July 31, 1944: On Hitler's instructions in Florence all bridges are mined, except the Ponte Vecchio which will remain isolated from the destruction of the access roads.
August 13, 1944: Allied sappers build Bailey bridges on the rubble of destroyed bridges.
September 8, 1944: In the newspaper 'La Nazione', the Florentines read about the definitive expulsion of the Germans from Monte Morello, Montesenario, Monte Giovi and Calvana.
Piero Calamandrei reopens the university; the Court reopens its doors. __________________________________________________________________________ July 1945 A year later...
“I've decided, said Lea, let's get out of this house which luckily is still standing. Yes, I decided: let's go to the countryside near Vinci for a month, at least so we will rest after all these scares and so much hunger ... "
Via di Mezzo was a side street of Borgo Pinti just before the Arch of San Piero.
Here was an American bus that, who knows how, some 'sharks' of the black market had managed to win by starting a public transport service. But that was not the means by which they would go to the countryside, leaving the city center torn apart by bombing, by mines blazed by the retreating Germans, by cursed snipers who for months had been shooting at the defenseless population.
Waiting for Lea, Emma, Lalli and a few others was, behind that American bus, an old truck with a flatbed on which wooden benches had been mounted, after the charcoal furnace, the gasometer, had been removed. which must have traveled for at least three years.
Four of them had sat on the bench on the other side of the van, husband and wife with two children. Skinny madmen, lost eyes, not even a smile or a word. The husband must have been a former military deserter, under a grisly overcoat (in that heat) you could see a giorgioverde military ordinance shirt.
Lea tried to strike up a conversation after greeting them, but they looked like salt statues and did not answer.
It took more than three hours to travel those few kilometers to get out of the disastrous Florence.
At the helm of the junk was a middle-aged man who sported a vermilion red shirt and trousers, just to make it clear that he had not been involved with the fascists, much less with the Nazis.
Find out if it was true or if it was not the usual ruffian ready to change his coat at the first rustle of branches.
Finally, after many jolts and braking to avoid holes and rubble, the van with its load of bewildered humanity reached a crossroads.
Lea, her mother and Lalli, her 10-year-old nephew (son of her brother taken prisoner in East Africa) were taken off by the red-dressed driver who had pulled out a ladder.
When it was Lea's turn, the vermilion slut took the opportunity to groped that blonde who was a good of God.
"You are really a big pig ..! Are ashamed to take advantage of a single woman .." Lea screamed in his face as soon as he put his feet on the ground.
"The fault is not mine but yours, dear the super virgin. Because with that firm ass you provoke, do you understand?" the driver yelled, almost spitting in her face the piece of Tuscan cigar that he turned from one side to the other of his toothless and smelly mouth.
He opened the door of the truck, which then slammed with a great crash. He pushed the ignition button but the electric motor groaned and stopped.
Brushing all the snot and curses of his repertoire, the red-clad slut came out of the van's cabin again, opened a chest of drawers under the floor, pulled out a crank to start the hand.
"Hey you," he swore at the quasi-military man sitting with his family on the bench. "Come and give me a hand, otherwise I'll let you down and go fuck yourself ... I have already taken the money and I won't return it ..."
Lea, Sora Emma and her nephew had put on bags and packages that contained some things to eat at least to cover the first days of what was already presenting itself as a not exactly positive experience.
Lea had loaded a fiber suitcase tied several times with string on her left shoulder and began the walk.
The farmhouse where they would spend at least a month was more than a kilometer away from that crossroads where the pickup truck had left them.
It was hot at that time, it was now close to midday, but the air we breathed was completely different from that of Borgo Pinti, full of the dust of the houses hit by the Allied bombings, from the re-flowering of the bad sewers in many cases in the open air, from that permanent smell of death that weighed on everything.
They walked for more than half an hour, resting every now and then when they found some trees providing shade.
They left the provincial road which was paved and took a path that climbed up to a half hill.And they saw the house where they would spend a month's vacation, let's call it that. Calling that ruin a "farmhouse" seems to be excessive for those three citizens who, despite the suffering they suffered in the last two years in Florence, were still used to living civilly.
And to think that that was the birthplace of Leonardo da Vinci, in fact.
It was hot, very hot. And it was all a chirping of maddened cicadas under the rays of an overbearing sun that crept between the rows still standing, the gaunt olive trees and the rest of the countryside desertified due to the lack of water, due to the absence of manpower because men still valid ones had been captured by the Germans who had loaded them on trucks destined - as it became known later - for the extermination camps.
Or, just to escape the accursed Nazis and worse still the 'repubblichini', there were those who had holed up in the mountains with the partisans, people often of culture, with whom it was not easy to get into the brigades.
And the former peasant-laborers were entrusted with labor duties, because they needed their arms and certainly not their illiterate heads.
“My little Madonna”, said Ms. Emma as she crossed the threshold of that hovel. And it was the least that could be said because the entrance room had a black slate floor dotted with the shit of a dozen mute dwarfs who were doing their post hoping to get a few bites missed by humans.
"This is your room," said an old hag who smelled of overcooked piss a mile away. Not a smile and not even a "well arrived…".
That dried-up old woman with a face carved in wood and two bleary eyes scrutinized the strangers who had arrived from Florence torn apart by bombs, by artillery duels between the two banks of the Arno, by the dead shot by snipers and by those killed in the evening around seven by Pippo, the stork plane attributed to the Germans but which was instead English, and was feared more than the bombing of American flying fortresses.
"To wash yourself you have to go to the sink and use the bucket which, however, you have to go and fill at the well, out there in the garden."
In that sink dug out of a stone slab all the members of the family who at that moment were out in the fields trying to restore some scattered crops were washed.
"The retreat is out in the courtyard. You have to bring the paper ... Here are some pieces of newspaper that are left over ... Then it's your business ... When the loot bucket is full you have to go and pour it into the garden."
The old woman with the carved wooden face shuffled out into the courtyard to stir something in the hen house.
The three citizens who have just arrived from Florence were not enthusiastic about that arrangement. In their room there was only a large sack filled with straw that creaked when you lay down on it.
"Let's hope there aren't any bedbugs or other insects," sighed Sora Emma. "But at least we will be able to eat something", said Lea a little resentful, also because she expected a house that was very different from that swineherd with the walking and shitting ducks. And that month of vacation began in a world absolutely different from the one in which they had lived up to Ilora. _________________________________________________________
"Lalli, go and get me that bowl of lemonade that I left near the sink.", Says Lea who, together with her grandmother Emma, was lying on a blanket in the shade of the big fig tree in the garden near the house.
It was very hot in the middle of the day and the boy was hoping to take a few sips from that bottle of lemonade before taking it out to his aunt and grandmother.
Arriving at the threshold of the so-called "farmhouse" he stopped because he heard a woman's voice singing "Fiorin, Fiorello, love is beautiful near you ...".
And peeked inside the main room. The one who sang was Germana, one of the landlord's daughters, advanced in years according to the old women who gossiped while awake, the evening before going to sleep.
The Germana risked becoming a spinster in their opinion. She had broken up with a couple of boyfriends during the war, then had met a German soldier during the occupation, handsome, blond, athletic who supplied the family with dark bread, chocolate, canned sausages. (but it was better not to talk about this).
And now, the evil tongues said, she was one of the entertainers of the Mokambo bar in Vinci, which according to many was nothing but a private brothel.
"Fiorin, Fiorello, love is beautiful near you ..." sang Germana, half naked as she rinsed her armpits with the water from the bucket, leaning over the sink dug in the sandstone.
Lalli had stopped at the door and was looking at that marvel of pink flesh. While he was washing himself with a cloth, the Germana shook those big and solid breasts and he felt a disturbance that rose from below and kept him nailed to that threshold from which he dared not move.
"Fior di margherita, What is life, If there is no love that our heart makes palpitate .." In addition to being a beautiful daughter, La Germana was also in tune and that interpretation of Fiorin Fiorello painted a picture made of beauty, energy, desire to love, a hymn to life in a world of death and destruction.
There was a basin resting on a bench near the sink. Germana filled it with a pitcher she had brought nearby. Having lifted the short petticoat once pink, now of an indefinite color, she sat astride the basin and began to wash her private parts. But it was a strange way to wash, more than anything else a series of gentle strokes from below up.
"Fiorin Fiorello, love is beautiful near you ..." Germana felt 'observed and turned' towards the door. "But look at this little citizen petty that is gazing at me ... You have never seen a naked woman, eh! kid? ... " And wearing a shirt that he had leaned on the back of a chair she left the house and through the door made a quick smoothing of his hand on the flap of the boy's shorts who remained nailed to that threshold for a few minutes, short of breath and completely troubled.
"Lalli, can you bring us this lemonade?" insisted Aunt Lea.
Casaloste was the name of the hamlet where the farmhouse was located, which was a couple of kilometers from Vinci.
Lalli had been accepted by the small group of kids who gathered in an open space a few hundred meters from that ruin. In truth they considered him as an alien, a strange entity, very different from them, starting with those glasses he was forced to wear all the time. And how many had he had to change when he had a fight with those who teased him at school and called him 'four-eyed' ..
And then it was understood that he had to learn how to follow the natural rules of the group starting from the respect due to Moreno who with his 12 years was far superior to him and to the others, but above all it was understood that he was a born pack leader.
When Lalli had been forced to say that he was attending elementary school by the Dominican nuns in Florence, Moreno (immediately followed by all the other acolytes) had performed in sneers punctuated by colorful curses while lighting up a butt found somewhere, perhaps in a package of cigarettes left by the Germans.
Add then that Moreno was at least a span taller than Lalli and therefore it was easy for him to impose himself with his stature on that citizen who did not speak the heavy vernacular with which all the other members of the group communicated but performed sometimes, when he had to. to answer Moreno's specific questions, in an Italian without dialectal inflections. Because so his aunt and grandmother had imposed on him as a rule of principle since Florentineism did not suit him well. But Lalli in that gang tried to imitate their vernacular in order to be accepted.
Moreno was in charge of a group of five kids plus the Milena. How old could Milena be? Seven eight. Difficult to say and maybe she didn't know either. Milena was the unwanted daughter of Giuseppina Greganti who had been found slaughtered one morning in a field behind her house on the edge of the hamlet.
It was known up to Vinci that Giuseppina was a nymphomaniac, always looking for a male to cover her, hated by all other women because Giuseppina gave their men a treatment that they did not even dream of doing. And it wasn't like she asked for anything in exchange for her sexual performance. She was not a professional but only a young woman, born like this, with that impetuous and irrepressible desire for a male that made her go out every night to hunt for someone, while during the day she was holed up in bed, not caring about her daughter Milena who both grandmother took care of it, desperate to find something to eat every day.
How old could Milena be? Anyway she was a scary thin creature, but her face was beautiful, graceful with a pair of blue eyes with that bush of blond hair that fell partly over her shoulders. But it was precisely those blue eyes that made you uncomfortable when Milena met her gaze with yours. It was like throwing yourself into a frozen lake, Milena had no expressions, she looked like an automaton.
Why Milena was part of Moreno's group Lalli could not understand. But after all, this was not an essential question: Milena was there and participated in group life like the others. Except that she never spoke, enough to make it seem that she was deaf and dumb. And instead Moreno had told Lalli that Milena heard us well but didn't want to talk. Every now and then it seems that he modulated some of the motifs that the radio had started to transmit again. But these were rare moments.
The second day that Lalli had been admitted to the group (and no one could afford to protest as the citizen was in favor, so to speak, of the chief Moreno) ... Moreno himself had performed in one of his stunts.
"This is Pietro, next to him is Luigi, then Paolo, this is Benito (but it is better to call him Ganzo because with that name he risks being beaten.). And this is Milena who is now showing you her pussy ... Come on Milena: show him her pussy to Lalli, who I'm sure he has never seen in his life ... "
And Milena did it, who knows how many times she had done it, lifting the dress full of stains that covered her and uncovering her naked pussy because she was not wearing underpants. She did it without a word, with her sad face and absent gaze because Milena was in the group only because she was retarded and according to Moreno it was convenient because you could command her to do the work, such as carrying a bucket of water taken. from the well, helping everyone cut a few pieces of flatbread stolen from the shop while Moreno negotiated the purchase of a pound of mortadella.
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“Today is a special day,” Moreno told the group. And the others looked each other in the face because they couldn't imagine how special it was on that day with a sun beating hard and the millions of cicadas chirping as hard as they can and you had to be careful because they drove you out of your mind.
"But what's so special about it?" Ganzo ventured to ask, risking a lot because Moreno did not admit that his decisions were questioned with silly questions. "Put your shoes on because we have to go through an area full of glass and metals." Moreno said without bothering to answer Ganzo. "I don't have shoes here. I only wear them on Sundays to go to church otherwise the priest sends me away and doesn't let me serve Mass. " Ganzo was in a protest mood that morning. Ganzo wanted to go to church because every now and then he was able to drain a Mass wine. And then the priest handed him some bread and salami in exchange for ... but he got dark and didn't want to talk.
Moreno shrugged and got up taking a side path that led to the bush more than a kilometer away. It was there that there had been clashes between the Nazis and the partisans, some of whom had been taken by the Germans and then shot on the spot after having tortured them to get information on the other brigades fighting in the area.
“Be careful where you put your feet. You Milena go ahead ... " And the others in the group had the joke ready "So if you find a mine you jump first ...". But they didn't say it because Moreno was not one who appreciated those who were witty.
On that path, however, many must have passed it, perhaps dragging some howitzer or heavy machine gun. They walked cautiously and no one spoke. Moreno had taken the lead and had accelerated his pace, so much so that the others could hardly keep up with him and the Milena was now at the bottom of the group and detached by about ten meters.
They finally arrived in a grove which, judging by the pieces of newspaper scattered everywhere, had been considered an open-air latrine by Germans and partisans. Moreno had come to a crossroads in the lane. He took a right and slowed down because that path was now a respectable climb.
"Moreno, I'm tired, could we stop ...?", Everyone said. "Come on, come on, we're almost there." In front of them was a bunker built by the Germans to control part of the valley as far as Vinci.
Moreno proved to know the place well by having been there who knows how many times after the Nazis had retreated beyond the Gothic line.
"Now stay here, I'm going inside to get something, so I know you're a crap and you're afraid to go in ..." Moreno said. The invitation was welcomed with great sighs of relief because those boys could no longer stand to walk and as for Ganzo who had no shoes, despite the callus on his feet he had gotten several superficial cuts as much as he wanted but still the blood had clotted. . But that accusation of being a 'cagasotto' did not suit him and, despite the tiredness and the sore feet, they approached and entered the bunker with Moreno.
"Holy shit is what is it?" Ganzo exclaimed, giving flowers with a snot so much then he would confess to the priest. "He's a Nazi, who died as a stone more than a year ago, he has a bit of SS uniform left over his bones. But I don't care because I don't want to touch him. Germans even dead are capable of infecting and killing others ... " Speaking Moreno pointed out to his companions that heap of pieces of cloth over what was left of the bones because clearly the animals of the area had filled their stomachs for a few weeks.
“Here look: this is a howitzer bullet still loaded. There is no need to be afraid because they taught me how to remove the fuze to prevent it from being triggered and exploded. "
Moreno had crouched on a step of the bunker ladder and was holding the missile on his knees. He began to tilt it with difficulty because it was heavy, he let out the black powder with which he began to draw a path of a few meters. Then, leaning the ammunition against a wall, he pulled out a box of Swedes from his trouser pocket and set fire to a match which he placed near the gunpowder terminal.
The blaze that followed quickly spread along the entire line that Moreno had drawn and then ran out against a lump of grass. "How about? Beautiful, is not it? It looks like the explosion of the cart in the Duomo in Florence. They took me there for Easter. Is there anyone who wants some powder? " And Lalli found himself putting some of that black powder wrapped in a piece of paper that seemed unused found nearby in his pocket of torn shorts.
It was 10 September and the school had started operating again after the precarious closure during the "emergency", a period in which Florence was a battlefield with the Allies on one side of the Arno river who did not decide to cross the river on the new ones Bailey bridges that the British engineers were erecting since the bridges had been blown up by the retreating Nazis, minus the Ponte Vecchio but both the adjacent roads had been destroyed.
And on the other side there was Florence still occupied by the Germans and the republicans who rounded up the men and young people who ventured into the streets. While the bombs of the air raids fell on the railway junctions, even if the bombs often changed route. The night was drawn by the tracers fired from one bank and the other of the Arno.
So the school of the Dominican nuns in via Manzoni had started working again. Lalli had been on the honor roll for five years, a painting at the main entrance of the building on which the names of the best students were marked. He was number one. He had to finish the fifth year and then there would be two exam sessions, the first in the school and the second in a public institution where private students had to be examined more carefully than those in public schools, as it was assumed that they came. from families who could afford it.
And then it was better to evaluate if they were prepared or if they were trying to enter middle school with easy entrances.
But Lalli was no longer the same as a few months before. That month spent in Casaloste with those other boys had changed him a lot, he grew up among women with the prohibition against going into the garden to play with the other boys because, said his aunts and grandmother, they were too rude. Imagine.
Those of Casaloste and Vinci were a world apart, but they knew how to live for the day. There had been the war and everything had changed, everything had been overturned, there was only the desire to survive, an animalistic feeling as much as you want but when you are surrounded by death, hunger, disease, terror, the lack of a future, then live for the essential ... Everything had changed, everything had been overturned. But the boys from Vinci and Casaloste were strong inside even if they were illiterate.
The companions of the fifth A were largely those of the fourth of the year before. But when they met Lalli during recess, they were amazed by the descriptions he made of past experiences.
At a certain moment, Lalli took out the packet with the black powder which he distributed by making a line that went along a wall of the main corridor of the school. He armed himself with a box of matches and to demonstrate how important the rural experience he had had was, he set fire to the gunpowder that ignited by blackening the corridor wall. The dumb comrades were in admiration.
After this episode that upset the nuns, the school council met that should have removed Lalli from school by preventing him from taking the exams. But that bespectacled kid was also the standard-bearer for years of the teaching level of that private school. He had to be kept for another year, hoping that he could be number one in the double exams at the end of elementary school before moving on to public lower secondary school. It was decided that he would be given a harsh punishment with exclusion from any recreation and negative marks in conduct. ______________________________________________________________
“Do you remember Moreno, that boy who was there in Vinci in that group that you saw every day?”, Lea said to her mother one day while they were mending socks and T-shirts. "Yes, I remember," said grandmother Emma looking at her daughter sewing, "What happened?" "Moreno had a passion for bombs and blew up while fumbling a cartridge case ... Poor fellow. " _____________________________________________________________
by Oscar Bartoli
