One morning when it was still dark, Gerda handed her father the coffee but he didn’t wake up straight away. He was still dreaming. His opaque eyes opened with difficulty.
“Mamme,” he muttered.
His mother was back! And now she was there next to his bed with a cup of steamy white coffee for him, just like when he was ill, as a child.
Gerda got frightened: she had never seen him with this helpless, trusting expression before.
“Tata . . . i bin’s. Die Gerda,” she said.6
Hermann blinked and opened his eyes again. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same cheekbones as his mother; except that it was only his daughter. He realized what he had just called her and never forgave her.
In the summer, when the truck engine didn’t need warming up, Gerda would go to the mountain pastures with her cousin, to mind the cows of uncle Hans, Hermann’s eldest brother, the one who had inherited the family maso.
The pasture was half a day’s walk from the maso, too far to come back every night. Gerda and her cousins, Michl and Simon, who were more or less the same age, and little Sebastian, known as Wastl, would sleep on the hay in a hut. They would spend their days showing one another those anatomical parts that they didn’t have in common, stuffing themselves with blueberries, spitting juniper berries at one another, and carving twigs. Only when absolutely necessary did they run after cows that were wandering off. When it rained or, even better, when there was a thunderstorm, they would plunge into the warm hay and tell one another scary stories, with evil spirits of the mountain as protagonists. Three times a week, Hans’s wife would bring crisp rye bread, called Schüttelbrot, speck and cheese.
Gerda was the only one who never needed to use the stick with the cows, since they followed her around like huge lapdogs. Her cousins, too, would have followed her anywhere. Several decades later, when Simon and Michl thought back to those nights in the hay with Gerda, with little Wastl asleep right next to them, the memory of her sparse, blond pubic hair, revealed by her raised shabby dress, could still make the blood rush to their nether parts.
One of those summer mornings, an English mountain climber who’d lost his way saw her from afar. Gerda was sitting under a Swiss pine, her eyes half closed. She was emitting high-pitched whistling sounds, like glass, with a blade of grass held tight between her lips. Her bare legs and feet caked with mud protruded from a threadbare cotton dress, and her dirty hair was tied back with a string of braided bark. High cheekbones, rounded forehead, fleshy lips, elongated blue eyes. The Englishman thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The thought of going away and never seeing her again seemed unbearable. He contemplated her for a long time before making his presence known. He forgot about his planned climb and remained all day at the hut.
The English climber shared his packed lunch with Gerda and her cousins. When he heard her laugh he decided he would do anything to hear that sound again. He began chasing after the cows, brandishing his Alpenstock, and barking like a sheepdog. He hung a cowbell around his neck and grazed, ruminating and actually swallowing the grass in the field. He mimed the solemn gait of young Queen Elizabeth, placing a crown of daisies on his head with which he then crowned Gerda, declaring her the one and only queen. However, when the moment came for him to leave, the Englishman respectfully asked her permission to take a photo. At the end of the summer, Hans’s wife handed Gerda an envelope addressed to her. Sender: John Gallagher, Leeds, United Kingdom. In it was Gerda’s photo at the age of ten, which Eva would one day put on her bookshelf. On the back, in large, spiky letters, was written: In eternal gratitude for the best day of my life. Forever yours, John.
During one of those summers, the monument to the Alpini had been rebuilt—a little more slender than the previous one, and a little less grumpy. At the solemn inauguration, the army bishop declared that this time it underlined the reconciliation between the Italian government and its faraway province. It symbolized defense, he stressed, not aggression.
However, the South Tyroleans didn’t change their minds. That was a Fascist monument and always would be, even though there was no more Fascism. Except for the authorities, none of them attended the inauguration. Not even Peter, who was now sixteen, or his father. Hermann didn’t want anything to do with these things anymore.
One night, a couple of years later, Peter came back home at dawn. His mother, who could never get to sleep until her firstborn was back, knew immediately: Peter hadn’t been hunting. His clothes didn’t smell of forest or gunpowder, but were soiled with red and white paint. However, Johanna asked for no explanation. The following morning, the Carabinieri surrounded the monument to the Alpine troops and closed to traffic the intersection where it had been erected. During the night, its granite pedestal had been painted red and white, the forbidden colors of the Tyrolean flag. Thus derided, it inspired more an almost ironic affection than fear or resentment. From that moment on, the town residents started calling it by the common diminutive, Wastl. The Carabinieri had to spend an entire day scrubbing it with brushes and soap.
Peter couldn’t find a job and got by on seasonal work. He picked potatoes, hired himself out as a laborer to peasants whose sons were conscripted when they needed an extra pair of arms to gather the hay. Only occasionally, when there was a particularly heavy load, he would help his father with the truck, but there was never enough money. One winter he found a good job as a custodian in the house of a noble family from Vienna that spent the summers in South Tyrol. His duties involved lighting the stoves three times a week so the pipes wouldn’t freeze, checking the windows, and sweeping the snow from the roof. The work wasn’t arduous but it wasn’t well-paid. Peter wanted to start a family. He was twenty-two now and there was a girl he quite liked. But at this rate he’d never be able to do it. That was until he heard that Falck steelworks in Bolzano were hiring workers.
Johanna was the only one in the family who could read and write in Italian: she was the only one to have gone to a Fascist school. Hermann had gone to primary school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and suspended his studies when his parents had died. His children had gone to the schools of the Republic created by anti-Fascism, which had not returned South Tyrol to Mother Austria, as its residents had deluded themselves it would, but at least it had recognized their right to study in their own language. All the bureaucracy, however, was still in Italian.
It was therefore Johanna who helped Peter prepare all the documents: certificate of good behavior, dispensation from obligatory military service, a strong and healthy constitution. It was she who accompanied him to the various offices. There was no form or sign in German, no state employee spoke German; nobody understood German. The fact that the population that frequented these offices was German-speaking was totally ignored. Applications had to be written in correct Italian or you risked having to start from scratch. For Johanna, having to speak with these impolite clerks in a language that wasn’t her own was a source of anxiety and embarrassment but, in the end, Peter obtained all the certificates. She then ironed his Sunday suit, and one Monday at dawn Peter took the bus to the main city.
He remained in Bolzano for a few weeks. He stayed with a distant cousin of his mother’s in a tiny house with four children aged between two and eight. At night, Peter slept on the floor next to the stove, but he could not remain there during the day. Those were the days of the three Eis Männer, the ice saints in the middle of spring, the last cold and nasty stretch of winter, and the air was frosty. Peter had no money to go and warm up in a tavern so he spent his afternoons in the waiting room at the station. That’s where he saw them get off the trains.
They were mainly men. Although Peter didn’t know it, they were identical to those who during those same years were arriving also in Turin, Liège, Düsseldorf. They had peaked caps, checkered jackets, cardboard boxes tied with string and the odd leather suitcase. Every so often there would also be a woman between twenty and thirt
y, seldom any older, with thick black hair. She would get off the train alone or else with three or four children, but there was always a man waiting for her, with a face identical to those who had arrived alone though perhaps a little less hollow, a little less anxious, a little more self-confident: the face of a man who has a job and can now take on the responsibility and dignity of the head of the family.
Nobody had explained to the immigrants from southern Italy what kind of place they were going to, before they left. It hadn’t occurred to anyone in the recruitment offices in Enna, Matera and Crotone, where the Bolzano factories were obtaining their workforce, to let them know that they were about to go and live among people who spoke German, who did not eat spaghetti or even polenta, but things they called Knödel, Schlutzkrapfen, Spatzlan. They were still in Italy, weren’t they? That was all an immigrant needed to know.
When Peter arrived in Bolzano, wearing his Sunday suit all clean and ironed, he went to the Falck recruitment office. There, he left his job application and all the painfully obtained documents. Over the following days he also went to Lancia, then the railroad company and even the road company: the life of a road worker wasn’t great but it was still better than being unemployed.
Not one of his job applications was answered.
It took a while for Peter to understand. The economic miracle of the industrial area of Bolzano, with its social housing and almost acceptable wages, had been devised only for Italians. It’s not that they didn’t want a German-speaking worker. It was simply not factored in.
Yes, now you could teach in German once again in Alto Adige schools. There was no more need for Katakombenschulen for pupils and teachers to be able to speak and study in their own language. The new Italian Republic had not tackled the Germanness of South Tyroleans the way Mussolini had done. It had chosen to adopt a different attitude toward the problem: pretend it didn’t exist.
Peter went back home. Johanna was horrified when she saw the state of his suit: he hadn’t taken it off for three weeks. Peter did not explain why he hadn’t found work and nobody asked him. The following summer he remained in Switzerland for the entire season. He found a job as a herdsman and supplemented his income selling hunting trophies, especially chamois. Once, he got lucky and killed an ibex. Only German tourists bought anything from him. The few Italians who ventured in those parts weren’t particularly interested in trophies.
One November day, when Gerda was almost twelve, Peter suggested she go with him on an excursion near Bolzano. He said there would be lots of people, like at the church fair, Kirschta, only much bigger.
An excursion! Sometimes on a Sunday automobiles, carts or groups of bicycles would drive along the highway past Shanghai, and Gerda would hear people singing and laughing. On Sundays during the summer, her father’s colleagues would also load their families and friends on trucks and take them to the shores of the river that comes down from the glaciers, or to the fields at the start of the adjacent valley. The wind would carry to Gerda the smoke, the smell of grilled Würstel, waves of music, laughter, and she would be overwhelmed with longing at the joy of these strangers. Sometimes, without needing to go too far, there would be a party even in Shanghai, in the courtyard in the middle of the houses on the upper part of the road. At the end of the summer, that’s where they would pile up freshly-picked corn, then tear off its long, sharp, pointy leaves by hand: once dried, they would use them to stuff mattresses for the whole winter. The workers and the peasant women would set the pace with songs and jokes and afterwards, in the evening, when the heap of leaves in the courtyard corner was taller than the front door, they would start dancing to the sound of the zithern and the accordion. All the residents of the district would come, some with bottles of cider, others with a slice of speck, others with chairs for the elderly. Everybody came except for the Hubers. When Hermann heard singing during those light evenings that smelt of hay, his face would darken. “It’s alright for some who are rich and can afford to party,” he would say, “but I have to work tomorrow.” Then he’d go to bed.
Gerda had never heard the sound of her father’s laughter. On the other hand, she remembered exactly the last time she had seen her mother laugh. A pail with soapy water had been knocked over on the kitchen floor, Hermann had walked on it and slipped. The sight of her husband falling stiffly and hitting his behind entertained Johanna, and for a long time Gerda remembered her mother’s delicate laugh, in whoops and hiccups that shook her skinny chest. Hermann did not tell her to stop, did not shout at her, and did not make fun of her in his turn. But when he got up, he gave her such a look of deep contempt that laughter dried on her lips like a flower touched by a firebrand. Gerda never heard her mother laugh again for as long as she lived.
Gerda did not know her older brother Peter very well, either. He was ten years her senior and she had spent much less time with him than with her cousins. There was no intimacy between them: separated by sex and age, they had never had much to say to each other. They had lived under the same roof, eaten the same bread, but that was all.
Peter had become a tall, well-built young man but his movements were somewhat graceless, like his mother’s. More than uncertain, he looked furtive; like a hunter lying in ambush who has to conceal the power of his firearm. He had also inherited his mother’s dark brown eyes that didn’t reflect the light. There was something opaque in his eyes that had frightened Gerda as a child. Now that he was grown up, Peter looked nothing like Hermann, except when he spoke—which, like his father, almost never happened—and when he really had to speak he did so with his mouth half-closed, as though words were precious objects you could only part with reluctantly.
Peter had never even brought a friend home. The girl he would have liked to marry had never yet been to their Stube. He would visit her in the courtyard of the maso where she was born. He took her small gifts: the long antler of a stag, which he had carved with geometrical figures; a bunch of capercaillie feathers with a steely sheen; a handkerchief he bought at the market. Leni, the girl, would accept them with a smile that made them precious, just as a sunbeam lights up a cat’s eye and makes it look like a gold nugget. However, even with her Peter wasn’t very talkative.
No, the Hubers were not known for being good company.
An excursion. With Peter. Gerda wasn’t sure which of these novelties was more extraordinary. Tata and Mamme wouldn’t come, he explained, they weren’t interested. Nor would Annemarie: she worked as a servant in a family and had only half a day off on Sundays.
They left long before dawn. That year it was a mild fall, but it was still dark and cold. Gerda was surprised to see so many people in the street even though it was long before early mass. They were all going to the town center where a few trucks and a bus were warming up their engines. Gerda was wearing her confirmation dress. Twice already Johanna had let it out, but it was still tight over her chest and soon you wouldn’t be able to fix it anymore. Over it she wore a boiled wool jersey, gray with green borders; and she had a red handkerchief around her neck. Peter was wearing the same suit as when he was looking for work in Bolzano. Johanna had restored it to life with patient darning and cleaning.
They climbed onto one of the trucks along with a couple of dozen other people. Some were in Tracht: the women were wearing long skirts, heavy satin aprons with an iridescent glow and lace bibs, like on a HerzJesu parade; many men wore waistcoats with red and green stripes, embossed leather belts over Lederhosen, and felt hats with capercaillie feathers. Even those not in Tyrolean costume were wearing their Sunday best.
Gerda was the youngest there. When she got on the truck the men made room for her as if she were an important person, the women offered her rye bread and elderberry juice from aluminum flasks wrapped in felt. Never had so many people smiled at her all at the same time. When the column of vehicles started moving, the headlights formed a wreath of lights, which Gerda thought was more festive than an Advent crown with its ca
ndles. The people on the truck started singing and she joined in with her still childlike voice. They sang “Brunnen vor dem Tor, Wo der Wildbach rauscht, Kein schöner Land”: songs in which romantic love merges with the love of the Heimat. Gerda didn’t know the words: she’d never sung in chorus at a country festival. However, the melody took predictable, reassuring turns, and the notes resounded on the roof of her mouth and deep in her throat, as though she had always known them. The icy wind slammed in her face and she felt happy, even though Peter hadn’t told her why there were so many people, or where they were going. For the first time in her life, however, he bent down to his little sister and smiled.
Three hours later, when they reached their destination, Gerda was asleep, her head in the lap of the woman who had given her elderberry juice. The truck stopped with a tired moan of the brakes and she opened her eyes.
She wondered if she was still dreaming. She had never seen so many people at once. Not even at the HerzJesu procession, or at the funeral of the local nobleman, when the funeral cart, pulled by four black horses, had proceeded along the Medieval street with people on either side. Peter lifted her off, his hands in her armpits, and put her down on the ground like a doll. Gerda was surrounded by people who squeezed her, pushed, halted and, like a river going in the wrong direction, flowed up the slope that rose from the Bolzano valley all the way up to the dilapidated ruins of Castel Firmiano. Gerda held Peter’s hand tight, but she wasn’t afraid. On the contrary, she felt as though the crowd was a single organism, a living entity of which she was a part, and whose emotions and waves she sensed before they became also hers. Something she felt she belonged to and which gave even her, a girl who wasn’t quite twelve, meaning and dignity. She felt brave, enthusiastic, a believer even though she had no idea in what. Never again was Gerda to see such a crowd, except on television.
Eva Sleeps Page 4