History (54 page)

man with rank . . ."

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"Maybe it's that lieutenant . . . what did he say the lieutenant's name was, in the letter . . . ?" Annita suggests meekly.

"Mosillo! Lieutenant Mosillo!"

"No . . . no . . ." Santina shakes her head. "King of Coins

not a lieutenant . . . more! Somebody higher up . . . A Captain

or . . . General!"

"General! ! ! ?"

"And now here we see the Queen and the Two of Cups . . . and the Trump! A dark woman . . .
"

At this, Annita looked away, to hide the sadness of her black eyes, which were almost in tears. Among the dangers of Russia, from what people were saying, there were the women out there, who fell in love with the Italians and held onto them, not letting them go off again. This was perhaps the sharpest of the various aches that tore the anxious bride's heart.

A last letter from Giovannino, in the family's possession, was over a year old, dated 8 January 1 943. It was written in watery ink of a reddish black color. On the envelope, and also at the beginning of the letter, there was written CONQUER, because it was said that letters got by with a simple rubber stamp, without censorship, if they bore that Fascist slogan written on them.

CONQUER

Rusia 8 January 1943, XXI

Dearest memmbers of my Fammily

I write this letter to let you know I am well and hoping you are the same the epifany was not bad here I can tell you that here for cold they say olodna
(
. . . three words censored )
the paklwge didnt arrive

but dont worry for christmas the government gave us some pasta in hot water and an old Rusian lady made calws for us lucky civilians here its so cold it splits your toenails and all these nights laying barb wire and digging for the gun we live underground lil

believe the bad news its all the defeattists
(
. . . fi words censored )

Ill be home soon the importunt thing is your haelth here Im learning some Rusian words like for potato they say kartoshy dear Mother I cant wait to come home and kiss you all this is all I think about day and night theres never any letters dear Parents let me know if the last money order came now Ive got to run and theres no more space all my love your Son and Husband

Giovannino

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Besides this letter, another had arrived, a little earlier, addressed to Annita, and since then there had been no further mail or news from Giovannino. In the spring of that same year 1943, that soldier passing through, who brought the photograph, had told of meeting him a few months before, in November, and they had shared a loaf of bread and a can of meat. As for the other missing soldier, Clemente, Consolata's brother, the man had never met him or known him and had no news of him.

Filomena and Annita were both almost illiterate; but whereas Filo mena often took Giovannino's letters from the cupboard in her bedroom to have them reread to her and to comment on then, Annita was very jealous of hers and showed them to nobody. One evening, however, when the other women had gone out, she knocked at Ida's door and, blushing, asked her the favor of reading his last letters from the front. At the time when she had received them, she was still in the mountains, and since then, here in Rome, she hadn't had anybody to
explain them
to her, so she almost risked forgetting them . . . From beneath her pullover she drew the little packet of paper. They weren't all letters, there were also some franked postcards with propaganda phrases printed on them, such as : IN EVERY HOUR OF HER GLORIOUS HISTORY ROME HAS CAR RIED OUT HER MISSION OF CIVILIZATION . . . As usual, on

the envelopes and on the letters, the boy, as a cl stratagem against the censor, had written CONQUER. Because of the ersatz ink, made of dust and water, the writing was all faded, as if it were a century old.

"Beloved Annita please if you can get a foto taken for me so I can look at it at least for example ask that hospittal worker santospirito who has a codak and please dont worry about me Ill get home and I cant wait to give you a milion kisses and well have a nice honneymoon I want to take you all the way to
V
ennice
. . . (a line censored)
dearest Wife dont be afraid Im well and here we have lice races and the one who had the fastest wins a cigarete I won two Africas and a Trestelle and please dear Wife next time you wr send me a one lira stamp there arent any around here" "please remember to put lice powdder in the package" . . . ". . . the women here are called Katusha but dont think about that!! for me theres only one woman in the world the queen of my Heart! Youre the whole world for me and a milion kisses . . ." "Last night I dreamed I was with you but you werent grown up like now you were a little girl like the old days and I said to you how can I marry you now? Your too little! And you said when you get back from Rusia Ill be grown up and I said here I am back and I held you in my arms and you grew up right in my arms and I gave you a milion kisses! Ah my beloved Wife this is hell nobodys

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unhappier than me but well be together again soon because I cant wait
(
. . . one word censored )
but this is the army I send you a milion kisses"
. .
.

Refusing, in her shyness, to take a seat on the single chair or on the edge of the bed, Annita remained standing throughout the reading, barely resting her stubby, chapped hand on the little table. But as her eyes fol lowed, one by one, the words Ida read aloud, she had an overseer's expres sion, as if those little sheets of paper were a most precious codex and deciphering them were another kind of cartomancy that somehow com pelled destiny. She made no comment, except for a very brief sigh in taking the bundle back at the end. And she left, with the rather clumsy gait of her sturdy legs, which had been made for the long and ample skirts of the Ciociaria women and now-exposed beneath the short, shrunken little dress, with knee-length black stockings, leaving bare a strip of fl seemed of a rustic and animal heaviness in contrast with her tiny body. From the winter of 1943 until today, she and her in-laws had continued to make the rounds from one offi to another, seeking news of Giovannino : Ministries, Army Headquarters, Red Cross, Vatican . . . And the reply was always the same:
There is no news of him. Missing in action.
This reply, from certain functionaries or soldiers on duty in the offices, by now, was sometimes given in a brutal tone, or bored, or actually mocking. But what does
missing
mean? It can mean taken prisoner, shipped to Siberia, or still in Russia, guest of some family, or married to some woman there . . . And in the fi place it can mean
killed.
But this hypothesis, among all the possible ones, was ignored by Annita and Filomena as impossible. They continued to expect Giovannino any day, airing his good suit every now and then, and they fi denied all credence to offi news sources. They had more faith in Santina's cards.

Their friend Consolata criticized them for their ignorance:

"Only peasants like them," she murmured aside to Ida, "can believe in these frauds with the cards." In fact, she was more educated than the Marrocco women, a clerk in a notions shop, and a Northerner originally; however, no less than they, she also optimistically expected her brother's return from Russia. "Missing means he can be found. And with so many of them there, a few thousand are sure to come back. They can't all have disappeared. My brother isn't the kind who gets lost. Before he went to the Russian front, he'd been at the front in the Alps, in Greece, and Albania. He carr a compass to fi his way, and he always wore a miraculous medal of the Madonna." She had great faith in the Madonna's protection, especially in a coun try of Godless heathens like Russia; and she would make a grimace at the talk of some people, who said : "Russia is the grave

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of Italian youth." "It's all propaganda," Consolata would say. There were some who would remark cruelly, "They say
missing
rather than say
desper ate cases,"
and they would make fun of Annita because of her condition, "Married but still a virgin . . ." they would taunt her; and maybe they would wink and suggest she get herself a new husband. Then Annita would cry, and her mother-in-law would become infuriated with those wicked people, who insulted a young bride's purity and cast doubt on Giovannino's fi

Both mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were, by nature, faithful and chaste; but their language, common to the peasants of their parts, in some instances sounded obscene to the bourgeoise Ida. It seemed that, for them, every named object was supplied with a sex, an ass, etc., and made for the purpose of copulation. If the door wouldn't open, they would say, "It's that cunt of a lock that isn't working," and if they couldn't fi some pins, "Wh the fuck are those buggers?" and so on. Ida was aghast, hearing little Annita casually utter certain words which, for her, inspired fear and shame.

The master of the house was seldom seen, because if he worked the day shift, he came home late; and if he worked at night, he slept during the day. In one of his brief intervals at home, he taught Useppe a song of his village, which went like this :

The bad shepherd who eats the cheese In church never goes down on his knees He keeps his hat right on his head That's why the shepherd is so bad.

As a rule, in the Marrocco home, as during the latter period at Pietr lata, nobody paid much attention to Useppe. There were no other kids; the
piccinina,
half-stupefi by her hunger pangs, barely had enough breath left to sing, more and more listlessly,
my joy and my tormend are you;
and the women of the family, like their visitors or customers, were too busy or concerned to bother with him. Mostly, they treated him like a kitten, to be tolerated as long as he plays on his own, but to be driven off when he gets in the way. The days of The Thousand were receding farther and farther into the past, like an ancient legend.

In Ida's long hours of absence, and after the rabbit's obscure depar ture, Useppe, when he didn't
think,
stayed in the company of the grand father, who, to tell the tru didn't seem to notice his presence. Though the old man spent all his days sitting on a chair, he never had a moment's rest, badgered by the life which still persisted in his organism, as if by a swarm of horseflies who refused to leave him alone. His eyes could still see and his ears could hear, yet every object of his senses was reduced, for him,

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to a tormenting irritation. Now and then he dozed off but only for a little while, coming to again with a start. Or else, with the eff of someone setting forth on a toilsome journey, he would shift his body's weight from the chair to the window, where he was immediately repelled by the full of the buildings and walls which attacked him from outside : "There's no emptiness! Empty air!" he would say in despair, gazing out with his spent, bloodshot eyes . And if he saw somebody looking at him from a window opposite, he would say, "He's looking at me, and I'm looking at him!" as if establishing a law of unbearable anguish. So he would go back again to his chair and resume his spitting into his usual basin. Useppe would watch him with intent, eager eyes, as if gazing at an enormous landscape, tor mented by the cold:

"'Vhy you spit so much?"

"aaaagh . . . aaaaaaak . . . rrrrhhaaaa . . ."

"What's wrong? Want a drink? Eh? . . . Want a drink? Want some wine?" ( in a lowered voice, so as not to be heard by Filomena ) .

"Uuuuuh . . . muuuuuuuuuurrrhau . . .
"

"Here! WINE! Here . . . WINE! ! ! But don't tell, eh? Don't let anybody hear . . . hey . . . here . . . drink!!"

3

During the last months of the German occupation, Rome took on the appearance of certain Indian metropolises where only the vultures get enough to eat and there is no census of the living and the dead. A multitude of beggars and refugees, driven from their

destroyed villages, camped on the steps of the churches or below the Pope's palaces; and in the great public parks starving sheep and cows grazed, having esca the bombs and the confi in the countryside. De spite the declaration of
open city
the Germans were encamped around the inhabited area, speeding along the consular roads in the clatter of their vehicles; and the disastrous cloud of the air raids, which constantly crossed the territory of the province, spread over the city a great tarpaulin of pestilence and earthquake. The windowpanes in the house shook day and night, the sirens wailed, squadrons clashed in the sky amid yellowish rockets, and every now and then in some outlying street, with a thunder clap, a dust-cloud of ruin burst up. Certain frightened families had settled in the air-raid shelters or in the labyrinthine basements of the great monu ments, where there was a stagnant odor of urine and feces. In the de luxe hotels requisitioned by the Reich Commands and guarded by arm sen tries, fantastic suppers were held, where the waste was obsessive, to the