That afternoon he had punctured the front tyre of his bicycle and had strapped a piece of linen around it to stop the air leaking out and just had to remember not to apply the front brakes lest the brake pad catch on the bandage, blocking the wheel, and he be propelled skyward. It turned out that he forgot about this special arrangement and came freewheeling at breakneck speed down the road towards the single corner in the single street of Villora. Someone in the raucous crowd outside Nedo’s bar saw what was happening and tried to stop him, but his momentum was too powerful and he slipped through their hands. Approaching the hairpin bend he braked with great force. The bike reared forward and he was thrown off and up, frightening Alfonsina and landing on the awning over her back door, which cushioned his fall and saved his life.
After dusting himself off and complaining of a sore hip and leg and bleeding a little from a blow to his forehead, he was given a glass of rum to calm his emotions and then, head swaying, he limped over to join the group outside the bar and listen to their lively conversation about the consequences of the war. After listening for two hours to various accounts, he announced: ‘There were twelve consequences!’
They all looked at him and wondered what he was talking about but quickly dismissed this utterance. Yet if they had reflected for a few moments on what Nello had said, they would have realised that their collective mind had already agreed on many of the consequences, which are presented below. They could not, of course, have known about those that had not yet materialised by the day of Nello’s bicycle accident.
…
The first consequence of the war was that for two kilograms of corn meal, you could buy Giorgia.
Before the war, and during it, there was a saying: Ci sono più puttane a San Ginese che pecore in Maremma (there are more whores in San Ginese than sheep in Maremma). Maremma is the wild, unspoilt region of Tuscany where sheep and cattle are raised.
Giorgia was one of the whores. Consider this: in the days when
a visit to a brothel cost 5 lire
a packet of cigarettes cost 1 lira
a day’s labouring in the fields was paid 5 lire
a night at the opera in Lucca cost 5 lire
1 kilogram of corn meal cost 1.2 lire
you could see Giorgia, who would let you do what you wanted to her in exchange for two kilograms of corn meal, costing 2.4 lire. It would take place either in a neighbouring stable or in a field. The war was here, they said, and no-one had any money so you did what you had to. ‘The war was here’ – that’s how they said it. And Giorgia did what she had to do.
With two kilograms of corn meal, you could feed polenta to a family of seven children, and their parents, twice.
Her husband, Large Joseph, the pig merchant, a gentle-natured soul, was a tall round man with round eyes and a flat nose from whose nostrils long tufts of hair protruded and who wore a battered round brown hat. He never doubted his wife’s fidelity, but Large Joseph could not earn enough to support his family by trading in pigs.
Some people said that not all seven of his children were his and that one of his wife’s visitors had slipped one in when Large Joseph wasn’t looking. When one of the children walked past, the doubters would place two fingers and a thumb under the child’s chin and lift its head up and move it around, sideways, a few times, to examine its physiognomy. The alternative gesture was to run your fingers through the child’s hair and gently push its head back to perform a facial inspection.
If you ask the people now, no-one can remember what happened to Giorgia – or perhaps they are all lying and prefer to forget what the war made her do and what their fathers did to her.
…
The second consequence of the war was that Il Pallone became busier than Il Bertuccelli.
Il Pallone was not a shoemaker but a cobbler, which means he repaired shoes and did not make them. He had been struck down with poliomyelitis as a child and walked in a strangulated way. Although he was barely able to climb the steep staircase outside the whorehouse just inside the walls in Lucca, he was nevertheless a whoremonger. Having caught syphilis, he produced two damaged children, Titino and Bettina, who were lucky, or unlucky, not to die. Because of the approaching war and the impecuniousness of the local population, who lacked the money to buy new shoes or have shoes made, there was a great demand for the more economical option of his repairs, and he was as busy as he had ever been. He patched shoes and stitched shoes and resoled shoes day and night in his little workshop on the corner next to Gino’s house. You could see him working at night through the glass panes of his front door as you were walking past.
At the same time, if you wanted a proper pair of shoes made you would go to Il Bertuccelli, who was a shoemaker. Because of the economic catastrophe that had arrived from America fifteen years before, and because most young men were away from home, having been forced to join the army, he received few orders for shoes. Il Bertuccelli was therefore poor and only made some money after the war was well and truly over, after the Germans had run away and the Americans had gone after them.
Nevertheless, he was a true artist and made exclusive shoes. If he made you a pair, you knew no-one else would have a pair like it. He made the upper of the shoe from one piece of leather, with the only break being the split for the eyelets through which you threaded the laces, under which was the tongue.
His shoes were very expensive but were sought after by young men with a sense of elegance. Ugo bought a black-and-white pair after the Germans had retreated, and his father scolded him soundly for throwing his money away. One more reason to emigrate was to avoid being scolded by your father. However, shoes were important because he was a great dancer, and the women in the crowd watched his feet during tangos and waltzes and fox trots and cha-cha-chas. The women imagined what a man with shoes like that could do to a dancing partner.
…
The third consequence of the war was that many Sanginesini had to disguise their political emotions and at least pretend they supported the authorities in Rome. This was difficult, especially for those villagers who just wanted to work their fields and wander the lanes with their cows, feed the pigs and collect wild plants that they could eat for the evening meal. Bucchione was one of these and did all he could to hide his beliefs and avoid military service.
At first Bucchione and his friend, Il Papa, who was from Pierini, had decided that they would present themselves at the recruitment bureau and leave together. Il Papa was to come round in the morning. However, overnight Bucchione thought about it some more and changed his mind.
When Il Papa arrived and stood at the front of the house calling out to him – ‘Hey, Bucchia, let’s go!’ – Bucchione stuck his head out of his bedroom window and shouted back, ‘Papa, I’m not coming. I’m feeling sick.’
Il Papa left for the Russian front by himself and years later, after serving on the Russian front, managed to make it back alive with all his fingers and toes intact.
This was at the start of the war, and Bucchione made up his mind he would stay in the village to look after his family. ‘And I am not going to allow myself to be called up and then have to run away to be shot as a deserter either!’ he would say to those who cared to listen.
He took to his bed, refused to eat, drank litres of wine and grappa and pots of strong coffee, kept himself awake and didn’t shave for a week, all the while smoking the strongest cigars he could find, one after the other, day and night. When the military recruitment office in Pisa wrote to him, he wrote back and told them he was too sick for military service. Then two military police officers turned up with a doctor to examine him. By then he was raving mad, bleary-eyed and gaunt, with large brown patches on his skin where the caffeine and the nicotine had seeped through his veins. Not only was his blood pressure high, but he had developed an irregular heartbeat and started having hallucinations. He hid under the bed and they had to drag him out so the doctor could examine him. His sister Gemma hovered around him all this time, keeping an eye on
him, making sure he didn’t hurt himself.
The authorities discharged him provisionally, and later, when he found work as a security guard at the Piaggio factory in Pontedera, which built fighter aircraft, discharged him indefinitely. It was work of national significance for the Italian war effort and was counted as military service. Riding his 80 cc Gilera motorcycle across the Lucca plain, through the early evening winter fog, to the plant where one day they would build the Vespa after the war had ended, Bucchione thought about the obstacles that kept getting in the way of his wish for a quiet existence.
On the other hand Il Pechini, from Castello, whose wife was Ugo’s schoolteacher, did not have to pretend to be a supporter of the government. His support was genuine. Because he was a devout fascist, but too old to go to the war, they appointed him secretary of the local fascio, the party chapter, together with another man from Centoni whose name no-one can remember. The two organised rallies in village squares to encourage the population to donate money and to maintain their fervour in support of the regime. They even held parades, with the village band leading the way, followed by the little children in their balilla children’s brigade uniforms, the men in their black shirts and the women dressed as traditional rural housewives, all striding through the hamlets of San Ginese. This took them three hours, and the approaching line of marchers, with its distorted fanfares of trumpets, could be heard a kilometre away and annoyed all the secret communist Sanginesini, especially the whole of Villora, which had for generations been the poorest hamlet and was waiting for the real revolution to arrive.
The administration of the fascio took place in the casa del fascio, a small building next to the church that had been built for the purpose. It was a smooth, white rectangular block with a balcony running the length of the first floor, and the effect was of a kind of modern colonnade with arches. Bucchione said it was called a casa because that was the word for house, and when you saw it or went inside you were supposed to feel like it was your home. It was a kind of trick by the government in Rome. On the ground floor was the dopolavoro, an after-work club to encourage fellowship among the men of the village, a place where they could drink coffee with cognac and play cards and be in company away from their wives. They did not drink wine there, because to pay money for wine rather than drink the wine you made yourself was a sign that you were morto di fame, literally starving to death, meaning you were an incompetent human being, unable to look after your most basic needs, perhaps not even a cristiano (which is a rich, poetic Italian word for a human being).
The dopolavoro, like the draining of the swamp, was one of Mussolini’s ideas. The men were happy to drink and play cards there, but not many believed what they were told to believe. Nedo or his father, who was also called Nedo, like his father before him, opened a dopolavoro in Villora too because the one at Castello was too far to walk to after a day’s work in the fields. It remained in operation for seventy years.
After the war Il Pechini and his forgotten associate were beaten soundly – pestati, crushed – and then bashed again, by the local people who had hated them for years and years but had been afraid to say what they really believed. The two men had been self-important and walked erect and with their chests so puffed out that the tails of their shirts slipped out of their trousers. About men like that they said: ‘Aveva la camicia che non gli toccava il culo. His shirttails did not touch his arse.’
The government was teaching schoolchildren the approved fascist way of standing and walking, and these two men had studied the relevant section of the elementary education programme and applied what they had learned.
At the start they thought they would win. Vinceremo! they would shout at the rallies.
…
The fourth consequence of the war was that the old men always remembered the fascist songs. The old men were children then, of course, and the marching music, the fanfares of trumpets and the words filled the hearts of the little boys in their little black shirts and little neckerchiefs, which made them look like boy scouts. Having been taught the words at an age when learning by repetition is very effective, they never forgot them.
Even after they had hidden or washed from their hearts their childish involvement in the balilla, old Sanginesini remembered the songs of the regime and the names of the African colonies: Abyssinia (later called Ethiopia), Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. The most popular singers of the time recorded these songs as if they were recording arias by Puccini or Verdi. The dramatic sounds of the orchestras brought to life the pictures in the hearts of the old Sanginesini.
‘Faccetta Nera’ was a song addressed to a pretty young Abyssinian woman, ‘small black face’. The little boys and girls learnt the words that told a story of Italian ships approaching the Abyssinian shore, bringing new laws and a new king. It is a song about doing your duty, black shirts, fallen heroes and liberation. The young woman with the small black face, according to the song, would in due course be shipped to Rome, where she too would wear a black shirt and march before il Duce and the king.
‘La Sagra di Giarabub’ was set at the oasis of Giarabub in Libya. When you listen to the words you are reminded of an old-fashioned theatre stage, with a painted moon nailed to a backdrop that depicts a palm grove, an ancient minaret straddling the dunes, fanfares, flags, explosions and blood. Then you realise the narrator of the story is a dead soldier who refuses his colonel’s offer of bread and water, asking instead to be given fire, fire the destroyer, and lead bullets for his musket, swearing that the battle of Giarabub will be the beginning of the end for that bitter foe, the English. The Sanginesini hated the English with a hatred never before experienced. One reason, apart from many other legitimate grievances, was that after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia the English banned imports of wheat and other goods from Italy, and many Sanginesini were impoverished as a result.
Even the children would chant the defiant rhyme of the period:
Con un pezzo di pan
e un cipollòn
mando in culo l’Inghilterra
e le sanziòn.
All I need is an onion
to eat and a crust
and the English sanctions
can go get fucked.
At Buffalo River in north-east Victoria, Ugo’s son would put the blue-labelled Decca record on the old turntable and lower the needle, and Ugo would sing under his breath the words he learnt as an eight-year-old balilla, daring the enemy to attack and fight. What he didn’t know was that the English force at Giarabub was made up mainly of Australians.
…
The fifth consequence of the war was that Vitale’s family of seven first became smaller, and then grew by one.
Before the war, in Vitale’s house lived his old parents, Tista and Ancilla, his wife, Irma, daughter, Lida, and sons, Sucker and Ugo. In the middle of the war Tista died, and Ancilla died a year later, and both moved to the final abode of all of us.
Seven became five.
Lida married Leonildo and moved to her husband’s house fifty metres away.
Five became four.
Sucker enlisted with the carabinieri and moved to the training barracks in Rome. The carabinieri was a military force – if you joined them, you could avoid fighting in the proper war, so any sensible person did that. Irma sent parcels of food to Sucker in the post.
Four became three.
So before the war there were seven people in Vitale’s house and then there were three. Ugo was shocked as a boy to experience, suddenly, a quiet house. He realised that your life could change unexpectedly, that the people who lived with you could go away, and you could not do anything about it. He decided it would be better if he made his own decisions rather than wait for fate to play its hand.
When Irma gave birth to a late-born son, three became four – but first, three almost became two.
…
The sixth consequence of the war was that Ugo almost died.
Having completed his elementary education, he attended a v
ocational secondary school at Capannori, where he studied agricultural practice. His education was permanently interrupted when he became sick with double pneumonia and began to spit up blood. He was cupped and given leeches before his mother called the doctor. After visiting Ugo in his sickbed, Doctor Venturini diagnosed fulminating influenza pneumonia and didn’t tell the family to pray for the sick boy overnight, for fear of frightening them. Despite the discovery of sulfonamide a few years earlier, the war had disrupted supply and there was none for Doctor Venturini to administer. He believed Ugo was on his deathbed, in his grandparents’ bed on the first floor, but when he returned in the morning the doctor performed an auscultation and cried out: ‘È salvo! He is saved! I believed I would find him dead!’
A radiological examination performed seventy-eight years later discovered that old Ugo had a large hole in each lung, which he attributed to that fulminating influenza pneumonia.
…
The seventh consequence of the war was that Gino came home early.
Gino, who had been called to military service a few months before and had managed to keep away from the fighting, strolled into Villora one day wearing his bright new uniform, polished buttons sparkling and every bit of cloth pressed, with creases in their proper places. He carried his helmet under his left armpit.
If it hadn’t been for him turning up out of the blue, no-one would have known that the Italian army had surrendered and was now on the side of the Americans, for San Ginese woke up that morning and everything was the same – except for Gino walking down the road, returning before the real war came and everyone had to leave for the safety of the Enchanted Glade and the Babbling Brook. ‘Ehi, Gino, bentornato! L’hai fatta la bella vita, eh? Welcome back, Gino! Been living it up, eh?’
The Fireflies of Autumn Page 13
