| uncle carlo came from a farming family and had inherited the *** house, with some land, which was cultivated by a tenant farmer named adeline canepa. the tenant planted, harvested the grain, made the wine, and gave half of everything to the owner. a tense situation, obviously: the tenant considered himself exploited, and so did the owner, who received only half the produce of his land. |
| the landowners hated the tenants and the tenants hated the landowners. but in uncle carlo’s case they lived side by side. a bluff piedmontese, all duty and fatherland, he became a lieutenant, then a captain. one day, in a battle on the carso, he found himself beside an idiot soldier who let a grenade explode in his hands—why else call them hand grenades? uncle carlo was about to be thrown into a common grave when an orderly realized he was still alive. they took him to a field hospital, removed the eye that was hanging out of its socket, cut off one arm, and, according to aunt caterina, they also put a metal plate in his head, because he had lost some of his skull. |
| in other words, a masterpiece of surgery on the one hand and a hero on the other. silver medal, cavalier of the crown of italy, and after the war a good steady job in public administration. uncle carlo ended up head of the tax office in where, after inheriting the family property, he went to live in the ancestral home with adeline canepa and family. “as head of the tax office, uncle carlo was a local bigwig, and as a mutilated veteran and cavalier of the crown of italy, he was naturally on the side of the government, which happened to be the fascist dictatorship. |
| fascist enough to earn the hatred of adeline canepa, who was ardently anti-fascist, for obvious reasons. canepa had to go to uncle carlo every year to make his income declaration. he would arrive in the office with a bold expression of complicity, having tried to corrupt aunt caterina with a few dozen eggs. and he would find himself up against uncle carlo, who, being a hero, was not only incorruptible, but also knew better than anyone how much canepa had stolen from him in the course of the year, and who wouldn’t forgive him one cent. adeline canepa, considering himself a victim of the dictatorship, began spreading slanderous rumors about uncle carlo. one lived on the ground floor, the other on the floor above; they met every morning and night, but no longer exchanged greetings. communication was maintained through aunt caterina and, after our arrival, through my mother—to whom adeline canepa expressed much sympathy and understanding, since she was the sister-in-law of a monster. my uncle, in his gray double-breasted suit and bowler, would come home every evening at six with his copy of la stampa still to be read. |
| he walked erect, like an alpine soldier, his gray eye on the peak to be stormed. he passed by adelino canepa, who at that hour was enjoying the cool air on a bench in the garden, and it was as if my uncle did not see him. then he would encounter si-gnora canepa at the downstairs door and ceremoniously doff his hat. and so it went, every evening, year after year. one morning uncle carlo came into our room, waked me with a kiss, and said, ‘my boy, you want to hear the biggest news of the year? they’ve kicked out mussolini.’ i never figured out whether or not uncle carlo suffered over it. he was a citizen of total integrity and a servant of the state. if he did suffer, he said nothing about it, and he went on running the tax office for the badoglio government. then came september 8, and the area in which we lived fell under the control of the fascists’ social republic, and uncle carlo again adjusted. |
| he collected taxes for the social republic. “adeline canepa, meanwhile, boasted of his contacts with the partisan groups forming in the mountains, and he promised vengeance, the making of examples. we kids didn’t yet know who the partisans were. there were great tales about them, but so far nobody had seen them. there was talk about a leader known as —a nickname, naturally, as the custom then; many said he had taken it from flash gordon. mongo was a carabinieri sergeant major who had lost a in first fighting against the fascists and the ss and now commanded all the brigades in hills around ***.. .. |
 trichothecene mycotoxin |