‘What I’m trying to say is, whatever happens in the end, we still have to fight our own bosses, Slovenian and Italian, all together.’
‘So what are your hopes for Trieste?’ asked Rizzi, curious about this unfamiliar point of view.
‘First of all I want Winterton and his gang to leave. After that, we should maintain the internationalist fraternity between Italian- and Slavonic-speaking workers, and reject all racial and patriotic claims. We’ve had enough of that kind of nonsense, dangerous rubbish about blood and soil, before and during the war. I know you don’t agree.’
‘How could I? You’re comparing the Führer’s ravings about Aryan purity with the legitimate desire to reunify the peoples of Italy in a single country! I’m an old liberal, I’ve always been anti-fascist. It’s hardly my fault if words like “homeland” have been sullied in the mouths of rabble-rousers. Ask the citizens of Pola and Zara whether they don’t want to be freed from Tito’s yoke! Families have been broken up, there’s a diaspora —’ His voice choked in his throat, and Pinamonti took advantage of the fact.
‘Let’s drop the biblical stuff! Words like “diaspora” merely exacerbate an artificial quarrel. Grudges divide people who should really be fighting shoulder to shoulder against their exploiters. My dear Rizzi, I don’t doubt your honesty for a moment, but the homeland you want to reunify is the homeland of the bourgeoisie, the Christian Democrats, the bosses, who were all fascists the day before yesterday, and who then put on democratic clothes, and it’s not as though the Italian police behave any better than the Allied Military Government, either. Do you think we in Trieste would be any better off if they were wielding their clubs on the orders of Rome rather than the AMG? Utter nonsense. And I’d go so far as to say that nonsense of that kind enables the AMG to marshal its forces of repression all the more effectively.’
‘Meaning?’ Rizzi interrupted him. He wanted to know where Pinamonti’s acrobatic reasoning was taking him.
‘Trieste is divided between an irredentist Italian majority, a Slovenian minority and an “independentist” Italian minority: a good reason for bringing Italians from other provinces, Slovenians and independentist Triestines into the Italian police. In that way, Italian police repress pro-Slav demonstrations, while Slavs and independentists, as happened just now, beat up the Italians. It’s that race hatred, which you call “patriotism”, that fuels the machinery of the AMG, and perhaps other state machinery as well.’
‘So are you some kind of anarchist? What sort of formation do you serve in?’
Pinamonti put his hand under his coat, took out a folded newspaper and passed it to Rizzi. It was a fortnightly paper called The Communist Programme. Rizzi unfolded it and skimmed it for a few minutes, lingering over the account of a meeting of the Internationalist Communist Party, which Rizzi had never heard of before, and which had been held in Trieste, of all places, during the summer.
‘What on earth is this Internationalist Communist Party? Are you a member?’
‘Actually no, but they have ideas very similar to mine. They don’t side either with Moscow or with Belgrade, they hate Stalin and they maintain that Russia is a capitalist country.’
‘Weird. Who’s in charge?’
‘No one, but the most highly regarded exponent is this fellow Amadeo Bordiga, who founded the ICP in 1921 and was expelled a few years later.’
‘I think I’ve heard the name. Anyway, my dear Pinamonti, I was there when Tito’s Fourth Army fired into the Italian crowd on 5 May 1945. You can analyse all you want, but when it’s a matter of life and death you’ve got to unite your forces, and I’m convinced that Istria, Fiume and Dalmatia would rather stay with us, with people who speak their language, rather than with brigands who express themselves in grunts and throw people in sink-holes in the Carso. You go on thinking whatever you want, and I’ll go on using the words I prefer, “homeland” included.’
Pinamonti said nothing for a few seconds, then shrugged and said, ‘My dear Rizzi, you do what you want, too, but because you’re a decent guy I want to warn you that, as a patriot in this time and place, you’re going to get fucked one way or another.’
And on that serious note their debate concluded.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, the bells of Sant’Antonio summoned the faithful. The parish priest was reconsecrating the bloodied church. The steps and the surrounding streets were crammed with people, the atmosphere was tense, and police jeeps were already assembling. Half an hour later, the priest came out in procession and, holding the cross aloft, began to bless the external walls. Silence. Men took their hats off. Everyone present crossed themselves.
Rizzi and Pinamonti, mingling with the crowd, studied the British police, their fingers drumming on their weapons. The same officer as before — identified by some as a certain ‘Major Williams’ — ordered the ‘assembly’ to be broken up. Once again some people launched a hail of stones while the congregation tried to stop them and the priest tried to perform his function. From a side road came the rattle of rifle fire, first in the air. then at head height.
Panic: in the general scramble the wounded were carried over people’s shoulders, but the police obstructed and beat those who were trying to help. On the church steps, everyone could see big patches of blood. The priest and his congregation fled inside, but the pursuit continued right up to the altar, the hoses drenched the nave, and voices were heard crying, ‘There are people dead! There are people dead!’ and ‘Christ almighty, they’re trying to kill us, fight back!’
Rizzi lost sight of Pinamonti, then he lost his tricolour, and finally he took a bullet in his backside, which passed through his right buttock and emerged on the other side, just grazing the joint of the femur. Pinamonti got away with a truncheon blow to the temple and a few kicks in the kidneys.
A sixteen-year-old boy died from a bullet to the heart. His name was Pierino Addobbati, said to be the son of an exiled doctor from Zara. Everyone remembered the little tricolour ribbon in his blooddrenched buttonhole. Another casualty was Antonio Zavadil, a sixtyyear-old maritime waiter of Czech origin who had become a naturalised Triestine. There were twelve serious casualties and about forty arrests. The police smashed up the headquarters of the Movimento Sociale Italiano and the ‘Flame’ athletics club, to create the impression that they had been putting down a neo-fascist demonstration.
The Italian correspondents of the British newspapers spoke of the ‘thuggish actions’ of ‘neo-fascist gangsters’.
From Rome, Prime Minister Pella exhorted the people of Trieste to ‘maintain the calm of the strong’.
The following day a general strike was declared. The tension mounted until, at around ten o’clock in the morning, clashes and gunfire resumed. On the corner of Via Mazzini and Via Milano, demonstrators overturned a police jeep and set it alight. The offices of various Slovenian and independentist associations were invaded and smashed to pieces. Someone threw a hand grenade at the Prefecture. In Via del Teatro, the police opened fire on some people who appeared at the window. That day, 6 November, the police killed another four people, injuring thirty.
When Rizzi heard of this, he was lying belly-down on a hospital bed, humiliated and exhausted, and more concerned with his own backside than he was with his homeland.
That man Pinamonti was either a prophet or a jinx.
III Around the world, 25 December 1953
A substance that relaxes the heart and the sphincter, a nectar that eases rebellion in the muscles, fairy tales told to bones and joints. The bitter fruit of papaver somniferum. The hand of a Turk, a Laotian, a Burmese. Firm thumb, sharp blade, latex that touches the air and clots. Brown mush that sticks to the fingers. Filaments and fingertips, children playing with pine resin.