I don’t know what to say but she doesn’t need me to say anything. She continues, “I’ll just finish making him comfortable in the living room, please give me a moment, we’re a little slow, I’m not a little girl anymore, either.”
She goes beyond a frosted glass door, the only source of light in a corridor with a dark stone floor.
There’s a smell of sauce.
“Would you like a coffee?” Gabriele says.
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll go and make it.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Please, don’t leave me alone.”
He lowers his head in agreement; he’s not surprised. He puts a hand on mine as I look at him gratefully.
There are various honors hanging on the corridor walls. Gabriele sees that I’m looking at them, and switches on the light.
They are all certificates conferred upon Vito Anania.
BRONZE MILITARY MEDAL FOR LONG SERVICE
SILVER MILITARY MEDAL FOR LONG SERVICE
GOLD MILITARY MEDAL FOR LONG SERVICE
GOLD CROSS FOR SENIORITY OF SERVICE
KNIGHT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC
MAURITIAN MEDAL
There’s also a mention in dispatches, with grounds. I start to read it.
Alongside the Special Operations Group, he cooperated successfully with his superior in charge of carrying out complex and risky inquiries into organized crime, concluding with the discovery and reporting of 20 persons with records for criminal association, responsible for 8 extortions, 17 explosive attacks, 7 aggravated damages and other minor crimes, 2 of whom were arrested while dictating over the line the details of delivery of significant sums of money.
“What does ‘dictating over the line’ mean?” I ask Gabriele.
“That they were on the phone.” His eyes laugh a little but not his mouth, which remains serious.
Vito’s wife comes back through the glass door. She’s wearing a jacket and putting a handbag across her body. She says to her son, ”I’m taking advantage that you two are here, so I can go shopping.” To me, as if I’m already part of the family, she clarifies, “We can’t leave him alone anymore.” Then she smiles in such a way that I can’t help smiling myself.
“She’s here.”
Gabriele opens the glass door and lets me in, then I think he goes to the kitchen, but I can’t remember.
He is lying on the sofa on a dozen cushions, a shawl over his legs that are resting on a pouf.
“Eva . . . ”
He’s so old. He’s so ill. Only his eyes are the same, the rest of him is ready to die.
“You came.”
I can’t even say his name. He motions to me to come closer. I cross the room; he looks at me, and looks at me, and looks at me.
“You’re so beautiful.”
Never before have I realized just how much I look like my mother.
What do you say in these cases? When you see a man who over thirty years ago . . . I don’t know.
So I ask, “How are you?”
“Well . . . as you can see . . . ”
“Do have a lot of pain?”
“A little, at night . . . ”
He taps gently on the sofa, as though inviting me to dance.
“Come, sit down, tell me about yourself . . . Everything, I want to know everything.”
Here we go, I think, now he’s going to ask me if I’m married, if I have children. Instead, he asks, “So, what work do you do? I’m sure you have a good career. What did you study at university?”
He has the same voice as when he read me the exploits of the Malaysian Tigers, only fainter.
I shake my head. “I didn’t finish university. I organize events.”
“Events?”
I tell him I was studying law, that I wanted to qualify in employment law, but that in my second year they hired me at a public relations company. So I didn’t take any more exams, started my own business, and now organize events, and I’m doing well financially: I’ve bought myself a nice apartment. My mother is happy that I don’t do the job of a slave, as she puts it.
Vito doesn’t comment. He doesn’t tell me off for not studying, he doesn’t say he’s disappointed in me. And he doesn’t say: if I’d been there, I would have helped you choose differently. He nods slowly, as though thoughtfully contemplating the already fixed course of things. It’s clear, however, that my answer has made him sad.
Neither does he ask if my mother is married. He just wants to know how she is. I tell him. “Does she know you’re here?”
“I told her this morning before coming. But . . . I think I went about it the wrong way.”
Again, he nods, in that slow way of his. Something else he doesn’t say: give her my best.
He asks about the people he used to know. It becomes increasingly easy to talk. I tell him about everybody. The last one I tell him about is the hardest. Vito’s eyes cloud over and, for a while, he can’t find the words except his name: “Ulli . . . ”
We remain a long time without speaking, and it’s almost lovely to be close together in silence, the memory of the little boy with roebuck eyes between us.
He asks about Nanga Parbat. He remembers the name of our hiding place! The old hayloft was demolished, I say, Sepp and Maria’s grandchildren have built a new one, and now the cowshed looks like a research lab.
I tell him about Sigi and his son Bruno, who’s become a Schütze like his father, and about the parades where he wears a 19th-century three-cornered hat over dreadlocks and piercings. It’s so easy to talk to Vito. He also tells me about himself, about his family. But I can see he’s getting tired. I’m about to tell him but he pre-empts me.
“You look tired,” he says to me.
I nod. “I haven’t slept since . . . I can’t even remember.”
He puts a small cushion on the blanket that covers his legs, looks at me, and gives it two little taps, an affectionate invitation. As if to a cat or a little dog. Or to his little daughter.
I take off my shoes, put my head in his lap, stretch my legs, and make myself comfortable. He puts an arm around my shoulders, and plumps up the cushion under my neck.
“I listened to the tape,” I say softly, looking up at the ceiling.
“Did Gabriele give it to you?”
I slowly move my head. “I would have liked to receive it when you sent it.”
“You have it now.”
The belly I’m leaning against resounds with his quiet voice, like a drum. I close my eyes with a deep sigh.
“But it’s late now,” I say.
“It’s not late. It’s just later.”
Sleep creeps up on me like a thief: it was next to me but I didn’t see it until I was in its clutches. I can still hear Gabriele coming into the room with the coffee, and Vito saying, “Eva will drink it afterwards. Now, she’s asleep.”
KILOMETER 0 - TODAY
And now I’m hugging my mom because nothing and nobody can make up for what we have lost, neither those guilty of these losses, nor those who, directly or indirectly, were their origin or cause. In the end, when all the calculations have been done and it’s clear who has taken what away from whom and why, and credits and debits and the whole double entry of faults and resentments is in order and precise, the only thing that counts is this: that we can still hug each other without wasting a single instant of the extraordinary luck of still being alive.
I returned home on the plane, I flew over Italy in a couple of hours, my nose stuck to the window: I feel as though I have caressed the entire small peninsula I can now see from above.
I immediately went to see my mother. I told her about Vito. She looked at me, she didn’t speak immediately. Then she said, “You must have missed him very much.”
Words I’ve been waiting for for thirty years, yet
I only realize it now that I hear her utter them. I tuck them inside myself, like a treasure.
“And what about you? Have you often thought about Vito?” I then ask.
My mother does something strange: she takes her bare feet out of her house shoes, and crosses her big toes. She looks at them for a long time. “I’ve thought of him every night before going to sleep.”
I’ve slept over at her place. The roads are icy, there’s a sudden frost. She’s fallen asleep on the sofa, her head under the cushion Ruthi has embroidered, her mouth, still beautiful, half open. It almost hurts to look at her, but it’s a good pain.
And I think: Gerda schloft. Gerda sleeps.
EPILOGUE
There is the time that flows around us, toward us and through us, time that conditions us and shapes us, the memory we cultivate or shake off—our History. Then, there is a sequence of places in which we live, between which we travel, where we are physically, places made of roads and buildings but also trees, horizons, temperatures, levels of atmospheric pressure, the major or minor speed with which the water of a river flows, altitude—our Geography.
These two trajectories, linked partly by fate and partly by free will, meet every instant and in every place at a spot, like in a Cartesian graphic cosmos, and the sequence of these spots forms a line, a curve and sometimes, if we’re lucky, even a pattern which, if it’s not harmonious, then at least it’s one you can make out.
This is the shape of our lives.
One morning, in spring 1998, following the Schengen agreement, in the presence of Italian and Austrian authorities, the frontier barrier between the two countries at the Brenner Pass was removed. There was no longer a physical border separating Südtirol from Austria, its lost Mother Country.
It’s a shame, though, that this event that had been dreamed of for almost eighty years, which had been claimed with blood and denied with military force, now had almost no more relevance in a world shaken by globalization. If History had meant to play a practical joke, the date was appropriate: the first of April.
Eva has made a decision. If there is another census of linguistic belonging, when she fills in the Sprachgruppenzugehörigkeitserklärung, in the box “ethnicity” she will write: CHINESE.
After all, her mother was born in Shanghai.
NOTE
Within the obvious limitations of an invented novel, I have tried to be as faithful as possible to historical events. In particular, the episode of the raid is based on episodes of the round-up that took place in Montassilone/Tesselberg (Val Pusteria) in September 1964, as reported by eyewitnesses. The Alpini officer who gave the order “shoot them all,” and the fact that that order was part of a wider strategy, was reported in an interview given by retired General Giancarlo Giudici and published in the newspaper La Repubblica in July 1991: he had been the young lieutenant-colonel who directed the operation—and who disobeyed the orders.
The chapters dedicated to Silvius Magnago are largely based on the excellent book by Hans Karl Peterlini: Das Vermächtnis. Bekenntnisse einer politischen Legende (Raetia, 2007).
In order to meet the demands of fiction, I have allowed myself to pretend that the decree signed by Umberto of Savoy regarding “acceptable” mixed marriages for Carabinieri was still in force in 1973. In reality, it was repealed in 1971. Similarly, I have brought forward by one year, to 1963, Mina’s return to TV two years after the birth of her son.
I would like to specify that the rules of South Tyrolean dialect, especially in its written form, are much simpler compared with official German.
Finally, an observation on the terms “Alto Adige,” “Alto Adige resident,” “Südtirol” and “South Tyrolean”: precisely because a non-secondary element of the issue was what the Province had the right, or the obligation, to be called, the names were not used, except rarely, in any neutral way. In general, I have followed the rule according to which you say Alto Adige when you’re speaking from the Italian point of view, and Südtirol from the German point of view, and which defines Alto Adige residents and South Tyroleans as respectively Italian and German speakers. But the current usage of this rule has many exceptions; therefore, in writing, I have mixed things up a bit.
And if this sometimes causes confusion, then welcome to Alto Adige/Südtirol!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book wouldn’t exist without my mother. As an Italian holidaying in Alto Adige since the late 1960s, she has given me an interest in and respect for the residents of a land of which, even nowadays, many Italians love the geography, but know nothing of the history.
Moreover, I wish to thank the many Carabinieri, in service as well as retired, veterans of the fight against Alto Adige terrorism and of peace missions abroad, who have told me stories of life in the force: “usi obbedir tacendo,” they have asked me not to mention their names; the chef Albert Pernter who opened the doors of his kingdom to me, the kitchen of the Hotel Post in Bruneck; Alois Niederwolfsgruber, for the stories of the coming out of gays in the mountains; Mirella Angelo and Giovanni Monaco for their hospitality and Sicilian-style sardines; Stefan Lechner for organizing the historical research; all the Italians, the Deutschsprachigen and the ladins who, in Alto Adige/Südtirol have always made me feel at home, most especially the Senoner family of the Putzè maso in Santa Cristina di Val Gardena, Annemi Feichter (die liebe Omi) and Dr. Manfred Walde; finally, the many friends who, with intelligent patience, embarked on the reading of the gradually evolving manuscript, providing advice, precious criticism and encouragement—too many to list them all, but they know who they are.
Many thanks—Donkschian.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Francesca Melandri is a screenwriter and novelist. This is her English language debut. She lives in Rome, Italy.
NOTES
1Rural house typical of the Italian Trentino-Alto Adige region. It generally consists of a barn, a stable and a small room for cooking food and making cheese.
2Stove. The term also refers to the timber-paneled room at the heart of traditional Tyrolean houses, with a wood stove in the centre.
3Godmother.
4“Shitty contraption!”
5Literally “catacomb schools,” illegal institutions that taught the German language (which was forbidden) and were widespread in the Alto Adige region during the Fascist era, from 1924 onwards.
6Daddy, it’s me. Gerda.
7Quick! The bus for Merano is leaving now!
8Committee for the Liberation of South Tyrol.
9Belonging to a language group.
10Prostitutes.
11Town celebration.
12Lieutenant in the German Alpine Infantry
13Parish church.
14Country band.
15Threatened border Germans.
16Community of people and cultures.
17Vital space.
18A little boy.
19Two soldiers are asking for you.
20“Is everything in order?”
21Advent calendar.
22Godfather/mother
23Also a bit of chives . . .
24Smoked salami.
25Rye and wheat bread flavored with fennel, cumin seeds or coriander.
26Turnip
27Pan-fried potatoes.
28Sourdough cake.
29Viennese fried chicken.
30Sugar for the stomach.
31Taverns
32Swear words.
33Pigsty. Mess.
&nb
sp; 34A form of greeting.
35Grandfather.
36“Gerda, are you in?”
37“Let’s go.”
38“How old are you?”
39Traditional fashion.
40Mono-ski sled.
41Country celebrations.
42A vulgar term for a homosexual.
43As above.
44As above.
45“Hello!”
46Saxony, a Red worth three pfennig. It was the first stamp issued by the Kingdom of Saxony in 1850.
47A Black. The first stamp to be issued by the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1849.
48Dear lady.
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