Gianni Rodari (1920 – 1980) was a notable Italian writer, famous for his prolific output in the field of children’s literature. Published in 1962, Favole al telefono (“Telephone Tales”) is a collection of fables based on an ingenious literary device. A travelling salesman phones home every day to tell a bedtime story to his daughter. Since trunk calls are expensive, all stories are concise and self-contained, with the plots based on modern everyday situations enhanced by fantasy, supernatural, or other highly imaginative elements.
Il muratore della Valtellina (the mason from Valtellina) is unusual for being one of the few examples of children literature dealing with the bombing war. This story is based on two aspects: that of the mason is entombed in concrete and becomes the sentient awareness of the building he was constructing; and the people who live in the same house who are killed when a bomb hits it.
Valtellina is a poor mountainous region in North-West Italy, from which young men have historically migrated to more developed places. In keeping with that, Mario goes to Germany to find work, but his hopes are shattered twice: initially when he died and subsequently when then building when he dies and when the building he helped constructing was destroyed. This parallelism adds poignancy to the plot.
The story is also notable for the light-hearted treatment of two horrific themes; a deadly work accident with a supernatural twist and the harsh reality of the bombing war. The disturbing contrast between the gruesome content and the dreamlike quality of Rodari’s writing makes the story the modern equivalent of some folkloric material, especially the German fables edited by the Grimm brothers which are notable for combining imaginative elements with a great deal of dark themes such as violence, viciousness, and killing. An unrecoverable corpse hidden inside a concrete pillar is also a recurring trope in organised crime fiction, which undoubtedly strikes a jarring note in children’s story.
Il muratore della Valtellina is set in Berlin and the fact that the victims are caught in their sleep implicitly suggest a RAF night-time operation. The end conveys an anti-war sentiment, although delivered from an unconventional angle. We become part of what we built or what we use: these things are not neutral but are imbued with our hopes and aspirations. Destroying them – admonishes Rodari – is destroying a part of ourselves.

The translation below has been prepared for this post

The mason from Valtellina
A young man from Valtellina, unable to find work at home, migrated to Germany and found employment as a mason in a construction site in Berlin. Mario – as he was known – was really happy: he worked hard, ate frugally, and saved what he could for marriage.
One day, while working on the foundations of a new building, a walkway collapsed. Mario fell into the concrete mould, died, and the body couldn’t be recovered. Mario indeed died, but he was unable feel pain. He was trapped inside one of pillars of the building under construction – it was a bit of a tight spot, but other than that he could think and hear as before.
Once he got used to his new state, he could even open his eyes and see the house that was growing around you. It was like he was supporting the weight of the new building, and consequently this offset the ensuing sadness of not being able to send news home, to his poor fiancée.
Hidden inside the wall, in the very heart of the structure, nobody could see him or even suspect that he was there, but Mario did not care. It rose until the roof was built, doors and windows fitted, the flats put on the market and sold, furnished, and eventually many families moved in. Mario got to know all of them, the young and the old alike.
When toddlers scuttled across the floor, practicing their walk, they tickled his hand. When young women were going out on the balconies or leaning out of the windows to see their boyfriends walking by, Mario could feel the gentle swish of their blonde hair against his cheek.
Mario listened to the families talking over their evening meals, them settling for the night and the baker rising before dawn is response to his alarm clock – the first to arise in the morning. Mario lived the highs and lows of the building making those moments his own.
One day war broke out. The whole city was bombed, and Mario felt the end was near. A bomb hit the house, which tumbled down. All that remained was a shapeless pile of debris, shattered furniture, and flattened chattel. Beneath were the families caught in their sleep. Only once both the building and the families who inhabited had died could Mario himself actually die for the house that was born out of his sacrifice died as well.

Source: Rodari, Gianni; Altan (1995): Favole al telefono. Torino: Einaudi ragazzi.
Translated by author; proofread by Claire Campbell.

Even a desultory walk in the most inconspicuous Italian town shows a clear imbalance in the memorialisation of the Second World War. Leading resistance figures, victims of reprisals, and key events of the partisan struggle are widely represented: piazza resistenza partigiana, via martiri della Resistenza, corso XXV aprile and piazza Sandro Pertini are recurring features of any urban landscape from Sicily to the Alps. On the other hand, the bombing war left fainter and less obvious marks on Italian toponymy. Traces are few and far between.

This bias is even more evident when figures are taken into account. The killing of all the Cervi brothers – seven communist activists who took active part in the Resistance – is remembered by street names all around Italy. Conversely, even bombings which caused a death toll in the region of hundreds of civilians have rarely memorialised in this way (if memorialised at all). Some notable exceptions are Piazza dei piccoli Martiri and Piazza Caduti sei luglio 1944, both in Milan. The former also stands out for the almost unique word choice of “martyrs” as a synonym for bombing victims.

Another way the Second World War has been remembered is by small monuments and memorial plaques sponsored by local administrations or groups. They come in every shape and size, but a recurring feature is the elusiveness of the inscriptions: expressions such as “victims of enemy aircraft” or “killed by enemy action” are commonplace. Others resort to even more nebulous and essentially tautological expressions such as “victims chosen by Death”. In this case, invoking an impersonal force also resonates with style conventions of memorials erected to victims of natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, landslides etc. Not surprisingly, some local authorities took a step further and sanitised text completely by omitting any reference to human agency. The following example (viale Monza 233, Milan) is illuminating:

Sign translates as follows: “On 20 October 1944 an aerial bombing hit this building, which at that time housed the “Antonio Rosmini” primary school. All children trapped inside the underground shelter were rescued just before the collapse by vicar Claudio Porro, recipient of the civic merit medal awarded by the Milan City Council. The citizens of Precotto.”

The sign has all the hallmarks of a compelling story. The initial order is threatened by an evil power; innocents are defenceless. The hero steps in, leads the forces of good, saves the day and obtains his well-earned reward. The most interesting bit is the information omitted: who dropped the bombs on a Milan residential neighbourhood (the United States Army Air Force); why (a controversial navigation blunder) and finally the context, as this rescue is just an episode of the highly contentious 20th October 1944 Milan bombing. That day, a direct hit on the nearby “Francesco Crispi” primary school caused the death of 184 children wiping out an entire generation. The Piccoli Martiri mentioned above.

The International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive managed to interview Paolo Bottani, one of the very survivors rescued by Carlo Porro.

Paolo Bottani

The interview was conducted by Erica Picco (Laboratorio Lapsus) on 2 December 2016.

“The moment the siren went off, we children were rounded up and our teachers hastily shepherded us down into the shelter. We were in high spirits, none of us realised that we were about to be bombed. We cheered because our class had been disrupted. Yeah, that’s true happiness! In the shelter we had good time: horseplay, you know, what children do. After a while, point black, the lights went out. Gosh! What’s going on? Then a terrible rumble came, the building shook and trembled, and rubble fell on me. Smell of dust and sulphur. Some children were crying, others moaning, one was covered in blood. At that point we realised how serious the situation was. I retained my composure nonetheless. I’m honest in saying that: I was fairly calm. Oh, yes, afraid but calm. After about ten minutes Father Carlo Porro assembled a rescue party of three or four volunteers, realised that we were trapped below and opened a small passage through which we were rescued. I was the penultimate to leave. The teachers remained calm and collected and managed to keep us in control. They formed a queue, pushed us up through a slope of rubble, so we reached the ceiling and someone from outside pulled us up, as if we were salamis [cured sausages were traditionally stored hanged]. The familiar urban landscape had changed beyond recognition. […] No living souls around, only deserted streets covered with rubble. I was walking alone covered in dust when I saw a derailed tram out of the tracks, and a bleeding horse without a hoof, moaning pitifully.”

Paolo was later celebrated as a star:

“I went back to Crema. The headmaster, the teachers, all Fascist propaganda so to speak, welcomed me almost as a war hero. I was held up as an exemplar figure, someone who did something praiseworthy, a deed inspired by a noble sense of duty. “The Allied bombings”, “American killers” they said – the usual propaganda. I was turned into a star and never had the opportunity to speak with my friends.”
In reflecting on his experience, Paolo Bottani makes his stance clear in no uncertain terms:

“I loathe war, any kind of war. I simply cannot grasp the sense of waging war. Since then I’ve come to understand that war is useless, really useless. How many friends of mine died while still in their childhood? How many fathers died on the front? How many mothers died among hunger and sufferings? What has war left? War is pointless […] All these events are etched in my memory – I’ve always been an avowed pacifist.”

A snippet of the interview with him has been translated in English and featured at the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. Paolo Bottani passed away in Spring 2018, only a couple of months before his interview went live.

Alessandro Pesaro, Digital Archive Developer

I’d like to record my indebtedness to Sara Zanisi, research officer, Fondazione ISEC, Milan for revising the first draft of this post.

The bombing of the Francesco Crispi primary school, in the Milan neighbourhood of Gorla, is one of the most controversial incidents of the Second World War in Italy. A series of mishaps and errors led the United States Army Air Force to bomb a residential area instead of the nearby Breda works. A direct hit killed 184 civilians: pupils, headmistress, teachers and caretakers. The event has a prominent place in the tormented landscape of the memorialisation of bombing war in Italy. The memorial marking the place where the school once stood is remarkable in terms of scale, artistic quality, and enduring community support. Victims are consistently referred to as “martyrs”, a term which has an implicit religious connotation in modern Italian and is rarely used for other casualties of the bombing war. Yet the event has also been massively controversial: held up in the aftermath as indisputable evidence of Allies’ ruthless brutality, in recent times it has been appropriated by right wing activists.

The recently-published L’ultimo tema in classe (‘The last class assignment’) is a rare example of children’s literature exploring the morality of bombing war. This is a subject traditionally considered the preserve of scholarly studies, or at least intended for an adult readership. Authored by Mario Emari, who recently passed away, it was marketed by a Montabone Editore, a small independent print-on-demand publishing house. The book follows the hours leading up to the event from two points of view: a fictional working-class family in Milan (Ambrogio, Mariuccia and their daughter Lucia) and two imaginary aircrew stationed at an airfield in southern Italy: Squadron Leader John Stuart and Lieutenant Frank Capece. Stuart has a daughter, Lucy, the same age as Lucia. The device used to provide a balanced view between multiple perspectives anticipates Len Deighton’s Bomber.

The book challenges readers’ preconceptions, since Italian popular culture has frequently represented Americans as larger-than-life figures. They are portrayed as bold, unproblematic people, imbued with a gung-ho attitude. John Stuart, in this respect, is anomalous. In his most recent letter home, he muses on the implications of his mission and explains how he and his fellow crew members are fighting to bring democracy to all those oppressed by criminal dictatorships. This ambition brings him to shed a tear, thinking of his daughter in distant New Jersey. The unresolved duality surrounding the bombing war is typified by the relationship between Stuart and Frank Capece, a serviceman of Italian descent.

Art by Elena Manazza

Whereas Stuart is depicted as professional and detached, Capece seems more in tune with the cultural mores of those on the ground. His role is twofold. For a start, he suggests that the distinction between those at each end of the bombing war is constructed and somewhat spurious. Look closely enough and both sides have something in common, shared ancestors and shared cultures. Secondly, Carpace brings in a religious theme. Immediately before take-off, he invokes St Pio da Pietrelcina (1887-1968), a controversial, mystic figure known for his stigmata and the gift of reading souls. The holy man, Carpace points out, lives not too far away and would surely condemn the bombing. Stuart’s reply is sharp: servicemen must obey orders, whatever their morality. On top of that, this is a liberation war, not an aggression war. The tension ratchets up and Carpace backpedals, in a classic top dog / underdog exchange. The operation proceeds as planned.

Meanwhile, the plot follows Lucia preparing for school while her mother ignores her complaints about claimed ailments and turns down her request to stay at home. She is incinerated in the explosion; no mortal remains are ever discovered. Her mother can only yell at the “bastard Americans”. Ambrogio arrives at the scene unharmed. The horror becomes unbearable when he realises that the bombs intended for the Breda works, where he toils for little money, have instead killed his daughter. Every sense of justice is shattered. One class assignment is recovered from the debris, a fortuitous ink blot covering the pupil’s name. The task is “write about you” and a vivid description of wartime hardship is spun: life inside a shelter, rationing, missing relatives, cold, and hope for a better future. There is a dual absence, a missing body and a missing name – a couple deprived of their daughter and an anonymous piece of writing deprived of its author. Both become universal symbols of grief and suffering.

The aircraft returns to base, where Carpace urges Stuart to think of the innocent people they have killed. His reply is predictable: waging war is part of human nature and servicemen are mere cogs of an impersonal machine. If they don’t carry out their duties, somebody else will. At this point the stories diverge. Mariuccia is pregnant and will soon give birth to a new child – a transparent allusion to a new beginning – while Stuart is shot down over Germany. The message is more nuanced than simply retribution for supposed wrongdoings; Stuart, his crew and the schoolchildren are woven together into a tapestry of violence. Both have experienced suffering, both have been mercilessly crushed.

Art by Elena Manazza

The book is beautifully illustrated by Elena Manazza, who has approached the subject in a delicate way. Violence is suggested rather than openly displayed, while loss and grieving are evoked through symbols of innocence and purity. Clouds feature prominently, either in a realistic way as backdrop to aircraft manoeuvres, or symbolic of despair and hopelessness, as when they frame a distraught face. In the foreword, eyewitness Marco Pederielli elaborates on his recollections of the event and traces parallels between the bombing of Italy and contemporary conflicts in Syria and elsewhere. He escaped unharmed by pure chance, a powerful reflection on how minor events can lead to completely unpredictable life paths.

The book opens and closes with two pieces of poetry by Caterina Rovatti: Aereo in volo (‘Airborne’) and Non esiste guerra buona (‘There’s no just war’). Both explore the duality of the destructive nature of warfare and the suffering inflicted on innocents. Non esiste guerra buona uses images of toys scattered on the ground and a mother in anguish to suggest a maternal perspective on violence. Aereo in volo, on the other hand, explores the moral confusion and blind power encapsulated by an aircraft in flight. The following passage is revealing:

[l’aereo] Traccia bianchi nastri
nel cielo
visibili come spontanee carezze di donna
all’esterno
ma nessuno conosce
tutto l’oscuro che tace
nel cuore d’acciaio

[the aircraft] traces white ribbons
in the sky
as visible as spontaneous woman’s caresses
outside
but nobody knows
all the silent darkness
in a steely heart

The free verse structure is impervious to translation, but the main point here is the powerful contrast between the bright natural light, enhanced by ribbon-like contrails, and the dark interior of the aircraft. “A steely heart” evokes vividly the absurdity of evil, namely an impersonal force controlled by people who are no more than pieces of machinery. In the same vein, the “silent darkness” seems to operate existentially rather than literally. Silence means no-one is talking, hence no communication is taking place, while darkness is the inability to see: not seeing other humans as humans utterly denies any form of relationship. War, the book admonishes, is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

Alessandro Pesaro, Digital Archive Developer

Mario Emari, L’ ultimo tema in classe, Milano, Montabone, 2017. Foreword by Marco Pederielli, verses by Caterina Rovatti, illustrated by Elena Manazza.

http://www.montaboneeditore.it

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