Read Online Eva Sleeps by Francesca Melandri, Katherine Gregor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Francesca Melandri, Katherine Gregor
Ads: Link
wasnât Gerda, but high-voltage pylons. Forty-three of them, all blown up at the same time:
Feuernacht
, the Night of Fires. The spectacular action staged in a precise, meticulous, patientâthis time you simply have to say itâGerman manner.
The Befreiungsausschuss Südtirol
8 claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their objective, as stated by their cyclostiled leaflets, was not the administrative autonomy strived for by the SVP of Silvius Magnago, the thin, charismatic orator of Castel Firmiano: they considered that to be a petty political compromise. They insisted that only the Volk, the people, had a right to decide with whom to stay: be it with the Italian government that had been occupying South Tyrol like a colony for the last forty years, or with Austria, from which they had been snatched away by force through a historical abuse of power. They wanted a referendum on self-determination and were convinced that the outcome would be a majority vote in favor of returning to the motherland. Fifteen years after the end of Fascism, the Italy of the Christian Democratic Party was shilly-shallying, ignoring the problem, and hoping that it would resolve itself by magic. So the attackers decided to strike.
For their most spectacular blow they chose the June night when Tyroleans light thousands of fires on top of the hills to commemorate the courage and unity with which their people halted Napoleonâs advance. Every Tyrolean child knows about the exploits, studies the life, and imitates the words and actions in school plays, of Andreas Hofer. By knocking down about fifty pylons on that special night, the attackers were sending a very clear message: South Tyroleans did not feel Italian. They were not Italian, and they never would be.
The dailies informed readers in Rome, Milan, Palermo and Turin, of the existence of a South Tyrolean issue. Until then nobody had ever heard of it.
Â
That first summer in the hotel was therefore a baptism of fire, and not just for Gerda. The health resort was besieged like the whole of South Tyrol, which had suddenly become a war zone. Roadblocks, curfews, mass requisitions. Fifteen thousand men were deployed, including police, soldiers, Carabinieri, and customs police.
With them came jeeps, motorbikes, and dogs. Few of them were professional soldiers. They were conscripts, boys. They arrived carrying large, torpedo-shaped shoulder bags, side caps on their heads, and binoculars around their necks. They had the Arabic profiles of Sicilians, pale Etruscan eyes, protruding ears from Bergamo. And all of them looked at Gerda.
She, too, however, looked at them. Some of them didnât seem all that different from the men in the town where she had grown up, from her cousins or her schoolmates. Some Alpini from Friuli, for example, walked in the slightly stiff way people from places of stones, forests and slopes once did: that was exactly how her father Hermann walked, and Peter, too. She had also seen the taut lips, beneath eyes from which an almost childlike light escapes: when emotions become difficult, mountain people purse their lips but, higher up, their clear eyes seem to beg to be saved from all that silence. Other, more Southern faces, however, were new for Gerda. A certain almost feminine softness in the hips, a lack of rigidity in some of the wrists, a way of smiling that didnât take anything, especially not oneself, too seriously: these things didnât exist among the adult males of her people. Sheâd also never seen two men walking close to each other with that familiarity between male bodies which some of the Southern pairs on patrol had. And then there were the compliments! These were soldiers sent on a mission to a place where they feared a full-blown attack on the government, armed from top to toe, and certainly also frightened; and yet they still had something light about them, or perhaps they were reckless enough to tell a blond girl wearing
Feuernacht
, the Night of Fires. The spectacular action staged in a precise, meticulous, patientâthis time you simply have to say itâGerman manner.
The Befreiungsausschuss Südtirol
8 claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their objective, as stated by their cyclostiled leaflets, was not the administrative autonomy strived for by the SVP of Silvius Magnago, the thin, charismatic orator of Castel Firmiano: they considered that to be a petty political compromise. They insisted that only the Volk, the people, had a right to decide with whom to stay: be it with the Italian government that had been occupying South Tyrol like a colony for the last forty years, or with Austria, from which they had been snatched away by force through a historical abuse of power. They wanted a referendum on self-determination and were convinced that the outcome would be a majority vote in favor of returning to the motherland. Fifteen years after the end of Fascism, the Italy of the Christian Democratic Party was shilly-shallying, ignoring the problem, and hoping that it would resolve itself by magic. So the attackers decided to strike.
For their most spectacular blow they chose the June night when Tyroleans light thousands of fires on top of the hills to commemorate the courage and unity with which their people halted Napoleonâs advance. Every Tyrolean child knows about the exploits, studies the life, and imitates the words and actions in school plays, of Andreas Hofer. By knocking down about fifty pylons on that special night, the attackers were sending a very clear message: South Tyroleans did not feel Italian. They were not Italian, and they never would be.
The dailies informed readers in Rome, Milan, Palermo and Turin, of the existence of a South Tyrolean issue. Until then nobody had ever heard of it.
Â
That first summer in the hotel was therefore a baptism of fire, and not just for Gerda. The health resort was besieged like the whole of South Tyrol, which had suddenly become a war zone. Roadblocks, curfews, mass requisitions. Fifteen thousand men were deployed, including police, soldiers, Carabinieri, and customs police.
With them came jeeps, motorbikes, and dogs. Few of them were professional soldiers. They were conscripts, boys. They arrived carrying large, torpedo-shaped shoulder bags, side caps on their heads, and binoculars around their necks. They had the Arabic profiles of Sicilians, pale Etruscan eyes, protruding ears from Bergamo. And all of them looked at Gerda.
She, too, however, looked at them. Some of them didnât seem all that different from the men in the town where she had grown up, from her cousins or her schoolmates. Some Alpini from Friuli, for example, walked in the slightly stiff way people from places of stones, forests and slopes once did: that was exactly how her father Hermann walked, and Peter, too. She had also seen the taut lips, beneath eyes from which an almost childlike light escapes: when emotions become difficult, mountain people purse their lips but, higher up, their clear eyes seem to beg to be saved from all that silence. Other, more Southern faces, however, were new for Gerda. A certain almost feminine softness in the hips, a lack of rigidity in some of the wrists, a way of smiling that didnât take anything, especially not oneself, too seriously: these things didnât exist among the adult males of her people. Sheâd also never seen two men walking close to each other with that familiarity between male bodies which some of the Southern pairs on patrol had. And then there were the compliments! These were soldiers sent on a mission to a place where they feared a full-blown attack on the government, armed from top to toe, and certainly also frightened; and yet they still had something light about them, or perhaps they were reckless enough to tell a blond girl wearing
Similar Books
