Eva Sleeps (5 page)

Shanghai became once again part of what was now Republican Italy.

 

When Gerda was eight she began replacing her mother in the task of warming up the engine of Hermann's truck. She would wake up at three in the morning, put on her coat without even washing her face, and go out into the winter frost when the night was at his darkest. Interrupting her sleep was even more painful than the cold slapping her drowsy face. At night, her father's truck was parked outside the front door, and in order to start the engine in the morning you first had to scrape the ice off the crank on the front. Gerda's hands were already as rough as a washerwoman's. She would light a small fire with shavings and paper under the belly of the vehicle, taking care not to waste the matches. She stayed there in the cold, on all fours, to make sure it wouldn't go out, spreading the fuel in a circle with an iron shovel. You had to be careful: if the flame was too high the oil tank and the entire truck would explode, and she with them. Once the starting crank was warm and the ice vapor that blocked it had melted, Gerda would go back home, pick up the cup her mother had meanwhile prepared on the wooden stove, and wake up Hermann with the coffee. While her father climbed into the truck and started the engine, Gerda would get ready for school.

One morning when it was still dark, Gerda handed her father the coffee but he didn't wake up straight away. He was still dreaming. His opaque eyes opened with difficulty.

“
Mamme
,” he muttered.

His mother was back! And now she was there next to his bed with a cup of steamy white coffee for him, just like when he was ill, as a child.

Gerda got frightened: she had never seen him with this helpless, trusting expression before.

“
Tata . . . i bin's. Die Gerda
,”
she said.
⁶

Hermann blinked and opened his eyes again. The same eyes, the same mouth, the same cheekbones as his mother; except that it was only his daughter. He realized what he had just called her and never forgave her.

 

In the summer, when the truck engine didn't need warming up, Gerda would go to the mountain pastures with her cousin, to mind the cows of uncle Hans, Hermann's eldest brother, the one who had inherited the family
maso
.

The pasture was half a day's walk from the
maso
, too far to come back every night. Gerda and her cousins, Michl and Simon, who were more or less the same age, and little Sebastian, known as Wastl, would sleep on the hay in a hut. They would spend their days showing one another those anatomical parts that they didn't have in common, stuffing themselves with blueberries, spitting juniper berries at one another, and carving twigs. Only when absolutely necessary did they run after cows that were wandering off. When it rained or, even better, when there was a thunderstorm, they would plunge into the warm hay and tell one another scary stories, with evil spirits of the mountain as protagonists. Three times a week, Hans's wife would bring crisp rye bread, called
Schüttelbrot
, speck and cheese.

Gerda was the only one who never needed to use the stick with the cows, since they followed her around like huge lapdogs. Her cousins, too, would have followed her anywhere. Several decades later, when Simon and Michl thought back to those nights in the hay with Gerda, with little Wastl asleep right next to them, the memory of her sparse, blond pubic hair, revealed by her raised shabby dress, could still make the blood rush to their nether parts.

 

One of those summer mornings, an English mountain climber who'd lost his way saw her from afar. Gerda was sitting under a Swiss pine, her eyes half closed. She was emitting high-pitched whistling sounds, like glass, with a blade of grass held tight between her lips. Her bare legs and feet caked with mud protruded from a threadbare cotton dress, and her dirty hair was tied back with a string of braided bark. High cheekbones, rounded forehead, fleshy lips, elongated blue eyes. The Englishman thought she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The thought of going away and never seeing her again seemed unbearable. He contemplated her for a long time before making his presence known. He forgot about his planned climb and remained all day at the hut.

The English climber shared his packed lunch with Gerda and her cousins. When he heard her laugh he decided he would do anything to hear that sound again. He began chasing after the cows, brandishing his
Alpenstock
, and barking like a sheepdog. He hung a cowbell around his neck and grazed, ruminating and actually swallowing the grass in the field. He mimed the solemn gait of young Queen Elizabeth, placing a crown of daisies on his head with which he then crowned Gerda, declaring her the one and only queen. However, when the moment came for him to leave, the Englishman respectfully asked her permission to take a photo. At the end of the summer, Hans's wife handed Gerda an envelope addressed to her. Sender: John Gallagher, Leeds, United Kingdom. In it was Gerda's photo at the age of ten, which Eva would one day put on her bookshelf. On the back, in large, spiky letters, was written:
In eternal gratitude for the best day of my life. Forever yours, John
.

 

During one of those summers, the monument to the Alpini had been rebuilt—a little more slender than the previous one, and a little less grumpy. At the solemn inauguration, the army bishop declared that this time it underlined the reconciliation between the Italian government and its faraway province. It symbolized defense, he stressed, not aggression.

However, the South Tyroleans didn't change their minds. That was a Fascist monument and always would be, even though there was no more Fascism. Except for the authorities, none of them attended the inauguration. Not even Peter, who was now sixteen, or his father. Hermann didn't want anything to do with these things anymore.

One night, a couple of years later, Peter came back home at dawn. His mother, who could never get to sleep until her firstborn was back, knew immediately: Peter hadn't been hunting. His clothes didn't smell of forest or gunpowder, but were soiled with red and white paint. However, Johanna asked for no explanation. The following morning, the Carabinieri surrounded the monument to the Alpine troops and closed to traffic the intersection where it had been erected. During the night, its granite pedestal had been painted red and white, the forbidden colors of the Tyrolean flag. Thus derided, it inspired more an almost ironic affection than fear or resentment. From that moment on, the town residents started calling it by the common diminutive, Wastl. The Carabinieri had to spend an entire day scrubbing it with brushes and soap.

 

Peter couldn't find a job and got by on seasonal work. He picked potatoes, hired himself out as a laborer to peasants whose sons were conscripted when they needed an extra pair of arms to gather the hay. Only occasionally, when there was a particularly heavy load, he would help his father with the truck, but there was never enough money. One winter he found a good job as a custodian in the house of a noble family from Vienna that spent the summers in South Tyrol. His duties involved lighting the stoves three times a week so the pipes wouldn't freeze, checking the windows, and sweeping the snow from the roof. The work wasn't arduous but it wasn't well-paid. Peter wanted to start a family. He was twenty-two now and there was a girl he quite liked. But at this rate he'd never be able to do it. That was until he heard that Falck steelworks in Bolzano were hiring workers.

Johanna was the only one in the family who could read and write in Italian: she was the only one to have gone to a Fascist school. Hermann had gone to primary school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and suspended his studies when his parents had died. His children had gone to the schools of the Republic created by anti-Fascism, which had not returned South Tyrol to Mother Austria, as its residents had deluded themselves it would, but at least it had recognized their right to study in their own language. All the bureaucracy, however, was still in Italian.

It was therefore Johanna who helped Peter prepare all the documents: certificate of good behavior, dispensation from obligatory military service, a strong and healthy constitution. It was she who accompanied him to the various offices. There was no form or sign in German, no state employee spoke German; nobody understood German. The fact that the population that frequented these offices was German-speaking was totally ignored. Applications had to be written in correct Italian or you risked having to start from scratch. For Johanna, having to speak with these impolite clerks in a language that wasn't her own was a source of anxiety and embarrassment but, in the end, Peter obtained all the certificates. She then ironed his Sunday suit, and one Monday at dawn Peter took the bus to the main city.

He remained in Bolzano for a few weeks. He stayed with a distant cousin of his mother's in a tiny house with four children aged between two and eight. At night, Peter slept on the floor next to the stove, but he could not remain there during the day. Those were the days of the three
Eis Männer
, the ice saints in the middle of spring, the last cold and nasty stretch of winter, and the air was frosty. Peter had no money to go and warm up in a tavern so he spent his afternoons in the waiting room at the station. That's where he saw them get off the trains.

They were mainly men. Although Peter didn't know it, they were identical to those who during those same years were arriving also in Turin, Liège, Düsseldorf. They had peaked caps, checkered jackets, cardboard boxes tied with string and the odd leather suitcase. Every so often there would also be a woman between twenty and thirty, seldom any older, with thick black hair. She would get off the train alone or else with three or four children, but there was always a man waiting for her, with a face identical to those who had arrived alone though perhaps a little less hollow, a little less anxious, a little more self-confident: the face of a man who has a job and can now take on the responsibility and dignity of the head of the family.

Nobody had explained to the immigrants from southern Italy what kind of place they were going to, before they left. It hadn't occurred to anyone in the recruitment offices in Enna, Matera and Crotone, where the Bolzano factories were obtaining their workforce, to let them know that they were about to go and live among people who spoke German, who did not eat spaghetti or even polenta, but things they called
Knödel, Schlutzkrapfen, Spatzlan
. They were still in Italy, weren't they? That was all an immigrant needed to know.

When Peter arrived in Bolzano, wearing his Sunday suit all clean and ironed, he went to the Falck recruitment office. There, he left his job application and all the painfully obtained documents. Over the following days he also went to Lancia, then the railroad company and even the road company: the life of a road worker wasn't great but it was still better than being unemployed.

Not one of his job applications was answered.

It took a while for Peter to understand. The economic miracle of the industrial area of Bolzano, with its social housing and almost acceptable wages, had been devised only for Italians. It's not that they didn't want a German-speaking worker. It was simply not factored in.

Yes, now you could teach in German once again in Alto Adige schools. There was no more need for
Katakombenschulen
for pupils and teachers to be able to speak and study in their own language. The new Italian Republic had not tackled the Germanness of South Tyroleans the way Mussolini had done. It had chosen to adopt a different attitude toward the problem: pretend it didn't exist.

Peter went back home. Johanna was horrified when she saw the state of his suit: he hadn't taken it off for three weeks. Peter did not explain why he hadn't found work and nobody asked him. The following summer he remained in Switzerland for the entire season. He found a job as a herdsman and supplemented his income selling hunting trophies, especially chamois. Once, he got lucky and killed an ibex. Only German tourists bought anything from him. The few Italians who ventured in those parts weren't particularly interested in trophies.

One November day, when Gerda was almost twelve, Peter suggested she go with him on an excursion near Bolzano. He said there would be lots of people, like at the church fair,
Kirschta
, only much bigger.

An excursion! Sometimes on a Sunday automobiles, carts or groups of bicycles would drive along the highway past Shanghai, and Gerda would hear people singing and laughing. On Sundays during the summer, her father's colleagues would also load their families and friends on trucks and take them to the shores of the river that comes down from the glaciers, or to the fields at the start of the adjacent valley. The wind would carry to Gerda the smoke, the smell of grilled Würstel, waves of music, laughter, and she would be overwhelmed with longing at the joy of these strangers. Sometimes, without needing to go too far, there would be a party even in Shanghai, in the courtyard in the middle of the houses on the upper part of the road. At the end of the summer, that's where they would pile up freshly-picked corn, then tear off its long, sharp, pointy leaves by hand: once dried, they would use them to stuff mattresses for the whole winter. The workers and the peasant women would set the pace with songs and jokes and afterwards, in the evening, when the heap of leaves in the courtyard corner was taller than the front door, they would start dancing to the sound of the zithern and the accordion. All the residents of the district would come, some with bottles of cider, others with a slice of speck, others with chairs for the elderly. Everybody came except for the Hubers. When Hermann heard singing during those light evenings that smelt of hay, his face would darken. “It's alright for some who are rich and can afford to party,” he would say, “but I have to work tomorrow.” Then he'd go to bed.

Gerda had never heard the sound of her father's laughter. On the other hand, she remembered exactly the last time she had seen her mother laugh. A pail with soapy water had been knocked over on the kitchen floor, Hermann had walked on it and slipped. The sight of her husband falling stiffly and hitting his behind entertained Johanna, and for a long time Gerda remembered her mother's delicate laugh, in whoops and hiccups that shook her skinny chest. Hermann did not tell her to stop, did not shout at her, and did not make fun of her in his turn. But when he got up, he gave her such a look of deep contempt that laughter dried on her lips like a flower touched by a firebrand. Gerda never heard her mother laugh again for as long as she lived.