The Last Son’s Secret

by Rafel Nadal Farreras

  ‘You can’t,’ she repeated once more between sobs.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind. I have to go.’

  ‘No!’ she shouted, beside herself. She dropped to the ground and beat her hands and head against the rock floor of the cabin. Vitantonio had never heard such a desperate cry before. It frightened him. What could cause her such pain? He tried to pick her up and felt sticky blood streaming through her hair.

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to me,’ he said again, but with little conviction, knowing that his words would not calm her.

  She was still shaking. When she lifted her face, he saw in it a gaze as terrified as the one on the animals he killed when out hunting with Salvatore. Blood was dripping on to her lips and she had trouble opening them when she tried to speak again. She got on to her knees and started to beg him, ‘You don’t understand, you can’t go! You are my son! I’m your mother! You are a Palmisano!’

  Time stopped in the hut. Outside the dogs left off barking and the cicadas ceased their monotone concert. The seconds ticked by and neither of them dared say a word. All that could be heard was Vitantonio’s panting and Donata’s ragged sobbing. She was having more and more trouble breathing. A donkey brayed in the distance, on the other side of the gravina. The animal’s mournful lament brought Vitantonio back to reality.

  Finally, he spoke. ‘I always knew it! Mamma!’ He threw himself at her and began to kiss her forehead, cheeks and hands.

  She hugged him with all her might. After a little while they pulled apart and she looked him up and down. Vitantonio was the spitting image of his father and she felt as proud as she had on his confirmation day, when Nonna had dressed him all in navy blue.

  ‘What do you mean you knew? Since when? You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I think I always knew, without knowing that I knew … I’m not sure when or why. One day I started to feel that you were my mother and ever since then I just assumed it was true. I’ve felt this way for years and just accepted it, I suppose.’

  For some time Vitantonio himself had wondered how he’d arrived at that conclusion. He was never totally sure, since he had no proof. In fact, he didn’t have the slightest sign. He just longed for it with all his heart. Nor could he explain where that intense longing came from. Maybe out of his desire not to be Giovanna’s brother?

  Donata looked up at her son, insisting, ‘If you go to war you’ll never come back! When the time comes, you don’t choose sides, the side has already chosen you, long before. And you are a Palmisano … the last Palmisano!’

  ‘It’s precisely because I’m a Palmisano that I have to go. You’re right, Mamma: long before I was born, you tied my fate to the Palmisanos. I can’t break away from that. Even if I hated them with all my might I couldn’t get away. If I chose not to take sides, I would still be shackled to them. But am I condemned to death by this curse? Aren’t I a free man? Don’t I control my actions? Can’t I rebel and fight against destiny?’

  ‘You can’t escape it.’

  ‘That was in the past. A man must face his future and not hide from it. You don’t flee from curses, you fight against them. My duty now is to fight the fascists and the Nazis, according to my own moral convictions. Uannin has always seen things clearly; that’s why she went to Spain to stand up to them.’

  ‘She also found out the truth: she’s known you’re a Palmisano for some time now. That’s why she left.’

  Vitantonio paused. ‘Uannin knows?’ he said eventually.

  ‘She read it in a letter written by your grandmother, when she was helping her answer the condolence cards for Father Felice. I don’t know if it was a mistake or something Nonna did on purpose; she had been saying for a while that we should explain things. Anyway, Giovanna took it very badly. That’s why she left, to make us pay for the betrayal.’

  They spent the rest of their time talking through the revelations together. Donata knew that she wouldn’t be able to change his mind. Finally, she plucked up her courage and asked, ‘Did you say you’re going with the Matera exiles? Have you become a communist?’

  ‘No! You know I don’t care for the socialists or the communists, but I want to be on the side of those who speak for justice and freedom, like Doctor Ricciardi. Surely you wouldn’t want me to join the fascists? I’m a deserter in their eyes and they’d execute me. Besides, you know I’ve never supported them.’

  ‘I had the feeling you weren’t going to be in hiding much longer,’ she answered. And she burst into tears again.

  Roosevelt

  AS VITANTONIO WATCHED his mother hurry down the path through the thicket, he found that he was already missing her. The trail wound out into the open, zigzagging amid the Murgia rocks, like a gigantic serpent. Every once in a while she would stop and turn and wave, until the path disappeared into the forest and she vanished among the trees. She reappeared further down, at the entrance to the ravine, but from that point on, the path was swallowed up by a copse of taller trees and he couldn’t see her any more. They had spent the whole afternoon crying and had also cried when they parted; now he could feel his eyes welling up again. It was the first time in three years that he had allowed himself to be carried away by his feelings, something he hadn’t been able to do during his time in hiding; he had never before cried when they said goodbye. But today his emotions had got the better of him.

  He stood there for a little while longer, looking out over the Gravina di Laterza towards Bellorotondo. The sky had grown overcast and thunder rumbled on the horizon, towards Matera. The darkness spread rapidly and in a matter of minutes had swallowed up the hills. Suddenly, a voice called out behind him.

  ‘Goodness gracious!’

  It was Roosevelt. He was just a few steps away from him, leaning against the wall of the sheep pen and looking at him indifferently. Vitantonio wondered how long he had been there, watching him. He would never understand how he could move about so silently.

  Roosevelt had returned from America four years earlier and now lived all alone with his flock in a shepherd’s hut on a hillside, a two-hour walk from Matera. He spent entire days without seeing a soul, herding his livestock on horse between Puglia and Basilicata. Alone, with just his dogs and sheep.

  The log cabin comprised a single large room presided over by an image of the Virgin Mary and a portrait of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The shepherd’s devotion to both the holy mother and the US president was shared by many homes in Matera and all the little villages throughout the mountains, but his case was an exceptional one. He talked about the American president all the time: that Italy needed someone like Roosevelt; that only Roosevelt took care of the poor; that Roosevelt was the best leader on the planet; that Roosevelt would soon liberate Italy; that Roosevelt would send the Germans running for the border. The shepherds of Alta Murgia had heard him go on about it for so long that they re-christened him: Mario Moncluso became plain Roosevelt from then on.

  While Vitantonio had been in hiding, Donata had visited him every two months, always on the second or third Sunday of the month, and the shepherd let them use his hut to make sure their meetings took place away from prying eyes. The young fugitive would arrive at the cabin early in the morning to avoid running into anyone, and would wait there for his zia, who had spent the night halfway from Bellorotondo, in a farmhouse in Laterza where her cousin lived. When they went inside the hut that first Sunday, Vitantonio couldn’t believe what he saw: in addition to the two main images, the walls were covered with dozens of postcards and posters of Manhattan.

  ‘Why did you come back from New York?’ Vitantonio asked him.

  ‘New York is a desert,’ the shepherd answered without hesitation.

  ‘A desert? But millions of people live there …’ The young man looked at him in confusion.

  ‘Seven! Seven million people live there, but it’s a desert. I was there for ten years. Every day on the way to work I was in the subway with thousands of people; in the evening, coming home, I ran into them again
. But in all that time I never spoke to a single one. I felt lonely in America, and that loneliness was killing me.’

  ‘Then here in this forgotten corner of the world you must be really desperate!’

  ‘Not in the least. I haven’t felt loneliness like that since I came to Murgia.’

  Roosevelt said those kinds of things. He thought like a philosopher and talked like a poet. A flash of lightning on the horizon brought them back to reality, but Vitantonio still decided to walk back the two hours to Matera. Even if he got caught by the storm, by nightfall he would be back at the Sassi caves.

  The Englishman

  VITANTONIO’S CAVE REFUGE in Matera was dug vertically out of the rock and was more than likely an old cistern. A tiny opening led to both the space he used as a kitchen and to the stairs that dropped steeply down into the lower cave, which was in permanent darkness. At the top of the wall there was a tiny window always kept closed, which led directly to the cliff face. It was his emergency exit, only to be used in a life-or-death situation. Jumping through it would mean dropping on to the rocks and climbing down into the gravina along a vertiginous trail that was passable only for deer or very, very desperate fugitives.

  When it was dark, Vitantonio would go outside to stretch his legs and smoke on the roof of the neighbouring cave house. From that vantage point, one year earlier, on a muggy night lit by a full moon, he had noticed a shadow zigzagging through the rocks. A man was wandering lost through the labyrinth of the Sasso Caveoso, trying to get as far away as possible from the Italian authorities, who unbeknownst to him were close behind. From the cave roofs, Vitantonio had watched the stranger moving from one side to the other, illogically, unaware that a group of carabinieri were climbing up from the ravine and were about to come face to face with him.

  The sudden appearance of the national police had caught Vitantonio by surprise; the carabinieri in Matera were afraid of the gravina and usually left the locals to watch over the two sets of steps that led to the city from the ravine. When Vitantonio grasped that the fugitive was in danger, he leapt from the roofs and dropped down right behind him. He didn’t give him time to react: with one hand he rammed a gun into his temple and with the other he covered his mouth; another quick motion dragged him back into a dark corner. He could feel the man sweating and sensed that he was weighing his chances of taking on his assailant. Vitantonio pressed the gun barrel harder against his temple to discourage him and make him understand he had to keep still. Then they heard the patrolmen’s steps drawing closer. They saw them pass by half a metre away and he felt the fugitive’s heart beating like mad. The two men remained motionless for a little while, until the patrol had rounded a corner, and then he lowered the pistol and they relaxed. The fugitive turned and saw Vitantonio’s face for the first time, and watched as his rescuer’s eyes grew wide when he took in his military uniform.

  ‘Well, this is a surprise. American?’

  ‘British.’

  They let some time pass and then Vitantonio led him up the same steps the police had just taken. They went into the cave, dark as a stormy night. When they were down below Vitantonio invited him to sit.

  ‘You’ll get used to the dark soon.’

  Hearing a deep grunt from inside the cave, the Englishman leapt up, knocking Vitantonio to the floor.

  ‘Relax, it’s the pig,’ he told him as they got back up.

  ‘A pig? Here in the cave?’

  ‘Usually there are donkeys and goats too, but now all we have left is the pig.’

  They heard another grunt, even closer, and the Englishman shouted, ‘It’s sniffing me! Get it off me, for the love of God! It’s going to bite my leg!’

  ‘Relax, that’s not the pig. It’s Tatònn, welcoming us.’

  ‘Tatònn?’

  ‘Yes, Grandpa ’Nzìgnalèt. This is his cave.’

  They hid in the cave for a couple of hours and then Vitantonio took the Englishman out for some air and brought him up to speed on the situation in that part of the country. It had been a sweltering day and when they sat down on the neighbours’ roof, the cave rock was still burning.

  ‘Luckily there’s a bit of a breeze now. These hot rocks could fry our balls.’

  The Englishman laughed for the first time.

  ‘Can you hide me until they give up looking for me?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re safe in the cave. In a few days I’ll take you out of here and to my other hiding place in Murgia, on the other side of the ravine. It’s a shepherd’s hut. There you’ll have more freedom to move about during the day. I’m a fugitive, too.’

  ‘Can I trust the old … what did you call him before?’

  ‘Here grandfathers are called tatònns. ’Nzìgnalèt is his nickname. You don’t need to worry: after the defeat at Caporetto, in the Great War, the Germans killed his three sons. I’ve never met anyone who hates them so much. All he had left was Donata, his daughter.’

  ‘Where am I exactly?’ asked the Englishman, now that he was a bit calmer.

  ‘In the Sassi of Matera. Cave neighbourhoods where the same families have lived for thousands of years. Right now, we’re sitting on the roof of a house, which is also a street and a square. And sometimes a cemetery, because before, the dead used to be buried in tombs carved out of the rock that forms the roofs of the homes. The whole thing is a dangerous labyrinth and the carabinieri don’t like to get too close. What happened today is very rare. You must be a big fish.’

  ‘I’m a lieutenant in the RAF, a cartography expert. A week ago we were on a reconnaissance mission over Taranto. I know the port because I took part in a bombing raid there two years ago; back then, we really gave them a good pounding, but last week we had problems and had to bail out. The others landed in the sea. I didn’t have any choice but to climb up the mountain to hide.’

  ‘If you’re keeping an eye on the port of Taranto, that must mean that you’re planning an invasion. That’s good: we just have to wait and kill time until it happens.’

  More than a year had passed since that first hopeful conversation with his new cave mate and the prediction hadn’t come to pass yet: the English had been fighting all year in North Africa and, finally, that summer they had attacked Sicily, but there was still no news of a landing on the Italian mainland.

  Vitantonio didn’t want to get mired in negative thoughts; all he could think of was the moment he would join the action. Those three years of war had claimed half of his schoolmates and some of his closest friends from boarding school. Most of the Convertini men had also died; their names would be carved on the next war memorial in Bellorotondo. He knew now that they weren’t his own blood, but he had grown up with them and still considered them his family. In September 1942, Uncle Luca had disappeared into the waters of the Atlantic along with most of the other fifteen hundred Italian POWs aboard the Laconia, a British ship torpedoed by a German U-boat. Inexplicably, an Allied aircraft had bombed the German submarine when it had surfaced to try to save the shipwrecked men, sending the lifeboats to the bottom of the sea, along with women, children, British soldiers on leave and Italian prisoners. Uncle Luca Convertini was one of them.

  In a short period of time three of his cousins had died as well, on the Dalmatian coast, in Greece and North Africa, and two more had disappeared in Russia. Meanwhile, Giovanna, who had long been taking excessive risks in southern France under the very noses of French collaborators and the Gestapo, was preparing to return to fight fascism within Italy. With every passing minute Vitantonio reaffirmed that he could no longer watch from a distance: desire for the freedom that Roosevelt and his new friends in Matera talked about compelled him to commit himself to the struggle.

  The Announcement

  AT THE GENTLEMEN’S Circle in Bari on the evening of Sunday 25 July 1943, the atmosphere was very festive. The glasses were filled to the brim, the cigars were good, the card games went on long into the night and there was more than the usual traffic in the garden. That night, the brothel couldn’t ke
ep up with all the demand. July was almost over, as were the days of freedom for the club’s members: in August the men headed off to towns on the coast or farmhouses inland to spend the holiday with their families.

  In the large salon there was a contagious euphoria that seemed ready to spill over into a real ruckus because everyone was shouting, alternating political conversations with nervous giggles that followed salacious comments. The hilarity affected all the armchairs when a short, chubby man came running in and tripped on the rug; he was the most important forestry owner in the region. When he’d managed to regain his composure, he started waving his arms to get everyone’s attention.

  ‘Turn on the radio! They’ve just said that the king is going to make an important announcement to the nation.’

  The conversations stopped and were replaced by general murmuring. The exclamations of surprise and nervous questions spread from table to table.

  ‘The king? What’s going on? This doesn’t sound good!’

  The bolder ones moved closer to the radio, which the bartender kept in the drinks cabinet, and waited in expectant silence. A tall man with white skin and red hair, a lock manufacturer, started to turn the dial. He stopped when he heard the last few notes of ‘The Royal March’. The others drew near and formed a circle around the radio.

  A deep, serious voice read the king’s announcement very slowly: ‘His Majesty the King and Emperor has accepted the resignation of His Excellency Cavaliere Benito Mussolini from his duties as the head of the government, prime minister and secretary of state, and has appointed Cavaliere and Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio to be head of the government, prime minister and secretary of state.’

  The broadcast ended before they had had time to process the statement. ‘The Royal March’ played again. The gentlemen looked at each other, confused. None of them had predicted Il Duce’s end and none of them were expecting it. Angelo Convertini tiptoed over to his wingchair and dropped into it, dejected.