the same thing happens with three or four small factories then Pepe who’s a bit sceptical goes right round the fourth factory he sees that the cars are parked at the back that they’ve kept the cars out of sight the gates are closed to give the impression that the factory was closed Pepe tells the people at the very front of the march and in no time word gets right to the back we turn around and we reach the factory gate everybody is shouting scabs out gutless scum a hell of an uproar with drums and cow bells but not a sound from inside Cotogno with Ortica Valeriana and the others go round the back they climb up the gate and throw a few stones at the cars everybody has an idea what’s going to happen and Talpa makes a dash for the back but some workers restrain him and tell him not to bother for those guys are shitbags
the workers who were inside come out on to the forecourt one at a time first surveying the lie of the land from the half-open iron gateway the oldest guy comes up to the gate with everybody yelling at him he talks to the trade-union man who he seems to know he says he didn’t know there was a strike otherwise he’d have joined it he comes to an agreement with the trade-union man they’ll all come out and we’ll stay there to make sure the scabs get into their cars while everybody outside the gate lines up on both sides they’ve no option but to go dead slow and you can see the fear on their faces their windows rolled up and the safety catches down spit hits the windows the odd kick on the sides of the cars it’s the women who are most enraged they stop a few cars standing in front of them and shaking their fists
they leave and we get on with the demonstration another small factory and here too people working but here they’re not even bothered about hiding their cars they’re doing it quite openly tempers rise but no sooner do they hear the uproar than they come out at once they invariably have the same excuse saying they didn’t know about the strike we go on like this one small factory after another some are genuinely shut down in others the workers come out before we get there and one guy is actually waiting for the march and he joins it we get to a small rotor factory one of those where they’ve taken over the work from the occupied factory that the demonstration’s for the gates open some of us flood inside on to the shop floor marching round in a muddle because there isn’t room for us all
you can hear bumps and thuds the plastic material they’re working with ends up on the ground Lauro gets into a fight with a scab he doesn’t want to come out they’re separated almost at once then the scab comes out pressing a handkerchief to his nose with blood pouring out of it we don’t get there in time to clear out the little block where the offices are because the office workers have already all taken to their heels and we go on with the demonstration towards another factory this one is a bit bigger than the others there must be about thirty workers but not all of them are at work there too the cars get kicked and thumped one car window gets shattered Talpa runs backwards and forwards trying to cool down tempers and this time Cotogno gets pissed off and tells him to cut out playing at being a fireman
the gates are closed there’s an uproar to get them opened from the entrance the two owners emerge looking pissed off and making a show of confidence they open the gate and start talking to Talpa however the people behind him push and break through the two owners take to their heels and stop in front of the big glass door shielding it with their bodies behind it you can see the scabs who’ve now stopped working and are peering outside the two owners go back to their argument with Talpa who’s telling them flat today nobody’s working everybody out I’ve already been here to talk about this problem if people are working here they’re breaking our struggle to keep our jobs because with the overtime that you’re doing here you’re doing our work from our factory that we’ve occupied and you’re breaking our struggle
the two owners aren’t impressed one of them looks at the bus with the carabinieri that’s stopped about thirty yards away and says now I’m calling the carabinieri Talpa answers the carabinieri can see perfectly well what we’re doing and they’re not interfering because I’ve talked to them too and I’ve told them that I’m taking responsibility for there being no trouble but you’ve got to bring the workers out the two owners aren’t impressed and they say we’ve got no right to do what we’re doing further back the workers are beginning to get impatient somebody starts shoving that’s enough that’s enough let’s go inside Talpa goes on arguing with all the workers yelling behind him the first stones fly you can hear the shed windows breaking
the two owners get even more irate Talpa acts as if nothing has happened and he goes on arguing I’m right behind him beside Cotogno and Ortica I’m holding a flag with a big pole the workers behind me keep shoving I hear the window panes breaking and without even thinking about it I thrust the pole forward against the glass door there’s pandemonium the whole door collapses there and then a shard of plate glass comes away from up above and falls smack on Talpa’s head fragments bounce off me and others who are nearby a cut opens on the trade-union man’s bald head and instantly turns red shit I had no idea it was so fragile maybe it was badly built
one of the two owners the one that wanted to call the carabinieri thinks it was Cotogno who broke the glass door and he lands him a punch on the nose Ortica reacts with an instant reflex with both hands he lifts the banner and brings it straight down on to his head I hear the blow I see his eyes rolling then his legs giving way and he falls in a heap the other owner is petrified because Ortica has already raised the banner again over his head but he doesn’t bring it down Talpa takes his hands away from his head and looks at his fingers messy with blood he’s a bit stunned there’s a moment of silence of general dumbfoundment the owner lifts his partner under the armpits and drags him towards the wall
from behind us there’s shoving and everyone goes inside all the scabs run away leaving by the side doors but no one runs after them we take it out on things like in the earlier factory only more so all the plastic material ends up on the ground scattered everywhere all the window panes are broken this shit hole of a factory is where I work Verbena tells me the angriest the ones who do the most damage are the young ones and the women but the others think they’re quite right they say nothing they don’t try to stop them when we go outside the carabinieri’s bus is still there it hasn’t moved they haven’t even got out
the two owners have disappeared the march re-forms and other small factories are cleared out but there are no more incidents the cut on Talpa’s head isn’t as deep as it looked at first but he’s pissed off with us because he knows it was us behind him when the glass door collapsed but he doesn’t say anything to us he just acts pissed off without blaming us we go back to the canteen in the occupied factory and there’s a decision to do a leaflet to be handed out in the village so as to explain what has happened we write it and we pass round the text which is approved unanimously other clear-outs are threatened if in the next few days we get to know of overtime still going on in the small factories then groups of us go to hand out the leaflet in the streets and the shops and the bars in the village
29
The light above the door is bright and it hurts my eyes I’ll have to lie on my stomach to sleep or put the pillow over my face but I wasn’t sleepy and so I started thinking about the comrades who by this time will all have mobilized around my arrest they’ll all be having discussions at the centre they’ll be doing things to get me out of here they’ll be talking to the lawyer I can imagine how the news got round fast immediately after my arrest telephone calls appointments meetings by this time the whole movement will already know about my arrest and now they’ll all be organizing for everything that has to be done when I think about the comrades I feel a bit better as soon as I’m able to write I’ll bring them right up to date it’s years since I’ve written a letter I try to think of everyone I must write to there are too many better to write collective letters
it comes into my mind that I’ll also have to write to my parents I think of them th
ere at home anxious worried by this business that’s come so unexpectedly it was unexpected for me too even if it crossed my mind occasionally but though possible it seemed so remote and in any case it wasn’t worth dwelling on it so this too is why I’m now so stunned and dumbfounded and most of all so unprepared now that it’s happened but my parents couldn’t even imagine that I could get mixed up with the law as far as they were concerned I was a being from another planet a crackpot a dreamer but harmless incapable of hurting anybody I hoped the comrades had gone to see them to calm them down to give them a bit of reassurance I really haven’t a clue how to write I had no idea how to communicate with them
the spy-hole is opened again it’s the sergeant of the guard who stares at me in silence without a word after a moment or two I jerk my head as if to enquire what’s wrong he remains silent a bit longer then he asks me you wouldn’t be the one who killed our warrant-officer two months ago I answer that I’ve never killed anyone that I’m there through a mistake that soon it will all be cleared up the sergeant gives me a surprised look and says that all the ones like me he’s ever come across so far never say they’ve nothing to do with it and that they’ve done nothing they only say they’re proud to be communists struggling against the state whereas it’s the non-politicals who always say they’re innocent even when they’ve been caught red-handed
I’m put out by this I wouldn’t like to have made a blunder I feel as if I’ve broken some kind of protocol that must exist among comrades in prison meanwhile the sergeant starts telling me that the murdered warrant-officer was a decent fellow who had children and a family that what the people who murdered him put on the leaflet wasn’t true at all that he didn’t have a gang that beat people up that he’d never beaten anybody up or had anybody beaten up that he was a good humane fellow and so on and he goes on to explain that they’re all decent fellows that it’s wrong to hold anything against them that you have to understand that they’re doing that job just to get by because they have to feed their families
that it’s not their fault if there’s unemployment that they’re the first to want to get out of there if they get a chance of anything else that they’ve come from the south where there’s no work and they’ve had no education and this is why those are the only jobs they can get but they do the job with respect for others and that it’s not them we should hold things against because they’re only carrying out orders and they’re compelled to carry them out that it’s the politicians we should have it in for and not them they’re in agreement that things as they are are disgusting and that they need to be changed because they too realize that things can’t go on like this but we shouldn’t go shooting at them but at who’s really in charge who’s really to blame for the situation the sergeant goes on like this and there’s no end to it
while he was going on like this it sounded to me just like the same reasoning the same things that the blacklegs doing overtime were saying when we went to picket in front of the factories to stop them from going in but here on top there was the naivety with which he said those things which made it evident that they weren’t his own ideas they were ideas he’d picked up talking to comrades they were crude basic propaganda clichés and all this became his justification but the point was his reason for telling me all this this was the point and clearly he was doing it because he was afraid of ending up like that colleague of his who’d been killed and he wanted to keep on the good side of anybody who directly or indirectly could be a threat to him
and the way things were at that moment I had a kind of advantage over him I knew nothing at all about prison then but I was beginning to guess that it was a different world with different rules and a different logic that I had to learn as quickly as possible because in there along with the air that smelled of shit of piss and of vomit you also got a whiff of constant fear of threat of danger so it was better to be cautious to be careful better an excess of caution than a mistake that could have consequences I couldn’t even imagine I felt the danger instinctively even in what the sergeant said maybe he’d been sent there to sound me out to see what sort of guy I was and how I saw things and so the best thing to do was not to give myself away to be vague about things but then even if I’d wanted to what could I have said in reply to that speech of the sergeant
so all I did was look at him until he stopped talking because a guard was calling him I hoped I wouldn’t see him come back but he’d left the spy-hole open and in fact a minute later he was back looking through it but before letting him get started again I asked him if he could give me some matches because they’d left me my cigarettes but without matches I couldn’t light any then the sergeant of the guard tells me that the rules forbid those in isolation from having matches because there’s already been a case of someone going crazy and setting light to the mattress which is foam rubber and burns in minutes and gives off smoke that suffocates you in no time and if this happens at night when the keys to the cells are up in the rotunda there’s the risk of a fire that would burn everyone inside the cells
when you want a light call the guards knock on the spy-hole and they’ll give you a light seeing that the sergeant was so ready to give me information I also ask him how long I have to stay there in isolation he’s astonished by the question he didn’t know how long I had to stay in isolation he only knew I was in judicial isolation pending interrogation and that until then I could have no contact with anyone neither inside nor outside the prison I couldn’t go out into the sun nor go into the exercise yard with anyone else not even with anyone else in isolation like me and I couldn’t talk to my lawyer or my parents until I’d been questioned and since I was a political isolation was even more severe these were the orders he’d received from his superiors who in their turn had received them from the magistrates
and by way of going back to the earlier conversation he gives me a wink you see it’s not us who’ve put you in these conditions we’re not the ones who make these decisions do you see who’s making them I ask him how long it usually is before the interrogation with the judge and he tells me that it can take up to forty days from the day of arrest I think to myself that it hasn’t even been half a day and I’m already in this state I can’t even imagine forty days the sergeant of the guard gives me a light and then to show him that I don’t want to talk any more I turn my back on him and I go towards the bed then he closes the spy-hole and goes away I stretch out and slowly smoke the cigarette savouring every puff and I fall asleep without even noticing
I wake up again with the spy-hole suddenly being opened a fattish face taps on the door with a biro and twice says the word shopping the guard is holding a clipboard with a list of foodstuffs and other things on it I ask him what I can order and rather impatiently he says how should I know I think of cigarettes and mineral water and order that he’s holding a form with my name and my registration number and he writes down cigarettes and mineral water and then shuts the door again saying he’ll bring me the stuff the next day I lie down on the bed again for a bit but I can’t get back to sleep then I get up and I beat on the door with the palm of my hand no one comes then I shout guard guard two or three times the spy-hole opens and a guard gives me a light with a lighter and then closes it again
when the spy-hole opens it seems for a moment that I’m not locked in that hole and for a moment it makes me feel better in the evening the prisoner who brings the food comes back some overcooked pasta with a sour red sauce one forkful with the plastic fork and I leave it all on the plate and go back to sleep now and then in the night you can hear screams from the adjoining cells you can hear people calling the guard who doesn’t come the light is left on and if I’m lying on my back the glare’s straight in my eyes and while I’m awake during one of the regular cell-check patrols when they open the spy-hole I ask the guard to put out the light but he says he can’t that the rules say it has to stay on
a night of fitful sleep with that bright light on all the time then
it’s morning the first cell-check patrol comes around early and then the working prisoner with the watered down white coffee and a piece of bread half an hour later they open my door for exercise the guards outside in the corridor each carry a long truncheon and one of them uses it to point to the small door at the end of the corridor before I go outside he asks me if I want to empty the bucket but I say no the idea of lifting that stinking pail disgusts me I go through the little door followed by the guards with their truncheons we enter a kind of narrow tunnel and at the end it leads out to the open air into a kind of narrow corridor between two high walls where there’s only room for one person at a time at the end it opens out into a small courtyard with an area no bigger than a few square yards surrounded by high walls
they open the last gate at the end on the left and then they lock it on me again above it there’s an iron grating and through it I can see a part of one wing of the prison with the windows screened by vents broom handles with television aerials tied on to them stick out through some of the vents I think how those are the cells where I’ll go after isolation I’m not clear what difference there is but at any rate there’s television I don’t know how many years it is since I’ve watched television but now I have a great desire to watch television to see anything at all with images and sounds anything at all that comes from outside anything at all with faces colours words
The Unseen Page 15