Mussolini and his escort exited at the same speed as they had entered. The Germans remained on the turrets with their 20-millimetre guns aimed inwards. They feared not an attack but a mutiny.
Thanks to my friend Bellosguardo, who lent me a telephone, I was able to get in touch with my father at the Pino station. ‘We leave tomorrow under guard in a troop train. The city we’re destined for? Maybe Dusseldorf or Dresden. If you ask me, they’ll bolt the carriages shut, like the last time.’
My father was silent for a few moments, then he said: ‘Whatever happens, don’t lose heart. Good humour and irony are your salvation, don’t ever forget that. I’m stuck here tomorrow, but Mamma will come and see you.’
Next morning, outside the barracks, there were hundreds of people, the relatives, mothers, fathers, wives and sisters of the soldiers about to depart. All of us were lined up with our bags on the parade ground, one company behind the other. The same, familiar roll-calls were being repeated, the usual insufferable rigmarole. Our detachment had been put at the end of the procession. The Colonel came over in our direction, accompanied by a sergeant who handed me a note. I glanced at it: it was from my mother. She told me she was outside, under the big beech tree. ‘When you come out to get into the truck, look over this way.’
I did not see my mother that day on account of an unforeseen event. She, as she said in her note, had been standing for hours under the big tree which in dialect has the same name as me (in Lombard dialect, a beech tree is called a fo.). She saw companies of boys passing in front of her, desperately searching for their loved ones among the noisy, jostling throng which was held back by the German guards and by a force of around a hundred carabinieri, I later learned that as she stood there against the trunk of the fo, she suddenly heard someone whisper in her ear: ‘He’s not going, your boy’s not going!’
A somewhat elderly woman, totally unknown to her, was at her side, leaning on the same tree. ‘Were you talking to me? About my son?’ she asked.
‘Yes, your son … he’s staying put!’ she repeated, speaking in the dialect of Lomellina. ‘He’s not leaving.’
‘What do you mean, not leaving? Look over there, they’re all leaving, more than a thousand of them.’
‘But the ones at the back are staying here.’ So saying, she made off, supporting herself on her walking stick. She disappeared, swallowed up by the host of mothers running over towards another departing division.
‘Signora Giuseppina Fo.’ She heard her name being called out. ‘Which one of you is the mother of Dario Fo? Make yourself known.’
‘Me, it’s me. I’m here.’ She moved away from the others, still unaware of where the call was coming from.
At that moment, a soldier, or rather two soldiers, came forward, the one holding the other’s arm. One of the two was blind. ‘Signora Giuseppina, I have a message on behalf of your son. His company is not leaving, for the reason that they are new recruits, not fully trained in artillery techniques and the Germans don’t know what to do with them.’
My mother could not speak. She embraced Corporal Bellosguardo. Other mothers who had heard the message requested more precise information.
‘My son’s a new recruit as well.’
‘So is mine.’
‘Then set your minds at peace. They’re staying here,’ insisted the blind corporal. ‘Those who have not received training will be staying at home.’
Dozens of arms stretched out to take Bellosguardo by the hand. ‘Thank you, thank you. God save you. May Jesus Christ bless you, my son!’
Bellosguardo replied: ‘Well, if you see him around, put in a good word for me. See if he’ll work a real miracle tomorrow!’
CHAPTER 24. Desertion and Escape
There are periods in the life of a man which slip away leaving no trace in his mind, others which, however brief they may be, leave deep marks on the memory, causing each moment to be imprinted as though sculpted on stone. We owe this simple intuition to a ‘story-teller’, Jonathan Swift by name, author of Gulliver’s Travels, and it conveys perfectly what was happening to me in those days.
When I think back to that time between 1944 and 1945, it seems to me impossible that I lived through so many stories, all piled one on top of the other in such a brief space of time. Grotesque or tragic situations, often lived as though in a nightmare. Even today in sleep, I find myself carried painfully back to the bedlam of the bombing raids. The troop trains with the goods trucks in which I am enclosed, the escapes, the desertions, the police searching for me from village to village, all come flooding back to me. And each time, I relive the anxiety of being captured and thrown in jail. But coming back to the reality of those days, the sequence of such episodes underwent an incredible acceleration the moment the last contingent departed for Germany. The only ones left in that enormous barracks were us, the new recruits, a few elderly officers and a dozen or so sergeants. There were four hundred of us in total. A month later, my friend, Bellosguardo, who had partially regained his sight after the operation on his eyes, came to give me a piece of advice. I was in a dormitory room chatting with a friend, Marco Bianchi from Besnate, with whom only a few months previously I had been training for the four hundred metres sprint on the track at the Gallarate Sports Club. Our miracle man interrupted us: ‘Watch out! In a couple of weeks they’re going to pack you, off too, for the same destination, Dusseldorf.’
‘What do you mean? First they tell us we’re useless recruits that they couldn’t do anything with in Germany, and now they’ve changed their minds?’
‘Well, you might come in handy as support staff for the artillery. You could do your apprenticeship on the job. With the carpet-bombing underway, you’d learn all the faster … unless you get blown apart first.’
‘Bloody marvellous! We’ve got our arse in parsley again!’ burst out Marco Bianchi, and I added: ‘Hell, what a cock-up! Is there a way out this time?’
‘Get the hell out! Desert,’ was Bellosguardo’s advice.
‘Desert!’
‘Yes, but cover your backsides. I mean, get yourselves a cushier number with a safer corps.’
‘Which one?’
‘The paratroopers at the Tradate training school. Look, in this folder there’s a pamphlet asking for people to join up. They’re looking for volunteers to go on the paras’ course, nose to the wheel for forty days until you get the licence. One of our guys, Sergeant Paludetti, applied last month and they accepted him on the spot. That way, he managed to avoid the move to Dusseldorf.’
‘OK, it went all right for him, but suppose they take one look at us, turn us down flat and throw us back into the arms of the Germans? That would really be great!’
‘Yes, it’s a risk, but it’s the only card you have in your hand. If everything goes well and they take you on at Tradate, you’re in the clear for at least another month and a half, and nothing can happen to you meantime. This bollocks of a situation has to end sometime! The British and the Americans can’t stay behind the Gothic Line forever. They’ll have to decide to get on with it, otherwise what kind of liberators are they?’
‘All right,’ the two of us accepted almost in unison, ‘let’s put in this damned application for the course in Tradate and be done with it.’
‘By the way, will we be expected to throw ourselves out of an aeroplane?’ asked Bianchi, and I came out with the comment, ‘Damnation, I never thought of that!’
‘Listen,’ the miracle-worker cut off further discussion, ‘if you feel your buttocks tightening at the idea of jumping into mid-air with a parachute, the only alternative is to ask a convent for hospitality: just up the road, you’ll find the convent of the Nun of Monza, and who knows, you might even have some kind of erotic thrill thrown in.’