My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) (22 page)

He was as good as his word. Dispatched back to our quarters, shoved as naked as spawning worms through showers, having a whale of a time in a joyous parade of quivering privates of sizes and shapes to suit all tastes, we were finally issued with new uniforms. They did nothing to enhance our virile, war-like appearance, and indeed quite suddenly we once again took on our natural aspect of pathetic Italian rookies: a sign that we really were back home again!

Urged on by men from my own part of the world, I resumed my habit of putting on performances of my comic stories. I had begun working on a new repertoire based on our less than pleasurable experiences at Mestre, episodes which my fellows and I had lived through personally but which we had almost completely erased. One which went down particularly well was the story of the rescue of the Mestre streetwalkers. These poor, piece-work Vestal non-Virgins had been buried alive when their ‘red house', the little villa on the outskirts of the city where they operated, had collapsed. Their numbers, granted the vicinity of barracks filled with troops groaning under the pain of long-term abstinence, were considerable: around fifty devotees of the multiple orgasm. On the famous night when it was completely destroyed, the house of phallic relief was literally overflowing with guests anxious to free their loins of the troublesome accumulation of seminal liquid. When the sirens went off, not one of them so much as entertained the prudent idea of evacuating the premises. The Madame, with all due zeal, advised the assembled clients to make themselves comfortable in the well-furnished, underground cellars, but would you believe it, not a single one among them paid heed. As the old scientific adage has it: ‘The erect penis often indicates a complete prick.' But when the first bombs began to rain down on the fun-loving band, causing explosions of such violence that the entire roof of the building was lifted clean off, the whole bunch – revellers and revelled alike – made a headlong dash for the cellars in the hope of saving their skins from the more than imminent collapse. A further blast caused all three floors to fold inexorably in on themselves like sand castles.

Our company of improvised aid-workers was first on the scene: the poor souls had been buried alive for more than an hour. For us this was the second first-aid operation – we were first, but not really operational!

An enormous earth-moving machine arrived and we set to work at once. After hours of gruelling work, we were literally drained when, all of a sudden, we heard shouting from down below: it seemed to be women's voices, and the appeals were desperate. ‘Hurry up with those bloody shovels! Get a move on with the bulldozer! We're suffocating down here.' Untrained bunglers though we were, the urgency of the impending tragedy spurred us on, but we only succeeded in throwing heaps of rubble over one another. To make matters worse, groups of curious individuals gathered around the collapsed building, each one lavish with advice but unwilling to lend a hand.

I somehow got into a cavity in the middle of the debris outside a jammed door. I shouted to them to pass me down a pickaxe or sledge hammer. I was handed the implement, raised it up, flexed my muscles and brought it down with all the force I could muster. The door fell in cleanly and a half-naked girl appeared out of the dust: when she caught sight of me, she leaped forward, laughing, crying and shouting, then gave me a hug and a big kiss on the mouth. The woman behind her pushed her out of the way, and she too gave me a full, open-mouthed kiss, sticking her tongue down my throat and spinning it around like a roller, leaving me quite out of breath. Thank God my first-aid companions were there to pull me away from the entrance and generously take my place, receiving in their turn the passionate hugs and kisses offered in grateful recompense by the liberated women. Something of a traffic jam was created by the pushes and changes-of-guard among the helpers, each one anxious to claim his portion of the gratitude. One late-comer, desirous of his fair share of kisses, came on the scene just as a naked German soldier was exiting: he gave him a slobbering, double dose of lips-on-the-mouth, with the accompanying movements of the tongue. The violated victim mechanically went for his holster to pull out his gun: luckily for the kisser, the enraged Teuton was completely naked!

My tale was met with gales of raucous laughter which rose and fell with a rhythmically perfect crescendo, reaching its peak with the scene of the naked women emerging to freedom, offering their liberators their gift of tits, mouths and round buttocks. The finale of the German soldier, mouth filled with Italian tongue, was greeted by the audience with extremely warm applause. Among the spectators was a corporal who howled with laughter throughout and exploded with delight at the closing sequence. When I first heard his laugh, I was taken aback. It was such an absurd guffaw that I thought he was having me on, so much so that I turned towards him and threatened: ‘Watch out, Mr Corporal, because if you carry on yelping like a coyote, I'll come over and stuff my tongue so far down your throat that you'll drown.' He replied with an even more riotous burst of laughter, so I concluded that that must be his natural laugh. At the end of the performance he got up and came over to me. From his awkwardness and from the fact that he was not able to look me in the eye, I realised he was blind. ‘I can't thank you enough for these side-splitting laughs you've given us. We blind people devour these fantastic images.'

I was overcome with embarrassment, I had no idea what to say but he rescued me from my awkwardness with another guffaw: ‘For God's sake, it occurred to me that if I could tell stories the way you do, I could pass myself off as some kind of Homer for these shitty times.'

Later, he himself told me how he had lost his sight. During a bombing raid in Turin, a shower of debris had struck him full in the face. ‘And to think that my nickname was
Bellosguardo,
‘Handsomeface'. In a few days I have to undergo another operation which hopefully will restore my sight, at least partially. I'm from Brindisi and have no relatives or friends here in the North. I've to go to the hospital and wait my turn, on my own, like an abandoned dog, and blind into the bargain. Who makes me go through with all this? The only friends I have are here in the barracks, so I'll just wait until they come for me.'

A short time later, I found out that they had given Bellosguardo a job as switchboard operator, and I went to visit him in his office. He recognised me immediately from my voice, and made a great fuss over me. He then asked me to take him to the canteen. I took him by the arm, and on the way over he said to me: ‘I needed to talk to you privately, and over there in the office there's always at least one person eavesdropping. This morning with Giovanni, the recruit who's looking after me, I popped out of the barracks … I can come and go as I please. I had an appointment in Milan for a series of preparatory tests for the operation. Once we were inside the city walls, Giovanni alerted me to the fact that there were three or four armoured cars and a much bigger number of trucks carefully concealed among the plane trees and beeches in the park. I might be wrong, but something major is about to take place!'

Bellosguardo was not in the slightest wrong. The Yugoslavia veterans, too, had got wind of the same thing when they took to their heels, for they had sensed that the Germans and the overlords in the Republic of Salò were setting a trap.

The first warning arrived exactly one day later when we discovered that all leave, including leave already requested and granted for those who had exams to do, had been cancelled. No exit from the barracks! That same day, the parade call was sounded: everyone on the parade ground in rows of three, every company to be in readiness for review. ‘Look up there on the turrets,' muttered one of the sergeants, ‘the Germans are positioning heavy machine guns.'

The regimental band, too, was being lined up when around a hundred SS men, armed as though for battle, came running in. The band struck up the regimental march, and from somewhere at the back German and Italian officers came forward, followed by a company of the Black Brigades. In the middle of them was Mussolini … yes, Mussolini himself, in uniform as in photographs from years before. He was pinched and drawn as he paraded before us, giving an occasional salute with his outstretched arm. Close up, he appeared even more emaciated and tired. He carried out the inspection, then mounted a podium hurriedly prepared with some planks, and addressed us through a microphone. There was no emphasis in his tone: ‘The cities of Germany are being attacked every day and every night by enemy bombers. The civilian losses are huge, but there are also reports of losses among the units which succeed day after day in bringing down hundreds of the attackers' aircraft. The German anti-aircraft force is foremost among these heroic combatants. You will, all of you, have the great honour of joining with them to inflict a sacred lesson on the enemy, and of displaying the most tangible solidarity with an allied nation and with the German people!'

‘They've stuck it up us and no mistake,' was the semi-audible comment of the commander of the battery, while the SS and the Black Brigades applauded and screamed the usual hosannas exalting death and glory. The faces of several men were lined with tears.

Mussolini and his escort exited at the same speed as they had entered. The Germans remained on the turrets with their 20-millimetre guns aimed inwards. They feared not an attack but a mutiny.

Thanks to my friend Bellosguardo, who lent me a telephone, I was able to get in touch with my father at the Pino station. ‘We leave tomorrow under guard in a troop train. The city we're destined for? Maybe Dusseldorf or Dresden. If you ask me, they'll bolt the carriages shut, like the last time.'

My father was silent for a few moments, then he said: ‘Whatever happens, don't lose heart. Good humour and irony are your salvation, don't ever forget that. I'm stuck here tomorrow, but Mamma will come and see you.'

Next morning, outside the barracks, there were hundreds of people, the relatives, mothers, fathers, wives and sisters of the soldiers about to depart. All of us were lined up with our bags on the parade ground, one company behind the other. The same, familiar roll-calls were being repeated, the usual insufferable rigmarole. Our detachment had been put at the end of the procession. The Colonel came over in our direction, accompanied by a sergeant who handed me a note. I glanced at it: it was from my mother. She told me she was outside, under the big beech tree. ‘When you come out to get into the truck, look over this way.'

I did not see my mother that day on account of an unforeseen event. She, as she said in her note, had been standing for hours under the big tree which in dialect has the same name as me (in Lombard dialect, a beech tree is called a
fo.
). She saw companies of boys passing in front of her, desperately searching for their loved ones among the noisy, jostling throng which was held back by the German guards and by a force of around a hundred
carabinieri,
I later learned that as she stood there against the trunk of the
fo,
she suddenly heard someone whisper in her ear: ‘He's not going, your boy's not going!'

A somewhat elderly woman, totally unknown to her, was at her side, leaning on the same tree. ‘Were you talking to me? About my son?' she asked.

‘Yes, your son … he's staying put!' she repeated, speaking in the dialect of Lomellina. ‘He's not leaving.'

‘What do you mean, not leaving? Look over there, they're all leaving, more than a thousand of them.'

‘But the ones at the back are staying here.' So saying, she made off, supporting herself on her walking stick. She disappeared, swallowed up by the host of mothers running over towards another departing division.

‘Signora Giuseppina Fo.' She heard her name being called out. ‘Which one of you is the mother of Dario Fo? Make yourself known.'

‘Me, it's me. I'm here.' She moved away from the others, still unaware of where the call was coming from.

At that moment, a soldier, or rather two soldiers, came forward, the one holding the other's arm. One of the two was blind. ‘Signora Giuseppina, I have a message on behalf of your son. His company is not leaving, for the reason that they are new recruits, not fully trained in artillery techniques and the Germans don't know what to do with them.'

My mother could not speak. She embraced Corporal Bellosguardo. Other mothers who had heard the message requested more precise information.

‘My son's a new recruit as well.'

‘So is mine.'

‘Then set your minds at peace. They're staying here,' insisted the blind corporal. ‘Those who have not received training will be staying at home.'

Dozens of arms stretched out to take Bellosguardo by the hand. ‘Thank you, thank you. God save you. May Jesus Christ bless you, my son!'

Bellosguardo replied: ‘Well, if you see him around, put in a good word for me. See if he'll work a real miracle tomorrow!'

CHAPTER 24

Desertion and Escape

There are periods in the life of a man which slip away leaving no trace in his mind, others which, however brief they may be, leave deep marks on the memory, causing each moment to be imprinted as though sculpted on stone. We owe this simple intuition to a ‘story-teller', Jonathan Swift by name, author of
Gulliver's Travels,
and it conveys perfectly what was happening to me in those days.

When I think back to that time between 1944 and 1945, it seems to me impossible that I lived through so many stories, all piled one on top of the other in such a brief space of time. Grotesque or tragic situations, often lived as though in a nightmare. Even today in sleep, I find myself carried painfully back to the bedlam of the bombing raids. The troop trains with the goods trucks in which I am enclosed, the escapes, the desertions, the police searching for me from village to village, all come flooding back to me. And each time, I relive the anxiety of being captured and thrown in jail. But coming back to the reality of those days, the sequence of such episodes underwent an incredible acceleration the moment the last contingent departed for Germany. The only ones left in that enormous barracks were us, the new recruits, a few elderly officers and a dozen or so sergeants. There were four hundred of us in total. A month later, my friend, Bellosguardo, who had partially regained his sight after the operation on his eyes, came to give me a piece of advice. I was in a dormitory room chatting with a friend, Marco Bianchi from Besnate, with whom only a few months previously I had been training for the four hundred metres sprint on the track at the Gallarate Sports Club. Our miracle man interrupted us: ‘Watch out! In a couple of weeks they're going to pack you, off too, for the same destination, Dusseldorf.'