The Innocent Days of War

1

Stefano Portelli would remember that virginal, never-ending kiss for a very long time. He would remember the smell of wet earth and the immense silence all around, a silence broken only by the rapid thudding of the blood in their veins. He would remember the treetops moving slowly in the distance, and his own body flooding with a sudden drowsiness. That, above all. He will never forget it, the very sudden longing to sleep, and then, instead, running away, running back to the house, away from his wife, away from everything. Over time, that kiss will become familiar but unapproachable terrain: a mountain on the horizon buried in his heart.

He had met Eleonora Polidori at a party. He was born in 1912, she in ’16. A yearlong engagement and then the wedding. At which point, Stefano was fresh out of law school. Law, like his father and his grandfather. He can’t claim to be brilliant, but he is a serious and resolute young man. Law, as Stefano sees it, is not empty, artificial rhetoric; it doesn’t mean knowing how to erect a tower of words, interpretations, or hypotheses over a void. For Stefano, justice has concrete, constructive foundations. It is a way of thinking, or an ideal, that is poured into everyday actions, into the honest toil of daily life. In his youthful imaginings, studying law represents the first step toward becoming a decent man, a just man, who will judge and defend his own actions and those of others.
Eleonora’s story is different. She reads lots of novels and loves poetry. No regular, formal schooling. In the tiny villages of northern Lazio like the one where she lives, school and (in the best of cases) university are reserved for boys. Her family owns a little land. Her father could almost be described as a peasant farmer. Her two brothers—Ernesto and Giuseppe—are noisy and glib, and enthusiastic fans of the Fascist regime. Eleonora is unassuming by nature. Very reserved. When she realizes that Stefano is courting her, she feigns a certain disinterest. But it’s not genuine. She likes that young man who is not much older than she is and who inspires her with a sense of quiet satisfaction. She approves of Stefano’s kind, discreet ways. She likes his blandly Socialist ideals. Eleonora has not had a regular, formal education, but she has always harbored a certain regard for the idea of culture—a word she thinks of not as meaning something precise but as a kind of tuning fork, vibrating and emitting concentric circles of sound. In her eyes, Stefano is in every sense a cultured man: He comes from a family of professionals; he is about to graduate in law. And once Fascism comes to an end (Eleonora is sincerely convinced of the fact: Fascism will come to an end), she is certain he will have a role to play in the new political order.
But at the party, when the two of them meet, there is no time for considerations such as these. The first time they meet, simpler things take precedence. A glance, a gesture made by a pair of hands, the cut of his suit. Who knows why that particular glance, that gesture, and the cut of that suit imprint themselves in a way that will later be hard to forget. Eleonora and Stefano are, both of them, levelheaded young people. No sentimental hyperbole. He asks if he can see her again; she accepts. She does so with a hint of coolness, not because she wants to give herself airs but to put Stefano to the test. If something is to come of this, she would like it to be serious, she thinks.
The party doesn’t go on until late: It is the end of May; the evenings are still cool. 1938. Rome is only thirty miles away yet might as well be another planet. The rest of the world is very remote. Maybe there will be a war, but not now, not yet. Right now, they look out at the view from the terrace, the young men drink wine, and a few people dance under the vigilant gazes of family members.
That evening, at any rate, there is no kiss.

Stefano reads only law books. Even after completing his university studies, even when he is no longer working at the Police Court (he never will be a practicing attorney—at the end of the day too one-sided, too insubstantial a profession to satisfy the instincts that make of him a natural-born legal philologist) he will carry on devouring legal texts. They are his great passion, his great pride. Among other things, he dreams of putting together the largest library in the area. Something to hand down, one day, to future generations, so that his name might be remembered as that of a man whose life—every second of it—honored the concept, the very notion, of justice.
This veritable obsession is not universally appreciated. In Stefano’s disquisitions on the Code of Justinian or the Napoleonic Code or the principles of common law, local party officials note a subtle criticism of the regime. Even his father has words to say with regard to those monothematic interests of his. Eleonora, on the other hand, will come to love their subtlety and his prodigious erudition.
Sadly, the conversations they have will not last long. Conversations which, if we are to be entirely honest, are monologues recited by him, with rare interruptions on her part to ask a few timid questions. Conversations regarding the Napoleonic Code or the principles of common law. The marriage will last only two years. Two full and authentically happy years.

About which there is not much to say. There never is when everything goes well and concord reigns. To which we might add, happiness is always too fleeting to leave any time for detailed descriptions.
War breaks out for real. To begin with, nobody notices. It feels like an abstract concept, an implausible claim only registered by folk who happen to make the journey from the village to Rome and perhaps read the newspapers—an irrelevant number of individuals. When even the local boys start leaving for the front, that’s when the war becomes real.
No one seriously understands the ins and outs of the compulsory draft. In Eleonora’s family, the eldest son, Ernesto, who is twenty-seven, volunteers for service. He adores Il Duce and is a snappy dresser: The uniform undeniably suits him. He thinks of the war as a sort of catwalk. Her other brother, Giuseppe, is champing at the bit, longing to follow in Ernesto’s footsteps. He expects to be called up soon. Stefano, meanwhile, is more than happy to remain at home. He has been married to Eleonora for just a few months. The two of them consider themselves very lucky, and in effect they are. As if the world were unchanged, he still has his job at the Police Court, and he manages the property (not a great deal of it—mostly planted with olive trees) that his wife has brought as her dowry, while she devotes herself to the home. They also consider themselves lucky because all the chatter floating around has nothing to do with them personally. How could ridiculous claims to far-away lands have anything to do with them? And all the talk of imperial pasts and military glories and virtues? Why should they pay any attention to the risible, offensive rhetoric that animates the buildup to all wars? As a matter of fact, Stefano nurses dreams of global peace and justice, dreams in which a supranational organization regulates and defuses eventual conflicts or—and preferably—disagreements between nations. And does so on the basis of an unambiguous charter, a governing code that will be universal, and in its own way mathematical . . .
Luckily, in those first months of war there are no local deaths to mourn. Eleonora and Stefano know no young men who have died in combat. They hear news of a few acquaintances being wounded, but nothing tragic or irreparable.
Despite the war being a distant but—they imagine— painful and horrible thing, both begin to think they might want a child. They talk about it for the first time toward the end of autumn in 1940. Italy has just launched hostilities against Greece; Adelchi Serena has been acclaimed secretary of the National Fascist Party; the Racial Laws have already demonstrated what stuff their fellow Italians are made of. It all seems so senseless. Eleonora and Stefano are, after a fashion, conscious of that, but they don’t lose heart. Although, to tell the truth, Stefano had been thinking of leaving his job at the Police Court. Eleonora has dissuaded him, and yes, for motives that are also financial but above all out of a conviction that he is as well-equipped as anyone to make a quiet, stubborn stand against the folly that seems to be engulfing everything.
And so the two of them talk about having a baby, one evening when the air is so balmy and soft that it seems impossible winter should ever arrive. They are out on the little terrace, at home after supper. A few clouds drift by. Mount Soratte is mutely bright in the moonlight. Now more than ever, its silhouette brings to mind a giant’s face—a supine giant who has abandoned himself to sleep.
Sex has never been something much discussed by the two of them. Stefano is a straitlaced man. He does not belong to that class of men for whom a woman’s body is a refuge to be made use of as and when desired. He respects his wife’s rhythms, her silences. Which is why Eleonora has never once felt threatened by him, and why she is able to love him the way one loves a landscape.
A handful of words: What will the baby be like? Boy or girl? One kiss. Followed by others.