Chapter 1

Gornate, 16.4.45

It is cold.
The child hears a new noise and climbs onto the cot's net, with his hands he grabs onto the metal bar to look out of the window, his feet pointed at the ropes like a circus child, his eyes wide open, it's April, the window is open to the front garden, the noise comes roaring loudly and he moves away, he stands there to see if it comes back but ta-ta-ta-ta-ta a machine gun and falls into the cot closing his eyes.

Now she hears Dina, the cook who came from Brugherio as a child, her running footsteps on the gravel in the garden and shouting 'go away, go away'. She has a broom in her hand to scare off the American fighter jet that was strafing the factory in the valley.
The 2-year-old and 7-month-old child looks around, does not understand what is happening. The engine is far away now and the child climbs up again, the noise increases, it comes from the right above the woods, the village, it gets closer, it is above the church tower, the red beech in the garden where it roars again, it jumps into the valley and ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta again and the child falls onto the cot, frightened.
Dina is still running in the garden, she has seen a threat to the safe little world that protects and exploits her. Rushing downstairs is Milone, a police colonel who runs into the large cellar to grab a rifle and become a hero by shooting down an enemy fighter.
The child looks outside, there is silence, a few 'oh my goodness' from the village. Light footsteps on the gravel, his brothers looking up in the air, Aunt Lida's voice, 'go back inside, now, he might come back'.
The mother Evelina looks out from the balcony of her room, facing the church of Castiglione and the Olona valley, the locust trees are just showing their buds, you can see through the bare branches the smoke rising from the plants, you can smell the stench of burning plastic, suddenly the siren of the firemen. It was then heard that the factory was empty, even the Sunday shifts were suspended, the plants stopped, not even the caretakers, even in war it happens that messages are passed from one side to the other, the partisans had been warned, they spoke to the bosses, the damage was only material and no one was injured. It seems a far cry from the war but there is no way.
Milone listens in the cellar, the plane does not return, no heroism, pity for his career, something shadows him, a figure fills the window on the street,
"Ah it's you Barbieri, did you get scared?"
"No colonel it's quiet now, I'm going to the countryside, I have to hoe to plant peas."
"Good boy go ahead, we will protect you from the enemies."
Barbieri says goodbye and goes, he was able to count the rifles that Milone has in the cellar, in a few days it will be the Liberation, he will go and get them together with the other partisans and they will take the rifles and Milone to the prison in Varese.
This colonel has requisitioned half a house for himself, his wife his daughter. They act like masters, but he appears as a 'miles gloriosus', deforming his surname. He lets everyone know that he is the one, true and only heir to the throne of Byzantium, if anyone listens to him he opens a trunk and shows documents, heraldic certificates, genealogies.
The child has a direct memory. The house was two storeys above ground, an L that had the living part on the ground floor and the rooms all on the upper floor.
One day a servant woman puts the baby on the potty in a living room with an unpainted floorboard, very little used, you could see that he was constipated and did not keep to the timetable, there were times for everything, even pooping. The woman goes elsewhere, no one knows where, and the child remains seated and obedient. The door to the grand staircase opens, ample, with two large black cupboards, a 16th-century one with putti on either side of the doors, also black because in the terrible 1600s of Spanish domination even over Lombardy, the ferocity of the Counter-Reformation had led to all furniture being painted black so as not to display the wealth of previous centuries and to show modesty, Luther's reform had given sobriety a value. Milone appears, looks at the scene and exclaims: 'cagone'. The child must already have known the word because he remembers the scene after 80 years.
Milone's daughter irons her black-fascist shirt because she has to go out into the village. She will also do it on 25 April and the villagers will pity her, 'go home Miss, it's better'.
Someone probably Teresina, goes into the child's room to see if he is frightened, he is sitting there pulling on the net with his hands and eyes wide open.
His 6- and 8-year-old brothers are still in the garden, Aunt Lida checks that there is no damage, everyone goes to the 'glorietta' to see what has happened to the factory, smoke rises from two sheds. The Gallarate - Mendrisio train on the line hidden deep in the Olona valley will not pass today. The insurrection is being prepared. On the 25th, the partisans will climb from the valley into the woods up to the commune to take possession.
Evelina feels isolated, no news of her parents who were in Trzic, of the father of her children she certainly does not care, she knows he has the Germans in the house, they have commandeered two floors. She cannot go anywhere. She thinks about how her marriage fell apart, she is offended because Alfredo found himself a girl, she will be offended all her life, plus a late son, born shortly before the final break-up, a burden for her whole life, borne and never loved; she does not regret Buso, for years she has said she cannot stand the climate, humid, too hot and too cold, trips to her parents and to Trieste, the villa Bazzoni as a warm kennel, in Gornate the climate is better but it is not her dream, she reads, writes letters, goes down to eat and returns to her room, the largest at the back of the house, a view of the Collegiate Church of Castiglione and trees in the garden,
I don't think she ever fully realised the privileged life, it was natural for her, as she had a very good opinion of herself. But she is far from her closed parents in Trzic, who had spoilt her, the last child of a mature couple, perhaps the last egg.
The child's brothers, Manfrid and Lida, this one in honour of their aunt, have also seen and heard for the first time a fighter jet firing, they go to look from the edge of the garden which is above the woods the Olona valley the Romanesque church the factory, they see the smoke. Aunt Lida's factotum, Alfredo too, explains what has happened, they try not to show fear, the fighter was right nearby. They forget.