Distant Fathers by Marina Jarre

Author:Marina Jarre
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939931955
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Published: 2021-06-21T16:00:00+00:00

No one paid any attention to a group of French people who came down the road from Villar singing “The Marseillaise” to invite us to take advantage of the occasion and immediately free ourselves, period, from Italian domination.

In the hours after the Germans’ departure I had had for the first time a terrible fear. I was sure they would return to take revenge—wouldn’t I have?—and, besides, standing at the intersection of our street with the main street was a high cart, of a singular shape that recalled a kepi, loaded with weapons. That cart had been left behind by the fascist soldiers who had occupied our house for the previous two days, plugged up the toilet, and listened nonstop to the radio. I had picked up my books in a blanket and brought them to the cellar, and had slept there very peacefully on a straw mattress. Now though, I was afraid that an isolated shot would hit the cart and blow up the whole house, along with all of us.

In fact the Germans returned, and that same isolated shot, from a mortar, I think, didn’t strike the cart but, instead, at the entrance to the town, destroyed the first truck in the column, which was carrying the flamethrowers, pulverizing it. The next day, people pointed out pieces of brain left stuck to the pavement at the sides of the road.

Once the fear had passed, I was plunged into the same state of depression I used to feel on my return from hikes in the mountains. Yet again the adventure had passed beside me and I had been unable to seize it and enjoy it; no way could I share in the general joy, and the years that passed, that became history precisely in the final success—O good, who have conquered evil!—seemed to me yet again an immense, senseless mountain of corpses.

I went to the cemetery alone. Right in front of the entrance, I found the doctor and the undertaker next to some open coffins. Inside, rigid corpses in fascist uniforms.

Back at home I wrote in my diary:

“Torre—evening April 29, 1945.

“Tonight you sleep, there in the cemetery, in rough caskets, without flowers, without tears, Germans and boys of the Littorio. I saw you today, you whom I do not know, on your back in the casket, your face fouled with blood and dirt, mouth open as if to shout, and your hands lying limp beside your body, hands of a boy, defenseless. The tombs of the partisans were covered with flowers. On the streets of the town there are flags. Brothers, forgive this joy; brothers, forgive the smile of mammas and wives; brothers, forgive the dead partisans what remains of them on earth, you who leave nothing, alone in a foreign cemetery.”

In the margin, dated July 3, 1945 (I had happened to see the first documentary on the concentration camps, tacked on to the showing of a film in Turin):

“Buchenwald concentration camp. Brothers, I’d like to have the ‘right’ to forgive you.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.