The commotion had continued in front of the Verdi monument in the Piazza San Giovanni, in Piazza Goldone and in the Viale XX Settembre, where the crowd had attacked a cinema reserved for the English officers. In the midst of all this confusion, a police van had crashed into a trolley bus: ten policemen injured.
In Via delle Torri, where the street was being repaired, the demonstrators had tried to erect a barricade using crash barriers and a steamroller. The police had replied to flying stones by firing into the air, then ten jeeps had broken through the roadblock and trucks full of police had come by way of reinforcement.
The clashes had reached as far as the Chiozza arcades.
All in all, twenty people had been injured. Sixteen arrests.
The students, and others besides, had decided to go to the piazza the following morning. All the processions were to converge under police orders.
Because of roadworks, the street in front of the church had been torn up. On the demonstrators’ side there were carts, bags of gravel, some pickaxes and a heap of broken paving stones. Two roads led into the little square, Via XXX Ottobre and Via Dante. On the corner of Via XXX Ottobre was police headquarters, dangerously close.
Among the 200 fearless fighters surrounded by the riot squad there were schoolboys, university students, some old irredentists and various citizens of no particular politics. There were also some exfascists, but, heavens above, were they not Italians too?
The riot squad was reinforced by jeeps covered by metal netting, armoured cars, at least 300 police officers wearing steel helmets, and carrying truncheons, carbines and rucksacks containing tins of tear gas. They looked pretty threatening, but. was it the moment of truth, or was it not? Rizzi unfolded the tricolour and started yelling at the top of his voice.
Eventually one of the commanders left the ranks, walked towards the crowd and stopped right in front of Rizzi, staring him straight in the eyes and clutching a riding crop. There could be no doubt about it, he was the same provocateur he had seen the previous evening. Pale as a sheet, with a face colder than the bora in December. Silence fell. Without lowering his eyes, Rizzi threw the flag over his shoulders. With a horrible English accent, the man said:
‘This is to be the only warning, there will be no others: hurry up, all of you, go home!’
Rizzi thumped him in the sternum, knocking him backwards. The police officers were unable to retaliate immediately, because the demonstrators blocked them with a hail of stones and handfuls of gravel. A pick was also seen flying through the air, missing the bonnet of a jeep by only a few centimetres. Then the charge began, and the impact was terrible.
Rizzi found himself running a gauntlet of kicks, punches, and blows from batons and rifle stocks, ‘Son of a bitch!’ in English, although he didn’t know what it meant, ‘Son of a whore’ in Italian, which was one he did know, insults in Slovenian, and splatters of red. He and some others managed to get inside a church and close the door. There were more than thirty of them, all breathless.
One of them was Enrico Pinamonti, thin and bespectacled, a secondary school teacher with anarchist ideas. What was he doing there? Rizzi barely knew him, they had never gone beyond hello and good evening, and now they were besieged together.
‘Good day to you, Pinamonti.’
‘Hi, Rizzi. We’ll see whether it’s a good day or not. It could be.’
Outside there was a terrible commotion, shouts, sirens, people hammering on the door. The parish priest arrived, completely out of breath.
‘What on earth’s going on?’
A middle-aged man with a tricolour kerchief around his neck replied, ‘Is this not the house of the Lord, father? You must give us asylum — those people outside are worse than the Germans and Tito’s men put together!’
The priest walked over to the door and shouted, ‘Listen to me, I’m the parish priest. This is the territory of the Holy See, consecrated to St Anthony of Padua. It is the house of God. If you break down this door, you will have profaned a sacred place. Cease your hostilities, I will speak to the people in here and persuade them to leave, as long as there is no further violence!’
‘Fucked if I’m leaving this place when that lot are still out there!’ said a mop-headed young man.
‘If we’re going to take ’em, I’m going to dish ’em out as well!’ said a man clutching a long bronze candelabra as though it was a pike.
‘What are you doing? Put that down this minute! Why didn’t you stay out there, if you’re so bold?’ shrieked the priest. Meanwhile there was not a sound from outside.
. At that very moment the door was burst open by the jet of water from a big fire truck, which immediately drenched everyone inside the church, opening the way for an even more violent charge. At the sight of the flooded church, the priest turned purple, and if had he not been a man of the cloth he would no doubt have cursed. He started shouting, ‘Where is your leader? I wish to speak to your superior officer! Immediately!’
His words went unheeded; the slaughter had already begun. A few students had their skulls broken with rifle blows. Blood mingled with water. The man who wasn’t going to take them without dishing them out swung the candelabra around his head, then brought it sharply down on the shoulder of a policeman, hit another in the stomach, and was finally overcome by at least seven police officers, hurled to the ground, and kicked until he had stopped moving.
Everyone who had been besieged in the church was arrested and dragged away. All but Rizzi and Pinamonti.
A moment before the police burst in, the architect and the teacher had hidden themselves in a confessional. Just by a hair, they had escaped being beaten up and arrested. They stayed in the sacristy talking about what had happened, while the priest went to deliver his protest at police headquarters, saying that the church had been profaned and that even if the sky should fall he would reconsecrate it that very afternoon, in front of the faithful and all the people of the city.
‘Pretty spirited for a priest!’ remarked Pinamonti, then looked at Rizzi and added, ‘That was a good slap you gave the commander.’
‘That wasn’t a slap, it was a push,’ said Rizzi pedantically, his mood darkening.
After almost a minute’s silence, Rizzi sighed and declaimed in a low voice:
‘Poor homeland, racked by the abuse of power
Of the wicked and the vile.’
‘Ah yes you’re a poet. Pretty words, but I didn’t go to the square for my “homeland”, strange though it may seem. I’m an internationalist, I don’t believe in homelands.’
‘As a matter of fact I was wondering why you —’
‘If there’s a challenge to police violence, I have to get involved. And besides, I’m neither an irredentist nor a slavophile, nor am I a supporter of Togliatti, who changes his mind about Tito every day, following directives from Moscow.’
‘I don’t understand, I’m afraid. Whose side are you on?’ asked Rizzi, narrowing his eyes slightly and stroking his beard.