Bruna Rassevi Hill

by Bruna Rassevi Hill

Alberta

October 1943 brought silence to Salerno beach. The student nurses could sleep now.

The American Fifth Army was heading north.

Automatically Alberta was bandaging, cleaning, immobilizing fractures. Her hands were dedicated to her patients; her mind was in limbo. Like a refrain, she remembered the solemn tone of the radio announcer on July l943: “The King-Emperor has accepted the resignation of Benito Mussolini and has nominated Pietro Badoglio as Head of the Government. . . .”

Great hope that crumbled when the armistice didn’t work. The fascist plague was dead; the war was not. Alberta lamented silently.

The peace talks fell apart when Mussolini refused to be handed over to the Allies. And while he was being shuttled from Ponza to Maddalena, to Il Gran Sasso, to Germany, and then back to Northern Italy, the “blood swollen god” was devouring more and more soldiers and civilians. Finally, when the Gothic Line—the last bastion of German resistance—collapsed in April 1945, the war was practically over.

The Italian dictator, actually a “prisoner” of the Nazis since l943, was finally captured by the Italian Partisans while he was trying to cross the Northern Italian frontier disguised as a German soldier in an SS truck. The Nazis didn’t try to rescue him; and while the soldiers in the truck were getting ready to abandon him, Mussolini screamed: “Aber so, ohne kampf?” [What? Without fighting?]

Captain Otto Kisnat, looking at him from a distance of few meters, reached for his gun, then changed his mind. He had strict orders from Hitler to watch every step Il Duce made. Now, however, Captain Kisnat knew the war was over in Europe. The Allies were a few kilometers away, and he was anxious to return home safely. The SS column of trucks proceeded. The Machinenpistolen they gave to the Italian Partisans was the price of their freedom.

The Partisans took Mussolini to Dongo, on Lake Como. With him was Claretta Petacci, his long-time mistress, who insisted on staying with him until the end. The Allies were only a few kilometers away, but the partisans refused to deliver the famous prisoner to them.

From Dongo the couple was taken to Mezzegra, where they were shot. It was April 28, l945. Lake Como was smoking thick fog. . . .

Lecco, a province of Como, was the birthplace of Alberta. She was the only child. Her father a wealthy businessman (and a faithful Blackshirt), her mother a beautiful woman who spent all her time patronizing people of high society. Doing it for the sake of her husband’s business, she often said. Alberta didn’t believe her. She knew her mother needed adulation, constant attention, and her husband was too busy to take care of her needs.

Alberta didn’t care for her parents. She planned to leave home after high school graduation.

She enrolled at the University of Bologna at the school of Medicine. But, although she had a bright mind, her academic performance started to deteriorate very soon when parties, dates, and pleasure superseded the importance of a grueling schedule of hard study. Once she compared herself to her mother, and didn’t like the similarity she saw. Soon she had to leave the university, and, rather than return home, she enrolled in the nursing school of Naples.

“A step down,” she said once, “but still in the same field.”

She made an excellent nurse. Cheerful and bright, with an inquiring mind, and genuine tenderness toward the patients; wherever she was she brought radiance and beauty with her.

Berta was her roommate, and they made a perfect match: friendly with everybody and very dedicated to their studies.

“Someday I’ll go back to medical school,” she told Berta. “I love medicine, and I am learning how to concentrate now. I am maturing fast after my first fiasco.”

Berta had the same dream. They both made elaborate, detailed plans for their future.

In the ward Alberta had to orient the new help sent to her. After a while she had time to make rounds checking on the little soldier in Room 41.

He was dying; his mother was with him—a small, young woman with dark clothes and a dark head scarf, holding her son’s hands. She came from Sicily to be with him. How did she travel through the ravages of the battle lines?

There were no words among the three of them: the moribund soldier was comatose, and Alberta couldn’t communicate with the young mother, who spoke only Sicilian dialect.

And in Sicilian she was softly praying and crying: “Picci-riddu, Picciriddu.” [Little One, Little One].

With all her senses numb from fatigue, hunger, and lack of sleep, Alberta callously wished the young soldier would die later, after the end of her shift.

But he died just a few minutes after she had checked on him, and while she was attending the corpse, the piercing sound of the ambulance announced its presence at the emergency room.

The nurses’ dormitory was buzzing with noise—chattering, slamming of doors. Groups of students were congregating all over. The place was animated like a beehive.

English and American representatives were inside the hospital in the administration building, discussing the placement of their patients and military personnel in the pavilions. Outside, the gravel paths were crowded with soldiers, patients, and civilians who were applauding, singing, and talking.

Inside the dormitory the students were also talking, daring to hope: maybe the war will speed up and the end will be near. The big calendar on the wall mutely announced, “October 1, l943.” Who knows? Maybe Christmas at home?

Returning from her tour of duty, Alberta opened the door and was overwhelmed by her colleagues’ questions: what did she hear at the hospital? Would there be any changes? Any hope for a quick solution? For a quick peace?

“Yes, yes, yes,” she answered, annoyed. “I heard some disturbing news, and, frankly, I don’t give a damn! The British nurses seem to be very interested in our dormitory. I’m too tired to care, period!”

“What a grouch,” commented Annamaria, “and you sure look like a wreck.” Alberta, who had always been impeccably dressed, had changed lately. Her beautiful slender body was often slouching, her uniform soiled, her blond hair sticking out from her cap, and her shoes dirty.

She opened the door of her room, and, slamming it after her, she fell on her bed. Couldn’t cry. Just wanted to disappear.

Elena knocked on her door. No answer. “Alberta,” she called, “may I come in?” When there was no answer, she gently opened the door and saw Alberta lying on her bed looking at the ceiling. Elena shivered: her friend’s eyes looked like they were punctured by needles, their steel heads shining like lightening. Elena started to approach the bed, but Alberta waved her away. She left the room with a heavy heart. Hating the war!

The next day the head nurse found Alberta in a patient’s rocking chair, singing and rocking. She was placed on sick leave in her room; the only thing she asked for was a rocker.

Elena went back to her bed, sat on it, and opened the drawer of the bedside table. Inside a letter from her father, the last one she received: January 31, 1943. The letter was full of love and concern. Did she receive the package and the money he sent? Did she have enough to eat? Is she playing the zither? He loved the instrument and had bought her one. He was working hard. The family was all right. He remembered with nostalgia the trip they made together to Naples. How cold it was the first days of September! The wonderful dinner they had at the Vomero! He was writing at three o’clock in the morning. Unable to sleep. He hoped she liked her job. After the war, she may want to go back to the University. He hoped she would remember the guiding light we should always follow: ‘the cane of the blind’—an Italian idiomatic expression meaning philosophy.

How much would she like to talk with him! Tell him—she never did it before—that she loved him, that she appreciated his concern, his interest in her future, his working so hard for the family.

She opened her diary and wrote. About him. About the dark winter nights when she heard him leaving the house to meet his ship. Four in the morning. The icy streets and the fiercely blowing Bora wind would not allow any kind of transportation on his route. So, he walked to the pier. She loved him, but never expressed it. She would now, when she saw him. But when?

After closing her diary, she dressed and started praying. To what god? To a god who MUST be there.

October 8, l943: The eviction notice came today from the British. All the Italian “nurses” will have to move by the tenth of the month. Move where?

Some of the students were crying. The dormitory was the only refuge they had. The two-bed rooms were comfortable, their roommates established. Great comfort in returning to their “second home” after hours and hours of work. Now they had two days to pack and go! Elena was thinking of Marina. How would she react, if alive?

The nurses were escorted to the ward at the sixth floor of the Italian Pavilion after the patients had been crowded into other quarters.

Alberta had to be transferred to another hospital downtown to continue her sick leave in the rocking chair.

Berta and Elena went to visit her. They wondered how she felt—alone, in a completely new environment. The hospital downtown was an old edifice that looked more like a fortress than a “healing” facility. Dark and dismal. When they saw Alberta, they wanted to cry. She was rocking and singing.

“Alberta, do you remember us? Elena? Berta? Your buddies? Alberta?”

The rocking chair was moving. Alberta did not look at them.

Back in the “barn,” Elena chose a bed in a far corner where she could be alone, be able to route her helplessness to the diary. Berta moved close to Annamaria, where Alberta used to be.

Each nurse had only one tiny bedside table to accommodate all her personal possessions. Privacy was gone, and sleep often impossible; with the students working different shifts, the traffic was constant. They got used to it. After awhile they even had fun—gossiping, laughing, telling stories.

Some of the nurses became friends with G.I.’s and began to share the “loot” with their friends. Chocolate and cigarettes were the most precious commodities.

Once, they pooled their meager resources to buy a big can of peanut butter on the Neapolitan black market. That New World invention! It was not only delicious, but filling as well.

They congregated around Elena’s bed armed with spoons, forks, and stale pieces of dark bread filled with sawdust, waiting for the opening of the “Wonder Can.” The can was filled with mud—nasty, dark, smelly mud. Elena felt like sobbing and thought of Marina. She was glad her friend wasn’t there.

That night German airplanes bombed the hospital, hitting the nurses’ dormitory, where the Italian students had been evicted. Two of British nurses were killed. The word “eviction” meant “rescue” today for the Italians.

For several weeks the students couldn’t leave the hospital premises--orders from the director of the school. “The Allied shock troops, the Bedouins,” she said, “are roaming around town, raping women, and stealing whatever they can.” It was too dangerous to leave the hospital.

On their day off, the girls were back in the ward beds, cursing the war.

Waves of Gold

Elena and Laura were working at the medical military ward, on the fifth floor.

The place was full of soldiers; some with gastric ulcers, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, and mental disorders. There was not enough space to isolate the ones who needed it. “Just use strict infection control.” The words of the doctors and the director of nurses.

“Easy to preach. Hard to do,” commented Elena while assisting a young soldier who was coughing and spitting blood. He was a handsome young man about her age.

“I was strong as a ox, Nurse, until they sent me there, in the immense nothingness of the desert. I used to play all kind of sports. Now, look at me! I know I won’t make it. Doctor told me so. I didn’t want to go to war. I used to help my father with his farm.”

“Where? Tell me about your life on the farm.”

“No life better than that. Fresh air, good wholesome food, work in the fields that build your muscles and put you to sleep at night, like a baby. You know Friuli?”

“I’ve never been there, but I know where it is.”

“Well, east of Udine there is a small village called Meduno. A few farmers’ houses; very humble.” He had to stop to cough. “Sorry. The valley, Nurse, is like an ocean of gold, when our corn ripens. Its silk waves in the wind, with pride. We make polenta with corn. It’s our staple food. Do you know what polenta is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Delicious, Nurse! It’s a kind of corn-mush, and we serve it with a sauce made out of tomatoes and meat, or tomatoes and fish.” His beautiful green eyes shone with pleasure. “Go and visit my family, when the war is over. They’ll treat you like a queen, I promise!” He had another coughing spell and stopped for a minute. “At night,” he continued, “people used to gather in our big kitchen to play the accordion, and we sang our local songs for hours. So much fun!”

“And Africa? Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, and immediately regretted the question. She should have let him “undulate” in his corn fields some more.

“I don’t mind if you’ll let me cuss,” he answered with a mocking smile.

“Go right ahead, I don’t get shocked easily.”

“Hell, Nurse, pure hell! Sizzling temperature in the daytime, freezing at night. We didn’t have the right uniforms for that kind of climate. Our shoes fell apart after awhile, and had no replacements. We used to wrap our feet in rags, to prevent them from scorching. The wind blew the damned sand into our faces and lungs, and we didn’t have proper nourishment. Boiled spaghetti for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Well-prepared army! We sure were.” His eyes now showed resentment. Rebellion.

“I didn’t want to die. But, you know, there were many young soldiers in that infernal place who actually gave up, and willed themselves to end it all. It can be done, you know!”

“I know, Sergio.”

“I didn’t want to die. I wanted to go back to my golden corn fields. When they saw me spitting blood, they sent me back here.”

He kept coughing and spitting up. Elena cleaned him, and caressed his face. He smiled and winked, then turned his head on the right. She checked his carotid pulse. Nothing. She listened to his breathing. There was none. No blood pressure. No vital signs.

Before she placed the sheet over his head, she smiled at him, and silently promised she would visit Meduno to look at the “waves of gold.”