History (48 page)

The third unexpected visitor was Eppetondo, who had his own key and thus could enter the room. In the place of his old hat, he had found himself a cap like an American gangster's to protect his head from the cold. And he was as merry as ever, though his arm, put in a cast and healed after the fracture of the previous summer, had developed rheumatism. He didn't want anyone to know his arm hurt, however, for fear of being dismissed from the partisans for being too old and decrepit. And he con fi his fear to Useppe. Moreover, he brought him news from the ca

as if by now he were speaking with a guerrilla comrade. All the comrades

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were well; and they had performed new, splendid feats. One night, the
Liberty
and other squads had scattered four-pointed nails on the roads into Rome, working with the RAF, which, attacking the blocked German vehi cles at the right moment, had massacred them with volleys of automatic fi ordinary bombs, and incendiary bombs, so the great Roman consular roads were all a bloodstained orgy. And, on another night, Ace and some comrades, after various minor actions of road sabotage, had dynamited a whole train of German troops; it had exploded immediately, in an inferno of fl and twisted iron.

The
Liberty
group had abandoned the hut, moving its base elsewhere, into a little stone house. Ace and Quattro and Tarzan, etc., sent greetings and love to Useppe. In spite of the cold and the bad weather, which made underground life much harder, all were in good spirits and fi shape, with the single exception of Pyotr, who, after the fi days of ardent parti

tion, had fallen into a kind of listlessness, and didn't do anything, spending all his time getting drunk. Actually, Comrade Pyotr for some time had been unusable as a guerrilla : so much so that the others, in fact, were arguing about whether or not it would be a good idea to send him away, or even liquidate him, with a shot in the head. But instead they went on tolerating him: fi because they fi when this bad period was over he would be himself again, the way he had been at the start; secondly, because of his bitter situation as a Jew; and thirdly, because of the friendship of Ace, who still trusted and respected him, and considered him a hero, defending him fi against the stubborn hostility of the other comrades.

Though he understood little of it, Useppe listened to all this epic news with the same ferv as when he listened to the song of the
ships;
and, indeed, at the end of Moscow's report, he said to him, "again!" but with no results.

Unfortunately, the chief reason for Eppetondo's visit proved a severe frustration for him. He had come, in fact, with the idea of taking to the camp the last supplies of canned goods he had left in the room-sardines, mussels, and octopus in tomato sauce-but he discovered that everything had been carried off and of his belongings only the mattress and the empty cage were left. All the rest, clearly, had departed along with The Thousand; and assailing them with various insults, of which the less unre peatable were "bastards" and "sonsofbitches," Eppetondo took the initia tive of unrolling his mattress on top of Ida's, so that at least someone would enjoy it, since as a partisan he slept very comfortably on straw. For that matter, this big room was even less comfortable than the
Liberty
squad's little base, where at least a wood fi could always be managed. Inside the room, on the contrary, there was no means of heat; your teeth

242 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 43

chattered; the dampness made stains on the wall; and Useppe, rather pale and wasted, wandered around, wrapped in so many old woolen castoffs (ex Charity Ladies') that he seemed a walking bundle. "Now at least you'll sleep on two mattresses," Eppctondo said to him when it was time for their goodbyes, "and mind you: don't let them steal this too, eh ! It's all wool, and be careful the mice don't eat it, either!" The empty cage re mained in the corner, as a souvenir.

Frequent visitors, on those lonely days of Useppe's, were the sparrows, who arrived to hop and chatter at the barred window. And since his talent for understanding the language of animals came to him only on certain days, Useppe understood nothing of their chatter except their ordinary cheep cheep cheep. Still it wasn't hard for him to understand that even these guests were looking for a snack. Unfortunately the bread ration was so scant that it was hard for him to fi a few leftover crumbs to off these other starving creatures.

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This double ordinance, by which the Italians sanctioned the
Final Solution
already initiated by the Germans, covered the case of the widow Ida Mancuso nee Ramundo, both in the fi article (because she was an air raid victim ) and in the second (because an Ary of mixed blood ). But it

2 4 3

doesn't seem to have had any practical eff on Ida, all the same. In fact, she received no benefi from the Jews' confi ed property. And, as for the second article, it's true, apparently, that in the course of the following season, after her transferral to a new temporary domicile, some policemen came to question the concierge about her situation. But the concierge informer kept his information to himself; or at least, if he reported it to anyone, it was under the seal of secrecy. She never knew about it. And probably her file ended up lost in the subsequent annihilation of all destinies.

However, the double ordinance, which she happened to see at the beginning of December, meant for her that she was offi under special police surveillance from that moment. Her guilt was thus contemplated by the law, without ambiguity or compromise, and denounced to the world on the city walls :
Wanted, a certain Ida, alias Iduzza, of mixed race, mother of two children, the older a deserter and a partisan, and the second, a bastard of unlmown father.
For Ninnarieddu, she wasn't too afraid : the moment she thought of him, she could see him, with his dancer's gait, his long, straight legs and his feet fl out, kicking aside any obstacle or tumult, her invulnerable son. But she was persecuted by horrible fears for Useppe. It was known that during the round-up of the Jews, the Germans had grabbed children, even babes in their mother's arms, fl them into their funereal trucks, like rags into a rubbish pile; and that in certain villages, in reprisal or merely out of drunkenness, they had killed children, crushing them with tanks, or burning them alive, or slamming them against the walls. Few people, at that time, believed these reports, con sidered too incredible ( though, to tell the truth-it must be reported they were later confi by History and, indeed, represent only a small part of the reality). But Ida couldn't dispel those visions : so the streets of Rome and of the world for her seemed crowded with possible executioners of her Useppetto, her little pariah without race, underdeveloped, under nourished, poor valueless remnant. At times, not only the Germans and the Fascists, but all human adults seemed murderers to her; and she ran through the street, aghast, to arrive, exhausted, her eyes wide, in the big room, starting to call from the road "Useppe! Useppe!" and laughing like a sick little girl when the tiny voice answered her: "A' rn

The Nazi-Fascists, actually, still didn't dare show themselves too often in the slum. The October shootings hadn't sufficed to frighten the popula tion of those huts drowned in mud and hunger. With winter, the attacks on bakeries and food trucks became more frequent. Bands of guerrillas were form within the slum itself, and it was said that in the caves, in the hovels and little rooms where families of ten people slept, even under the beds, weapons were hidden, stolen back in September from army outposts

244 H I S T O R Y
. .
.
. .
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1 9 43

and barracks. Even the young males, who in the rest of the city mostly remained hidden in the fear of raids, here displayed themselves defi ly, with hard, grim faces, in the courtyards and the holes and the garbage dumps of their outlying ghetto, among their worn and disheveled mothers, the wasted girls, the lice-ridden kids with their little bellies swollen from lack of nourishment. Ida avoided going too far away from the slum, so as not to leave Useppe alone; but to bri him something to eat, she forced herself to desperate exploits. Even the famous nest egg of savings sewn into the stocking had now been consumed in black-market shopping, and like the other kids', his little belly had also swollen slightly. Every time she went to the Bursary to draw her monthly pay, Ida felt her legs buckle beneath her, expecting the clerk to announce to her indignantly : "Wicked halfbreeds like you are no longer entitled to any salary!"

The big room had remained uninhabited only for a few days. At the beginning of December, once the news had spread that over there, at the end of that avalanche of mud and garbage, a roof was available, new lost creatures had begun to turn up, in whom Ida, with her confused preju dices, saw a threat rather than a protection. She was even more afraid to leave Useppe now in that company than she had been, before, to leave him alone.

Among the many newcomers, there happened to be the family of a little shopkeeper from Genzano, dazed with terror of air raids. Apparently some one of The Thousand had directed them here. The head of the family, a ruddy and corpulent man, who suff from high blood pressure, had been seen only at their arrival, then he had rushed back to Genzano, where his shop had already been bombed out, but the house was still standing. The fact was that in a wall of the house he had secretly bricked up, for safe-keeping, all the money and valuables he had left, and for this reason he wanted to stand guard. Until one day, in a raid, which still left the house intact, he died of a heart attack, from fear. A relative came from Genza to bring the news to the family, all women. And the room fi with screams and weeping. But after some argument, between sobs, the women, also overcome by terror of the bombings, left the relative the task of burying the dead man and wa tching the house; and they stayed where they were, in the room.

They were also obese, but pale; and the mother's legs were all swollen with varicose veins. They spent the day around a brazier, mourning, in total inertia and dejected silence. They were waiting for the arrival of the Allies, who, according to them, were at the gates, and then they would go back to Genzano, where, however, they no longer had a shop, or a man, nothing but that hypothetical, walled-up treasure. And they spoke of the imminent Liberation in spent voices, like enormous hens on a peg perch,

245

saddened in the swelling of their feathers, reduced to waiting for the arrival of the master, to carry them off in a sack.

If Useppe approached the brazier, they pushed him away, saying in a whining voice, "Go back to your mamma, kid."

A woman from Pietralata also turned up, mother of one of the boys shot on October 22nd. When her son was alive, she had nagged him all the time because he came home late at night, until her son, exasperated by her constant yelling, had even beaten her, and she had also, in the past, re ported him for this to the police. Now, every evening, she went wandering from one house to another because she was afraid to sleep at home, where she said her son's ghost came back every night to beat her. This boy of hers was named Armandino, and the Germans had arrested him before her eyes, after she too, that day as on previous occasions, had joined in the attack on the Fort, hoping to get some fl Every now and then, during the night, she could be heard saying : "No, Armandino, no. Not your own mamma!" Often, in the daytime, she would boast of Armandino's beauty, famous in Pietralata for his resemblance to the actor Rossano Brazzi. And, in fact, she herself must also have been good-looking when young : she still had very beautiful long hair, but gray now, and lousy.

These new refugees in the big room had brought their own ma ttresses; and in addition, left by transient guests, there was some kapok scattered on the fl at the disposal of other temporary vagabonds. Carlo Vivaldi's pallet was occupied by a young man of whom Ida was especially afraid, as if of a werewolf. It's true he had made some improvements in the room, applying pieces of plywood to the broken windows, replacing the paper; but for the rest, he resembled not so much a man as some other starving mammal, of a nocturnal species. He was tall and muscular, but bent, and he had a cadaverous face, with protruding teeth. No one knew where he came from, or what his profession was, or how he had landed there; but from his speech, he seemed Roman. He also, if Useppe approached him, sent him away, saying : "Clear out, kid."