Eva Sleeps (7 page)

The man from Merano had come to tell Hermann that he wanted his younger daughter to work in the kitchens of a large hotel. Tourists had only recently started coming back to Alto Adige after the war, so anyone looking for a job could now find one in tourism's new frontier: the Dolomite valleys. The large pre-war hotels in the health resorts in the Adige valley were therefore short on staff. The man was offering a good salary, free bed and board, and an apprenticeship in a steady profession: cooking.

Maybe if Hermann hadn't been a frightened little
Knecht
who wetted himself out of sadness; if he hadn't spread excrement over the doors of the masi during the dark months of the Option; if he'd chosen a woman to marry out of love and not powerlessness; if he hadn't done and seen things on the Eastern Front that nobody could talk about; in other words if Hermann hadn't lost love a long time ago, too long ago, then maybe he would have taken into consideration the fact that the hard times were over, that his family was no longer grindingly poor, that his truck kept his children fed and clothed, nothing more than that, but at least that, and that everyone knew from many stories what awaited his daughter if she went (there was a reason they called young female cooks
Matratzen
: matresses).

And he would have said to the man:
Wort a mol
, wait a moment. He would have said
Des madl will i net weggian lossn
, I am not letting this little girl go. Her cheeks are still round like a child's but she already has a woman's shape, and slender legs, she is beautiful, very beautiful, she is exactly like her grandmother, but she doesn't know it yet so I have to protect her, which is something only I can do, and must do, as her father. I will take her to dance the polka at the
Kirschta'
in the summer, to show all the young men how desirable she is but also how protective and careful her father is and that he will never allow anyone to hurt her. So, no, I will not let you take her to hotels for foreigners so she can be called a
Matratze
.

Instead, Hermann said, “
Passt
.” All right.

Gerda was sixteen. She left.

 

The journey to the health resort wasn't long but it was complicated. When she arrived at the train station in Bolzano, she was taken aback: she could hear only Italian spoken around her andcould see only dark complexions. This was, after all, the same city where, a few years ago, Peter had seen immigrants arrive from the South.

She was supposed to catch the bus to Merano, but she couldn't see any. There was a wide, tree-lined avenue in front of the stairs to the station. She went there clutching the ticket on which the man had written the name of the hotel where she was going. The flowers of the chestnut trees on the avenue gave off a powerful scent. The man from Merano had told her to walk halfway up then turn left. Gerda walked, uncertain, intoxicated by the scent of the clusters of flowers above her, clutching the handle of the small suitcase containing her few possessions. The bus station was there. Gerda approached the driver but didn't dare ask him for information: she was embarrassed to speak Italian.

“
Schnell! Der Bus Richtung Meran fährt jetzt
!”
⁷
she heard a couple of elderly German tourists. She ran after them to a bus with the engine already started, and got on. She was lucky: just a few seconds later the driver closed the doors and drove off.

I
call my mother and tell her that I'm not coming to Easter lunch. I won't be eating the delicacies she and my
Patin
Ruthi have been preparing for the past week. She won't be able to show me off in front of the tribe of relatives, or get the usual compliments on how beautiful and clever her daughter is, but such a shame she never married (I'm greatly relieved they now say “never” when they used to say “not yet”—turning forty brought with it that achievement).

“I must go away,” I say to her, “it's something urgent.”

I've never missed a festive meal with her. Therefore, this exception can only be something important. As a matter of fact she doesn't demand an explanation. She simply asks, “Do I know him?”

Does she have any doubts that this urgency might not be connected with a man? No, none whatsoever.

I look at the glaciers in the distance, or at least at what global warming has left of them.

“You might do,” I say, and she doesn't persist.

 

It's impossible to find a plane to Calabria the day before Easter. I call all the airlines, and then the airports of Bolzano, Verona, Venice, Milan, Munich, Innsbruck and Brescia. I try for hours on the Internet. Nothing. The first seat on a flight to Reggio Calabria is in three days' time, after Easter Monday. That could be too late for Vito. There's just one other option: a sleeper train to Roma Termini, and from there another train to Calabria. It will take a long time. Italy is a long country. And so, here I am on the local train that's taking me to Fortezza/Franzenfeste. High up at the other end of the carriage, there's a poster of the
Deutsches Kultur-und Familienamt
, the local government's family and culture department for the German-speaking population—strictly distinct and separate from its Italian counterpart. It's publicizing training courses for adults in the Bolzano area. There's a picture of a man in blue overalls sitting in what we imagine is his workshop. He must be a mechanic, an electrician or a welder. With his large worker's hands and the expression of an attentive child, he's folding a pink sheet of paper carefully and turning it into a delicate origami.

There's a caption at the bottom of the picture:
Wer Lebt, Lernt
. Those who live, learn.

Did I ever think about Vito while I was growing up? I'm not sure. He exited our lives so suddenly. So unexpectedly, at least for me. Not for my mother, of course, but no one explained anything to me. Vito left just when I was thinking that he would now always be part of my world, and we of his. I was his daughter now, and Gerda Huber his woman. He was there. Then, suddenly, he was gone.

No, I haven't thought of Vito very much.

 

Fortezza/Franzenfeste is so narrow! The steep slopes of Val d'Isarco come so close together here that they barely leave room for the bottom of the valley, which they enclose like a bite. I always wonder how anyone can live here. What could the railroad men Mussolini brought here from Rovigo, Caserta, Bisceglie, Sulmona have thought when they saw that this valley is so narrow that to see the sky you don't just have to look up but also bend your neck back? Rumor has it, when the Nazis were fleeing to Brenner, they hid the gold stolen from Italians in the dark fortress the town is named after, and, every so often, someone starts shifting a few stones and digging beneath the bastions. I suspect it's just a legend invented to give a meaning, however absurd, to such a claustrophobic place.

I'd better have dinner here. The connection to Bolzano is over an hour away.

 

The pizza restaurant next to the station doesn't seem to have updated its menu for twenty years:
Knödel, Wiener Schnitzel
, steak, salad, spaghetti with tomato or meat sauce. There's nothing else. The pizzas, though, include the Hawaiian, with pineapple, and the Treasure Hunt (
Schatzsuche
): cherry tomatoes, anchovies and olives stuffed with capers. Could they be the treasure?

As I eat a cutlet that's not particularly tender, I look around. In the bar mirror opposite my table I can see my head against the light. I immediately look away, startled. High up among the bottles of liquor no one ever orders, I've seen three of those damned targets. I really hate them.

They're hand-painted wooden circles. At the center of two of them there's a capercaillie holding a coat of arms in its beak, while on the third one there's a pheasant. High up on the edge there's a different date on each: 9/8/84, 12/5/88, 3/10/93. And three names: Kurt, Moritz, Lara. Dates of birth and names, just like those my uncle had written on the target dedicated to the newborn Ulli. Here too there are tiny holes in the center, in the picture of the animal. The owner of this restaurant is obviously a hunter, just like Peter, and like him, he and his friends celebrated his becoming a father by shooting (my God, shooting!) at the names of the newborn children. But he was a better shot than my uncle, or perhaps he had drunk less: because instead of the picture in the middle, Peter hit his own son's name.

The last time I saw it—that horrid target even Ulli had always hated—it was being lowered with him into his grave. It was easy to believe that being such a bad shot, his father, the uncle Peter I never knew, had riddled with bullets not just his son's name, but also his life. Yes, I remember it now. That day I missed Vito terribly. The day Ulli's coffin was lowered into the grave.

“We've lost a friend, a wonderful person,” someone said to me. I was so angry I clenched my fists in my coat pockets. I hadn't lost anyone! I hadn't gone to the supermarket with Ulli and suddenly turned around and not found him like it happens with children. I hadn't put him in a drawer and then couldn't remember which one. I hadn't left him on the bench like a newspaper or my cellphone. Or in somebody's house, like an umbrella. Or on the train, like a suitcase. I hadn't lost Ulli. Ulli had killed himself. And there were many people there who could have spared him a few reasons to do it. My anger rose and dropped like a wave, then all I felt was great tiredness. That's when I missed Vito.

I felt the need to rest my head on his shoulder—on his belly, in fact, because even though Vito wasn't tall, the last time I'd seen him I was a little girl—his little girl. That's how I remembered him at that moment: strong arms wrapped around my chest from behind, me barely leaning my head back and brushing his breastbone with the back of my neck, reclining against him with all my weight, certain that he would support me. Standing by Ulli's grave, I suddenly felt such an explosion of longing for Vito that for an instant it even covered the pain I felt for the death of my cousin, my playmate and confidant, more than my brother, my friend, perhaps my one and only love.

That was the moment when Lukas, the old sacristan, started his astounding speech. And only from Vito would I have accepted to hear, later: you see, Ulli didn't die in vain. Except that Vito wasn't there at the cemetery.

It's time to pay my bill and go. The train from Innsbruck that will take me to Bolzano is about to arrive.

W
hen, at the headquarters of the Italian Armed Forces, they heard that Gerda had gone to work in a large hotel in Merano, they immediately decided to send about a thousand soldiers to Alto Adige. The army requisitioned her hotel, occupying all its rooms, as well as other major hotels in the renowned health resort. When the new and very young
Matratze
arrived at the hotel to begin her apprenticeship, she found over a hundred Alpini waiting for her. The soldiers saw the perfectly developed sixteen-year-old come in through the tradesman's entrance, wearing her Sunday dirndl, the knuckles of her right hand so tight around the handle of her suitcase that they were white. The troops expressed gratitude and enthusiasm for the decision made by their generals: they were finally seeing the reason for a mission in that land of Krauts where all they could understand were the swear words.

But no, that's not how it happened.

The reason for the arrival of all those soldiers wasn't Gerda, but high-voltage pylons. Forty-three of them, all blown up at the same time:
Feuernacht
, the Night of Fires. The spectacular action staged in a precise, meticulous, patient—this time you simply have to say it—German manner.

The
Befreiungsausschuss Südtirol
⁸
claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their objective, as stated by their cyclostiled leaflets, was not the administrative autonomy strived for by the SVP of Silvius Magnago, the thin, charismatic orator of Castel Firmiano: they considered that to be a petty political compromise. They insisted that only the Volk, the people, had a right to decide with whom to stay: be it with the Italian government that had been occupying South Tyrol like a colony for the last forty years, or with Austria, from which they had been snatched away by force through a historical abuse of power. They wanted a referendum on self-determination and were convinced that the outcome would be a majority vote in favor of returning to the motherland. Fifteen years after the end of Fascism, the Italy of the Christian Democratic Party was shilly-shallying, ignoring the problem, and hoping that it would resolve itself by magic. So the attackers decided to strike.

For their most spectacular blow they chose the June night when Tyroleans light thousands of fires on top of the hills to commemorate the courage and unity with which their people halted Napoleon's advance. Every Tyrolean child knows about the exploits, studies the life, and imitates the words and actions in school plays, of Andreas Hofer. By knocking down about fifty pylons on that special night, the attackers were sending a very clear message: South Tyroleans did not feel Italian. They were not Italian, and they never would be.

The dailies informed readers in Rome, Milan, Palermo and Turin, of the existence of a South Tyrolean issue. Until then nobody had ever heard of it.

 

That first summer in the hotel was therefore a baptism of fire, and not just for Gerda. The health resort was besieged like the whole of South Tyrol, which had suddenly become a war zone. Roadblocks, curfews, mass requisitions. Fifteen thousand men were deployed, including police, soldiers, Carabinieri, and customs police.

With them came jeeps, motorbikes, and dogs. Few of them were professional soldiers. They were conscripts, boys. They arrived carrying large, torpedo-shaped shoulder bags, side caps on their heads, and binoculars around their necks. They had the Arabic profiles of Sicilians, pale Etruscan eyes, protruding ears from Bergamo. And all of them looked at Gerda.