Victims and Executioners E-Book

Simone Malacrida

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"Victims and Executioners" sketches the tale of two generations that witnessed the inexorable change of Italy and the World.
Starting from the end of World War II and the Resistance movement, the Borgonovo family participates in the post-war reconstruction, the economic boom, and the turbulent and wonderful events of the 1960s, until their conclusion in the following decade, increasingly sharpening the clash between the different generations and the different social parties.
An unspeakable secret will mark the development of their affairs, going on to profoundly alter their existences.
It will be up to the next generation to take provisional stock, having brought to the surface a part of the past truths.

Leseprobe

Simone Malacrida

Victims and Executioners

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Victims and Executioners”

ANALYTICAL INDEX

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VIII

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XXI

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SIMONE MALACRIDA

SIMONE MALACRIDA

“ Victims and Executioners”

“ Victims and Executioners”

Simone Malacrida (1977)

Engineer and writer, has worked on research, finance, energy policy and industrial plants.

ANALYTICAL INDEX

ANALYTICAL INDEX

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

In the book there are very specific historical references to facts, events and people. These events and characters really happened and existed.

On the other hand, the main protagonists are the result of the author's pure imagination and do not correspond to real individuals, just as their actions did not actually happen. It goes without saying that, for these characters, any reference to people or things is purely coincidental.

"Victims and Executioners" sketches the tale of two generations that witnessed the inexorable change of Italy and the World.

Starting from the end of World War II and the Resistance movement, the Borgonovo family participates in the post-war reconstruction, the economic boom, and the turbulent and wonderful events of the 1960s, until their conclusion in the following decade, increasingly sharpening the clash between the different generations and the different social parties.

An unspeakable secret will mark the development of their affairs, going on to profoundly alter their existences.

It will be up to the next generation to take provisional stock, having brought to the surface a part of the past truths.

" The waste of life is found in the love that has not been able to give,

in the power that has not known how to use,

in the selfish prudence that prevented us from taking risks

and which, by avoiding a displeasure, made us miss happiness.

––––––––

Oscar Wilde

I

I

Milan, July 1948

––––––––

The open air, so heavy and hot as to give the impression of setting fire to the lungs more than the cigarette he had just lit, brought no benefit to Giulio.

He had just left a Milan branch of the Communist Party and was on his way home, an apartment located on Corso Buenos Aires, just above the shop owned by his wife's family.

He had never gotten used to the summer heat of Milan.

Since he was a child, he had been accustomed to that breeze that blows constantly on the Lario, the great lake of his childhood.

Nestled between the end of the eastern arm of that lake and the small bumps that make up the border between Italy and Switzerland, Como, his hometown, was certainly more livable, not only in summer and not only for the climate.

The lake provided a sort of buffer against the seasonal changes.

In summer it wasn't so hot and in winter you could enjoy the days with a certain warmth.

He clearly remembered his adolescence, spent with friends hanging around on a bicycle, shuttling between the different beaches near Como.

In some points, you could dive without any problem, in others you could fish, in still others you could perform acrobatic dives.

The inhabitants of the area, the laghée , had more or less learned to swim as self-taught people by exploiting that body of water.

The Borgonovo family resided in a suburban area of Como, the one intended for workers' homes.

Giulio's mother had worked for years in the textile industry, which flourished around the city.

An embroiderer and seamstress, her skills were recognized locally and she had made a name for herself.

His father, a mechanical worker in charge of bolts and nuts, was one of those men of other times, silent and withdrawn like the elderly who had seen the unification of Italy and who, during the Great War, sat in bars or at crossroads admiring the landscape and scrutinizing the people.

That world had completely ended when Giulio, a worker in the same company as his father, had been transferred to Milan for business strategy issues.

Thirteen years had now passed since, in 1935, he had moved to the urban area in Gorla, a very peripheral fraction of Milan, in the middle of wheat fields and orchards, squeezed between the industrial district of Sesto San Giovanni and the big city.

In less than a year, he had met Maria Elena Piatti, his future wife.

Only in Milan could such a thing have happened, given the enormous difference in social class and wealth.

Maria Elena was part of that group of the Milanese middle class, the one that had always frowned upon both revolutionary movements and too many new things coming from foreign countries.

Maria Elena's father was a well-known textile merchant and knew almost obsessively the properties of each of them.

Despite the heat, Giulio made that trip from the Party section all the way home.

He was one of the section's most frequent visitors, even after the defeat of the Popular Front in the spring of 1948.

The electoral campaign had been truly heated.

After the end of the war and the victory of the Republic, it was the turn of the Constituent Assembly, in which the Communists had played a leading role.

On January 1, 1948, the new Constitution came into force which definitively sanctioned the unity of Italy, the Republic as a form of representation and the centrality of Parliament, the legislative body that Fascism had done so much to destroy.

A copy of the Constitution had been given to every comrade in the section and Giulio had dutifully taken it home, reading a series of articles every day.

He had formed the idea of something grandiose, a document in which the fundamental principles of the new society were enshrined.

The elections that spring would mark the history of Italy, for better or for worse.

The great mass forces, those that had been most capable of attracting the votes of the social classes, were essentially two.

The Christian Democrats led by Alcide De Gasperi and the Communist Party, under the direction of Palmiro Togliatti.

The latter's ingenious move was the alliance with the Socialist Party, overcoming the atavistic division that arose in 1921 with the division of Livorno and, much earlier, with interventionism in the First World War.

There had never been so much fervor in the various sections of the Party.

Rallies, posters, pounding electoral campaign.

There had been no settlement attempted.

The future of the country depended on it.

The disappointment for the defeat was enormous.

Many comrades did not resign themselves to the outcome of the polls:

“It's not possible, the Christian Democrats will end up delivering us into the hands of America” they said, shifting the concept of adversary from the political to the social field.

The partisan formations, of which Giulio had been an active member, had always wanted to claim their autonomy in the war of liberation.

Milan, Turin and Genoa had been taken by the partisans before the arrival of the Allies.

“But in Rome, Naples and Florence it didn't happen like this. We can't tear the country apart...” someone else had pointed out.

Absorbed in those considerations about the recent and remote past, Giulio, totally drenched in sweat, crossed the threshold of the building on Corso Buenos Aires.

On the first floor was the apartment where he lived with his wife and his four-year-old son Edoardo.

Until that moment, the greatest regret in Giulio's life had been that of not having been able to attend the birth of his wife.

During August 1944, when Maria Elena had given birth to the baby in her in-laws' house in Como, Giulio was a prisoner of the Nazis.

He was not present, not even on Edoardo's first birthday.

That initial lack marked him very deeply.

As if to make amends for some fault, he had decided to spend much more time with his son than was customary in families.

Since the end of the war, Giulio had never resumed his work as a worker and had pledged to lend a hand in his wife's shop.

“I always remain a proletarian, a worker and a comrade...” he was keen to clarify.

"How did it go today?"

Maria Elena recognized from a distance the cadenced sound of Giulio's footsteps as he climbed the stairs.

The man sighed as soon as he closed the front door.

“How do you think it went? The usual. The press is all lined up against us and against Togliatti.

There is a targeted campaign underway. All because of those cursed elections we lost...”

His wife paid no more attention to the political implications of the events.

"Come on, there's some cold rice with some vegetables..."

The postwar period had not been too benevolent in terms of prosperity.

It was certainly better than in the times of fascism and the war, but there weren't many people willing to buy fabrics, so that the shop's business languished.

Edoardo, hurrying to the kitchen for lunchtime, ran to Giulio's.

“Daddy daddy , where have you been?”

The little one denoted a strong curiosity for the surrounding world.

It was as if he was inclined to live among people and always visit new spaces.

When his parents took him for a walk around Milan, if Edoardo realized that the place was already known to him, he used to express his disappointment:

“We've been here before...”

Giulio took the child in his arms and gave him a piece of bread.

Edoardo devoured it voraciously and sat down in his place.

The man accompanied the lunch with a couple of glasses of white wine, specially kept cool in the cellar.

“This afternoon we need to take stock...” Maria Elena always tried to involve her husband in the business of the shop.

Her family was not very happy with that marriage.

Her parents, from the top of their wealthy life, had thought of something better for their only daughter.

There were several scions of the Milanese bourgeoisie, but Maria Elena had discarded them all.

Up to the age of nineteen, the girl had remained very reserved, alternating classical studies with family presence.

She was not attracted to the various Fascist bureaucrats who frequented her father's shop and who, quite blatantly, wooed her.

Still less did he consider those high-profile bourgeois who only filled their mouths with stupidities and nonsense.

Some high school professors had introduced her to the intellectual circles of men of letters and artists, but even that world had left her completely indifferent.

“In short, my daughter, don't you want to look for love?” her mother asked annoyed.

It was exactly what Maria Elena had in mind.

At the age of twenty, during an outing with her friends, most of whom were engaged and about to get married, she noticed a group of young workers, probably in town for a Sunday outing.

Horrified by their ways, her friends turned away.

“These brutes, maybe some are even revolutionary.”

Maria Elena had never paid attention to the affected ways of a certain society.

In his opinion, the worst souls and the lowest instincts of humanity were hidden behind those gallantries.

Among that group of workers, certainly from Milan or from the surrounding area given the constant use of the dialect, he noticed one in particular.

The thick hair adorned the head of the young man who, with his collar turned up to protect himself from the cold, was lighting a cigarette.

His eyes were so dark that he could not tell if the pupil was present.

He had powerful arms and a slender physique.

In those few seconds in which she stared at him, Maria Elena realized that the boy had met her gaze and nodded to her, as if to say he was struck by her presence.

With some excuse, she broke away from the group of her friends.

“Wait for me a minute, I'm going to see that shop.”

She crossed the street and stood in front of a showcase of musical instruments.

She hoped that young man would come forward, but she had to wait longer than expected.

“Are you interested in any particular instrument?”

“No, I was just watching.”

Up close, she could have seen it better.

He was just a nice boy.

Before returning to her friends, the young man asked her name and how he was going to find her.

From that moment they began to see each other more and more frequently, until, having overcome the initial hesitations, Maria Elena decided to introduce him to the family.

Her parents' reaction was dismay and stormy months followed.

Gradually, Maria Elena convinced her mother of the goodness of her choice.

“Your father will never agree to marry that...”

"Proletarian? Worker?" she ended the sentence with the word her mother hadn't been able to pronounce.

It was a hard work of attrition, but in the end Maria Elena's parents gave in to their daughter's convictions and Giulio was able to boast the title of boyfriend.

They would have married in 1940 if not for the war.

That event made everyone wait for better times.

“Okay, Maria. I'm going through the paperwork with you this afternoon. I will go to the warehouse and I will take everything present, I will bring it to the counter for you so that you can register everything.”

Little Edoardo, raising his head from his plate, protested:

"And I? What I do?"

His desire to make himself useful was constant.

"You Edo, will you give dad a hand in the warehouse..."

The boy smiled as if he had been given the most precious gift in the world.

Maria Elena used to keep the radio on in the shop.

So he could hear the radio news and listen to some music to distract his mind.

“I wonder if today they are talking about Bartali...”

In the all-Italian division between the cycling aces Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi, Maria Elena sided with the first, while Giulio for the second.

Her husband did not like Gino Bartali's stance for the 1948 elections.

A fervent Catholic, he had sided with the Christian Democrats.

For the same reason, Maria Elena saw in him a great champion.

As in many post-war families, the split between the center and the left could be reflected in the different positions of the spouses.

The Christian Democrats had won so many votes among women.

“They are more than the Church and there are few female workers...” this is how Giulio commented in the Party section, commenting on the negative outcome of the elections.

Getting up from the table, he reproached his wife:

“That is old now. What do you want me to do? Bobet has an unbridgeable advantage...”

Soon after he added:

“Tomorrow is July 14, the French national holiday. Imagine if they let such an opportunity slip away.”

The afternoon passed quietly.

Around that shop, the Borgonovo family tried to rebuild a unity of purpose and a future of prosperity for Edoardo.

It was a personal dream of a second chance, of a revival after the dark years of dictatorship and war.

Hard work was reserved for Giulio, while customer relations for his wife.

However, the latter had understood how a change in the management of the shop was needed.

The sale of fabrics no longer gave so many economic certainties.

"Why don't you bring your mother here?"

It was an unusual request for a daughter-in-law, but Maria Elena was aware of her mother-in-law's enormous talents.

She had come to know Anna Molteni during her period of residence in Como, from 1943 until the end of the war.

Now that she had stopped working in the textile company, she could teach Maria Elena the secrets of sewing and tailoring.

In fact, the woman had in mind to transform the family shop, opening it to the work of embroidery and finishing of the garments.

From this point of view, Maria Elena's foresight was much greater than her husband's vision.

“You know how my mother is. Don't take it off the lake to come here to breathe this heavy air..."

In reality, Anna remained in Como mainly to assist her husband who was not in good health.

After the death of his youngest son on the Russian front, Giulio's father had no longer had any incentive to live and had literally let himself go.

Not even the end of the war and the advent of the Republic had been able to arouse the spirit of that elderly worker.

The war had left behind a trail of continuous death and infinite pain.

Keeping those thoughts to himself, Giulio had convinced himself that, once his father died, his mother would move to Milan without any problems.

Maria Elena's parents, on the other hand, continued to live in their apartment in Corso Venezia, in one of those stately buildings of good Milan.

They had maintained a certain royalty in their behavior and didn't let their daughter see them too much, despite the birth of their only grandchild.

Relations between them and Giulio had remained suspicious and sanctioned by a formal and physical detachment.

“Tomorrow morning remember to stop by Giovanni to pick up the latest catalogues.

We must already think about the autumn and winter season...”

In moments of family quiet, both spouses took care of little Edoardo.

His mother was the main guardian of his upbringing.

She was more cultured than her husband and, surely, she would have played the best role in stimulating the child towards knowledge.

Talking to Giulio, she had established a precise school curriculum.

Edoardo should certainly have obtained a diploma, preferably in classical studies.

As for university education, it was all deferred to the inclinations and wills of that little one, when he would grow up and demonstrate his aptitudes.

On the other hand, Giulio had resolved to involve his son in all manual activities.

He would have taught him to work wood and iron, to fix every type of mechanism and to assist in the work in the fields.

At least once every two months, they went to Como using the bus.

The view of the countryside awakened in Edoardo his natural playfulness.

With his paternal grandparents he had the opportunity to go to the farmhouses, located immediately outside the city on Lake Como, and have direct contact with the cattle breeders.

Cows, hens, geese, pigs were very common animals and Edoardo stayed whole afternoons to admire them.

Furthermore, there was no shortage of running through the wheat fields and looking for fruit.

Giulio had done his utmost to make him savor the different fragrances of nature directly from the trees.

"A joy that the children of Milan hardly have..." he had whispered to his wife.

Punctual as only workers accustomed to clocking in for the work shift know how to be, Giulio went to the studio of Giovanni Beretta, the main sales agent in Milan in terms of fabrics.

It was he who guaranteed the sale to individual shopkeepers and the novelties on the market.

Although it was morning, the heat was already oppressive.

“ Hey, Giovanni so, what are we doing? ”

"Let's go drink a grey-green..."

Neither of them minded a drink from time to time.

They talked about business in general.

"Your wife has a big head... listen to her", suggested Giovanni.

Giulio took the catalogs and went to the Party section.

It was now a habit for him to pass by that place, immediately after running his morning errands.

The section consisted of only three small rooms, located on the ground floor of a building in Viale Monza, near Piazzale Loreto.

Giulio moved around Milan mostly by bicycle, except for some days when he moved on foot.

Much more rarely he used public transport, such as the tram or the bus.

There was no mention of a private car, the costs were still too high for his family.

At most, he could have bought a small-engine motorcycle, a fifty for example, but he wasn't very convinced of that.

If he ever bought anything motorized, it would be a Gilera.

That brand had always seemed to him the best among the Italian ones.

Usually, the section was manned by two, maximum three people, while that morning Giulio found around ten.

“More are coming...” someone told him.

"What happened?" Giulio asked in astonishment.

“Don't you know?”, and they looked at him in amazement.

“Half an hour ago they shot in Togliatti. The news is spreading like wildfire. Someone is already announcing the general mobilization.”

Each person who flocked to the section brought some news.

“The unions will call a general strike, you can bet on it.”

There was no further news regarding the Secretary's health.

"But is he dead? Who shot him? How many were there? Where did they hit him?”

Few really knew anything.

Giulio took his bicycle and ran towards the house at full speed.

Seeing what had happened, he had to warn his wife.

It was no more than a mile away, but the heat of the moment combined with the heat meant that he arrived home soaked in perspiration.

He knew that his wife had a habit of keeping the radio on in the shop and assumed he knew more details.

As soon as he crossed the threshold of the house, Maria Elena ran to him:

"They shot..."

Giulio nodded:

“I know, that's why I came here in a rush. I eat something on the fly and then return to the section. They won't get away with it, these fascists."

Maria Elena ran into the kitchen.

"Cursed. The press campaign was successful. They aimed to kill him, but they don't know our power."

His wife feared the worst.

She had always been aware that her husband had lacked the joy of deliverance.

Having been arrested by the Nazis had prevented him from participating in the last stages of the partisan struggle and the immense satisfaction of seeing Milan revolted and covered with red flags.

He was afraid that, now, Giulio wanted to take his revenge against the course of events.

"What will you do?"

“I don't know, but they won't expect us to stand like this without reacting.

You know how much we contested Scelba's designation as Minister of the Interior. Due to his past, he will give orders to the Police to repress any possible demonstrations.”

He said goodbye to little Edoardo and, after having swallowed a salami sandwich, an apple and a pear, he set off again towards the section.

Only two and a half hours had passed since the attack, but already the ferment was high.

“The comrades from Genoa are in the square. They are doing the same in Naples, Livorno and Taranto.

They are getting organized in Rome.

What do we do?”

New dispatches were constantly arriving.

“He was a fascist! Two shots, one to the back of the head and one to the back."

“The Secretary is not dead, but he is hospitalized. They're operating on it."

Although they were all Communists, someone prayed that, up there, someone would have an eye for Togliatti.

The fascists, theirs again, but this time the government was in the hands of the Christian Democrats, it would not have been possible to witness another unpunished crime like Matteotti's.

“The workers are on our side. The general strike has been called.”

Someone, coming from the suburban districts of Bicocca and Ghisolfa, added:

“The trains are already stopped. Public telephones are out of order.”

The section chief glimpsed something unclear.

“This thing stinks to me, they want to isolate us. Scelba will have ordered the prefects to repress any demonstrations.

We must take to the streets peacefully. At the Duomo, with the red flags!”

Other comrades on bicycles shuttled between the different sections.

Almost all of them decided to gather a small group of protests in Piazza Duomo.

“The police will be deployed or they will be deployed shortly.”

“But they can't beat defenseless people. Workers and proletarians...” someone replied, but others didn't think that way.

The memories of the Portella della Ginestra massacre were too vivid.

“What did the police and the state do there? Did he defend the workers, the communist comrades or that bandit, that mafioso by the name of Salvatore Giuliano?

Don't put too much trust in the institutions,” the section chief reminded.

The majority of them had served in the ranks of the partisans, some had not accepted the outcome of the spring elections, speaking openly of fraud.

“If they charge us and the dead run away, we will be ready with weapons.”

The incandescent souls had brought back something that had never died down during those three years.

The desire to rebuild a new Italy had always clashed with another tendency, that of settling accounts with the past.

There were too many change-makers, too many who got on the bandwagon only at the last moment.

Thousands of petty officials who, having discarded the black shirt and the photo of the Duce, had re-proposed themselves the following day as champions of democracy and parliamentarianism.

Faced with those vulgar figures, the post-war state had not investigated thoroughly.

There hadn't been widespread trials, as had happened in Germany with the Nazis, against the crimes of the fascists and republicans.

Yet there had been heinous massacres, but those crimes had remained unpunished.

The few culprits investigated had been sentenced to ridiculous sentences, the majority of which were amnestied.

To those who had fought against that regime for years, to those who had lost loved ones, all this had never seemed right or respectful.

The attack on Togliatti would have been the reason to settle those scores.

“A general uprising of all Italian proletarians against this fascist state masquerading as democracy. Against the occupation of the Americans and against the usual suspects who have recycled themselves in the ranks of the Christian Democrats!”

In Piazza Duomo there were more people than expected.

“Fiat fellow workers have kidnapped CEO Valletta.”

It was an all-out battle.

A fundamental game was being played and you had to be in the front row.

The police, in riot gear, charged first, without any kind of provocation.

“They got the order from Scelba. Disperse the demonstration.”

Giulio, together with others, put up a fierce resistance.

Armed with only a few stones, they began hurling them at the officers.

A companion, exactly in front of him, fell under the blows of a truncheon and the next one nearly struck Giulio himself in the face.

He hurried away, going to pick up the bicycle he had left beyond the Galleria, towards via Manzoni.

The news that came from other cities was not comforting.

“Fourteen dead and an unspecified number injured and arrested.”

They were civil war numbers.

Italy was on fire during that very hot day.

July 14 would no longer be just the symbolic date of the French Revolution, but would remind everyone of the cowardly attack of a fascist student, a fanatic who had plunged the country back into a social clash of unheard-of violence.

“We have machine guns, we have hidden them in the countryside, from fellow partisans, waiting for events like this.

Tomorrow we can put Milan on fire and give a general assault on the Police."

Someone, in the section, had hypothesized this strategy.

They were all certain that these were not hypotheses that were far-fetched.

Those weapons really existed, everyone knew about them.

At the time of the disarmament of the partisan brigades, few had trusted the Allies and the King.

The monarchy had been directly responsible for the rise to power of fascism.

If in 1924, the King had given military powers to the Facta government , the march on Rome would have been repressed.

That puppet, who had even called himself Emperor, had supported the Duce to the last, approving the racial laws and every other shame that had fallen on the country.

He had been in agreement with the abolition of parties and trade unions.

Only in the end, with a total about-face, had he dumped the Duce and fled into the arms of the Allies, leaving the country in the throes of civil war.

After the republicans, the greatest responsibilities fell on the royal family and it was for this reason that not all the weapons were returned.

There would have been a first partisan uprising if the referendum had sanctioned the victory of the monarchy, but fortunately the common sense of Northern Italy had prevailed.

But an attack on Togliatti was an outrage to millions of workers and proletarians.

Giulio returned home only late in the evening.

“My God, where have you been? I heard that news and I was scared.

Aren't you going to get into trouble right now?”

Maria Elena, more apprehensive than usual, had literally assaulted him with kindness in the living room of the house.

“Let me rinse, is there clean water?”

“Yes, in the tub.”

Only then did he realize that he was hungry.

In the excitement of the day, he had totally forgotten to fill his stomach.

"There's still some bread with some tomatoes and a piece of cheese."

That would have been fine.

“Tomorrow, don't leave the house and don't open the shop. Keep the shutter down”, were Giulio's instructions.

"What will happen? Will there still be fights?”

The husband nodded and pointed to the weapons.

“No, you can't. You have to be stronger."

Maria Elena had joined her hands in prayer, but her husband immediately retorted:

“I know it's crazy, but they almost killed Togliatti.”

His wife, lying down on the bed, begged him:

“That's not what your Secretary would like. You must convince others to avoid all bloodshed and needless violence.”

Giulio mumbled something without providing a definitive answer.

The night would bring advice, or at least that was what he believed.

Gone were the days when the fascists or the Germans would stealthily break into homes to find partisans and arrest them.

Now, everyone could sleep peacefully as the Liberation and the Republic had brought back a minimum rule of law.

The following day was truly spooky.

Milan was pervaded by a strange silence, unreal and sinister.

The well-known industriousness of the city had stopped and this did not bode well.

The oppressive heat and emptiness heralded social storms.

At Borgonovo home, not much was known about the latest news on Togliatti.

Was the operation successful?

How had the previous day gone in the other cities?

Giulio left early and went to the newsstand:

“Unity,” he asked.

The newspaper would be sold out in a short time.

Before going to the section, read the main articles.

He wasn't very educated and was quite difficult to read, and he didn't understand many technical terms.

Maria Elena intervened to explain them to him.

He had always appreciated this gift of his wife who, from the height of her culture, had never placed herself on a pedestal.

It was one of the traits that fascinated him most about that woman.

“My schoolteacher”, he used to call her when they were engaged.

He got a rough idea about the general situation.

Togliatti was not in danger of life. The third blow, the one that would have been fatal, had only grazed him.

The operation had gone well and conditions would improve.

There were no doubts about the fascist origin of the attack and this had been the spring that had unleashed the reaction of the people.

“What are you going to say in section?” the woman asked, as her husband was getting ready to leave.

“I will say to stay calm while awaiting official directives from the Party. We are always in time to unleash a civil war...”

Maria Elena smiled forcibly.

After returning from captivity, Giulio had never been the same.

Time had healed many wounds and the attention given to little Edoardo had helped him in that slow recovery to normality, but Giulio's joyful and hopeful character had disappeared.

It hadn't been the war in Africa, not the defeats of the fascist army, not the loss of many friends, not the arrest of many partisans, but it was that imprisonment that changed him permanently.

She had tried to understand her husband's situation, but Giulio had erected a wall against that past.

"Let's act as if I had never left, as if I had spent that time in Como with you and Edo", so he closed the argument definitively.

At the Party branch, the atmosphere was even hotter than the previous day.

Many had been busy organizing a real armed revolt.

“Elsewhere it will be the same. Genoa is the epicenter of the revolt.

Today we will make them pay dearly.”

Giulio did not share that vision and tried to externalize his position:

“Comrades, many of us have known each other since the days of the Resistance and the partisan struggle.

We took up arms against the Nazi invader and the fascist traitor, to defend our homes and families and to give a future to our children and our people.

A future made of hope.

We have freed Italy, bringing it into the tracks of a parliamentary democracy.

Our Party has lined up in the front row for the Republic and it was a Republic.

We sent many representatives to the Constituent Assembly who put our battles and our ideas on paper.

Out of the Savoy, no more fascism, work and workers at the center of everything.

We lost the elections a few months ago, but I am sure we will make up for it in the future.

But if we take up arms now, if we now assault the police with machine guns, no one knows where we'll end up.

Democracy, we know, is still fragile and reactionary forces lurk everywhere.

Don't you understand that they can't wait to outlaw us and crush us?

Do you think Americans are comfortable seeing that the Italian Communist Party is so strong in percentage terms?

We are the strongest Communist Party in the West.”

The majority complimented that speech, but others disagreed on the principles:

“You speak well Giulio, but now we need to act.

What will happen if they outlaw us like they did in the past?”

Giulio shook his head.

“At least we are waiting for directives from the central committee. If the Party says to lift us up, we will and I will be first in line.”

Although demonstrations and clashes continued in other cities, they decided to wait for some news on the matter.

“Togliatti will speak on the radio...”

They all stood with pricked ears.

“ Stop, don't do crazy things .”

The Secretary urged for calm and peaceful coexistence.

The section breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn't take much to rekindle spirits.

The news from Italy was of a completely different kind.

Many factories had been devastated and many offices of the Christian Democrats had been attacked.

In retaliation, some right-wing militants had done the same about some sections of the Communist Party.

Everywhere there had been bloody clashes, above all in Genoa and Naples.

There was talk of dozens more victims.

“Who will stop this wave of violence if not even the Secretary's own voice has succeeded?”

It was the question Giulio had been asking himself for hours.

Togliatti was out of danger and invited calm, so there was no need to expose the side to the police.

Scelba would not have backed down from anything, perhaps going so far as to order a state of general alert.

The Party branch was a safer place than the squares and streets, but it was best to stay at home.

Giulio thought of taking his bicycle and going to his wife and son, but then he reflected:

“I'm doing all this for Edoardo's future. It is my duty to stay here and fight.”

Beppe's son, an experienced partisan leader who had spent two winters in Valsassina, arrived in a hurry.

His fifteen-year-old voice had not yet changed into that of an adult man, denoting some accents typical of being a child.

“What?” asked the father, as if annoyed by that little boy's improvisation.

“Bartali! He broke everyone on the Izoard. He gave Bobet nearly twenty minutes, he's close to the yellow jersey."

The men present immediately looked away from the papers and leaflets in front of them to rush towards the boy.

"Are you sure?"

“Yes yes, all the radios are announcing it. Great miracle of the old lion of Bartali.”

Some tossed their hats in celebration, others hugged each other.

Giulio stood to one side.

“That tuscan Catholic friend of the priests worked a miracle...”

He came home before dinner.

Maria Elena was less apprehensive than the previous day.

She had learned that in Milan the situation had not degenerated.

“There are clashes everywhere, how do you think we will get out of it?”

She was visibly worried about those events.

“In the meantime, keep the shop closed tomorrow as well. I think things will settle down, but it will take some time. Togliatti said to stay calm, but new orders will have to arrive from the Party, perhaps from Longo, and the unions will have to cool the spirits of the workers."

He embraced his wife.

He had fallen in love with her from the first time he had noticed her, in the midst of a group of typically bourgeois Milanese girls and with an attitude of manifest arrogance.

Maria Elena immediately wanted to distinguish herself from the others, overcoming the social difference between them.

Since then, his love had only grown although life had presented them with trials of a certain suffering.

War and distance, bombing and civil strife. Then, again another period of distance due to the arrest by the Germans and finally the awareness of not being able to have more children.

Maria Elena kissed him.

"And if your Bartali continues to win like today, no one will want to start a civil war in a country that will rediscover national pride after years of harassment!"

The next day the situation calmed down further and Bartali won again.

The yellow jersey was on his shoulders and the dead stopped at an altitude of thirty-two.

However, the police had not waned their attention.

“You'll see that they'll hit us once we stop protesting,” the section head said to Giulio.

That premonition led him to propose to his wife that they close the shop for the entire month of August.

“Anyway, we don't sell much in that month and we will be able to spend time in Como, with my family. We will stay quiet and in a calmer place.

Then it will be good for Edoardo. He will see his grandparents and will be able to play in the meadows and with the animals.”

It was a way of distracting oneself from those events that were too close and dangerous.

Maria Elena, who grew up in the city, didn't disdain that proposal, but wanted to set a couple of conditions.

“Okay, husband. But you won't take Edoardo to swim in the lake. It's still too small."

Giulio agreed.

He would have had time to teach him to swim.

His wife, not entirely satisfied, returned to the task:

“And you will help me convince your mother to move her to Milan.

I need your help if I want to transform the shop from a simple resale of fabrics to a tailor's shop.”

As usual, Giulio had to agree with his wife, although he was aware that it would have been difficult to complete the mission.

Her mother would hardly have left her husband alone in those conditions and a transfer of the same was to be excluded.

If there was one thing that the head of the Borgonovo family hated more than fascism, it was the chaos of a city like Milan.

"It is enough for us to leave here temporarily, leaving this month of July behind us" were his words.

Edoardo, intrigued by those speeches, turned to his father:

"Where do we go?"

Giulio took him in his arms:

“To my grandparents, in Como. With animals and the countryside. You will see Edo, it will be a beautiful summer.”

The child burst out with joy:

“Yes, a beautiful summer.”

II

II

Milan - Como, June-October 1943

––––––––

"For infantryman Giulio Borgonovo, a special license was granted from 1 June 1943 to 31 August 1943 given the news of the fall of his brother Emanuele on the Russian front and his imminent wedding."

With this telegraphic message, the central command authorized what remained of the 101st armored division "Trieste" to grant a prize license to Giulio.

The events of the war in Africa had turned for the worse since the summer of 1942.

Poorly equipped and with few supplies, the Italian troops would have struggled to maintain the assigned positions, but the orders were categorical.

Push forward.

Conquer Egypt.

Annihilate Montgomery's British.

Those ambitions had appeared absurd from the outset, despite the decisive contribution of Rommel's Afrikakorps .

Giulio, enlisted against his will and certainly not in line with fascist directives, had thought, from day one, of saving his life.

With the outbreak of the Second World War and the entry of Italy in June 1940, there weren't many alternatives.

There were two initial fronts and the African one seemed the best.

Those who were sent to Greece and the Balkans told of a much worse fate.

Of an almost total initial defeat and a shameful retreat.

1941 brought the Russian campaign and Giulio's parents also saw their younger son Emanuele leave for the front, classified among the Alpini who would go to be massacred on the Don.

The greatest in the heat of the desert and the least in the Russian frost.

There was to be very calm and serene.

Giulio had decided to postpone the wedding with Maria Elena.

He did not want to make her a widow prematurely:

“See that you return home safe and sound,” were his words.

Africa and the desert proved to be an immense tragedy for the Italian soldiers.

Only a few had had previous war experiences, particularly in the war of Ethiopia and Abyssinia, reporting terrifying anecdotes.

In those situations, he realized that he was completely different from the fascists.

Giulio was in love with life, not with heroism and death.

But, far more serious consideration, he realized that the Germans were completely different.

Devoid of any morality and humanity, they did not make any kind of prisoner among the local population and were not interested in mixing with them to absorb their customs and traditions.

Dutiful to the point of stupidity, they would not stop even in the face of the most glaring defeats.

The British turned out to be much better prepared than expected and El Alamein remained synonymous with total defeat, replacing what in the collective imagination had been Caporetto for the Great War.

Entire divisions were annihilated or taken prisoner.

In Giulio's department, the majority of his fellow soldiers perished to cover the German retreat and the Italian collapse.

At that moment, all the Italian soldiers understood the real nature of the Germans and the Nazis.

Not allies, but masters.

There were several episodes of verbal confrontation, but the Germans resolved everything in a simple way: they saved themselves and let the Italians perish.

Only in March 1943, Giulio was repatriated due to a contagious fever.

He was placed in solitary confinement in the Naples hospital for over a month.

He used that time to write to his loved ones.

It had been almost a year since she had had any news from home, either from her parents or from Maria Elena.

Despite the censorship, it didn't take long for him to realize that the outcome of the war was for the worse.

In Russia there had been another defeat of the Axis and his brother was lost in the retreat of the southern front, the one which, between the Don and Stalingrad, had worn out all its resources going towards the catastrophe.

Regained strength, he was transferred to Rome with patrol duties.

There were rumors of a possible Allied landing in Sicily, but the majority fell silent after the Duce's words on the safety of the " sacred Italian soil ".

There was no way to get a leave to go home, so he started writing to Maria Elena about the wedding.

The girl was enthusiastic and Giulio began to bombard the central command with requests.

The news of the discovery of his brother's body, which reached the Ministry, gave the decisive turning point.

Two days' journey from Rome to Milan, but on 3 June he finally saw his adopted city again.

He had changed a lot in the more than two years spent in Africa.

There was no longer any joy in Italy, but only a great desire to put an end to that delirium, to a useless and harmful war and to an alliance that no one had ever tolerated.

An immense hug engulfed Maria Elena in tears.

In uniform and having spent over two years at the front, the fiancée's family's hesitations towards Giulio had completely disappeared.

He had served his country, although he did not share its ideals, and he was in love with Maria Elena.

He wouldn't accept any rejection from her father.

Immediately after saying goodbye, he asked about her parents.

“Do you want to announce it like this?”

“Yes, of course, we don't have much time. We've already lost too much...” and he kissed her.

He moved to the hall of the sumptuous apartment in Corso Venezia, waiting for his fiancée's father.

The man, with a neat goatee and always dressed in a formal way, introduced himself and listened to Giulio's proposal.

“What will you live on? Did you ask?” his objections were purely economic.

As a good Milanese, money was at the center of his thoughts.

Maria Elena, much more accustomed to dealing with her father than Giulio, had already thought of everything.

“We'll give you a hand at the shop. You need it and you know it. I've been going to him since I was a little girl and I know every little detail.

Giulio will be busy in the warehouse and making deliveries.

We're going to live in the vacant room above the shop."

The boy came to his aid:

“Yes, that's a great idea.

I can fully furnish it and do some small jobs. I'm good at manual things."

The father, not yet fully convinced, looked hesitant.

In any case, he could not have expressed a refusal in front of a man in uniform who had done his duty.

After some reflection and a couple of nervous walks around the hall, he agreed.

Maria Elena burst with joy and embraced Giulio.

“We will have to fix the wedding date. I will be on leave until the end of August, we can do it for mid-July, what do you think?”

They agreed in this way.

“Tomorrow I will leave for Como. I have to go see my parents.”

Maria Elena offered to accompany him.

She had only been with her future in-laws before the war and hadn't seen them for years.

She had enjoyed it immensely when, as an engaged couple, she had visited the main towns of the Lario.

She found that lake of an unheard-of enchantment.

“So we will also announce the good news to them.”

The wedding had been fixed in Milan in a rather limited form.

However, these were times of war and luxuries were uncommon.

There was a certain difficulty in finding basic necessities and expenses were rising in every family.

Maria Elena let herself be lulled by the rural climate of the Lombard countryside.

Outside Milan the landscape was totally different, as if the agricultural nineteenth century had never ended.

Giulio's parents had not yet recovered from the shocking news of their son Emanuele's death.

Marriage and the joy of future spouses was only a lukewarm palliative for those ills.

In particular, Giulio's father had been strongly impressed.

Always on communist positions, opposed to fascism and this war, he hadn't been able to prevent the departure of his own children.

One had returned and the other hadn't and he felt responsible for it all.

“Many here are going to the mountains to fight.”

His father informed him of the first partisan brigades.

The war veterans, mainly those who had returned from the Balkan front and now from the African one, had been the greatest supporters of that movement, joining the historical opponents of fascism.

“I have seen what the fascists and the Germans are capable of and I am convinced, more than ever, that we must fight them.

But what can we do in the mountains with few weapons?”

The father took Giulio aside.

“Get organized, that's what we can do. Your contribution is valuable. You have been in battle and seen military tactics.

Tomorrow go up towards Musso and you will find some of your friends. They know you're back."

With any excuse, he convinced Maria Elena to go on a picnic in the eastern part of the lake, the one closest to Switzerland.

They took the bus and stopped in various villages, until they reached the stretch between Musso and Dongo.

“Here was the seat of ancient noble families. We are talking about the Middle Ages...” he tried to stimulate Maria Elena's curiosity in the field of history.

“Yes, I read something. The times of the Guelphs and Ghibellines and then of the Visconti and Sforza. There were feudal lords in the lake area allied with these powerful lords.”

Walking through those villages, Giulio aimed to be recognized by his old friends.

Indeed, in the early afternoon, a colleague of his at the bolt factory came forward:

"Giulio, is that you? I didn't recognize you in that uniform..."

They embraced and made introductions.

“This is Maria Elena, we are getting married in less than a month.”

"My pleasure, I'm Paolo."

"Said Paulin ..." added Giulio.

That boy's build was rather small, such as to justify the nickname.

Paolo told of what had happened in those years.

“Those who come back from war talk about horrible things. Many are joining us...”

There were no more than a hundred people in the whole province.

“We are still few, but the number is growing all the time.”

Giulio inquired about weapons and ammunition.

“Unfortunately, they are in short supply. We need someone inside the barracks.”

Instead, what was not lacking was enthusiasm and an overall vision.

The partisans were much more aware than the normal population of the outcome of the war and the atrocities of the dictatorship.

“It won't last much longer. The three fronts we had have fallen apart and those who return understand what the fascists and the Germans are made of.

Wait for the Allies to set foot in Sicily and you will see what pandemonium.”

Paolo was absolutely right.

Giulio nodded and recounted some episodes of the war in Africa, confirming what his former colleague had asserted.

Of the inability of the commands, of the lack of relief and supplies.

"I believe it. But don't you know what the fascists were doing? They stole and still steal. They are corrupt people who skimp on everything.

When the people understand that fascism has robbed the nation by sending the sons of the fatherland to die in foreign lands, they will revolt."

Paolo drew a very clear picture.

"There are all. I mean not just us communists. There are the socialists and also the whites, the liberals, the people of the people and those inspired by the Action Party.

We are coordinating at a high level, then we will take control of the situation in the various areas.

Surely throughout the North, partisans will be able to become an army. In each valley there will be thousands of fighters.”

Giulio, despite feeling interested and involved, declined, at least for the moment, citing personal reasons.

“Yes yes, sorry for these speeches. You have to get married..."

Paolo gave his greetings to Maria Elena and slipped away from where he had come from.

Those mountains held no secrets for a local and the fascists would never have been able to find anyone, not even by deploying an entire battalion of black shirts.

There was turmoil in Italy, much more than she had imagined during the long months in Africa or when she was convalescing.

"Aren't you going to make a revolution?" Maria Elena asked.

“Don't worry, my love. Even so, the revolution can wait. We have to get married!" and kissed her.

Reluctantly, Giulio's parents left Como to move temporarily to Milan where they would attend their son's wedding.

Giulio's father hated the chaos of big cities and the hell created by the bedlam of people.

“You would love the desert,” his son teased.

The in-laws did not like each other.

Their personal stories and their respective worlds were too distant.

Conversely, Anna, Giulio's mother, found perfect harmony with her daughter-in-law.

She saw her as mild and reflective, very inclined to family life and to moderate her son's head shots.

They decided to carry out the ceremony in a sober way, without attracting too much attention.

Just a more elegant dress than usual and a small lunch just outside Milan for a few close friends.

The guests were no more than twenty.

“Better times will come, in which we will be able to enjoy the spring,” said Giulio.

For his part, he felt embarrassed.

Who knows how much her in-laws had dreamed of that moment and what splendor they would have wanted for their only daughter's wedding.

Whereas now they had had to settle for little and put on a good face in front of proletarian country workers.

The only thing he had taken care to let them know with granite certainty was what would have made Maria Elena happy.

“We really love each other and our love will overcome any difficulty.

It survived two years away while I was in the war and, therefore, can withstand any test.”

The bride's father convinced himself that, despite his son-in-law's extreme poverty and his too revolutionary ideas, he was basically a good person.

The preparations for the ceremony were marred by the news of the Allied landing in Sicily.

The Americans and the British had accomplished something unheard of by catapulting hundreds of thousands of men across the Mediterranean.

“The enemy invasion has begun,” commented the father of the bride.

"The liberation from the Nazis and fascists has begun", so Giulio thought to himself.

His father advised him:

“Use the license to the last. Don't go back to the army, we don't know what will happen."

No one had thought about the honeymoon, but the couple didn't worry about it.

“We will stay here in Milan to fix our house.”

In fact, that apartment needed a lot of work and Giulio's father had immediately offered to lend a hand to his son to fix it.

“I could embroider your curtains, tablecloths and sheets,” Anna claimed.

The wedding was celebrated in the small church of Santa Maria in San Satiro, a jewel of Renaissance architecture set in the center of Milan.

Hectic days followed, not quite in line with the classic idea of the honeymoon.

The Allies were starting to bomb Italy.

First it was the turn of Foggia, an important railway junction of the Adriatic line.

Thousands died among the civilian population.

And then, on July 19, it was Rome's turn.

It was a tremendous shock.

The capital, the city of the Emperors, had been violated.

By now the Duce's proclamations no longer had any sense.

The situation in Milan became incandescent and not only because of the heat in the city, badly tolerated by Giulio's parents.

Little was known about what happened at the front or about the intrigues of power, as censorship had completely extended the mesh and had penetrated society.

Only from the so-called unpatriotic defeatists, i.e. in the underground circles of socialists and communists, did direct and, probably, exact news arrive.

It was for this reason that the press release on the evening of 24 July took a good part of the Italian population by surprise, including the Borgonovo family.

“Attention, attention. His Majesty, the King and Emperor, has accepted the resignations from His Excellency Knight Benito Mussolini as Head of Government, Prime Minister and Secretary of State, and has appointed His Majesty as Head of Government, Prime Minister and Secretary of State, His Excellency the Knight Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio.”

Giulio stared at his father and his wife.

"What does it mean?"

“That Mussolini has fallen and fascism is over,” his father claimed triumphantly.

“The Grand Council of Fascism has decreed the end of the Duce,” his wife added decisively.

“Some last-minute opportunist must have turned their backs on him.”

“Besides, what did he expect from those scoundrels? He, the Duce, raised them that way!” asked Anna.

“And the war?”, Giulio worried about everyone who was at the front.

Everyone stared at each other in puzzlement.

Now, without the Duce, it would have made no sense to continue in that unsuccessful war with such a hated and cowardly, petty and inhuman ally.

Badoglio's first communique was, however, to confirm " the war effort alongside the faithful German ally".

Giulio regretted it.

"But isn't that enough for now? The Fascist Party was dissolved. It's the end of the dictatorship!" his wife scolded him.

“Don't worry, my son. First the Duce and fascism, then the war. It's just a matter of time. Badoglio will have to negotiate an honorable surrender”, his father tried to console him.

Honorable surrender?

But after what he had seen in Africa, there was no more honor.

The following morning, from dawn onwards, an ever-growing crowd poured into the streets.

It was the joy of an entire people.

Statues depicting the Duce, fasces and fascist mottos were removed by the ecstatic people.

Many paraded on makeshift buses decorated with the tricolor.

Giulio and his family took part in that event with mixed feelings.

They indulged in liberating tears and shouts of exultation, especially after the news of Mussolini's arrest.

On the other hand, they were aware that the war would not end.

The Allies would continue to bomb Italy and the Russians would continue to target our retreating troops.

"If only Emanuele were here with us..." the father said disconsolately.

Fascism, this revolution so acclaimed for twenty years, which was supposed to bend the character of Italians and forge a new species of men and women, had literally vanished.

Vanished, as if it didn't even exist.

What were the demonstrations and marches for? The exaltation of the Duce and the army?

Squadrist demonstrations and gratuitous violence?

Total control of society, schools and factories?

Nothing.

All those rivers of rhetoric had flown in vain.

Behind it, that ideology left only mourning and the dead, prisoners and convictions.

A shame from which the Italians were called to get rid of.

Where were the fascists? The millions of black shirts?

The hierarchs?

Many, they were all sure, would flee.

Others would have recycled themselves in disguise, playing with the typical transformation of the Italian nature and more in sight among the so-called politicians.

And all that they had pocketed in the face of the Italian people who had sunk into poverty?

Where were the rings donated to the country by millions of married couples?

And the royal family?

"That cowardly dwarf thinks he can save himself with this move, but let's not forget that he has delivered Italy into the hands of a fanatic", so Giulio's father addressed him.

The fascists seemed to have disappeared, holed up in their homes or holed up in the palaces of power.