Summer 43

In the summer of 1943, the armies sent across the snow of Russia,
into the sand of Egypt, were dispersing backward.
The war of fascism was going badly,
but a peace: distant. "As long as they don't bomb
Rome,"
"As long as they don't bomb Rome," the phrase circulated in
low voices,
dangerous to pronounce it in full, the militia had a hundred
ears,
a few fewer recently, while the war
was failing.

As long as they don't bomb Rome, it will never end.
A strange vaccine for the epidemic, what a strange anti-war serum.
It had entered the minds of the cities of Italy,
pounded, first only at night,
then also at midday, and in Rome nothing.
"There's the Pope, they can't throw bombs at the
Pope." »
This was how the bad luck in Naples was explained,
the most heavily machine-gunned from the heavens, and Rome nothing.
"The Pope, there's the Pope, they can't do anything to him, there's Saint Peter."

In July 1943, the sky above Naples was a field of crosses with wings.
They flew high above and dropped bombs on a clear target, on the ground without alarms, without sirens, in the middle of the city.
At midday, the bombs are more infected with terror.
At night, it's perfectly normal to run for cover, to take refuge in the darkness, but during the day it's worse. "When will it end? Never?"
And the heat, 'o calore, of July 1943."

My mother was eighteen, carefully guarded
so as not to be stolen. Passing by the central post office after one of these bombardments,
she noticed there were no flies,
they too had died from the displacement
of air.
"On the crushed bodies, unlucky ones, there was not a
fly.
It wasn't even a bombardment,
but bomb dysentery, they were shitting on us.
And in Rome there was the cinema, they heard the war on the
radio,
People went out in the evening, went to the theater,
they lacked nothing. I was eighteen, two brothers
in hiding,
the Germans shot the young people who didn't show up.

— No, Mom, it happened later, in September,
when the Americans hadn't yet entered,
and the Germans were laying mines in the middle of the Gulf.
We were talking about the month of July.
— Without being able to sleep even one night,
the siren would sound two, three times,
we would go to bed fully dressed,
I wouldn't even take off my shoes, ready to run again,
to rush down the stairs, the siren in my ears
gripping my nerves, hurry, quickly, run,
the silverware in the bag, all our fortune,
Mom yelling behind me: "Take the good seats."
There were good seats and bad ones, like at the
theater.

“As long as they don't bomb Rome, this despicable war will
never end.”
Now the militia hears and pretends not to hear,
o’ ssape che è fernuta ’a zezzenella
(she knows the good times are over).
For me, fascism was the war. I was fifteen,
the best of times, when fascism took over:
Win and we'll win. We thought we'd pull off a feat,
four maneuvers behind the Germans and we'd win immediately.
A few days later, in Naples, we heard the siren,
the first alarm siren. I still dream of the siren.
In my dreams, I don't remember the bombs, but the
siren.
I was fifteen at the start of the war, the best of times.
Fascism ruined it for me until I was eighteen.

I knew nothing about politics and I didn't care.
I wanted to make love, go out with my friends,
dance, go to the seaside. If fascism let me do it,
if fascism let me live, so much the better for it and for
me too.
On the other hand, nothing, he stole our youth,
he sent the cream of the crop to die for a despicable war,
he didn't give a damn about me, Naples, or Italy. He was in
Rome,
safe under the papal robe,

in Rome nothing would happen to him.
— And what was the cry like, the voice you heard as you left the shelter that day?
— It might have been noon, or early afternoon,
I couldn't say, it was sunny, and for two hours
we'd been dying of heat in the shelter.
The all-clear siren sounded, we went out.
I was coughing from the dust kicked up by the bombs,
my eyes burned in the strong light after the darkness,
half-dazed, a cry reached me: "Rome!
They've hit Rome! They've thrown bombs at the Pope."
And after that cry, came another: "It's time,
the war will end, now the war will end."
People came out of the shelters, confused, stunned,
and all together behind that cry
embraced each other, wept, raised their hands to the sky.
"The war will end" and "Rome bombed" were one
cry.
And I, who believed it impossible for it to end,
felt my blood run cold when
I saw this celebration because
Rome had been bombed.
We, who knew what a tragedy it was,
were getting ourselves into this state of excitement?
What can I tell you?
War is a dirty thing and fascism had made bastards of us.
Then the militia left and we all went home to listen to the radio:
Rome had been bombed that morning, near the train station, not St. Peter's.

And that's how fascism fell.
The king had Mussolini arrested and people believed it would all end: the war, the famine, white bread restored, and freedom.
Pure imagination, it wasn't the right time yet.
In Naples, it ended two months later, at the end of September,
the people revolted alone against the Germans,
four whole days and three nights,
in the dark amidst the gunfire, full of determination,
four days to erase the blows on their faces.
Until the Germans retreated,
at the moment when the young Americans, sons of
Neapolitans from overseas, entered.
So began the little youth I had left.
I got married in 1946, so my youth lasted three years.

And of all fascism, I only have the worst left of that hour
of celebration for bombed Rome.
Even if in that July dust, heat, sweat,
I didn't kiss anyone,
it's for my people that I grieve.
It was normal then, and so for me, fascism is the abjection that led us to this, to applaud.
I speak to you of these painful things because you know how
to listen,
but I cannot allow any of you who came after
to judge Naples at this hour,
because you know nothing about fascism.