The school corridors had become encampments or hospital wards. The families had ended up against the walls, seated on benches, with their bundles and children, their sick relatives on stretchers, and those in charge trying to count up their own groups and never succeeding. Scattered and dispersed throughout these echoing halls one could see young Fascist Balilla Scouts, soldiers, officials in khaki uniform or in civilian clothes, but the only people in charge were, as far as one could make out, five or six Red Cross matrons, all sinewy and tense, as imperious as corporals, who manoeuvred that crowd of refugees and organizers and helpers as though they were on a parade ground, implementing a plan that was known to them alone. The order for the Avanguardisti to mobilize had not had much success, it seemed, not even among those who were always the first to put themselves on parade. I saw some of the corporals standing on their own, smoking. Two Avanguardisti were hitting each other and nearly crashed into a woman refugee. No one seemed to have anything to do. I had finished my tour of the corridor and had reached a door at the opposite end. By now I had seen everything and could go home.
On the far side the steps were deserted. The only thing there was a hamper, placed against a wall, on a landing halfway down the steps, and inside it was an old man. The basket was one of those long, low, wicker hampers, with two handles, to be carried by two people; it was leaning against the wall in an almost vertical position; the old man was crouching on the edge, which was on the ground, using the bottom of the basket as a back-rest. He was a small, stiff old man, paralysed, I would say, from the shapeless way he had crossed his legs; but the trembling which shook him would not let him stay still for a second, and made the hamper shake against the wall. He was toothless, and was muttering with his mouth open, staring straight in front of him, but not lethargic; on the contrary, he possessed a watchful, wild attention; he had an owlish look underneath the wing of a beret pressed down on his forehead.
I started down the steps and passed in front of him, crossing in front of the beam of those wide-open eyes. His hands could not have been paralysed: big and still full of force, they were gripped round the handle of a short knobbly stick.
I was about to go past him when his trembling became worse and his stammering more anxious; and those hands gripping the stick handle went up and down, striking the point of the stick on the ground. I stopped. The old man, tired as he was, beat the stick more slowly, and from his mouth emerged only a slow breath. I made to go away. He shook as though seized by hiccoughs, struck the ground, and started muttering again; and he got so agitated that the hamper bounced against the wall and started to topple. The big basket with the old man was about to tumble down the steps, had I not moved quickly to stop it. It was not easy to place it in a safe position, given its oval shape and the dead weight of the man inside, who was trembling but could not move an inch; and I had to have my hand constantly at the ready to hold the hamper if it slipped again. I was immobilized, too, like the paralytic old man, halfway down those deserted steps.
At last the steps filled with bustle. Two Red Cross people rushed up, in great agitation, and said to me: ‘Come on, you as well, hold this here! Move, come on!’ And all of us together lifted the hamper with the old man in it, and transported it swiftly up the flight of steps, all in a great hurry, as though we had been doing nothing else for the last hour and this was the final phase, and as if I was the only one showing signs of fatigue and laziness.
As I entered the crowded corridor, I lost them. Seeing me looking around, a militia group leader rushing by said: ‘Hey, you, what time is this to turn up at assembly? Come here, we need you!’ Turning to a man in civilian clothes, he said: ‘Is it you, Major, who is a man short? You can have this chap here.’
Between two rows of straw mattresses, where poor women were removing their heavy shoes or were suckling babies, there was a round, pink gentleman, with a monocle, and hair that was parted very precisely and of a yellowish colour that looked as if it had been dyed or was a wig; his shoes had little white spats on top and the toecap was yellow and perforated with holes; on the sleeve of his black alpaca jacket he wore a blue strip, with the initials UNUCI.2 This was Major Criscuolo, from the South of Italy, now retired, and a family acquaintance.
‘Actually I don’t need anyone,’ said the Major. ‘They’re all already so well organized here. Ah, it’s you?’ he said, recognizing me, ‘How is your mother? And the professor? Well, in any case, stay here, let’s see.’
I stayed by his side; he smoked his cigarette through his cherry-wood cigarette-holder. He asked if I wanted a smoke; I said no.
‘Here,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘there is nothing needing to be done.’
All around us the refugees were transforming the schoolrooms into a labyrinth of streets like you would find in a poor village, unfolding sheets and tying them to ropes in order to get undressed, hammering nails into their shoes, washing stockings and hanging them out to dry, taking fried zucchini flowers and stuffed tomatoes out of their bundles, and looking for each other, counting those in their party, losing and finding belongings.
But the dominant element in this sea of humanity, the intermittent but recurrent theme which first struck the eye – just as when entering a reception, the eye sees only the breasts and shoulders of the most décolleté women – was the presence in their midst of the lame, the village idiots with goitres, bearded women, female dwarves, people with lips and noses deformed by lupus, the defenceless look of those with delirium tremens. It was this dark face of the mountain villages that was now forced to reveal itself, to be put on parade: the old secret of the country families around whom the village houses huddle like the scales on a pine cone. Now, having been ousted from the darkness, they were trying to find some escape or some stability in the bureaucratic whiteness of that building.
In a classroom the old people were all seated on the benches; now a priest had also appeared and around him a small group of women was already forming; he was joking and trying to cheer them up, and a tremulous smile, like that of a hare, was forming also on their faces. But the more this semblance of country atmosphere took over their encampment, the more they felt somehow mutilated and dispersed.
‘There’s no doubt about it,’ said Major Criscuolo, as he walked back and forwards with a nimble movement of his legs that never disturbed the crease of his white trousers, ‘the organization is good. They all know their place, everything has been ordered in advance, now they’ll dish out soup to everyone – a tasty soup, I’ve tried it myself. The rooms are big, well-aired, there is plenty of transport, and more on the way. Yes, of course, they are now off to Tuscany for a bit, but they’ll have good lodgings there and be well nourished. The war won’t last long, they’ll see a bit of the world, some lovely towns in Tuscany, and then they’ll come back home.’
The distribution of the soup was now the activity around which the whole life of the encampment revolved. The air was soft with steam and rang to the sound of spoons. Imposing and irritable, the supreme legislators of the community, the ladies of the Red Cross, were presiding over a steaming aluminium cauldron.
‘You could go and hand out some bowls of soup,’ the Major suggested to me, ‘just to show you’re doing something …’
The nurse who was holding the ladle filled me a bowl: ‘Go towards the right, up as far as they’ve been served, and give this to the first one who hasn’t had any.’
So, full of scepticism, I devoted myself to dishing out soup. I moved between two hedgerows of people, anxious not to spill soup and not to burn my fingers, but I felt that the little bit of hope I could instil in them with my bowlful was instantly lost amid the general bitterness and disapproval of their own condition, which, to a certain extent, I seemed to them to be responsible for; a bitterness and disapproval from which the comfort of a little drop of soup could certainly not distract them: on the contrary, it only served to accentuate those feelings, as it stirred up in them a we
ll of basic desires.
I also saw the old man in the hamper again, leaning against a wall, in the midst of other luggage, resting stiffly on his stick, with his owlish eyes staring in front of him. I went past him without looking at him, as though afraid of falling under his spell again. I did not think he could recognize me in the midst of all that upheaval, but I heard his stick striking the ground, and him ranting.
Having no other way to celebrate our new encounter, I gave him the bowl of soup I was carrying, even though it was meant for someone else.
As soon as he took the spoon in his hand, a group of ladies from the regime’s Social Assistance initiative came forward, with their black forage caps sitting at a jaunty angle on their curls, their black uniforms perkily stretched over their voluminous bosoms: one was fat with glasses, and another three were thin with make-up. Seeing the old man, they all said: ‘Ah, here’s the soup for old grandad! Oh, what lovely soup. And it’s good soup, eh, it’s good, isn’t it?’ They were holding in their hands some children’s t-shirts, which they were distributing, and they held them out as though they wanted to try them for size on the old man. Behind them popped up other refugees, maybe daughters-in-law or daughters of the old man, and they stared diffidently at him eating, at those women and at me.
‘Avanguardista, what are you doing? Hold his plate properly!’ exclaimed the matron with glasses. ‘Are you half-asleep?’ In fact, I had become a bit distracted.
One of the daughters or daughters-in-law came unexpectedly to my defence: ‘No, he can eat by himself, leave him the bowl: he’s got strong hands and can hold it on his own!’
The Fascist ladies became interested: ‘Oh, he can hold it by himself! Clever grandad, look how well he holds it! There, that’s it, good man!’
I did not really have much confidence in leaving the bowl solely to him, but the old man – whether it was the presence of those women, or whether the soup aroused in him a nostalgia for lost happiness – got angry and yanked the plate out of my hand, and would not let me touch it. And now we were all standing there, myself and the ladies and the daughters-in-law, our hands stretched out – the ladies holding their t-shirts and little pyjamas – all surrounding the plate he was holding as he trembled all over, the plate he did not want us to have, and at the same time he continued eating and uttering angry syllables and spilling soup on himself. Then those silly women said: ‘Oh, now grandad is going to give us the bowl, isn’t he, yes he’s good at holding it himself (watch out!), but now he’s going to give us the plate so we can hold it for him. Look out! It’s falling, give it to us, for God’s sake!’
All this attention only served to increase the old man’s anger, so much so that he dropped plate, spoon and soup, dirtying himself and all around. We had to get him clean. There were so many people bustling around and all of them were giving me orders. Then someone had to take him to the toilet. I was there. Should I run away? I stayed and helped. When we put him back in the hamper, other doubts arose: ‘But he’s not moving this arm, not opening this eye! What’s wrong? What’s wrong? We need a doctor …’
‘A doctor? I’ll go!’ I said, and I was already running away. I went to the Major. He was smoking, looking out from a balcony, watching a peacock in a garden.
‘Signor Criscuolo, there’s an old man who’s not well. I’m going to fetch a doctor.’
‘Yes, good lad, that way you’ll get out a bit. Look, if you want to come back even after half-an-hour, forty-five minutes, that’s fine. In any case, everything’s under control here …’
I ran to get a doctor and directed him towards the school. Outside it was one of those summery late afternoons when the sun no longer has any heat left in it but the sand is still burning and it is warmer in the water than in the fresh air. I thought about our detached attitude towards anything to do with the war, a detachment that Ostero and I had managed to take to an extreme level of coolness of style, to the point where we turned it into our second nature, a kind of carapace. For me now the war meant carrying paralyzed old men to the toilet, that was how far I had travelled: see how many more things there are on earth, Ostero, than were dreamt of in our calm Anglophilia. I went home, took off my uniform, put on my civvies, and went back to the refugees.
There I felt immediately at ease, light and agile. I was full of a desire to achieve things, I thought I could make myself genuinely useful, or at least make myself heard, be with other people. Of course, I had entertained the notion of disappearing, of going off to the beach, of stripping and stretching out on the sand, thinking about all the things that were happening in the world at that moment while I was lying there calm and idle. So I had toyed with the idea of being torn between cynicism and moralism, as often happened to me, pretending I was split between the two, and I had ended up yielding to moralism, but not without retaining a veneer of cynicism. All I wanted was to meet Ostero, in order to say to him: ‘Hey, I’m off to cheer up a few paralytics, a few scabby kids, you coming?’
I instantly went to present myself to Major Criscuolo. ‘Oh, good lad, you’re back: you were quick!’ he said. ‘All quiet on the Western front here.’
As I was heading off, he called me back: ‘I say, were you not in uniform before?’
‘I got it all stained with soup, helping that old man … I had to go and change …’
‘Ah, good man.’
Now I was ready to carry dishes, mattresses, accompany people to the toilet. Instead I met a staff-sergeant, the one who had assigned me to Criscuolo: ‘Right, you, without the uniform,’ he called – fortunately he had already forgotten that previously I had been wearing it – ‘make yourself scarce; the Federal Inspector is about to come, and we want him to see only the right kind of people.’
I did not know where to go to make myself scarce. I wandered amongst the refugees, torn between my fear or disgust at ending up with the paralysed old man again and the thought that he was the only one of all of them that I had had some kind of dealings with, so my footsteps ended up taking me back to where I had left him. He was no longer there. Then I saw a circle of people looking down at the ground in silence. The hamper was now placed on the ground; the old man was no longer hunched up but laid out flat. The women were making the sign of the cross. He was dead.
That immediately posed the problem of where to take him, because the inspector was coming and everything had to be in order. A geometry classroom was opened up and permission was given to use it as a mortuary chapel. His relations lifted up the hamper and walked down the corridor; daughters, grandchildren and daughters-in-law followed after, some of them weeping. I brought up the rear, last of all.
Just as we were about to enter the classroom we met a group of young Fascist Party officials. They leaned over, their heads covered by their tall berets with the golden eagles, and looked into the hamper. ‘Oh,’ they exclaimed. The inspector came to offer his sympathy to the relations. He shook everyone’s hand, one by one, shaking his head, until he came to me. He stretched out his hand to me as well, and said: ‘I’m very sorry, yes, really very sorry.’
As evening fell, I headed home and it felt as if days and days had passed. All I had to do was close my eyes and I saw the long lines of refugees again, with their knobbly hands around the soup bowls. The war had that colour and that smell; it was a grey, swarming continent, in which we were now immersed, a kind of desolate China, infinite like the sea. Going back home was now like being a soldier on leave, who knows that everything he finds only lasts a short while, an illusion. It was a bright evening, the sky had turned reddish, and I was walking up a road between houses and pergolas. Armoured cars went by towards the mountain road, towards the fortified roads at the border.
Suddenly there was a commotion, some people running along the pavements, getting caught in the string curtains at the fruit-sellers’ and barbers’ shops, and others saying: ‘Yes, yes, it’s him, look there, it’s il Duce, it’s il Duce.’
In an
open-top car, beside some generals, and wearing the uniform of an army marshal, was Mussolini. He was going to inspect the front. He looked around and, since people were staring at him in astonishment, he raised his hand, smiled, and signalled that they could applaud him. But the car was going fast; he had disappeared.
I had barely seen him. What struck me was how young he was: a boy, he seemed, just a boy, as fit as a fiddle, with that shaved neck, his skin taut and tanned, his eyes flashing with anxious joy. The war was here, the war he had declared, and he was in a car with generals; he had a new uniform, his days were more active and hectic, he was crossing towns where he was recognized by people, in those summer evenings. And as though it were some sort of a game, he sought only the complicity of other people – not too much to ask – so much so that people were tempted to allow him it, in order not to spoil his party: in fact one almost felt a sting of remorse at knowing that we were more adult than he was, in not wanting to play his game.
The Avanguardisti in Menton
It was September 1940 and I was almost seventeen. After dinner I could not wait to go out again for a walk, even though I did practically nothing else all day but walk. Perhaps that was exactly the time when I began to enjoy living, even though I was not aware of it, because I was at the age when you are convinced that every new thing you gain is something you have always had. Because of the war, my own town’s tourism had stopped and it had shrivelled, so to speak, into its provincial shell; I felt it was now more familiar and I could get the measure of it. The evenings were lovely, the blackout seemed an exciting new fashion, the war seemed something distant and routine: in June we had felt it looming over us, but just for a few astonishing days; then it seemed to be completely over; after that we stopped waiting. I was young enough to be able to live free of the alarm of being called up; and I felt I was outside that war both in terms of temperament and opinions. Yet each time I allowed myself to fantasize about my future I could not set it in any other context than the war: and then it was a war of derring-do, in which somehow I found myself happily free and different. So I experienced both the pessimism and excitement of those times, and I lived in confusion, and went out to amuse myself.