The Woman from Friuli
This short story, published some time ago in an abridged version, stems from some readings and consequent sad thoughts on historical events in Italy. These events are not well known and have been rigorously omitted from teaching in schools.
Today, Italian and European politicians frequently travel Africa, illuding themselves for their own benefit of being able to undo the catastrophic consequences of colonization. The great powers continue to hunger for the riches of African soil, and still, now, we see mercenaries and weapons flying to that unfortunate continent filled with wonders to fuel fires and sow misery, emigration, and the death of innocent people.
Of course, Italy does not hold first place in the inglorious and obscene race of European colonialism; among the Europeans, the French, the Belgians, the Spaniards, the Portuguese, and the British hold far more consistent honors and much more embarrassing statistics. But shame is common among them, indelible shame. And, when Italian shame is concerned, Italians do not want to talk about it.
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Sandra has no memory of her childhood. Her first memory is of a specific day when she was eleven years old. It’s as if she were born in the dazzling sunlight reflected in the Libyan sea when the ship from Trieste docked in the port of Bengasi. Sandra Dri disembarked with her parents, farmers from Sequals in the Pordenone province. She was the only child. Her four younger brothers and sisters died as infants. Life before disembarking in Italian Africa has been erased from Sandri’s memory. She doesn’t remember the extreme poverty nor the fear of the scourge that ravaged the countryside, which the Anglo-Saxons would call the disease of the “four Ds”: diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death. The Spanish tongue is very poetical, “mal de la rosa,” for the shape of the sores that scarred the skin looking like red roses. “Pelle agra”, sour skin in Italian. The disease gave rise to the myth of vampires because of the impoverishment of the blood and the horror of sunlight, which becomes intolerable because of burnt skin.
In Italian-occupied Africa, Sandra’s formerly poor family receives a home, land, workers to till the land, and servants. With every meal, they thank God for Fascism.
Sandra learns Arabic. At the market, she keeps her head covered. With her black eyes and hair, no one notices her. She’s an Arab girl. She listens to the women talk. She puts things together, fragments of stories. She discovers that people who lived in the lands now belonging to her parents and other Italian colonialists were deported to concentration camps in the desert. This happened to thousands upon thousands of families. Tens of thousands starved to death like rats. Any attempt at escaping was punished with summary executions. The Italian military knows how to be inflexible. Sandra’s mother says these stories are false. Sandra wants to believe her mother. And she stops listening to the women at the market.
When she’s eighteen, she falls in love. He’s a handsome man, a PAI (Polizia dell’Africa Italiana) officer. He has a strong character, a rough man. But he is sweet with her. His name is Aldo Ruggeri, and to win her over, he sings romantic opera. Irresistible. He’s from Cremona in Lombardy. Even when he was still very young in his city’s fascist combat group, Fascio di Combattimento, he was intrepid. In October 1922, before the March on Rome, Aldo had taken part in the assault on the Prefecture and the taking of his city alongside Roberto Farinacci, who would soon become the secretary to the Fascist party, known as the ‘anti-grammatical’ (he received his university degree by buying a pre-written thesis). Aldo Ruggeri became an excellent military man, a fascist “with balls” who, in building a perfect Italy liberated from the parasites, argued with his mentor, “If the broom is not enough, then we’ll adopt the machine gun!”
Aldo followed “savage Farinacci” to Ethiopia in the 15th combat squadron, ‘La Disperata’. The Italians conquered the colonial empire through devastation, mustard gas bombs, and 275,000 Ethiopian corpses.
Aldo was not with the “savage Farinacci” silver medal for military valor when the man (heroically) lost a hand because a bomb (not a mustard gas bomb; otherwise, things would have turned out differently) exploded in his hand (he received commendation and a lifetime annuity). When Aldo finds out that his “hero” lied and that the bomb was not directed at the Ethiopians, but at the fish that were not taking his bait in a pond in the region of Amara, Aldo walks away from Farinacci, the ras (despotic provincial viceroy) from Cremona, and becomes part of the Italian Police of Africa. And this is where he meets Sandra Dri.
With Sandra, Aldo is an angel.
“… Ma per fortuna è una notte di luna--- e qui la luna l’abbiamo vicina. Aspetti signorina…” Aldo belts out, driving her through the desert dunes in his sidecar. They find an oasis. In the shade of the date palms: “Bella siccome un angelo, in terra pellegrino. Fresca siccome un giglio che s’apre in sul mattino…” he warbles as he has her sit on the edge of a spring, and he strokes her ankles.
Sandra gives all of herself to him with no hesitation -- her smiles, her eyes shimmering with a mysterious yet pleasant urge to cry, her flesh -- so white from always being covered by clothes, the soft hair on her skin, and her virginity. They get married. Aldo leaves the police and goes to manage a construction business in Addis Ababa. When a juicy opportunity presents itself, this leap from ideals to money is tempting and easy. And you might say it is better off like this because Aldo Ruggeri’s ideals were detestable, to say the least. Sandra gets pregnant. Aldo is happy. He showers her with gifts. She gives birth to Giovanni. Aldo is immensely proud to have a son. But Aldo is more and more absent from home. He says it’s work. Sandra knows Aldo cheats on her. Husbands cheat. Life cheats you, but there are gifts, and she is now leading the life of a lady when she began as nothing more than a starving peasant. But, above all, there’s her son. Giovanni is everything to her. And there’s the sun and the fragrant jasmine that, along with hibiscus and geraniums, overflows in the beautiful garden surrounding her white house. Addis Abeba means “new flower,” and Sandra, the submissive wife who always smiles and endures, has her new flower, her son. Giovanni is beautiful. Giovanni is her happiness.
One day, Sandra hears explosions. Aldo returns home in an uncontrollable fury. There was an attack during a ceremony to celebrate the birth of Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy. Two young men from the Ethiopian resistance dynamited their way into the garden of the Prince’s Paradise, the palace of the Italian viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, governor-general and head of all the armed forces present in eastern Africa.
Aldo was not at the ceremony but in his business office, but he comes home shouting and collects all the weapons he keeps locked in a closet. He speaks excitedly. How many people died? We don’t know; there are definitely dead. How many were injured? We don’t know, many for sure. Sandra tells him he must understand that “these people do not accept that we stole their land.” Aldo stares at her. Sandra feels like her husband’s eyes pierce right through her. What are you saying? He grabs her and drags her along with him.
Holding Sandra with his left hand so he can teach her a history lesson, Aldo kills with his right. In the streets of Addis Ababa, gangs of Italians armed with everything: firearms, bayonets, and iron bars take to the street. They crush, punish, and slaughter the cursed Arabs. Women and men. When Sandra sees Aldo shoot a woman fleeing with a child in her arms, she grabs one of her husband’s guns from his belt and shoots him in the head. Then she runs. She manages to avoid an Italian who tries to stop her. She rushes home. She grabs her son, takes the car, and flees with him. In the middle of the night, she reaches the monastery of Debra Libanos, belonging to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, about 80 kilometers from the city. Built in the thirteenth century among caves and springs surrounded by acacias and eucalyptus, the monastery now holds a thousand tukuls where monks, priests, deacons, theology students, and nuns live. A monastery city. In their grottos, the monks hide women, men, and children fleeing the massacres in the region. Sandra and Giovanni are with them. There are thousands.
The monastery, suspected by Italian authorities of protecting and helping the rebels, is surrounded by the army commanded by General Pietro Maletti with the order to annihilate all of the clergy. Maletti carries it out. Heavy machine guns mow down monks and deacons, nuns, and civilians. The army uses hand grenades to clear out the caves, which collapse into the mountain. Bodies explode in the darkness. Around two thousand people are massacred at Debra Libanòs, half of whom are priests, monks, and deacons; the other half are innocent and harmless as well. After this operation, Maletti is promoted to division general for “exceptional merit.” Fascists know how to recognize “exceptional merit.” Fascists do not forgive.
Sandra drags herself further back in the cave into the darkness where the screams and explosions can still be heard, yes, but they are distant.
She holds Giovanni to her chest with all the strength she has left. She wants to suffocate him. Then, light. Sandra sees a wave of fire roll quickly and hungrily towards her down into the mouth of the cave. Right at that moment, she remembers everything about her childhood in Friuli. She hears the screams of her little brothers and sisters she held in her arms one after the other as the pellagra burned them. At the exact moment Sandra remembers, flames engulf her and her son.