Pushing Past the Night

by Mario Calabresi

  The story behind the famous photo is shocking. There were actually five photographers on the street that day, four men and one woman. Unfortunately, the terrorists were able to track down four of them before the police did. Two of the photographers were at the main entrance to number 59: Paolo Pedrizzetti and Paola Saracini. In the sequence of images that was used at the trial, Memeo, after firing his gun, noticed the photographers to his right and retreated. Pedrizzetti managed to escape, making it through the front door and up the stairs to the top floor of the building. He delivered his roll of film to the newspapers and then to the police. As a result of his actions, he was subject to repeated threats by the terrorists. Saracini, in contrast, was too paralyzed by fear to move. Memeo shoved his pistol in her face and forced her to open her camera to expose the film to sunlight. She fell to her knees while the boy in the black ski mask continued firing at the police. The third photographer, Antonio Conti, captured this scene from the other side of the street. He originally told the police that his roll of film had been “violently yanked” from his camera by the protesters, who had attacked and threatened him. But as it turns out, not only was he a relative of one of Italy’s leading militants, he was also considered a sympathizer within terrorist circles, and he hid the photos to protect them. No one cast any doubt on his version of the facts until 1989.

  The fourth photographer, Dino Fracchi, was able to save his images of the three high school students fleeing the police with revolvers in their hands. He published them, an action for which he paid dearly. One month later, someone set fire to his Milan studio, destroying it and forcing him to live abroad for a period.

  “The fifth photographer was Marco Bini. He was wearing a white raincoat that concealed his Zenith camera, and he was able to take shot after shot in the midst of the battle. A few days later, however, he received death threats and was forced to give up his film rolls.”

  “I have never been to Via De Amicis or to Milan. I reject that city and I don’t have the courage to go there. But is there any indication on the street of what happened?” Antonia asks.

  “Nothing,” I reply. I had been there the day before, stopping at the point where the police had lined up. I went to the corner from where the shots had been fired and the doorway where two of the photographers had been standing. The copy shop is still there. It’s been renovated and is very nice, but there is no remembrance on the outside wall of what happened there.

  “What a shame. Anything that would make people remember would be welcome. There is a middle school named after Papà in Cercola, not far from the house where he was born. It was a happy day when they inaugurated it, seven or eight years ago.

  “Maybe I should go to Milan. I should read the transcripts of the trial and finally keep my appointment with sorrow. It might help me to get over, to articulate, the grief weighing down on me. I never read detective stories. I’m also wary of the news. I keep my distance from the newspapers, with all their death and violence. The fact that I never knew exactly what had happened filled me with rage, a rage that has no outlet. My mother did tell me—now I remember—that she had gone to the trial and seen the faces of the boys in the cage. She felt sorry for them. I would have murdered them, in the sense that I would have screamed all my rage in their faces.

  “Twice a week I see a psychologist. I go from anorexia to bulimia: I have an emptiness I can’t fill that leaves me helpless. I lost both my father and my mother. I have to pay the psychologist myself. The state has never taken any interest in providing this kind of assistance. It’s not about the money. It’s just that they never thought it was their job to support the widows and orphans economically, psychologically, or emotionally. No one has ever assumed this responsibility.”

  We go for a bite. She doesn’t want pizza, so she orders two salads. I try to speak to her the way my mother always spoke to us: about the future, the importance of living again, the destructive power of grudges that devour everything—love, passion, energy.

  She looks at me tenderly and replies, “I know you’re right, but I can’t help thinking what my life would have been like if I had had a father, if I had had brothers and sisters I could play with and confide in. My parents would have had a lot of kids and my mother wouldn’t have been the way she is today. Sometimes I obsess over it so much that I can’t take it anymore. I fall apart. I’m not at peace. I am alone with too much anger at what they took away from me and all the things I could have had but did not.”

  4.

  the blue fiat 500

  In the spring of 1972, I had just turned two. Our memories don’t normally go back that far. They get erased. Some impressions may remain, like a spin on the merry-go-round, fish in an aquarium, a ride on a motorbike, a scolding from your parents, a joke by an uncle.

  I have two memories from that period. The first is from Sunday, May 14. It’s a vague memory of a wonderful feeling, and the only real, palpable recollection that I have of my father. The second is from the morning of Wednesday, May 17, the day of his murder. It’s sharp, detailed, precise.

  It’s as if I had put all my childhood thoughts in a box, a special place I had created where they could survive intact the oblivion of time and maturity. For years I kept them inside me. To avoid ruining them, I took them out gingerly, in the dark, at night, before falling asleep. Then one day I shared them with my mother, but I was already in high school, and it was not until the trials that I spoke openly about my memories of the day that my father died. At one point, however, I realized that my telling and retelling of this memory was destroying it, like the copy of a film that’s been seen too many times: the image deteriorates and whole frames are lost. So I ran for shelter and filed them away in an attempt to save them. But maybe it was already too late, and today they’ve lost some of the overwhelming force they wielded over me for more than twenty years of my life.

  But the first memory has resisted and it reminds me that I am his son.

  They shot my father at 9:15 a.m., while he was opening the door of my mother’s blue Fiat 500. He had just left the house after going back twice, first to smooth an unruly lock of hair, then to change his tie. He had gone out wearing a pink tie, then came back to take it off and put on a white one. When my mother looked at him quizzically, shaking her head and poking fun at him, he explained, “I like this one better: it’s the color of purity.” She closed the door without giving his words a second thought. She was waiting for a woman who was scheduled to arrive at any moment. They had never met, but the woman was supposed to start coming twice a week to help her out at home: there was too much work, what with two children and a third on the way. She arrived late, out of breath. “My apologies, signora, but there’s pandemonium down on the street: someone shot a police inspector.”

  In the book that she wrote in 1990, my mother recalls that moment:

  We were in the kitchen. Paolo was in the playpen, still wearing his pajamas. Mario was playing with his toys. I sat down, ashen. I felt the three-month-old baby inside me kicking at my stomach. The cleaning woman ran to get a glass of water. “Do you feel all right, signora? What’s wrong?” “Did you say they shot an inspector? My husband’s an inspector.” The woman, whom I never saw before or since—a simple, unassuming woman in her forties—guessed the truth immediately. And she knew exactly what to say. “But, signora, you must have misunderstood. I got off the streetcar in Piazzale Baracca. There was a police barricade. They were chasing some wanted men and there was a shooting. They blocked the traffic and I had to do all of Corso Vercelli on foot. That’s why I’m so late.”

  I said, “Let me call police headquarters and try to reach my husband.” I dialed the number and asked for Gigi. “One moment please, I’ll connect you with his office,” the operator said. A few seconds later, someone picked up. “Is Mr. Calabresi in? This is his wife calling,” I said. On the other end, I sensed a kind of hesitation. Then, “He hasn’t arrived yet, signora. Don’t worry. We’ll have him call you as soon as he gets in.” The
y already knew what had happened. At that point the phone went dead. The telephone company had been instructed to disconnect it. I tried dialing the police station a few more times, but the line gave no signs of life.

  In contrast to her negative thoughts and premonitions of earlier weeks, my mother now seemed more inclined to deny that anything might have happened. To survive the next few moments, she grasped at flimsy explanations and improbable coincidences, hoping to somehow alter the course of destiny.

  Until the doorbell rang. When she went to open it, she found our neighbor, Mr. Franco Federico, a tailor and a friend of my grandfather. In the spirit of true friendship, he had bravely shouldered one of the worst tasks that life can assign to you. “Signor Federico, to what do I owe this pleasure?” my mother asked, forcing herself to smile. But he couldn’t speak, and he stood there in silence. In an instant the castle of hope that was still standing, despite everything, came crashing down. She retreated into the house, howling, “No!,” trying to flee the truth. My memory begins with her cry of despair. He tried to speak with her, but she kept running away, walking from room to room while I clung to her skirt. Frozen in my memory is the image of the two of us, in black-and-white, circling for a long, long time. I was worried that he wanted to hurt her, but I didn’t know how to defend her. Finally she stood still, he spoke with her, she wept, and I hugged her legs, feeling lost.

  For years I was afraid of Signor Federico. Whenever he came near me, I would start to cry uncontrollably. Every Christmas he would bring me a nice present, but I would keep my distance, and in the first few years I even refused to open his gifts. Over time we were able to reach a compromise: he would place the package in the middle of my grandparent’s living room and then walk away. Slowly, furtively, like a cat getting ready to pounce, I would sneak up to it, grab it, and steal away with it quickly to another room. I would circle it for a while and then open it warily. No one came with me. They would leave me alone, giving me all the time I needed. When Signor Federico was about to go, my grandfather would call out to me. Only then would I peek out from behind the door to say thank you.

  The last time I saw him, he still had a white mustache and white hair, very thick and shiny. More than ten years had gone by since our last encounter. He was in a bed at the San Carlo hospital, the same place they had taken my father. He was dying. Although he hadn’t seen me since I was a little boy, he recognized me and brightened up as soon as I came into the room. We spoke for a fairly long time and then I stroked his hair. It was still smooth, and he told me, “You have given me the nicest gift I could have ever wished for.”

  People often make lists of wasted opportunities. I also keep a list of the opportunities that were not wasted. That afternoon figures at the very top of it.

  • • •

  Signor Federico told her, “Gemma, they shot him. He’s in critical condition, and they’re doing everything they can to save him.” With a broad gesture of her arms, taking in the apartment and everything in it, she uttered words to the effect that nothing made sense anymore. I do not remember voices or colors, only images, not unlike Japanese cartoons, in which everything freezes during key moments, especially during combat or athletic competitions. The image goes from color to black-and-white and zooms in slowly for a detailed close-up. As an adult, I used to watch these cartoons with my little brother, Uber, and I was startled at their resemblance to the way my own memories operate.

  Signor Federico had just closed the door behind him when the doorbell rang again. It was the deputy police chief. He looked upset, and he said something like, “He has a gunshot wound in one shoulder. They took him to the hospital. We’re taking you there now.” Followed by “Are you all right, signora? How are you feeling?” I told him, “I’m pregnant with my third child.” He smacked the palm of his hand against his forehead as if to say, “This too?” In the meantime, the children had gotten dressed and gone downstairs. A police car, an Alfa Romeo Giulia, had been driven into the courtyard. Outside the main door, on the street, plainclothes police were stationed around the Fiat so that we wouldn’t see the blood when we passed by. Someone shoved me in the backseat of a car next to the children and just then Don Sandro Dellera came running and squeezed in next to us. He was the pastor of San Pietro in Sala, in Piazza Wagner, our neighborhood church, where we had gotten married on May 31, 1969. “Take me to my mother’s,” I told the driver, “I have to leave the children with her.” The Alfa took off, tires squealing. I didn’t have enough time to speak with the cleaning woman. On her own initiative, she went ahead and locked the door to our apartment, delivered the keys to the doorwoman, and disappeared from our lives forever, as much of a stranger then as the moment she had arrived.

  None of us ever went back to that house. My grandparents packed everything up. Mama would never take another step down that street, where a plaque in his memory would never be placed. She promised that she wouldn’t set foot there until the day the city finally made up its mind to remember him.

  I did go back, almost secretly, without telling my mother or brothers. I felt guilty about breaking a taboo, but I was going to the house of my favorite classmate, Alessandra. One day in junior high, she asked me if I would walk her home—I already knew where she lived—and I didn’t refuse. Thanks to her, I was able to reconcile myself with the place where my father was killed. Every time I studied its details and imagined my father’s footsteps, I tried to imagine what he had seen in the last minutes of his life.

  After a ride that seemed interminable, the Alfa came to a stop in front of my mother’s house, on Viale Caprilli. Waiting for me at the door was my sister Aurora. My mother had gone to the hospital. No one was home. My sister Mirella was in Africa, my father in Australia, one of my brothers in Biellese, the other in Germany. “Aurora, take care of the children, I’ve got to go,” I told her. I could see that she was trying to detain me, to put her arms around me. Then I said to the two policemen, “What are we waiting for?” One of them tried to buy some time by claiming that he didn’t know the directions to San Carlo very well. “Well I know them perfectly,” I replied. “The hospital is near here. Let’s get moving!” More hesitations. The police radio squawked. “We’re waiting for them to call us from the hospital,” the policeman continued. “They have to tell us which ward he was taken to. Would you mind going upstairs a minute, signora? We’ll call you when we’re ready.” The deputy police chief caught up with us. “Go on inside, signora, your mother will be here in a minute.” I let them talk me into it, but I realized they were stalling. So as soon as I went in, I gave Don Sandro a look. “Tell me the truth. Why aren’t they taking me there?” With a simple movement of his lips, almost wordlessly, he took hold of my hand and told me, “He’s gone.” Then I finally collapsed onto the sofa.

  They told me that I was on the sofa for an hour, holding Don Sandro’s hand. After an hour I came to and my first thought was Mario. Since he was older than Paolo he would figure out what had happened, with all those people around. I picked him up, sat him on my lap, and spoke to him as softly and gently as I could. “Mario, Papà has gone to heaven. You’ll never see him again, but he can see us. He’s gone to make us a beautiful little house where we are all going to be together one day. And there will be trees, meadows, flowers, wonderful toys, and all the things you like. We can speak with him and he can hear everything we’re saying, even now.” Mario listened without once interrupting me.

  The night before, my father and I had played hide-and-seek, as fate would have it. He had been given one more day with his wife and children. One more dinner, a few more pages from the book he kept on his night table, Khrushchev Remembers—he used to read early in the morning before having his coffee—and enough time to choose that white tie over the pink one. Fate prolonged his life by exactly twenty-four hours. Fate in the form of a parking garage. Let me explain. Since he didn’t have an assigned spot in the garage downstairs, he always had to park the Fiat on the street at night. There was just enough sp
ace on the ramp to the garage to park a small car, and whoever got there first could take it. Though my father always tried, especially because it made him feel safer, he almost never got it, since he came home so late. But on May 15 he got home early for a change, and he was able to claim the spot on the ramp. And the next morning, he was late leaving the apartment. The combination of these two circumstances gave us the gift of an extra evening of play.

  We did not discover this until many years later, in 1990, during the first trial. Leonardo Marino, the driver of the getaway car who turned state’s witness, testified that the murder had initially been planned for May 16. The criminals had staked out a position on the street very early, but after surveying the area a few times they still couldn’t find the blue Fiat. The appointed time came and went. They waited for another half hour, until 9:30, and then, figuring that he had probably left at dawn, they decided to try again the next day.

  The evidence for this development did not emerge until the day of my mother’s testimony. On the witness stand, she described how a few months before the murder she had started to keep a diary of my father’s schedule. She wrote it in a small date book, a gift from the Dutch Tourism Board, with “Holland ’72” written on the cover. Her reasons for doing it were partly for fun, partly to make a point. She used to claim that my father wasn’t getting paid for all the overtime that he did, so she jotted down in the date book at what times he left in the morning and at what times he came back—often in the dead of night. In the courtroom, she was asked to read the date book aloud. When she came to May 15, she understood why. On that date, she had written, “Gigi came home early tonight.” It meant that he had found a spot on the garage ramp and the car was in the inner courtyard, where you couldn’t see it from the street. On May 16, she had written, “Gigi leaves at 9:30.” On the same page, at the bottom, there are a couple of other lines. “Gigi comes home with chocolates and candies and we play hide-and-seek with Mario.”