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July 44 Alberto was in the
main square of the village, when he heard the roar of the planes. This time
he didn’t wait for leaflets or anything. On one side of the large structure
of the Church, across the street from it, there stood a row of houses that
looked back onto the fields. One of these homes rested over a large loggia, a
short tunnel really, serving as a passage way for the oxen-driven carts and
other farm equipment. It was there that he ran, throwing himself flat on the
ground, next to the wall. Tremendous explosions
engulfed him. He found himself standing up again, blinded and choked by
swirling clouds of smoke and dust. He threw himself to the ground a second
time. Other explosions knocked him around some more, like a wet rug.
Suddenly, silence, or maybe he could no longer hear. Then there was the
wailing and yelling of women calling out the names of sons, fathers, husbands
and brothers. Shrieking wildly, a
young woman emerged from the ruins of one of those houses. She was completely
naked, dark of skin, thick hair glistening black, her heavy breasts swinging
as she ran. Again the roar of the planes. The naked woman shouting
“Murderers! Murderers!” sprinted toward Alberto, then fell on top of him,
panting. The boy found himself half suffocated by the heavy body, his head
pressed against the enormous breast, one nipple on his mouth, one right over
an eye. And more explosions; now within his body, it seemed. A pause. The curate
came running. He sees the naked woman and starts to undo the long line of
small buttons on the front of his cassock. There must be a hundred of them,
plunging from under his chin almost to the ankles. In his haste, he
accompanies the movements of his hands with contortions of his entire body,
performing some sort of a dance, now on one foot, now on the other. Finally
he succeeds in taking his frock off and he puts it on the woman, who is still
holding on to Alberto, still shouting “Murderers! Murderers! . . .
my son! May God damn them! . . . They killed him! . . .
there . . . under there!” The curate, in
tank-shirt and underwear down to his knees looks like a cyclist. He tries to
calm down the woman who is now dressed like a priest, her enormous breast
erupting out of the less than half buttoned cassock. New explosions. And
now all three of them are tightly embraced. Alberto between the priest and
the madwoman, her nipples still with him, pressed on his face. Once over,
they remained for a few moments bound together, in the same position, too
dazed to move. Smoke and dust enveloping them, everything as if suspended in
an ominous silence. Then the weeping, calling and cursing resumed. Alberto’s
mother appeared all of a sudden, frantically calling his name. In seeing him
there, shocked into a sort of trembling stupor, she slaps his face, then
starts dragging him away, over the smoking rubble, toward home. Later in the
afternoon, artillery shells start raining all over the place. By then they
were hiding down in Signora Anita’s cellar, along with other neighbors.
Speechless, pale, thirsty from terror. Everyone can see himself or herself
mirrored in the others’ faces. The worst is during the night. The barrage
keeps on, and it is even more scary than the bombing from the air, which when
it came, with those unbelievable explosions, one didn’t know anymore what was
happening. This way instead, it was all a succession of whistling, thuds,
crushing of walls, roofs, and a constant whining, whirring, of shrapnel which
propelled in all directions smashed and crushed doors and windows. And the
constant fear that the next one could be for them. The cellar was
divided into three separate chambers, succeeding one another in a L shape.
The first two sections, with ceiling almost two stories high, contained
enormous oak vats for the fermentation of crushed grapes. The vats were
raised about one meter off the ground by large cement blocks. It was under
there they had been sleeping, for several days now, on straw mattresses. The
last chamber made up the cellar proper, dug out of the flank of the hill on
which the house was built. That night they were all huddled there, surrounded
by hundreds of bottles, flasks and demijohns of Chianti. On that night, they
really came to know what war was like for the civilian population. Up till
then, the war had been all around them, they lived it every day through the
radio and papers, through direct reports. They had been watching it in the
forms of planes and tanks and trucks and soldiers and nearby bombings, but
they had never before been directly under such barrages. Signora Anita’s
husband, Guido, who had taken part in the First World War, was trying to
reassure everybody: “When you can hear the whistling, it means they are not
going to hit us; they are falling somewhere else. Should we get one you wouldn’t
hear it coming.” Some comfort! Meanwhile, the house dog, a pointer named
Lampo, an old friend of Alberto’s, is constantly whimpering, his muscles
shivering, vibrating, under the tense skin. The boy let Lampo rest his head
on his knees, but the dog keeps shaking and whining all the same. No one could sleep
that night. Now and then Alberto would doze off, and, as he realized every
time he reopened his eyes with a start, dream. The stuff the dreams were made
of were all bits and pieces of the immediate reality he had been so brutally
experiencing. Yes, sure, there where planes, shining planes, in the sky
. . . now, wait, there was only one of them left . . . a
big, glistening one, . . . but, wait . . . it wasn’t a
plane, it was a young blond man, dripping wet, his outstretched arms, like
wings, . . . he was diving, bombs were dropping, . . .
but, no, these were not bombs . . . he was trying to figure out
what they were, . . . now he could see them better, yes, they were
enormous breasts, raining down softly, . . . now the sky was
becoming really crowded with planes, leaflets, bombs, naked women, priests,
tits and nipples, . . . more than one time a priest would grab one
of the naked women and then fly away in a fluttering of black vestments,
filling up the sky with bursts of sardonic, cackling, laughter. He then realized that
he himself was the blond young man, and that he too was trying to capture, to
embrace, but with no success, now one, now another of the naked women. When,
off and on, the boy came too, because of a closer, louder, explosion, or
maybe because the dog had howled, or someone screamed with terror, he clearly
retained in his mind the image of the madwoman’s naked body, the first one he
had ever seen in its totality. And he felt, along with all the other emotions
triggered by those unusual happenings, a strange shudder running down to his
groin. Meanwhile, his mother
and the other ladies, rosary beads in hand, kept mumbling prayers,
punctuating them with sudden exclamations and higher pitched modulations of
their tired voices. By dawn, they were all livid with fear and exhaustion,
almost resigned to their destiny, whatever that might be. Then, suddenly,
silence. During the last few
days, as the front was moving nearer and nearer, people in Montesecco were
saying that maybe it would be safer down in Florence, for, certainly, they
would not bomb the historical center of the city. Not only, but there would
be fewer chances of unpleasant experiences, such as looting, and
“worse!”—women said exchanging meaningful glances with one another. There had
been rumors that down south the Moroccan contingents attached to the Allied
armies had brought havoc to the population, stealing everything they could
lay their hands on, and indiscriminately raping women and men—of all ages. A
real scourge. And everyone had some disgusting, horror-ridden, anecdote to
relate. In spite of all the
talk, not many had gone to the city though, mainly because of the food
situation, which was still much better in the countryside. That morning,
however, it was a mass exodus. Alberto’s mother also decided that it was time
for them to go. She and her son ran home and were glad to see that it had not
been damaged too severely. They locked a few drawers and some doors. They
hastily filled a small suitcase, then ran out again. Alberto was wearing
two of his jackets, one on top of the other. In one of the exterior pockets
of the topmost coat he was carrying a sparrow which he had been raising now
for about a week. He had to take him along, because the small bird had not
yet learned how to feed himself and would have surely starved to death. The sun was rising
from behind the hills. Almost at the same time, the shelling started again,
but with less ferocity now, and not concentrated on Montesecco like last
night. The street was crowded with people, some with bicycles loaded with
bundles, suitcases and bags of different kinds. Some people had nothing,
others were pushing handcarts piled high with all sorts of things. Alberto
noticed a man of about sixty who was having a hard time trying to pull one of
those carts. He was between the two long shafts, in the place usually
occupied by a donkey, a rope slung across his chest, his hands tight around
the wooden handles. The contraption was loaded with a mountain of boxes,
suitcases, bags, chairs, and what have you. On top of everything, on old
woman, an invalid it seemed, fastened with a rope, just like a sack of
potatoes to a half torn mattress. The boy hesitated for a moment, but his
mother, who had chosen to take along hardly anything in order to expedite
their long walk, told him to hurry up. Now they could see
more clearly the effect the air raids and the shelling had had on the
village. The town itself seemed to have vanished, buried as it was, under
heaps of rubble. The day before they had not realized how the church itself
had been hit. There it was, busted wide open. The bell tower strangely intact
though. Almost nothing was left of the houses nearby. One of the few
structures still standing was the loggia under which Alberto had taken
shelter along with the madwoman and the curate. As they were climbing
over some charred beams, some still smoldering, they heard a loud, wild, cry.
It was something beyond description. Only after a moment of fearful wonder
and expectation, did they realize that it had been the desperate cry of a
donkey. It came from a completely demolished home on their right. When they
passed in front of it, they could see the animal stuck there, half buried by
debris, in what seemed to have been a stable located under the house. It was difficult,
almost impossible, to proceed. All those people who were pushing carts, or
bicycles, had to take to the fields, and travel on some of the many paths
that crisscrossed the countryside. A bit further up, passed the main square,
Alberto noticed, mixed with the rubble, something round, some kind of a
soccer ball made of rags. It was all frayed, with threads hanging loosely on
all sides. As he got closer, he realized that the filthy thing was the
mutilated head of a woman. His mother saw it too. Her face went white, but
she pushed on, after making the sign of the cross, without saying anything. They were now out of
town and kept on walking on the dusty road. As they went through some of the
tiny villages along their way, there would be people who, from doorways or
windows, asked them how was it up in Montesecco, was there anything left
standing? Those who answered, did so hastily, without stopping. The shelling
continued, sporadically, now punctuated by the sharper thuds of mortar fire.
There were the usual remarks: “These are antitank guns, . . . these
are mortars, . . . no, it sounds more like mines, . . .
the Americans must be in Mercatale, . . . or Tavarnuzze,
. . . not at all, they are probably in Impruneta.” Oddly enough,
this whole time, nobody saw even a trace of any soldiers. Of any kind. Finally they reach
Florence. They go through Porta Romana, one of the old city gates, then
proceed, passing in front of the Pitti Palace, over the Pone Vecchio, Via Por
Santa Maria. After skirting around the Duomo, in the center of town, they
take Via De’ Servi, then turn off on Via del Castellaccio, to uncle Mario’s
place, for the family flat on Via XX Settembre has been rented out. They all
embrace and kiss with noisy exclamations, sighs, tears. Alberto is
particularly glad to see his grandfather and his cousin, Carlo, a boy of his
own age. Mother will take
Carlo’s room, and the two boys will sleep in the dining room, on some
mattresses placed under an enormous table. A nice, safe place, should the
ceiling collapse, or glass splinters from the large windows fly around, or
even some shrapnel. Actually, the window-panes, all painted solid with dark
blue paint, because of the blackout, were also reinforced with strips of
adhesive tape placed in the shape of a large x on each glass panel. But one
never knew. The dining table was
normally kept under the protection of a richly embroidered cloth cover, with
fringes reaching practically down to the floor. When the boys turned in at
night, they folded one side of the cloth back over the table, but left the
other three sides in place, so that it gave them the impression of being in a
tent, camping. They enjoyed sleeping there. The real problem was
that in Florence there was hardly any food to be found. Meat, poultry, fish,
for most people, were only memories. There was some black market activity,
but even this, in those days, had practically dried up. At times, some rabbit
would be available, but everybody said that it was actually cat, so this was
out too. People even resorted to catching the pigeons still inhabiting the
towers and rooftops of the city in great numbers. Alberto and Carlo knew of a
neighbor who had come up with an ingenious method of pigeon hunting. He would
place bird seeds on a window ledge and wait until after several pigeons had
landed there and were busy pecking at their food. Then he would slowly pull
at the strings he had attached to a nail on the corners of the heavy,
exterior, wooden shutters, until, at the right moment, he would slam them
shut, trapping the unsuspecting birds. Three or four at a time. One day they heard
that at Robiglio, a reknown pastry shop on Via Cavour, near Piazza San Marco,
a few blocks from where they were, you could buy chestnut flour, at a decent
price. Run there! A long line of people was already in existence, but moving
rather quickly. The flower came in packages of five kilos each. One package a
person. After about an hour, Alberto and his mother, Carlo and Aunt Anna
started back home with twenty kilos of the precious stuff. “And now what are
we going to do with all this sweet flower?” “We can make castagnaccio,
chestnut-cake.” “In the summer? And without olive oil?” “We can try; or we
can make pattona, mash.” “In this heat?” Thank God we got this flour!”
Alberto, who, in the country had been accustomed to eating chicken, duck,
rabbit, and sometimes even beef, was not too excited at the prospect, but
when he saw there was hardly anything else, he adapted himself to that diet
like all the others. The day of the flour
was the last time they could venture out with relatively little fear. Soon
thereafter gunfire, hand grenades explosions, started to be heard from all
directions. Groups of the Resistenza had gone into action, and Florence
became a battlefield. Now the streets were regularly patrolled by German
troops supported by armored trucks and other vehicles. These would proceed at
the center of a street, the soldiers on the sidewalks, close to the walls,
machinen-pistolen trained toward the roofs, for the attacks normally came
from up there. The two boys were
experienced roof-top explorers. For fun they had covered quite a lot of
territory up there, along with cats and pigeons. It was quite dangerous, but
exciting. They would go barefoot, and it felt good to walk on the centuries
old tiles warmed by the sun and covered by a sturdy growth of microscopic
moss and lichens. Whole new vistas of the city and surrounding hills would
open up to their roving eye. Most houses had some sort of terrace on their
roof, and at times they would stop briefly to talk to some of the people they
met up there. Especially when there was some bombing going on, there were
lots of spectators. One night, large
squadrons of planes had bombed in the direction of Pontassieve, a small town
about ten miles to the east of Florence, and it had been quite a performance.
Extremely luminous flares were descending slowly under their chutes lighting
the sky with an eerie glow. Searchlights scanned the night crisscrossing each
other, sharp blades of magic swords engaged in a fantastic duel. The tracers
of antiaircraft guns danced around the hills like fireflies, and the
explosions! From the rooftop, it looked exactly like the traditional
fireworks display in Florence for the Festa di San Giovanni, Saint John’s
Day, the patron saint of the city, on the twentyfourth of June. Besides the German
patrols, you could see only Red Cross volunteers going by in the deserted
streets. Often they passed right under uncle Mario’s windows, the hospital
being just around the corner. First came one man, carrying an enormous Red
Cross flag made out of white sheets, with large strips of red cloth sewn over
on both sides. Then came others, pushing handcarts with the wounded, sometimes
seriously ill, persons lying on bloody mattresses and pillows. The cries and
laments of the dying could by clearly heard from inside the house, since only
the outside shutters, not the windows, were kept closed. In spite of the
danger, there still was an important reason for the two cousins to venture
out in the street: to fetch water, since right now there was non to be had
from the faucets. Luckily, a few buildings down from them, in the garden of
an imposing Renaissance palace, now belonging to the Banca Toscana, there was
an old well rich with cold spring water. The whole neighborhood relied on
that well for their needs. One afternoon,
gunfire erupted right there in the street. The people waiting in line for
water, and Alberto and Carlo were among them, rushed for cover in the few
doorways they could find open, or threw themselves down on the the pavement.
As it happened, the shooting was several houses down from the Banca building,
and nobody was hurt. But, for that day, no fresh water. The following morning
it rained. Hard. A typical summer downpour. One of the large, old fashioned,
rain gutters hanging from the tile roof of the building had a large hole in
it, almost certainly a bullet hole. As a result, a shimmering jet of rain
water was now arching right in front of the dining room window before
splashing noisily on the stone of the sidewalk. It was a sin to see all that
water ending up in the street, running off into the stormdrain. Uncle Mario, after
staring out the window for awhile, ran into the kitchen and came back with a
large metal pot, the one normally used to cook the pasta in, and a heavy duty
mop with a long wooden handle. He asked the boys to hold the mop and pot and
rushed back out of the room again. A second later he was back waving a piece
of rope triumphantly. He tied the pot securely to the other implement and
then stuck it out the window, directly under the stream of water cascading
down from the roof. From heaven. The pot filled up quickly. Pot after pot,
the two kids taking turns holding the contraption, all large containers
available in the house were filled to capacity, including the kitchen sink
and bathtub. That day they were able not only to wash some laundry, but to
almost take a full bath. During the storm,
shooting could still be heard, but less frequently. The following morning was
hot and dry again, and in front of the bank the line started to form very
early. They also went for drinking water. In the afternoon, the boys went to
pick pears in the garden of some neighbors, an old couple that lived alone
and who had always regarded Carlo as a grandson. At home, the pears they
brought back were immediately rationed, like everything else they had left to
eat. Alberto saved his
pear. Later in the evening, after eating some chestnut mash, when the house
was all dark and the rest of the family was carrying on, hushed, intermittent
conversations, he went to the now open living room window, and rested his
elbow on the large stone windowsill. He enjoyed long, deep, breaths of the fresh
night air. He was holding his precious pear in his hand. Before biting into
it, he inhaled its sweet aroma with anticipation. Everything was eeirly calm
on the outside. Florence was immersed in total darkness, and the stars in the
sky appeared unusually bright. The Milky Way was a river of light. Alberto sank his
teeth into the pulpy fruit: he saw a great flash light up the night and at
the same time he felt a shivering-like sensation running up his legs. A deep
rumble shook the building, making the glass panels of the window panes
vibrate madly. Some cracked in spite of the protective tape. Here and there,
people started screaming. Several more flashes and explosions followed each
other. Then everything was silent again, except from the windows up and down
the street you could hear voices, louder and louder. Two words began to
emerge clearly over all the others, until they were on everybody’s lips: “The
bridges! They blew up the bridges!” “Maledetti! Damn them! Cowards!
Assassins! The bridges! The bridges!” The fact that the
bridges had been mined, and not only the bridges, but also many buildings on
the streets leading to and around them, such as Via Por Santa Maria, Via
Guicciardini, Borgo S. S. Apostoli, was already known. The Germans had warned
the Florentines, and thousands of people that lived in those areas had been
forced out of their homes a few days earlier. Yet, when it really happened,
it was a mortal blow to all of them. The Americans had avoided bombing even
near the historical center and by then the people of Florence were confident
and certain that their beloved city would emerge unscathed from the war. But
it wasn’t to be so. What Alberto could
not understand was why the partisans had not been able to stop the Germans,
to slow them down, and to prevent such a disaster. He felt that it could have
been done easily enough. Cutting some wires, detaching explosive charges. Or
maybe a surprise attack directly on the Germans, before they could activate
their fuseboxes. A well thrown hand-grenade could have perhaps done the job
. . . if only he had been older, if he had been with the partisans
. . . if. But nothing! Nobody had done anything, and now some of
the most beautiful parts of Florence lay in ruins. Finally, on August
11, 1944, the Allied troops made it across the Arno, and Florence was
liberated. The British appeared first, or at least, Alberto saw them first,
and he felt somewhat cheated, for he had been anxiously expecting the
Americans. So had everybody else. So many extraordinary things were said
about them. The British, on the other hand, had been real enemies, and nobody
cared much about them. They even looked rather comical, wearing short pants
that weren’t really short, since they came down to their skinny knees, and
those barber bowls of helmets on their heads. Like Don Quijote used to wear.
On this day however, they too were welcome. There weren’t great parades or
anything though, since heavy fighting was still going on all along the
Mugnone Creek, in the northern sector of Florence. Gunfire and explosions
could still be distinctly heard. The irony was that
the destruction of the bridges on the Arno—all of them, except for the Ponte
Vecchio, the oldest one, which had been spared by Hitler’s direct order—had
slowed down the Allied troops only briefly. The American equipment was such
as they had never seen before in Florence. Powerful bulldozers were able to
shove aside the heavy rubble with little effort. Once the streets were
cleared, prefabricated bridge sections were placed over the still standing
pylons of the Pone Santa Trinita, and it was done. With equal speed, a whole
new pontoon bridge was built farther upstream, right next to the ruins of the
Ponte di Ferro. The unfortunate thing
was the Germans had had the time to mine, to boobytrap, the rubble on their
side of the Arno river. Several civilians who had gone to inspect what was
left of their homes died because of this. Among them a young man who had been
a friend of Alberto’s older brother Marcello. He had been safely in
hiding until then, when he decided to check the family’s home in Via Por
Santa Maria, the main street running from the Ponte Vecchio to the center of
town. By then, everybody was aware of the mines, so what he did, he did well
knowing the risk involved. In large letters he painted on a plank of wood:
“DANGER—EXPLOSIVES” and after climbing gingerly on the enormous pile of ruins
that was once his home, placed the warning sign in full view. He then came
down even more cautiously. He was almost on safe ground when something gave
way under his feet. There was a tremendous explosion and he was thrown into
the street, dead on the spot. In the following days, others were killed in
approximately the same way. |