of the shirt
the camera zoomed back again to show the body of the carabiniere shot down beside the yellow column of a petrol pump beside the body you could see a pistol I don’t know whether it belonged to him or the person who’d killed him I turned up the volume on the television which was down low the newsreader was saying someone had waited for the carabiniere outside his house and killed him with two shots in the head from a nine calibre no one had claimed responsibility yet then there was a review of casualties in the security forces since the beginning of the year pictures of carabinieri and policemen killed in the street or through the windows of cars a long list of names and dates
the images of the casualties were intercut with other images there was commentary on mug-shots of fugitives scenes of terrorists being arrested of gun battles with terrorists of killings of terrorists scenes of terrorists on trial lined up in the cages with fists in the air and threatening faces the tone of the commentary was like a war dispatch China who had by now lit the joint passed it to me and took the remote control and cut out the sound now you can see two carabinieri in full dress uniform stiff young men carrying a vast wreath of flowers with a big purple ribbon across it with The Government in big gold lettering on it then China changed channels she started changing backwards and forwards from one channel to another
at that time I had just stopped working in the dye factory and China and I didn’t have a permanent place to live any more we were moving around here and there for a bit with comrades who could let us stay with them we weren’t the only ones for sure to live like that not at all at that time we were all more or less compelled to be nomads because of the oppressive atmosphere at the time there were strings of arrests and house searches nearly every day and carried out quite at random on just anybody in the movement on anyone who in some sense was a comrade or had dealings with comrades so it was usual not to stay too long in one place
we tried to spend the nights at the houses of comrades who considered themselves less known less exposed or better still staying with friends who weren’t involved at all or staying with friends of friends the demonstrations and festivals in the square were a thing of the past the movement was like a great ghost absent withdrawn sheltering in its ghettoes the stage was now held by the trickle of clandestine armed actions where responsibility was claimed by dozens of signatures of combat organizations in competition the life of the movement was over but for the comrades it wasn’t over it wasn’t as if they could stand on the sidelines saying let’s wait and see because the repression involved everyone there weren’t too many distinctions made
and so we were there that evening me and China on that unfamiliar bed strewn with newspapers magazines clothes smoking a joint and watching television which we usually never watched and outside you could hear the police sirens going by nobody went about any more at night even at our centre we would see one another only by day and when we were out we were careful meeting comrades and then there was the business of Scilla and his friends that worried us we were worried about them and worried about how it might reflect on us I remember that we talked about it that evening too while China switched backwards and forwards from channel to channel with the remote control
before that Scilla was the typical steward who in fights with the fascists stood out as a very firm character very violent very aggressive Scilla had always been at the centre of all the fights he’d even fought the fascists alone and this is how he’d gradually turned himself into a myth because there in that small town the fascist presence had been sizeable and there too like anywhere else they didn’t let people go about the town centre dressed in a way that marked them out as left-wing carrying a left-wing newspaper so the fascists provoked and attacked people who could be recognized as left-wing or just suspected of being left-wing
later the movement managed to win the upper hand thanks to guys like Scilla but at that time it was the fascists who ruled the roost and the police and judiciary shielded the fascists and through this Scilla and his kind let’s say the military branch of the movement built their status by virtue of a necessity acknowledged by all of the left the physical challenge to fascism was recognized as a legitimate necessary function and on this role of antifascist militant Scilla was able to build the status that in days to come placed him above suspicion when he began to play the role of police informer
Scilla always displayed an attitude of physical competitiveness towards everything and everyone even with comrades also because he probably felt unable to compete in other areas so that he was always aggressive sometimes pretending it was just in fun but it wasn’t much fun unpleasant yes that’s it unpleasant and with those he couldn’t draw into this physical competition his demeanour was a rather slimy and forced kind of awe in short he reproduced within the movement the same levels of violence expressed towards the enemy he always felt at war with everything and everybody and in everyone he saw an enemy on whom to take out his violence and he’d hit a comrade in the very same way he’d hit a fascist
and so inside the movement even Scilla’s kind had their uses he was an internal policeman he carried out a function that was maybe unpleasant but considered useful Scilla and his kind never took part in the internal debates of the movement in the meetings and mass meetings they were largely silent interested only in where the violence came in they experienced the stage of intensified conflict in merely mechanical and purely military terms of escalating the conflict and using violence against the State as earlier it had been used against the fascists they were always outside the struggles in the local factories and little by little began to mimic clandestine ideals and behaviour the habit of hiding a gun in the cellar and so on
later when things got as far as that meeting that conclusively split up our group and which I’ll talk about later after that meeting we heard nothing more about him and those who took the same road we never saw them again we heard nothing more about him Valeriana Cotogno and Gelso except in the leaflets claiming the armed actions that they carried out they carried out a series of armed actions before this carabiniere but I only discovered this once I was inside they didn’t do killings they did robberies a few woundings until this carabiniere but then when I saw it on television that evening with China we didn’t think for a second that it could have been them
China presses the remote switch again this time the screen shows a boundless plain the lens zooms in it must be filmed from a helicopter and you can see an ostrich running very fast on a flat barren plain it’s running fast in a straight line its head still the body rhythmically trembling the legs are so fast you can’t see them sometimes it turns its head and runs even faster a long low shadow comes fast behind it it’s catching up the ostrich turns its head the shadow is a few yards away the ostrich is running in zigzags now it gains a few yards but in seconds the shadow’s again very close the ostrich runs towards the void with all its strength the shadow rises into the air and in one bound the cheetah’s upon it they form a single still shadow the helicopter turns there’s just the grey sky and the noise of the blades
5
It happened right after Christmas on Christmas Eve I’d had a telegram from China to tell me she was coming to see me on Monday for a visit this telegram had arrived in the middle of a discussion I was in the dormitory cell with four other comrades discussing how to share the tasks of cooking the Christmas dinner I was making the risotto I was making yellow risotto and I was making the stock with a stock cube on the camping-gas stove a guard called me I turned and saw the little yellow square against the bars I thought it was the lawyer about the trial which was getting close now but then when I saw it was from China I thought I didn’t think anything I think I was very pleased because it had been a surprise and I thought that China had given me this surprise of a Christmas visit and I was very pleased
it’s funny I thought because all the Christmasses we’d spent together I don’t think we ever once celebrated one but now there I was preparing Christmas dinner I thought about China’s hair her long hair that when she laughs she throws forward covering her whole face with her long long black hair that when we talked with the glass between us I couldn’t even touch but luckily
