History (8 page)

An so Ida began her teaching career, which was to end only after nearly twenty-fi years. Where Alfio could not help her, however, was in gaining an assignment to a convenient school. Ida found a position not in a school in her own San Lorenzo neighborhood, but quite far away, towards Garbatella (where, after some years, the building was demolished and the school transferred to the Tes taccio quarter ). All along the way, her heart would pound with fear, in the midst of the alien crowd on the tramways, crushing her and shoving her, in a struggle where she always gave in and remained behind. But the moment she entered the classroom, that special smell of dirty children, lice, and snot, promptly consoled her with its fratern helpless sweetness, sheltered from adult violence.

Before the beginning of this career of hers, one rainy autumn after noon, when Iduzza had been married only a few months, she was startled, up ori the top fl by a loud racket of singing, shouts, and gunfi in the neighborhood streets below. In fact, these were the days of the Fascist "revolution," and on that particular day ( 30 October 1922 ) the famous "march on Rome" was taking place. One of the black columns on the march, enteri the city by the San Lorenzo gate, had encountered open hostility in that Red, working-class district. And the Fascists had immediately set about taking revenge, beating up the inhabitants and kill ing some of the rebels on the spot. There were thirteen dead in San Lorenzo. But it was, actually, a chance episode in the course of that easy Roman march, with which Fascism marked its offi assumption of power.

At that time of day Iduzza was alone in the house, and like the other neighbor-women, she ran to shut the windows, terrifi at the thought of Alfi out on his rounds with his samples of paints, varnishes, and shoe polish. She supposed this was the outbreak of the famous universal revolu ti constantly announced by her father . . . Alfi however, came home punctually that evening, safe and sound, thank goodness, and cheerful as

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usual. And at supper, discussing the events with lduzza, he declared to her that the things Don Giuseppe, her father, always said were surely ri sacrosanct; but, in practice, now, what with strikes, incidents, and delays, getting on with the job properly had become a problem for businessmen and merchants like himself! From now on, Italy would have a strong government at last, to restore order and peace among the people.

TI1e boy-groom could say no more than this on the subject; and the girl-bride, seeing him serene and content, didn't bother to ask more. The dead, shot in the street that afternoon, had already been hastily buried in the nearby Verano cemetery.

Two or three years after that, with the abolition of freedom of the press, of opposition and the right to strike, the setting up of the
Speci Tri

the restoration of the death-penalty, etc., etc., Fascism had established a defi dictatorship.

In 1925, Ida became pregnant, and gave birth in May of '26. The birth, dangerous and diffi ult, tortured her fi for a whole day and a night, leaving her almost drained of blood. However, she brought forth a handsome little boy-child, dark-haired and feisty.

Alfi boasted of him, announcing to everyone : "I've got a boy who's something special, weighing nine pounds, with a healthy little face like a bright red apple!"

After that fi child, no more were born of his marriage. As had long been decided, they gave him the name of his patern grandfather Antonio; but from the beginning they usually called him Nino, or even more often, Ninnuzzu and Ninnarieddu. Every summer, Ida would go back to Cosenza for a little while with the baby, to whom the grandfather would sing the lullabies familiar to her, and especially that "tomorrow we're going to Reggio," with the variation:

" . . . we'll buy some little shoes

To dance on the feast of Saint Ninnuzzu."

The summer visits of Iduzza and Ninnarieddu gave Giuseppe Ramundo back his puppylike gaiety, which had seemed etern in him, but which, instead, had become more and more subdued these last years. His good nature enabled him to resign himself to lduzza's absence, which at heart, especially in the beginning, he had felt as a theft. But this repressed suff of his was exacerbated by the advent of the Fascist "revolution," which had aged him worse than an illness. To see that gri parody tri umph in the place of the other REVOLUTION he had dreamed of (and,

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at the end, it had seemed imminent) for him was like chewing every day a disgusting gruel, which turn his stomach. The occupied lands, which still resisted in 1922, had been taken away from the peasants with defi violence, and given back to the contented landown And in the squads recl the proprietors' ri there were (and this was the worst of it) many boys, deprived and homeless as the others, brutalized by propaganda or money, led to assault their poor equals. For Giuseppe it was like acting out a play, in a dream. The people he found most odious in the city (who, in recent years, had kept their heads down a bit, out of fear) now strode around provocatively, sticking out their bellies, sovereigns restored to power, treated deferen tially by everybody, among the walls papered with their manifestos .
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At school, at home, and wi his local acquaintances, Professor Ra mundo still imposed an artifi conformity on himself, partly so as not to increase Nora's anxieties and worsen her declining health. However, to make up for it, he had taken to spending much of his time in a secluded little place where he could give some vent to his ideas. It was a tavern of the lowest order, with three or four tables and a barrel of new wine. The owner, an old acquaintance of Giuseppe's, was an anarchist. And he and Giuseppe shared youthful memories.

I have been unable to discover the exact location of that tavern. However, somebody once told me that to reach it you had to take a suburban tram, if not the funicular up the side of the mountain. And I have always imagined that in the place's dark, cool interior, the smell of new wine mingled with the country smells of lime and wood, and perhaps also with the tang of the sea, beyond the coastal range. Unfortunately, I know that area only on the map, and perhaps grandfather Ramundo's tavern now no longer exists. Its few customers, from what I've heard, were farm laborers, migrant shepherds, and an occasional fi from the coast. Th conversed in their ancient dialects, with their Greek and Arab sounds. And in pri with these drinking friends whom he called, fi with emotion,
my disenfranchised companions
or
my brothers,
Giuseppe would regain his boisterous gaiety and would vaunt his youthful ideals, all the more exciting now, however, since they really were dangerous secrets. Finally he could unburden himself, declaiming some verses he considered peerless, which he had never been able to teach the children in school :

". . . In radiant glory we may fall, The future's path to clear!

Our blood we'll shed at mankind's ca For Anarchy so C. .
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". . . Outcast and spurned by all the world, Like slaves made but to serve,

Our hea erect, our fl unfurled, We'll gain what we deserv !"

But the climax of those meetings came when, after making sure that no one outside could hear them, the men gathered there would sing in a low chorus :

"Our Revolution's on its way, Our black fl will wi the day For An-ar-chyll"

They were, to tell the truth, poor Sunday anarchists, and this was the beginning and end of their subversive acti However, some reports fi reached Cosenza One day the tavern-keeper was sent off to en forced residence elsewhere; the tavern had to close down, and Giuseppe, wi any specifi explanation, indeed with some pretense of respect, was pensioned off at the age of fi

At home, with his wife, he pretended to give credence to this show of res deceiving himself with his own reasoning, as children deceive themselves with fairy tales. Nor, obviously, did he ever speak of his secret tavern or of the fate of his friend its proprietor, which tormented him constantly, especially since he felt responsible, at least in part. And since he really had no other confi but Nora, he could speak of these things with no one.

In his personal misfortune, his worst regret was not the harm he had suffered, or even his forced inactivity ( for him, teaching had been a great pleasure). Those disasters, and maybe even the threat of confi or pri came to him from the Fascists, his natural enemies. But it was the thought that among the friends of his little table, whom he called brothers, a spy, a traitor had been concealed : this suspicion, more than anything else, ca him into melancholy. For some hours he could fi distraction by ma wooden toys to give to his grandson Ninnuzzu when he came in the summer. Moreover, mostly to console Nora, he had bought a radio, so in the evening they could listen together to operas, which they both had loved since the days when they used to go and see the traveling company. But the moment they heard the voice of the news broadcast, which made him almost rave, he would force her, even rudely, to turn off the set.

For her part, as her nerv gave way completely, Nora grew more cross and quarrelsome, even persecuti In some moments of exasperation, she

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actually shouted at him that they had dismissed him from his position for professional incompetence! But in reply to this slander he merely teased her (to make her smile again ), without attaching much importance to it.

Often, in his pity at seeing her so worn and saddened, he would suggest they go together to visit his relatives, down in Aspromonte. And he would announce this plan as a fantastic journey, in the tone of a ri husband promising his wife a splendid cruise. But, in reality, he was too enfeebled, and no longer had the physical strength to set out. Lately he had taken on a purplish color and an unhealthy, obese heaviness.

He never went to taverns now, and even at home he avoided drinking excessively, out of consideration for Nora; but in some private lair he still had to slake his thirst for alcohol, which had become sick. Every day, some Cosenza citizen would come upon him in the streets, limping along in his old cloak, always by himself, with drunken eyes, staggering now and then and leaning against the wall. He was killed by cirrhosis of the liver, in 1936.

Not long afterwards, in Rome, the still-young Alfi followed his elderly friend in the destiny of death. He had set out for Ethiopia-re cently subjugated by Italy-with some business plans so gradiose that he expected to distribute his merchandise throughout the whole Empire. But three weeks later he was back in Rome, unrecognizably thin, with a con stant, piercing nausea that kept him from eating and gave him a fever. At fi thought it was some African disease, but instead the examina tions it was cancer, which had perhaps been developing inside him for a long time without his knowledge, only to attack him then suddenly with precipitous virulence, as it sometimes does in young and sturdy bodies.

He was not told of his death-sentence : they led him to believe he had been operated on for an ulcer, and was on the road to recovery In reality, they had cut him open in an attempt to operate, but had promptly sewn him up again, because there was nothing to be done. At the end, he had become a skeleton; and when he got up from his hospital bed briefl he looked so tall and thin that he seemed much younger, an adolescent.

Once Ida found him sobbing and shouting: "No! Nooo! I don't want to die!" with an enormous violence, incredible in his weak condition. Ap parently, a nun, to prepare him for a holy death, had hinted at the truth. But his desire to live was so great that it was easy to deceive him once more with reassuring lies.

Another time (it was towards the end; in fact, he was already being given oxygen through a rubber tube), while he lay in a daze under the eff of the drugs, Ida heard him saying, as if speaking to himself: