Nemiren sem, ko voda, ki šumi,
razbit ko slap, ki v brezdno moč prši
in sam si šteje kaplje bolečine,
ki padajo vse dni, vse dni…*
Today in Nova Gorica, something Haya knows, the central square is named after France Bevk, and there is a statue to France Bevk there, and the library there is also called France Bevk Knjižnica.
Costatino Costatini, the architect who used to live at Via P. Diacono 51, has apparently moved away somewhere, Florian Tedeschi says one morning, sweetening his coffee with condensed milk, which he gets through a contact, though in limited quantities, fifty grams per person every month. I was thinking about building a partition to divide the children’s rooms.
Carlo Hakim de Medici, a sculptor who lives at Via Petrarca 3, does not mange to finish work on the tombstone for Ada’s father, Bruno Baar; at the clinic of Ada’s and Letizia’s family doctors, Luigi Bader and Glauco Bassi, the patients are received by some new doctors. Giovanni and Luigi Fuchs, the goldsmiths at Via Rastello 28, do not seem to be opening their shop.
Enough! says Florian Tedeschi and turns up the radio, because it is 2 p.m. and they are broadcasting the giornale radio in lingua tedesca on 263.2 megaherz.
Life knits circular pathways. It submerges in a repetitiveness without which it would die. Like her mother Marisa twenty years ago and more, Ada bakes crescent rolls and macaroons, and takes them to the club at the Aosta barracks on Via Trieste, although the image is a little blurred, because Ada’s hair doesn’t ripple; Ada has limp hair with no shine and Ada does not sway her hips provocatively, and her shoes are old and all of it, all the palaver that for twenty years has stretched like thin, sticky dough, the smiles drawing out the lips, the wait for life to begin, all this is beating Ada down, she doesn’t feel like doing much any more, there is no music in the house, no-one sings, not even Gigli. Colonel Scharenberg, commander of the German forces in Gorizia, awaits Ada with a smile, slips his hand into the napkin-covered basket, as if preparing for seduction, stuffs two rošćići cookies into his mouth, and says Danke as he chews. The sweet crumbs dance mischievously on his whiskers. Ada points to them and says, Staubzucker. The same way each time.
Transports have been running for a long time now.
Quietly, almost conspiratorially, the freight trains run through Gorizia at night, when the moon draws a black veil over its face. Gorizia is blocked. One can enter or exit only with special permission from Gauleiter Globočnik, which means almost never. The names of the residents are put on lists. There must be order. Colonel Wellhausen, commander of the operative zone, issues a directive on 23 September, 1943, according to which all who have moved to Gorizia since 8 September must leave.
The station slumbers by day and by night it dies in the phantasmal light of the lanterns of the train dispatchers, which sway, so everything on the platform looks as if it is dancing, the tracks, the train cars, the hanging baskets with flowers, as if in a wild, musicless Tanz in which outlines twist and fracture, sliding along the entire fenced-in area, which turns into a gigantic human face contorted with pain, shedding no tears.
Transport 3
The train leaves Cairo Montenotte camp (Savona-Liguria) on 8 October. It arrives in Gusen on 12 October, 1943, and in Mauthausen on 23 January, 1944, whence it departs the next day for Auschwitz. On that train there are 999 people of Italian nationality from Gorizia, Trieste and Kopar.
Transport 48
The train leaves Trieste on 31 May, 1944—destination Dachau. It stops along the way in Gorizia and Udine, where new internees are boarded: civilians, anti-fascists who have been arrested, partisans and Italian soldiers. The train arrives in Dachau on 2 June, 1944, and there are between 342 and 352 “travellers” on board. Ten wagons leave Trieste, and the German authorities add another eight in Udine.
Transport 58
The convoy leaves Gorizia on 27 June, 1944, and arrives in Dachau three days later. There are 194 people on board; 190 of them reach the destination.
Transport 79
The convoy leaves Trieste on 29 August, 1944. It stops in Gorizia, where new internees and prisoners are loaded on board. Number of deportees: 289.
Transport 87
The convoy leaves Trieste on 2 October, 1944—and arrives in Dachau three days later. It stops in Udine and Gorizia to take on more people. Number of deportees: 289.
Transport 101
The convoy leaves Trieste on 15 November, 1944, and arrives in Dachau on 17 November. It stops in Udine and Gorizia to take on more people. Number of deportees: 42.
Transport 109
The convoy leaves Trieste on 8 December, 1944. It arrives in Dachau on 11 December, 1944. The train stops in Gorizia and Udine, where additional deportees are boarded. Four hundred and fifty people arrive in Dachau. There are 200 prisoners in the convoy from the Trieste Coroneo, as well as a group of Slovenes and Croats under S.S. guard. The convoy leaves Gorizia at about four o’clock in the morning.
Transport 120
The train leaves Trieste on 2 February. It arrives in Mauthausen on 7 February, 1944. New internees and prisoners are loaded on board in Udine and Gorizia. Number of deportees: 365. In this convoy is the youngest deported resident of Gorizia, three-month-old Bruno Faber. He is killed at Auschwitz on 26 February, 1944.
Of the 123 convoys that leave from Italy for the Nazi camps, 69 of them depart from Trieste, right here, next to Gorizia, practically in its immediate vicinity, not counting the 30 convoys that travel to the forced labour camps. More than 23,000 former soldiers are distributed throughout the camp factories in which they are bringing to life the light and heavy industry of the Reich. By mid-1944 half a million Italians are working for the German war machine.
The transports continue to run until the end of February 1945. The army and police of the Republic of Salò puppet state and the Third Reich transport to the concentration camps about 40,000 Italians, of whom 10,000 are Jews and 30,000 are partisans, antifascists and workers arrested after the massive strikes in March 1944. Of the 40,000 deported, 36,000 men, women and children are murdered or die.
So, this is the winter of 1944. Battles flare around Gorizia. A civilian is killed now and then by a German bullet. From time to time Nazis march small columns of dangerous partisan bandits through town, probably to a firing squad, or prison, or the former rice mill, but these are isolated incidents, or so Haya believes since she reads no newspapers. Had she read them, she would have learned that these are “great war victories for the Nazi Army in Gorizia”, because the Trieste paper Il Piccolo has a special page entitled “Cronaca di Gorizia”, and aside from that Il Piccolo has a local editorial board in Gorizia on the 1st floor at Via Crispi 9, where one can go to hear the latest news, or even to bring in an interesting news item, which the police are constantly urging citizens to do, to bring news in, to rat on each other. Haya, therefore, has no idea what is going on around her. While it snows outside, and while she waits for customers to turn up, she works on maths problems and keeps track of changes in the cinematic repertoire.