in the streets we cross all the shops are closed the shutters are all rolled down and then suddenly all the helmets go on I can see row after row an expanse of coloured helmets like a sea of billiard balls coloured red white blue green black the demonstration stops in the avenue at a crossroads there ahead just a few yards past the crossroads is a roadblock cars jeeps super-jeeps lock up vans of the police and carabinieri protecting the fascists’ headquarters that’s a few yards behind the roadblock the front of the march with the stewards is at a halt a few yards away from the roadblock the spanners and the bars are raised threateningly police and carabinieri close ranks and take cover behind the shields stones are thrown in a hail that seems never-ending you can hear the thud of the stones as they hit the shields and the policemen’s helmets
dozens of petrol bombs fly through the air then come the blasts loud as can be yellow red blue they make a high wall of flames ahead of us some jeeps have caught fire the police break ranks they all turn and run tripping and stumbling in their flight one more volley of petrol bombs and other cars are catching fire a cloud of black smoke you can’t see a thing any more then you hear the dull thumps of the teargas canisters that hail down on us by the dozen a downpour of teargas that rains on us from all sides in a single moment the air becomes impossible to breathe the stewards’ lines move back and get to the road junction they stop at the junction behind in the avenue the march has crumbled and suddenly from the end of the avenue we hear the piercing sirens of a column of super-jeeps
the sirens get closer louder and louder I hear shouting all around then suddenly everyone’s running towards the sides of the avenue towards the pavement and all at once as the crowd parts there appears a huge grey-green super-jeep driven at top speed brushing right past us I’m running on the pavement as well more super-jeeps arrive from the column the sirens really close ear splitting stones and a few petrol bombs are thrown at the super-jeeps whose windows are guarded by iron grilles flames rise up from the side of one so many of them that they seem never-ending from the pavements the comrades are still throwing stones and petrol bombs they’re shooting ball-bearings and screw bolts with slings I see a super-jeep zigzagging in the middle of the avenue and then aiming straight for the pavement
people fling themselves against the walls of the houses they scramble up the grilles the shutters of the shops onto the first-floor windowsills the super-jeeps mount the pavement they graze the walls they brush against us I scramble up the grille of a shutter everyone is trying to scramble up but there isn’t room for everyone people hang on to one another the super-jeeps come on to the pavement scraping against the walls of the houses brushing against us one two three I hold my breath and close my eyes someone near me is screaming in terror I keep holding on to the grille even when the column has gone by and I can see the last super-jeep that has brushed against us and then kind of jolts and suddenly turns towards the middle of the road I can hear a lot of screaming all coming from the place where the super-jeep turned round
very loud screaming shouting I see a lot of comrades running in that direction I can’t see a thing there’s smoke and confusion they all have red eyes crying with the teargas I get down from the shutter and head over there running with others we collide with others coming from the opposite direction anguished faces staring eyes some lower their kerchiefs one’s running his hands through his hair I can’t see what’s happened there’s a group of comrades standing in a semi-circle some are weeping it’s not with the teargas some are sobbing one girl shouts something I don’t understand then further on I see the bloody body on the ground I see the long trail of dark blood and further on I see the reddish mass of brains the wheels of the super-jeep have spattered out of it out of the head spattered out
4
Then suddenly a puzzling still image that I couldn’t quite make sense of it wasn’t a photograph because inside the frame were hints of movement there was the intense glare of a floodlight it must have been filmed at night something shot very close up so close that you could make out nothing in any detail there was no commentary there was only that mute puzzling image I could hear only the rustle of China’s fingers rolling the joint then the camera lens zoomed back to focus on a head a man’s head the head lay on a stain a broad red stain and there was a red stripe coming out of one ear and running down along the cheek as far as the white collar of the shirt
the camera zoomed back again to show the body of the carabiniere shot down beside the yellow column of a petrol pump beside the body you could see a pistol I don’t know whether it belonged to him or the person who’d killed him I turned up the volume on the television which was down low the newsreader was saying someone had waited for the carabiniere outside his house and killed him with two shots in the head from a nine calibre no one had claimed responsibility yet then there was a review of casualties in the security forces since the beginning of the year pictures of carabinieri and policemen killed in the street or through the windows of cars a long list of names and dates
the images of the casualties were intercut with other images there was commentary on mug-shots of fugitives scenes of terrorists being arrested of gun battles with terrorists of killings of terrorists scenes of terrorists on trial lined up in the cages with fists in the air and threatening faces the tone of the commentary was like a war dispatch China who had by now lit the joint passed it to me and took the remote control and cut out the sound now you can see two carabinieri in full dress uniform stiff young men carrying a vast wreath of flowers with a big purple ribbon across it with The Government in big gold lettering on it then China changed channels she started changing backwards and forwards from one channel to another
at that time I had just stopped working in the dye factory and China and I didn’t have a permanent place to live any more we were moving around here and there for a bit with comrades who could let us stay with them we weren’t the only ones for sure to live like that not at all at that time we were all more or less compelled to be nomads because of the oppressive atmosphere at the time there were strings of arrests and house searches nearly every day and carried out quite at random on just anybody in the movement on anyone who in some sense was a comrade or had dealings with comrades so it was usual not to stay too long in one place
we tried to spend the nights at the houses of comrades who considered themselves less known less exposed or better still staying with friends who weren’t involved at all or staying with friends of friends the demonstrations and festivals in the square were a thing of the past the movement was like a great ghost absent withdrawn sheltering in its ghettoes the stage was now held by the trickle of clandestine armed actions where responsibility was claimed by dozens of signatures of combat organizations in competition the life of the movement was over but for the comrades it wasn’t over it wasn’t as if they could stand on the sidelines saying let’s wait and see because the repression involved everyone there weren’t too many distinctions made
and so we were there that evening me and China on that unfamiliar bed strewn with newspapers magazines clothes smoking a joint and watching television which we usually never watched and outside you could hear the police sirens going by nobody went about any more at night even at our centre we would see one another only by day and when we were out we were careful meeting comrades and then there was the business of Scilla and his friends that worried us we were worried about them and worried about how it might reflect on us I remember that we talked about it that evening too while China switched backwards and forwards from channel to channel with the remote control
before that Scilla was the typical steward who in fights with the fascists stood out as a very firm character very violent very aggressive Scilla had always been at the centre of all the fights he’d even fought the fascists alone and this is how he’d gradually turned himself into a myth because there in that small town the fascist presence had been sizeable and there too like anywhere else they did
n’t let people go about the town centre dressed in a way that marked them out as left-wing carrying a left-wing newspaper so the fascists provoked and attacked people who could be recognized as left-wing or just suspected of being left-wing
later the movement managed to win the upper hand thanks to guys like Scilla but at that time it was the fascists who ruled the roost and the police and judiciary shielded the fascists and through this Scilla and his kind let’s say the military branch of the movement built their status by virtue of a necessity acknowledged by all of the left the physical challenge to fascism was recognized as a legitimate necessary function and on this role of antifascist militant Scilla was able to build the status that in days to come placed him above suspicion when he began to play the role of police informer
Scilla always displayed an attitude of physical competitiveness towards everything and everyone even with comrades also because he probably felt unable to compete in other areas so that he was always aggressive sometimes pretending it was just in fun but it wasn’t much fun unpleasant yes that’s it unpleasant and with those he couldn’t draw into this physical competition his demeanour was a rather slimy and forced kind of awe in short he reproduced within the movement the same levels of violence expressed towards the enemy he always felt at war with everything and everybody and in everyone he saw an enemy on whom to take out his violence and he’d hit a comrade in the very same way he’d hit a fascist
and so inside the movement even Scilla’s kind had their uses he was an internal policeman he carried out a function that was maybe unpleasant but considered useful Scilla and his kind never took part in the internal debates of the movement in the meetings and mass meetings they were largely silent interested only in where the violence came in they experienced the stage of intensified conflict in merely mechanical and purely military terms of escalating the conflict and using violence against the State as earlier it had been used against the fascists they were always outside the struggles in the local factories and little by little began to mimic clandestine ideals and behaviour the habit of hiding a gun in the cellar and so on
later when things got as far as that meeting that conclusively split up our group and which I’ll talk about later after that meeting we heard nothing more about him and those who took the same road we never saw them again we heard nothing more about him Valeriana Cotogno and Gelso except in the leaflets claiming the armed actions that they carried out they carried out a series of armed actions before this carabiniere but I only discovered this once I was inside they didn’t do killings they did robberies a few woundings until this carabiniere but then when I saw it on television that evening with China we didn’t think for a second that it could have been them
China presses the remote switch again this time the screen shows a boundless plain the lens zooms in it must be filmed from a helicopter and you can see an ostrich running very fast on a flat barren plain it’s running fast in a straight line its head still the body rhythmically trembling the legs are so fast you can’t see them sometimes it turns its head and runs even faster a long low shadow comes fast behind it it’s catching up the ostrich turns its head the shadow is a few yards away the ostrich is running in zigzags now it gains a few yards but in seconds the shadow’s again very close the ostrich runs towards the void with all its strength the shadow rises into the air and in one bound the cheetah’s upon it they form a single still shadow the helicopter turns there’s just the grey sky and the noise of the blades
5
It happened right after Christmas on Christmas Eve I’d had a telegram from China to tell me she was coming to see me on Monday for a visit this telegram had arrived in the middle of a discussion I was in the dormitory cell with four other comrades discussing how to share the tasks of cooking the Christmas dinner I was making the risotto I was making yellow risotto and I was making the stock with a stock cube on the camping-gas stove a guard called me I turned and saw the little yellow square against the bars I thought it was the lawyer about the trial which was getting close now but then when I saw it was from China I thought I didn’t think anything I think I was very pleased because it had been a surprise and I thought that China had given me this surprise of a Christmas visit and I was very pleased
it’s funny I thought because all the Christmasses we’d spent together I don’t think we ever once celebrated one but now there I was preparing Christmas dinner I thought about China’s hair her long hair that when she laughs she throws forward covering her whole face with her long long black hair that when we talked with the glass between us I couldn’t even touch but luckily here there was no glass separating visitors now but then I remember how awful it was that we couldn’t even hold hands for a moment and this depressed us a lot even though we were happy to see each other but not in that inhuman humiliating depressing way and sometimes I’d get into a furious rage before the visit knowing I’d see her there behind the glass and that we’d have to talk through the glass without being able to touch not even a finger
again I was overcome by that feeling of hatred I’d had other times before the blood rose to my head a violent desire to kill the guards any of them right there and then with my bare hands if I dwell on it it’s as if I can still feel it now even after all this time well I wasn’t expecting that visit because China had come just the week before it had been a lovely visit we’d talked about so many things made plans because I believed I’d get out soon right after the trial and so I was touched now thinking about that unbelievable journey that she had to make for me every time a thousand kilometres to come and see me and every time another thousand kilometres it was unbelievable but after all that visit wasn’t to take place in the end because of all the havoc that was to come
Monday came no it was Sunday it was afternoon exercise time in the morning there’d been a search but oddly unlike the other routine searches this search had been a bit tougher than the rest and the guards had also done a strange thing they’d left because there the symbolic runs right through these things through the searches and such things it’s a matter of giving reciprocal signs and so the sign they’d left this time strange to interpret strange for me that is without any inkling of what was going on while the guards probably did have and no mistake because they had a nose for the mood of the moment there was this sign we found it there on the table when we got back up to the cells after the morning exercise
they’d left on all the tables in all the cells in all the dormitories they’d left all the objects everything in the form of a box a receptacle a tin a bottle in other words all the containers they’d put them there on the tables from boxes containing detergent to ones containing coffee or sugar to bottles of oil and shampoo all the boxes all the containers the bottles they’d left them there on the tables as if they were hinting at something or other I realized what it was only later to begin with I didn’t pay much attention the fact of finding all these things lined up there on the table surprised me and then later when I went for the afternoon exercise it also surprised me to find out that the same thing had been done in all the other cells too
so I remember that the atmosphere of that afternoon exercise was particularly tense there was an atmosphere you could cut with a knife and what I thought in the light of earlier situations I’d been in and experiences I’d had I thought somebody was going to get done in because there was a lot of tension and you could see it in the air you could feel it in so many things in a strange silence that was different from usual and especially from the looks quick rapid looks that passed suddenly between some people as they were walking up and down and then the thing that I surmised and that must have been on their minds a stabbing or at any rate the settling of some score or other and I was expecting it to happen any minute something like what I’d seen other times before like once shortly after they arrested me and it really upset me at the time
that time it happened as we were exercising outside as usual when three or four non-polit
icals because we exercised along with the non-political prisoners these non-politicals went up close behind another non-political they went up close to somebody exercising there like them and from behind they put a noose round his neck a knotted steel wire they put this noose around his neck from behind and two of them took his arms they held his arms tight to keep him from moving and they pulled the noose it’s this system that’s used to immobilize someone during a stabbing for it isn’t as easy as it seems to stab someone so that the blade can get deep enough into a vital organ but it can happen that the person survives even after twenty or thirty stab wounds
it’s not easy to stab somebody it’s not as easy as it might seem I mean it’s easy to stab him but it isn’t easy to kill him because besides he isn’t just going to take the stabbing without putting up a struggle he struggles he wriggles he goes wild he thrashes all over the place it’s very difficult to hold him still I mean and one of the techniques is precisely to put a noose around his neck first to pull it until he half loses consciousness because he’s nearly choking and in the meantime you stab him with the knife pushed up from below because wounds angled down are less effective you have to push the knife up from lower down and most important you have to try to aim for a vital organ maybe just under the sternum here
and so they put this noose around his neck and the others held his arms and the one behind him started pulling the steel wire noose but the steel wire noose broke or it’s more likely that the knot was badly tied anyway it snapped or it worked loose or I don’t know anyway they didn’t succeed in pulling it tight round his neck of course he was terrified because he knew at once what they had in mind trying to get a steel wire round his neck but as for them after a moment’s awkwardness they treated it all like a joke all the more because they hadn’t brought out the knives yet the knives hadn’t appeared yet
The Unseen Page 3
