The Unseen. Nanni Balestrini
upper floor there were rooms on the ground floor two rows of columns ran its whole length supporting two high crossed vaults in the centre there was a big main door between two rows of big windows running right along the facade protected by grilles but with no glass and no frames
since everything had gone according to plan one comrade went out to go and give the signal to another group waiting outside that went off to put up posters and hand out the leaflets we’d done to announce the occupation while we inside started forming a chain to clear the Cantinone of the building lumber we carried out everything through the door leading to the yard and we heaped it up there outside the nuns and the old people from the home started looking out of the windows more and more of them they were looking at us in amazement and disbelief perhaps at first they thought we were building workers but they must have doubted it for they saw that there were girls at work there too
nearly an hour goes by then those on guard outside sound the alarm that they’re on their way and we all rush out into the street the carabinieri are driving up in their two minibuses in no hurry at all and once they pull up opposite the door they stop and get out there would have been ten or so in no hurry and empty-handed the maresciallo comes towards us he looks puzzled and Valeriana takes a few steps towards him and tells him it’s an occupation and she gives him the leaflet and tells him it’s all explained here the maresciallo glances at it quickly but then he says he wants to come in and see and he points to the door and makes a move in that direction but at once all the comrades who’d gone outside spontaneously form a tight human barrier we form a wall between him and the main door of the Cantinone
the maresciallo looks at us in astonishment more than anything else then he says but you know what you’re doing is illegal Cotogno answers yes but there’s a lot of us doing it and we’re not the only ones occupying round here the maresciallo shakes his head and asks and who’s in charge here and we answer all of us all of us are in charge here rather abashed the maresciallo waves his men away but we don’t budge we stay there waiting for them to leave in earnest they all get back on their minibuses they go into reverse and pull away slowly but when they get to the junction one of the two minibuses stays there while the other vanishes then we go back inside and Scilla gets busy setting up a defence team it’s sickening what we need is petrol bombs because those guys can come back any moment now and there’d be a slaughter
all this time new people were starting to turn up they came in groups the students who knew all about it already and then the first ones to come out of curiosity workers and unemployed people came who’d seen our posters and the leaflets word had got round and people turned up came in and hung about the place taking a good look round we were explaining why we’d occupied what we wanted to do now and people were talking asking questions more and more people were turning up people I’d never seen before there were children running about the hall and going into the rooms upstairs it was total chaos everywhere then standing to one side we notice three well-dressed guys we hadn’t seen coming in grim-faced looking around anxiously and keeping their voices down the word gets round at once the mayor’s here
the three come towards us the mayor in the lead a big tall heavy man with a long camel coat nearly down to his ankles and when the mayor opens his mouth the deafening racket stops only the children go on running about the room he comes straight out and asks abruptly who’s in charge here you know what you’re doing is illegal immediately we all burst out laughing they look around at a loss to understand then the vice-mayor a thin old man with a red face who’s also the party secretary lays into us you’re provocateurs you’ve done this tomfoolery to undermine the new left administration this is a provocation there’s a whole crowd of people who’re not from round here who’ve come from outside it’s a deliberate provocation I’ve been in politics for forty years and I know provocateurs when I see them
but the mayor takes over again listen kids we’ve come here to tell you that charges have already been filed against you and legal proceedings are already under way to have you forcibly evicted we promise you we’ll withdraw the charge but you must clear out right now and put everything back just as it was and we guarantee that there won’t be any legal consequences everybody’s jeering and Nocciola steps forward turning to the three of them look there’s no question of us leaving here not for a minute the only thing we want here is to go on with this occupation and to achieve what we set out to do which is something you aren’t even bothering to find out I don’t know if you’ve got the point the mayor makes a gesture of annoyance he turns round and leaves followed by his retinue
then I don’t remember what else happened in the afternoon we also had a visit from the extra-parliamentarians who’d just founded their own party and so had stopped wearing their jeans and anoraks they turned up with the party newspaper sticking out of the pockets of their grey lodens they came up to Cotogno and me their leader got straight to the point what you need to do right away is call a mass meeting to discuss what’s to be done this spontaneous movement has to have political leadership first of all we’ll have a closed meeting between us and the occupation leaders to decide on the programme we’ll get the mass meeting to approve and so on finally they left none too happy but their leader threatened us all mass struggles are doomed if there’s no vanguard to lead them you’ve got no political line and you’re dragging the masses to defeat and blablabla and blablabla
9
Well right at the start of the revolt there was pandemonium in the sense that the first word going round was that there are nineteen guards taken hostage and this provoked outright amazement there was incredulity fear and amazement but then at once the general mood rapidly became a mood of great excitement probably because what everyone felt most of all at that moment was the fact of being in control of this space the fact of freedom of movement all over this space and just the simple fact of free movement in a space bigger than the cell you were confined to released this whole general excitement
then what happened was that those prisoners who’d planned the whole thing who’d organized it immediately set in motion all the organizational functions of the revolt these comrades assigned themselves roles precise tasks which involved guarding and surveying the most likely points where a break-in could be made from outside because the guards could always try a break-in even if the hostages we were holding meant it wasn’t so simple and then somebody had to attend to guarding the hostages and all this took place in great haste the whole organizational machine was quickly set in motion despite the great amount of confusion because obviously it had all been decided in advance and these roles had all been assigned well ahead
there were comrades with a weapon made from those coffee-makers they were moka coffee-makers later on in fact they were banned from being used in cells the fuse came out of the coffee-maker there was the detonator and inside was the explosive and these coffee-makers functioned as grenades the explosive had been hidden in the cells and it was this the guards were looking for when they’d carried out that peculiar search they’d searched in all the boxes and bottles because that’s where people hide explosives they hadn’t found any but they’d left them all on the tables to make it clear that they knew there were explosives in the prison that they’d got wind that something was going to happen
the guards were all put in a dormitory cell and there began the whole ritual of the search and so on the guards weren’t molested nobody harmed them only some comrades began to mimic though without any malice very ironically it looked like the kind of thing the indians* did in ’77 they started mimicking the whole ritual of the guard towards the prisoner and then they were all searched like that exactly the way they searched the prisoners every day they were made to stand there with their legs slightly apart their arms raised and then they were searched in the routine way as they did to us day in day out whenever we went out and whenever we returned to our cells
first the head was searched fingers through the hair under the hair then down the back of the head on the neck down on to the shoulders and under the armpits and then going right down the back under the bum the legs the backs of the legs and down the legs to the feet and then back up again up the legs the thighs the inner thighs the stomach and then all the way up the trunk back to the neck and then making them undo their trousers pull down the zip feeling the waistband feeling the balls and then making them take off their shoes hand them over and turn them upside down to look