The war dealt immense damage to the Bruni family, snatching away both Vasco and Corrado. Not even this loss, however, helped to reconcile Dante and Checco. Common wisdom has it that when a person feels offended by someone, and then trouble happens to befall this someone, the first is likely to think that chance or bad luck has punished the second sufficiently and this would normally serve to make the first feel more magnanimous or at least, nudge him into making the first step, even if he still feels wronged. But that was not the case between the two brothers; not even the death of their own mother had brought them together and they stubbornly continued to ignore each other.
Armando had no quarrel with anyone, but found himself more alone than ever in facing his misfortunes. His problems just never seemed to let up, especially because of the mental infirmity of his wife, who he continued to love with great ardor and attachment. His growing family might have been considered a burden as well but for him, it was the most important reason for living, and he gave his daughters all the affection he was capable of. He maintained an extraordinary capacity for tempering even the toughest hardships with irony and humor.
Given the situation, his conflict with Doctor Munari worsened every time the doctor had to assume the responsibility for committing Bruni’s wife to the psychiatric clinic in Reggio. Armando experienced the doctor’s resolution of the problem as an act of violence. He couldn’t understand why, if he was content to keep Lucia as she was, someone else should go to the trouble of tearing her away from him and admitting her to a hospital where she was surely more poorly treated than at home and where the therapy didn’t help her in the least.
The war was worsening every day in every way, and the fact that the United States had entered the battlefield, with all the weight of their enormous economic and military power, had already amply overturned the balance of forces. There was practically no one who had any illusions about which side would win victory in the end. Allied aircraft passed overhead more and more often, and in addition to singling out military installations, had begun to bomb civilian targets, like factories and railway stations.
Many families went hungry; only those who had enough money to pay the exorbitant prices of the black market were able to get enough food. Farmers were the exception, because the land never betrays those who work it. At least food was never lacking. There were two kinds of farmers: those who sold their products on the black market and grew rich, and the others, the majority, who gave generously to those who were suffering. Like Nino’s family: not a kilo of wheat, not a piece of cheese, was sold at anything but the official price, and more often than not they were given away. Nino’s mother, a minute, extremely pious woman who expressed herself in an improbable dialect which was half Emiliano and half from her native Veneto, would take care of the distribution personally. Once she was left with no more flour, not even a handful, and when a pale, spindly child stepped up to take his share, she filled his pockets with apples.
Fonso found that he had to take on jobs which were increasingly hazardous and backbreaking, just to make ends meet. In the winter he found employment in the city, cleaning snow off the roofs, risking his skin every time. It was so easy to slip on the wet or icy roof tiles, and he was often called in by people living in three or four story buildings. There was no hope if you fell from that high up.
Nino showed up at Fonso and Maria’s home one night to ask for Eliana’s hand in marriage. It was traditional to go to your fiancée’s father accompanied by your best man, but the friend he’d chosen to carry their rings, Pace, had been swallowed up by the war; no one had heard from him for a long, long time. Rather than replace him with someone else, which felt like a betrayal, Nino went alone.
Fonso thought highly of Nino and was happy to give his consent. The wedding was held soon after. Times being what they were, there was no chance of a lavish celebration, but the newlyweds managed to take a short honeymoon, to Veneto, where Nino had relatives on his mother’s side who they could stay with, without spending money on a hotel. It was there, in a tiny mountain town at the foot of the high plain of Asiago, that they learned from the radio that Mussolini had been removed from office and transported to a secret place in the mountains of Abruzzo.
“Do you think the war will end?” asked Eliana.
“I don’t think so. The king will form a new government that will have to negotiate with the Americans. If those negotiations go well, which would basically mean an unconditional surrender on our part, we’d find ourselves fighting against the Germans. And the Germans are everywhere.”
The facts bore out his predictions.
When they returned from their honeymoon, Eliana realized immediately that daily life in her father-in-law’s house complied with Modenese customs, which were very different from the Bolognese traditions she had grown up with. Her sisters-in-law worked in the fields alongside the men. Not wanting to embarrass Nino in front of his father, she tried to fit in. After just one day of work, her hands, with their polished nails, were sore and bleeding. She soon got used to bundling herself up in coarse, ugly work clothing, formed calluses on her hands and feet, and kept up a punishing rate of work from dawn to well after nightfall.
But the darkest night of them all was on the eighth of September, when she and Nino listened to the public declaration of the armistice on the radio. Italy had surrendered to an American general with a face like a mastiff’s in a small town in Sicily. The king fled to the south with his family, and his generals took off their uniforms and went to hide as well. In the following days, from one end of the peninsula to the other, the army—completely abandoned to its fate, without orders, without support of any kind, without coordination—collapsed and was overwhelmed by the Germans, almost everywhere.
A great number of Italian soldiers were imprisoned by the Germans and sent to concentration camps, among them a cousin of Fonso’s who had just come back from the African front. Others went into hiding, hanging on to their weapons so they could form groups of armed resistance, often with the help of their officers, maintaining their uniforms and their flag.
Many families in town were consumed by anguish since they had no notion at all of where their sons might be. Nino was torn but he decided in the end that his place was at home because his wife was expecting a child.
In six months’ time, the country had to face a calamity that was even worse, unthinkably, than the war.
Civil war.
Rescued by the Germans in a parachuting operation, Mussolini established a Republic of the North and called on all young fascists willing to fight off the Anglo-American invaders to join him. At least, this was the line of propaganda used for recruiting these youths. It soon became evident, however, that these troops would be mainly used not to fight off a foreign invader, but rather to repress the actions of the partisan brigades close to home.
In a very few months’ time, every young Italian male north of the Apennines was forced into a dramatic choosing of sides: either unite with the partisan Resistenza groups in the mountains, or put on the uniform of the fascist Republican Army, or even its extreme wing, the paramilitary Black Brigades. Since the young are rarely moderate in any of their actions or beliefs, several thousand flocked to join the forces of Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, who commanded the seasoned, ferocious fascist assault corps known as the Tenth Legion MAS. Italy was split in two. The king, in escaping to the south instead of remaining honorably in Rome to fight alongside his soldiers, had forfeited the last chance he had to redeem what little was left of the country’s pride.
“That’s what a king should be for,” thought Fonso, reading the paper in the tailor shop. “He should stand at the head of his people and die with his weapons in hand if need be, not run off with his own family while the sons of his people are fighting and dying in Russia or being deported to Siberia to die of cold and hunger.” He thought of his nephew Vasco and his other nephew Corrado, Floti’s son, and even though they weren’t related to him by blood, tears came to his eyes.
Their own town mirrored the same divisions and tensions that were splitting apart Italy, that had not yet been conquered by the Allies. Many of the villagers, exhausted by hunger, poverty and the grievous loss of their sons, fiancés, brothers, had gotten to the point that they’d begun wishing that their soldiers would lose and be routed. Let them bomb our cities, sink our ships, they began to think, anything, so long as the war ends. Let us dry our tears and start to rebuild from the ashes.
One evening in September, Rossano returned from Rome and he confronted his father as Nello was coming home from work to tell him that he had decided to leave. “I’m going to enlist, father, I’m going to fight in the army of the Social Republic. I’m volunteering for the Republican National Guard.”
Nello felt his blood turn to ice. “Why would you do such a thing?” he asked. “You’re not being called upon to serve.”
“Now is the time. We have to fight to the very last man,” replied Rossano, “to restore dignity to our homeland, invaded and humiliated, to save whatever can still be saved. As far as the reds are concerned, they are the true traitors and they’ll be eliminated without mercy. They are receiving weapons and supplies from the enemy!”
Nello realized then what a terrible effect the fascist education and training—which he himself had desired for his son!—had had on Rossano. His only son was likely to die, in a matter of months or weeks, or even days. Nello dropped his head, searching for the words that would convince his boy to change his mind, but he found none.
“You were the one who taught me these principles, and now that I can do something about them, you want me to back out?”
“You’re only twenty years old, Rossano, it’s not time for you to take up arms: you still have to study, to prepare for your future . . . ”
“There’s no more time for such things, father. We don’t need books, we need rifles. The only thing to do is fight.”
Nello’s wife Elisa heard them arguing and broke in, alarmed. “What’s happening?” she asked.
“Rossano wants to enlist,” replied Nello. “I can’t convince him to wait.”
“And you’re surprised?” replied his wife. “You were the one who insisted on sending him into the middle of those fanatics and this is the consequence. Remember that, if something happens to him, you are responsible. You pushed him into this. I won’t speak to you or even look at you for the rest of my life.”
“Cut it out, mother,” said the boy. “I’m no fool; it’s not like I’m letting myself be manipulated by anybody. I’ve chosen to do this out of my own free will. No one asked me and neither you nor father can stop me. Can’t you understand that you’re offending me by speaking that way? You should be proud of me!”
Elisa burst into tears. In her son’s eyes and in the blood that had rushed to his face, she saw irrevocable determination. She saw that her husband had tears in his eyes as well.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to make you reconsider?” asked Nello.
“Nothing, father. I don’t want to cause you pain but, I swear, I’d have no respect for myself if I didn’t go.”
“You’ve never killed a man. You don’t know what that means. It means you’ll have to shoot, stab, take the life of other boys much like yourself. Or lose your own. You won’t be yourself anymore, you’ll turn into someone else, someone that would frighten you, or horrify you, if you met up with him today.”
Elisa spoke up herself: “Listen to what your father’s saying, for the love of God. You’ll regret it if you don’t!”
“I’m sorry, mamma. There’s nothing that can stop me. But believe me, I won’t be looking for death. It’s life I’m looking for, for everyone, for you too. And I’ll be back, I promise you.”
A long silence followed, because Rossano was feeling emotional, even if he didn’t want to show it.
“When are you leaving?” asked Nello.
“As soon as I can. Tomorrow or the next day. I don’t want to risk changing my mind. I’m not made of iron, either.”
Nello shook his head at hearing those words. They were bigger than the boy was.
They had dinner without speaking. As soon as he had finished, Rossano left the house and went to the corner Bar del Dopolavoro, where just about everyone went to meet up; they just called it the Dopo. He didn’t feel like hanging around the house with his parents to watch his mother cry. He ordered a beer and sat down, pretending to read the sports newspaper that another client had left open on the table. After a while he realized that someone was standing in front of him and he looked up: Fabrizio.
“Have something to drink?” Rossano asked.
Fabrizio sat down. “Sure, a lemon soda, thanks.”
“That’s another difference between us,” said Rossano with a half smile. “You like the sweet stuff, I like it bitter.” He motioned to Gianni who was at the counter.
“That’s right. I like red, and you like black. But we can still be friends, can’t we?”
“These are tough times,” replied Rossano, serious now. “And each one of us has to make a choice. I’ve made mine. I’ve leaving tomorrow, or the next day, at the latest.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to sign up for the National Republican Guard.”
“You’re kidding. You’re enlisting with the Nazis?”
“They’re not Nazis. My conscience tells me I’m doing the right thing. I’m even ready to put my life on the line. I’ve thought hard about this.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t even say good luck.”
“Right, you can’t. So I guess it’ll have to be goodbye,” said Rossano with shiny eyes.
“See you around?” said Fabrizio.
Rossano nodded. “See you around,” he replied.
He left two days later with a rucksack on his shoulders headed to Cremona. By bus and then by train. At the clearing office, they gave him a uniform and assigned him to his regiment.
Three months later Fabrizio found out that Bruno Montesi, the blacksmith, had narrowly missed being captured by the Germans and had come back to town but he had decided to go into hiding, so he wouldn’t be called to arms by the fascists. One evening Bruno showed up in his courtyard, skinny and scruffy-bearded, almost unrecognizable. They embraced.
“Can you believe my friend Rossano signed up with the Republican Guard?” Fabrizio told him.
“I do believe it. I’m not surprised.”
“I think he did it in good faith.”
“At his age that’s likely. But the day he kills someone he’ll be in the wrong, and worthy of suffering the same fate. I’ve joined the Resistenza. I’m studying to become a political commissar.”
“Isn’t that one of those guys who preach the communist ideology to combatants?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that. For me it means, above all, siding against those who goaded my father into killing himself, by beating and humiliating him every way they could. It means choosing to fight for the poorest and the weakest against the strongest and richest.”
“I understand. Good luck then, Bruno.”
“I don’t think there’s luck to be had for anyone in this situation. But if you want another reason that I know I’m right, it’s that after the armistice of September the eighth, the Nazis deported tens of thousands of Italian soldiers to their concentration camps, including friends of mine from my regiment. Our soldiers aren’t white or red or black, or rich or poor; they’re the sons of the Italian people, of all their fathers and all their mothers. Whoever collaborates with their jailers is an enemy of the nation. So we are the patriots, and they are the traitors. Goodbye, Fabrizio. Say hello to your father for me, when you see him.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Bologna, for now, and then up to the mountains. There’s a man up there who’s organized a partisan brigade. They’re fighting like lions. He’s from Sant’Agata, and he’s about thirty years old. They call him Lupo: the Wolf.”
“Is that his battle name?”
“No. Apparently his friends in elementary school used to call him that, because when he got into a fight, he’d bite like a wolf . . . He’s a maverick but apparently he’s one hell of a fighter.”
“And he’s a communist like you are?”
“Nah, not him. He’s a Catholic, devoted to Saint Anthony. Sounds like he’s a little mixed up—maybe I can set him straight.”
“Watch out, Bruno, wolves bite.”
Montesi smiled at this and went off.