History (4 page)

Air war of Hitler against England, with uninterrupted bombings and total destruction of roads, harbors, installations, and entire inhabited cities. A new verb is invented: to coventrize, from the English city of Coventry, pulverized by the German air raids. The terroristic battle, continued without pause for weeks and months with the intention of breaking down British resistance (in view of a possible, decisive landing), does not, however, achieve the desired eff t.

The action in progress in the West, meanwhile, does not distract the Fiihrer from other secret projects of his own for an imminent action in the East against tl1e Soviet Union ( foreseen in the historic plan of the Great Reich, which calls for the extermination of the inferior Slavic race and the erasing from tl1e earth of the Bolshevik Specter ). But l1ere again the Fiiluer underestimates his adversary's resources, as well as tl1e operation's risks.

T ripartite Pact: Germany-Italy-Japan, with the aim of establishing a "new order" (Imperial-Fascist) in Eurasia. The pact is signed also by Hun gary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Sl ovakia, and Yugoslavia.

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AUTUMN-WINTER 1940

Sudden Italian aggression agains t Greece, announced by tlwse respon sible as "an easy stroll. " The ill-advis ed undertaking proves, instead, disas trous for the Italians . Driven back by the Greeks, in a dis orderly rout, without supplies, they are overtaken by winter in the mountains of Epirus .

The Italian fl suff severe loss es in the Mediterranean.

In North Africa, the Italians have diffi defending their garrisons, tlueatened by the desert army of the British . . .

One January afternoon in the year

1941

a German soldier was out walking

in the San Lorenzo district in Rome.

He knew precisely
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words of Italian

and of the world he knew little or nothing. His fi name was Gunther.

His surname is unknown.

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One January afternoon in the year 1941, a German soldier was out walking, enjoying an afternoon's liberty, when he found himself wanderi alone, through the San Lorenzo district of Rome. It was about two o'clock in the aftern , and as usual at that hour

there were very few people in the streets. None of the passersby looked at the soldier in any case, because the Germans, even if they were the Italians' comrades in the current world war, were not popular in certain working class areas. Nor was the soldier in any way distinct from the others of the seri : tall, blondish, with the usual excessive discipline in his bearing and, especially in the position of his cap, a provocative assertion of conform

Naturally, if anyone chose to observe him, he showed some individual characteristics. For example, in contrast with his martial stride, he had a desperate expression in his eyes. His face betrayed an incredible immatur ity, although he was six feet tall, more or less. And his uniform-a really comical thing for a soldier of the Reich, particularly in those early days of the war-though new and fi his thin body tightly, was short at the waist and in the sleeves, exposing his thick wrists, rough and innocent, like a worker's or peasant's.

He had, as it happened, grown suddenly, unseasonably, all duri th last summer and autumn; and so, in his body's haste to reach maturity, his face, through lack of time, had remained the same as before. It seemed to accuse him of not having the minimum age requirement even for his very low rank. He was a simple recruit called up in the latest draft. And until the time of his summons to his military duties, he had always lived with his brothers and his widowed mother in his native home in Bavaria, near Munich.

His legal residence, to be specifi was the rural village of Dachau, which later, at the war's end, was to become famous for th camp on its outskirts devoted "to labor and to biological experiments." But at the ti when the boy was growing up in the village, that insane slaughter-machine was still in its initial and secret testing phase. In the vicinity, and even abroad, it was actually praised as a kind of model reformatory for deviants

. . . In those days, its inhabitants numbered perhaps fi or six thousand; but the camp was to become more populous each year. At the end, in 1945, the total number of its corpses was 66,428.

However, just as the soldier's personal explorations could not extend (obviously) to the unheard-of future, so also towards the past, and even within the present itself, they had thus far remained very vague, few, and limited. For him, that little maternal hamlet in Bavaria signifi the only clear, domestic spot in the tangled dance of fate. Beyond there, until he became a warrior, he had visited only the nearby city of Munich, where he

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went to do some jobs as an electrician and where, rather recently, he had learned to make love, thanks to an elderly prostitute.

The winter day in Rome was cloudy, with a sirocco wind. Yesterday had be Epiphany, "the holiday that ends the holidays," and only a few days earlier the soldier had ended his Christmas leave, spent at home with the family.

His Christian name was Gunther. His surn is unknown

They had unloaded him in Rome that very morning, for a brief prepa ratory stage along his journey towards a fi destination, knowledge of which was reserved for the General Staff but kept from the troops. Pri vately, his companions in his unit guessed that the mysterious destination was Africa, where apparently there were plans to set up some garr to defend the colonial possessions of their ally Italy. This news had thri him from the beginning with its prospects of genuine exotic adventure.

AFRICA! For someone who is barely grown, whose journeys have all been by bicycle or bus to Munich, this is a magic name!

AFRICA! AFRICA!!

. . . More than a thousand suns and ten thousand drums za tamtam baobab ibar!

A thousand drums and ten thousand suns on the breadfruit and the cocoa trees!

Red orange green red

the monkeys play football with coconuts

Here comes the head Witch Doctor Mbunumnu Rubumbu under a parasol of parrot's feathers!!!

Here is the white marauder riding a water buff

who combs the mountains of the Dragon and of Atlas za tamtam baobab ibar

in the tunnels of the river forests where the anteaters jump in droves!

I have a gold-bearing and diamond-bearing hut and an ostrich has nested on my roof

I go dancing with the headhunters I have bewitched a rattlesnake.

Red orange green red

I sleep in a hammock in the Ruwenzori In the zone of the thousand hills

I catch lions and tigers like hares

I ride in a canoe on the hippopotamus' river a thousand drums and ten thousand suns!

I catch crocodiles like lizards

1 4 H I S T O R Y
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in Lake Ngami and in the Limpopo.

. . . This stop, here in Italy, was his first foreign experience; and it could already serv as a foretaste of curiosity and excitement. But even before arriving, as he crossed the German border, he had been gripped by a ghastly, lonely melancholy, proof of his still adolescent character, filled with contradictions. To some extent, in fact, he was impatient for adven ture; but to some extent, also, unknown to himself, he remained a mamma's boy. At times he vowed he would perform superheroic acts, in honor of his Fuhrer; and at the same time, he suspected the war was a vague algebra, thought up by the General Staff which had nothing to do with him. At times he felt ready for any bloodthirsty brutality; at other ti duri the journ he brooded constantly, in bitter compassion, about his prostitute in Munich, th how she wouldn't fi many customers these days, because she was old.

As his journ proceeded towards the South, this sad mood prevailed over every other feeling, until he became blind to landsca people, to any sight or novelty: "Here I am," he said to himself, "being carr bodily, like a cat in a sack, towards the Black Continent!" Not
Africa,
he thought this ti but actually
Schwarzer Erdteil, Black Continent:
seeing the image of a black tarpaulin already stretched out above him to infi isolating him even from his present companions. And his mother, his brothers, the climbing vines on the wall of the house, the stove in the hall, were a vortex that spun away, beyond that black curtain, like a galaxy in fli through the universes.

This was his state when he rea the city of Rome and used his afternoon pass to venture, at random, into the streets near the barracks where his unit had been installed for their stay. And he happened into the San Lorenzo district, not through any choice, but like an accused man encircled by guards, who doesn't know what to do with his last mockery of freedom, useless as a rag. He knew a total of 4 words in Italian, and of Rome he knew only the bits of information taught in school. So he could easily assume that the old, decrepit apartment blocks of San Lorenzo were no doubt the ancient monumental architectures of the Eternal City! And when, beyond the wall of the enormous Verano cemetery, he glimpsed the ugly tombs inside, he may have imagined they were the historical graves of Caesars and Popes. This thought, however, did not lead him to stop and exa them. By now, Capitolines and Colosseums were piles of rubbish. History was a curse. And so was geography.

To tell the truth, the only thing he was looking for at that moment,

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instinctively, in the streets of Rome, was a brothel. Not so much because of any urgent, irresistible desire, but rather because he felt too alone. It seemed to him that only inside a woman's body, plunging into that warm and friendly nest, would he feel less alone. But for a foreigner in his position, oppressed by that grim and sullen mood, there was slight hope of fi such a refuge thereabouts, at that hour and with no guide. Nor could he count on a lucky encounter in the street; for though he had devel oped into a handsome youth almost without knowing it, Private Gunther was still fairly inexperienced and, basically, also shy.

Every now and then he released his tension by kicking the stones he came upon, perhaps distracting himself, for a moment, by pretending in his imagination to be the famous Andreas Kupfer, or some other personal football idol of his; but he immediately remembered his uniform, a fi

for the Reich. And he resumed his decorum, with a shrug that shifted his cap slightly.

The only lair that turned up, in his wretched search, was a half basement, down a few steps, which bore the sign : "Remo's-Wine and Food"; and remembering that at noon, lacking appetite, he had given his rations to a companion, he promptly felt the need to eat and descended into that interi lured by the promise of some consolation, however meager. He knew he was in an allied country : and in that welcoming cellar he expected-not of course the ceremonies due a general-but a cordial and friendly reception, at least. Instead, both the proprietor and the waiter greeted him with a distrustful, listless chill and with some hostile glances that promptly cured his hunger. So instead of sitting down to eat, he remained standing at the counter and threateningly ordered wine; and he was serv it, after some resistance from the two men and some private confabulation between them in the room behind the shop.

He was no drinker; and in any case, to wine he preferred beer, a taste familiar to him since childhood. But as a show of protest against the waiter and the proprietor, his manner became more and more menacing as he made them serve him fi quarter-liters, one after another, which he drained, down the wine in great gulps, like a Sardinian bandit. Then he violently fl on the counter almost all the scant money he had in his pocket; while his anger tempted him to knock over the counter and the tables and to behave not like an ally but like an invader and a murderer. However, a slight nausea was rising from his stomach, and it dissuaded him from any action. With a still fairly martial tread, he climbed out into the air again.

The wine had descended to his legs and risen to his head. And in the street's putrid sirocco, which swelled his heart at every breath, he was

1 6 H I S T O R Y
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seized by an impossible longing to be at home, curled in his too-short bed, between the cold and swampy odor of the countryside and the smell of the cabbage his mother was boiling in the kitchen_ However, thanks to the wine, this enormous homesickness, instead of tormenting him, made him jolly. For somebody strolling around drunk, any miracle, at least for a few minutes, is possible. A helicopter could land before him, ready to return at once to Bavaria, or a radio message could come to him through the air, announcing an extension of his leave until Easter.

He took a few more steps on the sidewalk, then turned at random, and coming to a doorway, he stopped on its threshold, with the carefree notion of huddling up in there and sleeping, perhaps on a step or in the area beneath the stairs, as masked revelers do during Carnival, when you act as you please and nobody pays any attention. He had forgotten his uniform; a comical interregnum had taken over the world, and the total whim of childhood now usurped the military law of the Reich! This law is a farce, and Gunther doesn't give a damn about it. At that moment, the fi female creature who happened to come into that doorway ( we don't mean just an ordinary girl or some little neighborhood whore, but any female animal : a mare, a cow, a she-ass! ), if she looked at him with a barely human eye-he would have been capable of embracing her vio lently, or perhaps fl himself at her feet like a lover, calling her: meine Mutter! And when, a few instants later, he saw a woman arriving from the corner, a tenant of the building, a humble-looking but decent little thing, coming home just at that moment, laden with shopping bags and purse, he didn't hesitate to shout at her: "Signorina! Signorina!" ( this was one of the 4 Italian words he knew). And with a leap he appeared before her, al though he himself didn't know what to demand.