by Luce d'Eramo
All on their own, the strands of hair on my head stood up one by one; my skin became drenched in a cold sweat; shivers came and went in waves from head to toe; my teeth chattered in my skull; a tube-like thing inside my stomach, maybe the esophagus, writhed; and I broke out in goose bumps. I felt like I was about to burst. But it didn’t last long. Horror swept over me. In every pore, a horror of death, my eyes bulging out of their sockets as a sense of irreparability plunged me into that overall horror with the full weight of the miserable thing that was me.
What’s really stayed with me, intact and vivid, from that night, whenever I think about it (which is as seldom as possible), is the utter sense of wretchedness that I felt at a certain moment of my poisoning (the rest is entirely reconstructed). That I would deny the universe my life seemed so miserable—I have no other word for it—that it overwhelmed the horror, drowning out the evidence. Yet even amid my body’s turmoil, the determination not to ask for help prevailed, with a murky (and futile) awareness that the refusal to demean myself in front of the women was in fact the very lowest depth of my wretchedness.
I wanted to get up but I couldn’t. I wanted to turn over on my side but I couldn’t. Two fingers, the whole hand in my throat, supine, goggle-eyed, I realized that even if I wanted to—and by then I wanted to—I couldn’t scream; not a sound came out of me. My flesh twitched, nerve fibers and organs convulsed. Streams of vomit flooded my face.
*
I woke up in a neat white and blue hospital room, with tulle curtains, varnished beds, a drip in my arm. It was blood. I had transfusions totaling four liters, which had been donated to me by the anemic, famished internees in the Lagers. I’m even taking your blood, I sometimes thought in serenely bitter, quiet desperation during the weeks of convalescence that followed; even your blood, as I read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, which the pastor of the Italian consulate had brought me as a gift.
The morning I’d ingested the rat poison they found me drowning in vomit and blood, my jaw dislocated. What had saved me was the excessive dose I’d swallowed down in one gulp. The violence of the poison’s effect had activated the body’s defenses and made rejection possible. Had I taken only half the amount, I would not have survived. Only the kidneys had been damaged, permanently; some renal vascular duct was fragile and at the slightest strain oozed blood.
The consul himself came to see me. Director Lopp had notified him.
“Why didn’t you turn to me? You will be officially repatriated,” he informed me.
The consul was a hale and hearty, benevolent man with graying hair, who above all did not want to hear any details. He’d sent word of my circumstances to the Italian Foreign Ministry. He was anxious to convince me that he hadn’t known and that, as soon as he’d been informed, he’d moved heaven and earth to afford me the assistance that was due me, owing to my status. He indicated the curtains, and in a lowered voice confided:
“A hospital for Germans only, nur für Deutschen,” and with a sly wink: “Reichsdeutschen,” he explained, raising an index finger. He was on edge because he didn’t know whether the girl who’d attempted suicide was my father’s daughter or the one imprisoned by the Nazis, the girl beaten by the internees or the one with the OSTEN in her buttonhole.
He proffered a question but immediately took it back: “Don’t think about it anymore. It was a terrible nightmare. It’s over.”
He sat stiffly upright at my bedside, with a monocle that I could not stop staring at, leaning forward only to emphasize the difficulties he’d had to overcome to have me admitted “here,” he said with a sweeping wave of his hand, turning his gaze of approval on the walls. I observed the capillary veins on his moist, ruddy face, on the pale forehead and receding chin. I was aware of how drained I was compared to him. I felt only a faint, brief flicker of sympathy when, with a certain consternation in his eyes, he considered my father’s self-discipline: “A true Spartan,” he said, in fact, a man “who despite the ability to pull so many strings, didn’t ask me to do a thing for you, Signorina Lucia.”
“He doesn’t give a damn,” I replied sweetly. The consul took his leave.
II
I boarded the train without being allowed to go back to the camp. They brought my stuff to me at the hospital. I had been there six weeks. The doctors had visited to philosophize with me. The nuns approved of Saint Augustine on the nightstand. A clerk from the consulate was present to witness the tally of my clothes, ready to file a complaint if I was missing anything. I hated that pale blue cotton dress, those sweaters and suede shoes, the stockings and panties, I wanted to destroy them. I was about to ask the clerk to send the entire suitcase (a gift from the consul himself) filled with my stuff to the women in the barrack, but I sensed that he would have kept it for himself. I summoned the pastor but at the last minute I didn’t trust him. I insisted that he be the only one to accompany me to the station. He had a sidecar. Once I got him complaining about the Nazis, he opened up. So I told him to pass by my old Lager. When he refused, I threatened to report him, and he drove me there. I slipped under the barbed wire fence, shoving the German shepherd away with a kick. I left the suitcase under Jacqueline’s bed with a note. I kept the boots I had on, and I was wearing a pair of trousers I’d gotten back from the clerk and a sweater around my waist; in the duffel bag on my back were a loaf of bread and Saint Augustine.
The boredom wore on. I smoked throughout the trip, lighting one cigarette from the butt of another. I handed my documents to the inspectors, ignored the seatmates who asked me about opening or closing the window. After twenty hours or so I was in Verona: a sunny morning, stalls with peaches outside the station, at a few liras per kilo. A forgotten hustle and bustle, and Italian words everywhere, surprising me at every step. I didn’t know where to go.
All I remember of that morning is wandering around the city, staring at the people. They all looked like faces that hadn’t seen war. Buy a peach, I told myself, eyeing the velvety piles at the fruit stands. I approached a woman who was feeling them, but my smile faded when I saw her unwelcoming expression. Surrounded by talk and gestures that didn’t concern me, clearly in the customers’ way, with the shopkeeper standing there, I reached out my hand, quickly pocketed a stolen peach, and made off, obsessed. I turned the corner and bit into the flesh, the fruit hidden in my hands, sucking the juice slowly before continuing to walk. But by the third time I did it (a plum this time) I felt isolated by my stealing—it was out of step with the passersby.
In a trattoria I ate three plates of roasted polenta topped with tomato sauce and two slices of chestnut cake. I was eating my food placidly when two soldiers at a nearby table ordered pastasciutta. I didn’t see them hand over any food stamp vouchers and called the host:
“A pastasciutta for me too.”
“I already told you, you don’t have a voucher.”
“You gave it to the soldiers.”
“Of course.”
“Without a voucher? I’m going to report you.”
“What do you mean, without a voucher! They gave me vouchers all right!”
“I’m going to report you just the same,” I said, making a move to get up.
The man changed his tune, he was sweating.
He quickly served me a plate of spaghetti aglio e olio (with garlic and oil), a glass of wine, a small piece of pecorino cheese, and a large hunk of bread as well. I savored every mouthful, chewing slowly.
“Did you have enough?” the host finally asked; he was around forty and had a wary look. I nodded my head and started laughing. Suddenly he winked at me: “What was there to report? I gave you this food because I wanted to, my dear girl, I took it out of my family’s mouth, I took it from our rations.”
“How much is it?” My good mood was already gone.
“You decide, young lady, ask your conscience, such things are priceless these days.”
“How much is it?” I repeated, hardening my voice. “I want the bill, written and signed.”
I counted the money remaining from what the consul had issued me (one hundred Italian liras) along with two cartons of cigarettes. I had eighty-two liras left. Five for water on the train and thirteen for the meal, it added up. I stretched. I had to find a place to sleep, but first a toilet. I was in a little park in the middle of a piazza; I just had to ask. But the faces that passed were all absorbed in their own little world, as if that were all there was, and I put it off until the next person came by. Why spoil my freedom? I roused myself: I’d find my own way. I knew I looked decent again; after the suicide attempt I was back to my old weight of fifty-two kilos, deloused, clean. I returned to the station, where some soldiers came up to me:
“Want to spend the night with me?” one asked. They looked like inexperienced, violent boys, repubblichini with a fez worn backward or over the eyes. I recall two insistent ones with whom I ended up in a bar: one was tall, brown-haired, with a kind of dapper cheeriness, the other shorter than me, dark, with a mocking air.
“Are you Fascists?” I asked in a low voice.
“You can say it out loud,” the short one laughed with his affected swagger. “They saw things get ugly, so they all turned tail. When the ship is sinking, the rats are the first to flee, but I’m holding firm. Those fucking whores go with the Germans, would you believe? But not with us, no, they turn up their noses,” he said, wrinkling his nose to imitate the girls who rejected him.
“And you?” The tall soldier leaned down to me.
“I’ve come from the Lagers and the German prisons.”
“Oh.”
“How is it over there?” the dark one asked, lowering his voice.
“It’s like they say here,” I replied.
“Oh.”
“How did you get out?” the tall one whispered. I was standing between them, at the counter of the bar, a cup of chicory with saccharin in my hand, and I looked at them in the mirror opposite us.
“I tried to kill myself and they sent me back to Italy.”
“You’re going home? Lucky you.”
“Watch out for the partisans, they don’t answer to anyone,” the dark one said.
“Are your parents expecting you?”
The thought of my parents, up till then avoided, oppressed me. Unexpected tears welled up in my eyes.
“I don’t know where to go anymore,” I uttered, exhausted.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.”
The three of us walked the streets until late at night. I told them what I’d been through, about my situation, my fear of going back to my parents, of standing up to their opinions. I described in detail my father’s thoughtless way of saying hurtful things, my mother’s way of looking down on the lower classes.
The tall soldier tried to reassure me at all costs; they would welcome me back, he said. “They will forgive you” were the words he used, interrupting my constant outpourings and justifications with suggestions such as: “Why don’t we go have a good meal? It’ll be easier to talk, things seem less bleak on a full belly.”
The short soldier instead shook his head: “They won’t understand a fucking thing.” Nevertheless, he agreed that going to eat was a great idea.
Stuffed as I was, I said I wasn’t hungry and they sighed; to them I must have seemed like a spiritual creature.
At the restaurant, however, I devoured everything they ordered for me, maybe twice what they ate.
“Damn, you eat like a horse,” the short one chuckled, pouring me some wine.
The other one pressed his leg against mine under the table, about to suggest a good night’s sleep. I focused on the dark soldier, who struck me as more sincere.
“I don’t want to have sex with you,” I slurred, tongue-tied from the wine. “Not with him, though he’s trying to feel me up under the table without you knowing, nor with you, even if you’re more frank. So tell me how much I owe you and no hard feelings.” This time I cried on purpose, to move them so they wouldn’t make me pay my share.
“No, no!”
“Don’t be silly. We’re not skirt-chasers, you know. A Fascist is a man of honor,” the dark one exaggerated, he too slightly tipsy. “We can see you don’t feel like it, you know, given the bad situation you’re in!”
“I did it to cheer you up,” the tall, brown-haired one said, taking offense, “given how tired I am! What can I say, you were so down.”
“Whatever,” the dark one reproached him, “you were taking advantage of her, I wasn’t.” And to me he said, “I’m not tired and I’d make you reach the stars. But I’m a man of honor and, if you don’t want to, friends like before.” He winked at me: “Think about it a bit…”
“Right.” I said I had to go to the toilet. I left by a back door without saying goodbye to them. I was proud of the trick I’d played on them. Maybe they would have paid the bill at a hotel, but this way there were fewer complications. I could always go and sleep in the waiting room at the station. Meanwhile, what was stopping me from taking a walk? I checked the money in my pants pocket. I’d managed to do okay, at this rate I had enough to live on for a few more days before having to go home, to Como, to the villa the Mussolini government requisitioned for my family. The party’s over, home at sunset, my mother’s eyes aimed at the grandfather clock in the hallway if I was late coming back, worse, my father’s orderly glued to me, tacitly decrying all I’d put them through, maybe sending the chauffeur to pick me up if I lingered someplace too long, or not being able to go out anymore except accompanied by my mother, to those unbearable ladies’ teas like in Rome. Back then I’d amused myself by cultivating a retinue of mothers-in-law: to evade boredom, I practiced ingratiating myself with mothers who had sons, for any future prospect. But now that pastime seemed insipid. The very idea of receptions and concerts, with my mother in a veil or wide-brimmed summer hat to shade her lovely face, me with dainty lace gloves smiling staidly and demurely, gleaming officers clicking their heels here and there with a haughty expression, the gracious atmosphere—it was all so predictable that I had to remind myself of the suicide attempt so as not to run and hide somewhere.
I got lost in the darkened streets and was stopped by a patrol of repubblichini.
“Documents!” they demanded. “Don’t you know there’s a curfew?”
Surrounded by an escort of soldiers, a dozen or so holding machine guns, the rhythm of hobnail boots on the pavement and a scent of oleander in the still darkness of the long avenue, the disorientation that had confounded my pleasure at being free since I’d stepped off the train vanished. I was myself again; with every measured step I came to life, marching to the factory in a column with my fellow internees.
I realized that I hadn’t thought about them throughout the entire day, not once from the moment I arrived in Verona, as if they had never existed, and I had a strange sense of fear at seeing how easy it had been for me to pass over those recent months, too rooted in the present moment, as if there were nothing more. All of us wrapped up in paltry ambitions. I would not return home. I would go to work in a factory in Milan, better yet in Turin, farther away from my parents. I had to be very careful, however, forget about stupid petty thefts and anything that could attract the authorities’ attention, keep in mind the curfew, go unnoticed. If the consul had revealed that I’d been repatriated, my father would surely look for me. He would lose face if I didn’t go back home.
We came to a building that turned out to have been a school. In a classroom with desks stacked along one wall, an officer behind a teacher’s desk interrogated me. When had I arrived? Why hadn’t I immediately taken the connection to Como, which my ticket showed was my destination? Whom had I had contact with in Verona? What was I doing well after midnight in the center of the city? Who was I looking for? Questions peppered with insults and threats. I
got distracted comparing the Italians’ interrogation methods with those of the Germans, the latter contained, the Italians brutal. It was as if I had committed a personal affront against that officer, whom the soldiers addressed as marshal. Strike a human chord, I thought. “Marshal, I have nothing against you,” I said. “Look at my papers, here, you see? It’s the Frankfurt prison stamp: Gefängnis, do you understand the word? I was in prison. And look here, there is also a certificate from the hospital. They freed me because I was innocent, but I was ill. And being back in Italy, with people talking excitedly, peaches liberally sold in the streets…”
“The sun,” he empathized.
“Yes, the sun, everything, after nearly six months of detention between the Lager and all the rest, I wasn’t about to rush, I felt like taking a stroll.”
“I understand, but try telling those higher up. Who’s going to tell them? Are you going to tell them?”
“If no one says anything, I’ll keep quiet,” I promised. “Let me sleep somewhere, tomorrow morning I’ll leave for Como and that’s the end of it.”
Another dozen or so soldiers were lying sprawled on the ground, some snoring, some awake and following the scene.
“And who’s to say you’re not one of those? I don’t want a brothel in here. Inspections come thick and fast, my dear girl. If you’d been a partisan, you would have been fair game, we could have fucked you all we wanted. There would have been some merit in disrespecting you. Hitler himself might have arrived and found us with our dicks up: an act of war,” he declared, drawing a line in the air with his thumb and forefinger joined together. “We would have been in proper order, see? But they released you, complete with documents and stamps, their documents, know what I mean? Who can trust you? It could well be a trap, my beauty, and I’m not falling for it.”
“But where should I go now?”
“You’re asking me?”
They brought a bench into the middle of the room.