Pushing Past the Night (9 page)

The flyer claiming responsibility for the murder said that Luigi Marangoni was a servant of the state and of the Christian Democrats. His widow, Vanna, speaks in a soft, low voice. “And to think that he'd never even voted Christian Democrat. He was a liberal, a perfectionist, completely dedicated to his job. He had gotten rid of all the riffraff in the hospital morgue, where some of the employees had been cutting deals with funeral parlors. He made even more enemies when he testified at the sabotage trial. Three nurses also testified. They were kneecapped inside the hospital. The terrorists gave him a death sentence. But first they wanted to smear his good name. They passed out a pamphlet claiming that he had been paid off to deny thermal spa treatments for some bank employees. He went home that night and started to cry. It was January 31. He realized the leaflet was a warning sign. He woke me up that night and told me, ‘Remember that I'm an honest man and that you have to love me. Please forgive me if I leave you and Francesca alone, but it's not my fault.' That was all he said.”

This tiny woman remained silent for a long time, her gaze lost in memories or perhaps in regret for what might have been. Then she added a final thought. “It was a complete waste. It didn't help anyone and I was cheated. They took away a part of my life.”

In late May 2005, my mother paid the widow a visit, and they spoke for a long time. Mama was also struck by her quiet tone and heavy sadness. When she left, she called me from her cell phone on her way home. My mother is a person who believes in moving on, in always looking forward, in reconciliation and forgiveness. She is sustained by her strong, fervent faith. But that afternoon, her voice was shaking. She told me, “You see, Mario, I listened to her for a long time. It made me think
again of my children, of Papà Gigi, of all the people that we've met over the years who haven't found the strength to go on living, of what the terrorists did to us, of how we were all left alone, and how the parade passed us by. We were too nice about it, too patient.”

T
HERE IS A POINT
when the normally mild-mannered, easygoing, civic-minded people who go by the reassuring name “the relatives of the victims” start to grow restive. They rebel, they speak out. Not that anyone notices. In a country that's used to full-throated protests, to people lying down on railroad tracks or occupying the stage at pop music festivals, the relatives' words fly well under the radar. Their protest takes the form of angry letters or threats to return commemorative medals. Respect for the dead prevents them from giving full vent to their feelings, but the pain underlying these small gestures is of terrifying dimensions.

These sudden eruptions never stem from a single provocation. They always come after a series of insults, affronts, slights. I have developed a key to understanding these outbursts through my passion for cataloging. I've learned to predict and sometimes even staunch them, warning government officials that malcontent was growing and would soon erupt, somewhere. Luckily not everyone turns a deaf ear. Some officials have shown that
they understand these delicate moments and, in silence, without fanfare, without seeking political gain, have tried to heal the pain.

One such instance was the day in July 2004 when, after years of stalling, Parliament finally approved in committee, by a unanimous vote, new regulations to benefit the victims of terrorism and massacres. Shortly thereafter, however, problems arose with funding the measure. So for many victims, the promised restitution has been a dead letter. Five years have gone by and the law has still not been fully implemented. Exasperation has led some family members to take a step that they would never have contemplated earlier: they decided to file suit against the state.

The malcontent of the families comes from their sense that the state has ignored or abandoned them. Their feelings are easily understood in light of an unfortunate series of events in spring 2006 that combined chance, carelessness, and a remarkable lack of political, historical, and cultural sensitivity. On May 31, a few days after he was sworn in as president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano issued a pardon to Ovidio Bompressi, the convicted murderer of my father. The decision had actually been made and finalized under the previous president, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. The only thing that Napolitano did was affix his signature to the document.

The problem is that no one alerted us beforehand. I was on my moped one day when my cell phone rang, not with one call but with two. They were from Luigi Contu, my boss at the ANSA news agency, and Arturo Celletti, the political reporter for the Catholic newspaper
Avvenire
, calling to warn me that the wire services were carrying the story about the pardon. I was flabbergasted. My cell phone fell from my hands and was crushed beneath the wheels of a passing bus. I raced home to phone my mother before reporters called seeking her comments. Luckily she was in the park watching her grandchildren play on the trampoline. When I told her the news, she was beside herself. Not
because of the pardon itself, which we had never opposed, but because of the sloppy and off-handed way it was handled. Thanks to confusion and mismanagement, a potential gesture of appeasement had been turned into a slap in the face.

Allow me to explain my position. I don't think that the government should be required to seek the victims' permission before passing laws or deciding whether to grant pardon, parole, early release, or supervised furloughs. Such matters should be carried out in the general interest, which might not necessarily coincide with the interests of the “families of the victims.” If the state, the judiciary, the government, or the president thinks that an act is appropriate, necessary, and justified, then the pain of private citizens should obviously not be an impediment. Nor is there any requirement that the families be notified. But there is plain common sense: the sensitivities, kindnesses, and gestures that can ease the pain and help people to accept it. Let us remember that most of the people killed in the Years of Lead worked for the state and paid for their service with their lives. Rather than pay tribute to their sacrifice, the country seems to be suffering from a kind of emotional illiteracy.

My mother's phone started ringing nonstop after the news of the pardon was broadcast. The calls were not from politicians or even journalists, however. They were from people like Carole Tarantelli, the widow of Ezio, a jurist killed by the Red Brigades at La Sapienza University in 1985; Marina Biagi, the widow of Marco, the expert in labor law killed by the New Red Brigades in 2002; representatives of victims' associations; people who had been kneecapped by the Red Brigades, like Maurizio Puddu, or who had lost loved ones in the bombings, like Manlio Milani, whose wife died in the Piazza della Loggia massacre in Brescia. All of them were angry. Some wept with rage. There was also a call from Rosa Calipari, who had lost her husband in Baghdad
when he was killed by an American soldier while accompanying the kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena to freedom.

The next day Giorgio Napolitano telephoned—early in the morning, after reading the newspapers, which had drawn attention to the fact that the family had not been notified. He explained that the presidential palace had been convinced that communications were being handled by the Ministry of the Interior. The phone call was long, clear, and direct, and helped to forge a relationship of mutual esteem and respect.

In early June 2006, Sergio D'Elia was appointed secretary to the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. A newly elected deputy, he had run on the slate of Rosa nel Pugno (Rose in the Fist), a coalition of the Radical and Socialist parties. Before entering the political arena, he founded the human rights organization Hands Off Cain, which advocates the abolition of the death penalty. But in the 1970s he had also been a militant in the armed struggle, as a member of the terrorist group Prima Linea. For his role in the January 20, 1978, murder of Fausto Dionisi—a police officer killed during the attempted escape of a group of terrorists from a Florentine prison—D'Elia was sentenced to thirty years in prison, which was reduced to twenty-five on appeal. After serving twelve years, his sentence was commuted by the Rome Tribunal in 2000. His civil rights were restored, despite the objections of Dionisi's widow and his daughter, Jessica, who was two and a half at the time of her father's death.

They bristled with indignation: how could a former terrorist be seated in Parliament? And promoted to the position of secretary to the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies? Politicians were split over the issue: some rode the wave of political indignation, while others defended the decision with heartless arguments. Once again the debate quickly dispensed with the victims and shifted to the rights of former terrorists: the right to build a new
life, to be reinserted into society, to freedom of speech. They had paid for their crimes—this was the most popular expression—and now they had the right to live like other people.

“I took it very badly. This time I was absolutely sick over it: I already had to struggle to digest the fact that he had been elected to Parliament. Then when I found out that the same man who had been convicted as an accessory to the murder of my husband had become the secretary to the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, I was mortified: this was really impossible.” Mariella Magi Dionisi was twenty-two when her husband, Fausto, who was a year older, was killed. Her voice is lively, with a strong Tuscan accent. She is not the type of person who lives withdrawn from the world. She founded Memoria, one of the most active associations representing the victims of terrorism. For years she has been fighting for laws to remember the victims and to grant damages and assistance to their families.

“There are things that are intolerable, that go beyond the pale. I don't question the laws or allowing terrorists to rebuild their lives, but the least I would expect from the terrorists and from the government is respect and some sense of decorum. From the former terrorists, I also expect silence and a refusal to take part in public debates, if for no other reason than to avoid opening old wounds. Because the truth is that they gave us a life sentence. They have a second chance at life while we, and the persons whose lives they took, have had this possibility taken away from us forever. I was a young woman and my life was stolen from me.”

She pauses for a minute and then begins to explain her thinking more precisely, to avoid being misunderstood. “I wasn't offended by the fact that Sergio D'Elia was the secretary of Hands Off Cain. Everyone should work for a cause he or she believes in. It's what happened later that shocked me. The debate in the
Chamber, followed by the controversy in the newspapers, was truly indecent. The politicians outdid themselves to defend D'Elia, themselves, their decisions, and their behavior. D'Elia did not utter a single word of remorse. His defenders in the Chamber failed to pronounce even one word of remembrance for the man who had been murdered. I felt so alone after that day. A wave of depression came over me. Thank goodness some people spoke out, particularly in Florence, where the mayor, the speaker of the regional assembly, and representatives of every party expressed their solidarity. I especially appreciated the fact that many town councillors, some from very small towns in ‘Red' Tuscany, felt strongly enough about this to vote in favor of a motion asking D'Elia to turn down his appointment.”

Mariella Magi Dionisi feels as if she's been condemned to spend her whole life in the shadow of the late 1970s. She finds her way back to the present only when she talks about her daughter. “For two years now, I've had a grandson … He's such a joy! You should see how cute he is!”

A new controversy erupted in November of the same year when it was revealed that Roberto Del Bello, the personal secretary of the Deputy Minister of the Interior, had been convicted of membership in an armed group and served a prison sentence of four years and seven months. In December yet another scandal broke when the Minister of Social Solidarity appointed Susanna Ronconi to the National Council on Drug Addiction. Ronconi seemed to have excellent credentials in the field, on the basis of both her experience and her publications. But she had also been a member of the Red Brigades commando that in 1974 attacked an office of the Neo-Fascist Party in Padua and took the lives of two people. This time the controversy ended with her resignation. The Rome prosecutor's office also began an investigation of the minister for official misconduct: as a former terrorist, Ms.
Ronconi was prohibited from holding public office, so her appointment was illegal. She contested the judiciary's interpretation and complained that she was being “shackled to a story from thirty years ago.” She added: “No one is giving any importance to what I've done since then. It's not right. It's vindictive. I do not deny my responsibility and I know that compensation for human life is not possible, but I served my sentence in full and as proof that I've changed there is the truth of the life that I've lived and the concrete commitment I've made.”

On January 29, 1979, Emilio Alessandrini was killed by eight gunshots fired by two members of Prima Linea, Marco Donat Cattin and Sergio Segio, shortly after dropping off his son Marco at school. He was thirty-seven, the same age as his son is today. Marco Alessandrini is a lawyer in Pescara, his father's hometown. His father was a prosecutor who distinguished himself first for his investigations into right-wing terrorism—he uncovered the Neo-Fascists' role in the Piazza Fontana massacre and the Italian Secret Service's obstruction of the investigation into it—and then for an investigation into the left-wing terrorism of a Milan chapter of Autonomia Operaia. Marco has his father's smiling face, broad forehead, gentle manners, and passion for basketball.

Marco doesn't enjoy speaking in public, but he feels compelled to by a strong sense of duty. His speeches are remarkable for the precise and polished language he uses. “I want to help feed my country's hunger for memory.” The first time he found the courage to speak out was during an interview with
Corriere della Sera
. “It's not true that time heals all wounds. My mother was thirty-four years old when they killed her husband. In a certain sense, she has never moved past that twenty-ninth of January.” They had left Milan for Pescara a few days after the murder, in silence. And in silence they remained for another quarter of a century. “Today we're suffering from this rather disturbing Italian
peculiarity: former terrorists elevated to the status of philosophers, writing books, granting erudite interviews. A full-fledged cultural industry has been created and we are supposed to sit back and accept it.”