2/ SEBASTIAN… the “jus exilii”

Illustrations by Regina KIRILLOV  click here  

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Voce narrante Giuliana Poleggi Quaranta 

I left my husband. I wasn’t in love with him and I understood I had never been after meeting Sebastian. He and I, a very young scientist, were similar. Both passionate about Art and Literature, we spent our afternoons totally immersed, indeed, lost among the volumes of the large school library.

When, after various vicissitudes, my mother informed me that she had managed to obtain permission for me to leave the country for study reasons, he was the first to know. I ran like crazy right up to his house to tell him in person. He listened to me seriously, his eyes anxious. “And what about us? What will become of us?” “You have to come too, Séba! You absolutely must come too!” “And how?” He was bewildered.

I didn’t wonder how my mother had done it or how much and what the price had been paid to allow me and Sebastian too, to leave. I just figured it out: we had no money. She had understood everything: I would have left only if he too had been allowed.

A stranger, who introduced himself as a Superior, but above all as a friend of the official to whom my mother had turned to obtain permits, came in person to our house to give us the documents that would have set us free.

Mom was young and very beautiful. Her partner, who worked for a national mining company, had been sent to a branch of his company for a week in a northern city. He was therefore not at home when the bureaucrat arrived and showed himself to be very thoughtful and attentive to me and my mother. He brought us plenty of food and excellent Italian wine from major brands, things we would have only dreamed of… and he ate his meals in our company. Mother did not go to work for a couple of days and begged me not to report anything to her partner. The man who must have been twenty years her senior, was kind, polite and jovial. I found myself thinking that it would have been better for my mother to live with him rather than with a younger companion with whom she only made sacrifices… Then, one evening, after a merrily eating and drinking, I heard them arguing animatedly. They both spoke in very low voices, but I, who had already retired to my room, without being able to understand the reason for their quarrel, perceived anger mixed with a strong agitation in the tone of my mother’s voice, above all in that dry and immediate reply to the the man’s words that seemed more calm to me, sometimes even persuasive.

Only after years I understood everything: two permits…? double price…!

Mom couldn’t allow…

This was the reason why during those two days she had demanded that I stay away from home as much as possible and she never left me alone with him. That evening, at a certain point, she had come to my room, had closed the door and, speaking quickly, she had told me to ask Sebastian for hospitality for the night. Then, after I, with my rucksack on my back, had walked away into the darkness, she had noisily closed the door behind me, as if to make him believe that she was the one who, out of a pressing need, had been outside, where we had the latrine.

That night I had slept at my fellow student’s house, in a very uncomfortable armchair which completely lacked the padding on the seat and I could feel all the wooden planks pressing painfully against my bones. I had, very generically, justified my request by saying that some relatives had arrived to whom I had to kindly give my room. I doubt that he and his sister believed my unsolicited excuses but they didn’t ask me questions, for which I was grateful. Both generously offered me their respective beds, but I, in the well-founded fear of the inconvenience I was causing them, categorically refused and, after asking for a chair to rest my legs on and a pillow to put under my butt, I remained there, wide-awake up, thinking all night. At one point they both got up and came to offer me their beds once again. It had ended up that, after having made ourselves a coffee, we had put on sweaters and trousers and started talking about our plans. All three of us dreamed of expatriating to Italy or at least of getting away from there but, sure of being listened to, we didn’t say a word about our real plans and I talked enthusiastically about being able to teach at the University, Sebastian about contributing to the development of the Space Program and his sister, a girl with a degree in Chemistry, very cultured and of a breathtaking beauty, declared that she would marry her boyfriend, that they would have a family and that she hoped to become the head of the research sector in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she worked as an assistant. Only around four in the morning, shivering and fully dressed, had we slipped into bed. All three in the one room, Sebastian and his sister together in the same bed and I in Sebastian’s who hadn’t wanted to listen to any reason.

The following morning I had gone directly to the University and my mother had gone back to work. When I returned towards evening, the man was not at home… I would never see him again. She had hugged me tightly, hadn’t said anything, she had only begged me, once again, never to talk about it… with anyone. She had a bluish bruise on one cheekbone…she looked tired. To me, who hadn’t dared to ask for explanations, she had generally said to have slammed into a door… but there weren’t any doors at cheek level in the house… the tone of her voice seemed superficial but her eyes were anything but…

After four days, her partner returned home and found it empty: two days earlier, Sebastian and I had left for good and my mother wasn’t there waiting for him.

Italy: our dream!

Regina Kirillov, Bar in Berlin

It didn’t seem true to us when they told us that our expatriation request had been accepted and that that would be the very nation where we could develop our artistic and literary knowledge.

The journey by train, in a last class compartment (in hindsight I realized that it was an adapted boxcar), seemed like an otherworldly experience… nothing and no one could spoil my state of pure euphoria. The windows, protected by gratings, placed high up and long, narrow rectangular in shape, were nothing but openings without curtains and without glass. The only two wooden seats were very uncomfortable and the bathroom, where there was only a very small corner sink and a squat hole, from which you could see the tracks running away, was dirty and smelly… It wasn’t even possible to close the door because the small bolt that was supposed to keep it shut had been ripped off. Like a large fan, the door clapped loudly back and forth with every movement of the train and the whiffs of stale urine smell enveloped us and permeated us and the whole environment.

There were five of us in there: none of the university classmates with whom we had taken the English course were there, but besides us, three adults in their thirties or forties: strangers, taciturn and shy who I doubt knew each other the other. Those men, dull-eyed, thin and poorly dressed, no longer young and not yet old, looked at Sebastian and me with the tolerant benevolence of the old towards the exuberant enthusiasm of youth. The two of us spent most of the long hours of the journey standing on those wooden benches, clinging to the gratings and looking through those loopholes at the landscape that seemed to rush away. Even if our traveling companions didn’t seem to be very interested in the panorama, we left the place to allow them to see too, taking turns so that there was always someone on guard, to warn promptly in case the conductor to check but, in fact, during the journey, no one ever entered the compartment where the access door was bolted from the outside: our permits had been carefully examined before departure.

We finally reached the destination city. We must have been as exhausted as the others who, after a few hours, had stretched out, two on each of the seats and the other on the floor and had remained like that with their eyes closed… although I don’t think they had fallen asleep. We were so excited that, as soon as someone, after opening a huge padlock and removing the chain that kept it hooked to the fixed part of the carriage, had slid the heavy metal door, first, throwing our luggage onto the tracks, we were jumped off the train. The Italians in charge of the service, who were waiting for us to get off, handed us over to the policemen who escorted us out and, with gestures, invited us to get on a bus with tinted windows parked immediately outside the station. Those in our compartment were joined by seven other men who had traveled in another carriage: in all, twelve poor wretches, ugly and filthy.

“What a smell!” “This one also said: What a stinks!” One of the group understood a little Italian. And it was still the same, the phrase uttered by the beautiful lady who welcomed us and which our companion hastened to translate again as soon as we arrived at the pension destined to lodge us: “Even the lady says we stink!”. An accommodation, with a single toilet at the end of the corridor, more than modest by Italian standards, but which for us had the effect of a six-star hotel: a bath in the tub with hot water, which, as only woman, I was chivalrously granted first, enormous white towels and, even, a bar of soap… new… perfumed… an unimaginable luxury that I was happy to allow myself also to get rid of the unpleasant smell that I certainly had on me and that had been clearly underlined, by those who had so kindly welcomed us. An untouched tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush still wrapped in its packaging moved me to tears.

Food, lodging, argent de poche… and hours and hours spent walking around the city with our mouths wide open admiring its beauties and people. We never took public transport, both to avoid spending even a cent of the money that was given to us for our small daily expenses, and to fully enjoy the splendor that surrounded us. In the small hotel where we were accommodated, the overnight stay and breakfast were provided, which fortunately was very abundant. We ate everything, filling our stomachs so as to be able to skip lunch, then, in the late afternoon, before returning, we stopped at a bar in the centre, where we always and only ordered a latte macchiato which would have been our dinner. After a few evenings, a man, who must surely have been the owner, without any request from us, ordered the bartender to also serve us one or two pastas each. These were sweets that had not been eaten during the day and could not be served to his customers the next day. The first time I tasted one, filled with delicious custard, I was afraid I’d faint because it was delicious! When at the till we made it clear that we wanted to pay for those pastries too, that kind manager, with an eloquent gesture made us understand that we owed him nothing: he had collected the change that Sebastian had placed on the counter, then he had stood up, had taken Sebastian’s hand and placed them in his palm, closing his fingers. We didn’t utter a word of Italian, and he didn’t speak our language or even English, but his sensitivity had made him understand things that, even if we could, we might never have confided to him! I struggled to hold back the tears. Sebastian was also moved and, fearing that our voices could betrayed our emotions, we didn’t even exchange a word on the way back to the pension.

When it rained we slipped into the libraries, happy to be able to consult precious and ancient texts.

Italians? All beautiful, all very well dressed, polite, but above all happy: they had that expression of serenity on their faces and in their eyes that we had never seen on the faces of the people of our country… They passed by you and you could smell their perfume… I was convinced that even their shit didn’t have the nauseating smell of ours and that of our compatriots!

Regina Kirillov, Shop Window in Bologna

The two of us, but I think everyone else too, would have given our souls to the devil to be able to stay in that place… That was heaven on earth: the climate was wonderful and the trees bore fruit even twice a year, supermarkets and shops were full of food and all sorts of good things and there were no queues in front of any commercial outlet… but above all, people smiled and lived surrounded by beauty! Other than misery and hunger! Other than cabbage and potatoes… when even these hadn’t rotted under the ice…

At first we hadn’t even dared to enter, convinced that, in similar places, entry was granted only to those who would make purchases, but after a few days, with the little money set aside in our pockets and after having observed carefully, on the opposite side of the street, the behavior of other people, we positioned ourselves in front of the automatic doors to access a huge supermarket in the capital. Never seen anything like it! We were dazed by so much wealth and all those lights on… My partner and I held hands for fear of getting lost among all those people. We wandered around the shelves with our mouths open and for the first time we also climbed the electric staircase that led to the upper floor. We spent a whole morning in there, in the end, having carefully checked the prices, I bought myself a headband lined with black French velvet to hold my hair back and Sebastian a wallet made of synthetic material: we couldn’t have afforded to buy a leather one even if I had given up my hair-band and pooled our resources. When we reached the cash desks we noticed, in front of us, that a group of boys who didn’t carry anything in their hands had quietly left without anyone having said anything to them. Definitely students who had skipped school and who, given the particularly cold day, had decided to pass the time hanging around the shop where it was warm and inviting. From that time on, every now and then, we too entered those sanctuaries of abundance continuously open until ten in the evening… but only to feast our eyes.

That was not a time of war, but something static and adverse persisted between our nation and the rest of the civilized world.

The distrust towards us was evident and we were constantly under observation by the secret services… they feared that we might be spies. For our part, we were sure that we were also under the control of our nation’s undercover agents. This was the reason why, when a television journalist asked us to participate as guests in a famous show of which he was the conductor, offering us a fee which would have been difficult to give up, the thought of possible retaliation on the people left behind made us that we decline the invitation without thinking twice. Only years later, aware of the events following our departure, did we regret not having denounced to the whole world the denial of freedoms by that regime born to defend the working class from what they called the oppression of power, the one that, still according to them, had preceded the liberation.

No one ever said anything to us, no one was ever rude towards us, we continued to receive the economic subsidy and to use the accommodation until we requested the residence permit, which, with very polite manners, was denied to us.

The second alternative? Asking for political asylum from another nation… which granted it to us.

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Voce narrante Giuliana Poleggi Quaranta 

Video work in progress

       SEBASTIAN  lo “ius exilii”. Seconda Parte (Scritto e tradotto da Ida Renzicchi)