Bitter Spring

by Stanislao G. Pugliese

  Nearly a quarter century after Don Orione’s death, Silone confessed that “certain things that he told me . . . I only understood much later.” Among them: “In whatever difficult situation you find yourself in the future, do not be discouraged. God is everywhere and not just in church. He is the father of everyone, even those who do not go to church, even the atheists.” For Silone, it had been impossible to fall asleep during that long train ride. “Side by side with many weaknesses, fears, cowardice, which were and are the raw material of my regrets, I carried within myself a dimension, excavated from my deepest self, almost unknown to me, in the first years of my life, in which every word from Don Orione had a very living resonance. That was the source of my nostalgia for the Word, in its original purity and audacity, and the intolerance for institutional compromises.”

  At the San Remo school, Silone failed to excel academically or even to integrate socially. In one of his letters to Don Orione, the question of a transfer was raised: “I would prefer to remain in one of your schools. This year, you are disappointed in me. It’s only right: Even I am very disappointed in myself and so I have decided to straighten out. I beg you not to laugh at my proposals, which would be terrible for me.” And he concluded, revealingly: “It’s not always true that the wolf changes his skin but not his vice. And then, I don’t really believe myself to be, all in all, a wolf.”

  He chafed under the harsh discipline. His difficult character, combined with a concern for his fragile health, prompted a transfer a year later to the San Prospero school in Reggio Calabria on the toe of the Italian peninsula. There, in the “deep south” of the Mezzogiorno, Silone felt more at ease among the students and faculty.

  Silone felt he had found in Don Orione not just a father figure but something more. When Don Orione wrote and agreed to a change in schools, Silone was overjoyed. “It’s been so long since I have heard such sincere, good, and affectionate words! In truth, only a father’s heart can say certain things . . . I have heard the voice of my father, the breath of my mother, the wish of a saint.”

  Silone’s portrait of the “strange priest” was no less powerful nearly a decade after Orione’s death:

  Don Orione, with his average height, his dark coloring, and other somatic traits, while Piedmontese, could be mistaken for a Sardinian peasant. But his gaze was extraordinary. He was benevolent and profound . . . he appeared as a man of rare simplicity and naturalness, so to induce even a young boy resisting it, to also be, with him, simple and natural . . . Don Orione clearly believed in the continuing presence and assistance of God, to the point of having the impression, in certain occasions, that for him any border between the natural and the transcendent disappeared.

  From the San Prospero school, Silone wrote to Don Orione on October 29, 1916: “I have a great fear of myself and want to be in an isolated environment, but I have within myself an irresistible fire that pushes me to do good and to be in the middle of the world.”

  The children in Don Orione’s schools were, whether they were willing or not, forced to take up the burden of poverty. In a note found among Don Orione’s papers, Silone lists the entirety of his pathetic worldly possessions: a pair of bedsheets, two torn shirts, a single pair of socks, the uniform from San Remo and a pair of blue trousers, two pairs of broken shoes, an old beret, no quilt, no handkerchief, no pillowcase. But it was not the material deprivations that caused Silone anguish; he was convinced of his moral and spiritual corruption. In a letter of early 1917 to Don Orione, Silone confessed to a state of moral despair. A “corrupt environment,” among other things, contributed to a cooling of his fervent promises to do well. “I thought I was finished once and for all with vacillating between good and evil, but I am disillusioned . . . and I was succumbing to evil.” Although he finished the academic year in good standing, Silone returned to Pescina in the summer of 1917.

  At eighteen, Silone definitely abandoned his studies. Two or three doctors (“fountains of science,” he sardonically recalled) assured him that “you won’t live more than a year.” In his mordantly comic voice, he recalled years later: “Fate had decreed that my doctors would die one after the other, while at this moment, I am writing and drinking coffee. But at the time, I could not foresee this and so I abandoned my studies, faithful to the Italian proverb: ‘Better a living donkey than a dead genius.’ ”

  Finding it impossible to live with his relatives, Silone rented a house in town with friends. He described them as “students, vagabonds, workers, and happy people.” To the principal of the Reggio Calabria school, Silone wrote an impertinent letter, telling Don Silvio Ferretti that the house is known as “the house of devils” and that he and his friends pass their time singing, drinking, and dancing. His only lament? That with the departure of the class of 1900 for military duty, he will be all alone and thus, perhaps, he’d seek a wife. He also toyed with the idea of entering the civil engineering office in Pescina. (Silone himself was exempt from the call-up to military service due to his ill health and, perhaps, some timely intervention by Don Orione.) But a few months later he is humble and dejected in a pathetic attempt to mend fences with Ferretti and asking for help. “Summing up: 1) studies = disastrous; 2) health = dangerous; 3) soul = (I no longer have one; I no longer believe!).” A letter the same day to Don Orione is more considered and reflective but no less desperate. He berates himself, a Socialist, for speaking of the soul and sin to Don Orione, but in going over the tenets of Marxism, he was overcome by a desolation, a sense of terror in realizing that his new faith (socialism and materialism) would surely lead him to suicide. “Father, my health is ruined, my studies are ruined, but I still want to rebuild, rebuild, rebuild! Help me!” Don Orione refused to offer easy counsel. “Read me with your heart and not your eyes. For me you are an enigma who becomes, day by day, bigger and more awesome . . . You have before you a great crossroad—a tremendous fork in the road.”

  An Italian biographer has called Orione “God’s Fool,” while Pope John Paul I thought of him as “the strategist of charity.” Orione often referred to himself as “the porter of God.” When Douglas Hyde—like Silone a former Communist but unlike Silone a convert to Catholicism—was in the process of writing a biography of Don Orione, he asked Silone for an interview. It was the Italian writer who suggested the title for Hyde’s book: God’s Bandit. When Hyde asked Silone if he had ever met anyone with such a temperament and personality as the humble priest, Silone answered without hesitation: “Lenin. I have met no one else of the intellectual stature of those two men, combined with the same magnetic and rebellious personality and the same immense drive. Don Orione might easily have been a Lenin.” Silone sent his explication to the editor of the Italian translation of Hyde’s biography: “The motive for the paradoxical paragon between Don Orione and Lenin is the following: two exceptional personalities, with a strong spirit, extremely simple, concentrated on a single point. For Don Orione, this was Christian charity; for Lenin, the social revolution. If Lenin had been a monk, he would have been a saint; if Don Orione had become a politician, he would have accomplished a revolution.” Hyde seemed to agree with Silone’s assessment of the priest. Although his biography of Orione often approaches hagiography, Hyde writes that he could well imagine Don Orione as a Lenin, for he “was a natural demagogue” and might have gone “far in fascist politics,” even challenging Mussolini himself.

  The “strange priest” saved Silone in more than one way. In an episode recounted to Domenico Sparpaglione (another biographer of the priest and formerly a fellow student with Romolo Tranquilli), Orione told how, meeting at the train station in Milan, and sensing that Silone, now a high-ranking figure in the PCI, was being followed, he walked arm in arm with him, making sure that the police agents couldn’t get a good look at the fugitive. Orione was under the (correct) impression that the agents were “authorized to shoot [Silone] on sight should he attempt to escape.” Orione was shrewd enough to understand the mentality of the police: Surely a man walking with a wel
l-known priest could hardly be a dangerous Communist. So Orione was able to escort Silone to a waiting train destined for Switzerland.

  Orione had a special desire to help those priests who were in danger of being defrocked or excommunicated. Perhaps he saw in Silone a heretical figure similar to the men he ministered to in the church. Silone, for his part, must have recognized a kindred spirit in the priest. Young men who knew Orione in the seminary recalled that he often said that “if Christ had not kept his hand on my head I would have been a revolutionary.” In March 1940, suffering from pulmonary infections and cardiac problems, Orione was sent back to the seminary at San Remo, protesting, “It is not among the palm trees that I would like to die but among the poor who are Jesus Christ.” When his body was first exhumed in 1965, it was said to still be intact; the body now rests in the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Guardia, the church he founded in Tortona.

  Romolo

  With an athletic build and a love of sports, Romolo Tranquilli was very different from his older brother. Perhaps just as intelligent as Silone, but chafing under the necessary discipline to succeed academically, Romolo was Silone’s last link with family and Pescina.

  Pulled from the rubble of the earthquake after five days, his mouth full of dust and dirt after desperately calling for help, Romolo emerged with no more than a broken shoulder. Unlike his older brother, Romolo did not seem to suffer trauma from this event; at least he rarely mentioned it in his letters. He was brought to Palazza Madama, the official residence of Queen Elena, under her direct patronage. From there, he was sent to the Policlinico in Rome, where his shoulder was attended to. Unlike Silone, Romolo remained for some time in Rome, with the Salesians at the Institute of the Sacred Heart. Don Orione brought Romolo to the Istituto San Filippo in Rome and finally to the Paterno boarding school in Tortona, where he remained until 1920. From Rome, Silone wrote (February 21, 1919) to remind his brother that “our fate depends on us.”

  Don Orione was just as preoccupied with Romolo as he was with Silone. Romolo could never adapt himself to the communal life and self-discipline demanded in the boarding schools run by the church; even Don Orione’s intervention failed to convince the boy. An episode in 1920 was cause for concern. Romolo decided to take part in a Socialist May Day demonstration in Tortona. Wearing a red neckerchief, he climbed on a chair in a crowd and began denouncing priests in general and Don Orione in particular, the latter for “starving” the boys in the boarding school. The president of the Socialist cooperative grabbed him by his collar and pulled him from his perch, angrily saying, “It’s not true! I bring the bread to Don Orione’s school and I know how much I bring every day. Don Orione doesn’t let his boys go hungry.” First wanting to expel him, Don Orione thought better of it and permitted Romolo to finish school, even sending the boy on a summer trip to Venice. Orione’s portrait of Romolo was revealing:

  Romolo was not a wicked boy but very vivacious and inclined to follow the subversive ideas of his brother. Even in Tortona there were subversives . . . and they organized meetings against the state and against the church. Romolo often attended; indeed, he was one of the most ardent supporters of those movements . . . . How many times did I have to present myself at police headquarters to hear the complaints of the authorities and to suffer their reprimands, saying that in the boarding school I was creating youth unworthy of the patria [homeland] and of religion. But if we don’t restrain these boys, where will they end up? Those at the police station were right, but they didn’t know or had forgotten how Don Orione had to suffer to pull them from the ruins, or how poor Romolo had suffered because of the loss of his mother and almost all his relatives. Only his old grandmother remained, who placed her two grandsons in my care so that they wouldn’t starve, that they would study and, above all, that I would act as their father!

  But Tortona could no longer condone Romolo’s outrageous behavior, so Don Orione arranged for his transfer to another boarding school. There, he started an apprenticeship as a typographer and joined the school band as a trumpet player. But once again, he managed to land in hot water, attended political rallies, and was expelled, returning to the patronage of the queen and a school in Velletri. On the sixth anniversary of the earthquake, Don Orione wrote to Romolo, begging the young boy to mend his ways. Saying that he was soon departing for South America, Orione asked how he could watch over the boy from such a distance. Be honest and brave, “we will always be spiritually close . . . Courage my son! Don Orione will be close to your heart, like your mother and father.” Romolo immediately replied in desperation that it was true: He was a poor student and a worse Christian. “Leave me to my crazy fate! Clear your fields of the seeds of dissension.” Orione, deeply perturbed, responded, “What are you saying, my son, abandon you to your fate? . . . Fate doesn’t exist and it is the child of ignorance; but even if it did exist, your mother would never abandon you to your crazy fate, and neither will Don Orione, as long as he can.”

  Notwithstanding his proper Christian denial of the concept of fate or destiny, Don Orione tellingly wrote to the director of Romolo’s boarding school, “I’m sorry because he [Romolo] was a genius, who could have been a good Christian; this way, perhaps, he’ll end up like his brother.” Indeed, by the early 1920s, Romolo had already been under surveillance, arrested, and schedato (that is, a file had been opened on him) by the Fascist police: COMMUNIST, it declared in block letters; “dangerous” and “denounced to the Special Tribunal,” the Fascist court established to suppress dissent and destroy all political opposition.

  At a state boarding school in Velletri, Romolo was expelled by the local Fascist officials and sent home to Pescina. Silone introduced his brother to an acquaintance in Rome who owned a typesetting studio/printing press, but the business soon failed and Romolo was again without means of support. In August 1924, Romolo was called up to serve his military duty and was honorably discharged in 1926. He continued to travel between Rome and Pescina, returning to the hometown when there was no work in Rome. In Pescina, where there was even less work available, he often passed the day in the carpentry workshop of his cousin Pomponio Tranquilli, living off the generosity of their maternal grandmother. The local podestà (an appointed Fascist official who took on the duties of elected mayor) demanded that Romolo’s identity card be stamped “sospetto in linea politica,” effectively destroying any chance that the young man would be hired for work. Pomponio Tranquilli recalled that after Romolo’s discharge from the military, Silone (at the time wanted by the Fascist police) made a dangerous trip back to Pescina, intent on convincing his younger brother to leave the country; Romolo refused. Don Orione tried to get Romolo a position in the Tipografia Vaticana, to no avail. Failing that, the priest found a spot for Romolo at the Tipografia Emiliana in Venice. In testimony after Romolo’s arrest in 1928, Don Orione claimed that Romolo had asked him for a job so as to be able to marry, thus “removing him from the malevolent influence of his brother Secondino.” Another priest, Antonio Ruggeri, claimed that Romolo once confided in him about having joined the Communist Party, declaring ambiguously, “I’m in trouble if I fall into my brother’s hands!” Was it because he feared being dominated by his older brother or rather that he knew that Silone would not have approved of his brother’s joining the party?

  Romolo was Silone’s last surviving link to Pescina. The writer often returned to the town in his thoughts and in his writings, seeking to understand the ancient way of life he had forsaken. When asked by his comrades in the revolutionary struggle about the apathy of the peasants of the Mezzogiorno, Silone would write, “It would be incorrect to conclude that what held them back was fear. The people were neither cowardly nor lazy.” Instead, it was better to look at “centuries of resignation, the consequence of violence and deception” that weighed them down. “Experience seemed to justify the blackest pessimism.” For Silone, the peasants were “wounded and humiliated souls” capable of experiencing the “worst torments without complaining, until they broke out i
n unexpected revolts.”

  TWO

  The CHOICE of COMPANIONS

  I explained to him by gestures that two persons who ate the same bread became cumpane, companions, and that . . . company came from cumpaani.

  —SILONE, The Seed Beneath the Snow

  In the worldview of the southern Italian peasant, the state has always been identified as “the Devil’s own creation.” Why, then, would any sane person concern himself with politics? “A good Christian, if he would save his soul, should avoid contact with it as much as possible,” Silone wrote, reflecting the worldview of the Mezzogiorno. “The State always stands for theft, corruption and special privilege. It can be nothing else. Neither law nor force can change that.” If some calamity should strike it, “it is the judgment of God alone.” Yet as he ruefully acknowledged later in life, he simply could not follow the ancient admonition about “minding one’s own business” and threw himself into public life. “In my rebellion,” he reflected, “there was a point at which love coincided with refusal to cooperate.” The step from submission to subversion was very short. All he had to do was simply “apply to society the principles that were considered valid for private life.”

  One of Silone’s earliest memories of politics focused on the peasant agrarian leagues established around Pescina in 1911–12. The major opposition to the peasant leagues came not from the great landowners but from the local parish priests. Almost all of the peasants joined the leagues but since they were all Christians, a conflict was inevitable. The priests rarely bothered to criticize the political and agrarian positions of the leagues; rather, they were against the very principle of organizing the peasants in any association outside the Catholic church. As soon as the peasants met in the piazza to discuss their affairs, the priests would give an order to ring the bells of the church, drowning out the voices of the speakers.