by Dario Fo
‘Lucky you came back,’ she shouted to me. ‘I’m getting cramp.’
‘Take it easy, I’ll help you onto the boat.’
‘Thanks, but what is that black strip down there?’
‘It’s a fierce squall.’
‘Does that mean a hurricane?’
‘Yes, but relax. There’s time enough before it hits us. But come on, get up here! There’s only one system to stop the boat from capsizing. We’ve got to do the crossbar balance.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ll explain to you as we go. I stretch out full-length, sideways … like that, with my bottom on one side and my back propped against the other … perfect! Now I put my legs in the water, feet first, being careful to keep my balance, just like a set of scales … you see? Now you sit astride my feet … come on! Try to move up to my knees. Well done. Now see if you can slide forward on your front, holding onto the side of the skiff with both hands. Careful, now I’ll raise my legs very slowly until I can pull you on top of me. Like that, that’s it!’
I give Lucy a push and she flies into the boat with a cry. Her body was completely on top of mine, leaving us in an embrace: she laughed, I was out of breath. I would have stayed that way forever, but the wind was starting to howl menacingly. I turned her over gently, making her take a seat in the shell of the skiff. I took up the oars and started rowing in an attempt to get away from the swelling waves. The first gusts hit the boat, hurling flurries of foam over us. I decided to head for the port in Cannero, so as to get the wind at my back. We made it into the mouth of the port just in time to escape the first heavy blasts of the squall, and were swept powerfully onto the low bank. The boat slid bodily up the beaten-earth slope. ‘If I’d had to wait for my friends’ boat, I’d definitely have gone under like a stone,’ commented Lucy. ‘What can have happened to them?’
Among the people on the shoreline cheering us on, there was someone I knew, a schoolfriend of mine called Aristide. Lucy was trembling and could hardly stand. I too was exhausted, but like the valiant saviour I was, I lifted her in my arms. ‘Come over here,’ shouted Aristide, ‘let’s go into this bar.’ I took a couple of paces, and instantly my legs gave way. Two youths grabbed hold of me before I landed on top of the girl. My friend undertook to carry Lucy, and they moved smartly towards the bar. ‘Hey,’ I shouted, ‘and what about me? Are you abandoning me here like some poor son-of-a-bitch?’ It was all I could do, crawling on all fours, to make it on my own to the bar. They brought out a blanket and put it over me.
‘I can’t see Lucy. Where is she?’
‘The woman took her up to her bathroom for a hot shower.’
I asked if they had any news about a motorboat which should have berthed before the squall blew up. ‘Yes,’ they replied, ‘There is one which has docked down at the police jetty. It had broken down, the engine was completely seized up.’
Aristide appeared at the door and pointed out over the lake directly in front of him. ‘They’re taking the two strangers, the girl’s friends, over to the far side of the lake. Look, they’re circling round the spot where you were a little while ago. Obviously they don’t know you reached land.’ Aristide picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the police station. Someone needed to tell the people in the motor launch that the girl had been brought ashore. Aristide put down the receiver and said: ‘Everything’s OK. Unfortunately the launch can’t turn back to pick you up. With the waves whipped up by the squall, it might get battered onto the coast. They’re heading for the far side, where they’ll be able to shelter in Germignana Bay.’
In the bar, Lucy was now in tears on a chair, releasing all the accumulated tension of our adventure. She was worried about her mother who wouldn’t have seen her return, so I made an attempt to calm her down. ‘Don’t worry, I asked Aristide to get the policemen to let your parents know you’re safe and well.’
‘But you don’t even know where I live.’
‘Oh yes, I do. Villa Mainer, Castelvecchia, care of the Unner family…’
‘But look … how did you find all that out?’
‘I’ve been spying on you. I crept up on you a couple of days ago. I know everything about you. You have a sister and a grandfather, your mother’s from Milan and your father’s from Hungary and he’s a dentist.’ She laughed, untroubled.
By now, the big breakers from the lake were battering ferociously against the facade of the bar. The owners pulled the shutters down and reinforced the doors and windows from the inside with heavy tables. Still wrapped up in blankets, we went out by the back door with Aristide as our guide, and made for his house higher up, beyond the headland. Her mother greeted us with great warmth. When her son explained the dangers we had faced, she was close to tears. She took Lucy in her arms and hugged her. When she realised that under the blanket, the girl was wearing nothing but a wet costume, she took her by the hand upstairs to the bedrooms. I went with Aristide to his room and he gave me some dry clothes.
A short time later, we all sat down at table. The Signora took my hand in hers and then, looking at Lucy, asked: ‘You’re engaged, aren’t you?’
There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then Lucy took charge: ‘Yes, since this spring.’
‘Ha, ha!’ the Signora laughed. ‘Look at your boyfriend blushing! There’s nothing to be ashamed of, son. If you don’t fall in love at your age, when will you?’
After supper, the Signora took us to our two respective bedrooms. ‘You’re too young to sleep in the same bed!’ was her comment. ‘I’m sure your mother would never forgive me.’ Lucy smiled.
We retired. I lay down on the big bed, but I couldn’t get to sleep. Outside, the howls of the wind, as it twisted along the canal, were punctuated by the crash of uprooted trees. Lightning, followed by claps of thunder which sounded like explosions in a mine shaft, lit up the sky. A particularly terrible gust blew open the windows. I rose to fasten it, but struggled to get it closed. I turned round and in the doorway stood Lucy, clutching a blanket.
‘I’m so afraid,’ she said. ‘Can I stay here with you?’
I muttered something incomprehensible and made her a sign to come in. She went straight to the bed and sat down. After a brief preamble which made no sense at all, I asked her: ‘I saw you once with Jute’s brother. You were playing and laughing in the water…’
‘No,’ she stopped me firmly. ‘He’s not my boyfriend. He’s very keen on me, but I don’t like him.’
‘Except when he plays with you in the water and throws you in the air and catches you in his arms.’
‘Oh God, we’re only just engaged and already you’re throwing a jealous fit.’ We both laughed.
‘Anyway, I still have a bone to pick with you. Don’t get annoyed, but can you explain why you didn’t want to come with me when I caught up with you in the water?’
‘It’s simple. Because I didn’t want Jute and her brother to see us together when they came back with their motorboat. She’s always nagging at me, telling me that every time I see you I go into a flutter like a nun standing in front of a naked Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows. Not to mention her brother who’s much worse. He’s very jealous of you … to put it mildly, you give him a pain in the balls. If he’d found you and me in your yawl, tangled up in each other’s arms after we tumbled in together, there was every chance he’d have rammed into you with his big, show-off motorboat.’
I was panting like a bellows, but I was also getting rid of all the bile which had built up in the pit of my stomach.
Outside, the storm roared noisily: at times it quietened down, only to begin howling again more loudly than before. We told each other everything, starting from the first time we had met on the beach. She made fun of my acrobatic diver displays, especially since more often than not they ended with horrendous belly flops. I got back at her over certain poses and attitudes she struck: I laughed, and she denied that she had ever behaved in that way.
She was clearly flattered at ha
ving produced such emotion in me. I stood up on the bed and began mimicking her various ways of walking, real mannequin parade stuff, in front of us awestruck lads, her way of running, jumping … I even imitated her voice and laughter. Lucy rolled about laughing, and in fact careered about on the bed so much that she fell off and landed on the floor with a great thud. ‘Oh God, my head! What a bump!’ I had to take hold of her to help her back to her feet. She embraced me and gave me a tiny peck on the cheek. My heart was beating in my temples, in my chest and right down to my toes. We carried on chattering, lying one close to the other, but when the first rays of light began to filter in through the shutters, it was a struggle to speak; our words came out mangled by sleepiness. We fell asleep like two children. For both of us it was first love. I was seventeen and she fourteen. Blessed be that squall!
CHAPTER 22
Fleeing to Switzerland
I was seventeen when the British and Americans landed in Sicily. A few months later, the Fascist government fell and the king decreed an armistice. In the immediate aftermath, many men from our neighbourhood returned home, some from Yugoslavia, others from the South of Italy. I saw one friend of mine return from Croatia dressed as a train driver, another arrive on a woman’s bicycle disguised as a baker, covered in flour; yet another was done up in a strange mixture of sailor’s trousers and postman’s jacket.
Some days after that, I found myself in Milan, in the house of my uncle Nino, my mother’s brother, who had been granted exemption from military service. He came to meet me at school. ‘I need you. Perhaps you can help me.’
‘Glad to. What do you need?’
‘Women’s wigs!’
‘Wigs! What for?’
‘Later. I’ll explain later.’
At one end of Corso Garibaldi, there was a shop where wigs were on sale cheaply. We went there. They had about a dozen moth-eaten samples, all at bargain prices, so my uncle took the lot. ‘Come with me to the station.’
When we got there he said: ‘It might be a good idea if you were to come with me to Sartirana. Maybe you could make yourself useful!’
‘Just what do you plan to do with those wigs in Sartirana?’
Once we were inside the compartment, he opened the sack he had with him. Inside, all musty, there were some women’s dresses. Then from a semi-rigid bag, he took out a box with make-up. ‘Are you going to do a performance?’ I asked.
‘Almost. In Torreberretti, there’s a camp with British, South African and a few Indian prisoners. The garrison that’s supposed to be in charge of it has made off, so now we’ve got to get them to Switzerland before the Germans wake up to the fact. I have been asked to take care of about fifty of them. If I stick them all on a train in civilian clothes, they’ll stand out too easily. I can hardly pass them off as people going to the Pirelli factory annual picnic! Apart from anything else, about a dozen of them are Scottish, almost all with red hair and white faces splattered with freckles. Another half a dozen are South African, one metre ninety tall, and feet that take a size fifty-four. And that’s before we get to the four Indians that look like versions of the famous Tugh from Malaya!
‘I don’t get it, Uncle. Do you really believe that if you dress them up in wigs and make-up they could pass as a Variety chorus on the move?’
‘I’ve not going to dress them all up, just about ten of the ones who would stick out like sore thumbs. Then we’ll put them all onto the same train as the catariso folk.’
‘And who would they be?’
‘The catariso are the people who come to Lomellina from the city in search of a few sacks of rice, rye or wheat so that they can for once eat like human beings. The guards on the government warehouses let them get away with it, because as long as the amount does not exceed a couple of kilos a head, it’s permissible. All we have to do is mix our prisoners in with the catariso, who are mostly women. In fact, we might even entrust some of the more passable ones to them!’
‘Are you sure that these catariso women are prepared to take the risk?’
‘Don’t worry. Women are always more generous, and they’re always the ones prepared to run risks.’
The following morning, when it was still dark, we went to the station at Sartirana. The train coming from Mortara for Novara and Luino arrived. It was already quite busy, mainly with catariso women with their bags and packages. The train stopped, took on more passengers, then, instead of moving off, reversed to the shed where it was joined to a goods train. I learned later that this manoeuvre was a ruse to allow the liberated prisoners to get onto the rear coaches undercover, in other words, to dash out from the arches in the shed, out of sight of the guards on duty in the station. Clearly the engine drivers and conductors had been squared.
I followed Uncle Nino down to the rear coaches. Four comrades from Sartirana had been put in charge of overseeing the transport. As my uncle had forecast, at least a dozen women had volunteered to take part in the adventure. Some of them were obviously completely unconcerned about any risk they might encounter. ‘If we’re rounded up, I want to be locked up with that good-looking Scottish guy who is disguised as a rice-gatherer!’ one of the women giggled.
It was an exceptionally well-assorted gang of escapees! Almost the whole bunch were done up in trousers which were too short and tight, while those with the wigs on their heads looked like dockside whores in the middle of a particularly bothersome period of abstinence. Someone had even put a baby who was kicking and screaming in abject terror on the knees of one of those streetwalkers.
The greatest danger was that some traveller or other would ask one them a question, for not one of them had so much as a word of Italian. Of the four from the Indian subcontinent, two spoke an impenetrable Bangladeshi dialect while another was so dark of skin that not even a heavy dose of foundation cream would have lightened his complexion. Having tried everything else, they had decided to swathe his face in bandages, leaving openings for the eyes, nostrils and the mouth. To hide his hands, they had got someone to knit waiter-style gloves. If anyone asked what had happened to him, the reply was that he had been standing nearby when flames from the furnace had blown out … burns all over.
As luck would have it, the coach was so packed that no one was able to get on. Instead, at each stop, we leaned out of the window to suggest to people looking for a seat that they move towards the centre of the train. Even the guards who were supposed to get on at Novara and go through the two carriages where our escaping prisoners were squatting tried only once or twice to make headway through the crowd, then gave up and climbed aboard further up the train.
We arrived in Luino, the usual half-hour late. It had taken us almost four hours to do no more than one hundred kilometres.
At this point, the whole undertaking became more difficult. A garrison of Germans was waiting for us at the station, and to make matters worse, the number of travellers in our compartment had been almost halved. We could no longer take advantage of the crush to stave off the possibility of inspections. In addition, with the passage of time, the make-up cream was beginning to stream down the faces of the disguised runaways. They now looked like clowns fleeing from a custard-pie-in-the-face competition.
‘Watch out, four “Deutsch” inspectors clambering aboard the rear carriages to pay us a visit!’ At that moment, the train moved off, jolting so powerfully that one of the Wehrmacht men, standing with one foot on the running board, was thrown onto the ground. The station-master whistled like a madman. The train shuddered to a halt. Another jolt. The four Germans went racing up towards the locomotive. The head conductor got off to scream at the station-master: the engine driver leaned out of his cab and started screaming in his turn. The Germans tried gamely to get into the discussion, but no one paid any heed to them. As if that were not enough, the normal travellers leaned out of the windows and did their own yelling: ‘We’re already a half-hour late! Would you like to wind up your argybargy and get this train rolling again?’
The result was that the st
ation-master cut the whole thing short with one almighty blow of his whistle, the train engine replied with a snort and set off resolutely with the indignant puffing of one who is fed up to his back teeth. The station-master on the platform continued debating the matter with the Kraut guards, and as I drew level with the altercating parties, I had the clear impression that once more the railwaymen in Luino and those on our train had set up the whole scene with the express purpose of stymying the German gendarmes and preventing them from carrying out their inspection.
After half an hour, once we were beyond Maccagno, we arrived at the tunnel a few kilometres short of Pino, that is, a few steps from the Swiss border. The train stopped with the engine and the greater part of the carriages inside the tunnel, leaving only the rear coaches outside. ‘Out, down you get, off you go!’
Hardly had our feet touched the ground when the train started up again. The fifty prisoners and those of us in the escort had made it, even if we had been tossed about a bit!
Not far behind us, there was a path which led into the woods and then wended its way upwards over a steep shoulder. We climbed at the pace of wild goats. The supposedly scalded Tugh pulled the bandages off his face, and with cries of satisfaction, those who had been disguised as women stripped off their skirts and bodices. There was no time to stop and get them into trousers, and so they were obliged to remain in their underpants. The tension caused them to neglect removing their wigs … an ever-more obscene vision.
When we reached the plain above Tronzano, we ran into a group of shepherds – men and women – and at the sight of the various Tughs, African giants, fair-skinned, red-haired Scots and striding women, they opened wide their startled eyes; the women made the sign of the cross. A few more paces and we were on the frontier. We stopped at a hut to get a drink and catch our breath. There waiting for us were a couple of smugglers whom I had known for years, as well as another group of people, men, women and children. In the middle of them, I saw my father, who had come up with the people from Pino. I had not expected to see him up there. We embraced and he complimented Uncle Nino and his companions: ‘You had some courage to make him do a journey like that!’