The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana   ::   Эко Умберто

They had not even bound them, though the two who were guarding them were sitting with submachine guns across their laps, while Gigio and Gragnola had been thrown down like sacks.

At a certain point Gigio heard a strange noise, like fabric tearing, and felt a viscous liquid spray him in the face. One of the Fascists heard a gasp, turned on a flashlight, and there was Gragnola with his throat cut, lancet in hand. The two Fascists started cursing, stopped the van, and with Gigio’s help dragged Gragnola to the side of the road. He was already dead, or nearly, spilling blood everywhere. The other three had come over too, and they were all blaming each other, saying he could not croak like that because command needed to make him talk, and they would all be arrested for having been so stupid, failing to tie up the prisoners.

While they were yelling over Gragnola’s body, they forgot Gigio for a moment and he, in the confusion, thought Now or never. He took off to one side, crossing the ditch, knowing there was a steep slope beyond it. They fired off a few shots, but he had already rolled to the bottom like an avalanche, and then hidden among some trees. In that fog, he would have been a needle in a haystack, nor were the Fascists too interested in making a big deal out of it, because it was obvious by that point that they had to hide Gragnola’s body and go back to their command pretending not to have taken anyone that night, so as to avoid trouble with their leaders.

That morning, after the Black Brigades had left to meet up with the Germans, Gigio had taken a few friends to the site of the tragedy, and after searching the ditches awhile, they found Gragnola. The priest of Solara would not allow the corpse in the church, because Gragnola had been an anarchist and by now it was known that he was a suicide too, but Don Cognasso said to bring him to the little church at the Oratorio, since the Lord knew the proper rules better than his priests.

Gragnola was dead. He had saved the Cossacks, got me back safely, and then died. I knew perfectly well how it had happened, he had foretold it too many times. He was a coward and feared that if they tortured him he would talk, would name names, sending his comrades to the slaughterhouse. It was for them he had died. Just like that, sffft , as I was sure he had done with the two Germans-a kind of Dantesque poetic justice, perhaps. The courageous death of a coward. He had paid for the only violent act of his life, and in the process purged himself of that remorse he was carrying within him and would no doubt have found unbearable.