Loves & Miracles of Pistola. Hilary Prendini Toffoli
rest of the compartment goes quiet.
‘Porca puttana!’ he snarls. ‘Wish I’d been there when they strung him up. I would’ve been cheering and throwing stones!’ He fingers the star-shaped scar on his cheek. ‘Got this from one of his Fascist pigs in the prison camp, always showing off his maledetto Duce medallion.’
They stare at him in silence.
Then Zio Umberto says in a firm quiet voice: ‘Yes, we certainly paid the price. No question. But I still believe Mussolini did some good things for Italy. Tried to instil in us a sense of pride in our nation. A return to the days of Rome’s glory. He had great plans for his country. Until Hitler came along and ruined it all …’
The soldier’s face goes dark. ‘Mussolini was a criminal! A monster who grabbed power and killed people!’
‘Course he was a dictator.’ Zio Umberto shrugs. ‘That’s what Italy needed. A strong hand to unify and guide us.’
‘Porca puttana! I can see you’re one of them!’ The soldier leaps up and disappears out through the door.
Immediately, a young woman comes bundling in. As she tries to take the empty seat, the other soldier covers it with his arms. Pistola gets up.
‘Don’t be silly, ragazzo!’ Zio Umberto tries to push him back down.
Pistola shrugs. ‘Fresh air …’
Passing close to the young woman, he smells lavender and is overwhelmed by a vision of Teresa in her kitchen.
In the corridor there’s not much fresh air and the soldier has disappeared. People are standing, backs against the metal, smoking as they rattle towards Rome. There’s a sordid desperation in the way they suck at their cigarettes as if sucking life’s last breath. He wonders if that’s how he looks when he smokes, even though he always tries to smoke like Massimo Girotti, to elegantly manipulate the cigarette with the same droopingly sophisticated fingers as his screen idol.
The train clatters through the back streets of a small town. Women in curlers hang out washing. Men in vests play cards at pavement tables. Boys on bikes hang around outside shops whistling at girls. Strange to see other people’s lives from the outside, other people doing the ordinary things he and his friends do in Campino every day.
‘How other people live …’ The scar-faced soldier has appeared next to him.
Pistola takes a chance. ‘Where was that prison camp you were in?’
‘A country called South Africa.’
Pistola’s heart jumps. ‘My father was in a prison camp in that country. Maybe you knew him. Giacomo Casagrande.’
‘We were thousands and thousands of men—’
‘He went to work on a wine farm.’
‘Lucky. Where was he caught?’
‘Desert in north Africa.’
‘Like me.’ The soldier shakes his head. ‘I was lucky to survive.’
They reach Bologna. In the drawn-out wait at the station, Pistola is treated to a no-holds-barred account of life in that South African prisoner-of-war camp, some of it so gruelling he’s shaken by the intensity of his feelings as he listens. What can it have been like for that confident father of his, the man with the movie-star smile, to live on a barren plain where lightning killed so many prisoners in their tents that some preferred to hang themselves rather than sizzle like pigs on embers as they slept?
But there was a lighter side, the soldier tells him. A progressive new camp commander arrived who gave the prisoners bricks to build their own barracks, and encouraged them to play sport and stage plays and operas.
‘I can do quite a good soprano.’ The glimmerings of a smile appear on his sardonic face. ‘I also look quite good in a dress. Actually …’ He lowers his voice and winks. ‘I had an enormous fan club. Amazing what you can do when pushed. We had operas every weekend. Doubt there has ever been another prisoner-of-war camp like that …’
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