The Day of Judgment

by Salvatore Satta

  Neglect of her body had not only caused her legs to swell, but had ruined her teeth and, what is worse, her sight. People and things became shadows for her. The acuteness of her understanding compensated for the decline of her faculties, and so from her armchair she was intensely in touch with the life of the house; she read the face of each of her sons, and from the window at which she stood on the long dull evenings she recognized, by their voices or their footsteps on the cobblestones, all those who passed by without looking up for fear of having to greet her. Playing with her two youngest, Sebastiano and Peppino, who were still very close to her, she regained the liveliness of her girlhood. Sebastiano would still have jumped on her lap if she had not held him off. Peppino, whose fine-drawn face revealed the almost feminine delicacy of his spirit, in response to some unknown call had discovered a mysterious world, the ancient epics of the Orient, and when the three of them were alone together he read some passages in the translations of Michele Kerbaker or Italo Pizzi, and she would pretend to understand; or maybe she really did understand, prompted by motherly love. She too had her moments of happiness. Sebastiano was proud of this brother little older than himself, and together they created distant, iridescent worlds in which they would live when they grew up. It is what all children do, except that these dreams were made in Nuoro, where no one dreamed.

  I have to admit that this is not quite true. In fact, the truth is the opposite: everyone dreamed. But the dreams of the Nuorese were like those of Antoni Mereu. Antoni Mereu (and I seem to see him before me) was a peasant who lived on the edge of Sèuna and worked as a day laborer like all the rest, except that he had a little field with half a dozen olive trees and a handful of vines, and this set him above the others, because he moistened his bread with his own oil and drank his own wine. He was, like so many others, “related” to Don Sebastiano, who was godfather to his only son. The boy grew up skinny and stunted, with a pear-shaped head, and he would have made a perfectly good Seunese if his father had not started dreaming, as I said. And his dream was to get his son an education. He spoke about this to Don Sebastiano, who told him he was mad. He didn’t know what it meant to maintain a son as a student; and in any case, everyone ought to follow his own destiny. Antoni dug his heels in. He sent his son to school, and as if to spite Don Sebastiano the lad did not do badly. Though he had to repeat a few years, eventually he would have received his diploma. Antoni Mereu worked like a beast, waiting for the day. Suddenly the boy began to cough, to get thinner and thinner, and then to spit blood. Antoni went wandering around the streets like a lost dog. It was heartbreaking to see him, but the fault was his, because he had chosen to dream.

  But I am straying off course with these memories that come crowding into my head, and I have no time to lose. Don Sebastiano’s sacrifices were beginning to bear fruit, and in fact the time had come when the family goes ahead on its own and the parents are left as impotent spectators, watching and suffering. In addition, the lofty example of Don Sebastiano weighed on his sons. Too long had they seen him working and depriving himself of everything, not to feel the need to lighten his load as soon as possible. This was the height of unfairness, because the father asked nothing but to crown his sacrifices with the success of his highly gifted sons. Although he had not traveled, he knew that there were such things as meteoric careers, goals higher than those of the lawyers and doctors who populated the town. There was the university career, which brought one fame, and even in Sardinia there were some examples of this, such as Chironi and Fadda, whom he had known as boys. Poor notary, he also had his dreams. But Gaetano, who had qualified with excellent results in medicine, had immediately competed for a post as medical officer in a far-off village in Campidano, because he wanted to earn his own living. And Michele, who was studying engineering, was destined to do the same thing. But one has to admit that this spirit of independence on the part of the boys had its positive side, because the commitments were not yet finished: there were still the two youngest, who would also leave home soon, and there were Pasquale and Giovanni, who gave food for thought.

  In fact Pasquale, who seemed destined to go off the rails, had been rescued by Ludovico with a bold stroke that had contributed not a little to gaining him that reputation as a sage that would be with him all his life. Pasquale was certainly intelligent, like his brothers, but he had no desire to study. In the rigid secondary-school system of those days, he failed every year. In the family there was an atmosphere of tragedy, because Don Sebastiano’s plans were upset by this. All the most violent remedies had been attempted, but without success. The family was threatened with the shame of having a member who was a flop. It was then that Ludovico, who had kept in touch with the headmaster of the school, went and had a talk with him, and together they made the great decision: Pasquale was not suited to classical studies, but should turn to technical studies, thereby losing his chance of getting a degree. These were days of mourning for Don Sebastiano—bow was it possible that any son of his should not get a degree? But there was nothing to be done about it, and Pasquale had to take the road to Sassari, where he was to study accountancy. And it seemed that in one way or another he got by. Proud of this success, Ludovico returned to his uncut books. But he had gained moral dominance over the family.

  The real anxiety, the great anxiety, was Giovanni, the eldest. You will remember that from youth up he had lived a life of his own, almost looking down on the rest of his brothers and immersed in some dark dream; and you will also remember that there was a rumor that he was infatuated with Don Pasqualino’s beautiful daughter, who was hopelessly ill. Well, she died, and from that moment on, it seemed that Giovanni had entered a kind of nimbus of insanity. He had got into university, also in the law school, but had then failed to take his exams in time. People murmured that not everything could be expected to go right for Don Sebastiano. And Don Sebastiano, who was not really abreast of things, wrote letter after letter to no less a person than the Rector of the University of Rome, to find out if his son, who never got in touch, was keeping up with his exams. He wrote with the same wretched pen he used for drawing up deeds. But the Rector did not answer. Unless it was that his sons hid the reply so as not to upset him. He blamed the mail, and said that one of these days he’d go there himself to find out.

  The tragedy came when, after the fiasco of his exams, Giovanni returned home. He arrived without warning, as if at a hotel where one has a room permanently booked. His arrival was marked only by his heavy step on the stairs and the slamming of the door of his room. Peppino stopped reading, and Donna Vincenza told her beads. Ludovico said they should let him be: Giovanni was a fake neurotic: the real invalid was himself, and he never gave anyone any trouble. And so he spent his days. When he deigned to come to table the meal became funereal. No one even knew what they were eating. Don Sebastiano, who was dying of hunger because he ate only one meal a day, would chew furiously, and the noise of his dentures clicked the silence away. The wretched boy appeared to detest his family: this father who fed his horse before the meal and brought with him the smell of the stable; this ignorant, gloomy, prematurely aged mother; these badly dressed brothers, who passed their exams without batting an eyelid... As soon as he had finished eating, Don Sebastiano would mount his horse and set out for his sun-drenched fields: let them all go hang! Donna Vincenza wept without shedding tears, and amid the protests of her sons she would climb the stairs as best she could and stay motionless for hours outside the door of Giovanni’s room, not daring to knock.

  Into this family, which was forming and disintegrating at the same time, as is the law with all families, Don Sebastiano that evening tossed the news of the assassinated archduke, and the possible declaration of a war that might involve Italy. The boys’ eyes shone, as they did when they read a story from Plutarch. Ludovico said that if he didn’t have that nervous stomach he would volunteer. Don Sebastiano read the paper out loud, and not without a touch of pride. Only Donna Vincenza, in the depths of her gloom, understood a v
ery, very simple thing: that people die in war, and that of her seven children five would be exposed to death if Italy were to enter the war. With her heart in turmoil she shouted—and no one had ever heard her voice so loud—that Italy was in no condition to go to war. They were all taken aback, and Don Sebastiano, always ready to be emotional and to see things through rose-tinted glasses, was on the point of saying that she was in the world just because there was room for her, but luckily he restrained himself. Instead, he driveled on about old people who can make themselves useful in wartime, even if they don’t go to the front line.

  Enough of that. As everyone knows, the world did go to war, and for a year Italy was hanging on the edge of the abyss. In the Caffè Tettamanzi, where they all hated Italy because it had turned Sardinia into an outpost (as if this had not been its fate since Roman times), between one drink and the next they said that if Italy went to war the Sardinians ought to refuse to fight. Words, words, words: especially when unknown people arrived from Italy, made contact with the socialists and (naturally) with Don Ricciotti, improvised meetings in favor of the liberation of Trento and Trieste, and drew crowds to the Piazza San Giovanni; and these applauded frantically in spite of the fact that no one had ever heard of those cities. Even Commissioner Palazzi, who clearly had orders from the government, put on his tricolored sash and had three bugle calls sounded to disperse the crowd. But he did so without enthusiasm, because the fever had gripped even him.

  Consumed with anxiety, Donna Vincenza dwelt on the fact that the first to be called up would be Pasquale, since he was due for conscription. After that would come the others, because the war wouldn’t last only two months, as those imposters said. At least five of the boys might run the terrible risk. Only Sebastiano and Peppino would be exempt because of age. She had started to pray again, and she did not get even those few hours of sleep that her perpetual sufferings allowed her. Her sole comfort was Gonaria, who had no sons, only her brother the priest, but who knew that war had its origins in original sin and could bear no fruit other than sorrow. They spent long hours under the pergola, which was already covered with vine shoots. Will they still be here when the first bunches sprout? Suddenly came a hope: the newspapers said that there had been a disastrous earthquake in a place called Avezzano. The papers came out bordered with black, the King visited the scene, and dismay filled every heart. Italy could not make war under these conditions: this was the thought that came into her mind, and she clung to it with desperation. Even Gonaria said that God had sent a sign of His power to warn the Italians.

  But war did come, as everyone knows, because men are more powerful than God. If we really think about it, God exists for any single individual who puts his trust in Him, not for the whole of humanity, with its laws, its organizations, and its violence. Humanity is the demon which God does not succeed in destroying. And so Donna Vincenza’s sons started for the front line, which for Sardinia began at the port of embarkation, Terranova, on account of the submarines. She remained in the old house, custodian of the years, with the two youngest and with Ludovico and Giovanni, who had been rejected.

  Her relations with Don Sebastiano grew worse, because (prey to his sentimentality) he had done nothing to help his boys avoid military service, and in vain did Donna Vincenza reproach him with the examples of Don Pasqualino’s sons, who had stayed in Nuoro because they worked in industry, or those of the Corrales, because they were employed in agriculture. But he was thinking of doing even worse. As the government was issuing one loan after another in the name of “the Country in Danger,” he wanted to sell all his property to underwrite bonds at 5 percent. Rescue came, as ever, from Ludovico, he who would have volunteered except for that damned neurosis, but who had enough balance (as well as having studied a bit of economics for his exam) to understand that wars produce inflation and that those shares would have become worth no more than the paper they were printed on. Don Sebastiano had done his duty to his country by way of his sons, and when they came back they would ask him to account for Isporòsile and Locoi—their patrimony as well as his. Giovanni continued to be the way he was, if not worse. When the newspaper arrived and little Sebastiano was reading it aloud under the pergola, while Don Sebastiano sat listening with moist eyes, Giovanni sidled up as if in a trance, snatched the paper from his brother’s hands, and rushed up to read it in his lair. No one had the courage to protest, partly because Donna Vincenza held up her hands in supplication, as if to ward off disaster.

  Well, if he snatched the newspaper it meant that he had some interest in life. The war reached Nuoro in the form of telegrams bringing news of those killed at the front. Buziuntu’s son died, and the sons of Palimodde and of Zia Tatana, people from Sèuna, San Pietro, and the Corso, all together in a heap, like sheep at the slaughterhouse. The Caffè Tettamanzi was depopulated. The young socialists who gave themselves airs with Avanti! sticking out of their pockets had all followed Mussolini’s example and volunteered: those loafers who aimed at getting into the middle classes had either taken the little train that would carry them to the other world, or had hidden away in the civil services and dared not show their faces for shame. Only Bartolino, Giovanni Maria Musiu, Ricciotti, and the other old men were still left, to keep up the card games and play at defeatism. Anyway, the war was a long way off, and there was still white bread to eat, and ration cards were useful only for those who were unable to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, the years went by and the end was not in sight. At Don Sebastiano’s house, on the other hand, two sheets of paper arrived, calling up Peppino, who was eighteen, and Giovanni, who was over thirty. If there was nothing to worry about with Giovanni, because he was assigned to the territorial services (and his departure would remove a nuisance), Peppino was scarcely more than an adolescent, and they wanted him simply to get him killed. Things had gone that far. Donna Vincenza, her heart already turned to stone, filled his suitcase with sweet buns that could last as long as a month, and he took the little train, accompanied to the station by Don Sebastiano, who walked with his chest thrown out. Young Sebastiano remained alone in the deserted house, because Ludovico had gone off to Sassari to take his exams, which the war had made much easier to pass.

  *

  Letters from the front arrived fairly regularly, and they were always cheerful, even when they contained the news that this person or that person was dead. They were like messages from nowhere, because there were never any signs of where they came from. Donna Vincenza called on Gonaria to read between the lines for her, knowing that the letters were (as they said) censored, and that Gonaria was incapable of telling her a lie.

  And so, day after day, the war became a habit. It was a distant thing, that perhaps might never end, just as there had seemed no end to the state of peace in which Nuoro had lived until then. Terrible things would happen from time to time. For example, one of the ferries between Sardinia and the Continent had been torpedoed, and five hundred people had been killed. One stunned moment, and then nothing. Many people didn’t even know who the war was being fought against; and as for the places mentioned daily in the bulletins displayed in the windows of the Caffè Tettamanzi, they had no notion where they were. Right at the start the government had sent over about twenty internees, who were dotted around the town. No one could imagine who they were, but later it was learned that they were Austrian and German Jews resident in Milan, who had not wanted to leave Italy. Until then no one had ever heard of the Jews, except in the Bible. They were men like any others, but they were gentry, and had money, and if some of those draft-evading socialists said that when it came down to it they were traitors to their countries, the aristocrats, who had a good nose for such things, opened their houses to them as guests of honor.

  The only penniless exiles were a family of semi-gypsies, two sisters and a brother twelve years old and scarcely less than a moron, who as soon as he got off the train started trotting about like Raffaelle and shouting “Chuff-chuff, chuff-chuff,” and “Chuff-chuff” became his nickname. The
y must have been Slavs, and no one could imagine why anyone had bothered to send them all that way, since they didn’t even know where they had come from. The sisters could earn a bare living, and earn it they did, competing with Giggia up in the bushes at Sant’ Onofrio; the boy lived on air. Don Gaetano Pilleri the tobacconist, who also sold newspapers, took pity on him and employed him as a news vendor. It wasn’t much to live on, but it was something. And he would trot about, alternating between “chuff-chuff” and the news headlines and making everybody laugh. Except that winter came, the bitter winter of Nuoro. Chuff-chuff, who was half- naked, began to cough, then to spit blood and run high fevers. In a short while he died. The cemetery of Nuoro, with ever-open arms, received him. No one knew where he had come from, just as no one knew where he was going. And as he had no name, no one even knew if he had really existed.

  The war was extraneous and distant, but it was to have enormous influence on Sardinia, because the Sardinians discovered Italy, if indeed they did not discover mankind at large. All that, however, was still in the future. Meanwhile, the news of Peppino seemed good. They had sent him to an officer-candidate school, and such was their rapacious hunger for men that in a fortnight he was given the specially created rank of “cadet,” which was one of those bureaucratic compromises made to create de facto officers and hurl them into the fray. What Donna Vincenza did not know (he himself was to tell her afterward) was that Peppino, half in officer’s uniform, wearing his civilian shoes because the army was short of everything, with the lines of the Ra¯ma¯yana still in his head, was sent at once into the war zone. There he reported to a bewhiskered general who said, “So you’re dying to be an officer? Well, go to the trenches and die.” Peppino had set off on foot in the pouring rain, over mountains of red mud that left him breathless. After half an hour the soles of his shoes were torn clean off. He went on barefoot all night long, and when he reached the trenches in the morning he was a mass of cuts. Among the soldiers there were a few from Nuoro, who recognized Don Sebastiano’s son, and bandaged his feet and gave him something to eat and drink. He was in a dugout all day, and toward evening he began to run a fever. The next day he was worse. They came for him with a stretcher and took him to hospital.