That’s why that presenter is never going to be a great success in the Bar Aurora. And if it was up to us, we’d kick his arse all the way back to America.
VIII Trieste, Italy, 5 November
The poet and architect Carlo Alberto Rizzi got up early and made himself a good breakfast. At his desk, he leafed through his notebook. That evening, at the club, he intended to declaim a poem about the 4th of November, about the commemoration of the martyrs, about the gold medal awarded to the city. He had jotted down some impressions, and was preparing to turn them into verse.
So clear a morning distance is erased.
An interesting note. He could exploit it to talk about the Italian people, distant yet close, on the opposite shore of the Adriatic. As though even the atmosphere had grown keener, on that 4th of November, to bring the irredentist lands closer to Trieste, cut off from the motherland by wicked and biased interests.
The merest breath of the bora sets the banners flapping, on every balcony, on every building, specially two, huge, at the entrance to the square: the Tricolour and the Halberd of Trieste.
Celebrations on land and sea, in the Piazza dell’Unità and on the ships moored opposite, in the San Giusto dock: the cruiser Duke of Abruzzi, three white destroyers and an old-fashioned sailing ship, all shrouds and pennants, the training ship Amerigo Vespucci from the Naval Academy in Livorno.
Soldiers and sailors standing in ranks. The crowd moving anxiously from one railway station to another. Waiting for President Einaudi and Scelba.
The wind and the banners gave the poet a shiver of inspiration. He picked up a white sheet of paper and smoothed it in front of him, as though to purify it with his hand. His biro scratched and nothing came out. He breathed on the tip and started again:
The bora stirred, and from the ship-filled sea Rose scents and memories that touched the heart. Trieste, our beloved city fair, Trieste — pride of all thy sons thou art!
Fine, so that’s the wind taken care of. And the banners? Mustn’t forget them.
The buildings huddled on thy crowded flanks Bunting-clad and draped with banners bold Proudly salute the living and the dead; Thy blessings fall upon both young and old.
He buttered a slice of bread, spread it with marmalade and after the first bite stared once again at the crumb-scattered notebook.
Twenty-one cannon shots raise flocks of doves on land and gulls on sea. The presidential procession arrives: ten cars, preceded by the horses of the curassiers.
The President musters the soldiers. Women and children push their way to the front to touch, greet, stroke the uniforms. People in the trees on the lamp-posts: ‘Italy! Italy!’ At least 150,000 people.
The authorities climb to the city hall and at 11.35 they appear on the balcony. The mayor reminds them of their sister people on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. Scelba explains why the government has signed an agreement that does not satisfy the expectations of the Italian people: Trieste had been waiting for too long, it had to resolve its situation at all costs. He reassures the Slovenes who have stayed on Italian territory of respect for pacts and the will to bury the past and ensure cooperation. If pacts are respected, minorities will become a reason for friendship between the two countries.
‘To facilitate useful exchange between the two countries’, ‘Italy and Yugoslavia must collaborate for the defence of peace and the prosperity of the two nations’.
Rizzi remembers the whistles that had risen up from the square when the Prime Minister had uttered those phrases, too obliging to Tito and to a pact that flattered Yugoslavia just to keep it away from Moscow. The rights of the people were being trampled by the politicians: worse than in Korea and Vietnam, because at least there everyone spoke the same language, in the North and the South. Their regimes might have been different but their culture, their traditions, their spirit were not. If it had been up to the British, Trieste would have become another Berlin, divided into sectors, dismembered. And in Vietnam there had been talk of a referendum, of unification: why did no one think of asking the opinion of the people in Zone B? In the face of Wilson and the principle of self-determination.
But those gloomy thoughts, the image of Scelba’s bald pate on the city hall balcony, were distracting him from his verses. So what was missing? The irredentist lands, close by in the distance. The hubbub and the sadness. His pen glided across the paper:
Trieste! Italy! — yet our joy subsides;
We think of others not so far away
But cruelly severed from their fatherland
Who should be celebrating here today.
Excellent. Nearly done. Just a few more lines in the notebook:
Einaudi pins the gold medal to the gigantic banner that Rome donated to the city. The loudspeakers articulate the reasons for the honour:
‘Outstretched for centuries, pointing in Italy’s name to ways of unifying peoples of different clans, proudly it participated with our country’s finest in the independence and unity of the Fatherland, during the long vigil it confirmed with the sacrifice of the martyrs the will to be Italian. That will sealed with blood and with the heroism of the volunteers of the 1914‒18 war. In particularly difficult conditions, under Nazi artillery fire, in the partisan war it demonstrated how great its yearning was for justice and for freedom, which it won by using its vital force to rout the oppressor. In recent dramatic events and in the humiliation of Italy, against the treaties seeking to part it from the motherland, with tenacity and passion equal to its hope, it confirmed to the world its unshakeable right to be Italian. An example of inestimable patriotic faith, of constancy against all adversity, and heroism.’
The day had come to an end in San Giusto’s. The Basilica was packed; so was the square, despite the bora that was just starting up. After the Te Deum of thanks, the bishop had recalled the dismembered diocese, the Istrian parishes transferred to the control of Lubljana and Parenzo. On the tower, the banner with the medal had greeted the crowd, along with the chimes of the big bell.
Rizzi thought about how chilly it had grown. He glanced out of the window: the wind wouldn’t stop blowing, it was freezing. He would have to buy a new coat. A coat that was as warm as his old grey duffel-coat. The GMA agents had taken it from him without so much as a by-your-leave. An exchange of clothes, it seemed. In one of the cafés in the centre of the city. But then why hadn’t they given it back to him? Given it back to him? They’d kicked his arse and sent him home.
His leg still hurt.
And his arse wasn’t what it had been, either.
IX Moscow, the Lubyanka, 21 November
General Serov lays out the documentation on the desk, the pages perfectly aligned.
The latest information from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam.
A report on Bao Dai, the pantomime ‘emperor’. A moronic grin and a stolid expression on banknotes and stamps. He was outside history, if he had ever been in it.
Report on the new Prime Minister Ngo Dihn Dien, a pious man with an unhealthy attraction for crucifixes, in power in a Buddhist country. His brother: an opium addict with foolish pseudointellectual aspirations, and a passionate conspirator. His sister-inlaw: a slut, consumed with hatred for the communists. A corrupt regime supported by America.