His brother looked at him and shook his head. His eyes were as hard as his voice.
‘No, Pierre. It doesn’t work like that. There are people who go and there are people who stay. I’m one of the ones who stay.’
Nicola looked at them both, then turned to Vittorio. ‘You can’t always leave. Not everyone can leave. Someone’s got to stay behind. You went to Yugoslavia, you chose to make the revolution there, where the communists had won. I stayed here, even after ’48, when times got hard, when we had to roll up our sleeves and defend democracy one inch at a time, in the factories, in the streets. Our resistance didn’t stop when we came down from the mountains, it’s continuing even now. And if we weren’t there, if we had all gone as you did, who knows what this country would be like now. No, someone must stay in his place.’ He spoke fluently, he spoke more than he had ever spoken before. ‘I’m not angry with you any more. I’m not angry with my father who left us alone, or with my no-good brother who has given me nothing but anxiety. The fact is that your place is not here.’ His lips narrowed and he added, ‘I’m not forgiving anyone, but I don’t feel angry. I’m happy that you’re going away together, because you’re the same breed. You’re the kind people who leave.’
A long silence followed, interrupted by Paolino’s irritable voice: ‘Get a move on, you buggers! There isn’t much time left, you’ve got to get on board!’
Pierre hugged his brother. ‘I have one last favour to ask you.’
He put a string bag at Nicola’s feet and added, ‘This is for you. For the bar, if you prefer. I’ve got enough. Do what you want with it, burn it if you don’t want to spend it, give it to the poor. But keep part of it for Angela Montroni. Don’t ask me any questions, deliver it to Professor Fanti, he’ll find a way of getting it to her.’
He waited for the reply. He had no idea how his brother would react.
Nicola looked down at the bag.
‘Ok, then.’
‘Thanks.’
The longshoreman gesticulated in the shadows. ‘Come on! Get on board!’
Vittorio moved forwards and hugged his elder son. Pierre saw that his father’s eyes were gleaming, but his expression was fiery.
‘Nicola. Listen carefully: you’re a better partisan than I am. Perhaps you’re a better communist as well. And I’m proud to be your father. We’ll see each other again. I’ll come and find you, wherever we go.’
Then father and son walked quickly towards the gangway.
Nicola’s voice reached them when they were already on the first steps.
‘Hey, Pierre, you finally did it, eh?’
‘Did what?’ he asked, gripping the railing.
‘Got yourself out of the shit and sorted everything out for everybody.’
Pierre thought he could glimpse a half-smile in the darkness of the wharf.
‘You’ve been decent. A fool, but decent.’
Pierre returned his smile. He heaved himself towards the ship’s rail, followed by his father.
L’Unità, 1.7.1954
From the Hiroshima bomb to the peaceful use of atomic energy
Soviet nuclear power launches a new phase in human progress
With the signature of the surrender — the law of the terror of United Fruit returns to Guatemala
Large numbers of drug-traffickers arrested in Rome and Naples
L’Unità, 4.7.1954
Serious gaps in Government inquiry into scandals related to the Montesi case
L’Unità, 6.7.1954
Serious territorial losses anticipated by the plan for trieste
Two thousand arrests in Guatemala
Repeal of the law for agrarian reform
Il Resto del Carlino, 11.7.1954
Days of waiting and trepidation
The banners of Trieste ready to flap over the balconies of the houses
The drug route
A long and terrible route populated by dreams and drenched in blood with, in Italy alone, countless paths, highways and even aeroplane runways. A long and serious inquest into drug-trafficking, also taking in the Montesi trial, has been conducted by Lamberto Sorrentino, who has, in the course of his laborious inquiry, approached smugglers, dealers and idlers, and even had a stay in a clinic for addicts, enabling him to give the reader of Il Resto del Carlino a version of this searing problem
Il Resto del Carlino, 1.8.1954
Trieste accord between 9 and 15 August
L’Unità, 2.8.1954
Tito makes new claims on zone A
Il Resto del Carlino, 4.8.1954
Italian tricolour hoisted over the terrible summit of K2
Il Resto del Carlino, 5.8.1954
Scelba has reported to the chamber the danger of a left-wing dictatorship
‘The threat hangs over the political life of the country’
Il Resto del Carlino, 6.8.1954
Trieste accord to be announced after assumption day
L’Unità, 19.8.1954
Atomic fall-out over Washington eighty hours after explosion in Nevada
L’Unità, 20.8.1954
sudden death of Christian Democrat leader de Gasperi — a nation mourns
L’Unità, 25.8.1954
‘Touchez-pas au Grisbi’ at Venice Festival
Latest Jean Gabin yields up its booty
Il Resto del Carlino, 26.8.1954
Trieste accord may be announced in mid-September
L’Unità, 26.8.1954
‘Witch-hunter’ investigated on Monday
McCarthy before Senate commission for ‘conduct unbecoming’
Il Resto del Carlino, 31.8.1954
A mysterious obstacle in the way of solution for Trieste
L’Unità, 03.9.1954
The United States already has weapons prepared to give the soldiers of the New Wehrmacht
L’Unità, 10.9.1954
The chain of silence must be broken and light shed on the Montesi affair
The level of protection enjoyed by the leading players confirms the political responsibility of the Government
Il Resto del Carlino, 20.9.1954
A speech by the Marshal at Celje
Tito extends hand to the USSR
Prospect of ‘normalisation’ with the East
L’Unità, 22.9.1954
Justice on the way: two arrest warrants issued
Piccioni and Montagna in jail
Coda
home
I Paris, 14 July
Seventy-five parts potassium nitrate. Fifteen of charcoal with low levels of sucrose. Ten of pure sulphur, non-acidic; alternatively replaced or accompanied by starch, rubber, sucrose. The composition of the explosive powder.
Gunpowder.
The potassium nitrate releases oxygen and produces combustion.
It is almost certain that it was an eighth-century Chinese monk who gave birth to the age of bangs, with all its incalculable consequences. It was Roger Bacon, thirteenth-century philosopher, who passed on to us the formula as it is today, while Berthold Schwarz, a sixteenth-century German monk, was the first to use it to fire a projectile.
In any case, the art of fire is a very ancient one, much of it shadowy and unknown. In China, once again, there are records of pyrotechnic exercises from the second or third centuries AD. There are hardly any detailed publications on the subject: the essay by a sixteenth-century Italian, Vannoccio Biringuccio, On Pyrotechnics, in 1540, a treatise on technical chemistry. Then nothing until a dense manual from the late nineteenth century. After that, little more.