The Unseen (4 page)

at that time I had just stopped working in the dye factory and China and I didn't have a permanent place to live any more we were moving around here and there for a bit with comrades who could let us stay with them we weren't the only ones for sure to live like that not at all at that time we were all more or less compelled to be nomads because of the oppressive atmosphere at the time there were strings of arrests and house searches nearly every day and carried out quite at random on just anybody in the movement on anyone who in some sense was a comrade or had dealings with comrades so it was usual not to stay too long in one place

we tried to spend the nights at the houses of comrades who considered themselves less known less exposed or better still staying with friends who weren't involved at all or staying with friends of friends the demonstrations and festivals in the square were a thing of the past the movement was like a great ghost absent withdrawn sheltering in its ghettoes the stage was now held by the trickle of clandestine armed actions where responsibility was claimed by dozens of signatures of combat organizations in competition the life of the movement was over but for the comrades it wasn't over it wasn't as if they could stand on the sidelines saying let's wait and see because the repression involved everyone there weren't too many distinctions made

and so we were there that evening me and China on that unfamiliar bed strewn with newspapers magazines clothes smoking a joint and watching television which we usually never watched and outside you could hear the police sirens going by nobody went about any more at night even at our centre we would see one another only by day and when we were out we were careful meeting comrades and then there was the business of Scilla and his friends that worried us we were worried about them and worried about how it might reflect on us I remember that we talked about it that evening too while China switched backwards and forwards from channel to channel with the remote control

before that Scilla was the typical steward who in fights with the fascists stood out as a very firm character very violent very aggressive Scilla had always been at the centre of all the fights he'd even fought the fascists alone and this is how he'd gradually turned himself into a myth because there in that small town the fascist presence had been sizeable and there too like anywhere else they didn't let people go about the town centre dressed in a way that marked them out as left-wing carrying a left-wing newspaper so the fascists provoked and attacked people who could be recognized as left-wing or just suspected of being left-wing

later the movement managed to win the upper hand thanks to guys like Scilla but at that time it was the fascists who ruled the roost and the police and judiciary shielded the fascists and through this Scilla and his kind let's say the military branch of the movement built their status by virtue of a necessity acknowledged by all of the left the physical challenge to fascism was recognized as a legitimate necessary function and on this role of antifascist militant Scilla was able to build the status that in days to come placed him above suspicion when he began to play the role of police informer

Scilla always displayed an attitude of physical competitiveness towards everything and everyone even with comrades also because he probably felt unable to compete in other areas so that he was always aggressive sometimes pretending it was just in fun but it wasn't much fun unpleasant yes that's it unpleasant and with those he couldn't draw into this physical competition his demeanour was a rather slimy and forced kind of awe in short he reproduced within the movement the same levels of violence expressed towards the enemy he always felt at war with everything and everybody and in everyone he saw an enemy on whom to take out his violence and he'd hit a comrade in the very same way he'd hit a fascist

and so inside the movement even Scilla's kind had their uses he was an internal policeman he carried out a function that was maybe unpleasant but considered useful Scilla and his kind never took part in the internal debates of the movement in the meetings and mass meetings they were largely silent interested only in where the violence came in they experienced the stage of intensified conflict in merely mechanical and purely military terms of escalating the conflict and using violence against the State as earlier it had been used against the fascists they were always outside the struggles in the local factories and little by little began to mimic clandestine ideals and behaviour the habit of hiding a gun in the cellar and so on

later when things got as far as that meeting that conclusively split up our group and which I'll talk about later after that meeting we heard nothing more about him and those who took the same road we never saw them again we heard nothing more about him Valeriana Cotogno and Gelso except in the leaflets claiming the armed actions that they carried out they carried out a series of armed actions before this
carabiniere
but I only discovered this once I was inside they didn't do killings they did robberies a few woundings until this
carabiniere
but then when I saw it on television that evening with China we didn't think for a second that it could have been them

China presses the remote switch again this time the screen shows a boundless plain the lens zooms in it must be filmed from a helicopter and you can see an ostrich running very fast on a flat barren plain it's running fast in a straight line its head still the body rhythmically trembling the legs are so fast you can't see them sometimes it turns its head and runs even faster a long low shadow comes fast behind it it's catching up the ostrich turns its head the shadow is a few yards away the ostrich is running in zigzags now it gains a few yards but in seconds the shadow's again very close the ostrich runs towards the void with all its strength the shadow rises into the air and in one bound the cheetah's upon it they form a single still shadow the helicopter turns there's just the grey sky and the noise of the blades

5

It happened right after Christmas on Christmas Eve I'd had a telegram from China to tell me she was coming to see me on Monday for a visit this telegram had arrived in the middle of a discussion I was in the dormitory cell with four other comrades discussing how to share the tasks of cooking the Christmas dinner I was making the risotto I was making yellow risotto and I was making the stock with a stock cube on the camping-gas stove a guard called me I turned and saw the little yellow square against the bars I thought it was the lawyer about the trial which was getting close now but then when I saw it was from China I thought I didn't think anything I think I was very pleased because it had been a surprise and I thought that China had given me this surprise of a Christmas visit and I was very pleased

it's funny I thought because all the Christmasses we'd spent together I don't think we ever once celebrated one but now there I was preparing Christmas dinner I thought about China's hair her long hair that when she laughs she throws forward covering her whole face with her long long black hair that when we talked with the glass between us I couldn't even touch but luckily here there was no glass separating visitors now but then I remember how awful it was that we couldn't even hold hands for a moment and this depressed us a lot even though we were happy to see each other but not in that inhuman humiliating depressing way and sometimes I'd get into a furious rage before the visit knowing I'd see her there behind the glass and that we'd have to talk through the glass without being able to touch not even a finger

again I was overcome by that feeling of hatred I'd had other times before the blood rose to my head a violent desire to kill the guards any of them right there and then with my bare hands if I dwell on it it's as if I can still feel it now even after all this time well I wasn't expecting that visit because China had come just the week before it had been a lovely visit we'd talked about so many things made plans because I believed I'd get out soon right after the trial and so I was touched now thinking about that unbelievable journey that she had to make for me every time a thousand kilometres to come and see me and every time another thousand kilometres it was unbelievable but after all that visit wasn't to take place in the end because of all the havoc that was to come

Monday came no it was Sunday it was afternoon exercise time in the morning there'd been a search but oddly unlike the other routine searches this search had been a bit tougher than the rest and the guards had also done a strange thing they'd left because there the symbolic runs right through these things through the searches and such things it's a matter of giving reciprocal signs and so the sign they'd left this time strange to interpret strange for me that is without any inkling of what was going on while the guards probably did have and no mistake because they had a nose for the mood of the moment there was this sign we found it there on the table when we got back up to the cells after the morning exercise

they'd left on all the tables in all the cells in all the dormitories they'd left all the objects everything in the form of a box a receptacle a tin a bottle in other words all the containers they'd put them there on the tables from boxes containing detergent to ones containing coffee or sugar to bottles of oil and shampoo all the boxes all the containers the bottles they'd left them there on the tables as if they were hinting at something or other I realized what it was only later to begin with I didn't pay much attention the fact of finding all these things lined up there on the table surprised me and then later when I went for the afternoon exercise it also surprised me to find out that the same thing had been done in all the other cells too

so I remember that the atmosphere of that afternoon exercise was particularly tense there was an atmosphere you could cut with a knife and what I thought in the light of earlier situations I'd been in and experiences I'd had I thought somebody was going to get done in because there was a lot of tension and you could see it in the air you could feel it in so many things in a strange silence that was different from usual and especially from the looks quick rapid looks that passed suddenly between some people as they were walking up and down and then the thing that I surmised and that must have been on their minds a stabbing or at any rate the settling of some score or other and I was expecting it to happen any minute something like what I'd seen other times before like once shortly after they arrested me and it really upset me at the time

that time it happened as we were exercising outside as usual when three or four non-politicals because we exercised along with the non-political prisoners these non-politicals went up close behind another non-political they went up close to somebody exercising there like them and from behind they put a noose round his neck a knotted steel wire they put this noose around his neck from behind and two of them took his arms they held his arms tight to keep him from moving and they pulled the noose it's this system that's used to immobilize someone during a stabbing for it isn't as easy as it seems to stab someone so that the blade can get deep enough into a vital organ but it can happen that the person survives even after twenty or thirty stab wounds

it's not easy to stab somebody it's not as easy as it might seem I mean it's easy to stab him but it isn't easy to kill him because besides he isn't just going to take the stabbing without putting up a struggle he struggles he wriggles he goes wild he thrashes all over the place it's very difficult to hold him still I mean and one of the techniques is precisely to put a noose around his neck first to pull it until he half loses consciousness because he's nearly choking and in the meantime you stab him with the knife pushed up from below because wounds angled down are less effective you have to push the knife up from lower down and most important you have to try to aim for a vital organ maybe just under the sternum here

and so they put this noose around his neck and the others held his arms and the one behind him started pulling the steel wire noose but the steel wire noose broke or it's more likely that the knot was badly tied anyway it snapped or it worked loose or I don't know anyway they didn't succeed in pulling it tight round his neck of course he was terrified because he knew at once what they had in mind trying to get a steel wire round his neck but as for them after a moment's awkwardness they treated it all like a joke all the more because they hadn't brought out the knives yet the knives hadn't appeared yet

so they were making a joke of it they were slapping him on the back saying so we gave you a fright as if it was all a joke but he didn't believe it was any joke he didn't fall for it at all because besides you don't play jokes like this in a prison if someone plays a joke like that on you then you're the one that murders him because these are no jokes then the guy went over to the exercise yard gates and he started to yell to call the guards to let him out and that was when the ones who were after him realized that either they went for him right then or the guards would arrive and it would all become trickier and if he managed to get out in time they'd never get him because then he'd obviously be transferred or shoved into the isolation cells anyway he wouldn't be showing his face there again that's for sure

then just as the guards were running to see what he was yelling about four or five of them jumped on him with knives with blades skewers and they started stabbing him all in a muddle and obviously he put up a fight he didn't just stand there and let himself be stabbed he was kicking trying to shield himself to wriggle free and he took quite a few stab wounds before he fell to the ground and all the while screaming and the guards were rushing about the exercise corridor they could see what was happening but they didn't come into the yard there was a sergeant yelling from behind the gates cut it out cut it out the whole scene lasted a few seconds the others were at the far end of the wall we were all there all at the far end watching without a move the whole scene lasted a few seconds