To be honest, I left for the mission, which though not really dangerous still presented risks of every kind, in a state of mind of absurd, reckless delight, as if I were going on vacation, as if I were leaving on one of those adventures of which my solitary childhood had been deprived, and for which I had tried to find compensation by living a new childhood, free and adventurous, through my son.
Today I wondered. Was this widespread foolhardiness really absurd (of which mine was only a particularly vivid example), or rather a heaven-sent remedy for the unremitting, excessive tension that we would not be able to withstand otherwise?
No matter what it was, having left routinely from Meana on the morning of 30 December, we reached Beaulard around 10:00 a.m. Alberto, who had gone ahead of us with Pillo, jumped on the train, and went to Bardonecchia with Paolo. Ettore and I got off and set out toward the hospital in the company of Pillo, who gave us the latest news in the meantime. Everything was in order. We could have dinner at the hospital and remain there until the time of departure. The Corallo brothers would come with us, but they would leave several hours before us, and wait for us at the top at the Colle dell’Orso. No one else knew about our departure. Alberto and Pillo’s stay had been too brief to put the wheels of suspicion in motion. There was still important news about the location of pieces of ordnance to collect that Piccolo had gathered. This is why Alberto and Paolo had gone to Bardonecchia.
Bianca and Alberto’s brother Bruno, with his wife, Juanita, had also arrived on the same train as ours and joined us quite early at the hospital, but they had left from Turin. Bruno, a surgeon by profession, had been captured as a Jew and held in prison for some time. Having gotten out by a miracle, now he intended to join us on the crossing. Once he reached France, he would ask to be taken to Southern Italy, where he has another brother, and there enlist in the Liberation Army as a doctor.1
Immediately we began to prepare our belongings, knapsacks, and articles of clothing. Virgilio, the youngest Corallo, arrived, a handsome boy of sixteen with a splendid physique, and with the blond hair and blue eyes that characterize the ancient Celtic race here. He and his brother were about to leave. They came to see if we wanted to give them something to carry, seeing that they were going up unladen. My eyes fell on a big coil of ropes that seemed absolutely useless to me, and that instead Paolo had wanted to bring at any cost. Wasn’t the Passo dell’Orso an easy little walk? I thought that, by entrusting them to Virgilio, I would be doing something clever, because later we would have them anyway, without the effort of carrying them. Indeed, but if the ropes were to be useful, they would be so during the climb, as occurred in reality. For once, Paolo rightly observed that my decision revealed my lack of any “rudimentary knowledge.” (No one knows of what, perhaps of everything.) In any event, in his absence, no one dared oppose my intelligent decision, and the boy left with the coil of ropes in his knapsack.
We dined, and then I left to rest a little in a room that dear Bricarello had put at our disposal. I was tired and, considering the upcoming trip, I thought it advisable to get a bit of rest when I could. I threw myself on the bed and fell asleep immediately. I woke up after about an hour after hearing someone enter the room. It was Alberto and Paolo, with an unknown and mysterious man who took off his boots as soon as he entered, and out fell papers and documents. It was the information that Piccolo had gathered, which he had preferred not to entrust to Paolo and Alberto, fearing that they would stop them on the train. Instead he sent them by means of one of his reliable men, who had his documents in order.
By now everything was ready and we could leave. I stuffed myself with documents, and we set out toward the mountain and through the town. By now it was dusk, and the Germans were traveling from one house to the other with pots of rations. Today I still wonder how the passing of that group of people, thoroughly rigged out, who, at that hour and during that season, were moving toward the mountains, did not arouse their suspicions. What is more, at a certain point Bianca and Juanita stopped and, before turning back, for a long time stayed to say good bye to the group that was leaving, with expressive hand gestures, if not exactly waving their handkerchiefs. Evidently the Germans in residence in Beaulard—as was already tested and as was also demonstrated later—did not have a particular hostility for either the population or the partisans, and took good care not to take any initiative against them. No one had given the order to stop us; therefore they observed us leaving without the least interest. Only two or three days later, when an anonymous denouncement regarding our departure reached them—we never knew from whom—did they go to look for Gino, tagged by them as a guide and ski instructor, and force him to accompany them through the mountains in search of us. But the storm had completely erased our tracks, and Gino, who knows the area thoroughly, brought them to places that were so difficult and dangerous and impossible that they, in all honesty, could state that under similar snow conditions no one could have carried out the crossing.
While the others were going up to the cabin, where we would make a stop and wait for the moon to rise, Alberto and I went to Pacchiodo’s house, where some of our partisans had gathered. We handed the money for the month of January over to them, gave them final instructions and a few newspapers (I had brought up Il Partigiano Alpino with the news of Duccio’s death and his photograph), and agreed that, if everything went smoothly, we would have them notified, or someone would come to get them. They would be ready to leave immediately as soon as they were notified, in small successive squads, without the news spreading.
Then we too went up to the cabin. I was so tired that I was thinking with terror about the exertion that awaited me. At that moment the Passo dell’Orso seemed to me to be infinitely far away, almost unreachable, and I almost did not consumai l’impresa (bring the enterprise to an end).2 I could say goodbye to those who were leaving and turn back. I thought with hopeless nostalgia about the little room in the hospital where I had rested for a moment in the afternoon: the pretty clean little bed, the radiator on, and the hot running water, instead of the cold, the darkness, and the fatigue, above all the fatigue. Basically I was just a woman and they could do without me very well. What was more, in the very end I only represented an obstacle. For a moment the temptation was very strong, but I reacted quite quickly to the physical laziness that had inspired me, taking a tablet of simpamina, and when I reached the end of the climb, I was again more determined than ever.3
We found the others in the cabin, in the dark, not as a measure of prudence but because there was no coal for the acetylene lamp. In the uncertain light of the stove that was lit, we ate something, and then we remained seated in the darkness, tranquil, and sang old mountain songs, waiting for the moon to rise.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. when we left. The snow glistened in the moonlight, and the big dark fir trees seemed to be so many Christmas trees decorated with shining stars. It was so magnificent that a feeling of happy exaltation followed my depression of a little while before. “How lucky I am!” I said to myself, proceeding in what seemed to me a fairy tale land. “To think that I would never have been able to see something like this!”
Suddenly, I heard suffocated sounds and curses behind me. It was Pillo, who had gotten his foot caught in a hare trap. It was not difficult to free it, and he immediately continued on his way. This was his first mishap.
At 2:00 a.m. we reached Rocher de La Garde. The cabin was empty and the door was open, just as the Germans had left it when they went away about a month before. There were bunk beds, a bit of straw, empty cans, and an old blanket. We went in and decided to make a brief stop. Paolo announced that we were about half way from the summit, but that now the hardest part was beginning. It was terribly cold and we tried to light a bit of fire with the straw, but it was wet and we were not able to set it aflame. Suddenly we felt the wind rise whistling in the valley. We listened, with our hearts in suspense. If a blizzard were breaking out, it would be difficult for us to be able to continue. But the wind did not reach us. The air continued to be still, the sky clear, and the moon bright. The blizzard remained below, raging, and providentially erased our tracks. Bianca and Juanita, down at the hospital, and the boys who knew about our departure, awakened by the hissing roar, wondered anxiously what had happened to us, and if we had turned back.
But near us the night continued to be clear and still, and after about ten minutes, we continued on our way. At the moment when we left, I realized that my gloves were soaked. Naturally I had another pair, but they were at the bottom of Ettore’s knapsack, and I did not want to make him lose more time looking for them. Therefore I got the blanket that was abandoned by the Germans and threw it on my shoulders, wrapping my hands in its two ends. I left, very proud of my solution. I felt picturesque, like a figure in a Goya print, and my hands wrapped up like this were freer and warmer than they were with the gloves.
That last stretch proved to be really difficult, however. The Germans’ tracks, which had made Paolo and Alberto’s crossing so much easier the last time, were no longer there. The wind had swept away the soft snow, and we had to proceed by making steps in the ice along the naked ridge, at a considerable slope, above an overhanging rock of two or three hundred meters. But that night I was not aware of the difficulty. I realized the danger that we confronted only when, on the trip back, I saw, from the other side, the frightening incline of our route over the abyss. Alberto and Paolo, the only ones who were really aware of the situation, remembered it. But Alberto’s shoes (Valle’s ill-fated shoes) did not grip and tended to slide. Therefore Paolo went ahead, made steps in the ice with his ice ax, and then tried them with his feet, scrupulously, slowly, before trusting his weight on them and making more of them. Alberto, who adjusted and hardened the steps with his feet, came after him. Then I came, panting and protesting. Paolo’s precautions seemed truly excessive. (Why was he not going faster? I was beginning to feel cold.) Behind me, Bruno, then Pillo, and last, Ettore. I had told him, “Stay behind. That way you can close ranks and we will not lose anyone.” He faithfully performed the task entrusted to him. But the tracks that Paolo marked so accurately and that Alberto and I maintained and hardened, then became badly crushed, broken, and practically destroyed by the feet of Bruno and Pillo, who were not mountain dwellers. Therefore poor Ettore, who is not a mountain dweller in the least, had to laboriously remake the track for himself. When I think of my foolhardiness that night with regard to him, I feel really guilty. I admire the calm equilibrium that enables him, under similar conditions of inferiority, to quietly go through the ordeal. If only we had the rope! But I had sent it ahead! When I confessed it to Paolo, in response to his question, he shook his head, more amused than infuriated: “It’s OK!” he said “We will manage without it.”
As a matter of fact, thanks to I do not know what saint, we did manage very well without it, and after about four hours we were at the Passo. A rag was fluttering, hung on a rope between two poles, and for a second my heart shuddered at the thought that the Germans might have preceded us, closing in on us. Paolo went down to call the Corallo brothers, who came outside immediately. A little because of their joy at our arrival, and a little to stretch their legs, they began to run like chamois halfway up the slope that led to the other side. While I watched them go away, smiling, I saw a figure break loose from the group that had waited for us at about fifty meters from the cabin and begin to hop behind them. But suddenly my smile changed into a cry of anguish, because the figure in motion—Pillo? Bruno? Ettore?—had unexpectedly fallen and was sliding rapidly along the frozen slope toward the precipice. Distraught, I hurried ahead with Paolo, even though we knew perfectly well that there was nothing to be done. But, by I do not know what miracle, when he arrived at the edge of the abyss, the poor wretch stopped suddenly. Perhaps he had found a rise in the land, or perhaps he had been able to stop himself. Counting the others who also had approached, I realized that it was Pillo, who now was trying laboriously to climb back up the slope. The Corallo brothers ran to help him and, after a few minutes, he was at our side. Even in the moonlight, I could see that he was very pale and was trembling violently, and with reason, because he had had a narrow escape. This was his second mishap. I gave him a bit of brandy, which he swallowed in one gulp, and then courageously got back on his way, flanked by the two Corallo brothers. But by now the dangerous part was over because, having gotten over the Passo, the descent began into a tranquil ravine, without a hint of precipices or overhanging rocks.
I had barely finished rejoicing over the dangerous escape when I noticed a strange sensation in my hands. In the excitement of the last few minutes, I had forgotten to keep them wrapped in the hems of the blanket. Now, looking at them, I saw them becoming a strange color, between yellow and brown, absolutely unnatural. I understood immediately—it did not take much—that they were freezing. I would never have believed that it could happen so quickly! I began to hit them, rub them, and beat them under my armpits. After a few minutes, a thousand little stabs and the resumption of a normal color revealed that the circulation was back and the danger of frostbite was over.
Then I thrust myself ahead for the descent with a kind of drunkenness. “We are in France!” I continued to repeat while I went down with long leaps, sinking in the soft snow. “We did it! Now we are safe!” Instead, even if we had crossed the prewar border, we were not now in France, but in “no man’s land,” when at any moment we could run into some German patrol on reconnaissance, and where we were within sight of the German emplacements at the Col des Acles, visible to the naked eye.
It was 6:00 a.m. when, having completed the descent, we began our march on level land. The moon had set, but the sky was already illuminated by the light of dawn. Nature was slowly awakening, and we could even hear the song of a bird at the top of a pine tree, tender and touching in that icy silence.
We had to move quickly to get out of the stretch within sight before broad daylight. But we were all a little tired, and advancing in the soft snow was extraordinarily difficult. Therefore the sun was already illuminating the tops of the mountains when we reached Châlet des Acles, a group of grange used in the summer season, in peacetime, by herdsmen who brought their animals to pasture, and of course deserted now.
Still we made a short stop. Ettore took two photographs of the group. (Why not immortalize such an event?) I combed my hair and made myself up as best I could. I had it in mind that I should embrace the first French person that I met, and I wanted to be presentable. In 1940, when Italy had entered the war against France, I had sworn that when the war was over and I crossed the border, I would throw my arms around the neck of the first Frenchman I saw. Certainly the event was happening in circumstances different from the ones I had foreseen, but the promise was valid just the same, and the time to keep it was approaching.
We had resumed the march for a short time when the roar of a shot from a firearm gave me a brutal start. “How stupid!” I said to myself. “Here there is really no reason to be afraid. The Germans must be practicing.” It was the Germans all right, and yes, they were practicing, but practicing firing at our line, which, winding dark against the whiteness of the snow at the bottom of the valley, constituted a moving but perfectly visible target. Yet I continued to navigate in my state of almost unreal bliss. I did not even comprehend the situation when we heard a second roar, this time notably closer. “Perhaps they are blowing up mines,” I thought.
“Quick, quick!” Paolo took care to say. “Quicken your step if you can!” Again I scarcely listened to him. Why hurry? We were doing so well! Nevertheless we all walked a little more hurriedly while the shots recurred, at intervals that were shorter and shorter, louder and louder, and closer and closer, until we reached the narrow gorge that, between two high walls of rock, led to the Clé des Acles, the French checkpoint. There, finally safe, Alberto and Paolo made us stop. Then Alberto, followed by Paolo, advanced carefully toward the guard post, with a white handkerchief hoisted on the tip of a stick and yelling at full voice: “Vendettà! Vendettà!” the code word that had been given to them the time before.
But the garrison of the checkpoint had been changed. The Moroccans were no longer there; no one from before was there any more. Still, even though they did not recognize the code word, someone came outside to talk with them, and what they said must have convinced them because they turned to us immediately, making a sign to come ahead. When we had approached, and after they looked us up and down and were certain that we were not Fascists in disguise, they removed the mines to let us in. One cavalierly offered me his hand to help me to pass over the barbed wire. “On vous a tiré dessus avec le mortier! (They fired on you with the mortar),” they said in the meantime, excited. “On entendait les coups et on n’y comprenait rien. C’était pour vous, alors (We heard the shots and we did not understand anything. They were for you, then)!” “Vraiment (Really)?” I answered, with the most radiant of my smiles. “Cela se peut bien (That could very well be).” But at the bottom of my heart, I still did not believe it.
When we were in the baraccamento—a cabin only a little bigger than ours in Sapes—they subjected us to a formal but superficial search, after which, having removed any suspicion, they indulged in manifestations of cordial hospitality.4 They were maquisards of the Ffi and almost all of them had a bouc, which was an unkempt little goatee. They were down-to-earth, solid, dear, and sincere, like our mountain folk from the other side of the Passo. They gave us cookies and chocolate, bread, sardines, salmon, and above all coffee, real coffee, two quarts (quarter liters) of which I gulped down immediately, and which truly restored my soul. Meanwhile one continued to transmit with a telephone from the camp. “Allô, Mouton (Hello, Sheep), he yelled, all cheerful, evidently using conventional names. “C’est ici Lapin, Lapin qui parle. Appelle-moi Cochon! Eh, dis donc: nous avons ici huit partisans italiens, sept homes e une femme. Qu’est-ce qu’il faut faire? Oui, c’est moi, c’est Lapin qui parle (This is Rabbit, it is Rabbit speaking. Call me, Pig! Hey, by the way: We have eight Italian partisans here, seven men, and one woman. What should we do? Yes, it’s me, it is Rabbit speaking).”
Suddenly I remembered that, in the anxiety of our arrival, I had forgotten my promise. I looked at the maquis, choosing the one who seemed to promise the least rough skin and the least pungent beard. My choice fell on the young man next to me who had just now filled my quart of boiling coffee for the third time. “Est-ce que je peux vous embrasser (May I embrace you)?” I asked him laughing. “Mais oui, sans doute (yes, of course),” he answered, reddening under his bouc and sun tan. I kissed him loudly on both cheeks, eliciting the warm-hearted laughter of the others who, when I explained to them the origin and reason for my gestures, explained to me in turn that I had chosen to kiss the very one who, before becoming a partisan, had been a seminarian. “C’est qu’on l’appelle ‘le curé’ vous savez (We call him ‘the priest’, you know),” they said laughing. Then I was afraid I had embarrassed him, and tried to make amends by saying that there was really nothing wrong in it, because I could very well have been his mother. The curé, rather than being sorry, seemed rather flattered and satisfied because a moment later he pulled me aside and, pouring me more coffee, told me seriously: “N’oubliez pas. On m’appelle le ‘curé’. Si jamais vous avez besoin de quelque chose, appellez-moi e je serai toujours à vot’service (Don’t forget. They call me the ‘priest’. If you ever need anything, call me and I will be at your service).”
Pillo complained, saying that one of his feet hurt, and I advised him to take off his shoe. It was not an easy undertaking. It took four of us to pull, two on one side and two on the other. When the shoe finally came off, bringing with it the sock that was stuck on it, the foot seemed black and blue and swollen to our eyes. I bet it hurt, poor boy. The shoe, evidently too tight, had stopped his circulation, and his foot was on the road to frostbite. Immediately we hastened to guard against it, beating it, rubbing it with the snow, and warming it. Some feeling returned, but it still remained in bad condition. This was Pillo’s third and final mishap.
Meanwhile, with the new changing of the guard, which was supposed to replace the group from Clé, two French policemen charged with accompanying us up to Plampinet arrived. They became very excited when they heard that there was a blessé (a wounded man) among us. “Est-ce qu’il faut faire venir un brancard (Should we have a stretcher brought)?” they asked. No, Pillo did not want the stretcher, and he said that he felt like going down on foot, provided that they give him some footwear for his foot, which he could not pour back into the fatal shoe. They quickly found a rubber boot, with which he declared that he could walk. “Bon (good),” the head policeman then concluded. “La dame va nous précéder avec le blessé. Ainsi on n’ira pas trop vite (The woman will go ahead of us with the wounded man. That way we will not go too quickly).” Then we set out, in a procession, along the mule track: Pillo and I in front, arm in arm, then the policeman, then, at random, our men and the French men who came down after having finished their turn, and finally the other policeman.
I do not think I will ever forget our descent in the sun and our glorious arrival in the village. It was Sunday, and the entire population of the town, having been notified of our arrival, had gathered to wait for us. “Ce sont des italiens, des maquis italiens (They are Italians, Italian maquis),” they said. “Voyez, il y a aussi une femme (Look, there is also a woman).” They greeted us festively, with their hands and with their smiles.
They had us go into the Command Post (P.C.), and while Alberto, assuming his part as chef de l’équipe (team leader), withdrew with an officer, explaining to him who we were and showing him our credentials, the others surrounded us affectionately, made Pillo stretch out on a mattress, and gave us something to eat. Evidently, before the liberation, the house had been the headquarters of a German command, because everywhere we could see drawings and writings that the French had spiritedly modified. For example, Ein Reich (one Reich) was written on a wall, and the French had commented: en ruines (in ruins); ein Volk (one people)...décimé (decimated); ein Führer (one leader)...aux abois (in dire straits).
When we finished eating, the boys threw themselves on the mattress next to Pillo, whose foot was covered with water blisters and still hurt him, and fell asleep. The policeman came to propose that Ettore, Bruno, and I, the older ones, go to sleep in his room for a while. I accepted with gratitude. With the excitement over, I was beginning to feel quite tired. There were two beds in the room and the stove was lit. I threw myself down and dozed lightly. Half asleep, I heard Bruno, who instead of going to sleep had sat down near the stove and was talking with the policeman. He was speaking a strange French. For example, he said “lon qu’on dit, lon qu’on fait (when one says, when one does).” At a certain point he spoke about one of his “ami qui avait une ville dans la rivière (friend who had a city in the river),” evidently meaning that he had a villa on the Riviera. Lulled by his conversation, I fell sound asleep. I awakened upon hearing the wind whistling menacingly. Was I dreaming or was it real? It was, because Ettore, who was stretched out next to me, had also heard it. Another policeman, who had entered the room a little while later, announced that it had begun to snow. I wrapped myself in the blanket that they had thrown over me with a sense of well-being and profound gratitude. I did not have much time to make myself comfortable, however. Alberto came to call us. A car sent from Briançon had arrived to bring us up there, but it could only carry three people, and naturally they wanted the “leaders.” Alberto thought that he, Paolo, and I should go.
Regretfully, I tore myself away from the pleasant warmth of the room and returned to the Command. Pillo had a slight fever. “On va l’emmener à l’hôpital et le soigner comme il faut (We are going to take him to the hospital and care for him properly),” an officer assured me. But my heart wept at leaving him when he was not perfectly well. Even Paolo had a slightly dazed appearance, although he did not acknowledge any pain. The others, aside from fatigue, were in excellent condition, and the French assured us that they would come to join us quite soon, with another car, the next morning, or perhaps this very evening.
An officer came in, running: “Vite, vite, on va partir tout de suite (Hurry, hurry, we are leaving right away)!” I snatched my things quickly and embraced Ettore very tightly. It made me very sad to begin the New Year away from him. Whether it was the pain that sounded in my voice in saying goodbye to him or the tenderness of my embrace, the fact remains that the French officer, the one who had previously refused my request (“pas possible...la voiture est surchargée (impossible, the car is overcrowded)”), proposed with some hesitation: “Mais, enfin...si vous voulez...prenez vos affaires...on peut se reserrer encore un peu...(Well, OK, if you wish, get your things; we can squeeze together a little more).” He did not have to tell us twice. Ettore ran to get his knapsack, and for once he was very fast. We squeezed together incredibly to make space for him. Finally we left. The car, a little bigger than an “1100,” was effectively surchargée because, in addition to the four of us, crowded in the back, there were three in front—the driver, the officer, and a girl who belonged to an auxiliary corps who, even though it was not very comfortable, continued for the entire trip to sing a little song that had for a refrain: Chez Beber!5
A brief stop in Briançon, and then we left again for Embrun. After a few kilometers we could see the lights lit, like in peacetime. “Oh, la lumière (Oh, light)!” I exclaimed, happily surprised. “Oui,” said the officer. Ici finit le blécou (Here there is no more blécou).” “What is a blécou?” I wanted to ask, but at that moment a sign answered my question. It said “Fin du Black out (the end of the blackout),” and I understood that blécou was none other than the dreadful French distortion of the English word used for blackout.
At Embrun, where we arrived after nine, our chef (leader) was not able to find the individual who was supposed to look after us. He went around from one office to the other, but it was New Year’s Eve and no one was there. He finally brought us to the hospital and from there, having telephoned right and left, was able to make blankets and food arrive. Then he left us in the care of the nurse on duty, a soldier boy with puffy eyes who spoke a strange French, and who wanted to offer everyone one of his bottles of very bad cognac at any cost. Then he brought us to sleep in a room with four beds and a stove. I was too tired to make observations or comments. Ettore tucked me in really well. (I think he also gave me his blanket). So, sleeping, we entered 1945.
The arrival of a soldier with four loaves of bread and four cups of a black broth, defined by him as a jus (juice), woke us up in the morning. We wished him a Happy New Year, to which he responded with little enthusiasm. “Avec cette sacrée guerre (with this blasted war)!” he sighed. I understood that he must have been weary of the naia (cobra), and I learned later that during those very days the Germans had launched a new offensive against the Allied front in the Ardennes, and there was some apprehension in the air.6
I wanted more than anything to take a bath, or at least to wash myself with some comfort, but on the floor where we were, I was not able to find a washbasin. There was only a toilet whose pipes were broken because of the cold and that, consequently, was overflowing. What is more, since the door handle was missing (“les allemands les ont emportées toutes (the Germans took them all away)”), I might remain shut in there until someone came to free me. I was about to go down into the nurse’s little room, where we had eaten the night before, and where it seemed that the only available faucet was located, when I saw the officer who had accompanied us as far as here arrived. “Vite, vite,” he said, and he brought us immediately to the Command.
While we were waiting to be introduced, we met two pretty, nice girls in uniform who drove the ambulances (ambulancières, they described themselves). I confided in them freely that, together with my love for France and my wish for the war to end soon, I also wanted to wash up. “Mais venez chez nous (then come with us)!” they cried, understanding right away. “On vous donnera de l’eau chaud et tout ce qu’il faut (we will give you hot water and everything you need).” I could not take advantage of their offer because right at that very moment they brought us into the office where they subjected us to a long, idiotic, and very intense interrogation. As a result, they issued a report, which they gave me to read later. It was a real masterpiece of idiotic bureaucracy where, for example, they said that “sept partisans italiens avec leur mère (seven partisans with their mother)” had arrived, whose mère, by the peculiar phenomenon of prematurity, was born in 1922 (rather than in 1902). (Good gracious! I did not know that I had so many sons, and so grown up!)
Among the others there was a fat officer, whose porcine face clashed peculiarly under the elegant cap of the chasseurs des Alpes (Alpine hunters), and who brightened up greatly when he heard that we had specific information about the German artillery in the Susa Valley. He begged us to give him a summary of the information that we brought and translate it, which we innocently agreed to do. To us it was important to support and help the war operations. We were not aware of the touchiness and spite of the various commanders, who only wanted to get ahead and put themselves in good light with their superiors. Certainly we could not know that by giving a report to the officials at Embrun, we were upsetting those at Grenoble.
Therefore, with Alberto and Paolo’s help, we worked hard all morning long, summarizing, translating, and typing the most important details of our information. At a certain point we saw Bruno and the two Corallo brothers arrive. They had been worse off than we had been because in Briançon they had essentially slept on the ground in a guard post. What is more, right at midnight, as if to greet the New Year, the German cannons (those located near us) had begun to fire, stirring up a certain panic, fortunately without consequence. Pillo had been taken to the hospital the night before, and they did not know anything more about it. I begged the officer with the face of a piglet to call for news about him by telephone. He was so happy about the trick that he was playing on his colleagues from Grenoble—thanks to our naiveté—that he obliged me immediately. Lieutenant Spriano was better. His foot had second-degree frostbite, but they had already begun to treat it with certain marvelous special injections, and in about two weeks he would be healed. Not to worry because he has received all the necessary care.
It was past noon when we finished our work. Then they brought us into a large, empty room, which must have been used to hold lessons because it contained a blackboard, and where there had evidently been a Christmas party, because you could still see holly branches, tinfoil stars, and cotton snowflakes hanging. There was a table, chairs, and a stove that had been extinguished. They told us to wait, because soon they would bring us something to eat. It was very cold and I was beginning to become terribly hungry, because the morning jus had not been very nourishing. Immediately Ettore got busy and lit the stove. He made an inspection tour of the various neighboring offices, gathering all the wood that he could find, and was able to create a pleasing and comfortable blaze. But the meal did not arrive. Suddenly we heard footsteps approaching. “Here it is!” we shouted enthusiastically. Instead it was a young soldier who was coming to ask us if we had mess tins and cutlery. No, we answered, how could we have them? We were not regular soldiers. At which the young soldier scratched his head, saying that it was a big problem. They did not have extra plates or cutlery. They could buy them, but it was a holiday and the stores were closed. At first I thought that he was pulling our leg, but then I realized that he was very serious. He went away with a worried look, and we did not see anyone else for quite a while. Virgilio killed time writing his own name with big flourishes on the blackboard. Paolo began to complain, saying that the big toe of his right foot hurt, and maintaining he must have gotten frostbite, but I was too exhausted to pay attention to him.
Finally, around two thirty, a succession of soldiers arrived, bringing everything we needed: plates and cutlery (Had they bought them, or had they gone to get them in the neighboring town?), and not the usual stew but some excellent broth, and a magnificent casserole with potatoes, and even peaches in syrup.
We had barely finished the meal when there came our guide. “Vite, vite!” We were leaving for Grenoble. We said goodbye to Bruno and the Corallo brothers, who, they assured us, would join us the next morning, and we left. The car was not so crowded because the girl was no longer there, and the officer himself drove. I was stunned to see that he took a Thompson.7 “On ne sait jamais (we never know),” he explained. “On pourrait rencontrer des collabos (we could run into collaborators).”
Instead we did not encounter anyone, and it was an enchanting trip along the Route Napoléon, surrounded by a regular succession of marvelous Alpine scenery. We crossed small rivers with expressive Provençal names (like the Rabioux). We went through villages where children tobogganed like the children in Meana. We went down and climbed back up pure white valleys, and we drove alongside a large frozen lake for a while, on which the fisherman had constructed straw huts, and over which an equestrian statue of Napoleon had a commanding position from on high.
It was already dark when we got to Grenoble, and we stopped in front of the Hotel Lesdiguières, headquarters of the Commands. But we barely had time to get out when Alberto and Paolo cried simultaneously: “Palisse!”8 They had seen Lieutenant Palisse, navy officer in charge of the information service, with whom they had negotiated and made agreements the time before. He must have thought that they would not return again because, on seeing them, he lapsed into manifestations of cordiality and joy that seemed to me to be somewhat excessive. He even became downright frenetic when, in response to his questions, they told him that they had the location of pieces of German artillery. “Vous avez les 420! (You have identified the 420s),” he cried, ecstatic, jumping up and down.9 “Vite, vite,” he said then to the officer who had accompanied us. “Emmenez-les au Rochambeau. Je vais venir tout de suite (Take them to the Rochambeau. I will come right away).” He had not even noticed my presence, nor that of Ettore.
At the Rochambeau, the réquisitionné (requisitioned) hotel at the other end of Grenoble, a gracious mademoiselle showed us into a room that was very modest, but that, after a night spent in the barracks, seemed downright luxurious to me. There was a washbasin with hot running water, on which I flung myself and washed up without delay. Then I went into the lavatory, which was clean and not frozen. But I had only just gone in when I heard the sound of footsteps and the voice of Palisse, who was talking with the boys, which then intensified suddenly, disturbed and excited: “Non, mais non, la dame ne peut pas rester ici (No, but no, the lady cannot stay here)!” I felt my heart skip a beat. The lady could only be me. “The next thing you know,” I thought with some apprehension, “they will keep the others here and will send me to a concentration camp, and I cannot do anything about it!” I no longer had the courage to come out. But I could not stay in the lavatory forever, even if it were clean and comfortable. Therefore I got up my courage and, having come out, went to introduce myself with the most beautiful of my smiles. The storm had been placated by then, and the situation had been explained. Palisse and the other officer who was with him, Lieutenant Campin, welcomed me cordially.10 They calmed down immediately when they learned that I was Paolo’s mother. But they could not make a decision. We had to speak to the general.
Again they loaded us into a car, and they brought us to the Hotel Lesdiguières, where this time we went in. Yes, there were the polished sidewalks and hazy lights Paolo had described, but there were no longer Moroccans in turbans, and even the atmosphere of the Thousand and One Nights was missing. They conducted us to the first floor, and made us wait several minutes in a long hallway. Poor Ettore, who did not have time to avail himself of the lavatory, where I had remained much longer than I should have and wanted to, desperately began to look for one. Suddenly we saw him turn, contented and determined, toward a door where Chef de Cabinet (supervisor) was written. “No, no!” we shouted with energetic signs of opposition. Then he ran to the end of the hallway where he threw open a door and went in, first turning to us with a radiant smile and stretching out his arm in the Roman salute!
He had just returned when they showed us into the general’s office. He was most polite, greeted us cordially, and gave a nice speech, praising the work of Alberto and Paolo and thanking them for the valuable news they had brought. “But,” he concluded, “we were expecting two of you and eight arrived. Naturally I must ask you who the others are.” And after all, he was not wrong.
It was easy to explain the position of the Corallos. They were two mountaineers, guides and carriers, useful for the transport of weapons that they hoped to obtain. Pillo was a young partisan officer who had cooperated in the search for information, and who had to be put into contact with the French authorities in case Alberto and Paolo could not come personally to bring the news—a kind of deputy, in effect. Even Bruno—a persecuted Jew and surgeon who wanted to join the Liberation Army and who offered to work as an aid in some French hospital in the meantime—was quickly justified. It was my presence that they could not manage to accept. What had I come to do? The traditional masculine idea of the woman, which arose from natural distrust, made them unable to understand, and although I did not resemble Mata Hari in the least, I still aroused some suspicion in them.11
I tried to explain that I wanted to establish connections with the French women in order to profit from the experience they had gained after the liberation, and to lay down the basis for collaboration in the future. “Mais c’est justement ce que vous ne pouvez pas faire! (But that is exactly what you must not do),” exclaimed the general. He went on to say that diplomatic relations between Italy and France did not yet exist, and that therefore they could not permit contacts of a political nature between the French women’s organizations and me. “Oh no,” I answered, having finally become aware of his typically military phobia for politics, “Nothing political, for heaven’s sake.” I gave him a magnificent idiotic speech in which the words humanité, philanthropie, soins pour les blessés et les malades, crèches pour les enfants, e retraite pour les vieux (humanity, philanthropy, care for the wounded and the sick, day-nurseries for babies, and old age homes for the elderly) entered continuously, and I concluded emotionally by saying that it would be cruel for me (une cruelle deception (a cruel deception)) if, after having faced so many and such grave dangers for such a purpose (here I exaggerated a bit), I would be forbidden from performing my job.
Certainly the general was not convinced by my words, but he did not know what to say to me. Perhaps he thought I was a little crazy and that it was better to agree with me, if for no other reason than out of respect for those capable young men who had accompanied me, and from whom they had received such important information. “Eh, bien (Oh well),” he said “on va y penser, et dans quelques jours on vous dira avec qui vous pouzez vous contacter (we will think about it, and in a few days we will tell you whom you can contact).” Therefore I might remain at the Rochambeau. The next day I would have a carte de circulation (travel pass) like the others, with which I would be able to go around freely, but for the moment I should not try to approach any women’s organization. “Je vous remercie (thank you),” I answered with a smile, which could be interpreted as an assent or as a promise, but which really meant, “Leave it to me, and I will be very careful only to me contacter (contact) the people who interest me.”
So I too was set. As for Ettore, who was the very one who had the least to do with it (the mission), they asked him absolutely nothing. “How nice to be a minor detail!” he commented, congratulating himself while they went down the stairs.
Again we climbed up by car, and again we went down to the Rochambeau. But this time no one came to threaten to take us away. The rooms were not heated, but the kitchen range pipe passed underneath the one Ettore and I occupied, so there was some heat. We ate alone in a big dining room on the ground floor, served by an old cook with the classic (red) nose of a drunkard. At the end of the meal, Paolo took out a bottle of Port, duly padded, which he had carried through the mountains. With that, thinking of those close by and far away, we toasted 1945.
The next morning, we were all upset and suffering from a cold, a natural reaction to the fatigue and excitement. Paolo was limping. I examined his foot. The big toe was puffy and swollen and covered with little blisters; it appeared frostbitten indeed. Nevertheless, he could walk and he went with Alberto to the home of Palisse, who had sent a car to get them.
After a while, Ettore and I also went out. There was a newspaper store at the corner of Rue Rochambeau, where the hotel was located, and Corso Jean Jaurès. I hurried to buy everything that seemed interesting. It was like a miracle to be able to buy newspapers freely where we could read news that could only be printed clandestinely at home. I found the local dailies: Les Allobroges, organ of the Resistance; Le Travailleur Alpin (The Alpine worker), organ of the Communist Party; Le Réveil (The Awakening), organ of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (popular republican movement) (corresponding to our Christian Democrats); and a women’s newspaper, Femmes Dauphinoises, which would help me to find out about the existing organizations.12
Then we found a pharmacy not too far away on the main street, where I went in to look for remedies for our various illnesses. But they had neither syrups nor cough lozenges, and we had to be satisfied with some cachets (tablets).
When we went back into the hotel, we found the two boys with Palisse and Campin who had come to accompany them and bring us our cartes de circulation, which in realty were typed pieces of paper that were furnished with a stamp. Palisse reprimanded us amiably for having gone out before having them in our possession. “Vous voyez, il y a souvent des rafles, et on aurait des ennuis (You see, there are often raids, and we could have problems).” (In reality, for the entire time we remained in Grenoble, we never came across a rafle, either by day or by night, but evidently soldiers cannot be too careful.) Then he asked me to translate into French the information bulletin of the Committee of Liberation of Northern Italy that I had brought, which I gladly agreed to do, as long as they gave me a typewriter. They brought it to me right away, and I set to work immediately.
At four in the afternoon, Palisse came to collect what I had done and accompanied Paolo and me to the hospital, where the doctor (a strange chap, visibly Jewish, who had bare feet in his shoes “in order not to get cold,” he said), examined the big toe of his foot, and diagnosed third degree frostbite, but fortunately on quite a small area. With two or three injections he would be cured. He quickly got ready to give the first one. Paolo, who loathes doctors and medicine and gets sick if he just passes by a hospital, did not look very pleased. “Est-ce qu’il est un peu douillet? (Is he a little bit of a softie?)” the doctor asked me. No, of course not, I protested energetically, he was a partisan, the deuce! But the partisan reacted to the injection with a whining frown, to which the doctor commented, shaking his head: “Oh, il est bien un petit peu douillet quand même (Oh, he is really a little bit of a softie all the same)!”
When we went out it was sunset. The fog, which weighed down on the city in the morning, lifted for a moment. For the first time I saw the circle of mountains that surrounded the capital of the Dauphiné, shaded with clouds. I thought with a pang of nostalgia about the circle of Alps around Turin. I had left it only three days ago, but it seemed far away, unreachable, as if in another world.
We went by the pharmacy to get the prescribed medicines, and then we returned home. Paolo had a high fever and went to bed immediately. Ettore and Alberto were very cold and sleepy. Bruno and the Corallos had not arrived yet. There was no news about Pillo.
Slowly a feeling of deep depression began to take possession of me, against which I tried to react by working on translating the report.
This was the first of a long series of days that followed each other, now happy, now sad, now calm, now anxious, but all dominated by a strange sense of unreality, as if we were not really the ones who lived in the Rochambeau, went out on the streets of Grenoble, and talked with so many people, but others, whom we watched live with a feeling of detachment, only dimly interested, as if the very essence of our lives had remained far away, beyond the Alps.
We thought we would remain for a maximum of about ten days, and instead we stayed for more than a month. The French Command wanted to give us the address of a certain man from Cuneo, with whom we should keep in touch regularly. In order to get this address, Palisse had to go to the Nice Command in person. Hindered by that year’s exceptional snowfall that blocked all the access roads to the Dauphiné for several days, he was more than a week late in returning. Then, realizing that Ettore was a radio engineer, he wanted to give us a broadcasting apparatus, which would have enabled us to keep in contact with them directly. But it took a lot of time to get the transmitter out and explain a very complicated code to us (the Marchetti code).13 In short we were hung up in the military system, bureaucratic and slow to the point of exasperation, and which it was not in our power to accelerate, as much as we tried.
Therefore we remained in Grenoble for the entire month of January and the first week of February. The mountains that surrounded the city (the Bastille, at the bottom, and behind her, the massif of the Chartreuse; the glorious Vercors on one side, and on the other the multifaceted and snow-ridden background of the Savoyard Alps) became familiar to us, but—at least as far as I was concerned—without becoming part of our innermost being.14 We learned to know and travel Avenue Jean Juarès, which led to the center of town from our suburban Rochambeau; the Cours Berryat, which crossed it at a certain point arriving on one side as far as the Drac river; the long Rue Thiers (on which opened the streets that led to the hospital and to Military Security, and where we found a newsstand that had Swiss newspapers); Place Victor Hugo, with its garden and grand hotels; and Place Grenette, where the headquarters of l’Union des femmes françaises was located. We discovered the ancient charm of the little piazza, where the Palais de Justice (Municipio) and the cathedral grace the monument to Baiardo “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche (the fearless, irreproachable knight).”15 Distracted and pensive, we contemplated the flowing waters of the Isère, at the foot of the hill that vaguely reminded us of that of Turin. We ended up finding it natural to go out in the evening without a curfew and without a blackout, and spending every day at the editor’s office of the Allo (Les Allobroges), where the war bulletins were published, and where we could follow the progress of the Allied armies on an enormous map.
The weather was almost always harsh, gloomy, and unpleasant. It snowed continuously and, since no one removed the snow from the streets, walking was quite difficult at times. Enormous icicles hung from the balconies and gutters. Even the ground was often icy, and more than once we managed to find ourselves seated on the ground, as usually happened even to the local people, moreover. Sometimes, returning home at night, when we crossed the overpass situated at the intersection of two roads we were violently knocked down by icy, violent, tumultuous gusts of wind from a snowstorm in the high mountains. But, despite this and even though at home it was not very well heated, I never really suffered from the cold. Perhaps this was because I was sufficiently covered. I had a good five pairs of socks in my shoes, and several sweaters and, over everything, the old faithful fur coat. Besides, almost all the women that I saw around me were bundled up and wore trousers. Therefore I could mill around in a state like this without attracting attention. Only during the first days of February, when it stopped snowing and the temperature improved, did we have days that were almost like spring. But walking became even more difficult, because we waded through a kind of quagmire of mud on the streets and roads that were not cleaned.
Along with the presence of a number of people in the most diverse uniforms, and groups of German prisoners that we encountered from time to time with P.G. (prisoner of war) on their backs, the streets’ lack of cleanliness was one of the most visible signs of the state of war in the city, which, not having endured serious bombardments, exhibited neither defacements nor ruins. Another sign, less visible but even more noticeable, was the shortage in the stores. There was destitution during those times at home as well, but we still found many things, even without ration cards. It was always possible to buy fruits and vegetables in stores and markets that were more or less nice-looking and more or less expensive. Instead here we found absolutely nothing. Four years of German occupation had exhausted all the reserves, and the difficulty of transport, especially during the winter season, seriously cut into supplies. In recompense, however, rationing, even if not lavish, proceeded regularly, not with exceptions and by chance as it did at home. But for the foreigner, not equipped with tickets d’alimentation (ration cards), the stores offered very few resources. The only thing there was an abundance of was salt. Instead at home, especially among the mountain folk, who were eaters of polenta and soup at all hours, it was really missed. (In fact, the two Corallos, drunk from such abundance, bought several kilos of it, and we had a hard time convincing them not to bring it back with them on the return passage.) Another thing that was available and convenient was Cologne water and perfumes—at Galeries Nouvelles, the biggest department store in Grenoble. But this did not constitute a great resource. When we went into a cafe to talk with a friend or to flee the icy winds of the streets for a moment, we absolutely did not know what to order. Our “substitutes” of that period in Italy were a veritable nectar compared to the horrendous tisanes saccarinate or praliné (saccharine or praline herbal teas) that they prepared for us in Grenoble. There was good beer, but it cooled us down rather than warmed us up, and the classic Pernod, a favorite of the French of any social class, was a bit alcoholic for our tastes. Only toward the end of our stay did we discover the existence of some excellent fruit juices, which, mixed with a bit of water, made a reasonable drink.
We were neither well off nor poorly off at the Hotel Rochambeau. It was a small hotel, which at that time lodged only us and from time to time some mysterious character (certainly some other “spy”), who stayed at most only one day, however. The owner was a short little man with a Jewish nose and a beret that he always wore on his head. While he boasted about I no longer know what athletic ability, he was almost always sick, and they cured him with methods that were horrifying to us: ventouses (leeches) in abundance, and poultices of pigeon dung! His daughter was a beautiful girl with the typically French minois (fresh young face) and extremely polite, with whom we exchanged a real battle of verbal courtesies every evening.
“Bon soir (good evening),” she said with a smile, coming out of the dining room.
“Bon soir,” we answered in chorus.
“Et bonne nuit (and good night),” she hurried to add.
“A vous aussi (to you too),” we retorted.
“Reposez-vous bien (sleep well),”she insisted, unrelenting.
“A demain (until tomorrow),” we continued.
And so forth. But it was quite difficult for us to have the last word.
The maid, Madame Rose, was the widow of an Italian political exile, a native of Bordighera, who was killed by the Germans, by accident, during the days of the liberation. She was an ordinary little woman, insignificant and colorless, who had a single refrain: “Ah, oui, c’est pénible (oh yes, it is tough)!”
The cook, Madame Roche, was much more picturesque, with her big drunkard’s nose and a “goduriosa” tendency that was typically gauloise.16 She spoke quite an expressive French, and she always told strange, terrible stories, such as, for example, that she fell while she was crossing Place Championnet on her bicycle and had completely partagée la langue (split her tongue)! We loved how much she loathed the owners (whom she defined as misers and thieves), and when at times, in the evening, we played and sang (there was an old, forgotten piano, which Bruno and I took advantage of from time to time), she appeared from the kitchen and delighted in singing various French songs with gestures and expressions that reminded us of cafe concerts of the can-can era.17 One evening Alberto offered her a cigarette, which she accepted with eyes that were bright (more than usual) and moved. “Je la fumerai pensant à vous (I will smoke it thinking of you),” she said. She added, with an inviting smile that was all languor: “A moins que vous ne vouliez venir la fumer avec moi dans ma chambre (Unless you want to come and smoke it with me in my bedroom)!” a proposition which literally terrorized Alberto.
As for the food, we passed through several changes. At first they gave us French military ravitaillement (provisions), comprising, at least as far as we were concerned, essentially vegetables and pain mouillé (moistened bread). After a few days, however, they replaced it with American ravitaillement, consisting exclusively of food in cans. So we went from vegetarian meals (pain mouillé, potatoes, carrots, and cauliflower) to meals that contained meat and were very spicy (stew, salmon, corned beef, and pork paté). We asked timidly if we could alternate between the two regimens, but we were asking for something impossible for sure, because the bureaucratic machine could not conceive of such a sensible solution. Only toward the end did the meals begin to improve. When, after the big snowfalls ended, the transports began to function, there were a few fresh vegetables. One day—oh what a miracle!—they even gave us a salad of greens.
Jokes aside, there was really nothing to complain about. The American meals, even if they were nauseating, were nutritious. And—something especially important to me—we had tea and coffee (albeit an amalgamation) in abundance. Moreover, Major Hamilton, head of the English mission in Grenoble, supplied us with biscuits, butter, and jam. I still remember the sensation that I felt on opening a jar of Cirio apricot jam, made in San Giovanni a Teduccio in the spring of 1944, even if it had inscriptions and explanations in English, as if I had found the familiar face of a person held dear, though in a strange uniform.18 But when the French learned about these gifts from the English, with Latin sensitivity they felt degraded, and did not want to be outdone.
One evening when we came home, we were greeted by the mademoiselle, who shouted to us festively: “Venez voir! Il y a le Père Noël pour vous (Come and see. Father Christmas came for you)!” In fact on the table, in front of each person’s plate, there was a little multicolored pile of chocolates, cigarettes, and chewing gum. The latter represented a new experience for the younger of the two Corallo brothers, Virgilio, who had never seen it, and who did not know what it was. The next day he reported to us, half angry and half annoyed, that he really did not like those American candies. He had chewed and chewed them and then, seeing that they did not melt, he “swallowed” them! Fortunately not even the ingestion of various packets of chewing gum could hurt his cast-iron stomach.
Certainly, if we had known from the beginning that we had to stay for so long, we would have been able to organize ourselves and make the most of our days. Instead we were up in the air and in suspense, waiting to leave from one minute to the next. Despite my passion for plans, we absolutely were not able to make any beyond the day.
What is more, we were almost all more or less sick, as if, the tension and the danger being relaxed for the moment, the body, abused, overworked, and neglected, had reaffirmed its inconvenient rights.
First it was Paolo’s turn. After the injection, the big toe of his foot resumed an almost normal appearance, and the doctor with the bare feet, who came to see him after several days, declared, to the great satisfaction of the patient, that the circulation had returned and that more injections would not be necessary. But the high fever that had taken hold of him on his return from the hospital lasted for more than ten days, annoying and obstinate. We all believed—doctors included—that it was a question of a typical, ordinary flu. Instead it was probably the first sign of those rheumatic problems which then resulted in so violent an attack on our return to Italy, and which caused the heart murmur that Bruno noticed when he visited him before he began the return trip.
Paolo was barely well and had begun to go out when Ettore got sick: a high fever, a cold, and a cough. He too had to remain in bed for several days. He suffered a slight pleuritic rub of which the roughness of the voyage, which should have harmed him, instead cured him completely.
Then, with Ettore barely cured, Paolo began to have a fever again, not so high and not continuous, but vexing and worrisome nonetheless.
Then Alberto was sick for a few days, then Bruno (who had arrived in Grenoble with the Corallos three days after us), and then I too, although only mildly. Only the two Corallos stayed well, even though they also caught cold and often had crises of depression.
Since the warmest room was mine, the person whose turn it was to be sick moved to my bed and we gathered around him, “forming a circle.” Our Italian and English friends who came to visit us, seeing a different person in the bed each time, could not make heads or tails of it, and the juiciest rumors began about our relationships. It was clear at once that the two mountaineers were the guides. I was a woman, and Bruno was the “surgeon,” but the others? At a certain point when, having gotten to know us better, they had finally clarified the situation, they confessed to me that at first they thought Alberto was my husband (something that for me was quite flattering since he is around twenty years younger) and that the one they had the most difficulty in identifying was Ettore: “The one with the eyeglasses, we did not really understand who he was then!”
On the first of February Pillo too arrived, practically cured. The miraculous injections—they had given him five or six—had saved his foot, which hurt him only sometimes. He could walk very well, albeit with a wooden shoe that, together with a cane—absolutely unnecessary, in my opinion—and a gray wool face mask that he pulled down over his ears, gave his face and stride quite a sinister appearance, half pirate and half moneylender. At Briançon, he was quite well taken care of and surrounded by attention, on the part of both the French and the Italian community of the place. His companions in the hospital ward had naturally all been French soldiers with whom he had struck up a friendship, thus enhancing his education with respect to the French language by a rich patrimony of jargon from the barracks, which he used, in the euphoria of convalescence, both at the right moment and at the wrong moment. One evening, having gone out with Alberto and Paolo, he risked becoming entangled in a dose of punches from a soldier who, passing near them, had believed directed at him the name sale con (dirty idiot), which Pillo had yelled without the least personal intention, but rather out of mere expressive exuberance, thumping the ground hard with the notorious, useless, cane.
It was not that we refrained from doing anything. Our days, even if not organized, were full and at times even productive.
We had a visit from the French almost daily: Palisse or his assistant, Campin. They always wanted some explanation, or had some news to give us. We discussed and perfected our plans for activity in the future. We studied the radio code. They kept us up to date on changes that took place in the insignia and acronyms of the Germans, so that our observations could then be accurate and precise, and they consulted us about the equipment and weapons that we needed for the return trip.
Our contacts with the English mission were also frequent. Major Hamilton, settled in a villa on the outskirts of Grenoble, sent for us with his jeep, and did not just offer us biscuits and jam but promised us weapons (which he later gave us) and discussed with us the possibility of organizing strikes in the Susa Valley (which afterward he did not have time to do). Through him we met Vernon, an officer of the P.W.B. (Psychological Warfare Bureau), a young Englishman who resembled a little blond angel with his blue eyes, and whose white cloth jacket and strange cap adorned with ribbons gave him the appearance either of a schoolboy or a sailor, I cannot say which. He was an intelligent and kind boy, with many interests and open to all ideas. We could speak frankly and talk with him—much more than with Hamilton, bound by his professional discretion as an agent of the Intelligence Service, and more than with Palisse, who was restrained by the bureaucratic shackles of the Deuxième Bureau. He came from Naples and had intelligent ideas about the Italian situation, even if they were not very specific. To use a term that came into fashion some time afterward, I could say that his political orientation was quite “progressive.” I saw him again in Turin, two or three days after the liberation, before the Allied troops arrived. He was full of admiration and moved, and he gave me what for an Englishman must have been the greatest compliment: “You carried out the revolution,” he said, “and everything is so quiet and orderly. I feel like I am in England!”
Our friendship and the frequency of our contacts with the English evidently got on the nerves of our French friends. Lots of distrust, quarrels, and spite existed between the two commands, ever more gangrenous since, unable to be vented, they became more and more ruthlessly acerbic under the obligatory veneer of proper respect. The hostility of the officers of the Deuxième Bureau for the Intelligence Service, in whose organization they unwillingly had to recognize a model much superior to theirs, and one that would be difficult to attain, became more intense than ever. It was natural, therefore, that they resented our intimacy with the English and judged it, on their part, to be a kind of illicit rivalry.
But our position was clear, and had always been clear. We were working with them because circumstances put us in touch with each other. All the same, we remained free to establish relationships with anyone who could help us in our war of liberation, which was our only goal. Solely to its leaders did we owe obedience and discipline.
They could not object to anything regarding such a position, which was perfectly legal and correct, even from a strictly military point of view. But the heads of the service, if they accepted and even appreciated it theoretically, in daily practice were annoyed about it. They got even with poor Palisse, who therefore found himself between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one hand, he had to please his superiors, who certainly held him responsible for each of our actions. (I think I heard them say: “Qu’est-ce que ces italiens ont à se f...avec les anglais (what business do these Italians have with the English)?”). On the other hand, he did not want to irritate us, whom he genuinely respected. So at times his discomfort materialized in observations or questions whose impertinence he tried to veil with irony. (For example, he asked Alberto, “Combien de fois par jour voyez-vous M. Hamilton (How many times a day do you see Major Hamilton)?” At other times it appeared in precautions that seemed like childish annoyances, as when, having found the English with us two days in row, he had a big cow bell applied to the entrance door of the hotel, which had opened silently before. We did not know if it was supposed to give us the impression of being restrained, to intimidate visitors, or to warn us, when he was with us, about the arrival of the...enemy!
Even before we left Italy, we knew that there must be Italian partisans in Grenoble, who had crossed the border from the Lanzo Valley and the Aosta Valley during the last German roundups, and we immediately tried to get in touch with them. The French, in deference to their useless and irritating discretion, were purposely rather vague and evasive. Despite this, it was not very difficult to find responsible individuals quite soon, among whom was Professor Corti, who explained the situation to us.19
In Grenoble there were around seven hundred partisans, who had come from the Aosta Valley toward the end of November, with him, with Chabod, and with the chaplain Don Solero and some other officers.20 At first they had been locked in a concentration camp; then they had then been quartered in Fort Robot, on the hillside of Grenoble, half way down the road from the Bastille. In the beginning, they were rather poorly off as far as ravitaillement. (From this standpoint, the month of December must have been bad for the army and the French population as well.) But for some time the situation had become better, and now they did not have any serious complaints. The French did not want anything to do with arming them or organizing them militarily, but now the Anglo-Americans were paying attention to them, and it seemed that things were taking a turn for the better. There was also a group of partisans from the Lanzo Valley who had arrived a month before the valdostani, but having arrived a few at a time, disbanded, without leaders, and often with their wives and small children, they were in part scattered here and there, finding work in Grenoble itself or in the neighboring countryside.21
The morning after the meeting with Professor Corti, we left for Fort Robot, where he had us visit the local inhabitants and speak with the partisans. They were accommodated in a barracks-style settlement, but certainly better than the one that they would have had a short time ago in Italy. The rations, which they distributed while we were present, were excellent, and they could come and go as they pleased. (In fact, when we went outside in the evening we always ran into someone.) Then they were still dressed in their clothes, but after some time we saw them go about in American uniforms, furnished by the Allies, on which was sewn a piece of ribbon with the Italian colors as a badge. Those with whom we spoke confirmed for us the things that Corti had said. They were capable and nice boys, even if it did not seem to me—at least through the few words that we exchanged—that they had a definite and certain political orientation. Neither, however, did their leaders: a certain De Francesco, an excellent and efficient organizer; a Captain Plik, whose real name we never knew; and the dear and very compassionate Don Solero. Corti was an old and experienced antifascist, but like many of us, he was one essentially for moral reasons. His almost austere unselfishness, absolute lack of opportunism and ambition, and candid optimism made it difficult for him to find his bearings in the complicated and treacherous game of self-interests that affected the relationship among the French, the Anglo-Americans, and us at that time. But precisely because of this, he was a charming man, and I cannot without tenderness think about our meetings and chats of that period, on the gelid streets or in the not-very-hospitable corner of some cafe, when, under his courageous and cool demeanor, I felt the nostalgia of a man, who was no longer young, for his native country, his family, and his home.
The only one among all of them who had a political vision of the situation was Federico Chabod, who had crossed over the mountains with his wife and faithful dog, Bobby, and who, he himself being a valdostano, was naturally more sensitive to the danger that was developing. As he explained to us, the French did not want to arm the partisans of the Aosta Valley and organize them militarily because they wanted to avoid having them be the ones to go down into the Valley at the time of the liberation, where the French had—as was shown by some articles that appeared a little while ago in French journals of a nationalistic tone—very specific objectives, based on the separatist leanings of some movements. The Anglo-Americans, on the other hand, who were naturally opposed to the French ambitions in this arena, were in favor of the formation of an Italian expedition corps, destined to stop them and fight them.22 In the end, as was predictable, the Anglo-Americans prevailed. I confess, however, that at the time—while I valued the factual information disclosed to me by Chabod, and had complete faith in his judgment and intuition —the entire question seemed to me to be a simple quarrel among the Allied Commands. It seemed impossible to me that, after a war of an ideological nature, as I believed the one that we were fighting was, they still had to have a dispute over the nationality of a piece of land. But I was deceiving myself, and even if Chabod’s fears were not realized, they were, however, as was demonstrated later, perfectly well founded.
It was also Chabod who brought us a bundle of newspapers that came from liberated Italy. Many issues of L’Italia Libera were among them, with almost all of the articles signed by people I knew. It made a strange impression on me, as the French newspapers had earlier, to see publicly in print names that had to be spoken lowering our voices at home.
Then, a few days later, we met another Italian representative, Dugoni, who was there from Switzerland as an emissary of the Committee of National Liberation of Northern Italy.23 Unlike Corti and Chabod, essentially intellectual and moralistic, he impressed me with his tone of practical efficiency and diplomatic ability. He wore the uniform of an American officer, and told us to constrain our activity in order to avoid the trouble that the French might give him. He was very courteous and cordial to us, interested in our work, and gave us useful information and advice. It was from him that we received—on January 17, I remember the day perfectly—news of Parri’s arrest. From that moment I no longer had any peace. Who else had been arrested? How were things going at home, in Turin? What had happened to all of our friends? What were they thinking, not seeing us return? These were questions and thoughts that, continuous and insistent like those in a nightmare, kept me in a state of long-drawn-out anguish, without allowing me the relaxation of tension that external circumstances would have been able to do.
It goes without saying that I did not wait for permission from the authorities to get in touch with the French women, which in reality was given to me two or three days after my arrival, but in a very limited form. “Puisque vous avez si bien travaillé pour nous (since you have done such good work for us),” Palisse told me with an air of granting me a big favor, “on a décidé que vous pouvez vous contacter avec la Croix Rouge (we have decided that you can contact the Red Cross).” He also gave me a letter of introduction to the president. I went there, although I was not very enthusiastic. They welcomed me courteously, but they did not have anything extraordinary to tell me, nor I to ask them. The Red Cross is an international organization founded on fundamentals that I already understood perfectly, and they could not teach me anything about its operations that I could not learn directly from De La Forêt. But they spoke to me about certain équipes d’urgences (emergency teams) that had been very useful during the liberation and even afterward, whose leader and organizer was a certain gentleman whose name I do not remember. So I went to his house and he gave me plenty of explanations and suggestions. He had formed équipes (teams) during the occupation to give aid to air raid victims. But there had been very few air raids in Grenoble, and the équipes (made up of citizens of every political orientation, but all anti-German and anti-Pétain) had been able, under the auspices of the Red Cross, to develop genuine and appropriate assistance for the partisans, with whom the surrounding mountains were filled.
But before, even without being authorized, I had already contacted the women of the French Resistance. There was an office of the local seat of the Uff on Place Grenette that was open to the public. It was with a sense of nostalgia and at the same time of high hopes (who knows when the Gruppi di difesa will be able to have a headquarters open to the public, in broad daylight?) that, the day immediately after my arrival, I pushed open the door to the small office. There were, in some glass cases and hung on the walls, photographs and inscriptions that would become familiar to me afterward, but that appeared new and marvelous then. There were portraits of Danielle Casanova and Bertie Albrecht and other women murdered by the Nazis.24 There were photographs of smiling babies and women at work and documents of women’s participation in the reconstruction of the country. There were some inscriptions with slogans that seemed singularly happy and impressive: “Si toutes les femmes du monde voulaient se donner la main,” one said, “on pourrait faire une ronde, une ronde autour du monde (If all the women of the world wanted to hold hands, we could make a circle, a circle around the world)!” And another: “Nous voulons créer pour nos enfants les lendemains qui chantent (We want to create for our children tomorrows that sing).”
The woman in charge, Jeanne, who had very sweet eyes and entirely French good manners, after giving me the explanations I asked for, directed me to Claude Dunoyer, editor of Femmes Dauphinoises, who certainly would be happy to meet me. I could even find her right away at the headquarters of Les Allobroges, where she was a reporter.25
In fact I found her immediately, and when she learned who I was and what it was about, she welcomed me with enthusiastic cordiality. She was a small woman, around my height and age, whose features vaguely resembled Claudette Colbert. “Mais c’est épatant (but that’s marvelous)!” she kept on repeating, “On va enfin pouvoir parler des femmes italiennes (we can finally speak about Italian women)!” She called a stenographer and began to interview me. I realized quickly from her questions how little they knew about us in general in France, and how many vague or downright wrong ideas they had as far as we were concerned. Therefore I spoke for more than an hour, trying to clarify how our Resistenza had not been born simply from an uprising of revolt against the invader, but had its roots in the twenty-year period of antifascism of many Italians. I spoke about what the women were doing, explained who the Gruppi di difesa were and what they intended to do, and gave figures, information, and precise statements. Claude Dunoyer listened approvingly, at times asking me something, and launching into explanations and clarifications in turn. It was from her that I heard mention of the sadly notorious camp of Auschwitz for the first time, and of the tens of thousands of women who had lost their lives there.
When I left her we embraced cordially, with the understanding that I would return two days later to read the interview before it was published. I arrived home late for dinner, but in a state of personal euphoria.
I returned two days later to read the interview, which had to be modified a bit. In my enthusiasm, I had responded so profusely and with such precision to the questions asked of me that my person could not be confused with anyone else. It was certainly unlikely that Femmes Dauphinoises would arrive in Italy and fall into the hands of the Fascists, but the possibilities are infinite, and it was better to be prudent. Therefore by common agreement we modified the article, taking out all of the references of a personal nature, and not hinting at the crossing through the mountains at all. On the contrary, we decided to date the interview from Geneva in order to divert any possible suspicion. But even as far as women’s activities in Italy were concerned, there were several inaccuracies that we corrected. It was the first interview that I had given in my life, and I had not yet learned that, if I did not want to be misunderstood, I should talk as little as possible, say few precise things, and continue to emphasize them using the same words. Instead, at that time, in the effervescence of this first experiment, I had blurted out a flood of words among which it was natural that the French journalist, new to the topic and to the milieu, did not always know how to find her bearings. She fell to work with good will and rewrote the article completely. When I returned the next day, I no longer had any important objections to make.
The issue of Femmes Dauphinoises of the following week came out with the interview on the first page, with a title in big letters that contained the entire heading: Les femmes italiennes contre les nazi-fascistes (Italian women against the Nazi-Fascists), and underneath, the view of a city—that truly I did not recognize and that could have been any city of the North —with the inscription: Turin, la capitale de la Résistance (Turin, capital of the Resistance). I confess that when, going about on the streets of Grenoble, I saw the newspaper with its remarkable title exposed in the shop windows and in the news stands, I could not hold back a sense of pleasure and genuine pride. It was a small thing, a very small thing, without a doubt, but after so many years of silence—worse, of shame—it was really great to see the name of Italian women gain world recognition in the land of France.
Quite soon Claude introduced me to another interesting woman, Denise Varelle, an artist and a pupil of Le Corbusier.26 Her Spanish heritage revealed itself in the warm pallor of her beautiful, expressive face, as well as in the passion that she put into every word. She was young, learned, and intelligent, with at times the contradictions and candor of genial temperaments. We established a close friendship right away. The respites in her delightful, warm kitchen are for me one of the most soothing and pleasant memories of that period.
Denise introduced me to almost all of her friends, and invited me straight away to participate in the meetings of the Directing Committee of the Uff, where I was welcomed without a shadow of mistrust. They even allowed me to speak, and more than once my suggestions were accepted. For the first time during those meetings, I heard mention of subjects fundamentally similar to those that we wanted to encourage in Italy after the liberation: assistance to families of partisans and victims of war, milk for children, ravitaillement (the transport by truck of potatoes and cheese from certain isolated mountain regions of Savoy seemed to me to be an excellent initiative), defense of the values of the Resistenza, rapport with other women’s groups, penetration into the masses of women who were still politically uninformed, and above all the battle to make understood, through initiatives that were even simpler and more banal, that politics are not intrigue or conspiracy, but an essential form of life.
During these meetings, I learned to appreciate Jeanne’s abilities and spirit of self-denial, one of those modest “workers” on whose activities and incessant sacrifice the existence and functioning of an organization were often based. At that moment, they were trying to create outlying sections of the Uff in the various neighborhoods of Grenoble. Several times she drove me with her to preliminary meetings. I always admired her tact in dealing with new people, intuition for finding convincing arguments time after time, and clarity in imposing questions. I learned many things that could be useful to me later.
I had learned from Dugoni that there was a Socialist in Lyon, a certain Gina Lombardi, an old organizer, trustworthy and intelligent, whose address he gave me. I wanted very much to meet her. But to get a train ticket in France at that time it was necessary to complete certain formalities that I, a foreigner and an illegal one at that, could not execute. Therefore I spoke with the French about it, saying of course that I wanted to go to Lyon to meet a childhood friend there. “On va voir d’arranger cela (we will see about arranging it)!” Palisse said with a promising air. I already anticipated the pleasure not only of meeting a smart woman, but also of seeing Lyon, which I did not know, of having a look at the bookstores, certainly better equipped than those appalling ones in Grenoble, and perhaps of making a brief visit to the editor’s office of Lione Libre (Free Lyon) and meeting Ferrat there.27 The next day, with a satisfied and triumphant air, Palisse announced to me that I could go to Lyon on Monday (it was then Saturday) with a military car that would take me back to Grenoble the same evening, a solution that limited my plans somewhat, but that I still accepted with due gratitude.
On Monday morning, punctually at 7:00 a.m., the car came to get me at the small hotel. There were two French officers with me and a noncommissioned officer who drove. It was a frigid day, perhaps the coldest of that very cold winter, and we had hardly left Grenoble when the motor, frozen, stopped functioning. After quite a while it began working again, but it continued to become clogged from time to time. Every time the driver had to get out, and every time—I could not make out whether because of propriety, discipline, or prudence—he took off his jacket and put on a work smock, even when he simply had to raise the cover of the hood to see what had happened, which undeniably provided some variety to the scene, but certainly did not serve to speed things up. At a certain point the fog became so dense the unfortunate fellow was forced to drive holding his head outside the small window for more than two kilometers.
It was almost noon when we arrived in Lyon. They accompanied me to Villeurbanne, a huge, crowded suburb where my friend lived, and we agreed that the car would come to get me around three o’clock in the afternoon.
I climbed the stairs—the classic wooden stairs of so many French houses—wondering if I would find Signora Lombardi at home, and how she would receive me. She was there, purely by accident, as she explained to me. There was no electricity in the factory where she worked, and therefore she had stayed home. I thanked my good fortune, and told her the reason for my visit. She knew my name, and said she was happy to speak with me.
She was an ordinary woman, but deeply earnest, with clear ideas and valuable experience. She told me at great length the story of her life in France, where she had emigrated a little after the advent of fascism in order to flee persecution, described people and surroundings to me, and spoke to me about organizations and movements of which I had never heard mention. From her attitude I could sense what the mentality of exile must have been for most people, its struggles and discouragement, accumulating hurtfully, month after month, year after year, small ambitions, resentments, and quarrels that were doomed, since they could not be vented openly, to poison relationships and obscure the very visions they had in common. I believe that one needs an ideal sense of security and a better-than-normal strength of spirit to be able to preserve one’s lucidity and equilibrium during exile. Listening to Gina, I thought about the words that Piero had said to me on that day, so many years before, at the time when he left for France: “In Paris, we must try not to be exiles, fuorusciti, but to force ourselves to remain Italian and become European.”
At a certain point, Gina’s husband came home from work, and he too was approachable and nice. With the cordiality of humble people, they invited me to dinner, even though I was basically a stranger, and we continued to chat. When I spoke with Gina about women, about what I thought should be done, I asked her how she thought we could lay the foundations of work for today and for tomorrow. She told me her ideas, supported by extensive experience, almost all in agreement with mine. She confessed to me that after the liberation she had not concerned herself with anything extraordinary, a bit due to fatigue, and a bit because she was annoyed about so many things. “But now I will begin to get involved again,” she promised in the end. When, the car having come to get me, we parted with an affectionate embrace, I had the impression of having found in her a friend and collaborator.
The return trip was much more rapid and comfortable. The sun had dissipated the fog, it was no longer so cold, and the car ran like a dream. The only black mark was the strange phenomenon of incomprehension that was expressed between the driver and me. I sat next to him (the two officers had remained in Lyon) thinking that I would entertain him with my chatter. But it did not work. He did not understand what I was saying, and I did not understand what he was saying. At a certain point, seeing a burned and semi-destroyed house, I observed: “On voit que les boches sont passés par là (We can see that the Germans have passed by there).” “Mais pas du tout (Oh not at all),” he answered me. “On ne passe pas par là. La route est par ici (We do not go that way. The route is this way).” I was quiet for a while, until he asked me to take something out (I did not understand what) from the glove compartment I had in front of me. I opened it and saw a bar of American chocolate that I took out and handed to him. “Non,” he said, smiling “prenez, prenez (take it, take it)...” I thought that he was offering it to me and therefore I broke off a little piece, but evidently I had not understood well: “...le chiffon (the rag).” He wanted the rag to clean the window, and I had eaten his chocolate! After this experience, I did not try to converse with him any more, limiting myself, when he left me at the door of the small hotel, to telling him, “Merci et bon soir (thank you and good evening).” This time evidently he understood because he responded smiling: “Au revoir.”
Meanwhile Alberto, Paolo, and Pillo devoted themselves to organizing and directing the liaison service between the Susa Valley and France.
The first to arrive, three or four days after us and without waiting for our direction, were Eligio Pacchiodo with another two. Circumstances justified the initiative. The day after our departure, some French prisoners, having fled the Germans in Bardonecchia, had gone to Beaulard, where they knew that there were partisans, to beg them to accompany them to France, across the border. The French were in danger, and it was urgent to get them to a safe place. Eligio, who would have been an excellent noncommissioned officer in a regular army, had taken the responsibility for organizing the crossing. Everything had gone very well. Having crossed the border, they came into contact with the American mission stationed at Guillestre, half way between Briançon and Embrun, which, on their request, had sent them to join us in Grenoble. Then we too came into contact with the American mission, in particular with Major Richard, who was the leader and who promised to give the three men, when they returned to Italy, all the weapons and materiel that they could carry. He would continue to do the same with all of the subsequent patrols that crossed the border with the same purpose. Thus the supplying of weapons was effectively organized and begun. Two days later, Eligio and the others departed again with their load of weapons, carrying newspapers and other messages in addition. After around ten days, Eligio returned with five more men. The American mission, convinced by now of the regularity of the patrols, decided to create a Centre d’acceuil (reception camp) at Plampinet, with an officer placed at the head of the service. In this way (in the end it was a problem), the Passo dell’Orso became an almost official thoroughfare, just like the Colle della Galisia, whose reception camp was in the Isère Valley, where the staffette and partisan patrols from the Lanzo and Canavese Valleys flocked. Movement became more and more speedy and continuous, and the Americans—with their usual lack of any prudence regarding clandestine activities—went as far as to print on one of their propaganda leaflets, destined for diffusion in Italy, the photograph of a partisan who, armed and loaded, was crossing the Colle della Galisia.
In truth this happened somewhat later. Then, notwithstanding the intensity and frequency of the crossings, the publicity had not yet reached these extremes. Our boys from Beaulard went back and forth several times, without the least difficulty.
On 8 February, we also saw Carletto, one of Laghi’s trustworthy men, arrive with another two from Beaulard to look for us and get our news. Since, by pure accident, Carletto had not met the Americans, we thought instead of putting him, together with his two companions, in touch with the mission of Hamilton, who was very happy to welcome them and agreed to arm and equip them for the return trip.
In this way we had set up three liaison services: one with the French, essentially consisting of the transmission of news and which, because of its particular sensitivity, would have to be centralized in our hands and occur essentially via the Corallo brothers; another with the Americans for the transport of weapons, in which squads of five or six of our sturdiest mountaineers would have to follow each other almost uninterruptedly; and a third with the English, centralized around the very dependable Carletto, for the communication of news and the transport of various materials, newspapers, and propaganda.
As can be seen from all this, our days were full of movement, inquiries, and meetings. Yet we still had a certain margin of free time left, more than we had been used to having during recent times in Italy.
We took advantage of it to go to the cinema sometimes, although Grenoble’s screens did not offer much of interest at that time. I saw some films that I had missed up to that time, even though I had wanted to see them, such as Pépé le Moko and Les gens du voyage. I saw some others again, among them Charlot’s La febbre d’oro, which struck me for its inexorable vitality. The only new ones were three Soviet films: l’Assedio di Leningrado, Una giornata di guerra nell’U.R.S.S., and Arcobaleno.28 I was enthusiastic about the first two, not only because of their present-day interest and their brisk pace but more than anything because the faces of the actors, soldiers, bourgeois, and workers, struck me. On all of them, and on those of the women as well, and even on those of the children, you could read an absolute and precise commitment, assumed with enthusiasm. I could not, looking at those faces, doubt the victory. Instead Arcobaleno left me perplexed. It was quite alluring and had convincing episodes, but in the woman’s final invective against the Germans, she brandished such a fury of hatred that it left me dismayed. Yes, she was in a war, it was true, but it seemed to me that the tragic reality of the facts—which the film crudely narrated—was enough to inspire in the spectators the implacable wish to resist and conquer. One day we went to see a Franco-Soviet exhibition, by means of which the reality of the new Russia seemed, beneath its propagandist veneer, profoundly alive and vital. Another evening we went to a commemoration of Lenin, on the anniversary of his death, and I was profoundly moved, remembering how, twenty years before, I had seen the news of his death during a lecture Piero had given in an underground passage of the Sforzesco Castle for the Proletariat University of Milan before a public that was essentially made up of workers. “Our Ivan Illic is dead,” the announcer had said simply. In the silence that had suddenly fallen over the crowd, I saw the face of more than one of these ordinary men streak with tears. The atmosphere of the commemoration held in Grenoble was much less tragic and intense, but the words and phrases of Lenin, read or cited by the lecturers, sounded alive, contemporary, and heavy with meaning and promise, like twenty years before, and perhaps even more so.
Another day we went to hear a rally of Jacques Duclos, assistant secretary of the French Communist Party, who, notwithstanding the unfavorable weather conditions, attracted an immense and enthusiastic crowd to the Palais de la houille blanche, an enormous, frigid room with big windows on the outskirts of the city.29 But I did not like his speech: too little Communism and too much nationalism, too many words and too little substance. His verbose rhetoric, and even his stout figure, seemed to me to be typical of a political man of old, all of one mentality, all of one style, that at the time I deluded myself into believing had disappeared forever, and that instead I saw resurge, affirm itself, and have its way almost everywhere afterward.
We also went to some concerts and to a performance of Molière’s L’Avare (The Miser), which was followed by the recitation of verses of various poets of the Resistenza. At that time I heard the names of Aragon and Éluard for the first time.30 The short poem by Aragon, “La balade de celui qui chanta les supplices” (The ballad of one who sang supplications) made a huge impression on me. How many times later on, at moments of particular anguish or fatigue, did I repeat two of its verses to myself, to give myself courage, like a magic formula:
Et si c’était à refaire,
je refairais ce chemin!
(If I had to do it over,
I would take this road again).
In the evening we were almost always free, and I would have liked to take advantage of this to read, but as I think I already said, the bookstores of Grenoble were at that time quite inadequate. Besides the newspapers and some rare magazines, we did not find anything extraordinary. I launched into reading the classics (Racine, Corneille, Voltaire) and some modest English novels. There was absolutely nothing new.
And I wrote a variety of reports, for the French, for the English, for the Americans, for the French women about the activities of the Italian women, and for the Italian women of liberated Italy about the activities of the women of occupied Italy and about the French.
At times we spent the evening conversing and discussing animatedly, or we played and sang popular old French songs whose music we had found, or we had races and jump rope tournaments to keep ourselves agile and in shape.
I remember with pleasure that we always got along perfectly, without even a shadow of those small acts of meanness that could have arisen so easily in the atmosphere of irritation produced by a stay that was forcibly prolonged. Alberto, Paolo, Pillo, and I, to whom in effect the initiative belonged, agreed on fundamental matters. Not one of us ever did anything without first consulting the others, and the slightest disagreement never arose. Ettore, with whom it was impossible not to get along, was his usual calm self, always ready to help everyone. Don Medoro Benefà (Don Medoro do good), we called him lovingly. Bruno was a very pleasant companion, interested in everything, amusing in conversation, spirited, and keen in his commentary. The Corallo brothers were literally golden boys, disciplined and patient. They endured cheerfully the long stay in a country where inevitably they felt isolated. I saw them become agitated only one time, and with reason, namely when the last patrol that had come from the valley gave them the news that their father had been arrested by the Fascists and taken to Turin. The elder, Eraldo, a former carabiniere, possessed all of the most fundamental and traditional virtues. The younger, Virgilio, was spontaneous, fresh, and naïve, like a force of nature. I already mentioned the sincerity with which he recounted having “gulped down” the chewing gum. I will never forget the wonder his big blue eyes expressed when staring at some innocent magic tricks Ettore performed. “Ettore is an evil spirit,” he said shaking his head. Even when he disclosed the trick to him, he did not seem completely convinced.
Today, when I think again of our stay in Grenoble, I wonder if its most positive aspect—other than the organization of liaison services and contacts made with so many people—was not the very perfect understanding achieved among people that were so different in temperament, education, mentality, and profession, and if it were not this very understanding, this profound fraternity—on a level that naturally was much more widespread—that was the essential goal to which everyone would have to strive and will have to strive once again.
Finally, after an unnerving succession of orders and counter orders, postponements and delays, our departure was set for 13 February.
Only five of us would go back. Pillo’s foot, though almost healed, did not permit him to face a journey in the snow that was so long and tiring; and Bruno, while waiting to be transferred to liberated Italy, would serve in a hospital in Grenoble. In compensation Carletto and the two from Beaulard who had come with him would join us for the return trip, and, passing through Guillestre, we would also join the last so-called American patrol.
Everything was ready. The last instructions were given and the last agreements made. Ettore had given and received the explanations necessary for the broadcasts, the radio apparatus was in order, and the Marchetti code was well clarified. The French had provided the equipment for the trip: skis, fur jackets, white jackets and trousers, and an entire case of K rations. The English had given each of us a Sten gun with many cartridges. One morning an official arrived with a mysterious knapsack out of which came weapons that I concealed carefully in my room. Then at the last minute Vernon arrived with two enormous bundles of newspapers containing some caricatures put together by the Psychological Warfare Bureau for propaganda in Italy. But it was propaganda that was so generic that it would not be very useful to us. If they threw it out of airplanes, fine, but for us to carry it across the Alps seemed excessive to me. All the same, we decided to bring it as far as Briançon. Then, having assessed our load, we would decide whether to take it or leave it.
It was not easy to pack our bags. In more than one month’s stay, we had acquired or received as a gift many things—especially books and newspapers—and we hated to part with them. We decided to be relentless, however. It was absurd to have to stop at a some point because we had brought things that were not absolutely necessary, and it was stupid to leave them by the road. I was merciless with myself and abandoned almost everything, among which were some particularly interesting books.
When, the night before we left, I looked around the room dominated by the disorder that precedes all departures, the feeling of unreality that had possessed me for all that time struck me, more acute than ever. We had not really been in this room where it appeared that we had slept, talked, and moved. Therefore I—usually so romantically nostalgic at the slightest separation—could not feel the least sense of regret in leaving it.
Later I went out with Ettore and Paolo and we climbed for a while toward Fort Robot. We contemplated the illuminated city from the top of the hill, beyond the Isère, and we wondered when, from the top of the Monte dei Cappucini, we would see the lights of Turin shine again beyond the twinkling reflections of the Po. “To think that in three days we will be in Turin!” I said suddenly. “If all goes well,” I added almost superstitiously. “Let’s hope so!” Paolo and Ettore said together, as if they had responded: “Amen!”
We waited around 8:00 a.m. for the car that was to bring us to Plampinet, where we would begin the crossing, but we were already in motion two hours before because, as usually happens at the time of departure, there were still many things to organize and decide.
Our hosts were very excited. Madame Rose, with her voice more tearful than usual, repeated “Saluez pour moi l’Italie (Say hello to Italy for me)!” Madame Roche kept embracing me, evidently not daring to embrace Alberto. (In the end she got up the courage and also embraced him.) Mademoiselle ran to and fro, visibly moved. Even the owner came out of his sick room, leaving the poultices of pigeon excrement for a moment to come to say goodbye to us personally and wish us a good trip. Just think that good Palisse had recommended the maximum secrecy to us. In the small hotel they were definitely not to know where we were going. (“On ne sais jamais (You never know)!” he had concluded with a mysterious air.) But where in the devil could six Italian partisans go, who were leaving with skis, equipped for the mountains, and laden with weapons and munitions and propaganda newspapers in Italian? To Nice to go swimming in the ocean? Or to the mountains for winter sports or to hunt chamois? No one respects secrecy more than I do, when something is really secret. But when it is Pulcinella’s secret, it seems like a piece of buffoonery to me, more than useless, damaging. I think it is better, when absolute secrecy is not possible, to engage the loyal complicity of others with frank honesty.31
A little before 8:00 a.m. Palisse arrived to say goodbye to us and give us his final recommendations. He said that a young lieutenant would come to accompany us, un type dégourdi (resourceful chap) who would see to whatever we wanted during the trip. He would leave us in Plampinet. But Palisse hoped and wished that the crossing would not be too tiring, especially for me (he said, with a chivalrous smile), the weather splendid, and the trip heureusement (happily) not too long. Instead, just the night before, he received news of Moretti and his wife, who, having entered Italy again by way of the Modane-Ambin-Exilles road, had been tués (killed). I gave a start. What? They killed them? Who? The Germans? “Mais non,” he then explained. “Ils sont arrivés tués de fatigue (No, they arrived worn out with fatigue.)” I breathed a sigh of relief.
Instead of at 8:00 a.m., the car came to get us at nine. The dégourdi, a young officer equipped with a very elegant bouc (goatee), with phony, effervescent energy, much more dégourdi for himself than for others—as he demonstrated later on—dwelled on long, complicated excuses. The car was a covered truck. I settled down in front, between the dégourdi and the driver, while the five men got in the back, with the bags and the weapons.
The trip took place without incident. We made a detour at Guillestre to collect the six men from Beaulard who would come with us. The officers from the American mission—settled in a gracious chalet adorned with hunting trophies and chamois horns—furnished the Corallo brothers with socks and sweaters, as they had already done for the others. When we were about to leave, Major Richard offered me in particular some sweets and a toothbrush that bore on its handle the emblem of a great Park Avenue store, an unusual provision for a journey for a woman who was about to cross the German lines at a height of three thousand meters, but I was duly grateful for it nevertheless, and when, after having used it for more than a year, I had to throw away the historical toothbrush, I felt some regret.
It was still daylight when we reached Briançon. The light of the sunset illuminated the mountains that separated us from Clavières. An old road sign signaled “Oulx, 30 kilometers.” “To think that,” I reflected aloud “if the Germans were not here, we would be at the border in half an hour without even going down by car. “Ah!” commented the dégourdi in the tone of a farceur (clown or practical joker). “Ces allemands. Ils gâtent tout (These Germans. They spoil everything)!”
At the entrance to the town, the car stopped. The dégourdi made us get out with our weapons and our luggage, said that he would come to get us the next morning, and left to take care of his own affairs. Alberto and Paolo went up to the Command to notify them of our arrival and get instructions, but they returned quite soon. The Command said we should manage for ourselves. A willing young soldier, who passed by here by chance, gave us useful information. He sent us to the Albergo della Stazione where, according to him, we would find a place to eat and sleep. It was the first stretch that we traveled on foot with our baggage. I realized right away that the load was excessive. In addition to a heavy bag containing foodstuffs, munitions, radio parts, and other things, each person carried one or two Sten guns and a bundle of newspapers. We decided for sure that we would eliminate the newspapers at the first opportunity. Personally I thought that I should have lightened my bag even more, although it really was not very heavy, and perhaps abandon my Sten gun as well—but I would resign myself to this only in extremis (at the last moment).
It was a gay evening. The feeling of being so close to Italy made us all euphoric and optimistic. Paolo seemed to be in excellent physical condition and amused himself by playing skittles with the boys from Beaulard on a billiard table in the hotel. The Corallo brothers were enchanted with the Bren machine gun that had been consigned to us by the English. They came to assemble it in my bedroom, and Ettore and I slept with the Bren at the foot of the bed.32
The next morning, after some difficulties of a bureaucratic order were resolved, we left. But we found an atmosphere of alarm at Plampinet. At sunrise one of our patrols (which included the two Pacchiodo brothers), which had arrived a few days before, had left to return home to Italy with their load of weapons. But at the Clé des Acles, the French on guard at the border would not let them pass. In the last few hours they had noticed suspicious movements in the valley. It appears that there were patrols circulating. Perhaps the Germans were aware of the trafficking and were watching the narrow mountain pass? Perhaps someone was spying? With a keen sense of responsibility, the French had detained our men, preferring to send one of their groups ahead in reconnaissance, made up of an officer, a noncommissioned officer, and two soldiers. They had been gone a little more than an hour when gunshots were heard. Evidently the alarm had not been unfounded. After having waited for a while, since no one wanted to go back, our six men had left in reconnaissance in turn (without baggage), together with a good escort of very well-armed French men. We did not know yet if they had been able to continue or not and, until there was precise news, it was not expedient for us to start off.
The news did not bother me excessively. I was convinced that it was a question of excessive prudence and almost of spite on the part of the French. Nevertheless, we could do nothing but wait. With Ettore and Paolo we set out for a short walk along a narrow lane that skirted the mountain. We could see the Colle della Scala below. On the other side were Bardonecchia, Melezet, and Sette Fontane, there, within easy reach. It seemed impossible that any obstacles could arise.
When we went back toward the village, however, the French officers ran to meet us, very excited. “Les allemands ont fait monter des petits ballons (The Germans have sent up little balloons),” they said. “Regardez (Look)!” They handed me some binoculars. Pour quoi faire (to do what)?—I asked, taking them. “On ne sait pas. On n’a jamais vu rien pareil (We do not know. We have never seen anything like it).” We looked through the binoculars, but no matter how hard we tried, we could only see minuscule little clouds that did not seem to be able to be called balloons.
But when I was just about to convince myself that they were useless fears and that there was no reason to worry, there arrived the Pacchiodo brothers with the other four Italians and a French squad. When they arrived in the vicinity of Châlet des Acles, they had found traces of blood and some cartridges scattered on the ground. The marks made by the skis entwined in all directions. Evidently the French had been surprised and taken prisoner. Presumably the Germans had then hidden to wait for our patrol farther ahead, at the narrow pass in the valley, at the point where the French guide should have abandoned it. Having analyzed how the situation stood, the group had turned back and gone down to Plampinet to get orders.
My reaction to the news was one of anguish for the French. “Vous avez perdu quatre hommes pour nous. Je le regrette de tout mon coeur (You have lost four men because of us. I regret it with all my heart),” I told the officers. “Nous ne le regrettons pas (We have no regrets),” one of them responded with a tone that I would never forget. “Ils seront traités comme des prisonniers de guerre. Si les allemands vous avaient pris, vous, ils vous auraient tués sur le champ (They will be treated like prisoners of war. If the Germans had captured you, they would have killed you on the spot).” I had to admit that they were right, but my pain was not lessened. (When I returned to Italy, I learned afterward that the four Frenchmen were in prison in Bussoleno where they were not bad off, and that after the Liberation, they returned to their country, safe and sound.)
Now the problem was: What to do? The French declared that we had to postpone the crossing. The area was alertée (on the alert) and we had to wait for a few days until the surveillance slackened and ceased completely. For a moment, I saw Paolo’s face stiffen into an expression of obstinate will. “We will leave tonight,” he said. “By day there will be patrols but by night we could go across quite well.” Certainly if it had been he and Alberto alone, like the first time, they would have done it, and probably it would have gone well. But there was the load of weapons, there was the radio, there was I, who could not follow the pace of their step in an escape, and above all there was the responsibility toward the valley dwellers who would have come with us. We could not run the risk of having all of us caught in an ambush. These reasons were so valid that he finally gave in.
Now we had a choice: remain in Plampinet (or in Briançon) until the alarm was over, or try to return home by way of another route. We rejected the first hypothesis quickly: the wait could be prolonged for several days, or possibly for several weeks. By now we had been away from Italy for too long and the prospect of another delay (what is more, it would have been a period of inaction and endless suspense) seemed unbearable to us. The two squads could be left, having arrived only a few days before. A period of rest certainly would do them good. But we had to return home. We would try another road. Immediately we had them give us a map for studying the various itineraries, but alas, excluding the Passo del Orso, the shortest route was precisely the Modane-Ambin-Exilles route that the Moretti brothers had taken, arriving tués (dead tired) in the end. Nevertheless there was little choice, and with this route, having crossed the last mountain pass (we had to cross three valleys instead of one), we could descend directly on Savoulx, making a stop at some grange where we would find the mother of the Corallo brothers.
Having made this decision, we had to go back to Briançon to confer with the Command. But the truck that had brought us up had left, because the dégourdi had thought it appropriate to turn back immediately after having unloaded us. The officers telephoned for them to send a car to get us, and we went to the Centro italiano (Italian center) to wait.
There was an American officer in charge of the service, and several other Italians besides us. There was one among them who, having been taken prisoner in 1940, had remained in France and, after the liberation, joined the partisans. He did not know how to speak Italian anymore, and he did not know French yet. He said “ho visto una lumiera (I saw a light)” and “ho la migrana (I have a migraine)” and “il fusile mitragliore (the machine gun).”33 We spoke about several things, and decided that one group would remain in Plampinet, waiting, and another would return to Guillestre. In the meantime the faithful Carletto, who did not want to leave us, decided to come with us.
Soon the truck arrived to get us. We retraced our steps on the road we had traveled a few hours before, but the flowery names of the villages (Val-des-Près, Rosier) that had seemed to be filled with good omen and promise in the morning had lost their enchantment.
At Briançon we climbed up all together to the big hotel requisitioned by the army, where the Command resided. Alberto and Paolo went to make contact, and I stopped with the others to wait for them in the big veranda that must have been very elegant once, but that was empty now, with broken glass and filled with dust and litter. There was not even a chair, and we sat on the ground. We were tired, not so much out of physical fatigue as out of nervous tension. Ettore and the three mountaineers went to sleep immediately. I watched the forbidding, white mountains in the radiance of the sun at sunset. At a certain point, I began to feel like they were enemies. A dark sense of uneasiness, of anguish that was almost panicky—to which I still did not dare to give the name of fear—began to take possession of me. The silence and solitude of the veranda, with these four men abandoned on earth like dead men, irritated my nerves, which were strained to the point of trembling. For a moment I had the feeling that I would go crazy. Then I realized that I would have to deal with it at any cost. I saw a book with its leaves turned over amidst the litter and I picked it up, as if it were an anchor of safety. It was a German translation of Delitto e castigo (Crime and Punishment), evidently left there by the occupants when they escaped. I tried to read, and the effort I made to understand the unfamiliar language made me regain my equilibrium.
When Alberto and Paolo came back in, chattering noisily, it seemed to me that life, which had been frightfully suspended, had taken up its normal rhythm again. Even the others woke up. Everything was set. The next morning we would return to Grenoble, and then leave again in the opposite direction for the new mission. Meanwhile we would eat at the popote for the sous-off (mess hall for the noncommissioned officers). Then they would give us a place to sleep somewhere.
At table, perhaps in response to the fatigue and disappointment of before, we suddenly became extraordinarily cheerful. Having finished dinner, we began to sing and whistle in chorus the French songs we had learned in Grenoble: “Les Allobroges,” “La Madelon,” and “Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse.”34 From the neighboring tables the sous-off stopped talking in order to listen to us. When we made a move to leave, they clapped their hands begging: “Encore! Encore!” We satisfied them. Then some of them came outside with us. “Attendez (wait),” one of them said suddenly. He conducted us to the house of an officer who had taken a drive into Italy that morning. We went enthusiastically, hoping for who-knows-what news, but in reality that person had only driven by car some hundred meters into “no man’s land,” and could not tell us anything important. But he was a nice young man with whom we soon passed from military and topographical topics to speaking about political problems. He wanted to offer us a coffee and invited a group of friends to join us, and the conversation was lively and interesting.
There were the good and the bad among them, rather the intelligent and the stupid, better yet the politically oriented and the inveterate chauvinists, more or less acknowledged or aware. Suddenly, one began a diatribe against the Italians, speaking of the usual “poignard dans le dos (stab in the back).”35 “Votre Mussolini (Your Mussolini)...” he began. Immediately another scolded him: “Tais-toi! Est-ce que nous n’avons pas eu notre Pétain (Be quiet. Did we not have our Pétain)?” I realized that in that atmosphere, which was not fundamentally military (they were all officers and noncommissioned officers), De Gaulle was not an undisputed and idolized myth, like he appeared to be among the military men and good bourgeois of Grenoble. I felt a sense of relief and pleasure in it, since the abundance of images of the tall general in all postures and at all ages (Charles à sept ans, Charles à quinze ans (Charles at seven, Charles at ten) never failed to be a particular nuisance to me.
When it was time to go to sleep, our new friends brought us to a very luxurious hotel, where they gave me a magnificent room with very thick carpets, dim lights, and the softest bed I had ever slept in. Naturally there was a washbasin and a bathroom, but there was not even a drop of water: the ice had broken the pipes, they explained.
All of a sudden I fell asleep, but I woke up quite soon with a big thumping in my heart and a strange sense of anguish and dryness in my throat. Finally I understood. I was afraid, a fear I had tried to dominate and ward off for the entire day. With terror’s ruthless lucidity, I saw what would have happened if the French had not sent the patrol ahead on reconnaissance: while we were moving ahead, unaware and confident, the Germans, lying in wait at the critical moment, surrounded us and captured us. We did not even have time to disappear, to defend ourselves. Perhaps I would have been able to throw in the snow the most important documents, which I always had within easy reach, and hide them by trampling on them, but what we had in the bags was much too conspicuous. We were Italians in the service of the enemy, spies, caught in the act, and there was not the least doubt about our activities. It was useless to take the trouble to bring us to Italy, to subject us to any trial: the evidence was more than adequate. They would shoot us immediately. Perhaps it was better like this. In a kind of lucid delirium, I saw Paolo and Alberto fall, and I saw Ettore, Carletto, and the Corallo brothers stretched out on the ground, lifeless, like I had seen them on the veranda. The thought of the narrow escape almost made me go crazy. For the entire night I tossed and turned in a kind of feverish nightmare, my teeth chattering in retrospective fear. Only at dawn did I fall asleep, exhausted.
When I woke up, it was bright daylight. The nightmare had vanished and everything took on normal proportions again. What vexed me most when I woke up was the lack of water for washing my face even crudely. Ettore, having left in reconnaissance, returned to announce to me triumphantly that down on the main floor, in the corner of a dismantled kitchen, there was a faucet with water, but the washbasin was a little dirty....He did not have to tell me twice. There was water and I took advantage of it as best I could. The washbasin was the dirtiest washbasin I had ever seen, and given my deep, invincible loathing for dirty washbasins, I certainly would have rolled up my sleeves and tried to clean it, perhaps going outside to get a little gravel and some snow, had they not come to advise me to hurry up because it was time to leave.
Naturally I did not tell anyone—except for Ettore—about my nighttime agonies. Instead, amused, I stopped to listen to the much more pleasant adventures of Paolo and Alberto, who had only just fallen asleep the previous evening in their very soft bed when the door to the room was thrown wide open. Two French officers, completely drunk, had entered the room and, seeing them, had approached threateningly: “Qu’est-ce que vous faites ici? La chambre est à nous (What are you doing here? This is our room),” they had said. Paolo, who when he sleeps does not move, had mumbled something, pulling the covers over his head. Alberto had sat up and, half asleep as well, had tried to explain: “Nous sommes des partisans italiens...on nous a mis à coucher ici...mais si c’est votre chambre...(We are Italian partisans...they put us here to sleep...but if it is your room).” “Mais non (Oh no),” they had responded, immediately pacified and very polite. “Ça ne fait rien. Si vous êtes des fifi italiens, c’est tout a fait normal (It’s nothing. If you are Italian fifi, it is quite all right)!” Emerging into the hallway, they had shouted: “Venez ici. Il y a des italiens...des fifi italiens...(Come here. There are some Italians...some Italian fifi).” In a moment the room was filled with all sorts of chaps, all rather drunk and in diverse stages of undress. All of them had emitted exclamations of surprise and made declarations of friendship, and all of them wanted to shake Alberto’s hand, and even Paolo’s, who let his be shaken while continuing to sleep. They had collected their things and, noisily wishing them bonne nuit (good night), had gone to sleep ailleurs (elsewhere).
We left on a public service motorbus, amidst women loaded with packages and baskets who gave the distinct impression of being part of the black market. At Embrun we took a diesel train reserved for the military, and we were in Grenoble by five.
When we got out, we were delighted to see the face of Pillo who, having been notified of our arrival, had come to get us at the station. While we were leaving, a French officer whom I had met several times, seeing me loaded down, offered to take me to the hotel in a small car that was waiting for him. I accepted with gratitude and, to make the most of the unexpected good fortune, had the others give me as many weapons and bags as possible. But evil befell me because, at a certain point, the officer who was driving, noticing the time, began to curse. He had wasted time and would arrive late at his appointment with the general! When we were at the height of Avenue Rochambeau, he said “Je regrette, Madame (I am sorry, Madame),” and he dumped me, bag and baggage (never was the expression more appropriate), in the middle of Cours Jean Jaurès. And there I was, on the ground, with four bags, four guns, three pairs of skis, and several bundles of newspapers. From there to the small hotel was not more than a few hundred meters, but I could not take a single step with all that load; nor could I place it in the middle of the street in order to go and ask for help. Therefore I made the move in installments, a few meters at a time, until I was near enough to the small hotel to be heard. Then everyone came out—Madame Rose and Madame Roche and Mademoiselle—and with great exclamations they brought everything inside for me. They welcomed me so much and seemed so glad to see me that for an instant I had the feeling of truly having returned home.
In the meantime the others arrived too. Then Bruno returned from the hospital and told us the episode of the day. While he was operating on the appendix of a certain man, the head physician turned to him and said, through his mask, “unpocodacquà.” He repeated it several times, with smiling eyes, while Bruno tormented himself thinking what on the earth did the strange word mean and could it possibly be the name of a new French disinfectant. Finally he understood. Out of kindness for his colleague, the head physician had wanted to express himself in Italian. The mysterious word simply meant, “Un poco d’acqua (a little water).”
After supper, in the absence of Palisse, who had gone to Nice, Campin came. We told him how things had gone and how we had decided to try the crossing from another side. He promised us that he would get the necessary permissions and that, save for some unforeseen difficulty, we would be able to depart the day after tomorrow.
The next day, 16 February, is still vivid in my memory as the most unreal of those unreal days, as if closed and isolated in an uneasy haze of tenderness and nostalgia between two black abysses of anguish.
Outside it was a perfectly normal, ordinary day, a day of vacation. I got up late, hung around in the room for a long time, and then went to look out the window and stayed to enjoy the sun while I listened to Paolo and Pillo’s chatter. After dinner, we brought a little table and chairs outside, in the little courtyard of the small hotel. Mademoiselle had coffee brought to us and we took pictures, like at the end of a summer in the country.
The temperature was that of early spring, and looking at the roses climbing, which naturally were still bare and which covered the walls of the little garden, I tried to imagine how beautiful it would be when they were all in bloom in the summer. (I passed by later in June, on the way back from Paris, but the flowering period had passed and the roses hung from the vines withered, dejected, and covered with dust.)
Then the others went to the movies. Paolo and I took the funivia and went up to the Bastille.36 The sky was very clear, and there were mountains on all sides as far as the eye could see. We sat in the sun and remained in contemplation for a long time. At a certain point, I stopped looking at the mountains, and turned to look at Paolo. With a kind of lucid intuition, I seemed to see him become transparent and to notice the signs that the events of the last months had engraved on his adolescent body, and above all on his heart. I thought of Piero who, eighteen years before (that day was his very anniversary), had died because his heart could not endure the strain that had been inflicted on it.37 I thought of the exertion of the long trip back, of all that still awaited us in Italy, and a sense of hopeless fatigue overcame me. I remained there for a long time, as if I were petrified, until the sun began to cast longer and softer shadows, and Paolo too recovered from his meditations.
We went down, running, and the exercise served to cheer me up a bit. We crossed gardens where a number of mothers and their babies were enjoying the sun. (Oh, how happy I had been, perhaps without knowing it, when I too brought mine outside in a little carriage, or to play with the small shovel or little pail.) I went to buy a pipe that I wanted to give Pillo as a gift, and then returned home. I realized that I had lost a pin, a small brooch with a bunch of flowers with the French colors that I liked because it did not have any special significance, and I could even wear it in Italy. Seeing my displeasure, Ettore ran to buy me another. His simple kindness moved me, and gave me a feeling of security. If he were there, I thought, everything would go well.
Again the next morning, 17 February, the car that came to get us was very late. Again the six men (this time Carletto was there too) got in back. Again I sat in front, between the driver and the guide, who this time was no longer the dégourdi, but a young lieutenant with a serious air and of few words, who proved to be much more experienced and efficient than the other. Again the trip progressed without incident. As we advanced toward the border, the valley narrowed considerably, and the signs of occupation and war became more and more evident: houses demolished, power stations destroyed, trees and poles smashed, and above all bridges in fragments. For kilometers and kilometers we did not see a single bridge that was whole or had been rebuilt. But Modane made the most desolate impression on us. The single long street that passed in front of the station ran between two continuous rows of rubble. (I remembered it very well for having strolled on it during the obligatory stops, between one train and the other, while entering or leaving France.) Not a single house had remained standing. The station was a pile of ruins. Even the neighboring hamlets, on the sides of the mountain and in the valley below, appeared terribly damaged.
It was nearly sundown when we reached the little town of Bramans. The serious young officer accompanied Alberto and Paolo to the commander, and we entered a kind of inn where there was a stove lit and where we put together a little dinner with the help of the K rations. “Vous êtes des italiens (Are you Italians)?” the host, a typical mountaineer who could have easily been born in Bardonecchia or Oulx, asked. “Oui,” we answered. He shook his head, without commenting, but something in the expression on his face disclosed to me that his experience with Italians during the brief occupation had not been pleasant. Without being even the least bit responsible, I felt a burning shame.38
Quite soon Alberto and Paulo returned. Everything was set. We would leave tomorrow at sundown. The French would accompany us for a while with mules. Then they would carry the bags and weapons for us as far as they could in order to lessen our physical exertion a bit. In the meantime, we tried to go out and be seen in the village as little as possible.
I did not know whether to be mad or laugh when they told me that a girl employed by the Command had been very surprised to hear that there was a woman in the group who would also make the crossing. She would come to meet us tomorrow, because she wanted to see the espionne (female spy).
After we finished our rapid dinner, the officer conducted us to an isolated little house, evidently used by vacationers during the summer season. We slept peacefully and stayed for almost the entire next day, which was Sunday, resting and conserving our strength to the utmost.
In the afternoon, the female employee who wanted to see the espionne arrived. She was a pretty girl who had the look of an imbecile, with enormous galalite earrings and an elaborate cocoricò hairdo, which came into style in Italy several years later.39 Her conversation was so idiotic that my initial resentment gave way to amused indulgence. Instead of bluntly correcting her definition, as I had intended to do, I ended up by going along with her attitude of amazement by assuming tones of cryptic mystery.
Around five o’clock, the young officer came to get us, and we went with him to the Command, where a company of chasseurs was waiting for us with mules. We loaded our bags, skis, and guns on them, and we set out in a long column by a passageway quite similar to our Stretta Valley. The colors of the sunset filled the sky with delicate shades. An incurable romantic, I thanked fate one more time for granting me such exalting experiences.
After about two hours of climbing, we reached a demolished grangia. At that point the valley narrowed until it became a simple passageway. We had to pass at the foot of the Piccolo Moncenisio, where there were German emplacements within hearing and seeing distance. The mules turned back. Our friends loaded our belongings on their backs. By now it was almost dark. While the last gleams from the sunset were dying out in the west, suddenly, raising my eyes, I saw before me a faint star glimmering deep in the sky.
“Passez votre cagoule (Put on your hoods),” the officer whispered to us. Then we pulled the hoods of our white jackets over our heads. We were so perfectly camouflaged that in that uncertain light it was impossible to distinguish us from the surrounding snowy whiteness. We continued in silence. At a certain point, the person at the head of the line stopped and, making a sign, lifted a curtain that hid an opening in the rock and went in. We followed him. It was the last French checkpoint, a kind of communication trench dug out of the earth and stone. There was a lit stove, and they offered us beer, wine, and coffee. We were all very thirsty, and we gulped down several glasses of icy water.
Then we left again. We were soon out of the narrow passage and the valley became wider. We were no longer close to the enemy, and we could proceed without so much caution. At a certain point, the binding of one of my skis broke. The Frenchman next to me took it and told me to go ahead. He would fix it and catch up to me. But it was not pleasant continuing in the soft snow with only one ski. Fortunately he caught up to me quickly, and I took up my normal stride again.
The climb became steeper and more tiring. We had to go around a small frozen lake. The snow around the edges was icy, and it was not an easy task for anyone. One of our valley dwellers slipped and almost fell to the bottom. I was afraid I would do the same, but the two men who were next to me were able to help me, and I came through the difficult passage without incident.
The French left us one by one. They had to hurry to turn back so as not to find themselves in view of the German positions at dawn. We said goodbye cordially with warm, mutual good wishes, and then we took up the climb again, alone. But we were already tired. Evidently the long stay in Grenoble, with the absolute lack of physical exercise, had weakened us, and our loads were perhaps excessive (except for mine, since the weight of my bag was insignificant and I had given up carrying the Sten, although with great regret). Nevertheless, we walked another two hours. We wanted to reach the Baraque d’Ambin, which must not have been far away, and to make a stop there, but although the moon was still high, we were not able to find it. At a certain point, exhausted, we stopped to catch our breath in the shelter of a rock. Everyone was panting heavily. We remained motionless so that we could catch our breath. We watched the moon set in silence until we got cold and started again. After another half hour of difficult climbing, we found the Baraque, which we had not seen before because its roof, which was almost at ground level, was completely covered in snow.
The door was open and we went in, going down the short ladder. Inside there was a table, stools, and wooden floors filled with straw. We unloaded and collapsed, exhausted. I had barely begun to become drowsy when Virgilio sat up, terrified. “There is some one here! They knocked at the door!” he said. I listened, my heart in my throat, but I did not hear anything but the rustling of the wind on the snow. “No,” protested the others, who did not want to move. “No one is here!” But the boy did not give us any peace. “I really heard it. I heard it myself!” he kept on insisting. “Well, go and see then!” another told him, irritated. But Virgilio, who was afraid of confronting any danger whatsoever in the open air, now, enclosed in a kind of trap, was afraid and did not dare go out. He continued to mutter and move about until he even transmitted a little of his worry to me.
Then I decided to get up. I would no longer be able to sleep in any case. I put my shoes back on, climbed the short ladder, and went outside. No one was there, as I well knew. In the blue light of the early dawn our tracks could be distinguished clearly, but no others could be seen on any side. Leaning against a wall of the hut, I saw one of our Stens, which someone must have propped there before going down, and then forgotten. I went back down with the weapon and showed it to Virgilio, who still did not seem convinced. “Doesn’t it seem that the Germans at least would have taken the Sten?” I said. “Furthermore, if there are not any tracks, perhaps they flew?” “Nevertheless, I really heard it,” the boy insisted, stubborn and evidently overexcited. I advised him to calm down, and to put himself down to bed. I was not sleepy and would stay up and be on guard. I told him not to worry, that I would not let him be caught in a trap.
I went back up the short ladder and sat at the top, looking outside. I saw the last stars go out, the light advance slowly in the sky, and the mountain wake up in the immense silence. I was perfectly calm. I no longer felt exaltation or anguish or regret or anxiety or longing. I was in a state of mind of perfect, almost sensual, connection with reality. A subconscious defense instinct kept me from thinking and worrying. This always happens to me: while I worry about anxieties that are absurd when plainly there is nothing to fear, instead, in moments of danger, I feel an inhuman, lucid serenity.
When it was bright daylight, I pulled the cagoule over my head. We were in view of the Piccolo Moncenisio, but even with very strong binoculars it would not have been possible to distinguish my hood from the pile of surrounding snow. But we could not set out by day, under the eyes of the enemy, who would have been able to inform the other stations that were closer, and have some patrol catch us unawares. Therefore I went down into the hut to discuss the situation. We would sleep and rest, since we could not depart before sundown.
I got a book, one of the very few that I had brought with me: Les yeux ouverts dans Paris insurgé by Claude Roy, and I went up to read at the top of the small ladder, serving as a guard at the same time.40 The insurrection of Paris seemed like a dream, a passionate dream, but unreal. I did not want to think about what the insurrection of Turin would be like.
After a while, Paolo came outside, too, and he crouched down in the shelter of the cabin, getting some sunlight. We talked and discussed and joked as if we were in the most normal of circumstances. The others preferred to remain below and sleep. Around noon, someone said that he was hungry, and everyone seconded him. We could have lit the fire very easily, but the smoke might betray us. Therefore we limited ourselves to burning some paraffin wrappers from the K rations, which enabled us to heat up a little water to make a broth. We ate the usual biscuits, and the usual hot chocolate with vitamins.
Around three o’clock, a cloud arose, the first of the day, and deposited itself right on the Piccolo Moncenisio. We decided to take advantage of it. We made up our loads again in a hurry, left, and rushed down for the descent. By the time the cloud disappeared, we would already be out of sight.
We traveled for a long while almost on level ground, leaving the Denti d’Ambin to our left. Then we began to climb again toward the Sommeiller glacier through the Colle del Gran Cordonnier. The last stretch was terrible. It was a very steep climb, but one that in the summer, without snow, could have been done in half an hour. Instead we spent more than three hours surmounting it. Our skis did not grab onto the frozen snow. There were no stumps or stones to lean on. We did two steps forward and three back. I had had enough. Paolo, who was in front of me, suddenly let himself fall to the ground as if he were dead. “What is the matter?” I asked stupidly. “Nothing, nothing!” he responded angrily. From the enraged fury of his answer, I understood that his endurance must have reached its limit. Nor were the others much better off: Carletto was vomiting and Eraldo was moaning from a stomach ache. Virgilio, motionless, looked around as if he were stupefied. Ettore did what he could. Yes, everyone had taken a good dose of simpamina. But the drug, so valuable during certain moments of mental tension, proved to be useless and injurious in this case.
It was Alberto who saved the situation. Without saying a word, he took the lead, and advancing slowly, with difficulty, in a zigzag, and with the aid of his ski poles, he was able to trace, with infinite patience, a kind of stairway on which everyone followed him, one after the other.
When we reached the top, notwithstanding my fatigue and breathlessness, I could not help but let out a cry of marvel and admiration. The moon had risen and the upper part of the Sommeiller glacier sparkled blue like a miraculous, immobile waterfall, while the flat part opened underneath us, velvety and soft, like a magic trail.
The boys dashed forward, almost running. I remained behind with Ettore. I did my best, but I could not hurry like the others, and soon lost them from view. I knew that they would wait for us at the end of the glacier, but not seeing them there made me feel absurdly anxious. When I noticed them on the edge, near some stones, seated in waiting, I let myself fall to the ground, exhausted. I think I fainted because for some time—I will never know whether it was brief or long—I was not conscious of anything. No one approached me, and no one came to talk to me. By now we had reached the point at which human relationships were reduced to their essential importance. If it had happened in any normal situation, everyone would have flocked around me, tried to help me, and spoken a number of words. Everything, words and gestures, was absolutely useless, because if I were dead, they would not have been able to revive me, and if I had simply fainted, I would have also come to by myself, which in fact is what happened. At some point, I regained consciousness, perhaps also because the cold had begun to stimulate me. I remembered the anxious run along the white trail of the glacier. I saw the six men, motionless as statues, with their heads bowed, just as I had seen them upon arriving. I realized we had to move. I got up with difficulty. “Let’s go,” I said in a low voice. Everyone silently obeyed. Paolo came near me and unstrung my modest knapsack from my shoulders, attaching it to his, and my despondency was so great that, even though I recognized his fatigue, I did not have the strength to stop him, nor to react.
Now it was a matter of crossing the deep Rochemolles ravine, halfway up the hill, and of reaching a narrow mountain pass from which we would proceed into the Fredda Valley. For a while we went along quite easily. Then the moon set, and going forward in the dark became much more difficult. We had to go carefully because the Germans were not very far away, the trail was not marked, and if we lost sight of each other, we could not call to each other. Every once in a while someone slid. Several times my ski pole slipped from my hand and Ettore went to get it for me, with incredible patience, without even swearing. Suddenly, Virgilio stopped, whispering in fear. “Shh! I heard voices.” We remained motionless, with our hearts suspended. But, like the night before, we could only hear the rustling of the wind. Suddenly I wondered what would have happened if, that night which was so incredibly calm and serene, a blizzard had broken out. I thought about this to console myself. To give myself courage, I kept on singing to myself the songs I had learned in Grenoble, one couplet after the other. Madelon, with her caporal en képi de fantaisie (corporal with his fancy soldier’s cap), always returned to my mind, and I though of Madame Roche. Every once in a while, at the worst moments, I repeated the verses of Aragon:
Et si c’était à refaire
je refairais ce chemin!
After several hours of walking, we felt the need to make a stop. We were also hungry, since we had not eaten since morning, but had simply chewed a bit of sugar and chocolate while walking. But there was no shelter nearby. We squatted down for a moment under an enormous protruding rock, but it was not very comfortable. What is more, I was afraid that the rock, which seemed to be wavering, would tumble down at a certain point, crushing us. Therefore, I insisted that we start again, and, while I was waiting for the others to get up again and get going, I leaned my head against my ski poles and dozed. When I woke up again, I lifted my eyes and saw the sky amazingly studded with stars, but these stars no longer had the witty, human wink of the little star that I had seen flourish on our departure from Bramans. These were cold, hostile, almost scoffing, and the geometric designs that they traced in the sky seemed faulty and absurd, like they had come out of an unhinged mind.
But even that night—the longest I could remember—came to an end. Sunrise found us in a kind of hollow full of rocks, in front of another climb that we had to make. “But haven’t we finished climbing?” I protested. “Courage! This is the last climb. Then we will only have to descend.” Paolo comforted me. The Corallos confirmed his words. Instead, as we would see, it was not true.
But when, huffing and complaining, I reached the summit, I suddenly forgot any fatigue, the view that it offered my eyes was so spectacular. It was a vast scene, in which the mountains succeeded one another, one chain after the next, endlessly: peaks, spires, and massifs, fused into a single enchantment by the rose-colored light of the sunrise. Olympus? Valhalla? Every comparison seemed inadequate, just as any attempt at description seems inadequate today.41 Human words are insufficient. At that moment, I had the impression of an eternal and superhuman reality that all the effort of man’s brainpower would never completely be able to understand and dominate. “He who goes to the mountains, it is as if he went to his mother,” I thought. In the impassible solidity of the mountain, I felt something primeval, essentially and fundamentally maternal.
When I had contemplated enough, we went down a small stretch in order to reach the others who, having crouched down in the shelter of some rocks, were trying to melt a bit of snow to make coffee by using some awful solid alcohol.42 They succeeded in the end. Since it was the first hot drink that we had swallowed down since our departure from the Baraque, it was a great comfort, even if each of us only tasted one sip of it. Then we chewed biscuits and chocolate again, and stretched out in the sun, on the rocks, and rested a bit until we decided to leave again and attack the descent. I protested violently when I saw that, at the bottom of the ravine, we had to climb back up the other side, contrary to what everyone had told me. But everyone assured me in unison that this climb was really the last.
There was not one cloud in the sky. There was not a puff of wind blowing in the sheltered ravine, and its isolated and uninteresting location made an encounter with any German patrol extremely unlikely. The cohesiveness of the group eased, and individual preferences regained the upper hand. Carletto attacked the climb in a straight run. I do not know how he kept from tumbling backwards, but the very strong sun had made the snow soft, and sliding was more difficult. Alberto, applying his usual technique, began to climb in a zigzag. Virgilio went up erratically, a bit straight and a bit in a zigzag himself. Eraldo had fallen asleep before finishing the descent, and we had a hard time waking him up. Ettore thought about taking off his jacket right away in order to get some sun. Paolo began to make marvelous ice cream, mixing the snow with a little sugar and a packet of Nescafé. I was terribly thirsty and thought of all the fresh drinks that I would have been able to drink in a bar.43 I seemed to feel the cool sparkling of seltzer water, to hear the tinkling of crystal, and to see the polished reflections of the espresso machine, and I felt a desperate nostalgia for these familiar things that spoke of normal life.
Finally, we too decided to climb. Eraldo and Paolo were soon at the top, but Ettore and I found it incredibly difficult. I was absolutely exhausted. Ettore was sliding and could not turn around. There was the track made by the others, a track of stairs, and every time that I had to turn, I pointed my ski poles against Ettore’s skis to keep him from sliding backwards. And every time I trembled at the thought of seeing him fall, not because of the danger—since he would stop on the soft snow at the bottom—but because then he would have to climb back up. Meanwhile the sun had set, the snow had begun to freeze, and moving became harder and harder. It took us more than three hours to do a stretch that under favorable conditions we would have covered in one hour maximum.
Paolo was waiting for us at the top. The others had already gone down to reach the barracks of the Séguret, which the valley dwellers called Vin vert (sour wine), where we hoped to find shelter for the night. “Where were these huts?” I asked with some anxiety. Paolo showed them to me: small buildings of gray stone, typical of the military, like all the other similar huts of the Assietta, Gran Serin, and Cà d’Asti, visible in the last light of the sunset. They did not even seem so far away. Above all, there was nothing more to climb.
Therefore we attacked the descent, but night fell unexpectedly, as often happens in the mountains. In the dark we lost the trail made by the others. Then I felt a sense of profound discouragement. I did not feel like going ahead any more, and even less like spending the night in a temporary encampment. I sat with Ettore on a pile of snow while Paolo looked for the trail with a torch. Then a strange thing happened to both of us. It seemed to us that we saw two figures dressed and hooded in white, with guns on their shoulders, pass speedily in front of us on skis. Instinctively I opened my mouth to call to them, thinking they were our men, but Ettore held me back. “Shh!” he whispered to me. “They could be Germans.” I held my tongue, in suspense. Suddenly I heard the sound of voices. I closed my eyes. I could not and did not want to understand anything anymore. Paolo’s return shook me. “Two men passed by,” I told him. “Who could have passed by?” he answered. “We saw them. Ettore saw them too, and we heard them talking.” Paolo shook his head: “Absolutely no one passed by. It was I who was talking to myself because I could not find the trail. You saw a bush move. Get up, come!” We got up again with great difficulty, but we were not at all convinced. Today I still wonder about the origin of that strange hallucination that appeared not only to my overexcited imagination, but also to Ettore’s calm, practical, very steady eyes.
We followed Paolo tiredly. I had really reached the limit of my physical strength. I went ahead like a sleepwalker, with the feeling that I would never be able to stop. In vain I resorted to my usual therapeutic methods, recited poetry, sang songs to myself, and repeated several times:
Et si c’était à refaire
je refairais ce chemin!
I was bewildered. The strangest things and most absurd memories came into my mind: scenes of my childhood, my old house, objects I had forgotten about. At some point (Ettore told me because I do not remember) I began to talk to my grandmother—who had died twenty-five years before—about some curtains and linens placed in I do not know what mysterious armoire.
Alberto’s voice awakened me from this sort of delirium. “The cabin is here on the right. I came to meet you. We prepared coffee for you.” I remember that I held onto his neck and let my head fall on his chest with a sense of profound tranquility, as if I had found something precious that I thought was lost for good. Suddenly I felt incredibly light, with a sense of not being myself any longer, of being able, at any moment, to step out of my heavy shell and vanish, light and happy, into the air.
In the cabin, there was a lit fire and a flask of hot coffee that I gulped down all in one mouthful. Only then did I regain a sense of reality, which in the end was not so consoling. What had seemed to be a welcoming cabin when I went in, in contrast to the darkness outside, was in reality a hut in ruins whose roof the snow and foul weather had almost completely burst open, leaving only some beams. Therefore it was filled with snow, except for the most sheltered corners, where the boys had placed as benches pieces of the doors from the neighboring huts, which were in even worse condition. The fire was lit on the wooden floor, which broke every once in a while, burning. No, the dwelling was not comfortable, but there was no choice. If I were more dead than alive, the others were not fooling either. They were all lying on the benches and on the ground, in postures that betrayed a state of extreme fatigue and the loss of the most elementary control.
We arranged ourselves for sleeping as best we could. Every once in a while someone stirred the fire, went to look for more wood, and added a bit of snow to the container that they had put near the fire to have a bit of water. After a while it began to rain: the snow which had accumulated on the surviving beams of the roof melted with the heat from the flame underneath. For the entire night the constant dripping continued, heavy and insistent, onto our jackets, which fortunately were waterproof.
I slept in stretches, a heavy sleep of senseless nightmares. At times I felt my feet burn through the climbing boots that I had put too close to the flame, and I hurried to pull them back. From time to time I reached out to take a handful of snow from the nearby pile to placate the burning thirst that I continued to feel in my throat.
No, it was not a pleasant night. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of acute regret when the flame waned at the first light of dawn, and I had to shake myself from that sort of stupor.
But as soon as I went outside, my fatigue suddenly seemed to disappear. The spectacle that it offered my eyes was much less grandiose than the one I had seen the previous morning. But they were our mountains: there was the massive shape of the Chaberton, there was Punta Clotès, and there was the bend of the Passo dell’Orso. I felt my eyes fill with tears. We had arrived. We were in Italy, finally. An absurd sense of euphoria overtook me as if the danger were over at last, not that now instead the most hazardous part had just begun.
For the time being, one thing was certain: there would be no more climbing. A long slope opened before us, at the bottom of which we would find the so-much-desired and dreamed-about grangia of the Corallos. “Mama is down there, there’s a cow, and there’s a fire,” Eraldo continued to repeat, to encourage himself and me. That simple phrase “Mama is there” sounded to my ears like music from Paradise. To see the face of a woman seemed to me to be a marvelous thing. I felt dirty, unkempt, and in tatters. I had on trousers in rags. It seemed to me that only a woman could understand all these things and help me, if only with her silent affection, a woman who would prepare something for us to eat, who would fix up a couch for us, to whom I would be able to cede the responsibility (that I felt, even without completely executing it) for organizing the basic necessities of life for the others.
We brought our things outside the barracks, where only a few embers and a black hole in the floor betrayed the nighttime fire. We tied our skis and poles together, since we would descend through the woods and stony land, and skis on our feet would have only been an encumbrance. We said goodbye to Carletto, who preferred, by skirting the Séguret, to go directly down to Exilles. We saw him leave, almost running under the heavy load, invigorated by the night’s rest and by the hope of being home soon. Then, with a final wave of goodbye, we disappeared at the first turn.
Then we too left, going straight down, without paying attention to roads or paths. When we found a stretch on a gradient covered with snow, we began to sit and let ourselves slide down. When we were in front of a drop of rock, we let our skis and packs fall. In the end we went downhill too. After some hours of these gymnastics, we were rather tired. While we were passing through a forest of spruce trees, Paolo let himself go onto a stretch of dry ground and closed his eyes. “Go ahead, I will join you right away,” he said. I went ahead for a little bit unwillingly; then, not seeing him arrive, I turned back. He was there, motionless, with his eyes closed, as I had left him. I had a hard time waking him up. While I was touching him, I thought that his forehead felt quite hot, but I wanted to attribute it to the sun and to fatigue.
It was noon when we arrived in view of the grange, exactly sixty-seven hours after our departure from Bramans: three nights and three days when we had barely eaten or slept.
But a terrible disappointment awaited us. From a certain distance, Virgilio had already observed with some anxiety: “I cannot see any smoke. How can it be?” The closer we got, the more the grangia gave the impression of being abandoned: no utensils or containers scattered around, no clothes hung in the sun, no odor of fresh manure. The two brothers rushed to the door, but it was locked and no one responded to their knocks and calls. What had happened? Without too much difficulty, we opened the door. Inside, a big mess (stools overturned, sacks spilled, bundles of sticks and straw scattered here and there) gave the impression that the grangia had not been left normally, given the orderly care the mountain folk had for their houses. Something unusual must have happened. Eraldo, who upon entering had immediately rushed behind a pile of wood bundles, let out a muffled cry.
“The weapons are no longer here. The Germans must have been here!”
“Your relatives could have had them taken away to hide them in a safer place,” I said to calm him down, but without conviction.
“It is impossible. They would not have left everything in disarray, and the hole open.”
He showed me the empty hiding place, which must have been covered by some big stones that were next to it.
Perhaps Eraldo was right. Truly we should have expected it. Having arrested their father, the Germans must have raided the house, down at Savoulx, then climbed up to the grangia, found the weapons, and then....Tragic questions were posed, to which no one knew how to respond.
One thing was certain: we could not stay there. The Germans, having come once, and not without success, could return at any moment. We, with our weapons, the radio, and all that stuff (from our skis to our trousers, from our sweaters to the cigarettes and the matches) that betrayed where we had come from! We had to go. But where? Since we did not know what had really happened and how things were, we could not decide to which side to direct our steps in order to find another less-dangerous shelter. We had to go down to the village to ask for news, and it was obvious that only I could go.
Goodbye, longed-for dream of a female presence and of abandonment to the warmth of maternal comfort! I told the boys to light the fire, make a little broth, and pull some small cans out of the packs. I washed my hands and face, combed my hair as best I could, took off my trousers, which were in rags by now, and put on the dress that, fortunately, I still carried in my pack. I went down, hoping that there would not be some surprise in the meantime.
I did not meet anyone on the street. During that season, there was not yet any traffic on the mountain. But on entering the village down below (Signol), I had a terrible impression: it was full of Germans who were drawing water from the fountain, sawing wood, and sitting smoking on the doorstep of various houses. I seemed to be entering the Russian village that I had seen in Arcobaleno, even if here, fortunately, I did not see silhouettes of men hanging. The same atmosphere of hatred and fear predominated around here. Perhaps I felt it with particular acuteness because I had come from a country where the nightmare had disappeared by now, and the only Germans we met any more had P.G. on their backs.
Trying not to attract attention, I found the house of a married sister of the Corallos. I met her in the little courtyard, and quickly informed her of the situation. She became as pale as a dead person. Then, with a nod, she had me go into a kind of hall filled with wood where, in a low voice, she told me what had happened. They had arrested the father and brought him to Turin (this we already knew). They also had wanted to arrest the mother. The Fascists had taken one of their young cousins, a partisan, and had torn away his fingernails to try to make him say where the two Corallo brothers had gone. They had gone up to the grangia, had found the weapons, and certainly would return. She concluded with anguish: “But why did my brothers return home? I was so happy to know they were safe! They cannot remain here. They must go away, immediately!”
I tried to calm her down. We would leave the next morning, or perhaps that very night, and we would find a place to stay, but in the meantime could she provide a little bread and something to eat for us? We had lived on chocolate and biscuits for three days.
She excused herself then, regretting that anxiety and fear had made her forget the duties of hospitality. She would go up to the grangia with me, bringing what she could. In the meantime, she had me go into the stable.
It was the first really welcoming place I had seen since my departure from Grenoble, and immediately I felt a sense of relaxation. The cows, which were chewing their cud calmly, were on the ground floor, there was a baby a few years old in the high chair, and there was a man seated in front of me at the table on which three bowls of soup were steaming. Perhaps I smelled the fragrance with too much pleasure because the woman said to me: “Do you want a dish of soup? “Thank you,” I answered gratefully, and immediately began to eat. While the spoonfuls of hot food went down into my stomach, I realized how starved I had been before. Never had food seemed so tasty or so exquisite to me. Perhaps this kind of ecstatic rapture revealed itself in my manner of eating, because after a while I realized that the woman and the man (who was her husband) were staring at me instead of eating too. Suddenly, with a tone not of someone who was asking a question, but of someone who was stating a fact, the man said: “She is Paolo’s mother.” “How did you know?” I asked, impressed. “You have the same eyes,” he answered simply. But the strange thing was that, as I learned later, Ernesto (as that was the man’s name) had only seen Paolo once, in passing, and what is more, it was in the wan light of an oil lamp.
My hunger satisfied, I set out with the woman toward the mountain, veering off a little so as not to cross the village. It was not a big climb—around an hour of walking under normal conditions—but I was so exhausted that it was difficult for me to keep pace with the village woman, and more than once I had to stop to catch my breath. “No,” I thought to myself in the meantime, “tonight we will not move, no matter what happens. Tonight I want to sleep.”
But we could not have left, even if we had decided to. At the grangia, I found Paolo flopped on the straw-filled mattress, burning with fever. He was complaining of severe pains in his knees, wrists, and ankles, which, as soon as they were uncovered, proved to be surprisingly swollen. The Corallos’ sister advised us to rub him with a bit of fat that by chance she had brought with the other provisions, and Ettore, willing and energetic, did it right away, but I had the impression that he did not enjoy it very much. We had aspirin tablets. I gave him one, followed by a hot drink. What else could I do?
After dinner, which, to my great relief, the woman provided, the three Corallos chatted for a long time, deep in conversation, in patois, narrating their reciprocal experiences. Alberto threw himself down on the other rollaway bed. He had a bad cough and it seemed to me that he also had a fever. Ettore and the three Corallos made up an improvised bed with straw and some blankets near the fire.
I understood that it was imprudent to the point of madness not to post a guard for the night, but how could I ask the others to do what I did not feel like doing myself? By now I was at that point of depression where a person becomes indifferent and fatalistic.
Soon my body reaffirmed its rights and, notwithstanding my worry and anxiety, I fell asleep. I woke up a number of times in the night. Paolo tossed and turned, moaning in his sleep, and I caressed his painful ankles and burning forehead with futile tenderness.
When I awakened in the morning, the Corallos’ sister was combing her hair in front of the fragment of a mirror. Sunlight was coming in the narrow window, the stove was lit, and the household utensils from the night before were washed. Paolo was sleeping calmly, and feeling his forehead, I noticed that the fever had gone down. When he too woke up after a few minutes, he said that he felt good and that he hardly felt any more pain. Then I had a moment of optimistic euphoria, and began to think about what to do.
It was urgent that we leave the grangia. The Corallos would move to another grangia that belonged to some of their relatives and was not far away, and from there they would get in touch with the group from Beaulard again. We could do two things: either go on foot as far as Beaulard, skirting the mountain, and ask for hospitality at the hospital for a few days, or even run the risk of taking the train to Oulx and arriving as far as Meana, with the hope that nothing new had happened there in the meantime.
The plans proved to be premature, however, since when Paolo got up he realized that he could not stand: his knees hurt him a little less, but his ankles were still swollen and he absolutely could not tie his shoes. He could not go down in stocking feet without shoes; nor could we carry him in our arms, when the essential thing was not to attract attention in any way.
I had a moment of true despair. Then I decided that the only thing to do was to go as far as the hospital and ask the doctor for advice. I sent the Corallos and Ettore to dig a hole not too far away to bury the weapons and the radio and, with a spirit that was anything but relaxed, I set out toward Beaulard.
Fortunately Bricarello was there and made his diagnosis immediately: an acute attack of rheumatism. He gave me what was necessary to make an enema of salicylate and an injection of I do not know what substance.44 With this remedy, the swelling in his ankles should go down the next day. We should avail ourselves of it immediately if we wanted to move, because there was no telling if they would swell up again.
I thanked him and started on the road back again. But in the middle of the road I ran into Ernesto, who came up with me. In the meantime we spoke about the local situation, the impossibility of keeping some partisan bands in place in such immediate vicinity of the Germans, at least as long as there was snow, and the opportunity for intensifying exchanges with France and collecting information at the same time. He, for example, worked repairing roads: no one could give us more precise news about the traffic along the road. I told him how he should do it. He was a very capable young man, rich in intuition, and he understood me immediately.
Luckily, nothing had happened up above. The radio and weapons had been buried, and the most damaging articles of clothing carefully hidden. Paolo was swollen like before. Alberto had a terrible cough and was burning with fever. I gave him an aspirin, and wondered who would become sick next. Even the Corallo brothers were coughing and looked pale. The only ones who did not have anything were Ettore and I, the oldest; perhaps it was for this very reason.
It was not easy to give the enema and the injection, without alcohol, with little light, and without any conveniences. While I professed a somewhat deplorable indifference to hygienic scruples, there are limits beneath which I cannot go. Moreover, I believe that Paolo had not had an enema since he was two years old. As for injections, I had no other experience than that very recent one in Grenoble. His profound aversion to any kind of medical care certainly did not facilitate the task, for which we, Ettore and I, prepared ourselves with much good will. We tried to boil the syringe as best we could. When I brandished it to complete the operation, however, Paolo protested for I do not know what reasons. I made a gesture that was a bit brisk, and the needle fell in the middle of the straw. It took us quite a while to find it again with the light of a flashlight, and certainly we should have boiled it again. But I confess that instead I just cleaned it with my handkerchief and used it nonetheless.
Even so, in the end both operations were happily completed. Ettore was sweating as if he had been carrying boulders, and I was literally exhausted.
Our efforts were not in vain, however. The next morning, the swelling in his ankles had gone down, and Paolo could put on his shoes and try to walk. He did it. Alberto still had a cough and a fever but, although he was tottering, he too was on his feet. Therefore we decided to leave immediately, according to the doctor’s advice, before any other complication arose. In order to be extra careful, we decided to divide up. Ettore would accompany Alberto to Beaulard and leave him at the hospital (where Bricarello had told me the other day that he could put him up), and Paolo and I would go down to Oulx. From there we would take the train to Meana.
Everything went well. While Eraldo accompanied Ettore and Alberto, Virgilio, by paths known to him alone, conducted Paolo and me speedily until we were above Oulx. Then he turned back, and we went down on the main road at a place and time when no one was there. We went ahead without a problem, arm in arm. We had in our knapsacks, and I had in my bosom, enough stuff to have us shot sur le champ (immediately), as the French would say. But I in my threadbare fur coat and Paolo in his very ordinary raincoat could very easily pass for two displaced persons on a trip from one hamlet to the next in search of eggs and butter. We crossed the bridge, watched by four Germans armed to the hilt who did not even deign to glance at us. We passed in front of the Command, where a group of bare-chested German officers were sunning themselves, and in front of the barracks, still chatting animatedly, stopping from time to time to look at something, with the untroubled appearance of lazy people who were not at all in a hurry.
After a stop at Cesare’s hospitable home, we took the train, where we found Ettore. It had gone well for them too. Eraldo had accompanied them through the mountains up to Beaulard. Alberto was staggering because of the fever, but he remained standing until the end. Then, having left Eraldo, they went down on the main road and, with the most indifferent air in the world, they crossed the train tracks. The Germans on guard did not say anything, but after they had already passed one called them back, suspicious. “Where are you going?” he asked. “To the hospital,” Ettore said, prepared, “where the doctor is waiting for us.” The other did not say anything more.
As soon as he arrived at the hospital, Alberto collapsed. Bricarello had him put to bed, took his temperature (it was higher than forty), and diagnosed him with common bronchitis.45 Ettore, seeing that Alberto was safe, took the train, counting on meeting us again in Oulx, as in fact happened.
Then I had an idea. Why stop in Meana? There was neither a doctor nor a pharmacist in Meana and, if Paolo were sick again it would be a disaster. Not to mention that, after so long an absence, I would have a number of things to do in Turin, and he would remain alone. Why not go directly to Turin, where we would have doctors and medicine and where, if nothing else, we would all be together? The proposal was accepted immediately, and we let the station in Meana pass by without getting off. But at the bottom of my heart, I was anything but relaxed. Provided there is not another disaster and the train does not stop, and everyone is not searched, I said to myself, as had happened at other times. Provided that we arrive before the curfew. Provided that our house has not been “burned,” and we have to go look for shelter for the night.
Instead everything went well. The train arrived on schedule. We took the tram, and we went home without incident. Espedita was touched when she saw us again, and told us the latest news. Nothing had happened, and she had not seen anyone suspicious. At times some friends had come over whom she knew well. As far as she knew, there had not been any serious arrests. We could very well go up and stay in the house. And we did, almost incredulous. Then I begged her for a favor. Could she try to fire up the hot water heater? There must still be a little coal and wood. Then we would have hot water. I wanted very badly to take a bath. Espedita did not have to be told twice and, with the aid of her exceptional [husband] Giuseppe, she lit a nice fire right away. But suddenly we saw water spilling onto the floor. The ice had frozen the pipes, which threatened to flood the house.
It was this absurdity that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.46 In a short time I began to cry from exasperation. But I had not accounted for Ettore’s infinite resources. While Espedita and Giuseppe hurried to dry and remedy the disaster, with some of his mysterious electrical wires he was able to heat water in the bathtub for me, where I immersed myself with incredible delight after all.
Paolo was in his bed, calm and satisfied, and said he felt just fine. When Ettore and I entered ours as well, we confessed to each other that we had not thought we would ever return to sleep there again.
The next day, normal life began again. I went out to go shopping, and it seemed strange to see the vegetable stalls and familiar faces at the market on Corso Palestro. I saw children coming out of school, and wondered if and when I would teach again.
I saw Mario Andreis, whom I had notified of our arrival, and I heard the news from him. Parri had been released in Switzerland through an exchange, and this relieved me greatly.47 Naturally the activity of our partisan bands in the mountains had slowed a bit, for reasons of weather. But in the Cuneese, Livio Bianco—who had duly succeeded Duccio as commander of the Piedmont Giustizia e Libertà formations—had made important agreements with Juvenal, head of the French maquis in the area.48 The Gruppo mobile operativo (Mobile Operations Group or Gmo), which had gone into the Langhe, was prospering and was amazingly active. In the city, everything was going on as usual. The press came out regularly and in abundance. The young people were organizing themselves into the Gioventù d’Azione. The doctors had almost completed preparations in the health arena, and the women’s movement was moving forward.
Then, briefly, I told him about our venture and, when he left, I began to jot down the various reports.
The parenthesis was closed. Life took up that rhythm of orderly anxiety to which I was accustomed by now, and in whose absence I had experienced somewhat of a feeling of longing during the days I spent in Grenoble. Intuitively, I felt that the end was near, and that we had to reach it.
1 Bruno Salmoni wanted to join the Southern Italian Army that fought alongside the Allies and took part in the Allied advance.
2 The phrase “consumai l’impresa” comes from Dante’s Inferno: “Perché pensando consumai la impresa, che fu nel cominciar cotanto tosta (For when I thought thereon I brought to an end the enterprise which had been so hasty in its inception).” Translation by William Warren Vernon.
3 Simpamina or amphetamine sulfate is a drug that stimulates the central nervous system and was probably used in this instance to treat fatigue.
4 A baraccamento is a small building of gray stone typical of military buildings.
5 The Fiat 1100 was first introduced in 1937.
6 Operation Cobra, which took place between 25 July 1944 and 31 July 1944, was part of the Normandy Invasion. The German offensive in the Ardennes, known as the Battle of the Bulge, occurred between 16 December 1944 and 30 January 1945.
7 The Thompson, a submachine gun, was also known as the “Tommy gun.”
8 Bernard Palisse, a lieutenant in the French Army, was in charge of the information service on the border with Savoy.
9 The 420 mm howitzer.
10 Campin was a lieutenant in the French Army.
11 According to Bonnie G. Smith, who provided a photograph of Mata-Hari, the female spy “became a symbol of women’s power to seduce men away from their duty to the fatherland.” Bonnie G. Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath, 1989), 372–373.
12 The Allobroges were an ancient Celtic tribe in Gaul.
13 Most likely Ada means the Morse Code. Nello Marchetti, tutor of the inventor of wireless telegraphy, Guglielmo Marconi, and a retired telegrapher himself, taught Marconi the Morse Code.
14 For a history of the battle between French Resistance fighters and the Germans that took place in the Vercors plateau in July 1944, see http://www.vercors-net.com/dossiers/histoire/resistance.html. According to Fofi, 750 maquisards were killed in the battle, which he called “one of the most glorious and dramatic of the French Resistance.” Diario partigiano (1972), 276 n. 2.
15 Pierre Terrail, the Chevalier de Bayard (1473–1524), was known as the “the good knight without fear and without reproach.”
16 A “goduriosa” is a woman who likes her pleasures.
17 As a young girl, Ada studied piano under Ermenegildo Gilardini at the piano school of Boerio-Ferraria-Gilardini and voice with Stella Calcina. Her teachers judged her to be sufficiently talented to pursue a professional career in music.
18 Cirio was an Italian company located in San Giovanni a Teduccio, a town near Naples.
19 Alfredo Corti was a university professor and a partisan in the formations of the Aosta Valley.
20 Federico Chabod was a professor of history and collaborator of the partisans in the Aosta Valley. Don Solero was a chaplain of the partisans in the Aosta Valley.
21 Valdostani were individuals from the Aosta Valley.
22 Historian Gianni Oliva has provided several reasons the French government did not want to fully support the Italian partisans. De Gaulle’s program of self-preservation could not envision a neighbor beyond the Alps where Communists, Actionists, and Socialists were too strong. The program of annexation of the Alpine valleys (which the Gaullist troops tried to carry out in May 1945) could be accomplished only with an Italy that was weak and deprived of new forces capable of governing it. Finally, the position of France with respect to the postwar European order would benefit from an Italy liberated by Allied forces rather than one that rebelled autonomously. On the other hand, as Oliva observed, military objectives would be well served by helping the Italian partisans, who through their acts of sabotage and attack on German positions, were useful in keeping roads and other communication links between France and Italy open. Gianni Oliva, “I rapporti fra i partigiani piemontesi e la Francia libera: estate 1944–primavera 1945,” Mezzosecolo 9 (1993): 358–359.
23 Eugenio Dugoni was an industrial manager and representative of the Socialist Party.
24 Danielle Casanova and Bertie Albrecht were heroines of the French Resistance. Casanova, a militant Communist, founded l’Union des Jeunes Filles de France. She was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and died in May of that year. Albrecht was a French partisan who died in the Fresnes Prison in the Val-de-Marne in 1943.
25 Journalist Claude Dunoyer was also an editor at Les Allobroges.
26 Denise Varelle was an artist and organizer of the Uff in Grenoble.
27 André Ferrat was the editor of Lyon Libre.
28 Pepe le Moko (1937) was a crime drama directed by Julien Duvivier. The drama Les gens du voyage (1938) was a German film directed by Jacques Feyder. La febbre d’oro (The Gold Rush) (1925), was one of Charlie Chaplin’s best films. Chaplin was known as Charlot in France. Arcobaleno (The Rainbow), 1944, directed by Mark Donskoi, was an anti-Nazi film about partisan resistance. L’Assedio di Leningrado (The Siege of Leningrad) and Una giornata di guerra nell’U.R.S.S. (A Day of war in the USSR) were probably documentaries.
29 After the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, the Communist Party was banned in France. Jacques Duclos went into hiding and later joined the communist underground, helping to edit the underground newspaper L’Humanité and helping to establish the Front National, a communist-based resistance group.
30 French poets Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard were both active in the French Resistance.
31 Pulcinella was a stock character in the Commedia dell’Arte who could never keep a secret.
32 The English army was introduced to the lightweight, machine-fed Bren machine gun in 1937.
33 These phrases involve a curious mixture of French and Italian spelling.
34 “Les Allobroges” was a patriotic Savoy hymn written in 1856. “La Madelon” was a popular song created by the singer Bach (C. J. Pasquier) in 1914. “Le Régiment de Sambre et Meuse” was a song and military march written by Robert Planquette, with words by Paul Cezano, around 1870.
35 Italy declared war on France on 10 June 1940.
36 A funivia is a suspended cable car.
37 On 16 February 1926, Piero Gobetti died in exile in Paris at the age of twenty-four.
38 Italy’s ten-month occupation of southeastern France began in November 1942.
39 A hairdo where hair was piled on the head like the comb of a rooster.
40 Les yeux ouverts dans Paris insurgé, written in 1944 by the communist journalist Claude Roy, recounted the liberation of Paris from 19 to 27 August 1944.
41 Mount Olympus was the dwelling place of the ancient Greek gods. In Norse mythology, Valhalla was the great hall of the dead warriors, a kind of heaven for the Vikings. From his throne in Valhalla, the god Odin could look out over all the heavens and the earth.
42 They used cans of denatured and jellied alcohol similar to Sterno for fuel.
43 “Bars” in Turin serve coffee, pastries, sandwiches, and cold drinks, as well as alcoholic beverages.
44 Salicylate is a salt of salicylic acid used to treat rheumatism.
45 Forty degrees centigrade or 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
46 While I translated la goccia che fece traboccare il vaso as “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” literally the phrase means “the drop that made the vase overflow.”
47 For more information on Parri’s release, see Michael Salter, Nazi War Crimes, U.S. Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremburg: Controversies Regarding the Role of the Office of Strategic Services (New York: Routledge-Cavendish, 2007), 99–103, 142.
48 Max Juvenal was a lawyer and leader of the 2e Région des Mouvements Unis de Résistance.