the river."
Evening. Water drips from clothing and luggage. I look at him from the rip in the sky, from the lighted windows of unknown families, from the attentive street corners. And I always superimpose my spirit on his. [go back]

In the Barracks: As the rain continues, he arrives at the statue of the sentinel. He enters. At a dirty table in a corner sits an officer of the picket guard, blue band slung over the left shoulders, head bent over the newspaper spread under the dark of a lamp. He salutes. The officer replies mechanically in a Genoan accent, then raises his head for a brief conversation between two sea accents.
Who are you? A conscript. Give me the paper. Here it is. What’s your name? Emilio Magnanini. What class? Ninety-two. What, two years late?, you’re a draft dodger. No, reviewed periodically. Why? Weakness of physical constitution. I wouldn’t say so. Nevertheless, it’s true. You’re outspoken, what town are you from? Venice. That district, I know, but where were you born? Venice, Sestiere di Castello. My God, you can read and write? Yes. Are you sure?, how much schooling have you had? Third Technical. Good God... take the pen and write here whatever you want.
Outside it had stopped pouring; the silence concentrated attention on those two bent over the newspaper. The officer observed the essay in the margins ("I have just arrived at the barracks. Better barracks than loneliness.") and rose satisfied. They climbed to the floor above and went through a corridor. At its end, there was a placard hanging from a hook: 13th Company. They passed beneath it and crossed the sill of a small room on whose door was pasted a leaf of paper with a huge "COMPANY OFFICE."
The officer called out to someone named Addari that he had found a substitute and was going back down to pick up the thread of some article. Addari arrived with the face of a discharged, sat Emilio at the desk, put in front of him everything necessary for working and immediately had him compile the passes for liberty for tomorrow, Sunday. He smiled broadly, and showed sympathy for the recruit. Outside it had begun pouring again, but Emilio felt himself on dry land and at his ease. The first pass bore his name. [go back]

Memories of Parma: You never went back there. You go where they send you but then, if it’s up to you, you don’t return. We are in the hands of others, Crown, generals, corporals. How poor is man, so manipulated, so random, so uncared-for. Something stronger, itself fabricated, makes you out of earth, heaven and a conscience, digs a road and a grave for you in any sort of climate. You never went back there because no one sent you. Thus, after the war, a freedom of space is added to that little pile that everyone has. Others are more greedy, like time, which must keep working. Other freedoms have only form, like freedom of thought, a suit inside which there is a weak body pushed and pulled by a thousand non-chosen things. And then temperament, inclination...
The memories had felt the effects of it: selections, deformation. I don’t know the frescos of San Giovanni, giant-sized and delicate, but the Pilotta Palace which you call a dark barracks because of its resemblance to your military surroundings: its theater, which you politely call little theatre, was one of the largest in the world. And the Duomo and the Baptistery, which you don’t even mention. The Romanesque is shy, it tends to hide and get forgotten, as does everything which didn’t triumph. On the other hand, what has been experienced remains in all its length in the eyes, like a consumptive river full of sand and gravel, over which rough, exhausted day laborers are bending; or in its great breadth, like the pentagon of the Citadel with the storage deposits where you would go to get equipment, or in its smallness, like the entire center, so collected that a giant could place it on his palm. And the saucy girls, the men, spirited and alert, hospitable and kind but also passionate and violent, and the evening blazing of tempers in their meeting places, regurgitating with soldiers still so unthinking as not to foresee their own destiny. [go back]

Aria: The air of war breathed by the Crown and the elite classes descended corrupted onto the people. Even the Catholics, new to politics, begin to get familiar with power, utilizing a concept more diabolic than divine to distinguish the absolute neutrality of the Church from the relative neutrality [Note 6] of the faithful, who bore aspirations which opposing interests must not damage. To affirm a principle as well as its contrary is a taste enhanced by power: attractive, effective, secretly ambiguous.
The majority of Socialists and the world of labor line up on the side of peace, proclaiming themselves neutral (neither to support nor sabotage) [Note 7], partisans of the international utopia. On the other hand, the aggressive nationalists, a composite horde living on senses, anger, money, and passions, who believe in the healthy, revolutionary marvels of war, had no need of idealistic subterfuge. But Giolitti kept his feet on the ground, knowing that Austria would give us the Trentino and even more if we remained neutral. The great old man wanted us neutral to the point of creating for himself as many monarchical oppositions as he needed for not returning to power.

Salandra [Note 8] and Sonnino [Note 9] study how to obtain more advantages: with the Triple Alliance or with the Triple Entente? To pretend and to betray is the diplomacy of all countries, preparing for war is a game of poker in which everyone is cheating. Then we beat every record of diplomatic shame playing on two fronts, by offering ourselves to who would pay the most. We did this in both wars, coming in on the side we thought stronger, but always with the wrong result. Even the Great War was more a loss than a victory, it was a mutilated victory [Note 10]. And without taking into account that immediately afterward they gave us Fascism. We are not a people of heroes [Note 11], nor are many others. And a King who threatens to abdicate if we don’t give him the toy of war [Note 12] to play with, is a grandson too spoiled by a too distant Julius Caesar. [go back]

Preparation of Bodies: Triple Alliance and Triple Entente court us to hold onto the tails of their machine, or at least to avoid complicating their plans like a ball-busting dog. But Italy meant to break things, a lot of them, and more than shortening the dog’s tail, it meant to scratch like a hyena and damage the probable losers. Thus they negotiate with the Triple Entente and continue with the Triple Alliance.
Summer of ’14. Neutrality [Note 13] is proclaimed. The magnet of recall of the previously discharged and the patriotic anticipation of those born in ’94 begins. Mobilization not by public banns but with a half clandestine card. Emilio, born in ’92, is given an extension and leaves only in October. At the beginning of ’15, the treaty with the Triple Alliance is outlined. Cadorna: the army must be ready in two months. Optimism and even worse: war was declared on the chance of an offensive from Friuli until the success of the Tsar on the eastern front paralyzes Austria. As experience teaches, a competent person knows very well his field of study, but in front of a new one, faced with a prediction to make, he loses intuition or prudence, and any still possible change of position bewilders him.
They prepare themselves. The gaiety is attenuated, daily get-togethers become more rare, the soldier is concerned. At Parma doubt becomes certainty when unexpectedly the companies are crowded into the Cittadella enclosure for a complete change of uniform. Redingote [Note 14], grey trousers, soft blue beret with two points, képi [Note 15] with towel, white spats, and felt knapsacks, discarded to rot in the courtyard to the joy of cats in love, and replaced with a gray-green suit, yellow shoes, mule-drivers’ spats, soft cap, and cloth sacks. Officers and troops, elegant and boorish, smelling of fresh manufacture, think themselves more attractive to the girls, but with the melancholic duty of leaving. Having lost the intense promiscuity of the colors, the city is becoming a uniform barracks. Italy is ready to leave; destination: the saddest of adventures.
The quartermaster has three hundred soldiers in his force, not just souls: arrivals, departures, equipment, and works. Almost the only one to use a pen, he may remain in the office while the others are obliged to training courses. When, at the end of March of ’15, the regiment leaves Parma for the front, it seems he’s reappearing in the light after a period of lethargy. Only then does he realize he’s a real soldier on his way toward an unknown tragedy. [go back]

Preparation of Souls: The military General Staff is preparing soldiers, the political one civilians. Parma is pounded by propaganda that leads the day laborers to see the war as a way to escape poverty, to hope for the impossible, to see what isn’t there: the leaders’ magic. And the leaders perform the first magic on themselves, and change their skins. The most excited are directors of the world of labor, who until yesterday had tried preaching pacifism while they held in their fists the deluded masses of the disinherited, who had learned discipline in the union. This mass was to be exploited by interventionists, incited by orators which formerly with their huge protest strikes had provoked horizontal hecatombs of beasts, and now promised vertical hecatombs of humans.
In front of the agricultural masses of Parma, the most eminent demagogues (Corridoni and Mussolini) talk glibly (instead the little D’Annunzio climbs on appropriate stools in evocative and more refined resorts, like Quarto). Benito, engaged by the King through foreign embassies in a series of "performances", is always pursued by the shadow of the man who has replaced him as director of "Avanti!", Giacinto Menotti Serrati, Emilio’s future employer. After his death this great dreamer will be forgotten in the invasive and charlatanesque shadow of the directors whom the USSR will place on the altar in front of the Italian workers, those same directors who unexpectedly began pleading that unity of the workers’ movement which they had already repudiated. Serrati had been accused of treason for supporting that unity itself. And to think that this priest of socialism, he who maintained that the workers wouldn’t reclaim their own rights if first they didn’t see to their own obligations, had been the only one of ours to support, at the conference of socialists in Switzerland (September ‘15 and April ‘16), Lenin’s proposal to create a Third International and transform the imperialist war into a proletarian revolution, markedly outstripping the maximalist and reformist pacifism of his companions in the delegation.
A shadow, I was saying, followed the future Duce into a theater in Parma. Emilio was making rounds. After the speech the shadow asked for other opinions, but, as soon as he had opened his mouth, interventionist pandemonium was unleashed, seats and heads were broken, Serrati was saved by the men on rounds and the police intervened.
By this time, segments of viruses, cursed half-straight lines launched by God, had violated the senses of the students and injected them with their first Fascist fever. Idiotic history books, stupid faces of school teachers, and geography of the borders made the students exclaim from their desks some indignant "Oh!!!’s" or, easier, hand on chest, pronounce the "C" of Country. One doesn’t joke with delicate feelings, it takes only a little to divert them toward improper goals, a nothing, a crumb, a fart interpreted as a palpitation, to set flame to souls and provoke hecatombs. But the ability of those two and their extraordinary, remunerative services which Benito was operating in the plebian sector, Gabriele in the aristocratic. They peaked in the "Radiant Days of May" [Note 16]. [go back]

Chapter I

THE TRENTINO ALBUM

Professional Mystique: Soldier as priest or artist, intrinsic with the calling, clear through the fibers, down to the bone, Captain Depretis commands the 12th Company, a mature, thickset nobleman of the Piedmont just returned from Eritrea, with the burden of a family and his rank his only resource. He liked to appear inflexible, making threats with the swagger stick, invoking colonial methods. He would reprove, offend, and add scathing remarks appropriate to the recruit in his sights, who from the beginning was made to feel humiliated, even if he didn’t know exactly why; then he would feel elevated to son, admitted to the good father’s confidence, so that the company would go from frightened silence to noisy hilarity, just as he had expected: feared and welcomed like a real officer, an individual ahead of the group, one man out in front of those numbers.
A soldier born, love of fatherland his profession, a stranger to politics, ready to be against anyone if commanded, as when, in the fascist period, he unleashed those ugly squads against day-laborers and Parma workers, earning nomination as Mayor.
There is art for art’s sake, war for the sake of war, and anything for anything. The power lies here, supported by these activities, which are needed not for thinking, but for acting, for doing a service. Even thinking, reduced to technical thought, a pure professional function, now means only doing. The power lies here, and we are all beneath its feet, there are the working categories, praised provided neutral; the military, the state functionaries, the magistrates do only what their professions demand, without crossing the boundary into freedom of thought, much less of action. And the largest return is obtained by convincing the functionary and his pockets to the most uncritical obedience. [go back]

The Other Side of the Mystique: The music master. But domestic needs, exceeding the total of salary and allowances from family holdings, were continually putting the captain into an embarrassing position. Always being pressed by creditors, especially his own soldiers, who are tacitly silenced with promises of his own promotion (interventionism had given impulse to spending, stimulated inflation, and ignited the hopes of debtors). But not everyone is resigned to wait and so he goes after other resources available to his rank. To those most useful to him he gives tickets to the opera season at Reinach, and induces the others to buy them at low prices, showing up in the gallery to ascertain their presence. "Here you are, because in your town you’ll never have the chance to see a spectacle like this!" Thus, by filling the highest balcony, the soldiers contribute to the education of his daughters, pupils of the music master who has a financial interest in the theater.
The shoemaker shoes the captain’s entire family. The accounts slip into phantom lists of resoled shoes and re-sewn leather cartridge cases. To Emilio, commanded to collaborate with the artisan, the officer declares he will assume all responsibility.
The tailor, and all the rest. With the tailor, identical procedure, and even with his own horse, nourished with the mules’ hay. The same with the provisions for the house, enriched with meat and coffee taken from the soldiers’ rations, or added as non-existent. To Emilio and to the corporal of the kitchen: "The life of a soldier is a holy life, but a more clever saint will be more blessed, because the ancient commandment is still valid and always will be: take care of yourself!"[go back]

At Nozza: Midway through March, the military corps begins to climb through the Padana geography. The 61st Regg. is moving as well, which at the first pre-alpine reliefs takes its own direction: the three battalions which comprise it go up the Chiese Valley.
March 28. The 3rd Batt. camps at Nozza in Val Sabbia, province of Brescia. Thanks to the Captain, the 12th gets the best of it, occupying the new nursery school. Everyone rests well on straw pallets for a couple of months, enough time for the preventive inoculations to take. Officers go to courses, soldiers do exercises.
Emilio learns the loneliness of the camps, the rural smells, the profile of the mountains, the arrival and irruption of waters, links them to amorous memories and sends his beloved poems about starry nights, sparkling dew, warm fronds in bud. Not only anxiety before battle but the fear itself that precedes war is absent. Instead, calm and faith in destiny, even if the conflict can’t be extinguished in a few months, as the facile prophets say.
The young recruits see, with a sad pleasure, the prose of nature all around, in their eyes moments with the beloved, in their hearts, distance overcome by a strength able to bear the sacrifice of separation and resigned to the distance. On the other hand, he who does not lift his gaze to the hills appears worried, with a perpetual frown; those are the older men who’ve been recalled, suspended on the hook of affairs, gnawed, torn away from their feelings, shut in the torture of abstinence. They show no will to defend "civilization", nor to enlarge the borders of the fatherland, nor to vindicate the crimes which, it is said, the enemy perpetrates daily. During waking moments, beauty and peace shine ironically; in sleep, fatherland and duty pale into phantasms. [go back]

At this Point, the Enemy has been Chosen: In Europe, the war twists on itself for eight months, and the Italians hear that they will soon be joining the brawl. But against whom? In the grotesque of power, it’s not yet official. But the army swept to the borders of the Trentino and Venezia Giulia is proof that the enemy selected is Austria, and that to defend "Latin civilization" from "Teutonic barbarism" Italy would line up with the Triple Entente, which seemed stronger and promised more. The Russian roulette played by the Piemontese Crown against the Italians’ temples had begun, and only after thirty years would it finish with the pistol turned against the temples of the House of Savoy.
The prophets assure us: "Our intervention will decide the lots in favor of the Latins (the English are Latin as well?), and it will all be over in three months." According to the scribes and the radiant poets, the Central Empires are already conquered, they’re eating black bread, using degenerated black powder, cannon shortages now that the fronts are being widened enormously, and they don’t have any more men, everyone’s been mobilized. Because they must, and being able to tolerate three whole months more, the Italian soldiers shrug, grumble, but allow themselves to be pushed to the fronts. [go back]

Fatherland and World: But in fact they had not been educated with that noble sentiment called love of country, which comes with education and quality of life. If it was, as it was, the sentiment of the bosses, it could not also be that of the servants. Nor even that of mercenaries who make war for the sake of war. Before the conflict, the children of the people were taught, as part of their rudimentary instruction, a primitive idea of fatherland, glorifying the monarchy, which soon crumbled at the edge of the world of labor, where the new concept of the International was being affirmed. In the last century, ascetics and propagandists had united universal Christian brotherhood with the anarchist-marxist idea, a little romantic and gypsy-like, of "our fatherland is the world". Workers and students were dazzled by this principle of no borders, a splendid varnish spread over nebulous interests. The apostles of this positive anarchy, those without a fatherland, were wandering through the world displaying multicolored flags, spreading words with which to deafen the new generations. But as the outbreak of war came closer, those persons were deafened by the pounding of nationalist propaganda, reawakened by politicians, poets, and by those same adventurer trade unionists and anarchists who had once rejected it in the name of a universal peace, which they would praise in their reviews. These allowed themselves immediately to be co-opted into the profitable ranks of the directing classes, those imposing love of fatherland on the multitudes. In every nation, the fatherland demolished the International, reducing the people to a mass to manipulate, at the mercy of military strategy.
In our army the idea of nation spread to the officers most of all, future cadres of Fascism. Those soldiers with a little education and means (workers from the industrial centers of the north and farmers from the cooperatives on the river Po plain) remained socialist. The illiterate peasants and urban lumpenproletariat remained anonymous.
Nationalism, an elemental, aggressive sentiment. The Soviet Union, having parted from the internationalist illusion, immediately becomes chauvinistic. Every day we see ethnic groups fighting each other, much more often than those who differ in other social categories yet are able to live together in the modern democratic state, which thrives on integration, mediation, and rules, and today aspires even to trans-nationalism.

The fatherland, a sentiment that is ambiguous, because of the illusion that it can continue functioning until it falls apart ("You think you’re dying for your country, and instead you’re dying for the industrialists") [Note 17]. Or even the International (You think you’re dying for the world, instead you’re for Stalin’s Russia or for a tyrannical statism). How much suffering, even in these utopias… In Italy, maximalism, sectarianism [Note 18] (which kept its leaders in an ideological limbo where they appeared ascetic rather than defenders of special interests) ; imitators of Bolshevism and dependence on the Third International destroyed most of what socialist reforms had been able to construct over years of organization and rational battle. All that had made a great party of the PSI, whose cooperatives were the preludes to a florid development of workers and their integration into the middle class. As soon as the country, instigated by the monarchy, found it necessary to aggregate interests around the idea of the nation, the PSI, in the name of pacifism and international communism, left the fold and was accused of defeatism. This led to its ruin and shifted the power to fascism.
After the second war, the communist parties developed nationally as well. The fatherland, thrown out the communist door, came back in through the communist window, and communism too revealed its ambiguity. The national trends toward socialism, which disconcerted the old comrades no less than the "bourgeois", solidified the politics of the communist parties, but not even this change of strategy could save them in the long run from ruin; because those national trends were being administered by the USSR, just as in their time, it seemed the international ones had been. The motherland having dissolved, these parties were in crisis, the times had completely changed them, and they demonstrated their competence in a pragmatic context, democratic-liberal socialism, a revolution just as important as the one which brought the bourgeoisie to power with the French revolution, and with bolshevism in the Soviet Union, solely peaceful. Once again political algebra has triumphed, and has given the countries involved in this process a stable equilibrium.
Internationalism of the proletariat, a utopia similar to the Christian universal brotherhood; but impossible to achieve because it presupposes the translation into practice of an ideology, that is, of an abstract, absolute conception, of a perfection which, like happiness, is not of this world. On the other hand, a relative internationalism is possible, reinforcing the role of international organizations. [go back]

Toward the Frontier: During the two months at Nozza the officers of the 3rd Batt. make their mess in a local osteria, and Captain Depretis is charged, or rather has charged himself, with administering the mess. Each week he goes with Emilio to the back of the kitchen where the hostess gives him the account, "Add," turned toward the sergeant, "five lire for yourself, and divide the bill into equal parts." He waits for the outcome of the calculations, he mumbles, then exclaims in Piemontese his right to compensation. But, since no one has had the good manners to propose this, "I must humiliate myself and decide to award it to myself, so divide my total among all the others, and make sure it’s done right!" Having returned to the dining room, he distributes the papers with the sums written on them, showing off his long witticisms that leave no space for comment.
12 May. The officers were deprived of the captain’s services, because the battalion is coming back to Preseglie where in succeeding days the other battalions were converging: the 62nd Regg. from the Brigata Sicilia itself, united with the 6th Div, they arrive and organize supplies and equipment, and the troops train up and down in the hills.
23 May. The 1st Army, on its way to the center-west sector of the front, is getting a move on. The 6th Div and the Brigata Sicilia are confronting the afternoon in full battle dress, with helmets and masks, directed toward the south-western border of the Trentino, other units are climbing the eastern slope of Guarda aiming for Val Lagarina, still others at the mouth of the Valsugana. To the west, after a short deviation to the right, Emilio’s brigade halts at Crone Idro, on the shore of a lake. The 12th Comp. sets up in a little deconsecrated church.
24 May. With synchronized respect for the secret Pact of London [Note 19], signed by Italy with the Entent on April 26, 1915, huge territorial compensation guaranteed, our four Armies are placed in their respective war zones: the 1st has a sector that wanders from the Stelvio to the Passo di Cereda (separating the Trentino from the Bellunese), the 2nd and the 3rd, the Isontino sector, the 4th , a sector that goes from Passo di Cereda to Monte Peralba (sources of the Piave) and includes the eastern dolomitic zones; and they penetrate easily into enemy territory for a few tens of kilometers. The symbols are coalescing into real things: our war has begun. [go back]

"Get out of Italy!": The 3rd Batt. relaxes at Crome until 30 May, suffocating its few inhabitants with its presence, disturbing and making muddy the quiet waters of the lake.

31 May. At dawn a trumpet blast set them in motion toward an unknown destination, preceded and followed by other trumpet blasts from other nearby units. The trenghs took the deviation again, in the reverse direction, in effect advancing toward the north along the left shore of the lake, with their numbers still intact. The 12th proceeded in two lines at the sides of the road leading to the Trentino. Each line had to stay under cover as much as possibile, leaving the road and snaking under vines and rows of trees bright with new leaves, stumbling in the freshly hoed soil and crossing low but wearying walls. It isn’t clear whether this movement was meant to be a late exercise or a superfluous preoccupation, because the captain, trotting on his steed in the middle of the road, smashes the silence of the countryside with orders howled into the megaphone he wears around his neck. Rustling of grass, weak cracks from small branches, monotonous tinkling of weapons against pouches, canteens, and the sides of knapsacks, are perceptible a few meters away, but the captain‘s yells can surely be heard at an undesirable distance. The proud warrior would have been the only one to endanger the operation, if the enemy, apparently occupied elsewhere or with other business, had been found in the vicinity.

At the approach to Ponte Caffaro the two files reunite. Forcing himself to appear agile on the back of an ugly horse, as low and stocky as he was, the captain pauses, cocky in the middle of the bridge, making the soldiers mark time as they pass. When the entire company has come together, he puts on an imperial face, orders the march step, spurs the animal, who was little inclined to continue, raised the megaphone, and with all the force of his lungs intoned: "Get out of Italy, get out, O foreigners!"

But only his baritone breath could have reached enemy ears, because the soldiers’ voices, who were to have sung the chorus, weren’t really able to exit from those dry throats and exhausted lungs, used to oxygenate the motion of the march. Even though a half century ago the hero of Caprera had really passed through this place; on the officers’ faces could be read disappointment for that imprudent homage to the garabaldini in a war that would be very different from that one, experienced by only a few chosen warriors, with that exuberant pace, and that seductive color of shirts.

What is more, other companies from other battalions had already crossed the border and ventured into enemy ground without erecting a whole altar on the spot.

At the pace of a slow march, the 12th enters a territory up to a few minutes before subject to the laws of Austria. Having read a message from the colonel, the captain yells to continue in two lines with the same precautions as before, this time more appropriate. One line trickles along the slope of Dos della Croce, the other through the cornfield of the Giudicarie. The Chiese runs to the left under the noon sun, becoming lost at the feet of an alp that emerges very high in the depths of the vale. The 3rd Batt. relaxes at Crome until 30 May, suffocating its few inhabitants with its presence, disturbing and making muddy the quiet waters of the lake.
31 May. At dawn a trumpet blast set them in motion toward an unknown destination, preceded and followed by other trumpet blasts from other nearby units. The deviation was taken again, in the reverse direction, in effect advancing toward the north along the left shore of the lake, with their numbers still intact. The 12th proceeded in two lines at the sides of the road leading to the Trentino. Each line had to stay under cover as much as possible, leaving the road and snaking under vines and rows of trees bright with new leaves, stumbling in the freshly hoed soil and crossing low but wearying walls. It isn’t clear whether this movement was meant to be a late exercise or a superfluous preoccupation, because the captain, trotting on his steed in the middle of the road, smashes the silence of the countryside with orders howled into the megaphone he wears around his neck. Rustling of grass, weak cracks from small branches, monotonous tinkling of weapons against pouches, canteens, and the sides of knapsacks, all are perceptible a few meters away, but the captain’s yells can surely be heard at an undesirable distance. The proud warrior would have been the only one to have endangered the operation, if the enemy, apparently occupied elsewhere or with other business, had been found in the vicinity.
At the approach to Ponte Caffaro the two files reunite. Forcing himself to appear agile on the back of an ugly horse, as low and stocky as he was, the captain pauses, cocky in the middle of the bridge, making the soldiers mark time as they pass. When the entire company has come together, he puts on an imperial face, orders the march step, spurs the animal, who was little inclined to continue, raised the megaphone, and with all the force of his lungs intoned: "Get out of Italy, get out, O foreigners!"
But only his baritone breath could have reached enemy ears, because the soldiers’ voices, who were to have sung the chorus, weren’t really able to exit from those dry throats, since their exhausted lungs were being used to oxygenate the motion of the march. Even though a half century ago the hero of Caprera really had passed through this place; on the officers’ faces could be read disappointment for that imprudent homage to the garabaldini in a war that would be very different from that one, experienced by only a few chosen warriors, with that exuberant pace, and that seductive color of shirts.
What is more, other companies from other battalions had already crossed the border and ventured into enemy ground without erecting a whole altar on the spot.
At the pace of a slow march, the 12th enters a territory until a few minutes before subject to the laws of Austria. Having read a message from the colonel, the captain yells to continue in two lines with the same precautions as before, this time more appropriate. One line trickles along the slope of Dos della Croce, the other through the cornfield of the Giudicarie. The Chiese runs to the left under the noon sun, becoming lost at the feet of an alp that emerges very high in the depths of the vale. From that huge eye, the enemy sees, follows, and takes note of everything.[go back]

Milk for Two Fatherlands: 31 May, afternoon. Storo is being occupied, at the beginning of Val d’Àmpola, where the logistic base of the 61st Regg. is being organized. Deserted streets. The villagers have retired into their houses, and spy on the troops from windows. Other contingents of the Brigade are sent into the outskirts to form outposts. The 3rd Batt. has as its objective the heights of Val d’Àmpola which goes from Storo to Tiarno. The 6th Div. continues with the Giudicarie following the Chiese to Condino. The four companies of the 3rd Batt. 9th, 10th,11th, and 12th, are climbing into the mountains.
31 May, evening. Climb by mule road on mount Stìgolo. The 12th rests in a courtyard. Faces at windows, a few women follow the soldiers’ movements with worried compassion. Sons, husbands, and brothers speak Trentino but are in the service of Austria, and could be killed by the guns of those young men satisfying their thirst at the fountain, or themselves kill those boys who are stuffing their packs with venetian, lombard, emilian accents. When the foot soldiers start off, they say farewell to them, and bless them in a loud voice, with shiny eyes. For the first time Emilio confronts a real climb and soon starts to puff like the others under a pack complete with cover, the fabric of an individual tent, clothes, ammunition, and reserve rations. He slows, and a little at a time he sees himself being outdistanced by those ahead of him, and outstripped by those behind him, until he’s left at the tail with a small group of the exhausted. They are dripping sweat, piercing the evening with wide open eyes. The group thins out slowly along the curves.
Left alone, he notices the unexpected perfume of a chimney. He’s thirsty, and his appetite has awakened as well. A trail breaks off and disappears with the smell around a curve. He runs, following that thread that tastes of polenta, until the outline of a hut jumps out under the black space of the sky. He advances. At the decrepit entrance stands a little old lady with a light, who looks at him, nods, bends over a bucket, and offers him a smiling bowl of milk, which he grabs avidly and empties in one breath. The tiny grandmother is happy that even an Italian is drinking, from that bowl, milk from her only cow, which a few hours earlier had been drunk by Austrian soldiers in retreat. And she adds: "God bless you and everyone!" puts the coin in her pocket with a sigh, and retires.
Refreshed, Emilio returns to the mule road. The moon shows him the curves clearly. He hurries his pace and reaches the battalion which is stopping at a rocky clearing at Pian D’Onedo. [go back]

First Bivouacs, First Trenches: 31 May, night. Western slopes of the Stigolo, in Pian d’Onedo near Rocca Pagana. The battalion pounds in stakes, digs lateral drains, lights fires, and hungrily awaits the arrival of rations. The baggage train sent from Storo with meat rations, weapons, and equipment, are late, but they get there. The cooks light the fire under the pots, and after a few hours infantrymen and officers fill their mugs with steaming soup, not too delicate but full of good Trentino potatoes, enriched with pieces of sausage.
In the heart of the night and of the rocks the soldiers go to bed, so many in each tent. For someone who’s a lover of comfort, the mattress is a layer of moss ripped from the rocks. Damp and cold. Lying one against the other, they sleep until full day.
1 June. After the noon rations, while the service personnel retire to rearrange the equipment and prepare the baggage train for going on, the battalion enters a place along with its charts of data, a wood in the direction of Malga Bislera. No trace of the enemy. At twilight, encampment on a soft meadow, crossed by a brook and surrounded by dense groves of fir at Rocca Pagana, next to Cascina Mauser.
2 June. The highest climb in Emilio’s memories, on the Stigolo, and a night-time bivouac at Cascina Pavel
3 June. Arrival at Malga Bislera where anyone who has money can taste butter and cheese from cows who eat flowers. The cowherds, only geographically Austrian, not only have not fled, but have seized the chance to make a little money having their cows work for the Italian infantry. The first outposts have been fixed, along with trenches improvised with the rocks lying about. Lookout duty begins. [go back]

Mules, Cuckoos, and Falcons: The supplies arrive twice a day over another mule track that climbs up from Val d’Àmpola, but so narrow, steep, and slippery that the overloaded mules frequently fall near the top. Was it a goat trail? Clumsy mules, or mules loaded by the inexperienced? The fact remains that a few animals, once they were just about to reach the hut, would fall, letting themselves roll down the grassy slope of a lateral valley and remain there motionless, and only when the mule driver reaches them cursing, beats them, and adds to their kicks a codicil of blows, do they get back up, and become again patient and plodding, undertaking the final stretch with cautious, surprising ability.
6 June. A group of soldiers called back into service from the Po and Emilia provinces reaches the battalion. They bring with them, as persons who come from outside will do and know that anyone who is waiting for them has for a long time been left alone or isolated, with uncertainties and exaggerated news about the war and the world, knowing that anyone who holds back will be left out or isolated for a long time. Old men who’ve left family and job, angry and sad within themselves and without. Lined up at the Val d’Àmpola transport center, they had snorted like the mules, and with them would have gladly let themselves roll down the meadow slope, to remain there and forget.
The companies alternated with mounting guard. The 12th had the first watch, which passed without suspicious sounds. Only a cuckoo all night long didn’t stop expressing surprise about the presence of so many intruders in his solitary surroundings. At the age of action, Emilio feels his freedom and reality becoming enclosed within a cage of bars, the trees of a wood squeezing him into the damp bit of patience. And time continues to pass.
One afternoon a shadow is noticed very high in the sky, and he’s convinced it’s an air-plane. He tells his nearby messmates, and soon the whole encampment in siesta lifts its sleepy head to observe that vague, wandering body, cutting through a sky enclosed by a penumbra of cliffs; and which is nothing but a falcon, as is soon obvious by its descent in low, circular motions. At which the captain derides the quartermaster, to the servile laughs of his comrades, many of whom had never seen an airplane, but without canceling the small shame of being himself left with nose in air and hand on forehead for some time, before realizing that he had to do with an innocent creature of nature.
In the days following, to maintain security in the face of the mouths of cannons of the surrounding Austrian peaks, and position oneself for safety in case of incursions, trenches must be dug at Case Bisti on a spur overlooking Tiarno, not yet occupied by the Italians. The captain, incapable of keeping quiet, continues to yell orders through the megaphone, surely carried by the wind to the ears in the nearby town. With afterthought, Emilio would deduce that in that sector and at that moment the Austrian troops and artillery were outnumbered or no longer interested in offense. But the commandant of the battalion wisely decides in the knowledge of the moment to command his officer not to use that noisy instrument, which ends up in the bottom of a sack, to the admitted relief of the subalterns. [go back]

Volunteers: Full July. In the face of that story, the comrades march in time to Cascina Pavel with orders to continue toward Case Rango, on the western slope of the Stigolo, where the battalion will remain for months. During the transfer, the 12th is joined by a group of volunteers from Parma.
The afternoon air is sucking heat from the walls enclosing the little valley that contains the mule track, and the creaking sylvan pines decorate the slope of the march, reddish beneath a pitiless sun turning leaves to paper, when the expected group of volunteers is pointed out to the captain, as they drag themselves along a secondary and extremely steep trail below. Patriotic zeal has induced them to take the short-cut, and now they are paying for it. As soon as the captain sees them, he lowers the binoculars, orders a rest and, inviting everyone to do the same, yells his throat out: "Hurrah for the Parma volunteers!" The call remains unaccompanied, gets lost among the cliffs, evaporates in the heat of stones too tired to make echoes and makes no impression at all on its audience, who are arriving prostrated by fatigue and by concerns that it has, eyes wide open to a thousand questions.
Very young and quite old, students and lawyers, workers and even mayors, all of subversive faiths: socialists, revolutionaries, and syndicalists except for one authentic nationalist, almost a child,. There’s also the cousin of a lieutenant of the 12th, but there’s no good blood running between them. The officer, serious and poised, doesn’t want to greet or even to see the relative, who had always been an internationalist, and was unexpectedly converted into a vigorous patriot. To repent at the right moment and then throw yourself onto the winning side is a continuous practice the greedy use to make their way; unable to bear standing off-stage or playing the role of a loser, they are turncoats by profession. Thus the suspecting lieutenant expresses himself openly to his own quartermaster. [go back]

Poets and Waiters: Of those volunteers, Emilio took two out from the shadows. The first is Gino Grazioli, a young, ethereal man not even nineteen years old, the only one with a real love of the fatherland and a huge will to serve it. The others, with one excuse or another, are soon lined up to find a way out, disappearing in the labyrinth of the zone behind the front line, or crawling up the ass of high-ranking officers, to emerge later, each more ambitious than the others, with a little star on their shoulders.
The second strikes him because he’s a revolutionary, at least talking the talk, but at the same time quite lazy. Short, broken nose, the flat chin and feet of a policeman, he displays a witty spirit, apparently satirical but in reality servile. A waiter in body and spirit, he’s enrolled in search of fortune or rank, but realizes immediately that he’s made a mistake; and now repentant, is seeking a peaceful minor post. This he confesses to the quartermaster to whom he had been immediately recommended, destined to the duties of an orderly. Years later, during development of delicate assignments for the party, Emilio will find him again, during the most shameless period of the dictatorship: the waiter saying that he had left revolutionary syndicalism and turned toward communism, revealing in this an unsuspected courage. He will seem to be embarrassed to see his friend the quartermaster, now comrade on a secret mission, before whom he was displaying his voluntary service, because he considered it simply not coherent with his new ideas, almost making him ashamed of his own youth. He would encounter him again at the fall of the regime; his voluntary service had become a title of honor on the wave of love of country unexpectedly raised by the party of Togliatti. In sum, one of so many passive followers who, out of opportunism, accepted pre-established models of official conceptions. Unless, Emilio’s always suspicious heart whispered, nothing worse was hiding between those flat feet.
Much different, that other one, bright soul of a young man, patriot and poet in a moment when not only the love of a girl but love of the fatherland as well was turning everyone into poets. Always in search of the discomforts and risks of the trenches, two years later, immediately promoted to the higher grade, he fell in Macedonia’s desolate mountains. [go back]

Case Rango: Encampment at Case Rango, complex of stalls and hay barns, on the slope of the Stigolo, among meadows and woods, two, three km by air from the Hapsburg nests. The cows have been dislodged and, after a wild clean-up, the various commands are being installed in their stead. The finest barn is set up for the battalion commander. The captain of the 12th gets a shed, small, but with a view of the enemy mountains. Emilio and the quartermaster can enjoy their own mansion in the hay barn behind the captain’s shed. The other officers are accommodated at well as possibile. Again, the troops must be content with cold, narrow tents, at least free of the fragrant bucolic residues with which the permanent parts of the complex are still impregnated.
It is necessary to fortify and occupy a stretch of the front that runs from Condino to a point called Cima Boreale, with the intention of preventing the enemy from leaving by the Giudicarie valleys or coming down by Val d’Àmpola. Here and there on this stretch, the 3rd Batt. is in contact with the other units of the brigade and with those of the 6th Div. which, all together, form links of a extended chain, lying in wait for the enemy to show itself. Above Condino loom the strong Austrian emplacements of the Lardaro Fort. Cima Boreale, a bare peak above the encampment, has the most elevated Austrian peaks opposite it: Monte Giovo, Cima Palone, Monte Mozzolo, and the highest and most fortified of all, Monte Cadria, said to be impregnable.
For a few weeks, absolute silence, except for reconnaissance patrols returning incomplete, having tripped along the trail over the trigger wire of a bomb, or had the bad luck to fall into the wolf’s mouth. No trace of the enemy in person. On the other hand, the local inhabitants are working at bringing to safety the animals and things they use for the summer grazing. They let us know that the Austrians are fortifying Monte Mozzolo and going back and forth between Mozzolo and Cima Palone, where they’ve placed a fortified observation point, and they go down to Tiarno every so often to requisition food and arrest civilians.
The most intense work goes on behind the lines, while on watch and in the trenches, everything is quiet. It isn’t right for the troops to continue sleeping in those damp tents, and so the off-duty soldiers are employed in taking down the trees needed to build sleeping huts. In a short time, the splendid forest of red fir and sylvan pine north of Case Rango is reduced to a squalid slope of mutilated trunks. Multiplying the havoc by the dozens of regiments stationed in the central-eastern Alps, one can get an idea of how great a wound had been made in the nature of those places. But every war is played around the pronouns mine and yours, and, according to a certain instinct, better something of yours destroyed than something of mine. A complement to this: "And to think that one might live completely in peace if humans were not always infected with the itch to grab the belongings of others." Thus Cadorna, in a private letter of June 28, 1916. And, in an earlier paragraph: "This morning I went to the Asiago uplands... What horrible sights! There were still many bodies left to be buried. Oh, the war!" This, a month’s distance from another letter, to Gen. Lequio, commandant of the Altopiani zone, a classic war letter for a classic war, an example of professional schizophrenia of feelings following our ill-fated collapse without resistance: "The E.V. takes the most energetic and extreme measures: it will have shot , if necessary, immediately and without any trial, those guilty of such an enormous scandal" [go back]

The Future Don Luigi: From the quartermaster’s hay barn, to the north could be seen the chain culminating in Doss dei Morti and, further off, the deadly whiteness of Adamello. The deaf and solemn horizon is barely disturbed by the weak echoes of cannons throwing mute projectiles in the direction of the glacier. Respectful of that apparent peace, everyone is inclined to speak quietly, including the captain who at this point has forgotten the mechanical gesture of grabbing the megaphone.
The troops use their rest time going quickly down the mountain and with difficulty back up, with tools and materials on their backs, helping the mules. Evenings, when everyone is back at the same time, the soldiers retire to the new, resinous barracks, and gradually get warm. They get visits from nearby units with festive bottles or tinned food offered by a few generous people, offering in their turn glasses of wine, and they relax into conversation, enlivening the introverted hours before sleep, staying inside, content to be moving within time stopped in the mountains.
Emilio remains misanthropic in the office, and when he’s not working he’s thinking, or debating with a recruit he’s chosen as a scribe, a seminarian ready to say mass. They were already calling him don Luigi, a well-built young Lombard, his goodness on a par with his size, smiling and kind to everyone, although he is more of a glutton than a gourmet. Evenings, they sit at the entrance and compare ideas, opposite but not conflicting, missions and feelings justified differently but tending toward the same end: the good. One through God, the other by means of socialism, dreaming of the same things and ending each confrontation the same way. The effect of silence, the dark, and the incumbent common danger, reduced to an operation of survival and getting people’s spirits to cooperate in defending themselves from the inexorability hanging over them. Differences and arguments might arise in other, more complex situations, when the danger of death isn’t the same, but the differing obligations of life put the quality of ideas to the test. The application of ideas is their test of fire, which burns people’s heads and feet whether the ideas come from the heaven of religion, controlled more by chance and emotions than by reality, or whether they fall from the cloud of an ideology lacking connections to reality. Up there, priest and socialist are disposed toward confronting one another affectionately in a mystical demonstration of overcoming difficulties and differences. But up there, there’s nothing to prove. That world of stars, of perfume, by now of summer, gravitates surreal and weightless, unifying the diverse scriptures of the heart and mind. [go back]

The Miller: At the encampment there’s a miller from Colorno, the mess orderly, expert and quick at carrying of sacks of flour, pasta, chick-peas, and loaves of bread. His name is Fadani, handsome in face and body, an unusual thing for a man from Emilia. Thin, erect in bearing, he seems to have stolen the best of every region. Sharp and witty, and this isn’t unusual, and maybe a little bizarre, and this is normal. The opposite of Emilio and Luigi, if one can be the opposite of two different things, but Fadani forms between them the harmony of a trio, not in speaking but in listening to their discussions, of which he touches the surface in seductive and dialectic tones, transfers capably into his own barracks and through the lambrusco of his countrymen, displaying an eloquence completely rural and piquant, blooming with metaphors invented from real and carnal doings.
Wine and abstinence stimulate him to recount loves, which he certainly has lived, as his physique and extroversion bear witness. Between the blond sacks of grain and the soft sacks of flour he got involved so often and so deeply, it all might have seemed invention, but the details of thighs white with flour, two by two, four by four, nude, smooth, beating out the rhythm of the mill’s blades, all taste of truth. The listeners would always ask for new details, to which he would respond generously, and when someone of honor is present, with gestures and winks like someone playing scopa, and the sweating as they were behind the sacks with their eyes dilated sacks as well, and exhausted with pleasure, until the detailed reference to the most delicate parts, and the orgasm, proclaimed by an unrestrained mouth, makes everyone explode in a liberating laugh, enough for that evening and leftovers. According to him, he intends to acquaint don Luigi as well with these tales, often present in the barracks, tasting sweets and trying to elevate the tone of discussions on subjects that had little to do with the rubicund bystanders, who shared with the miller both abstinence and desire. [go back]

Shoemakers and Trumpeters: In a hut next to the quartermaster’s, they’ve placed two Ferrarese shoe-makers. Big-mouth birds, they gladden the leather-smelling air, exchanging remarks and affectionate improprieties, between a pull of laces and a lick of a nail, a smear of pitch and a rap of a hammer on a tack on a knee, which is the limping mark of every shoemaker. Under their breath they sing lewd, filthy songs, which no one not of their region can grasp the meaning, and which will certainly be extinct after them.
In addition there is a Roman trumpeter, plump and red, who’s never without his instrument because he holds it to his breast and it consoles and confirms him in his own identity. Certainly he’s kept his good appetite. He’s the despair of the corporal of the kitchen Pizzamiglio, from whom he knows how to extort supplementary rations, his eyes and mouth so convincing that the non-com feels he would be a worm if he doesn’t yield to what seems to him more than a caprice, rather, a necessity. His barrack has been transformed into a storehouse, and smells like food. In his knapsack and everywhere that pockets can be found, there are tins of meat, remnants of cheese, and slices of bread toasted in anticipation of a long famine.
Emilio is perplexed about that trumpet. Every morning after the raising of the flag he looks around and interrogates the frontier. Incredible: the Captain’s megaphone ended up in the sack, the cows from Case Rango have gone to moo elsewhere, but now, the trumpet? Absurd: why has no order yet arrived to silence that dangerous breath? Fantastic: many times a day the woods are penetrated with that silver bound, like a flying horse it escapes, crossing cliffs and descending peaks to amaze the enemy and reveal our presence. Presumptuous: perhaps a cow or megaphone would be less martial, or would reveal too much to the enemy, while a wild blare will impress them, just as a mask did the ancient hordes. Humorous: from now on we will proceed only in sunlight, in the Roman "turtle" formation, or only after accords with the Austrians. Frontier Grotesque: The Austrian has certainly realized that we Italians are here, and our Command knows that the Austrians are over there, therefore it is worth a great deal to let him blow. Unconscious: the point where we are doesn’t count, so the cannons will be firing randomly. Worried: but a random shot might cost us dearly, and what if their binoculars are good and the Austrians precise? Every morning, infantryman Emilio thought about this, but he knew nothing about elevating [Note 20] and strategy, perhaps the same as the command itself.

The trumpeter did his job well. Appetite and lungs didn’t fail him until, on a particular day, wounded in the arm, he would be transferred to do nothing in an office in Central Italy, the only citizen of Cupolone in the 12th. And from that day when he could no longer make use of his shiny brass instrument, he entered the temple of deep melancholy. [go back]

The Captain’s Affair: With the passing of days the Captain had become irascible. When the weather is beautiful he says he likes to be in the mountains, but a cotton-wool cloud surrounding the place with damp spires is enough to make him unbearable and cause him to complain about being exiled in a place so squalid and so far from the town. He comes out of the barn, looks into the foggy emptiness, then down at the ground as if thinking about something practical, launches an open hand on high in an impotent gesture of rage, as if slapping the face of destiny, then composes himself, puffing like a bellows. But the real reason for his being unbearable is the impossibility of his seizing something useful. If only he were in town, he would be hoarding a variety of good things, but in this damned place, except for butter and cheese… To tell the truth, he’s been able to do something even up there. Every so often, a few of his "protected ones" have him sent by mule, (in addition to old credits, and from their own families), chickens, rabbits, hams, and other country favorites, everything sent in duplicate to his wife as well, left in Parma with the daughters. The goal of these supplementary credits seems to be a reserve fund of sorts, it’s connected with the mission that Emilio performs every five days at Storo, where he goes to get the five-day pay for the troops, staying in town until the next day, and sometimes for two days, for the paperwork to be completed at Regimental Command. Then the captain entrusts to the quartermaster the company and custody of a soldier whom he wants to favor with a peaceful walk or a restful sojourn below. And this will invariably be someone from Parma, whose fine foods have the magical power to ward off long nights in the trenches or watch services or the horny-skin caused by the hatchet, and especially on dangerous patrol missions, diverting any wandering bullets elsewhere.
But, little satisfied by such homage, the officer doesn’t give up. One day, in a thunder-storm that isolates the camp in a funnel of rain and makes mountains fly with clouds, he comes angrily out of the barn and calls a lieutenant. Firm gaze and decisive voice imply that time is passing without anything of importance occurring. He commands the subaltern, already attentive to all his own duties, to get ready a patrol, search the farms in the vicinity and requisition (the correct verb would be "to loot") anything transportable: why not? The Austrians, having turned nasty with the local population guilty of being Italian, don’t they do the same? Indeed, they do more, they arrest civilians. The affair earns him, in addition to various rustic objects and equipment for cattle raising, numerous brass spoons and copper spots which he hurries to entrust to the mules and to send to his own legal domicile, packed full of new shoes and many other things not really fruit of the raid but equipment of the company and thus belonging the Ministry of War. Therefore, the affair is repeated days later with a wider scope and with better results. But this time, out of fear of irritating the Colonel, who is patient but not a fool, he decides, with more decency, not to ship the goods immediately, and in the meantime, to fill the manger in the barn with them. Also, because he smells the odor of a promotion and a transfer. [go back]

Promotion and Parting: His major torment was the wait. Promotion is imminent, and it is good not to compromise, with the little of today, the much that the future is saving for us. While he was devouring himself with impatience, it was Emilio’s task one morning at Storo to transmit the passionately desired phonogram to the radio-telegrapher at Case Rango. The Colonel, even happier than the Captain, hurried to get his hands on it in person. He departs the day after, as the rain began, after signing out to the most senior lieutenant, and after the time necessary to load half a dozen mules with his personal effects and the booty of war. In the meantime he’s again become talkative, moving lightly and restlessly as a dancer. He goes to say goodbye to his superior, then stops to talk to the creditors. Everything is ready. He’s had the major’s insignia for who knows how long. He goes back into the shed, decorates his beret and his jacket, and comes out, pretending to be concentrating. The officers smile and wink at the company gathered on the meadow, waiting and joking. A few call attention, and the soldiers become serious. The captain jumps on his steed from whom he makes a tearful farewell salute, and the soldiers are moved. A few have damp eyes. The rain doesn’t quit and the trees are starting to drip. The caravan starts to move to the cry of "Hurrah for the Captain!" Three times, while a wind arises to shake the branches, and the last mule’s tail disappears along the trail.
For at least one year after his departure , his post is occupied in turn by various lieutenants, officers in name only, colorless men without personality who, only substitutes, do not impress any particular character on the company which, in spite of some contrary and satisfied opinions of the Colonel, will seem more empty. [go back]

The Existence of Nature: At the peak marking the forward position, directly opposite the fortifications and the powerful martial potential of an enemy who shows only silence and seems inert, Emilio leads a contemplative life. The landscape fascinates, and evokes ascetic feelings. Nature’s small, instructive creases stimulate many observations. While on the reddened front of Isonzo the battle rages, he spends hours in the woods collecting cyclamens and multicolored, perfumed grasses to make a bouquet for a glass at the quartermaster’s, observes untrustworthy mushrooms, and lies back on the natural grassy balconies to memorize the connected range of peaks that from Doss dei Morti extend so far into the distance that they get confused with the Adamello whose glacier, a little beyond his gaze, opens the sky like an immense key. Birds and flowers put his soul at rest.
Love, in a nothing that is everything. In this I’ve taken after him, and one day I asked one of my friends, a noted musical critic (he would have preferred to have been the literary critic) if he were interested in mushrooms and beetles. He looked at me, rather, he looked into the distance with the following possibile expressions: pity for an infant, a little affection for one both ignorant and ingenuous, some embarrassment for what he had to tell me, and pity for my love of the sciences, which perhaps he considered decadent, like the piano. No, it was worse, none of those, just two seconds and the critic went off.
To enjoy the view and the widest spaces, with the pretext of taking the weekly pay to the soldiers on guard, who would never be able to spend a cent in that solitude, he braves the extremely steep path which climbs from Case Rango to Cima Boreale. From here a stormy sea of peaks can be seen, straddling and pressing unevenly one upon the other as if all were aspiring to be the highest. [go back]

The Existence of the Enemy: Full August. An early morning in which coolness invigorates the legs, using the excuse of the weekly pay and without notifying anyone, Emilio climbs up to that seductive view and starts to chat with the commandant of the guard post, corporal major Funari. Everything is stillness, color, and peace. The only thing moving is the wind, which dries forehead and shirt for anyone who sets foot on the top. The words they exchange blow away and leave a trail of silence. With his arm, Funari is pointing out a probable line of enemy trenches. But all at once a flash dazzles the nearby rocks, so quick that each of them thought they had more imagined it than seen it. There followed an explosion that pounded on the eardrums like a mallet on the baritonal hides of a drum. And a great roar of stones rolling downward. "Get down! The enemy! To safety!", Funari yells to the soldiers, who were floundering around, smoking. Gesturing that he wants to get back to the camp immediately, Emilio goes jumping down the path, as excited as a boy and followed by other projectiles which seem to be seeking him out, shattering on a nearby spur without harming him, but with a repetitive uproar of echoes creating confusion along the entire fortified line. For the first time, Case Rango hears enemy cannon.
He reappears racing past the huts; the quartermaster is called by the Colonel who immediately reproves him for running up there without permission, then asks him what was happening. The lookout with huge binoculars hanging onto a nearby cliff calls back that the shots were coming from Monte Mozzolo. The commandant looks in that direction, then at Cima Borele, perplexed.
At that point our line, perhaps because of the prolonged absence of the enemy, seems abandoned. It has almost no trenches or redoubts, and it’s not protected by any cannons. No artillery is visible in that zone. Luckily, the enemy as well has no shells to waste, and that battery which seemed to have been exerting itself only to ruin Emilio’s hike had probably been on loan to Monte Mozzolo only for that day, then pulled back and taken elsewhere where it can do more damage; because in the following days King Silence returned to the zone. Evidently, the enemy had only wanted to warn that it exists, and is well-endowed, and don’t even think of trying to advance. The effective response to the eloquent surprise is that of giving our line a medium-caliber, which gets installed at Cima Stigolo, and begins to function parsimoniously above the heads of those encamped at Case Rango, also a large howitzer, placed in Val d’Àmpola, which makes the whistles of its projectiles heard on their way to smash on Monte Mozzolo, causing more suffering to the meadows than to the Austrians. [go back]

Lies and Insults: The summer can do nothing but decline and the autumn is busy rusting the leaves further below us. The fir groves in between remain unbleached. On the heights, the larches pale.
The mail is regular and with it the newspapers with their cargo of triumphant lies about the progress of a war already losing blood through delay. On the Austrian front, the smell of war is at Isonzo where thousands of Italians are dead and Austria hasn’t moved back a yard. On the western front, the imperial wave of Wilhelm, urged on by the wind of the motto "Deutschland über alles in der Welt", [Note 21] has gotten stuck in a swamp in which Germans, English, and French shoot at each other, but only from trenches. On the northeastern front the Austrians, after having been poured back as far as the Carpathians under a Russian storm, are ransomed by their ally of steel, and together they push the Tsar toward the east and toward the north. Southwestern front: back and forth with Austria and Serbia, the blockade of the Dardanelles by Turkey, Bulgarians having entered into the war on the side of the Central Empires. Romania, paralyzed by the lack of Russian success, doesn’t move. Serbia, freeing itself from Austria, is intent on tearing Albania apart along with the Montenegrins and Greeks, and is promised compensations in the Balkans by the Entente, at Italy’s expense. The Balkan chaos, the Teutonic victory over Russia, and the absence of any involvement of Serbs and Romanians in support of Italy have by now nullified Cadorna’s fantasy of invading Austria from the hills of Picolit in Friuli and the walnut groves of Carnia, thus the Hapsburgs are allowed to maintain power on the Isonzo.
In the newspapers, the Entente and Italy win always and everywhere, a step forward becomes a kilometer, a kilometer back is reduced to a step. Besides the ejaculatory lies printed for bragging purposes, reserved to those who can read, but through those to them who cannot as well, and to those whom nature has blessed by limiting their intellectual capacity to that strictly necessary for life, (and how many of these are around even now, who limit themselves to sucking up televised propaganda, with never a critical thought!), the newspapers throw insults against Italian socialists, guilty of having spread proclamations against the war. In fact, in September our socialists had met in Switzerland with the Bolshevists, and as a majority had refused Lenin’s idea of converting the imperialistic war into a revolutionary one, not even to be considered in Italy; instead they condemned their European colleagues for their support of the conflict, and Serrati was able to spread, under the noses of the police, a valiant manifest against the patriotic warmongering to which Europe had fallen prey. [go back]

Cima Palone is Conquered: With the first cool of October the Austrians are beginning to annoy the Giudicarie front. From the excellent observation point of Cima Palone, their lookouts signal the routes necessary to supply the Italians to the batteries on Monte Mozzolo, this time well furnished. The order to expunge the hated position has already reached the Command at Storo. Our battalion has been charged with the duty. The attack is ordered for the night between 19 and 20 October. The 12th will be reinforcements, held back to wait for orders from Monte Giovo. Major Corridoni is at the head of the assault platoon climbing up the sides of the Palone with rapid steps into the final darkness, but one of the first enemy shots strikes him, casually and mortally. On the other hand, the attack, now on its way, has been conducted with quick competence having the troops advance in order, spread out, with some on all sides. The semi-darkness prevents the enemy artillery from targeting the Palone without the risk of hitting their own fellow-soldiers. The Austrians, taken by surprise, can’t hold back all those infantrymen, who rise with determination, forming a ring ever more tightly around the peak, and they are encircled.
But, out of rage or shame, they don’t surrender. The first light clarifies the disproportion of forces: about eighty Hapsburgs with their eyes still sleepy are surrounded in a small circle by four hundred Savoys. No one knows what to do with the two guns left like a memory on the top, but the machine guns hidden in the dwarf pines, peeking from the edge of the clearing, are already in Italian hands. Our oldest captain yells in German to the surrounded men to surrender. A chorus of "Nein!" spills over the edges and dies on the flanks. Then the captain gives the order to charge with bayonets. About forty heroic "krauts", including three or four officers, throw themselves into the fray, succeed in making a breach, and descend precipitously down the slope on the north side, leaving behind them more than one uniform upended on the sparkle of the dew, then undertaking the climb up to Mozzolo where their disconcerted artillery colleagues will be welcoming them. But the other forty infantrymen and non-coms for whom the escape hadn’t succeeded, now seem to want to surrender, and allow themselves to be captured at the price of a few wounds. Our total losses are not heavy. Serious and sad, however, has been that of Major Corridoni, honest and brave soldier.
From the captured, the captain who speaks German asks for information about the enemy, but they give vague answers. The officer calls them liars, and like a lullaby, they begin: "Nein Lügner, Lügner nein!" [Note 22] and start to laugh. The captain persists with other questions, and complains that those bold people didn’t want to admit that Austria was beginning to suffer from shortages of armaments and famine and that they detest a country which they should rather exalt with patriotic ardor, imperialistic ardor, and a compassionate light from eyes which irritate ours, stacked around the prisoners as if they were wild beasts. Patriotism against patriotism, our captain must in his turn give in and desist, most of all because at that moment, more persuasive methods wouldn’t be a good example to the troops. He entrusts them to a non-com and warns them that they will be interrogated again at the Command, noting that, on the waves of the vaunted Austrian courage, the officers leading them, rather than allowing themselves to be captured with honor, had taken to their legs with the rest of the group. There’s no way to convince them: their lieutenants are heroes who only after having confronted the bayonets face to face and having fought heroically, had been able to flee. A relative truth: heroism or cowardice? A half full or half empty glass? [go back]

Little Racketeers: With Cima Palone having been erased, supply operations are less constrained and the battalion is transferred to Monte Giovo, closer to the line of fire. The necessary barracks are built, here too with the sacrifice of a dense forest. Winter announces itself and demands to be let in, the air predicts memories of low temperatures and, all around, the peaks are already white without distinction of fatherland. The 12th notes: transfers to the Isonzo front of a few Venetians and Friulians who, to their misfortune, had applied for it; two creditors of Major Depretis transferred to Parma; a couple of volunteers transferred to Command Logistics; and, transferred to another battalion the miller Fadani with all his sensual memories of rustic loves. His place is taken by the younger brother of the kitchen corporal, just called up fresh with the group of ‘95. Originally from the Naples region, the brothers now lived in Mantua at Commessaggio, a town noted for its delicious melons, where they worked on their father’s farm. The new Pizzamiglio restores the trio with Emilio and don Luigi tending to the company office, where, hidden among the bundles of files and the ink-pads of the bureaucracy, there is every kind of delicacy, so that they have no need to attend daily mess.
Here they enjoy a free zone, and the trio becomes a quartet with the providential addition of the kitchen corporal, who comes to keep his brother company, bringing with him all the stores that he can. It’s natural for them to be joined evenings by non-com friends, to consume together the day’s economies, little doses of everything subtracted from the rations of the troops which, put together, add up to a few bottles of wine, a little cask of Marsala, a few kilos of fresh cheese, and many tins of meat. The rosy complexion of the cleric Luigi is often seem at the table; Luigi, afraid of the cold, always feels the need for double rations of wine and Marsala, sins of the gullet that he can’t resist, but which he forgives himself. The officers, for their part, not only know about these banquets, but support them, appearing every evening before lights out to drink a toast with private bottles and excellent salami. This imparts to the symposium a tint of Masonic ritual that legitimizes the presence of the officers and satisfies the presumption of the non-coms, giving them the impression of being distinguished from the troops, and exciting their human servility.
A little because of the presence of the officers and a little out of the diners’ native ignorance, little is said about the conflict, very little about its causes, and nothing about politics. After abundant libations, the optimism is spontaneous, and the war, as we had seen it to that point, doesn’t seem so dangerous. "We’ve already pushed forward quite a way into the Trentino," someone says. To someone who points out that in other less fortunate sectors they’re dying like flies, the officers answer that the war won’t last long. "The more we succeed in winning," they conclude, glass in hand, "the sooner the war will end early. It all depends on us." Then the officer of the guard leaves the barracks to do the only thing that really depends on him: he orders the trumpeter to blow lights out. [go back]

On the Peak under a Cloak: The winter of ‘15 is very rigorous, and near the height of 1500 meters, ferocious. Having been spared the cannons and bayonets, the battalion is struck with nature’s inclemency. Many are those suffering from nasal and bronchial illness, and many with feet stricken with the beginnings of frostbite.
31 December, evening. Emilio climbs to Cima Palone to deliver their pay to the men at the lookout, along with bottles of spumanti and the Colonel’s good wishes. Thus, above 1600 meters and under the threat of the cannons on Monte Mozzolo, the guards have the feeling they’re getting something from the state, in exchange for risking their lives. After a festive toast drunk within the intimate form of a hut heated with breath, and outside, the deepest recesses of starry space, the quartermaster lies down under a tent put at his disposal by the non-com in charge, right above the spot where a few months earlier, the attack by his companions had ended with the capture of about forty of the enemy.
In the rocky silence he imagines the din of that battle, and counts Austrians like sheep, stretched out on that bare earth, that the cold had petrified, lying under his overcoat, which he’s thrown over himself as a cover. Luckily, he has at least toasted the new year; he doesn’t notice any particular discomfort and sleeps soundly through the night. The transparency of the first day of the year filters through the tent and wakes him. He becomes aware of something hard on top of his body. Having given a shake to the encumbrance, he stands up; and with his eyes open, realizes that the coat, damp from the vapors of the wine and the night, had frozen completely, risen up and stood on the ground, remaining threateningly upright in front of him like an enemy. Nevertheless, he felt very good, and he enjoyed coming out to breathe sensuously the glassy air that was slicing his lungs. [go back]

Memorandum 1915: To concentrate its forces in a rational order, on a less contorted and dispersed front, the Austrians have been withdrawing from all the borders since the beginning of hostilities, allowing a relatively easy but moderate advance since the first month of war. This was insufficient in the Isontino sector, where it would be followed by a series of bloody and barely profitable battles. But our advance is soon transformed into a war of waiting on the Trentino heights. We have entered the region from many parts. Counterclockwise: to the west (Cevedale, Val Vermiglio, Presanella, Adamello); to the southwest (Ponte Caffaro, Valle Giudicarie, Monte Altissimo, Val d’Àmpola, Bezzecca e Val di Ledro almost as far as Riva del Garda); to the south (Val Lagarina up to and beyond Serravalle, Zugna, Zugna Torta, Pasubio, Cima Maggio); to the east (a few dolomitic peaks that look over the Val d’Adige); to the northeast (Ampezzano e Monte Cristallo to threaten Dobbiaco and Val Pusteria).
The end of 1915. Italy is solid in the region and, in the expectation of more favorable European events, is continuing the war of position. But things go poorly on the Isonzo where, between dead and wounded, we lose 25% of the contingent.
February 1916. After other successes, followed by news gains on the Russian front, Austria moves from the Isonzo, and from the Balkans, and concentrates in the Trentino 14 divisions; to punish us for the about-face that had made us a party to the Entent, to resolve the Italian question, and to have a freer hand in Europe. [go back]

The Strafexpedition [Note 23] is Prepared: Morning at the end of February 1916. Pale sun. The soldiers laze through a rest period within the tepid silences of Monte Giovo, when from the north a buzz is heard, barely more intense than a swarm of bees, changing gradually to a roar. Squadrons of enemy airplanes deafen the Alps, directed to the Italian inland. They’re flying high, exciting reactions from the soldiers who, launching furious invectives, are firing rifle shots that lose themselves in the milk of heaven then fall back onto the amaryllis and the other early spring beauties. It’s the first time (and the last as well) that quartermaster, by now, corporal Emilio, will use a weapon. Anyway, only formidable anti-aircraft might stop those bombers continuing undisturbed to Verona, dumping their cargo on women and children who were at that hour making happy the market of Piazza delle Erbe, sowing a death that curdles this writer’s cream.
This only a premature terroristic taste of what in the prolonged cold of that year will be the spring Strafexpedition, organized by Conrad von Hötzendorf, head of the Austrian Stato Maggiore, who by February has concentrated 14 divisions on the Trent front, increased later to 20-22, to break through between Adige and Brenta and spread through the plains, with the plan of taking our army arrayed on the Isonzo from behind. [go back]

Fresh Sheets: The missions to Storo become trips, and compensate for the enforced waiting. Everyone is waiting for the war to be over, and that means return to the normal worries. Emilio flies over trails that run along the western face of the snowy Stigolo, then merge onto a mule track descending from a group of summer livestock shelters through Val Giudicarie, which dominates the white landscape decorated by soft embroideries of branches, fluffy roof edges, and waterfalls, frozen into capricious decorations on cliffs and courtyard fountains. Every so often he holds back his heated legs, turning to observe contently the holes formed by his impetus in the fresh snow, which tries to slow him down. A humble church on the precipice is a jewel placed in cotton wool with ritualistic care. Storo, village of patriarchal life at the foot of the Stigolo, lies in a closed corner, the Giudicarie to the left, the Val d’Àmpola to the right, at the fork of the two arteries that point to Trento; one crosses through Tione, the other Bezzecca. The inhabitants, forbidden to climb the occupied mountains and kept from cultivating the valley filled with barracks, infirmaries, carts, and storehouses, live by helping the military, who for the most part compensates them. The army isn’t all made up of animals of prey like captain Depretis, but of honest people whom the inhabitants trust. Every home houses officers and non-coms, every kitchen has a kneading trough and a cupboard furnished with homespun nostalgia, every chimney diffuses the perfumed warmth of the beech.
When he goes down to the town the quartermaster stays with a family that rents the only available room and goes to sleep in the barn. The beauty of the place echoes the simple souls of a couple of grandparents always working at gathering wood, stirring polenta, and washing winter lettuce, and of a young mother who with her dialect and shyness does the honors of the house, with a little newborn boy full of very black hair, upon whom has been imposed, not out of opportunism but as a sincere vocation for Italy, the name of Vittorio Emanuele, while his father has been dragged to Galizia to fight the Russians. There Emilio can enjoy a good meal, a relaxing cigarette in front of the chimney’s soliloquy, and a night between sheets freshly laundered, sunk into a down mattress in a tidy room smelling of cirmolo-pine. Even if the next morning, when he climbs back to the encampment, he will have to pay the Lord back for all the pleasure he’s received. But he feels himself gifted by the apotheosis of splendor, that stretches beneath his gaze.
Of course, not everything is so idyllic and pure. There are also the needs of the body, and the consequences their observance leads to. Following every army, there has always appeared another army of loose women ready to sell themselves, and even the Trentino didn’t escape. So, while Emilio and all those like him who, in their promised hearts, abhorred even the thought of practicing sex as an end in itself, others, who had no commitments, or who separated them from physiological necessities, when they came to Storo go straight away to form a line in front of a tiny whorehouse on the edge of town. The few who work there are shapely mountain women, white and pink as flowers and, as they say in the camps, healthy as fresh cheese. [go back]

Return to the Plain: After so long a time, a young person’s desire for novelty welcomes every word about transfers with curiosity and pleasure. Spring has dragged out winter like a single night that keeps getting shorter, but without warming the morning. The snow persists and is renewed, prolonging the diffuse whiteness of the cliffs, until it’s forced to let go, displaying bare cereals and the sorrows of a new season of war.
26 April 1916. After eleven months of living in the forests, the order for rotation is here. The battalion comes back to lower elevations, stopping a night at Ponte Caffaro, once again near the black lake, the day after in Val Sabbia, then at Villanova above Clisi; and on April 30, at the air’s first warming, it camps at Virle Treponti, a few kilometers from Brescia. Emilio returns to the plains, having followed only the first curve in a cycle that soon will start to move again, like something which twists and turns only to arrive at the beginning. He asks himself how much longer must he be shuttled between plains and mountains before starting on his way home.
The 61st remains at Virle for a couple of weeks. Nothing is there except for a small barracks, and a number of soldiers need to be lodged in public and private buildings. Stimulated by the exposure to civilian life, by his age and by springtime, they enjoy themselves (these are Emilio’s appropriate words), with the girls there, who follow them and tease them with their charm and caprices. The quartermaster of the 12th has been relocated to the ground floor of a small private house. Often, the girls peek through the door and exchange with the quartermasters a little rural humor and invitations for walks. One late sunny morning a little group of girls barely out of school, all about 15 years old, present themselves, making an attractive uproar in the front office of the quartermaster who, throwing the door wide open, has them come in, arranges them in a line by height, and puts a lighted cigarette into each mouth, inviting them to sing a little song. Door and walls vibrate with laughter and the girls’ melodious squeals, attracting the curiosity of neighbors and passersby. At a certain point, an elderly superior officer comes into the depot with all the decisiveness of his authoritative and concerned curiosity but, having seen and evaluated the scene, his moustached lips are seduced and spread in baritonal laughter. Recomposed, he escapes, not to be trapped in that embarrassing situation.
On the other hand, one evening in a wine-filled sunset, Emilio and a few of his comrades are joking with the landlady of an inn, a lovely, well built young woman, blond, with a pink complexion, with whom the quartermaster has a familiarity which he can keep just beyond this side of innocence. The inn-keeper, next to the odor of burning beech, is mixing polenta in the copper pail hanging above the fireplace, arrayed with small pots from which the perfumes of meat sauces are escaping, and Emilio is caressing the white muscles of her arm in motion, when a friend of the quartermaster runs up and yells through the open doorway: "Signore, your son is in here!" Emilio’s father enters and the licentious scene is transformed into pathos. Everyone becomes quiet and they embrace. The next day, Bepi must return to Venice to continue his work at the maritime military Arsenal, but he promises to return very soon with all the women of the family. In fact, after a few days, another sweet surprise, in truth already requested by letter: made possibile by the prolonged assignment of the battalion to Virle and organized by his father immediately after his return. Thus a thin pause between one chapter and the next of his military life is snipped out. [go back]

The Meeting: 15 May. Emilio goes to Rezzato, two kilometers from Virle, and from there arrives at the station early, another kilometer. Spring has finally exploded and is warming the little station, whose master is taking care of the flower beds with the scrupulous attention of someone who wants to win floral concourses. The roof of the little iron entrance gate is arched over by the rainbow of a wisteria; thickets of roses and peonies, cascades of geraniums, and undergrowths of the same pelargonia redden the sidewalk along the first track, the one from the Milan trains. Opposite, groomed hedges and a vine barely in bud on a vertical trellis show off beautifully in front of the trains puffing in from Venice (in those days, a couple of proud slow trains stopped at Rezzato as well).
During the nervous half hour of waiting, Emilio has passed in review four or five times the colors of the flower beds and smoked more than one cigarette. Unexpectedly, a railroad watchman comes out of a shed, jumps on a bicycle, and goes to throw the switch for the train to enter the siding. A bell rings. In a few minutes ( the convoy is in the background where the tracks converge into a single point against a sky held up by poplars) it advances with effort, whistles, then slows until it stops, in all its braking sweetness. Many people descend. From a third-class carriage, his father descends, cautiously, and immediately after, aided by him and in worried confusion, his mother, his fiancée with a sister, and the future mother-in-law. Embraces and kisses, time to realize that the only available carriage has already left over-loaded, it’s a kilometer on foot to Rezzato on the white of the dust between fields green as a flag. From here, a cart having calmly been found, the two men and four women trot for the two kilometers remaining to the little inn, already reserved.
In the course of the day Emilio is able to exchange only a few more or less impassioned glances with his fiancée, because he has to dedicate the larger part of his time to maternal effusions and to the affectionate inquisitiveness of the other women who keep asking him about dangers and discomforts and a corporal’s pay, all of which he has already referred to by letter, and about his future destination, which he keeps repeating he doesn’t know. His father keeps silent, saying only that he’s worried because the war isn’t over yet. [go back]

Beginning Again: The following morning, while they’re sitting on the benches of a public meadow and dipping biscuits into the glass of Marsala looking at each other eyes sweet with reciprocal patience, they hear the trumpet-blast for muster in the distance. The man on rounds finds them and orders the Corporal to prepare to leave immediately. Everyone is left with half a biscuit in his mouth, the dream of a longer stay vanishes, and a few hours later Emilio sees the station again, no longer with flower beds nor colors, suffocated by the gray of the soldiers of the entire regiment, ready to depart to a destination unknown. The feverish activity of the Command and the worried glances of the officers let them understand the urgency of the transfer. The Austrians, it is whispered, must have broken through at some point, and immediate intervention is necessary.
Used to almost carefree rest, the face of every infantryman expresses disappointment, and those of the relatives, who have been conceded transportation with the troops to the station, are anxiously asking questions. Mouths just pressed by the beloved are quiet, pale; throats reddened by maternal kisses take on again the pallor of uncertainty. Even tears, which would like to fall, pause with manly self-respect in the sons’ eyes. Those of the parents and spouses overflow with copious tears as soon as the train moves. [go back]

The "Punishment" has begun: 15 May. Two months late as regard the original plan because of the persistent winter, the Strafexpedition has begun. Conceived in the spring of ‘15 by ten. col. Schneller (then stimulated by later Austrian successes on the Russian front at the end of the year), the expedition had been approved by Field Marshall Conrad as the mark of a deep disdain he nourished toward Italians, because of their about-face in the war. Cadorna, although worried by alarming news from well informed enemy deserters, had been skeptical and incredulous until the day the operation was unleashed, not much believing in the possibility of an offensive in the grand style, in a sector he regarded as marginal. But he hadn’t calculated correctly on Conrad.
It might have been a blow of fate, they say, but who knows, which forced us Italians, to twice play the part of traitors, and the Teutons the part of avengers; they say, but who knows, whether they were the more stupid to trust our loyalty, or whether we were the less honest to change sides at the last minute. In reality, the Hapsburgs and the Germans weren’t really stupid always to keep an eye open on our real intentions, just as we were neither honest nor schemers to turn our backs on them so late; not only on the first occasion, but also and especially in the second world conflict. Then, it is true, that after the armistice, by allowing the army to flow into the Brenner and blow up the alpine tunnels and bridges [Note 24], we did strongly obstruct, if not actually impede, the tragic Nazi invasion of the country. But we had easily discovered the cause of our problems, which in both wars was the opportunistic nationalism of our monarchy, madly set on raising itself to the level of the major Houses of Europe, instead revealing themselves to be among the shabbiest in history. With masters like this, there’s nothing left for a people except to mourn their own deaths.
Conrad had tried to involve the Germans in the expedition, but their Chief of Staff Falkenhayan, much less indignant than his colleague over Italy (who had still not declared war on Germany), and much more worried about the situation on the Russian and French fronts, had refused. Then Conrad, hoping for a glory all his own, decides to act alone, and sends into the Trentino, counting first line, services, and reserves, at least 380,000 men (the c.d. Armored Group of Archduke Eugene) against the 450,000 Italians: but with a number of machine guns, howitzers of 380 and 420 mm and very modern cannon (including a 350 mm that would shoot as far as 35 km), much superior to our parking lot of obsolete equipment.
On the dawn of 15 May, the 11th Armored of Austria-Hungary, armed with over a thousand pieces of artillery, opens fire on the 1st Armored of Italy between Adige and Brenta. Our first lines, arranged in an employment more offensive than defensive, were emptied. Then begins the infantry attack against our divisions (34th, 35th, and 37th) operating between Val Lagarina and the Plateaus of the Sette Comuni, with the goal of opening a breach between Pasubio and the Plateaus, permitting invasion of the Vincentine plains. Between 15 and 20 May, our troops retreat with heavy losses, and the danger of an invasion of the plains becomes concrete.
After the first cannonades, the Austrians move from Rovereto and begin to reoccupy the zones from which they had retired at the beginning of the conflict, to where the Italians had penetrated since 24 May 1915. Having taken Zugna Torta on 15 May, in the span of a few days they conquer Colsant, penetrate into Vallarsa and Val Terragnolo; and from Passo della Borcola they spread into Val Pòsina in the direction of Arsiero and the plateau of Asiago. The high part of the Pasubio, impassable because of exceptional snow-falls, was encircled. The Austrians occupied the slopes of the massif until the arrival of a battalion from the Volturno brigade was able to stop their advance. The also famous Dente Italiano and Dente Austriaco confront each other here for the whole duration of the conflict.
On 16 May a providential pause in enemy action allows evaluation of the defense of Monte Zugna, threatened both on the side of Zugna Torta, and from the Vallarsa. The two regiments (61st and 62nd) of the Sicilian Brigade (Reserve units of the 1st Armored), coming from the zone between Rezzato and Sabbio Chiese, whose imminent arrival has been announced, took care of it. [go back]

Val Lagarina: 16 May 1916. The train proceeds with circumspection. Every so often it slows and stops. Long rest at Desenzano and another at Peschiera, the lake intense and still. Baldo emits small, white cannon puffs toward the northeast. The train stops first at Verona, and after a very long pause begins its course again, avoiding crossing the city. Then everyone understands they’re going toward Val Lagarina. The voyage ends at Ala where the administrative command is established. The three battalions of the 61st continue the march as far as Pilcante, where they camp. A few hours later the three battalions of the 62nd arrive as well. It’s evening; slow cannon shots are heard from the direction of Rovereto. On the next day, in single file of truncated trees, a little below the orchards and vineyards and somewhat in the open carriage road, the 3rd Batt., commanded by a major, proceeds along the flanks of the Zugna up to Santa Margherita, followed at long intervals by the remaining units. To the west a hard climb up to the camp at Malga Zugna (1612 meters) near a place called I Fortini where, in view of the probable war with Italy, the Austrians had begun to build a fort which they’d abandoned at the beginning of the hostilities, only to retreat to Rovereto.
After a hurried bag lunch a brief rest is conceded, during which there is noisy confusion because of the unexpected apparition of some patrols. They had reached the Malga by descending the steep slopes of Coni Zugna, and they want to talk to the Major. The soldiers gather round, making out a few words, and are soon seized by a concern that infects the rest of the troops, who are hanging onto the slopes shivering. From one mouth to another the most discomfiting words are circulating: that the Austrians have captured the entire Zugna stronghold, that they’ve broken the front on the plateaus as well and are marching on Vicenza, and that all of the eastern Veneto is being threatened from behind. Words not completely unfounded. From the excessive fury with which, according to the tales of the patrols, the enemy is carrying out its attacks from Pasubio to Serraville, the importance they attribute to the collapse of that sector can be deduced.
In this game, with the most strength and fortune on the attack (also with the greater weakness of the Italian defense), with the employment of five or six additional divisions or the involvement of Falkenhayan’s Germans, Austria should obtain a quick victory and a huge advantage on the European front, bringing with them more men, bombs, and strong language. But history takes the course it wants to. History is like life, one understands it only when it’s over. [go back]

Italy against Italy: They say that the enemy troops have climbed Zugna Torta, wiping it out, and that Monte Zugna itself and the nearby Coni Zugna are threatened, and now the Austrians are busy transporting their artillery up to new positions. We must take advantage of this pause to rebuild the defenses. But no one has a precise idea of where the enemy is to be found. The officers discuss how far forward Austrian patrols will be sent, and our risk of being discovered. The Major is disoriented, uncertain about what to do, and on which side to defend ourselves, whether from the north (Zugna Torta) or from the east and south (Vallarsa). He moves in jerks, looking at the ground without asking for opinions. At a certain point, remembering a manual or convinced by one of his own inventions, he orders everyone to sit on the ground, divided into many little squares, and to keep watch, rifle in hand, in that chessboard formation, all night long. He could as well have chosen triangles or circles. The soldiers obey and are patient, forcing themselves to stay awake, which was easily done, because at a certain hour shots were heard and bullets whistled over their heads, a few bursts of rifle fire that came from the mysterious surroundings, and then there was a response with more bursts aimed madly into the darkness. No one has the courage to move. The Major seems frightened, he doesn’t understand where the enemy might be, who seems to be shooting now from the north, now from the south, and even from the flanks. He is, however, satisfied that his squares have served to defend us on all sides.
At dawn on 18 May everything turns peaceful. The light of day extinguishes nerves and fears. Patrols are sent around to make contact with the other units camped in the vicinity, and it is discovered that all night long our soldiers had been shooting at each other, luckily without consequences. Contacts, reports, and the light of day allowed positions to be clarified. But the enemy doesn’t show his face. For the next night, it is decided to make more rational arrangements; having the soldiers rest, and charging the lookouts with signaling the presence of an enemy who, wherever he might drop upon us, doesn’t seem to be to climb Zugna and surround us. [go back]

The Best and the Worst: The 12th is at that moment under the orders of Lieutenant Zuffardi, mining engineer from Parma, cultured, affable, fervent believer and patriot by family education, but not obsessed with the art of war. Emilio is honored to have him for a friend and avoids ideological discussions with him, not to disturb his feelings of security and the pure comradeship with which he treats even the most dense recruit.
Unfortunately, in the economy of life, the best must perish prematurely in order to remain rare and remembered examples, above the masses of common men. Is this perhaps only an impression due to the fact that the death of those few makes a large mark on the memory of those who are able to respect them? Or is it perhaps the masses instead who undergo the worse fate? After all, it is they who are the most manipulated and the most exposed to massacre. Although a few of the better group are heroes by vocation, many common mortals are forced to become heroes when they’re in the front lines. And not all of the best perish, nor is the quality of a man measured only by the way he dies. These are relative things. But with the indifference of relativism we end up not knowing where to find ourselves between good and bad, between better and worse. So? We will present a good definition acceptable to everybody and then "Calculemus!", [Note 25], Baron von Liebnits would exclaim. Nevertheless, our calculation might be correct but would lack feeling, while lives are judged more by impressions and state of mind than by reasoning. Emilio’s impression is that his superior is the best, and that’s that. And his precocious death will soon confirm his belonging to this rare species.

The same cannot be said about the commandant of the 3rd Batt., the strategist of the four-some, who had learned to fight theoretical wars, and who after yesterday’s episode will become a closed man, not before exposing everyone to all the poverty and shame of a mediocre, frightened soul. Fine, this major is the worst of a quite rare species: trembling in fear, he will end up spending that month and a half of the Trentino war hiding in a cave which he almost never leaves, except by night for his bodily needs, seized by a panic. By good fortune, and perhaps from his isolation, he does not contaminate the troops. At a distance in time, one might be amazed that this coward had not been discharged or replaced: however, rather than setting into motion the bureaucratic risk of an investigation, officers and troops were thinking at that moment about saving their own hides, and with it a part of Italy. Thus, they ended up ignoring his existence, and that man, whose only virtue was his knowledge of his own moral inferiority, ended up leaving every decision to subordinates. At least until a certain day.[go back]

Three days on Mount Zugna: The Zugna range (which from north to south connects the peaks Zugna Torta, Monte Zugna and Coni Zugna) is strategically important: whoever holds it dominates from one side Val Lagarina from Ala to Rovereto, and from the other, the Vallarsa, which the Austrians try continually to traverse within range of our emplacements; it is a corridor that flows into Val Pòsina and reaches to Arsiero and Val d’Astico. Beginning with the wildly angry explosion of artillery on 15 May and up to the end of that month, the enemy never stopped pounding the Zugna range and trying to cross the Vallarsa, despite the fire from our infantry perched on the crest of the chain, and that being directed from our artillery positioned at Brentonico, the northern extension of Monte Baldo. On 18 May, the Italian Command is forced to withdraw from Zugna Torta while the Austrians move into Vallarsa, advancing to Coni Zugna. From 19 to 31 May their artillery spits innumerable bombs onto our defenses from Biavena [Note 26], pounding the ground inch by inch. Because of the rough terrain and the difficulty encountered by the observer officers, firing is controlled by planes flying undisturbed at low altitudes.
19 May: The 61st Regg. is dispatched, along with a unit of the Brigata Taro, to garrison the so-called "Pillboxes" of Monte Zugna, seriously threatened. The 9th and the 12th Comp., designated as support, are packed into a broad gully under the ruins of the Fort. Pieces of various caliber are chewing away at us in our position, dug in among the foundations; more than one finding a target, making a butchery of the men. At every shot that hits the surrounding rock instead, cascades of stone plummet into the gully, striking the support troops and killing some whom the helmets hadn’t helped. With the passing of time and the complicity of the airplanes, well-aimed cannons have learned to rise to the correct height and also to search for those in the gully, and the foot soldiers have learned to identify and fear the characteristic whistle, and throw themselves to the ground, hunching their shoulders and squeezing against each other. After every explosion, someone lifts his head and pronounces words of relief that are translated into a collective comfort. And so for three tormenting days. Every evening the cannons are quiet so that everyone is afraid of an infantry attack, but then, exhausted, they end up sleeping stretched under the stars in spite of the rotation of the watch. But on the third evening the compass of the sky is veiled with clouds and its cardinal points remain impressed only in the memory of those few able to stay awake and orient themselves between the pincers of night, and they are afraid at any moment that they will see the infantry clambering over the gates of the Zugna, while the Artilleriste are sleeping on the cushion of Biavena after having loaded the mouths for the next day. The friends of the Volturno Brigade, meanwhile, keep a firm hold on the Pasubio. [go back]

The Good Star: Deep in sleep is Emilio as well, so sound as not to notice that a nocturnal downpour has completely soaked him. On his waking, the gully is deserted by the alive, rustling under a diagonal insistence of rain. Some bodies lie around, brushed by a rustling vapor and the black plumage of crows, slowly scratching in the wet dirt. He thinks everyone has escaped, leaving him lie, thinking him dead like those poor bodies with the helmets smashed. He’s undecided whether to inspect their faces when, ripping a hole in the clouds, the bombardment begins again, brutally, with Schrapnel [Note 27] bombs. He escapes into the boulders and shelters under the contortions of a tree the projectiles have stripped of its fronds. A cascade of balls grazes his helmet and ends up against a nearby rock. A few fall smoking between his feet. He goes off again in a run until he finds a few of his comrades who, having taken shelter during the thunderstorm, have found a crack where they’re standing heaped in silence, eyes almost absent, as if resigned to being captured. Breathless, he slips into the grotto while others leave to stretch themselves during a pause in the firing. But the enemy is rational and, before launching the infantry, wants the road unencumbered, giving no respite. A howitzer projectile, rained by surprise from a sky disturbed by the noise on background, carries a soldier’s arm neatly away and falls without exploding, raising a mud that dirties his comrades. More bombs fall and more rocks roll. The situation cannot be borne, it is necessary to recover the troops. Retreat is sounded, which, when heard in the gully, induces even the support companies to descend toward Malga Zugna under a torrent of rain and fire, dragging in their arms or on their backs a few wounded comrades, while a more tragic fate awaits those running down from the fort, more exposed to the cannonades. Many save themselves by venturing wildly through the grenades until they reach the comrades below. For now, it is necessary to yield the forts; another day under those conditions would be fatal and an assault on the enemy infantry would finish the slaughter. But so far, only the cannons have thundered, the infantry hasn’t been seen. Perhaps they are preparing themselves, and in meanwhile Monte Zugna remains Italian and the opposite Pasubio as well. The survivors descend to the Malga. To the Red Cross is assigned the recovery of cadavers and remaining wounded.
Dawn of 23 May: From our lookout points, placed south of Zugna in location Selvata, notice arrives that during the preceding night, enemy troops succeeded, hidden by the forests, to penetrate deeply into Vallarsa, and are climbing the flanks of the Zugna, to conquer Passo Buole, from where they might be able to conquer the mountain from behind, encircling us. Thus the order to leave Malga Zugna to be led two or three kilometers more to the south, onto the strategic pass. But the zone will not be abandoned to blasts of enemy dynamite: they remain charged to garrison it with other units, among them the 208th infantry from Brigata Taro, which at the beginning of the Austrian offensive had tried in vain to defend Zugna Torta. [go back]

Thermopylae: The threatening situation in the Trentino has led Cadorna to organize reinforcements, more to avoid his probable substitution than out of real conviction. The Capo had thought a successful offensive of large proportions improbable in a sector so vast and twisted by natural obstacles, therefore difficult to penetrate. One might say, as for the lack of opportunity for Austria to concentrate so many forces in that region, removing them from more demanding fronts, Cadorna thought as did Falkenhayan, who had refused to participate in the expedition; certainly not out of delicacy as regards us, but because he thought it likely that for the plan to succeed, they would need more divisions, at the moment not available. When they were, he would in fact send them, provoking for us the disaster of Caporetto.
At the height of the offensive, after the Austrians occupied Arsiero, the Valsugana, and the Altopiano dei Sette Comuni, from where they could enjoy the panorama of the Venetian plain, Cadorna hastened to scrape together and put in place a fifth army, in reserve between Padova, Cittadella, and Vicenza. To pull the cover down over the face of the Trentino alps, they would have to uncover the tips of Isonzo’s toes, carrying away eight infantry divisions. Also this measure would be adopted, together with an added, well-founded fear of an Austrian breakthrough, in order to avoid a personal damage and a ministerial crisis. But the government is already thinking of substituting that Marshall whose original plan, based on exploitation of the first Russian victories on the eastern front, then more on the offensive than the defensive, has reached a crisis. The government will change its mind and the Marshall will remain in charge until Caporetto, thanks to the many Austrian contingents retiring from the Trentino front, owing to the nth reversal of the situation on the Russian front: Brusilov’s first offensive (June 16).
Luckily for Italy (and for Savoy), the culminating moment of the Strafexpedition can be passed over quickly, because the Trentino had its Termopili as well, impeding the enemy conquest of Passo Buole and with it the entire chain of the Zugna, therefore free passage into Vallarsa, into Val Pòsina, and as a consequence, easy access to Val d’Astico and the Vicentine plain; and indeed, even direct descent to Val Lagarina and the Veronese plain (as states the plaque placed at the pass by the citizens of Parma, memorial of the undertaking). Thermopylae, not because there had been a Leonida, but because, almost without counting our scarce artillery, a few thousand infantry armed with rifles and bayonets and gifted with a few machine guns performed the miracle of stopping an enemy more numerous and vengeful (the entire Tyrol division of Landesschützen [Note 28], over 9,500 rifles strong), but less desperate. Austria had used impressive means to get its hands on a mountain pass that would allow the rapid conquest of all of northeastern Italy.
It’s not the first time the Hapsburg Empire had to be stopped by a company of heroes. Other Termopili, in the XVI century, had kept Maxmillian and his mercenaries from taking over the territories of the Serenissima. Lanzknechts had tried to force the high valley of the Piave, but the rafters of Belluno and Cadore had defended the river pass strenuously, at the price of admirable sacrifices, and with it the entire forest patrimony of the Republic. Termopili in Thessaly, Piave in Cadore, Passo Buole in Trentino, three strategic passes, three gates of blood on which legends hang, encoded histories as well. [go back]

Passo Buole: The pass (1460 m) is incised into the long range of the Zugna which, starting south of Rovereto, divides Val Lagarina from Vallarsa. Standing out from north to south: Zugna Torta (1256m), Monte Zugna (1864m) and close to this last, Coni Zugna (1772m). Between Zugna Torta and the group Coni Zugna-M. Zugna is Malga Zugna (1602), practically at the line of maximum Austrian penetration into Italy. One arrives at the pass in about three hours from the town of Marani in Val Lagarina. It’s a position suited for defense, well located on a crest dominating Vallarsa, but armed only with a few antiquated artillery pieces and three machine gun sections. The battle to defend it or expunge it will cost unheard-of sacrifices on both sides: the infantry of Brigata Taro and those of Brigata Sicilia (for the most part, from the barracks of Parma), for a probable total of 5000-6,000 men on one side; on the other, 9,500 choice riflemen of the Landesschützen Division. Naturally, nothing is so partial as the testimony left to history by both sides: each maintains to have done more sacrifices and fought more heroically than the other, and since one can interpret and manipulate at will the numbers and the so-called objective data, to make history you must be able to add up algebraic sums.
The Landesschützen try a first assault on the pass and adjacent positions (Costa Mezzana and Costa Selvata) on 22 May. They repeat on the 23rd in a violent rain, succeeding in occupying the buttressed spur of Loner (1332m) immediately below the pass. On the 24th enemy action has to be suspended because of worsening atmospheric conditions (two meters of snow have fallen on nearby Pasubio), and also to drag the artillery forward, but they begin again on the days following, but with less enthusiasm, until May 30 when the final great assault will be attempted.
23 May. As soon at the 61st Regg. Coming from Malga Zugna reaches the pass, the 9th and the 12th Company get placed along the mule track that goes from Passo Buole to Coni Zugna, a few meters from the pass. Again they are reinforcements (12th and 9th become candles to take to the Madonna), protected from rifle shots but not from cannon fire, much less from trench-mortars. Along the entire spur that connects from north to south with Costa Selvata, Passo Buole, and Costa Mezzana, almost all the other companies of the Sicilian Brigade are dislocated, as well as those of Brigato Taro. In particular, the comrades of the 62nd Regg. find themselves on the pass waiting in silence for the enemy. The Tirolese riflemen climb from Vallarsa through woods and over mule trails amidst dense, excited columns of "Hurra!". Those who’ve occupied the overhanging buttresses of Loner are now forced to leave, to the discovery of having to cross the hundred meters of meadow that separates them from the top of the pass. Our infantry, ferocious from days of isolation, anxiety, fast, and cannon fire, repels them continually to the anger of rifles, machine gun bursts, bayonets, and heavy losses. [go back]

Return to the Malga: The only road that climbs from our location behind the lines to Passo Buole is a mule road that starts at Marani in Val Lagarina, a little more south of Santa Margherita. In the low part, it’s out in the open except at its beginning, with modest shelter among the stations of a Via Crucis. The Austrians dominate from Biavena, and they fire at us with a big waste of ammunition, following even a single soldier or anything that moves. Because of this, transports move through only evenings and nights. Even the high route, which is sheltered by the forests and enters like a snake into the throat of the Zugna, is exposed to blind bombardment.
Val Lagarina has been deeply distorted by the large calibers, and the towns of Marani, Santa Margherita, and Serravalle all’Adige have been razed to the ground, including the aid stations and field hospitals, despite the highly visible markings of the Red Cross. On the fields and back roads the howitzers have dug enormous holes becoming muddy ponds with the rains.
25 May. At dawn the Austrian artillery directs intense fire onto the slopes of Coni Zugna, in particular toward a strategic point called the big trench of Cisterna. From the other side of the Adige the Italian cannons answer. Shortly, so many rhythms of dynamite are poured over all the available rocks that the mountains are emerging from the smoke as if from volcanoes, through broad bands of ashes. The bombardment is of such violence and extent that it interrupts all communications and provokes the death and wounding of some hundreds of the infantry of the 208th (Brigata Taro) left to occupy the zone of Malga. The position must not be lost in order not to compromise the safety of the pass, this time on the side of Zugna Torta, which, with enormous sacrifices, we are holding onto day by day. To integrate the losses suffered, it is decided to transfer yet again to Malga Zugna companies 9th and 12th, who just two days before had raced to the defense of the pass. To compensate for nerves frazzled by these continuous movements, infantry reinforcements have arrived in the meantime on Zugna, on the mule road that climbs to Santa Margherita, by forced march from the Stelvio and the Carso, armed with a few machine guns and some men from the artillery, dragging two elderly howitzers. This is the spontaneous testimony of Emilio, even though in his report, Gen. Cletus Pilchler, Head of General Staff of the 11th Austrian Army writes: "In v. Lagarina intense artillery fire from the Italian side one can observe the climb of the considerable reinforcements of the V.d’Adige toward the Zugna . Aside from the exaggeration of those considerable reinforcements, it is true that on that morning, the mountains and valleys of the zone echoed in Italian as well. In fact, from the report of officer Alberto Quarra: the two companies (9th and 12th) were made to cross by a protected trail that passed between Zunga and the Coni; but, as for the great trench, the enemy infantry wasn’t able even to get close to the barbed wire because "the formidable bursts of our artillery positioned beyond Adige (those of Brentonico) created great confusion and destroyed the units set up for action." [go back]

Luck divided and multiplied: 30 May. The Landesschützen try the final great assault at Passo Buole but, as the existence of the undersigned bears witness, the good star of Emilio, that submitted the quartermaster to other grave dangers, will save him from all mortal risk from gun or bayonet. To aid the assault on the valley, the enemy launches interminable columns of riflemen who, repelled repeatedly, immediately swell new columns. But by now our formation is complete, and robust enough. The assault resolves itself into a slaughter on both sides, but the pass remains forever in Italian hands.
The 9th and the 12th Company are immediately sent back to the pass. The 12th has barely started on the march again when Lieutenant Rizzardi orders Emilio to leave the ranks and go to Ala to work urgently on supply problems. The quartermaster hurries. As he descends toward Santa Margherita and passes along an Italian position, an officer stops him at pistol point and interrogates him rudely, suspecting him of desertion; but his documents certify that he’s telling the truth. The officer apologizes and lets him continue. A Romagnolo from Lugo, he will soon have command of the 12th, and will become a friend.
In the evening Emilio reaches the valley along with a few isolated cannon roars, drawn to the only house in a neighborhood remaining standing, in the middle of its own garden. The entrance door is wide open. The owners have fled, leaving in the pantry eggs, flour, and oil, and, in the basement, a goodly amount of wine. Emilio enters and finds that a few special service soldiers have already taken possession of everything and are cooking aromatic pancakes. With his comradely manner he’s able to join with the brigade and dine on egg and flour pancakes and a frizzy red wine, fruit of the house’s vineyard.
Late night and good weather. The cannons are quiet, and outside the door only the crickets are furious. Emilio says farewell to the others, who continue to open bottles, throws himself on a bed of corncobs found on the floor above and drops into an absolute sleep. At the first rays he opens his eyes wide, awakened from a nightmare in the middle of his snoring; and, petrified, realizes that half the room, up to the edge of his sleeping spot, no longer exists; and with it has gone half the house. All around, a firmament of powder, pierced by the sun and impregnated by the sharp smell of roasting lime. Sideways at once the rustle of a tree in the courtyard. He recovers from his first amazement. Intent and determined, he takes himself off the bed, taking care to put his feet in the right places, climbs down into the kitchen by the still intact ladder, and runs out: the house has been neatly sliced with such precision as to appear sawn. The part taken off lies in a heap under the tree in the courtyard next to the intact half. "You still alive in there?" The laconic Venetian voice at his back belongs to one of the soldiers he had eaten with. "And the others?" "What others? They slunk away last night!"
Emilio, for whom things had gone well so far, was beginning to think he wasn’t the only lucky man in the war, and that since that poisonous mess has filtered down from the royal and imperial houses of Europe to the inconvenience of their corresponding peoples, it would be just to spare them even more. At that moment a deafening explosion and an irresistible displacement of air smashes the two of them to the ground, thrown up against a ruin of objects into a sweetish cloud of sulfur and cardboard, which disappears in a few seconds, sucked upward by the milling of the wind: the other half of the house as well has disappeared, drawn up into a cloud lying alongside the earlier one. Emilio stands up, wipes his burning eyes, and feels a finger touch his shoulder: "Listen to me, let’s get out of here, since there’s no house any more, and no one left but us.!" They run out of that ruined town and throw themselves into the fields in the direction of Ala. [go back]

Mule-track, what Passion!: Around the provincial road, a series of grenade explosions. At the edge of Ala their attention is finally drawn to four pieces of Italian artillery. Brand-new pieces, they’re firing at short intervals in the direction of the despised north. After those other sharp explosions, these reverberations are a relief to Emilio’s chest, and anyway, the pieces retire in a hurry toward Pilcante. The two comrades of the road career along the last stretch, preceded and followed by enemy grenades and kept in the sights of that benign star, the sun. Having entered the town, Emilio says farewell to his chance companion and enters the Command. By now he’s so embroiled that everything Italian comforts him and everything he knows about the Austrians depresses him and suffocates him in an anger which paradoxically reduces his level of fear, bringing his innate pacifism to the surface. Austria seems more imperialistic to him than Italy, and more of an enemy to civilization, because it wants to keep so many peoples subjugated, including the Italians; this rules out any Austrian claims of intrinsic human superiority. He feels he must take sides, certainly not for the culpable monarchy but for his own innocent comrades so sorely tried. Immersed in the inferno and part of an organized military unit, he approves, not the reasons of the war, but the necessity of defense.
With work finished and a simple meal eaten at the Command kitchen, he takes the most direct way back toward Passo Buole, where he knows his fellow soldiers are working continuously at repelling Tirolian assaults. At I Marani he takes the mule road, which climbs by switchbacks and celebrates the passion of Christ at every turn of its first stretch, in tiny masonry chapels whose niches hold small frescoes. He passes each station happily, tired but with the calm of one who has just dined. But he’s forced to hurry his steps in fear of hearing the whistle of a howitzer, or failing to notice a closer, well-aimed burst fired by possibile sharpshooters. He’s comforted at the thought he might be able in some way to take shelter behind the stories of Jesus, and the hint of a smile rises in him at the idea of going through a passion of his own, but he hopes his story will have an outcome different from that of the Savior. At the same time he’s gaining altitude. Passing the last chapel, he mumbles a thanks, but notices immediately and with anxiety that the rest of the road, located on a grassy slope, is in full view of the front and at the mercy of mountains, all Austrian. But he keeps on just the same, in the courageous afternoon sun.
To the left lies Val Lagarina, encircled by orchards and furrowed by a reverberant Adige, overflowing with careless beauty. To the naked eye the towns are indistinct, and the destruction is not easily identified. In the background, the houses and bell towers of Mori are a summer crèche. Further off, Rovereto lies compact and frightened by the nearby explosions. Above the town, mysterious mountains observe everything. Among them the threatening Biavena where the most powerful Austrian artillery is nested and from which at that precise moment observers are directing their telescopes. That little road followed in solitude becomes an immediate target. But the quartermaster plays an astute game, now running forward, now suddenly pausing, now going backward, all these moves followed and preceded by a disproportionate waste of cannon fire. Having reached the safest gully on the mountain, and as tired as the road, he sits down on a tree trunk to rest and sip wine from his flask, hidden by the forest’s dense love, while the cannon continues to resound, blind and furious. He thinks it prudent to wait until an easily conceded Austrian silence returns.[go back]

History and Truth : He proceeds in the pause of sunset, overtaken slowly by a column of mules with rations for the garrison. He follows it at a short distance. Every so often, to avoid being trapped by the sharpshooters’ intentions, he traverses a cliff, climbing through boulders and wild vegetation. Then, in the stable silence of darkness and artillery, seized by a fatigue that substitutes for fear, he hangs onto a mule’s tail. He arrives at the pass as the Austrian symphony has begun again; enemy lookouts must have noticed something in the dark, feared the arrival of reinforcements, and decided to avenge the night with a few casual cannonades. Returned to his post, they tell him about the tremendous assault of the previous day, costing the skins of so many brave comrades who at the top of a spur had opposed a veritable wall of hand weapons against the stubborn attackers; and he comes to find out that today as well in the late afternoon, while he was distracted in avoiding the enemy howitzers, the Landesschützen had set off another unexpected attack at the pass from the Loner spur, but had been thrown back down by the 1st/117th infantry of the Padua Brigade, just arrived as relief for their heroic comrades of the IIIrd/62nd. He can do nothing except to recount as a contrast his still worthy, modest, double and unwilling adventure of the day: the "house cut in two" and, on the road to the pass, the "alone against howitzer." The important thing is, at bottom, that life hangs by a thread, but a very strong one indeed.
It seems that at the beginning of the Austrian offensive, the Command of the 1st Army hadn_t ascribed any particular importance to Passo Buole. As to what Emilio remembered, the pass wasn’t even marked on the map of the Trentino distributed to officers operating in the sector. Notwithstanding, it became one of the hinges of our defense. What’s more, according to the testimony of our corporal, it was the exclusive merit of the infantry to prevent the enemy from taking it by storm. A few days after that heroic resistance, thanks to the withdrawal of many contingents more necessary on the eastern European front to contain Brusilov’s Russian advance, Austria had lost every hope of descending onto our plains, and the 1st Army was able to pass to the counteroffensive along the entire Trentino and Vicentino fronts.
It also seems that the name and role of the pass have been almost completely ignored by school texts and popular encyclopedias. What’s more, in the encyclopedia Vallardi of the Twenties which at least dedicated a few words to it, Passo Buole become famous thanks to heroic resistance to the enemy by the Alpini Corps. But infantryman Emilio, recounting the deeds of which he had been a protagonist, makes no reference to this; instead he is precise: except for a pair of artillery pieces, he had seen only infantry in action at Passo Buole. Must we believe more in a compiler of encyclopedia topics sitting in front of a desk, or in someone who had participated in the whole course of action? Today history has rendered justice to Emilio. Thanks to documents only recently in the public domain, the Strafexpedition, the picture of forces in the field and at Passo Buole have lost their mystery. It is absolutely true that in almost all sectors the Alpini as well had contributed in grand and heroic measure to defense of our Alps, usually employed on higher and more difficult peaks, but in the case of Passo Buole, Emilio’s pride is almost completely justified. Almost, because near the pass, together with some thousand infantry men, a company of the 6th Alpini was operating, precisely on the height to the south of Costa Mezzana called Jocole, with orders to defend the height itself and to keep in touch with the 44th Div. operating in Vallarsa. Probably, from where he was (on the flank of Passo Buole, on the Costa Sevatica side) Emilio couldn’t see that company. At any rate, beyond every attribution of merit to individual corps, they were simply "our soldiers" fighting and suffering in spite of the strategy of the Command, the internal diatribes of the General Staff, his arguments with the Government, and the ambitions of the monarchy, all of whom were addicted to manipulating men like pawns, playing at war on the people’s hides. [go back]

The "Punishment" has failed: First of June. Austria, betrayed by the Russian front, finds itself in trouble. Cadorna organizes the counteroffensive and alerts the 5th Army, which can now turn from its original assignment of opposing the enemy on the plains, to following it instead. The Austrians, already meditating a general retreat to the farthest rear positions, decide to give up on Coni Zugna, but to keep the Landesschützen in Vallarsa. At the bottoms of the valleys the rains continue and on Pasubio, the snow.
The Austrian cannons persevere as well and gouge our land without pause. On June 5 the infantrymen of the 79th Regg. of the Brigata Roma are squatted in their muddy trenches around the low wall of the Parrocchia cemetery, on an escarpment above the Vallarsa, beneath the cliffs of Pasubio on one side and the Zugna on the other, when a large-caliber piece, aimed right at that poor bit of consecrated earth, blows it up in a snarl of squashed coffins, dismembered bodies, and rubble. A few hours later they are subjected to an infantry assault as well. The survivors arrange the cemetery craters as well as they can, and add their own dead. This is the war which the young interventionists of Italy, asses cold, brains reduced, and hearts drugged, had been led from on high to desire.
Falkenhayan begins to argue with Conrad: I won’t send you any more divisions because I need them all to stop Brusilov, you send me yours instead, and you, you stop trying impossible advances in Trentino. Opposing them, concentrated on the war’s chess table, the chess champions Petrosian and Karpov would seem dilettantes. Instead, worse: orders emanating on June 6 from the Austrian Command of the Trentino: "The battle in the Russian theater of war makes sending the planned reinforcements impossible. For this reason the Supreme Command desires that the consumption of men and munitions on all fronts be controlled." That makes one think of the soldiers as less than worthy chess pieces, as humble draughts pieces, not only Italian and Austrian but from many other countries, involved in a foreign war. It is told of Polish soldiers forced to fight against ours in the Trentino, that in their knapsacks they carried a handful of earth from their fatherland which our soldiers would spread piously on their graves.
Since the middle of June, only few and isolated attacks at Zugna, until on the 18th the Landesschützen are definitely withdrawn. But in Conrad’s revanchist heart the obsession of reconquering Pasubio remains. At the beginning of summer the Italians are on the offensive on the Altopiano of the Seven Communes, and a little later in the zone of Zugna as well, with a slow advance on both banks of the Leno di Vallarsa. On 25 June the Austrians’ general retreat begins, and good weather smiles on their baggage. The Italians don’t really chase them, but follow them with ease. They want to recover the territory lost at the beginning of the punishment, but succeed only in part. As explained many years later by Gen. Giraldi, Commandant of the 1st Army, Cadorna didn’t give him the chance to complete the reconquest, because he wanted to shift urgently the forces to the Isonzo and conquer Gorizia. At any rate, Giraldi confessed on that occasion that Conrad had made a fundamental error thinking he would defeat us in the Trentino with only 20-22 divisions. If he had used 25-28, we would have been pushed back to fight on the plain and wouldn’t have been able to resist him. The Austrian rear guard doesn’t go completely away without saying good-bye, and when they can, they still bite and throw hard at us. Toward the end of June we give battle to dislodge the enemy from the Matassone fort in the middle of the Vallarsa. And we succeed. [go back]

Two Way Trip: With the late arrival of a dry summer, thirst suddenly approaches, and the scarce provisioning from the nightly mules is never enough, until the night of a nourishing downpour. Then the soldiers collect as much water as they want from the burning cloth of the tents, still spattered with blood. The air has changed temperature and smells a thin gray. In the following days, a beneficial drizzle furnishes them regularly until, the ire of enemy mountains placated, everyone can drink potable water every day. Re-dimensioned by the needs of the eastern front, the Austrians are at this point quiet in their positions, and the four companies of the 3rd/61st are being sent back to Malga Zugna where the necessary complements are arriving to replace the losses of Passo Buole. Just when the battalion has reached full strength, Major Codardo (thus has the commandant been rebaptized by the troops for staying in his cave at the beginning of the offensive), seized perhaps by shame, or by the will to redeem himself, orders an action worthy of him and of the fanatic officer who had suggested it to him.
One day at the end of June, Emilio returns to Ala for routine accounting duties. He could have stayed there a few days, but his scruples about not overly exploiting an open-ended pass, as well as the seduction of the cool woods, now more peaceful, render any stay in that stuffy place unbearable. Notwithstanding the always immanent risk, he decides to return to Malga the next day. He’s found out that the Austrians have removed their cannons from the terrible Biavena to take them to the Russian front. So, instead of going back along the main road to Santa Margherita and passing through the rubble of the valley, he prefers to take a stretch of the already familiar mule road that goes from Marani to Passo Buole, and at a certain point, use the shortcut to Malga. The tiny chapels of the Via Crucis unwind behind him, like stations of a history by now past, ingenuous frescoes of a far away holy legend, behind which he can no longer hide.
Having reached Malga in the late evening, he finds his comrades in feverish motion. Lieutenant Zuffardi has already arranged for the scribe Pizzamiglio to remain on guard at the camp of the 12th, specifically at the quartermasters’, while the entire battalion leaves for action. Seeing the quartermaster already returning, the lieutenant takes the substitute with him and entrusts Emilio with remaining on guard, upon whose conscience a heavy sense of guilt will weigh in a few hours. [go back]

Reward: Deep night between 30 June and 1 July. The four companies in battle dress, with mules behind them, leave the camp at Malga Zugna for an unknown destination and disappear into the darkness. Nothing is known about the mission except that it has been ordered by Major Codardo (no one knows whether even this is true but we pretend that it is, a little to avoid blaming the high Commands, and a little because his type could very well have ordered an action so foolhardy and possibly useless as well). The major, after the heroic behavior of his men at Passo Buole, must have felt like a worm and, coming out of his hiding place once too often, resolved to merit, like the others, the praise which the Command of the 1st Army was certainly planning to confer on the entire brigade. According to confidences the lieutenant made to the quartermaster, the sortie was suggested to the major by a captain, perhaps wanting to help his own career.
Emilio remains alone for a long night watching the shadows of the firs waving their tips between the limpid stars. From time to time a flare lights up the camp like silent lightning, immediately extinguished in a wake of paper and smoke, until an unexpected moon imparts clear outlines to all the vegetable and mineral creatures. A little later, one of the infinite sunrises that alternates with twilights and establishes the rhythm of our duties, is returning our attentions to the existence of things: trees, cliffs, and facts ready to be ascertained.
Hoofbeats, orders softly spoken, and short parabolas of moans rise from the forest and make Emilio shiver as he goes toward the noises. Along the trail, given back by the night, a mule appears with two soldiers on its back. A mule driver from the Red Cross is leading the animal by hand. Behind, other mules with other bleeding soldiers, some moribund, others still capable of holding onto the mule’s back. One of them with his head bandaged recognizes the quartermaster. According to his aphonic voice he’d been bandaged at a dressing station and now has to proceed to the nearest field hospital. He doesn’t add anything more as the mule goes on. More mules with more wounded soldiers follow.
One of them, staggering along, stretches out an arm for support and says that something horrible has happened. Having gone over the crest of the Zugna, the battalion had begun to climb down the slope of Vallarsa. At a captain’s orders, they were to proceed without making noise. After a slow couple of hours, leaving the mules waiting in a wood, they reached the valley bottom. Having crossed the torrent on a wooden bridge, they encountered thick barbed wire and cut through it an opening that allowed them to pass two or three at a time. Behind the barbed wire runs a carriage road, along whose edge the infantrymen are forced to sit. Opposite, a meadow rises along with some cold larches toward an enemy position or small fortification. After an hour without end the whole battalion has squeezed through the wired opening. With bayonets fixed, two silent, warm human columns begin to climb toward the fort.
The long, elaborate transit isn’t possibile without some clinking of rifles on cartridge-pouches or scratching against barbed wire, or the blow of a boot on rocks. The lookout had noticed something and suspected that someone would be coming to disturb a peaceful night in this war of position. In fact the enemy launches a flare in whose brilliance the soldiers are visible. Then they set off a mortar round which explodes against the trunks of the larches, wounding many with the fragments. The two columns break ranks and everyone, recognizing the trap, races down the meadow, throwing themselves into the only opening in the wire, in a snarl of bodies fighting desperately to gain passage. Without risking coming out of the fort, the Austrians repeat the mortar barrage that, in the uncertain half-light of a flare, is unable to strike the mass of men working at entering the channel through the barbed wire, and explodes to the side. But just at that moment, over the enchanted crest of Pasubio, the lunar disk appears in all its chill indifference, masculine, traitor, Austrian, and into that milling swarm the enemy points the machine gun.
After agreeing with the Captain on the plan for capturing that little fort, the Major responsible for the slaughter had retired the evening before to think about what his reward might be; but the officer who had planned it is already dead on the spot, with nearly all his men and many from other companies, pierced by the Hapsburg smiles of a moon that thinks it has elevated them to heroes. But a few days later, the High Command of the 1st Army, covering up the blame for that poorly planned expedition, reunites the survivors who, having fled before the bursts of the enemy machine gun, had not become extinct in a manly way; and it inflicts upon them and their blood Savoy’s eternal, humiliating, solemn Reproof. At that point, Emilio’s good heart is beaten down by strong emotions: "This is the reward for the heroes of Passo Buole!" As for Major Codardo, no one knows into which new and deeper cavern he might have been transferred. [go back]

Wounded Officers and Others Wounded: First ten days of July. Among those who haven’t returned to camp are Lieutenant Zuffardi and Pizzamiglio the scribe, admitted to the hospital at Ala. The battalion’s survivors had been transferred to Serravalle to occupy more peaceful and better fortified trenches. From this new house of war, Emilio leaves to visit the two wounded comrades. It is a day of winds, in which essences are changing temperature and expanding into rich burdens of odors. The weight of afternoon hours lies heavy on his legs. He’s climbing the outside stairs of the hospital, set up in a school, when he becomes aware of the smell of medications coming from the entrance along with the flapping doctors’ tunics and the Red Cross girls’ caps, and he crumples to the marble of the top step. To someone who runs immediately to help him, he murmurs that it was because of emotions. They have him sip a glass of water. He waits for his blood to take up its normal rhythm, gets up, and asks for Lieutenant Zuffardi. A Red Cross lady accompanies him to the cubicle where, bandaged in many places, the officer is lying; and to Emilio’s embarrassment in front of the lady, she tells him about Emilio’s fainting spell. Seeing the quartermaster’s pale face, the lieutenant smiles widely and exclaims that for him this visit is an undeserved honor because he’s been so lightly wounded. He says that a mortar shell had exploded near him, and that he was pierced by many fragments but only superficially except for one, very small, that had stuck in his throat. He adds that it’s so imperceptible it doesn’t even keep him from talking. The wound seems banal to him and he’s excited about the certainty of a quick recovery. He jokes about having gone through the war with his mouth open like a dumb recruit, and tells about the time his grandfather was downing a good glass and swallowed a wasp and suffered the pains of hell. On the other hand, he’s obviously worried about Emilio’s weak spell; but Emilio has recovered his pink and white coloring. They say goodbye and thank each other over and over again with sincere affection.
Moved, Emilio leaves the little room and goes off along a corridor painted half-way up the walls with green oil paint, whose fresh smell hangs over the sick, toward a huge room where the ordinary soldiers were lying, some on enameled bunks, most on densely packed cots. From the door he sees the white bustling of attendants in the midst of a sea of sheets and bandages, and in the background of the room’s emotions he identifies his friend and assistant Pizzamiglio, being aided by his older brother. The emotion broadens into a state of panic and is transformed to guilt. He knows the clerk has been wounded by the same mortar shell that struck the lieutenant and that the poor boy’s arm has been amputated above the elbow. He blames himself for having reentered the camp too soon, making Pizzamiglio’s disaster possibile by his excess of zeal. Meanwhile, the kitchen corporal has recognized him and points him out to the brother. And now they are looking at him, and laughing with that sweet ingenuousness that puts the best, most spontaneous feelings before everything. But Emilio has lost his courage, and feeling this remorse as well, limits himself to saluting them from a distance with his hand, and with the saddest smile of his life. [go back]

Yesterday’s Medicine: Descending the stairs renews the remorse, until the violent afternoon light and dark of the greenery, beneath globes of clouds flattening the mountains, sunken in a continual expectation of cannons, persuade him that war is not fought with "but" and "if"; and that it is useless to eat our guts out for things much larger than we are. The war and every other difficulty of life are obligatory walls: either you knock them down or you’ll run into them. And even chance has its share of guilt. Walking slowly, he begins with relief to meditate on the pretenses and vacuity of our divinatory knowledge.
He soon has confirmation that not only can we not predict events, but not even the consequences of those we’re already aware of. In the following days he receives notice that the lieutenant’s condition has worsened. That fragment, unable to be found, has caused an infection. Finally, he comes to know that he is dead, and he thinks of him in bed, not moving now, but finally free of the pain that wounded throat must have had in swallowing. On the other hand, the soldier Pizzamiglio has made it: an amputee, but alive.
At the time of those events, mold of the Penicillium genus, species notatum, before undergoing the casual but intuitive observations of a benefactor of humanity, before its beneficial products were isolated by other benefactors, was considered harmful along with every other species of that genus, especially to insect collections and herbariums, and it had to be destroyed with antiseptics. Thus, the good lieutenant from Parma had his destiny; he had to die, even if he would have been, by High Command, not only afflicted with a solemn reproof, which is a punishment destined for ordinary troops, but more drastically demoted, hardly like an insect; because in the hospital they would have done everything to preserve him from the formation of beneficial mold, while the clerk Pizzamiglio, allowing the absurd supposition that a simple soldier might be demoted in the same way or just drift downward like a leaf, would had been saved by virtue of that or some other mold innate in his body or spirit. [go back]

Apropos of Fate and Unusual Coincidences: Wednesday, May 5, 1954. Emilio goes to a business meeting at Verona and takes his seat in the auto of a businessman, with whom he is to visit a few clients in Trento, Bolzano, and Merano. In the auto is also the wife, a beautiful woman, who gives a blond, homey feel to the voyage. Near Ala the business-man says he would point out the places where he had fought in the great war. Emilio asks whether he had fought on Monte Zugna; the man says yes, and adds that between May and June of ‘16 he was in the vicinity of Passo Buole. Emilio exclaimed that he had finally found a comrade and asked what corps he belonged to, and what his rank was. The man shook his head: "I was an artillery officer, but I’m from Alto Adige and I fought for Austria." "Then we were enemies, and the grenades that were trying to kill me had been launched at your orders!", said Emilio’s mischievous face. "That’s right. And now I’ll show you where the observation point was." At Rovereto he stops the auto and invites Emilio to follow him up to the ossuary. Here he points to a tuft of firs close behind the temple and says that exactly from there he transmitted the data to the cannons at Biavena. He tells that, the offensive having begun in the middle of May, he crossed Zugna Torte, strewn with cadavers; but the infantry had had to stop under Passo Buole, defended strenuously by the Italians. "On Monte Corno, almost opposite the pass," he then added wrinkling his forehead emphatically, "we took a famous prisoner." "Ah, yes, Cesare Battisti the ninth of July, if I’m not mistaken it was my last day on Malga Zugna!" The businessman raised a finger: "I was the interpreter at his interrogation. A proud and determined man. But he was on your side".
The business trip over, Emilio climbs onto the train at Trento. A woman comes into his compartment accompanied by a thin man with a pointy beard, who kisses her and gets off again. Between one idle word and another, Emilio comes to discover that she is Battisti’s daughter-in-law and that the man with her was the hero’s son.
Thanks to that day and that voyage, he wants to dust off an old manuscript entitled "Notes of a quartermaster" and, of course, to publish it. Sixteen years had passed since he put hand to pen in 1937, and another forty-three would have to pass before the same desire would come to his son. And now, after sixty years, with all the squalor of times and persons, the last word hasn’t yet been said. Nevertheless, it is well revised and much more seasoned by the nine or twelve years that my friend Franco Fortini needed, more than it takes for a bottle of whisky, for a poem. But the time of poets outside the lodge has a fixed fate. It’s like a compartment on a train: it stands still even when it travels. [go back]

The First Curtain Falls at Serravalle: In the trenches of Serravalle the battalion with-stands the enemy fire for another twenty days. But it’s easier to withstand this time: monotonous cannonades, routine, without conviction. On the other side, down below, with tunnels and concrete walls defended by the dense earthworks and the redoubts resistant to the most accurate firing, everyone feels at home. While Austria, forced to withdraw its troops, reacts with symbolic cannonades; the soldiers play tressette.
26 July. An order sets all the players moving through the trenches in search of equipment and everything else with which to stuff a knapsack. After an eagerly awaited march out in the open, a halt at Peri, by the railroad where more than the whole brigade is being concentrated. Uniforms must be completely renewed as in Parma before leaving for the front, and a very light one is added to that heavy one. Consignment of abundant reserve rations and distribution of new arms complete with ammunition.
As usual, there are those who think they know one page more than the book, and word spreads about transfer to a foreign front: Tripoli, Greece, Albania. It is known that there is continuous battle between Cadorna and the Government about where to send the troops and upon which table to play a game that promises never to end. Until now, Sonnino has won, sending ships and troops to Durazzo to collect the rest of the Serbian army, while to the head of the General Staff it would be more rewarding to participate in the body of the expedition of the Entente into Greek Macedonia. The infantrymen camped at the Peri station turn to look in the direction of their longer, twisted past, the chain of the Zugna that no longer stinks of blood. On the other flank, Mount Baldo is no longer smoking. Word is out, reciting a goodbye to the wooded wholesomeness of our own land, and promising an adventure in regions distant, desert, and debilitated. And after the voice, the kernel of truth: it is certain that we will have to go far away, don’t know where, but to mysterious and desolate lands. To do it, one must cross the sea. [go back]

Chapter II

MACEDONIAN ALBUM

The Adriatic Coast: On the morning of 1 August 1916, long empty trains were sent to Peri. The IIIrd Batt., mounted in open third-class carriages, making up a train that in the afternoon moves toward Verona, immediately reaching a speed which the soldiers, used to a exhausting, very slow pace, judge to be unusual. After a pause at Porta Nuova, the route is taken up again, not toward Peschiera or Vicenza, but toward the Padana valley. The destination remains a mystery that leaves most of them indifferent, some of them resigned, and a few of them offended. Parma is out of consideration because of the route: the train doesn’t go through Villafranca but by Isola della Scala. Also because of the situation: a reentry to the base is unthinkable, the war is anything but over. After a long stop at Bologna with rations from the military post, they start again in the direction of Imola, and the soldiers, who in homogenous groups have begun to sing about their regions, begin some of Romagna’s melodies.
It’s night, it’s hot. A conductor turns off the bright lights. The soldiers quiet themselves, relax, and with legs stretched out one against the other, abandon themselves to the bluish possibility of sleep. At the window, looking forward, Emilio tries to sleep, but excitement and curiosity reopen his eyes. He then tries to evaluate the dark of the countryside, not to miss the railway sign-boards, and to read calmly the names of the stops. And so on, through the long hours of the night, with a few stretches of oblivion and a train which now runs indecisively, and in the stations is sleepier than he is, until the first rays reveal the mid-Adriatic coast. The light is slowly spreading on the waiting landscape, flooding the field of vision until the sun announces itself over the red oil of the sea. Some are still sleeping but most are watching, awake in silence. The solar image, elongated by reflections reaching the shore, filters into the soldiers’ eyes and stimulates something their thoughts can’t formulate, and for which they have no words. Many are seeing the sea for the first time. One of them has put his head out the window and is sniffing the air with childlike curiosity, opening his mouth in deep gulps, and turning to his companions: "Bellissimo!"
The peremptory voice of an officer running through the cars announces that soon there would be a stop at Ancona but only for the time necessary to change the locomotive, that no one is permitted to get off, but eating reserve rations is allowed. Everyone passes from enchantment to reality, and with it, the desire to fish some provisions out of the knapsack. At the Ancona switches the train slows as if in fear and slides slowly up to the platform. Around them, only police and railway workers removing rubble. A few hours earlier, a warship had bombarded the station and the port, leaving many victims. The wait, the jolt of the replacement of the locomotive, and a new march taken along the rocky and empty Marchigiani, Abruzzesi, and Molisani villages. The Gargano is cut away from and forgotten; the train comes out onto the Foggia plain, immensely yellow with stubble. After Barletta it finds the sea, facing a beach striped with white cubical houses, lived in, and nourished by vineyards, olive groves, and plantations of tobacco, whose long leaves the women are drying on wooden racks. At sunset it stops for a long time beyond Bari in open fields as if before the unknown, and at night it takes up again a very slow march, exasperated by continual stops. It pauses at Gioia del Colle, its station in the hands of a clamoring crowd of officials, carabinieri, and functionaries of the national services. Again the convoy takes up its cautious march into darkness, leaving behind the reason for all that noise. It descends to the Taranto plain, proceeding at the rate of a suspicious man. From the little windows, flashes from the direction of the city, a continuum of fires, not artificial. [go back]

Santa Barbara: 3 August, before dawn. Telegraphs, telephones, and electric bells at the Taranto station are ticking and squealing. The gilded, excited caps of the two Station Masters peek thorough the Chief’s doorway. The auxiliaries enter, leave the Director of Movements office at a run, and fly down the sidewalks. The switchmen cross and recross the tracks, and go off into the distance to wave signals that look like enemy glow-worms engaged in arranging mysterious sabotages. Carabinieri and police are keeping groups of frightened travelers away from the switches. Soldiers stick out of windows, forming an oscillating chain of heads, and shouting requests for clarification.
The officers, jumping down at a run, go talk to the commander of the military post and return, trying to impose silence, forbidding the soldiers to get off, and not answering their questions. They pretend not to know or they have orders to remain silent and wait for more orders. Finally a non-com runs along the sidewalk yelling to everyone to get down from the train and arrange themselves by company. While the battalion is reforming, news is spread that a few hours earlier the battleship Leonardo da Vinci, anchored at the city arsenal and ready to sail fully armed, has exploded in connection with the Santa Barbara [Note 29] explosion, and has sunk. In the disaster, many sailors have perished. [go back]

The Mystery of the "Leonardo": Transferred to a column of trucks and transported out-side the city to a plain looking over Mar Grande, smelling badly of grass and salt marshes, where the tents are raised. After the fatigue of a sleep resigned to a mosquito-infested night, the soldiers squeeze out of their tents with permission to run into the foam for a healthful wash, soon transformed into a liberating and savage diversion. Having returned, they organize things under the cloth, feeling heads ever more burning and flies ever more buzzing as the hours go by. In the afternoon their faces, pearly with sweat, are permitted to sleep; and toward evening, their relaxed bodies are allowed to swim.
Two days later, transportation must be arranged to the city, in mourning for the Leonardo’s tragedy, for those representing the soldiers at the victims’ funerals. They were told not to avail themselves of the whores at the port, who might not be as healthy as those in the Trentino, reminding the soldiers to keep themselves fit for a long crossing. Emilio, still excited by the tragedy, asks immediately to participate in the honors.
The history books pay no attention to the sinking of what had been one of the biggest Italian battleships. The origins and backstage events surrounding what doesn’t seem to be an ordinary accident will remain forever blackened in mystery, as has become our firm tradition in similar cases. In days following, Emilio would find a way to approach a few surviving sailors. They all concur in feeling horror, each suspecting a cause of his own; but the prevailing opinion was that of sabotage, enemy infiltration supported by the complicity of corrupt Italian officials. If this little patriotic suspicion, among the civilians as well, was snaking into simple hearts of the public opinion, which the authorities certainly had no interest in spreading, there must be some truth in it. The official silence after the catastrophe and inquest supports this hypothesis. In different ways, government, military, and press have supplied breath to the trumpets of simple accident or simple sabotage [Note 29 bis].

In the cathedral there’s no room for the crowd, who must wait outside. Only stripes of the old authority, representatives of the armed colors, and families in black, a sea of shiny light coffins surrounded by a youthful perimeter of sailors. Then everybody out to file up to San Cataldo pier for an admiral’s speech and a military ceremony, in a silence cut only by intervals of trumpets. After the funerals, Emilio, set free, wanders through the city and the port, consoling himself with oysters and clams. [go back]

Milk…: The next afternoon, as the camp spread to make space for other battalions, permission was granted to go into the city, except for the forbidden center. Emilio again took advantage of it. Unable to cross over to the small ancient island, he walked the suburban streets, everywhere meeting soldiers and sailors, flags flying above barracks, and forests of vessels’ pennants.
His curiosity is drawn to the local milk sale, done without intermediaries, directly from producer to consumer. Cows and goats rest fragrantly in front of house doors, and the cowherd or shepherd milks the white food into receptacles brought by women, old people, and children, unperturbed by any threat to the product’s purity from the swarms of insects whorling about the beasts and surrounding them. Fixity of gaze and patience of women’s folded arms and of hands behind the old people’s backs, the play of waiting children, and the tranquility of the animals show that it’s not a matter of lack of observance of rules, nor a defect of the distribution system, nor a emergency because of lack of shopkeepers, and not even the war economy trying to keep prices low, just simple atavistic tradition. [go back]

…Savoyards…: The forces amassed in the camp at Taranto form the new 35th Div., or more accurately, the remains of the 35th Div., which in the days of the Austrian offensive had operated from the Altopiano of Folgaria to the left of Astico, suffering frightening losses, now joined by the remains of the 61st and 62nd Batt. of the Brigata Sicilia. Six infantry brigades in all, plus other specialized corps, under the command of General Petitti di Roreto, formerly Commander of the 35th Div. in Trentino during the Strafexpedition.
At the camp, unceasing rumors about the next destination. The more dense the mystery, the stronger the curiosity and the desire to inform family and fiancée. Some don’t care, some are resigned, some complain that the troops are always kept in the dark. Not to aid spying, whim of the officers, game of vanity, or simply orders from above?
At that moment the 12th Comp. is commanded by lieutenant Baldassari, that same one from Lugo di Romagna who in Val Lagarina had stopped Emilio when he was climbing down toward Ala. Tall and robust, red-blond hair, blue eyes, feminine speech, cheeks plump and pink like a well-built mountain girl, and he seems like one in his carriage as well and maybe even in his tendencies, if a manly yellow-straw moustache weren’t decorating his lip. An easy-going man, nit-picking in his personal habits and scrupulous as to his duties, he enjoys familiarity. In short, Emilio wheedles him out, pretending not to be interested, until, sworn to maximum secrecy, he discovers that the brigade is about to undertake a long crossing to Thessalonica.
In ‘15 the French and English, disembarked on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli, had failed at their undertaking in the Dardanelles, and now find themselves in difficulty because Turkey is allied with Bulgaria. The Entent has now occupied Thessalonica in a still neutral Greece, to serve as a bridgehead to a new front against the allies of the Central Empires, extending from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, from Valona to Burgas; and it is transferring materials and troops there. Seeing the impossibility of forcing the strait, it has decided to evacuate the peninsula. The lieutenant adds that Italy, having declared war on Turkey on 21 August of ‘15, is now committed to helping its own allies in the Balkans, France, Great Britain, Russia, and Serbia and, if the pressure of the Entente has a good outcome, Romania as well. What he was not able to add is that this declaration of war had already been planned in the secret Pact of London. What he doesn’t want to add is that our intervention matches the Savoy enthusiasm for participating in the future, rich sharing of the possessions of the supposed loser, Turkey. [go back]

…and Sea: 8 August. Half of the 35th Div. waiting in Taranto, mostly infantry, for a total of ten thousand men, must be loaded onto two ocean liners built for carrying emigrants to the Americas. In the holds, thousand of camp-beds have been stacked, four by four. For Emilio, existence down there would be impossible, the suffocating heat and the stench of the mob make the air unable to be breathed. For those few gifted with corporal hypersensitivity, climbing on deck and staying there becomes an immediate physiologic imperative, while all the others adapt to the crowded conditions; thus the natural order of things is guaranteed; just as most of them can finish a meal in a military mess or, a little less difficult, a meal in a canteen. But there are still some who can’t do it, and their difference from those who can, is perhaps something more than internalized presumption. Emilio, an obedient soldier until that moment, hair and buttons always in order, decides without delay to move on deck and to stay there in the open air night and day, in spite of sea, wind, weather, and orders.
The loading of men, animals, and things having been completed, including mules and a few cattle still alive and well, pulled up on a rope by their future slaughterers, the transatlantic steamers move out one after another, then drop anchor offshore. The same operations must be done on both ships, the same things announced, the same orders given; each soldier is a copy of each other and ten thousand is only twice five thousand, even though at times quantities are dazzling, and equal things can conceal souls of their own, that look out timidly, reach out, and on certain circumstances even come out, imposing themselves as an autonomous mystery on the sea of abundance.
The troops having gathered on the deck, the head of the division, General Petetti di Roreto, speaking through the megaphone, announces that the destination is Salonicco, that those present have the honor of representing Italy on foreign soil alongside of the armies of the Entente and that, once in contact with the other troops, must learn how to behave with propriety, and above all to try to stand out and to succeed in deserving everyone’s admiration. Instructions follow, imparted by a ship’s officer, on behavior in case of enemy attack, and the location of life preservers, during which many are making broad, repeated gestures to ward off bad luck; and the locations, company by company, of the corresponding lifeboats.
In the dead of night, the ships still at anchor, the signal squeals to abandon ship, generating panic and general chaos during which only a fortunate few are able to don the life jacket correctly and find the right lifeboat. It was only a drill, certainly crude and pragmatic, necessary and sufficient to reassure the commandants of both ships that all the instructions have been given according to regulation, understood, and observed. On the morning of 9 August the two liners slip away, escorted by four destroyers. [go back]

On the high seas: Sky cloudy, sea gray and moving. Skirting the Salentine peninsula, the steamships head toward the open Ionian. The salt wind burns eyes and slaps cheeks at nervous intervals. The destroyers run back and forth like puppies around their master. From above they look like rowboats in difficulty, but they are corsairs, loaded with threatening torpedoes; they are the comfort of the troops with which they distract themselves from the frightful insidiousness of submarines. When they take off into the distance to certify the freedom of the route, the soldiers, who follow their departure from the parapets, become concerned. They appear and disappear between the waves, and just when they seem swallowed, they emerge again with vigor, lifting the tip of their prows. Then they return, playing like baby animals with their mother, with a lot of noise from the machinery, whistles and gusts, then the exuberance changes to calm reentry into order, alongside the slow, obese navigation of the two huge steamers, heads of the family who watch over them, keep them in check, and hold them close. Those four hunters, so showy in peacetime, ship-shape and flying flags from prow to poop, so fragrant with paint and suggestive of shiny stones that roll over the tranquil dark waters of the port, are now constrained to serious work, to swim unobtrusively, cleared of any decoration, loaded with powerful force.
On the other hand, the enemy ships as well, metal, color of the sea, have the same potential, and in fact, having doubled Capo Santa Maria di Leuca, everyone becomes aware of a perplexed sea, strewn with wrecks in the midst of which leaping dolphins shine silvery. The day before an English cargo ship had been sunk by a submarine and the survivors had been picked up by one of our fishing fleet. To this explanation the sailors on board added the worrying detail that our route is infested with German submarines with bases in the narrows of the nearby Greek coast.
But although the sailors are familiar with the destination of the voyage, they_re ignorant of the route, decided at the last moment by the commanders. Instead of skirting the Greek coast to enter the Corinth Canal, the steamships file to the south into the heart of the Mediterranean to circumnavigate Candia and go back up the Aegean between the Cyclades and the Sporades. And while they’re losing themselves on the surface, the horizon grows more vast, the sky more concave, the weather more clean, and the wave peaceful. At the early sunset the vault weighs heavy with red above the ink-black band cleft by the two steamships, close to one another, who from time to time launch whistles of liberating joy, releasing it into the sea with jets of water and steam. In the wake, at a prudent distance from the whirlpools, the dolphins are spouting, and with blows of their flanks they sit up to interrogate the sailors animating the poop of those steamships, which resemble immense cetaceans whose meal they are waiting for, leftovers, in company with the sharks, lying in voracious wait for rents caused by enemy ships.
The steamers stitch the route mile after mile, while on board life shows itself varied, and even diverted by a little theater, where scantily dressed chanteuses appear. Emilio disdains these shows and declines the insistent invitations of lieutenant Straw Moustache, preferring to start on deck silent conversations with the firmament. He doesn’t look at the sky with an eye curious for knowledge, as he did with his celestial observations during adolescent Venetian nights, but with the breath of an amorous passion translated into poetry, memories he tries to imprint with a pencil onto pieces of paper. [go back]

Gorizia: The dawn of 10 August surprises him in his sleep, leaning against the side of a ladder. He opens his eyes to the noise of maneuvers. The ship is running straight in the direction of the first rays. Climbing to the highest step allowed, he looks at the command bridge and at the sailors overseeing the navigation. From the crows’ nests, lookouts are peering ahead and exchanging words. The early glow brightens into the black and white of dawn, proceeds into colors, and achieves the tones of the first rays. The sun compresses light and heat into the water, or the sea keeps it in its embrace, until it is free, like a word, and becomes mouth or pupil against whose fire the prow directs either calm or haste, throwing off, right and left, the impediment of foam. It is the hour when everything is ahead and everything is golden, values which with the passing of time are corrupted into the after and the redundancy of the day.
Birds approach the ships, standing out against the dry massifs of rock which divide Crete like a red spine, and at the center Mount Ida appears, very high opposite the eternal tracery of the sea and in Emilio’s fantasy, enriched not by scholastic memories but by solitary, tumultuous reading.
The escort fleet, out of sight for hours, reappears when the sun is high, and the steam-ships head for the Cyclades. One of the destroyers pulls alongside and a crew member picks up a megaphone, calling out something not understood. On board the liner uneasiness spreads, out of fear of some sighting, and some are already thinking of getting into a life boat, when the ships are paused and from the powerful loudspeaker on the command bridge comes a peremptory "Attention, pay attention, everybody!", which allows everyone to hear clearly what the sailor wants to communicate: the message has just been received that yesterday, 9 August, Italian troops, having crossed the Isonzo, entered Gorizia. Hurrahs rise from the liner. Those on the second ship, following less than half a mile behind, paused as well, are forced to decipher that indistinct confusion carried by the wind, until the destroyer reaches them as well with the same news. The voyage proceeds more comfortably. [go back]

Tempest: In the Cyclades the sky darkens and the close air of a storm invades the labyrinth of islands, making the air sticky. The steamer begins to roll and a pair of flying gulls, grazing the deck, get caught in a tangle of lines. The swarm, who amidst tragic laughs becomes aware of the imminent disorder from which an abundant meal on the waves can be expected, veers at once, frightened into a unique maneuver, and flies off. The waves swell, preparing to assail the ship from every side. The helmsmen and crew double their watchfulness and the commandant issues orders which the boatswains spread.
The decks of the prow and poop must be freed from dangerous objects not secured. Things and rigging must be taken down from the overheads and elevated parts, hatchways closed, and sailors moved to previously planned, strategic points. In the space of a few minutes the waves rise quickly, one after another, until they’re above the first lines of portholes, smacking the ship’s sides with such vehemence that the liner rolls, the floor slips from underfoot, and some spray hits the railing. In the sky, indistinct at the limits of the sea, lightning is unleashed and thunder resounds, followed by dense torrents. A few waves pour over the prow and beat vertically, trying to drag everything they meet with them; others seem bent on running back to grab the poop, fleeing the thrust of the screw.
The steamer rears with the anger of a wild horse and drops into the void, causing an invincible sense of nausea to rise in the soldiers’ stomachs. Faces white and seized by the panic of nausea, they run up the ladders and throw themselves to the rail, setting off the sailors’ laughter. The officers of the Corps of the Expedition, fearing the hilarity of the crew, and even more, of the troops, have disappeared into the their lavatories, including the Commanding General, followed by an attendant with bucket and towel. Emilio, who is stretched out on deck in a sheltered and central location where oscillations are reduced to the minimum, is dislodged by a mariner who intimates he should go down to the hold with the others. Rising to obey, he feels the approach of nausea and is forced to run to the rail to unload uncontainable mouthsfull of vomit, punctuated by the sarcastic observations of the sailor, to whom, as Emilio wipes his mouth, he directs mental insults. A few hours later, the storm became placated as quickly as it had begun. The fury of the wind fled elsewhere, the refreshed sea recomposes itself in its own lap, and stretched out in the summer evening, puts its weapon back into its holster. [go back]

Thessalonica. Disembarking…: Emilio passes the night in short sleeps, seated or stretched out on the iron pavement covering the prow, links of an anchor chain for a pillow. Navigation proceeds among islets and rocks marked with lights and lighthouse colors, and time moves like a substance slipping past the ship. At dawn on 11 August the mainland is seen. In the orderly lights of the rays that from the starboard illuminate the coast of the gulf, many soldiers, having climbed on the deck area with the sleepy curiosity of an early morning at sea, look to the left with eyes that don’t yet know the vast, disdainful distance of Olympus with its burden of discarded Gods. A few hours later, confused with the brightness of the sky, the more intense white of upper Salonica is seen from the tip of the prow, its chromatic reflection diminishing as it slopes down to the feet of Mount Chortiàtis. Soon, able to be distinguished through the mystery, the names of the elevated Eptapyrion, the ancient walls with a few towers still standing, embracing the old city as if to protect it from the cliff of Chortiàtis; and the new city sparkling above the sea over which stands Torre Bianca, white to Venetian remembrance, or Torre del Sangue, red in Moslem memories.
The destroyers had returned to Italian bases, and now some tugs and English and French destroyers in fancy dress are meeting the steamers, which our own crews are decorating as well. The troops have orders to clean with vigor, breath and saliva anything that man can polish, weapons included. The officers don their most impressive uniforms and even the mules and a pair of bovines who’ve survived the needs of the kitchens are in feast-day adorned and patriotically festooned with our colors.
General Petitti di Roreto is a handsome man, imposing and authoritarian, which must be the quintessential qualification for the rank. He stands nailed to the command bridge, surrounded by his highest officers and those of the ship, with a white veil hanging behind his nape and lengthening his pink chubby face, which shows, as internal contrast, the very serious expression of two acute blue eyes, protected by the light eyebrows. He gives orders to have the soldiers lined up on the upper deck, fully equipped and in parade formation, then inspects the troops and yells through the megaphone that they must disembark with order and pride and execute with precision the orders given them by officers. He ends the communication by howling: "Italian soldiers, the world is watching you!" Inflamed by the howl, the usual many impose the three classic "Hurrah for the general!" following which everyone waits patiently for a very slow docking and a very long disembarking. [go back]

…and Parade: During the hours of waiting on the wharf, a ration of stewed beans in broth had to be consumed on foot, poured from a dipper by cooks’ helpers, who moved a pot on wheels quickly from one company to the next. Spoons and mess tins, cleaned as well as possibile with pieces of paper, had to be put back into knapsacks. The order is given to reform then march in line in the most rigorous silence. The parade moves. The widest streets in the city had to be traversed in a crowd packed under a blinding sun, waving Italian, French, and English flags, screaming evviva at them, alternating with what Emilio perceives the curses of their fellow soldiers, overheated, exhausted, and thirsty, who were preceding or following him, realizing that the line of march, now going down, now up, will never end, because they’re being forced to pass repeatedly along the same streets, to have the contingent’s numbers seem triple.
If the crowd of civilians, made up mostly of women and children, are behaving in a festive manner, the same can’t be said of the foreign contingents arranged along the sides of the route in motionless platoons, with orders to welcome the diverse components of the parade (among which many soldiers of color stand out) with "Present arms!" Seeing the new arrivals marching with difficulty from the heat and the weight of the packs, the orders to present arms are immediately overcome by the atavistic tradition of poking fun at recruits, to which was added the need of venting one’s own pride upon freshly arrived rivals who were stealing the crowd’s admiration. And superimposed over everything is the not so good reputation enjoyed by Italians outside Italy, where they are known almost exclusively as poor immigrants.
It is soon obvious that the Italians do not please their foreign companions. At a narrow passageway in front of a reviewing stand, packed with civil and military authorities, the members of a French platoon begin to laugh and call our troops "Macaroni!" Our soldiers reply with noisy raspberries, comradely tolerated by the lieutenants escorting the march. Twenty minutes later, the same platoon, of which Emilio was a part, finds itself filing past the same point, and the French repeat the insult in a more sustained voice, followed by an echo of most incisive raspberries. A few meters further, some English troops show off a few gold English coins, pretending to offer them as an act of charity. Then one of ours, moving toward the reviewing stand and stretching out a hand, is able to make smoothly away with one, to the song of "Thank you!" The robbed Britisher pales and runs after him, receiving only pointed shoves. As the platoon goes off and the Englishman insists on following his own money, it passes quickly from hand to hand among winks and glances of understanding, until it finds shelter in a jacket pocket. The Englishman, disoriented, begins to complain to one of our officers who’s been following the action and pushes him away, pretending not to understand what he’s saying. As our platoon is filing in front of the same reviewing stand the third time, our soldiers have changed their positions cautiously. The French repeat the same insult followed by the same raspberries, while in the English platoon livid, hardened faces, eyes half closed and lips compressed, scrutinize our men, marching as if nothing is happening, faces turned as much as possibile to the other side of the street.
A little further on, some Scots can’t restrain themselves from the shameful act of whirling and lifting their womanly, clownish skirts. At this point, two or three of ours, already worked up by heat, boredom, and thirst, can’t stand it any longer, explode out of formation and throw themselves on the Scots, landing stellar kicks on their asses and punching out the others. The immediate intervention of officers of the respective nationalities keep that planned expedition from degenerating into a saloon ruckus. The platoon reforms and again takes up parade step. Emilio, spectator and accomplice, is surrounded by the others and tries to escape the heat and boredom by looking at the mechanical proceeding of his own steps, the tips of his boots, and the confetti coloring the street. Finally the snake of honor comes out onto a peripheral country road and goes off into its dust. A few kilometers and the zone reserved for the encampment is reached. It is now evening, and the operation of setting up camp is the final and hardest effort of that day. [go back]

Civilized or Uncivilized Land?: Despite almost a year having passed since the English-French landing at Salonicco, the new Balkan front has not yet been organized. Troops and materials have been brought from Gallipoli, which, taken from the Turks in April of 1915, had been evacuated, after the impossibility of forcing open the Dardanelles had been established. The allied troops are already tired and tried by the preceding campaigns, and not animated in the least by any reciprocal spirit of camaraderie. Besides Serbs, Russians, Romanians, and Italians, they are made up of British and French contingents but, more than insular components of the Kingdom, or European citizens of the Republic, they are colonial troops of every race and color.
The encampments are scattered throughout the city surroundings. The numerous sentinels keep the unauthorized from wandering free, a prudent measure, not only because of the need to keep the opposing groups intact, but to defend them from the hostility of the local population as well. The inhabitants could be called civilians only in the sense that they don’t wear a military uniform. Ignoring the few thousand Hebrews who live in the city, dedicating themselves to business, the others inhabitants are very poor, used to a low level of life, and having all the characteristics of people apt to be used as instruments for any kind of evil purpose. There is no way to dissuade these people from being interested in a few coins. Between the so-called ideals that animate the city’s population, and the primitive condition of those who have been disinherited, there is an abyss. That there are French or English, Russians or Italians, on their territory, makes no difference; to them they are all foreigners with whom they share nothing in material, moral, or cultural terms. The fact that Greece continues to remain neutral notwithstanding the pressure of blackmail from the Entente, contributes to the impatience and independent spirit of the population. In the Court and among the nobility, Germanic tendencies show through. But the liberal elite looks to an alliance with the Entente as an occasion for nationalistic revenge on yesterday’s enemies, Bulgaria and Turkey, with the additional goal of the country’s modernization. In any case, they are ideals that remain completely foreign to the masses.
A specific and neutral concept, used by specialized humanistic sciences and banally drawn from both mass media and the dilettante culture, states that each people, however primitive, has a civilization of its own. This view diverges from the differing and generic concept, more widespread, instinctive, and based on common sense, which holds that one can speak of civilization only in reference to a society in a high level of development. One must be careful not to assign the same name to different realities. The confusion between special concepts and generic concepts is at the heart of pseudo-discussions promoted by the mass media, having as common protagonists the people for whom such techniques are designed. These discussions are typical of today’s modern liberal democratic states, based mostly on consensus organized into rules, in a state of confusion owing to the widespread, often presumptuous ignorance of people who are unfit to profit from any discussion at all, and are therefore easy to manipulate; with the goal becoming consensus itself, so much so that one can affirm that the democratic state rises and falls just on this consent/ignorance. On the other hand the primitive state and the illiberal one are both founded on ignorance and/or violence, no consensus being needed. In referring to the scant civility of the place our contingent finds itself at this moment, I have used the concept in its generic sense. [go back]

Foreign Land: The encampment of the Italians is placed further off than the others in an area of barely waving stubble from which with difficulty the city rises confused, and, more distinctly, a stripe of sea. Undone by the overheated fatigue of the day, the soldiers fall asleep under the tents, experiencing shivers of relief, breathing the night breeze and hardly noticing they had their backs supported on a sea of vibrating sticks.
The next morning, in an air pregnant with old salty odors, and molested by insane coastal insects, and yet a foreign and new air, a natural curiosity would push anyone, to pop into Salonicco or at least to the closest foreign encampments, or to reach the light of the sea, but the sentinels’ guns did their work of dissuasion. Of those few who, suffering from the isolation, were able to slip out of camp to poke about in the city and elsewhere, more than one didn’t return: found bled by a stiletto to be exhibited proudly to a wife or some Greek Moslem, or strangled by a thief who stole a wallet, or stabbed in the belly in a banal fight in an inn. Or never again found. Episodes which fed, first among the troops and then in the fatherland, the legend of a particular reciprocal aversion between Italians and Greeks. If anything, the opposite is true, especially today, the troubles of two world wars having ceased. Between the two peoples there is affection, perhaps because of somatic affinities, or the similarity of Mediterranean customs. [go back]

Twenty Thousand: The regiments remain prisoners in their fiery encampments and the carts that go into the city to pick up food and equipment need to be escorted by armed guards. All around them, no spring, no stream, only stubble that yellows even eyes beneath a sun, cooking tents from sunrise to sunset, and under the tents a crawling and whorling of only a few species of infinite individual exemplars of insects, especially ants, flies, and mosquitoes who enter according to the hour. In the morning, mini-armies of worker ants, enthusiastic about having found an easy way to store up provisions for the coming winter. In midday, when the sun keeps us from going out, there are swarms of insatiable flies covering everything, and every part of our bodies smells just like them. At night, it is the turn of two species of mosquito: the smaller, semi-invisible, furtive, and fastidious Culex, who is common and harmless and the slightly larger, elegant and frightening Anopheles.
After about ten days under those conditions, when everyone is predicting that cases of psychic hydrophobia are about to explode, orders arrive to break camp. Meanwhile, transported by the same steamers, disembarked at Salonicco, and on the way to the same encampment, the other half of the division has arrived, including the machine gun sections and sections of field artillery with howitzers, bringing the contingent to a total of twenty thousand men. All accompanied by a few health and sanitation experts.
On 20 August 1916, in twilight to avoid the heat of the day, the 35th Div. begins its nocturnal march to a destination in the Kruska-Balkan region, a hundred kilometers as the crow flies from Salonicco on the Greek-Bulgarian border between lake Dojran and the river Struma, established by the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 following a war lost by Bulgaria to Serbia, Greece, and Romania. Salonicco is left behind, a mystery yet to be discovered, a white mass, fascinating and inviolate, and Emilio, buried in that multitude of infantry, felt disappointed and discouraged. [go back]

Sleep: One after another the companies proceed in a column, a snake stretching black and endless beneath the stars, now rising, now sinking in the undulating terrain. During the first hours of march, lights, fires, and the evening disorder of other encampments are seen. Then, in the nothingness, hours and hours without a village. With the passage of time, bodies slow and minds are invaded with sleep. Legs beat rhythmic and unending numbers of paces like pistons activated on a layer of dust, aware of its smell but not its substance, producing only a rustle that covers the desert voice of the crickets. The starlight barely distinguishes the pallor of the road from the nothingness of the plain. Mind and eyes are vacant, one seems to be walking in a void. Even the dawn is coming up like nothing, to make brighter the file of regiments, who are walking through its light without seeing it.
Upon reaching the first stop, the sun is high. While the latecomers are arriving, the tents must be set up, and everyone throws themselves onto the covers, stretched out to give them a little comfort; but they can sleep only for a few hours because of the heat. Outside was called Druma, perhaps the name of some village, but nothing could be seen, only land overgrown with brushwood and the remains of fodder as far as the eye could see, in a deathly silence. Here and there pairs of vultures are wolfing down the carcasses of horses, keeping the impatience of crows at a distance.
At night they take up the march again, and soon a need for sleep takes over their limbs, more compelling than hunger, thirst, or anger: a desire to abandon the world, seductive to the body and resigned to that knowledge, that deceptive sleep which overcomes all effort and cancels the instinct for self-preservation. Another hour passes, many legs fold, a few fall to the ground, not caring about anything, without even the fear of being left alone, a possible victim of an assault by nocturnal animals or attack by brigands. Toward dawn, most of those who have persisted welcome the appearance of the first heights of Macedonia, which very quietly spread out under the binoculars at the pass. Meanwhile, the distance between soldier and soldier lengthens and the column stretches, until in the rear it breaks into numerous segments. Entire platoons drop to the ground, cut down by the first rays, and remain motionless in the position of their fall. Anyone able to continue must also make the effort of going around the heaps of bodies and packs obstructing the way. In broad daylight those who can still stand up are less than a half and, having reached the second stopping place, let themselves fall straight down onto the stubble, lacking the strength to stretch out a cover. Emilio is among these. Before abandoning himself to the earth, he is able to read the name Akeklis on a beam nailed on a pole obliquely, and to look around a village of hovels made of mud, straw, and shit, which seemed to have been built by birds.
At the new sunset, officers and non-coms do a body count, and give a weak order to continue, only the semblance of an exhortation; but they’re unable to stimulate the soldiers, and only maximum pride keeps them from appearing sleepy, while a few of them, not holding up after the wakeup call, have lost all control and lie motionless on the scratching dry twigs, until in the evening twilight the vehicles of their superiors arrive. Without getting out and with the voices hoarse from yelling and humidity, they order them to get up under threat of demotion, give orders to the officers still on foot and quickly continue around toward the other units. They agree to allow a rest of a few minutes each hour. Whoever has marks of rank on his shoulders or sleeves must keep the troops from sleeping. But many infantrymen don’t move. Conquered by deepest sleep, they don’t even hear the usual insults and ritual threats voiced by the sergeants, and end up left there. On the following dawn, the order is given to the marching troops to proceed slowly so as to be reached by those still late in sight of the third stop. [go back]

Hamlet’s rations: In the space of a few hours, the columns regain their continuity, and under the strong sun of noon make a feeble entrance into Alezia, a squalid village built in stone on the lowest slopes of the Kursa mountain, whose peasants observe the troops with weak, curious eyes. Emilio’s battalion camps at the edge of the first houses, on a terrace that opens out over a torrent of white water, whose banks are slippery with green gelatin, into which the soldiers descend to sink their overheated feet in disgust and relief. Everyone having climbed to a dry spot, the distribution of rations is ordered.
While everyone is scraping his own mug, some have noticed that here and there, a few large light-colored rocks are sticking out above ground and shining in the sun. The most suspicious goes to look at one close up, scratches a little dirt away with a spoon handle, and unexpectedly jumps back, overturning the mug’s contents onto it, and screaming a curse against the Virgin Mary. At this, the onlookers, then immediately the other soldiers, realize they’ve pitched their tents and eaten their meal right in the middle of a cemetery. Many mugs and spoons, set down comfortably on the protruding skulls, fly into the river below, along with angry insults aimed at those who had chosen to camp just at that spot. One of the sergeants cried that he had nothing to do with it, after all, it wasn’t the village cemetery, which he had already noted above the last of the houses.
After a quick inspection by the officers, the place is judged to be a military cemetery, certainly containing the fallen from one of the preceding Balkan wars. Vast but without markers, rather than a real cemetery it seems a dump of bones thrown at random, and superficially covered with the pity of time. The officers take note, and decide that, when we get to Snewce, they will arrange for a decent burial of the remains. The macabre incident encourages us to take down the tents immediately and take up the march again, in worse conditions of hunger, sleep, and fatigue. In the evening, with the help of the last efforts of light, they arrive at the camp at Snewce, assembly and distribution center for Allied troops on the Kruska-Balkan front, near Lake Dojran, where everyone can catch his breath and close his eyelids for a reasonable time. [go back]

Anopheles Maculipennis: The division is left in peace for a week, during which the accursed witch makes her massive appearances among the troops, having accompanied them secretly on the long march, after first having infecting them on the plain of Salonicco: germ of the swamps, daughter of military disaster and of the lack of caring of the civilian population, who forever is stagnant in the same neighborhoods. The shivers of malaria fever pervade bodies and souls, and the only field hospital, which provides all Health for the division, is filled with sick and with quinine pills. This is only the tip of a wide mount of torment for soldiers without adequate support, in a war fought hand and foot with skin starting to turn waxen, and eyes that burn from artificial coal, yellow as a fake cat.
But at Snewce an intense military action is progressing fervently all the same. The English troops who until this moment had taken care of the front are leaving and must be replaced by the Italians. The week of light duty and the less stifling piedmont climate allow our men to rest and proceed with calm to the logistic services department. Everything is ready for a war not ours, to defend a distant unloved land, and the soldiers do not feel like doing it.
30 August. The Italian contingent has orders to take itself to the front, and sets off through unexpected, pleasant little hills strewn with villages and covered with a dense vegetation whose sweet-sour smell comes unexpected. A shame that the malaria has by now spread into their fiber and will thrive, because they will have had the occasion to enjoy, at least for short intervals, a natural oasis.[go back]

The Bashlani Oasis They march in silence through the hilly landscape all in movement, traced by the flight of sacred storks gathering and preparing themselves for migrating; the men sticking to the street dust that penetrates the nose with the bitterness of the bordering fig groves, and the giant animals, free, enclosed only by the horizon. Every so often they encounter soft sighs and sips of lullabies sung by the peasant women trotting on donkeys, who leave behind their poorly embroidered shoulders a trail of love songs, as if peace reigned on the asperities of these mountains. But in those contested zones, man lives as far as his eye sees, or as far as the feet of his domestic animal can take him in a few hours. Or perhaps he sees more, but he resigns himself. At the base of the hills, plowed fields and well cared-for gardens alternate with orchards and vineyards around a small white house with courtyards where water bubbles from springs, and leaves of tobacco are being exposed to sun on trellises and lattices. New and fresh surroundings that attest to the existence of energetic and sociable people.
A providential pause for a few days in the village of Bashanli gives Emilio the chance to barter stacks of huge bread loaves, which abound in the camp kitchen, for chickens, eggs, figs, and grapes; all easily available in those hills. The peasants, having overcome their early hesitations, come to the camp to propose with elegant mimicry their products in exchange not for money but for objects. All the shoemakers in town had to be called to refurnish the battalion, this time for hard money, with the greatest number possibile of shoes, and to resole as many as they could in those few days, for at the moment, too many soldiers are marching around with their big toes out. [go back]

Geography and History: Morning in September. The Italians occupy the front line po-sitions opposite the Bulgarian enemy in Hodja Malè, in place of the English who, as they leave, look at us with envy, so that our troops consider that front not to be especially dangerous. The almost total absence of shots in the vicinity is confirmed, except for a very distant echo of cannon. But that same day, the crackle of guns heard in the vicinity, coming from Bashanli just left at our backs, seems to be a proof of it; and a little later we come to find out that it was a settling of accounts between a retiring English patrol and the mayor of the village who, already suspected and now caught in the flagrant crime of espionage for the Bulgarians, has been killed.
Our contingent is established half-way up the north-west slope of the Kursà chain, from where it can dominate the space of a valley that separates us from the enemy, established along the frontier Kerkini chain, marking a stretch of the Greek-Bulgarian border, and continuing to the east, widening into the valley of the Struma. On the distant left, the Anglo-French cannons echo by day and sparkle by night, aimed at the northern coast of Lake Dojran, half Greek, half Serb, in a zone considered the geographic and geometric center of Greek, Bulgar, and Serb Macedonia. This is geography, harsh and diseased.
But let’s insert ourselves into the chaos of Balkan history in the period before the Great War, characterized by a series of wars of independence, led by liberal nobles and by more or less noble fanatics of various nationalities and ethnic groups, against the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, and sometime Russia as well, unleashed from time to time with the goal creating a Great Serbia, a Great Bulgaria, and a Great Greece. With the victorious war of ‘12, made in common with the Balkan states against the Turks, Greece and Serbia acquired the greater part of Macedonia at the expense of Bulgaria. In the lost war of revenge of ‘13 against yesterday’s allies, Bulgaria had to cede them even that little bit of Macedonia that was left to her, except for the region of Petric and an insignificant port on the Aegean. In September of ‘15 the Bulgarians aligned themselves with the Central Powers, hoping to remake themselves and obtain a more substantial outlet on the sea. Shortly, Bulgaria and the Austro-German armies had invaded and wounded Serbia and were threatening the Greek borders. To the east, Turkey had blocked the Dardanelles and isolated Russia making the war difficult for the Anglo-French. Thus, the forces of the Entente are arrayed along an endless front that runs from Albania on the Black Sea, of which Monastir, Lake Dojran, and Kruska-Balkan are the strong points. And this is history, no less harsh and diseased, and as irremediably repetitive as the doings in an anthill. [go back]

The Monastery of Deli-Hasan: On the left the cannons continue, on the right repeated puffs of smoke disperse into the sky, echoing the intermittent whistles of the locomotives, which between one cannon blast and another, are pulling their own cars bravely along through eastern Macedonia, Thrace, and, war permitting, European Turkey, as far as Istanbul. In the middle of the valley lies the Bukova, a torrent which further on at a swampy service port joins the same lake into which the Struma enters majestically, arriving from the proud heart of Bulgaria. Everywhere the vegetation is exuberant but entangled like a jungle, showing the lack of care, because of continuous wars.
A few days later, Emilio’s battalion is ordered to take itself to a nearby promontory thrusting into the valley like a massive spur, from which one can watch over the Struma plain, and on whose border rises, squat and large, the monastery of Deli-Hasan; whose monks, exasperated by the continuous border disputes, have abandoned it. The troops settle in, placing guards to the left and right. The distance from the enemy remains reassuring, and finding themselves able to sleep in austere little cells contributes a sense of religious meditation to the soldiers, in which Emilio as well falls asleep. [go back]

Wolves: In the heart of night and a silence which even crickets don’t dare profane, repeated howls are heard. The sentries begin to worry, and peer into the darkness as if looking for the enemy. When to the howls are added noises of large numbers of animals at a gallop, they aim their torches, and see through dense bushes just a short distance away, the light of many eyes; moving aside quickly, all together, to one side, then to the other, as if pacing back and forth in a long cage. Unexpectedly, all those eyes turn to the sentries, then go for them with a single nocturnal torch. The sentries waste no time with alarms, and unload their guns toward the pack which, although scattered, continues galloping instinctively, until they are caught between the lookouts. The ready appearance of more sentries, napping behind the door awaiting duty, and their shots into the madness, more than making victims among the wolves, disorient them, force them to desist, and retreat into the nearby forest. Here the beasts pause, reform, and driven by an enthusiasm that makes no truce, again take up pacing to and fro, giving the impression of intending to renew the attack at any moment. The sentries lose no time. Having pulled out a machine gun, they storm the pack with fire; they flee, leaving many bodies in the undergrowth.
Night after night, all the detachments in the area realize that they’ve been infiltrated by an enemy more frightening than the army facing them: a starved, ferocious enemy who, divided into squadrons, insinuates itself between one lookout point and the next. In attacking us, it filters into the encampments, devouring everything it finds and causing chaos in the support areas, penetrating even to the aid stations, attracted by the smell of blood. During the prolonged absence of man, the animals have proliferated into an army which, led by their own corporals, can take over in the darkness of the hills. But (and this is the positive note) they also contribute to our keeping a distance from the enemy, who, like us, remain constantly occupied in transforming the war into a hunt. Shots echoing a great distance through the mountains are still being aimed at packs of those wild animals, who fill with sadness the hot nights at the end of summer with their howls, so that the whole valley is weeping at their song. [go back]

Revenge of the Wolves: Division Command, informed about the unexpected obstacle and made wary because of that difficulty of Mother Nature, orders every battalion to organize a hunt; but then he sees the scanty results, and considers the danger if those four-legged partisans, resolved to defend their own territories and satisfy their terrible appetites at any price, were to be left unharmed. Thus, he turns to more radical, subtle methods. Around the monastery, in the nearby woods, and along the entire front line, pieces of horse meat are strewn, injected with strychnine. On the first night, the howls have already lessened, reduced gradually to the still sadder cries of those few, weaker examples who, for reasons of natural hierarchy, have been kept by their own pack leaders from feeding on that manna of protein fallen from the sky. Inspections reveal bodies of wolves and jackals lying everywhere, tortured by spasms of poison, a unique and definitive cure for hunger upon which man cannot improve, and on which local raptors banquet enthusiastically, risking the same end as their own prey.
But very soon the large number of carrion decomposing in the Macedonial rays of a still summery sun was poisoning the air of the hills. The sparse, motionless packs took vengeance, then liquefied, diffusing in the stink and with the help of every possibile means: air, insects, worms, and running water; the infected atoms restoring to the executioner the punishment received. To the epidemic of malaria that was spreading with intermittence, and to the one of camp typhus beginning to appear in the trenches because of the filth, and the clothing infested with parasites, are added epidemics of abdominal typhus and hepatitis. Many soldiers look jaundiced, yellow of cheek, eye, and edge of cornea, while others writhe with belly pain, experiencing the fever’s shiver. The only field hospital in the camp, of only about fifty cots, was like a place of cure for rare, exceptionally deteriorated men, staffed by a mass of supermen immune to everything. It held more than two hundred patients, with no reinforcements of doctors or nurses. The sick are in practice assisted by their own comrades, who have the duty of administering quinine pills and burning pyrethrum powders inside the tent where, if it keeps the Anopheles at a distance, everyone gets toxic. At the same time, a use for war: health personnel are working on experiments for a typhoid vaccine, which seems it might give good results. [go back]

A Pleasant Armored Invasion: The wolves having thinned out, the zone is invaded by tortoises which had already been noticed in large numbers and, it is said, had furnished succulent food for the English. The Italians, to whom just the thought of drowning them in a pot caused repulsion, enjoy playing with them, improvising slow racing games like babies with toy autos. They are quite numerous and everyone finds them under foot; and even Emilio, who had never seen so many beasts like these, so hard and so nice and gentle, spends much of his time observing them as they squeak among the rocks on every path.
The season spins with its age-old rhythm, and so the soldiers, seeing the rain, remember their own countryside in autumn. Rain, trees, mountains, the subject is the same and always reminds you of something, but this is a different war. They feel tired, distant, watch their years of youth being lost, and they hope at least that the war will soon be as exhausted as the body. Watch and rest alternate, and every so often they get sent on reconnaissance. In October the battalion is transferred to the nearby Dedelì, then to Karasouli Nord, and in November to reinforce Ezendzili, always staying at the edges of the Bukova valley where it seems they are to spend the second winner of the war.
Toward the end of the month, Emilio as well is struck by fever and malarial sweats. The doctor, after stuffing him with quinine, has him transported by auto-ambulance to the small hospital 141 in Bashanli. The fever disappears the day he’s admitted, but the quartermaster is kept for observation. He spends time chatting with a French officer hospitalized after a frightening attack of fever during a tour of inspection. On 25 November onto his cot bounces the news that our division must change front, and that the battalion has already entered Snewce for a general muster. Emilio immediately obtains permission to return to his company, which he gets on 27 November just before the new winter. [go back]

Again, a little History: 28 November. The division is leaving the Kruska-Balkan front. In an early stretch, the route coincides with that of three months earlier. The goal is to reach Monastir in Serbian Macedonia, to help the Entente get behind the backs of the Austro-Germans and the Bulgars: who in October of ‘15 had beaten the Serb army, dispersed them, and forced them to take refuge in Albania. Since August of ‘15, the Entente had tried to bring in Bulgaria against Turkey, along with Romania and Greece, by offering them part of Macedonia, which, after the lost war of ‘13, the country of roses had had to cede to Serbia. In exchange, Serbia would receive compensation in Croatia, Dalmatia, and Albania at the expense of Italy. But the Bulgar intervention on the side of Austria and Germany had cancelled the project, while a large part of Serbian Macedonia was passing into Bulgarian hands just the same, thanks to Bulgar-Austro-German military successes.
At this point a disagreement had arisen between foreign minister Sonnino, who favored an intervention in aid of the Serbs with a landing in Albania, making sure of our nearest Balkan interests, and Cadorna (read "the Monarchy"), favorable to an expedition into Greek Macedonia to guarantee our most distant Middle East interests, looking forward to a more equitable partition of the Ottoman Empire than that already imposed by the Anglo-French to their own advantage. If in December of ‘15 Sonnino had scored by sending an expeditionary force to Durazzo where the remains of the Serb army had been collected by our fleet, in August of ‘16 Cadorna had the better of it, able to send to Salonicco the division whose operations I’m narrating. Toward the end of ‘16, while the Anglo-French are obtaining varied success in the heart of the Ottoman Empire, and in eastern Macedonia the operations have bogged down, in western Macedonia, where the invaders have concentrated their forces, the war heats up. Therefore, it is necessary to direct the 35th Div. of Italy to the Monastir front. [go back]

The Thousand and One March: Between the front of Kruska-Balkan and that of Monastir there is an unfortunate space of more than one hundred fifty kilometers of plateaus and mountains, more or less desolate, ancient memories of spaces, rocks from primordial chaos. Autumn has brought with it weather horrid with insistent rains, which begin falling the moment the troops start to march from Snewce. The equipment is poor and worn out, and the supply services are soon revealed as insufficient. The cloth of the tents is worn and ripped, the soldiers have broken shoes; they’re tired, filthy, and tortured by parasites. Before meeting the supply wagons with tinned meat and ship’s biscuits meant to renew our personal reserves, the division goes for about forty kilometers, after which each of the various units continues with supplies, rhythm, and destiny of its own, and makes plans to meet at Monastir. Marches are made by day, in air saturated with humidity and patience, on a ribbon of the continuous present, running toward a horizon of plains and uplands where only positions change; an infinite sameness of men and rocks. No one may stop, every soldier is trailed, the non-com drivers drink orders from the officers and raise fans of mud with small quick trucks, braying hurry to the troops intoxicated with fatigue.
The Command surely has its inhumane reasons to have an army reduced to those conditions undertake a march of more that one hundred fifty kilometers. But the fact that for long stretches along the route, there is a functioning railroad which our troops aren’t allowed to use, leaves us perplexed. In all religions there are mysteries to be resolved only by initiates. For soldiers, the arcane knowledge is revealed to a modest number of persons with many marks of power on their shoulder boards. To the troops is left the comfort of faith, or hope in the clairvoyance of superiors, or if they’re still able in spite of everything to recognize the dulled life they’re leading, the orgasm of indignation, which like any orgasm, lasts a few seconds and changes nothing. If it were only out of malice, one could suppose that the convoys are reserved for the white Anglo-French troops on the same itinerary. It is certain that many units of color have been seen marching under the same conditions as the Italians. And where there is no railway there is at least a dusty one, scored by the bouncing troop trucks, where there’s room only for rosy sons of Albion and rustic French faces with eyes winking with Napoleonic flashes.
Toward evening and under the rain, Gramatna is reached, but many are left strewn along the road. Those who can, drag themselves along to collapse at the camp during the night, or the next day: others remain where they drop and need to be collected by the Health wagons. The Command, forced into hurrying, pushes to get them moving again, but then is made to listen to officers closest to the troops, who are able to agree on a rest of two days; during which it’s possible for the soldiers to use the heat of their skins to dry out their soaked clothing and other poor things in their tents. [go back]

As far as Topci: 1st December. The march resumes under the fury of rain and malaria, everything decayed into a single common condition. Under the ripped canopies of tents, the Anopheles sucked from arms abandoned like dead algae on the fetid swamp of bodies. Many of the sick have remained at Gramatna in the little hospital without anything, others have preferred to go on even with the fever in hope of a better hospital or better rest; so that during the march, one part of the troop is employed in holding up the other part, unconscious phantasms who limp mechanically. Every trace of elevated land has disappeared; one moves in a plain of mud that sticks to the soles, and all around, the croaking of swamps. Two days later the forward lookouts reach the town of Sarigòl. The others arrive in slow procession. Here a rest of a few days is granted, during which Health sends the sickest to Salonicco by auto-ambulance and Subsistence distributes reserve rations useful for a few days, while mules arrive with a camp kitchen, bread, pasta, and meat.
6 December. The march begins again under a driving rain on roads that are torrents of mud. Stop at Nares and resumption on the following day to find the same conditions of clime and of spirit, arriving toward evening at Topci, all places with no houses nor shelter of any kind, only a name. On 8 December the march continues toward Jenitze-Vardar, always leaving along the road more soldiers covered with mud. And so, marching from name to name, one goes on.
The haste with which the Command wants to pour troops into the crucible of Monastir, occupied by the Entent and at the center of ferocious battles, doesn’t allow time to wait for latecomers who are at this point being scraped together to by the Anglo-French autoambulances as well, who like a mechanical broom search up and down the itinerary to clean it of infected soldiers and take them to the Italian hospital at Salonicco, capacity two hundred beds, where they are already accumulating, one on top of another, many more hundreds of sick men. [go back]

Alexander: The regions being passed through are more or less without roads, except for the few provisory tracks which the armies of the Entente have traced in the dust for their use. The rains, following the natural fate of the place and season, fall inexhaustibly, rendering fields swamps and roads rivers. A little after leaving Topci, the numerous remains of what had been Via Egnazia are encountered, which used to connect Durazzo to Salonicco. The stone slabs which the Roman legions put there two millennia ago are still in place, but our legions must be content with more modest mud roads.
In the middle of the morning, the rain stops like a miracle and a glimmer of sunshine unexpectedly silvers the clouds. One ray makes a breach over nearby sparkles of water, but a moment later an angry plug stops it up, seals it in black, and orders new rains. In that caprice of light, the troops have reached the back of one of the first branches of the Vardar at a point where it widens almost enough to form a lake: and in the historical reminiscences of Emilio, the walking poet, an image appeared to him as in a dream; the image of a boy bathing in those waters, certainly in summer, drawing from them the extraordinary benefit and exceptional strength to make of himself the greatest and most fortunate leader of Macedonia. But the sight of the current conditions of the place, battered by bad weather and invaded by mud, immediately dumps the still practical quarter-master into depressing reality: the rains have so swollen the river, which has gone far beyond its banks, covering the bridge connecting them with at least a half meter of water.
There’s no time to wait for the waters to fall; if anything, they’re rising, and our leaders have imposed a mandatory order to cross the bridge no matter what, not only staying attentive ourselves, but also guiding the mules to the center wherever the railings are missing. In order not to be swept away by the current, the soldiers hold each other by the hand in a long chain, succeeding in crossing unharmed. But the same can not be said of many unhappy quadrupeds who, overloaded with everything and left to themselves, slip off the bridge, ending up swept away by whirlpools.
A little later, Jenitze-Vardar is reached at last, a real inhabited village, enclosed in its little territory, a tiny islet between two branches of the river. It lies at the end of a stretch where, to the already overwhelming exhaustion of the early portion, has been added the unspeakable suffering of not getting our unfeared army even half way to its goal. [go back]

Hunger: The brigade seeks the relaxation of a meal in a corner of the island, all rocks, and free of any resources. In the afternoon, women are being called from the town so that in exchange for a few loaves, they would repair, even crudely, the most obvious rips in the tents. The women, who had been shown a torn tent so they would understand, arrived with children, who started to go through the feverish, bedridden sick, asking for pieces of bread. The work goes on until late evening. The night passes, flogged by bad weather, as if rain, wind, and river mean to blow the island itself away. In the morning, camp struck and ready to leave, notice drops like a rock: they can’t continue because the rain has so swollen the river as to make the second fording impassible. The Command has no means of resolving the problem, so it saves itself the effort of conducting any kind of prospective morphologic and meteorological investigation of the route or sending out even the least prediction.
Expressions are coined, cliches used as orders. One of these must accompany all troops from the beginning of a venture, in this case: "Onward, no matter what, even to defeat". Once inculcated, the same phrase must be kept to the end. But not wanting to destroy its own army through its own stupidity (only because missing the appointment at the near-by slaughterhouse of Monastir would cause the monarchy to forfeit the right to share any future booty of war), the Command decides to support a last delay in the project; and orders a wait by radiotelegraph, just as one might order someone not to kill himself.
Blocked and isolated at Jenitze-Vardar, our infantry quickly makes acquaintance with another horseman of the Apocalypse, met with at other times but not yet suffered from in person. The contingent stays in that neighborhood for seven days, from 9 to 15 December, exhausting in the first three days the contents of the kitchens, the boxes of meat that a few mules, fortunate at the ford, still had hanging from their sides, and the provision from personal reserves. There’s nothing left but to requisition a few lean hens, and the sheep and goats of the island, whose woody, gamy flesh is enough only for one more day. Keep in mind that, to feed for a few days a brigade of six thousand men, no matter how reduced by losses, not even one of those florid herds fording Texan rivers would have sufficed, mooing their hymns to the sun in the movies: any member of which would have so pleased the future and comfortably situated middleman in coal, Emilio Magnanini.
The next three days are dedicated first to patience, then to suffering. There’s nothing left but muddy water running everywhere. Toward dawn on 16 September, Subsistence is able to ford the first branch of the river, whose waters had begun to ebb, and to hurriedly distribute its black moldy bread: part stone, part poultice; devoured by the peasants of the place as well, who like stray dogs are gathered around with women and little children at the edges of camp, awaiting some kind of restitution of their credit. Immediately after, into that stressed and malnourished corps, orders were shouted: take up the march again. [go back]

What does fontana mean? Culture is a dream: as powerful as money, but impoverished, a loser. It is a poverty reserved for the few. The many who make money cheat and know it: they are contradictory and dissociated people, false objects sold for the pleasure of the multitude. In bygone times, it was instead a rich, dominant reality, only counted on fingers, but those of a powerful hand.
With another day of march on this journey toward ideal but not romantic borders, Emilio and brigade reach the village of Alaklike, at the edge of the ruins of Pella. The quarter-master, perhaps the only one of the troops to recognize which vestiges of ground this ignorant line of army ants are trampling into the soil, notes here and there the mutilated marbles of statues, ornaments, and columns, scattered in the vegetation like silence after music. And, as he marches, he’s again struck by the sound of imagined historic memories; but this time, rather than fantasizing alone, he has the lieutenant at his side, to whom he narrates the motionless, formidable deeds guarded by that silence. The officer, educated and sincere, reaches over and puts an arm around his shoulders; and as they exchange reciprocal memories of readings, Alexander’s birth, the palace plot that cut short Phillip’s life, and still more episodes, on their faces appears that patient expression of cultured men, caused by the feeling of an inexorable destiny of decay.
They notice a heap of worn, mossy stone from which plentiful water is flowing. On the side of that living ruin, there’s an inscription in modern Greek and English, which speaks of the remains of a monumental fountain Alexander had built. As kings do with the people, joking and cheating with their fate until they themselves are destroyed by the game: History as well enjoys itself that way, and after having spread a great civilization, turns it upside down, crumbles it, and restricts it to those few murmuring rocks that the lieutenant points out to the soldiers, inviting them to come close. Those of his platoon crowd around to observe that clearing, not with the innocence of enchanted savage children around a modern technical miracle of which they understand nothing and nevertheless notice the potential fascination, but, with the bored indifference of someone obeying orders out of habit. Only in the eyes of a few more attentive, fixed on the clearing, is any curiosity awakened, as fleeting as a blade of grass.
After a few moments of distraction and sips of water, the march goes on, through that famous land become a land of ruin, whose warrior protector himself might no longer recognize. But if by chance he did recognize it, might he deny at once everything the spirit of Aristotle had taught him; or instead would he deduce that decadence through the master’s teaching? [go back]

The Force of Destiny: The torture continues like an iron wire to Vertekop, Vodena, and Vladova, breaking up the line with rests of a few hours in mud. The horde of sick stretches out its tail, prolongs the march, and reduces the healthy component of the sections to a sparse forward guard. Vodena is the first Serbian city encountered, Vladova a picturesque village. And right here, as the calendar marks 17 September and the troops are lined up breathless, ready to take up again their eternal, now unique function of marching in that semi-lost, uselessly beautiful solitude: an officer on horseback, with the insignia of a General goes by, in front of Emilio, whom Emilio recognizes immediately although doubting his rank. Since leaving for Macedonia, Emilio has lost track of his fellow soldiers, comrades in adventures on the Trentino; except for a few of his battalion and some others from his company with whom he shared that infernal exile. As to the others, officers or not, many certainly find themselves in Macedonia but as parts of other brigades; he hadn’t met anyone, in spite of having twisted his neck and sharpened his sight. But really, the one he never would have expected to see again is passing at that moment under his nose. How can it be that his old Piemontese captain, the one with the megaphone always around his neck, the one who had triumphantly crossed Ponte Caffaro at the head of his troops to the song of "Va fuori d’Italia...!", and who had put so much energy into collecting other people’s things for his own house, had become a general in a year and a half? But he isn’t mistaken, it really is him, he’s confirmed it, recognizing size, color and pace of his ugly horse, still the same, still an ordinary plug. With a short run, Emilio catches up to him, goes past, and stands in front of him. The officer looks at him, annoyed, recognizes him, and his face gets even more annoyed, and he greets him in the register of a low baritone. The quartermaster is annoyed as well and replies with a verbal greeting, equally cold, added to the military one. The tomb is uncovered and the dead have risen but, rather than rising as a martyr, he’s been rewarded with braid on his beret, like a sprig of laurel as poet of the art of command: rather, juggler of military arts, poet of the art of theft. Swift thoughts pass through Emilio’s head like loaded clouds.
Having spoken, the General looks forward, slaps the bridle to tell the horse to move and the quartermaster to move away, and goes on keeping his usual arrogant expression, irritated by the misfortune which has allowed the survival of someone who knew him as an impoverished captain, always on the take because of debts, who in addition had been witness to his mediocre accounting tricks. [go back]

A Good Chance: 18 December. The remains of the brigade reach Ostrovo, on the shore of the lake of the same name. That day the road runs consistently next to a railway line, with a greater mockery of the infantrymen going on foot, forcing them to move off the tracks from time to time, resulting in much greater fatigue. On the hills to the north of the lake, they move freely through an open space above a mirror, which seems to help the soldiers, pushing them higher every time they turn to look at it; the line rises then descends to Banica to make camp. The next day, more extreme fatigue until, after the sobs of twenty-two days of rapid, crushing march, the chorus of tents is staked at Negorani, to whose bosky crust it will stay attached until the 28th : and before that date no order, even were it given by the King in person, would be able to force the troops further without killing them.
Here Emilio encounters the second Christmas of the war, a cold guest in the midst of all his exhausted comrades, covered with snowy powder that dissolves immediately to water lacking the smell of memories, barely aware of its being called Christmas, and here he again undergoes a crisis of malarial fever. But the regimental health officer, with whom he has always spoken as a friend, confides to him that he can’t send him to the hospital, because he’s been ordered to have only the most serious cases admitted.
29 December. They take up the march again. He’s just passed a placard that says "To Brod" when the doctor comes up to the platoon containing Emilio, and pulls him out by the arm. He points out to Emilio two ghosts of soldiers on their feet in the middle of the road, and adds in a low voice that he can get him some rest for a few weeks, because he needs to entrust to him two seriously ill men, keeping them on their feet and moving them as far as the small hospital in the nearby village of Eksissù. With three admission orders folded safely in his pocket, Emilio and the two sick men wait at the edge of the road until the troops have finished passing, then they set off.
It rains and rains again, a few kilometers from the cannons at Monastir, from where hoarse voices are heard calling for reinforcements. Emilio is serious around the eyes but smiles inwardly. That providential intervention happened just in time, pulled out and alone as a three-of-a-kind on an open field. It seems from the inferno in front of him that he has no need for his gun, which he hasn’t even oiled. That way, he feels more useful to the two seriously ill men he’s supporting leaned against his shoulders with a hot face and fiery eyes, forming a unique group of suffering. He’s happy, he’s seen a glimmer of safety, he knows that his destiny is as uncertain as that hidden in a deck of cards, but he hopes it might be the start of one of those lucky hands that excite the players. And I know that at this moment he leaves forever front, regiment, and company, another gift of his good star. On the other hand, one can only intuit what sad destiny might be in store for his comrades. [go back]

The Second Curtain falls at Eksissù: After a few drawn-out hours, they reach Hospital Number 150 at Eksissù. No fine welcome, no one wants to know anything about it. The shelter is overflowing; an embarrassed corporal sends them to a sergeant who unloads them curtly onto a marshal who inveighs against him and sends them back to the corporal. A pedantic orderly in eyeglasses specifies that there are neither cots, covers, nor straw and not even a free corner of earth, much less anything to eat, and added that to give them bread would be to take it from the mouth of others. The three listened to the speech in silence, suffering on the ground next to the packs like beggars on convent steps.
Evening. It might seem because of some hospital orderly’s good heart, but in reality because it’s known that a few patients won’t last the night; they spread them out in a corner on a thin layer of straw that feels like nothing, without even the comfort of a bowl of warm broth. During the night they’re quiet, more in wakeful sleep than in oblivion, listening to the nearby roar from the front which calls to them, overlying the moans of the sick. The next morning, two regular cots are freed and assigned to Emilio’s two seriously ill companions. Emilio is decided on escaping from that anxiety-provoking hospital where he risks dying of hunger even before malaria, or, in the worst theoretical scenario, being sent immediately back to the front. He finds something important to do with a greedy sergeant of Health, and at last he experiences the relief of feeling a chit for admission to Hospital 151 in Salonicco crackling between his fingers. Throwing the weight of his pack onto his back, gathering all his strengths like a god, he makes his great escape, his heart in the confusion of someone who in the irrational fear of a counterorder or a hitch wants to get away without even turning around. He goes toward nearby Flòrina thinking only about the station, where these damn trains never pick up troops on foot, but would certainly welcome a single soldier armed with a regular pass and transformed into a normal traveler with ticket and wallet. His emotion is divided in half between what he is leaving and the unknown that awaits. [go back]

Hard Sleep in a Hard Place: At the Flòrina station, Emilio’s final effort is to climb into the carriage, surrounded by an impossible crowd, and to look energetically for a place. He succeeds in sitting on a bench in a coach filled with military of every nationality. With muscles loosened below and arms folded, he meditates as if in a fog. His anger returns to him when he thinks of those stubborn marches, without the aid of trains; and possibly for the first time in many months, he finds himself in a comfortable position. It makes him comfortable just to reflect that, after all, no train can hold a whole brigade, and that it would take all the convoys in Macedonia, nothing compared to ours, and that to do it, to make room for the troops on foot, it would be necessary to suspend normally travelling traffic. As for now, they’re not dealing with troop movements, because all these soldiers are travelling on their own, each with his own permit for transfer or leave or even for admission to hospital, like his. From fatigue, the rhythm of the wheels, that quartermasterly reasoning, the incomprehensible, hypnotic babble of the superimposition of so many languages spoken in a low voice in a whorling of cigarette smoke, he is conquered by an irresistible sleep that wants to compensate him for suffering through so many watches. Abandoned to the hardness of his seat and saved by pitying conductors, he doesn’t notice accelerations, breaking, maneuvers, shocks, nor anything else, and awakes only in the silence of dawn on the second day of the voyage, 30 December 1916, when the train, as they say, is already threading through the heart of the Salonicco plain, because the convoy takes two days and one night to cover the distance that separates Flòrina from the capitol of Macedonia, more or less equal to that between Milan and Verona. [go back]

Chapter III

SALONICA ALBUM

The 151st : At Salonicco ten days of rest await him on a real bed. The 151st is a well equipped war hospital, made up of huge tents but conceived for not above two hundred beds. To the worn brain of the High Command, malaria, just as wolves and rain, is something unexpected, included for the most part in the sphere of possibile but not probable. To foresee malaria would be a serious obstacle to an organization necessary to the pure greed of a King, thus the desire to ignore it from the start, sticking a head into the filthy morass like the ostrich into the cool substratum of sand.
To deal with the exceptional influx of sick, first coming from the Kruska-Balkan front and now from the inferno of Monastir, and from the road which leads here, wooden barracks have been added. The complex rises just outside the eastern zone, beyond the Quay and the White Tower, on the edge of the sea. Given the unsustainable situation, it has been transformed from a place of cure to a place of observation and transfer. The sick with serious or prolonged prognoses must be embarked on hospital ships and repatriated; those who can be cured in a brief time are sent to the peripheral collection center in Zeitenlik, to be sent from there to their units of origin.
At the 151st the uninterrupted continuum of arrivals and departures, with a daily movement of many tens of units, overworks the personnel beyond their endurance, confuses the work shifts, and delays physician visits, as well as any subsequent treatments. The chaos turns to Emilio’s advantage, and he avails himself of all seven restful days waiting for a visit from a doctor, which days promise to increase indefinitely thanks to the complicity of an orderly who promises to repatriate the quartermaster on the first available hospital ship, in return for ceding him his own cloak, of which the orderly has become enamored, and which, because of deformities and mistreatments undergone during the march, has in his opinion acquired a cut so modern and elegant as to make him seem a civilian. Enthusiastic about the exchange and believing in the power the orderly brags about, Emilio stays always in bed in hope of convincing the doctors that his malaria is serious. But the thermometer never signals an alarming temperature. On the eighth day, the physician Captain who is going through the beds to decide the fate of the sick stops at his bedside, and when he sees the rosy complexion of his cheeks, he stops perplexed, smiles in understanding, but decides to do a complete exam. The outcome is disastrous for the quartermaster and disappointing for the orderly, forced to cancel his name from the list of those leaving. Emilio is consoled to find himself healthy, and, as is his habit, resigns himself to accept the decree of fate. More out of routine than to make up for the disappointment, the doctor allows him three more days, until 10 January. On that date the corporal will have to transfer to the camp at Zeitenlik for an undetermined time, waiting to be sent back to the front. [go back]

Fried Fish: A desire for Salonicco remains, seen only in the torrid confusion of the August parade and traversed a week earlier by tram from the station to the hospital stop, going up Via Egnazia, sticking to his eyes like a loud color film. He plans to visit it the next day. For now he will have to be content with the memory of that film seen through windows behind which hundreds of rapid shops are running and reciting thousands of hurried extras of every race and color.
From 151 nothing can be seen except the sea opposite and a few dunes to each side, on which a multitude of ragged are stationed, arousing his curiosity. Tents and hospital barracks are enclosed by metal netting beyond which, housed even more poorly than the soldiers, on bare Macedonian dirt, poor refugees are scratching about: from various places on the border, fallen into Bulgarian hands. Many are trying to get along by selling every kind of merchandise to the soldiers. On the morning of his discharge Emilio goes up to the netting and acquires cigarettes and fried fish, still scorching hot, a habit and food for the transfer to the camp, which comes along punctually by lorry: just at the same moment when under the hospital tent, the chaplain is tracing the sign of the cross in the air above an unfortunate soldier, and the gravedigger from the adjacent cemetery is hurrying to break open the earth with the groove of his grave.
The lorry is full, but faster than the tram, and from its sides of blackened wood the city spills white as milk from a tilted pail. He promises himself again to explore it and meanwhile is distracted by the happy uproar of his fellow-soldiers singing around a comrade’s accordion. They seem to be Emiliani or at least from the Po plain, with that indefinite accent of those borders where so many differences, so much in common, are heard all together. Along Via Egnazia they sing a happy dance music that separates them from everything going on behind their necks or passing before their eyes; then gradually as the vehicle loses itself in the steppe of the periphery, the music becomes more melancholy, the soldiers more taciturn. On the yellow undulating ribbon of the dunes, with nets of the sea on the left and sparkles from the wetlands on the right, the soldiers become quiet, the accordion slows, and its sadness, which is our own, weeps alone. [go back]

The Chaos of Zeitenlik. Impact: At the Italian camp at Zeitenlik, Emilio finds himself thrown into a mixture of a few thousand soldiers who’ve preceded him, lived through the same or worse experiences, and are waiting to be reassigned to the front, thrown into the arms of death rates more glorious than those hovering over the camp hospitals. Behind the fence everyone is awaiting orders, those concentrated and those watching them, if there is anyone watching them, because you don’t see them; and in the meantime they live like prisoners without discipline, left to themselves and fed in a way that is very like throwing food to beasts. As soon as he sets foot in that cage, the cloth concealing the military maxim "Look Out for Number 1" rolls up in the quartermaster’s mind, and soon finds a useful application.
There’s no ordinary soldier not missing at least half his gear; in the entire camp there doesn’t exist any office to turn to, or if there is, it doesn’t function in the least; there’s no one to go around issuing orders, or at least no officer has the courage to do so. The only one visible is the picket officer at the entrance, whose one assignment is to keep those inside from leaving. There’s nothing for it but to go out into the crowd, discover the specific problems, orient himself, know someone with the help of intelligence and luck, who has already solved problems of survival, then disappear into the crowd, possessing now at least the minimum of autonomy. Chance might let him meet a few soldiers from his region, or if that’s not enough, and it isn’t, a few from his town or even some distant or close relatives; although the most propitious of fates would be to find someone from his own battalion or company; otherwise, the misfortune, more easily present than the luck in that kind of camps, forces the victim to roam from tent to tent begging for anything he might use, a cover so as not to die out in the open, a little place to sleep under shelter, a few hard crumbs to eat; or even, but this would be a superfluous request made only by those who already possess the essentials, the loan of shaving brush or razor, or the flirtatiousness of a little mirror in which one could establish to what point the disfigurement of one’s own face has arrived. But finally, that solidarity which in need accepts those worst off, ends up settling any critical situation; so that everyone can sooner or later find a miniscule shelter under a tent, where you can warm up the air a little with your own lungs, or simply share a piece of bread or, with stricter rules, a little tin of meat. [go back]

The Chaos of Zeitenlik. Entry: It cannot be said, however, that there was no kitchen; but just to get to it and grab something, you needed to survive a kind of natural selection, be in firm possession of a mug, and know how to hide a spoon in your pocket. The weakest and most distracted had to content themselves with seeing its smoke from afar; and with smelling, mouths watering, the rancid smell spreading through the entire camp from two Olympian pots black as pitch.
If the new arrival belongs to the species of entrepreneur who knows how to take care of himself when working with others, he must first put up with a series of initiation remarks of the oldest soldiers: "How do you think I eat? With my mouth!" Or: "You need a mug? From here to the pots it’s a hundred meters and two hundred tents, that’s at least seven or eight hundred mugs: isn’t that enough for you?" And it’s not just a remark, because the new boy, coming out of the forest of tents with a pretend air of indifference, but watching out of the corner of his eye, always finds a shiny mug at hand that’s not being watched, which he must have. In such a case the first measure to adopt after it’s entered your possession is to render it unrecognizable to the legitimate owner, with some kind of abrasive, erasing the coats-of-arms of the old houses, to substitute for it the proper marks of style borne, so that all mugs in the camp, as they pass from hand to hand, look repeatedly engraved and encoded like ancient manuscripts in disappeared tongues, or maps to some treasure.
Once having survived the attack of the crowd that might show up at any hour of the day at the pots, one must put up with biting remarks seasoned with the treasonous smiles of the corporal of the kitchen and his scullions, who always pretend they’ve discovered a thief who’s come around the second or third time; and when he protests, they pretend to give him a few smacks with the big spoon until, seeing that the hungry man isn’t leaving, they pretend to content him, magnanimously pouring him a thin broth that is the symbol of all their power, unfortunately real, over life and death.
As for the containers for meat, they lie unobserved near the pots of minestra , simply because they’re always empty, and that pretends to be a mystery for everybody. Meat takes other routes, obligatory or more remunerative, even before being dribbled in here. In fact down there as well, three atavistic rules of life in a community are important; and they dominate, separately for the most part, but more effectively if combined: belonging to a recognized group, having physical strength, and having money. And here, at least in regard to the meat, I must report, not to do wrong to history, what the quartermaster’s memory registered like that: "Who knows how many calories subtracted from the bellies of the soldiers have served to warm the bellies of the Salonicco Hebrews, who in exchange give the drachmae necessary for buying good Samo wine and getting into the brothels."
If then, the new arrival, by now owner of a mug and some associated broth, gets the bold idea of soaking bread in it, he must know first that bread is distributed completely and only at the first morning light and that, if he really wants some at other hours of the day, he must go to the tent where the remains are kept and submit to more witticisms and other humiliation. And woe to whoever hasn’t an identifying document of one type or another, like the pass for leaving the hospital or his personnel book or at least dog tags, which are good for nothing except the enjoyment of some corporal or sergeant of his right of authority over the unlucky, warning him that if he isn’t who he says he is, he’ll get nothing. But then, with a little insistence, the little soldier is always able to put hands and teeth on a piece of bread. As in every other situation in life, this too is an unbearable, very ancient game, played never with threats, rarely with promises, often with flattery, always with dissimulated anger because of a simulated submission. [go back]

The Three Sergeants: The winter is hard and early, but it’s stopped raining as hard as in late autumn. Twenty, thirty thousand soldiers, thirty corps and special units of six, seven countries, are encamped and cared for, wounded and sick on the Salonicco plain; in a dead number of camps like Zeitenlik, perhaps less disorganized. The wind blows, and in icy spirals blocks the stench of human and vegetable exhalations. The cold stops the activity and allows passivity to fall asleep. Two, three tries at snow abort in flurries, and everything goes unwillingly back to gray. Every two, three hours, a few stretch legs outside the tent and walk. He looks at the camp, the sky, and again at the camp, then comes back to get his body under cover again and passes the watch to the others. The landscape from there to the dunes is rational, the pains are divided in whole numbers and fractions over the Macedonian and commercial field of the accountants of the Royal House.
But Emilio’s star shines as well on the grotesque of those rounds spent in tragic wait, as he finds a few non-coms from his company who have preceded him, already practiced in the situation and well disposed to give a hand to the quartermaster, who had always helped them resolve their little big problems. Within one day Emilio is found in a tent along with three sergeants who fill him with attention, without taking any account of the small but certainly significant hierarchical space that separates them from the corporal.
One is Abruzzese, emigrated as a boy to the USA where his father had set up a highly profitable restaurant; and when orders for mobilization resounded through the world, the son had answered with a sense of duty, but also to look good to his father’s faithful and wealthy clients who, in accord with the majority of American public opinion, are hostile to the Germans and incite him to show his love for his fatherland.
Another, a farmer from the Parma area, remembers with always shiny eyes his two small children and his wife, adding sighs for the harvest surely gone badly without him, and the animals malnourished and sick with TB. He’s shown up in that mob to spend a period of convalescence in the expectation of being fished out and thrown back into the front. The doctors at Salonicco verified a focus of tuberculosis in one lung which, according to them, is almost completely scarred over. It might have been a mistake in diagnosis, or the time spent in those pleasant surroundings, but the fact remains that the poor boy would die in a few months, much earlier than the beasts.
The third is a wise-ass law student from Brescia, who spouts forensic eloquence that no one is able to evaluate, and a political oratory packed with juridical terms from which Emilio, self-taught Marxist, feels estranged; the man is incapable of furnishing adequate explanations of the institutions and phenomena about which he is always speaking: that is, government, parliament, war, and the like. The corporal doesn’t want to contradict him, he’s not interested in that, and limits himself to listening to him formulate those fine reasonings, expressed with the geometric sensibility of someone who commits exam answers to memory without ever breaking through the crusts of things.
Thus, between the patriotic Abruzzese restaurant, the poor Parmigiani cows, and the deaf-defying juridical pseudo Political Science, Emilio can put up with the vacuity of hours under the tent, which pass better when the four play cards. Meanwhile, the camp continues to inflate with wounded and ill, kept in hopes of cure; while from Italy, new contingents continue to arrive, destined to fill empty positions and, one hopes, to replace exhausted veterans as well. Waiting to be sent to the front, even the new and still healthy infantrymen just disembarked at Salonica are dipped into that cloaca, more stupid than tragic, which is Zeitenlik, with an impact disastrous for morale; which, in the absence of military schools, adequate equipment and technology, is our only resource. [go back]

Abstinence: In the morass of Zeitenlik, they don’t take care of their bodies, morale gets beaten down, and the soldiers, abandoned to indolence, experience sharpened desires. After eighteen months of war in Italy, then six on Macedonian marches, then the recent days, ending up in the ferocious rock pile of Monastir, the soldiers shut up in camp fall one by one into the hands of a rebellious god. Weakened and crushed by conditions, they have on their balls two years of lonely life. Here, they lack the trees whose resin awakens Panic desires: they might have been able to find release in action in the mountains with talk and now and then in earnest in the valleys; but now they refuse to indulge even in the usual memories of masculine exploits, they aren’t content any more with teasing each other sarcastically; and the nocturnal dreams of those still capable shake them violently and make them ashamed.
One night there is an uproar in a four-man tent near the one of the three sergeants, and it comes out that the oldest had jumped on the youngest and was undressing him as far as the boy’s sleep had allowed. Then, an unexpected jump, howls, punches, slaps, and a weeping deluge of shame alternating with explanations and a request for pity. Since then, the failed seducer, repulsed by everyone, has had to be content with sleeping under the stars, at the edge of the encampment, in contact with the barbed wire and on the edge of a ditch where perverts are known to slither together like ignored serpents.
Toward the dark of evening many women come from the periphery of Salonicco to ask when the soldiers can come out. The picket officer chases them off laughing. But meanwhile, it’s getting darker, and the women pretend to leave, instead making a half spin around the camp up to the place where everyone knows there’s a rip in the wire mesh, and here they work hard until dawn. [go back]

Location of the Camp and Permission to Leave: The camp at Zeitenlik lies sunken into a basin bounded by small hills resembling dunes, beyond which other mild elevations and basins follow one after another, forming everywhere an undulating terrain flattening toward the south until it disappears among the waves of the Aegean. To the north it grows imperceptibly until indistinguishable from the first hills of Macedonia, to the west it flattens and becomes lost, submitting to the sky of the Vardar plateau, and to the east it rises until it touches the sky of mount Chortiàtis which elongates into the Calcidic peninsula, on whose first slopes Cassandro, Alexander’s brother-in-law, founded Salonicco, naming it Tessalonica, his wife’s name. The military camps lie at the periphery of the city. The Italian camp is farthest away, repeating the location of last summer; now however they are all transposed more to the south-west, on the last plain of Vardar. Zeitenlik is thus closer to the radiotelegraphic stations, whose antennas break the monotony of the landscape and excite a feel of being connected to the civilized world left behind. But when one climbs one of the surrounding hills, the panorama becomes more vast and satisfying, including the mirror of the sea, the slopes of the city, and those extravagant formations, the military encampments.
First days of February ‘17. Some officers finally show up, including a physician and a few non-com nurses, charged with setting up a census office to identify, count, and visit the convalescents, and making a list of those ready to leave behind the privations and idleness of camp. Other officers, settled in a small barracks, are concerning themselves with new contingents arrived from Italy, arranging their distribution to the front. The camp is finally opened and a normal system for coming and going is put in place. And so, a few days later, one late, rare, and fine afternoon, the three sergeants plus Emilio are tempted to go and visit the city. They arm themselves with passes and start walking. [go back]

The Way of the Allied: They soon notice that the road is longer than they would have thought from the surrounding hills, but just as muddy. They pass close by the French encampment. It seems less poor and more comfortable, huts of solid wood surrounded by plantings and embryonic gardens esthetically cared for. Other huts, of cement, are under construction, and Senegalese masons are busying themselves like black ants on white plaster. A little further they encounter the Serb camp collected into a circular symmetry of tall conical tents, wide at the base, separated one from another by many planted beds, ready to sprout the next spring; and from the reddish soil were sprouting also, like an early crop, tiny cards indicating specific vegetables and flowers, stuck there with love and fastidiousness by some soldier farmer. Then, from the increase of noise, they realize they’re walking along the edge of the Russian tent city, containing one infantry regiment and one of Cossacks which the Tsar has deigned to send to the aid of the Allies.
Russia, beaten by the Germans, has defeated the Austrians, but now is betraying the Entente. The new prime minister Sturmer, secretly linked to the Central Powers, has conceded some simple formal aid to Romania, which doesn’t keep the Austrian-German-Bulgarian armies from invading her and entering Bucharest victoriously. The equivocal Russian behavior at the moment, and much more that one of renunciation and defeatism after the revolution, will allow the Central Powers and their allies to remain firmly in place and ready for battle on the Balkan front until 1918, provoking the indelible rancor of the powers of the Entente toward the new Soviet state.
The Romanian intervention ends in disaster and the Russian policy becomes even more suspect at the moment our four allies are advancing alongside the disorderly Tsarist camp, whose occupants are partying like the devil, drinking, singing, and dancing nonstop.
Closer to the periphery lie the English camps, the richest, the best equipped, and the most numerous, approaching city comforts. There, soldiers of every color can be seen circulating, including a few blond officer sons of Albion, milk white, freckled, devourers of marmalade and excessive consumers of whisky. Along the road many autos, busses, and horse-drawn vehicles of every type and flag, especially International Red Cross transports that pour out thousands of wounded and sick along those kilometers sewn with hospitals. [go back]

Hut Town: The slanted sun stretches the shadows and the curiosity of the four soldiers, with the slow walk of first timers. They enter the periphery from the west through the Vardar quarter, where a hut village of unheard-of size is squeezing in, not military, inhabited by a crowd of beggars. In addition to poverty, begging, and illicit activities typical of all large cities, it has smells and tastes peculiar to that place. Cracked huts and ripped tents, erected in the most complete chaos, as if after a throw of dice, present as many forms and colors as there are nationalities and ethnic groups from the Adriatic to the Black Sea of their derelict inhabitants, who survive thanks to the presence of the nearby military camps.
The men wear a mosaic of remains of all possibile uniforms. Lurid and horrid, many go about in remains of Zuave pants donated by French colonials, gesticulating with scraps of English jackets and moving heads beneath greasy Italian berets. Others wear Serb rags and pull on worn-out Russian galoshes. Women and girls, who must be so designated even if savage and filthy without regrets, are wearing Scotch kilts, faithful witnesses to hard marches and bloody battles undergone by the behind of their previous owners. The children, if these as well can be called children, because of their right to a common humanitarian name, are not nude, only because it gets cool, and they’re wrapped in multiple layers of the same rags the parents throw away after using up the last layer of fibers. The families, and this is the true name with which one must connote the cohesion between men, women, and children of that population, poor, but respectful of primitive natural laws, proliferating under the tents on simple straw ticks. As for water service, drains, light, and heat, don’t even mention it. The tent city spreads over piles of ashes, coal, pieces of used-up wood and smoking embers. Garbage is rotting everywhere, drain outlets, filth, in a chaos of shit, extraneous and inconceivable even to the most bedraggled examples of the animal kingdom.
But these poor people aren’t Salonicco’s rejects, people from the abyss of a serial story. One city on its own, with a little fewer than 250,000 souls, no matter how low the level of life, could never give birth to a miseropolis like this. This is instead a camp of refugees, ten times bigger than the one next to hospital 151 where Emilio had bought cigarettes and fried fish, composed of civilian victims of the recent Balkan wars; and especially of that Great War which was still persisting; people forced out of nests of their own, just rat holes, born as prey for cannons, rifles, and enemy daggers, lived in border zones without any notion of a globe of land and water in the little hut now occupied by the advancing enemy, now liberated by friendly troops who are just as arrogant and who steal everything, now reoccupied and then liberated again, but by now semi-destroyed or completely demolished by one side of contendents or the other. Having fled from a land always warm with shots, he’s found a beach where he can live a quiet life without the constant danger of being harmed by unexploded arms or by fire, adapting himself to lick bones already stripped by his liberators and to bear insulting kicks from every European pioneer sent to the Balkans by Their Royal and Imperial Highnesses.
With the end of the war in sight, a few prospectives open up even for these poor folk. The old people are writhing in agony and dying on their mats, but the young ones might be able to get assigned to go off to what seems to be a new, liberal Greece, a piece of land to cultivate, or to be absorbed into a the new world of the worker, and the girls might have jobs in factories or try their hand working in a cottage industry, except for the prettiest or most ingenuous or unscrupulous who will end up in the brothels. But the war must end, then the start of rebuilding. In the mean time, in this fetid oasis, one lives as if the war surrounding us is the most normal of conditions, a fact as eternal as sky and sea. [go back]

Brothels of the Orient Midway between city and periphery, there’s a little quarter behind the dunes, only recently delineated, intimately connected to the business of war and the concentration of the military, upon which it depends almost entirely for its economic well-being. In that quarter, houses and huts have gone up, destined for the sexual desires of the troops and of those city dwellers who, in addition to desires, have money at their disposal to satisfy them. What with war breaking out and soldiers arriving, they’ve had to make longer journeys; from the center of town, seat of the original "houses", to the periphery where a specific complex has been installed and furnished to international satisfaction, with a vast choice of females, accomplished in the most refined methods of sexual relief, with convenient discounts for the troops as well.
The soldiers are waiting in groups and platoons, on foot and in queues on the sills of these places of public service, abominable to respectable persons, even though these are true and proper social institutions, catalogued in the archives of the prefect and administered privately under the control of an authority, in a way not dissimilar from many museums and universities. It is easy to imagine the tortures to which those poor girls of every race and country are submitted, including the most shapely Turks and beauties of every Balkan ethnicity, condemned to distribute the pleasure of Venus to Mars to a crowd whose claims to being martial are only the scrawls of their names copied legibly into the registers of the conscripts of the Ministries of War, and the only things left of Venus are the frequent sicknesses and the variety of flesh whose spectrum changes every quarter hour: from the black of the semi-savage Senegalese to the ivory of the subjects of the Scottish Counties, perhaps more rustic but having an advantage because of the kilt, which certainly allows them no time to be moved to pity. In that place, with every sentiment removed, and with Venus and Apollo escaped or reduced to the ablative, desires turn bizarre, into the most rude, the most rushed, of pleasures.
But there are also refined, costly houses, aimed at superior officers, bureaucrats, and businessmen, those who can’t wait outside the entrance mixing with the rabble, who need to be welcomed into semi-darkness, perfumed, stylish little rooms, fashionably furnished with bedrooms and, for the superior officers, bureaucrats, and businessmen, with baths and other comforts, including mosquito nets, not so much as to avoid acquiring annoying itches during the sexual action, as to give the client a certain guarantee that the odalisque isn’t transmitting anything by mosquito, at least, not malaria.
But you can look around if you want to, narrow ways, hidden among concealed huts, more tolerated than abusive, functioning only evenings, completely discreet, for those not wanting to publicize certain vices; because of persons in view whose morality is unmistakable or, even if not in view, have deviancies to hide. In fact, it’s not difficult to discover, preceded by the light of a torch, beardless youths and curly-headed boys accompanied by a pimp with hooked nose and pronounced chin, almost always dressed like a Turk, furtively crossing the poorly illuminated sill of some narrow doorway, inevitably followed by the client.
Further on, at the far edges of the quarter’s periphery, perverts come out of holes in the ground to gather in the evenings; perverts who every so often are attacked by the police. Anxious not to appear obvious, armed with torches, they dress in black, looking like big pikes out of season, and go off to slither with clients at the foot of the dunes.
It’s nothing but the usual pleasure place every city has, but with the particular characteristic of being a resource for capital and labor, increased by the war of the moment and with the ability to gather together an abundant workforce ready to be exploited at low wages, fished up a few steps from the Vardar quarter. [go back]

Metropoli of the Orient: Having gone beyond the pleasure quarter, one comes into the real Salonicco, through the western gate where the road for the encampments merges with via Egnazia, entering the city solemnly shaded by huge trees. From that point it’s all a succession of smaller and larger stalls, at first separate one from another and then combined into even larger ones which, gradually progressing toward the center, have become huge sheds, then they’re transformed into houses, and finally into modern buildings, at the works of the port, the docks, and the other public buildings.
The four comrades enter the city urged by a sun low on the horizon, giving its last to the western grid of Macedonia. In this early moment it has the effect, on Emilio as on me, of reducing the historic road to separating those huts into two wings, but, after all, our Egnazia is only a mental construct. Apart from the important buildings and the center, the rest must have been, in imperial times as in 1917, a sea of hovels and, mutatis mutandis, so was Rome.
The huts, all different sizes and shapes, with a base of color plastered masonry and with the rest of wood, are filthy shops without glazed windows, selling forage, preserved meat, prepared foods, bread, and sweets, on whose sills produce is being decanted and passersby are being enticed as still today in every neighborhood market. The shopkeepers are of the most motley cosmopolitan types: Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, French, and Spanish, dressed with multicolored costumes, but mostly Hebrews; descended from the twenty thousand who were thrown out of Spain, who not wanting to dilute their Hebrewness, had in five slow centuries reached only a number of sixty thousand; but they hold in their hands the portfolio of the city.
Goats and lambs hang bleeding from hooks or smoking on spits, spreading the characteristic smell of male goat, Middle East style, through the paralyzed air. Gilded fish bubble in the oil of enormous skillets and fill wide, splendid plates of brass incised with heroes, tilted and thrust forward to seduce the customer’s appetite. Loaves of bread and biscuits make a more delicate display on the baker’s table, flanked by saffron cakes stuffed with cabbage. Yogurt, honey tortes, lucumie, spun sugar, and almond phosphates ennoble the next table, followed unexpectedly by barrels of anchovies and smoked herring. Then, more pastry shops imbued with the burned smell of almond paste, and more fryers and roasters where monumental, odorous Gyros are progressing on slowly rotating spits powered by small children, attacked and sliced at every customer’s request; and places where Turkish-style coffee is being roasted and sipped. In this midst of this smoky den there are on exhibit, stinking from the nearby food shops, all kinds of clothing, light fabrics, brightly colored silk and cotton goods, dresses in an oriental fashion and European suits, military uniforms for officers, and then leather boots, sabots, thick-soled shoes as if for tragedies, slippers, western shoes, and infinite leather gewgaws. The whole immersed in a din of horses, automobiles, and trams, unable to cover the merchants’ rich vocalizations, accumulating under the nose of a throng of ragged beggars, dragging themselves in silence into the red of a sunset apparently without war.
From via Egnazia, some small, more quiet alleys take off in the direction of the gulf, but our comrades, being more attracted by the sign of a wine bar than repelled by the siege of offerings and the stench of that Homeric market, they go inside.[go back]

Absinthe: The host, with a solicitous smile, bows and undertakes immediately to enumerate his specialties in an Italian with an exotic English accent: renowned liqueurs, common ouzo, very sweet wine of Samo, camphorated dry white from Crete, common retsina, wine from every town and also authentic Chianti, and says he even has whisky and absinthe, whose sale to the military is prohibited but just as risky for him, to please his clientele who of course must compensate him for the risk. Not at all curious about the virtues of absinthe, Emilio asks for wine from Samo, but the sergeants permit themselves to be attracted by the destructive desire to taste the liqueur-drug. They look around to decide where to sit. The smoky darkness of the bar is populated by French and English military, the first with the unfailing, perfumed, milk white glasses of watered absinthe in front of them, which were getting confused with the turbid color of the tiles on the walls; and the second with the traditional bottle of whisky, seized with nervous, ever increasing frequency as the blond level falls, neither one nor the other seeking oblivion but only the rowdy pleasures of alcohol. In one corner sit two Greek plump officers with black moustaches soaked with pomade, throwing down pure absinthe, pouring it out of a bottle with the lack of concern of someone who feels himself the head of the house and doesn_t want to put up with any restrictions; and with eyes shiny as their moustaches they seem to say to customers and to the padrone: "Drink all you want, we don_t know anything, but we_ll keep quiet only in exchange for this bottle and more."
Content, after seven months of military enclosure in a foreign land, to be able to express something to a human being not in uniform and who in addition speaks Italian, the four sit at a table near the bar and start to chat with the host who, as he passes over the table a worn rag imbued with an acid odor, he listens to them, smiling and bowing, at the same time throwing glances to check on his other clients. A Hebrew of middle age, bronzed and with black curly hair, he speaks six languages, shows sympathy for the Italians, and asks for information about our front where the killer Isonzo, after the battles of last autumn, seems to have become quiet. The four friends have two rounds of glasses and talk about this and that. A few mentions of the internal dissension in the Entente about who, at the right moment, will guzzle the biggest Turk mouthful. But mostly they complained about Zeitenlik where life is impossible. Finally they settle the account and get up. The host says goodbye deferentially, asking them to send him a lot of customers who want to drink forbidden liquors, and he’ll even buy a few things from them and pay better than anyone else, and treat them generously at the bar. After the third round they can no longer continue their walk in the city, also because night is falling. [go back]

Coffee Concerto In the following months, every time they could, Emilio and his Sergeant friends get away from Zeitenlik, going to the entrance of the allied encampment, from where connections to the city are more organized, ask for a ride on a truck, and take the road to Salonicco, getting there still fresh, to walk around for a few hours. Emilio would gladly have gone to the old city, sloping white below the Eptapiryon, but the three non-coms go directly and inexorably to the modern quarters where streets, houses, inns, restaurants, café, and movie theaters are the same as in any other Mediterranean city, including the Quay, lively frequented by a cosmopolitan population.
Long hours at the cinema or in some café where lean modern Salomes exhibit themselves in belly dances, in which they accentuate, to the delight of a mediocre public, only the exterior vulgarity. At the end of each number it’s usual to throw handfuls of small coins to the dancers, which they hasten to collect, throwing kisses and dispensing smiles and looks of desire. In those places, where the wine is watered and the bill is inflated, one must be shrewd enough not to risk theft or attack; as sometimes happens to patrons who like to go back to the wings to admire in private the ladies they’ve just seen dance, upon whom they’re counting to be allowed to lay hands on easily; while the girls, having evaluated the chicken and behaved invitingly, help their friends strike the blows. [go back]

We Discipline the Chaos: At Zeitenlik chaos makes everything in life impossible. Before the situation degenerates into tragedy, the Command decides to intervene. A barracks, pompously named "Convalescenziario of the 35th Division", is impersonally rebaptized "Deposito Rifornimento Uomini". It includes all the military present in the camp, convalescent and not, transformed into the seat of a command formed by a captain, a lieutenant adjuvant-major, and a corporal. On paper a convalescent artillery major is named responsible, who after a few days is substituted, still on paper, by an equal rank and so on, week after week. The captain is in the beer industry in Lombardy, adept and active in giving directions to the lieutenant, whom he trusts, a pure-blooded Genoan who, no matter what, does not forget that he belongs to the stock of the Lighthouse. They lack a corporal.
One day when Emilio is in the tent, a soldier runs in to ask whether a capable quarter-master is available. The corporal offers himself immediately, and to him is entrusted the assignment to organize a section just for soldiers with special weapons. At the same time, other quartermasters are organizing other sections with analogous responsibilities for those belonging to normal corps. That of Emilio is the most numerous, with more than two hundred soldiers to administer, as well as the most heterogeneous and complex, including radio-telegraphers, various kinds of engineers, sharpshooters, cyclists, field artillery, mountain artillery, bomb experts, flame throwers, sanitation, and rations.
In those circumstances, to be quartermaster means to exercise effective command over individual men and to develop the role of trusted counselor to the officers. Emilio begins working vigorously, and has to suspend the trips to Salonicco. His organizational work is effective and fully appreciated. The captain doesn’t want to let him return to the front, and is able to keep him at the camp, declaring him unable to bear the effort of the war. With such a conclusive stroke of luck, a new period of military life has begun for Emilio, made of labor intense but sedentary, lacking danger and specific annoyances: still the pains of hell in respect to the ineffable family life, but angelic privilege compared to life in the trenches, to the risks of the marches and those of fire.
The quartermaster has carte blanche. Following his inspiration, the construction of concrete huts for the Command and Officers and wooden barracks for the troops are carried out. Order, cleanliness, and discipline make their first appearance. The soldiers are all employed in some services, and with little expense they can augment the quality of their rations in a specific shop until an economical mess is completed, accessible to everyone for breakfast and two daily rations; and a place is set aside for recreation and evening meetings. The Italian encampment finally rivals the English and French, and the corporal, who has deserved to be recognized for having reorganized it, receives promotion to Corporal Major. [go back]

Slavic Caprices For Emilio the early months of ‘17 pass quickly. Immersed in intense work in support of the incessant movement of the Special Weapons troops, he’s become used to that insipid, indifferently flowing life, distracted only by rumors of peace bouncing frequently from one front to another and punctually denied. It’s said that the Central Powers have asked for talks with the Entente, who have refused. As for Italy, it seems there’s a battle in the PSI between the surreal maximalists, lovers of "the worse, the better", and those who, in a leap to the world of responsibility, would like to collaborate in some way with the institutions. But one happening more important than the others comes to crack his resistant skepticism, used at this point to untrue reports, illusions, and jokes, coming from every corner of the world and into every newspaper’s ear.
At the end of March the Russian camp is swollen with infantry and Cossacks, because all the Little Father’s divisions have been recalled from the Balkan front. A little later, the entire encampment is transferred to a desert spur of Mount Chortiàtis. Anglo-French units of color have surrounded them and are preventing any contact between the Son of the Tsar and allied troops. In the Italian camp, the first reason which comes to mind for this isolation is an epidemic. But a few energetic and particularly curious men want to see for themselves, venturing into the place in spite of the sentinels, and establish that the Sons of the Steppe, far from being sick, armed with numerous accordions and balalaikas, are showing themselves as usual, wild and riotous, frenzied songs and dances, but being observed from the outside as prisoners of war. The Italian spy speaks of hearing new songs, never heard before, not really orthodox, and numerous toasts to the cry of "Dobra Kerensky!" [Note 30] and "I mir!" [Note 31] with the addition of not very reverent yells in the direction of the Holy Synod, the war, and His Majesty, Emperor of all the Russias. Indeed, from that little which drips from the Salonicco newspapers, it seems that the Tsar really is deposed.

Having considered the subversive, inadmissible behavior of that camp, counterproductive to the morale of the allies and the fortunes of war, the Great Deception (today one says the Fourth Power) [Note 32] has appealed to the journalists of the western plutocracies to interpret that capricious ferment with their usual ease; as an exultant incitement to the new Russian government to continue the war with still greater energy and bloodshed, being in the intentions and interests of the Entente. Except that common sense, that unsupressible, mysterious, and omnipresent entity, most of the time compressed and repressed in the depths of the psyche, begins to peek into the heads of a lot of soldiers, who are asking themselves why ever the frightening Cossack cavalry, according to the papers, seized by the frenzy of war, has been removed from the front, separated from the allied soldiers to whom it could and should have been an example, and isolated like plague victims. A light has been lit inside those heads: either Generalissimo Serrail, head of the Entente in Greece, is an idiot to give up a militia so precious and available, or the newsmen are deceivers.
These are the repercussions of the March revolution which, notwithstanding the silences and acrobatics of the Great Deception, translate into the first defensive measures, which after the November revolution change into an offensive reaction. In fact, many of those expelled and defeated in the civil war reappear continually in Salonicco later, as mercenaries coming from the files of world wide poverty: the white armies. [go back]

From the Height of the Minaret: The mess so well organized by Emilio attracts and welcomes officers and non-coms as well, stationed there and in passage. Here the quartermaster has a chance to meet a sergeant of the Engineers with whom he strikes up a friendship that lasts for many years. He’s an artist, a painter who had to interrupt his activity because of the war, so much so that he has somaticized his depressed morale into a tic of the eyes and pains in his liver and in various parts of his body, accompanied by a strange fever which has led the health officers to grant him convalescent leave, for anomalous and not better specified malaria. The mutual understanding between the two and their conversations are different from the usual rapport of military life. The war is an important subject but it doesn’t exhaust their discussions, which touch on art and the world of culture, while their poet and painter eyes rest on the spring hills surrounding the encampment.
With his new friend, the quartermaster takes new, real walks, rummaging through every corner of Salonicco, discovering its characteristic aspects and admiring the Byzantine art, brilliant in the marbles and the mosaics of churches, able as well to be traced in the simple grace of other monuments, including those made only of brick consumed by time, decayed by the lack of care of the old Moslem administration, ended in 1912 after the Greek victory. The lively caprice of superimposed cupolas, the mystical and airy restraint of bifore and other pierced walls, express everywhere the good taste of the ancient builders. The church of the Twelve Apostles and that of the Prophet Elias are the favorite destinations of the two friends, who often like to go as far as the walls of the old city.
From the height of the minarets erected next to Christian churches transformed into Moslem mosques, they dominate the entire city, and spy on the interiors of those mysterious Turkish surroundings immersed in a deep and already summer silence, otherwise never open to scabby Christian dogs_. In the internal courtyards next to the always present pomegranate and wrapped in airy scents of rose, women and girls sit, intent on embroidery, their faces still veiled as on the street. On the other hand, when they sit at the windows of their rooms flowered with scarlet geraniums, which give onto internal pergolated cornices of wisteria and grapes, they gladly let fall the veil during the absence of their man, after having well made sure that no indiscreet eye is watching them.
One sunny afternoon at the end of May, as the two friends were contemplating the city from on high, casting furtive glances into the privacy of the Moslem gardens, it happened that a very beautiful young woman without a veil looked out the window of a small building next to a mosque, to see the two of them sticking out of the little round balcony of a higher minaret, their eyes glued on her. Rather than retire, the girl produces an ineffable smile, very sweet, not erotic except for that tiny bit which betrays only the desire to be admired at least once by someone who’s not the usual, relatively ancient, and extremely jealous husband who, unfortunately, is coming home just at that moment, crossing the courtyard on his donkey and throwing the usual suspicious glance at the circle of windows that enclose his harem. He sees a wife without her ciaf-ciaf [Note 33] in place smile toward the minaret, twists his neck, raises his head, and sees the two of them, who are making broad gestures of greeting. He gets off his ass like lightning and arms himself with a rod, almost intentionally lying in wait for him in the bushes, races up the stairs, drops into that room, and strikes the innocent creature repeatedly, who, conscious of the grave infraction committed, reacts not with screams but only by weeping. Then, coming up to the window, the little old husband threatens Emilio and the sergeant with his finger, and yells in his language something that surely signifies his will to avenge the insult. Two days later, here they are again, happy inside the mosque with the intention of repeating the exploit, but with surprise and disappointment they discover that the muezzin has barred the little entrance door of the traitor minaret. [go back]

Disputes among Intellectuals: After the March [Note 34] revolution, the Russian army begins to disband and pull back. On the Eastern and Balkan fronts, the war is at risk of being resolved in favor of the Central Powers. Not so in the West, where America’s declaration of war on Germany promises a decisive contribution toward resolving the conflict to the advantage of the Entent. Emilio often reads the Salonicco newspapers in the French edition, then the Italian papers a few days later. He finds out that Italian protests against a threatened truce between France and Austria have led the Entente to promise Italy bases in Turkey, aimed at of dismembering the Moslem empire; and that, in order to give a decisive blow to the enemy in the Balkans, Italy, France, and Great Britain intend to induce the germanophile King Constantine of Greece to abdicate. And in fact, among the news that excites the curiosity of the political observers, there appears a springtime visit of important personalities to Salonicco, come to plead the cause of the Entent to the government and the court, already expounded a thousand times since the beginning of the war.
Among the articles most illustrative of the anti-Teuton climate related to the world conflict in the west, which Emilio has come to believe in and to discuss with his painter friend, he would always remember the one that appeared on 7 October ‘15 in the "Giornale d’Italia", first read by Emilio within range of Austrians on the Trentino mountains. The laughable work of an illustrious professor of philosophy, one of those who, as they get older, are inexorably destined to sit on their venerated chairs in the Senate of the Realm, a man who my justified laziness prevents my looking up his name. There were so many of them then, still so many today, and a few of them are so stupid, acting in such good faith as not even to ask for pay from the powers with whom they’ve taken service. This article exposes to the world the workings of a verbose logic, exhibited for the purpose of arriving at an answer to the following very high-minded question: If Jesus were alive in our time, which cause would he be speaking for, that of the Allies or that of the Central Powers? To the question, born probably in the salon of some woman of elevated lineage and with chivalry accepted by the professor, this one gave his patriotic solution: "Long live war!", Jesus would cry if he were among us, "long live war and the victory of the Allies!" This reply is then reinforced by a few short verses of the Gospel, citing it with maximum seriousness as if it had been written by the evangelists, its only goal that of pleasing the dynasties and plutocracies dear to the heart of the professor. And, like him, many other buffoons of the cultural and political worlds, and of the Italian and foreign social theater, distract Emilio’s life, which has become monotonous at Zeitenlik.
As to our concerns, he discovers serious public riots verified in May, in Milan and in other parts of Italy, against inflation and war; and the loud series of mutinies and desertions occurring in the files of our army, in regard to which Cadorna has begun the habit of unloading the guilt onto the socialists. And every so often he is seized by his political memories appearing before his eyes, without ever overcoming the prudent obstacles of eyelashes. [go back]

Eleuterio Venizelos: One afternoon in the beginning of June, corporal major and sergeant are walking down a crowded way in the modern city, when they become aware of a noisy demonstration behind them, underscored by raucous voices. They turn and look. A cortege made up of about fifty worked up men armed with guns is advancing along the sidewalk, pushing people out of the way. Some of them are in filthy pieces of uniforms, others in ragged city clothes: heterogeneous souls, to all appearances ignorant of the cause they’re yelling about. The group, led by an organizer, stops, points their weapons at the façade of a dignified looking building. The only word Emilio is able to pick out of the excited voices of this half hundred is the name of the liberal head of government, Venizelos. At the cry of "Venizelos!" a fusillade from the guns sprays fragments of plaster. Then, obedient to the orders of whoever hired them, just as it had come, the carnivalesque rabble turns back on its own steps.
During the entire wild scene, not more than ten minutes long, no one intervenes, no policeman, no Greek soldier, no representative at all from any of the allied armies who are really in charge of Salonicco. Having found out from an elegant French passerby that the building fired on was the prefecture, Emilio is perplexed. Why this demonstration against a representative of the King? He finds the explanation the next day in a local French newspaper, according to which a huge revolt had broken out, sustained by the people, against King Constantine, husband to a Hohenzollern and friend of the Central Powers, but in favor of the prime minister Eleuterio Venizelos, friend of France and Great Britain. A few days later, newspapers arrive with huge headlines from Italy, and Emilio reads that, led by a genial political person, a great revolution has broken out, supported by huge masses of the people, to force the King to either intervene in the war on the side of the Entente, or abdicate in favor of his son. Then smiles of sadness for the world of information, which has cleverly expanded that insignificant episode of insubordination, transforming it into a revolution, and elevated Mr. Venizelos to the level of the greatest statesmen of history, only because he is a devoted creature of the western plutocracies. [go back]

The Great Deception: The first machination between the Anglo-French and their Trusted Man has come and gone, ending up well. Venizelos, his back covered by the Entente’s cannons, assumes full power, forces the King to flee and to abdicate in favor of the second-born Alessandro; the court and the entire pro-German world to renounce neutrality, and Greece to go to war against the Central Powers.
On the pages of the press, a great abundance of details may be read, described by special correspondents, naturally dispatched to sink deeply into the chairs of their hotel rooms, from which they turn through pages of ample and fantastic reports: skirmishes between revolutionaries and troops faithful to the king, assaults on public buildings, in particular the prefecture, the incendiary speeches of the heads of the people, the apotheosis of Venizelos, and anything else that might please the nationalist bourgeoisie, greedy for a role, wheeling and dealing for power: all the art of the press which had been predicted in his time by G. G. Rousseau.
Only the press, Jove of the modern Olympus, can transform the howl of ragbag mercenaries scraped together in the Vardar quarter, who don’t even have the courage to get out of the sidewalk and not get stuck in the traffic, intense at that hour, into a great popular revolution. The episode furnishes the chance to create a Greek militia for intervention. From flophouses, whorehouses, cafes and refugee quarters, able men disappear, induced for a few drachma to declare themselves volunteers and enroll in the so-called "Venizelos militia"; and soon they form a little regiment which the newspapers translate into a powerful army, with the pretense of sending them to the Front, even publishing war bulletins about them. To sum up, what happened then is the same that happens today, when more subtle methods, refined by the computer, are used in the mass media, to the Fourth and Fifth Power [Note 35], into whose belly the cheated televiewing masses fall like moths into the lamp. [go back]

The New World Café: During the summer, work is reduced to a simple routine, and Emilio frequents the city regularly. Besides his painter friend, the quartermaster has found a new one, with free time to spend with him at the New World Café, where a family trio brightens his rest after afternoon walks. One little girl plays the violin gracefully, her older sister experiments with languid eyes on the piano, while the father directs while he too plays the violin. The café opens onto via Egnazia at the center of the city. Tall, spacious, and Liberty, the bar is held up by a circle of white columns connected by arches softened by floral stuccos. All around, swallows are flying, who’ve nested between the ceiling beams, coming and going by the windows, always open onto the courtyard in the back, from where come breezes and fragrant gusts of rose and jasmine. Beneath every column, musselmen sit motionless smoking hookahs, seemingly absorbed in who knows what meditation; while indifferent to anything else, including the music, they are intent only on savoring the tobacco smoke. Their silence contrasts with the lively ‘pour parler’ of French troops with blue uniforms, in harmony with the deliberate silence and controlled gesture of the English in diverse khakis.
Emilio is often there with his new collaborator from the quartermasters, a young man of Tuscan origin who’s lived since infancy in Paris, where all his family lives, and who has assimilated Parisian habits and characteristics. He performs his toilette with excessive precision and vanity. Talkative, he initiates rivers of chatter on romantic themes with the French soldiers. In good faith, he believes he’s in love with the pianist, and is amazed, in pain, and almost indignant not to meet with corresponding feelings in her. He greets her with languid eyes, that seem stolen from her, and more than once he’s attempted familiarities, but she always goes right on, pretending not to understand, continuing to apply all her languor to the music. The father’s presence is an objective, constant, obstacle. The young soldier torments himself for not being sufficiently fascinating, and begs Emilio and a few others to be frank with him and point out any defects of his behavior, body, clothing, which he might be able to remedy: his being too forward, the cut of his hair or of his uniform which on leave he’d had redone by a Parisian tailor. He belongs to a not too rare type of young man, a little vain but good, weak, and sweet, predisposed to fall easily in love with every girl, and to surrender to the flattery or seduction of their graces as well; and not always only to women. With his attitude and infatuation he’s become the object of some sarcastic conversations by his colleagues at the quartermasters’, which he doesn’t seem to notice. [go back]

Review of shirkers: in the Quartermaster’s… Among those hidden in the quartermasters, there’s a Genovese on his second tour of duty, a mountain artillery man now working as a clerk, gigantic and muscular as a Hercules, kind and meek as a romantic girl. Precise and patient in his work, Emilio will find him again years later at Genoa, having discovered without surprise his talents as a municipal employee. In a diligent and delicate hand, he compiles impeccable lists and enviable prospective drawings which, combined with the precision of the data furnished by Emilio, are cited as examples for all the quartermasters. He speaks somewhat precisely, slow but prolix, just as he writes. He’s terrifying in anger, but only on the outside, perhaps enclosed by a limit that keeps him from becoming truly angry, or conscious that with his strength he could overcome anyone.
Another clerk under Emilio’s orders is a little soldier from Siena just drafted from his job at Monte dei Paschi, curly and handsome as a little boy, astute and initiated into every vice. He fears Emilio because of his austerity and because Emilio holds him in the office longer than the others, keeping him from games of chance and worse, because more than once that soldier was seen to grant secret pleasure to someone to whom he had to return the money borrowed for his games, inexorably lost. He amuses himself with a wholly Tuscan insolence by teasing the Genovese giant who, pretending to lose his patience, lifts him with one hand and takes him out, up onto the barracks roof, leaving him to squeal and cook in the sun.
An unarmed factotum, a little dwarf Sicilian all hair and moustaches, is a fake fool. One night when two of his countrymen are on watch at the quartermasters, he breaks into the barracks and steals sixty silver lire that Emilio had put in a chest. The quartermaster’s accusations are in vain, whether because of the conspiracy of silence of his comrades, or because of the intervention of an officer from the Island. Emilio himself has to indemnify the theft, with the added risk of getting the reputation of a liar. A noted politician of the PCI whom he met after WW2 refreshes his memory of the Mafia episode: first name, last name, age, appearance, town of birth, degree, and estate, all coincided with those of the thief’s protector. Emilio, who was often discreet, let’s call it reluctant, or better yet, reticent, about not dropping too many names including this one, adds only that he refused to believe it was the same person, and that means he’s sure. At times it seemed that Emilio’s tongue wasn’t working, but he always had his good reasons.
A field artillery man from Parma is an excellent quartermaster as well, furnished with thick lenses behind which he sees life as tumult of the brain, being in fact, or rather, seeming and proclaiming himself to be a poet, who publishes a small Italian magazine in Salonicco, financed by Hebrew professors, modestly entitled "The Voice of Italy." Lyrics: whether pompous like D’Annunzio or absurd like Futurism, ardently patriotic by intention, therefore with cowardly results, where the words are sonorous but concentrated in a void of tomato sauce, vacuity in line with the tragic imbecility of the moment being traversed by Italy and its official culture.
Poets love to fly and not only in their fantasies, leaving every concrete thought and embarrassed modesty, in the throes of an irrepressible surge of warmongering. Invulnerable to antiaircraft fire, they drop upon cities in flames, they fold themselves in quarters over a leaf white behind the writing, returning to the fatherland in a vehicle that’s become a national icon and a future source book for anthologies for unfortunate students. The quartermaster will continue to laugh with that field artillery poet for the rest of the war, and conclude his friendship with him in a Milan bar where they meet by chance many years later, drinking to the aged victory with a syrup of rhubarb and seltzer; the poet is very depressed and is trying to get a war pension. He’s wearing even thicker lenses but he’s beginning to see what’s happened. He’s still a poet and stupefied, but now disappointed as well, and married, and incapable of going beyond his old Fascist faith, and he marvels that Emilio, with his knowing resignation, continues to believe in life.
Then there’s a career sergeant of coastal artillery, formally included in the command of camp guards. Sicilian and a handsome man, he was in service in Venice and he doesn’t know how to keep his secrets from his Venetian comrade. He’s enjoyed the favors of a woman known in the underworld of the lagoons as an owner of whorehouses. He still gets letters and money from that woman, and shows around licentious photos of her. Another of the underground is a gunner from Taranto, college student and futurist who, having volunteered a few days before he was called, has been able to choose weapon and destination. And he arrives rejoicing, waving a tricolor flag which he immediately puts on the tent making it able to be identified by the whole camp. Affected and fond of gossip, he displays a gesticulating but commonplace eloquence. He has himself called by his mother’s last name, because of its aristocratic flavor, and has relatives in the high spheres of the navy of great help to him. He should be sent immediately to the front but, as a perfect futurist and a future component of that same party, he’s immediately placed in the quartermasters nook; if not having the world in his hands, at least to look after its physical cleaning.

Later, he lowered the tricolor so as not to attract the eye quite as much, and in its place he has waved his tongue, which on every occasion unrolled justifications that matched his voluntarism with the needs of the platoon. He stays with Emilio for all of ‘17, when a circular from the command imposed on every upper-level student the need to attend courses for officer training. He’ll become an officer and then a journalist. Emilio will read his name from time to time, only that, at the end of articles published in Paris, London, New York. [go back]

…and elsewhere: The thousands of military men routed to Zeitenlik, waiting for the approach of the line of fire, required nourishment, lodging, and various services performed by convalescent personnel, who must be rotated after a certain period. There’s no rivalry among the competitors for this transitory entry; instead they are firm, locked either into stable, peaceful places in their offices, like the Quartermaster and Command Supply, or in active operations, such as mess and military shop. The clever ones are pre-selected, those who can slide unctuously into opportune places and touch the most delicate keys of the one making decisions, or the fortunate clever ones who know how to awaken sympathy. But the most certain sympathy and payback converge on the man from your own town, or on someone who gives a guarantee of something in exchange or, best of all, on the man from your own town, who gives you that guarantee as well. At Zeitenlik those who prospered, more than the Sicilians, were a little mafia, more instinctive and stronger. The most important jobs, that is, those where there’s some kind of possibility for grinding out money, are rigidly reserved to the Genovese and invariably assigned by the Captain’s already mentioned adjuvant-major. Although the organized principals are all children of the Dominant, the Sicilian lieutenant who helps the adjuvant major in a provisory way has the opportunity to impose less important jobs.
To cover the position of provisioner for food, a Genovese has been chosen who, not deigning to have anyone not his countryman touch the money, surrounds himself with natives of the Lantern, making enough profit to wish that the war would never end. As director of the kitchen a sergeant from Genoa has been selected, who goes every day to pick up the food for thousands of soldiers, enjoying all the power that goes with it. The cyclists who work for the Depot in the city, who have the way and the means to do a little business from door to door, are natives of Bisagno and of Righi. The accountants and clerks are from Portaria. And so on.
Among the few non-Genovese exceptions, and just because of that they need to keep their wits sharp, there’s a Milanese corporal who’ s brought a typewriter from home, certain that with this tool he would be stopped along the way before he was buried in some trench. The practical Ambrosian has guessed right: at the Depot they really need one, thus machine and machinist go together to make a durable and shady little woods. On the other hand, a Pugliese clerk who doesn’t like to split hairs has cheated the Command, back-dating his date of birth by ten years, to seem older and therefore more worthy of respect and evasion. The falsification is discovered too late, after the inhabitant of the toe of Italy has already discovered how to make a connection and bind to gratitude an officer who protects him. Finally, a Neapolitan, gifted like so many of Partenope’s inhabitants with the uninhibited spirit of a lawyer, convinces everyone that he possesses such a superior education that, in respect and deference, everyone in the Depot calls him the Lawyer. Notwithstanding, when the circular arrives that forces graduates to attend courses for officers, he admits candidly that he has only an elementary diploma and had been a clerk in a Naples perfume shop. Nevertheless, when he is in the company of his friends, a little wink of his eye lets everyone understand that his low title and modest job are nothing but a way he’s found to foil the Command and keep away from dangerous obligations of the front, so that in a short time they again think he’s a lawyer, and perhaps he is.. [go back]

The Turkish Quarter: With his painter friend, Emilio continues his cultural visits to Salonicco, exploring every corner. To the historical superimposition of the Powers is added the monumental and the artistic. Three centuries of Hellenism, more than half a millenium of Rome, one millenium of Byzantium, along with various western, Nordic, and eastern incursions and conquests, and half a millenium of Turkey, have left every kind of imprint, and at times a complete testimony, especially paleochristian and oriental. Skirting the imposing Byzantine wall, they enter the Turkish city, where in a filthy alley one might come upon a precious sarcophagus, a rustic but pleasing fountain, the tomb of a holy man, an isolated column surmounted by a sculpture, or an ordinary house built on a prominent pedestal of sculpted marble. On the height, at the center of the wall, there’s the mark of the Serenissima, the winged lion holding the open book between his paws, invoking peace for the evangelist: peace, the necessity of the entire world, whose invocation seems to be released in that moment of absolute noon silence, then spread from the height of the marbles down to the sparkling sea, straddling the horizon and losing itself toward the imagined bulk of Olympus.
They continue nosing about the Turkish quarter, looking behind the doors of those jealous places which they find half-closed, viewed with disgust by the inhabitants who would gladly beat them with whips, but are restrained by the caution aroused in them by anyone wearing a military uniform. They even explore the most elevated part of the quarter which has the reputation of being a den of thieves and criminals, escaped from every Balkan province and set up there to avoid any kind of control, but where in reality live only a few hundred of the poorest. Some of them watch like cats, backing away slowly but without losing sight of them, poised to get close to them in a hurry if they show any signs of handing out a few coins. [go back]

Whirling Dervishes: They dedicate two afternoons to the Israelite, Moslem, and Orthodox cemeteries, leaving those places of peace with collected thoughts and patient expressions. Not far away from the western wall, at the edge of the Turkish quarter, they watch the frenzied contortions of the dancing dervishes, who are exhibiting themselves in their own monastery. Having fled persecution in Asia Minor, many of these Moslem monks established themselves at Salonicco, where every religion and minority has found refuge and the possibility of making a home. Their rites are primitive and resemble those of the fakirs who swallow live scorpions and pierce cheeks and tongue with daggers, but are less ferocious and demoniac.
Every religious performance has the same idea as its basis: prostration and mortification of the flesh before the spirit, whatever the means: pain, pleasure, stupefaction, ecstasy. If today we experience only revulsion when faced with certain manifestations of fanaticism, it is because we are sustained by the ease and comfort of modern living. We have buried the fear of being alone in front of the mystery of life. They seem to be insane, but perhaps we are the true madmen; we are fallen, immersed in a false triumph over God, and confusing comfort with rationality, which, at bottom, is nothing but a sophisticated, although often justified, defensive system.
Even dervishes have their hierarchy, from neophyte dancers to the old monk, head of the community; who with the white beard that crowns his chin, directs the ceremony without moving, enraptured in an ordering silence, but certainly aware that it will be necessary afterward to compensate for the energy spent on heaven, with a cool vegetable drink. [go back]

The European Quarter: From the half deserted Turkish quarter, where they speak under their breath and understand gestures, one drops into the underlying European quarter, noisy and overflowing. Once in the lower city, even the Moslems are transformed by evil enchantments, adapting to the cosmopolitan crowd to which are added the lights and the colors of their costumes and the guttural, inspired, intermittent sounds of their speech. Among them, one often encounters a Turkish girl wearing clothes the color of the sea, closed in the fascination of the veil, which excites in westerners and especially in the soldiers a morbid curiosity barely restrained by good manners or the fear of breaking mysterious rules of costume. To Emilio, it seems that those young women wear the ciador like a hateful compulsion, wanting nothing better than to get rid of it to display their own charms, but perhaps he confuses the expressive shading of their eyes with his own desire. Maybe there’s a little truth in his thought that they might be envious of those in modern dress, elegant in a different way, and much more free to move and to act as they choose.
The two friends go and sit in a café in front of the Torre Bianca to watch the promenade and enjoy the gulf with its airy movements of ships and sails. About that mysterious ruin, also called the Tower of Blood, once rocky Venetian flag, rebuilt and whitewashed many times, circulate strange legends, mixed with historical memories of the impious Moslem massacres, connected to the struggle for the city.
Not less pleasant than the exotic Moslem women are the western women passing through, with elegant daytime clothing, and not less elegant that these are the impeccable uniforms of their husbands, high-ranking officers of the allied garrisons, such as to be truly amazing, contrasting with the clumsy uniforms of the ordinary soldiers and even more with the worn, stained ones worn by veterans of the Front. Ladies and officers treat our infantrymen as if they were their mercenary troops, and the ex-servicemen as if they had the plague; they do as much as they can to avoid those poor, repulsive heroes, and they have fits of horror if they’re bumped into or even brushed by one of them, as if seized with fear of contagion or of an angry insult. Gods of uniforms and swords, little goddesses of the theaters and café, wives and lovers of the Chiefs of Staff, appearances are everything on the "Promenade du Quai" and inside their heads. [go back]

Swimming Season: Although he shares the distance from home with a few understanding friends, Emilio feels lonely at the Zeitenlik camp, just as he does in that howling squawking of Salonicco. One afternoon, to soften sadness underscored by summer heat and strong memories of freedom, he heads for the sea. On the way, he notices that it’s much farther than he’d estimated. After a long march he finally enters a deserted beach crossed only by the fragrant splash of waves, which the breeze is pushing along the sand. His senses, struck by the elements he’d always been at home with, carry him back to childhood and meetings with little friends on the lagoon, with whom he would row, dive, and collect shellfish among the little islands.
The beach shows the presence of sweet bivalves through innumerable copies of little holes on the water-line, or just before the first trace of water. Seized by an impulse of nostalgia and gluttony, he sinks his fingers into the sand and pulls out a round shellfish in the shape of a heart, big as a walnut with a gray shell streaked with yellow egg, rinses it, opens it with his fingernails, and stands looking at the mollusk, who reacts, its viscid orange body perfumed with salt, then eats it in one mouthful. The intense pleasure pushes him to gorge his full.
On the next day, he comes back to the place with his friends from the quartermasters’ and provisions of bread, lemons, and salt. After an abundant harvest, they take a walk along the beach toward the city until they find a shack that seems to be a rustic bar. Around a wooden table, legs stuck in the sand, beneath the beginning of a sunset maturing like fruit behind them, they are inhaling the mollusks with a camphorated white wine of Crete, then, with eyes fixed on the edge of the horizon, they are dropping off. Sensual memories of a vegetative life, but enduring because they are made of things which have endless peculiar worth. [go back]

Speaking again about the Captain: The philosophical practices with which Italian cultural life of the first decades of the century is imprinted, futurist idiocy and irresponsible nationalism, unite and synchronize with each other the categorical imperatives of living dynamically and living dangerously. Today, when the storms of two world wars are over and the risk of a third has ceased, and in its stead continual local wars break out or are fomenting, only the myth of dynamism has remained. Enough is enough, more than enough dynamism, especially in the world of business, which along with the other consequences, mania for success and love of money, form that most holy trinity to which every sly man aspires, in the hope of being able to count some of that stuff, and before which the excluded masses of people of the low and middle class genuflect.
At that time it was (and is now) necessary to add another difficulty to danger and to dynamism (today only to dynamism), which depends only partly on man: the unexpected. Fate, nature, and human beings are full of surprises, rarely pleasant, more often bitter obstacles, whether to common attitudes of the neurotic life, or to individual aspirations to a peaceful one. Surprise descends abundantly at random from the brute forces of nature, but results as well from wickedness and human stupidity, and it serves to bring back to earth the man who dares to dream, and to keep him firmly in his place.
The day after the sweetness experienced on that virgin beach in the form of images and sea odors, the goddess Fate approaches him in the unkempt guise of an infantry lieutenant. The type, functioning as an inspector, is charged by the Command at Salonicco to communicate to the quartermaster something unpleasant arising at the time when he was keeping the accounts of a company stationed in the Trentino, employed in facing the Austrian enemy, then under the command, as the lieutenant declares, of Major Depretis, now a general. The quartermaster, in the habit of carrying the funds needed for the payment of the weekly pay to the soldiers, would have one fine day forgotten a certain sum in the pockets of his own trousers without ever giving it back, a reason for which the Supreme Command in Italy, after having arranged the verification, was sending the proceedings to Greece and requesting the sum to be restored by the ex Major responsible for the military unit. That man, believing himself above any earthly responsibility, and as a consequence unloading it down the chain of command, is now pressing the quartermaster of Zeitenlik to confess the crime, immediately and unambiguously.
Emilio, after having declared to the inspector that he has nothing to confess, takes a look at the document of accusation signed by Depretis in which he maintains that when the quartermaster was administrating by his orders the accounts of the Fourth Company, eccetera eccetera. And here falls, just like the ass, the General as well, because Emilio had never belonged to a Fourth company. Instead that officer had temporarily and obviously held command there immediately after his promotion to Major. In addition, neither the facts nor the grade of the officer match, because when Emilio was under him, the Major was still the Captain; nor did the number of the battalion match, nor the place where the crime occurred, nor any other details. It’s obviously the equivocal outcome of some scam the scheming officer wants to get away from by implicating the ex-quartermaster of the 12th, guilty of having been witness and testimony to his accounting crimes. Emilio replies to the accusation in writing, rebutting the accusation with circumstantial precision and with such pride as to stimulate talk of marvels and to deserve the admiration of the entire Depot, whose collective conscience submerged itself in him as in a hero who knows how to confront courageously the illicit pressure of his superior, to do justice to the weak in the face of the powerful. [go back]

The Burning of Salonicco [Note 36]; the Beginning: But the unexpected comes now also in a meretricious guise, half natural, half not, to desolate thousands of human beings with its fatal energy, leaving them the rest of their lives to reflect on the fragility of earthly well-being , the unfathomable ends of Providence, and on our own discrepancies, giving rise to so many discordant interpretations, but with only one state of mind in common. Whoever might want to decipher their internal feelings by watching their faces would read there nothing but hate, center of gravity for every other sentiment, hate for everything and everyone, which only after many years of life might change into that superior emotion, the patience of old age.
On the afternoon of 18 August, Emilio is gossiping near the barracks of the Command Stores, located on the yellow of the dunes in the wheel of summer, when he’s attracted by a column of smoke rising rapidly above the Salonicco sky. In the first moments, he didn’t make much of it, fires aren’t rare in the city and usually it was only a single building, a house or inn, and this time, seeing the density of the combustion, it might be a factory or a storehouse for wood or automobile tires or a shipping warehouse. But as the hours passed, the smoke didn’t lessen as it had other times, rather, it increased and seemed to be getting broader at the base. The wheel of time began unexpectedly to turn, and even the surrounding dunes lost substantiality and seemed to vibrate with concern.
Someone puts forward the theory of an air incursion or a naval bombardment, but no one’s heard the rumble of planes or shots of cannon. That day nothing unusual or abnormal seems to have occurred: it seems a day like the others, a day in a far-off war, absent as if outside history, which needs to connect to something to leave us a meaning; but an ordinary day, when the periodic wind of Vadar has begun to whistle, annoying hair and eyes, that wind which blows every month for three or four days, from the northwestern mountains of Macedonia toward the plain and the sea, in connection with some recurrent local atmospheric phenomenon.
In the late afternoon the wind is much increased and takes a breath more impetuous than usual, filling the air with swift particles of earth and tastes for mouths, flexing and polishing the grass in the fields, relieving the sky of any rag of cloud, and rapidly dispersing the highest part of the column of smoke, which is continuously regenerating itself, and whose base of fire, still invisible by day and at a distance, is being fed by the gusts. The inhabitants of Zeitenlik suspend their work and stop to observe the novelty from every part of the camp.
Toward evening, officers from Salonicco arrive by automobile along with cyclist soldiers. They say the fire originated in the upper city at the height of the western walls where the Turkish quarter starts, set in an unknown manner by person or persons equally unknown, and is rapidly propagating itself toward the newer quarters below, under the force of the wind blowing very hard from the north-west toward the sea. They add that, according to our Command, the coincidence of fire with the beginning of the Vadar gusts makes them fear the worst, and that measures will be taken soon. At twilight the horizon presents a vast orange halo, although at that distance flames cannot be distinguished, nor could they smell the odor of burning because the wind passes over the encampment before it invests the city.
The gravity of the situation is confirmed by the fact that before nightfall, from the Allied Headquarters the order arrives to confine the troops to camp and to send some of them in turns to the city with all available anti-incendiary equipment for sappers and mine disposal experts. At the same time, the Italian base at Salonicco sends Zeitenlik an urgent request for means of transport to carry goods and equipment to safe storage. [go back]

Movements of Soldiers: Night having fallen, those who remain in camp, still the majority, are unable to sleep from the agitation, nor can they stay awake in the barracks. In a little while, they’re all out on the ocean , attracted by a magnetic force, on the surrounding dunes to peer at that red horizon where now a low layer of flames can be seen extending almost all through the city, which seems to be melting slowly inside an immense brazier. The sky is warm and threateningly clear as on certain winter nights, swept by intermittent gusts. Groups are forming, discussing the cause and behavior of the fire, and the chance to go there to help out.
But what really stirs them is an irresistible curiosity, an almost unconscious enthusiasm, to see close up a fire of gigantic proportions never seen before, the biggest city fire of their lives, perhaps of history, in comparison to which that of Troy stands up only because it’s celebrated by poets; and also the thought of not having to be limited to watching such a phenomenon from far away like a foreigner, but as a unique phenomenon they want to touch with their hands. They all are seized by the longing of living in that place as protagonists, something that heralds itself a grandiose performance instead of a huge tragedy, for them not directly involved because they have neither affection nor properties in the city.
Thus, in deep night, in small groups gradually becoming more numerous, with the sentinels no longer trying to stop them, they find themselves all together almost without knowing it, on the way to Salonicco. And the Italians aren’t alone. From every encampment, innumerable other soldiers are walking almost mechanically toward the fiery horizon, as if driven by a pre-established call. Under the impetus of the gusts that eased the march, and sailing into the wind, a river forms, made of men running down a road, enchanted by the glows coming from the city.
Many of them are arm in arm, not to get lost in the crowd, singing those choruses with the power to keep them united in a singular intention of pleasure. As they proceed, restrained by emotion and wonder, toward the hypnosis of pleasure, many acquire a feeling of pity for the so many victims who are awaiting aid. But as the esthetic distance gets closer to the material reality of the fire, pity gets associated with other feelings, is transformed, enters the road of neutral impotence, and is caught in the least faithful, most hidden recesses of the soul. [go back]

Flight of the Inhabitants: Emilio goes on with those from his Depot, enclosed and hidden within a crowd that’s growing gradually as it nears the city; and the bigger is the disaster, the more intense is the collective will to touch right now with one’s hand that powerful and destructive fire, behind which is hidden the silence of the ashes, the nothing from which to reconstruct the all.
The walls, illuminated in a sinister way as by daylight, begin to appear, pounded by rips of fiery air. The Vardar blows ever more impetuously, crossing burning buildings, dragging with it trails of sparks that straddle the roofs like ephemeral comets, spraying smoke and acrimony about. Having entered Via Egnazia, the river of soldiers becomes irresistible and starts to run, penetrating like a fluid into every side alley. Beneath the illuminating trails crossing in the sky the roofs crackle, letting fall pieces of burning beams.
The inhabitants of the upper city flee along the dazzled slope of Mount Chortiàtis toward the port, through alleys bright as afternoon, clutching their valuables to their chest and whipping before them donkeys loaded to the limit, with half-naked women at their sides, dragging weeping children clinging desperately to their skirts. And behind them the flames are descending as well, burning objects, rolling downhill in a deadly race. Gust follows gust, and by now the fire is lapping at the buildings of the modern city. Houses already burned and fallen become enormous braziers, which under the wind’s violence seem active sulfuric craters which propagate the flames to the nearby edifices, until entire chains of streets are burning. Carts with asses or horses leave burdened from every court-yard, and a few animals, taken fright at the sight of the fire, escape with a still unbalanced load without waiting for the master’s bridle, while others buck so hard as to make everything fall, all the owner is trying to load.
Many carts turn over in the race, and men and women, slowed down in their search for their belongings, are forced by the fire’s advance to leave them along the road but escape more easily; so that between the collapsed houses and the abandoned goods and objects, the streets are filling with every obstruction, hampering the flight and increasing the confusion. [go back]

Behavior of Soldiers and Inhabitants: In the crowd, the feeling of pity never speaks alone; other voices hidden in the heart and mind and awakened by superior forces arise to confuse him, hold him back, disturb him. Only a few leave the crossroads of emotion for reasons of solidarity: most run as fast as they can along the more instinctive street of unrestrained egoism. At this point, on the flooded river of soldiers, innumerable jackals surface who, realizing that with these streets the way they are, it’s possible, even easy, to get hold of anything, start collecting any kind of booty like madmen, even the most unlikely object, anxious to make profitable spoils, while others go into houses left unguarded by the owner’s flight. Emilio realizes with disgust that many soldiers have brought knapsacks with them which they are stuffing with stolen goods, almost as if the sack had been premeditated.
The most instinctive and simple throw themselves toward the restaurants and bars which they had visited during these many months, finding a few of them open because of the precipitous flight of the host and his family; and they sack the cellar, and the bars they find barred they force open, creating an orgy within an orgy, while others, more attentive and interested, break into the shops on via Egnazia.
A few hours later, many of the wine besotted are wandering through the fiery ways, committing vandalism and molesting the inhabitants occupied in moving themselves and their own things to safety. Clusters of drunks smirk and deride the fleeing unfortunates who, meeting their gaze, experience a sense of horror, as if Our Father had turned the afterworld topsy-turvy and installed the Inferno on the surface to show them the eternity that’s waiting for them. More than one soldier, seized by a liberator’s panic, is able to seize and violate a girl, lost and disarrayed, wandering weeping in search of her family, while others strip and take advantage of children left behind in the flight. Emilio’s precise eyes note squalid episodes in which every group participates; in the first place, the military of every race and country, and not only those of color, and then the inhabitants themselves, including Moslems and Jews. In its true roasting belly, the city is divided in two: the People, that is, those who are busy fleeing, having both themselves and something to save, and who are concentrating only on fear and pain; and the Animals, those who have nothing to lose and wait in ambush for perhaps the only chance in their life they’ll ever have to give vent to their instincts of thieves and rapists, without restraint and with no fear of punishment. People and Animals who, in other, opposite circumstances, might exchange roles...
Meanwhile, the Vardar blows ever stronger, amusing itself with feeding the fire and raising sparks that crackle in a diabolical vortex of lights and colors. Twisting, suffocating columns of smoke, compressing the flames then immediately freeing and elongating them toward a useless sea, that immense, inert reserve of water, limiting itself to reflecting the play of light of the disaster. The fire roasts the inside of the minaret, peeking its horns out onto the balcony from which the muezzin used to sing, directing the citizens’ rituals, until those white referrals of prayer become sinister torches emerging from the volcano of the city, from which tongues of fire are presenting a performance, dancing like drunk devils. The flames seize churches, mosques, synagogues without thinking about right or wrong, and attack the modern quarters as well, the Grand Bazaar, hotels, the Quay and the White Tower, getting closer to the sea. When Emilio reaches the port, he sees that all the refugees have gathered there, watching anxiously the rapid progress of the fire and the disappearance of their every hope. [go back]

Arrangements for Refugees: Through the entire night, no fire alarms are ever heard, simply because a fire-brigade does not exist. There are neither water hydrants nor standpipes nor cisterns, so that, lacking water and helped by the wind, the fire was able to jump every obstacle and even cross the few isolation areas created by the engineers and sappers of the Allied Armies. Seeing themselves followed by the fire as far as the port, and seriously threatened even here by possibile of fuel depots, the more than hundred thousand jam-packed refugees move toward the periphery, heading en masse toward the military encampment, a unique place of referral for every possibile assistance and arrangement.
By now everyone has given up on their things and are paying attention only to save themselves. Only after having safely stowed the supplies and the equipment of the military storehouses are the trucks placed at the disposition of the refugees. Pressured by the intense excitement of a sparkling and enemy sky illuminating a mass of people, certainly and inexorably advancing, which threatens to overwhelm with its own weight the camps themselves, the General Command decides to have the column of refugees deviate to an area distant from the military settlement, and assigns them an area in which to camp, putting food and tents at their disposal. Thus arose in that section of the plain a new tent city of enormous proportions, double the size of the Vardar quarter itself, whose ragged inhabitants feel fortunate to have been excluded from the furious advance of the fire which wanted to punish only those who still owned what they had lost months or even years before. Emilio reentered Zeitenlik at dawn as the flames continued inexorably to devour the city. The fire burned itself out after three consecutive days of ritual placation of the wind, leaving on every ruin a thin layer of ashes covering fused remnants of building materials. [go back]

Controversy: In the days that follow, polemics break out on the Pharisaic pages of the newspapers, to establish who should be blamed for the innumerable crimes of theft, housebreaking, plunder, rape, and inconveniences of every kind, committed by the military poured en masse onto the city; and especially for the failed suffocation of the fire. The question of the crimes is in reality the usual problem of routine moral nit-picking, in which each of the allied armies tries to dump the guilt onto the others and, since the only people with a concrete interest in the matter are that population of citizens who’ve been victims of the crimes, it’s soon let go, as well because it’s obvious that the misdeeds can be ascribed a little to every nationality present at that moment on Macedonian soil, including the Greeks themselves, military and civilian, and excluding only the Russians, who remain isolated in their camp, surrounded by leveled rifles, to avoid any peaceful and revolutionary contagion of other troops.
All countries are alike and their citizens behave the same way because their instincts are a national patrimony for everyone, the only difference being that with a better education for some, depending on family, school, socioeconomic condition, culture and traditions, more is expected of them, while for others with less of an education, less is expected. At any rate, the attention of the press is almost immediately concentrated only on why they hadn’t been able to surround the flames effectively.
A fire of comparable size had never entered the realm of the possibile. Its verified appearance had instantly produced anxiety, then irritated military and civilian authorities. No one ever thought of connecting the danger of a fire with the simultaneous rise of the periodic Vardar wind, which certainly had been blowing around since some epoch preceding the appearance of man in earth; much less of adopting preventative measures in relation to such a competitive coincidence. The city, which at that time held a little less than 250,000 inhabitants not counting the military contingents, is not equipped with anti-incendiary equipment nor does it have a real and proper fire department. Each allied Command accuses the other of having done little or nothing to cut off the fire, and to have been concerned only with saving its own plant. A few attempts had been made to extinguish the fire but only after the fire had already become irresistible, and with the use of the only means available to the military, which means dynamite and other means of destruction meant for use in a war. Entire groups of factories had been blown up to isolate the hot spots and to deprive the flames of fuel, but in all parts of the city and even along the sea, the water to complete the job was missing. The only conduits in existence were large hoses, equipped to the ships anchored in port, whose commanders, after having loaned them to the civilian authorities, seeing that the fire was getting closer to the port and threatening the fuel deposits, immediately took them back, taking their vessels out of harm’s way. [go back]

The King’s Visit: "King Alexander, accompanied by the Marshall of the Palace and three Field Adjuvants, has arrived this morning at Salonicco on a special train from Athens." The train did not stop at the Eastern Station, but using the track of the Dogana, entered by Street of Mitkra, extension of the Conduriotis Promenade. It was 9:30. The King, standing at the door of his salon car with a sad air, contemplated the mournful spectacle offered to his eyes. He is a young man, tall, dark, with short sideburns. He wears a monocle in his left eye, attached to a black silk cord. His eye is Danish blue, the color of his grandfather’s eyes, King George. He’s dressed in white: trousers, jacket and. On his shoulders, epaulettes with the Royal crown and the letter B (Basileus) embroidered in silver. He responds to the cry of the crowd with quick gesture, bringing a finger of his left hand to the visor of the képi. Meanwhile, the allied troops are amassed in Tour Blanche Square in the following order: to the right, going toward King George Avenue, Greek infantry, French marines, Serb infantry, Italian infantry; to the left, Boy Scouts of Salonicco, Scots, English, French alpine machine-gunners, Italian marines. On the square, the senior civilians and military: Mr. Argiropulos, the three members of the Venizelos cabinet present at Salonicco, the English general Milne, the French general Marty, the Russian general Artamanoff, the Greek general Zimbrakakis, the consuls of France, England, Italy, Russia, Romania, Serbia and Spain, the officers of all the Chiefs of Staff, French, English, Italian, Russian, Greek, Serbian, seated by nationality. Under the burning eastern sun the different colored uniforms form a harmonious whole. Exactly at ten, the French trumpeters blow attention and their light-infantrymen play the Marsigliese. The troops present arms: it’s for Generalissimo Serrail, who’s just arriving. He’s wearing his regulation-dress, with the medal of the great cross of the Legion of Honor attached. He salutes the crowd crying: "As you were!" Four minutes later, in the distance, along the harbor promenade, can be seen the locomotive of the royal train, advancing very slowly. Another five minutes and the train will be as close as the Tour Blanche.. The trumpeters and the band are playing the Greek anthem. The train stops. The doors of the salon coach open, the steps are lowered, and the Aides-de camp descend first, then the king. Everyone salutes, the troops present arms, the crowd screams: "Viva Basileus! Viva Venizelos!". At the door of the coach, the King is received by Generalissimo Serrail who extends words of welcome. While Mr.Argiropulos is presenting the official personages to the King, the train is backed up. Preceded by Generalissimo Serrail, the King reviews the troops, then, still accompanied by the French Generalissimo, he crosses King George Avenue to review Serbs and Italians. When the review of honor is over, Generalissimo Serrail says to the King: "What do you want to do now?" "I want to visit the remains of the city." The royal automobile is summoned, in which the King and his Officers take seats. The auto goes off, crossing into the city by Campo di Marte, behind the Boulevard of Cemeteries. Thus, the King has taken the streets where the auto needed to take him. He’s watched clean-up work being done by the sappers of the French civil engineers, who blew up some ruined houses for him as he was passing. Faced with the extent of the disaster, the young king seemed extremely afflicted. He said very little, but a folding of his lower lip showed the violent emotion he was experiencing. The King ate in the strictest privacy at Villa Modiano, former residence of the provisory Government. After the meal he left by automobile and visited all the encampments and barracks of the refugees from the fire. He personally distributed large amounts of aid. He will leave Salonicco this evening at six in a special train. The members of the government currently at Salonicco will return to Athens with him.[go back]

The new Salonicco: The buried Salonicco couldn’t have had more worthy mourning ceremonies, nor its disinherited inhabitants any higher honors. The article in the local "Echo of France", August 8, 1917, could not have been any more ceremonious, nit-picking, flirtatious, French-loving, and French, and at the same time contradicting itself by supporting the Monarchy, even if only in appearance, since the French-loving King Alexander I, second-born of the German-loving Constantine I, nephew of Christian IX, King of Denmark, had been forced on the abdicating father by the Anglo-French, to whom he’s nothing but a straw man. To be noted is the excessive whoring of the press, obsessed with the formal details and monotonous in their overzealous attention to the listings. There is no individual name not preceded by a title. Generalissimo Serrail gets as much exposure as the King, and the French are the only ones who know how to get rid of the dangerous houses in those quarters of Salonicco, what’s more, to the strains of La Marsigliese. Did the reporter realize that he’d swallowed that drop on the King’s lower lip? Maybe so, but it didn’t keep him from having His Majesty run the risk of being left buried under those ruined houses that the French sappers blew up just as he was going by. Of course, there weren’t any serious things left to say to those who aren’t exclusively journalists: such as some observations about the disaster, or a few words of hope for the poor homeless refugees, or some little words of pressure, or at least of encouragement, for the Venizelos government and the Allies to do something for the more than one hundred thousand homeless. [Note 37]

When the ashes got cool around the most obstinate ember, and the main streets were cleared by the sappers, the refugees sheltered in the new camp settlement dropped onto the city in the days just after the fire, all of them running to where they’d been living or to their shops, in the vain hope of pulling something useful out of the ground. But troops of every color and nation, including the local ones, had cleaned it all up, or all out, carrying off even the most useless soup ladle. A sigh marked his resignation, but a nidus of unexpressed hate remained in his throat and in the depths of his body.
It might be said that Venizelos, he of the agrarian reform and the modernization of the country, had done something even for the poor inhabitants of Tessalonica, but certainly they did more for themselves, especially the Hebrew shopkeepers and businessmen, whose money wasn’t so heavy as to require the back of a mule to take it to a safe place. For this a jewel case was enough. The fact is that Salonicco rises again in a short time, especially because of those Jews. A city of huts, that’s understood, built out of the ruins of destroyed buildings which the jackals hadn’t been able to carry away. Under those huts, the modern Salonicco is hiding. The new neighborhoods have the strangest shapes and the most flashy colors, and even the inhabitants with their mended, bizarre clothing seem new. An industrious population. Shops, bazaars, café, and especially the little ambulatory salesmen soon begin their own lives, with a good volume of business, not to mention the whorehouses in the periphery which, being undamaged, continue to profit undisturbed. Later appear workshops, small factories, and warehouses. In the tent cities only a few of the poorest remain, those who out of apathy, pessimism, fatalism, lack of energy, in sum, because of their nature, cannot even hope. [go back]

Chapter IV

CONNECTIONS

Blue Leaf: While the war of position stagnates on foreign fronts, in Italy dramatic events carrying a double threat are ripening during September and October of ‘17. First of all a military threat, because Cadorna, having become aware of huge movements of Austro-German troops into the Julian Alps, correctly decides to continue the war only on the defensive level, but dangerously lingers to take concrete steps as regards that strategy. Thus, the breakthrough of the enemy at Caporetto will find our army unprepared. In the second place, a civil and social threat, because the government begins to issue anti-liberty proclamations and to arrest socialist leaders, laying on their propaganda all liability for the absence of military success.
This is the situation on 15 October when Emilio, whom Providence has never forgotten, finds a leaf of blue paper in his hands. He’s never had a leave since the day he left as a soldier, and he’s dying to see his fiancée, his loved ones, and his own city. When a celestial being in the guise of a soldier sings out his name and puts that blue leaf for two weeks plus travel time into his hands, the quartermaster experiences a joy whose intensity attenuates the nostalgia tearing at him. He gathers all his personal possessions in a hurry, goes almost at a run toward the now ash gray Salonicco, and reaches the seat of the Italian Military Base which organizes the journeys of our soldiers to the fatherland. He arrives in time to get the last place available in the last lorry. Immediate departure. In front of him a line of bouncing jitneys, loaded with happy soldiers, crosses the city and takes the direction of Vardar, raising clouds from the Macedonian steppe as far as Sakulevo. The next day the column reaches Flòrina where Emilio, miraculously escaping the Monastir front, had climbed onto a train for Salonicco that last winter, which seemed a century long. He now notices that the village effectively consists of only two lines of houses overlooking a filthy canal. On the morning of the 17th the line of vehicles begins the climb into the mountainous region that leads to the border with Albania. [go back]

Crossing the Greek-Albanian Border: The weather is rainy, that same damned weather that had so weighted and glued to the ground the long marches of the past winter. The road rises steeply, in very bad condition. The vans surpass the altitude of 1500 m, the wheels begin to slide on the icy ruts, and the edges of the road surface start to crumble here and there under the weight of the vehicles in motion. On a sharp, descending curve one of the vans at the head of the column slips, leaves the road, and slides down a short slope, injuring quite a few soldiers, who, after being put onto one of the other busses and crammed in with the rest of those passengers, will have to be taken back again along the vicious, unlucky circle of the road to Salonicco as far as hospital 151, from where they must return to Zeitenlik for convalescence.
As a certain point, the vehicle on which Emilio is travelling along with about twenty fellow soldiers, is stopped, balanced with two lateral wheels over the edge of the road, luckily with the engine stopped and the wheels braked. The soldiers, having descended with a calm as cold as the road, put the machine back on the ribbon by the strength of their arms, and the march begins again, with relief and prudence, through the dense woods of the mountains, by now Albanian. Between the trees, uncultivated fields appear, abandoned to the power of nature. They go an entire day without encountering either house or human, except for groups of prisoners or convicts intent on breaking rocks to make crushed stones, using their long hammers, moving slowly under the gaze of armed guards. Toward evening they reach a Italian Command in the village of Bilishti. The next morning they take up the journey again, through a luxuriant high plain touching Còriza, and a compact group of white houses stacked one on another, called Erzek. Then they pointed south as far as Leskoviku and Perati, to follow the course of the Vojussa in descent toward the north-west, then that of the Drhino climbing to the south-east. The 19 climb up to Delvina and toward evening finally arrive at the port of Santiquaranta, stupid with fatigue, disoriented by the contortions of the roads followed, owing to the Albanian orography, and mummified from five days of bouncing, cold, dust, and mud. They embark immediately on an Italian merchant ship into whose hold they are thrown, into the middle of a fetid and noisy cargo of goats, wild boars, and various alimentary goods which, from the emanated stench, seem to be in complete decay.[go back]

In a different Italy: At night the boat sails through a brief crossing, without incidents but without sleep. Emilio, with the stubborn joy of return, squats at the prow oblivious of the rigors of weather and the sea spray which from time to time reaches his hands and his face, turned up to a sky packed with stars, where the Milky Way seems parallel to the route. He disembarks at Taranto in time to grab a very full train headed north. He’s alone because his travelling companions have other destinations or have found places in other carriages. It stops here and there according to the orders of various military commands at stations or travelling on rounds. Thus, he has a chance to observe and think about Italy after two and a half years of conflict. Soldiers everywhere, silence, indigence, and sorrow borne with dignity, while all around the underworld is flourishing, and many men, healthy and able to bear arms have gone to hide in privileged offices, or specialized places, or have become politicians or their flunkeys or a military supplier or a victualer or a spy or they’re employed in one of the numerous special services. But since not all evil causes harm, it’s come about that even in these two and a half years of war the women, without men, have made progress toward their own economic independence and learned to do business, to administer firms and shops and in the most modest of cases, to work in a factory and to drive automobiles, of course acquiring the same vices as a man, like alcohol and tobacco, his culture and his pastimes, attending cinemas and theaters, gyms and dance halls and modifying their clothing to their own tastes. Their traditional dominators, returning to the table after the war, will realize that they’ve lost a large part of their day-to-day supremacy. [go back]

Venice: In his native city Emilio finds a way of living more diverse than elsewhere. Aside from the so-called moral customs, already compromised by the continuous arrival of every sort of troops, one lives a life totally special within the already characteristic Venetian way of living. The Arsenal, the many munitions dumps, the shelter for the fleet, and the nearness to the front are cause to be particular military objectives. The aerial incursions are continual, and with them the fear of the population, forced to observe schedules, norms, and orders of the military authorities. It’s dangerous to venture out into the completely dark night, both because of the risk of an ugly meeting and because of the canals which can act as a trap, over which only expert citizens can venture, and then only with the aid of the moon or a torch. On the other hand, the dark is propitious for lovers who, forgetful of every risk, can enjoy the sensuous darkness of the lagoons, and their romantic repertoire in alleys and under porticos full with stories of love, impassioned theft of kisses, outbursts of embraces and frenzied caresses, happy for promises and the solemnity of oaths; or disturbed by the anxiety of waiting, empty absences, veiled good-byes and perfidious betrayals.
The two weeks of leave run quickly away, pregnant with events. On 24 October, under the unexpected impetus of seven German and eight Austrian divisions, adding up to more than twice our strength, and helped by the Russian defeat in Galizia and the Baltic sector, our front crumbles at Caporetto, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers drop their weapons and aim for the Venetian countryside. The front is broken again, first on the Tagliamento and then, after a final enemy breakthrough, on the Piave line. The organizational and morale repercussions of the loss are particularly felt at Venice, where the population lives through days of anxiety for the nightmare of invasion. In the city, distinct cannon thunder can be heard from the nearby village of Cortellazzo. The life of the city is squeezed into a frightening and authoritarian isolation, while means are being prepared for the eventual evacuation of a citizenry unable to get used to the idea of abandoning their moldy but much loved homes. [go back]

Salute from the Hierarchy: On the afternoon of one of his last days of leave, Emilio is walking with his intended and a few relatives on the extremely crowded Mercerie, when he hears himself called imperiously by the rank on his shoulders. Turning, he sees a medical Major looking at him angrily, apparently waiting for an explanation. Emilio approaches him, saluting in the military manner. Then the officer asks him in the accent of a stranger why he had walked past without saluting him, to which the corporal major replies that he really hadn’t seen him. The major, annoyed by the omitted salute and still more by the answer, replies that he’s quite sure he’d been noticed; and with blood in his eyes, calls out that he’ll take Emilio’s leave papers away immediately and send him back to his unit. Then the major looks around and pales immediately, having understood the sarcastic Venetian comments of the people. They’ve been able to participate in his entire outburst owing to their own slow pace in the walk, and have organized an amused group: growing rapidly, swelling to obstruct the circulation in the alley, and expressing sympathy for that soldier walking with his blonde girl. Becoming aware of the public’s support, Emilio swallows his own resentment, which is about to escape in a dangerously disrespectful form toward that pompous officer in a billet with nothing better to do, never in danger, whom Emilio unexpectedly sees leaving by quick march, on his own way.
Emilio, fiancée, and relatives traverse the last part of the Mercerie before coming out onto San Marco Square, commenting on military discipline, half idiotic and half necessary, but now with more vigilant eyes. It needn’t be said that their verdicts on the excesses of discipline are negative and annoyed: stupid yet necessary? Stupid yet suitable within military boundaries only? These are the themes, to which are added the psychological ones of chance, vanity, the captain’s envy of the corporal’s pretty blond, and those of inanity and formalism, obligatory attributes of every hierarchy, not to mention the theme of injustice which inevitably accompanies the imposition of discipline: for example, collective punishment for individual infractions and things of that sort. The practical Emilio concludes that in any event the behavior of the soldier must be imprinted with a just equilibrium, blending instinct and intelligence. There are those who submit passively, who tolerate patiently, who react prudently, who rebel dangerously; for Emilio, prudent reaction is the most appropriate behavior. One thing is clear: the concept of hierarchy is itself negative, but the alternative is anarchy, which, expecting perfection, is inapplicable. Therefore imperfection forces negativity, and this reality must be faced from time to time, but with a sense of equilibrium, not in the irrational light of abstract schemes. [go back]

Return to Macedonia: He leaves Venice with his heart in a tumult. Tragic questions obsess him; painful phantasms accompany him. What will happen to his city? What will be the fate of his dear ones and his betrothed? Where can they go? He finds disorders and confusion in stations invaded by refugees packing into the trains. They tell their troubles, dramatic episodes, lacerating uncertainties. All Veneto is living under the nightmare of an immense Sword of Damocles. He gets off at Bologna, swarming with the military. The citizens packed into the stations look at the soldiers like fathers look at sons, making gestures of solidarity to invite them to resist, to hold hard to save the country. It comforts him a little that the inflexible Cadorna, who continues to blame the socialists for everything, has finally been removed and replaced by Diaz.
Young and idealistic as he is, he decides to take advantage of the voyage to visit Florence, Rome, and Naples, even if at a run, which he has never seen. He gets on the Bologna-Florence train, full beyond belief, and stops in a space he finds in a corridor. When the train is in motion, he’s able to sit on his pack. A little later some soldiers on rounds, who succeed in making their way among the travelers, go up to him. His leave papers are in order, and they go on. He’s about to take a nap when he feels the fingers of a hand pressing his shoulder like a claw. He notes with annoyance that a man in civilian clothing is looking right at him and grunting. Seeing the soldier’s annoyed face, the civilian raises his palm as if to say: "Stop right there!", and with the other hand raises the lapel of his overcoat, showing a small enameled disk that seems all crinkled by colored hieroglyphics. Emilio doesn_t understand what kind of police that fellow might belong to, and that badge, rather than clarify, increases the mystery. Maybe he might be an agent entrusted to check on the soldiers, set on the track of deserters in that dramatic moment. Before the policeman can open his mouth, he hands over his leave papers, which the man first reads and rereads, front and back, observing stamps and signatures, and even with a lens, after which he decides to relax his face, persuaded that he wasn’t dealing with a deserter or a fugitive from Caporetto, circumstances that would certainly gratify him more than the boredom of checking the regulars. Nevertheless, he puts the paper in his pocket, sets his face into an expression of sarcastic annoyance, and asks the corporal why he was travelling on a train not his. Emilio pretends to have taken the train in a run without looking at the placards. The policeman orders him to get off at the next station, Sasso, then return to Bologna on the first available train. Meanwhile, he would keep his paper and give it back to him through the window once he was off the train. As he does.
Emilio finds himself in Bologna reflecting on his own bad luck and on the fact that military stupidity would be constructed in such a way as to uselessly keep a soldier from visiting a city in his own country. Culture is foreign to that world, as even the undersigned discovered when, during pre-leave inspections, he was forbidden to have a book under his arm.
This time, the voyage through Taranto is sad and unnerving. His financial resources are so restricted that it seems wiser to sleep in the train rather than to stop and eat in the buffet of some station. He reaches Taranto on 17 November. He must stop at Commando Tappa to wait for the steamboat for Santiquaranta, according to orders allowing soldiers to reenter Macedonia only through Albania. On the 25th, he boards a merchant steamer that unloads him at Santiquaranta the next morning. He’s put on a bus which, stop by stop, reaches Bilishti, where the post lieutenant who has no accountant in his command, holds him back, planning to keep him. But a week later, a phonogram circulates ordering corporal major so-and-so to be sent immediately to Zeitenlik. The lieutenant, disappointed, is forced to let go of the quartermaster, who on the other hand is happy, because to him the officer seems presumptuous and ignorant, and what’s more he sees impressed on his eyes other vices which it’s better to stay away from. In fact, a few years later he sees the man in Rome at Termini Square: the lieutenant pretends not to know him. He sees him again the same day in the hall of a hotel next to the station, and that man pretends again not to know him. At the reception he hears that the man has given false identification. The next morning, when he’s coming out of the hotel, he stops Emilio and greets him effusively. Immediately after he asks for a loan to satisfy unspecified obligations. Gambling debt or something more? Emilio returns the greeting with cool courtesy, but responds negatively to the request. He returns to Zeitenlik a few days before his third Christmas of the war. [go back]

Angels and Mice: The commandant of the Depot complains about Emilio’s tardiness, admitting to being the author of the phonogram, He has urgent need of the quartermaster, who goes immediately to reoccupy his old position at Reparto Armi Varie, where he will remain for a few months reorganizing the administration and the accounts, ignored and violated during his absence. Later, he will advance to being the assistant of the officer responsible for the administration of the entire Depot, obtaining lodgings all to himself, a masonry barracks, and, esteemed and respected by everyone, will be admitted to the officers’ mess. In this way he spends the remaining period of the war, immersed in intense work, but swift and consistent, living a cloistered life, but under continuous personal tension, originally due to the family situation created by the rout of Caporetto, and later to his impatience for the end of the conflict.
He finds a little serenity in reading a few books he brought from Italy and in contemplating the sky. From Serrati’s secretary he’s received the Divine Comedy in a pocket Patriotic Edition, part of the library of the "Avanti!" In the dark and peaceful nights he spends hours and hours observing the stars with the help of a text on Popular Astronomy. But his eyes dream things that go beyond and connect the stars of each constellation with imaginary lines, and his fantasy wanders from sphere to sphere finally to confuse the small happiness of one life with that of the infinite. He feels his certainly practical youth to be involved in contemplation as well, because the two things might very well go together: ecstasies born of unique sensations, unknown to children and most adolescents, and abandoned, if they had them, by the old: a feeling of being immersed along with everyone in everything, the mind, the heart, and the senses, with a great sense of the world; and this brings forth the will to write.
Unfortunately at times, when in his sleep he dreams heavenly music, it’s really not nightingales nor crickets, much less angels playing divine concerti. A gnawing of teeth on marble hard biscuits, from the pouch hung by a nail on the wall over his head, awakens him, bringing him brutally back to earth, followed by squeaks, light thuds, and trampling, and the shiver of feeling his hair and forehead overrun by the little pink paws of the voracious rodents who flee, just after having mysteriously perceived his reawakening. [go back]

Twilight of the War: The news that arrives every five days in the mail from Italy isn’t reassuring. Mother and sister have been refugees at Cairo Montenotte and then at Campoligure. The beloved is at Riccione with her family, the aunts are at Pisa, other relatives in Turin, Cremona, Milan. In Venice only his father remains who, as driver for the military Arsenal, is exposed to danger every day, almost like a soldier in the trenches.
At Zeitenlik time passes fluid and measured, in expectation of a peace that explodes suddenly in one mouth or another to burn itself out immediately in mutterings of denial. The Bolshevik revolution, which has caused Russia definitively to withdraw from the conflict, has favored the more reactionary powers, who in the spring of ‘18 are able to involve the Anglo-French in huge battles in Piccardy, in Flanders, and in the Argonne. But Emilio thinks that even a German victory over the western plutocracies would be a small thing compared to the historical miracle of the birth of a socialist state. But the American intervention might readjust things in favor of the Entente. In Italy one notices a general fatigue, and even Austria, after Caporetto, has no more wind and is stopped on the Piave and the Altipiani. The conflict is being dragged through the mud in which the militarism has sunken its own arrogance. King and Emperors have played Heads or Tails and are now genuflecting before the altar of Pluto. The military strategy is exhausted and has slipped to second place. At this point the war seems conducted only by the banks and high finance. Whoever lasts longest will win, still able to dip gold from the strongboxes of their own country.
In Emilio’s office, Strategy is represented by a modest officer, head of administration, a Sicilian marquis with an interminable name. He’s a little thick and wanders slowly through the papers of his office, but he’s quick at hiding his countrymen here and there against the quartermaster’s will. After he’d tried to trip up Emilio in favor of one of his own protected, but in vain thanks to the foresight of the commandant of the Depot, the officer resigns himself to becoming friend with Emilio and to keeping quiet, seeing that his only duty is being present to put his signature on the papers set before him.
One day, this new and noble friend of Emilio is called urgently to the Command of the Commissariat of Salonicco, where a colonel of Administration, notoriously nit-picking and gruff, is going wild. Even before going to the Command, the marquis is making thousands of assumptions and pessimistic predictions for his own career, loading the guilt onto the quartermaster to whom he attributes improprieties and imaginary errors in the work, and already considering himself a scapegoat. He leaves the barracks that morning completely demoralized but comes back in the evening with his cheeks rosy and his eyes shining. He gathers around himself a group of officers and soldiers and recounts, pointing his finger every so often at Emilio, that he had a conversation with the colonel, who had praised the work of the administration of the Depot, and had even charged him to thank the quartermaster officially. [go back]

From Zeitenlik to Vladova: For Emilio at Zeitenlik, even the months of 1918 pass smoothly and slowly, not only because of his impatience and desire for peace, but also because the administrative machine he’s put in motion is functioning like a well-oiled mechanism, with precise daily rhythms, always the same, as if outside time.
But the number of sick is mounting because by now malaria has contaminated everyone and the military hospitals are so packed they have to direct many patients to Zeitenlik which already holds a few thousand. It can be confirmed that the expeditionary corps for Macedonia has been many times renewed, only because this scourge has been found more deadly than machine guns. Everywhere cheecks, eyes, and hands yellowed, skeletal limbs, exhausted movements, ears pinched, lips pale, in the act of swallowing quinine pills. At the moment rations are distributed, everyone’s mouth is twisted, prepared to drink Bacelli’s mixture. And after the meal, the oppressed feel of a stressed digestion.
Nevertheless, the Italian army in Macedonia, which more than a war machine seems an immense convalescent home, remains superior to the Bulgarian enemy which is in action under conditions even more pitiful, tormented not only by the punctures of the anopheles, but by the bite of hunger. Ours, no longer capable to fire a rifle, are at least able to fill their stomachs with sparse rations of boiled cod-fish, wild Australian rabbits, stinking local mutton, chick-peas, dried peas, and wormy broad beans. In addition, with the passage of time the submarine war has become so insidious as to hinder the return of the sick to the fatherland, as a consequence swelling the camp at Zeitenlik beyond measure. Therefore in the summer of ‘18 almost the entire Convalescence Depot is transferred to the pleasant and healthy village of Vladova on the first rise of the Balkan plateau, at the boundary of Serbian Macedonia, already encountered by Emilio during the terrible marches of autumn of ‘16. Here, on a wide, grassy natural terrace, in the thin air that emanates from the pleasant hills rich in woods and springs, the sick enjoy a priceless benefit, sustained morally as well by the always more insistent words of peace. [go back]

From Vladova to Zeitenlik: The first to surrender are really the Bulgarians at the end of September, and never has a page of news run so quickly through military hands, spreading through the troops with so much joy as if the angels were singing among tents and huts. A month later, Turkey capitulates as well, defeated in the middle east by the English and Arabs, while the Hapsburg Empire was dissolving into various independent republics. The war in the Balkans is over, while in northern Europe, Germany is forced to bend under the counteroffensive of the Anglo-French aided by more than a million American soldiers, and on 11 November signs the armistice with the Western powers.
Italy, after having borne the unbearable of the new and final Austrian offensive of June, and after having reconquered the positions lost on the Asiago plateau, on Grappa and on the Piave, takes back the Veneto, definitively conquers the Trentino and occupies Trieste. On 3 November Austria signs the armistice at Villa Giusti.
The Convalescence Depot prepares to return to Zeitenlik to wait for repatriation. The contingency takes place and moves through a little railway line Decauville connecting Vladova with the line for Salonicco, over which pass two or three convoys a day, more or less. It might be the fatigue of four years of war, or the joy for its end, or a lack of attention that can supervene at any moment, but the fact is that on that single track, where to see a train go by is a rare attraction that enchants inhabitants and animals in the local villages, two trains are travelling in opposite directions, luckily at the speed of a Venetian gondola. At a certain moment, screech of brakes, great metallic noises, windows broken, and a few head lumps for those who had been on their feet. Emilio, asleep on his wooden bench, facing in the direction of motion, holds in his arms the Chest of the Depot, and he’s put the rolled up flag of the Depot and his knapsack on the baggage rack. The frontal blow makes him bounce forward into a nice fat non-com who absorbs the impact, thus he’s unhurt and can leave the spoiled carriage with the Chest intact under one arm, the knapsack on his back and the Flag intact over the shoulder like a gun. After a few hours, the train that had been invested, one of the two but no one knows which one, is pulled into the closest small station, and everyone can take up their voyage on the investor train, then to get on the train
To Salonicco overcoming the remaining monotony of the Macedonian landscape and taking back possession of the old barracks at Zeitenlik. [go back]

The End of the War: The first prisoners of war begin to arrive from Bulgaria, released by the rules of conventions stipulated between conquered and conquerors. These last haven’t yet organized to go and collect their own liberated soldiers, left to trickle in. For the next few months the squalid Macedonian steppes are being traversed by thousands of specters aiming for Zeitenlik, the largest and most organized camp in Macedonia, which therefore takes everyone. Once liberated, they cross the Bulgaria-Greece border, not knowing where to go. A little by asking the way, a little by instinct, they’re found in large numbers on the streets of Salonicco and therefore on those of Zeitenlik, arriving there in lesser numbers and in piteous conditions, starving or having already lost the habit of eating, dragging themselves to the final kilometer like competitors dying in a grand finale. Others have met their ends along the way, and for them, peace has been fatal.
Our veterans from Greece return to the fatherland and unite with the survivors of the slaughter on the Italian front. For all of them, having left the source of their pain, there was joy at the beginning. Just as knowledge of any kind of pain can make men wise, danger escaped from can also turn into something to be proud of. But, while they’re waiting for the deserved gratitude of the country, they’re experiencing the disappointment of poverty and unemployment. And they become pawns in play in maneuvers larger than they are. Deceived once again by the monarchy that felt itself imperiled, they were convinced they had to do justice to those who had undervalued, and according to them also sabotaged a war that, suffered to the depths but won, had become something sacred, a pedestal for heroes. Manipulated by the promises of the interested powers, they convinced themselves that they were gifted with a will of iron, even steel, with exceptional powers with which to risk dominion of the world.
And, having learned nothing from their suffering, they soon fell into the hands of the King and agrarian and industrial capital, and became deceived and violent protagonists of a new Italian regime even less worthy than the last, veiled in sham and the imaginary, everything out of bounds, which hid its fear of socialism, not only of the revolutionary and Bolshevik form, but unfortunately even of that which was much more possibile yet frightening, having liberal, democratic, and reformist characteristics, which all of us now, in the most advanced countries of Europe, enjoy today. [go back]

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Notes on the Text:

1) Sardines drowned in onions browned in oil and vinegar [go back]

2) Real name, it is said, of Gabriele D’Annunzio [go back]

3) ) October 1914: Mussolini changes his politics and becomes an interventionist, must leave the editorship of "Avanti!" and the party. In November, financed by the French, the industrial sugar companies, and the "Resto del Carlino" he founds "The People of Italy." [go back]

4) Ninsiol (sheet) is the white rectangle painted on the walls of houses at the ends of lanes, on which is written the name of the lane itself. [go back]

5) Treaty of a defensive character (officially secret) stipulated in May 1882 between Italy, Austria, and Germany [go back]

6) Conditional proclamation of the inviolability of the Rights of the Italian Nation (discourse held at Rome 6’1’15 by Count G. Della Torre, president of the popular union of Catholics in Italy [go back]

7) Slogan in which is reassumed the neutralist position many times expressed by the PSI, before and after entering in the Italian war [go back]

8) Head of government [go back]

9) Foreign minister [go back]

10) Expression with which the nationalists judge the outcome of the Paris Peace conference in which the Wilsonian project prevails in respect of nationality, and therefore opposition to the Italian goals for Istria and Dalmatia, and also the hostility for our aims for Fiume which, although inhabited mostly by Italians, was not included in the secret Treaty of London. [go back]

11) "Salve, o people of heroes…" so begins the strophe of a noted Fascist song. [go back]

12) 8 May 1915 Victor Emmanuelle III declared that, if the Camera would reject the Italian intervention on the side of the Triple Entente, he would abdicate. [go back]

13) Aug 1, 1914 the government officially declared Italian neutrality. [go back]

14) Long cloak, wider at the bottom. [go back]

15) Rigid head cover in cylindrical form with visor and a veil hanging behind the nape. [go back]

16) The first fifteen days of May ’15 saw D’Annunzio, Mussolini, and Corridoni involved in great speeches in favor of intervention. They culminated 14 May with intimidatory anti-Giolitti manifestations.[go back]

17) Aphorism attributed, if I’m not mistaken, to Anatole France. [go back]

18) Maximalism: current in the PSI that, in opposition to the reformists, were proposing the maximum program, with no compromises with the middle classes, for the installation of Socialism; Sectarianism: in the PSI it coincides with the position of Bordiga and, in general with that which Lenin called "extremism, infantile disease of communism" . [go back]

19) The Pact of London, signed 26 April 1915 between Italy, France, England, and Russia, allowed for the entrance of Italy into the War on the side of the powers of the Entente within a month from the its signature in exchange for notable territorial compensation: Trentino, Sud-Tirol as far as the Brenner, Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, a great part of Dalmatia, protectorate over Albania, possession of Valona, islands in the Dodecanese, the coal fields of Adalia in Asia Minor, and a few colonies of German Africa. [go back]

20) A measure, expressed in degrees, to regulate the aim of cannon shooting at a distance. [go back]

21) "Germany above everything in the world" [go back]

22) "No, liar, liar, no!" [go back]

23) Punitive expedition [go back]

24) The first hypothesis (to send the army to Brenner) was advanced by the English secret service agent Max Salvadori in the book "Short history of the Italian Resistance"; the second ( to explode the tunnels and alpine bridges ) by Gobbels himself in his own diary. [go back]

25) This Latin word signifies the course of logical deductions descended from certain premises, which have come to be called "logical calculus." Liebnitz is considered the founder of modern symbolic logic. [go back]

26) The "terrible", very heavily fortified Mount Biavena, 1617 meters in height, which rises up above the town of Mori, NW of Rovereto. From it the Austrians dominated Val Lagarina and the surrounding mountains, keeping them under artillery fire. [go back]

27) bombs that incorporate large iron balls that fly away, spreading like a fan when the main projectile explodes on hitting the ground [go back]

28) Sharp shooters [go back]

29) The room formed by a bulkhead under the first bridge of a ship, where the mouth of the powder magazine is located [go back]

29bis) About that event I have unexpectedly received information (July ‘99) from Ing. Romano Sansone, the grand-daughter’s husband of Head Quartermaister Criscuolo, one of accused during the trial. Mr. Sansone has made inquiries at the History Office of U.S.A.Navy and at History Archives of the Italian Navy, that had brought important explanations to his knowledge. In the disaster perished 250 out of 1100 sailors. The inquiry attributed the accident to the Austrian secret services all together with some Italian traitors. Charged with the crime were: the businessman Vincenzi, hiding from justice during the trial, perhaps killed by the Austrian secret services bacause suspected of double-dealing; the police inspector Cimmaruta; the quoted Head Quartermaister Criscuolo, involved because of a correspondence between Vincenzi and Cimmaruta, who at the moment of the disaster was on board; the captain of the battleship, Picenardi, responsible for not preventing the sabotage. Waiting for the conclusion of the trial, Criscuolo spent three years in prison, then he had to face the world with the mark of presumptive traitor, until in 1920 he died of desperation. The trial, protracted for threee years, ended in June 1920 with an acquittal for all the accused for want of proofs. When Criscuolo died, the Italian State integrated his widow in the Navy pension system. Captain Picenardi, who did all he could in order to help the shipwrecked sailors, died on account of the suffered burns and gained a gold medal to the memory. There were consequences in high circles: the Duke of the Abruzzi, head of Italian Navy, left his post, and admiral Cutinelli, head of the 1st Naval Squadron, was dismissed from his post. [go back]

30) Viva Kerensky [go back]

31) Peace! [go back]

32) The Press [go back]

33) Probably a dialect term used in Salonicco for " chador ", the veil Moslem women wear over their face [go back]

34) The revolution broke out 12 March 1917 (27 February on the Russian calendar) and brought to power the social democrats of Kerenskij (August ’17). The Tsar was forced to abdicate and a parliamentary republic was installed. The war was continued until the November revolution but with little enthusiasm (vast sectors of the army sided with the Bolsheviks and wanted an end to hostilities. [go back]

35)The television [go back]

36) The fire at Salonicco (September 1917) remains indelible in the contemporary history of Greece, because it was truly colossal and destroyed almost the entire city which, before the disaster, harbored a significant Moslem imprint. Today major tourist texts refer to it. [go back]

37) We must, however, tell that there was tangible help for the victims of the disaster. Jewish community took the most advantage, and received 100.000 golden franc from the Frech government, whereas the Moslem, Greek and that one from Asia Minor, Tracia and other communities received only 10.000. [go back]

Venice, last revision, 1/11/2002

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We thank the management of the site Italian WebSPACE for having graciously

agreed to insert the address of this page onto its online guide; http://www.nikos.com/iws/

We thanks also the managemento of the Italian site Virgilio; http://www.virgilio.it for having graciously signaled this page.

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N.B.This translation into American English is by an Italo-American, Thomas V. DiSilvio, of Burlington, Vermont, USA, 28.6.00; tompatds@sover.net. The translation rights remain with the author.

Inserito nel sito di digilando.libero.it nel settembre 2005.

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[go back to the beginning]