Marco Balzano

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Vanya Bogliari

“Se Dio ci ha fatto gli occhi davanti ci sarà un motivo. È in quella direzione che bisogna guardare, altrimenti li avremmo di lato come i pesci! - ripeteva severa.”

Bekki

You don't know a thing about me, but then again, as my daughter, you know a lot.

The smell of your skin, the warmth of your breath, your twitchy nerves, I gave them all to you. 

So I am going to talk to you as if you'd looked into my heart 

Until that time, live had kept pace with the rhythm of the seasons, especially in these border valleys. (...)

Our language was German, our religion Christianity, our work was in fields and cowsheds. Nothing more was needed to understand this mountain people. 

Mussolini renamed streets, streams, mountains... Those assassins even molested the dead, changing inscriptions on tomb stones.

They italianised our names, replaced shop signs, we were forbidden to wear our traditional clothes.

Overnight, we ended up with teachers from the Veneto, Lombardi and Sicily. They didn't understand us and we didn't understand them. Here in South Tyrol, Italian was an exotic language.  

Meanwhile, the fascists occupied not only schools but town halls, post offices and the courts. 

Employees from the Tyrol were dismissed on the spot and the Italians hung up signs in the offices saying 

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO SPEAK GERMAN AND MUSSOLINI IS ALWAYS RIGHT 

Maja would say 'I feel like I'm walking over a minefield' 

One morning we ran into the priest, who pulled us into an empty alleyway with moss stained walls. He said that if we really want to reach, we'd have to go to the catacombs.

Going to the catacombs meant teaching secretly. It was illegal and could mean fines, beatings, castor oil. You could end up being transported to some remote island. 

Barbara immediately said no. Maja and I looked at each other hesitantly. 

"There is no time for reflection" the priest urged us. 

Wenn I mentioned it at home, Mama started shouting that's I'd end up in Sicily with all the black people. But Papa said that I was doing the right thing. 

It was wonderful teaching German. I liked it so much that sometimes I forgot I was a secret teacher. (..)

One evening two Carabinieri (Policeman) broke down the cellar doors as if we were bandits. One little girl started screaming, and the other children scattered, turning to the wall so they would not have to look. 

Only Sepp stayed in his place. Slowly he approached one of the Carabinieri, and I'll never forget the cold rage with which he insulted him.

The Policemen didn't understand German but he gave him a slap on the face. The child didn't move an inch. He never stopped staring at him with hatred.

All this time, the secret schools were growing in number. The smugglers brought us notebooks from Bavaria and Austria, abacuses, slates. They left everything with the priests, who allocated the materials to us. 

Despite putting up signs everywhere that read IT IS FORBIDDEN TO SPEAK GERMAN the facists didn't succeed in Italianising anything, and they become increasingly violent.

In the evenings, the aeroplanes beyond the mountains sounded like swarms of hornets and Mama said we should take shelter in the stables, where she had filled a trunk with straw and blankets.

"The bombs might fall on Curon by mistake since it's so close to Austria!", she said in panic. 

"Go to the stables yourself. I want to die in my bed, not surrounded by the smell of shit!!" Papa would shout, his voice growing increasingly hoars.

My brother, Peppi, managed to avoid conscription. 

When he got the call-up notice, he ate nothing but liquorice for days. He showed up for his medical pissing green, and with a fever of 40 degrees. Just a little more and he'd have died of poison.

"he's my youngest son", she said without entering. "Every time the teacher speaks to him, he answers in German and he's got sores on his hands from being beaten with a stick"

She pried open his reddened palms, which he kept shut as if he were hiding a stolen coin. 

"Teach him a little Italian", she begged me. (...) 

One day while I was trying to get him to learn a poem, I thought that although I'd been made to hate it from the depths of my being, Italian was actually a beautiful language. 

Reading it was like singing. If I hadn't automatically associated it with those swaggering fascist, maybe I'd have continued humming those Italian songs I heard on Barbaras Grammophone.

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