Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Alceo Folicaldi pushed an upright piano in from the restaurant’s kitchen, where the owner probably hid it so it wouldn’t be played. Folicaldi must have known where it was since the start of the dinner, or perhaps he’d discovered it on one of his trips to the bathrooms, which were next to the kitchen. Several people swooped down on him as soon as he entered with the piano and again an argument arose about who had the right to play their songs in the first place. Once again, Johst solved the problem by standing up and demanding that, that night, we would only hear songs that would allow us to forget we were at war, at least for a few hours, and that was why in the end it was Mencaroni who played.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
You probably don’t know this, but Mencaroni was not only a writer, but a filmmaker as well: an unusual filmmaker who composed the melodies for his films and, before sound—by which I mean, in the silent film era—he would play the tunes himself on the movie theater’s piano, often introducing comments and observations about what the viewers were seeing or explaining the plots, as if they were incomprehensible to the spectators. The arrival of the talkies put paid to that practice, which was, at least in Mencaroni’s case, an activity so extraordinary, its unfinished nature so complete, that the talkies often seemed impoverished without his music and commentary, less satisfying, as if they were some sort of a regression. Then the war put an end to all Italian cinema that didn’t serve as propaganda, and Mencaroni, who was unable or unwilling to meet that requirement, hadn’t made a film since 1939; so when he began playing that night, it wasn’t the familiar melodies he’d composed for his films that we’d seen, but rather ones he’d created for the films he hoped to one day make.
Michele Garassino, Genoa, March 13, 1978
Borrello had taken a seat at the far end of the table and remained in silence the entire night, slowly eating with one hand while the other covered his neck, as if it was hurting him or he didn’t want the others to see it. Arnaldo Ginna addressed him a couple of times, and Rosa Rosà spoke to him as well, but Borrello exchanged only a few words with them, interrupted by coughing. None of us dared to approach him, and then Mencaroni started to play and I forgot about him. Only later, when I thought about it again, did I understand why Borrello had spent the entire night covering his neck: his shirt had no collar, it was the typical shirt of an Italian worker of the time, and that, it seems, embarrassed him.
Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
All I can say about Mencaroni’s film—I mean, the music for the film Mencaroni told us about that night—is that it was like a blind man’s drawing. Have you ever seen one? The blind’s perception is tactile and, as such, sequential, in the sense that they are unable to comprehend an object in its entirety, at a glance. Imagine a cube. You and I can see most of its faces simultaneously, and because of that we know it’s a cube; the blind, on the other hand, can only hold and touch its faces one after the other. Their understanding that it’s a cube comes from a succession of tactile stimuli, as they confirm the cube’s faces are regular and there are six of them, and that’s how they represent it if they have to draw it; as a series of six squares laid out one after the other. Something similar happened with Mencaroni’s film. The narration was linear, but the object it referenced, the hypothetical film, seemed set in a hard-to-imagine place in which time did not exist and description was not sequential. A place where words did not follow one another but rather could be spoken out loud all at once. In some sense, Mencaroni’s description of his film was saying that there’s a way to escape the linearity that affects music, literature, ballet, cinema—not the visual arts—and that is to conceive of the description as a lost entirety, or as an object we’re unable to comprehend. One that we have to touch and approach from different angles, describing one after the other, knowing they make up a whole, even if it’s an incomprehensible whole. Mencaroni’s art took place in time while rejecting time. His art made us walk feeling our way, as if we were blind. And as a result, it was exceptional art, only accessible through a multiplicity of simultaneous perspectives that’s said to only be visible through God’s eyes, if God exists. I am not God—I think that’s pretty obvious—so I can only imagine such art, but I think it’s the art of the future, if, once again, a future exists, something I’m also dubious about. So, here, these are my blind drawings.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
The music was all noises, as I recall, music that could only have been tolerated in an era without noise, a time without bombs or airplanes flying over cities, without antiaircraft alarms or explosions.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Naturally we were all very drunk by then, including me, and I don’t remember much. If anyone was sober, however, it was Borrello, who approached first Espartaco Boyano and then Atilio Tessore, leading them out of the restaurant to speak on the street. I couldn’t hear them from where I was, but I did see that Borrello spoke first and they shook their heads and then spoke and he made emphatic gestures of refusal, there in the middle of the street, as if he were talking to himself like a madman, and then he spoke again and the others shook their heads and then he left; Borrello headed toward the end of the street and the other two stood there for a little while before coming back inside. He didn’t approach me, and he didn’t approach Garassino either; while his reasons for not wanting to speak to Garassino seem obvious, I don’t understand why he didn’t want to speak to me. That was the penultimate time I saw him; the next time was a day later, but then, of course, it was too late for me to ask him.
Pinerolo
APRIL 1945
We are inhabited satellites.
A falling man
is creation
collapsing.
But we keep spinning
with the weight
of those who perish.
ARMAND GATTI, “Death/Worker”
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
The morning of April 21, 1945, broke with a magnificent dawn, like every other day that terrible month. I remember it perfectly, and I also remember how, when we found Luca Borrello’s corpse, his eyes were open and he was looking up at the sky, as if a moment earlier Borrello too had been appreciating that indeed it was a splendid day.
Atilio Tessore, Florence, March 11, 1978
On April 21, 1945, it rained all morning and then the sun came out; ironically, by that time we’d all found shelter and no one had the slightest intention of going out for a walk; in fact, some of us were already leaving.
Michele Garassino, Genoa, March 13, 1978
I don’t remember. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about and I can’t even imagine how one would be able to remember such a thing, what the weather was like on an uneventful day more than thirty years ago.
Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
On the twenty-first of April 1945 it rained all day and that made the search difficult. Gradually almost everyone gave up, except for me and a few others, who continued on despite the bad weather. Who can say whether their motive was curiosity, or the conviction that the missing person could have been any of them, or the speculation—right on target, of course—that searching would exempt them from the list of suspects. That was if, in the end, it turned out that Borrello had had an accident or been murdered, and not just left on the sly.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Giorgio Almirante turned to me during breakfast and whispered that Borrello had disappeared. “What are you talking about?” I asked him. Almirante told me the woman who ran the hotel had informed him that Borrello hadn’t returned from dinner. “It seems he checked in before heading over to Town Hall,” he said, “but never came back.” Almirante and I were silent for a moment; then both opened our mouths to speak at the same time, as so often happens. “What’s most important is
that this doesn’t get out,” I said, “that we deal with it amongst ourselves.” Almirante replied, “That isn’t possible, or at least not anymore, because the woman reported it to the police. She said she had to.” “Which police?” I asked him. Almirante shrugged; by that point there were dozens of more or less secret police forces, with contradictory objectives that were never very clear, even to their members, whose primary motives I imagined to be personal convenience, along with some sort of loyalty to their most immediate superiors. Wasn’t that also how the legions behaved, and later the condottieri? Perhaps it’s the only form of social organization that we Italians are willing to accept, the one that best matches our nature, as all the others have failed. “I don’t think we need to worry,” I said. “Borrello might’ve just gotten distracted somewhere along the way. He’ll be back.” Almirante didn’t answer; he got up and asked to be put in touch with Salò.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Later I went up to my room and stretched out on the bed to think about what to do; the second day of the conference would start in an hour and I was still thinking that Borrello was fine, wherever he was. Maybe he’d simply left the conference, angry over something or with someone, and gone back to where he’d been living, possibly near Perugia, in Sansepolcro or wherever he’d been spending those months we all—even those who, in some sense, wished it weren’t the case—knew were the final months of the war. It was strange to register his absence as an exception, a problem, because up until that point it had been, for lack of a better word, normality—at least for someone like me, who at one point had seen him frequently and then hadn’t seen him for years; it was as if, for the first time, an ominous portent lingered over his absence. Now I know that it was the situation itself that was ominous, and I wonder if Borrello had planned it that way—his disappearance and reappearance and new disappearance—so that our lives (completely desensitized to the pain of others, and even our own pain, after so many years of war) would be disrupted by an ominous situation that forced us to flee, to break with the stasis we found ourselves in (of which the conference was merely a manifestation), in order to seek refuge (those of us who could) from what we ourselves had created.
Espartaco Boyano, Ravenna, March 10, 1978
People say that when someone close to you dies, you don’t dream of them as soon as you’d like. I think I dreamt of Borrello just a few days later, although it’s possible, probable even, that it was weeks or even months later. Dating it precisely is no longer as important for me as the fact that in the dream I was irrationally convinced it was taking place the day before Borrello’s death. I mean I knew that what I was seeing and doing was all part of a dream, and I believed that the dream was taking place the day before his disappearance and not months or years later, as was perhaps the case. It doesn’t matter. This was the dream: I was walking through a park. It was autumn, a clear day. Then I saw Borrello. He was seated on a bench and waved me over. As I approached, he got up and quickly moved to a different bench further away, where he sat down and again waved me over. I continued my approach and he stood up and moved to another spot, further on, where he yet again waved me over. This went on a few more times, and I experienced a growing feeling of powerlessness. Finally, when there were no more nearby benches, and Borrello could no longer continue to flee, he remained sitting in his spot but raised both hands to his face. I asked him why he was doing that. They stole my face, he said through his fingers. And then he vanished.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
When I came down from my room I found the source of the noise that had awoken me: some members of the Black Brigades had come to the hotel to interview the conference participants, who were firmly refusing to answer or had stated, with varying degrees of truthfulness, that they didn’t understand Italian. Apparently Troubetzkoy had fainted or had a dizzy spell a few minutes earlier while being questioned by the police, and Morlacchi and Hrand Nazariantz were working hard to bring her back to life. A life that, frankly, if it were up to me, there was no need to bring her back to. I remained standing on the staircase, observing the scene, not daring to descend completely, and it was in that moment that I saw Almirante, who was trying to mediate between the soldiers and the conference attendees, particularly the French, who were shouting and refusing to answer questions, and Almirante saw me too, in the same moment, and shook his head. Years later, as you perhaps know, Almirante became a politician of some importance, with a career that, despite what people say, was based on intelligence and his eye for opportunity as well as a certain loyalty that some people consider useless and that serves not so much fascism as the ideas and ideals that made fascism possible. Those were the ideas and ideals of our youth, which, in some sense, fascism later betrayed, because all it could do was betray them. Almirante’s political career is maintained more by that foolish loyalty (which must be intrinsic to his character) than by votes, at least beyond southern Italy, which seems to be his fiefdom. In that situation, with that gesture, Almirante was being loyal to something perhaps not even he understood: he turned his back on me, and drew a one and a four with his hands, and I understood what he meant and went back up the stairs.
Oreste Calosso, Rome, March 16, 1978
Naturally, the bed hadn’t been touched, and there were no clothes or personal effects in the room, except for some sort of large chest that must have been dragged there by someone much stronger than Borrello, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. Both the door and the window were open. I stuck my head out the window; it overlooked the hotel’s interior courtyard, which adjoined some homes with clothes in the windows that must have been hanging there all night. I wondered if Borrello had taken in the same view, at least out of curiosity, and I told myself that he must have in order to open the window, although his reason for opening it was and continues to be unclear, at least to me. A woman emerged on one of the balconies over the courtyard and I ducked back instinctively. I realized I didn’t have much time: I took the chest and, with great effort, as it was even heavier than I’d imagined—which again made me think Borrello couldn’t have dragged it there to the middle of the room, although he may have—pulled it out of the room and into the hallway. I heard familiar voices in the stairwell, including Almirante’s, which was yelling and crackling in an attempt to impose itself on the other voices, taking part in the argument but addressing me exclusively, in warning. I struggled with the handles of various doors until I found one that was open: it revealed a storage room piled with brooms, rags, some tools, and a half-drunk bottle of grappa, which shocked me—though, of course, I had no reason to be surprised. There was a key: I pushed the chest inside and locked the door. Almirante was leading the group of soldiers up the stairs just then. His gaze was filled with terror; I had never seen him like that before.
Michele Garassino, Genoa, March 13, 1978
I was late coming down from my room: by the time I did, all anyone was talking about was Borrello’s disappearance, which I learned of from Bruno Corra or Arnaldo Ginna, I can’t remember; more likely it was Bruno Munari or Alceo Folicaldi; or, perhaps, Paolo Buzzi or Luciano Folgore.
Michele Garassino, Genoa, March 13, 1978
Two groups formed very quickly, the first mostly made up of Italians and Spaniards: we argued about the possible reasons behind the disappearance, knocking down other people’s theories and defending our own in a chaos where both sets of arguments were similar or exactly the same, though we didn’t notice that so it didn’t trouble us in the slightest. It was this first group that came up with the idea that Borrello could have been kidnapped by partisans, in other words, by criminals operating outside of Salò’s laws, an idea we all accepted despite its relative improbability, in the sense that the scofflaws who would later create the myth of the Resistance could have chosen a more noteworthy representative of European fascist literature to kidnap, if that was what they had done: Henri Bruning, Ion Sân-Giorgiu, Paolo Buzzi, or Han
s Blunck. Besides, kidnappings weren’t common in those days; the prevailing dilemma was between indifference and murder, with no intermediate terms. For some reason, however, that argument won out over the others, even over the idea that Borrello could have simply left, which is what I had originally thought. In the second group, on the other hand, Rintsje Piter Sybesma had gotten a detailed map of the Pinerolo area from the hotel owners and was studying it, surrounded by the Germans, who were tracing possible search routes. No one spoke except for a few whispers, there were no arguments about the reasons for his disappearance, just the enviable practicality of those who see in tragic events—for some reason, everyone agreed that, whatever had happened to Borrello, we should expect the worst, that he wouldn’t be found alive—an opportunity to exercise a talent or ability, in this case map reading and missing person searches. We southern Europeans also saw Borrello’s disappearance as an opportunity to exercise our talents—the only ones we had—which were, and are, a gift for controversy, unprovoked rejection of others’ arguments, and stirring up scandal. I probably don’t need to tell you that we employed another of our talents—perhaps the most important one: as soon as the Germans had divided up the territory and established search routes, we all set aside our arguing and obeyed them, as if obeying were the only thing we knew how to do.
Don't Shed Your Tears for Anyone Who Lives on These Streets Page 13
