Translation from Italian into American English by Thomas V.DiSilvio

go to the Vol.I in English

go to the photo of the Soviet Commercial Delegation

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Information from the Author (and bibliographical note)

To contact the Author: dariomagnanini@libero.it

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Welcome to this, my new Personal Web Page. You will find specific information about me in the bio-bibliografic note at the end of the document. This page should be of particular interest to those interested in literature, biography, history, and political science.

In introducing my preceding page, I had praised the Internet because it allows circumvention of the more or less degrees of difficulty, sometimes insurmountable, allowing writers, poets, and scholars in any field, to become known to a wide public, and to have their works printed.

On the other hand, I criticized the publishing situation, because it is well known that only a few are able to be published free or with a profit: those in categories privileged by social position or profession, so that even in those sectors it would not be excessive to speak of fraud or cultural pilfering in the form of letteropoli, premiopoli and publicopoli, and even to deem it necessary that there be a restructuring of civilization. Unfortunately, what’s done is done, and has always been in every time and place, and justice can no longer be done to anyone. As for the future, the need is a valid one, as confided to me by Franco Fortini a few years before his death: one solution might be the use of a garantor.

Meanwhile, apart from this, we note with satisfaction that today there exists this new, extraordinary electronic means, the Internet, which excludes no one. Thousands are the more or less disappointed writers who are not able to add their own voice to a public wider than their own restricted circle of friends, and therefore thousands would be able to profit from this new means. It is understood that there is a cost even here: not in money but in the effort of learning the secrets of the new information art. Nevertheless, I think it is worth the effort. To this effort one adds that of publicizing one’s own Web pages, both on search engines and by traditional methods.

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This second volume of "My Father’s Works" is the re-writing and amplification of the notes put forth by Emilio himself during the second post-war period and in the Fifties: the first constitute Chapter X, the second are the Chapters from I to IX and a large part of Chapter XI. The remaining parts were added by the undersigned. The structure of the book is analogous to that of the first volume (previus events and a series of chapters, with the addition of an appendix composed of Emilio’s political and economic writings composed following the war, a few of his poems about the fascist period, the biography and the political thought of Angelo Tasca.

A series of historical and political eye-witness accounts characterize this volume. In particular:

-Previous history (essays, for the most part): birth and evolution of Venetian socialism in the post-war period; born of the communism in the Lagoon and its branches; early fascist reactions in Venice; birth and "exploits" of the "Cavalieri della Morte", political adventures of some Venetian antifascists.

-Chapter I: Emilio, messenger of the "Gold of Moscow"; Nicola Bombacci just before going over to fascism; envy of a PCd’I treasurer towards Emilio.

-Chapter II: rivalry among Tasca, Bordiga and Gramsci on the occasion of Emilio’s promotion to the Sovietic Commercial Delegation; Emilio’s contacts and connections with soviet functionaries and with the upper levels of the PCd‚I; curious Italian goings-on with a celebrated soviet film.

-Chapter III: Spy techniques of the carabinieri, police, and OVRA, in particular toward the Soviet Representatives; Paolo Robotti and his sister-in-law Rita Montagnana, at the Delegation, and their flight from Italy.

-Chapter IV: Attack on the King on 12.4.28. Torture and assassination of comrade Giuseppe Riva; Palazzo Ducale and Marassi prisons; high fascist officials bribed by the financiers.

-Chapter V: Emilio spyed by the police both during his work and during his holidays at Piani di Creto.

-Chapter VI: Commercial obstruction against the new Soviet State; bullying by fascist magistrates and hierarchy; ritual imprisonment on May Day.

-Chapter VII: Emilio held in prison, technically under investigation.

-Chapter VIII: Private life and surroundings spied on until the end of the Thirties.

- Chapter X: Emilio’s remarks and descriptions relating to the final period of Fascism and the post-war period. The case of Gen. Umberto Nobile.

- Chapter XI: Connections between and the setting of the Milan PCd’I; (in particular "L’Unità"); Emilio investigated by Revenue for "Illegal Traffic in strategic materials," the "Trial of the three M" ((Mussolini, Missiroli, Marasini), who had become rich from exploiting the exclusive sale of German coal destined for reparations; relations and correspondence with Angelo Tasca in the Fifties.

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The true and proper story is developed in the first nine chapters that cover the period 1924-1945 and continues to Chapter XI, corresponding to the early years of the fifties, which close the entire proceedings with a few references to Emilio’s final years.

It is not for me to say what might be gathered from this reading, a reading from multiple viewpoints: historical, literary, and human. I am limiting myself to observe that the recounting of Emilio’s adventures has been intended most of all as a penetrating look into the environment of a fascist society, and an implicit warning to any country, any government, and any people not to recreate another.

Fascism has been treated as the stuff of everyday life, an integral part of Emilio’s experience; and that might make it useful to those who, like young people, have not had the misadventure of experiencing it themselves.

The siren sound of historic revisionism, which today enchants many otherwise educated persons who are invading the media, might be useful in putting dots on is (even without returning to father Croce, it’s evident that evil never comes from only one direction and that, by a little effort, one can find a little Pangloss anywhere), but it might be incapable of overturning the pendulum. Every civil society is filled with latent defects, but it is through its political structure that these defects might be transformed into executives defects.

Give man the possibility to do evil and he will immediately seize it, and the wickedness will explode and spread like a virus through an entire population. The fascist society (I imagine it like that foreign communist kind that we don‚t have in Italy and that we fortunately have never been able to get to know because of specific historical-political reasons) was a society rotten to the marrow, from the humblest porter to the Head of the Government. Besides the servile distortion of all institutions and political activities civil and cultural, fascism had degraded the economy. The regime was enriching only the big shots and its own hierarchies, as was amply shown by Emilio’s experience. It had succeeded in transforming the Country into a band of spies, abusers, and whores. Only the high quality of a government‚s rules is able to keep in twilight the evil tendencies inside us all. Emilio’s story is a starting point of the social history of fascism, but it is also the story of the communist illusion, amply justified by the conditions of economic, political, psychological, and cultural backwardness into which Italy was poured at the beginning of the Novecento, where, in fact, it would persist at least to the end of the Fifties and beyond. To desire communism through the entire arc of that period made one feel like an incarcerated man who wants freedom or a poor man trying to avoid his poverty. Very few in those days had cognitive parameters sufficient to evaluate objectively the history they were living, especially at an international level. As I’ve had the occasion to say, history is like life; you understand it only after you‚ve lived it. But Emilio’s story is also the story of all our illusions: atheists or religious, fascist, communist, liberal or democratic. Every one of these ideological and political entities, is capable, when it can, of as much evil as can be thought of. None of these must become a fetish. A political change of any type can have an influence on the structures, yet fail with humans, if they are not measured by the rules of equilibrium, which are able to rein in instincts and degeneracy. Today, taking into account of development and the conditions of life in the most advanced countries, most of us hold that the best system of rules is mixed, liberal-social-democratic, based on a practical equilibrium between liberty and a leaning toward the social: a miracle that could easily shatter at the least disturbance of conditions. [Go back]

Venice, December 1999

It is over [Note 1]

The slaughter is over. It has cost deaths and billions, and everyone is poorer; even if the rich, who are few, are now richer. The winners have locked the slaughterhouse and thrown away the keys, but peace is difficult; the losers are adding up and thinking about trying again.

The world and its mediocre leaders take a short breathing spell so that, with new bandits, they will again take up the race toward evil, which never rests. The spirit of the people must be remade: tissues, brain, and emotions, to return to the eternal past future: the philosophy of the wheel, metaphor for anything that moves time along, whose name is always death [go back]

I see it in every day of history, in the deeds and gestures of leaders, the people unconsciously submissive, forming governments in their passive way, books and pictures of tragedies displayed in libraries and museums where they run to look, not seeing it, at their own end. I see it in everyone’s eyes, circled by abundant boredom: rich, fat, and healthy, but if it depended on us, we would go back immediately to perform the old tragedies, as people today left caught in time, but still capable of desiring their own misfortune. But for us to return is impossible, protected by a firewall of development, well-being, global trade. We don’t determine anything any more, not even by mistake, just like when we gave our power to the fascists, we don’t count for anything any more, instead we’ve glorified war, blessed the assassins. They used to listen to us before they acted because they needed us. Today we are fat vegetables, to whom the "leaders" pretend to turn, knowing that everything will go on just the same, because what we value are things, things that take care of themselves: no free will, no frightening ideals. Having finally reached the liberal-social-democracy of the physical and social body, in the public and private eyes there is a mild dullness. Once we were authors, an acting crowd. Today, we don‚t even know how to do anything wrong.

I found myself in this ugly quiet, again putting together words, signs, and hypersigns that cross each other. I don‚t understand, I would say, it’s not because of you, they’re words left for later. We will go back to taste again our tragedies, to discover how much we were alive when we were believing in everything and crazy to have done so. We write to distance ourselves from the silence of an enormous afternoon. [go back]

Spring 1919. Emilio repatriated in a steamer and returned to four places: family, sweetheart, workplace, party, where he returned in the opposite order. He renewed contact with Musatti, Serrati, Ferrazzutto, and the others, and writes for "Il Secolo nuovo" which he had discovered as a boy, a gift of socialist Providence. [Note 2] [go back]

Close to war, the Venetian socialists had distanced themselves from the anarchists and syindicalists who, as ambiguous as reality, had lined up on the side of the purifying massacre. The repatriated socialists found themselves opposite their old companions, with whom they could trade blows, not yet ready to stop acting like idiots: these will go on to fascism, dreaming of a revolution, searching for ideas in fascism, which is only actions.

Exemplary figures of betrayal: professor E. C. Longobardi who, when the conflict is over, and war magistra vitae, returns repentant, to fight this time on the extreme left; and professor Ferruccio Della Lena, the anarchistic evangelist, who had become an apostle of the holy imperialist war. Professors, what use is it to study if then you decided only by instinct? [go back]

Emilio was searching for himself in an ideal-rational whole, and socialism seemed to cover his needs like a well-cut suit. In contrast with his anarchist comrades he wanted to know the reasons for things, and from that reasoning derive logical actions, if you‚ll allow me a concept more or less contemporaneous to the deeds. [Note 3]

Growing up in poverty, his house was a hovel, that is, a Venetian house that is not a palace, and the street was his living room, as for any boy without a palace. Already at sixteen years, he had worked hard for eight of them in proletarian jobs, and at ten had been fired (unusual today before age thirty or forty), and he had written on the anarchist and the Milanese "The Human Protest" by Schicchi.

He never claimed that his early anarchy was correct. His meekness contrasted with the type suggested by the picture of a grim figure, intent on regicide. The young are attracted by great flashes of ideas, and even today, where there’s no more communism but only a flat and comfortable demo-liberal socialism, find me a child who’s not at least an ecologist. But give him time: he‚ll grow up with his nice automobile, all those capable consumers, excellent abusers, and everything will go to hell. The difference: then, idealists used to stay that way, setback after setback, for their entire lives.

In that period there was no ecology; not only was there no communism but not even the most minimal Social Democracy. Young Italians (except for the Catholics) have nothing but facile anarchic ideas to hold on to (Andrea Costa, Pietro Gori); except for a few bespectacled people, already penetrated by the word of Marx. To children of the people, anarchy was the concept of Christ but on terrestrial soil. Whole-hearted idealism and poetry for self-sacrifice! In a country impoverished of everything, Marxism isn‚t the elite; instead, the anarchism of the people was the first trigger for the masses. [Go back]

A lack of concrete ideas, of everyday revenge (except for a few desperate places in the South), anarchism looks only to the future. "The Search for Bread" and "Mutual Support" of Kropotkin, "The History of a Stream" by Reclus, and other fantasies irresistible for the adolescent of good faith. And too much faith in the capabilities of man and nature. But, as the country and culture continue to grow, the young people understand that these were only meant to be beautiful words. Also, in ragged Italy, time was marching at the direction of industry. Within an air of tolerable freedom, the guards shot easily, to suffocate the rebels, but parties and newspapers were overflowing like springs, and discussions were starting on every corner. Organizations were mushrooming: Mutual Aid, Cooperative, Sport Society, People’s University, Circle of Culture, Worker’s Associations, Chamber of Labor. To continue opening pages: the young people, finally disappointed by Nietzsche and Stirner: exasperated individualism, extreme consequence of a "nothing" upon which nothing could be built: specifically, nothing revolutionary and which, instead, would become the suggestion most suited for Hitler and Mussolini. [Go back]

But, still drunk with the unconscious anarchistic spirit, they ill-judged those workers and parliamentarians who, on the road from day to day, had strengthened the worker class, hiding even the framed Marx in the attic along with the anarchistic chimeras. And they made accusations: parliamentary democracies and cooperating bureaucracies had perverted the worker’s class and promoted personal ambitions! To become mayor or deputy means accepting the system, betraying precious class spirit! Utilitarianism, opportunism, certainly not Marxism. In sum, a "Seventy-eight" in "1918".

These impending communists did not realize that the successful conquests were really the fruit of a cocktail of reform, democracy, bureaucracy , ambitions, and well-deserved opportunism. Becoming bourgeois, the natural tendency of the proletariat, was viewed as a devil corrupting the purity of the child called "revolution", laying traps for the "class instinct." The patriotic intervention in Libya had arrived; that of Bissolati and Bonomi, expelled earlier from the PSI in ’12 for having paid homage to the king, who had just escaped from an anarchist’s attempt at his life. And also the patriotism of a lot of trade-union leaders and anarchists who wished the war. This explains why young men like Emilio are horrified in front of what seemed a compromise between the pure aspirations of the left and the subsidized nationalism of Morello, Federzoni, D‚Annunzio, Marinetti and Papini, and might end up with repudiating the anarchy on the left and hating the social democracy on the right. [Go back]

In a war with such defects, Marxism offers doctrines, new measure and thrust to the young man in need of revolution. The "scientific socialism" was responding to Emilio’s reflections more than the out-of-date utopias or the recent opportunism. The chaos of so many youthful readings cleared, became order, their assimilation was pondered: observation and treasure of daily experience, especially dated from the war in Libya and from the familiarity with extraordinary personages like Elia Musatti and Giacinto Menotti Serrati. And when Marx descends to earth to redeem the human race in the shape of a Russian with a little beard and two decisive eyes, total enthusiasm. You had to understand: not only was there the cause to follow, but also the example to imitate, an immense flaw that is born from immense love. What else is life for? [Go back]

The Beautiful Country enters the war, and the voice and activities of the PSI remain in the throats of its leaders. Everything is stopped at the nothing which is more or less permitted. To that kind of civil war, in which the monarchy has forced Italy to fight and die, has followed the dictates of wartime, which imposes on everyone the most pitiless dictates of Cadorna and the sad severity of civilian life.

Discharged in Venice, Emilio took up again his place in the first line, no longer a young man of the avant-guard but an adult active member. The party is rebuilding, one eye turned toward the country and the other to the Bolshevik example. The Camera del Lavoro is again putting together the National Federations by categories. The middle class, supported by the winning monarchy and the clerics who’d been taken off the leash, was experiencing the anxiety of having to face pressure from the workers.

The strain of history continues to unroll: January 18, 1919, peace conference [Note 4]. But for us it’s a "mutilated victory" because they’re not giving us Fiume (they hadn’t thought about it in the Pact of London) or Dalmatia (inhabited almost entirely by Slavs). The severe conditions of that laboratory of peace are already synthesizing the virus of Nazism, a prelude to the second world war. Meanwhile, the strongest winners obtained the German colonies; we, on the other hand, remained stubborn about Fiume.

In March of that fated ’19, Mussolini creates the Fasci with a retaliatory, anti-Wilson program (a little earlier he’d been Wilsonian just like the Socialists), an abstract proletarian program stuffed with invocations of civil liberties and social justice, soon abandoned, and a concrete reactionary program, adopted immediately, and swinging according to convenience between Republic and Monarchy. At the pulpit of San Sepolcro were arriving arditi, that is, assault soldiers, ex-combatants, revolutionary syndicalists, interventionists of all kinds, ex-republicans, solitary madmen, associations of madmen, and serious industrial masons [Note 5]. The movement brings checks from Ilva, Ansaldo, and others. The first example in the world of a one-party reactionary regime is in the cradle and already sucking money from above and blood from below: not even a month later, the first tongues of fire in the shop of "Avanti!", and in the course of a year, Action Squads were being born almost everywhere.

In May at Turin "The New Order" is born from Gramsci, and a few months later at FIAT the first Factory Counsel is elected [Note 6]. The madness of Fascism having been born, D’Annunzio has madly occupied Fiume in September [Note 7]. Almost two years ago, the other insanity, Bolshevism, is born in Russia, and after the other two years they held a baptism in Italy the dream of Communism. Thus, we go forward from madness to madness (or backward, and "historical revisionism " will have a lot of trouble establishing how much fascism has advanced and how much Communism has fallen back.)

Meanwhile, inflation is galloping and causing an uproar, having taken by surprise even the PSI. The maximalists prevailed at the XVI congress [Note 8], liquidated the program for democratic reforms because it’s "borghese". And they are believed to be getting ready to take over the power of the proletariat.

Also, the proportional electoral system has been born, which favors the parties of the masses. However, the king has taken a rib from the president of the council and from that rib has been born the idea of F.S.Nitti, the first lethal corps which will be used to suffocate popular and labor agitation: the Guardia Regia. And already since January 1919 of this year, has been born, in and out of the confessionals and with the Vatican’s blessing, the Christian Democrats with the name of the PPI.

In November at the first post-war political election, the parties of the masses triumphed: the PSI captured a third of the electorate [Note 9]. It seemed that the time to come to power had arrived. To Mussolini, zero seats and a metaphoric, cadaveric bath in the Naviglio with so many socialist litanies to fuck him in front of his own house. For democracy it’s the prime mortal event. Il 1º December the king re-inaugurates the Chamber but the PSI performs the insult by abandoning the hall: it’s the second event.

The year is extraordinary. After the Libyan prelude it's the first act of the world war, the actors are arriving on the stage for the second act of the century. [Go back]

During the "Two red years" [Note 10] the Venetian PSI had grown. Also consistent were the numbers of readers and subscribers of "Il Secolo Nuovo", printed in the shop of comrade Corrazza with its seat in the Camera del Lavoro at Malcanton. The party is changed; to the old faces well known by Emilio, those of the new comrades had been added or replaced. Many were the intellectuals and professionals of various kinds, and at times hostile or even enemy extraction. Bernau the lawyer, future soul of Venetian communism, came from local monarchist circles: for his old friends a jump into the void, for the new ones a reformation owing to the guilty errors of the monarchy. Professor Licausi himself, a future leader of the PCI, was an element whose the previous position was unknown.

Many young men coming from the school of economics at Ca‚ Foscari enrolled in the Cooperative of Labor and Consumption of Ca‚ Foscari, directed by the Hon. Giacometti. Facts as small as labels but all to the credit of Venetian history.

Taking into account, then, of all the workers and artisans flowing into our reborn organisms, one could say that even in Venice as in so many other places in Italy the PSI had so grown that it was becoming difficult to manage it without having it explode. Among new and old elements there is wide divergence in listening and in dealing with problems. The old people, heart filled with practical prudence, have remained reformers. But in the rest of the country, most people seem to be lying down in the messiainic expectation of a spontaneous end of the middle class.

On the other hand, some young people are in search of ideologic purity and action, stimulated by the International communist who at the second congress furnished his associates the list of "21 points" which sanctioned the break with reformism and provoked the split of the maximalism itself between the "pure communists" (future founders of PCD’I) and "unitarian communists" (Serrati’s faction) [Note 11].

The official national newspaper of the PSI is still the "Avanti!" of Serrati, which expresses the thought of the leaders, but each faction and every city has its own newspapers in which they permanently debate. The sterile sonority of this babble and the predominant presence of the messianic maximalists evoke the gramsciana idea of a circus where everyone wants to exhibit himself with his own act, as opposed to the others. Nevertheless, behind this war of words, everything of value has already been done, even in Venice, is a fruit of the reformist initiative. [Go back]

Still in the Lagoon, concepts and currents fragmenting the PSI were taking shape. Reformers, exponents of the idea of collaboration of classes, who were making headway with Turati, were the lawyer Eugenio Florian, Silvio Barro, and professor Roja, anchored in the Second International. Reformers on the national level were cultivating ambitions of governing but didn‚t have the courage to enter into a monarchy government without the party‚s authorization, knowing that, as the cases of Bissolati and Bonomi had taught, they would be repudiated by the working class as traitors. But, at least, as deputies, that was permitted, because of a sort of good sense left over from those in the PSI who weren‚t dreaming with their eyes open like Bordiga. They were the maximalist electionists who were leading by Serrati, Matteotti, Basso, and others and, in Venice, by Elia Musatti and a few syndicalists who, aside from the theological disputes, had constructed solid local organizations against which (not against the verbal virulence of the maximalists and the embryonic ones of the pure communists) would fascism would be unleashed.

The electionists were sympathizing with the Third International but insisting on wanting to keep the party together, trusting on its massed strength. As for the left of the PSI, it was in its turn divided, as known, into left, center, and right (Bordiga, Gramsci, Tasca). Iginio Borin was a "bordighiano": with a restricted group of comrades, he was representing the abstentionist wing, as straight as the mind of the engineer founder of the PCd‚I.

The center was represented by the lawyer Bernau, A.Brustolon, Costa, and by Emilio himself, who nevertheless was worried that they weren‚t making, at least on the local level, all those distinctions which later will be enjoyed by intellectuals and party historians, who had pigeon-holed the personal rivalries of the leaders. The right wing, finally, had not appointed a representative for Venice: whoever would confess to belonging to the right when he’s really of the left? The entire left of the PCI was unconditionally bound to the Third International. In the political elections of November 1919 the PSI placed itself very well in Venice. No seats for the Fascists. [Go back]

1920. Those arguments agitating the current of the socialist gulf were all focusing on the alternatives: socialism or communism? Second or Third International? Reformism or dictatorship of the proletariat? But even in Venice, as at Turin, the worker and artisan base (because then the artisans were all on the left) there was very little uncertainty about the choice to make, and this was evident in the administrative election in October.

One Sunday morning in September when the air tasted like grapes, at the school, Gaspare Gozzi of Castello was holding a meeting of Clericals and Liberal-Democrats. Emilio and lawyer Bernau were approaching with a dense crowd of comrades to hold a public debate, as was the custom at that time. After the speech of a professor (who later became mayor of Venice), Bernau asked to be heard. The professor agreed and, turning toward the public, added that his program was no different from that of the socialists, but what he didn‚t agree with were the dangerous intentions of the communists. Then, turning to Emilio‚s comrades and lifting his voice into an oratorial surge, he asked: "Are you real socialists or communists?" With a unanimous cry the comrades answered: "communists!" At that moment the Communist party was born in Venice. The professor and his charges were impressed, and came out into the open to breathe the September air, already smelling of red wine. [Go back]

The PSI could have come to power and installed a Social Democrat regime of the Labor type, straddled the crisis caused by famine, inflation, and the post-war lack of employment, the wave of continuous worker and farmer agitation, and the strike of 1919, exploited the awareness of the imminence of its own electoral crowd, and used its wits to take over the masses already radicalized, with a clear alliance of peasants and Catholics (this last was the most difficult thing), taken advantage of the need for radical change of the constitution, demanded in a loud voice something from almost all of the political components, profiting from the chronic weakness of a litigious government that is too easy to discharge, brought to its extreme the consequences on the national level of the program of democratic conquests, on the base of which before the war it had constructed its own local leadership rather than repudiate it in favor of an impossible dictatorship of the proletariat, as was done at the XVI Congress. The State, by its own admission, would not have resisted the tidal wave of change rising on all sides [Note 12]

Instead, nothing. The PSI wanted, in addition to chattering "Do as they do in Russia," to excite everywhere patriotic-fascist enthusiasm and electoral blocs on the right, while in practice, they looked impotently on the agitation of the cities and the trials, both revolutionary and spontaneous, in the factories and in the fields. They spread terror through the right-minded, respectable thinkers and the catholic masses, but proposed no re-formation of the state in a democratic and anti-monarchist direction, and they stood there, dreaming of Russia diffusing through the world the deus ex machina of a dictatorship without any basis in Italy. Even in more progressive countries, despite the predictions, the probability of installing bolshevism was zero: everywhere, excluding the as yet semi-feudal Russia. Attempts at subversion were aborted at birth, so that between the abstract chimeras and the everyday practice was an abyss.

In Germany, there prevailed first a chauvinistic social democracy and then a revanchist Nazism. In Italy prevailed the reaction without fall: in a country where the elite realize only their own power and the complete exclusion of the masses (because such has been the conclusive meaning of the Risorgimento) or, at most, attempts at exploitation in hopes of giving a minimal stability to weak conservative governments (Nitti, Gioletti, Bonomi, Facta), the middle-class, after having played the card of war to re-appropriate for itself the privilege which had been taken from her, plays the card of fascism and wins because of renunciation of the maximalists, covering with ashes what had been an efficient local social democracy which, at least in the great cities of the north and in the Paduan plain, had gnawed away huge slices of power for the agrarian interests and the industrialists.

Fascists triumphed because the left couldn‚t trigger a modern social democratic revolution that would lift them to the level of the more advanced western countries.

This was true even at the cost of participating actively in the war, and even after having seen the possibility of avoiding it; even for motives diametrically opposed to those who would have opposed the reaction, but would have lost the excuse of an anti-patriotic plot.

As is clearly affirmed by Angelo Tasca: it isn’t that fascism impedes socialism, as Hitler believes, but the unsuccessful socialist lights the fuse for Fascism, which triumphs with a vengeance when there is no more danger of Bolshevism in the country. If the disastrous conclusion of the war was a cause of Nazism, the triumph of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia was in Italy a cause of fascism, insofar as it paralyzed our socialism. These conclusions, considered reactionary by the left until a few years ago, would today be more easily shared. [Go back]

1.12.19: the new parliament is inaugurated. When King Vittorio enters the hall to pronounce the traditional speech, the socialist group rises and leaves, singing the Internazionale. The king speaks to a half-empty hall, his ill-will smoldering. Outside, fascists and monarchists await the socialists with clubs in hand. A few days earlier, the sarcastic electoral comment in the "Avanti" about fishing the body of Mussolini out of the Naviglio. The two of them were soon revealed as an explosive mix of revenge and hate compressed to the point of destroying themselves and the country.

The Monarchy and the middle class are frightened by the result of the politics of ’19, by the confirmation of the administrative elections of ’20, and by the socioeconomic power that the socialists had put together during the preceding decades. Thousands of municipalities were held by socialist councils, always more numerous the workers cooperatives, who were approaching the size of a large business: the Cooperativa di Navigazione Marittima Garibaldi di Genoa, directed by captain Giulietti, operating a merchant fleet of a dozen large ships. Powerful also the Port cooperatives and those for food, like the Alleanza Cooperativa Torinese and other similar ones from Romagna and the Padana. The socialists even had their own banks, like the Banca Operaia delle Venezie of Comrade On.Giacometti.

There is a growing power gnawing at both middle class and monarchy, which feels threatened by the desire for a republic, a desire which is rife all over the country. Added were the experiment of the Councils of Factorie which Gramsci and FIOM were performing at Torino in September ‚19, the "strike of the minute hands" of March 20, the occupation of the factories of the North in the summer of the same year, and that of the anarchists on the uncultivated lands of the south. To the tangible loss of power of the middle class, there seemed to be added the incubus of the possibility of Bolshevism, sufficient to call for drastic remedies. Even the Catholics, at this point having emerged from the clerical pouch, were asking for democratic reform, and founding savings institutions all through Italy.

A little later when, by Mussolini‚s own admission in the autumn of ’20, the specter of communism had set forever, owing to the lack of success and the inability of the left, the reaction, without obstacles will proceed to the systematic destruction of the Social Democratic fortresses which the working class had erected. [Go back]

Milan, spring of ‚19: Mussolini has created the Fasci. Immediately the "action squads" are formed, which soon spread through a northern Italy subsidized by landowners. They waste no time. The first action: burning the "Avanti!" with dead and wounded. This type of action would be repeated many times. Also in Milan a bomb (they blame the anarchists but it has the logic of a serious provocation) makes a slaughter of orchestra and public at the cinema-teatro Diana. In ’20 the violence of the Fasci spreads [Note 13]. For the officers of the General Staff, the Fasci are the correct force to put up against the "subversives. The occupation of the factories having failed, hundreds of red and white seats are destroyed in all of Italy, especially in the Padana. November ’20: nine dead in front of the seat of the Municipality of Bologna. The action squads are led by ex-officers of the agrarian and industrial middle class and supported by the carabinieri. In ’21 at Trieste ex-officers of the Arditi dressed as "Cavalieri della Morte" devastated the Chamber of Labor and burned the seat of "Il Lavoratore". Then comes the terror. They were beaten and made to swallow glasses of castor oil, anyone who showed up with a red tie on his neck or a red carnation in a buttonhole. War wounded were mistreated, blaming the subversives. But police, prefectures, military commands, and bureaucracies received only one order: Let the Fascists act.

In S.Marco Square, the first dramatic action of the action squads: a bomb is thrown onto the start of a workers‚ cortege, which is filing by peacefully. The squads are under the command of army officers, branches of the aristocracy and of the middle class; commercial, agricultural, and bureaucratic, all elements tied to the monarchy and to capital, which pays them. The laborers are drawn in part from the petty borghesia (students) but mostly from the urban and rural under-proletariat, a mixture of a few of the pseudo-instructed elevated by nationalism, and of many manual laborers and unemployed half-illiterates, easy prey for anger against the strict, corporation-like rules for workers‚ associations from which they‚ve been excluded or expelled, and loaded with hate against the workers who sympathize with the Russia of the Soviets, and from whom they want to take the privileged positions achieved in the communal administrations in the Mayor‚s organizations and in the cooperatives. Because of this they are burning, to the cry of "Down with Russia!", the Case del Popolo, beating and killing mayors and mayoral employees directors, leaving the perpetrators unpunished or having the survivors punished, guilty of having defended themselves, and all this with the complicity of the forces of order and the magistrates. In Venice, the Casa del Popolo at Malcanton, permanently fortified with armed workers, has many times been defended from night-time and day-time attacks. Later, it was appropriated by Fascism: I don‚t know by what ruse it was given the semblance of legality. With the construction of Rio Nuovo, no trace of it is left.

A sad privilege that the city of the lagoon shares with Parma is to have given life, between the end of ’20 and the beginning of ’21, a nucleus of the so called. "Cavalieri della Morte" which, with the complicity of the local authorities, persecute socialists and communists forcing them to flee from city to city. They are composed of executioners without scruples, who display a gruesome uniform, elements of low morality who can‚t even find a place in ordinary action squads. Toward the end of February ‚21 they left Venice for Trieste expressly to attack Professor Gennari, director of "Il Lavoratore", responsible for correspondence from Venice that didn‚t satisfy them, and led to the end of his life with a stab low in the belly. [Go back]

1921 added two fundamental ingredients to the fascist-antifascist melting pot: the PCd‚I and the PNF. The current of pure communists led by ing. Bordiga separate from the PSI, where the reformists of Turati and the majority of the united communists of Serrati remain, and founds the Communist Party of Italy, section of the "Communist International" until this last was dissolved in 1943 [Note 14] Obedient to the decision of the Third Internazional, the party was formed to react to the refusal of the maximalists to expel the reformists of Turati. The hypothesis was that what maintained the schism was the revolutionary character of the Italian situation, which lacked only a guide. Such an interpretation, later revealed to be completely in error, was maintained, in addition to the Bolsheviks, by ing. Bordiga, a man of valor and notable practical and organizational skills, but with a rigid theoretic vision. At least, Bordiga was an honest comrade. A similar absurd theory might be maintained only ten years later by Togliati at the IV congress of the PCd‚I: and certainly not with conviction, but because of Stalin’s directive, and so to remain at the leadership of the party [Note 15].

The maximalism of the PSI and the Bolshevik-oriented extremism of the PCd’I had the fundamental fault of thwarting every possibility of the Italian left’s success. How could they have thought that a worker class, a small part of which had become fanatical because of a pro-soviet minority, in large part guided by the PSI wich at the moment of the greatest effort in the battle ("red biennium") would abandon the armed spontaneity in the shops when governments and industrialists are already coming to pacts, considering as borghese the occupation of the uncultured lands of the south and going so far as to provoke strikes against the new laws on social insurance [Note 16] based on a contribution from State, employer, and the insured, how could this party ever succeed in coming to power? Even when Mussolini was about to seize power, the PSI was already facilitating things, not wanting to participate in the Bonomi government from which he might in some way be able to control the situation, to stem and perhaps stop the fascist wave.

The PCd’I, far from providing revolutionary contribution to the masses, increased the faults of the left closing up like hedgehogs and hoping as much for the ruin of the PSI as for a victory of their own. According to the founders of the new party, an elite of intellectuals would be guiding the revolutionary masses into the dictatorship. But that elite was too much of a minority, and it exercised its own influence only over a small part of the world of workers, while the great majority would still be following the PSI. What is more, the workers and farmers disposed to sacrifice themselves for the cause, as were the "Arditi del Popolo", were labeled as too spontaneous and neutralized, even before the fascists, by the same communists who couldn‚t conceive of a revolutionary movement developing outside the orders of the party. Lenin himself had no way to understand the Italian situation to its depths; he considered it more revolutionary than it was, and applied mechanically the Bolshevik experience to the rest of the world. He believed or hoped in the capability of the heads of Italian socialism but later Lenin would see in D‚Annunzio that, like Mussolini himself, in foreign politics he was sympathetic with Russia, an authentic revolutionary.

Ideologic and sectarian ardor had blinded the leaders, and given them ideas necessary to the official historical men of the party, to condemn Bordiga’s direction and to save, for the most part, that more reflective and less abstract, but always inconclusive, of Gramsci, and that following one, much more rational, but completely subservient to Moscow, of Togliatti and Longo.

The new party was born at the point when, after the failure of the Two Red Years, the expected revolutionary situation was crumbling ruinously in front of the wide-spread brutality of the actions of the Fascist squads, who were destroying everywhere every Socialist conquest, especially in the fields of the Padana (in only the first six months of ’21 were destroyed by the fascists, in an atmosphere of civil war, at least a thousand sites, including workshops, seats of newspapers, cooperatives, etc. to the point that Mussolini, fearing that such an excess of violence would lead to the formation of governments that would exclude him from power, decided to conclude with the left a treacherous "peace pact" which would get him more than a few problems from the heart of the fascist movement, resolved later with a clever compromise with Grandi. [Note 17]

The left, finally, did their all to alienate the masses of farmers, with a rigid rural regulation that made impossible the existence of small proprietors in the cooperatives and the initiatives of farm labourers who wanted to do some work on their own, and to make themselves hated also by the masses of citizens with an urban regulation of an exclusive and privileged sort (often denying the common citizens admission to proletarian associations) and with an anti-patriotic and provocatory attitude. [Go back]

Revenge and reaction guarantee the interests of a governing and entrepreneurial elite that is very backward compared to those of more progressive European countries. The future Duce himself had recognized in the autumn of ’20 that, because of the inadequacy of the heads of the PSI, any danger of Italy‚s becoming Bolshevik had vanished. Because of this, since then, and for the peace of those who still today fear this or pretend to fear it: Good-bye, Communism! Fascism fears facts, not words. The fascist civil war was fought not against communism but against the institutions and conquests of social democracy, which in the north of Italy had bowed down to the bosses to receive the most elementary needs of the workers, today taken for granted by any entrepreneur, and by the party of the right itself.

Fascism had been born with the Fasci of Mussolini and was developing as a reaction to capital (industrial and agrarian) and to the monarchy independent of the will of its own head, and immediately reveals its own hired spontaneity. The action squads were not initiated by Mussolini but by the "ras" of the Padana with the money of the agrarian interests, and the problem of the future Duce was, if anything, how to contain it. After the birth of the PCd‚I, it was the Chief of Staff of the Army who had to cancel every foolish revolutionary action of the left created in October ’21, a kind of Sword, organizing the armed forces in a counter-revolutionary direction. The minister of war of the Bonomi government issued a circular in which he obliged the 60.000 demobilized officers to adhere to the Fasci maintaining four fifths of their pay. It is difficult to deny that the monarchy was the principal creator of Fascism. The king didn‚t want to be compromised in the first person, and he used Mussolini, who was nothing but the able exploiter of the situation.

November 1921. The PNF is born with a National-Revolutionary program. The fascist programs are of a devastating incoherence: chatter, and contradictions. Theoretically, the void. But, between incoherence and the void, there is Mussolini‚s genial lack of scruples, unable to bear any doctrine that keeps him from acting freely and always ready to have himself bought: by France and their industrialists to propagandize intervention in favor of the Entent, by France again to take care of territorial interests at the borders with Germany, by Giolitti to liquidate D‚Annunzio during the poetic idiocy of Fiume, by the industrialists and masons, who are well-connected to cut off every possible worker comeback. Besides, if not with money, with the promise of good connections, from the Vatican and Catholics on the right. The newly elected Pope Pius XI was so enthusiastic about the prospects of Fascism that he ran down into Piazza San Pietro to have a procession and bless the crowd, something the Church hadn‚t done for half a century. [Note 18] Finally and most of all, from the monarchy in exchange for the assumption to Prime Minister, a thing which, on its own, seemed to say everything: if in place of the dogmatic Bordiga, the cultured Gramsci, and the clever but mean-spirited Togliatti (then only a simple functionary), at the helm of the Communist party would have been Mussolini, Italy would have risked a dictatorship "on the proletariat " that would have made Stalin envious, if possible supported by Savoy and a few other powerful families, a fascism disguised as communism. Jokes apart, to estimate Benito‚s psychopolitical capability one must think about the transformation of action squads into Militia, a decisive goal of the first meeting of the Great Council (15.12.22), which restored tranquility to the monarchy, breath to the industrial entrepreneurs and to those farmers the joy of acquiring again his previous semi-feudal power, to the ex-officers that of emerging from the post-war disillusions, lack of occupations, and the narrowness of a town life without the power of taking the command of an army. For the piccoli borghesi and the lumpenproletariat gone bad because of poverty and social discrimination and envious of the relative well-being of the proletariat, that of exercising power for the first time, and in addition, under the protection of the State. To survive and act, fascism had to immediately repudiate the republican-revolutionary programme presented in ’19 (similar to that which he pretends to propose again along with with the Republic of Salò), and to serve openly, after having widely assured capital, monarchy, army, bureaucracy and church. The communist party, on the other hand, made up for the most part of honest people, had as a calling voted for defeat and martyrdom.[Go back]

Beginning of ’21. In the section assemblies of the PSI the congress of Livorno was being prepared. At Venice, after animated discussions and perorations for the unity of the party on part of the maximalists, and the ideologic arguments of the communist members (the most active are Bernau and Borin), the communist motion obtains the majority. A new Committee of Sections needs to be elected and comrade Magnanini is chosen, to whom they entrust also the editorship of "Il Secolo nuovo", the weekly which little Emilio had seen born and distributed through calli e campielli at the beginning of the century. To represent at Livorno the lagoon section has sent the bordighiano Borin.

Immediately after the foundation of the del PCd’I nazionale, the communist fraction gives birth to a section of its own in Venice, electing Magnanini leader. Then, an Executive Committee is formed by Magnanini, Bernau and Borin, with the charge of editing a weekly that is unequivocally titled "The Eco of the Soviets", on which Emilio writes, signing himself "Telemaco". After some time the three editors have the pleasure of reading on a bulletin of the Third International that Comrade Lenin had cited on the order of the day, together with a few other leaflets, as "The New Order" of Gramsci, "The Eco of the Soviets", as one of the most effective publications for communist propaganda in the world. [Go back]

I mean the end of the chapter. Without annoying with a well-known chronicle, I will point out the following points.

1922, March: 2º congress of PCd’I. Music and Players are the same: yes to the revolution of the proletariat, no to collaboration with the PSI: The PSI responds, tit for tat. April: Germany and the Soviet Union flirt, the new Russia is recognized by the new Germany and breaks its isolation with the joy of the Communists, of D’Annunzio and Mussolini, who support a revision of the too weighty peace treaties which are only to the advantage of the western plutocracies. May: While they have a place, undisturbed, the first great Fascist gatherings in the Padana and in Emilia, the chiefs of the PCd’I go to Moscow for a session of the Internazionale. Gramsci will stay there until May ’24 to represent the Italian section. June: The Parliamentary group of the PSI, more available for mediations and supported by the CGdL, tries again to approach the Facta government but is still disavowed by the party directors, with which he is always on hot coals. July: fascism is unleashed throughout the country and provokes a general strike of protest of the Allenza del Lavoro (union of all trade unions). Democrats and Catholics are stoned: no collaboration with the left. At this point social forces and non-proletarian parties want fascism in power, some to keep the left at bay, some to re-dimension it and bring it back to lawfulness, some to see it triumph. August: new Facta government, against which Mussolini directs an ultimatum: act against the Alleanza del Lavoro, otherwise fascism will no longer be responsible for itself. Agitation follows, with many dead. Facta doesn‚t find anything better than to transfer the powers to the army, friend of the fascist. The PNF prepares the march. September: Benito becomes a monarchist and declares he wants to agree all the requests of the capitalists and to demolish the reformist and democratic structure of the State. October: at the 18º Congress of the PSI the maximalists decide on expelling the reformists (Turati, Treves, Matteotti), who in a nook are creating the PSU (Parito Socialista Unitario). Meanwhile the fascists, having conquered almost all of Italy, complete the foray occupying Trento and Bolzano. At this point Mussolini pretends to again attack the monarchy: these last are not in the dangerous game as long as they stay out of play (which is exactly what the king wants), and he adds: We are republicans because the monarchy, who has everything to gain with us, is not enough of a monarchy. The message is too obvious. On 24 October the fascists convene at Naples: the future Duce delivers a threatening speech demanding five ministries, among them the so desired State Department. They offer him two without portfolio. Then: we won‚t come to power through the service door! And Badoglio recites (in good faith?) to the king: at the first shot, all Fascism will crumble!

Mussolini, however, doesn‚t trust Sua Maestà who is occupying his own time measuring the degree of loyalty of his own armed forces, and in his heart he would prefer a less drastic solution for the country, like a Giolitti government that would succeed in keeping socialists and fascists under control. Benito took his time and played hard to get until the last moment, or just before the last, expecting to be called in a loud voice by the sovereign as savior of the fatherland, knowing very well that fascism would never be allowed to take power with an act of force against the will of the state. To relieve himself of any direct responsibility he allows that the Quadrumvirate, ensconced at Perugia, to busy itself with the March on Rome [Note 19]. Therefore, well knowing the world, when he returned from Naples, he goes straight to Milan, two hours from the Swiss border... Giolitti and Facta contact him to propose a generous participation in the government, but again the future Duce plays the reluctant star. At this point the farce of the march begins, e Badoglio, again, ten, twelve stops, and every movement is shortened! In this story, one thing above all is obvious: inside the House of Savoy there was no unanimity; and perhaps the only one who, after all, does not want Mussolini to take power is King Vittorio.

Here begins that pochade which the historians have dissected hour by hour, without ever coming to the end of that mystery: by this time, was or was not the Duce in agreement with the King? If he was not in agreement with King Vittorio, the sequence of events seemed to show that he was with the royal family. The king had made him suffer plenty before saying yes, this can be deduced because until the end he’d searched for some other less indecent solution, but then, knowing full well that Mussolini was in some way in accord with the Duca d’Aosta, in a hurry to slide the throne out from under his ass, realizing that others of the same House, and especially the queen mother, were pushing for a fascist solution, seeing that by now the entire country was singing a fascist chorus and because of this, he couldn’t do otherwise, and with the invocations of all, he would be elevated to the heavens of "historic necessity" of which he would be the interpreter, decided on the solution that would turn out being the most helpful to the House (anyway, some time ago he had said to Turati: "My dear Turati, a constitutional king can’t do very much..."), that of keeping himself on the throne and leaving the real dictatorship to that character who seemed made to measure and had shown up at the right moment, everyone‚s pet, from the masons to the pope. For the assassination of Italy, the monarchy was the principal and the Duce the killer.

So, Vittorio Emanuele does not sign the decree of a state of emergency, avoiding both the impossibility of governing the country and perhaps a fascist-socialist chaos; returning to the economy of a feudo-capitalist type; and making promises, but without really wanting to, for a soon-to-come clerical sistem-government. But most of all, salvaging the institution of monarchy, which had been running risks for a long time.

The so-called March on Rome was a joke: the legions of the Quadrumviri would receive from Mussolini the order to enter Rome only after the royal assurances and, far from becoming an occupation, the march, apart from the sweaty and painful condition of the marching columns because of the heavy rains, becomes a walk of consecration to the cry, ordered by Mussolini, of "Long live with the King!". To find out how much that farce had cost the masons, who more than others had financed it (many millions, of which little was spent and much slipped under the Duce's mattress, against the always possible future lean cows, but most of all, many fallen heads and internment for those greedy financiers with the mysterious handshake, to which Mussolini soon preferred the applause of the Catholic masses) sent back for more in-depth studies. [Go back]

Having been again established in the Lagoon, Emilio returns to the Ufficio Autonomo of the Genio Militare for the Regia Marina and remains patient there from 1.5.19 to 30 11 20. But he burns with the desire of giving himself entirely to politics to which he dedicates gratis all his free time. In December ’20 comrade on. Giacometti, director of the Banca Operaia delle Venezie, hires him as cashier at Branch of Treviso (salary £.600 monthly). In March of ’21 he is President of the Internal Commission of Personnel of that company.

The first important functionary of the PCd‚I that Emilio meets, as soon as he is named secretary of the new Lagoon section, was the national secretary Amedeo Bordiga who, profiting from the pleasant comfort of being lodged by an illustrious uncle, professor at the Ca’ Foscari University [Note 20], comes to Venice to supervise the local organization of the party. In Emilio‚s memories, Bordiga is seen as a tireless and valuable man.

In July of ’22 Emilio quits his job of cashier of the Banca Operaia to be taken on as an accounting administrator at the "Casse Professionali for Unemployment and Illness of the Italian Federation Workers in Wood", of which Comrade Arturo Brustolon is secretary. The office is in Venice, at the Casa del Popolo at Malcanton, Ramo del Gallo n.3561/B (salary £.800 monthly). His new job and the friendship with Brustolon give him the chance to become friend of an important party functionary, Giuseppe Vota of Torino, one of the founders of the PCd‚I at Livorno, national secretary of the Federazione of Workers in Wood. This friendship will give an important turn to his life. [Go back]

On 2.5.45 Emilio wrote to the director of the "Unità" asking him to publish an article on which is evoked the figure of Vota, as an act of recognition in his memory, and useful toward the end of education of the masses.

Vota was born in a village of Val di Susa into a family of artisans, and he himself had grown up a craftsman. At the end of the Great War he was head of the Italian Federation of Workers in Wood, an important trade union that he had brought into the orbit of the PCd‚I. In September ‚23 he was arrested for three months together with his good friend Angelo Tasca and almost all the leaders of the PCd’I. He then underwent more arrests and various persecution by the Fascist regime, and shared with Tasca the dissention they he had with other leaders of the party. In the most leper-like period of Fascist reaction, he contracted an illness that shortly truncated his life. His bier was followed in Turin by family and a very few comrades. He was not a great leader in the exterior or aesthetic sense of the term, but a truly moral and practical one. He supplemented his sparse education with the intelligence and sensitivity of one who had always lived with the class themselves whose the rights he was defending: an important precondition in forming a sincere leader faithful to his own community.

The article by Emilio was rejected, not only because Vota had been placed into oblivion along with other protagonists of the history of early Italian communism, many of whom had never lost faith in the revolutionary success: those who Togliatti, having re-entered Italy toward the end of the second war, called the "old glories", but especially because he had been very faithful to Tasca, which to some of the leaders of the party was viewed as smoke in their eyes (the "turncoat Tasca") and unexplainable, even now, notwithstanding PDS (now the DS,) had become a Social Democrat party. Tasca had been expelled in September ’29, because of his battle against the stalinist line and even more because of the anti-bolshevist writings in the years after the Second World War during his long residence in France [Note 21]. Add the fact that Emilio himself, notwithstanding the long friendship with Tasca, Vota, Graziadei, and Roveda [Note 22], has never been a follower of Tasca, was well known by the Milan editors of the "Unità", because every time he’d pick up paper and pen and mail a letter, it was to criticize sharply (but from the left) the conduct of the party about some problem. [Note 23] [Go back]

From ’23 Emilio dedicated all his time to the cause. Giuseppe Vota invites him to Milan, presenting him to the members of the Executive in whose name Emilio is charged to spend all his time developing confidential assignments.

In ’76 Senator Gianquinto, commemorating in a conference the figure of Comrade Magnanini, recently deceased, asked the Venetian comrades who were present to consent not to reveal the nature of the charges trusted to their first secretary, and limited to specifying that they were delicate and important. At the Istituto Gramsci, seat of the PCI archives, I didn‚t find any trace of any such charge, not even Emilio's name. The party bureaucracy was obviously not able to get involved with the party cadres, but especially they didn‚t want to leave tracks of certain activities. Besides, almost all the documents about Emilio’s activity were sequestered by the various police during the frequent searches at his homes. Something might remain in the archives of the Minister of the Interior or even the Minister of Finance [Note 24].

Based on the my father’s wrintings and my reconstruction, I know that it was a question of financial assignments. At this point Emilio had been most of all commanded to travel in order to consign to the communist sections of various cities the necessary finances to support the semi-clandestine life of the party. In other words, he was a courier of the so called "Moscow gold". Besides, and most of all, he had to provide, maintain and direct the Italian sector of the SOI (International Worker of the Financial Assistance), a work of assistance and mutual support, an organization still legal then, directed at the European level by Comrade on. Francesco Misiano [Note 25], from whom he would receive appropriate financing. Faith meditated and well placed, therefore, by the party, face to face with a comrade of unquestioned honesty and who, we shall see, excited envy as well.

I can exclude the possibility that any other assignments were concealed among obvious ones. [Note 26]. In a person so honest and mild, one could not imagine, for example, an informational activity of the political type that might favor the party, even if very common, then as now in all political organizations, or in the same way, with common but less justified turn for the exclusive use of some functionary, and that much less, that is to say less noble, practiced by a few functionaries (and not all on the left), in favor of the Russians (the power of ideology but also the need to fill one’s belly!). I repeat, I exclude , at least judging from the little pleasure with which Emilio named me the comrades of the Directorship performing such activity.[Note 27]

Thanks to the responsibilities already mentioned, he was able to attend and observe important party members in their privacy and reciprocal rivalries, unmasking talents and defects, becoming a reserved observer of their private world. At the same time, in his turn, he could be recognized and appreciated, and deserved something more than the risk connected with handling the "Moscow gold." And from 1924, in fact, the recompense came in the form of an excellent and stable job, [Note 28]. But the risks didn’t disappear, they would only become more subtle.

Emilio worked in Milan for a few months, then the comrade and his activity were transferred to Rome. During the months spent in the two metropolis‚, Emilio was able to meet the principal representatives of the party. The family remained in Venice. One day among those spent in Milan, he heard ring the bell of his temporary lodging: there were two of his friends and Venetian comrades who had something to tell him. [Go back]

On the occasion of the anniversary of the forty years of the PCI, Emilio recounts with simplicity to the comrades of a Milanese cell episodes of his militant youth. He doesn‚t show off his eloquence, he doesn‚t think it‚s necessary, and he makes it clear that eloquence is the enemy of witness, because for bettor or worse, the truth will always deteriorate.

Iginio Borin a deputy from Venice. The "Class war" heats up. High finance and ras have ordered the squads to "beat the shit out of the fag communists." Those who carried out the orders, press, and local authorities, whistled with zeal at the zeal of the ancient families, their own supporters pointing out the people to strike. Death sentences were issued for the comrade the hon. Iginio Borin. In the first hours of darkness over the lagoon, a squad of daddy’s boys, flanked by carabinieri, leaved a tavern in San Marco, where they warmed themselves with lots of little glasses, heading for the house of the deputy in a dark little and folded up street near the Asilo della Pietà, of the then unknown memories of Vivaldi. It proceeds in fits and starts, breaking out at intervals into battle cries of "Who gets the gold?" "We do!" "Who gets Death?" "The communists!".

Waving truncheons and playing catch with grenades (safety on), the band reads in a loud voice the personal information of the neighborhood, as if to frighten the inhabitants, until they stop in front of the home of Iginio, who is sleeping. But the marshal who commands the Carabinieri listens to a suggestion, his own or one of his superiors, that slipped out, a little because of his conscience and a little from the desire not to complicate his career in a period in which public opinion and public force are disturbed by excesses which Mussolini himself attempts to moderate, to show a "fascist legality" and not to jeopardize the way to power. Thus, at first, he imposes silence on the rabble and says that he himself will take care of pulling the Honorable out of bed.

No one raised objections. The marshal pulls the handle of the doorbell, orders the woman who had put her head out to open up to the forces of the public, and climbs the steps followed by two carabinieri. When the honorable appears at the entrance to his apartment, she nods to him to be quiet, whispering to him to obey his orders if he wanted to save his skin. Then, she has him put on the uniform of one of his two men, who, pistol in hand, stayed on guard at Borin’s house while he descends with the disguised deputy. The faint light of a gaslight is distant, the rabble waiting in the calle doesn’t notice anything, and with silent, questioning snouts lets the Benemerita pass.

"It’s his luck that he’s not at home! He‚ll return tomorrow, but tomorrow w’ll be back too." The band beats the shadows with curses and insults but is content, and the band separates near the tavern from which they’d started.

A little later Borin can find safety in the house of comrade Picelli, deputy of Parma, by chance in those days in Venice. So, that time, the Benemerita have impeded in advance another Matteotti-type crime. Having waited for dawn, the two Honorables climb on the first train for Milan. With the uneasiness of two fugitives lost in the crowd they go and knock on Emilio’s door, receiving hospitality and aid.

A few years later, Borin will be thrown into solitary confinement and condemned to many years by the Special Tribunal. Comrade Picelli will die in the revolution’s trenches in Spain.[Go back]

Comrade Attilio Spina belonged to the PCd’I in the terzina fraction [Note 29] of Serrati, after the expulsion of the head of the unitary communists from the PSI. Having been given the stamp of approval of his own ideals to all that he held most dear, to his own children, a male and a female, he imposed the names of Rebel and Freedom. He ran a modest trattoria at San Vio, today an elegant part of Venice, in Sestiere of Dorsoduro, where he was known to all for his kindliness, generosity, and communist faith. Because of that, it was constantly under the sights of the fascists.

Late one winter afternoon in the early twenties, the calli are invested by a fog that cleaned canals and facades, breathing in collective intimacy. At the bar of a wine shop, crawling with workers and artisans heating their hearts with a few honest glasses, a black squad of many shirts shows up asking for him. Worried glances among the workers. Then, all together, clients and fascist thugs fix on the wife of Attilio who’s passing a dishcloth over one of the copper trays stacked on the bar. The intention of the thugs is obvious. The woman, turned to her husband preparing dinner for the customers in the kitchen. screams Tilio, scampa!" [Note 30] Used to living on the run, Attilio understands intuitively, throws the kitchen window wide open, which opens onto a small inside courtyard off Rio di San Vio, launches himself into the intense chill of the canal, and in a few strokes reaches the other side, where he is safe in a friend's house. The Black Shirts heard the splash. Defied and humiliated, they threw themselves behind the bar onto the woman, slapping her and breaking everything they got into their hands. Then, howling threats of vengeance, they left in a hurry, shooting into the nothingness of the fog.

From the fear, the poor woman developed heart disease and lived in a debilitated condition for years. When she died, toward the end of the Thirties, Attilio had a marble pedestal erected on her tomb, with a laconic inscription: "We’ll rise again/"! Faced with this theological promise, and to his dissimulated political warning, the Venetian Communists often go to San Michele in Isola to harden their faith. [Go back]

As a sign of these testimonies, the name of a modest and dear comrade of Emilio, his life-long friend, that of the engraver Arturo Brustolon (who knows, perhaps a descendent of the great Venetian sculptor of the Seicento), party comrade and director of the Union of the Federation in Wood, who underwent a long condemnation by the Tribunale Speciale. After serving that prison sentence he returned to Venice to take up a tough clandestine activity maintaining contacts with other Comrades forced into silence because of the dictatorship.

He would work on his always lively material in a small place, an appendix to the church of Campiello del Sole, secret gathering place of many comrades who, like Emilio, would go to visit him when they came to Venice, and between whose cold and mildewed fissures I sniffed and peeked. They would all close themselves into that storehouse and vent their anxieties. Toward evening, to lift their morale, they would go circumspectly to visit Attilio Spina in his trattoria at San Vio, and around his local wine they would exchange news and opinions. [Go back]

History is a sea where waves break corroded shells on the beach, making them again shiny and new. But they are always the same, they are always seashells, being shifted or admired, admired and shifting, shells of ideas, amulets; persons that we hold in esteem today we deprecate tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow we admire them again, recycle them, as they walk along with our constantly changing nature. And even in the same moment there is someone who adores and at the same time scorns, in a grotesque, schizophrenic group of I hate and I love. But for one party or the other it is a serious thing, one can compromise his material and moral well-being, even his life.

The world is all this variety: contradictions, beauty, and sorrow. And we can't get away from it: the rich man who hates/loves the poor, the poor man who loves/hates the rich, the liberal with a salary, the collectivist who owns a great industry. Things will return. Oh, do they return: the love/hate of Fascism and Communism, certainly in a different form, simply because there is always the need. Maybe because we are destined always to remain far from the truth, or maybe because truth doesn't exist. For one singular coincidence in the house of a communist, my brother born on the anniversary of Lenin's death, I on that of Stalin [Note 31]: are we to weep or to throw a party? Or to try to make sense of all our words, like that small boy whose reply to the words "Why aren‚t you going to school today?" was: "Today is a cheerful day because the pope is dead".

In a rush of historical sentiment, Emilio has wanted to close his witness putting togheter the old Venetian comrades with the young cadres, the leaders founders of the party and their precursors, from Cattaneo to Antonio Labriola, from Cafiero to Lazzari, from Costa to Malatesta, eternal revolutionaries bound together against the eternal Reaction.

The reaction of the Italian working class to Lenin’s death was intense but composed, strongly held inside. The joy of the directing classes and of the enemies of socialism was perverse and clamorous. Groups of students (and whenever have the students been able to renounce their physiologic protagonism?) staged manifestations in all of Italy, San Marco Square included, rowdy manifestations in memory of the great experimenter, displaying farcical processions and satirical funerals, and declaiming dark prophecies for the life of the first socialist state. [Go back]

At this point Benito is in Roma, faithful servant of the king. At the bat of an eye he forms the government: Catholics, liberals, and representatives of all the rights. Immediate, fascist violence with devastation of newspapers and many dead. Again before having the vote of trust by the Parliament, he gives a good lick to the Vatican and high finance, abolishing the registration of securities, and to the farmers, withdrawing the agrarian reforms pending in the Camera.

Speech so called "Of the bivouac", presentation of the program, (economy, order, discipline). A parliament become fascist in a flash votes unanimous the trust and full economic and administrative powers, depriving itself of all authority. Then it gives him as well the right to repress all political agitation. Voting eagerly, besides the social democrat Bonomi and the old liberals, Giolitti, Orlando and Salandra, also the catholics De Gasperi, Meda and Gronchi.

The foreign press is off it’s head, speaking of the healthy reaction against Bolshevism, of an innocuous phenomenon, of the transformation of the Klu Klux Klan of Italy into Garabaldi in a black shirt. Mussolini and D’Annunzio vie in making fascist, and each in his own way, the CGdL. The constitution of Milizia is prepared, [Note 32], which for now is authorized to not swear fidelity to the king (the farce of the not compromising the monarchy goes on). A few days earlier, at the IV congress of the Internazionale, has been decided the unification of the PSI and the PCd'I, by now late, boycotted by the police and destined to fail in the span of a few months. The catholic farce also continues: while the fascists massacre the workers in Turin. Don Sturzo criticizes violently what until that moment had seemed to be a liberal and democratic State!

1923. The circle has closed like the sea over Ulysses. Mussolini loses no time: he represses and acts quickly, taking a little power even from the local ras (Balbo at Ferrara, Farinacci at Cremona),who nevertheless continue to lord it over them for at least another year. Fascismo must be order and even culture. Croce, although in the beginning a self-confirmed liberal, sees fascism as a medicine against anarchy, and the bearer of an order that had to be supported. Gentile elaborates his reform for state control over teaching in middle schools. Then, "Fascist criticism" is born, to co-opt the intellectuals, and the Acerbo electoral laws need to be promulgated for a majority system, giving it the semblance of legality. .

At first, foreign policy is amateurish: every day a different direction, if not two in opposite directions, for or against this or that country. While the clero-fascio bunch is organizing, masonry has declared itself incompatible with the new regime, which suits them fine. Arrests, one after another, of leaders of the Left, but also of a young liberal with too free ideas [Note 33]. When the PPI finally shows its due scruples and takes it members out of the government, Mussolini, who already had a carrot in his hand, wielding a club with the other, and down with violence also against the catholic associations [Note 34]. The PPI splits and its right creates a Popular National Party. At the XX congress of the PSI the maximalist prevalence continues, still deciding no to collaboration with the communists. Meanwhile, there are no 1º May, regulations against the freedom of the press are being prepared, and "The Worker" of Trieste is being shut down. After the February arrests, in September almost the entire communist General Staff is imprisoned for three months. In December Gramsci moves from Moscow to Vienna to supervise the PCd’I-European Communist Parties connections. On 5 December the communist deputy Bombacci (this will be strictly of interest for us) maintains that there is an affinity between the fascist revolution and the communist one, and the party wants his dismissal.

The rapid and sad review having been terminated, we can now talk about anything at all without the risk of going to jail. [go back]

December 12, 1923. Living in Rome, Viale Lombardia, where he is at the disposition of the party which, through Giuseppe Vota, has charged him with a few missions, Emilio has returned to Venice for Christmas with the family (wife, two little children, parents, brother, and sister).

He’s not a leader, he’s a "cadre". Cadres and unskilled laborers are not part of the party’s history, but they are invaluable for demonstrating fidelity and ability. The history of a party is that of the leaders. The historians cannot make a careful study of a party, there's not enough time, and as for the subject: there's a pile of anonymous people treated at most like objects (usually victims) of particular deeds, or impressive situations, or who are listed in a general way, for the sake of completeness. So the history of anything so vast (a company, a nation) is the history of the elites. But if history can‚t contain everyone‚s life, this means that it doesn't exist, or exists only in the abstract. We must realize this: historical facts are those of the leaders, their deeds. Our deeds are absent or tagging along behind. Certainly, one has to choose, skim, but pay attention to the pride of the absolute opinions of the official judges that the history hands down, those who, when all is said and done, leave a void. This void must be filled with literature, prose, and the telling of tales.

The day before Christmas eve, the party treasurer, Aladino Bibolotti, has charged Emilio, trough the comrade Giuseppe Amoretti, to consign to the Trieste activists a letter with the money necessary to reorganize the propaganda after the furious attacks of the "Cavalieri della Morte" against the House of Worker, the devastation of "The Worker" and its closure by the prefects.

Having returned from the mission the afternoon of the 23, Emilio has paused in Venice at "Calle dell’Oca ai Santi Apostoli" at the second floor of a large and decrepit house filled with the smell of mold, cracks on its walls, and holes in its floors. From the front, it opened out over the calle, and behind, onto a courtyard confined by a small calle on one side.

Morning of the Christmas eve. A stabbing cold. The little cast iron stoves in the rooms, burning generously because of the feast days, draw brightly; and the smell of mold changes to the sweet perfume of beech and the sharp perfume of fir of a cupboard to burn before it crumbles. In the snowy air the gulls reconnoiter calli and channels, skimming the shutters opening their wings in front of the balconies and calling for the inhabitants.

In his double-bed Emilio plays with the babies (one a year and a half and the other a few months old) with a papier-maché doll, when a violent ringing of bells shook the kitchen. His mother, Maria, on foot with her shawl, scalding milk, thinks that another pull like that and the rope will break.

Throwing her shawl on her head, she peeks out and sees an unknown man already holding onto the handle. At her side four people are looking up; a little further on a group of neighbors has stopped. One of the four calls Emilio’s first name. "Momento!" Maria turns off the stove and goes to tell her son that quite a lot of men are asking about him and that some of the neighbors are looking for him as well. Grabbing his trousers from a chair, Emilio ran to the nearest window. Without opening it too far, he can see the figures of police in uniform and in plain clothes. He dresses quickly.

Another fierce ringing of bells, and the police move to surround the building, two in Calle dell’Oca and two in the two small lateral calli, as if they are preparing for an assault or beginning a siege. Made curious by the maneuvers, the passersby are stopped and informed. While together with the neighbors: the first flakes being shaken from collars, emotions betrayed in watching an arrest.

Emilio says to open the door. The family is gathered in the kitchen making worried comments. His sister Catina has gone to keep an eye on babies and big babies. A sharp blow on the front door, and two agents climb the stairs in a hurry followed by the calm of a moustached man of middle age, tall and lean, which describes Inspector Zavagno. For the reason of that surprise, he has a leaflet from the Questura read to Emilio. And Emilio, with calm and dignity: "Search where you wish." [Go back]

Realizing the size of the house, the inspector had a third agent go up, and all three set to work with method and patience. More of substance falls from the sky but no one notices. His wife Ida follows the movements closely. Guided by doctor Zavagno’s gestures and signs, the policements seem to be performing the most normal job in the world. They search everywhere but are interested only in books, newspapers, letters, post cards, and any other piece of paper with writing on it. They find and requisition even the little sheets on which as a child Emilio had written his first poetry.

An hour later, the living table is covered by piles of books and heaps of papers. Emilio is sitting apart in the kitchen with his parents and his brother Fausto. Catina continues to play with the children. At a certain point, an agent, who is scattering over the floor clothing extracted from an unused chest of doors, stopped as if enchanted. The moustaches laugh at him: "Here it is,inspector, here is the gold of Moscow!" Ida couldn‚t hold back a burst of laughter at the policeman who is left holding the bag, a poorly knotted handkerchief with something shiny inside. Doctor Zavagno bends to look, and turned a pitying glance: nothing but ordinary baubles from Murano. Then, with little patience, he turned to Ida, asking her where the money was. Emilio, in the kitchen with his ears wide open, approached, while Ida answered that all they had was a five-hundred lire note that her husband had given her the night before for house expenses, and disoriented, extracted it from the pocket of her dressing gown.

The inspector took it and looked at it indecisively. Emilio in an anxious voice: "What will my children eat?" With a slow gesture, Doctor Zavagno restores the banknote, orders his men to fill a leather purse with all the papers and the books, and Emilio to put on his coat. Silence of snow. Laments of gulls at the window. "They’re taking me to the police-head-quarter!", says Emilio, showing emotion. Maria faints and has to be reanimated with balm-mint water. Ida starts to weep. His father Bepi and his brother Fausto are hiding their upset, hanging their heads and looking at the floor. The children keep playing on the bed. [Go back]

The inspector sends the police off with the papers, except for one, who stands next to Emilio. They move toward Strada Nuova through the murmurs of the curious. A few had asked who was being arrested, others answered that he was a communist. Everyone was left with faces perplexed.

On the way, doctor Zavagno kept forcing his face into a smirk that was trying to be a smile, discussing lazily while looking around annoyed. He knit his brows and pursed his lips as he didn’t know the reason of the arrest. Emilio was looking at him out of the corner of his eye: the arrest must not have been decided by the Venetian police, who had executed it by order of higher authorities. But he couldn‚t imagine the reason. He had been a very visible communist in Venice when he was elected secretary and was writing in the red weeklies, but then, to perform his duties, he had gone far away from the lagoon without showing up for a long time between calli and campielli, and he hadn’t written on even one page.

He had done everything to have himself forgotten and to pass unobserved. Anyhow, the Soccorso Operaio Internazionale, a route by which the soviets were channeling funds to the PCd‚I, was still legal. Until now things had gone smoothly. The regime was without mercy toward the leaders, who at this point were acting semi-secretly, and persecuting anarchists and communists who were caught in some way, but tolerated those who professed subversive ideas as long as they didn't practice them. Meanwhile, agents were infiltrating everywhere, taking notes and keeping files. Emilio was known by the police as a local ex-leader, now a simple militant party member and honest family father, and the informers have never been especially interested in him.

This the lump of thoughts under the hat from which every so often he takes the snowflakes off, when they arrive in front of the black of the great door of the police-head-quarter of San Lorenzo. [Go back]

An hour of waiting. Then, he is introduced into an office smelling of wood and skin, made to sit on an old armchair with a long story, and interrogated by the Vice Questore.

Doctor Cocco is a plump, bald southerner, one of those of whom one might call a good man, completely dedicated to their duty and without the taste for particular malice, rather, one of those who, when they marry you, they send you a telegram "I will give you cloudless skies, roses without thorns.". Emilio has already had the occasion to meet him some time ago, an informative conversation concluded with formal expressions of mutual respect.

But now Doctor Cocco does not hide his unease, because he‚s received from Rome the orders to search his habitation and to arrest him. Even he does not know the reason. In the police office there are no precedents, except for an information card that says nothing. That hour of waiting was being used to read the sequestered papers, to have him understand something, and to find an excuse to keep that "subversive element" in a state of hold. Thus Cocco is limited to a charge of having connections with a few nationally known communists, as the result of a few letters. Emilio explains in detail that he was dealing with old personal friendships and nothing more, but Cocco turns a deaf ear. He asks how Emilio can make things meet. Emilio answers that his only source of income is the stipend due to him as a director of the SOI of Italy. The functionary spread his arms, a sign that he has nothing to do with it, but Emilio must consider himself in a state of provisional arrest: "I’m sorry to have ruined your Christmas" [Go back]

He‚s made to go down into the boat with two agents, not handcuffed. Under the squack of the gulls the oarsmen take up rowing in silence toward the Bacino di San Marco. An icy wind is blowing, and a few flakes are still flying, but he doesn‚t think of turning up his collar. After a few meters, he realizes that his father is on the Fondamenta di San Lorenzo looking at him. He feels his heart tighten, then swells with pride.

Having come to the end of Rio dei Greci, the rowers aim toward the jails for trial in the Giudecca. In that space the light is more white and the wind more strong. Burning of the eyes, with images within, images of home that keep him from seeing the opposite bank and from hearing above his head the raucous alternation with the gulls. The cadence of the oars and the line of noise from a far-off boat in the line concentrate him; and to the two seated police keeping an eye on him from the prow to the poop, he seems drowsy.

Behind his eyes, the house, flashes of the past, smells of incense, the Sorelle Gamba who make him trip on the bridge, the little newsboy of "Il Secolo Nuovo", who wants him to become a Socialist, the Committee that elects him secretary, Giuseppe Vota, the transfer to Milan, and then the party sends him to Rome. But now, the Giudecca. A sequence of prized memories that seem to converge to an avaricious destiny.[Go back]

He shakes himself from his torpor when the boat ties up in front of a wide gate at the side of the bridge that connects the Fondamenta delle Zitelle to that of the Redentore. It is late morning, getting less cold and bathing cheeks with a fastidious sleet. He disembarks, they open the gate, have him cross a courtyard whose sides face many doors. Behind the first is the office for the formality of entrance. On the walls white like a hospital, the Savoy coat of arms. And he is left on foot in front of a writing desk. The director is absent, and Emilio is entrusted to a prisoner accountant.

Surprise: the attentive eye of Emilio recognizes him as the captain who at the Italian camp at Zeitenlik, near Salonicco, recognizing his organizational capability in July of ’17, had written him a certificate of merit, which might help him on the first occasion to undertake a career as an officer. [Note 35]. He remembers him distinctly as a distinguished-looking man and with authoritarian bearing. He must be in his forties, he still has his fine good looks but his face shows cunning and sadness, and he still can‚t keep his eyes still. But he can still be cheered up. They exchange words of recognition. The officer asks for explanations but, when Emilio begins, he starts speaking again and, meanwhile, every barrier disappears. Returned from the front, he married and has two children. But he didn't find a steady job. Feeling the need for family necessities, he had decided to set up a small commercial activity.

He had begun well, but his faith in himself soon betrayed him and led him to become exposed to unwise operations. He hangs his head: "You know, the children, you have to give them something to eat..." In short, he was in that jail, doing time for false bankruptcy and fraud. He puts on the veiled expression again and asks Emilio the reason for his arrest, but with an unexpected gesture holds him back again, takes from a door the entrance log, and enters data to be reported. When it was compiled: "They were hard times..." He looks around and reformulates the question in a conspiratorical voice.

Emilio felt obliged to exchange confidences and, in a low voice: "Measure of political caution against a socialist". The officer broadens his gaze, incredulous, and it immediately contracted into a smirk of disappointed surprise, then states precisely that he had never noticed, in Salonicco, that corporal Magnanini had this weakness. "Certainly, I was too busy fighting the war," he adds sarcastically. He would prefer a different reason , a crime less noble and more common, more similar to his own, something to excite the spirit of camaraderie, because he really doesn’t understand that crime. He shakes his arm high in the air and bends his head as if to say: let’s let it go. He rises and leads his corporal to a very long room, crowded with prisoners, poorly lit by small windows covered by grills dusty with spider nets, cold, and smelly. He points out an empty straw mattress: "After all, this is just like being on the field at Zeitenlik, corporal Magnanini!" [Go back]

Emilio looks all around: on the ground shoes, socks, sacks of clothing, pieces of paper, and other trash. Along the walls a crowded line of straw ticks on which about a hundred recruits were sitting or lying, waiting for the noon meal. People of every type and origin, guilty of the most disparate crimes from the forgivable to the disgraceful, excluding rape and murder, all put together without any apparent criteria. Taking a few steps in the direction of his bedding, he feels everyone’s eyes on him. Those closest come up to him and ask if he has cigarettes. Others want to know why he’s been put inside. "Politica", says Emilio. One repeats to the next in a loud voice, toward the back of the room. Someone exclaims that here‚s that communist now. From the farthest ticks some of them are yelling something offensive. A big man stands slowly up, and acts as if he’s about to go after him, threatening him with an open hand, but he's stopped by the arm of his bed neighbor, who with a long white beard has the air of being a boss. So he’s left in peace and can take a place on his tick until someone from the service command summons to a meeting. [Go back]

In the refectory he sits next to the man who had protected him. He asks him a pile of questions, and also talked a lot about himself. The man is at least in his sixties, and inspires confidence. Inside, he has influence because of his long years as a prisoner, his frequency of returns, and the indescribable virtue of a man who knows how to be a boss.

He’s always dedicated himself to inventing ingenuous systems from which he can draw easy profits; scams astutely and methodically designed to deceive the good faith of firms even of proven experience. Tall and robust, loquacious and polished, from his beard there emanates a white respect, a sense of honesty that begs for sympathy for the vendors and can to acquire with a simple promise of payment the most disparate products, which were immediately sold below cost for ready cash. When the bills came in, he would write evocative and convincing letters obtaining deferments, so that, after many months, the charges and denunciations arrive and he is arrested for bankruptcy and fraud and is condemned. A story repeated many times with the same outcome, to the point that, when the moment of release arrives, the comrades enjoy themselves betting small sums on the probability and time of his return .Having to go back inside, he distributes generous tips left and right, acquiring respect and dependence from everyone, including the ancients used to analogous experiences. But he was most constant, generous, intelligent.

He is the one with the most ability. Inside and outside, it seems he's founded a real school of swindle. He has many pupils in the city with whom he loves to chat at the caffè during the always short intervals of liberty. His beard emanates a fluid of consummate experience that confers on him a priestly aspect. Emilio thanks him for having been saved by the haste of a bully, and the "prior" admitted that he had always had respect for cultured persons, as Emilio had immediately seemed to be, and especially for those who fight for an ideal, it isn‚t important which. And anyway in life, which is all about getting and having, you never know...Finally, he says ecstatically, he feels that even he has always acted, if not exactly for an ideal, for an idea, or a feeling, a sentiment in homage to the spirit of swindle, an art like any other, in sum, for the esthetic taste for scams, of which he considers himself, without false modesty, theoretician and champion. [Go back]

Emilio, who’d been standing there listening, has lost the will to touch food. He limits himself to peeling the apple that closed the meal but then didn’t even taste it. At a certain point that angelic delinquent pulls out a squat little bottle of brandy he keeps hanging from his neck under his work shirt, and induces his protégé to drink an intimate and cautious toast.

Emilio spends the rest of his day without being bored, concentrating on his own thoughts and images of home. It’s the first time they’ve put him inside, and they haven’t clarified the real reason. He imagines that it might have been, besides a political reason, a question of money. Perhaps they’ve discovered some source of finances, a crime that, since Mussolini had come to full power, leads straight to jail. He’s just consigned money to the comrades in Trieste, but that’s not anything they’d be dealing with. If they’d followed him or if they’d found some proof, they could have contested it to him. Perhaps they’d only imagined that... And all this right at Christmas, when it’s lovely to stay home, all the more that these are the only vacation days he’s been able to take in the last months. But, if it’s only a precautionary measure, it shouldn’t last long. He only has to have a little patience. But evenings in the room, the hours aren’t passing, and he’s seized by a sense of panic that keeps him up late, unable to fall asleep. The vigil passes in uncertainty, and he is not displeased to spend the hours chatting with the "prior".

On Christmas morning, while from his straw tick he was looking through the little fogged, spider-webbed windows, trying to decipher the trajectories of the gulls, Captain Bancarotta came up to him: "Corporal, tomorrow you will be set free, I’ve read the telegram. Good for you!" An unexpected gift, the taste of an undreamed of medicine. Could all this have been the fruit of a lie? Good, tomorrow he can still play with the children...Many of the prisoners approach him, this time joining in with sympathy. Everyone has requests to make of him, and some errands to entrust to him. [Go back]

He’s led outside. From a sky white and content, there falls not even a bit of sleet, and the lagoon is more alive and shifting, thrown into netting by a wind that scrapes away boredom. Escorted by the same two cops, he crosses back on the same boat the pungent air of the Bacino di San Marco, the Rio dei Greci and that of San Lorenzo, and is made to sit on the same leather armchair, with the numerous wounds resewn by the upholsterers, before the same Vice Questore who, this time with the air of knowing a bit more, gives him back a few papers, teasing him in a mysterious voice: "If I were you, I’d keep an eye on my friends...", and adding that he’s expressed his personal opinion to his superiors: Magnanini isn’t the type to commit crimes. And now he can go home. In vain Emilio, disturbed by that sibylline phrase, asks for explanation. Doctor Cocco shakes his head in the sign of secrecy.

On the way, he tries to organize his thoughts. He can‚t think of any explanation. He repeats to himself that the envelope taken to Trieste has nothing to do with it, since it hadn’t even been mentioned. Perhaps the police were looking for something that hadn’t yet arrived at its destination, otherwise, why search? Perhaps they were trying to surprise him before he carried something out?

They hadn’t found in the house, nor could they find, anything compromising. Had they received more precise information about the SOI? But from whom, perhaps one of the so many who’ve infiltrated? Had a few comrades betrayed him? What else could "If I were you, I’d keep an eye on my friends..." mean?

At home, having embraced the family members, he wasn’t able to give explanations, but neither did he feel like reporting the phrase of the Questor, not to excite the usual worried reactions.

On the other hand, wife and mother give him an explanation, in their style and with maximum conviction: he was arrested because he’s communist, and to be communist might be a noble and just thing as far as that goes but also something which according to them, one can do without, especially with a family to maintain. And Ida makes matters worse: it's become more than a mania, a chronic illness, and he needs to be convinced. With a pair of clamorous curses Emilio shuts her up and observes that they eat from his communism. His father breaks in: "El ga rason, se no ghe fusse mai sta anime come lu, el popolo saria ancora ridoto in schiavitù!", which means: He’s right, if it wasn’t for men like him, the people would still be reduced to servitude. [Go back]

On Saint Stefano’s day, Emilio gets on a train for Rome. Crowding, military returning from leave, families coming back from vacation, cardboard valises and bundles held together with string.

With a few coins but without compromising papers he is able to sleep compatibly with the silence-noise at every pause at the stations. Toward dawn he’s awake, with that sense of emptied warmth and his bottom insensitive from the long hours on wood. Under the progression of the light, the roman countryside begins to take up the yellow and maroon of its own expanses, and the withering of the hills spotted with ilex and young oaks. The long fixing of the eye through the little window induces sleepiness and closes his eyes as if in front of a lighted chimney, until a vender serving coffee sticks his head into the corridor. A nod of assent, and the perfume of the drink bubbling warm from a big thermos, diffusing into the compartment and taking away everyone’s torpor.

He drinks in little, tasteful sips, lights a cigarette, and goes back to looking at the courses of hills, his mind active. What has just happened to him and the feelings of the family are both confronting him, fear and pain are making him feel sorry, and the images of the babies rend his heart. But a conviction rooted in twenty years justifies him, coinciding with ideas and feelings from his short but intense piece of history. [Go back]

To the running of fields equal yet different, to their yellow and maroon abundance, he substitutes fragments of memory and pieces of ideas. In the rhythm of the wheels flow books and generous truths, ideals ready to confront reality, in which everyone is right and wrong. But it is a reasoning that has taken a decided form: ideology, at this point become a way of life: work, honesty, danger, and sacrifice.

It was absolutely necessary that the evil of the world be avenged, and the suffering set free. After the war, it had seemed the beginning of a new era, one that could bury forever the shameless medal that king Umberto had pinned onto the chest of the gunner Bava Beccaris, and take the conquest of Italy away from the Piedmont monarchy, for which Trentino and Venice might be the swan song. Bur how many enemies to face? At this point, Savoia was a out-of-date reaction, but there were new enemies: capital, punishment squads. How much coherence would it take to confront them?

The society of demagogues, where a few intellectuals from the middle-class and many self-taught proletarians declaimed the magical virtues of socialism was no longer adequate. Not even the peaceful and concrete local victories of the preceding ten years would be enough: against pistols other pistols are needed, or at least a decisive constructive strategy.

But Emilio had been convinced that with the new party and with the soviet example the goal would be reached. Instead, the revolution was only an exciting serial story. Bosses and Comrades were still stopped at the preceding point, and always hoping for the next. [Go back]

In Rome he finds a better climate. On the streets, people without overcoats. He's rented lodgings in a rather severe building on Via Lombardia, crossed by via Veneto: a room with cleaning service, in an apartment where the proprietor and her husband live. The owner, about fifty and still beautiful, loves gossip and dedicates herself completely to the house. The husband, a retired marshal of the carabinieri, is the opposite, taciturn and dignified. He‚s opened a butcher shop in a street near the center of town where he works with two of his sons.

Emilio comes back tired. The owner, usually happy and chatty, greets him coldly and cautiously. He answers with a smile as if he doesn’t notice: it’s probable that during his absence the police have shown up. The woman accompanies him, opens the door of the room, and, in a tone that implies everything he’s imagined, says she’s already cleaned up, because there was need to do it. An indirect confession. Perhaps she was intimidated into keeping quiet, as it seemed she was trying to do. Emilio was sorry to have bothered the owners of the house who more than once had told him that they’d never been involved with politics, but rather they hate it, because it only causes trouble. Emilio, the lodger, understands that, for a carabiniere, to find a subversive in his house is something that injures the dignity of the Army.

The next day there’s the usual Roman sun illuminating the bare trees at the crossing with Via Veneto. The owner has changed her mind. She thinks that Emilio is an honest person and, tickled at the thought of participating in a mysterious business, couldn’t keep her mouth closed. Begging him not to say anything to her husband, she confided that on the same day of his departure the police had come to ask a lot of questions that she couldn’t answer: they had searched the room and left without saying anything.

To Emilio’s amazed face, she searches in a pocket of her robe and pulls out a closed envelope saying that on the next day a distinctive young man with a motionless left eye larger than the right one had come to see him.

Pretending not to have recognized him, Emilio asks whether he at least had left his name. The woman answered no; she’d asked him but he’d said it wasn’t important. But he’d left a card, which he’d put in that envelope. Giving it to Emilio, the woman repeates the man’s description, emphasizing again his left eye. Emilio thanks for her confidence and promises the maximum secrecy. He’s understands well that that man is Ercole Graziadei, son of his good friend Antonio. [Note 36]. [Go back]

Getting the owner out of the way, Emilio opens the envelope: comrade Mauro Scoccimarro, getting to know about his Venetian adventures, wants to meet him and asks him to come to his house as soon as possibile. Therefore, the party knows everything. While Emilio was arrested in Venice, the police must have completed analogous operations regarding other units of the party, who then came to know of his arrest, and perhaps Scoccimarro knew the reason as well.

That afternoon Emilio went to the indicated address. They didn’t know each other. Scoccimarro welcomed him with curiosity saying that he wanted to meet a Venetian, he himself being from Friuli, even though of pugliese origins, with many relatives in Venice. They talk about the city on the Lagoon, and about the places, diverse and separate, where they used to go: Ca’ Foscari University, where Scoccimarro got his degree; humble artisans‚ workshops and modest public offices for employee Magnanini. Concerning the reason for the arrest, Scoccimarro don’t know anything. [Go back]

Emilio will see Scoccimarro a second time one day in the summer of ’46, after his reconfirmation as minister of finance in De Gasperi’s cabinet of 15 July. The minister is on a visit to the Milan Communist Federation. On meeting him, Emilio greets him with a gesture of pleased surprise that one reserves for friends not seen for years, but His Excellency, stepping back brusquely, pretends in a loud voice in the presence of many people not to know Emilio as if he suspected him of boasting. This is a subject on which Emilio’s pride has never conceded pardon: first he was surprised, then indignant, finally resigned to the thought that seventeen years of jail might have weakened the Minister’s memory. But his indignation is stronger than ever when comrade Rossinelli (another unknown cadre) makes a candid observation: it is common usage for the new minister to pretend not to recognize comrades with whom, as in this specific case, he’s worked with in the same room for over a year. Woe is you who have known generals when they were simple officers!

But this isn’t the only weakness of the illustrious comrade economist. In fact, one day of that same summer, Emilio is in Rome in the office of a high executive functionary of the economic sector of the party, when he is present at a telephone call where this same functionary informs Scoccimarro that a movie troop is ready to film him in a short. The minister who, to escape visits of his petitioners and "obscure" comrades, had stayed at home today and called in sick, was cured unexpectedly, jumped out of bed, and ran to his office to pose. [Go back]

A few days later Emilio is contacted by Ercole Graziadei, who makes an appointment to meet in a bar near Piazza Barberini. After the reciprocal greetings and exchange of information about the health of the respective families, the lawyer clarifies that he’d been looking for him to talk to him about the organization of the Italian section of the Soccorso Operaio Internazionale. He says politely that he is somehow aware of what was happening in Venice and adds that, because of the delicate assignment that’s being developing in the SOI, Emilio must absolutely be left in peace by the police, and that comrade Tasca has already shown to be useful. He continues with technical details about the job and finally asks Emilio to tell him his Venetian adventure. When Emilio tells him the questor’s insinuation ("If I were you, I’d keep an eye on my friends"), the lawyer pursed his lips, shook his head, and admitted that he couldn’t see it clearly: he doesn‚t know the details, but it seems that the police had intercepted a letter containing money destined for the party, in which Emilio figured as sender.

Emilio was astounded. Graziadei explains that only good Tasca knows well the facts. At any rate, he concludes, Emilio will no longer be charged with consigning funds to peripheral party activities, so as not to risk compromising also the central one of the SOI. This being a legal organization, that is, one of the very few channels still able to be used, Emilio’s work is indispensable. [Go back]

The following morning a messenger delivers a message from Graziadei announcing the visit of a person who has had depositions from comrade Tasca to take him to an important member of the police [Note 37] and to swear that his activity as director of the SOI is completely extraneous to militant politics.

That afternoon, in fact, the honorable Bombacci [Note 38] comes to get him in an auto. At that moment, Bombacci is smelling strongly of heresy since, in the parliamentary discussion of 30.11.23 on the recognition of the Soviet Union and the stipulation of commercial agreements, he has carelessly compared the socialist revolution to the fascist one, which cost him the suspension of his parliamentary function. Against such a drastic measure, which has deprived him of his means of subsistence, Bombacci, maintaining that a statement of disapproval would be sufficient, has appealed to the communist Internationale. Tasca has defended him and made it possible for him to be conceded an allowance to substitute for his stipend: the party, knowing the chap as a demagogue maximalist, wasn’t be able to charge him to speak in the name of the parliamentary group. It is nevertheless the intention of Bombacci to favor recognizing the new Soviet State. [Note 39].

He was a good man, but a little foolish and obstinate, enamored with revolutionary rhetoric, and in politics he let his wife influence him, fellow countrywoman and friend of donna Rachele, who convinced him to become fascist. Because of this friendship, he was viewed poorly by the party, who couldn’t tolerate his frequenting Mussolini’s family. Not only did the wives of the two leaders have something in common, but even they themselves: same age, both from Rmagna (the Duce from Forlì, Bombacci from Imola), both masters of elementary schools and active in the socialist movement with important duties, director of the "Avanti!" Benito, secretary of the party Nicola. Finally, they were both captured, shot, and hung from the metal structural work of a distributor of fuel in Piazzale Loreto. One thing only divided them profoundly: the Duce was a bandit of uncommon intelligence; Nicola a poor thing, a very of kind man. [Go back]

The pragmatic Tasca, understanding Bombacci’s equivocal friendships, had profited by his fresh parliamentary misadventure, which was making him more well received in government circles, and, it might be either with the promise of support for his reentry into parliament or even to avoid expulsion from the party, had called him to trust him with that mission. As poorly as it might go, at least the demagogue from Imola had tried to render a final service to the party before transferring soul and body to the other side of the barricade

Therefore, the ex-honorable leads Emilio to commendatore Arturo Bocchini, who welcomes him cordially, wide smiles on his lips and two good coffees. Bombacci expounds the facts as instructed, emphasizing Emilio’s distance from political activity and underlining his essential welfare activities, and concludes that the episode can be attributed to a few deplorable misunderstandings. Continuing to smile, the commendatore opens up immediately, exclaiming that Emilio’s arrest had been only the consequence of a serious imprudence of the party. One of its functionaries had sent from Rome to the direction of the communist federation of Naples a registered letter containing money for the political activities of the communist comrades of that city, and had made it appear that the sender’s name was Emilio. Since that name was unknown by the Naples police who had intercepted the letter, a search had been undertaken and, after patient work, gone back to Venice. Bocchini widens his smile even more, makes a gesture as if to say that everything is over, and says goodbye to his guests. [Go back]

Emilio reflected for a long time on the declarations of the Questore, and he was convinced that the ingenuity of the functionary who had arranged that stupidity couldn’t have been as boundless as it seemed. Any director would realize that such an imprudent act could jeopardize the comrades‚ liberty and the party organization itself, knowing that the police were opening thousands of letters and most of all, the registered ones. If that fellow had to identify a sender, he would have done better to use his own name or to invent one, rather than get Emilio into trouble. Of course, provided he were not one of so many who had infiltrated, he could only be dealing with some one who knew him and was acting out of envy and spite. The party must have understood, since they’d hurried to protect the modest but precious contribution from a director of the SOI.

The doubts were fleeting a few days after by the revelations of Antonio Graziadei, who in his turn had had it from Tasca. The responsibility for what had happened was not that of someone who had infiltrated, but of a comrade, Aladino Bibolotti. He was the same party treasurer who a few days before had charged Giuseppe Amoretti to send Emilio to Trieste, with money allocated to reorganize the comrades after the closing of "Il Lavoratore". Bibolotti, or someone for him, had sent that registered letter to Naples and had Magnanini’s name appear with incredible thoughtlessness as sender, in this way transforming Emilio into bait.

A thoughtless act, which didn’t explain one single thing except for the envy toward a comrade charged with high-qualities assignments, and who had made a lightning career: Brustolon, Vota, Tasca... recommendations, envy, rivalry, evil deeds and moral faults of every kind, even in a revolutionary party which, far from being made of infallible heroes as Bordiga wished, was made simply of human beings. [Note 40] [Go back]

That day and that place, fated coordinates. Rathenau and Cicerin agree: Germany and Russia renounce their reciprocal war debts and reparations for damage and reestablish diplomatic relations. The most imperialist country of Europe becomes the protective deity of the country of socialism. It’s not enough: with secret accords on the way since the end of the conflict, Germany is able to rearm, and experiments in Russia with the most deadly weapons, thus succeeding in circumventing the Treaty of Versailles, while the Soviets are able to break their isolation. But our modest protagonists of a home-grown revolution, which means the one to come which never will come, they can’t even begin to think about it. Lenin hadn’t thought about it (even though many voices were insinuating that he had), but had in fact behaved like a German agent. And then Stalin completed his work. [Go back]

The soviet Republics, having become the USSR in December ’22, aimed at breaking its diplomatic and commercial isolation. The western countries are at first against recognition, turned against it because of the failure of the Genoa conference (April-May 1923): demanding from the USSR 18 milliards of gold rubles (state loans and capital confiscated by the revolution, to which Cicerin had candidly replied by asking for 30 milliards as indemnity for the damage caused by their intervention in the civil war. But the commercial offers were tempting and commerce ended up prevailing. Apart from Germany, the first to recognize the Soviet Union is Great Britain (2.1.24), the second is Italy (7.2.24) and so on, all the other powers (France only at the end of October ’24), except for the United States.

Mussolini, who in January of ’23 was still demanding that Germany honor all its obligations under the peace treaty, with one of his classic pirouettes has now begun preaching that Europe can only be saved if, with the aim of avoiding the excessive power of the western "plutocracies", the defeated nations and Russia will be aided, and the moment has arrived for a diplomatic and commercial agreement.

The recognition is given on 7.2.24, preceded by a commercial treaty signed by the Duce and by the moustached soviets delegates Jordanski and Jansson. So, at this point, the Soviet Union can send diplomatic delegations to Italy, along with a Commercial Delegation that sets up its own office at Milan in Via Cusani (Largo Cairoli). [Go back]

Having set up a commercial office, the soviets decide to hire an Italian employee to facilitate local contacts. The choice must fall on a person of unquestioned morality, absolutely trustworthy, that is, of proven communist faith, and with a generic attitude for office work: that is, a methodic love of order, and skill with a typewriter. What is more, the applicant must possess at least a moderate knowledge of the Russian language, a thing not so rare in the period of which we speak, when, seized by ideologic enthusiasm, more than one comrade had already been subjected to the sacrifice of studying the difficult language of the country of socialism.

At this point good luck comes to the aid of the unaware Emilio. The first leader of the PCd'I, who has come to know about the thing, is Angelo Tasca who is also head of the "Consiglio dell’Alleanza Cooperativa Torinese" of which is taking part his most faithful Giuseppe Vota, director of the Federation of Workers in Wood and Emilio’s friend, is taking part.

As already recorded, it had been Vota who had called Emilio to Milan at the beginning of 1923 and to procure for him his first assignments for the Direction of the Party. As soon as he comes to know from Tasca that the soviets are looking for an Italian employee for their office in Milan, Vota gives him Emilio’s name. Tasca, who trusts him blindly, as if he were his right arm, repeats his name to a representative of the Comintern in Italy, Commissar for agriculture of the Republic of the Ucraina, Dimitri Manuilskij, an expert in raising silk worms, who has friends who culture silkworms at Vittorio Veneto and has already contributed to increasing relations among soviet silk growers and sellers, Ukranian, Caucasian, and Italian. [Note 41] As for Emilio, he starts studying the Russian language at a forced run. [Go back]

Tasca’s recommendation arrives in a moment when the Taschian right is very highly regarded by the Comintern, because it’s considered more coherent with his strategy as compared with the political positions of secretary Bordiga and those of the center of Gramsci and Togliatti; so much that these last, sniffing the danger of seeing himself excluded from the ladder to the directorship of the party, which might still be for a short time in Bordiga’s hand, hasten to make their own the points of view on the right. Manuilskij accepts Tasca‚s request and suggests the name of Emilio to the functionary who‚s opened the office of the Soviet Commercial Delegation in Milan, Ing. Romanoff.

As the principle of inertia shows, nature tends to be always the same: whatever ideology or politics we are going through, factions, lodges, and cliques have always been the same and always will be. If a man keeps another man from eating when he’s hungry or drinking when he’s thirsty, that man betrays himself, notwithstanding his original good faith, in a vain effort of hypocritical energy. Even behind what seemed the purest of pure ideologies, socialism, word with whom the communists themselves ever express themselves when they want to give a solemn appearance to their intentions, the most banal of practices, that of recommendations, hidden.

As soon as Bordiga and Gramsci, this last having re-entered Italia after two years of European activities, knew that the Russians intended to engage one of Tasca’s favorites, they expected a competitive exam, and to choose from their favorites.

Who they might be was never discovered. One of Emilio’s hypotheses concerning Grieco and Longo, a couple who went well from the point of view of belonging to the factions (bordighiano the first and gramsciano the second), is rash, especially in the case of Grieco, who was already helding important jobs, but not to be dismissed.

Engineer Romanow, having seen the determination of Gramsci and Bordiga, did not feel like dissatisfying them. Then a competitive examination was held, which consisted in typing with his best self-confidence and the fewest number of errors questions of a commercial nature. There followed a brief conversation in Russian. The contest wasn’t performed during the same time for all three candidates, but separately for each one of them in such a way that they cannot see, recognize, or hate each other. Emilio was the most deft of the three. [Go back]

Thus, toward the end of spring of ’24, Emilio was taken on trial into the Milan office of Via Cusani. After a brief training and making a careful study of Russian language, he was transferred into a stable position at the main seat of Rome, at Via delle Terme di Diocleziano as Executive of the Coal Office with various employees, including Russians. The representative in Italy of the USSR for foreign commerce at that time was prince Korciakow. Emilio had to organize the importation into Italy of Russian coal at the request of anyone who might want to do business with the soviets, then follow in the first person the contractual rules between seller and buyer (letters, prices, signatures, sureties, promissory notes, etc.) and to go as the commercial agent to various Italian ports to meet the customs boats and deliver the goods to the buyer.

From then on, Emilio deals almost exclusively with everything that pertained to the commercial connections between the two countries, including information connected to economy, finance, and commerce. He stopped all party activities, except for the direction of SOI of Italy, which he continues for some time. A competent executive, appreciated and well paid. Every time the Russians move their main office, he is transferred: hired at Milan in ’24, he was transferred to Rome where he remained until the end of ’24, then in ’25 to Milan, from ’27 to ’30 he was at Genoa, and finally again in ’33 to Milan, after which, because of the growing nazifascista hostility, the Russians had to close their offices and Emilio was paid and discharged. He continued as a private consultant to mediate business affairs, but almost never with the Russians, who in those occasions exploited his competency but never paid him.

Emilio is visible in a 1925 photo, showing the Commercial Delegation in the office on Via Cusani (near Largo Cairoli). Not far from Emilio the face of Pietro Nenni looks out, he too in 1925 working for the Delegation.

In the following blown up photo you can see both better. Emilio is the second from the right, Nenni is behind the lady in the front row with the hat.

[Go back]

His early impact on the world of the Soviets is shocking. More than a few ordinary employees have the air of having been up to yesterday a mougik who’d never seen paper nor pen. Someone inside there, but especially and luckily out on the street, is still using the natural method of blowing his nose with his fingers. To balance accounts, they have outstanding ability with an abacus. They are very intelligent and energetic, and have learned Italian in the blink of an eye. Of course, they’ve been chosen after careful selection. The directors are rotated every year: a precautionary measure but also reflection of frequent changes at the top of the party during the time of internal fighting after Lenin died.

Once a week the personnel participates in a nocturnal, secret meeting, called sobranie, to discuss the Russian-Italian political situation. At those meetings, to which the Italian personnel are not admitted, everyone, from the director to the doorkeepers, enjoy the same right of participation and intervention. Analogous reunions were being held at the various seats of the consulates and at the embassy at Rome, in via Gaeta. Political rappore between Commercial Representatives and the PCd’I, in appearance, no one, but the visits of the big wheels are frequent, and it’s not plausible that all those functionaries have been seized by the craving for business affairs. [Go back]

Late spring of ’24. Thank to the new arrangement, Emilio transfers wife and children to Rome. The couple who’s rented him a room in Viale Lombardia has conceded them the entire apartment and withdrawn to a nearby two-roomed flat that he owns, happy to entrust the house to a lodger who is always punctual with the rent. Emilio continues to supervise the SOI. Giuseppe Vota finally introduces him to Angelo Tasca. Emilio feels he can become friends with this cultivated man, sensitive and at the same time concrete, whose experience had been formed before the university environment, in that union of workers in Turin, that is, in the most authentic stratum of the socialist world, a place of ideology and practice, made from the same substance as the Venetian one in which Emilio had lived, but much more vast and active, heart from the Italian industrial proletariat and brain from our own marxist doctrine.

The two comrades find themselves immediately attuned to each other and become friends. Sometimes the Magnanini couple visit the Tasca couple in the evenings in Piazza della Libertà (times being what they are, a name a with sarcastic wish), between Lungotevere Michelangelo and Lungotevere dei Mellini. Tasca, who lives in those parts, arrives with his wife and ten year old girl. He also has a boy in boarding school. They go out for ice-cream, and then take a walk, the two women talking about this and that, the two men almost exclusively about politics. Sometimes comrade Vota and some others come along, even prof. Graziadei. When that occurs, even though they weren’t making so many of those distinctions then, almost the entire fraction of the right of the party goes to get ice-cream and stroll by amiably, chattering and arguing, at times gently, more often sarcastically, about the leaders of other factions. Principal targets are Gramsci’s physique and Togliatti’s ambition. The first, although finding himself with Tasca in an antipathetic rapport that had its origins in the days at Turin at the factory Councils, he is nevertheless still held in high intellectual and moral favor, but the second, Togliatti, is looked down upon because of his authoritarian character, cunning, and obvious ambition. Tasca always speaks of him with scorn. Emilio has found out that Togliatti is acting as an informant to the Russians. So far, nothing really bad: at the moment Vota is doing it as well. But Tasca can’t swallow the Corporal style and the ambitious glances from that man to whom he prefers Bordiga a hundred times, a man perhaps too much of one piece, but a brave man of great value.

Tasca has confided to Emilio that Gramsci and Bordiga are very upset that they weren’t able to assert their recommendations to the concourse, and that the one who’d resented it the most had been Gramsci. This had cooled their rapport even more. "We no longer speak", he‚d concluded, "as if he dealing with a pupil of Togliatti!" Togliatti, however, was no longer an important person, but he will recover soon, and in two years he will park his wife and brother-in-law at the Soviet delegation. The ingenuous Gramsci, instead, will unknowingly place there a spy. [Note 42].

Emilio receives a stipend [Note 43] that easily allows him to maintain the family, whom he often takes to drive by coach through Rome, and a domestic. That explains the interest of the party directors in favoring their own pupils in the various Soviet offices just opened (delegations, embassies, consulates). As for the economic position of the biggest bosses, the members of the Executives who worked full time for the party receive only a stipend from the administration of the Third Internazionale, and never, for obvious reasons, from the soviet government. [go back]

Because of his delicate position as an executive who works for the Russians, and his familiarity with the important representatives of the communist right, Emilio can now deal on an equal footing with any director of the party. And he is a touchy man. Overbearing, authoritarian behavior: he will never forget any type or size of rudeness, even the most banal or accidental.

Roma, summer of ’24, when the party lives in almost clandestine conditions. Tasca and Grieco don’t get on togheter, they avoid each other and try to be in each other’s company as little as possible. One day Tasca has Emilio come to Via Panisperna where Ruggero Grieco has his own illegal office. He has to take a letter to Ruggero and bring the answer back to Angelo. When he reaches his destination, Emilio waits for Grieco to show. In the meanwhile he starts wandering around the office and observing some comrades busy around tall piles of papers. At a certain moment he hears at his own shoulders a shrill and commanding voice: "And you, why aren’t you hurrying up?" He turns to observe the verbal aggressor who, his arm outstretched and a finger waving to attract attention, points out to him a box full of printed matter. Just then Grieco arrived: "Look, Palmiro, this isn’t the comrade who does the heavy work!" There followed the comrade‚s name, family name, and function. Togliatti nods yes but purses his lips and his face shows the annoyance of having wasted a fragment of that authority to which he aspires, but with which he has not yet been invested. [Go back]

Emilio had already met Ruggero Grieco in Venice a few years earlier during the most bloody period of the fascist offense. The black shirts had attacked the Municipio of Verona and assassinated some comrades dear to the group of Venetian communists. Then Grieco, on Bordiga’s orders, had made a survey in the region of material and moral damage provoked by the fascist rabble. Having reached Venice, he had been working with the section that Emilio had founded. This one was complaining that the party, in regard to the crimes just committed by the black shirts, hadn’t operated in accord with the maxim "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth." And Grieco: "Dear comrade, the will might be there," but he added that that could be a road that would soon lead to the elimination of those few qualified comrades on whom he could still count.

The proportions of strength were unequivocally in favor of the enemy, and they were to remain so for another twenty years. Emilio would see Greco years later in the Rappresentanza Commerciale Sovietica of Milan conversing with a very lovely Russian employee, authoritative as well, the consort of a comrade of the old guard and very close to Lenin. And he thinks it might not be best to interrupt him. But they exchanged a smile of recognition and a brief nod of greeting. [Go back]

It is natural that ideology and politics have an effect even on the private life of the protagonists, involving the sentimental sphere. I’m not alluding to the "party marriages", an abberant custom used as an organizing principle by certain groups of the extraparliamentary left during the Seventies.

Instead, these were chances for communist directors of the Twenties to take advantage of their travels in the Soviet Union of "getting to know" some beautiful, more or less intellectual, comrades. Often, when an important and unmarried party member comes to Moscow, he is entrusted to the care and grace of some attractive blond, and sometimes, he would return to Italia accompanied by his fascinating Slav. And Gramsci himself had married a Russian girl. Emilio had known Umberto Terracini in Venice, when the director, re-entering from the II Congress of the Comintern (23.7-6.8.20), had stopped for the time necessary to make a report to the Venetian comrades on the course of their work, and had then taken with him into Italy a young, beautiful woman, whom he had presented as his companion. At any rate, even well-known directors of the old PSI had shared part of their life with other celebrated and beautiful Russian intellectualists. [Go back]

As for the influence on private life from belonging to a race, Emilio has this additional testimony. On the occasion described in the last paragraphs, Terracini is meeting with Arrigo Bernau, the most intellectual of Venetian communists, cofounder with Emilio of the Venetian section of the PCd’I. And the first words the two of them exchanged were those of reminding each other that they were both of the Israelite race. More than just chit-chat, it is the verification of Marxism, inasmuch as it preaches the attainment of the highest possibility of equality among men. But it has had no power to neutralize the inflexible laws of ativism, just as it has failed in the fight against nationalism. The natural and traditional conditions of human groups, even the most absolutist, are the strongest in the long run. [Go back]

"This is another and safer system for finding money." The attorney Ercole Graziadei points at two large purses lying stuffed in the seat next the small table, observes with a smile that Emilio can’t carry it all himself, even if he lives just over there, a few steps away, and therefore he will help him, accompanying him up to the house.

Late autumn 1925. At noon in a bar on Via Veneto elegant people are surrounding the apertifs. Outside a fresh crystalline breeze descends from the nearby park of Villa Borghese. Facing Emilio’s questioning glance, the lawyer explains that this is a soviet film which the Honorable Francesco Misiano, director general of the SOI, has sent from Berlin to his father, so that he would consign him to Emilio. It seems that the Russians, trusting in our evaluation, want to show it only in Italy. The proceeds, which are expected to be large, are to be used to finance the Italian section of the SOI of which Emilio is still director. The lawyer recounts that Misiano has telephoned his father Antony in advance about the shipment, explaining that he preferred to have the film sent directly to his father, since he was in the parliament, to make the shipping more safe, avoiding the suspicion of a package of that kind. Among other things it’s rather heavy, coming from Berlin, with various writing in cyrilic, and addressed to a private Italian citizen, enrolled in the Communist party and an employee of a soviet office, might wake up the police, even if upon it is written "Film". Even if they’d inside neither bombs nor money, they’d keep it for who knows how long, and good-bye financing. And yet, with what had happened to Emilio two years earlier with the story of the registered letter of Bibolotti, that decision had been an inspiration.

The attorney stands up and gives one of the purses to Emilio, and carrying the other. Having walked for a while, they turned into Via Lombardia talking about the film which, as Misiano said, no one in the west has yet viewed, nor officially, not yet even Russia, where they’d just finished shooting. The soviet comrades have assured them that it is a worthy undertaking. Emilio confesses not understanding cinema, but knows someone whom might be interested.

On arriving home, purses unloaded at the entrance, Graziadei says goodbye. Having overcome Ida’s barrier of curiosity with the word film, Emilio goes into the bedroom and looks around: the room is small and the only wardrobe is filled. Same situation in the children’s room. No space anywhere. Emilio explores well the contents of the suitcases, hangs up and again goes through the big metal boxes, trying to decipher the Russian language in Cyrillic letters that he’d studied, traced all over with a pen filled with ink, and scratches his head and sticks everything under the double bed. During dinner, he thinks that there’s nothing left but to turn to an acquaintance of his, an honorable of the PSI, administrative delegate of what claims to be the most highly rated Italian cinematographic house of Italy, Olimpia Film. [Go back]

A few days passed, but he’s so busy at work that he didn’t remember that he still had a film under his bed. Finally he found the time to contact his honorable acquaintance, who sends a porter to take the rolls, but after a few days that one returns them with a note saying that he is sorry not to be able to accept his offer because the film is old-fashioned and has been superceded by more advanced cinematographic techniques. He adds that this is an naive work that shows how far the soviets are behind in this art, and concludes that the film would never be projected in any room in Italy.

Emilio doesn’t give up, and one fine morning of October he shows up in an office on Via Buoncompagni to propose the business to a certain mister Rebua, a movie distributor, who has been pointed out to him as someone with the most competence in the subject and who, claiming to be interested because of his origin, sends a porter to get the film, but after a few days he sends it back, saying he’s viewed it more than once along with other experts: his conclusion is more or less the same as that of the Executive of Olimpia Film, but with a lesser sense of repulsion.

In successive months, Emilio tries to interest a few other persons of the commercial world of movies but doesn’t find anyone disposed to view the film, much less acquire it. One cold evening of January Ida asks if that stuff he’s keeping under the bed had to stay there much longer, since it interferes with the cleaning and just makes dust. Emilio giggles, and tells her again that it’s a Russian film which, since no one wants it, he would get rid of it soon. Ida asks if he was really so ugly, and Emilio answers that he doesn’t know because he’s never seen it. Ida then asks if it’s a love story and shows him how much dust has accumulated on the trunks and under the bed. "No, it’s about the war", says Emilio. "In that case I don’t like it", Ida comments.

Sometimes later the film will be returned to sender. The SOI will have to wait for a better chance, and Ida will finally have to give a healthy pass of the broom under the bed. It’s true: The Battleship Potemkin had made only dust, and lots of it. [Note 44]. [Go back]

Genoa, 1927. Wisgnowskij, great and huge, shape and movements ursine, middle aged, prudent as a diplomat, pedantic as a military man. He’s held important grades in the Soviet army and accumulated in the service an impressive quantity of decorations and rosettes. In ’27, thanks to a few infirmities or the thrust of a recommendation, he’s dropped the pectoral of the uniform, to wear the double-breast of thick grayish cloth of civil service, to which he’s been re-routed, destined as the director of the Office of Transportation of the Commerce Representative of the USSR, situated in a huge building in Via XX Settembre N.42, named Sovtorgflot. Plump and flabby as a medusa, violet, red, pale ivory, appear and disappear and disappear on his face in rapid success in the convexities of his face, indicating his state of mind without the contribution of one muscular contraction. You had to know how to read this big face with the sensitivity of a painter. And a pedantry only of the body, not of speech. The mouth speaks only when forced; in this case communicating only in monosyllables. Otherwise, nods of the head. [Go back]

At this point we are in the full black of fascism, Special Tribunals, OVRA, police records, corporations, fez, shirts and boots, series of parades; high seas of people aspiring proclamations and comic gestures in adoration of the clown reciting from the balconies. And on his walnut table, the elegant agreement with the black clergy. The oppositions no longer have margins, and are surviving in total hiding. At any rate, after the "Speech of the Ascension day", most of them, hadn’t they become useless rubbish for a "sound" political regime? [Note 45] After Lione [Note 46], the most philo-bolshevik positions of Gramsci, Togliatti and Scoccimarro had emerged, those of the right were eclipsed, those of Bordiga were defeated, and the hecatomb of the directors of the party began. One is safe only if he’s stayed outside the country, or one way or the other, has been able to leave. After torpedoing Bordiga at the VI Executive Session of the Comintern, Togliatti is in Moscow. He will remain outside of Italy until the end of the war, holding the course of the party as the faithful mouthpiece of the Kremlin’s will. [Go back]

Whoever is left in Italy is either in jail or trying to avoid it, doing the best he can to elude the forces of order, who give no respite. It’s more than natural that among the victims are the Italian employees of Soviet offices. The delegation is subject to meticulous checks by every kind of police, each of which is investigating on his own and with his own zeal. The most aggressive are the carabinieri, who persecute their victims directly, without intermediaries.

At the Genoa office, a corporal from the barracks at Piazza Sarzana had been imposed upon in an insolent way by some coarse authority. The carabiniere, in aid of the two porters of the building, is camouflaged as a workman, and is pretending to clean up: always keeping a rag in his hand, rubbing it over the irons and brasses of the banisters and the doors, all kept quite shiny. From behind the wrought iron, he always keeps eyes and ears well open. His charge is apparently quite simple, but requires intuition and memory: he must check the comings and goings of the visitors and signal to his colleagues resting on the sidewalks of Via XX Settembre, those who seem worth his trouble to have followed, when they leave the offices.

When the person leaving has well-grounded suspicions of being followed, he soon realizes that it’s true. The shadowing is so obvious and shameless that he ends up noticing even those not having anything to hide, no reasons to suspect. There’s always one of the Corps of the Carabinieri who clims on the same tram, gets off at the same stop, and follows him to the door of the house, avoiding only, thanks to the way things are, going home with him. If the one being tailed prefers to go around on foot, the one following prefers the same thing, and then follows him to his house, to the caffè, to the cinema, to the port, and anywhere.

The two spies stopping in the street, besides starting the act of following, note the plate number of the cars of the most active customers, who at times are stopped, searched, deprived of their auto, and questioned, as once happened, to his great disappointment, to a celebrated knight, influential and manipulator of captains of industry, having then become an important Senator of the Republic, who was making plump deals with the Delegation on the part of a Milanese society specialized in commerce with URSS. Sansepolcrista (that’s one of the founder of fascism), pure-blood fascist, to dispel the stubborn suspicions of the carabinieri, had to put himself out, ask for influential interventions, and appeal to his well-deserving past for services rendered to Italian espionage through some bank since when he was living in Russia even before the revolution. [Note 47]. A third carabiniere, who seems to be permanently loafing about the sidewalk facing the opposite way, has the duty of snapping photos using a tiny objective mounted on the handle of his walking stick.

The Italian collaborators of the delegation are scrupulously observed, the spies must imprint well in their mind and refer to their own superiors every one of their moves, meetings on the street, and greetings they exchange with persons met, observing their glances and decoding the meanings. It is often the case that a friend or an acquaintance, casually met and greeted with a handshake, is stopped, led to a division of the Corps, to ascertain what is going on, so that, to avoid annoyance to those you know, one pretends not to see or recognize anyone, assuming that absent air that can be easily interpreted as an act of rudeness, or better, of haughtiness, that gives way, especially with certain friends and relatives, to rumors, curses, calumny, lawsuits, and even into a vindictive behavior if not dangerous confidential information that ends up with squaring the circle of the investigations even without the merit of those charged specifically with carrying it out. Therefore, the first rule is to avoid, as with every open imprudence, even every excess of prudence that can turn back upon the one observed. In sum, for an antifascist to go for a walk means to practice the psychological science of equilibrium. [Go back]

The political squad of the Questura works differently, in a way less gross and more subtle and refined, profiting from the wide-spread propensity for information, spontaneous or induced as may be, then sublimated into that special social order based on the building bosses and their janitors. The police enter easily but obliquely into the public and private life of the watched over man, thus there is seldom any need to follow him.

Every political policeman has under his responsibility a certain number of potential subversives, each of whom is being watched by a policeman of the common sort, now assigned as a fixed observer, who is served in his turn by a myriad of offshoots: building superintendents, doormen, chambermaids, domestics, waiters, ushers, messengers and people without work; not to mention the neighbors, bought for a few coins or in exchange for favors, all people who, mobilized at the right time, end up weaving a very dense net through whose mesh it is impossible to pass.

If many of the PCd’I comrades, conscious of their own secrets, enjoy a complex of proud superiority, those below the borghesi and below the sottoproletari of the lowest condition, they suffer instead from an inferiority complex: cowardice, envy, ignorance, or simply stupidity that scrapes from the conscience every possible class instinct, if such a thing exists. But there is always some bestial idealist. If the many are induced to act the spy with the promise of money or favors or the threat of taking away that more or less consistent source of income, there are more than a few of them who declare themselves ready to serve spontaneously the regime against subversives, pleading patriotic or religious sentiments. It’s easier when the tip-off is verified when the informer is someone poor in spirit and the subversive is an intellectual able to dazzle with books and discussions who don’t know marxism, putting his back to the wall with a display of dialectic, engendering in those poor fellows a rough desire for revenge, those poor people who would not else be able to obtain that revenge with ideas or words in which they were deficient. Thus do the weak behave in the face of the strong, whom, they hold, it would be diabolical to suppress. The great part of these people, gifted with a spontaneous zeal for informing, enjoy the drunkenness, thanks to the underhand investiture by the police, to exercise a power they’ve never possessed in their life, that of disposing of a person’s fate, indeed, taking away from a man what he might have been able to do using his own natural abilities. Many of them would have the ambition to be enrolled by the authority in order to collect a modest but stable recompense. [Go back]

One summer day of ’40 it fell upon Emilio (who loved to linger over circumstances in which are formed the sentiments of the cowardly of the underoproletariat) to be present to a meaningful little scene of cowardice, a practical lesson in servility, the more shameful because masked as patriotism.

The war had just begun. House of Savoy and Duce, drunk on the German successes, have just toasted to France and Great Britain, and His Excellency cav.Benito, the imitator of Maramaldo, immediately after Pétain has asked Hitler for the armistice, and threaded a spine of soldiers over the French borders, hoping to obtain his part of the Gaulic spoils with some requests that have scandalized even the Führer [Note 48]. Our rulers had no fear that the ball hurled by Germany in the European roulette can overtake after a few lucky spins the number at which they’d been aiming, but getting caught on that of the Allied.

Emilio is on the Milan-Firenze train, express to Siena in whose vicinity he’s doing business with a friend from Piemonte for deposits of lignite. Toward noon, the waiter comes through, ringing the first sitting. The announcement awoke a certain languor, so he makes a reservation and heads for the dining car, followed by a distinctive gentleman from his own compartment, who takes the place next to him. When the places are all occupied, the waiter pass among the tables detaching from the ration books of each customer the respective coupons, and starts to serve maccheroni al pomodoro. When the moment had come to serve the second course, as a servant was at the point of turning onto the plates a main course that had the appearance of a small piece of meat drowned in a maroon gravy, the distinctive traveler makes with his hand a gesture of denial, and asks with the expected courtesy if it might be possible to substitute the meat with a portion of cheese. The waiter, a little man with eyes, hair, and moustaches of an aggressive black, almost as if reacting to a personal offense, made a smirk of disgust, and observes in a loud voice, looking insistently to the back of the carriage as if to attract someone else’s attention, that it’s wartime and no customer can be allowed to ask for cheese, if cheese is not included on the list of the day. Embarrassed, the traveler asks in a low voice if it’s possible to have a small piece of cheese, even at additional charge. Naturally, he would pay for it separately as he always does in all dining cars. Then the waiter, still directing his gaze and voice to the back of the wagon, screams that that man is offending him and everyone in his professional category, which are still linked to the rationing norms. The traveler is resigned to being without cheese, but the arrogant waiter continues to provoke him, exhibiting himself in patriotic arguments and making allusions to the presence of an important personage toward whom he directs words and obsequious expressions, alternating with exclamations of disgust aimed at the traveler.

Emilio stretches his neck and sees in the back of the carriage, intent in dipping bread and sauce with an indifferent face, the attorney Roberto Farinacci, ex-socialist and later the maximal exponent of the most intransigent wing of the PNF, of which he’s been for a short time the national secretary. And the more the servant raises his voice, the more the party boss pretends indifference. Meanwhile, the distinguished traveler is starting to get annoyed, brings it to the attention of the waiter with his way of exaggerating and he’s evidently doing this only to stroke some big guy and, this time he too is raising his voice, says precisely that until now, in all dining cars, he had always been brought dishes without ration book, paying them dearly. At this point the black waiter turns all red and howls from filled lungs that he was indignant and that he will call a big guy to reprimand him. Unexpected silence of mouths and silverware through the car.

On Farinacci’s face appears a smirk of embarrassed annoyance. He stops a passing servant and tell him to call a policeman who’s on duty. This one presents himself immediately, receives instructions, accosts the waiter who is still smoldering and whispers something in his ears. The waiter is suddenly silent, goes up the fascist boss, and bowing deeply, murmurs: "My respects, your excellence, how may I serve you?" It’s easy to see that Farinacci doesn’t care for those salamms, which he however cannot deny in public. So, while the waiter stays there as stiff as a rake, His Excellency is beginning to eat again, ignoring him. On the tables the silverware go back to tinkling, and the waiter comes and goes again, forward and backward through the car with plates in his hands and the fake air of satisfaction, bowing each time in front of the tabernacle of the fascist boss. [Go back]

The specific little angel that the political squad of the Genoa police has set on Emilio’s heels, with the assignment to inform, is a cop named Zito, scrupulous executor of a job that he feels noble, to which he has dedicated his entire intellect. A short, robust Sicilian, dark of flesh and hair, he cultivates with care his ambitious moustaches, which, as he lacks any more conspicuous stripes to sew on his uniform sleeves, have been assumed as symbols of his dignity. After years of praiseworthy service, he is more or less half-way through his potential career. A vicebrigadiere, courteous and respectful, at times he seems too timid, while on other occasions even too familiar. In effect, his visits to Magnanini house, earlier at Genoa and then at Sturla, are so frequent that he might be considered one of the family. Usually, before he goes up to the house, he waits in the street until he can see Ida’s figure through a window. Then he invites her, nodding, to look out of the window, and in a friendly voice asks whether Emilio is home, thus thinking to mask from the neighbors curiosity the real reason of his visit. [Go back]

With the passing of time, investigative and repressive techniques are being perfected. One particular investigative system of that alien creature still in swaddling clothes, called OVRA [Note 49] is that of using informers who, pretending to want to do business, ask for meetings with employees of the Delegation. The organization alsoo makes use of trustees placed inside the commercial offices themselves, moles masked as employees. Discretion, prudence, and intuition are the only means by which Emilio and his colleagues can neutralize this subtle method. It was useful to the regime to ascertain whether the soviet functionaries, considered especially astute, were carrying on illegal political activity through commercial transactions. They try to prevent with an insistent, provocatory persecution, that the communist party, not allowed to act openly, can continue onlyt in the shadow of soviet import-export. [Go back]

Many communists are languishing in jail or political exile, others took refuge outside the country, in France, Belgium, or the USSR. When a comrade considered an important comrade, and so particularly kept under observation, disappears from the list of control of OVRA, there are troubles for those who, for one reason or another, are forced to stay in the fatherland. These are usually less important functionaries who, because of what they know, tempt the police. Every flight to a foreign country is considered a defeat and provokes reprisals from the forces of order.

Among those who go abroad, generally activists in positions of danger, there are alsoo others who, because of links of friendship or relationship with the leaders of the party, are privileged. After crossing the border, they run immediately to Paris, Brussels, Moscow, to occupy a leading position that has been reserved for him, leaving the comrades exposed to the hysterical reaction of the regime [Go back]

Among Emilio’s Italian colleagues who Wisgnowskij has as his own employees there is comrade Paolo Robotti, from Piemonte, ex worker, about twenty-five years old, who made his debut as an activist since the first times in Turin at the Ordine Nuovo, and his sister-in-law Rita Montagnana, just over twenty, she too coming from the Ordine Nuovo experience, sister of Robotti’s wife and wife of Palmiro Togliatti, who had for some time been abroad working as delegate of the Comintern and, from March of ’27, become secretary general of the PCd’I.

The two in-laws spoke little, just like their chief Wisgnowskij, and are especially careful not to have their presence noticed. They never indulge in gossip with the other employees. Robotti exchanges at most a few words with Emilio, and vice-versa, knowing that they are both trustworthy. They are always punctual in coming and leaving. At the end of the day they leave without saying good-bye to anyone and on tip-toe as if to leave behind themselves an insignificant trace. Knowing very well that, thanks to family ties, they will be lent help to leave the country and will go to occupy in the communist movement the expected positions of direction and responsibility, they behave with detachment and haughtiness, that’s with that difference which, notwithstanding the equality proclaimed by communist ideals, has remained the general law of life. At that time it is easily said: If the "communist man" does not exist, communism itself does not exist. But Emilio, who exists, can’t stand those little, human defects, which he avoids as betrayals of ideology and, although he shows full respect for the in-laws who are faithful in their political activity, he doesn’t like them.

One day Robotti confides that he’s been called by the head of Questura of Genoa, who in his frank language, not really northern, warns him to pay attention and avoid cunning actions, because, if he makes a false step, they’ll have him "shot." Sincere warning or exaggeration? Or Robotti’s excuse? Emilio smells immediately a strong stench of flight, whose trace lingers for some time in the air. In fact, after a few weeks the pair does disappear and doesn't give news of himself any longer. With the most colorful disappointment of the medusa Wisgnowskij, the political squad of the Questura becomes an angry horsefly. The agents unleashed on the streets of the Superba grow in number, those put in Via XX Settembre set about obsessively checking all the employers, and from the entrance gate to the attic they shoot glances filled with the desire for retaliation. [Go back]

For some time the Delegation lives practically in a state of siege. In the street, on the steps, and even inside the offices there’s a buzz of whispers, movements, and controls, to the point that Wisgnowskij, seeing that because of the OVRA’s investigative fervor the work is proceeding slowly, loses his patience (it’s not known what color his face was), and intends to send the Italian government a formal protest through his embassy. Finally, also because this obvious intention immediately picked up by the informers, the police’s interest is attenuated, and the situation returns to that of before.

Unfortunately, that coincides with the arrival from Brussels of a letter from Robotti addressed to Emilio at the Delegation. The "in-law" declares himself overjoyed because he’s finally found freedom from fascist oppression and has met the free and most important members of the Party, who had left before him, carelessly name-dropping: Togliatti, Tasca, Germanetto, Mario Montagnana, Pastore and others, among them many of Emilio’s close friends. From his words does not shine anything of the romantic nostalgia of the exile, rather, that new community of foreign life has thwarted every sentimental memory. After another hymn to freedom, he concludes sympathizing with Emilio and the other comrades, whose names are wisely not given, remained in Italy to fight alone against the common enemy. [Go back]

The letter is compromising. If they find it on him it is proof of active militancy and of maintaining connections with exiles. There is the risk of being deferred to the Special Tribunal. Robotti must have written it in a moment of euphoria or momentary unconsciousness, any other explanation being unimaginable. But, having seen the experience undergone and the imprudent thoughtlessness, let’s call it that, committed four years before by Aladino Bibolotti, he feels it is always prudent to imagine the unimaginable.

At any rate, the first thing to imagine is that the police have already read it. The second thing is the most opportune way to get rid of it. But how and where? The spaces in the Delegation, including cabinets, are searched and sieved, and anyone who might be watching him knows that he, in that precise moment, has the letter in his hand. Make it disappear into the water closet? It risks being seen or leaving traces: the two bogs available to the personnel are always blocked up with the most perfumed satisfaction of the spy on duty, who, as necessary, can decide to mix shit and fascismo. He will burn it as soon as he is home for lunch. Surely the police will stop him on the street if ...if by pure chance the day before he hadn’t made a providential move from Genoa to Sturla, in Via Borgoratti, without telling anyone. He must profit from this favorable circumstance because it is probable that the police are waiting for him along the old route.

And that’s what he does. He’s able to enter his home undisturbed, burn the letter and disperse the soot in water, eat lunch with gusto, and return to work. Just in time, because in the afternoon vicebrigadiere Zito, having found out about the move a half day too late, shows up in Via Borgoratti with four agents and a search order. They go through everything with an exceptional meticulousness: mattresses, furniture, lamps, pictures, stove, pots and pans, clothing, hats, stockings, frames, zippers, papers, and books explored with infinite patience. Having completed the treasure hunt without success, Zito left perplexed, saying to Ida: "Dear lady, don’t be deceived, we’ll be back soon." That evening Ida recounted the search to her husband and asked what they should have been able to find this time. And Emilio: "A puff of smoke!" [Go back]

After the episode of the letter, the investigations begin again, at a fast pace. The questore, considering the flight of the two in-laws a personal affront, hadn’t given up, and has loosened the bridles of his lackeys. Police and carabinieri are firmly intent upon discovering the way of flight and the names of accomplices, and investigating everyone and everything without respite. The offices plunge back into a climate of curfew. Wisgnowkij complains that there is always someone at his heels. The police have interrogated the porter of his habitation, and the carabinieri are even tailing his wife. He feels persecuted and humiliated. Also, used to living in fatherland in a climate of police intrusiveness, he sees spies and provocateurs everywhere. Every time he looks around, his big face colors, discolors, and palpitates with anxiety and anger and his mouth babbles a few more words. One day he confides to Emilio that he doesn’t trust anyone and even suspects the doctor who has just been assigned to the Delegation as the employees’ physician.

The doctor is the youngest brother of a comrade who, having occupied a delicate post at the URSS embassy, has been transferred to the commercial offices in Genoa, and has schemed so much with the local authorities that he’s been able to assign the brother, citizen of Superba, as health inspector for the personnel of the Delegation. More than once, Wisgnowkij, who doesn’t like the physician’s insinuating method, has protested to the Prefecture, who had practically imposed him, but uselessly. But one fine day the favorable occasion presents itself. [Go back]

Lady Wisgnowkij is a shapely Russian blond. A little maudlin, with her bearing, she gives herself airs. Complaining of some intimate disturbances, she’s asked to see the doctor. The day and hour are set, they make her comfortable in the little room/surgery of the Delegation, he has her undress and stretch out on the cot, and begins an examination almost too scrupulous at this point, palpating her in all her rotundities, which are many, even those the most intimate and less bare. Not knowing a word of Russian, he lingered every so often to ask her "Bad or good?" The woman, who in her turn knew only two or three words of Italian, and who didn’t suffer with any localized pain, answered always in a soft little voice: "Good." Thus the doctor passes many times through a review of all the parts of the body which seem to be of some interest. After a good quarter of an hour, the woman begins to change her expression from that of an interrogative expectation to that of an irritated suspect, and starts to mutter something in Russian. Now it seems to the doctor that it’s time to stop, not without having first concluded the palpitations with a tiny, delicate pinch to the lowest and most hidden anterior part, which provokes in the soft lady a tiny cry that the doctor likes to imagine of an ambiguous nature. Then he makes a sign for her to sit up and dress herself. He writes a prescription. The woman, having saluted him with an air more embarrassed than questioning, runs immediately to her husband in order to translate it. Wisgnowskij sends immediately the collaborators in his office on their way, puts on his glasses, and reads in a loud voice the recipe, which concludes with the name of a noted purgative. Then the wife describes with passion and expressions of disgust the visit to which she’d been submitted, emphasizing the lust, and howling with the indignation of being forced to lie as if sick and then be prescribed such a vulgar medicine.

Wisgnowskij, who doesn’t know whether or not he should be taking it amiss more for the licentiousness of the visit or for the humiliating prescription, decides that the moment has come to get it over with. He immediately telephones the prefect, screaming that, if the health officer isn’t got rid of immediately, he would turn to his own ambassador for a formal protest. The threat is effective and, after a few days, the doctor has to leave his post. As chance would have it, on the same day the "comrade" brother as well disappears from the Delegation. [Go back]

A month hadn’t passed from the disappearance of the two brothers that the Soviet executive, returned to his own embassy so that their positions might be better controlled, obtains all the explanations expected from his muscovite sixth sense. In fact, the two brothers were playing a double role. An attaché of the embassy refers to Wisgnowskij that such a diligent and esteemed brother of the physician had once been caught by an Italian colleague with his hands in the parcel of papers reserved for the ambassador. This last, threatened by reprisals against wife and children, had not then made any formal charges, but then, having succeeded in taking refuge abroad with the family, had sent information to the embassy, denouncing the spy and also clarifies the analogous, equivocal position of the physician imposed on the Delegation by the prefect, confirming Wisgnowskij’s suspicions.

It was the triumph of the medusa, which from that moment lost its nervousness and went back to being in a good mood. Emilio, who had it from the horse’s mouth, had every confidence in him. Now, director and wife feel more relieved, as if from a weight. The purgative had had its effect. [Go back]

A few months later, the afternoon of a Saturday in which "in-law" and letter are far from his memory, Emilio is under the barber’s towel a few steps from his house, when Ida looks out of the door and announces that it’s the usual guy who wants to talk to you and is in a hurry.

"Let him wait!", Emilio yelled, under the whine of the clippers. Ten minutes later, he finds his little angel stopped in front of the door of the house. After a nod of greeting, the brigadier tells him that he wants to have a little talk with him, and it won’t be very brief. Emilio makes him comfortable. Sunk in the embrace of an enormous leather armchair, the cop looks fixedly at him and begins, in a mysterious voice: "You are connected with very high personages of immense power. Can you deny it ?" Emilio answers that he is amazed at such affirmations, and had never had such an honor. Zito replies: "We are certain of what we’re saying." To the question of what he means with those "personages of immense power", the brigadier declaims Robotti’s letter. He had it perfectly to memory, even respecting the punctuation. Having finished the recital, he invites Emilio to deny having received the letter. Emilio observes that even the police can’t deny the abuse of having opened it. Making his face very serious and squeezing even more into the chair, Zito asks him where this letter is and by what routes was he corresponding with the exiles. Emilio confesses with a bit of sarcasm that he has burned it after reading it. It would please him so much to correspond with his old exiled friends, but the Italian State hinders him, and if the authorities find proof of a letter, the consequences would be disproportionate to that pleasure: therefore he abstains from writing epistles of any kind, while there remains for him only the intimate and silent memory of his friends.

Warning that he will refer that response to the Questore, the policeman leaves. Emilio thinks that the game is over. [Go back]

The fair of samples in Milan, 12.4.28. Emilio is in the Soviet Union pavilion where they’ve set up an exhibition of samples, with documents and publicity, pertaining to fossil carbons, his special area of expertise. As usual, it’s raining. All around stands out the green of the great trees, and white and violet wistaria spread perfumes. He’s putting the last touches on the exhibit, when he hears the first whistles announcing the opening of the show. Immediately other whistles take off, and soon the Milan sky is a back and forth of sirens, scraping away the still atmosphere, in which the city is immersed, to replace it with new desires.

Satisfied with his own work, Emilio is enjoying this commercial, evocative concert, when a rending explosion makes him jump. It’s coming from the nearby entrance that opens onto Piazzale Giulio Cesare. A few minutes later the sirens are becoming quiet, and a cortege of autos, having entered the enclosure, files in silence in front of the URSS pavilion. King Vittorio Emanuele sits at the place of honor of a huge automobile. Behind the windshield he appears serious and pale, but is forcing himself not to appear moved even if it seems he’s just escaped an attempt on his life.

The next morning, having left the stand to the care of the employees, Emilio leaves early for Genoa. In the newspaper he reads that a powerful time bomb had been found at the base of a light pole. As the newspaper said, the charge had exploded a little in advance of the passing of the royal cortege. Instead, he’d had the impression that it had exploded a little late, when the cortege had already crossed the entrance to the fair, and this seemed to him consistent with a probable matrix of provocation for the attempt: a bomb exploding a few minutes earlier might have been a greater risk for the king. In the crowd there were 20 dead and 41 wounded. [Note 50] [Go back]

At Genoa he takes the tram to get back into the office without stopping at home. In front of the usual stop at Via XX Settembre he notices that a few agents, his personal cop among them, are resting in front of the entrance to the Delegation, and instinctively decides to follow. But then, thinking he should go to the office, and that those lackeys, if they’re looking for him, will be there all day and go back tomorrow or even later, or find him afterward at home. He gets off the tram a few stops later and goes toward them meets them with obvious calm. As soon as he sees him, Zito sends the other agents away and waits alone. When he’s within hailing range, he bows elegantly, lifts his arm in the gesture of halt, and invites him to follow.

He conducts Emilio to the Royal Questura of the Ducal Palace and leaves him in the hands of warrant-officer Vercesi of the political squad. He’s immediately searched and relieved of his personal objects. They sequester both a book of Lenin and a propaganda pamphlet. While he watches the operation, the warrant-officer looks at him disgusted and assails him with foul language. And he, quiet. When the search is over, he orders him to be taken away, and says that if the choice were his, he’d kill all the communists with his own hands. Emilio is taken violently by two prison guards who, after ordering to calling them "superiors," drag him into the underground of the palace and push him into an empty cell, in front of which is posted a sentinel with a bayonet, his duty to watch him day and night, the procedure called "Big surveillance". The cell has no door, but there is a wide gate through which anyone passing through the corridor can see the detainee.

A couple of hours later, Emilio sees taken downwards comrade Giuseppe Riva, his colleague at work, shooting him a furtive glance. Bewildered, he thinks it prudent to pretend not to know him, and remains passive, clinging to the bars of the gate until he hears the squeak of the door of a near-by cell where his friend’s been thrown.

The cellars where the prisons are located are isolated from the light of day. A pair of lamps shed pallor into the corridor. Emilio is enclosed in a little parallelepiped of living stone. An ugly table serves as pallet. In one corner a hole is destined for excrement. Next to the pallet it puts out from the wall the half-circumference of a large plastered column that seems to hold up a low ceiling, full of damp spots and covered with spider webs. Emilio begins walking back and forth, trying to reflect on what’s happened. The arrest of Riva as well suggests that a major operation has begun, certainly linked to that attempt at the Fair. [Go back]

Professor Bruno is questore of Genoa. From the teaching post of high scool where he exercised his zeal in the fascist interpretation of history and philosophy, he’s been elevated in one jump to the vertex of the city police. He’s convinced, or is forcing himself to be so, that between the attack on the King and the employees of the Delegation there must be a connection. In the shadow of his cell Emilio tries to formulate a hypothesis: the questore maintains that the device exploded at the Fair is of Soviet manufacture, and had been unloaded at Genoa from a Soviet steamer by Riva, then entrusted to Emilio, who’d taken it to Milan and consigned it to anyone who might be able to use it. A plot worthy of an idealistic philosopher, like prof. Bruno, and about that, bomb aside, it’s something real that can excite the imagination of a careerist, because Emilio and Riva, in their respective tasks of executive and employee of the Coal Office, come often to the port to receive soviet cargo.

Meantime, evening is falling, or at least Emilio supposes, whose watch has been taken as well. At a certain point he hears noises on the stairs and sees gathering on the stairs in front of his cell a small group of people who seem important and look at him like a bear in a cage, exclaiming satisfied comments in a low voice. On someone, he recognizes the uniform of General of the Fascist Militia. After a few minutes, the group continues the visit, stopping in front of the cage where the other bear is enclosed, comrade Riva, returning a little later. Many eyes sparkle in the dark and go off up the stairs. [go back]

Days pass without anyone paying any more attention to Emilio except to bring him food and drink once a day toward evening as in a zoo, and threre's a basin of cold water to wash with every morning. Instead, every afternoon Riva is taken and led away to be interrogated , returning each time in a visible state of suffering. When he passes in front of Emilio’s cell, Riva shoots energetic glances that seem to say: "Pay attention, you’re the accused!"

Meanwhile, from the few genovesi syllables that slide from the tongue of the "superiors", Emilio intuits that the Questore has communicated to the press that he’s made some sensational arrests, and that the sensational thing are him and his colleague.

One morning he’s conducted into the offices on a ground-floor and introduced into a spacious and well-furnished room, with rich stuccos on the ceiling, and many reproductions of pictures on the walls. In the middle is sitting, alone and fat, Commissioner of Police Vassallo, or so it’s written in gilded letters on a black glass plate on the entrance door. The Commissioner is pretending to read. A Genoa daily is open to the first page and lying askew so that, by twisting the neck a little, one can read a headline that has to do with the attempt at the fair. Showing indifference toward Emilio’s presence, Vassallo points to an armchair, offers him a cigarette, and dismisses the "superior" who had accompanied him. Finally, touching his pockets as if he’s forgotten something, he too rises and goes off, leaving Emilio unguarded.

The windows opened wide onto a sunny and animated Via XX Settembre, that might be reached in one leap from the balcony of the ground-floor, and the door opened onto a deserted corridor, inviting the captive to flight. But Emilio feels that many eyes are watching him, even through the pictures on the walls or from the stuccos on the ceiling. Blowing his nose, he pretends to look distractedly around, without noticing obvious tricks. He had better remain calm and indifferent while smoking the cigarette in front of an enormous Murano ashtray that commands respect and as booty of war is dominating the desk (these Genoese who‚ve thrown him into a cellar like his co-citizen Marco Polo!), pretending to appreciate the song of a yellow canary, who is singing its heart out in a little cage hanging from the frame of an office window. The cops, who are certainly observing, are hoping for an attempt at flight, or at least he to threw onto the paper to read the revelations of the Questore.

He puts out the but when suddenly appears in the corridor the fat figure of the Commissioner who, after having looked him up and down annoyed, nodded for someone behind to take him back to his cell. Immediately two "superiors" throw themselves onto the prisoner, followed by the sentinel with a bayonet in his barrel, and take him back to the cell. Everythink has happened without a word being said. The only and stridulous voice, which had never stopped singing the praises of the regime, belonged to the canary. [Go back]

Time passes and Emilio is still more perplexed. No one says a word to him. He lies in that dungeon for twenty days without the police formulating a charge. One evening, when he’s about to fall asleep on his cot, he hears a few coughs behind him. He sticks out his head and looks around: the usual cell with the usual walls in darkness. More poorly repressed coughs. He has a suspicion, gets up very, very slowly, and approaches that half-column that sticks out from the wall. Holding his breath, he plants an ear there: there’s no doubt, the column is breathing and coughing. He’s tempted to hurl against it the water receptacle but holds himself back and goes back to his cot with the same caution with which he’s risen. Outside, the soldier with the bayonet continues going up and down.

The next morning he explores the cell with care. He observes the ceiling: many spider webs are real, but others, too pretty, seem painted, certainly hiding holes with microphones and eyes for observations. Columns and other traps might help if there was more than one prisoner to a cell, but what do the regime propose to uncover by spying on an isolated detainee. Does it help if, like Cassio, they talk in their sleep? Or maybe those coughs are poorly attenuated only in appearance, and have the goal of waking him and trying his patience or provoking some compromising action? Which might not instead be a bureaucratic practice followed withy every detainee? Meanwhile, awaiting an event to resolve the situation, he remains in that cage subjected by the police technique to that sibylline inquisition. [Go back]

Riva is now taken for questioning twice a day. Emilio sees him return suffering more each time, until he can barely drag his legs. In the usual afternoon darkness, one of the "superiors" who has just accompanied Riva to his cell stops in front of Emilio’s grate, asks for a cigarette and in a low voice warns him, that if he doesn’t decide to talk, he’ll come to the same end as his friend. With an ingenuous and marveling air, Emilio asks what they’re doing to that prisoner. The "superior" lights the cigarette and smiles: "Soft sacks of sand on the knees!" Emilio is crushed by the idea that it might be better to pretend devotion, and to assure that, if he has something to say, if only he would have, he should say it soon. But he held himself back: it wasn’t worth the trouble to try to move those dogs to pity, first, because it’s a question of pride, second, because it wouldn’t work at all; and he remained quiet inside his bewilderment.

Almost a month has passed and he suffers the anguish and anxiety of being far from his family and the unbearable lack of freedom. Then in the half-light of a morning, after having seen Riva dragged away for the usual interrogation, he didn’t see him return. A few hours later the head of the "superiors" descends, opens the gate, and calls him out, hooking his index finger. Without the accompaniment of the guard he goes with him to the office of Commissioner Vercesi. The cop greets him with a humble air, almost suffering, and Emilio has a sad premonition: "You know, Magnanini, that your friend Riva has killed himself?" Emilio paled and answered that it’s not possible, that nothing would have been able to induce Riva to do such a thing. The Commissioner observed that Emilio must have known his own colleague very well if he talks like this, and asks him if he has anything to add about the nature of their relationships. "Work relations". Vercesi looks at him skeptically and sends him back to his cell. [Go back]

He’s fallen into a state of profound consternation. He knows very well that the Delegation, of which he knows almost all the secrets, has nothing to do with the story of the bomb, because it’s an office created only for reasons of commerce. The soviets are limiting themselves to the collection of information reserved to the economic-financial side of our import business. It is probable that during their secret nocturnal meetings they are preoccupied with obtaining political information as well, but they have no interest in going further. Moreover it is impossible for the Italian employees to develop any subversive activities. Apart from this, the actions of the Italian communists have never taken on violent and irrational forms like those of the anarchists, republicans, and followers of "Juistice and Freedom", and the soviets would never have tolerated the risk of jeopardizing their commercial interests. For Emilio the attempt at the Fair, which history will attribute to the usual anarchists, but which hasn’t even scratched the royal cortege, is a pretext to foment persecution of the communists, and the assassination of Riva is the atrocious consequence of a too zealous staging commanded from on high. [Go back]

Far from his cell, the sonorous jump of the keys echoes at the back of the corridor, the push on introducing it into the keyhole, and the scrape on withdrawing. Immediately after, they hear the jailers yell to all the prisoners to leave their cells. Confusion, steps approaching and steps leading away. Two jailors throw themselves at Emilio’s gate and the masses of their keys bang against the top of the keyholes. One falls to the ground with a metallic thud, and the oldest "superior" shoots the youngest a furious glance seasoned with a curse. Finally the gate gets opened and Emilio as well is ordered to leave. They find themselves with many others, passing along an underground corridor, then crowding into a sort of vast circular cloaca , wet like a cistern, semi-dark and smelling bad, of mold and of worse. A chief calls for silence and orders them to line up in twos. The double file touches the curved sides of the big room, soon insufficient. Then the chief orders a triple file, which, after a little chaos, is formed with difficulty. A voice calls: Those called take a step forward!" Emilio is among the first. At the end of the roll call ten have been chosen: each is a political prisoner, in one way or another. They are channeled along a corridor curved and rising, spaced by long, sorrowful steps on which it is easy to trip, and come out unexpectedly into a courtyard, dazzling prisoners and jailors. At a guard post some carabinieri are waiting with a long chain in their hands, with which they connect the wrists of the ten prisoners who, lined up this way, come out onto the street and are made to climb into a police van that leaves immediately.

Inside the wagon, Emilio considers how foolish the way of proceeding of the jailers seems: was there a need to make all this fuss to transfer ten politici? Couldn’t they have called them directly from their cells? Obviously, he thinks, the lowest organizational aspects are left to the initiative of the jailors. From the little windows of the van, high and narrow, he tries to understand the itinerary. He sees the buildings of Piazza de Ferrari, Via XX Settembre, and Piazza Brignole. Here the van turns left, and, from the bouncing of the wheels, Emilio imagined the street that skirts the Bisagno and goes toward Staglieno. "We’re going to Marassi", someone observed, and the van stopped in front of the that prison. [Go back]

One after another they jump down and are gathered at the entrance. They are pushed inside. Gates open and close, so that the prisoners can be held in an entirely empty space for transit. They go off with chains on their wrists, and return separated. Two of the jailers line them up and order them to undress. The prisoners look at each other and ask each other questions. Silence must be imposed, and the order is renewed in a strict Sicilian accent: "Nude as your mother made you!" "We need to take a shower", observes a prisoner. The Sicilian thunders through the silence and repeats the order in a peremptory way. They begin to undress slowly, urged on by another jailer with an accent from Apulia, who shows a lash in his hand. Nude, they are again lined up. The about turn is ordered, then, to bring foreheads to the wall without turning. They obey mechanically. After a few minutes of waiting, they hear the jailors bustling at their backs. A prisoner turns his neck: "What the fuck do you think you’re doing?" Others turned as well. The Sicilian jailer has a thin rod in his hand, while the Pugliese brandishes his stick with one hand and with the other holds a little bottle without a stopper, pretending to offer it to him. This last yells that whoever doesn’t stand still, rather than a rod, will get the club up his ass. Everyone stiffens, not daring to breathe. The Sicilian takes to inspecting the inside of everyone’s orifice with the point of the rod. The business lasts for a long time. Having finished the operation, comes the order to dress. While he’s putting on his underwear, the first prisoner who’d spoken couldn’t hold himself back, and asks the Pugliese what they were looking for. This one threatens him with the club, but the Sicilian intervenes, ordering them to hurry and dress. Finally, in twos, they brought them into a small room..

Emilio, timid by nature and a little ashamed, is disgusted by what he’s undergone and asks himself why ever the regime was searching in the shit of the political imprisoned. He doesn’t know how to answer but thinks that all those prelates who have welcomed Mussolini as the man sent by Providence should enlighten him. [Go back]

Time again begins to pass. All ten of them are stacked in a little room of so many square meters or a little more. One corner is occupied by the vat of excrement. Along the walls and in the center, somewhat overlapping, the straw ticks. On one wall, a small barred window.

Emilio observes his prison companions: they are unknown to him.. From the few words they’ve exchanged, they seem to belong to diverse parties but none to the communists. Notwithstanding the painful common conditions that might make him fraternize with the others, everyone is still on his own. Between Emilio and the others, then, there is soon a crack of suspicion bordering on hostility.

Among the ten there are three brothers, two young men of seventeen and a blond and thin boy of about fourteen who seems to be a child, with whom he’s been able to exchange a few words. They are from an upper middle class family of Genoa, with strong interests in a large local industry. From a quarrel among these interests had been born a disagreement between the father and the uncle, and derived the vendetta that had brought those three innocents to prison as anti-fascists. The father had been sent to the political confinement with grave accusations, and his assets confiscated. From what they’d said and from the feelings expressed, Emilio has classified them as Republicans or presumes that their father is one. This hinders him from considering them true antifascists. Certainly experiencing great pain, he feels that they belong to the world of capitalism and prisoners of that borghese ideology which he considers the prime cause of all evils. He experiences the same feelings for another prisoner with whom he shares the sparse space in the room, a watchmaker who declares himself openly a historical republican. Holding that only communists can be true anti-fascists, Emilio experiences more pity than love for those who, mistakenly abhorring marxism-leninism as womb of a materialistic and bloody general rule, are convinced in their ingenuous irrationality that they must needs behave under fascism like christian martyrs in front of pagan executioners. The determining fact here for those "idealists", as for catholics, shows itself rabidly in confrontations with communists. Nevertheless, the state of detention, the common suffering, the particular situation of cramped space and poor nutrition, and most of all the violent and contemptuous way they’re treated by the jailors, who certainly make no effort to disentangle themselves among so many differences (nor would they know how to do so), do in such a way as these unfortunates to tolerate each other in silence, each within the pride of his own conviction. Only those two boys and their little brother inspire in Emilio, as days pass, and despite his fidelity to dogma, something more than a feeling of pity. Seeing them from time to time walk away from the larger group and screen each other as well as they could, when they adjust themselves as well as they can over the less bad vat of excrement, his eyes would mist in paternal feelings. [Go back]

The community lasts about fifteen days, when all ten are transferred back to Palazzo Ducale and reburied in the Boccanegra’s dungeon, where the apartments have in the meanwhile changed appearance. Because of a question of space caused by a progressive increase of guests, in the ample cloaca in the form of a cistern have been installed iron cages requisitioned to some zoos and circuses. Emilio is introduced into the smallest, capacity one person. The other cages get occupied by two or three units.

Some time later, due to the uncontainable increment of prisoners, the director of this singular zoo has been releasing a few animals from their cages from day to day, and with their solemn promises never again to commit any more actions against the regime, restores them to liberty. The first to be liberated are the three young brothers, embraced by all with warmth and sympathy; then, one at a time, all the others. Finally, one evening in late May, it’s Emilio’s turn. He’s conducted to Marshall Vercesi who returns his sequestered objects, except for Lenin’s book and the propaganda leaflet. When he says good-bye, he recommends him not forget his generosity, otherwise liberty will again be in danger. Finally, pointing at the two publications, he exclaims: "I really can‘t give these back to you. You know, mister Magnanini, where they’ll end up!" [Go back]

Summer of 1928 proclaims itself very hot, and Emilio is concentrating on taking wife and children to a cool and close locality, able to be reached every evening from Genoa. He’s chosen the Piani di Creto, a place of transit between the Ligurian and the Appennine piacentino, at the top of a hill a thousand meters high sloping down toward the sea and the beginning of the inland meadows. There are a few modest villas with a little park and two inns of the third order. In one of these, the first encountered climbing from Genoa, he’s taken lodging for his family.

On a rustic wooden sign-board supported like a flag by wrought iron, is engraved the name of Barcabà; thus is named the ancient and limping proprietor, gruff and rough, with a red and tuberous nose, who takes care of the inn with the help of a wife wiry and likewise bignosed who never smiles, two twins, boy and girl, in their twenties, both of them robust and with shifty eyes, a chambermaid who also limps a little, named Dirce, and a big dog, the nicest of them all by a long shot, a female bastard with sweet eyes and a human face, called Granella, who must have a marxist soul, since she’s immediately become Emilio’s friend and even better friend with her babies, with whom he plays at break-neck.

The stay is agreeable, the walks pleasant, underscored by the grandiose panorama of the sea. The temperature is mild, the hills are bare of trees but rich in low vegetation and very green meadows. The water, which is scarce on the peak of Piani and arrives at the houses by aqueducts, runs plentifully on the other hand from the springs on the slopes. The silence is solemn, broken only by some passing vehicle, more annoying for the dust it’s raising than because of the noise. A simple place, and little frequented by tourists, because it lacks worldly attractions, tranquil and without danger for children’s games. [Go back]

A few others, however, do not seem so tranquil, much less satisfied by Emilio’s presence. They are the usual defenders of the regime who, suspicious of everything, suspect even the silence of those hidden cliffs, considering them accomplices in who knows what anti-fascist plot. In short, the usual net of observation is closing again around him.

Among the few vacationers who frequent the Piani, two women, mother-in-law and sister-in-law, are not in the good graces of Barcabà. Having arrived a few days after Emilio has set up his family in the inn, they are mother and wife of a warrant-officer of the carabinieri, known and feared in Genoa by his victims for his inflexibility. From time to time he makes an appearance at Creto, as unexpected as it is premeditated. His mother, an distinguished southerner, seeks any occasion or excuse to approach Ida and make herself well liked, hoping to garner from her some information. The wife Vanessa, science teacher in middle school, is still young, lovely, and an authentic citizen of the Lanterna, with long blond hair, full in view, and as sensual in face and eyes as in the breasts and slopes of the body.

Barcabà has his own good reasons to like neither the mother nor the wife of the warrant officer. In fact, this last has picked up the habit of accompanying the owner’s son every day on long and mysterious walks. The aim, so she says, is to capture butterflies, of which she is an avid collector, known in local city naturalist circles, and that she must get ready for her lessons on Lepidottera. Everything happens with the explicit approval of the mother-in-law, and gives cause for perplexing and at times malignant comments among those who frequent the place. It seems that even the husband, notwithstanding the austere sicilian moustaches, had conceded his implicit and benevolent consensus, therefore this apparent double complicity, this, added to the fact that the boy remains away for hours and neglects the work of the inn, provokes in Barcabà a permanent state of nervous restlessness and embarrassment, that shines through his eyes in the way he serves the clients behind the counter of the bar. [Go back]

One green morning, a pretty maid named Dafne was looking after two small children belonging to businessmen from Genoa who, to keep their kiddies cool during the summer, have chosen the same inn. She happens to hear, while running after the little ones who are getting into everything, a peculiar dialogue between the warrant-officer and his mother. Since she’s not only curious, but also intelligent, she understands perfectly the terms and connections of the discussion, which has as its object the need to check on Emilio’s movements.

The warrant-officer has asked his mother to urge the daughter-in-law to continue her daily "service" which consists of spying on Emilio and his family, with the unknowing help of Barcabà’s son, always with the excuse of looking for butterflies. Luck would have it that Dafne, daughter of a worker of Ansaldo persecuted by the regime, has intelligence and a proletarian conscience as well, which lead her to refer everything immediately to Emilio, of whose wife she has already become friend and confidant because of her own easy way and from the children playing games together. She makes it clear to him that up till now they haven’t discovered anything, they’ve only stated that Emilio has never met with foreigners and that in the evening he’s never been away from the inn alone, and that therefore they must absolutely continue their patient, vigilant service, and, as the nasty warrant-officer specified, whatever the weather. Emilio thanks comrade Dafne, assuring her that those people won’t uncover anything, because there’s nothing to uncover; and recommends them nevertheless to keep eyes and ears well open to ugly surprises, to which Dafne says she has no need because, with all the fascists had made her father suffer, she considers it an obligation to be able to help Emilio, and assures him that she’ll always have her eye on them.

It is a real offering of counter-espionage. Not knowing how to gratify her, Emilio proposes to her that, if the need arises, and if she’s willing, she could offer herself as a domestic, "You know, dear Dafne, the proverb: the devil makes pots but not lids?" Dafne doesn’t know, nor does she understand, but it’s certain to bring some kind of punishment for those three spies. [Go back]

Working, even only on the commercial level, for the Soviet Union, is a challenge to the regime. The political authorities suspect, and the police are completely convinced, that communist propaganda passes into Italy and that subversive actions are smuggled through the Commercial Soviet Delegation. The Italian collaborators might be the executors. Nothing more untrue. The Italian collaborators are the least suited to play this role, whether because they are overloaded with work of their own, whether because they’re over-controlled everywhere and at every moment; apart from the fact that our employees don’t trust even the Russians, to whom commercial exchange and good relations with the Fascist regime is more important than the physical integrity of their own collaborators. With these stubborn checks, the fascist State wastes public money, and gets nothing in return, favoring if anything the opposite result: leaving the few comrades outside the Delegation to organize the propaganda and have it filtered down and to distribute subsidies to the clandestine fragments of the party.

Emilio and his family don’t like being tailed and checked on. Notwithstanding, he felt some small satisfaction. As employee of a soviet office, he is forced to play a dangerous role that tickles his pride and induces in him a certain taste for risk, combined with the intimate satisfaction of seeing the blind stupidity of the police. The risk is great because often, the cops, giving flesh to fantasy unloosed by that fixed idea, searching pretending to find, they interrogate and arrest, claiming to extract confessions, and finally putting themselves in way of having to commit crimes. But it is a risk justified by his being marxist, he, timid and prudent by nature: he feels ransomed and repaid by the pride of being among the few comrades left in Italy, exposed to the rage of reaction, proud of working with the enemy in his house, without ever genuflecting at the feet of the infallible. [Go back]

While the maresciallo of the Benemerita is spreading his net, and sending every day his wife on a butterfly hunt with the Barcabà’s son through the bushes of Piani di Creto, the friends of the Questura Centrale follow more along the town routes.

One muggy morning Emilio receives a visit from the highest Fascist official in Genoa. Commendatore Siliato is a Sicilian of low middle class extraction who, like many from those of his region, had left the island when he was a student to complete his studies on the continent. Here, not having a degree in any discipline, he’s aimed successfully at a political career, finally becoming Federale of Genoa. One of so many cases of a successful and rewarding career of Sicilian young people who’s continued to go far from his region. Armed with initiative, readiness and impertinence, without preconceptions, and desirous of emerging at any cost into an activity of any type, penetrating wherever he found a door ajar, and setting himself up without any prejudices on the right, and, whenever it was, or might be possibile, at the center and the left of the political life.

Grateful for so much luck, Commendatore Siliato has sworn to himself that the Duce is always right, and repeats it to everyone on every occasion. Being especially shrewd, he’s able to do two things at once, promote and supervise local espionage against the Commercial Delegation, at the same time doing excellent business with it. He had already been in Emilio’s office, introduced by the attorney Bagnara, the Delegation’s lawyer as well, and secretary of the well-known lawyer Paolo Emilio Bensa, which at this time smacks of political heresy. He explains his visits by the need to manage business on behalf of groups of high finance interested in the excellent soviet coal. And this is Emilio’s area of expertise. [Go back]

That morning the federale asks to speak directly with the new boss who, Wisgnowskij having been recalled home at the beginning of 1928, is a certain Petrov. Emilio leads him to his office and leaves him there. A little later a clerk announces that a gentleman wants to see him, urgently. It’s vicebrigadiere Zito, who’s walking back and forth with feline impatience between two huge mirrors in the antechamber, which reflect and multiply his little figure. He tells Emilio that he has to be taken to the Police Quarters immediately, but it should be a matter of a few minutes. Emilio goes to Petrov’s office to let him know. Commendatore Siliato takes from his lips the end of cardboard of a Russian cigarette and, his face half hidden by a small cloud of smoke, breaks in with a smile, but turns to the boss: "It’s a pure formality." Emilio turns as well with a smile, but a sceptical one, to the boss who, with a gesture of permission and patience, shows him the door.

In the Questura, Zito entrusts him to a cop who has him climb a tortuous staircase. Finding himself in the meanders of Palazzo Ducale, Emilio experiences anger and dismay, but consoles himself thinking that this time the fact of climbing toward the roof rather than descending toward the underground is more auspicious. At the summit of the stairs he finds himself in front of a turret on whose entrance a large sign indicates: SIGN OFFICE. The cop opens the door, makes a sign to someone inside, lets him go in alone, and turns back immediately.

Emilio found himself in a little storage room with damaged flooring, covered with spots of ink and bad smells, in the presence of a minute employee, completely bald, to all appearances ancient, wearing a worn black greasy apron, seated at a writing-desk completely covered with rubber stamps, blotters, absorbent paper, shellac seals, photos, vials and bottles of acids. After having asked for name and family name, he seated Emilio in front of himself, arranged the necessary objects, took his hands, and began the operation of taking fingerprints, thinking to quiet the supposed nervousness of the arrested person, saying mechanically: "Do’‚t worry, it’s a mere formality." Emilio is reminded of the face of the Commendatore Siliato partly hidden in the curls of soviet smoke, in the act of enunciating his prophecy, and experiences the humiliation of having to offer his hands to that little old man who manipulates the objects of his labor like a machine. And he felt he had no more hands, he'd handed them over to the regime. [Go back]

Meanwhile, a cop has furtively introduced another person into the storage room, leaving him sitting on a stool beside the entrance door, as if waiting for his turn to be fingerprinted. Then the old man, as if to distract Emilio and keep him from turning around, begins to submit Emilio to a barrage of questions: how did he ever get hired by the Commercial Delegation, is he happy working with the Russians, was the work difficult, did he have many friends among his colleagues, what did he think about poor Riva’s suicide, and so on, then slipping into the banal, asking him what he thinks about the oppressive hot spell in Genoa those days. Having finished with one question, he immediately begins another without giving him the time to answer except in short and uncertain monosyllables, so that it seems to Emilio’s experienced attention that he’s more interested in asking questions than in getting answers.

As he concentrates harder to understand the sense of the questions rather then the way with which the old man is taking him the fingerprints, and becomes suspicious because of the glances thrown every so often toward the door, Emilio realizes that someone has entered. Craning his neck, he can see him: he’s a young prisoner who’s hanging his head and is looking at the floor, probably a "politico", maybe a communist. He imagines that, if they’d let him in just at that moment, it was to have him be present at the questions of the employee, perhaps in order to discover his identity by exploiting the meaning of some of his reactions or hoping that he would give himself away with a glance or gesture of understanding. In sum, they hope that this unfortunate would fall into a snare of some kind. But since Emilio hasn’t ever seen him, and the poor fellow keeps looking at the floor, neither of them has the least reaction. There are none of the glances nor the false attitudes which the police had hoped to see.

The operation having been concluded, the old man passes Emilio a rag to clean his hands. "Mister Magnanini, you may return to Via XX Settembre to the Soviet Commercial Delegation," he says in a loud voice, pronouncing the words well and looking rather than at Emilio, at the young fellow sitting on the footstool, to have a last try. But the prisoner doesn’t change his own disappointed unseemliness and continues to look sadly at the sadness of the floor. [Go back]

Coming back once again to his office, Emilio sees Commendatore Siliato waiting for him in the anteroom, as if nothing had happened, and submits a business plan to him, relating to the importation of a steamship full of medium and large pieces of Russian anthracite, just approved by Petrov. As he takes notes on the case and illustrates to the Federale the technical and financial details of the operation, he’s thinking about the situation in which he finds himself, which seems absurd. He’s there to deal amicably with the enemy, a deal worth millions for both sides, and at the same time he’s being hounded with a stubbornness that can only be concealing something shady. Why do they have it in for him? Do they think he’s a big communist personality with international connections? Is there someone who hates him or is it just the simple consequence of his particular occupation?

In that period, functioning at all levels, Prefecture, Police-head-quarters, Police Station, and up, up, even to the porter of private co-owners, there was a kind of box of reports, called Bocca del leone which was eclipsing the fame of the notorious one of Venice Republic.

But, while in the Serenissima there had been discernment among accusations, and those false or the double-dealing were pursued decently, in fascist Italy anyone could exercise freely his own zeal as informer, true or false as his information might be, and any functionary could interpret what the bocca was saying, basing on any personal preconception.

Emilio’s influence on the activities and decisions of the Delegation was strong, and depended most of all on his competence and capacity for work, but most of all, as his father had taught him, on his honesty. It is true that the regime was persecuting many others, often with much more dramatic effects, but in that obstinacy there must have been some particular motive connected with his position on the job. An unconfirmed theory but one not to be discarded: someone, fascist or communist it’s doesn’t matter, was tempted by the millions that, in his place but without his honesty, he would have been able to set himself up, establishing in a descretionary way times, conditions and price lists for each business. [Go back]

Every evening after work, Emilio would go to the square opposite the Staglieno cemetery to take a place in the usual taxi that takes him, with the other guests of the same inn, to Piani di Creto, and brings him back to work every morning. There was also a slow but unusable bus service: two a day but not at that hour. The taxi is one of those huge black former autos which, opposite the back seats, has a pair of drop seats; so that, counting those in the front, it could carry up to six or seven people.

It’s hot. The sun is ready to set, reddening the slopes of the city, the cemetery, and the surrounding houses, giving everything a solemn atmosphere, including the square, where that sort of motorized diligence has begun to move, in its slow and tired way.

The auto is full of passengers who at this point know themselves and are starting to talk about the unbearable sultriness, the beauty of the sunset, the more or less violet tones of the previous day, and the desire to reach as soon as possible the cool of the Piani. Then, after a few hundred meters, there appears in the middle of the road a man in the uniform of the Milizia, his opened wide legs threaded into two boots and his arms waving, making an imperious signal to stop.

The driver stops the auto, grumbling. The man shows them a badge, opens the doors, orders the passengers to get out, leaving purses and baggage, and sticks his hand everywhere inside, making a complete inspection, after which he springs back out sweaty, saying that they can proceed.

Off and running, the travelers, who during the inspection had remained quiet to observe, begin to comment on the happening with scandalized expressions, exclaiming that it was a shame and that nothing like it had ever happened to them before. When someone put forth the theory that we were dealing with a misunderstanding, the driver broke in: It’s not the first time the police have stopped him to check whether a passenger was carrying a bomb. Everyone shut up again, exchanging alarmed glances. "Certainly" the driver concludes, "there have been some bomb outrages in recent times...with the communists going around you never know!" The travelers all have a distinct air, and wear, except for Emilio, the fascist bedbug in the buttonhole; including a woman of a certain age who wears a green tyrolian cap with a white feather and says she’s employed in a section from Genoa, detached from the Merchant Navy Department. She declares herself indignant, and after a few perplexed moments, they exchange with eyes and voice expressions of scandal and vexation, using as a stock phrase in every subject of conversation, a reverent "Ours Chief..." The most diligent are a bank functionary, an attorney, and a magistrate. Emilio speaks as little as possible, and limits his answers to a "yes" or a "no"or makes an echo with a few "May be" or some "Of course!" to theyr exclamations. Notwithstanding the repeated trips, he doesn’t feel safe with them.

It’s surely been noticed: he’s the only one who doesn’t wear the badge. And he, on his part, knowing them just enough, timagine them always there, in their professional armchair, or in the same post as functionary of any other regime. [Go back]

That evening during dinner at the inn, they spoke of nothing but that mishap. The woman of a certain age, who had participated in the adventure, skirting Emilio’s table, confessed being as much afraid as if there really had been a hidden bomb.

The attorney, following her closely, observed that there was no reason to be afraid, because there were only fascists in the auto. "All but one", Emilio let out, to whom that affirmation had provoked a quiver of anger. The attorney continued hurriedly, smiling and embarrassed as if he’d heard a little joke but hadn’t understood it. Even the woman was forced to smile, then Ida broke in, assuring her that Emilio is a good family man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She nods to show that she was certain of it, and caresses one of the children with an air that to Emilio, already annoyed by that remark of Ida, seemed to show pity. Thinking to distract her, Ida observes that in the same situation she too would be afraid. And the woman "It seems I’ve lived a page of a crime novel!" Then Emilio, sarcastic and scornful: " Third-rate literature, dear miss!" The old maid went off, again smiling faintly. [Go back]

With the passing of days on that little genovese hump, word was passing from mouth to mouth: and soon it was public dominion that Emilio not only was not a fascist, but in addition, a communist working with the Russians. That the object of that work was only commerce has no importance, nor was it considered. Instead, there flowered a fantasy on the nature of his employers, dropped into Italy from the land of Lenin. To work with the soviets is to work with Satan, with that same diabolical corrupter who was walking around with through Venice and that having him read "The New Century" since he was eight years old. In short, "work with" becomes "work for". And since during another red and hot sunset the search of the auto is repeated, someone at the inn begins to relate Emilio’s presence and profession to that humiliating annoyance. Another, with a finer nose, starts imagining a connection between Emilio’s presence and that, healthy and unpredictable, of the warrant-officer.

Barcabà and his wife, meanwhile, who have big shoes but subtle brain, smell ever more strongly the stench of the smoke that their son and the warrant’s shapely wife leave behind them on their daily nature walks, which the instinct of their noses, big and red as the shoes, is beginning to understand: half for politics and half for lewd behavior. But another being, perhaps more human than any of them, and gifted with a splendid black nose, seems to have sniffed more correctly than the others. One afternoon in which a soaking thunderstorm is unleashed, the naturalist couple, who had occasionally taken Granella with them, returned precipitously. They’re dripping and complaining that they weren’t able to get any butterflies because of the cloudburst, and the woman is complaining as well about a lovely bite on the calf inflicted by the bitch in an unspecified moment, for an unknown reason. "A rash movement during the agitation of the storm," those present declared. The blond warrant’s wife adds that, in spite of how the bite hurts her, she won’t say anything to her husband, who doesn’t like animals, not to make him angry. Nor is she angry and certainly there’s no danger of contagion because the dog enjoys optimal health. And so Granella, in spite of her no longer young age, cannot be prosecuted, and is left in peace. [Go back]

That same evening, the warrant-officer makes his unexpected appearance. His consort hasn’t said anything, but during the meal, there was an unusual silence at their table. At a certain moment the little and lively Daphne, who is running after the children among the tables, approaches Emilio, whispering that his name is in everyone’s mouth like that of a dangerous bandit and that the customers are complaining about being forced to spend their summer vacations so unhappy in the company of a communist.

Meanwhile, word has gone out that the taxi driver has had to leave Genoa because of an unexpected family disaster, and is being substituted by a colleague who has slightly modified, for his particular needs, the morning departure times. Emilio, whose table is next to that of the employee of the Merchant Navy Department, asks his travelling companion whether she knows the new schedule. The woman glares at him and answers in a vindictive tone that she doesn’t want to talk to undesirable people. For a minute, Emilio is struck, then, offended but at the same time flushes with pride from being defined an undesirable person and treated like an outlaw at liberty, begins to comment on that response to Ida in a loud voice. Among the terms being clearly pronounced many times is the adjective fascist and the nouns old maid and slut.

As every evening, the tables must be cleared, then set again for the games. Hustle and bustle of the seats and confusion of persons who search, call, and divide into little groups around the tables, where the decks of cards lie.

The warrant-officer is approaching the table of the magistrate and the lawyer, who greet him with deference, and all three begin to whisper together. Emilio, used to playing at their table, observes them with attention, and imagines that the warrant-officer might be confiding to his companions something that regards him. After a few minutes, his companions have the air of someone with a secret and, with that, they start to look around as if to be making a selection.

It’s obvious that they’re looking for the "fourth" for the usual game of tressette, and the fourth is, usually, Emilio, who does very well at cards. The warrant-officer also plays well, but when he’s not here, which is most of the time, he’s replaced by an engineer who, notwithstanding his professional familiarity with numbers, isn’t a very good player, and can’t satisfy the experts. That evening, after the confidences of the warrant-officer, the other two would have preferred to play with the engineer, who, knowing that he would as usual have to cede his place to the most skilful functionary of the Arma, has gone on a walk with his wife to enjoy the cool of a starry night after the storm. Not feeling like giving up what in that place is the only entertainment, they decide with clenched teeth to turn to Emilio, as on every other night. Requesting his presence is assigned to the attorney. Before yielding, Emilio allows himself to be cajoled and praised, and finally the game begins. [Go back]

The game proceeds quickly. The three comrades, concentrated on remembering the cards, have forgotten doubts and suspicion. Outside, the night is tepid and moves with an anxious clarity, and beneath the partly opened windows, the perfume of grass flows in on a little wind, filtering the stridulation of crickets. They begin to notice, confused in the distance, a kind of chorus. It seems to be a mountain chorus, but then, becoming more close and distinct, it reveals its political nature. The attorney lifts his eyes from the cards, looks at the ground, amplifying his hearing with the palm of his hand, and with one ugly eye states that it sounds like the Workers’Hymn. The magistrate leave his fan of cards covered on the table, and with a disgusted expression confirms that it’s really that song, adding that it must be a group of workers working at the brick works, staying just below the Piani, where they have huts where they eat and sleep, and go out on walks. "By God!" exploded the lawyer, red with anger, "We need to denounce them!".

The stars respond to those workers with clandestine poetry, and the chirp of crickets yields all its own intensity to the chorists, who in the meantime have attained, then passed the inn, their song dying into the distance.

The warrant-officer appears annoyed by the interruption and impatient to take up the game. The magistrate, who has no desire to rise to go and ascertain de visu who the authors of the crime might be, takes his cards into his hands: "Yes", turned to the lawyer, "it‚s a question of principles. Make a denouncement against persons unknown, and I’ll support you.".

The game begins again. In the distance echo still the traces of subversive notes carried by the wind: "Up, brothers, up, comrades...". Emilio looks out in the direction of the starry sky and, as if he hadn’t heard the scandalized expressions that his fellow players had just exchanged: "But, you must realize that this hymn, sung in this place and in a night like this by real workers, is truly fascinating!" The three look at him for a moment with their brows knit, then continue the game in silence. [Go back]

Vanessa and the son of Barcabà have been given the charge of inspecting Piani di Creto and its green slopes in search of possible movements of suspects, to discover if they are meeting with Emilio when he comes back from work. Emilio, who knows everything thanks to Daphne’s confidences, is really not able to meet with anyone, spending all his free time with the family, a thing which, added to the fruitless lurking, has engendered in the couple of butterfly collectors a profound sense of boredom. She has diligently referred to her mother-in-law the negative outcome of her research but the husband warrant-officer keeps saying, with the mediation of his mother, that there’s no reason to desist, and sooner or later, something will surely be discovered, since Emilio has been pointed out to him as a dangerous element. The two naturalists get quite excited by following their solitary explorations to the point that they can’t stand it any longer.

Their scientific commitment doesn’t end here, because in the evening they’re involved in the operation of embalming those poor creatures, whose delicate colors require the prudent use of deadly vapors of cyanide. Thus, what with retorts, vials, vapors, and pins, the evening passes, to the irritation of Barcabà who, if he could, would gladly crush the cyanide pills under the nose of the warrant-officer. The two have at this point collected exemplars of all the species of Lepidoptera in the zone and are beginning a collection of doubles. This fact gives the blond teacher a vague feeling of the uselessness of life and begins to damage her fidelity to the regime, which up to this moment has supported her. Then, the innkeeper’s son, who by now has realized that he’s been used for hardly edifying ends, is a handsome robust boy who couldn’t care less for butterflies or politics, and even less for Emilio, and has decided to continue to consent to the game, only with the allurement to obtain for the inn the license to sell tobacco, which Barcabà has always wanted, and at the Piani no one has ever had. And this is the only reason the father supports his son’s spying and becomes the object of malicious gossip.

During those long walks the two explorers had the chance to rest side by side in the grass, in solitary places sheltered by the bushes. Thus, they’ve learned to look at each other and to like each other. As days pass, the entomologist feels ever more humiliated, having to perform a mission that seems useless, and as well, puts her in a bad light with the vacationers and the locals, so that little by little she starts brooding, carrying a grudge toward her husband, who, because of an excess of zeal, is risking everything. That Emilio, considered so dangerous, isn’t showing anything suspect and they never see his presumed accomplices. The thing lasts for a month and she feels it’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The boy, realizing his hunting companion’s state of soul, thinks he can take advantage of it. From one chance to another, from one confidence to another, he discovers that the blond Vanessa is well disposed to yield to him and will not resist. Thus, after having exchanged opinions as sincere as their aims themselves, they resolve that they will no longer go hunting for butterflies, and they will no longer spy on Emilio, but only pretend to do this and that. [Go back]

Emilio, whose capacities for patience and will to react have reached their limits, is still being well informed by Dafne on the new rural background about the two naturalists’walks. He thinks that he will add to the annoyances that his followers, as he imagines, are being prepared for the warrant-officer, his own personal annoyance: that of transforming himself from tailee to tailer, or better, since direct spying disgusts him, into instigator.

One early morning, before going to work, he asks Dafne to follow the pair of scatterbrains and let him know where they went and what they did, because it doesn’t seem to him that they aren’t doing anything any more honest than what they’ve been charged to do, until now. The maid, with an excuse of some kind, slips the children back to her mistress, and, at the disappearance of the two through the fields in the early hours of the afternoon, she too leaves, officially to visit an old sick relative who lives in a nearby town, whom she hasn’t seen for years.

Dafne follows the couple at a safe distance, favored by her short stature, by the tall grass, by a green dress that hides on the meadow like a mantis on a twig, by a green foulard around a face and a small purse of greenish leather, which, after all, she hides behind her back. She has to stop suddenly and crouch, because every now and then the hunters, who are still in the vicinity of the inn, have to truly run after the butterflies, and in the rush to slash with the little net, are spinning continuously. After having advanced for some distance through the meadows, she notes that the two have calmed down, and are proceeding hand in hand toward a little thicket into which they soon disappear. She hastens her steps and slips as well into the thicket. She proceeds with caution until she can’t hear them talking. She curls up and holds her breath and, screening herself with the leaves of a hazel, glimpses the couple stretched on the grass of a small space, favorably surrounded by the most beautiful names in the undergrowth. They are exchanging sweet words and slow caresses.

"Here we are, comrade Emilio is right!" And she looks at them, narrowing her eyes. At a certain point the boy begins to unbutton Vanessa’s dress, beginning from the first button under the neck, revealing two white nipples which he kisses and sucks repeatedly. Then, slowly but decisively, he slides toward the bottom and disappears with his heard under her skirt. "Some spy!", thinks Daphne, and blushes. A little later, the wife of the moustached warrant-officer frees herself, moaning, throws the boy to the side, then launches herself onto him convulsively, opening all the buttons she could find and sinking her hair convulsively into his trousers. "What a whore!" Daphne paled. Immediately after, the serving girl is witness to a savage act of intercourse. She’s left watching with her mouth open until the two separate, howling. Then she recovers and decides to go back, using the same caution with which she’d approached. She descends on the main road and, since it still is early, decides to get to the closest bus stop, hoping to find one. She has to wait almost an hour to consider herself fortunate, and goes to Genoa to look in shops.

She’s back in late afternoon with the last run of the bus. After dinner, while Ida is putting the children to bed, she tells Emilio the outcome of the mission, and concludes: "To sum it up, you know, signor Emilio, you were really right. If you knew what those two have done!" Emilio gestures that he really doesn’t want to know the details and say’s he‚s sorry he’s exposed her to a spectacle like that, but Dafne replied that he doesn’t need to worry, because at least now she’s learned those ugly things that she didn’t know about before. Then they discussed the ridiculous situation that the maresciallo was in, and Emilio: "Dear Dafne, you know the old adage: Whoever does it, was waiting for it.?". Dafne doesn’t understand what is meant, in that phrase, by the word adagio, but she knows the proverb very well. For Emilio and his family, that vacation ends without any further annoyances. [Go back]

Every commercial war with the outside has been the result of the competition, presence of monopolies, of currencies, and the laws of each country. In the long run, it risks, or at least once it risked causing crises that were leading to the real war.

Having obtained judicial recognition in 1924, the USSR found itself on the edge of the void. Many capitalists were acting as if the new state didn’t exist. But soon, other business people, who’d decided to trade with the socialist empire, were facing serious consequences in their own house: no credit, ostracism by clients, obstructionism in the ports, in transportation, and in the bureaucracy and the suspicions of the political authorities. But the high fascist hierarchs, enjoying the lack of suspicion, and the official recognition of USSR by Italy, that had joined ad hoc for an estimate of commerce of over Lire 300,000,000, were really the ones doing the first huge but hardly clean business. It began with the soviet orders for many tens of millions of Italian goods, in favor of a Company put together on purpose by our biggest antisoviet captains of industry [Note 51] who organized their factories like prisons (in fact, they had to recover the funds they had given to the fascist regime!). The USSR relied on it, or at least tried to, but ended up importing merchandise that was shoddy or deteriorated or not corresponding to what had been agreed upon. Because of the legal protests of the soviets this first company had to close its doors. But at this point, the commercial connections had been opened.

The soviet exporters had to put up with competition from other countries who were trying to boycott them by any means. The USSR had available huge amounts of woods, gasoline, ferrous minerals and coal, which it wanted to export at any cost. The difficulty was finding a client. The competitors had the advantage of being able to offer credit to the buyers, while the USSR needed cash down in order to pay at least cost, insurance, freight with high-quality currency. And it often succeeds. In ’24 Italy had imported more than 11 million tons of coal (6 from England, 4 from Germany, ceded in part to the FFSS, on account for war reparations, the rest from USA and France), and did it using commercial organizations with seats in Italy but set up for the most part with capital and staff from the exporting countries. Consequently the USSR was at mercy of those countries who dictated the terms. The USSR, although offering advantagious terms, at first found the doors closed because of the envy of the countries trying to exclude her. The Russian syndicate Exportugol acted bravely, which a private firm had never done before: it sent the coal to Italy before it had been sold, storing it in various ports. The Italian importers reacted immediately resorting to violence with the complicity of the authorities: they try to dissuade and intimidate the customers and sabotage the product. The soviet functionaries were received haughtily and with insolence by our monopolistic importers. At Ancona one of them, a hebrew who was covering a high post in the fascist hierarchy, threw out the functionary who was proposing a business, screaming that if he didn’t leave immediately he wouldn’t be safe; because he would utilize the old action squad still under his orders. At Genoa a steamship full of superphosphates was being dumped onto the coal-bearing docks right next to soviet coal, that filled with fertilizers and were damaged. At Venice unknown saboteurs spread some iron filings over the Russian coal which then, ending up in the industrial ovens, got loose, ruining the equipment. At Neaples the barges where the Russian coal had been deposited were overturned into the sea. The USSR protested, to no avail. [Go back]

The vexations continued for many years. On 30.4.30 at the Genoa Coal Office, where Emilio was working, two characters showed up, one a hierarch of the Fascist federation of workers with coal, from Venice, and an unknown who refused to tell the porter his own name, but promised to reveal it only to Emilio. In fact: "I am Commendator Landolfi, public minister of the Tribunale Speciale for the Defense of the State. " - "Pleased to meet you. ." - "On my mission of public prosecutor we can speak later. For now I would like to know why the Delegation of the USSR has granted the sole agency for the sale of Russian coal to a firm in Trent rather than the one in Venice which is owned by the person here present"-"Excuse me, but I cannot respond to this question which it seems to me would have nothing to do with the competence of a magistrate. " ˆ His tone of voice rose: "You want to harm this person here because he’s a fascist in a high position in the union. That way, you’re not doing business, but anti-fascist politics instead."

The two left, but during the night a squad of carabinieri went to find Emilio and take him to the cells in the Ducal Palace. Effect of that magistrates rage? But that day there is, as chance may have it, a propitious occasion as well: May 1. [Go back]

Genoa, 1930. Wisgnak, a muscovite in his fifties, bachelor, short and fat, all bald and nervous starts. His winks send off reflexes onto objects and persons with infallible precision, penetrating them to learn their essence. He speaks in spurts, rapidly and with French "r"s, articulating the words shrewdly and alternating serious with improvised observations, followed by pleased giggles. Although he’s a communist of the old guard who’s participated in all the phases of the revolution, he speaks willingly and with reverence about his ancient and noble orthodox family, adding his own maxims and humorous sayings learned from his father and grandfather.

Inspector of the Commerce Department, he’s been sent to the United States with two Hebrew collaborators, welcomed by the PCUS for some important services rendered to the Bolshevik cause, with the official goal to sell them cotton from Turkestan. On April 30 of ’30, on return from the voyage, he’s gone to visit the Commercial Delegation with questions about labor; and on May 2, he was to take the journey back home.

During this period, the head of the Delegation is a type with sad eyes, wan and submissive, who applies literally all instructions that drop onto his Ministry; and who, for those relating to coal, trusts himself entirely to Emilio’s experience. On 30 April he has to do the honors of the house for Wisgnak’s delegation, dealing for a long time with three functionaries in his own office, then presenting them to Emilio who in his turn has presented them, going around through rooms and corridors, to the Italian colleagues. Wisgnak has offered employees, as a gift, two bottles of whisky, exclaiming glaringly: "Take them, they’re for you. For me, only vodka!" after which he waited to see on their faces the hilarious effect of his patriotic declaration. And then he returned with two co-workers to the Boss room where Emilio as well had been summoned, and all five begin to talk about this and that. Recurring subject: the United States of America.

It seems to Emilio that the little sarcastic phrases used by Wisgnak in describing the largest western country were hiding a bit of envy for that nation, so big and powerful, but which in that period was struggling in a profound crisis that endangers a true democracy (so called in spite of the soviet view). "The semblance of democracy", Wisgnak talked sententiously, stating precisely that in reality it was a jungle, where the disinherited are infinitely more numerous than the rich but incapable of seizing power, because they are without socialist direction. He insisted on the gravity of the economic situation, defining it as frightening, and pointing out to Emilio a huge leather valise, concluded: "Under those conditions, it’s not possible to buy even a pin.!" Then he nodded at one of the two assistants, who jumped up, went up to Emilio with the suitcase, and declaimed: "Comrade Magnanini, this suitcase is at this point too heavy for us. Our country offers it as a gift, including its contents, as a sign of our esteem and gratitude for your excellent work!" [Go back]

Emilio looks at the suitcase with a suspicious smile, then with a questioning air, at Wisgnak, who explodes into laughter and says that it’s full of samples of Turkestan cotton, of no use now that the trip is over. He adds that the cotton is of the best quality. Even the Capo Ufficio starts to laugh, but observes that going around Genoa with a huge suitcase will certainly awaken the suspicions of the hangers-on of the regime who are always tagging along after Emilio and... Wisgnak interrupts him with an authoritarian gesture to remind him that, speaking of the regime, tomorrow will be the First of May. Then, turning his penetrating gaze toward Emilio, under the slow and slightly bitter eyes of the Boss: "Remember not to miss tomorrow’s party!" And he signals to proceed. The Boss now starts talking about the preparations necessary for the celebration of the workers feast, which the Delegation continues to celebrate every year in private. [Note 52]. On that occasion, the functionary speaks precisely and with improvised emphasis, a communication whose content might be particularly advantageous for his career, will be announced to Emilio, that is, he speaks in a confidential tone, good news. Emilio, imagining for himself a bonus or a raise, thanks and assures the Boss of his own presence. Immediately afterward, Wisgnak’s Delegation says goodbye and retires to the hotel. That day the Boss allows the personnel a half day of leave, so that the employees who stayed on purpose can arrange the rooms for the celebration of the feast.

The thought of crossing Genoa with that suitcase gives Emilio every assurance except that of personal safety. Therefore, he plans to go home in a taxi, not to be caught carrying a suitcase by the rotating spies who lie around the office entrances. Before leaving, he has the suitcase put into a taxi by a faithful clerk. Going through the streets of the Superba, immersed in the marine light of a cold and windy April, seated among the smells of leather, gasoline, and lighted cigarettes, he sees again the cunning face of Wisgnak, and that, trusty and not trusty, of his collaborator. Who knows why that gift? Probably tomorrow they’ll give him a raise or a bonus, and the suitcase is only an advance. But is there really something inside the cotton? It’s a very fine leather, deluxe, enough on its own as a gift. He’s withered by suspicions. In the twilight of the auto, he can’t resists the temptation to open it. It’s enough for him to click open both the closures, open it just a little, and slip in three fingers and withdraw immediately, with the comforting impression of having felt, through a thin cloth, some fluffy, innocent cotton.

Nevertheless he doubts that Wisgnak’s mission had the real goal of doing business and, much less of selling cotton to the United States, the largest producer of cotton in the world, because they’ve brought back the whole samples. The story of the crisis to justify the absence of cotton sales seems to him an excuse, as does the transformation of the sample collection into a gift. Nevertheless, neither cotton nor suitcase is of any use at this time. Perhaps they should be gotten rid of. Or was it really a gift? Such a beautiful and costly suitcase can always suit someone. With all that cotton, it will make a lovely quilt, diffusing a pleasant and intimate smell of family. [Go back]

A tall lean Ukranian, profoundly good and consumed by TB, recently returned to Italy for treatment, with a wife and lots of babies, climbing the steps from a newborn in a cradle to a little girl of ten. He speaks slowly, almost not making a sound, and moves with difficulty. He’s not yet forty and it seems his life is at its end. An employee of Casa Editrice di Stato Sovietica, he works with many newspapers as an expert on economics, and visits our country often, where he stops at the Delegation to collect the data needed for his writings on soviet foreign commerce. Here he met Emilio and struck up a friendship with him, based on common commercial and poetic interests. He has been, in fact, a poet of the revolution, but now his disappointment shows. A little because of the sickness, a little because of the turn of events his country has taken with Stalin’s policy.

During his periods of cure, he’s written long, melancholic poems, oscillating between the pathetic desire for a perfect society not yet attained, and the conscious sadness of never being able to see it because of his state of health, a poetic excuse based on the truth of his illness, which urges him to project the prophesized society always further into the future, living it only in the state of desire, as all the communists in the whole world have always seen it, including the self-styled rationalist Marxists who fall regularly into the bottomless trap of a reductio ad infinitum, and excluding those who, denying the evidence, hold that socialism has already been realized.

Of his last writings, he’s not yet published anything, nor does he want to, doubting they’d be appreciated, rather, fearing the reactions of the upper hierarchy, convinced by their less stingy salary that they are already living in the vale of Eden. At any rate, wife plus numerous offspring to maintain do justify such fears.

He’s set himself up on a hill near Genoa, the Italian city he knows best and where he has friends from his own country, to face a long period of treatment in the land of sun and lemons. That April 30 of ’30 he goes down into the city to ask Emilio to go with him the next day to the San Martino Hospital where the radiologist is waiting to check him. As on other occasions, Emilio will act as interpreter for him.. Thus, in the early afternoon of that day, Tarapurov goes to the Delegation to talk to his friend, but, knowing he’d already come home with a half day’s leave, had joined him in his home. The radiologic exam has been fixed for the morning of May 1, which for the fascist state is an ordinary working day, and Emilio has promised to accompany him. They planned that after the examination they would go together to the Delegation to attend the Workers’ Festivity. [Go back]

Having set foot in the house along with the suitcase, Emilio hears in the rooms the lively dialect of the Venetian relatives. His mother-in-law Emma and two young cousins of his wife had wanted to make the trip as far as Genoa to visit him, and also because the youngest, Bepi, broken-hearted after having been diagnosed with a defect that precludes any possibility of procreation, can be enjoyed for a while. On his side, his oldest brother, Romano, has been lame since birth. Both are indifferent to politics.

A little after noon, Emilio is visited by Tarapurov and, notwithstanding some hygienic doubts on his opportunity to do it, has treated him to lunch. Seeing that there are sitting together at table a man with serious TB, a disabled and a cripple, he thinks there’s a need to lift morale. He uncorks a pair of good barbera wine and, a little in Russian for Tarapurov and a little in Venetian dialect for the relatives, he recounts the story of the suitcase full of Turkestan cotton, confessing doubts and fears and amusing everyone.

After dinner, the women left at home, the four men go on a walk through the city. By habit, distraction, and excess of gaiety from barbera, Emilio directs his guests right to Via XX Settembre. They sit at a caffè usually frequented by employees of the Delegation. An hour later Tarapurow rises, saying he doesn’t feel too well, and wants to go home. He salutes the company and goes off, staggering along the sidewalk, very quietly to the tram stop. Emilio follows him with his eyes from a window in the bar until he sees him disappear into the passersby. He will never see him again, but not for the reason he thinks. A few days later, after the response of the radiologist, the tubercular poet leaves in a hurry with his family to die in his country: so he says and so it seems and does, in time to reach the border before dying. But, after a year has passed, there arrives at the Delegation the news of his wife’s death, a shapely peasant who had seemed to challenge any illness, just as he was being described as risen to a new life. Since then, Tarapurow decides to stay always in his native land, marching towards the future rising sun, where for his poetic reductio ad infinitum he will need to introduce some other moving and plausible excuse. [Go back]

For time out of memory, the public forces of every police state periodically leaf through the list of internal enemies and throw a certain number of subjects into jail. Since the First International had been created [Note 53], the Italian police, at the approach of certain dates, passes in review its own agenda, to reduce to the minimum the danger of events disturbing the constituted orders. With the coming of the fascist regime the list in question is enriched by names of "subversives" to deposit in the jails of the fatherland for the short space of two nights that include the feast of Primo Maggio. The list of those who for that lapse of time must be separated from the rest of society has remained more or less constant during the duration of the regime. The group of communists was always the most numerous. The night that precedes the fateful and clandestine Workers’ Festivity has become for them the most punctual and feared of appointments with prison.

To tell the truth, until now Emilio hasn’t been subjected to these periodic collecting. His name has never been on the list of those selected, and this missed appointment has always given him a little feeling of consolation, breath, and a little security about moving about. But not all who are excluded experience an analogous sense of freedom, just as not all those included do not experience sorrowful resignation. There are those who feel offended in their self-esteem if in that decisive night they are not ripped out of bed and thrown into the hoosegow for twenty-four hours where they can put on their heads the halo of the martyrs‚ and there are also those who, once dropped into the fascist dungeons, burn with a pride touching on masochism. Emilio doesn’t hold with these supplementary points on the list of persecutions, and he’s always tried in his quiet way to avoid as well as he could the net of the police. But that night he couldn’t keep the zeal of vicebrigadiere Zito from unfurling its effects, whether as a vendetta of the fascist officer toward the Venetian businessman, or instead, just the fault of a stupid circumstance. [Go back]

Tarapurov having left, Emilio and Ida’s two cousins take another short walk, then return home by tram. But chance has willed that at the café the four "conspirators" have been noticed by that Emilio’s perennial shadow called vicebrigadiere Zito, who was going around these parts on solitary inspection. Because of his specific and equivocal motive, that must surely exist, because stupidity, like prudence, is never too much, the cop thinks it his duty to run to the police headquarters and warn his superiors.

Toward three o’clock in the morning, Emilio’s doorbell starts to ring furiously. Emilio is snoring tastefully, but in some little corner of his unconscious a timid little spirit wakes him and makes him jump. The other little genie, who watches over his conscious mind, intervenes quickly and makes him get down from his bed with a prolonged grimace of resignation and go to the door, while the rest of the family turns on lights and starts to mutter. Although he knew well who it was, Emilio asks who it might be. The police, obedient to their proper formal obligations, answer and add to be quick about it. Emilio asks for a minute, uses it to put on his trousers, and opens. The dark of the landing is occupied by many shadows in uniform, and others in civilian clothes, so many that some of them are forced to stop on a lower step, while others have occupied the first of the next flight.

Shiny buttons and sparkling disks of cigars are suspended in the void at various heights. The closest personage in civilian clothes goes up takings the cigar from his mouth, makes sure he’s got the right man, and orders Emilio to get dressed and follow him. At the same time the others in uniform throw open the door and hold it well open. A little later, Emilio salutes his family, gathered in the corridor, reminding them that it’s May Day, and crosses the threshold exclaiming:"How happy I am to be alive!"

In the street he meets, between two policemen, Vicebrigadiere Zito who salutes him seriously, bringing his hand to his hat. Emilio responds with an "Ah!" of amazed sarcasm to which he adds: "But you, dear brigadiere, don’t you ever go to sleep?" Zito remains impassive, entrusts him to the two agents, salutes him as before, and merges with the others. Emilio and the two guards had barely begun to walk when a voice at his back giggled: "Signor Magnanini, how happy we are to be alive! " It’s the cop in plain clothes who had ordered him to dress, and who, judging from the deferential smile with which Zito looks at him, must be the boss. [Go back]

He’s taken to a nearby station of carabinieri in San Martino d’Albaro Square, pushed down a slippery ladder, and made to enter an underground hole, empty, without even a stool, which his escorts call a "security chamber". However, it seems a refuse-dump that’s never held human beings. From the ceiling hangs a light, pale as death, and on the pavement, stinking and sticky from every kind of filth, some huge mice are resting, looking at Emilio like an intruder.

He waits on his feet for day to come, resolved to be calm and patient, attentive only to check any movements of the mice. But the rodents aren’t moving: keeping their tiny eyes partly closed, they seem to sleep, but they raise their eyelids at the least noise from Emilio, observing his feet with hostility as if warning that on that night shift, they’ll replace the carabinieri.

He spends a good pair of hours until, through a narrow grate open almost at ceiling height he notices that it’s starting to get light. He draws a breath of relief and feels the need to urinate. Keeping his eyes on the mice, all heaped up together along the wall, he aims the drops into the distance, but then, seized by a surge of anger, decides to aim right at them. But, except for a shiver of surprise they don’t move: they stand nicely under the warm spray, which they seem to like. And it seems to him that he has pissed on the regime. [Go back]

Another few hours pass, and outside, the first noises are heard: a few roars of automobiles alternating with the rattling of the early trams. By now a definite light is coming in: the voices of passersby crossing San Martino Square, and some childish voices. In a few minutes, the children’s voices multiply into a festive racket.

Unexpectedly, he remembers that in that Square, just in front of the station of the carabinieri, there’s the elementary school Pier Maria Carnevari, which his children attend, and he shudders. This is the hour the scholars gather in front of the entrance. At the thought of being in that sewer, a few steps from his children, he lets out a resigned and thoughtful moan. In his mind he can see the little girls in their smocks, ribbons on heads, lunch box in hand, and with eyes lowered in front of the wall, he sees the mice licking peacefully the pool of urine on which they subsist.

The door of the little room opens, a carabiniere with the stripes of his rank puts his head in, and orders him to step out. Emilio asks where they’re taking him: to the Central Police-head-quarter. Anxious, he begs the carabiniere to wait at least until the children have gone inside the school. It’s not possibile, because they have other urgent orders to take care of. Emilio says he doesn’t want to cross the square, not to run the risk of being seen by his children. "There’s only one way to avoid it," the lance-corporal smiles, looking like a kind mouse, "you pay for a taxi!" With a sigh of relief, Emilio accepts immediately. After a few minutes, one soldier in front and one behind, he climbs into the auto that takes him to the by now familiar Ducal Palace. [Go back]

In the offices of the Central Police Headquarters Emilio is relieved of the usual personal objects which prisoners may not keep, and is closed all alone into a subterranean cell. A little later, the screech of the gate announces the arrival of another prisoner, shoved in to keep him company. Emilio is leaning on the wall opposite the gate and observing him; he’s never seen him before, but he has a serious gaze and an honest expression that inspires faith. And yet, height, build, and even clothes remind him of someone. The new arrival looks all around, nods his head in greeting, touches his pockets to verify that he still had cigarettes, lights one, looks around again to better orient himself, and finally goes up to Emilio who, from the way he walks, understands the reason for their arrest.

He is in fact lame, with the same physical imperfection of the cousin of his wife with whom on the afternoon on the day before had been noticed by the vicebrigadiere Zito at the cafè on Via XX Settembre: same feet, same limp. They unfortunately coincide in height, build, hair, and age as well. This leads Emilio to believe that he is dealing with a true comrade, really arrested, with whom it might be possibile to exchange a few authentic words without the nightmare of provocation or espionage. He decides nevertheless to behave with prudence. They exchange a few remarks, introduce themselves, and exchange some information.

Emilio learns in that way that his cellmate is a communist who lives in Riviera, in a town near Ventimiglia, and who, taken from the table at the dinner hour, had been moved during the night in handcuffs up to Genoa.

Evidently the v icebrigadiere Zito didn’t know that man. But in speaking to his superiors, he said he’d seen the "dangerous" Emilio in the company of a lame man, whose identity he couldn’t ascertain. But, if he was with Emilio, he must be just as dangerous. With the typical arrogance of the "I can, I order and want" the fascist police, irritated by the approach of Primo Maggio and made suspicious by that "clandestine" meeting at the caffè of Via XX Settembre, have decided, and applying the decisive logic of a serving girl, (that if one pill is good to fight a headache, two would be better), arrests both of them. Naturally, Zito never imagined that the new and mysterious subversive, who was meeting Emilio in the caffè the day before the decisive recurrence, might be staying peacefully in the house of the man that’s watching him: otherwise he would have immediately arrested the wrong man he had to arrest (the Ida’s cousin), instead of the right man (the communist) whom he was not to arrest. And thus the police, by deciding to hunt all through the region using telegraphs and telephones for a lame, tall, corpulent communist dressed so and so and so on, had found one, unlucky for him, in Riviera.

This is Emilio’s explanation, apart from the doubt, less likely, that the whole succession might be instead attributable to the vindicative craze of the fascist boss, to whom he had denied the sole agency. Everyone explains things that happen to them as well as they can, and according to the information they have. I propose also a political interpretation of the business. The theory of the misunderstanding is probably correct: the police, to whom Zito pointed out a mysterious lame man who’s met his special watched-over man, have hooked that poor citizen of Riviera, and made up its minds to add both their names to the May Day list. And so this time, Emilio as well had been arrested. But Emilio doesn’t know he’s been victim of the beginning of a specific particular increase of police repression, beginning with...Stalin.

In January of ’30 the center of the PCd‚I, who’d emigrated to France (Togliatti, Ravera, Longo, Secchia...) have decided stupidly that fascism has entered into a crisis and that the moment has come to exploit this crisis, re-opening a clandestine internal center. This aroused the opposition of the more aware and honest leaders, that is, Tresso, Leonetti, and Ravazzoli, who because of this were expelled in June from a party that at this point had become the personal property of Stalin; upon whose will and finances it completely depends. Who pays is always right.

The reconstitution of an internal center, directed by Ravera, has led to a certain resumption of activity, not always quite clandestine, which in turn has caused the OVRA to become suspicious and intensify its surveillance. The resumption is witnessed by the presence of many small May Day celebrations, which the party succeeds in promoting all over the country, and by the increase of trials by the Tribunale Speciale during a year, aimed at the Communists. The preventative arrest of the lame man and of Emilio is attributed to Zito’s pointing him out, but is probably part of the picture of this general atmosphere of increased surveillance. And, for synergy, one might add the desire for revenge of those two who had gone to visit him in the office on the morning of the 30th: one hypothesis doesn't exclude the other, if anything, it makes it more powerful.

Nevertheless the two arrested men don’t know each other, and continue to talk with prudence about neutral things, giving special prominence to the fact that they don’t know each other, and as they talk, they observe with an expert eye walls and ceiling, darting each other glances of warning. The suspicion that the police are listening is so well founded that, after a few hours, evidently convinced they’d made a mistake, even a communist mistake, but different from that "dangerous" kind pointed out by the diligent Zito, some disappointed functionary gives orders to take both of them out of the observation cell. He has them enter a large and clean room where many other comrades, among whom Emilio recognizes one of his colleagues from the office who’s called Perillo, are waiting, some with patience, some with pride, and some with anger, according to his character, a few drinking beer and a few others smoking or playing cards, for the end of May Day. [Go back]

In 1932 Emilio moves with his family to Milan. The following year, he ends his working connection as an employee of the Soviet Commercial Delegation, and begins to work as a private consultant and middleman in coal, keeping a few relationships with the Russians.

In ’36 he re-ordered his entire poetic production including, as they used to say, the effort, but it’s better to say the enjoyment, of about twenty years, spent, not withstanding the political drama he’d lived through; under the protection more of Érato than of Calliope [Note 54], even though, as a better description, one would invoke a muse sui generis, one of versatile configurations, having at the same time political, amorous, and immediate appearances. Improvising himself into an editor, he’d had printed in a friend’s shop a volume of poetry entitled, precisely, Il Prisma, which is not only the fruit of the desire to acquaint the people of his literary virtues, but also the result of an uncontrollable will to escape the mute silence into which all antifascists have been forced for many years to live: an act of silent protest, the result of a will to communicate sensations, feelings, and free thoughts to a public, one not able to be reached directly, nourished only by the fascist catechism, and by a literature purged of every motif of civil disturbance. Silently he’d sent complimentary books to many persons of culture and to the papers, which in those times they would read before throwing them away, receiving many private responses (lucky him!) all characterized by that prudence of judgement which then was the index of dominant political cowardice, whereas today, considering the greater bleakness of the people, and apart from the fact that almost the totality of the responses would be substituted by a cowardly and "couldn’t care less" silence, if the few rare answers might exist, that ones would be only indicative of cowardly egoism or a sign of well-concealed incompetence. His friend the typographer does not have, on his part, any ambition except making his own industry prosper. Careful of the surprises that might strike someone who’s divulged the thoughts of others, he has made room in his own administration for an activist of the OVRA, the Fascist secret police. [Go back]

Public responses, not a shadow, except for a review in "Il Gazzettino" of Venice on 15.8.36, XIV of the regime. In the book there are linguistic and expressive ingenuities, fundamentally the result of being immersed in a nineteenth-century poetic style, a thing that reveals the vast but chaotic and autodidactic cultural formation of the author. But, leaving aside the fact that originality has always been a very rare gift, belonging only to great poets, and among other things almost never caught at the right moment by the so-called "experts", the texts of Prisma contain some beautiful things, like the sonnets full of nostalgia for childhood, worthy of deep study. "Il Gazzettino", sensitive to the Venetian spirit of the content but also to the spirit of liberty that winds through the pages of the volume, published the review, lingering over the "rebel tone" of a few verses, in particular, on one lyric, where the myth of liberty, problematically enounced by the title Enigma and decanted with a singsong of lines of six and five syllables, is thus described: "Di ciascun popolo/è la ragione, /sempre ‘l’anelito/d’ogni passione" and, provocatory, "tu fosti nitido/astro di Roma" and chorally, "sempre intangibile/rinnovellata/da tutti i popoli/oggi invocata" and individually, "e nell’attendere/ciascuno spera/che tu lo liberi/d’ogni catena" and explicitly, "Marx quello storico/materialista/decreta ai simili/la tua conquista" and finally, "io tuo discepolo/essere agogno/o mia dolcissima/ombra di sogno."

The demonstrated indulgence of that Venice daily, about the spirit of liberty that unwinds through those pages, is explained by the fact that that newspaper, belonging for decades to a distinguished and patriotic family from Cadore, was still one of the few who had escaped the claws of the regime. But not for long. [Go back]

The progression from below upward, from the earth to the heavens. The more we are inclined to an order imposed with force, the more we are illogical in justifying it. To the most rigid imposition of a practice corresponds the most absurd justification of a theory. When we feel a great need of liberty, power, money, or some other "value", in the effort to justify this earthly greed, we are capable of inventing nonsense of any kind, doctrines, and philosophies, from the most confessional to the most atheistic, from the most democratic or liberal to the most authoritarian, and in the highest compartment we put the copy of the lowest life. The Dionysian, imperfect world was justified by an Apollonean one, perfect, divine. Inside our celestial butterflies, everything is the opposite of everything: you have to know how to choose the thought that makes you most comfortable at that moment. When experience is disguised as ideas, with which every rational connection is only apparent, the inverse process begins from up to down, from heaven to earth. When the false induction that transforms the flesh into the word is concluded, then the false dedution begins and the word is transformed into the flesh; thus we become slaves of those ideas, that from our bodies have separated like emanations of a divinity. In both directions the process is absurd. Taking off from this experience, eternal laws have been invented, then from those laws, the experience is deduced. And with the most ample pretense: if you’ve done this, it means it’s been so written up there, and if it’s written like that up there, you must do it like this down here. A design more circular than Giotto’s. Every warning is useless against filling the abyss.

The problem is exactly this: once the ideology was invented, they invent also the procedure for the practice thinking to have it deduced from the ideology. The result of the double confusion is that, after a certain time, the one which according to the fantasy had seemed to be an efficient and rational society, is now revealed, according to the events and the times, to be an unsustainable Calvary. You think you’re following an ideal and you discover that it leads to a tyranny or a war or poverty, you follow, and the first things that get you back on track again are really your ideas, they’re sustaining you, and most of all, the scaly siren of liberty, obstacle contradictory and insurmountable when reaching for any ideal, including the liberty itself.

Theocratic systems, fascism, coomunism and many degrees of liberal capitalism prosper in the jungle and in the dictatorship, in war and in poverty. Throughout their heavens have sparkled the idiocies devised by philosophies and ideologies in all times and all places, who have obstructed their governments with sane empirical theories capable of being updated constantly, as they attempt to do now in more advanced countries. But even today, to speak of these things to fascists or to communists or to those obsessed with liberalism, or with religion or race, is like talking to the wall. Unfortunately experience teaches us little. History teaches us little. History is the story of confusion, the lack of clear ideas at the right time. Clear ideas always come later, as punishments. History is the story of fanaticisms, the ones that always come at the right moment. If Popper is right to maintain that the rational part within us is at least as important as the irrational, it is legitimate to doubt that in the course of history the two parts are equally shared throughout humanity. Judging from the catastrophes the human species have brought on themselves, the dark part seems to have taken the larger slice. [Note 55]. [Go back]

The fascist regime has always had the need to control the press. The expropriation of "Il Gazzettino" occurred in the same period in which Spain was about to break out into civil war, which will resolve itself, at the expense of idealistic volunteers participating there, in a series of ideologic and diplomatic conflicts among various countries, and in bloody disputes among the forces of the left, themselves working to aid the Republic, in the context of what might be considered a political and war-like agreement. Here the General Staffs of Europe, notwithstanding hypocritical declarations of non-intervention, want to experiment with their own fighting potential, in view of a probable, imminent, second world war, but without any real intention on the part of the western democracies of saving the Spanish republic.

The word democracy is not yet magical enough, and the nazi-fascist totalitarianism isn’t yet able to provoke sufficient cohesion among the western states and their parties, more or less social democrats, which the communists considered to be founded on bad democratic jokes. The military specialities of the various countries have not been sent to Spain as official expression of their armed forces, but disguised in the form of voluntary help with equipment, organization and men.

With so much malignant pessimism accompanying public and at times even private sentiments, originating not only from his national character but also from the justified egoism with which he’d had to defend himself since the hard years of childhood, Emilio labels the volunteers with the epithet of soldiers of fortune, who fight under any flag, run in to vent with arms in a foreign land, the reciprocal and repressed hatred that divides them in the countries of their origin.

At the beginning of the Spanish crusade, the fascist Italian State, besides taking over all the newspapers still virgin, was conducting in every town roundups of persons suspected only of not being faithful to the regime. [Go back]

During the summer of ’36 Emilio was on vacation with his family at Ballabio, a village of prealpine Lombardy near Lecco, when one morning the postman brought him a copy of "Il Gazzettino" from August 15, in which a review of his book of poems had been published. As bad luck would have it, the proprietor of the edifice where Emilio has rented an apartment is a fellow called Beefsteak, who emanates a strong stench of spy. Emilio has sniffed out the method by which Beefsteak, although avoiding him directly, watches and follows him, and tries to gossip confidentially with Ida and the children every time he meets them on the stairs. To convince him that the fact he sees spies everywhere is not a personal mania, unpleasant news intervenes, circulated immediately through town. To spend the August holidays, a squad of Milanese fascists has arrived at Ballabio, led by a sad figure known to be one of Matteotti’s assassins, and whose last name, Poveromo, fits his personality. And soon he happens to see Beefsteak in the midst of that group of hand-picked delinquents with whom he’s spending a lot of time in a bar in the middle of town, drinking and playing billiards, when they’re not running around in a car on the shores of the lake. On that August morning, Beefsteak, looking from the balcony of the apartment upstairs, has seen the postman consign "Il Gazzettino" to Emilio’s wife and heard Ida call her husband so that he read the review, after which he had run, as always, to the bar frequented by his filthy friends.

Today it seems absurd that anyone would take the trouble to give news of such low quality, even when it’s the review of a book by an unknown, who can’t boast of friendships in literary circles, a book that must pass even more unobserved than those of well known authors, books that no one in the world, except for them, will read. Of course, it might be a book reviewed only to please this or that friend, or, when we’re dealing with celebrity, to put in the showcase yourself. But then, even information sold by a mediocre human sub-product might be good if used to drive a wedge to be transformed into an excuse, to put some bad temptations out of harm’s way.

Naturally, then as today, there existed in the world of the intellectuals, artists, and authors in general and journalists in particular, a large, well-fed army of informers and fabricators of lies, used in order to provoke. The highest level was taken up with celebrities, to the point that it was, as it is now, very difficult to find a celebrity who had never acted as a spy. Unfortunately for him, Beefsteak was neither a journalist nor an intellectual nor anything of the kind, and had to be content passing news of little account for little money, but he ended up all the same with harming someone.

Late that morning, Emilio goes to Milan to take care of some business, along with his oldest daughter, Liliana, fourteen years old. He lives in Via Lamarmora. He’s just crossed the main door when the doorkeeper gestures to him as if to tell him something, but, taken by unexpected second thoughts, she stops and goes back to the porter’s room, allowing himself only a wave of greeting. Having climbed to the apartment, father and daughter spend the night in peace, even with the annoyance of a heat they’d not yet gotten used to. [Go back]

Dawn of the morning after. Along with the noise of the early trams and the cooing of the pigeons who, profiting from the prolonged absence of the proprietors, have occupied and besmirched the windowsills, one can hear the stubborn sound of a doorbell. Liliana puts on her dressing-gown and goes to open the door. While Emilio already suspects something, his daughter returns at a run announcing that some men are looking for him. "We are back again!", thinks Emilio, and says to have them wait in the entrance. Dressing in a hurry, he asks his daughter to do the same, meets them and ascertains that, instead of waiting for him in the entranceway, those men, that is three cops from the OVRA, are already at work and searching everywhere, starting with the bookshelves along the walls of the corridor. The one who seems to be in charge shows off his authority, a police identity card, and adds mechanically that, if he wants to, Emilio can assist with the search. After stepping into the study and watching the desk, all three exclaim: "Found!" Emilio observes them in disgust."Found what?" and the head: "The printed matter!" Then Emilio, impassive, points out to them that the material would obviously be found, since it had been put here, and added that there was a lot of it everywhere, inside a pair of chests, and even on the floor. And the head: "Don’t worry, we’ll check everything." He takes from the writing desk a copy of Il Prisma and starts to page through it with an attention that would make a literary critic envious, underlining it with prolonged moans of satisfaction. The other two look with amazement at the other two thousand copies of the book piled in every corner of the room. When the moans stop, the police head continues leafing thoughtfully through the pages, until he starts scratching his head, making gestures of disorientation. Emilio would like to observe that he didn’t know the police liked poetry so much; but he limits himself to thinking that, coupled with the thought that the OVRA not only did not like a sense of humor, but was decidedly averse to it.

Finally the head breaks the enchantment, turns, and showing the example in his hand: "Are you in compliance with the censor?" Emilio answers that he is, and that the printer can document it. "We’ll see", the cop concludes,"for now, come with us." Emilio assures himself that his wallet is in his jacket pocket. They go off toward the door. Liliana tries to follow them:"No, signorina, the head holds her back, and with a superior air: "Where we’re going, you may not come.".Then the girl, who hasn’t really understood the situation, asks her father call to say when he’ll be back tonight. But Emilio: "Instead, call uncle Fausto, and immediately." And the door closes. [Go back]

He thinks they’re taking him to the Police Headquarters Instead, the auto he’s made to climb into goes through Via Lamarmora, turns right onto Via Caldara, slowly crosses Porta Romana, Porta Vigentina, Porta Ticinese and Porta Genoa, and turns into Via Filangeri, stopping at the entrance to the jails of San Vittore.

The thought of ending up in jail because of a book of poetry gives him a feeling of guilt and of the absurd. He thinks he’d like more time before someone able to separate poetry from politics recognizes his innocence, and he experiences remorse for having written that book and for not having resisted the desire of publishing it, and what’s more, for the weakness of showing off his most intimate feelings in front of the whole world, and especially to people like that. But why, and meanwhile they’re making him get out of the auto, should he renounce it? He was a responsible family man, certainly, but also a communist. He’s never been involved in an attack of any kind, he’s never killed or wounded anyone, not even in war, nor has he even stolen a lira from anyone at all, and having those poems published was the only way to react to a madness that by now has been lasting fifteen years, during which a communist could be arrested for having drunk a glass of water.

The usual sad gates open, then close. He’s led into a small place on the ground floor. Here he must wait, kept company by a taciturn cop who’s begun to doze off, for the reception desk to open. A lot of time passes, and he’s stopped thinking. He feels he’s sitting in limbo, immersed in a compact silence on a wooden bench surrounded by other wooden benches, in front of a huge French window that looks out on a little paradise of eggplants and tomatos. But unexpectedly, there arrives from the Hell the personnel of the office, to take away his innocent thoughts and replace them with those of the purgatory of the present, taking him through the usual formalities. They take from him jacket, shirt, trousers, shoes, and socks, measure him, and weigh him. Then someone throws open the glass window that looks out onto the garden, and shouts: "Alì Babà!" They hear a rustle and a gallop followed by the breathless entry of a huge black dog, as big as a calf. Emilio experiences a little fear, but has to smile."What are they looking for, these unbelievers, pig meat or communist?" They let Alì Babà sniff all his clothing, then send the dog back to the tomatos and close the glass window. The ceremony being over, he’s become a legal client of that inn, and Emilio is entrusted to a warder who is ordered to take him to Sixth wing, cell 33. [Go back]

That warder had retained a crumb of humanity. He looks at the ceiling and sighs: "Poor guy, solitary!" and leads him to a destination after having pointed out the various sections of the prison and the courtyards with the diligence of a tour guide. Before leaving, and with the air of confiding a secret: "Do you know that the architect who designed this prison has killed himself?" He pauses, looks at Emilio, and feels an obligation to underline the concept: "He was overcome by great regret!"

The door having been closed, the huge chain having been put back in place, the keys having been snatched back, silence returns. The cell, on the ground floor, was no larger than nine feet by six feet, and eight feet high. There is a cot against one wall. Above, a grate lets through the rhomb of the heavens, and, according to Emilio, looks out over the garden inhabited by Ali Baba. At one side of the cot a beam sticks out, which serves as support under which there is a stool that serves as chair. In a hollow at the base of the opposite wall there is a pot awaiting the remains of the food and the leftovers of the body.

The cell door is iron, the highest part is a grating, and it has in the center a small window that opens only from the outside, so that the jailer can look inside and move objects in or out. Even when the door is closed, a thin longitudinal fissure left from the building’s settling allows him to see, better than from the keyhole, a part of the room of the wing, with the floor of red hexagonal tiles. Many cells open on to this room.

Forcing his eyes to the right, he can even see a little of the corridor coming into the room. Leaning to the left, he sees the entrance of a small stair which descends to an internal courtyard. Reacting to the prostration, Emilio starts walking up and down, in a cadenced step, coming and going in a straight line, thinking only that at that moment he should be doing what anyone else in his place would be doing. Then, since his head is starting to spin, he learns to take a more or less circular route, slow, and as much as possible touching the walls and fixed objects.

That business about the architect who committed suicide must have been the usual nonsense being said in all the prisons of the world, a little to make an impression, and a little to console the inmates. After a while, the desire to walk passes.

While he’s resting on the edge of his cot, a jailer enters followed by a prisoner helping to explain to him that the "political" prisoners are not allowed to eat in the refectory with the other inmates, and must therefore eat their meals in their cells, and asks him what he wants to eat today and tomorrow, naturally at his own expense, and if he has any money in the jail’s safe. Otherwise, he will have to be contented with the house slop. Luckily, this depressing eventuality has been avoided by his habitual prudence. Having arranged the meals, he asks for envelope, paper, and pen, and a book to read. After not even five minutes, a jailer enters all in a hurry and gives him the book and the necessities for writing, and leans on the door with his arms folded, waiting.

Suspicious of so much diligence, Emilio limits himself to directing a few lines to Ida, after which the things needed for writing get taken away with the same energy with which they'd been given him. The prisoner reflects: it’s obvious that his inquisitors are very interested in what he’s writing, they’re making conjectures, thinking of trails to follow, and perhaps inventing other guilty people to grab. [Go back]

At a certain point, the silence of the late morning, the exterior silence that precedes noon, when outside every least thing can be noticed by its regular habits and everything is wrapped into the general buzz, breaks by an unexpected bustling, quick steps, jargon in current use pronounced in a low voice first to the left and then to the right of Emilio’s cell. Numbers 32 and 34 have been opened without the usual mechanical decisions but with unusual circumspection. And someone now is whispering vivaciously in the room, in an almost silent, flexible voice, with someone else. After a few minutes the turn of a key puts an end to that excited flexibility. Everything has quieted down, and silence is cautioning silence.

The sixth wing of cells is reserved to the political prisoners, for the most part one to a cell. Therefore, despite their numbers, the only voices that are lifted from time to time are those of the jailors, or more rarely, those of prisoners calling them or other prisoners. But it’s not the uproar of the overcrowded comrades of the other wings.

Some time passes, until echos are bouncing through the air, steps, paces, doors, growing at times to a cadence. At Sixty Wing were arriving the short but always wecome parentheses to the meal, soon followed by the unpleasant operation of marking time with the crockery: the time when the prisoners return to themselves, when even the silence supports his forced mutism, the silence of after meals, when the outside air is dulled by digestion.

Emilio has eaten with a fairly good appetite, owing a little to his condition of semi-habitual prisoner and a little to missing his morning meal. After another hour he perceives other sounds, short ones from doors that open and close and rhythmical ones, of shoes approaching. He glues his eyes to the crack and sees part of a line of prisoners setting out to climb the ladder leading to the internal courtyard that must serve the entire wing, to judge from how many prisoners must be passing by, perhaps a hundred, and all registered as politicals. He forces himself to watch as little as possible, and sees through the crack comrades Sanna, Della Lucia, Tettamenti, Basile, Maierotti and others. After an hour; the same composed and cadenced sounds and the same scene run backward, until the silence of late afternoon get the upper hand again.

He remembers the book that they had brought him. It’s the first volume of Course of geology by Antonio Stoppani. "It’s better this one" he thinks, "rather than this shitty Bel Paese!" He reads with youthful attention until evening. The first day, although interrupted here and there by a few discoveries and by the early operations that give you confidence in the place; has passed, along with that monotonous thread which adds a feeling of unreal and invented vacuum to his awareness of the room. [Go back]

Lying partly dressed on the cot, it’s an effort to fall asleep. The lights of the cells, operated from a central point, are turned off by the jailor on the watch. The deadly pale bulbs of the halls and corridors remain lit. From the open window of the grille pours the light of a street lamp, the humid heat of night, and a strong smell of green. Through the crushed ear on his cushion he hears the running of his blood and the beating of his heart. The strange movements and chat of early afternoon heard from both sides of the cell have not been repeated. Not even a breath. Thus, in the normality of the night, the peace of cells 32 and 34 seems strange. He turns to a supine position and listens. In that silence, he notices lurking presences.

The late hours are slipping into his dream, when he’s shaken by the cautious and rusty squeal of the great chain. In the shadow he sees a pair of shoulders in sparkling uniform illuminated from the corridor, followed by another pair in a plainer uniform. He who entered first wears a hat with an extended visor with an inquisitory air. The second, with the more ordinary appearance of an simple jailer, is carrying a torch. Emilio’s first thought: any prisoner wakened suddenly in the heart of the night might react in a violent way, and this justifies the presence of the two men. Second thought: better to lie still and pretend to be sleeping. The head-visiting sets about inspecting the cell with the aid of the assistant’s torch, which every so often he directs clumsily onto the face of the prisoner as if to study it and anticipate his moves, but at the risk of waking him up. Emilio notices that the step of that nocturnal inspector is as soft and vague as if he were wearing plush skates under his soles, with which, almost as if in a dance step, he can move through nothingness. The same for his assistant, but with an awkward and dragging movement. The head checks every corner carefully, inch by inch. Having reached the stool fixed to the wall, he has Stoppani’s book illuminated, and begins to leaf through it diligently. He knows very well that it’s a donation to the jail, and could not be otherwise, and therefore, thinks Emilio, as he hears the pages turning, does not doubt that the book is checked and approved by the censors, nor at that hour would they be interested in geology nor, since they are in that antrum, in speleology. Perhaps they are seeking for something supposed to be hiding in the crevice of the book, as his experience was suggesting to him. Finally, bored searching for something not there, he retires cautiously with his assistant who, with the wordless recommendation of the inspector, answers in a less wordless way: "Yes, Sir" The big chain squeaked less this time and the cell fell back into darkness. A little later he hears, farther away, the squeal of another large chain.

Eyes and ears directed at the grille, Emilio floats on the surface, in thoughts always more rarified and unconnected. He’s finally about to fall asleep, when he perceives a rustle of leaves and heavy breathing followed by the short shower of a good piss. He gives a few coughs. Alì Babà’s breathing, as he makes his service rounds among the nocturnal tomatoes, stops at once and changes to a rumbling, whining growl. Emilio experiences a mild, uncontrolled fear, but he relaxes immediately and smiles. For some minutes, both remain immobile, immersed in the reciprocal control of silence. [Go back]

A little after dawn, a warder brings him a little white coffee, saying that with a tip he could bring him as much as he wanted. As soon as Emilio agrees, the man disappears, to return immediately with a full mug. He is followed by an inmate who has an obliging air and brings him a basin of water to wash with, then leaves, after making an analogous proposal for something else he’s grabbed, and holds in his hand half up in the air. In fact, he comes back shortly and leaves again with a satisfied air to have diligently completed his assignment of hygienically cleaning the pot to which he’d been led.

Later, when he’s sitting on his back-side on the stool to read his book, put on the board, a tapping that seems to be made with knuckles begins from the other side of the wall dividing him from cell 34. At first it might have seemed a way to pass time, a diversion used by 34 to break the boredom, but then it becomes insistent. Someone inside there wants to attract his attention. Expanding the ticks into a telegraphic communication, he seems to want a reply. It’s one of the languages in use among the incarcerated, well known to jailors but not to Emilio, so for that tenant, it’s a waste of time, and that exercise, when it’s prolonged, becomes annoying. But the guy doesn’t desist, and continues for two hours to repeat the same rhythm with suspicious ostentation, almost as if he were completing a precise assignment. Every so often he loses his patience and starts to scream in a strong accent from Venice Giulia: "Thirty-two, the Thirty-three pretendes not to understand. Thirty-three, why don’t you reply?" Number 32 answers yawning incomprehensible exclamations that seem to be insulted, but 33 stays stubbornly mute. [Go back]

In the afternoon, the cell gets opened, and Emilio as well is called to get into line with the others to go down to the courtyard for an hour of air. Thus he has the opportunity to see, in a great hurry, the inhabitants of cells 32 and 34 who, forced from their dens, are placed respectively in front of and behind him. Peeking into the curves of the walkways and turning around in absent-minded way at every chance, he gets the impression that they are not political prisoners and, to tell the truth, are not even being really detained. At any rate, he maintains that they’re not communists: it takes only one glance, one gesture, one witticism, certain details that don’t show up at all on those two faces. On the other hand, with the jokes and the obscene words that they emit they are decidedly repulsive and as far from the communist spirit as is the class instinct from a propensity to act like a delinquent.

In the courtyard, while the prisoners gather in clumps to gossip, he’s taken by the arm by a jailor and led into an adjacent and smaller courtyard, almost entirely occupied by a semicircular wooden hut, divided into many sections, in each of which was located a single prisoner. It’s the "Carousel of the Great Surveillance" The sections, wide enough to allow to take some short steps, are formed by tall wooden walls which communicate one with another like public toilets. Through those common spaces the prisoners can exchange calls and objects. That apparatus, neither movable nor complete in the circular sense, extends for the length of half its circumference, facing a small two story building about ten steps away. From a window, an armed guard is observing it all. Another guard is going up and down in front of the hut.

For a whole hour, Emilio goes up and down between the walls of his section in bright sun. Notwithstanding the heat, he finds it pleasant to breath good air. He closes his eyes often, not to be dazzled, and goes on like that, almost deceiving himself into thinking he was walking on a street in the outskirts of Milan.

Nothing unusual happened. When the hour is over, he’s put back into the cells with the others and realizes that he still has 32 in front of him and 34 behind, but this time he can better observe them, taking advantage of the curves and stops of that little human train, stops made for coupling on other prisoners, scattered through the courtyard, making the route less boring. During these walks, the prisoners are not permitted to communicate among themselves in any way, those two as well, like the rest, enjoy themselves on their own, laughing and swearing at every occasion.

Number 34 is about thirty, tall and lean, rosy skin, reddish pomaded hair that glistens in the sun, a insolent expression and gait of a gymnast, clearly fit for the march.

Every so often he shows off making comments, that from his point of view are sarcastic, with a marked giuliana cadence. Number 32 can’t be more than twenty, small and brown, and echos with an marked accent from Sicily. His gait is awkward, his face attentive and subordinate. All in all, a real conscript. No, neither of them is the type to be put under the Great Surveillance reserved for the political prisoners. Emilio tells himself to stay alert. [Go back]

Having returned to his cell, again the telegraph from 34. He keeps it up with the same rhythm but with ever increasing intensity. "What a communist!", Emilio thinks. "That ball-buster! The only things red about him is his hair and his knuckles." At a certain moment the clicking stops, but doesn’t leave his cell mates in peace. Not receiving an answer, the red one crushes the partition wall as hard as he can and starts to call " Thirty-three... Thirty-three..." each time raising his voice with a few variations, like " Thirty-three, why are you pretending you can’t hear?" Irate, he shows off in a stentorian sharp before the lookout, always ready to quiet anyone making an uproar, intervenes. Emilio, even more suspicious and glued to the crack, alternating eyes and ears, observes the jailor sitting at the little table concentrating on doing a crossword puzzle, paying no attention to the uproar in 34, which finally stops. Emilio goes back to reading in his cot, amazed how a regime can last so long with such idiotic collaborators.

The following night, more of the director’s padded steps, longer and more precise than those preceding, and this time too Emilio pretends to sleep. Number 32 pretends, 33 pretends, 34 pretends, the watchman pretends, everyone pretends, in that real nightmare of patience. [Go back]

The next morning, the inhabitant of 34 began to call, in a very loud voice, the man in 32, who immediately listens to him. They said things of no importance under the hard ears of the warder, and even went so far as to throw twists of papers through the grills of the doors. Emilio can see from the crack that the guard collects them and passes them on to the respective adresses, and decides to keep quiet, prolonging the rage of both.

During the morning hour of air, something new happens. While Emilio is walking in his slice of the merry-go-round, a swedish matches box, launched through the intercommunicating space, falls between his feet. He thinks is has to do with the usual 34. He picks it up and opens it: tobacco and rolling papers. Some words are written on the first paper. Without even reading them, he closes it in a hurry and throws it onto the guard’s path. The guard approaches, sees the box and looks at Emilio with a questioning air. "It’s not mine, it rained down from heaven!" The guard picks it up, hands them to a nearby superior, and begins again his back and forth. Back in the cell, Emilio undergoes the insults of his neighbor, but continues to remain silent.

The days pass heavily without anything different happening except for the usual drumming, which 34 practices regularly like a profession, at regular intervals, or the director’s inspections, repeated every night like a ritual. No one has yet made a charge against him. The only thing is, he takes the trouble to pay for small but useful services, which give a little meaning to his presence, to the jailers and to the prisoner who scours the chamber pot. He can’t get the least idea about how much longer he’ll have to wait. Once, asked in a friendly way, a jailer answers: "You’d like to know that, eh?" But he doesn’t know either. And another: "What makes you think you have the right...? ". The continuation"...to know that?" remains in his eyes, blocked on a note of a few lire, which Emilio passes under his nose, and he puts it into his pocket with the face of a man who, through no fault of his own, cannot really respond. The prisoner would like to talk to him about natural rights, teach him the rights of man, point out to him a certain Rousseau, but he holds back, first because he’s certain it will be like talking to an ignorant wall and, second, because he’s convinced that those rights don’t fall from above but must be conquered from below by the revolution and the organization taught by Lenin. And a lot of different things he would teach him to be honest and coherent within himself.

One day, to comfort his detention, an unhoped for radio opera program breaks in from the nearby, widely open windows of a private house, just before dinner. The soft sweetness and the eruptive force of Verdi and Bellini, the voices of Galeffi, Pertile, Caniglia, and the adventurous verses of Piave, Ghislanzoni and Solera were crossing Via San Vittore, assailing the red-hot wall of the prison, freeing themselves on the fortified turrets, absorbing the damp smells of the garden, slipping along the walls of the pavilions; and, infiltrating between the bars, filtering into the cells, letting the political prisoners experience, in spite of being oppressed by the heat and the regime, shivers of liberty and contradictory feelings of patriotism, as a fantastic tangle of things lost and ideals frustrated. [Go back]

The next day. Coming back inside after the hour of air, an unusual event. The guard, pretending to be talking absent-mindedly, lets Emilio into the cell of the "Red", and this one into Emilio’s cell, closing both doors in a hurry. Without losing time asking himself the reason for the exchange, Emilio uses it to take a look at his suspicious neighbor’s den. He’s immediately convinced that his doubts are not unfounded: everything is in order, clean, and arranged in such a way as to display military habits to a prisoner. The cot in particular is so well made that he must be a non-com. Then he knocks on the door and calls loudly for the guard, who opens at once with a sarcastic look. Emilio, seeing another guard come out of his cell with the"Red", thinks of a strategem to get to meet 34, even to tell him something or give him something, or to reprove him for such stubborn silence. In fact, meeting Emilio, he opens his eyes wide in sham complicity and in a furtive but easily visible way offers him a swedish matches box. Emilio turns away and goes on while 34 stops at once, hissing a curse. A moment later they were both back in place.

By now 34 seems on the edge of a nervous crisis because, having taken up the telegraphic communications, he interrupts them continually, alternating them with unspeakable rages. And the less Emilio plays his game, the more angry he gets. What his precise assignment might be isn’t yet clear. Meanwhile, that night Emilio must submit to an inspection in slippers, longer and more focused than usual. [Go back]

The next day, in the open air, the little game of the swedish box is repeated. Under the guard’s eyes, there falls into Emilio’s section a small box, poorly wrapped in a piece of paper, fixed with a rubber band, on which a few words are scratched. Emilio gives it a kick that sends it bouncing between the guard’s feet, who picks it up and gives it to his superior. This one gos off shaking his head. Meanwhile, the "Red" starts to yell: "Received?" And Emilio, quiet. "Received??" Again silence. "Where the hell do you come from? I send you something to smoke, I let you know important things, and you don’t even thank me?" Even with an explanation like that, the "Red" remains uselessly waiting for an answer. This time Emilio’s silence has exasperated him. With neither rules nor prudence, 34 starts yelling curses, maledictions and insults, and throwing punches on the divider of his section, so that the jailor has to intervene and orders him to be silent. The "Red" settles down, not before he vents his anger with a kick that makes the whole hut shake.

Going off in single file with number 32 behind and 34 ahead as usual, Emilio is the object of jeers, horns, and trivial gestures. Those behind him are laughing at him. The guards reprimands them with his eyes and put crossed index fingers on their lips. [Go back]

Early morning. The cell door is wide open: there’s no the white coffe. Emilio is made to descend into the courtyard, deserted at that hour, and left all alone on the merry-go-round for a good half hour. He doesn’t understand the reason for that supplementary exposition, but making him stand out in the open under a clear sky and the effusion of the first rays of the sun gave him pleasure. Perhaps they want to observe his behavior, study his reactions; or they might be moved to the point of doing an altruistic gesture, an eventuality, this one, which he hypothesizes only to add to a pleasant tickle of the sun the refuge of an interior smile, or again, but he thinks it unlikely, they’ve simply done something without sense. He’s taken back to the cell where he renounces meditation, and takes up again his reading of Stoppani.

The afternoon passes with nothing new, but in the evening shadow, before the lights are lit, the door is thrown open to afford the prisoner the view of a good part of the room. At the same time, the door is opened to a cell opposite which there rests a prisoner, or someone who seems to be one. In the semi-darkness Emilio thinks he recognizes him. He takes a few steps toward the sill, takes a better look, and suspends in the air a gesture of surprise and greeting, immediately repressed. To him, he looks like the soviet functionary sent to America to sell Turkestan cotton, and who had passed through the Delegation of Genoa the day before May Day, whom he hasn’t had the chance to see again. The person makes an analogous gesture in his direction. "It’s him", he thinks, "it’s Wisgnak!". He looks at him intensely, trying to understand better, and advances a step beyond the sill, but the guard grabs him by one arm and pushes him back into the cell saying that he’d opened the door by mistake, closing him in with a loud noise. From the crack in the wicket Emilio sees the "detainee" go alone hurrying off along the corridor. His cheeks feel warm and his heart is pounding hard with anger. The OVRA has put a double in front of him, hoping for who knows what to develop. The short stature, the plump shape, the total baldness, and even the way he gesticulates all seem those of the crafty Muscovite. But how would they have known him? And why he himself? Maybe he’s a spy, but for whom? Does the cotton suitcase he’d given Emilio have anything to do with it? It’s absurd, after six years! After a while, he stops asking himself questions and goes back to the geology course to which he’s become addicted like a medicine.

Emilio will never know the reasons for all those maneuvers, but at least he will solve soon the problem of that individual’s true identity. A few days after being set free, he will see Wisgnak’s double, walking peacefully through the Galleria, arm in arm with his wife, with a more than satisfied face. He has the air of an innocuous townsman whose incredible resemblance to the soviet functionary is worth a good reward. He has the face of all the right-thinking persons in Italy, ready to lend themselves to any game of the political police, recognizing the right to swindle the subversive elements in any way and for any end. [Go back]

The following afternoon, while he’s resting on the cot, he’s shaken by the noise at the door, which is opened by two fellows, one guard and one prisoner, who enter, the first with a stool and a towel, the second with a small valise. When this last opens the valise and takes out the necessities for beard and hair, the jailor invites him to be seated on the stool. Emilio obeys, but says he hadn’t requested that service. The guard replies that it’s a hygienic measure specified in the rules. With one hand, Emilio smooths his chin, and then passes the other over his head, realizing in his heart that he really needed his beard and hair to be cut. They are so long that, if he weren’t in prison, he wouldn’t be able to tolerate them. This time they hit the nail on the head, but he doesn’t make them believe it. "Your beard and hair are indecent!", the guard cut a long story short, and with a nod of his head invited the prisoner barber, waiting with a brush in his hands, to start the operations. "Go right ahead, signor Figaro". Emilio displays the smile of someone who is forced to make a virtue of necessity.

While the barber works, humming, the guard chatters about this and that and, to hold to the theme evoked by Emilio’s cue, lets it be known that he very much loves lyric opera, especially the comic opera. Then, with the appearance of saying something of no importance, he lets it be known that he’ll be on Corso Buenos Aires the next day for some errands, and, when necessary, if Emilio knows anyone from those parts, he could take him something. Emilio, suspicious beneath the shaving soap, hurries to specify that he doesn’t know anyone there. The guard becomes more insinuating: "I know, signor Magnanini, that you too love lyric opera, and I imagine you frequent the Tampa on Via Tadino." Induced by his love of opera, Emilio makes an instinctive, affirmative nod with his head, forcing the barber to lift his razor. "Well, if you have a singer friend who you’d like to send a greeting..." "No," says Emilio seriously, "I only know them to see but I’m not friends with anyone. But thank you anyway." The guard said no more. In truth, Emilio does have acquaintances among the singers who frequent the Tampa but, except for a few, they’re not real friends who confide in one another. With them, he’s always limited himself to talking about the opera, occasionally hazarding personal subjects but avoiding politics. At any rate, he would never furnish the police any bait they might use to get someone else into their nets. Having seen what is already happening, he is repelled by the mere idea of involving someone innocent, without wanting to.

But it happens that about half way to Corso Buenos Aires there’s the beginning of Via Plinio, and Emilio, during the moment of pause in which the barber has gone from shaving beard to cutting hair, he unexpectedly remembers, and in his mind, he walks up to number 12 where his friend and comrade Basile lives, he too in San Vittore during those days. Under the clicking of the barber’s little machines, who goes straight to the point, he runs back over the things that had happened to him a few weeks before the arrest, and everything becomes clear. [Go back]

Having finished the cut in a few minutes, the barber has just the time to grab a tip, when Emilio is led back into the courtyard and again exposed on the merry-go-round, this time in the setting sun of late afternoon. Opposite rises the two-story building from which, during the hours of air, an armed guard keeps the entire barracks under observation. At that hour the guard’s not there but Emilio is sure that behind the windows they’re watching him, someone who might recognize in him someone else, but who has never yet pronounced it, with the excuse that beard and long hair obstruct the recognition. Emilio hopes that after the beauty cure he’s had to submit to someone will realize that he’s not that other someone, thus putting an end to his ordeal.

A few weeks before his arrest, Emilio had received a visit from his dear friend and Venetian comrade, not to mention distant relative, Attilio Spina, who was in the company of his wife suffering from heart disease from many years because of a Fascist aggression incurred in Venice during the installation of the regime. Spina had rung the doorbell of the Emilio’s house on Via Lamarmora.

Having escaped diverse attacks, Spina had finally been captured and condemned to two years of exile at Lipari, and there he had spent the entire period with his family. Liberated a little after completing his seventieth year, he had gone immediately to Milan to find his old friends, among them his comrade Basile and, the next day, Emilio. That evening, so Attilio said, a few returnees from exile were meeting at Basile’s house to spend a few hours together poring over the mutual memories of their abasement. But Emilio hadn’t taken part in that gathering.

According to Attilio, the doorkeeper of the building on Via Plinio who, like all his colleagues, was a zealous informant for the police, had communicated to the political office of the police headquarters that in the house of Basile there had been a clandestine meeting of subversives, at which an influential member of the communist party had participated. The police were pointing their fingers at Emilio, whether because of his connections with Basile, whether, most of all, because for over ten years, he’s been collaborating with the soviets, whose language he even knows, and they’d got it into their heads that he was an authoritative functionary of the Red team with important tasks.

More than evident, therefore, that from the factory windows opposite the Merry-go-round, the doorkeeper of Via Plinio must recognize in Emilio that influential member of the party whose presence he himself has denounced.

While he’s enjoying that supplement of pre-evening air that gives him a sensation of liberty, and not worrying about his pale and extremely delicate skin that reddens even in the shadow, he forces himself to see someone behind the little barracks windows. To be seen better, he’s given up his walk in his segment of ground and his mind in the tree-lined periphery of Milan, and he puts himself well on view, motionless, arms folded, face turned toward the building. At a certain point he seems to see people moving around behind closed panes. He doesn’t even remember the face of the custodian of Via Plinio 12, where he’d been two or three times a long time ago, but in those moments he promises himself to bear witness for the rest of his life of his hate for all custodians. Thus, he can’t restrain an angry trembling on the day that, the regime having fallen, he reads in the "L’Unità" a pharisaic article singing the praises of the "Movement of Resistance" of the porters of Milan, a true and proper dithyramb to doorkipeers, transformed by a miracle from squalid servants of fascism to heroic partisans, mutations which, at any rate, this presumptuous city is now used to: whereas it was once prosperous with political culture, now it is enclosed for many years in televised illusionism and its own egoistic and arrogant interests, and it’s become the most provincial city in Italy. [Go back]

A few weeks pass, and life inside is starting to weigh heavily on him. The "Red" continues, but with always less conviction, to transmit his telegraphic hieroglyphics, and the director to inspect his cell during the night and to leaf carefully through the Stoppani text, all of which he’s read by now. Whether or not Emilio has been identified by the doorkeeper remains a bureaucratic secret, but it’s probable that the outcome will be negative, since at the moment they haven’t made any charges. Certainly the benefit of additional air would be denied. He’s not being put in the merry-go-round any more, and can make good use of the air in the courtyard, like all the others. The only consolation left to him, now that even the radio opera program have stopped, is the possibility of buying goods and services with substantial tips to the accomodating guards and jailors, thus making the sojourn less humiliating. One day, thanks to the promise of a large note, the kitchen guard brings him as second course a magnificent tomato, and tells him: "It’s one of our specials, the kind that Ali Baba pisses on. Only the director eats these!"

One afternoon, as he was reading and smoking, two sinister looking fellows, whom he’d never seen before, break into his cell. Tall and robust, provocatory expressions, they make him stand at attention in front of the cot and force him to call them "superiors". One of them slaps his hand, making him drop his cigarette, yelling that he must not smoke in front of them. Then, looking closely at the cell, they display acrobatics, climbing on each other’s shoulders to see whether from a certain height and position the windows of certain private house could be seen; or from where signals might be received or sent, never thinking that Emilio, in spite of being a communist, would never have been able to straddle anything in that cell and exploit that extraordinary opportunity to send a message. Then they shake the bars of the cage one at a time, not thinking sufficient the check a guard does every evening with a metallic baton, making them resound through the entire musical scale. Descending, one upon the other, checking the wall inch by inch, almost breaking off the cot, stabbing the mattress, stirring the contents of the chamber pot with a swagger stick, and, having noticed on the washing a bread roll left over from the day before, crumbled it into tiny crumbs. Finally, he goes up to the prisoner in a threatening way, then tousles his hair; and they conclude the bodily inspection with other delicate moves of extremely subtle shrewdness. Emilio behaves until they finish. They’re about to leave when the one with the fast punch notices that on the little beam where the bread roll is lying is resting also a parallelepipedshaped thingamy called "book" and that on its surfaces it bears large black marks that might be read as "A course in geology". He approaches the object, shoots it a severe look and, turned to Emilio with a glare of reproof: "Pay attention. This isn’t a recreation area!" The other observes complacently. With everything said and done, the two of them go off without doing any more damage. [Go back]

By now it’s the middle of September. From the grate that looks out over the garden descends an intense and fleshy smell of green, and fastidious little mosquitos have started keeping company with the director on nocturnal inspections. As for the family, whose visits to political prisoners under Great Surveillance are prohibited, he receives only a little news thanks to the interested complacency of the jailors. He knows only that after his arrest they’ve gone back to Milan, and that everyone is well.

One morning he receives the promising communication that in a few hours he’ll be led into the presence of an officer for interrogation. So, he has the barber sent in, with whom he’s more generous than in any other occasion. He’s seduced by the idea that something is finally on the move. He’s led into an office close to that of the director. Next to the desk he sees a young man standing: tall, and with a good presence, wearing the uniform of the voluntary militia. His face hides a hint of disillusion. The officer sends the jailor out, lights a cigarette and offers one to Emilio, who thinks it’s diplomatic to accept it. They remain standing opposite for a few moments, looking at each other. [Go back]

The expression on his face is eloquent: the militia man has the air of someone not satisfied with his assignment. Emilio imagines he belongs to that swarm of young men of the new middle class, who’ve been dazzled by the lavish climate of propaganda, and have been promised the illusion of a brilliant career.

Having been stimulated to aspire to the refinement of distinction and command, he’s been persuaded that the fascist ideology is the end expression of a social science. He’s further convinced that marxism and class struggle have been overcome and destroyed, according to what his anti-proletariat instinct was suggesting. It was evident that the regime wasn’t able to promote to the vertex of public life all those who belonged to a progeny whose development in the first ten years of the century had multiplied like mushrooms in the rain. Such limits had given origin to currents of unsatisfaction, impatience, and dissidence in the breasts of the lower level of fascist leaders. Those aspiring to the promised career laid claim to the "true" fascist program, that of ’19, reproving their paternalistic leaders and heads of having betrayed the "revolutionary" origins of the regime. As well, the young seemed often to use the adjective "revolutionary" to denote their unconscious or frustrated aspiration to the career (not unlike the young had behaved during the agitation of ’68). They reproved their leaders also of having made themselves comfortable in a hybrid situation of state bureaucracy and servitude to great private capital.

Toward the end of the second conflict, these discontented people, at last disillusioned by the outcome of the war, found themselves deserted. Those most clever and most inclined to double-dealing would have the opportunity to undertake a new and immediate career in partisan organizations, confronting the risks, until, the conflict over, they might profi from the turmoil surfacing above the ashes of fascism. The new movements and new parties, who seemed they’re returning to pre-fascist traditions (liberals, radicals, catholics, socialists, and communists), but that in reality could only reach out toward the new world, modern and pragmatic, based on the anglo-saxon civilization, after having put aside the "old glories" of tradition, engaged them with both hands. So it was that the post-war ruling class, in particular the class who had the credentials, have belonged to the "intellectuals of the left", as prestigious then as they are pathetic today, founded itself composed for the most part of ex-fascist dissidents, hack-writers with the ingenuous air of martyrs of the proletariat. They have become functionaries of good standing in the new bureaucracy of party, newspapers, mass media and publishing houses, but also of industries, banks, and public institutions, and they permeate with their spirit of career the entire organization of the left.

They, with the sons of the great industrial middle class converted to the antifascism (a class who had passed unharmed through the upheavals), and with the help of strategic Stalin’s instructions (who had renounced Italy in exchange for the broadest laisser faire in eastern Europe), dealt at the beginning of the post-war period a mortal internal blow (that’s inside the PCI) to the original classist ideology, a hard blow that subsequently the new pluralistic structure of the country and the extraordinary global development of the next years, not to mention the chauvinistic and imperial politics in the country of socialism itself, completed internally, so that that ideology, reforming itself like a cancer as reaction in the most exasperated extraparliamentary left, and encouraged by the provocation of the center, the right and the secret services, revived uselessly in the form of the raving terrorism of the Seventies, when a proletariat, by now reduced in numbers and modified by changing parameters of income, quality of life and culture didn’t need this ideology any longer.

In sum, our communism, already paralyzed before Mussolini came to power, and amputated by the upper levels of the hierarchy of the party at the end of the war, remained a simple slogan given to the PCI voters to drink, and as a life-giving potion to the anticommunists who still today drink it down in big, televised sips.

Even the less deficient, among these last, still drink it in until they’re filled, believing for example that De Gasperi had saved Italy from communism and similar farces of this kind still circulating, while it’s not absurd to claim that such merit really belongs to Togliatti, who has egregiously developed it by order of Stalin himself, while the DC confined itself to completing a job already begun by the PCI, and if anything, it has for years impeded Italy from becoming modern democracy, retarding in a deal with the Church and the USA every process for renewal, and unleashing as much as it liked the reaction of the right. In exchange, however, the USA have bought us with the Marshall Plan a great opportunity for our development, which has in good time been pulled back and replaced with developments of a more sophisticated nature. Agreeing, therefore, with Pangloss, that not all evil harms you.

Meanwhile, Emilio’s thoughts continue from this point, in the sphere of the post-war neo-communism, the "Barnum Circus" remembered by Gramsci, he’s again proposed in all the squares of Italy his pyrotechnic spectacles of the renunciation of revolutionary methods and of the acceptance of democratic methods of which the new communist directors are unexpectedly enamored themselves, whether for their remissive nature or by Stalin’s order. All that has produced a new hardening of social assets and political income. One generation later, in fact, the old story of a new elite in search of its own identity (that is, of money and power), would be repeated, and a new progeny, this time of young discontented and disillusioned communists, would have reproved its paternalistic ruling class ,who held the best part of the power allowed to it in a pluralistic system, of making itself comfortable into such a comfortable but liberal-communist hybrid position, and would unleash the more or less unconscious spirit of a careerist in what might be called by the appellation, as prestigious at that time as pathetic today, of "student protest" which served to modernize the Italian catholic/communist family, but also to put under every careerist’s ass a soft and remunerative armchair. Of those, those more disposed than the others toward socio-economic climbing are today desired advisers for the right. That’s life. Those who instead took things seriously ended up going crazy, becoming criminals, and giving birth to the terrorism of the "hot years". Life is that too. [Go back]

"Are you a communist?", asks the official who is looking at the detainee with sufficient condiscention. Devious and proud sarcasm shows on Emilio’s face: "If I said I was fascist it would be a lie." The official takes note of the phrase: "But how do you think?" And Emilio, as if to unload all the guilt onto his own book: "As is clearly shown by my poems printed in "Il Prisma" which you are holding in your hands." The official pretends he hasn’t ever heard of it. "You know Attilio Spina?" Emilio holds his surprise and hides his concern about the fate of his friend, knowing he’d taken part in the party at comrade Basile’s house: "Sure, he’s a relative of mine, and he came to visit me recently in Milan; why are you asking me?" The answers has an unexpected kind tone: "He’s been arrested at Venice, and he’s in the Padua prisons... But tell me, on June 15 you participated in a meeting at the address of Via Plinio, 12?". "Never, I don’t even know who lives there."

Everything finishes there, and the prisoner is taken back to the cell without any notification. Spina is at Padua, he, Basile, and others are at San Vittore, all the arrests are converging on the identification of that influential member of the party who, according to the imagination of the doorkeeper, had taken part in that meeting. And "Il Prisma" ? A pretext. Emilio hopes the business is resolved soon: if the porter hasn’t identified him, as is probable given the tone of the interrogation, and if the search of that mysterious big boss, who perhaps was an invention of the porter, have yielded no results, the police might not waste more of their precious time and will be devote to much more important things than that of chasing after elderly retired people, lovers of memories and good wine. [Go back]

At dawn the following morning, eavesdropping at the window and peeking through the crack, Emilio notices that 32 has visitors. Apart from the fact that no one in the Sixth wing is allowed visits, not even from lawyers, the hour is even more suspect. He runs to the dividing wall and applies his ear like a sucker. The regime, out of money as it is, has never undertaken to isolate the cells with anti-noise materials; instead, given the always increasing affluence of the guests, has had to multiply them as much as possible using dividers of little thickness. Thus he is able to understand a dialog between two low voices: "The captain", the visitor says to 34, "has received your complaint" It’s now!" the "Red" exclaims. "Don’t yell", the visitor yells, and continues in a low voice: "And he’s told me to tell you to have a little more patience." The "Red", this time in a low voice, asks for details, and the other explains that his patience might have to last a few more days, then they’ll let him out in the company. The voices go and come but gradually weaken. Emilio changes ears and begs the wall to be more generous. "I can’t do anything with this cock!" says the "Red", and the other answers that at this point it’s no longer important and that he’s proposed himself all the same for a prize. "I beg you, sir warrant, I’m bored with doing a prisoner serving a life sentence!" Then, silence, except for the sound of a door closing.

The wall had been a gift to him, and those few extra days are of use to him as well. When the little Sard who washes out the excrement peeps into the cell, Emilio welcomes him, moved: "Go to reception desk and have them give you money for a bundle of nationali, you deserve them!" "A whole bundle?" The sard doesn’t believe his ears, picks up the pot as if it were a flower, his black eyes smiling into the pot, which, as he left, he holds as high as a stein of beer. [Go back]

And since there is always an ending for everything, even this final adventure came to an end. As Emilio expected, he was called two days later by the director who told him to pack: "You can leave, but you’ve got to go straight, because the eye of the Duce is always aimed at you!"

Not having found proof of any subversive activity, the investigation has to bend in a cultural direction. From that book of poetry, the solons of the regime were drawing suspicions and pretexts to keep the author in prison, while the real inquest moves forward. But what struck the sensitivity of the censors had not been its poetic content, as Emilio was thinking, but a banal typographic irregularity. The book had arrived at the Great Central Committee of Censureship at the Academy of Italy of Florence, of which were members the most high-sounding names of Italian culture, some of whom will later become again innocent because of the deeds of the partisans, and will shine beneath the new democratic skies of poor Italy: prefascist, fascist and postfascist. Some time later, the King’s Prosecutor calls the poet to his office on Piazza Missori in Milan along with the printer, who, with sagacity and prudence, had himself accompanied by the member of the militia and of OVRA. The index finger of the academicians was in fact pointed at him as well, accused of having deducted a sextodecimo to the copies sent to the censors, and having it substituted by a duplicate of another sextodecimo so that the volumes maintained their number of pages, while one sextodecimo had escaped the check. The official of the OVRA guaranteed the good faith of the printer and assured it to be an error in binding. At the moment, no charges were filed against the author, but a little later Emilio was invited to present himself to the political office of the police-head-quarter of Milan, where he was notified that the Most Excellent Provincial Committee for the political exile, at the conclusion of the particular inquiry on his behalf, has magnanimously inflicted him the sentence of "Warning for two years". [Go back]

Milan, 1938, XVI°. The years pass behind the real cardinal number, followed by the fascist ordinal number. The family grows, with the birth of another boy, and lives in a flat on Via Vasari. For a few years, Emilio has no trouble, but keeps a low profile, lives his life at home, and avoids friends, so as not to get them involved in annoyance from the regime‚s police. Nevertheless, a few people, who know who he is and what risk his company could represent, gladly visit him on summer feast days.

At the end of the Thirties, Milan is still beautiful. Notwithstanding the harm that the regime has provoked, damaging her here and there with cruel and cold marble or brick buildings with squared shapes or cheap curves, she is still authentic and rich with the fascination of the Risorgimento. The outskirts are filled with the popular atmosphere of small houses among gardens, fields, and intimate lanes of poplars, courtyards where houses with railings face each other, smelly taverns with rancid outdoor toilets, tables of sour wood, Sunday bowls courts.

There aren’t many people showing up to go with him on a festive afternoon walk, sharing with him the pleasure and the expense of a rest in one of those homey taverns which just outside each Gate are destinations for those who want to flee the city’s congestion, or go to rest in less frequented places in the nearby countryside, braving long walks over cobblestones in company with domestic rivulets and along channels that appear and disappear continually, enjoying not having underfoot the importance of a main street or the pride of a avenue.

They go with him to Monluò to eat tiny fried fish just catched from the adjacent streams, or stop at Chiaravalle to enjoy a deceptive cool in the shadow of the ancient basilica, sitting on a plank drinking caffè or resting with bare feet on the bank of a pond, whose muddy waters are still agitated by the bathing of rowdy little children; or at Barona, where in the large courtyard of a tavern, aspiring artists are showing off their numbers: songs and sketches, dreaming golden flashes of a comeback from a troubled life, interwoven with illusions, painted over with stardust and dirty with the dust of the street, to earn themselves meal and bed. Here, under one oak, a pair of willows, and three rows of poplars, assisted by a peeling piano, the most imaginative subjects, singers, orators, and comics, show off to a very mixed public of families with mediocre taste and with impassioned, severe experts with partly closed eyes and open ears, waiting to tread the most dignified boards, even if lacking that rustic way of making a debut. From these rustic stages, real academies of light music attentively followed by impresarios and editors, songs have issued that have captured the soul of the people, such as the most Milanese,"O mia bèla madunina...". And, since the fascist climate demands a fascist subject, and the authors, to whom subject and content are of little importance, they do well with the smooth complacency in order to attain success, also"Camicia Nera" and "Faccetta Nera". But the propaganda song resounds in a more restricted way, limited to certain occasions, while the true and proper little song diffuses into the people with a long-lasting echo.

The environment of the artists is only in part from Milan, given the nourishing presence of the southern beginners, especially from Naples, who contribute to reducing the distance between the two life styles and the two mentalities, and to illuminate the lombard smoke with a little vesuvian light. The skit, acted in diverse dialects of Italy, entertains, wins, and makes more uniform this public festival. Naturally, the local meneghino accent predominates, the natives interpret as dilettantes who always carry with them a small handbag filled with makeup and stage-clothes. While on that threshing floor transformed into a stage they sing, recite scenes, and tell jokes, the master accompanists are forced to hold at bay and in tune the artists pounding on that junk-dealers‚ piano, which sometimes stops dead and rebels against fingers like a stubborn mule to a club. To those fortunate ones, who, at the end of so many ups and downs, are still able to drop the backdrop into the dark attention of a theater, or into the light of radiophonic studios, their corresponds, forced into permanent indigence, a tidal wave of postulants growing dizzily, whose boat without a tug is ineveitably sinking on the rocks of selection. [Go back]

The few acquaintances from the old times who keep him company in his Sunday recreation, sure of not having indiscreet ears nearby, after having talked about job, family, music, poetry, food, and various restful banalities, always slip in their discussions toward political concepts, putting forth ideas and feelings too long repressed. Those enjoying the amusement of conversations while resting under the poplars, of little fried fish, music, and politics are few, but not always the same ones. But one is present without fail, and he loves to listen attentively and to put in a word discreetly. He is Rodolfo. Emilio knew him superficially in Venice, when they were both representatives of the young socialists led by Serrati. Then he had lost sight of him. But, who knows how, Rodolfo had traced his friend to Milan, one day in ’33 when Emilio was about to leave the Soviet Commercial Delegation, and insisted affectionately that they have their noon meal in his dreary two-room rented flat in Via Broletto. This old countryman of his recounted his unfortunate experience or the part of it he thinks he can tell. In short, he’s followed an artist’s career. But "career" is nothing but the pitying euphemism for a concept visible from many points of view, vertical if something is happening, horizontal if nothing is. The vertical point of view itself can be considered from below to above or from above to below, and it was precisely that last movement that seemed repugnant to his conscience to explain. In fact, more than a career, it had been a calvary, because, after having sung first tenor in the Puccini reportoire, his voice grew weak because a sickness, and he was forced to accept only secondary roles and even parts as second leading actor. Then, because of a final softening of the cords, he’d had to be satisfied with operetta and variety show, where it’s enough to pretend to sing. Finally, his gift of voice definitely disappeared, but he was still able to act, and knew his own dialect, therefore he went over to the vernacular prose theater. Luckily, every time he took a downward step, he always ran into someone who helped him to a makeshitf solution. His friendships and acquaintances were concentrated in the world of entertainment, especially singing, where in place of the loss of his vocal cords he’d been given his heart to keep. Thus it is ascertained that the two have already seen and looked each other, though without recognition because the years past, at the Tampa Lirica on Via Tadino. Thus Emilio has begun to visit this man often, who, in the bohémienne poverty of Rodolfo seems to have retained all the love of Carmen, his most beautiful wife. Much younger than he, she is a brunette from Spain with Andalusian gypsy spirit, a long sensual face and huge round earrings that appear and disappear among black flutters of hair with every shake of her chin. He met her within the environs of show business: she can sing and dance, but since they’ve been married, he’s jealously forbidden her to perform, forcing her to be a housewife, or at most, his accompanist. Emilio returns the attentions of his rediscovered friend, inviting the couple to his house on rainy Sundays. His watchful and prudent instinct isn’t telling him to reject him, but the way Rodolfo acts, at times bizarre, sometimes obscure, doesn’t invite confidences and forces the conversation to be left on the conventional level, and the answers approach reticence. As for the rest, the conduct of the artist, notwithstanding his living among the ambiguities of the world of entertainment, seems irreprehensible, and her palpable poverty, not to say destitution, seems a guarantee of honesty. [Go back]

To warn Emilio to be on his guard, there’s an old Venetian comrade, that Attilio Spina who, having returned from his political exile, where he’s been relegated for two years, and from a short supplementary stay in the prisons of Padua, has gone at once to see him. Having found out that among the people who Emilio visits often there’s the artist Rodolfo, Spina says with grave voice: "Be careful, he’s a spy." "Possible?" "Not only possible, it’s certain." And he explains that the photo of that man, furnished with particulars, professions, and complete information, has been sent around clandestinely among the exiles and the imprisoned. What‚s more, his precedent is well known in Venetian anti-fascist circles, easily checked on a simple trip to the city of the lagoon.

Emilio, who really has nothing to hide, not having worked for the party for years, just a simple follower devoted to the cause, was left disoriented, especially comparing the accusation with the absolute poverty of the man. But, notwithstanding the embarrassment, he continues to visit him. It’s a period when the artist often changes his domicile because of defaulting on his payments. Finally, he’s moved from Via Broletto to Via Caminadella, a narrow little street near S.Ambrogio, stubbornly resistant to the invasive building of the center, in a shabby apartment, without comfort and, like his pockets, half empty. During the winter of ’38 Emilio had gone to pay him a visit in his new lodgings, and had found him in the cold like his namesake of Bohème: he was in his house wearing a still decent fur, whether to keep warm, whether to hide an old and filthy suit. The artist, after offering him a glass of wine, has asked him if he wants to buy the fur, the heritage of his first, fleeting period of well-being, when Rodolfo was playing Rodolfo in a papier-mâché hovel under skies of cardboard. Emilio refused; it seemed an indiscreet business, not wanting to profit from that poor wretch whose teeth he could already see chattering in the streets, wearing a thin jacket, his respectable friend wrapped in an astrakhan. But, since in this life what you don’t do today some other do tomorrow, an indiscreet friend and exploiter will soon come foreward to acquire the fur, lowering the already bargain price.

Promising to jump over to Venice as soon as possible to verify Spina’s serious claim, Emilio is disturbed and sorry: how could that person play the part of a friend and at the same time be a miserable informer? And how can he lead a poor life like that with such a lovely wife who’s also affectionate and docile? Perhaps only an artist can be so diabolical and appear so mild. But why? What secret is he trying to worm out of a comrade who likes opera and little fried fish? You might even say that the people who compiled that sheet have been sucked in by a slanderer who wants to

get his own back on him, even someone from his old party or from the labor movement itself, a social climber who, playing on the feelings of rivalry, makes it easy for him to get into that circle. Does he expect to discover something from a former employee of the russians?" [Go back]

Toward the end of ’37, looking forward to the birth of his fourth, Emilio has moved from Via Lamarmora 12 to Via Vasari 30 on the first floor of a more spacious house of recent construction and modern utilities. When he left the Soviet agency he opened an office as a Commercial Agent, an independent importer and exporter of coal, at number 10 Corso Monforte. But fascism is in its full maturity, that is, in the most unleashed authoritarianism of the State, unleashed naturally to the advantage of a few large private concerns. So that one fine day it has decided to take away that small bit of commercial freedom which Emilio enjoys, and to found the State Royal Monopoly for the purchase of foreign coal, with the happy consolidation of the coal business into the hands of a few monopolists. [Note 56]. Thus, forced to give up any chance of working on his own, in order to continue making use of his own experience in the field, Emilio asks on 11/11/37 the Consiglio Provinciale of the Corporations of Milan to be listed on the rolls of public agents of carbon fuels. He will have to pass an qualifying examination and pay a significant guarantee. The request will be filed on 4.6.38. On 2.11.38. he moves his office from Corso Monforte 10 to Via Vasari 30.

The "Warning for two years", inflicted on him by the Provincial Committee for political exile for reasons not specified, signifies that the regime is continuing to keep an eye on him, and it has not yet concluded the political-juridical procedure to which those being constantly watched are exposed. And since they never find anything, there not being anything to find, it always begins again at the beginning: simple political dissidence is not a normal crime that can be paid for with a normal punishment, but a continued crime continuously expiated. The instrument to keep alive vigilance and and repression is on one hand the huge bureaucratic apparatus of the forces of order and on the other hand the immeasurable number of eyes belonging to a population reduced to the slavery of informing. There is no building in which the porter’s room isn’t the center of espionage, there’s no family or apartment where at least one person isn’t an informer. It is all the fault of the regime, but only because of the natural disposition of mankind: to do harm to neighbour and good to himself, which could only be reduced with a moral education and a profound culture, which means never.

It is therefore completely natural that on the second floor of this same edifice their lives with his family an man from the Abruzzo, small, plump, and middle aged, named Alphonso, whose saddened, dignified attitude, typical of people of his region, is not enough to redeem his adulterated personality, that of functionary of the regime, in him shaped into that surreal condition of mixed seriousness and stupidity, honesty and nastiness to which an entire people can be reduced. Since it isn’t known what kind of work he does, it seems he lives thanks to his wife’s earnings, who is a elementary school teacher in a little place in the hinterland. From time to time he gets himself into Emilio’s house with unexpected, fleeting appearances, accompanied by useless excuses, and often stops to chat with the porter, and not only the one from his own building, to whom he seems to command respect and awe, and he is served by that one with special care, something that bodes nothing good. And so, Emilio decides to set into motion the family counter-espionage service, that is, wife and maid. A few things are soon found out.

The whole building is talking about that stuffed shell of a man as woman-chaser who’s often seen in those places, public and private, notoriously assigned to amorous meetings, that is, in certain parks, cafès, and brothels. More than once, Emilio himself has seen him in some Milan pastry shops usually frequented by couples of lovers, and conversing with some pleasant woman with smart look. However, not only lovers meet in those pastry shops, but also the informers under the orders of this or that officer of the police, or some diplomat or captain of industry or politician or bandit.

At the beginning of the war in Spain Alphonso disappears. They say he enrolled as a volunteer under the orders of Franco. After a few weeks a non-com of the carabinieri comunicates to the inhabitants of the second floor that their relative has done his duty as a "volunteer", and has wounded a leg and will soon return home. [Go back]

One Sunday morning at the Magnanini house the doorbell rings. Having been too many times tormented by rings, searches, and unexpected arrests, Emilio goes to open with trepidation, and sees before him Alphonso in formal dress and smiling, who, adjusting the point of a white handkerchief slipped into the breast pocket of his jacket, greets him unctuously, saying he’s just returned from the war and has come especially to bring him greetings. Emilio thanks him for his consideration, makes him comfortable in the living room, offers him a glass of marsala, asks how his wound is coming, and continues with other appropriate phrases. Having got rid of the small talk, the abruzzese comes to the point. He has something important to tell him, which is that on the occasion of the immanent visit of Starace to Milan [Note 57], he’s requested and obtained a meeting with a leader of the Fascist party, from whom he expects the offer of a good job in a solid company. Suspicious of such confidences, Emilio pretends he’s pleased, and asks what company he’s dealing with. Alphonso explains he’s looking for a leading position in a Milan paint factory, part of a huge chemical monopoly. Emilio fills him another glass: with these so personal chats, Alphonso must have the well prepared goal of giving his near spying an appearance of a friendly habit, a little like when the neighbor annoys you when he asks for a lemon or some parsley.

A few mornings later, Emilio accidently makes the discovery of the true identity of the abruzzese. Having turned into Via Lamarmora from Corso di Porta Romana, he sees a silent crowd gathered on the sidewalk while on the street a funeral cortege advances to the sound of a band, led by carabinieri on horseback, in full dress uniform. Just behind, the Army band, making a strong effort with legs and mouths to beat time and play music fit for the occasion, all weight and no quality, with behind it a carriage rich with gilded trim, drawn by matched pairs of horses as plumed as their riders. At the end, the suffering: relatives, friends, and colleagues of the dead man, surely a high officer of the carabinieri. The cortege has just left with the flags and standards of the barracks of the Via Lamarmora garrison. Emilio stops to wait for the enemy but impressive cortege to go completely by. Mixed in with the followers, he discovers old acquaintences, some in uniform, some in civilian clothing, among them an ancient retired warrant officer, who for many months of ’32 had guarded his address at Via Bergamo, stopping and searching many people and drivers, guilty of standing in front of the door of his habitation. At the side of the retired man, he discovers the lodger of the floor above, who is proceding in uniform, impeccable and rigid as if all Milan has always seen and known him this way. Honor, dignity, and other formalities which the funeral honors owed to a high authority have spoiled the fruit of the patient camouflages and studied cleverness with which the arm of the carabinieri would like to lock up Emilio and every other antifascist. [Go back]

There’s a third individual who’s often trying to approach Emilio with the hope of finding out I don’t know what that might be of use, and it’s that Beefsteak, confidant of the Milan police, with whom two years ago Emilio had unfortunately shared the beginning of a summer vacation at Ballabio, where Beefsteak too used to spend his holidays, again unfortunately, on the floor above. He’s a rough sicilian ex-laborer, short and squat, strong as a bull, teeth as scary as a steel trap, not to mention the cuts of meat he always brings home: you don’t know whether it’s a contribution from the regime for services rendered, or a tribute from some butcher he’s putting the squeeze on; cuts of meat which has given him that appetizing nickname during a period when they’re preaching savings and self-sufficiency. He lives at Porta Vittoria, and his official profession is that of renting tables, sandwich boards, and tents to street vendors, moving daily from one place to another of his lively district rich with stores, benches, and markets, an activity he’s been allowed to him by the local Fascio for his former efforts in the fascist squads, with the obligation to refer any happening of any kind suspected of aversion toward the regime that might be verified in that particular neighborhood, a job that, judging from his enthusiastic zeal he would perform even free of charge, such is the importance he seems to have among the black shirts, and such reverence and fear he seems to impart to the shopkeepers of the quarter.

He’s conected to a plump woman who, as wife of a construction worker, most of the time without work, has abandoned the conjugal roof, persuaded to follow a less squalid and more gratifying life. More hungry than ambitious, the fatty tries to be useful to her lover in his offcial job, moving to right and to left with two robust arms handfulls of heavy easels, and in his confidential one, at first arousing with little gossiping maneuevers and then listening to equally little and gossipy chatter. Since Emilio has surprised him more than once talking to the custodian of Via Vasari, and especially since Beefsteak is part of the gang of scoundrels led by Amleto Poveromo, one of the assassins of Matteotti, he tries to avoid him in the most thorough way, and, when he can’t avoid it because caught by the telephone, he answers in the most evasive way. [Go back]

One summer morning of ’39 Emilio is called to the telephone: it’s the well remembered voice of a muscovite, a superior colleague of the Commercial Delegation, not seen for years, asking if he might visit. Emilio consents with pleasure, treating each other like old friends who’ve always had the best rapport. A Hebrew, he speaks Italian fluently, but with his tall appearance, red-blond hair, pale, square face, and the unavoidable accent of the fatherland, betrays his foreign origin. He’s come from Moscow to Milan to set up a commercial treaty with our country at a moment when the precipitation of European events makes ever more difficult the continuation of international connections (but not completely unfavorable because of the new political relationships just signed between Nazi Germany and the USSR); and a consultation with Emilio would help. Naturally, the custodian at Via Vasari, after having pointed out Emilio’s apartment, has tried to warn the tenant on the floor above who, to his misfortune and anger, is momentarily absent, and remains so for the duration of the visit. The muscovite friend has just left, when the warrant officer Alphonso, as soon as he passes through the porter’s office for information, goes breathless to the door of his watched-over man, and presses his finger on the bell for a long time. Emilio goes resentfully to open, asking who it is, and that person, without even greeting him, drying the sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief, asks him if a foreigner had visited him. "And this is why you’re so agitated?", says Emilio, who’d never wanted to use the fascist "voi" [Note 58]. "I’d like to have seen him....who was it?" "That’s my business!" And he closed the door in his face. It’s the first time that Emilio didn’t answer someone with courtesy, but this time warrant has behaved shamelessly. Emilio hears him climbing the stairs, grumbling.

A few hours later the telephone rings, and to Emilio’s "Hallo?" responds the honeyed tones of Beefsteak, who wants to visit and share some gossip if Emilio isn’t busy that evening. He’s coming with his lady who has already ordered a ice-cream from one of her countrymen with a shop in Porta Vittoria, a real specialty. They agree on nine o’clock."Very well!", Emilio concludes, thinking that the doorkeeper would have notified Beefsteak of the foreigner as well. As soon as they hang up, Emilio reopens the spy circuit, dials the number of the artist Rodolfo, and, enticing him with the sicilian ice-cream, invites him and his woman. But, not to be left in the minority, he also invites his brother Fausto and his sister-in-law Irene.

Toward nine, a delivery man brings the ice-cream, well enclosed in a wooden cylinder. The guests arrive punctually, so that Beefsteak and Rodolfo arrive at the same time, almost running into each other in front of the doorkeeper. It’s quite warm, and Ida urges the men to take off their jackets. They all start to seat themselves around the dining room table, men in shirtsleeves, that of Beefsteak black and full of emblems, white and embroidered that of Rodolfo, who even has a black scarf around his neck, white and smooth that of Fausto, like Emilio’s. The women show off fresh and perfumed summer suits. Emilio’s daughters have gone up to their little friends on the third floor. Luciano, five years old, has stayed in the house, and listening to the fondlings of the women, is preparing to taste the gelato. Dario the newborn, after the womens‚ admiring inspection, is fortunately sleeping in his cradle. Since a few suffering souls are already commenting on the heat and humidity settled over the city in the last few days, the ice-cream is served immediately, accompanied by the promise of a watermelon, already packed in ice for a few hours.

The discussions are doing well, becoming animated. The women, after the early uncertainties, have taken the usual confidential slant, and no one was able to break it, when a long ring of the doorbell is unexpectedly imposed on everyone. In the mean time Ida, worried that the little child might wake up, is checking that room. Emilio goes to open, already thinking who it might be, certain that the custodian, after having seen all those people arrive, got busy immediately notifying the warrant officer. And, in fact, it’s the peak of a carabiniere. The abruzzese comes up, smiling and excusing himself, and asks timidly to use the telephone because, so he says, his isn’t working. Emilio exchanges the smiles: "Non at all! Make yourself at home!" and points to the telephone hung on the entrance wall, adding that, when he finishes, he should come to the living room and join the others refreshing themselves with ice-cream. This said, he returns to the living room and announces in a voice that is low, but clear enough for everyone to understand: "Now an informer will enter, from an unknown source." He’s just pronounced these words when the warrant officer rushes into the room, received by many questioning glances. From there, little Dario starts to whine, and Ida tries to calm him. Having stopped near the table in the posture of military attention, the warrant throws a quick, panoramic glance at those present. Then, he considers them one by one, passing over them quickly, and there’s verified in him an unexpected change: the scowl disappears and his face is distended in a friendly smile. While he’s finally pronouncing words of farewell aimed especially at the women, and the corner of his eye is falling on the men, Emilio notices that Rodolfo and Beefsteak are making conventional signs to the newcomers. The artist is showing off cabalistic signs with both his hands: the right is wandering below his chin, almost as if to smooth it, and the left seems to caress the forehead, while Beefsteak smoothes with his fingertips the badges that decorate the black shirt. The warrant officer, considering his own presence now superfluous, declines evey invitation, wishes them a good night, makes an enthusiastic right-front, and is off through the door, followed by Emilio. As he leaves, the warrant officer thanks for the telephone call, which he’s forgotten to make. [Go back]

Before falling asleep, Emilio thinks again but with more conviction about Spina’s warning. Rodolfo has certaily acted like an informer. Emilio, expert in card games, has no doubts: those gestures and those signs added up to a code. Well, what to do? For the moment, the only decision he makes is to frequent the artist as little as possibile. During a trip to Venice he’s had a way to verify that what he was being told by Spina really concerned Rodolfo. The photo that appeared on the antifascist newspaper seemed really to be him, and the other data corresponded too.

The war having exploded for us as well [Note 59], that artist disappears. Toward the end of ’44 Emilio finds out from friends at Tampa Lirica that a horrible thing has happened to Rodolfo. That socialist, they say, had surfaced in Venice, getting involved in a clandestine activity: collaborating with a friend of Emilio, Emilio Scarpa, to reorganize typography to print "Avanti!" in a reduced format. Toward the end of ’43 everything is ready for the paper to come out with its first number. But, when the second comes out, a police round-up nips it in the bud, and all the elements involved with the undertaking are arrested and deported to Germany. Among others, the principal organizer of the paper, Emilio Scarpa, is sent to the concentration camp, not to mention the artist himself Rodolfo. And the wife? They say that, before this all happened, she’d become the lover of an impresario. Perhaps she couldn’t bear so much poverty. Then, no one saw her again.

The impression is disconcerting. While doubt about that man’s activity had vanished a long time ago, giving way to a bitter certainty, here it is, returning again. The mystery is resurfacing, and since a marked sensitivity doesn’t tolerate facing a pitiful but at the same time heroic end for a true socialist, some suspicions might survive. Emilio speaks about him with Spina, from whom he draws a new, but hypothetic, version of the facts. In the autumn of ’43 the artist moved to Venice. It’s not known how he lived, but he was in contact with the socialist environment of the city. His wife had become the lover of a well-to-do impresario from Milan, but one day she’d appeared in the Venetian pied-à-terre of the consort, saying she was repentant. The real reason the artist had returned to Venice would be more in line with her real activity: in accord with the police, she would pretend to collaborate in the reorganization of clandestine typography, to frame and consign to the fascist republicans all those who, with money or labor, might get involved, faithfull in the rediscovered faith of an old disciple of Serrati. Everything was ready. The artist was taking charge of a not insignificant nest-egg, which at the conclusion of the operation would have to be commandeered. The money was in a safe at the typography. Rodolfo would have informed his woman about the whole operation. She, far from being repentant, installed herself in his pied-à-terre in order to bring to completion an agreement with the lover-impresario who, mad about that still lovely and sensual woman, was stimulated also by the will for revenge. One day he’d been met and manhandled by Rodolfo in a moment of jealousy. So, having found out about the clandestine maneuver, he had determined to exploit it to the advantage of his own passion.

Thus he induces the spanish woman to steal the sum kept in the safe, and to hide it in a small piece of furniture of the pied-à-terre on that same evening, when Rodolfo, at work with all the others at the typography, had arranged the arrival of the police. In the meantime, the impresario, fine connoisseur and many times producer of "Otello",

had instilled as Iago into nazifascist ears the suspicion that that poor starving artist had the intention of profiting from the sum destined for the clandestine undertaking, to pour the guilt onto some assosciate or at least to disappear from circulation in time to save oneself, or something of that kind. As for the breakin, the police found the safe empty. Rodolfo, interrogated, didn’t know what to say. A German officer, previously coached by the impresario, would immediately be sent to search the pied-à-terre, there finding the money hidden by that whore. Uselessly, the artist recites his own truth, going so far as to accuse his wife. No one believed him and, as the popular proverb says, he comes to the same miserable end of those who have fallen into his own trap. In sum, a reasonable explanation, but perhaps of use only to rationalize the suspicions of the socialist comrades. Anyway, how do you explain in a different way the informing and at the same time the miserable ending? [Go back]

The conversation with Starace has yielded its pithy fruit, which have the miraculous virtue of sprouting in every season. In fact, the abruzzese gentleman on the floor above obtains the post of head of personnel in that dye factory in Milan, a branch of a huge chemical monopoly. This seems unusual because of the fact that at the same time Alfonso is a warrant officer of the carabinieri on active duty, a miracle of the regime that can only be equalled by the celebrated perspicacity of Starace. In reality, these two contemporarary professions, one obvious and one concealed, has always been a universal tradition, being, it seems, the only way to obtain from life something gratifying, whether on the level of a fishmonger or an intellectual. Therefore, when you find yourself facing an important man, who isn’t so already by birth, before shaking his hand you need to ask yourself what hidden line of work he’s done and who have been his victims. If the important man is important by birth, ask the same about his father or grandfather. No one will give you an answer, and only you yourself will be able to imagine it, but you can be sure that it will be a correct one.

After the conversation with the heirarch, Alphonso’s behavior has become almost normal, so that Emilio himself can no longer find parameters of reference to distinguish the simulated activities from the dissimulated ones. To judge from the noises coming from the floor above, the abruzzese is now leading a normal life. No more visits to equivocal pastry shops, no more apparent and humiliating dependence on his wife. He rises, he washes, and leaves every morning at the same early hour, and, most of all, he’s not getting on Emilio’s nerves with his unexpected apparitions in front of his door. And, the few times Emilio’s been able to look him in the face, he finds him smiling if not radiant, with the far-off gaze of someone setting a trap for his neighbor, a powerful moralizer with an extra salary! While shaving, Emilio conjectures: a private company never takes on someone not to have him work, therefore, if he still has the vice of spying, there’s not much time left to satisfy it. Who knows, maybe the Arma has discharged him...

In the meantime, Italy has been liberated and the war is over. During the vindicative uncertainties following April 25 the abruzzese has prudently left his new post, but, after a few months have passed, he lies again on the armchair of the head of personnel. His reappearance causes a scandal among the subordinates, disappointments among his director colleagues, and silence among his superiors, the highest of whom, in truth, open his mouth but only to say that the company has to hold him tight because he needs people like him, an expert on maintaining discipline among the turbulent workers. And soon comes the chance to understand: Emilio asks a party comrade, president of the Council of Management of that huge chemical complex, how ever could a person like that, known for his record, recover so easily prestige and power. He answered him that that distinguished gentleman, returning to his place of labor, exhibited a document from an influential partisan command. "But how did he get that?" Emilio said, astonished. "You don’t think the Resistance was made only by the communists!" It’s a real history lesson. "And what did it say in that document?" "It proclaimed him a hero of the Resistance Movement." [Go back]

Among the final vomits of the regime, the last allied bombs fall as well, and on the poor devils like Beefsteak, those who in practice do the most harm, because there are so many of them and they don’t think, the diarrhea comes. Living without any initiative except the execution of an order, a type like him is seized with panic at the thought of ripping away his umbilical cord through which pass orders, nourishment, and little medals.

In his depths, he’s never been overwhelmed by true bad luck, nothing like a serious illness, a relative’s death, the betrayal of a wife, in sum, something in his depths to make him say: I know what life is and how poor is all the nonsense that surrounds it, politics, medals... Without maturity, he lives only his own infantile dimension like the greatest part of humal beings, and that is, having satisfied the primary needs, little foolishnesses that distract him and absorb him completely. He’s not even clever enough to be able to grab onto some kind of lifesaver, a thing you must foresee in advance, like the warrant officer Alphonso did, whereas for him fascism doesn’t posess time nor an expiration date, unlike everything else, including the good things who, like the evil ones, have never been understood by those who live from day to day without a crumb of culture. Fascism is for him what the environment is for the animals that it surrounds; that is, the only reality available at that moment, and that’s enough: it doesn’t take any idea, no principles, no foresight.

He notices the changes that are coming along from time to time only when they happen, like people, who react only when they’re kicked out on their ass, when there’s no longer a platter with a good ration of demagogy to hold them back, like dogs and cats whose lives are tied completely to noises, smells, and the material movements of things.

His wife hasn’t betrayed him, neither fascist officer nor partisan comand has helped him, no organization, neither catholic nor masonic nor the right nor the left has welcomed him into its protective breast. He’s lived only with extemporaneous organizations, gangs formed for the programs of the moment, action squads, black shirts, voluntary militias, all of them destined to die or change with the death of the regime.

When the 25th of April comes, and there’s an inversion of the direction of the hunt, and the christians begin to persecute the pagans, Beefsteak finds himself, I wouldn’t say just without a certificate of "hero of the Resistance", but with not even a simple safe conduct pass. On the other hand, he’s not even been a hero of fascism, he’s never been a hero of anything, like everyone else, and like them, he needs some way to survive. He didn’t even have the courage to wave other flags at the last minute, so he tries at least to get out of it in the most anonymous way possible. If in the good times of the empire the doors of the bars and the tobacconists were thrown wide open to his entrance, when he would pass with a scowl, reviewing the clients who, out of cowardly fear, would salute him roman style, now he’s constrained to stay home. And, if he really needs to go out, he does it with fear and caution; he quietly enters the tobacco shop on Piazza del Suffragio, buys the cigarettes without looking anyone in the face and slips out immediately, getting away in a hurry, rubbing against the walls of the houses. The people look at him, and those who know him look at him for a moment but have better things to do than worry about that insect who used to annoy them and sometimes bite them, who now is nothing more in front of the tragedy of war, mimed on the walls and alive, now as then, sucking shit. Perhaps his survival is owed to the fact that the environment where the insect "was working," and where he now slithers, was and is that of the street and the small markets, the swindles of little merchants always in need of favors, concessions, and licences, a setting less antifascist than others.

But what to say, now, about the surroundings where Beefsteak was enjoying himself? Until yesterday he’d spent time with Amleto Poveromo and his bunch of comrades. Evidently, the shitty flies had not even made himself conspicuous among them. So, while a few get shot and others hide in the middle of the crowd, and still others rip off the black shirt and tie a red kerchief on their neck, he slithers along the walls, which at least is a way of telling the truth. [Go back]

Milan and Siena, 1941. From 28 September 1940 Emilio lives in a villa of Via Padre G.B. Martini, on a sweet lane of lindens, near via Porpora. Every Monday morning he leaves from the Central Station, direct to Siena for his appointments related to the mines. He hasn’t turned into a miner, but to an owner. He has a capitalist partner from Piemonte who has obtained from the Royal Group of Mines a permit to search for lignite in the zone of Molino Querciola, about ten kilometers from the city of the Palio, at the edges of the wine country of Chianti. It’s a rather small deposit, of somewhat low quality, which the analysts call lignite xiloide [Note 60].

Tuscany, our region most rich in lignites, could count more than a hundred working mines which, given the situation of the war and the scarcity of fuel, brought in a small but sure profit. Incidental difficulties were obstructing the importation of fossil fuels. Germany was actively employed in furnishing its own mediterranean ally with a noteworthy amount of coal as reparations for the first world war, but it was being monopolized by the big fish of business, and by the regime, exploiting the huge income, but the German influx was too far away to satisfy the need of a State at war, therefore it was essential to make use of all our modest resources wherever found, from real coal to soft coal to the most humble lignite.

After the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland there’s the explosion of the European war. Germany’s lightening-explosive victories have induced Italy to throw itself into the fray, for some profit. None of our great-grandfathers of the Risorgimento would ever have thought they’d be seen, one fine day in September of 1940, behind the hysterical thus dangerously allied Germany, married as well to a far-away Japan. Unfortunately we were in the habit of believing we’d won an early world war, but instead our allies had won, and we were certain that, on the lightning trail left by the Wehrmacht, the miracle would be repeated, this time to the detriment of our old democrats, and now plutocrats, belovered neighbors. Instead, not only do we lose the conflict after the nazi defeat, we find ourselves in big trouble from the beginning.

Italy would never again be found out, in spite of all the favorable conditions during the period of sanctions when, because of an attack on Ethiopia, the League of Nations decrees an embargo, [Note 61], a decree that naturally leads all the countries

of the world to sell us, secretly, any prohibited product, as it were unknown to others countries. Because in fact, the democratic countries have no qualms about fornicating with our totalitarian state, nor has the soviet state itself experienced disgust in assisting the imperialist activities of a fascist country. Business is business, it has no sex nor ideals nor ideological lies that delude human activities. Thus, as a rule it happens that the big wheels of industry and finance might easily pass confidently from a black shirt to a red kerchief , as has happened to all the great Italian families after the fall of fascism, and how it happened to that fiber textile magnate, who at the time of the sanctions, to escape all the international controls, set sail for China on a steamer with a Chinese crew, himself disguised as Chinese, succeeding in importing into Italy a consistant cargo of silken fabric to make into parachutes, with the greatest gratitude of the Duce, who wasn’t sorry he’s chosen him as counsellor. The same person has later succeeded, after the fall of the regime, in returning to his preceding post of command as well-deserving citizen, acquiring friends in Italian and bolscevick communist worlds. [Note 62]. [Go back]

The mine, small and of little depth, has exposed a modest vein; but nevertheless, considering the times and the market, it was showing itself to be fruitful. The contour, which presented no particular difficulty, has brought various problems because of the superficiality of the bank to be extracted, consisting most of all of the collapse of portions of the roof. This was predictable, but complicated by the fact that during the exploratory drillings, in addition to the rocks and clay, they were also making cracks in the overlooking vinyards of Chianti, whose noble and aggressive proprieters [Note 63], alarmed by the share-croppers and vine-dressers, were demanding usurious compensations for damages. The same inconveniences are being proposed even during the normal extraction of that deposit. As for the rest, the usual routines: water from the mine coming out where it wasn’t expected, air that refuses to circulate in a few of the galleries, encounter with marle [Note 64] over where they’d hoped for lignite, props and crossbars not to be found from the usual suppliers, carbide that’s there’s not enough of, small switches that never arrive, tubs that don’t arrive at the time agreed on in the contract, and so on, all things that make necessary the daily presence of the two owners, or at least of that much more continuous one, of Emilio.

Outside, between the opening of mouths and tunnels, accumulations of lignite and dumps of useless material, there’s a little workshop, a storeplace for scaffolding lumber, a hut of corregated iron of which half serves as an office, and another as a dressing room for the personnel, about fifty men in all. They are all from Tuscany, miners from Grosseto and Pisa who, having discovered that the owner isn’t fascist and that some time back he’s had dealings with the Bolsheviks, they haven’t become familiar with him, and looked at him through cold eyes, almost as if obeying the precepts of a fascist propaganda manual. They think he’s rich, and against people they imagine rich, the tuscans know how to accumulate envy and insidious hatred.

Emilio isn’t rich, but he does’t let anyone know. He lives from day to day but, like any country people, when someone from the city builds a villa in his space, even those workers pay attention only to appearance. They show superficiality and rash judgement, in sum, an innate fascist spirit. Between Emilio and the Toscani there’s never run good blood. Perhaps history has taught him or maybe being surrounded by Venetian workers suggested it during his youth, or the wider and more connected Milanese one, where he’s lived the mature years of his life, but he sees in every Toscano a fascist. He would usually say at the North and think at the Center that the black shirt suits to Toscani in any case, even when they express a fascist, anarchist, communist, or liberal-democratic will. In sum, they might be part of any kind of party but still be dominated by a superficial impulsiveness, and it’s this attitude, spontaneous throughout the people, more developed in the leaders and intellectuals, what Emilio calls fascism, whose prototype he sees in Giovanni Papini, who rummaged everywhere without ever finding what it’s like to be human. [Go back]

No one had forseen that the battle would be raging even in this stretch of tuscan land, and pounding like a cyclone on the little mine that Emilio has constructed with patience and sacrifices.

The history of our peninsola can be divided into two parts: Rome and afterward. A third part is beginning, perhaps only now. The criteria? There’s no country in the world on which foreign countries have weighed as much they have on Italy; in Roman times in the positive direction, when Rome was dominating the surrounding countries, and later, in a negative direction, when the surrounding countries were dominating Italy. Since then, she’s always been a theatre of international wars that have influenced to her internal ones. The unification of Italy has not changed the rule, which has persisted from the fall of Roman empire to that of the Soviet. In the last century, to Italy’s scanty political autonomy has been added a huge importation of culture, which in other epochs had been the only thing we’d exported in abundance [Note 65], and also of economics, so much so that, in our country we speak of a lack of identity. The only home-grown, homogenous social-political phenomena are those which have always been negative ones: fascism and mafia. As for the rest, we’ve been torn to pieces by outsiders. After Rome, the barbarians were in charge, then came the battles between the Empire and the Papacy, then those between the great European countries and then again between the major world powers: central (Austria and Germany), western (USA), eastern (USSR), without counting that power we always have underfoot, the Pontifical State. If fascism was home-grown, liberalism, clericalism, and communism were imported. Having said all that, it’s clear, that apart from those great isolated persons, who have always shone among us in the arts and in the sciences, and a few even during fascism, to which, by force or for love, they had turned, even if many other illustrious personages were made to be quiet in order to give the biggest space way to the big-mouths. Italy, country of great individuals but little cooperation. On the other hand, as nazism and communism has taught us, better this than the opposite. But if, when speaking of individual and collective values, one might think it would be useful to complement one with the other and give life to a synergistic connection, in the case of nazifascist Italy we must deny it: because from teutonic-latin union there’s born a monster with little individualism and just as little sense of collectivity, which not even the most perfidious genetic-sociale engineer could imagine. In Germany, on the other hand, a collective monster would spring forth.

Rome having been liberated on the first days of June of ’44, the Allies go back up the peninsola and reach Florence on the first of August. In a few weeks, Tuscany is liberated and a small part of the price of that liberation has been paid by Emilio as well. Among the troops who, following the Nazis on their way to get behind the gothic line, rise fields of fodder of the plains, olive groves and vineyards of the hills, stand out, not just because of their color, the Moroccan troops as well. Italy, who from Hanibal’s times, had gotten used to seeing troops of every kind and from at least three continents, see African troops again, after 2,500 years, and to observe these primitive soldiers play their role of liberators of the superior Tuscan civilation, gives us a feeling of absurdity. [Go back]

The moroccans take good care of Emilio’s plant. After coming across the women of the nearby village, they threw themselves into action, drunk with the juicy fruit on the hills, to flood the mine shafts with water and destroy the plant. Then, seized by the whim of a refreshing bath, they made dikes in the waters of a nearby stream, using, in addition to rocks and mud and ordinary pieces of wood like more intelligent beavers would have made, lignite, rails, trolleys, and everything that could be moved from that mine as it would be a Nazi mine. But war doesn’t look anyone in the face, and, from the general point of view that there is always, it was suitable that we thank these "liberators".

It’s true that a specific law of the State has made a provision for war damages to be paid, so that after twenty years of investigation, recognizing correct the request made by Emilio, he was to be reimbursed 10% of the documented damage; but he received the sum just a few years later owing to unforseen economic crisis. [Go back]

During the mining missions in the Siena area, Emilio also had to deal with an important family mission, that of acquiring rationed food from the black market, such as eggs, porc products, cheese, and oil, available in the city only with great difficulty. Every weekend he leaves for Milan with his suitcase empty and comes back with all of God’s good things.

Summer of ’42. The cyclone of war is approaching to the north of Italy and the sky above Milan often echoes with alarms. Emilio has transfered family and part of the household goods to an inn in a part of Brianza called Tremoncino, along the local road that goes from Renate to the main road for Lecco, on a hill that just reaches 300m, to the north dominates the little vales of Oggiono, and to the south, overlooks the plain of Milan. Light air, comfortable climate. As the skies begin to dim after a fine day, the Madonnina can be seen sparkling, and in the heart of many nights one can watch the fireworks display of the allied bombardiers, who cross the band of light from dozens of reflectors, spinning in a savage mixture of colored tracers from anti-air and semimuted explosions.

The brianzoli, people a little narrow minded, a little hospitable, can bear with anyone with a stuffed wallet who wants to live among them. At Tremoncino there’s no drinkable water and one must dip well water. The percentage of those struck down with typhoid fever is very high, although we’re only twenty miles from Milan. Here there exists a specific northern problem, not just the water, but the general poverty of a zone without resources beyond a field barely fertilized with human excrement. Anyone who has a job must commute back and forth to an industrial center situated many miles away.

The inn is run by a poor widow with ten children from two to twenty. The husband’s been dead for some years, but the father-in-law, wealthy and very stingy owner, is still hale and hearthy, and has allowed the daughter-in-law to stay in the house with the children and take care of the almost always deserted inn. The old man has other children and numerous grandchildren, and hasn’t spilled a drop of his patrimony on any of them. He’s stingy with himself as well, lives almost without consuming anything, neither food nor clothing, as if he had nothing. The widow’s children are always like starved cats, and spend most of their time rummaging through every hole in the house and every corner of the property, shit-pile included, in search of cores, skins, peels, pieces of bread and maize-cobs, which they crunch continuously. At times, with the mother’s complicity, someone’s able to penetrate furtively into the grandfather’s room and get his hands on a fruit, carefully hidden in a chest drawer; other times, they slip into the inn to dip ladle into pot and frying-pan, both left unguarded by Ida.

The Magnanini family is living in a large room where he’s stacked up the house furniture and where the parents sleep along with the two little boys of four and nine years. To the oldest daughter, Liliana, newly graduated, is reserved a little room next door. The other daughter, Alba, has married a wealthy businessman and is living the life of a evacuee with her newborn son Maurizio at Lenno, on Lake Como. The dining room of the tavern functions as their living room, and is seldom used by any other visitors. Thus, for reasons of space, Emilio has been able to put the house piano there as well. Nightimes, there arise the counterpuntal revelry, baroque fugues, and twelve-toned scales played by mice. Around the building there’s a courtyard surrounded by stalls where many pigs are crammed with intense stench. They are property of a huge national meat-packing company. One of the sons of the old father-in-law has the job of raising them and caring for them. Every day at the same time there arrive from the packing house great vats filled with slops and feeds intended to fatten the swine. The farmer has arranged to increase his income, by taking out enough for the needs of his three swine, filling the empty space with water from puddles.

Emilio and family become adapted to a system of life that is all relaxation, better described as patient inactivity and peaceful forebearance, breathing healthy air in a silence surprising to those used to the bustle of the city and the clamor of alarms. Feeling himself immune from the dangers of war, he’s mothballed every inconvenience, at least for the family. But Emilio spends only nights at Tremoncino and his days on trains and in the big city. [Go back]

Meanwhile, following the allied landing in Sicily, new figurines have made their appearances in the new manger of Italian politics, whose names begin to circulate in the minds and on the tongues of the Italians: Palmiro Togliatti, Giuseppe Saragat, Pietro Nenni, Alcide De Gasperi, Don Luigi Sturzo, Randolfo Pacciardi and many others, whose pre-war activity has been lost in time, and is almost unknown to anyone. As for Emilio, there’s a general conviction that only the communists can replace the fascists in the country’s government. Everyone seems ready to accept this radical reversal, even those who, from the height of their own money and their own antisocialist convictions, would undergo the most difficult consequences. The name of Togliatti, the new leader educated at the Marxist Academy of Moscow, surpasses every other in being attractive to the people and because of the fear the winning Soviet Union strikes in the hearts of respectable people. Into the fold of the new government, they were preparing to bring gifts to the births of new twins, democracy and freedom, the Magi sent by Stalin and Roosevelt. The Resistance is at full force, and soon there will be the honors of the cow barn by the more consolidated representatives of the three renovated powers of Italy: monarchy, (Cadorna, the son), masonry (Parri), Church (De Gasperi), to which is added the new power of communism of the pro-soviet branch (Longo); in sum, the CNL plus the Church. The fascist newspapers print some timid news of the descent of new semi-gods into southern lands. And, when someone disappears momentarily from the scene, they make a big fuss to alarm people and authorities. One day in Milan word spreads that Togliatti has left the South for an unknown destination and will be appearing who knows where in the north to head a revolt. The new future leaders are already creating divine shoulders to bear the weight of potentially heroic deeds, meanwhile making difficult the life of those placed in real danger. One evening while Emilio is eating with the family, the inn is surrounded and invaded by about thirty police. Their head, flanked by two herculean cops, comes up to his table and asks for papers. And Emilio, prudent but irritated: "And you, who are you?" "He’s right, here it is!", and shows the credentials of the Inspector of public security of Como, then commands one of his mastiffs to search the subject. After the negative outcome, he feels disarmed, notwithstanding the decisive air with which he moves his men, pulling them back and forth until it was late. Of Togliatti, anyhow, neither that night not successive ones, not even a shadow. [Go back]

At the nearby town of Cassago you can buy meat at black market prices. The authorities themselves lay in a supply of it, obviously at favorable prices, and pretend not to see.

It’s evening. As she scoops into the family a substantial amount of beef broth, seeming to be talking to the children, Ida says: "Now I’ll tell you a true fairy tale." One hazy autumn morning in Brianza, when the smells were fluttering back and forth through the countryside, Ida has put the pot of boiled meat on the cooker. All through the inn the gurgling of bubbles could be heard, the vapor could be seen spreading the welcome smell of broth, even climbing the stairs, invading the adjacent rooms and the entrance door. Two uncertain fellows of passage, as soon as they’d noticed the pleasant perfume, having left any delay outside, entered with their noses made curious, and made themselves comfortable at the same table where the Magnanini family usually ate. Peeking out of the kitchen, Ida watched them: two very young soldiers of the Voluntary Militia, armed to the teeth, obviously making rounds.

They call the owner and ask if she has a license to cook. The owner, Maria, answers that it’s not her thing, but that of the lady here, a refugee, who’s cooking for her own family. Then they turn to Ida, letting her know that it’s not allowed for her to have so much meat that its smell flows out even into the street, and then: "We’re in a war, and food is rationed: who sold you this?" Ida goes up to them and puts both hands on the table: "Listen, boys, I call you boys because you could be my sons..." Mama Ida took care of it in a few minutes. The two boys looked at each other with reciprocal appetites, peering about and nodding. There follow two inebriating soups, a nice piece of boiled beef with roasted peppers, a half liter of red wine, and even coffee. A lot of hunger, Mama’s boiled beef and fatherland and fascism end up in the belly. [Go back]

It seems to Emilio that the political police, knowing him to be working under the vines in Chianti, might leave him in peace for a time. He’s never been bothered in Siena, and during his travels he’s never seemed to have the usual hounds between his feet. In Milan too, where he spends his days alone, it seems he’s never followed. In reality, the fascist lynx hasn’t lost sight of him. He convinces himself one Friday when he comes back from Siena with his valise full of food. Having come out of the Central Station, he walks along Via Settembrini and stops to wait for the tram to Via Porpora. He feels a touch on a shoulder and turns, and someone shoves a badge under his nose: "Customs agent, please come in here." He points to a large door. Then: "Open the suitcase." Emilio makes his resigned face and quiets himself."Here we are, this time I lose everything and I’ll have to pay a fine as well" Then, in a loud voice: "I have a big family, and I can never bring too much." "Let’s see, let’s see..." The self-styled customs man went goggle-eyed at the sight of an enormous tuscany salami, various sheep milk cheeses , bottles of oil, and a pig fillet, but he seemed most interested in a package wrapped in newspaper: "And this, what’s this? Open this package!" A few dozen eggs came out, which seemed to disappoint the functionary, who, as if ending a discussion, "Yours might be a big family, but to me all these provisions seem exaggerated. The next time, be more moderate."He waves his hand like a windmill as if to say "Never mind"and leaves without saluting, and unsaluted. Emilio puts everything back in order. He experiences relief and amazement. No, that guy wasn’t looking for contraband food...and now that he thinks about it, it seems he’s run across him a few other times as well... yes, at North Station, he was next to him and he’d slipped into a nearby telephone booth close to his, and had started to describe to his interlocutor an itinerary equal to one made by Emilio, who had gone to visit a property near Como that had been offered to him for sale. [Go back]

Having reached the little villa of via Padre G.B.Martini, he has the final proof of his suspicions. For those coming from via Porpora, the villa lies to the left toward the end of that little street, shaded and perfumed on both sides by lime trees, on which hundreds of birds sing hosannas in celebration of birth and death every day, but who soon will be uprooted for money and the need for wood, by vandals who, authorized by their heirarchs, will rip off even the original gates of the fences surrounding all the villas.

Emilio’s villa is surrounded by a garden. It borders on one side with the vast lands that are the property of a boarding school of the Sisters of Mercy, and on the other side with the property of a physician, at the moment evacuated with his family to his country home at Casalmaggiore. Emilio goes through the little deserted lane. Carriage entrance and small side gate are as expected but, having opened the main door, he finds that the lights in the corridor and in the kitchen are lighted. He remembers very well that he turned them off. Having taken a few steps, he realizes that the doors of all the furniture in the house are open. In the kitchen there are piles of plates on the table, and various shards on the floor. The glass door on the veranda that looks out over the garden has been opened from the inside. Indeed, the french door between the veranda and the living room is thrown wide open, its glass cut with a diamond. In all of the ground floor, notwithstanding the vandalism, nothing is missing. Instead, on the first floor, where the office is, obvious signs of a search for something which the unknowns haven‚t found; a sea of paperwork in the rubbish on the writing-desk, and on the floor everything dumped and all the folders rummaged through. But even here, as in the other rooms, nothing has been removed. Only one thing seems to have been swallowed up by some of the band's mouth water, a cheap little Kodak that Emilio found in a garden with the roll of film missing. So, here we are. What to do? Denounce to the police a crime that they themselves have committed and continue to commit, to the damage of who knows how many others and with the money of contributors? Not a chance. At any rate, rather than end up inside...better this new method of persecution, this new style; perhaps the herald of less convinced suspects. [Go back]

Soliloquies ’45-’46 [Note 66]

Even if instead of Emilio Magnanini I were called, what?, Libero Variopinti, I’d still be a common man, in whom the public voice doesn’t recognize any special gifts, a tangible, earthbound man who doesn’t fly through space while he’s sleeping, and likes to proceed whole and on an equal status with all things, and mixing with everything. For those of us who are mediocre, life is so real, reality, substance, the everyday things on which we depend, waking up, washing, going to work. And like deeds, like the spirit, a word that comes later. We are not individuals, we are only society, into which the few have banished us.

Every day, we enter into life coming out of a cold house, the panes of glass hard as ice, a wash basin full of hardened and biting cold water. The postwar period is a material reality: the gas doesn’t get to the outlets, running water, wood, and coal cost more than we can pay. And tomorrow there will again be the usual amount of heat, that is, cold again. We’re all poor, hurting, cretins or ignorant, but we’re all together, in public, exposed against our wills. Scoundrels are few, because they can choose, and they’re so only by choice. The few well-to-do, the fortunate, the wealthy, they enjoy life even in the chaos into which a nation can fall. Those who enjoy life because they create it; they’re special. For them there’s neither joy nor sadness, whereas anyone else can have those things. For them there’s no category because they’re individuals, they’re from above, they are gods to adore. [Go back]

Today, I’ve discovered that the tobacconist on via Accademia considers me an important person. But there’s a reason. I entered: "A box of wax matches!" He shot around a furtive glance and winked an eye to signal understanding. Usually I give him the ration card and he gives me my daily poison in cigarettes, because I renounce in his favor the toscani cigars or pipe tobacco, which he sells for three times as much. Because of this, he wanted to return the favor. He’s taken, in a brotherly way, my hand put it on the counter: "Wait a moment." Meanwhile, someone else comes in. "Wax matches"? " Wax matches? What wax matches, don’t you know they aren’t distributing wax matches at the factory because the ration price is too low? Take minerva or svedesi." And the customer, resigned: "Svedesi." The customer having left, the tobacconist bent over and estracted from under the counter a flaming box of wax matches. He hands it to me with a deferent smile. "Thank you,... you’re very kind..." I leave, embarrassed. [Go back]

Last night, a treacherous frost was added as a cover to the ice of the preceding snowfalls. He could at least get rid of all the snow away by kicking it off with his feet. Years ago it would have been shoveled as it fell, now misery lets it accumulate. And to the ice between his feet is added the fog on his cheeks.

Emilio goes off to the tram stop, where others suffering from the cold are resting. Above the white of the fog he guesses that the sun isn’t able to make it. The crowd of people increases, as does the lateness of the tram. What do arrive on time are the far from flattering comments. First, the citizens were entitled to the best service. The administraters agree, and the metropolis was impoverishing suburbs and countryside. Today the war has given the farmers a way to get their own back, selling their products a little at a time and at exorbitant prices. The city looks on enviously and the government makes fish eyes: the farmer is doubly special, for the table and for the vote.

The tram arrives already full. Everyone’s throwing themselves on the door, decided on pushing ahead those ahead and shoving back those toward the back. The ticket taker, heels dug into the ground, is forced to pack ahead of him as many people as possibile. The door gets closed, still pinching someone or holding someone back. There’s the effort of breathing. No one’s able to move their legs, everyone is stretching toward the straps like monkeys on branches. A few are cursing, exchanging insults, then they resign themselves to the mercy of braking and acceleration. Emilio has arrived. He wriggles, he frees himself, and, separated fron the tangle of tentacles, he descends weakly to earth to the sum of immovable things. He does this four times a day. [Go back]

Every morning I get the newspaper. A necessity. It serves to remind me that I am part of everyone. I make a quick spin around the globe, I intuit a few significant things, and persuade myself that I know...what? Truth can be approached if you’re shrewd enough: stay between the lines. Read, you must, what’s not been written. It’s a special alphabet, and since I’ve learned it, I might be tempted to consider myself special. But when did I learn it? Was it in the blood, in the cells? Is it also that I can read what’s invisible? I stay like who cannot read. Even if I know, I’m not able to take a fly out from behind a pane of glass. My vote doesn’t count for anything, I’m left out like those who can’t read, because they are so many.

The newspapers make slaves of the readers, every newspaper is a magician, masses of equal thoughts, public opinion, divided into as many zones as the wizards. There are also those who think with at least half a head, but who don’t count just the same, like a low number lost in infinity. And then, whoever thinks he can read a paper with his whole head is a presumptious ignoramus, because that means he really hasn’t read it. To think only on one’s own is in fact impossible because thought is born only in connection with the outside. The masses are made up of dangerous, plagiarized readers. The wizards say they wish everyone well but they do whatever they want to. First there were no parties for the masses, but only the masses and the parties. The bosses? Fascist heirarchs and aristocrats, and the masses obeyed. Today there are the Democrats, and every mass obeys its own head. The method is that of the induced conscience. The solitary man, the disdainful, the so-called individual who doesn’t count, is a person with pride, not distinguished from the crowd who deceives himself by not taking part, uselessly distrusts the bosses, stands uselessly aside, and can’t find a place except within himself. The heads don’t care about him, because they can’t see him. Because he doesn’t exist. [Go back]

I like to go to church to re-equilibrate the spirit. I’m a catholic but not religious. I don’t even know whether I believe or not, whether I hope or not. Which means I’m not an atheist.

You have to be careful with big words because they’re all or nothing. "Do you believe in God?" "I don’t know" is perhaps the correct response, but perhaps. God is doubt. To be an atheist is as foolish as believing. We can’t connect with him nor with the Nothing. Those who pretend the contrary hope, wish, but don’t know whether. To pray is to wish. I am content with my own existence.

My parents were Catholic, I was educated to apostolic feelings, altar boy, I knew the ritual. The magnificence of a cathedral, vastness, dressed up, vestments, light and shadow, suasive sounds of organ and chorus, hypnotic perfume of incense reawakening the well-being of a evocative viaticum. There’s enough to understand. And art is suggestion as well, then there’s knowledge, rationality, philosophy, science, logic, anything that allows us to live by our own measure, not the divine.

How powerful the Church is! Ideologies like marxism are as powerful as well, but on a lower step, because they treat of the contingent. Instead, the Church seems to contain God; it describes him, measures him, and shows him: it’s powerful because it’s been taken over by a copy of God. Every church has a copy of him, and if you can’t take the logic, you’ll love the sentiment. The masses confuse God with the copy, because they need something, and the need is born of fear as well. The copy of God doesn’t do him justice but it’s enough to subdue them. The copy invented dogmas and morals. It tells us when something is an acceptable truth and how we must behave in relation to it. But in the past, the Church has been responsible for unlimited crimes because the copy of God is a temporal power, exploitation, state, politics, ownership, money disguised as emotions, powers exercised by the heirarchies, praticed by the orders, rivers that spring from the sources of saints. The Church at the top is reactionary, inertia always threatened by progress, but also adaptation, slow acceptance. At the bottom, on the other hand, there’s activity, aid, sacrifice. It’s the enemy of knowledge, it’s hidden or adulterated it, and yet handed it down. It’s been useful because it’s power. The dark of the Middle Ages is also the dark of the Church, and yet how refined are monks and theologians! [Note 67]

The Church is a tangle of contradictions necessary for its politics, putting its nose in everywhere, meddling with everything. The main enemy of Christ is the Church, and yet it’s the only one, that cultivates it and the faithful use it as a reference, because the faithful are afraid to be alone. Thus they hold fast to the palpable community, and every community contains both matter and politics. An institution where live together shrewdness, love, fiction, charity and truth, it can only be eternal, like the State, which renews itself but never ends. But the Church has in addition the copy of God and they keep it as if embalmed. Its renewal is slow, imperceptable, and the faithful get from it the impression of something eternal and unchangeable.

The Church has blessed Mussolini, blessed the colonial massacres, collaborated with Duce and Hitler, keeping alive first fascism and later reactionism, and yet it was never swept away because the copy of God allowed it to pass unharmed through history. The high prelate who in the Duomo of Milan cried over the children of Gorla and solemnised the presence of all the nazi heirarchs is the same one who officiated at the Te Deum of the Liberation and glorified the allied heirarchy. The Church is amputated only when there’s excess and lack of shame, as when the Reformation was born, or when a lay force rebels, as at the time of the borghese revolution or the socialist one. But it can never be destroyed, it always gets back onto its calm, regulating course.

Incongruous facts: De Gasperi gives a hand to fascism but was then incarcerated; Don Sturzo thunders against democracy, but then they both become champions of the people. The DC is a party but also a religious congregation and therefore enjoys the ability to reproduce itself like the Church. Earthly problems are important but more important is to appear clearer in front of God, and when the Keys of Saint Peter tinkle, demanding obedience from everyone, everyone moves in one direction. The DC is a theocracy trying to be a democracy: dualism, schizophrenia, a system where order and abuse of authority live together. It’s the sage madness brought to us by the Copy of God. [Note 68]. [Go back]

From the place in Church to the place of work. Even here I think of myself as an ordinary man, but quite distinct. No suits of good cloth, too costly, but I move as I like inside the old ones. Half-way to elderly, I’d made a career in the offices of soviet commerce until ’33, then I set off on my own, avoiding the trouble of signing up in the PNF like all civil servants, or making that in the interest of the master like those ones in the private sector. By working always with well off persons in the world of business, I’ve concluded that even if they pretend to have liberal leanings, the rich are egoists and wicked: occasional goodness hiding snares, plotting to mask their objectives. I am the portrait of a man, medium but not without quality: medium qualities, sometimes a little superior. And among these there is conscience [Go back]

At the end of the first conflict, the situation was worrisome for the elite classes: Europe and Asia, theater of sensational deeds, the revolution of the poor in all the Russias and in Hungary. This was tried in Germany as well, and in Italy it almost succeeded. But the monarchy, using army, bureaucracy, and political class, and finding in Mussolini the bean that tasted best, escaped victorious from its tight squeeze [Note 69]. Savoia and Mussolini had saved the big capitalists, who out of gratitude have let the PNF take all the credit. And the PNF fattened them well. Today there’s neither Savoia nor Mussolini, and the direction of everything, the lungs of every business have remained in the tall buildings of high finance. The workers are paid, and pay to live, so the money returns to the banks. Everything is regulated in such a way that they are left with nothing except what’s necessary to live on, and to have the energy to produce. [Go back]

The big jacks of all trades study how they can keep drawing profits, this time using the "democracy" imposed by the liberating armies. They even had the motto "reconstruction democracy"." Everyone blew into the trumpet, blaring that it’s necessary to rebuild what’s been destroyed. But, rebuild for who?" We owe gratitude, they cry, to the Americans who are giving us food and fuel to have us not be hungry and able to work, but most of all to stem the scourge that threatens us from Eastern Europe and wants to destroy our civilization: Italy will be this dike! Rome against Moscow, the order of the day returns, history has these caprices. Then we built dikes with fascism, but now? The champions of liberalism have resumed contacts with anglo-american high finance, now as then. Thus, again we will have food and fuel but also gags and chains. Reconstruction is the secret of the bosses and their parties. [Note 70]. [Go back]

He reserves for labor a few solemn thoughts. "Man, you will earn your bread with your sweat!" This is the viaticum, this the endless way, from slavery to the current metal in diabolical motion, called machine, disciplined by that other power, called law. Mankind, might your work at least be the instrument of freeing you from your labor?

So we labor, from the day of our appearance to today; but every time, the genius of the past, jealous of all progress, throws itself upon our works with the will to destroy. Working to destroy, this is the work of Penelope, capitalism. This is the hidden meaning of the words of the exhorting, educated class, hastening today to take into hands Country and parties. [Go back]

At lunch hour, everyone, except for the bosses, descend to the basements of the building and sit at long tables to eat a steaming soup and a meager meat. Collective messes have been opened for people in the big cities as well. It’s been a good fascist initiative to calm the people’s discontent. They’ve retained the military barracks atmosphere. Monopolies and the tragedy of war have thrown the masses into the most abominable conditions. Large numbers of the well-off classes have fallen into poverty, and it’s sad to watch these impoverished on their way to the collective table. But even those of us who are working are poor, prices are so high we have to give up many things we need. The tables are a charity that is turning all of us into beggars, from worked to magistrate, from plebeian to fallen nobleman.

After a while, the meal becomes familiar, the neighbors at your plate were always the same, as are the discussions. At first, they talked about the progress of the war, projecting the opening of a second front whose necessity is always more urgent. [Note 71]Then, the tenacity of the soviet army made even the most frothing antibolshevik reflect on the efficiency of the socialist State. To the preconceived hostility is mixed sympathy for its young generals who, after Stalingrad, becomes enthusiasm, even if cautiously, because the eye of the Duce watches over the tables, and it’s not rare to see someone spirited away from his usual place, by the arms of OVRA and thrown into jail for having expressed flattering opinions of the red army.

If then discussions were inspired only by the Allied radio [Note 72], today they come as well from the papers and the parties. At least one can express himself in a loud voice without fear. The theme of every chat is democracy, the word most used and abused, the concept most undefined in the world of politics. The professors, when they talk about it, have to limit themselves to defining just a small part, the tip of a corner, one aspect at a time, not to lose themselves in the chaos of its mare magnum.. Today, those who enchant the people have begun again, blaring it to the four winds like a magic Diana, a cure to heal every wound. Democracy lurks like a shark around the leftovers of fascist institutions. It feeds on these disasters, gorges until it explodes, thus in its own refined egoism it contains the seeds of its own destruction. It’s the exploitation of more visible men by those less visibile, more refined and based on concensus, but cruel and untrustful as a trap. [Go back]

In the elegant hall of a monopolistic complex of the first order, among a well-dressed public, I attended the conference: The democratization of credit. The audience belonged to the world of banking. The participants are pushed into identifying a means of credit "for the people to use", or so they said. But, spin it and spin it, they’ve been reluctant to say that that giving money to those who have none, and who can’t guarantee the return of suffient profit, is forbidden by bank regulations as well as by good common sense. No one asked themselves: can this credit be democratic? Could that means, at one time aristocratic and later borghese, be at everyone’s reach? Obviously not. [Note 73]. [Go back]

In England democracy is personified by that multi-class party, Labor. Marxism had the same trouble as Columbus, he thought he could get to the East through the West, and instead ran into the Americas. Thus, the marxists thought that the nation most mature for revolution was the developed England, but instead the revolution showed up in Russia, where there were few borghesi and few of the proletarians and an ocean of peasants in a semi-feudal regime.[Note 74]. Here the borghese revolution developed almost at the same time as the proletarian one. There’s no doubt that this last revolution was made by the marxists. Lenin and Stalin had understood that in England the proletarian revolution couldn’t take off, because the borghesia had vented their own crisis of overproduction through the world market, imposing its own products on its own colonies and on those countries in need of raw materials, being able to assist the same proletariat during timely changes of government and having it cooperate with its own imperialism. The slaves of the colonies paid the expenses. The Labor party contains and conveys the malcontents of the slaves toward the trap of an apparent democracy, and does it with the same socialist spirit that Hitler would attribute to nazism. Laborism is parallel to imperialism and keeps internal order, avoiding at any cost, that is, at the cost of being marxist no longer, of exacerbating the class struggle. It’s right, from its point of view; the current big boss of the PSI Pietro Nenni: he declares that the socialists can not, in foreign politics, hang onto the communists, because that would obligate them to get in line with the eastern block against English labour, and therefore against the English workers. But the English communist party must at this point make the proletariat understand the loss of status of English labour, and bring it back to its original historic marxist function, which it will exhibit more convincingly as English imperialism decays. [Note 75]. [Go back]

After many years, general Nobile, catholic, and fascist, returned to Italy, to the loud noise of the public; and a book under his arm, which he’s written about the USSR, where for years he’s been a guest, treated with regard and generosity. And he’s immediately enrolled among the candidates of the PCI to the Costituent Assembly, and in such a democratic way as to ensure his election.

Commanding Colonel of a dirigible whose mission was to show the world fascist technology and audacity, he had on his own time worked away at and received the goodwill of the Duce, the Crown, and His Holiness, from whom he’d received respectively a pennant, a tricolor, and a blessed cross to stick right in the middle of the pole. But Fate had interposed itself between him and the three divinities, for whom he soon became a lost son. The expedition failed and he found himself lying on perpetual snow with his puppy and the crew. An amateur siberian radio operator from Arcangelo picks up the S.O.S. After four weeks Nobile and his puppy are saved by a Swedish aviator. A few members of the crew were picked up later by the soviet icebreaker Krassin. Others, left in the "red tent", and six men engaged in research, including Roald Amundsen, perished. The Colonel fell into disgrace. Having lost rank and employment, he became a guest of the country of socialism, leaving his early protectors humiliated and indignant. Thus, the soviet technicians were able to enjoy for many years a collaborator, if not fallen from the sky but at least risen from the ice, whom they were absolutely in need of. And now he’s a general, an authoritative representative of a workers‚ party. It’s not known what advantage they draw from him, excepth that of disorienting our consciences. [Note 76]. [Go back]

They talk and talk again about heroism and the merits of the partisans. No doubt, if you consider the military action. But I have my point of view, shared by those who having heard the hyperbole with which they describe their deeds, close themselves into a silent patience, not to spoil the general agreement of judgements that exalt the partisan as the hero of the Liberation.

When it was clear that the catastrophe could no longer be avoided, Savoy, supported by the ruling class and concerned about its own face, looks to save what could no longer be avoided. With a simple palace plot, the essential fascism, (Crown and Finance), eliminates formal Fascism, (Mussolini and his pretorian guards), as having become a usesless weight, and is given as prisoner to the Allied. He did it to be able to keep the properties and power he still posessed. Essential fascism was never denied but only trasformed into formal democracy. To the great step of the surrender he was drived by the bombardments, which in the feast of the Assumption of ’43 semi-destroyed our major cities.

On September 8 the partisan movement is born, it’s not known whether imposed by the Allies or the initiative of the Crown, but the Crown certainly lends support and organization and puts under his command the faithful general Cadorna. Then, the situation gets muddled. Mussolini, prisoner of the King, is freed by the Germans and founds the Salò republic. Savoia has flown like swallows to the Kingdom of the South. The Germans are transformed from allies to invaders and the Allies from invaders to liberators. The army of the King of Italy falls apart. Every soldier hopes that the war will be over and tries to get home. The allies, using radio stations and Italian and foreign orators, try to send toward the mountains all those in the Center-North to get away from the nazis and the fascist republicans, and naturally they use every sort of promise. The wolf dresses as a lamb and flatters the civilians and military, re-invoking traditions and civilizations using exiles in their services, a situation that will be exploited by the middle class, in some part still monarchists, and remain substantially fascist, to organize the partisan formations.

Naturally the middle class can no longer be called fascists, a name that Mussolini and his altar boys reserved for themselves. Therefore, they free themselves from that infamous name to hide their own past and have the country forget it as well. From now on everyone was destroying black shirts and fascist badges, making bonfires of compromising papers, and giving themselves over to the love of freedom and democracy. Those under the yoke of Salò throw themselves into the double game: capitalists, bankers, industrialists, and businessmen, while all together with the Nazis and their republicans they continue to dilapidate the finances of the Italians, they finance the partisans under the counter to buy themselves impunity in expectation of the ineluctabile allied victory and to hold onto their old places of command and privelage, and impede the march of the people, still oppressed and hungry, toward the liberation. With this metamorphosis the Resistence has absolved the real fascists of every nefarious deed, and kept the essenzial fascism on its feet.

The Allied have meantime occupied the South, disembarked at Salerno, and are fighting at Montecassino. (Samuel DiSilvio, of Pennsylvania, USA, the Italian-American uncle of the translator, died and was left buried there). Troups of every color were advancing to the song of liberty, razing villages to the ground, violating the women, prostituting children and forcing men to labor, to the point that the population of the South think that "We were doing better when we weren’t doing so well." The close ties of these people to the past regime, that of the monarchy, depends also on that earlier tragic experience.

Following the Allies, the refugees poured into Italy, refugees who for over twenty years hadn’t tasted the fascist tyranny. They placed themselves immediately at the head of the reborn parties and the partisan organizations, and at the service of the Allies. Even General Badoglio and Honorable Bonomi have been able to sustain the rights of Savoia and of the co-belligerancy agreement in relation to the support they’d given to the war of liberation. From July 25 to September 8 of ’43, Savoy has secretly mobilized its own burocratic apparatus and organized partisan cadres, the same who from ’19 had organized fascism, and from ’35 had sold Italy to the Germans, leaving open now a new market for the Italians to be sold again to other foreigners. The calling of Italians has always been making themselves slaves to strangers, invoking, from time to time, a "just cause.", like that of the Pope or that of the Emperor. This time the just cause is furnished by the Allies and regards the defeat of nazifascism. With this cause in mouths and on banners, the same profiteers as before have offered us to the new foreign arrogance.

Even the so-called parties of the left, turning without reticence to the partisan battle under the orders of the Allied anglosaxons and soviets, who together had partitioned out the world, have placed the Italians under the Angloamerican yoke, just as the monarchy and fascism had places below the Germans. The great middle class, who had called for fascism, has now invoked the partisan war, having grasped that in the participation of the lefts in this fight there’s nothing revolutionary, instead, that by such a war one arrives at the reconciliation between the new fascist substance, called liberty and democracy, and those who have always fought fascism. The revolutionary parties have renounced, through the Resistance, their reasons to exist. Rather than profiting from the victorious war to advance the social revolution, they’ve become conventional and look toward founding a united workers‚ party. There’s an obvious analogy between this "single" party and that of the "producers," that is, that of all workers, owners included, hoped for by Mussolini during the first war on the pages of "Il Popolo d’Italia", that had as its end their only and unique party, the fascist one. Deception shows signs of repeating itself. Faced with his danger, I feel lost and my conscience is glacial.

April ‚45. The war is winning. The partisans are coming down from the mountains, showing that theyre armed, and distributing weapons to the citizens. The Germans are surrendering and the fascist republicans are seeking safety in flight. At Milan there are no battles between partisans and Germans. They’re locking themselves into various buildings, and expect to be taken prisoner by the Allies. The partisans limit themselves to revenge on Mussolini, his direct lieutenants, and the fascist militants, who are the main victims of the uprising. The real twenty-year fascists, become allies with their victims, got away wth it. The most influential fascists began to renew their political vows with evangelic declararations of pardon, making possible the alliance between essential fascism and antifascism. The old scroundrels hid, or were kept in jail for a while, until the head of the most antifacist party allows him to leave, in a way that they can get his job back with no loss of earnings. The old foxes who with one hand had dispensed checks to Muti’s squad and with the other to the partisans of which they had no fear because they are commanded by the monarchic Cadorna and the mason Parri, showed up on April 25 quick as a flash of lightening a little tricolor in their buttonholes, saving themselves and prospering again, collecting benefits no matter what the outcome, on any stock exchanges‚ always remaining up-to-date with the vouchers, import and export licences, permits, food office, taxes, carabinieri, and the judges.

The most sensational execution of the liberatory turmoil was that of Mussolini. When I heard that the worm had been shot practically without a trial, by order of the CNL of Alta Italia, that is, with the concordent sentences of monarchists, masons, and communists (Cadorna, Parri, Valiani and Longo), I felt a shiver of suspicion. Why such hurry? To keep the Duce from telling him all he knew from the bar of a Tribunal, everything he knew about the complicity and the compromises of his national and international enemies? A few days later the Parri government is seated, in which Togliatti was minister of Pardon and Justice. In June of the next year Togliatti, new Minister of Justice, newly installed in the De Gasperi government, announces an amnesty of great importance to promote a pacification with the fascists, of which there is no need. What else would you expect from a Church, a free-masonry so comfortably surviving fascism? And the grand men of the world, Truman, Churchill and Stalin, what part did they have in stopping forever the mouth of the head of Fascism? The select classes have saved what they could, and a little something more, but the people, what did they salvage? Not material goods, ruined by the twenty-year regime, and not moral and spiritual goods, having compromised with new foreign influences. Stalin, having guaranteed the serfdom of eastern Europe, has sent Togliatti to Italy to put the brakes on every foolish revolutionary ambition of the Italian people and avoid endangering the agreement of the world-wide order.The people who, having lost the chance to exploit the crisis of their enemies at the end of the war, have found only new bosses. [Note 77] [Go back]

Having hanged Mussolini and his ilk by their trotters in Piazzale Loreto, the new era has begun. As an act of liberation and of education of the conscience, to be in some way useful to the cause now that it’s possible to be so, and to put his professional competence at the disposition of the party, Emilio sends for some years to "l’Unità", the Federation of Milan, and other addresses of organizations, and to periodicals and centers of economy a series of articles and essays, some of solid professional natures, others of political-ideologic subject, others of up-to-date critical observations, still others with the texture of an essay. To refresh the comrades memories, he even sends his own biography. He renews contact through letters to Roveda, now mayor of Turin, and with Robotti, now in Moscow, getting his address from Togliatti.

The articles of a professional nature are well written: interesting, simple, concrete. Some of them were expressly requested by entities interested in the economic reconstruction of the country and published in specialized journals. On the other hand, those of a political nature are always refused because the writings are critical of the new direction of the democracy, already anticipated by Togliatti in ’44 and inaugurated by the party immediately after the Liberation. Emilio remains linked to the origins and early years of the battle of Italian communism, and considers the change an ideologic and practical renunciation. The refusal of publication is at times accompanied by counter-observations from the editors of "l’Unità" (as an example, those of Longo on the criticism of an editorial by Togliatti of September ’45 on the communism-nazionalism connection), other times with the usual excuses of a lack of space, still other variants of excuses ("subject already published" and similar things ), but often by long, annoyed silences that let him know that Emilio’s efforts to revive a politics judged impracticable are in vain and that his leaves have all taken the easy route to the waste basket.

A few articles and many observations display very well the ideologic and strategic changes in the party, including the contradictions of Togliatti’s politics of the passing moment, glorious and in some way revolutionary like the Liberation, in the constructive and reformist phase of its post-war period. [Go back]

Obscure communist, belonging to the rank and file, Emilio recounts, I’m travelling on business from Milan to Rome while the Costituent Assembly is being formed. The trains are doing what they can, and I find myself in the same car with deputies and functionaries of various parties. Cordiality, camaraderie, good humor and "exhilarating" irony among the reciprocal ideologies, especially now that we’re all brothers. At Bologna the squads grow, and the jests become of a rare excellence. At Florence the honorable tuscans get on. The honorable communists are weighty with baskets jammed with all God’s goodness, prepared by their comrades at the buffets at the Stations.

The rest of us, ordinary travellers, are all famished. I lean myself out of the little window, hailing the sellers of food baskets. He’s disappeared: others have preceded me, exhausting all the goodies. A tuscan communist deputy, seated next to me, realizes my problem, and after the meal, having a extra chicken leg, he offers it to me. What to do? I accept and thank. Another tuscan communist, or better, communist tuscan, to whom I’d more than once spoken a word or two without getting back one word, seeing such generosity, makes an insulting sign to his colleague. Rare distinction among legislators.

At Rome I go to the Department of Foreign Commerce. The secretary of the Undersecretary of the Minister, both of my party, ask if I want to "see" the comrade Undersecretary. I don’t aspire to such a privlege, and have other things to do. However, an authoritative comrade from Milan had entrusted me a letter for him to deliver, and I consign it to his secretary, who reads it and, with an indignant face, lets me know that the Milanese comrade is asking for tires for his own automobile. As a consequence, he doesn’t at all take into consideration my business, the real reason for my trip. [Note 78].

I go then to visit a very high directing functionary of the economic sector. Insufference for the obscure comrades but great solicitude for the successful ones: his telephone call to comrade minister who a little earlier had pretended to be sick to avoid the comrades begging from door to door, lining up to see him, but very healthy and sprightly as soon as he finds out that a troupe of operators are waiting for him for a short. Having given the obligatory strokes to the minister, the most high functionary of the PCI has no time for my matter. [Note 79].

I don’t disarm, I go to Montecitorio to play my last card. In the waiting room, waiting for an entrance pass, I listen to an argument between the high authority of the director of the "L’Unità", Rome edition, and the functionary of the Entrance pass Office, who lets him in late, having put him in line, and considered him as if he were a common mortal. Finally, the journalist suceeds in getting ahead of me. I meet On. Ravagnan, who reproves me for not coming to him immediately for anything that has anything to do with Montecitorio, provided it regards his constituancy. But I want to speak to On. Pajetta for whom I have a presentation from an authoritative Milanese comrade. I’m moved along. Unfortunately, Pajetta is intent on writing a discourse and, tired from his having to give a talk just then, when I hint at my matter, he giggles he has a pure politician who knows nothing about economics. I explain to him that I need to obtain a permit to get Turkish coal into Milan, the only available in this period, and allow the public services to function. Pajetta says goodbye, repeating his confession in sufficiently sarcastic tones. I return to Milan without any more importance than when I left. [Go back]

Milan, 1951. The waters of the military and civil war having ebbed, the country has revived. Emilio is taken by the desire to extract the recollection of his own political life from the encrusted shell of decades of fascism. He looks around: many of his old friends are no longer, swallowed by the regime or by private misfortunes. The party has undergone a metamorphosis, new helmsmen are directing it onto a new route, no longer marxist, which he doesn’t trust. He feels the need to reconnect to his old ties and to confide in them his own concerns. He thinks of contacting Angelo Tasca, whose article in "Il Mondo" he’s just read. He turns to the director of the paper, Mario Pannunzio, asking him to have his letter sent to Tasca, whose address he doesn’t know. Pannunzio, a respectable persons, does what he’s been asked to do, and a few days later Emilio receives an answer. [Note 80]. Since Tasca confuses him with his brother Fausto, Emilio quickly rectifies the misunderstanding. [Note 81]. Tasca risponds at once, remembering person and circumstances, hoping for a meeting. [Note 82].

Three years go by without news, except for a book that Tasca sends him. Meanwhile, some old things...happen to Emilio. [Go back]

Milan, 1953. Emilio awaits comrade Wisgnakov at the entrance of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. They’d met when they were both employees of the Commercial Delegation. Wisgnakov, as part of the intellighenzia and member of the Russian communist party, Emilio a simple dieloproisvoditel, which means foreign general assistant and member of the Italian communist party.

He sees him approaching, tired and grown prematurely old. A few pleasantries, then on to the subject at hand. Wisgnakov wants advice about a certain piece of business. The soviet experts sent out of the country often arrived without specific skills, provided instead with a presumption that soon deflated to a resignation to the more modest role of ucenik, that is to say, scoolboy. This humiliated them and, when the occasion presented himself, they took revenge with intense bitterness.

They dine in a restaurant on via Pattari, in a zone then demolished where rises a huge modern building. Emilio was acting still in the name of the idea, no longer certain these consultations would be paid for, and this wasn’t the first time the soviet functionaries had sought him out without paying him, instead, letting him pay the restaurant bill as well. When it was convenient to them, they were always at his address, but when Emilio in September of ’63 asked for a document for pension purposes at their office, certifying a clerical work of more ten years in their offices, they ignored him, adding the excuse that with the war they’d lost every trace of his services, and this notwithstanding the documents sent to them by Emilio to refresh their memory. A hard blow absorbed like this: fine socialism, that of a State that proclaims it wants to realize an integrated communism on earth but forgets every international solidarity of class, in sum, a socialism that the Soviet Union keeps only for itself.

During the meal, Wisgnakov recounts his personal hostile goings-on in the war, which he is happy to have survived, and compliments Emilio for his physical resistence and appearance of a healthy person, who indeed is older than Wisgnakov. Then they separate with their old habitual confidence in each other.

Immediately after that meeting, Emilio notices a particular surveillance near the entrance of his home on Via Padre G.B. Martini. A few days of pause and ambush, the break-in occurs, this time not police or carabinieri, but the "yellow flame". The fiscal police have already reserved a few visits contesting his declarations of income that, accoding to them, hadn’t faithfully represented his profits. Given his previous ties with the USSR, they are claiming he’s enjoyed fat incomes while in reality he hadn’t closed one deal with the country of socialism. To the contrary, he’d lost time, energy, and money, like those business man who, persuaded of his influence on the soviet functionaries, had entrusted him a few mediations.

In those post-war times, the fiscal police, an explosive contrivance attached to the umbilicus of the State through which the Nation receives its supplementary nutrition, has acquired that power and notoriety which at the time of the fascist dictatorship was only available to the political police. The new regime hasn’t yet been able to democratize it, or hadn’t wanted to, and she bullies on the left and on the right, especially the middle class.

Out of organizational necessity the modern democratic state, forced to provide every type of service and structure for the citizens, is constituted by an ever-growing number of centralized offices. The number of its employees and that of the boards grow in proportion to its monopolistic power. Thus, almost without noticing and seduced by collective pressure, the leviathan is on the way toward socialisation. The legal move from the fascist dictatorship to democracy hasn’t modified this tendency which is connected to its size and social needs. This is the substance of the modern state, including fascist or communist dictatorships, while politics is its variable form that represents in some way the complementary aspect, for the tiny citizen just as essential. In certain periods, the citizens prefer, I don’t know how spontaneously, the democratic form to the dictatorial one. In other periods, the contrary occurs. At the plebiscite of 1934 the italians voted in favor of continuing and reinforcing the dictatorship: essentially, the vote was unanimous. From 1921 to the "Salerno Switch" [Note 83] the Italian communists conceived passage to communism only through a dictatorship and, notwithstanding Togliatti’s efforts, many of then continued to think this form preferable, at least until destalinization. Today it’s thought that the democratic leviathan is preferable to a non-democratic one, but they try to make it the least mastadonic and harmful as possibile. [Go back]

The fisca police who comes to make him a visit a little after the meeting with Wisgnakov consists of two units: one sub-officer and one hand-picked, which is what it says on the two badges shown diligently to the victim. "We have the authority to search anywhere.." "Do it according to the law." "Give me the correspondence." While the sub-officer reads and the hand-picked waits in silence, Emilio prepares at his desk a copy of his last declarations of income and related documents. The guard puts down the papers, gives a furrowed glance at the declarations, and: "Look, now I should have to put seals on everything that’s in here, and you can’t work until your case is resolved." "What case?" The sub-official throws aside the models and stands up: "A very serious case that has nothing to do with your declaration!" Emilio experiences a taste of pride. "If you think that I, as the defendant, must already be aware of what you’re accusing me, then solve the mystery for me!" "Listen, Signor Magnanini, it appears to us that you are practicing the smuggling of strategic material in favour of countries behind the curtain, and because of this, you’re registered in our archives." Emilio opens his mouth like a surfacing sub.

"And do these findings perhaps have some foundation, do we have you to thank for them?" "We have our informers." "Which puts you, with all the evidence, on the road opposite to the one of truth." The sub-officer, annoyed, pressis his cap on his forehead:"Do you have any idea who might be playing this joke on us?" "A useless question, because you’re the one who have informers, it’s you who have to be the butt of all the jokes and keep from commiting injustice and abuse of power."

They leave with neither comment nor minimally uplifting expressions on their faces. But here’s the following day, the hand-picker that the sub-officer had brought reports himself again, asking to be let into the office, and, after a snapshot glance at the room, asks Emilio if by chance he’d seeen a pencil he’d forgotten on the desk. Then, seeing that the office hadn’t changed its appearance, he salutes deferentially and leaves, forgetting his pencil again. [Go back]

Emilio is annoyed, but to react now he can choose the form he prefers without damage to his liberty. He sends a letter to His Excellency. the President of Cabinet: "Milan, 5.12.53,...Through my professional ties with the commercial officies of the URSS I was labelled as under "suspected of subversive activities", and during the fascist period the police of the regime would come often to search through my papers. After ‚’45 I’ve been able to again take up my professional connections with the commercial offices of the soviets, but to the political police have been substituted the fiscal police, who visits me too often, and without concealing that she isn’t searching among my papers for fiscal reasons but because I was registered as "suspected for strategic contraband". I protest vigorously against any similar abuse, as citizen, contributor, and innocent victim."

He turns also to the party, which charges Hon. Aldo Buzzelli to take to heart his protests. After a few months the letter to the government gets a consequence in the form of the following strategem.

One day in September of ’54, Emilio, who in the meantime has moved to Via Archimede, is called to the telephone,and the voice on the other end of the line awakes a remote resonance: "Do you remember me?" "If this is the voice of O [Note 84], I remember you very well." The voice becomes honeyed. "It’s really me." "And how could I not remember you?" The voice continues: He’s at Milan, passing through, directly to Luino to visit an uncle, a warrant officer of finance, in service at the frontier and, by the way, if Emilio needs any favor he would be happy to have it done for him. But over there, Emilio needs nothing. O has travelled by auto alone from Rome to Milan, and will return within a few days, and if Emilio would like to profit from the chance, he’ll give him a lift. But Emilio has nothing to do at Rome. O must content himself with a visit of greeting, thus they’ll be able to talk in comfort. By the way, he’ll be bringing a cousin who lives in Milan. Emilio would be happy without both of them, but limits himself to say that, if O wants to spend the night with him, resting from the trip, he would offer him a good bed. And him: "I’ll be at your place in half an hour."

While thought ran along through time, memories were awakening. He’d met O at Rome in ’24 at the USSR embassy. His duty as that of a courier, he was versed in languages, he knew a lot of them and swiftly learned Russian well also. He’d attained that position at the recommendation of a deputy whose sister had been united to O after she’d left her husband. From the new couple two children were born, a girl, dead in her adolescencence with a sickness, and a boy who commited suicide at twenty, overwhelmed by an unhappy love, throwing himself from a massive wall of the Pincio. O had remained alone. For these sad cases, Emilio’s memories were kept closed within a frame of respect.

During the years of almost common labor, O had spoken about his life, his family in Romagna, and some earlier work in Switzerland, without ever saying that he had relatives in Milan, not even when he’d come with his son and stayed there for some time with a person who would then have a curious notoriety. [Go back]

These were the years of the frenzy of economic self-sufficiency, when the imperial thrusts of Savoy were deceiving us into thinking that we were finally in possession of "a place in the sun," even when lacking those raw materials which, making us independent from foreign markets, allow the development of wealthy industry and an imperial commerce. The self-sufficiency was the deus ex machina of an Italy dreaming of a new roman empire, and many were the self-styled competent people showing the way toward miracle solutions. The dazzled press dazzled the readers. One of these solutions regarded the raw material for steel: the mineral iron. Some too efficient brain had made the following observation: Italy is surrounded three-quarters by the sea and therefore abounds with beaches. The sand of the beach contains iron. Separating it from other substances one would obtain such a quantity of the precious metal as to give birth to a majestic industry. Many applied themselves to the problem of separaring the precious mineral from the useless sand. O and his son had come to Milan accompanied by a fool who was claiming he’d invented a rapid and efficient separating machine. Experiments had been done, they said, on the beach of Ostia, with results so tempting as to convince a government Entity to have awarded them a government grant, and even some start-up money in advance. The best part is that they’ve even been able to start the mass production of these machines at a huge metal-working plant in Milan. Father and son, however, both lacking in the subject matter, have been assigned only to follow on the heels of the weird inventor and keep an eye on his movements in such a way as to prevent any unpredictable consequence of his mental state. In practice, once their availabilty is announced to the financeers, they exercised their functions of spying and overseeing until, as happened soon and necessarily, the availability of funds ran out. [Go back]

"Curious, Emilio thinks, O is my age and claims he has this obliging uncle financier in the service at Luino..." The uncle, the mysterious cousin, the automobile ready to take him to Rome, all those little mosquitos buzzing from one ear to the other are alerting him. O arrived with his presumed cousin hidden under a pair of very dark glasses. Exchange of greetings, presentation of Ida and the children, and everyone seated arround the table in the living room. From the mouths came first a river of words on the remote past but very soon also on that near one to whom O is not indifferent, having had a close relative swinging next to the Duce from the beams of the kiosk at Piazzale Loreto. "You, says O, have been fortunate, you’ve accumulated a good amount of riches...but I’ve had to be content with the uncertain job of a temporary employee in an Economic Committee depending on the Prime Minister." Emilio lets him know that this story of riches is a fable that contiues to follow him and which many believe, he doesn’t know why. But he does confess that he’s never taken the trouble to disavow it. However, if he works, he earns money, but just enough to maintain the family, and keeping an eye on the expenses. Meanwhile, he observes the strange cousin who, although in a room without glare, doesn’t take off that pair of fascist eyeglasses. Emilio’s eyes penetrate backwards and his mind works. That nose, the chin, the hair black as the glasses and so nicely combed and that profile remind him of a head already seen. He dresses him up as finance officer... and it seems to him he’s the fellow who’d crossed the threshold of his office on via Martini immediately after the famous trial of coal called "the three M", where Emilio had given evidence in the Assize Court as an important witness, and the doubt becomes certainty. The fake cousin of O is in fact him. [Go back]

The trial of "the three M"[Note 85]

The trial was rigged by the masonry. The investigation prosecution was fiddled by influential members of the CLN of Lombardy. The "three M", one of them was Mussolini himself (a propos of the claimed honesty of the head of fascism) had accumulated enormous riches in twenty years of fascism, having been able at his own discretion to dispose of the coal which Germany was sending to Italy as war reparations. Those riches were the judiciary salt for the absolution of the two surviving accused, Missiroli (Paolo) and Marasini, who had given themselves to the masonic antifascism after the Second World War, as demonstrated by the platoon of lawyers available for their defense, who, during Emilio’s deposition, gave life to an aggressive scene, intimidating and repulsive, tolerated by the Court and the Public Prosecutor himself. The defensive college, subordinate to the direction of an distinguished attorney, had been carefully prepared to recite on a melodramatic cue, deliberately provocatory. One defender began to recite bits of an article that would be printed in the technical-commercial review "Coal", edited by Emilio’s brother, Fausto, during fascism, containing opinions favorable to the regime and, for each of these comments, the chorus of defenders would emit porcine grunts and mouthfulls of silly noises aimed at Emilio as if he were the author of that script, to discredit his testimony, certainly aware that Emilio had nothing to do with that publication. In fact the magazine was always put together from the first to the last word, and according to his own exclusive judgement, by an eminent fascist, at that point become a well-known antifascist journalist, very close, today as then, to persons who have formed the social democratic vertex of Italy. [Note 86]. [Go back]

The dear friend O who is backup to the finance officer and whom the vicissitudes of life must have precipitated into the cloaca of the social underworld, is on loan to play the role of provoker. Emilio holds back the disgust of his first impulse, he doesn’t taunt his despicable role, and ends up listening to his alluring offers. "I know the russians have always considered you as one of them, and I’d be able to help you. My uncle from Luino is just what’s it takes." Emilio explains patiently that for many years he’s not had any business connections with the russians. There are all these new people that he doesn’t know, young men who want other young men as partners. He doesn’t know what he, the Luino’s uncle, and the cousin who’s there could do in favor of the Russians. "Let’s drop the subject, he concludes, and we’ll keep within the limits of our old friendship...instead, tell me, your current superior, the one who directs your Economic Committee, isn’t that the honorable so-and-so?" [Note 87] "Yes, that’s him." Emilio turns to Ida: "But look, this honorable was, during the dangerous times, one of those taking orders from the artist Rodolfo, the one who died in a concentration camp, remember? Ida nods.

Emilio’s perplexity in regard to the mysterious role played by the artist Rodolfo would never disappear, but that O was an authenic agent provocateur trying to use some trap to discover his presumed strategic contraband, was at this point proven by the part here played, and for which Emilio experienced deep consternation and the same degree of disgust. [Go back]

In May ’52 Emilio received an early book of Tasca, Les Cahiers du Bolchevisme. Since then he’d received all of them just after they’d been published. In May ’54 he receives Le pacte Germano-soviétique,and hurries to answer, also because he has to communicate to his old friend that he’s moved to Via Archimede. These are traumatic books for a convinced communist: he’s thankful for the homage, appreciates the historical research, but doesn’t sympathize with the acrimony expressed everywhere against the party. And he doesn’t share an essential criticism [Note 88] that makes the author appear an enemy not only of the leaders but of the "class" itself. The following month he sends Tasca an essay of economic politics and a piece of his own manuscript of memories of the first World War, "Appunti di un furiere" (Notes of a quartermaster) for an opinion and help in searching for an editor. [Note 89]. In November Tasca answers that he’s involved in a work to be published imminently which is absorbing all his strengths. [Note 90]. He praised both the little work on political economics and the piece on the first world war, but he has few contacts with the Italian editors, and thinks it too little nationalist to be published, nor would the party be able to take it on, since "the climate for it, being one of opportunism, today cultivated, seems to me not to conform to the spirit that inspires your memories." [Note 91]

In another letter Emilio returns to the subject of the sovietization of communism: "The problem is delicate and more profound than it seems, particularly for those who, having assimilated marxist ideology and practices, feel that these cannot and must not be practiced to the extreme consequences, in the higher and absolute interest of the Soviet State. This carries with it the danger of becoming contemptuous of the needs of the worker class of other countries. A way out that takes care of those people without harming the actions of the Socialist State can and must be found..." Here we note not only the doubt but also Emilio’s unshakeable, dogmatic faith, and at the same time his tenacious internationalism: egoism of the single States must be sacrificed in favor of the international class.

In yet another letter Emilio wants to demonstrates to Tasca that even he has been a severe critic of the party and especially of its current leader, thus flogging a dead horse always dead open in Tasca’s house. [Note 92].

A little less than three months later Tasca announces to him that he’s decided on a voyage through Italy. [Note 93]. And Emilio awaits his visit anxiously.

The real reason for Tasca’s voyage through Italy, or at least for the personal visit that they promised, are still unknown. When he discovers it, it will be the sealing of a definitive separation. [Go back]

One of the first days of April of ’55. That morning I was full of emotion. Angelo Tasca had phoned us from Rome that he would be coming to visit us. My father had hoped that he would come a few weeks earlier [Note 94], but Tasca had put back the visit until after his trip to Rome. [Note 95].

I was experiencing all the emotions of a seventeen year old who for the first time in his life would be able to talk to someone who understands, but.. what? The french language! That was it! I was so still so ingenuous that I didn’t realize that we would have at our table one of the most interesting personages of modern Italian history. What interested me was the fact that, living in France for many years, he spoke french perfectly, to which I’d taken a fancy. These are the jokes of age, and even today, whenever I think about it, I become ashamed and angry. Still, I’d been writing poetry for seven years...but "That’s how poets are!", Franco Loi said one day to my intended, commenting on a certain letter I’d sent her during my military service, in which I’d outlined an immense program of studies and book acquisitions. Point made, now back to basics!

Tasca arrived punctually. Various civilities, then many memories clarified. Years pass, hair whitens, and so on, until it’s time to eat. We eat in the kitchen: damn it, was he or was he not an old comrade? It was he who’d insisted, to the more practical relief of my mother. I don’t remember what we were eating, I remember only that he was seated at the head of the table and that he talked a lot. Certainly my father had thought he’d be in front of a comrade completely changed, if for no other reason but because of the books he'd written, antisoviet to his innards, and that’s all right, even my father was to a point, but this anticommunist was too much. In short, the aim of the visit was that comrade Emilio should turn his back on the PCI and, especially at Venice where he was best known among the comrades, handle the propaganda for Saragat [Note 96]. Emilio was smiling sarcasticly and spiteful, showing his eternal rosy complexion, completely unperturbed. Angelo tried to explain himself better, using somewhat a synthesis of his books, but there was nothing to do. Emilio was marxist, and marxist he remained until the end, that is, faithful to the general rule which he always thought of as possible and just, that is, the same during prefascist and fascist times: certainly down with Stalin and down with Togliatti too, but long live the proletarian revoluzion. Perfectly in agreement with Angelo that the PCI was making a democratic and nationalist politics only out of opportunism; but just because of this, it is necessary to return to the old proletariat ideals. With the passing of time, the political difference is widening. Angelo is looking askance at papà, but like a courteous guest he hold back, showing himself always very polite. When I asked him for information about French grammar (a question about the use of the partitive article), he looked at me, shook himself as if from a torpor, understood the question, and answered as if I would taken a load off his mind. Perhaps my interruption had happily distracted him from his useless attempt, and understood that there was no longer anything to do but talk to that poor guy that I was. At the end of the meal and of all his hopes, he thanked him and said goodbye, and I was charged with accompanying him to the bus stop for the station. I put aside French, but I don’t remember what we talked about in those five minures on the way, I only remember that he was very affectionate toward me. I said goodbye to him: his gaze was sad and resigned. Who knows, I hope at least that in those few minutes I said something interesting to him... Perhaps I talked to him about poetry, yes, without a doubt this is possible. He climbed onto the "N", and I never saw him again. In January of ’59 my father wrote him a letter that spoke of poetry. He had no response. [Note 97]. The following year we came to know of his death. [Go back]

Since 1948 Emilio had made efforts to be recognized in the catgory of political persecution, with a consequent pension: a process that unwound tortuously, many times interrupted by overlapping legal and bureaucratic difficulties. For years party and Corte dei Conti swarmed with letters explaining his wanderings. Everything was useless. On the other hand, as for the old age pension, no discussion was needed because of his qualification as middleman, on 14.4.61 Emilio and his wife were enrolled also into the national health insurance for businessmen, respectively as owner and co-owner. Emilio will receive for the rest of his days the fabulous pension of £.12.000 monthly.

Among the obstacles encountered in his commercial activies, he tells the Court how much was happening to him in October of ’48, when fascism was no longer but the bureaucrats of the various institutions remained the same: "As public mediator, on 4.10.48 I’m asking the Foreign Commerce Office of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan for an import license for USSR goods. In the afternoon a functionary reproves me over the telephone for making false claims because I’m not on the rolls of public mediators. On 5.10 I go to the Stock Exchange Office of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, where they repeat that I’m an illustrious unknown. Only after my insisting, documents in hand, they run again with bad will into a paper with may name in which, as for the director, some documents are lacking (which I show I’ve already produced) . So, my inscription is considered never to have occurred. Thus I am excluded from all the duties that, if need be, the Chambers of Commerce entrust to public mediators. Since I am the only mediator in coal in the province, I can’t not came to the conclusion that this product, fundamental for the national economy, isn’t contemplated in the register of the public mediators of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan. Still, they want, to ignore my right, established by note n.22963 on 04.06.38. I beg you to legitimize my position, and at the same time establish an ample reserve for protesting the damage undergone." On 15.10.48 The President of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, after having searched more diligently for the papers, confirms his inscription as mediator for "Vegetable and Fossil fuels" as from 15.02.38. It’s therefore absolutely necessary that the requested licence, because Italy seems now to a free country, must be conceded. [Go back]

In the following years, and in relation to his request for recognition of his status of "politically persecuted", he asked the appropriate ministry to at least give back to him his books and papers taken from him during the searches. But it was no use. Unable to search the innermost thoughts of space, it’s enough to remain on earth to recognize that the State is an alien machine which, if even one gear is missing, it doesn’t respond, it doesn’t obey commands: it either decrees the absurd or blows up in your face. So, in February of ’64 the Commission to provide for "persecuted politicians" decided to acknowledge a few days as regards the two months of detention in ’36 at San Vittore, which means, in effect, no benefits. Since his cases and periods didn’t fit within the expected norms, he resolved to ask the then president of the Camera, Sandro Pertini, for help. This one, seeing that they were still working hard in the meanders of his parliamentary palace, after twenty-eight years from the end of fascism, to find some remedy for the victims who hadn’t been completely torn to pieces but only constantly persecuted by the regime, answered with the promise to work for the approval of a legislative proposal which, extending the numbers of expected cases, would include his case as well [Note 98]. In expectation of the proposal, Emilio wrote to the attorney Ercole Graziadei [Note 99], who thanked him for having remembered an old connection and promises him to involve an influential senator. All this intervention had no results.

To the problem of being considered persecuted politician is later added that of increasing the pension of an autonomous business man, through recognizing the ten years of activity at the Commercial Soviet Delegation. Thus, he resolves to ask for a written statement from his old employers [Note 100]. His dear soviet friends denied recognizing him. What remained hidden in his communist heart, beyond the obvious effort to keep the ideology afloat, is hard to say.

Frequent exchanges of letters with a friend and comrade of long ago, who’d worked as a driver at the USSR embassy, who helped him with the developing of his pension practices in Rome, at the same time working on his own pension. [Note 101].

At a certain point in this itinerary are emitted two decrees of classic bureauocratic construction which deny any right for the benefit because of the insuffiency of the periods of deprivation of freedom and the absence of any reduction of the capacity to work to not less than 30% [Note 102]. Since the second deliberation recognizes only the police arrest of 1.5.31 and the detention at San Vittore of 1936, he insists and resorts against the refusal, invoking as well the arrest of 23.12.23 at the Giudecca Island in Venice, the period of detention at Genoa after the attempt on the king’s life in 1928, the Warning for two years received in ’36 and other troubles narrated in this book. [Note 103].

He writes then to Umberto Terracini begging him, in his role of national president of the ANPPIA [Note 104], to examine his case. [Note 105]. The senator tells him to turn to the central office, which Emilio does immediately. The ANPPIA responds that the life annuity of article 4 law number 261 is applied only to those who’ve undergone being sent to the confines or to prison after a condemnation or deferment to a Special Tribunal. Preventative incarceration isn’t considered. [Note 106]. Thus, Emilio and his antifascism are arranged for ever. [Go back]

In 1961, closed for years to partying with politics, Emilio also closes with commerce, and moves with his wife and youngest son to Venice, where all his world had been born. He found a few old friends and a few tavern where playing cards is accompanied by a few old ideologic expressions and comments on modern changes. In his city he feels sheltered, he likes to imagine it an independent republic and, to make himself understand by its streets, buildings and views, he begins with it a long dialogue in poetry, in the dialect.

They say "life goes on...", but it means our repose in the earth or in marble, and the license to others to continue the voyage. It’s the need to rest in the meanders of anatomy, in the heart which, guided by the brain, stops hoping, tired of not finding, and I refer to ideals much more than pensions. The response flattens then, and, as has been predetermined, we must make space for the others. Who knows what they’ll do with it, whether they’ll be more fortunate, if for them their potential will become substance. Meanwhile, the substance in which we’re immersed remains the vacuum, the vain, concealed by the appearance of things, deeds, and persons. One mustn’t dream one’s life away. Fine hopes support the time of youth, but then they decay. The most stubborn ones arrive untill the edge of maturity, and some people are even able to become transformed at that age, with a reverse fusion, from spirit into matter, from ideals into money, from spontenaiety to profession. The craziest ones takes you up to the beginning of old age, when the evidence forces you to give in.

Communism, poetry, write, communicate? Disappointment, the only prophecy that will not fail. And show the reverse side of everything. Humiliated, except for rare souls, inspired by mysterious divinity or by affects able to fly above every evaluation, you remain ignored by everyone according to his capacity and his needs, much more than that communism! The bitterness will be seasoning, it will nourish the round shape of your empty plate, always spinning around itself. Whoever has made a career knows well that it’s cost some betrayals: he’s lost every ideology and purity and he’s been bought, and since then he has no more time for others.

Neither you nor I can bow to the powerful who are eating words, in order to they pretend to be welcoming us into the harems of the intellectuals. Dear Emilio, I too am with you. There’s nothing to do, we’re both off the pass-list, you with your political fantasy, I with that of writing. I’m putting myself in your group, that of the defeated with the inevitable solidarity like those of the powerful among them. After all, the small amounts of money and the intimates, perhaps they feel like, they defend you a little, and even your health isn’t something to upset. Alone, but comfortable, sufficient, under pain of the impossibility of remembering. It’s sad, how it’s written in the concept of destiny, few know and no one wants to understand, treacherously absent or enviously against. At least, in this tragedy of many, something remains in some, the culture of memory, the hardest to die. Before the universe keeps us company, it will be the curved handle of our walking staff. Let’s close into the apartment and begin to remember. It will be his final effort, this weak effort of continuing the poetic flight to death, offering our past to the great empty theater. Withdraw, to fell back, to prepare the full resume of an emptied life to take into the universe, leaving neither love nor regrets. To leave from nowhere, dream nothing, cross over nothing and return to nothing. To transform nothingness into nothing.

Thus Emilio has transformed communism into poetry. [Go back]

Between one game of cards and the other, the Venetian comrades wanted him in the ANPPIA. Secretary of this association for the province of Venice, Emilio held a speech at the National Council of the ANPPIA in Roma on 26.9.71, almost a vital return to the old political world after years of humilating seach for a pension through the meanders of the burocracy.

"I have the pleasure of speaking to an assembly of people reunited in the grand room of a palace among those most celebrated for history and art. Our subject is not art but living history. I speak in the name of the Anppia, who has gathered and now cares for the traditions of the Resistance from its origins, which means from 1919 on. Given that the Italian State has chosen a republic elected by the people and supported by everyone’s labor, and having got rid of the parasites who with violence had held us all slaves for over twenty years, those ones have sought in the most underhanded ways, with the complicity of some state bureauocracies, to seize the reins of command. They haven’t reached that goal thanks to the vigilance of all of us, stubborn as we might be in impeding any type of vindictive return. The Anppia doesn’t take care only of antifascist traditions, but also the sorrows and tears of people scattered because of the sabaudo-mussoliniano regime. How to forget the shadowing, the house searches, the arrests, the sentencing to the Tribunale Speciale for ten years of prison and the political exile on the deserted islands of our archipelagos, the special surveillance at home, the preventative imprisonments, warnings, "white"homicides inside the walls of penetentiaries, offenses from the jailors, insults from all the police, personal vendettas, refined persecutions and diabolic torture? Long and sad would be the list of all those crimes perpetrated. But I want to attract your attention to a Venetian antifascist who at San Vito was running a modest restaurant several times devastated by fascist squads and by the "Riders of the Death". Because of these brutal attacks, his wife collapsed and died. In response to such persecution, he writes on the marble that was representing her bust at San Michele in Isola one word only:"We will rise again." His name is Attilio Spina. He will never be forgotten by us, and he will always remain among us, even in the memory of our children. One must not make the mistake of thinking that the magnanimity with which until now we have treated our executioners is the consequence of a poltical calculation. It’s due to our human education which, if it is a fount of goodness, might change to a strong willingness of repressing any violent stream, perfidiously organized, whose strategy is revealed by the today’s facts that have occurred here and there throughout the peninsula. The people of Venice sent first to Parliament the exceptional brain of Antonio Gramsci. Fascism wore out this brain in a penitentiary. In the continuity of her traditions, the people of Venice will know to choose the just road, so that Italians life continue on the correct road. Venice, sweet city where patriarchs become saints, will not permit the return of provoked and prefabricated strife, harmful to civil progress of an Italy at last formed into an effective and historically perfect union "[Note 107]. [Go back]

Venice, July 8, 1975

Dear comrade, we have not lived in vain, and that is what comforts the last hours of our existence." [Go back]

Venice, March 1, 1976.

From the provincial secretary of ANPPIA, Aurelio Rizzato [Go back]

With eyes full of the lagoon

in the motorboat, the thought of death moved you.

I won’t have the fate to leave

this melancholy to any son

but I and you, Amelia, we understand

children and things through those eyes.

Like a rite of wood

punctual as an obligation, the hearse

leans to the sound of the supporting waves

toward the pink shoulder of the casual

isle of Sacca Sessola where

by some accord you has decided to die.

Dancing to the infinite

he asked to bring back from the funeral chamber

this body which after the pain of life

has found a place in the universe.

and like a rite of water I tell the story

of the body closed in its last movements.

First I touched you, so that

the moment would stay inside me

(we are made of things we must do),

then I didn’t think of anything

(we are made of things the fog takes posession of

and takes away on the lagoon

until the sun returns).

The feeling has stopped

in the funeral chamber on tip-toe.

Slowly we came out of ourselves

and looked at each other with a disembodied face

I and my brother, I and myself. Outside

the fog wants to come in. The white walls,

the wash basin. The thought has remained

stopped for ten minutes in expectation

of taking account of things.

The hearse crossed the lagoon.

The red idea cut the fog

and waved the solitude above the casket

where we’ve all counted ourselves

we the relatives, motionless in our coats,

and there ware a wide space even for the comrades.

Across the emotion of Venice

someone was saluting from the height of the bridges,

and the fog was spinning bitter sugar

around the heart of those closed fists.

On the street we were waiting for a gathering

a little for us a little for their own needs.

The fog fills the flags.

A deputy said the speech, and a few

days later the old senator

recites an embrace to me that belongs

to the same sort of things, and a journalist

runs behind me for the usual necessities.

But an old comrade told the truth,

as you knew you, how you played at tressette

at Costante’s after the meetings at Mezzalira.

They come to surprise my office colleagues

to propose to me as well their world of hours.

Fists beg in the flags,

one of my nephews with the coquetry of the tie

steals from me half your marble face

and another weeps supported

by my sister’s blond shine.

We were the invention of the family

and the comrades the invention of party.

Only you were real with the

Venetian poetry behind your forehead. The casket

squeaks on its cart and the soaked heads,

and we’re leaving for San Michele.

The fog with masterly gusts

compresses below the wall a century of memories.

Your face was truly expectant

and knew there was nothing to regret

because that’s life, and with the cart

you cross to the four levels of burial niches.

When I was a child I’d brought you inside without knowing you

but then, as you’d predicted,

I’ve supported you a little in your old age.

Now I’m a useless staff,

one inert arm for your shy shoulders.

It’s noon, and we must separate

as one always must. The sun

goes back to screaming like the children,

and everyone’s gone home without flags

and without living a better life.

[Go back]

[Note 1] On a world-wide level, the conflict, begun 28.7.14 with the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia, ended 11.11.18 with the signing of the armistice by the new German Republic. In Italy, begun 24.5.15 with the crossing of the Italo-Austrian border, ended 3.11.18 with the armistice signed by Austria at Villa Giusti. For us, the war cost, in the most authenic liberal style (the one, let it be understood, reccomended by the English Reverend Townsend [1739-1816] who, having noticed even before Malthus the effects of the battle for existence, in 1786 had criticized the laws of public assistence, because they preserved the weakest at the expense of the strongest), 157 miliards of lire, 680,000 military dead, and, in the course of the next short period, over 500,000 dead of "spanish fever" among the civilians. [go back]

[Note 2] On Elia Musatti and "Il Secolo nuovo" see the paragraphs Elia Musatti and ll Secolo nuovo, on Serrati and Ferrazzutto the paragraphs G.M.Serrati and Dante, edizione patriottica, in the Forward of Vol.I. [go back]

[Note 3] In extreme synthesis, in his "Treatise of General Sociology " of 1916, Vilfredo Pareto differentiates human actions into logical (endowed with rational coherence between premise and goals) and non-logical (lacking such coherence owing to a determinate psychic state, but nevertheless arranged with theories and doctrines). According to Pareto the people tend to consider logical actions to be non-logical. These actions, although set only in theories, reveal the existence of residues connected to emotional states and to derivations associated to the need for logic. The error of many philosophers is that of giving objective value to derivations and residues. The idea-base of Pareto is that from an ideology (theory of a language of feelings) one cannot deduce, much less practice an action-logic. Marxism claims having constructed a rational system based on observation of objective reality. Pareto accepts the idea that a good part of historical materialism contains rational interpretations of reality but maintains that marxism has wanted to substitute the whole with a part, exchanging the relations between interests and feelings like a relation between cause and effect, ignoring every other chance. [go back]

[Note 4] The conference opens at Paris with the participation of 32 countries. USA, Great Britain, France, and Italy give life to a Council of Four which assumes all the power. The defeated have only to ratify the decisions, signing separate treaties. Austria, at this point dismembered, is out of the game of the great powers. On Germany, such hard conditions will be imposed as to constitue a preamble of Nazism and the second world war. [go back]

[Note 5] Fascism is baptized in Milan in Piazza San Sepolcro on 23.3.19. Among the founders of the movement is Pietro Nenni. [go back]

[Note 6] The first factory council is elected in September by the metal workers of FIAT-Centro in Torino as substitute for the internal committee, considered too moderate. [go back]

[Note 7] D’Annunzio occupies Fiume. On 20.9.19 its annexation to Italy is proclaimed. [go back]

[Note 8] The XVI Congress of the PSI is held at Bologna in the early days of October of ’19. The maximalist electionist line of G.M.Serrati prevails, (favoring the adherence to the Third Bolscevik Internazional), second was the intermediate line of Costantino Lazzari and, third, the scanty abstentionist line of Amedeo Bordiga, the future founder of the PCd’I. [go back]

[Note 9] The political elections are held on 16 November with the following results: PSI 32,4% and 156 deputies, PPI 20,6% and 100 deputies. Liberals and Democrats collapse from 310 to 179 deputies. The other lists get only a few. [go back]

[Note 10] So called for the tumult of the people and the huge strikes, political as well, of ’19 and especially ’20 (including among these last the famous "Hands strike" in March and occupation of factories in August and September. ). [go back]

[Note11] The II Congresso is held at Petrograd and at Moscow between July and August of ’20. Under the directives of Lenin is layed down the condemnation of European social democracy, which had provoked the failure of the revolution of the proletariat in Germany and Hungary. The 21 points are conditions that the communist parties had to respect to be able to be part of the Internazionale. The chief condition is separation from the social democrats. Serrati is opposed, claiming that the Italian social democrats are different from the German ones, and that a schism will weaken the front on the left, but Lenin, who sees the situation as a part of the russian problem, insists. From this tear a weak PCd’I will now issue. [Go back]

[Note 12] Thus expresses T.Tittoni, minister of the Cabinet Nitti. See. Angelo Tasca, Nascita e avvento del fascismo, Vol.I, pagg.26-29 (Ed.Universale Laterza, 1965). [go back]

[Note 13] At their second congress (May 1920), the fascists approved the Postulates of the fascist program, ripudiating the initial radical-democratic one. [go back]

[Note 14] To obtain the necessary military aid from the United States, the USSR in June of 1943 adhers to their request to dissolve the Comintern. The PCd’I, of which it ws a section, changed its name to PCI. In September of 1947, the cold war having made worse because of the Marshall Plan, the URSS created the Kominform (office for the exchange of information among communist parties), which was dissolved in April 1956. [go back]

[Note 15] The congress of the PCd’I (Renania, 14.4.31) confermed the decisive turning-point of January 1930 of Togliatti, Ravera, Longo and Secchia: by the order of Stalin the fascist regime was being considered to be in crisis and therefore there were conditions for re-opening an internal front against the opinion of Tresso, Leonetti, and Ravazzoli, opinions that cost their expulsion from the party. Social democracy was seen as the principal enemy to tear down and declared "social fascism." [go back]

[Note 16] While the head of the CGdL D’Aragona was going to Moscow to sign a pact for the triumph of the revolution and the universal republic of the Soviet, the CGdL was inviting the workers to accept the new laws on social security (April 1919). But the workers, incited by the party, refused, because in a little while they’d have "all the power", and even have protest strikes. Mussolini himself noticed it with disdain and deprecation, observing that demogogary was swallowing the party and making it ridiculous. [go back]

[Note 17] The pact, signed August ’21, provoked such a wave of protests in the fascist movements, headed by Dino Grandi, that Mussolini has handed in his resignation (that was rejected). The provincial federations having then denounced the pact, Mussolini was forced into a rapid march backward, which concluded at the congress of the Fasci in November ’21 with a clever compromise. The head of fascism accepted to denounce the pact of pacification, as Grandi wanted, but he got the action squads put under the control of the political direction of the PNF, which was just being founded, that’s under his own control. [go back]

[Note 18] At the outset, even the less clerical Sturzo shared with fascism an antiliberal and antigiolittian vision of the social-political world, and in ’21 De Gasperi as well was in favor of fascism. [go back]

[Note 19] It was the organ charged by Mussolini to prepare and direct the march on Rome. Taking part were Italo Balbo, Michele Bianchi, the general Emilio De Bono and Cesare De Vecchi. [go back]

[Note 20] Giovanni Alfredo Bordiga, professor of mathematics, taught at the Royal Superior Institute of Commerce of Venice, was secretary of the Royal Veneto Institute of Letters, Science ed Arts, and with Riccardo Selvatico and Antonio Fradeletto founded the Biennale of Venice. [go back]

[Note 21] On the person and work of Angelo Tasca refer to the Appendice at the end of Vol.II. [go back]

[Note 22] They formed the so called fraction of the right of the party of whom Tasca was the main exponent. [go back]

[Note 23] The refusal of Emilio’s articles was a real and proper vocation for the editors of the"Unità", intolerant of any criticism. (See the paragraph Refusal and waste-paper baskets, in Chapter XI). [go back]

[Note 24] Emilio undergoes searches of his own house even after the war as suspect of "strategic contraband" to the aid of countries behind the curtain. [go back]

[Note 25] Misiano, having taken refuge outside of Italy after ’21 to escape a trial for desertion, was directing the european SOI in connection with the Comintern. [go back]

[Note 26] With the exception, perhaps, of the delicate informative assignments, strictly financial, connected to the work of the Executive of the Coal Office at the Commercial Soviet Delegation, which Emilio began in ’24 and continued for about ten years. [go back]

[Note 27] From these, the name of Palmiro Togliatti stands out. But Emilio gives me also the name of his most esteemed and most honest friend, Giuseppe Vota. [go back]

[Note 28] See the paragraphs Russians in Italy, Marxist recommendations and Emilio the Executive in the Chapter II. [go back]

[Note 29] They were called terzini, those socialists of the extreme left, headed by Serrati, head of the maximalist current of the united communists, who were asking for the the adherence to the Third International. Expelled from the PSI in ’24, they enter the PCd’I. [go back]

[Note 30] "Attilio, run!" [go back]

[Note 31] Respectively 21 January and 5 march. [go back]

[Note 32] At the first meeting of the Grand council of fascism, (15.12.22), it was decided to create the Voluntary Militia for National Security (MVSN). [go back]

[Note 33] Piero Gobetti, founder of the periodical "The Liberal Revolution " (1922) and collaborator with "The New Order" of Gramsci, many times arrested and persecuted by the regime, left for Paris in February of ’26, where he died almost immediately, weakened by the posthumous of the blows to which he’d been subjected. [go back]

[Note 34] On 24.8.23 Don Giovanni Minzoni is assassinated by a MVSN squad, at that time led by Italo Balbo. [go back]

[Note 35] See the paragraph We discipline the caos (Chapter III, Vol.I). The name of the prison scribe is revealed in a letter of 1969 sent by Emilio to the administrative authority whose duty it was to decide on pensions. As for the request to attend a course for officer candidates, it went nowhere, whether for lack of interest, whether because the Commandant of the Macedonian camp at Zeitenlink, captain as major Würher from Brescia, not wanting to give up Emilio’s precious assistance, kept him in the Administration Office until the end of the conflict. [go back]

[Note 36] Antonio Graziadei: economist and venerated artifice of Italian socialism, who Togliatti, with the formal excuse of having published essays in which he’d dared to subject a "revisionist" criticism the marxist economy, but in reality because it was overshadowing his policy of supporting Stalin, the only one politics allowed to play the despot in the party, would be liquidated a few years later with Gramsci’s placet, as he would do later with Tasca and others. After the war, his son Ercole would become one of the most esteemed attorneys on the Roman bench. [go back]

[Note 37] Commendator Arturo Bocchini, then Chief of Police of Roma, later Prefect of Bologna from April of ’24, anf finally, from 13.10.26, after the failed attack on the Duce by the anarchist Lucetti, which cost the post to Francesco Moncada, head of the national police for fifteen years. He organized in ’27 the Tribunale Speciale along with the OVRA. [go back]

[Note 38] Nicola Bombacci: come from the maximalist group of the PSI and passed to the stream of Tasca of the PCd’I. [go back]

[Note 39] The soviet State had no need for a communist peroration to be recognized: the firm intention of Mussolini being more than sufficient. It’s probable that the imprudent parallel between the two "revolutions" were born from the fancy of Bombacci’s wife, who suggested it to her husband. The expulsion from the party of the delegate from Imola will occur only in late spring of ’24. Then the imprudent "Lenin from Romagna" (so named by a few leaders for his fiery oratory passion) went over to the other side. [go back]

[Note 40] Bibolotti, whose ears Tasca had painfully pulled, remained nonetheless pardoned in Emilio’s memory, because a few years later he would have to undergo a hard condemnation by the Special Tribunal. [go back]

[Note 41] Among these last should be remembered Franco Marinotti, the future head of SNIA Viscosa, who in the thirties was connected with the business with Emilio and who in his travels met many Russian silkworm breeders, aquired great experience in the field, and was hired by the Waste of Silk Society of Milan who named him its representative in the Caucasus. [go back]

[Note 42] See the paragraph "That late October ’26" (Previous events, Vol.I). [go back]

[Note 43] From a document relative to an official business to Milan in summer of ’25, sent in ’67 to a national insurance office, Emilio’s monthly stipend in 1925 is the sum of L 2,611.20: "The Agency in Italy for Foreign Commerce of the URSS-4.8.1925. Progressive order 923. Milan office. Account: Magnanini Emilio. Paid as stipend from 16 to 31.7:£1,305.60. Signed: the representative of the URSS, Joffe. The cashier, Signed: Emilio Magnanini." "It is so documented" - adds Emilio on the letter of transmittal - "that my pay in ’25 was £ 2,611.20. As witness I call Hon. Pietro Nenni, current vicepresident of the council, who in ’25 was on the employ of the Commercial Delegation of the URSS in Milan". (In fact, Nenni appears with Emilio in a photo of the time of the entire group of the Milan delegation.) [go back]

[Note 44] Emilio, who knew the Russians and who had a good memory, has always been convinced that the film that laid for a few months under his bed later became the celebrated Bronenosec Potëmkin, by Ejzenstein. I have no way to confirm it, not even the exact period in which the film was sent to him (it seems the autumn of ’25). The film was shot in two months toward the end of ’25 and presented with geat success at the Bolsoj in Moscow on 21.1.26. It might even have been sent to Italy for a series of previews. As is mentioned in Vol.I of "Il cinema", (ed. Sansoni, 1981), the film, censured in some western countries, nonetheless had the possibility of circulating freely. Anyway, Emilio doesn’t mention any political reaction on the part of those who had seen it. [go back]

[Note 45] On 26.5.27 Mussolini pronounced at the Chamber of Deputies a celebrated speech on the construction of the fascist state, in which he maintained that for a healthy political regime, the existence of the oppositions were useless. [go back]

[Note 46] At the III congress of the PCd’I (Lione, January 1926) the theses of Gramsci are approved, on the concept of fascism as the advanced point of borghese reactionism. The proletarian revolution was still considered possibile. [go back]

[Note 47] Emilio doesn’t mention the name. The bank most involved in espionage seems to be the Commercial Bank. [go back]

[Note 48] On 18.6.40, immediately after Pétain’s request for an armistice, Hitler and Mussolini meet in Monaco to discuss the conditions to be imposed on France. The Duce proposed such heavy clams that the head of nazism decided to exclude Italy from the mutual discussions. Thus, Italy must be content with separate treaties and much less. [go back]

[Note 49] The OVRA (Organization for vigilance and repression of antifascism) is formed in ’27 under the direction of the head of police Arturo Bocchini. In February of ’27 was instituted as well the Special Tribunal for the defense of the State. By the end of the year there will already have been collected in the central political records 100,000 folders of those designated as being suspected of subversion. [go back]

[Note 50] Following the attack, police and carabinieri were persecuting with particular zeal the Italian employees of the Commercial Delegation of the URSS. This allowed the real assailants to continue undisturbed their activity. Nevertheless, it does’t seem that the episode was police provocation, as it had seemed at first to Emilio. In fact, from his note of 1946, it appears that the real assailants were identified after a long time and by chance following an accident that had caused an explosion of a little powder magazine in an outlying quarter of Genoa. Emilio doesn’t furnish details but, since the target of the attack at the Fiera had been the King, it had probably been the work of anarchists. [go back]

[Note 51] Listed thus by Emilio: ing Giuseppe Gavazzi, sen. Borletti, rag. Franco Marinotti, sen. Giovanni Agnelli, Stefano Benni, Giorgio Enrico Falk, Alessandro Maino, dott. Piero Pirelli, ing. Raimondo Targetti e ing. Gianfranco Tosi. [go back]

[Note 52] The festivities of the First of May had been abolished by the fascist regime since March 1923 and substituted by the so called Natale di Roma of 21 April. [go back]

[Note 53] The first socialist Internazionale was founded at London in September in 1864. Giuseppe Mazzini was a member. [go back]

[Note 54] Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Érato that of lyric (romantic) poetry [go back]

[Note 55] Without thinking I can to synthesize in a few lines Karl Popper’s philosophy, it’s sufficient to allude to his "Critical rationalism". In the footsteps of the Enlightenment and of Kant, Popper assigns a liberating value to knowledge, but conceptualized in its negative virtue, in that it proceeds by continuous adjustments to overcome errors (the principle of "able to be falsified" in contrast with the principle of "what can be verified", on which is founded the concept of science as objective and absolute value). Conncted to such a principle is the refusal to consider objective any type of historical-political vision, denying every "sense" of history, every theory of progress or retrogression, (that is, every type of "historicism", idealism, marxism, evolutionism, theories of the cycles, assignment of ethical values, etc.). Evaluation of progress and regression depends on us and can’t be generalized. Positivity and negativity can coexist in the same historic period. Reason, which serves to differentiate them and even to determine them, occupies in our life an importance at least on a level with feelings. With reason and will we can undestand when and how we’ve gone wrong: the way to truth is the way of recognition of mistakes. As for the esthetic-artistic consequences (with which, it seems to me, the philosopher need not be directly concerned, but which might be deduced, like a theorem), see my two short essays: La falsificabilità della poesia e Popper contro Croce, published in the Florence review Michelangelo (n.2 of April-June ’93 and n.3 of July-September ’93) printed by Mario Graziano Parri and edited by Idolina Landolfi. [go back]

[note 56] Among those Emilio mentions in particular the busybody Mario Alberti, who on the fall of the regime will assume, as if it were nothing, the presidency of the Commission for the study of problems inherent in the shortage of coal, instituted by the CLN! (See note 2A, paragraph 1945 of the Appendix). [go back]

[Note 57] Achille Starace, secretary of the PNF from December 1931 to October 1939, executed at Milan on 28 April 1945. [go back]

[Note 58] The use of the fascist "voi" was made obligatory in February 1938 as a substitute for "lei", considered of the "middle class". In June of the same year, handshakes were forbidden in public workplaces. [go back]

[Note 59] In September ’39, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland, the second world war had begun. On 10.6.40 Italy threw itself into the conflict, declaring war on France and England. [go back]

[Note 60] Combustible material coming from the carbonization of cellulose and substances encrusted of the tissues of ancient vegetation, formed in the tertiary period, which still conserves the structure and appearance of wood and vegetation from where it came, has a brownish color and a tender, friable consistence, but, opposite to what might be thought, when it’s burned, it makes a beautiful long and bright flame, not too smoky. [go back]

[Note 61] The League of Nations, except for Austria, Albania and Hungary, declared Italy an agressor country, and deliberated sanctions, for the most part military: embargo on arms and strategic material, restrictions on financial transfers and importation, except coal, petroleum, and steel. [go back]

[Note 62] If memory serves me (but I’m not completely sure), Emilio alludes to Franco Marinotti, who was president of SNIA Viscosa (see Marxist suggestions, Chapter II.) [go back]

[Note 63] Among whom, Emilio insinuates without specifying his name, also a future, independent director of communist intellectuals. [go back]

[Note 64] Sedimentary calcareous, claylike rock. [go back]

[Note 65] The entire period of the renaissance was characterized by an intense exportation of cultures in many fields: humanistic and scientific sciences, plastic-figurative arts and music. This last would have notable diffusion into foreign countries, in the XVII and XVIII centuries as well. [go back]

[Note 66] This Chapter is drawn from Emilio’s thoughts, writings, and descriptions written during the course of 1945. In the note, I explain my current concordant or discordant opinions. [go back]

[Note 67] In fact, the finest logic, of relatively recent discovery, considered the highest peaks of mental possibilities, was developed in medieval monasteries. [go back]

[Note 68] Emilio avoids extending such observations to marxism, where in the place of God there’s a philosophy that wants to be the Truth, but is only a copy of it, and where its contradictions represent themselves as being complete. In addition, there’s that weakness which he himself has noted: earthly truths, sooner or later, explode and crash. It’s a normal forgetfulness when one is completely seized by faith or enraptured by the ecstacies of an ideology. This is because one lives the contradictions without realizing it. [go back]

[Note 69] But also, Emilio cannot keep from saying, because of the ineptness of the left. [go back]

[Note 70] Emilio’s viewpoint is not objective, but we’re in ’45, in a losing and ragamuffin Italy in which public and private capitalism continues to play as a boss just as in the Duce’s times. In place of Savoia are the Americans who are financing the DC, and in place of the PNF there’s the MSI. The industrialists are still the same. But all the same, method and form have changed. Emilio, the disillusioned, is too severe. But who understands history while he’s living it? [go back]

[Note 71] The second front was a necessity felt by everyone, but in a special way by Stalin, who was demanding a reduction of German pressure on the eastern front. It was an impelling necessity even though that flag was being waved by those who, like the soviets and the european communists, had been collaborating with the Nazis for two years. On the other hand, a landing in Europe would have to be well calculated and organized and would require a long time. We Italians as well would have to bear much of the brunt of creating this second front, slowing the allied and partisan operations in Italy: in practice, inactivity during the winter of ’44-’45. [go back]

[Note 72] Besides the famous Radio London broadcasts, begun throughout Italy in the winter of ’39, in which many Italian journalists participated, the day after the Nazi attack on the USSR (June ’41), Togliatti, who, like all his european colleagues had pledged not to obstruct nazi-soviet cooperation, had up to that moment been careful not to preach against Germany. Now, under the pseudonym of Mario Correnti, he began the Radio Moscow broadcasts entitled Speeches to Italians. [go back]

[Note 73] And yet, credit can be placed within the reach of many and, as incomes rise, so does an always larger number of small entrapeneurs. Democratic credit needs to be seen as a trend. Democracy itself is aproximation and compromise. Why do they consider things only like absolute values, just like they descend from an ideology? Complete democracy is possible only in a rich society, not one that is exaggeratedly disproportional. But even in a less rich society, democracy,

that tends to give political freedom, tends to yield economic guarantees as well, that is, it tends to the social, and therefore it must be conceived neither as communism nor as liberalism, but as social democracy. Certainly, in the total disaster of the war and postwar, when fascism, communism, and savage capitalism seemed the only actors, almost dying from hunger, it was difficult to imagine and even more to believe in it. [go back]

[Note 74] The comparison seems unproposable to me, because, while the theory of Colombo was correct, (and if he’d continued his voyage towards the east would have reached the Indies), the verification of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia denoted something wrong in the Bolshevik marxist theory. [go back]

[Note 75] Labor Party has exploited the capitalism that nourished England, but it’s absurd to compare it to national socialism. The first has in some way, even in spite of itself, made available to its colonies its own economic development, and at times even the way to democracy: the second, only a dictatorship. Under a certain cynical but obvious profile, we must give thanks to imperialism and war for having put in place the basis of successive development. And without having recourse to the current style of "revisionism" with whom many, in judging States and periods overwhelmingly condemned because of their many negative aspects, are forced to find positive little islands (which, obviously, are never lacking), it’s well known that in the greater number of cases the most important scientific discoveries came forth under the urgency for finding winning military solutions. Many colonies, since they have parted with the exploitation of the mother country, have put in place a dictatorship and fallen into poverty worse than that of colonial times. There’s nothing that’s all good or all bad. History, its ups and downs, can’t be dispensed with. It takes time for a middle class to form, and with it the need of first a liberal democracy and a social democracy later. Does the fact that the English middle class had allowed the proletariat the privilege of its adventageous reform mean perhaps that where there are more riches there is less need for communism? Social problems are solved by economic and technologic development, not proletarian revolution. Nor is it true that Labor keeps internal order by avoiding at all costs the embitterment of the proletarian battle, seeing that English strikes are the most famous for toughness and tenacity. Nenni was right: siding with communisn meant siding with the Soviet Union. To impede the union of the proletarian parties, there’s always been the barrier of foreigh politics. If Italian Communism had immediately to do without the Soviet Union...? But how could the son, if son he was, do without the mother? In reality, there was only an adopted son: rather, Russia had never been the mother, but the godmother. Finally, to hope in a revolutionary development of Labor was (and today there would be even better reason) absurd, because anyone travelling on the right track has no intention to switch to a different one, whose terminal we don’t know; except that it’s certainly a dead end. [go back]

[Note 76] On the doings of Umberto Nobile there exist many versions. One early expedition, led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and financed by an American in spring of ’26 on the dirigible Norge, planed by Nobile himself, was sucessful. The airship flew over the North Pole, onto which he dropped three flags: Italian, Norwegian, and American. The second, organized in spring of ’28 on the dirigible Italia, failed on return when the dirigible dropped onto the ice pack. A huge search operation having been launched, Nobile was saved by a Swedish aviator. According to some version, Nobile hadn’t wanted to climb into the airplane but yielded to the insistence of the aviator, whose insurance company had ordered to save Nobile. He then wanted to leave again in search of the dispersed men but the government removed him from command, holding him responsible for leaving of the three members of the expedition, intent on reaching the base at Kingsbay, one of whom perished. In the event Amundsen perished, along with a few aviators employed in the search, while it seems that seven of the members stayed in the "red tent" and two of the three had been pulled to safety by the Soviet icebreaker Krassin. According to other versions, at least eight explorers were left in the "red tent" and perished [go back]

[Note 77] The Resistence has assumed that regulatory function of internal politics that had already been established on the international level by the winning powers. Italy had been included in the western block and therefore it was necessary to keep the antifascist rebellion from degenerating into a communist revolution. Certainly it wasn’t De Gasperi who’s saved Italy from communism, but Togliatti, and under Stalin’s orders. Of the forces used in the Resistance, masonry, crown, church, catholics, and communists, the only one who, in spite of the protection of Churchill, didn’t get away with it, had been the monarchy. Officially, it was the Church who had triumphed. The communist party has become revisionist and social-democratic. Formal Fascism and monarchy have found their own ends, while communism hasn’t even tried. Clergy and middle class have represented themselves as re-virginated to Italians. Using Emilio’s definition, a kind of basic fascism has remained at least to the early Sixties. Notwithstanding the pacts with the USSR, the USA has never hidden its fears of a sovietization of Italy, and this has cost us the creation of the secret military associationGladio, supports to clerical reactionism, supports to neofascism, mafia and black terrorism, and a still not clarified usage of red terrorism. The PCI had nothing in common any more to do with the original PCd’I. Notwithstanding the sad note of proclaimed friendliness to the soviets, since its shift in Salerno its program has had nothing to do with communism. At most, it can be reproved for that statist cheerfulness it has in common with that other party of the masses, the DC. Italy will never be a soviet, not even if the PCI were plainly to win the elections. A Gladio structure was superfluous, but it’s known that the Americans fear even the shadow of the most luke-warm socialism. Today, notwithstanding the opposition of Catholic extremism and of uncontrolled liberism, and despite the retro clamor of the party of the recast communists, things have evolved in the positive direction of a liberal-socialdemocratic stamp. Entreprenurial corruption has spread but has been punished. It still persists but continues to be punished notwithstanding the lack of cooperation of foreign countries who are the seats of fiscal paradises, and notwithstanding the repeated attempts to tie the hands of magistrates, achieved by representatives of savage liberalism, who invent accusations against the system of justice, and by a few complacent champions of so-called garantismo (that’s to avoid absolutely every punishment), and the painful attempts to rehabilitate the heads of the proportionally corrupt party, the PSI, some of whom are openly aligned with the right. Today the democracy is effective, and this means that there’s a wide space for an opposition, that times are better, and the form has the position it deserves. Form, that is, the rules, even if not always understood by the people, is as important to politics as the substance: it’s a creative form that allows substantial benefits. The problems of an advanced society are development and distribution. Historic evolution has demonstrated that well-being doesn’t depend only (or even so much) on political regimes as much as on economic and technologic development. Democracy is possible only in rich countries who have at least a certain distribution of wealth, and poor countries, or those with riches too unequally distributed, are exposed to dictatorships, either formal or in substance.

What Emilio says is true, but not the principal thing: the absence of communism hasn’t been a disaster but a fortune. But how could he have imagined it over fifty years ago? I myself, when I was very young, was taking sides for this ideology like so many others, including friends and relatives who now, for incidental reasons have lost their conscience to the right. Few love the middle road, the most virtuous way that by its nature is the most difficult and the least ostentatious. [go back]

[Note 78] Emilio’s voyage dates back to the summer of 1946. The Costituent assembly had begun its work in June, and in July the government of De Gasperi was in charge. The minister of foreign commerce was the christian democrat Pietro Campilli, an undersecretary of whom was a member of the PCI. [go back]

[Note 79] I don’t know the name of the economic authority of the PCI alluded to. The minister to whom Emilio alludes is Mauro Scoccimarro. The episode is described on the paragraph "Weakness of the martyr" of Chapter I. [go back]

[Note 80] Parigi, 2.12.51. 7, rue César-Franck, XV. Dear Magnanini, twenty-five years have passed since I left Italy, so my memories are somewhat clouded. In your case, however, it seems to me that they have retained their liveliness. I knew a Magnanini very well, friend, if I’m not wrong, of poor Vota, and who owned a small printshop in Milan. When I left Italy in December of 1926 it was he who made calling cards for me with the name I would use to get into Switzerland. If I am dealing, as I have reason to believe, with the same person, I am very pleased to re-establish ties. Give me news of you and your family. I salute you cordially, Angelo Tasca. [go back]

[Note 81] Milan, 8.12.51. Dear Tasca, I’ve received yours of 2 current month, and I must tell you that I am not really that Magnanini who put you up in his office at Via Vitruvio in Milan. He was called Fausto and has passed to the numbers of the many over a year ago. I am his brother, for a long time a friend of poor Vota. At Vota’s funeral, I met in Torino for the last time another friend in common, Avv. Martorelli. You might be able to glimpse me, I believe, through your clouded memories, on the streets of Rome, along with another particular collaborator of Vota, Ramellini. I am sure that in a meeting the past will live again and unite with the present by the logical and dramatic line of continuity. I hope the occasion of such an encounter will present itself as soon as possible. I salute you cordially, Emilio Magnanini. [go back]

[Note 82] Parigi, 12.12.51. Dear Magnanini, I remember, in fact, a brother of the accomplished Fausto and the circumstances that you evoke. A meeting would certainly allow dusting off the old stones: it’s the only effective remedy. If you have the chance to come to Paris, let me know. If I have the occasion to come to Milan, I’ll look for you. Cordially yours, A.Tasca. [go back]

[Note 83] In April of ’44 Togliatti, come to Italy as emissary of Stalin, proclaimed the transformation of the communist party from a party only of cadres, conceived as the front guards of the revolution, to a party of the masses, having as its objective an alliance at basic levels with the Catholics. This would imply setting aside the project of the dictatorship of the proletariat and acceptance of the democratic method. [go back]

[Note 84] Whatever his reasons, Emilio has not revealed the identity of his interlocutor. [go back]

[Note 85] As for the trial, which must have been a trial against war profiteers, I have available few but significant elements: 1) a text from which I’ve taken the above-told summary; 2) a note relative to supplying German coal as reparations, in which one can read that what declared by the rapporteur of the CNL at ANICSA (a witness in favor of that company), according to which this last would have begun his work in the field of coal in 1920 with the importation of Polish coal, is not the truth. In fact this coal began to arrive in Italy only in ’25 and in a total amount of hardly 56 thousand t. On the other hand, the German coal is starting to arrive in huge quantities as reparation in ’20. Is it, therefore, with the coal for reparations that the ANICSA has started to work? An investigation at the Coal Office of the national railway might yield the appropriate response. All the same, it was proved that in 1927, the year of ANICSA’s founding, German coal as reparation was introduced everywhere, because the year 1927 was the eighth one of its arrival in Italy in quite significant amounts. After eight years, therefore, the fascist state wanted to do the sole agency for this coal to a private company, and the choice falls to the trio Mussolini-Missiroli-Marasini; 3) a chronologic table of synthetic notes, served to Emilio during the trial; 4)a page with detailed notices about the changes of the name of the ANICSA, its names of prosecutors, and their balances from 1928 to 1937 with indications of the profits and amounts of German coal imported. There one reads, among other things: date of birth of the ANICSA: 20.5.27; in the years of 1928-29-30 that company would be importing a million tons a year as war reparations thanks to a contract with the Italian State. In’31 the company stipulates with the German Syndicate (Rheinische Westfalische Kolensindykat) an exclusive sales contract; in the years ’35 and ’36 the company sells 250 thousand t a month with a price of £30 and 50 a ton lower than that established by the price list of the stock exchange of Genoa. Who had taken responsibility for that difference in price? The control of the German syndicate over the consignees of the coal is stated: it’s clear the goal of conquering the market in spite of the peace treaty and the competition of the winners, one of the reasons, and not the last, for the war. From September ’43 to March ’45, thanks to the intervention of the Commercial Association for Coal of Genoa at the Allied Command, the ANICSA could no longer get any kind of favorable treatment. [go back]

[Note 86] His name is one of the secrets that Emilio has carried to the tomb, and only an analysis of the numbers of the magazine "The Coal", which I imagine is today out of reach, might bring an answer. As for the technique of the defensive college, it’s interesting to note the aimed use at that informal fallacy which in logic is called argumentum ad hominem.. This consists in raising doubts on the credibility of the witnesses, rather than confuting the truth which they asserts, practice still widely used in the trials, especially if they have political implications, taking advantage from ignorance whether of the public opinion or of the court itself on the subject of logic.[go back]

[Note 87] Also in this case Emilio names no names, which only a search of the presidents of the Economic Committee of the Prime Minister of that time might clarify. [go back]

[Note 88] Milan, 21 maggio 54. Dear Angelo, I beg you to take note of my new address: Via Archimede n.22-tel.581481. I thank you for your book on the Pact German-Soviet and also for that received before on the notebooks of the French Communist Party. I appreciate in those works the scrupulous precision and the patient, intelligent, meticulous research, with a critical goal. On the other hand, I don’t sympathize with the acrimony expressed from every sentence and I don’t appreciate the delimitation of the criticism. For all that, I don’t mean that I follow blindly and take everything as truth what it’s written by the bolshevic press, just because it’s bolshevic! I’ve never failed to express my thoughts, as you can see by the enclosed note, with the prayer that you will keep it only for your personal use, and I don’t avoid to express them from time to time, always in writing. Naturally, the "New Party" doesn’t care to answer and prefers to make itself unpopular with the critics, and sometime it’s whispering slanderous and calumnous reasons. But all that wouldn’t justify the attitude and activitiy as an enemy, not only of the leaders, but of the class itself. I would so much like to talk to you in person and for now I say goodbye with affection. Emilio. [go back]

[Note 89] Milan, 27.6.54. Dear Angelo, in far off 1937 I wrote my memoirs of the first world war, entitled "Notes of a Quartermaster." (1914-1919). Now I’ve re-read the manuscript and am convinced that its publication would be opportune. I’m sending you the attached Introduction and Table of contents and an essay entitled The burning of Salonicco. I ask you to take a look, and, if it seems to have merit, it would really please me if you read the entire bundle which I will sent to you typed, and also help me find a publisher. I have no contacts in the publishing field, and if I try directly I would find all the doors closed. I thank you and await your authoritative opinion. Believe me yours, Emilio. [go back]

[Note 90] La Guerre des Papillons, subtitled: Quatre ans de politique communiste (1940-44). [go back]

[Note 91] Paris, 10.11.54. Dear Emlio, since this spring I’ve been engulfed in a work that absorbs all my force, out of which has come a new book which will be published this December. I’ve viewed with interest your little work of 1948 on political economy, especially what you refer to the Councils of Management. However, I don’t know if the party is making a mistake concentrating its major efforts in the political sphere, since just like that it has obtained a growing success, at least according to what the papers that I read are saying. Do you think there might be other more important reasons for this success? The chapter of your manuscript on The burning of Salonicco has struck me greatly as a living and authenic evocation of an event of which you’ve been a lucid and humane observer. The problem is finding a publisher. I have few direct connections in this field in Italy and I don’t know whether a book of memoirs of World War I would find one. A public might be found for a book, let’s call it, ultranationalist, but this doesn’t seem to be what’s needed here... The party, in other times, might have taken it on, but the climate of opportunism, that it today cultivates, it seems to conform little to the spirit that inspires your memories. I was hoping to make a run over to Italy in December, going through Milan. Thus having the pleasure of seeing you, but at this point my plans have been shelved. Another time. Cordially yours, Angelo. [go back]

[Note 92] Milan, 2.12.54. Dear Angelo, in one of my previous letter I pointed out that in my time I too had criticized the political trend of the Party. That occurred in far-off 1947. I’m sending you those criticisms which, in general, have been confirmed by the facts. As you will see, I’ve spoken ill, very ill of...Garibaldi, who’s never been able to forgive me! I salute you affectionately, yours, Emilio. [go back]

[Note 93] Paris, 26.2.57, rue César-Franck. Dear Emilio, I’ve decided on a long trip to Italy, going through the country from top to bottom, the better to make me aware of a situation I need to study on the spot. I will make the first halting-place in Torino, between 4 and 10 of March, and then the second in Milan, where I’ll stay a week. I’ll impose a severe program on me, by the clock, to be able to finish my proposal for observation and study. But in this program there’s a visit to you as well, whom I will have the great pleasure of meeting and embracing. If there’s any difficulty, if by chance you’re not in Milan in the period I’ve indicated to you, let me know, writing to me at my daughter’s (Signora Elena Doglioni, via Cibrario, Torino). We’ll see each other soon, I hope. Yours, Angelo. [go back]

[note 94] Milan, 1.3.55. Via Archimede n.22. Dear Angelo, yours of February, 26, brings me the good news. I’m truly happy and I await your visit anxiously at my address (near one of your old Milan addresses) where you will surely find me. Meanwhile, if I can help you in any way, let me be so. Loving greetings. Yours, Emilio. [go back]

[Note 95] Milan, 20.3.55. Dear Emilio, I telephoned you today in the afternoon in the hope of being able to greet you, at least on the telephone, and get the news about your family. At Milan, not only have I been ground in a crush of daily appointments, that not only have absorbed my whole days, but I’m so fatigued that in the evening I’ve had to throw myself into bed exhausted. I hope I can go back to Milan on my return and reestablish contact with you. I’ll be in Rome for about ten days starting from March 24 (I leave tomorrow morning for Florence) and will be lodging at Hotel Senato, at Pantheon Square. I would be happy to have news of you and your family. Affectionately, Angelo. [go back]

[Note 96] I don’t know what the exact purpose was of Tasca’s visit to Italy, but, from what I had the opportunity to discover, the old leader of the PCd’I intended to verify the possibility of strengthening current Italian socialism of the democratic type. In this environment, he was proposing that as many communists as possible leave the PCI, in particular repudiating pro-soviet politics, and orienting itself toward another type of politic, more like social democracy, and looking toward the west. [go back]

[Note 97] Milan, 3.1.59. Dear Angelo, I’ve seen your "Autopsy of stalinism" in Italian, a book I’ve already read in the French text, which you sent me some time ago, and for which I thank you. I haven’t had your news for some years and am glad you’re in good health. The happening in France certainly keep you very busy. Some time ago I sent you one of my little volumes of verses in dialect dedicated to the Doges of Venice. "L’Unità" published a showy review and a similar one has appeared in a Venice weekly called nothing less than "Minosse". One of your critical words would please me. Give me your news. Very cordial greetings. Emilio. [go back]

[Note 98] Emilio letter’s dated 4.3.73: With Deliberation 23569 of 18.02.64 the Commission for providing for those persecuted has recognized that the writer is one of those persecuted but without granting him provisions because the persecution undergone for thirty years, from ’23 to ’53, don’t provide any of it under the present legislation. Pertini’s letter dated 7.3.73: Dear Sig. Magnanini, I’ve received Yours of 4 corr. and I assure you that I will not fail to press parliament for the bill n.420 in which you have an interest. Cordial greetings. [go back]

[Note 99] 9.11.73: Dear sir, I’m reminded of the friendship that conncts me to Tonino, your father, and to some ties owing to our common friend Angelo Tasca. I will remind you of a visit, which, at the request of this last, you made to my home in Roma, Via Lombardia, in far away december ’23 when the just-born soviet diplomancy was taking its first steps outside its house. I’m writing this introduction to clear away the mists of time and I’m including a copy of a letter dated 4.3.73, directed to the Hon. Fanfani and Pertini with an eclosure. Pertini has answered me quickly, assuring me of his interest. From yesterday’s parliamentary reports, I’ve learned that the Chamber would discuss a bill [...]. I’m asking you to take interest in it and get me an answer. [go back]

[Note 100] Letter of 10.10.63 (reminder). In mine of 20.9.63 I requested you the release of a declaration attesting that I was your employee from 1924 to 1933 as Commercial Agent. No reply has come to me yet. I am certain that the laws of your Country in regard to defense of the workers oblige all employers to release a statement to their employees like that one asked by the Minister of the Italian Treasury. [go back]

[Note 101] Here is an amusing letter of 31.1.68 from his roman friend Cesare Piccinini: Dear Emilio, it gives me pleasure that you’ve finally closed, with a positive (though modest) outcome, your extremely long suit for war reparations. In the way of informing you, I want to free you from any regrets you’ve had for not having asked INPS for a reversible life annuity because of omission of contributions, and for not having documentation from your employer. I, on the other hand, had done all those things, having the documentation from Embassy of the URSS up to ’37. I went to the Consolate at Rome and they asked me for a declaration from Moscow on the salary I was receiving when I left. I had it in two months. I went to my government pension office and this is how they answered me: 14 years of service; the share because of the payments omitted from ’23 to ’37 amounted to £.2,850,000 so that I can receive £.18,200 a month. To ammortize such a sum would take me almost 20 years, and I’m already 78. Who will I be by then? Blessed is he who has one eye left! So I let it go. And you don’t have lost anything either. Health, good, if you don’t get a fever... here Rome is full of people with influenza. Thank you for the invitation to Venice in the summer. At Easter we’ll be in Bologna at relatives’ house. Who knows, we might stretch the trip to Venice; with you, there’s always something to discover! Have a warm handshake.

Emilio’s response: Dear Cesare, from yours of 30.1 I take note of the shipwreck of your old age pension notwithstanding the declarations of the soviet authorities. The government pretends it’s helping with old age and passes laws that are phantasms, always sabotaged by the burocracy, who it pretends it’s betrayed by. My position is different, having been recognized a persecuted as explained in deliberation 23569 18.2.64 of the appropriate Commission: "Mr. Magnanini was always against the fascist regime and as such subjected to strict surveillance, and reguarding this, his request is accepted.". Article 2 Law 261 24.4.67 recognizes life annuity to those who’ve been submitted to special surveillance, and since the surveillance has been recognized as without a set length, and strict as well, my right is recognized. Or, at my choice, I should be given a position in the insurance field, for a period as long as that when I was subject to surveillance, that is to say, the entire duration of fascism. The INPS must confirm this position. But it, given its origin and the fascist spirit that still shapes it, will be obstructive. If you have time, get over to the Commission to find out at what point my business is and ask Terracini if he could suggest my next step. I’m pleased that you and your wife haven’t undergone the bouts of influenza that are going around us as well. It would please me so much if you would come to visit us with your wife at Easter in Venice. You will be my guests. We’ll have a lot to talk about from the past, far from the uproar of the big cities. [go back]

[Note 102] Resolution 34021 of 30.4.69 of the Commission for providing for persecuted antifascists or those who because of race etc. Having seen request 6.4.68 of Magnanini Emilio, to obtain the benefit foreseen by art.3 law 284 3.4.61, according to the laws of ’55, ’56, ’61 and law 261 24.4.67, this hearing agrees with the former request of 23569 18.2.64 that recognizes the periods of prison during fascism, for aversion to the regime, but don’t recognize limitations of his own liberty beyond those considered specifically above...Thus, deliberates: "The request is not accepted and therefore no benefits are recognized from art.5 law 96 10.03.55 and art.3 law 284 03.4.61. Signed the President, Dr. Felici. Resolution 34022 of 30.4.69 of the Commission for providing for persecuted antifascists..: seeing the request entered 6.4.68 by Magnanini Emilio to obtain the life annuity foreseen by art.4 law 24.4.67 n.261, recognizes its antifascist ideology, his arrest by the police on 1.5.31 and the arrest of 22.8.36 ended on 8.10.36, but don’t recognize the conditions foreseen by art.4, because the persecutions undergone are not foreseen by art.1 law n.96 of ’55. Request not accepted: signed De Felici [N.B.art.1 law 10.03.55 n.96: to the Italian citizens who after 28.10.22 might be persecuted following political activity against fascism and have undergone a loss of working capacity not less than 30%, will be given a life-long check. [go back]

[Note 103] 17.1.70. The examination of this Commission is incomplete. [...] What‚s more, the Commission hasn‚t examined the persecution that had damaged me more, to the point of not being able to work, and that is a) the refusal of the ministry of foreign affairs to grant me a passport allowing me to work in the USSR as officially requested by the USSR embassy in Rome; b) my inscription, sadly omitted by the prefect of Milan, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, in the list as a public mediator, as was my right. Which made it impossible to work from 15.2.38 to 15.10.48. Everything above is documented in my original request of 12.7.61 to the Examiner Commission Political Persecuted at Corte Conti. As can be seen, my persecution can be charged to the Ministry of foreign affairs and to the Ministry of Corporations. I remind you that all the State employees and assimilated, persecuted by fascism, have been rehabilitated in ’45 and indemnified. I request, therefore, an equal provision to me, that’s assignment of the life annuity that I asked for with my request on 6.4.68, or the crediting at INPS of the contributions as an insured contributer from ’23 to ’45. [go back]

[Note 104] Nazional Association Political Italian Antifascist Persecuted, of which Emilio in the last years of his life was secretary for the province of Venice. [go back]

[Note 105] 7.2.70. Dear comrade: we met only once, and it was, if I remember, in the summer of ’23 at Venice when you stopped on your return from Moscow where you’d represented the party at the Congress of the Third International. This preliminary remark serves to fix a common seniority of militancy, and to justify what I’m about to ask from you. In ’61 I had begun a file at the Commission for providing for persecuted antifascists, dealt by ANPPIA of which you are president. Since the Commission is too rough-and-ready and has a tendency to be hostile to those who are in need of its assistance, I’m asking you to examine my case as a comrade and as a jurist. I will be pleased with your communist greeting. [go back]

[Note 106] 7.03.70. Letter of National Secretary ANPPIA Lino Zocchi: Dear Magnanini...the resolutions of the Commission do not seem able to be changed. The life annuity specified by art.4 law 261 belongs by right to whom has suffered political exile or prison following a sentencing or has been committed to the Special Tribunal. Preventive encarceration is not considered. Your case could be resolved only if new legislation passes, which we have prepared. For now, you can only turn to the Corte dei Conti. [go back]

[Note 107] Unfortunately, dear Emilio, the magnanimity with which we’ve treated our executioners has really been the consequences of a political calculation, as you yourself have known and written, but now you don’t feel like repeating. I allude to Togliatti’s amnesty, necessary for the pacification of Italy, wanted by Stalin, who didn’t want any worries from these parts. [go back]

Dario Magnanini was born in Milan in 1938 into a Venetian family. His father (1892-1976) was the first leader of PCd'I in Venice in the twenties, commercial collaborator of the Soviet, business man and poet.

Since early adolescence, his discovery of poetry is owed to paternal rapport, contact with intellectual friends, and an intense rapport with nature as lived in his garden of the Milan outskirts. In 1961 he moved to Venice. His degree is in political science. He was interested also in history and music.

Publications:

-Participation in the anthology of poetry offered to Jorge Guillén "Sonreído va el sol" (Scheiwiller, 1983, edited by Pablo Ávila).

-Some texts published in "Lengua" (ed. Il Lavoro Editoriale, Pesaro‚85, edited by Gianni D‚Elia).

-First work: "Non fare a Venezia" (Edizioni del Leone, Venice‚86, preface by Franco Loi).

-Ten lyrics, drawn from "Non fare a Venice", translated into German in the review "Akzente" of Michael Krüger for the Buchmesse of Frankfurt, dedicated to Italian literature (ed.Hansen, München, 1988).

-Second work: "Approccio della poesia" (Edizioni del Leone, Venice 1990, preface by Fabio Doplicher).

-Included with a few texts in "European Anthology" preface by Fabio Doplicher (Quaderni di Stilb, 1991).

-Other texts, reviewed by Franco Loi, are found in the Florentine review "Michelangelo" (1/1994), directed by Mario Graziano Parri and Idolina Landolfi.

-Third collection of verse: "Trovar nel sentimento i veri casi" (Edizioni ARACNE, Roma,‚97).

-Included in "Il pensiero dominante" , Anthology of Italian Poetry 1970-2000 (Edizioni Garzanti, Milan, February 2001, edited by Davide Rondoni and Franco Loi).

Reviews:

1) RAI (Third Program radio "Open Space" on 12.6.86, with reading of some text, and Radiouno program, "Poets at the microphone" directed by Fabio Doplicher with reading of texts by Mario Mattia Giorgetti;

2) Rete A: "The Journal of Literature, Sept Œ86, preface by Paolo Ruffilli

3) Il Gazzettino di Venice (19.7.96, page "Venetian Authors")

4) "Il Giornale della Libreria", art. by Giorgio Tessi (Oct. ‚87)

5) "The Gazzetta di Parma" (14.8.86)

6) "The Piccolo" of Trieste (29.9.86)

7) "Il Giorno" , article by Morando Morandini (9.11.86)

8) "Panorama" (9.11.86, page by Corrado Augias)

9) "Il Sole 24 Ore", article by Franco Loi (6.5.90)

10) "Panorama", article by Franco Brevini (15.7.90)

11) Article by Paolo Leoncini (1997 "Ateneo Veneto").

Essays

In the area of essays Magnanini has published :

1) the essay "Ideology of maoism, practice and political science" (Ed.CESES, Milan 1973- directed by Renato Mieli);

2) in ‚79 with prof. P. Verardo from Conservatorio B. Marcello, the essay "Music in the Veneto Region", edited by Regione del Veneto.

3) in an historical diary format, an introductory essay on the diary of Romano Romagnoli "To play Poker with the Power", (men and institutions in the tempest following 8th september 1943 in Albania), ed. ARACNE, Roma, 1996,

reviewed by Anna Piccinini in n°4-1998 of "Il Ponte" (review founded by Piero Calamandrei);

4) in the field of literary criticism, two articles in the cited review "Michelangelo" about the esthetic Croce-Karl Popper connection (nº2 and nº3/1993) entitled "Falsification of the Poetry" and "Popper versus Croce".

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

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

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