We did not want to waste the afternoon in more distant, isolated villas, but wanted to stick to the town houses, where every landing opened up different worlds, every threshold the secrets of another life. The doors of flats had been forced and on the floors were scattered the contents of the drawers that had been overturned in the search for money or jewellery; and rummaging amid those layers of clothes, knick-knacks, papers, you could still find objects that were worth something. By now our comrades were working their way systematically through every house, grabbing anything decent that was left; we would meet them on the stairs, in corridors, and sometimes we would join up with them. It must be said, they never stooped to hunting for things, as we had seen Duccio do; when they found anything interesting or eye-catching, they would take it, flinging themselves on it with a shout before the others arrived; later maybe they would throw it away, if it got in the way or they found something better.
‘And what have you found?’ they asked us. I would growl between my teeth: ‘Nothing’, torn as I was between flaunting my disapproval and a residual feeling of childish embarrassment at being different. Biancone, on the other hand, waved his hands about, giving detailed explanations: ‘Oh, you should see what we saw! We know a place! You know just at the bend? Well, that house that’s been half destroyed? Go behind it and up those stairs. What’s there? Go and see for yourself if you want to find out.’ His gags did not work all that often, because he was known for being a piss-taker, but still they gave him the aura of someone who knew his stuff.
The excitement of the hunt had seized hold of everyone. When I met Orazi, all cheerful and excited, making me feel his pockets, I realized that there was nobody that would have understood us, me and Biancone. But there were two of us, we understood each other, and this fact would always keep us together.
‘Feel here, feel here! Know what that is?’
‘Bottles?’
‘Valves! Philips valves. I’ll make a new radio with them.’
‘Good luck!’
‘Happy hunting!’
Moving from house to house, we went into older, poorer areas. The stairs were narrow; from the state of the mess in them, the rooms looked as if they had been ransacked years and years before and left to decay in the wind blowing from the sea. The dishes in a sink were dirty; the saucepans were greasy and congealed, and perhaps had been spared because of that.
I had gone into that house with a group of other Avanguardisti. And I noticed that Biancone was not amongst them. I asked: ‘Have you seen where Biancone went?’
‘Eh?’ they replied, ‘Why? He certainly wasn’t with our group.’
We had got involved with several gangs, which every so often would split up and mingle with others; and I couldn’t say at what point, while thinking I was following the gang with Biancone in it, I had taken a wrong turning. ‘Biancone!’ I called up the stairs. ‘Biancone!’ I shouted down a stretch of corridor. I thought I heard voices, I don’t know where from. I opened a door. I was in an artisan’s shed. There was a carpenter’s bench down one side and, in the middle of the room, a table used by someone who did inlay work or worked with ebony. There were still shavings on the ground, splinters of wood, cigarette-butts, as if he had stopped work two minutes previously; and above it, scattered around and in pieces, were the hundreds of tools and bits of work that the man had made: frames, cases, backs of chairs, and God knows how many umbrella handles.
Evening was starting to fall. In the middle of the room hung a light-shade with a pear-shaped counterweight, but no bulb. And in the light from the sunset coming from the little window I looked at a shelf on which were lined up, all in a row, some busts of dolls to be used as Aunt Sallies, I think, or for a little mechanical puppet theatre: the wooden heads had been carved in a style that hinted at a naïve taste for caricature – some were painted, but most of them were still in their raw state. Just a few of these heads had met the same fate as everything else in the room and had been knocked off their necks; the majority of them were still there, with their lips curved in an inexpressive smile and their round eyes wide open, and one of them actually seemed to me to move, swaying on the upright peg that was its neck, perhaps shaken by the breeze from the tiny window, or by my sudden entrance.
Or had someone been in there shortly before and touched it? I opened yet another door. There was a bed, an untouched cradle; a cupboard wide open and empty. I went into another room: on the floor there was a sea of letters, postcards, photographs. I saw a photograph of an engaged couple: he was a soldier, she was a small blonde. I crouched down to read a letter: ‘Ma chérie …’ It was her room. There was little light, but with one knee on the ground I started to decipher the letter, and after the first page I began to look for the second. A group of Young Fascist sailors burst in, out of breath and all peering forward like bloodhounds; they crowded around me: ‘What is it, what have you found?’ ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I muttered. They sifted the heap of papers with their hands and feet, and then rushed out with the same breathlessness with which they had come in.
I could not see to read any more. From the window the noise of the sea could be heard as if it were in the houses themselves. I went out into the open. It was getting dark. I headed towards the assembly point. In the streets there were other comrades heading that way, with their jerkins deformed by humps and with the less easy to hide objects wrapped up in improvised bundles. ‘And what about you, what did you take?’ they asked me.
Assembly was in a pavilion that had previously been an English club, but was now transformed into the Fascist Club. In its corridors illuminated by chandeliers it was like a fair: everyone was showing and boasting about his booty, without fear of their superiors any more, and was plotting the best way of hiding it so as not to be too noticeable on returning to Italy. Bergamini made the tennis racquet disappear into the baggy part of his trousers, and Ceretti was cloaking his chest with bicycle inner-tubes, over which he put a jumper, and looked like Mr Universe. In the midst of them all I saw Biancone. He had some women’s stockings in his hands and was taking them out from their cellophane wrapper to show them, making them snake through the air like serpents.
‘How many have you got?’ they asked.
‘Six pairs!’
‘Silk?’
‘You bet!’
‘Good haul! Who’re you going to give them to? A present?’
‘A present? I can go womanising free for a month now!’
There: Biancone too; now I was on my own.
The others were cursing because they had been there God knows how many times and only Biancone had been clever enough to unearth those stockings.
‘The stockings?’ he said, ‘but what about my tartan scarf, now? And my cherry-wood pipe?’ He was top-class, Biancone, he was always the one with the sure touch, the one who always discovered a treasure wherever he laid his hands.
I went over to congratulate him, and maybe I was being sincere. Basically, I had been a fool not to take anything; they were not anyone else’s possessions any more. He winked at me and showed me his real finds, the ones he really cared about and would not show the others: a pendant with a picture of Danielle Darrieux, a book by Léon Blum, and also a moustache-curler. That was it: you just had to do things with style like Biancone: I had not been able to. The Commander himself was also having fun reviewing the booty taken by the Avanguardisti; he felt their jerkins, got them to bring out a whole range of items. Bizantini followed him, and laughingly agreed with him, very satisfied with us. Then he summoned us all, made us assemble around him, without making us form ranks, in order to give us our instructions. There was an atmosphere of glee, excitement, and everyone had that funfair of goods on them.
‘The arrival of our Spanish comrades’, Bizantini said, ‘is estimated at nine-thirty this evening. Assembly will be here at 8.45 p.m. to put ourselves in good order and be armed. After that we shall be off, and by tonight we will be back home. W
e will find a way of hiding this stuff, you’ll see, either in the bus or on you, and nobody’s going to object. The Commander, who is extremely proud of you, has assured me of this. Boys, let’s not forget, this is a conquered city and we are the conquerors. Everything in it belongs to us, and no one can object to that! Now we still have an hour and a quarter: you can go off again, but no noise, no carry-on, just as you have done up to now, off and hunt for what you want. I tell you this,’ he added, in a louder voice, ‘that any young man who is here today and does not take away something is a fool! Yes, sir, a fool, and I would be ashamed to shake his hand!’
A murmur of applause greeted these last sentences. And I was trembling with excitement: I was the only one, the only one amongst all of them, not to have taken anything, the only one who would not take anything, who would go back home empty-handed! It was not that I was less ready or sharp than the others, as I had doubted up until a few moments previously: mine was a courageous, almost heroic attitude! It was I who was full of myself now, more than they were.
Bizantini was still talking, giving his pointless advice to the impatient Avanguardisti. I was close to a door; in its lock was the key: a hotel key with a huge pendant showing its room number and the words ‘New Club’. I slipped the key from its lock. There: I would take away that key as a souvenir, a Fascist key. I slid it into my pocket. That would be my booty.
These were our last hours in Menton. I walked on my own, towards the sea. It was dark. From the houses the cries of my comrades reached me. I was seized by a gloomy turn of thought. I went towards a bench; and I saw that seated on it was someone in a sailor’s uniform. I recognized the yellow and crimson tassel of the Young Fascists under his collar: he was one of the young sailors from ***. I sat down; he stayed with his chin on his chest.
‘Hey,’ I said, and I still didn’t know what I was going to say to him, ‘are you not going off round the houses too?’
He did not even turn round. ‘I don’t give a toss,’ he said quietly.
‘Didn’t you take anything?’ I asked.
He repeated: ‘I don’t give a toss.’
‘Tell me, are you not taking anything because you didn’t find anything or because you don’t want to?’
‘I don’t give a toss,’ he said again; he got up, went off with long strides and his arms hanging down, amid the pointed shadows of the pine trees. All of a sudden he started to sing, but more shouting than singing, at the top of his voice: ‘Vivereee! Finché c’è gioventù …’ Was he drunk?
I sat down on the bench, took the key out of my pocket and stared at it in contemplation. I would have liked to have given some symbolic meaning to it. ‘New Club’, then Fascist Club, and now in my possession: what could that mean? I wanted it to be a really important, indispensable key, so that when they didn’t find it they would go mad, they would be unable to lock a room that contained some vast secret treasure, or documents on which their own personal fates depended.
I got up and headed back towards the Fascist Club.
There were a few Avanguardisti in the corridors packing up their knick-knacks; the corporals were counting the rifles and deciding on the layout of the squadrons; Biancone was there too, with them. I went along the corridors pretending I was bored, running my hand along the wall and the doors, whistling something that was like a dance tune. Every time my hand came across a key, I slid it swiftly from the lock and hid it in my hunting jacket. The corridors were full of doors, and nearly every one had its key hanging out of it, with the gold number dangling downwards. By now my jacket was full of them. I could see no other keys around. No one had noticed me. I went out.
At the door I met some others who were coming in. ‘Well, what are you taking home?’ ‘Me? … Nothing …’ But they saw the smile about my lips. ‘Oh, yeah, well done, nothing …’ they said.
I roamed around the garden. I must have had twenty keys on me. They clanked like old iron. ‘I’ve got my hoard too, now,’ I thought. ‘Hey, you, what have you got on you?’ someone passing by asked me. ‘You sound like an Alpine cow!’
I slunk away. The garden had pergolas and bowers covered with neglected climbing plants, and I went in amongst them. I started to realize what I had done. My incomprehensible act could, for one reason or another, be discovered at any time. What if some officer or local leader of ours needed to lock something in one of those half-empty rooms? … And what if my comrades – now or later, in the coach, or in Italy – forced me to show what I had in my jacket? … All those keys, with the room numbers of the ‘New Club’ on them, could only have been stolen from the Fascist Club: and to what end? How could I have justified my actions? It was clearly a gesture of disrespect, or rebellion, or sabotage … The former ‘New Club’ loomed up behind me with all its windows lit up, but with blackout blinds from which only vague blue glimmers could be seen. I was a saboteur of Fascism in conquered territory …
I ran on. I had seen a stretch of water twinkling: in the middle of a flower bed there was a pond surrounded by rocks, with, in the middle, a dried-up fountain. One by one I took the keys out of my jacket and dropped them into the water, immersing them gently so no clank could be heard. From the bottom of the pond a murky cloud arose, cancelling out the reflections of the moon. After the last key was at the bottom, I saw a pale shadow pass by in the water: a fish, maybe an old goldfish, was coming to see what on earth had happened.
I got up. Had I been a coward? Putting my hands into my pockets, I noticed I still had one more key: the first one I had taken and which must have stayed in my pocket. I felt myself in danger once more, and happy. My comrades were coming back for assembly, and I was with them.
An hour after we had been lined up in the station square the train containing the Spanish Falangists arrived. Bizantini roared: ‘Present arms!’ There were weak lamps that had been blacked out underneath the station roof. The Young Falangists formed ranks in that area of light, and we were very far off, down at the far end of the piazza. They were tall and strong, with what seemed to us squashed faces, like those of boxers; their red berets were drawn down over one eye, their black jerseys rolled up at the elbow, and their small rucksacks were fastened to their belts. A wind was blowing with short, sudden gusts, the lights swayed, we held up our rifles with bayonets attached facing the Caudillo’s young soldiers. At times we could hear the notes and cadences of one of their marches, which they had not stopped singing from the time they arrived, something like ‘Arò … arò … arò …’ They received some typically clipped orders from their superiors in their own language, and they formed ranks, measuring their distance from each other by stretching their arms forwards; and we could hear them calling and shouting at each other, though not very clearly: ‘Sebastian … Habla, Vincente …’ Then they marched off, reached the coaches that were waiting for them, and got on. They left just as they had arrived: without ever glancing at us.
When the time came for us to leave, we were all laden like smugglers as we passed in front of Bizantini, who examined us one by one to make sure we did not stick out too much. He sent each one off with a slap on their jackets, which jingled with the objects inside, or with a kick on the backside. I went past him as well, my empty jacket making my uniform seem close-fitting and smooth, and I kept my eyes up, looking straight at Bizantini, while he stood in a serious pose, saying nothing before moving on to joke with the person coming after.
The coach went back along the coast; we were all tired and silent. The darkness was cut through every so often by the headlights of motor columns; the houses on our coastline were dark, the sea empty, silvery and threatening. The war was on, and all of us were caught up in it, and by now I knew that it would be the decisive factor in our lives, in my life; though I did not know exactly how.
UNPA Nights
As a boy, I was a bit of a slow developer; when I was sixteen, given my age, I was rather behind in many things. Then, all of a sudden, in the summer of 1940, I
wrote a three-act play, had a love affair and learnt to ride a bicycle. But I still had not spent a night away from home when the order came round that, during the holidays, high-school pupils were to go on night duty once a week with the UNPA.1
The school buildings in the town had to be protected whenever there was an air raid. However, there had not been any air-raids up until then, and this UNPA business seemed just another formality, like so many others. For me it was something new and exciting; it was September, nearly all my schoolfriends were still away, either on holiday or hunting in the hills, or they had been evacuated in June and had not yet come back. Only Biancone and I were left in town: I would wander around during the day bored out of my mind, and he would wander around all night, having a tremendous time – or so it seemed. These shifts with the UNPA had to be done in pairs. Biancone and I, of course, made sure we enrolled together: he would take me to all the places he knew; we were going to have a great time. We were assigned the primary school building and a shift on the Friday night. A room with two camp beds and a telephone was our guard room there at the school; our task was always to be ready, in case of air-raid alarms; we could also make inspections nearby: in other words, go out as much as we wanted, but just one of us at a time, because they were going to phone to check up. Naturally, we instantly thought that we could also go out together if we squared it with those in charge, and that we could use the telephone in the early hours of the morning primarily to play tricks on people we knew.
Into the War Page 6
