Among the papers of my poor son Piero, died in El Alamein there is a war diary. I re-read them often, my thoughts and my heart broken, on those episodic and fragmentary notes, build a bridge of light launched towards that dark abyss that is his ignored war life. Hence, I gather to him, from the moment of the separation to accompany him along his painful, terrible Calvary, to the unknown corner of Africa, where his unburied bones dissolve in the ghibli, in the scorching Saharan sand. An episode that reveals the randomness that regulates human affairs and the irrelevance of our individual actions in the process of history impresses me.
October 26th 1943 – Today I can finally update my diary, I have been hospitalised at Giuliana since the 19th. I feel alienated, abulic, as if just awakened by a long sopor inhabited by nightmares. It was perhaps all a bad dream, in fact, once awake I always find myself in Africa, while I should be at home, and no longer likely to go there, now that the licenses are suspended. A real misfortune. Should I keep on thinking of being a lucky person just because I am still alive? Or is it just a postponement instead?
Well…, today 26th, then – We left El Alamein on the 14th, me and Lieutenant Fantini, my dear friend. Being free since the 10th, he did want to postpone his departure until I had been able to depart as well. I would disapprove him rather than feel indebted because I did not understand that decision. It was at least bizarre given his situation: with his suicidal wife, it seems as a consequence of the desperation of the long absence and the uncertain return of her husband. In similar circumstances one ought to leave immediately to ascertain what happened, he instead was nothing like that at all, he was calm, impassive in eager expectation that I was freed from the formalities related to the passage of deliveries. I would not understand. I excluded that he might have been afraid to make that trip by plane without the comfortable company of a friend, he would never hesitate, he would never pale while in danger. An iron heart, even in the face of death. It was during the journey from El Daba to Benina, that I had the unexpected and unpredictable explanation of his behaviour: he suddenly told me, in a moment of expansiveness, as if he wanted to free himself of an immobile, suspended pain that made him unable to regain possession of himself, that… his wife had committed suicide not out of excessive affection towards him but due to a lack of fidelity… now unconcealable. I showed disbelief but he knew everything, he was well informed, he also knew the name of the lover. He went on leave for consistency with the official version given to his misfortune, not to fuel the indiscreet curiosity of the malicious and to avoid unpleasant explanations, mischievous comments. Finally I understood! To be pitied twice, poor friend! He had to hide his bleeding pride under the mask of grief and to deceit the piety of others to escape the ridiculous: further violence to his frank and loyal character. What used to torment him was the thought that he who had been the cause of the death of that poor woman did not show any remorse by continuing to take care of his social network and to carry out his usual duties. At the Benina the service officer at the stop assured us that, because of the withdrawal of many leavers on their turn for that day, Friday 17, he could have us departing immediately, in fact, we would have took a seat on the air-plane piloted by Lieutenant Sandonaci, the best…
– Sandonaci did you say? – my friend seemed driven by sudden curiosity
– Do you know him? Franco Sandonaci, hunting ace, decorated several times, has now moved to transport
– No, I do not know him, I was confusing with a fellow countryman but… he does something else in life – Fantini replied hurriedly, recomposing himself in his enigmatic glacial impassivity, but his voice had seemed transformed, almost spirited.
– Ah… here is Barabba… that infantryman who is coming in, they call him Barabbas because he is a sly one but nobody punishes him or wants him to be punished – explained the officer – Well? Barabbas, are they ready? Here are the lists and escort the lieutenants to the air-plane number 40. Has Sandonaci come? Enjoy your trip and your leave. Do not come back any more, if you already have 24 months of Africa, let yourself be swapped while you are in the homeland… as once you get here, you will never go back home. You would much rather be admitted to a hospital, but in Africa never again… Best wishes!
There were already all the others on the air-plane: eleven passengers and crew, with us 13, a promising number. The engines roared and deafened. We put the life jacket on, except my friend, who sat shady in a corner: he was absorbed and occasionally stared sideways at the pilot, a young and athletic young man intent on manoeuvring. The engines accelerate, the air-plane begins to proceed prancingly. It Increases the pace, subsequently, slowing down, it stops, but immediately the roar becomes furious, thundering, and the aircraft moves and resumes the race wobbling and rearing up the track; finally it seems to get stuck and lean on a softer and more docile medium. It hovers. I see the sandy field running fast, littered with men, cars, and planes like motionless or moving big mosquitoes. The noise becomes a deafening gasp, breathless, grievous, like it was recurrent, a deafening deep bass gargle. The travellers, the look between being astonished and lost, stiffen holding their breath, gather in themselves and almost contract, in the faces have the disquietude of an anxious waiting. We are up in the sky, we seem steady, suspended in space and instead, the propellers, shaded in a shiver of silky transparency, drag us by cutting the clouds. Below us, the boundless, treacherous Mediterranean stretches out. Every now and then we precipitate by a few feet, hold the breath, lift the torso, grab the back of the seat as if to support ourselves to avoid falling. Immediately the air-plane, resting on more stable layers of air, begins to slip, grunting and grumbling hoarsely, slyly. The pilot looks ahead, the wireless operator writes, the gunner peers around the turret. In the infinite solitude where we are, in the empty, immaterial luminosity of the air, my imagination becomes heated and establishes unexpected calls and associations between the small and the infinite, between the ephemeral and the eternal. Stupors pullulate, winged images and evocations that have flashes of lyricism, tones of music; thoughts and emotions proceed in unison with the rhythm of the engines, my sensitivity has surprising and sudden revelations of beauty. In my soul musical harmonies palpitate, new thrills assail me, agitating my nerves as bold and unturned tonal chords. Vivid images erupt from the imagination like sparkling spirals of pinwheels. The roaring noise has now become harmonised and fused in an oscillating orchestral balance with my soul that is inebriated and disintegrates in that mighty symphonic effusion, it is forgotten and dissolves in the embrace with the clouds. Then, little by little, the sound becomes melodic, soothing for my nerves that unbend, my soul falls asleep muffled by a halo of forgetful unconsciousness, I am about falling asleep. Someone speaks to me, I recover and feel my eyes burn from a flaming look, close and attentive: it is my friend
– It’s him… that one… the pilot… Sandonaci… he was my wife’s lover… who got her in trouble… is he… got it? – seems upset, lit with anger and resentment
Through the noise of the engines I understand and I shiver
– Him uh? … aviation lieutenant… Francesco Sandonaci…
– Finally I have it in front of me… finally… I am only sorry for you, but…
I am afraid, I would like to shout to everyone else to help me immobilise that lunatic but… I do not have the time to do anything… he has already pulled the gun out and shoots towards the pilot. The turret machine-gun is almost simultaneously cracking. Among the noises of shattering glass, whistling bullets pierce our air-plane. Panic! the pilot collapses but beckons to us to make us move to the back. As the primordial latent instinctiveness that dominates the conscience and the reason emerges in us we all leap down the ladder, bumping into each other, pressing each other as the plane bows down, precipitates. Dazed, with the eyes on the pilot who agonises and on the bloody gunner that continues to shoot, we go further and further back, grabbing each other not to roll forward, to get away from the point of the next, inevitable collision, in the illusion of being able to delay the end. Meanwhile, the air-plane straightens but falls, falls, then collides and I am tossed against the ladder. When the shimmering darkness that had settled in my eyes cleared, I saw a tragic, bleak spectacle: four dead, the pilot, the gunner, my friend, a naval officer; wounded the wireless operator, the pilot helper, four travellers; unharmed but beaten are me and two others. The air-plane floats. The dying Lieutenant Sandonaci, did not let go the controls and managed to splash down, is still tenaciously steadfast in his place to continue his duty beyond life. No one had noticed the crazy action of my friend in the sudden simultaneity of a Spitfire attack. And no one understood how and by whom Lt. Sandonaci really was killed. We stayed in the sea for 48 hours, to unburden the air-plane we threw the baggage into the water and also the dead bodies who rose to seven. Forty-eight hours in the company of death around me and inside me. Finally we were rescued by a submarine. I will never know whether to kill the pilot was Fantini, the Spitfire or… the war.
Old Images Of Africa 