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XXXVII - At Sassuolo
 In February of 1943 I was called to military service. Four of us left from
Bronte: Nunzio, Peppino, Gregory and I.
At that time in Bronte I used to play a
lot of poker with some older members of the Circolo di Cultura and I'd won so
much that I had a wallet full of money. While we were at the train station ready
to leave, my father and my brother Nunzio, unaware of the my winnings, were
still giving me money.
We were headed to Modena and Gregory, seeing how much money I had in my
wallet asked me, “Are you going to the fair to buy beasts of burden ?”
Once in Modena I proposed not to report for a few days and spend some of my
money in hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues, cinemas and the like.
We really had lots of fun, but when we showed up we were all punished and poor
Gregory had to peel a huge amount of potatoes.
We were assigned to the Maida barracks of Sassuolo and to a Sicilian sergeant
who was nasty beyond belief.
At Sassuolo I had rented a room with a local family who had a daughter named
Mafalda. She was not a great beauty but was quite willing and some of us began
passionate love affairs with her.
I could not bear that demoniacal Sicilian sergeant and, as soon as possible, I
changed the company and joined a new unit commanded by an excellent officer who,
as a civilian, used to write children's books and was a sweet and very sensible
man.
In that new environment I was happy, and when in the battalion it was decided to
stage a show centered on the song “Polvere di Stelle”. I suggested
calling it “Polvere di Stellette”, and participated in the writing of the
script. To this I included some stories of one of my countrymen, a fanatical ex
soldier that used to tell this story: we were in the trenches against the
Austrians when I felt somebody touching me from behind. I turned around and it
was His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy and Emperor of Albania and
Ethiopia! I snapped to attention and said: “Command, Your Majesty!” And he said
to me, “Crouch, Cosimo, or they shall see you!”
Someone says: “Don Cosimo, this story is too big to be believed!”
He replied: “Ah, you don't believe me? Go and ask my dear friend the late
Don Gaetano, who was in the army with me!”
“But he is dead!”
Arranciàtevi! (Do your best) Was, don Cosimo’s anwer.
There was a Neapolitan cadet who seemed born for the stage, he could act and
tell jokes with an incredible naturalness. The show was a great success. It was
also shown in a theater in Modena, in the presence of bigwigs of the military
hierarchy of the time.
At Sassuolo, during my leaves, I saw that, generally, the inhabitants of that
countrytown were good and generous, and I had the opportunity to meet and get
friendly with a great many of them.
08/11/2013
XXXVIII - The pitcher or Sicilian Bùmburu
When we were kids, I could have been 8 years old and my brother Zino only
ten, we had a friend, possibly 12 years old, whose name was Salvatore Androico.
After school, he used to come to my brother Nuncio’s carpentry shop to learn the
craft. But, the truth was, he was only coming to play with us.
In the same shop worked a tall, thin man, who to us, was terribly obnoxious. If
I remember correctly, he had a very strange name. Something like Crusifix or
Christopher. He had a whitish pitcher in which he kept fresh water, and from
which he drank letting the water come through a small hole he had made in the
upper part of the container.
This man was very disagreeable to us because he would not let us children play,
as we would have liked, with the carpenter's tools and scolded us constantly,
sometimes with profanities, telling us to go home to annoy our mothers.
One day, Salvatore, suggests to pee in Mr. Crusifix’s pitcher, and we did it to
avenge the mistreatment that he was serving us at every opportunity.
When Crusifix went to drink from that pitcher he began to shout: “These sons of
bitches, have put salt in my bùmburu”.
I also remember that Salvatore and my brother Zino, as children, were very
cruel. They had taken a small mouse from a trap and, after having nailed it to a
wooden board, with a boxcutter they were making small cuts to it and were
putting alcool in its wounds. I went immediately to tell my mom about it and she
scolded them severely.
How many memories come to mind right now of my childhood. Maybe I was three or
four years old when I had found out that my mother kept coins in the drawer of
her bedside table. I, almost daily, took a nickel, whith which I used to go in
the shop of Mrs. Sposato, very close to my house, to buy four beautiful candies
that I ate before returning home.
At that time was put into circulation a new silver coin worth five lire - about
the same size and color as the nickel. One day, instead of the nickel, I took
one of these new coins and went by Mrs. Sposato to buy candy. She immediately
asked me if my mother had sent me and I said yes.. She poured a mountain of
candy over the counter and put them in a large paper bag. I thought she had gone
crazy. But I took the candy and went at the back of my house, eating as many of
them as I could and hiding the bag still nearly full of candy in a hole in the
wall by placing a stone in front of it.
After that I went home as if nothing had happened. But my mom was there waiting
for me with a rod in her hands with which she wanted to beat me up. I went
crying to hide behind a chest in my sister Rosa’ room. My aunt who was a nun,
was saying to my mother: “Leave him alone, he's just a child!” But my mother
said: “He is not a child, he is a thief, and now, when the gypsies come here,
I'll give him to them who are also thieves!”
I cried and cried inconsolably. I did not want to go with the gypsies. Since
then I never went to open the drawer of my mother’s bedside table.
10/11/2013
XXXIX - The lieutenant Santangela
Between my many friends in Sassuolo, I had the good fortune to meet the
Casali family. With me there was also my old comrade Nunzio, who had also
been a former cadet in the barracks of Maida. We used to go together to many
country houses of Sassuolo looking for some work in exchange for food.
When we went to the large farm of Mr. Casali, a big man more than seven feet
tall and weighing more than a hundred kilos, he not only made us eat the
best he had, but offered us the opportunity of going to live there with him.
This was not so much to work, but to be together. He loved to listen to our
adventures, and, I think, he considered us, two small Sicilians, as aliens.
He laughed at a lot of my jokes and used to ask me in his strong Emilian
dialect: “Ti vo danar ? “ (Do you need money?).
I had become quite popular in Sassuolo and had many friends and girls who
bought me gifts and things to eat. There was a large number of us former
cadets in Sassuolo and one day that lieutenant Santangela who commanded my
company in Fornacette, appeared in our group and said: “Guys, the raids by
the Germans and the Fascists are beginning to worry me. Maybe it’s time for
us to go to the mountains and join the partisans.”
I said: “Okay, as thou has commanded us as military, thou can also command
us as partisans.” I noticed, however, that he did not really like the way I
had addressed him.
Several weeks later Mussolini’s soldiers really arrived to Sassuolo to rake
in all the deserters and also came to the Casali’s farm looking for me.
Clearly, somebody who did not like me had given the soldiers my name.
I was not at home then, and, later on, I met Casali’niece who crying tells
me that the military had come to look for Salvatore Di Bella and not finding
me had taken her uncle. I asked her to lend me her bike and went straight to
the police station. The military were there and I introduced myself to a
lieutenant called Stanzani telling him: “Lieutenant, I heard that some of
your soldiers were looking for me, I am Salvatore Di Bella. What you want
from me?”
He looked on a list and said: “Yes, I find here that you are a former
cadet.”
I just laughed saying: “No, I was just the barber of the second company. But
I have been telling the Sassuolo girls to be a student just to put on airs.”
The lieutenant had almost believed me, except that another officer
sitting next to him says: “Wait, if he says he was in the second
company, we have the lieutenant Santangela who commanded it. He’ll know if he was the barber
or a cadet. I’ll call him right away.” Meanwhile, Mr. Casali was released
and I was there waiting.
When Santangela came I approached him whispering: “Lieutenant, I was only
the barber.” But he went straight to Stanzani and asked: “How can I help
you? “ Stanzani said: “I’m sorry to bother you, but there is a certain Di
Bella who claims to have been the barber of the second company.”
“No, no” replied Santangela. “He was a cadet and I wonder why he had not
joined the army yet.”
The lieutenant Stanzani looked at me and said, “Well, I have to arrest you.”
11/11/2013
XL – Imprisoned in Modena
After the arrest in Sassuolo they led us to Modena and imprisoned us
in the cells of large military barracks. The cadets raked in Sassuolo
and neighboring countries, were about twenty. Twelve or thirteen of them
joined the Republic of Salò’s army and were immediately freed and
enrolled.
Eight of us, all from the South of Italy, had agreed not to join and
agreed to remain prisoners. Lieutenant Stanzani who had arrested us and
who seemed to be a good person and not a fanatic fascist, tried to
convince me to join the new army of Mussolini because he thought that if
I joined, more than likely, the other seven or eight young men would
follow.
But I remained firm in my decision to remain a prisoner until the end of
the war that, now, seemed to be almost imminent. One day the lieutenant
told me that the colonel wanted to talk to me and led me to him.
This
officer who was in command of the entire department received me with
kindness and asked me the reason for my refusal to enlist. I explained
that I was Sicilian and most probably General Badoglio was enlisting my
brothers to fight against the Germans and that I did not want to be put
in a position to fight against my own brothers.
I explained that
personally I wanted a possible victory for Germany, but that did not
want to participate even further in this war. The colonel began to get
irritated and told me that these were excuses and that I was a coward
and a traitor.
I pointed out that I could not be called a traitor if I
did not intend to deny my original oath. Without realizing it, I must
have accused him of being a traitor. The colonel became livid. His chin
began to tremble with rage and said to me: “You know that I’ll shoot you
in front of the entire military barracks?“
He called one of his
subordinates and told him to prepare a firing squad and to bring me next
to a wall in the large courtyard of the barracks. I was terribly
confused. I did not think that I would be really shot.
A large number of
soldiers were deployed in the yard. In the meanwhile, I was preparing
myself to say something if they wanted to proceed with the execution. I
was terribly scared but I never saw the firing squad.
After about half an hour they took me back to my cell and I began to
laugh without being able to stop. It was a nervous laugh almost painful.
And while I laughed I was thinking that maybe I was going crazy.
After a few days they made me wear a uniform of cadet sergeant and took
me to Tuscany, near Florence, in a concentration camp of military
soldiers that formed a kind of regiment with officers and soldiers, all
ex-deserters, who were prepared to be sent to work behind the German
armies in Russia, Poland or wherever.
20/11/2013
XLI - In 1948 in Turin
One day, while I represented the company OFEI in Veneto, the accountant
Contorni asked me to come back to Milan to tell me that he wanted me to go
to Turin, where his agent was doing, unbeknown to him, operations quite
contrary to the interests of the company.
He wanted to dismiss Mr. Caretti and put me to manage the Turin branch. So
he asked me to find someone to replace me in Veneto. In Milan, then there
was a dear friend of mine, a graduate in chemistry who was seeking a job,
named Nunzio Pozzi. I presented this young man to the accountant who
immediately employed him under my responsibility.
In Turin I found all the contacts of Dr. Caretti who was not sorry to break
away from Ofei as he already had an office from which he sold ferrous
products from other sources. We even became friends.
In Turin I was
fortunate to find a large number of villagers including a Mr. Ciraldo who
introduced me to a large number of important people in Turin’s industry. I
had an office in via Bogino No. 9, a few steps from Piazza Castello, and I
lived right on the corner of Piazza Castello and Via Roma. I sold a lot of
pickled sheet and other ferrous products to different companies working for
FIAT and other car manufacturers out of series known as Pininfarina, as well
as rebar for reinforced concrete used by many housebuilders of
Piedmont.Through Caretti I bought wreckage of ships that were demolished by
a company in La Spezia. As a rule, the material that arrived in Turin from
that company, was checked by me before proceeding to Milan, and was of
excellent quality.
But after a few transports I stopped checking most of the goods that went
straight to Milan and one day I received a phone call from the angry
accountant Contorni telling me that he had received a load of rust instead
of scrap.
Evidently Caretti, was returning to his old tricks, and had cheated. When I
went to complain to his office I was practically thrown out. I was very
angry and told one of my employees, named Barone, what had happened. He told
me not to worry. He would find a way to fix this scoundrel. In fact, he sent
two fake buyers who proposed to him that they wanted to buy a huge amount of
iron at a very advantageous price.
For this order, Caretti bought a lot of iron, priced well above market
value, thinking that he could have made a strong gain, but was unable to
contact those ghost buyers who had given him false addresses. In other
words, he found himself in a situation - almost bankrupt - and even sent his
wife into my office to ask for my help that I did not grant.
Aside from that, I have wonderful memories of Turin. I lived a couple of
years in that beautiful city that has remained in my heart.
21/11/2013
XLII – A grand piano of Portland street
In 1959 I lived in Rose Bay, one of the elegant suburbs of Sydney, but in
a part of the suburb that was neither central nor possessing any views of
the sea. One day my wife told me that she had seen a house for sale at 13
Portand Street, Dover Heights, a suburb that over-looked Rose Bay. During
one of the following afternoons we went to see it together with our small
daughters, Sandra, who would have been about three and a half years old, and
Marilyn who was about two years of age.
This wooden house belonged to an old lady who lived there from time
immemorial in the sole company of two dogs. When the owner died, the dogs
were also taken away, but in their kennels they had left an indescribable
amount of fleas. Our little Marilyn, at a certain point, began to scream and
cry. She was literally covered with fleas.
We immediately ran away from the place, but we noticed that the land on
which this miserable structure was built had wonderful views of Sydney
Harbour and was close to new and expensive luxury homes. I decided to buy it
immediately and, after demolishing the existing structure, put my home in
Rose Bay up for sale. On our newly purchased land, I began to build an
elegant two-storey residence with a small garden with colorful azaleas in
the front and a very spacious back yard. We lived in this house happily for
many years, until my daughters had already graduated and partly left home.
I remember so many things about this place, but especially the parties that
we held downstairs in the huge rumpus room that was dedicated just to
entertaining. When my daughter Sandra was thirteen or fourteen years old,
she was also studying music and I had bought her a grand piano on which to
practice. Well, every morning, while I was still in bed, she used to play
the same piece of music: “Für Elise” by Beethoven. My little dog Timmy, a
black dachshund endowed with an extraordinary intelligence, used to howl in
resonance with the music.
After several weeks of this torture I told my daughter that I wished to give
that piano to the nuns at her school and they sent two men to pick it up.
The sisters thanked me very much for my generosity. I thought that should
have been up to me to thank them for having delivered me from my daily,
early-morning nightmare.
02/12/2013
XLIII - In prison at the Casa del Fascio
When I was eighteen and living in Bronte, I engaged in my regular
pre-military exercises with some of my peers. These took place, every
Saturday afternoon, on the premises of what was then the sports field of
Bronte called Colleggetto.
One day, during a pause in the exercises, I, my friend Nunzio Pozzi and
another student called Trazzera, laid our muskets on the ground and, sitting
alongside them, we started to play with the pebbles. Our commander, a
complete idiot and a fascist, accused us of having abandoned our weapons.
When we returned to the town he got us locked into a small cell of Bronte’s
Casa del Fascio with seven or eight young men who had probably committed
some other ‘improper’ act.
After that all the officers led by the Comandante don Attilio, our political
secretary, went to the movies. Some boys who remained in the room,started
mocking us through the cat flap and one of the youths kicked the door to
scare them. The kick broke a small sliver off the old and frail door.
The other boys ran to the cinema saying that the prisoners had broken the
door and wanted to escape. The Comandante, came running to the room with all
his heroic helpers, took out one of the young men and asked : “Who kicked
the door?” When the young man replied that he did not know the Comandante
hit him several times with a whip and after having ordered him to go to a
corner of the room, called out another young man.
The Comandante asked the same questions, gave him a thrashing and continued
to do the same thing with all seven young laborers and artisans who were in
the cell with us. Finally he called out my friend Nunzio and asked the same
question. Nunzio did not answer and looked at him indignantly. The
Comandante, now really enraged. hit him in the face with his whip. At that
point, I came out of the cell as angry as a wild cat. My eyes were bulging,
I grabbed a chair and, shouting like a madman, said : “Don’t you dare hit me
... you understand? Don’t you dare!”
The Comandante said to his aide : “This one is really a fighter!”, and the
other replied, “and they are family!”
Meanwhile, the other young men who were in a corner of the room had all
taken a chair in their hands and were ready to attack if necessary. The
Comandante ordered everyone to go back to the cell. Then, one at a time, he
called out each of those young men, saying that he did not like to beat
people, and did so only for their own good. He gave them a cigarette each
and sent them home.
Now there were only us three students remaining.He called us out together
and began to recite the usual lecture. Nunzio and Trazzera did not open
their mouths. I said, “Listen, Don Attilio, I’ve held you in high esteem, but you surround yourself with a bunch of
idiots who, blinded by an incomprehensible military zeal, do crazy things. I
have not yet understood why the three of us were punished.”
“But you have abbandoned your muskets. In a real army action that would
involve shooting”, he said.
“And do you think that sitting on the ground with our muskets beside us
means that we have abandoned our arms?”
I answered. The Comandante changed the subject, offered us a cigarette and told us to go
home. These were the things that were happening during the period of fascism
and that was why I was then an anti-fascist.
4/12/2013
XLIV - Angora goats of Burraga
While I was building apartments in Sydney and earning a lot of money, I used
to pay in taxes some truly indecent amounts. One day, my tax advisor told me to
buy a farm property as the charges for improvements made in it could be deducted
from taxes. Soon after, he sent me a real estate agent who proposed several
rural properties to me, all within three hundred miles from Sydney.
I chose a
property of over a thousand acres at an equal distance between Oberon and Blainy
and about 200 km from Sydney.
The property belonged to a former merino sheep farmer who had sold his cattle
and sheep and had retired. In the property there was a house and a huge shed
where there were all the tools for shearing sheep and treating wool. The terrain
was hilly, quite similar to that of my country in Sicily, about 800 meters above
sea level, and a significant number of acres had been cleared, fenced and
planted with grasses for grazing. It contained two dams with natural springs and
a stream that ran through almost the entire property. Forests of eucalyptus
trees and various hardwoods covered the rest.
I was really in love with this wonderful and private property and I went there
often with my friends to hunt rabbits and wild pigeons. I got some local workers
to prepare about thirty acres of that land on which I was going to plant
chestnut trees but I did not continue with the plantation as the company that
had to supply the plants has quadrupled the price of them from what it had
originally quoted me. Just as well, because a few years after a fire destroyed
everything, including the house. In the property there were herds of kangaroos
and every so often my friends killed some, though I was not able to shoot even
one of them.
My neighbor had about three thousand sheep and an undetermined herd of cattle,
which often grazed on my land. So, one day in agreement with him, I bought a
hundred angora goats, and two expensive rams, purebred Angora, with the idea
that he would look after my animals to grow in compensation for his free
grazing. But this gentleman proved to be neither reliable nor honest.
After a couple of years, I asked him how many goats I now had. His reply was:
“Maybe thirty.” “How come”, I said to him.
“Two years ago there were more than a
hundred!” “Yes”, he said, “but many have died.”
Indignant, I did not speak anymore with this individual and a few months later I
came to Italy to stay. I had given the property, in equal shares, to my two
grandsons but they never even went to see the property and several years ago it
was sold by my daughters without my knowledge.
12/05/2013
XLV - The adorable Timmy
Timmy was a small black dog with a shiny coat. I think I’ve already talked
about him. Of the many dogs I’ve had in my life, this has been the one of which
I was really fond. In English they call them sausage dogs because, if you think about it, they have
a long and round body like a piece of sausage and four little legs that, though
small, allow the dog to move with unimaginable speed. Timmy had an absolutely
extraordinary intelligence. Sometimes I did really think that he could read my
thoughts, or at least that was the impression he gave me as he could perceive an
order given to him, even when given in a very low voice. His bed was on the
ground floor of the house, on the garden level and there he spent most of his
time. He was also fond of a far corner of the garden where he would cover his
poo with the surrounding soil. When I lived in Portland Street, I usually came home from the office at about
five o’clock and after drinking my daily glass of water, made a little longer
with a finger of whisky, I’d just whisper to him: “You ready boss?”
He used to come like a bolt up the stairs, tail wagging furiously and ready for
our afternoon’ stroll. If my wife or someone asked me to do something and I’d
lost a bit of our walking time, Timmy used to touch my leg and with a nod of his
head, beckoned me to leave. When he was out he had a bad habit of chasing cars, and one day the predictable
disaster happened. A car smashed its right front leg. I immediately took it to
the vet who sedated it and after applying two small wooden sticks bandaged the
leg. While I was bringing it back to the house it looked at me with an air that was
so sorrowful and contrite. Poor thing. He was terribly unhappy and somehow
wanted to tell me. After a few days he began to walk with three legs without
forgetting to show everybody his little leg in a cast. When Timmy’s leg was perfectly healed and the vet had removed the bandages, he
began to run merrily as he always did and when, rarely, I wanted to scold him
for something, it used to put up his little leg in the same position as when it
was in a cast, and he looked at me in such a way that I could not resist picking
him up to pet him. Timmy wasn’t chasing cars anymore, but one sad day, while crossing the street, a
car hit him and killed him instantly. Can you cry for the death of a dog? Well I
cried and my daughters were inconsolable. I buried him near my house and I did
not put a cross there because it was not Catholic, but I put a banner with the
inscription: Here lies Timmy, an almost almost human dog.
16/12/2013
XLVI - The house of Wallangra Road
After selling my house in Dover Heights, I had gone to live in a new house
that I had built in a suburb called SouthCoogee. It was a good place and the
house was very nice but I missed the views and the Dover Heights environment. A
real estate agent in the area informed me that there was a house for sale on the
corner of Dover Road and Wallangra Road that belonged to a university professor
who had retired in the countryside, about one hundred miles from Sydney.
I went to see it and it was a good house in an excellent location with great
views of Sydney Harbour. I bought it without thinking much about it, but the
house, despite being more than reasonable, was not what I wanted, and in its
place, rather than a renovation, I thought to demolish it and rebuild the house
that I wanted.
In the opposite corner lived a Polish builder who, when he saw the bulldozer
that demolished my house, kept on saying to all the neighbors: “Someone said
that this new owner is a builder but I think he must be absolutely crazy.”
I designed and built on the site a two-storey house, which was extremely nice.
The entrance was from Wallangra road through a small but charming garden that
ended with three steps leading into to a marble portico.
The house contained three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large kitchen with space
for breakfast, a sitting room, dining room and a large terrace accessed from the
living room and the kitchen. On the lower storey, there was the laundry, a huge
rumpus room for parties, a double garage accessed from Dover road and the rumpus
room. An adequate swimming pool occupied the rest of the land.
How many memories attached to this house come to my mind. I remember that when
the house was completed, we invited all the neighbors, as is the custom in
Australia. There was also the Polish builder who, after seeing the new house,
came to me and said: “When you were demolishing the old house I was telling
everyone that you must have been crazy, but now I realize that the madman was me
who spent a lot of money to renovate my house and now, what I still have is an
old house”.
While I lived in this house, I also met many Italians who lived in the area. I
met Captain Roberto Palumbo, an Alitalia’s aviator, who lived, with his wife
Carla and his daughter Robertina, in my own street. I remember the day when
Carla was bathing in my pool holding her daughter by the hand, and when she let
her go, the baby began to cry and, out of the water, she went hiding behind a
large earthenware jar saying: “I will not talk with anyone, anymore.”
21/17/2013
XLVII - The confusion
I don’t know what to talk about today. Maybe my mind is in tune with the
general confusion that invades almost all television programs dealing with
politics. The things you hear from commentators of the right and the left, both
journalists, parliamentarians, economic guru or even philosophers, show that
they are becoming confused or incomprehensible.
They are absolutely blind of the real Italian, European or global situation.
Globalization has brought us to compete with the so-called emerging countries.
It is not humanly possible to bring our workers to the same condition in which
people are working in countries like India, China, Korea and many others states.
Our laws, unions, the myriad of laces that jam our productions and those of many
other European countries will never be able to compete with those countries. It
makes a nice little saying: Quality and Made in Italy How many are the people
who can afford the designer and made in Italy? Now do all the machines and their
buttons can be pressed Italians, Germans, Moroccans, Indians, or anyone.
Machines does not make any difference. And with the advance of technology, soon
there will definitely be more even need to press buttons. Then how will you
support the enormous and ever-growing mass of unemployed not only in Italy but
all over the world?
According to the laws of nature the disproportionate growth of men, animals and
insects were controlled by war, disease and natural disasters. We rightly
reduced most of the wars, we have invented a myriad of drugs to combat disease,
we are working to prevent earthquakes and floods, but never think to prevent a
disproportionate number of births, especially in less developed countries.
As for Italy you could start by abolishing all health care. This would solve the
problem in a few years public debt, would bring doctors to make medical and non
civil servants, riabituerebbe Italians to heal in a normal manner and not to
worry about so many diseases that are largely imaginary.
In America and many other countries who do not have health care people , live on
less concerns for their health and die at the same rate at which people die
everywhere. The quality of life depends on the overall well-being not by
medicines or by the number of hospitals.
Think, my friends, think again.
24/12/2013
XLVIII - Exams of Private Law
Back home after the war, I could not wait to return to Milan, but my father
told me in a rather peremptory manner: “If you don’t graduate first you don’t go
anywhere!”
When my father spoke in this way, there was no way to contradict him, so I
decided to graduate in the shortest possible time. Ther were almost six months
before the exams of eighteen subjects for my degree and I began to study
seriously and continuously throughout the summer of 1946.
I studied mainly on summaries of the eighteen subjects of which I had to take
exams, all in one session and I was promoted in all of them, of course, getting
the minimum grade of eighteen in a lot of subjects, but I got also one thirty,
one twenty-seven, twenty-four, four twenty-three, and three twenty-one. The most
difficult exam reguarded the Institutions of Private Law. I was told that the
professor, who handled that, at the University of Catania, was ruthless. The
size of the textbook was frightening and I had only read the preface to this
volume and studied the rest on a minimum compendium of it. A friend of mine,
majoring in law, who had to take the same exam asks me to go over the material
together and makes me some questions for me absolutely incomprehensible. He had
studied in this huge book for about two years and to me he seemed really
prepared.
In the preface, I had noticed that there were two schools of thought on this
subject. One was the Roman school and the other one name I can not remember.
They called me to the examinations and the professor asked me if I had studied
the subject well. I told him that I had done my best:
“But - I added - I would
like to know if you follow the Roman school or the other.”
The professor, rather surprised, tells me: “Why do you ask that?”
“Because I would agree more with the Roman school but I am not entirely sure
...”
The professor then begins a long disquisition on the theories of the Roman
scnool that he also was following and I would just nod in from time to time and
to give the impression that I understood perfectly what he exposing. So this
thing went on for about a quarter of an hour, and then he asked me something
about real estate to which I replied in a somewhat confused way. He said: “I was
expecting a more precise answer, however, I can see that you understood
something” and gives me a twenty-four.
My friend who was waiting on the corridor could not believe it and thought that
the professor had gone mad, and that, if he had given me twenty-four he
certainly would get a thirty and an academic kiss.
I decided to wait for the
results of his examinations and after about half an hour you could hear the
professor who was shouting: “I do not know how long you have struggled hard on
this book, but you did not understand a thing.” He gave him an eighteen.
My poor friend came out in the hallway with his ears redder than the Pachino’s
tomatoes.
27/12/2013
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