by Iris Origo
Almost the most immediate necessity is to get cooking-pots and pans, and these I have been lucky enough to find in Montepulciano. (The shops had buried them during the German occupation.) No less than fifty farms have to be provided for! Next, before the winter, will come clothes, especially for the small children. We will do what we can with the wool of the sheep that have not been taken, and perhaps later on there may be help from the Red Cross. After that, the imagination boggles: where, at a time like this, shall we find linen, blankets, or shoes?
There is cause for anxiety, too, about the general health. The place is still strewn with unburied corpses, both of men and of cattle. At San Bernardino there is still an unburied man in the stable, and six or seven other German corpses on the hill were only burned yesterday. And the flies swarm everywhere, bringing infection with them. In every farm there are severe cases of gastro-enteritis and we fear something worse—paratyphoid or what here is called colerina. When I drove into Montepulciano yesterday I heard that there is an epidemic there, too, and that eleven out of the twenty children in the Foundling Hospital have died. So we have brought our little refugees home as quickly as possible—singing all the way—in a great lorry provided by the British Army. For the sick I have bought some milk ferments, the only remedy available. At the hospital there is a lack of all medicines and medical supplies; they have even come to an end of their anaesthetics.
In Chianciano, too, where Antonio is working all day, the problems are numerous: lack of diesel oil for the threshing, of light, of water, of sugar and salt and soap, of all medicines or hospital supplies, of any transport. The refugees from southern Italy clamour unceasingly to be sent home, but the A.M.G. refuses permits, as we are still in the battle area, and the roads must be kept clear. I have formed a women’s committee, have issued an appeal for old clothes of any sort, and hope to set up a little workroom to prepare babies’ layettes, etc. But at the moment, with very little stuff or thread, there is not much that we can do.
Nevertheless, for the future I am hopeful. The whirlwind has passed, and now, whatever destruction it may have left, we can begin to build again. And it is here that the deepest qualities of the Italian people will have a chance to show themselves. To speak of the patience and endurance, the industry and resourcefulness of the Italian workman has become almost a commonplace. But, like other commonplaces, it is true, and sometimes, in times of crisis, these qualities reach a degree that is almost heroic. Time and suffering have engraved them in the lines of the peasant-women’s faces—a sorrow too deep for complaint, a patience that has something sculptural, eternal. Resigned and laborious, they and their men-folk turn back from the fresh graves and the wreckage of their homes to their accustomed daily toil. It is they who will bring the land to life again.
The Fascist and German menaces are receding. The day will come when at last the boys will return to their ploughs, and the dusty clay-hills of the Val d’Orcia will again ‘blossom like the rose’. Destruction and death have visited us, but now—there is hope in the air.
The Val d’Orcia today
1. I had not allowed for Florentine ingenuity. A great deal was saved and successfully hidden—to reappear in the shops immediately after the Allies’ arrival.
2. The child survived; it is still living with us, his mother having died.
3. ‘You should see what a stout fellow.’
4. After his return to South Africa he wrote a charming letter of thanks: ‘You may remember a foot-sore prisoner turning up one midday at La Foce—one among the many you helped—and receiving sundry items of assistance from you and your husband, including ointment for his feet and a route of the way to Laterina. It was the afternoon that the Fascists turned up from Siena and attacked the local partisans, and perhaps you may remember in what a hurry I had to leave when the shooting started in the hills surrounding your home—in such a hurry that I ran off with your pencil—which I fear I cannot return. I shall never forget how grateful I was for the socks you gave me; in a few days my feet healed completely … I stayed at Laterina until Cassino fell two months later, then pushed south with a Tommy who had called at your place the day after my visit. We wanted to call in again, but your contadini warned us that Jerry had got in first, so we went regretfully by … The kindness of the Italian people I shall never forget. They could not do enough for us who were wandering around waiting for the Allies … When I went home, I regretfully said farewell to the country that had meant so much to me …’
5. ‘Go on, boys!’
6. Wolff and Wildt—both civilised and humane men—have probably done more than any Italian, in the last few months of the German occupation, to save innocent people from the Germans, and also to protect Italian houses and works of art. In doing this, with great courage, they incurred grave suspicion from their own countrymen.
7. When we got home we found the room empty, and under the cypresses, a few yards away, a fresh grave with a rough cross, on which was written Unbekannter Italiäner (Unknown Italian). It was many months before we were at last able to trace his family in Bergamo.
8. This story proved to be wholly without foundation.
9. This was not true.
10. This unfortunately was not true.
11. Later on, they were all moved to our little cemetery, and lie there beside Giorgio, the young partisan.
12. ‘The bride’s walnut suite.’
13. We did. Thanks to help from A.M.G. in transporting a few lorries full of building materials, and to the industry and tenacity of the local labourers, a few rooms in every farm were habitable before the winter.
Table of Contents
Cover
Biographical Notes
Title Page
Copyright and More Information
Dedication
Introduction
Preface
1943
1944
Landmarks
Cover
Start Here
Table of Contents
