Today, as I reread and rearrange my diary from the days preceding the insurrection at a distance of several years, I realize that, despite my unassuming attitude of serenity and almost of indifference, I had the expectation of something big, heroic, and final. Incorrigibly imbued with the patriotism of 1848, on which my exultant adolescence thrived, I was dreaming, perhaps without admitting it to myself, of fiery, glorious feats where I would have been able to worthily conclude the heroic aspirations, always vivid and always thwarted, of my entire life.1 But, even while recognizing the limits and flaws of its origin, I can say in good conscience that this longing of mine was not superficial rhetoric; it was an honest desire for sacrifice.
Evidently, however, I was not worthy of martyrdom. Fate—which had for accomplices and instruments my friends who relegated me to the Borello—perhaps intended me for the more bitter and melancholy experience of monotonous work on tasks that were apparently without consequence, rather than for immediate and total sacrifice. It is a fact that those days—which my fantasy had imagined to be so warlike and glorious—unfolded almost with an ordinary administrative rhythm. If there were also brief moments that were touching or exciting, on the whole they lacked any risk or heroism for me.
The morning of 26 April dawned gray and cloudy. When I left the house a little after 6:00 a.m. on my very old bicycle, the city was almost deserted, and the absence of trams revealed the unusual situation. I found the Riccis at the Borello, and a little later all the others arrived, but there were no orders, and we did not know what to do. We sat in the empty house, waiting. In the meantime, it had begun to rain, and a sense of cold and uselessness began to overcome us.
Mario arrived around 9:00 a.m., irritated and in a bad mood. He unleashed the youngest girls on the various Commands, and he wanted the older women with a respectable appearance, who had convened thinking that they would be useful precisely because they did not attract any suspicion, to stay home. “If we need you, we will call you,” he said. “There is nothing to do here now.” Then, with childish impatience, I begged him to send me to some other place to do something, seeing that there was nothing to do there. “You stay here,” he responded briskly, and he left without further explanation.
Meanwhile, however, people began to arrive from various parts with the most disparate news: they had occupied the factories and the partisans were approaching. The blond Carmelina, the first partisan staffetta who entered the city, arrived by bicycle, with the tricolor ribbon on her chest.2 Then someone else arrived to say that there had been a counterorder, and that for that day the partisans would not enter. Then they came to contradict the news. The insurrectional movement was slowly going forward. They knew that the regional Cln, the city Cln, the Cmrp, and the Piazza Command were sitting in permanent session, and from time to time news and messages arrived from one or the other.3 With bureaucratic pedantry, intended to placate the nervous tension that I was feeling, I began to organize the papers that were arriving into various folders. At a certain point Nada arrived, who told me he had seen Paolo, who was suffering but in good spirits, at the headquarters for the Gioventù d’Azione. Toward noon we began to hear some shots being fired. Mino arrived with some bread and a piece of cheese, and we began to eat.
In the meantime several messages had arrived. The trade unionists were asking for women to act as liaisons. Having sent my “madame” (older women) home (who, to tell the truth, really had not done anything up until that time), there was no one to send out. I tried to telephone, but as was expected the telephone did not work. Then, taking advantage of Mino’s presence, I decided to make a quick trip home, stopping to notify the women who were in my part of town in the meantime.
At home, I found neither Paolo nor Ettore. Anna, imperturbable as always, was tranquilly working in the kitchen and had not seen either one of them. Espedita did not know anything either. She went to call one of her nieces, who took charge of carrying the various messages. While I was writing some brief notes, I begged Espedita to sew a GL badge inside my jacket (the one Duccio had given me so many months before, with joking words of homage). I might run into road blocks or partisan squads, and a sign of recognition would be useful.
I left again for the Borello right away. I was almost at the end of Via Cibrario when I heard an agitated sound of footsteps on the semideserted street. Then several shots of Tommy gun fire sounded, dense and furious, while the characteristic odor of gunpowder spread. At the height of the Maria Vittoria hospital, I saw that they were transporting the wounded. Fascists? Partisans? I just kept pedaling faster. I did not want to be stopped.
Nothing had happened at the Borello during my brief absence, but there was no longer the sleepy and disorderly atmosphere of the morning. Staffette, orders, and news came and went with a rhythm that was progressively more rapid.
When it was evening, the men left, and about a dozen women remained: there were the Riccis, Carmelina, Pinella, Alda, and Ester. It was unthinkable that all of them would leave. Crossing the city was extremely dangerous, and it would be even more dangerous to cross it again the next morning. It was pointless to do so unnecessarily. Therefore we decided to remain together. Naturally I gave up making the dash home that I had hoped to make. At a certain point, Jacopo arrived and said that he would spend the night with us. I was happy to share with him—a member of the Cmrp—the responsibility that I felt was weighing on me.
Pinella prepared a little dinner and lit the fire in the fireplace. A great peace reigned around us, broken only from time to time by some distant shot. The warmth of the fire, the security that being together gave us, the feeling of caring for each other, of being all for one another, and the feeling that we were not alone, gave us a sense of relaxation, almost of joy, to which, more or less unconsciously, we abandoned ourselves, and the same feeling that united us was that which was enlivening, in our city, in our country, and even beyond the borders, all men and women of good will. We began to sing: mountain songs of Italy and France, partisan songs, those I already knew and—from the formations of the Cuneese—those that I had never heard.
Suddenly I noticed that in a corner, in the shadows, Ester was crying. For her the imminent liberation could not be joyous, because Sandro would not return. Even Carmelina’s eyes were full of tears. The wait was hopeless for her as well. Alive in Nenne’s good, melancholy eyes, was the memory of another young fellow who had vanished forever. Who could say if each one of us, before the end, would not still have to surrender to a new tragedy, a new struggle? We were quiet for a long time, each to her own anxiety and her own pain, which was not closed and selfish but united and communal. When we looked into each other’s eyes again, we all felt that we could smile. Without useless words, we had understood each other profoundly. Our dead, those of today, those of tomorrow, those of yesterday, were with us. They would be with us forever, for us and for everyone.
Finally we roused ourselves, and I insisted that we go to bed. The next day would certainly be very tiring, and it would be better to confront it rested and strong. Pinella and the girls went to sleep on the floor above where, in case of an alarm, they could pass through the attic into the barn of the neighboring farmhouse, and from there escape into the fields, if ever the Borello were surrounded. Jacopo and I would remain below. At the first sign of danger, we would give them a signal.
Pinella wanted at any cost to prepare a rollaway bed for me near the fire, which was going out. But I did not sleep much. Now and again Pluto, the Borello dog, began to bark. Then Jacopo and I went out prudently, with weapons in our hands. But there was no attack. It had begun to rain and at times the moon made a fleeting appearance between the clouds. The good dog, faithful to his ancestral instincts and unaware of the anxiety that he was causing us, greeted it every time by barking.
As soon as it was light and I thought the danger of a nighttime attack was over, I decided, leaving Jacopo still on guard, to make a rapid jaunt home, before the day’s work began again.
I found Ettore and Paolo still in bed. Paolo was very excited because he had heard the Clns of Genoa and Milan speak on the radio. Lucia Corti had spoken in Milan in the name of the women. So Milan and Genoa were free. Now it was Turin’s turn.
I returned immediately to the Borello, cheered up by the good news. A timid, pale sun ripped open the gray mantle of the sky, and the saplings and little leaves of the garden seemed to smile at me with a sense of unfailing promise.
The girls left quite early for their various tasks. Then began an unremitting coming and going of people, a succession of orders, messages, and news, and a whirlwind of needs, all urgent and all different, in comparison to which the rhythm that I was used to at home during the last few months became a downright adagio.4 Naturally I do not recall everything that was done and everything that was said; nor would I know how to distinguish precisely the various phases of the day. But I recall that the most worrisome and insistent theme was the request for aid on the part of the factories. As soon as the order was received, the workers had occupied them, relying on the arrival of the partisans. Instead, the partisans had not yet arrived. (There had been a counterorder, a disagreement with the Allies who wanted to arrive first themselves.) The workers had resisted, and were continuing to resist, but now the Germans had surrounded the factories with tanks. We had to help them.
At a certain point I saw good, serene Alma arrive; I would have never imagined she would be so dismissive of the danger. She came from the Lancia factory; our men were asking for a GL flag. I told her to go and get one at my house. A little while later I learned from someone else that the red flag with the flaming sword was waving at the top of the factory, defying the enemy’s tanks.
Then Giosuè, a partisan from the Chisone Valley, the one who played the organ with the tricolor ribbon in his long hair, arrived. Now he no longer had either the little ribbon or the long hair, but instead he brought me a Tommy gun that he immediately began to lubricate and assemble.
Then Ettore came too, bringing a radio that he thought could be useful to us. In fact we were longing for news, but how to find the time to stay and listen to it? The radio put in place, he left in search of a truck with which to go and recover the parts of a transmitter—which were hidden in various places—to make the radio function immediately in case the Germans had destroyed the equipment as they were leaving. (In fact they did destroy it, but thanks to the foresight of the engineers from E.I.A.R., the very evening of the liberation we could begin to broadcast again.)
Around 11:00 a.m., a rumor circulated that the Germans had left. A festive cry arose in the village. Flags appeared on the balconies and at the windows. Sergio Pettinati arrived, commander of a squad of the Gruppo mobile operativo, gallant and happy in his big camouflage jacket, his eyes sparkling in his handsome face, tanned by the sun.5 Then the partisans arrived, and someone came saying that the city squads had occupied the Municipio.
But quite quickly an ebb tide followed this flood of good news and consequent euphoria. No, the Germans had not left. On the contrary, they were stopping, arresting, and shooting. The Municipio had been recaptured by the Fascists. The entrance of the partisans into the city had suffered a setback. The flags disappeared from the windows, one after the other. A silence made of apprehension dominated the roads that had been jubilant before.
And there came Mino, defeated, with the news that Albertino, stopped at the checkpoint of Reaglie while he was carrying the order to descend to the formations in the hillside, had been shot immediately: Albertino, Giorgio Latis, who had escaped unharmed from the most dangerous and audacious undertakings, who repeatedly ridiculed the police, going about with his bleach blond hair and that violently blue jacket which, in my opinion, should have attracted the notice of even the most half-witted policeman. Albertino, so generous, so ready to do and to give. Albertino, who the last time I had been with him, returning from a meeting by tram, had spoken to me, telling me everything about his passion for painting and especially for Botticelli... .
But there was no time to stir up memories and cry. We had to continue his battle. There was one more to make come to life again with our passion, one more who was forcing us to keep our promises, all our promises.
Maria Daviso returned from a factory, which she had been able to penetrate notwithstanding the encirclement of the enemy. She was exultant and moved by the spirit of solidarity and confidence that she had felt among the workers. Carmelina, who had crossed the city a good three times to carry orders and news to the formations that were stopped at Moncalieri, announced that the disagreement had been resolved, and the partisan formations were arriving regularly by now, with an orderly and repetitive rhythm.
In the early afternoon, Vera arrived, elated and exhausted. She let go of her bicycle on the lawn and came in shouting: “Auntie, the war is over! Hitler has fallen!” I understood immediately that it had to be one of those rumors that spread at peak times from who knows where. (Didn’t they spread roughly the same rumor on 26 July 1943? And then even I had believed them.) Mario, who was writing, raised his head, irritated. “Who is this crazy girl? Send her away!” “She is my niece, and she is not crazy,” I answered, and I led the girl into the next room. “But it’s true, Auntie,” Vera continued to insist. “Everyone is saying it....“Where did you hear it?” I asked. “I heard it everywhere. I heard it from....” She interrupted herself. Suddenly, she realized the falsity and absurdity of the unfounded news. With a moan, she collapsed into a chair, disheartened. “Oh, Auntie!” The chair where she was seated broke, perhaps because it was old and worm-eaten. The banal accident should have made her laugh; instead, it made her cry. She threw her arms around my neck, sobbing loudly. I gauged from this outpouring of feelings how very tired and stressed she was. I let her cry a little, content to close the door so that they could not hear her in the next room. Then, thinking that the best way to calm her down was to have her do something practical, I sent her to bring the printed materials to various places.
People continued to arrive, and the most absurd, strange, and terrible pieces of news continued to follow one another.
Someone said that they had seen a wagon loaded with lifeless bodies pass by in the vicinity of Porta Nuova: dead or wounded? A woman with a big white flag on which a cross was outlined in blood was walking in front. The news, linked with other rumors according to which the Germans, before leaving, had massacred all the politici (political prisoners) locked up in jail, filled us with indescribable anguish. We thought about all our men who were still inside and, given some terrible precedents, the cruel barbarity of such a gesture was totally likely. Luckily a little while later one of the Ricci sisters arrived, accompanying two partisans who had just gotten out of prison, who did not know where to go, and whom she had run into seated on the steps of a house not too far away. (Her brother-in-law, Massimo Visalberghi, was at that very moment at the Carceri Nuove.)6 Then the news of the massacre was not true, even if the two men, who still appeared bewildered and disoriented, could not tell us anything important. They had let them go, and they were out. We gave them something to eat, and we made them comfortable, feeling ourselves comforted in turn.
Around evening Silvia arrived, with the armband of the Red Cross and the news that they were fighting in the vicinity of the Cittadella garden. It was the last zone of defense of the Fascists and the Germans who had their Commands there, the Guardia Nera (Black guard) in the Caserma della Cernaia (Cernaia barracks) and the Questura (Police headquarters). Similar news, the thought of the danger that Paolo and Ettore were in, and the impossibility of running to learn what happened would have filled me with unbearable anxiety at another time. But I was truly on that plane of acceptance where our affairs were not worth more than other people’s affairs. I understood that we did not have to think about what was happening at the Cittadella. There were too many things to prepare for the next day. If truly the next day we would be free, we needed to print a new issue of La Nuova Realtà immediately, we needed to prepare a flyer, a proclamation to women, for the Gruppi di difesa and for the women of GL, and we needed to think about a brief speech to deliver on the radio. Luckily Silvia, who was much more clever than I, was there.
Again, Pinella lit the fire around which we gathered. Everyone from the night before was there, plus some others. But no one wanted to go to sleep, and it did not occur to anyone to sing. For a long time we could hear insistent shooting, from various parts, far away. Then everything was silent. A good sign? A bad sign?
Carmelina and the Ricci girls, who had traveled kilometers and kilometers by bicycle, fell asleep with their heads on the back of their chairs. Pinella, small, attentive vestal that she was, kept the fire lit, and kept her ears on the alert, full of anxiety. Sometimes she smiled with hope, and sometimes she shook her head. Silvia began to write; in a few hours she had dashed off four pages of the newspaper. I was not so inspired. I drew up a leaflet as best I could, and then I attacked what might be a speech or manifesto. “Piedmontese women,” I began, and then I was not able to continue. I managed not to think about the present, but the past, invincible, pressed on my memory and on my heart. All the past, our entire battle, from 10 September, with those first Germans, impassive, at the corners of our streets, and then the first weapons, and the sabotage of the bridges, and the first fallen soldiers. Then the Germanasca with the roundup, and the tragic light in the sky at Massello. Then the Chisone Valley, and the narrow mountain pass of the Colle delle Finestre, all in bloom with rhododendrons. The fire in Meana, and the poor boy who was hanged. Then Beaulard and the cabin, and France, and the return trip, and the endless night on the glacier. “Piedmontese women,” I began, and again my mind went astray. I was counting the dead, and I was remembering their faces and their voices: Braccini, Sandro Delmastro, Paolo Diena, Franco Dusi, Duccio, Albertino....The crackle of wood on the fire roused me, and the incessant grating of Silvia’s indefatigable pen. “Piedmontese women....” Only toward morning did I make up my mind to conclude. “Today, all women who have grief in their hearts,” I said. “May this grief not have been in vain.” Something like that. At the moment I was not able to say anything else. I was as tired as if I had written an entire volume.
The dawn arose gray, dominated by a silence that could have been as much a breath of relief as a threatening and deadly lull.
As soon as it was light, I felt like I could make a trip to the house, in search of news. I did not meet a living soul until Corso Tassoni where, at the corner with Via Amedeo Peyron, two or three men who looked like workers had stopped. “Well?” I shouted to them, slowing down my bicycle. Such was the nature of sentiments and thoughts in those days that they understood the meaning of my question quite well, and although they did not know me and I did not know them, they answered with a cheerful gesture of their hands: “They went away!”
I began pedaling again at a good pace. Again I did not run into anyone until Piazza San Martino, where, almost unconsciously, by my old habit of always avoiding Via Cernaia with its military barracks whenever possible, I slipped into Via Juvara directly. As I was nearing the house, signs of the recent battle became evident: broken mirrors, scraped walls. With my heart in my throat, more from anxiety than from the ride, I finally flew onto Via Fabro. There was Ettore with his tricolor armband of the Cln. I threw my arms around his neck. “Paolo?” “Here he is,” he responded with a gesture. Indeed I saw him arrive, at the steering wheel of a topolino. There was Espedita, who embraced me, tearful and moved. There were our fellow lodgers, who came out on the street and shook my hand, rejoicing and congratulating each other. There was a sense of festive relief in everyone, even in those who were the least politically conscious, as after the disappearance of a long nightmare.
I went into the house with Ettore and Paolo, where I found an indescribable disorder. They had just returned home the day before—Paolo from the Gioventù d’Azione and Ettore from collecting parts for the transmitter—when, around 2:00 p.m., a company of partisans arrived, the 49th Garibaldi Brigade, who occupied our house and the neighboring houses, preparing to launch the attack against the Cernaia Barracks from there. Paolo joined them immediately, going to take the old Model ‘91 gun we found on 10 September out of the cellar. In the meantime, expecting that it would “get hot,” Ettore had advised the neighbors to go down into the cellar, into the shelter, where no one had gone down for some time, and where he replaced the light. The afternoon was spent in preparations and anticipation. The Garibaldini were well armed, with rifles, machine guns, panzerfaust, and even a bazooka, and they settled down in the house, taking steps to assemble and prepare the weapons, waiting for night to descend in order to attack.7 Ettore devoted himself to helping them, from fixing or finding a missing screw to bandaging the feet of a boy who was wounded there. Espedita and the other tenants of the house (naturally the most unpretentious) brought food and relief.
As soon as night fell, they heard the sound of motor vehicles and saw an armed column wind onto the main street, beyond the garden: the Germans were trying to go to the High Command on Corso Oporto.8 Immediately our men began to fire from the windows overlooking the garden, and hit several motor vehicles. The others responded. A violent exchange of shots followed, the traces of which could be seen on the façade of the house and on the pedestal of the monument to Ettore De Sonnaz, which had resisted nonetheless, undaunted, like during the bombardments.9 The battle dragged on, at intervals, for the entire night. At a certain point, hearing the shooting from Corso Palestra (it probably had to do with Fascists from the Cernaia Barracks), they thought that the enemy was about to surround the block, but luckily the alarm was unfounded.
Continuing to shoot, they struck a truck with a trailer full of munitions that caught fire, continuing to explode for a long time. At the first light of dawn, Paolo and another individual crossed the garden to learn of the losses inflicted on the enemy. They set an armored vehicle and the truck with the trailer on fire, immobilized another four trucks and four or five cars, and hit a topolino, which certainly, judging from what it contained, belonged to the Feld-Gendarmerie, and was still serviceable, despite a flat tire.10 Paolo changed the tire and, having loaded into the little car as many Garibaldini as were there, they went to the Cernaia barracks, which appeared empty and abandoned. Having left the group of partisans on guard, he returned to load up some others to take them to the Stipel.11
While Ettore and Paolo were telling the story, I felt a burning regret, almost of rancor: they were fighting, but I had remained immobilized and nearly inactive for the entire night at the Borello. Even so, looking at Paolo and Ettore safe and sound, I immediately reproached myself for this absurd gesture of rebellion. New tasks had imposed themselves, less romantic but just as important.
Meanwhile, I had to return to the Borello, get precise news, and learn what I had to do. I wanted to wash up and change (after two days and two nights without sleeping, I felt somewhat fanée (withered), but I was too tired to take the necessary initiative. I remained seated in the kitchen, in the midst of the empty weapons and the dirty pans and plates, without making up my mind to move. Seeing my state of collapse, Ettore remembered the existence of a handful of real coffee that he had providentially put aside, and he got ready to prepare it for me.
In the meantime, the imperturbable Anna arrived—at 9:00 a.m., not one minute before and not one minute after. “Let’s see,” I said, laughing to myself. “This time even she will have to say something!” In fact she did say something: “Good morning.” After which, tranquilly, like every day, she proceeded to change her shoes into comfortable slippers, slip into an apron, and tie a handkerchief in a knot on her head. Then, looking around without amazement, she said simply “A smia (It seems) that in this house sta neuit a sia staje (last night there was) a bit of movement.” It was her only comment. Calm and impassible, she began to dust the guns and gather and organize the household utensils.
Having had my coffee, I began to feel a little better. Then the doorbell began to ring and people began to arrive, not friends, companions in battle whom I would have welcomed with enthusiastic joy, but people whom I did not know very well, or whom I once knew. Having seen the winds change and perhaps having heard news of the responsibility that awaited me, they were hurrying to come to be remembered, to congratulate each other, and to commend themselves.
Therefore I decided to cut things short, abandoning them, and giving up tidying myself and changing. Ettore returned to E.I.A.R. to see what there was to do. Paolo, decked out in the iron collar of the Deutsche Polizei (German police) that he had found in the topolino, got on his bicycle and came to accompany me.
I will never forget that ride. The sky, gray and unpredictable during the past few days, had definitely cleared up. The April sun illuminated the surviving trees adorned with new buds on the avenues, the more or less ragged houses, and the streets and piazzas on which the people timidly began to move again. As I advanced toward the outskirts, the flags became denser. Men, women, and children called to each other festively while they exhibited them from house to house. Some had cut away the coat of arms of the House of Savoy, some had covered it with a piece of cloth or paper, and some had limited themselves to putting it upside down.12 The bells of the churches sounded in festivity. The passersby, even without knowing each other, exchanged news, greetings, cries of “long live Italy,” and joy. Sometimes they embraced each other.
At the Borello, an atmosphere of demobilization emanated instead. The insurrection finished, its function was finished as well. Almost all the girls had gone away. Mino was there with some others. Pinella, who advised me not to leave and to remain there because they would come to get me to take me to the Municipio, was there. Here I was again, nailed down there while I thought there were so many things to do. Above all, I was obsessed with worry about the politici who had been released from prison and who, not being from Turin, did not know where to go. It was necessary to requisition a hotel, prepare it for them, think of their comfort, and welcome them. I would have liked to track down the women of the Gruppi di difesa and organize the matter with them. In the meantime, I spoke with Pinella about it. I saw that she was tired, and I observed in her that subtle sense of nostalgic regret that I too was feeling, and that often follows the achievement of a goal and the realization of a dream: the melancholy that comes after a cueilleson du rêve (the realization of a dream). “How wonderful it was last night!” she told me suddenly, with a sigh. Yes it was wonderful: that harmony, that understanding, that being and working together, that forgetting oneself in all the others, that feeling part of a unified whole. Now instead, everyone has become single, isolated individuals again, each one with different leanings, responsibilities, and ambitions. It was sad, but it was reality, and we had to confront it with courage.
Soon someone arrived running to tell me that I had to go to the Municipio at once. I immediately got on my old bicycle. Pinella protested: “Do you think it is right that the vice mayor should arrive at the Municipio on such a bicycle? Is there no car to come to get you?” Notwithstanding her protests, I left just the same. While I was going through the gate, which was thrown wide open by now, our men and some passersby gave me a kind of ovation. I do not know whether it was directed at the authority that I was about to assume, or at the splendor of my toilette (dress).
At the height of Via Cibrario, I stopped, hearing myself summoned. It was the car that had gone to the Borello to get me and that Pinella had sent after me. I do not remember who was driving. Instead I remember very well the dark-haired Stefania, seated at the side of the driver, with a Tommy gun pointed outside the little window.13 I let my bicycle go without bothering about it anymore, and I got into the car. (The bike was so damaged and I had used it so much that I could afford very well to lose it. Instead—how ironical!—someone picked it up and brought it to me at home.)
At the entrance to Via Saccarelli—where at the time the city Cln had its headquarters in the Istituto per l’Infanzia (Children’s Institute)—we saw a row of cars in motion. It was the new city authority that was going to take its place. A car came and stopped near mine. They told me to get out and switch. A big hand held itself out to help me get in, while a voice was saying, “Are you Signora Gobetti? I am Roveda.” “Oh, finally!” I exclaimed with a feeling of joy, and looking him in the face, I understood that I had found a friend. “Let’s address each other with tu,” said Roveda, after having acknowledged me in turn.
We crossed Piazza Statuto and entered Via Garibaldi. A truck loaded with armed partisans opened the procession. Then came our cars, then other cars with armed men. They were still shooting from the windows and from the corners of the streets, but the people, heedless of the danger, flowed onto the street in the way of our passage. “Long live Italy! Long live the partisans! Long live the Cln!” They cried, and they threw flowers, and mothers raised their babies and held them toward us, so that they could see, so that they could remember. While we were stopped for an instant at the intersection with Corso Valdocco, a certain man, with the appearance of an old worker, went up to the car and recognized my companion. “Roveda!” he said, with a voice that I will never forget. It was evidently an old worker, who had fought and hoped with him, who had believed in him, and who, after 8 September, had cried for him, thinking he was lost. Now he saw him there in front of him, ready to take the destiny of his city into his hands. I saw tears stream down his face while, with a deferential gesture, he took off his hat and bowed. At that moment I understood what real authority was.
We were supposed to stop at the Municipio, but in Piazza di Città the shooting was so violent that we decided to go first to the Prefettura (prefecture). As soon as we got out of the car in Piazza Castello, someone fired from the roofs of the neighboring houses, and the partisans responded with a fury of fire that seemed excessive to me: guns, Tommy guns, and bazooka fired for more than a quarter of an hour, making an infernal din. “Throw yourselves on the ground! Take shelter behind the cars!” someone yelled. But we did not even think of it. On foot, smiling, we filled our lungs with the air of freedom. To us, the shots seemed like fireworks of joy. “They want to show that they have a lot of weapons, and to consume a little ammunition!” I said at a certain point, laughing. “Who believed in cecchini?” Indeed I did not believe in them, but I was wrong.14
In a moment of respite we got out at the Palazzo del governo (Government office building), where Passoni, the prefect, welcomed us, and where we joyously found Penati, Lucca, Signora Verretto, and Signora Savio, representatives of the Gruppi di difesa in the new Giunta (council), with whom I immediately made arrangements to organize the hotel where the ex-prisoners could be welcomed.15 We decided to choose the “Patria” in Via Cernaia, which had been occupied by the Germans until the day before, and we took the necessary measures so that the women of the Gruppi di difesa could work on it immediately.
In the piazza they continued to shoot. In a little room set apart, which opened onto the Giardino Reale (Royal gardens), the first meeting of the Giunta Popolare (People’s council) was held; we said but a few words of reciprocal greeting, postponing until the next day the discussion of more concrete problems.
It was already well into the afternoon when, across the Giardino Reale, we reached the Municipio, a few at a time. We climbed the stairs of the Palazzo del Comune (Municipal office building) amidst the applause of the clerks who were taking part in the municipal Cln, and the bailiffs. “Finally!” the imposing head bailiff, Bertone, said to us with tears in his eyes, while he led us into the room. “We have dreamed of this moment so much, when people worthy of the position they were occupying had their turn to serve.”
We chose the respective rooms where we would work. Then, having found a topolino in the courtyard with an available driver (the excellent Manzoli, who later was my faithful and affectionate working companion for almost two years), Signora Verretto and I left to see how the welcome to the ex-prisoners was going.16 At the “Patria” everything was in order. The women of the Gruppi di difesa, and above all Adda Corti, had performed miracles.17 The rooms were ready, the food provided, and there were even flowers. But where were the guests? How would they know to come, if they did not know about it? We would need the collaboration of the director of prisons, who would be able to give us the necessary information.
Therefore we left at the turn for the Nuove. But it was not easy to enter. The partisans who had occupied it did not want to hear about letting me in. In vain did I explain the reasons for my request and invoke my authority as vice mayor. “I do not believe it,” the big boy who was acting as sentinel said to me. “Even le fûmele (a woman) is now the vice mayor?” Suddenly I had a flash of genius. I still had my GL badge sewed on the inside of my jacket. I showed it to him, saying “I am a partisan commander. Go call your leader, and hurry!” This was an authority that he had learned to recognize and respect. He left after he stood at attention, and returned a short while later accompanied by...Pratis who, since the day before, together with Gallo, the attorney, a member of the Cln for prisons, was working to resolve the practical matters for the liberation of the politici, in this way avoiding releasing the common delinquents indiscriminately at the same time.18 It was easy to reach an agreement with him. He would affix a sign to the exit, and he would personally notify the ex-prisoners who did not reside in Turin. The initiative seemed first-rate to him.
Then we spent a moment at the Borello to deliver some newspapers. There were people whom I did not know, and the enchantment was definitely broken.
We returned to the Municipio. There I finally had a long meeting with Roveda. I told him about my concerns regarding the ex-prisoners and the need to take steps to receive them decently. We spoke about a number of things, and we decided on several points, finding each other fundamentally in agreement and putting down the basis for a cordial, productive collaboration that was to last, unclouded and without obstacles, for the entire time of our working together. “Well brava!” He told me suddenly. (He then repeated the same phrase later, several times.) “They did not even tell me you were a teacher!” Although I am not at all embarrassed to be a teacher, understanding what he meant by that judgment I was deeply flattered.
Suddenly the door opened, letting a woman in who, laughing and crying, threw her arms around Roveda’s neck. “Gioânin,” she cried. “Oh, Gioânin!” It was his wife, the faithful, courageous companion who had fought and suffered with him, who had been able to save him by having him escape from the prison in Verona, and who, after the beginning of the insurrection, had not seen him any more. Now she had found him again, safe and sound, and the “mayor.” Relief, joy, and pride transfigured her.
I left the spouses in the joy of finding each other, and decided to finally return home. But the front gate of the Municipio was barred, and the bailiffs ardently advised me not to leave. “They are shooting! There are cecchini!” they told me. I left just the same, shrugging my shoulders. Who believed in cecchini?
At the entrance to Via Garibaldi, which was completely deserted, a squad of partisans blocked my passage. “You cannot go through. They are shooting,” they said. I showed them my badge, the card of the Cln, and they let me go. I continued rapidly along the empty street, thinking that the cecchini were pure fantasy, when I heard a bullet whirr that proceeded to drive itself into wall a few centimeters over my head. So the cecchini did exist, even if their aim was not perfect. I continued along my way, internally blaming myself. Mine was not courage, but stupidity. Given the responsibilities that awaited me, I did not have the right to risk my life out of reckless bravado. I swore to myself that I would never do it again.
At home, after a short time, Paolo and Ettore also arrived. We ate something in a hurry. Then I decided to go find Mario Andreis. I wanted to tell him what I had done and what I planned to do, and to feel that I was somehow supported and guided in the not-easy task that awaited me. Ettore and Paolo decided to accompany me. I did not have my bicycle (they brought it to me later), so Ettore took me on the handlebar of his.
We crossed the city, which was utterly quiet and deserted. Livio, who was shaving, was also at Mario’s house. I realized right away that neither of them wanted to listen to me. They were tired and bewildered, each burdened with a thousand problems and a thousand worries. “Fine, fine,” Mario responded to everything I said. “You have done a very good job. Whatever you have to do is fine.” He was in a great hurry to send us away. “It is better that you do not go about late in the evening,” he said.
We returned home in silence. We went to sleep in the beds that the incomparable Anna had laundered and made up again. Regardless of how very tired I was, however, I was not able to sleep.
I thought about everything that had happened during that very long day, but above all I thought about tomorrow. The shots that I could still hear in the distance from time to time reminded me that, notwithstanding the festive exaltation of that day, the war was not over yet. I knew that large German forces were still not far from Turin, in Grugliasco in the Canavese.19 But it was not this that worried me profoundly. The bloody struggle—even if there could still be terrible incidents—was virtually over. The Reich, according to the prophetic inscription I read at the French Command in Plampinet, was truly en ruines. Soon the Allies would arrive. There would no longer be bombs, fires, roundups, arrests, killings, hangings, and massacres. This was a great thing.
Nor did the practical and material difficulties that I had to confront in order to reconstruct a disorganized and devastated country frighten me, because the most unexpected and unheard of solutions for each matter would be found in the boundless resources of our people.
Yet, confusedly, I sensed that another battle was beginning: longer, more difficult, and more extensive, albeit less bloody. Now it was no longer a question of fighting against arrogance, cruelty, and violence—easy to detect and to hate—but against interests that would try to rekindle themselves treacherously, against habits that would soon reaffirm themselves, against prejudices that did not want to die: all things that were much more vague, deceiving, and fleeting.
Moreover, it was a question of fighting among ourselves and within ourselves not only to destroy but to clarify, affirm, and create; not to abandon ourselves to the comfortable exaltation of ideals we had coveted for such a long time, not to be content with words and phrases, but to renew ourselves, keeping ourselves “alive.” In short, it was a question of not letting the flame of a unified and fraternal humanity that we saw born on 10 September, and that has guided and sustained us for twenty months, be extinguished in the dead air of a normality that has only apparently been regained.
I knew that—even if the marvelous unity that had united almost all people in those days died in the fervor of victory—we would be there in numbers to fight this difficult battle. Friends, companions of yesterday, would be those of tomorrow as well. But I also knew that the struggle would not be a single effort, it would not have its own unique, immutable face like before, but would be shattered into a thousand forms. Painstakingly, tormentedly, through diverse experiences, accomplishing different tasks, whether they be modest or important, everyone would have to pursue their own truth and their own life.
All of this frightened me. For a long time that night—which should have been one of relaxation and repose—I tormented myself, wondering if I would know how to be worthy of this future, rich in difficulties and promises, that I was preparing myself to face with trembling humility.
1 The revolutions of 1848, beginning on 8 January in Palermo, resulted in constitutions in all of the Italian states except for Lombardy-Venetia, including the famous Statuto of Piedmont.
2 Carmelina Piccolis was a painter and a partisan staffetta.
3 The Cmrp was the Commando militare regionale piemontese or Piedmontese Regional Military Command.
4 Adagio is a tempo marking for music that is to be played slowly.
5 Sergio Pettinati was a doctor and a partisan in the V Alpine GL Division. The Gruppo Mobile Operativo was a GL formation.
6 Aldo Visalberghi (Massimo ) was a professor and chief of staff of the Regional Piedmontese Command.
7 The panzerfaust was a handheld, single-shot German antitank weapon. The bazooka was an American antitank weapon, which the Germans had copied.
8 Corso Oporto is now Corso Matteotti.
9 Ettore De Sonnaz was one of Cavour’s generals during the 1849 War for Italian Independence. He was also minister of war under Gioberti.
10 Members of the Feld-Gendarmerie were drawn from the German civil police and had a distinctive uniform.
11 The Società Telefonica Italiana per il Piemonte e la Liguria (Stipel) was the telephone company for Turin.
12 The monarchy, the House of Savoy, had collaborated with the Fascists.
13 Bianca Aloisio (Stefania) was a city staffetta for the Action Party.
14 Cecchini was a name for Fascist snipers. According to Fofi, these last Republicans did not want to surrender because they would have much for which to atone in order to settle the score for their crimes. Diario partigiano (1972), 370 n. 1.
15 Alfredo Lucca was a pediatrician and representative of the Action Party on the Cln of Turin. Piera Verretto and Maria Savio (Renza) were representatives of the Gruppi di difesa on the Cln of Turin.
16 Luigi Manzoli, the driver for the Comune of Turin.
17 Adda Corti was an organizer of the Gruppi di difesa.
18 Vittorio Gallo, the lawyer and English vice consul in Turin who had been arrested and accused of being a spy, was the organizer of the Cln in the Carceri Nuove prison, and was the director of this prison after the Liberation.
19 On 29 April 1945, the Germans killed sixty-six citizens in this Piedmontese town.