The carabiniere on the typewriter watches in terror. I want to go back up. They’ll already be giving the exit polls. But why, I ask myself, does this wretch have to come and demand to see me right now, after four and a half years? Is this one final act of sadism? Probably I have already been elected – so maybe he wanted to deprive me even of the pleasure of finding out about my freedom through the TV election programme. In any event, he is now feeling the cock up his arse, and he can’t continue with his natural sadism. He withdraws into himself every time I look his way, this yellow simulacrum of injustice – like worms, he has an amazing ability to make himself small. I think of the cruel games played by country children, doing nasty things to worms and snails.
‘I refuse to be examined by you – and I call for your resignation from your post and your withdrawal from this case against me, since you have taken public positions and spoken publicly to my detriment.’ My very words, plus various other insults, which I imagine are also in the transcript of our encounter. He reacts. ‘I have always spoken through court proceedings.’ Obviously he has gone mad. He forgets the interviews – many of them – with the newspapers and the TV. He has gone crazy. But that doesn’t stop him. He stammers justifications. By now his colleague has gathered his wits, and he issues me with an official warning.
It comes easily to reply calmly now, avoiding the insults. However, I address both of them in the informal ‘tu’ [‘you’]. ‘But stop this,’ I say – to the one and to the other. ‘Who exactly do you think you are?’ With a bit of luck, this will finish them off. At last I can go back up. I am very tired, but this time they are not going to be able to lay a hand on me. I go up the stairs – a huge long journey, right through Rebibbia, on the inside … never has it seemed so long.
I look closely at the door frames, at the corners, at the windows, at the grilles of the gates and at the bars, as if I’m seeing them for the last time. I arrive in the wing, and from the first peephole I hear a shout: ‘It looks like we’ve done it! Bravo, Toni!’ This is confirmed from the other spyholes. Luciano waves across and tells me that we’ve done it. I go into my cell. We’ve done it – I see it, from the first results. I feel faint, like some feeble teenager carried away with amorous fancies. I don’t remember what happened after that. I ate supper in Luciano’s cell, and I wept, for the first time since I came into prison. (G12 Rebibbia – 27 June)
Folio 54
People send me flowers. The guards allow them in. Avalanches of telegrams – I want to reply to all of them. The news arrives that the voting figure is somewhere up around 50,000 – incredible. I have been elected in the three constituencies where I put myself forward – Rome, Naples and Milan. This is a huge political fact. I don’t know when I shall get out of prison, but it will be soon. A few moments of aggressiveness towards me from some of the comrades, but never moments of animosity. What we have here is joy mixed with hope – and, for some of them, also a feeling of envy, which is entirely understandable. The things that I keep promising to do are mounting up – shall I ever manage to do them all? On Wednesday 1 July there is the hearing – what to do? There are two counterposing arguments – one, that I should keep a medium-to-low profile in my speech to the court, and not go too far in personalizing the event (and the trial) we are living; the other says that I should make a strong intervention, calling for all the 7 April defendants to be released. I don’t think this second line is correct. We need more intelligence. First we have to draw up an overall strategy. I argue that at the moment we simply do not have the time to do this. A few people get angry. I hear an accusation which I often hear when I insist on reason against the immediacy of needs: people accuse me of a lack of generosity. With great freshness of spirit, I sense the trap that lies behind this accusation. I am happy to concede both the value and the force of this slight lack of (and most certainly not absence of) generosity. How else would it have been possible to modify the internal climate of the prisons, and to make politics even in situations where desperation was seizing you by the throat? How would it have been possible to transform the refusal into contestation and to articulate a revolutionary strategy, both inside and outside the trial, with a realistic tactics? I am always ready to wait for anyone at the last station – and precisely at the Finland station – and I count on having the courage to arrive there. And, concerning the occasions when I raised my arms in a sign of momentary tiredness (when I look at myself, I realize that my gesture resembles the raised arms of one of those scissor-corkscrews when you open a new bottle): the astuteness becomes humanity, while generosity, on the other hand, becomes stupid when the struggle is getting tough. But these are not the main problems today. The handling of my exit from prison must be a major, solid, political act. A project for justice must be prefigured in that event. In the determination we have to be able to see the universal. Exiting from the sensation of paradox. Laying the basis for future work. In the confusion and emotion of these days I am very much keeping my feet on the ground. I have won. But how are we going to make this victory productive? Up until now, our heroism has struggled against the implacable machine – now the time of life has broken the repressive intrigue of the trial. How shall we now bring out into the open this collective hope for liberation, at this point of intersection between the times of exploitation and the times of life? How are we to organize the work on this? I want to be clear-headed – the happiness is catching at my throat … the new things that need to be done are disorienting me in the globality in which they present themselves – a political problem, and at the same time so very, very many individual concrete problems of justice that need to be dealt with. I need some time to think. But, anyway, it is done. The first step has been taken. A flower, a beautiful flower, has suddenly appeared through the concrete of this damned prison. (G12 Rebibbia – 28–30 June)
Folio 55
Trial again today. The fifty-first day – and this is the final day of this phase. The trial will start again on 26 September. Just to be clear: either I’ll be there, or I won’t. I took this decision today, sitting in court, as I listened to the learned and malevolent speeches of all the supporting actors in this ignoble farce of justice. But let’s take things one at a time. We arrive in the courtroom, there’s a commotion, with a load of photographers and a lot of public. From the back, applause and cheering – for the first time, a big sound of happiness comes across this desert, and the spotlights somehow become more humane, and the highly sophisticated systems of internal control react hysterically. Their temple of idiocy has finally been profaned. I find it hard to hold back the tears, and I keep blowing my nose. This is perhaps the last day I’ll be in this cage – at least for the moment … we’ll see about that later. Enter the court, in the midst of all this fracas. I am called up. I ask for the trial to be suspended, as is my right, since the vote of the people has lifted me out of these judicial proceedings. I say this clumsily, rapidly, which is what happens when I get emotional. All I want at this moment is to go somewhere far, far away. A long way from everything. I wish I could just collapse into myself. When I win, I get little pleasure out of the fact of winning. Instead there come crowding into my mind memories of the wretchedness and injustice of still being here, up on the stand, in the dock. Suddenly I feel an incredible sensation of disgust. I want to vomit. I go back into the cage. The president has accepted that the proceedings have to be suspended. As I go down through the tunnels that lead back to the cage, I hear shouting from the courtroom. Marini, the procurator, has started speaking. Coming up from the basement, I hear him making wild and provocative statements – he is bringing new pentiti against me – Savasta, Libera and Marocco. He is multiplying the shame of their lying accusations – accusing me of murders, accusing me of political vulgarity – with an impassioned rhetoric and with the voice of an inquisitor. By the time I get into the cage, all the comrades are on their feet and reacting violently to his accusations. The defendants who are not in the cage are also protesting noisily from behind th
e screens. The public has started shouting again. A tremendous din, you can’t hear a thing. In the journalists’ section of the court I see Rossana ranting at the public prosecutor. The comrades say we should walk out. The carabinieri open the cage door, and we go down to the cells. I understand nothing of what has happened – but I feel the immense warmth of the comrades. It seems to me that suddenly, as if by magic, we have re-found ourselves in one of those working-class struggles of years ago – a music resonating on feelings of a joyous great aggressiveness in the face of this barefaced injustice. Meantime the hearing has been suspended – the lawyers come down into the cells and ask us to come up again. They tell me that Marini has been shut up by the president himself. ‘But why didn’t you say anything?’ we ask. ‘Wasn’t that what we had agreed?’ They don’t reply. With lawyers, distinguishing the sense of opportuneness from opportunism, or from cowardice, is a problem of high mathematics, with margins tending to zero. Marini has stopped, and the court re-enters. Emilio goes into the dock. He calls for us all to be released. The president says nothing in reply – and when Emilio starts getting to the point he tells him to shut up. Then, having silenced Emilio, he starts talking himself, and outlines for the various parties the problem of the eventual suspension of the trial. They all have something to say on the matter – the civil parties, the various state lawyers, and finally, once again, the Public Prosecutor. They wrangle over the correct forms and procedures. Once again the hearing is suspended. Finally Giuliano steps up to have his say. ‘This story of yours,’ he says,
in other words the story of this trial, is a dirty story … The way the proceedings have been doubled up is also dirty, what with the various different cases and bunches of new warrants, and the way the procurator has made deliberate use of this period of the elections. Enough, enough! Do whatever you like, just as you have always done. Stir the shit with the stirring-spoon of the law, if that’s what you have to do. But my client has to be freed immediately.
His denunciation is powerful, and the invective is efficacious. The court withdraws. They go into consultation for three or four hours. I imagine that they will have eaten and drunk well in that period. They will also have consulted all their friends and political protectors. That much seems obvious. Then comes the decision to suspend the proceedings. Until 26 September. We go back to prison. Very tired. I think: when the stickiness of the trial is a mechanical fact, then that is just the way it is. However, when, as happened today, the prosecution transmutes the stickiness into deliberate provocation, then it is hatred. Political hatred pure and simple. So it is true, what I had thought and projected ever since that first day of our imprisonment: you won’t get out of here by juridical means. This is only possible through political means. Four years of my life it has cost me. In relation to the political dimensions and effects of my rebellion, this is not a lot. But in relation to justice – the justice of a state of right [stato di diritto] which we appreciated and wanted to preserve – it is too much, too much. (G12 Rebibbia – 1 July)
Folio 56
I am waiting to be freed. (I find it hard to imagine the world outside. Flashes of a life lived. What is it going to be like? I get clear images of particular people and places in my mind’s eye. Strangely, mostly I remember Paris – my last weeks of freedom. What is it going to be like? They tell me that prices have gone up a lot. But people aren’t dressing so very differently from five years ago. And what has happened in politics? What can you grasp with the new gaze of a man fresh out of prison? Very violent visual flashes …) I need to get out of here quickly. But, before the judges will let me out, they set up ‘bicycles’ – that’s what they call it, in prison, when they create deliberate pretexts and obstacles to give you the runaround. Pedal, pedal – the pretexts, the difficulties, the deliberate obstructiveness … once they are set in motion, it’s like being forced to do a cycling marathon. But I really don’t think they’ll be able to block my freedom. Basically I’m already free. This must be because I am thinking and thinking – with my comrades and within myself – without straining myself in doing so, but with a huge feeling of exhaustion as soon as I finish – thinking and thinking about what needs to be done. For some time now we have been on the path to reconciliation. Now, with the strength of the vote behind us, we need to take some big steps forward. For how long will they leave me free? How will these dogs succeed in putting me back behind bars? I am optimistic – perhaps not on the basis of any reality, but in my head, with my mind, which is so wearied by projects; I am optimistic, profoundly so. Optimism of reason. The road we have travelled has been long. From dissociation as the reconfirmation of our non-terrorist identity, to the campaign for a political solution. And then also our handling of this trial, always on the attack, against the loathesome practices of pentitismo and against their emergency laws. Optimism of the intellect: we cannot not win. From what I have heard, there is a deep crisis inside the PCI on the problem of repression. However, the only way we can get out of this situation is by putting ourselves forward again as a political force. Pessimism of the will: in other words, our enlightenment thinking [illuminismo] meets with opposition from forces which do not want, and which cannot handle, a radical modification of the political horizon. The constants of the scenario are in place for a long time – a modification in the materiality of the political framework is almost impossible to obtain through proposals which aim to win over the components of that political framework. Unless some radical political change [catastrofe] occurs. Italy needs a new Resistance. In part, that is what the 1970s represented – but the defeat has been very hard-hitting. How are we to get over it, how can we bring the comrades out of prison and reintroduce a spirit of radical political change? That world out there, which I shall shortly be entering, is dominated by war. Corporations at each other’s throats. Rot and corruption of political power. And a magistracy incapable of controlling a society in violent crisis. Pessimism of the will, extreme realism and extreme attentiveness. And yet, simultaneously, there is this enlightened, reason-based hope for radical change. Is it my fault if, today, the only way in which reason can sink this empty representation of the political is through radical political change? Is it my fault if this world, which I am reentering, is marked by an insane and absolute lack of meaning, and is a body of the most absolute contingency? Petrified in the repetition of itself? Of its rituals and stupidity? As I step out, I am strengthened by two considerations. The first derives from my knowledge of what we were in prison: the only force (because this is precisely what we have become) which, cancelling out the negative effects of a historical memory which cast us out of political struggle, has succeeded in making its way back into it, and in producing new subjects of social war against the un-removability of a regime of repression, against a constitution that had been killed. And we did all that from prison. So that brings me to the second consideration: from prison to society. The vote which has carried me into Parliament. This was a vote given by people who recognized, in prison, the symbol of the society we are, of the crisis we are living. There are very many of them. I am referring to the estimated number of voters. It seems that the total number of people who voted for me throughout Italy was about 500,000. So perhaps it is possible, with a bit of optimism of the intellect and extreme attention to our initiatives, to set in place a relais, a multiplicative relationship between the struggle for truth, which the comrades are developing in prison, and political struggle in society. Against their infinite reproductions of prison. They – the enemy – have sought to establish a social peace organized on the model of prison. They – the enemy – have introduced radical change in the lives of individuals, and of society as a whole. Our response, too, has to be made on the basis of radical change, on the arc which extends between prison and society. However, we should not underestimate the difficulties of the intellect. The ineptitude and the vulgarity, the ponderous ritualism and the priestly stupidity of the political class we have before us, all this creates cruelty and violence
. It is an obscene spectacle. I shall find myself up against forces that are decisively and strenuously fascist. And today, given the way the world is going, it seems that the only alternative to fascism is opportunism. Don’t trust anyone, the comrades tell me. They know that I shall do this – I shall address my words to everybody, even to the enemy, without placing my trust in anybody. Except in the comrades, and in all those whom I love and who love me, and in all those who have been living, outside of prison, the same prison that I have been living on the inside. So let’s get ready. What awaits me is fearsome. I have to be capable of combining hope with strength. (G12 Rebibbia – 2–7 July)
Folio 57
I am out. After another day of interminable waiting, all of a sudden … I hardly had time to say goodbye to the comrades … they let me out all in a rush … pushed me out. There was a car in the prison courtyard, with a senator on board and a very skilled driver, and we went out through a side gate. We headed for the countryside, moving very fast. Going down roads that I had only seen from the windows of the armoured vans they used for transporting us. The violence of the image seen only through steel grilles now diffuses into another image, of nature – the image of this rich and splendid Roman summer. The colours of nature fill my gaze. The oncoming dusk is really beautiful. I’ll never look at the sky again – for too many years in prison all I could look at was the sky. Now I look at this earth, this grass that changes at every step. My foot savours the sensation of walking on grass. After four years of cement, this is another life – and the muscles communicate it to you, right up to your head, in the tenderness of the contact with the earth. I hug Paola, with love – and astonished that we don’t have the usual prison bench between us. Anna, my daughter, hasn’t come – she has exams this week. I walk with Francesco, my son, chatting. I phone my relations in Venice and Padova. I look out Doni and Sylvie, my friends – I don’t find them but I am thinking of them. Then Tommaso, Rossana and Luigi F. arrive, and I am able to express my gratitude to them. None of us can get over our amazement. Pasquale and Claudia are my hosts, and they are emotional about this moment. With them, as with everyone else, I have difficulties of language. Talking on the outside, with free people, is like talking a foreign language. You think in your own language, and you have to translate. There’s a swimming pool in the park – I feel like jumping in fully clothed. I take a quiet swim. Then I drink a fair quantity of whiskey, after four and a half years of going without. It still tastes good. The strangeness and the difficulty of communication are still with me. I pinch myself – this freedom is real. The night is full of stars. Now everyone has gone. I’m writing, letting off steam a bit. Tomorrow …
Diary of an Escape Page 16
