Bitter Spring

by Stanislao G. Pugliese

  In November 1934, police informer #87 wrote from Zurich that “the Socialist writer Ignazio Silone (who is called Tranquilli), coming from Paris, has had a brief meeting with the spy Dante Lombardo at the cooperative restaurant.” (There is no indication that Silone knew Lombardo was a spy.) At this meeting, Silone told Lombardo that the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party was riven by jealousy and distrust, adding that “nothing would be accomplished without a revolt in Italy itself.” Another police informer (#582), the double agent Aldo Sampieri, was charged with following Silone and Seidenfeld and discerning the evolution of their relationship. By late 1934, the informer was able to report back to Rome that there had been a “cooling of relations” between the two. Sampieri managed to invite Silone to dinner through the intercession of Fernando Schiavetti, an important figure in the exiled anti-Fascist community. The agent noted that Silone had been expelled from the party in 1930 [sic] but that Gabriella, even though sharing his “so-called demagogic thesis,” had not been expelled. Curiously, as late as 1934, Sampieri had not been able to decode Silone’s politics. “He is for others, and even more so for me, an enigma . . . his companion is even more of an enigma.” Even Schiavetti had unwittingly “confessed” to the informer that he could not pin down Silone ideologically. But within a few months, Sampieri felt he now understood enough of Silone’s thinking to make a daring suggestion to his superiors in Rome:

  It seems to me that for our situation—national and international—it’s not good that these pathetic scraps of an opposition, which exist only in their own minds, continue to shoot their poisonous arrows on all continents; it therefore seems to me that a system should be put in place to eliminate the evil, just as a sick person goes to a SURGEON . . . In this case it seems to me that Tranquilli is very close to the surgeon, and it might be time to complete the cure. (emphasis added)

  The regime never “completed the cure,” perhaps having learned an important lesson from the assassination of Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924, a lesson described by Pietro Spina: “Killing a man who says no is a risky business. Even a corpse can go on whispering no, no, no, no with a tenacity and obstinacy that is peculiar to certain corpses. How can you silence a corpse?” Matteotti was “a corpse that no one can silence.”

  Sampieri was soon joined in Switzerland by Giovanni Bazzi, a former Socialist who had become a Fascist informer. In 1936, Guido Bellone began a long decline in mental health, suffering from amnesia and other neurological problems. He was treated in the neuropsychiatric unit of the Umberto I clinic in Rome, retired from the police, and moved to via De Rossi, not far from where Silone and Darina would find an apartment on via Villa Ricotti. He died in 1948. It’s not known if Silone and Bellone ever met or saw each other on the streets of Rome.

  Further complicating the story is another document, not without mistakes, seemingly a summation of Silone’s career and a commentary on his relations with the Fascist police. Dated October 12, 1937, the eight handwritten pages were then typewritten and carried a cover from the Ministry of the Interior, noting that three copies were made and that one was sent “this evening” to Mussolini.

  In 1931 Tranquilli’s brother Romolo was arrested and tried for Communist activities in Italy [sic: Romolo was arrested in 1928, tried in 1931]. Secondino Tranquilli, who had a profound affection for his brother, suffered greatly. He tried to help him in every way possible, sending him money and even sweets and delicacies. In that period it appears that, having repented of his anti-Fascist attitude, he attempted an approach with the Italian authorities, sending, disinterestedly, generic information on the activities of the fuorusciti. He did this with the intention of helping his brother, who, in any event, stricken by a very grave disease, died on October 20, 1932, in the infirmary of the prison of Procida.

  This paragraph was later incorporated whole into a report filed by the Ministry of the Interior on October 23, 1957. The Christian Democratic government of the time, seeking to discredit Silone, had commissioned yet another search. The resulting document mentioned that rather than being a Fascist spy, Silone was an Anglo-American agent: “In some political circles, Silone is considered a trusted confidant [uomo di fiducia] of the American embassy and, through his Irish wife, in contact with the English ‘Intelligence Service.’ ” As late as March 1956, Silone was still defending himself against charges that he was an agent of the American State Department, filing a libel suit against the Socialist Lucio Libertini, who had so accused him. Libertini, extrapolating from Ignazio and Darina Silone’s reentry into Italy in October 1944 aboard an American military plane put at their disposal by Allen Dulles, concluded that Silone was indeed an agent for the CIA. When pressed, he withdrew his accusations and Silone dropped the lawsuit.

  In late 1937, another police spy had been charged with following Silone. Agent #507 (“Platone”) also had some trouble pinpointing him:

  I still have not been able to master the true soul of Silone [ad impossessarmi dell’animo vero del Silone]. From our first encounter, I pegged him as a dreamer, and he is a dreamer. But up to what point and in what manner? . . . Today I add: what does he dream of, and where does his sincerity begin? He prefers to listen rather than speak. He begins a discussion and then does not develop it, preferring to hear the response of the other person. At times he seems to look deeply into space with an air of apparent distraction, and in those distracted eyes one cannot read whether there is a thought and active intelligence or if he is merely tired.

  Platone apparently had a warm relationship with Silone. In January 1939, “visiting” Zurich, he sought out Silone, but failing to find him at home, left an odd letter with Silone’s editor Emil Oprecht. “How is your health?” he asks solicitously. “Do you need anything? Have the boots been useful to you? . . . Did you receive a postcard from Lugano before Christmas?”

  Silone responded from near Davos on January 13, thanking him for the boots and letters and postcards from Lugano, Bern, Luxembourg, and other places. Silone, using a new pseudonym, wrote that he would remain for a while in Davos,

  not because the climate does me any good but because the mountains remind me of the Abruzzo . . . I have need of nothing. It may seem a proud answer, but since my conscience is at peace, the right response. This does not mean that I am content with what I do, and even less with what I don’t do, but the only criterion to do or not do something for me today is my conscience and not self-interest or vanity. Forgive me if, because of modesty, these sentiments must be silenced in public; I express them in a letter that wishes to be only an exchange of greetings. It is proof of friendship.

  Saluti cordiali, Sud.

  P.S. Today is the 13th of January, that is, the anniversary of the earthquake of 1915, which was for me the beginning of many misfortunes.

  But surely the most curious, if not bizarre, meeting took place in May 1939 when Platone was visited by Silone and Gabriella Seidenfeld at his hotel. The three had dinner together and Platone recorded the following conversation, with all three using the formal “Lei” throughout. It sounds very much like a game of cat and mouse:

  GABRIELLA: What do you think? When do you think fascism will end?

  PLATONE: You think I can tell you when fascism will come to an end?

  GABRIELLA: This is what I want to know: When will fascism end? Is it possible that it will never end?

  PLATONE: It would be better if you think of something else, signora. Don’t concern yourself anymore about the end of fascism.

  GABRIELLA: You believe that it will never die? You believe that he [Mussolini] will never die? You believe that Mussolini will die a natural death?

  PLATONE: But what are you thinking of? You wish for more attempts against the life of Mussolini?

  GABRIELLA: Are you so pessimistic?

  PLATONE: On the contrary, I am optimistic! I myself am spiritually closer to Mussolini than to any other political person. What harm has he done, what evil has Mussolini done that he should be assassinated?<
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  GABRIELLA: And yet we here [in Zurich] have heard news of demonstrations in Italy.

  PLATONE: They have told you lies.

  GABRIELLA: It was an Italian from Rome, in fact, and he himself had seen the demonstrations in Rome.

  PLATONE: I assure you, signora, that he told you lies: How can it be possible to think of demonstrations in an Italian city like Rome? In any event, we watch everyone who criticizes, everyone, and in every corner of Italy.

  SILONE: And such a state of affairs is a good thing?

  PLATONE: This is not a case of good or bad. I assure you that there are no demonstrations in Italy. Today, Mussolini commands the country, and there is no one who criticizes Mussolini. Mussolini is master of the people because the people feel themselves to be protected by Mussolini. And in fact, all the social reforms are in favor of the masses and the individual workers.

  GABRIELLA: So it appears that the masses are content, but if tomorrow something happens . . . then you would see the masses!

  PLATONE: But what do the people still demand? Which state, which government has created and continues to create social reforms and all for the benefit of the workers?

  SILONE: There is poverty [miseria] in Italy.

  PLATONE: Poverty is not only an Italian privilege; poverty is everywhere, especially in the so-called rich countries. In France there is no poverty? In London there is no poverty? In the Americas are there not more than twelve million unemployed?

  SILONE: I agree with you. In fact, in one of my essays I said that the dictatorship has always been the emanation of the people, and that democracy has always represented the privileged class of the rich, etc. Even I agree with you in recognizing the defects of the democracies. But I would like Italy, our beautiful Italy, our country, to have another form of government. To take an example, I would like each citizen to be able to voice his own opinion. That the army, which represents the nation, in all countries, that the army, that is, the chief of staff, would frankly voice his opinion before the nation, before the government. I would like the elected class to give its opinion of the problems that are to be confronted.

  PLATONE: Well, don’t you understand that the entire privileged class of the nation stands side by side with Mussolini? Mussolini can be credited with burying all the old things and now the entire nation has been rearranged according to his orders. Mussolini knows how to educate an entirely new social class and to have himself enthusiastically obeyed and loved. Mussolini is master of the situation.

  SILONE: Yes, I understand. It must be as you say. But I, for example, just to give an example, would like our Italy to govern itself under a federal system, so that Calabria, for example, could thrive through a reciprocal exchange with Lombardia.

  PLATONE: But what are you saying? Are you losing your mind? Italy live in a federal form with itself? Italy, which has finally achieved national unity, should, according to your conception, subdivide itself into a confederation? What are you saying?

  SILONE: Yes, you’re right. I have confused ideas. It must be the wine that is confusing my ideas.

  Platone slyly concludes to his superiors: “I will see Silone again next week, but I will see to it that the wine clouds his head as little as possible.”

  It is an extraordinary document, heavily laden with Gabriella’s outraged innocence and Silone’s familiar irony and sarcasm. More important, the conversation throws a very different light on the earlier correspondence, giving some credence to the position that Silone was consciously cultivating relationships with persons he knew to be Fascist spies. Twelve days later, the same Fascist spy sent another curious document on to the Ministry of the Interior in Rome. It seems that Silone, Gabriella, and “Platone” had another meeting, verbally circling each other, seeking weak points.

  Lunching at the Ristorante San Gottardo in Zurich on May 18, 1939, Silone tries to convince Platone that he has definitively abandoned politics and is not a member of any political party. Consequently, Silone affirms that, his apolitical stance being well known, “I don’t believe that I could be followed or under surveillance,” surely an instance of Silone’s sly irony, as he was undoubtedly aware of his guest’s true character and task. Condemning the democratic parties as being (according to Platone) “demagogic,” Silone insists that “every form of demagoguery is a dictatorship” and that “today democracy no longer exists.” Gabriella instead baits Platone with a rumor floating around Zurich that Mussolini had made a secret trip to the Swiss city for an operation to remove cataracts. Platone reacts indignantly to this suggestion, claiming that Mussolini is “in enviably good health.” And, even if true, Platone continues, why go to Switzerland when Italy has doctors who are “second to none. Italy has always been the cradle of knowledge: Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Marconi, Mussolini, yes Mussolini is also great, truly great. Yes, in Germany there is Hitler, who is great, but not as great as Mussolini.” Reading this protestation, one must ask: For whom is Platone writing? Is he acting merely as an objective chronicler of a conversation, or is he transforming his written report into a sycophantic performance for his superiors in Rome?

  Platone’s report ends by transcribing a telephone conversation with Silone (both using the familiar “tu”):

  SILONE: I thank you for the telephone call. I have been sick for three days with a fever of thirty-nine. Today I am somewhat better.

  PLATONE: Here the weather is terrible; I’m feeling very irritable. Say, would you like to visit me in a week?

  SILONE: Where?

  PLATONE: In Luxembourg.

  SILONE: Thank you, but it’s impossible. I don’t have a passport, Luxembourg is difficult. If I could, I would prefer Sicily.

  PLATONE: What?

  SILONE: I would prefer to go to Sicily! To Taormina, where there is so much sun!

  PLATONE: Your wish is sacred if it depended on me. I will telephone you tomorrow at noon; we’ll see if we can meet one of the following afternoons.

  The reference to Taormina is curious. Why offer to traverse the entire Italian peninsula when an order for your arrest is hanging over your head? Could it have been a coded reference to homosexuality? In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Taormina had developed a reputation as a hedonistic city with a vibrant homosexual subculture, fostered by the German aristocratic photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden. Both Biocca and Leake imply that Silone’s ambiguous sexuality may have been a reason for the relationship with Bellone. Biocca writes that “it is nevertheless plausible to theorize that the relationship was of a more intimate nature . . . The context, the tone, and the language of the correspondence, along with the numerous encounters that took place in Italy, France, and Switzerland, and the protection accorded until the end, sometimes reciprocally, leave us to suppose that the relationship implied emotionally significant and perhaps, for both, unspeakable elements.” In Zurich, Silone had met Dr. Magnus Hirshfeld, founder of the Institut für Sexualwissenchaft in Berlin and a pioneer in the study of homosexuality. (Garbriella Seidenfeld had worked for some months in his office.) Leake writes that “it has also been murmured that the intimate friendship between Silone and Bellone was strengthened by a mutual erotic interest.” The letter of July 5, 1929, perhaps by Silone or perhaps by Gabriella, also contained an ambiguous line: “At this point in my moral and intellectual formation, it is physically impossible for me to remain in the same relationship as 10 years ago.” Could Silone’s yearlong experience of psychoanalysis in Switzerland have been undertaken with the purpose of “curing” him of the “disease” of homosexuality? Could this be why Darina Silone insisted in several of our interviews and in subsequent correspondence that Silone had never undergone psychoanalysis?

  We do know that as late as December 1942, Sampieri was still spying on Silone, complaining that Zurich was a center of intrigue against Mussolini’s regime (“boiled, roasted, or stewed, as long as it is Fascist flesh”). He notes a rumor that the recent arrest of Silone was precipitated by a transmission from Radio Moscow
that an Italian writer, granted refuge by the Swiss government, had signed a manifesto urging an insurrection of the Italian people against the Fascist regime. This apparently was the fruit of Stalin’s vendetta against Silone.

  “Everything conspires to confuse,” wrote Sampieri from Zurich in early 1943. “No angel watches over him,” he continued, adding cryptically, “If that dear woman [Gabriella?] were to talk . . . it would be the ruin of many others.” In an ominous report, an agent implied that a “vendetta” might yet take care of the problem.

  As late as the spring of 1943, two years after Silone had met Darina Laracy, Gabriella Seidenfeld was still involved somehow in his life. It was Seidenfeld who taunted Sampieri with the information that Silone had entered a refugee camp in San Moritz, forbidden by the Swiss authorities to enter the city proper. Silone was preparing a new work (And He Hid Himself) while Seidenfeld “split her sides laughing at Mussolini’s expense, unable to touch her Secondino.” With the Fascist regime only weeks away from internal collapse, Sampieri wrote bitterly back to Rome that, notwithstanding his earlier arrest by the Swiss authorities, Silone was able to move about freely between Davos and Marcel Fleischmann’s villa in Zurich.

  In an exchange of letters, Darina Silone was frank with me about the possibility of her husband being a spy: “I tend to think that Silone was forced by his Communist Party superiors to exploit his friendship with this police official to pretend to inform; information that the party could afford to give away, in exchange for finding out about OVRA attitudes to Communists.” “I think the real truth will never be known because all concerned are now dead. (There was undoubtedly something, but what? Everything must be taken in its context.) I don’t agree with any of them.” “I am not innocentista oltranza [believing Silone to be innocent to the bitter end], although neither am I colpevolista. I believe the documents to be authentic but I question the way they have been interpreted. There are ‘official’ documents ‘proving’ that I was a Nazi spy. I am still alive to explain the weird circumstances of this—Silone is not.” The scandal was taking its toll: “As you can imagine, I have many sleepless nights.”