The Eel Woman ("La Fiocinina") - by Dario Fo

THE EEL WOMAN [La Fiocinina]

A dramatic monologue by Dario Fo

translated by Ed Emery

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For all queries regarding performance rights, please contact

Agenzia Tolnay : info [@] tolnayagency.it

For all queries regarding the text, please contact the translator at:

ed.emery [@]thefreeuniversity.net

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LA FIOCININA

Introduction:

In the following account, a woman from the valleys between Comacchio and Chioggia tells us of the birth of a resistance group which was organised by communists, and which consisted solely of communists. All we know of her is her nom de guerre from the partisan period: "Risola". In the original, the woman speaks in dialect: Chioggia dialect, a dialect which is among the most ancient in the world... from which, so they say, both the Venetian and Ferrarese dialects originated.

The account is taken from a tape recording which the woman made after the War.

[The Performance Text]

CHORUS: Avii! Sareee! Avi-avii-Mori-mori

Taij Taij... iiee’ Sare’ee!

Our life is down in the valley

Catching eels, salting them and smoking them,

And our love is down there in the valley,

Cuddling the girls, like eels intertwined.

Avii! Sareee! Avi-avii-Mori-mori,

Taij! Taij... iie Sare’ee!

And the eels are our soup

And the eels are our bread,

Even when we’re dead, they bury us in water

Down among the wet ropes and the rotting.

Avii! Sareee! Avi-avii-Mori-mori

Taij! Taij... iie’ Sare’ee!

ACTRESS: In early October in 1943, we were down at the sheds of Maria Negra, down on the lower island, all of us, working: men, women, children... We were cutting the heads off eels, so that then we could smoke them and dry them. We were out there in the courtyard, cutting with our big knives, and all of a sudden we saw a little boat coming across the water, with a captain on board. You could see straight away that he was a landlubber: every time the boatman gave a sweep of his oar, he lost his balance, as if he was drunk.

We spotted that captain when he was still a good way off, as small as an ant, and then he came closer and closer, and slowly got bigger. We had been expecting him for a while... We had heard that he was going round all the islands and the eel-sheds looking for men to go with him to act as scouts, to lead him and his rebels, with their boats. That was why, when he landed, no-one even looked at him, not even the children. Nobody greeted him, even... He told us that he was even willing to pay us, and that the English were giving him money... Anyway, he talked on, and we just carried on cutting the heads off our eels: "Scrunch, scrunch". And we watched the eels writhing just the same way that that captain’s tongue was writhing in his mouth... He was spitting, but he carried on speaking: "Take up arms with us!" he said. "For the motherland, against the German invader. Liberate our sacred soil from the foreigner..." and so on. A string of fancy words, just like the ones that the kids have printed on their books at school.

My father let him say his piece, and then he answered. And as he began to speak, everybody stopped cutting the heads off their eels, and everybody listened.

"Mr Captain, I served in the 1915-18 war," he said. "Out of 22 of us who left this valley to go and fight, and to chase out the invader, as you put it, only three of us ever came back. But when we came back, we discovered that the real invader was right here, in our valleys, in our houses... The bosses of the fishing reserves, which before had been common; they’d bought up everything, land and water alike, and we left high and dry! So now, Mr Captain, you can stop trying to treat us like simpletons! You want us to go through that butchery yet again, so as to chase out the Germans and bring in the English? But what difference will it make for us, if the bosses are still there when we get back?"

"But you can’t argue like that," shouted the Captain. "That’s a self-centred, egoistic point of view... How can you stand there, impassive and indifferent, faced with these criminals, these Fascists?"

"Oh, Mr Captain!" my father said. "But who was it who set up these Fascists? Hasn’t it always been these bosses of ours who set up the Fascist squads who came down to beat us during our strikes...? The same people who are running the army in which you are now a captain...? And now that you don’t get on with them any more, you come to ask us to liberate you from them!

And everyone was so pleased with these words, that all of us started cutting the heads off our eels again, and there was a tremendous racket... And the eels writhed and squealed, as if they were enjoying his words too. And the Captain went away... angry, and cursing under his breath. He was saying some pretty terrible things: "Animals... fishermen... smuggler mentality...!" And he lurched about on the boat, losing his balance, even worse than when he arrived!

Two days later, another fellow turned up, who was neither a captain nor even a soldier... He was wearing civilian clothes, and his face was pale, white... He spoke quietly, never raising his voice. The boatman who turned up with him, who rowed him over, was someone I knew well: it was Togno de la Rosa... a gamekeeper, a good man, and a communist. I liked him, that Togno... We were friends, even though he had tried to shoot my brother one time when he was poaching eels from the fishing reserve.

Togno immediately explained who this fellow was who was speaking so gently. He told us that he’d come out of prison a little while previously: he’d served 12 years! He was a people’s commissar... And this commissar was also asking our menfolk to go and serve as rebels.

"I have not even had time to see my wife and my daughters," he said. "They told me to come here immediately, to the valleys, to organise armed bands, because of the experience I have from the war in Spain... We’ve got the men: stragglers, escaped prisoners of war, New Zealanders, Russians, deserters, Czechoslovaks, and so on. But if some of you don’t come to lead us through all these reeds and marshes, we’re going to be lost like babes in the wood... and at the first Fascist round-up, they’ll catch us all...!"

"Why should we join your rebels?" answered my father. "The English are going to win anyway, even without us... You know that yourselves, don’t you?"

"Yes, that’s what I believe, yes," said the commissar.

"Alright then, so why don’t we wait and let them get on with it, since they’ve got the aeroplanes... the bombs, the big guns...? And the cans of meat... Let those English go out and get killed, and not us poor wretches, because afterwards we’re still going to be poor wretches, whatever happens!"

At this point, the commissar raised his voice a bit: "But it’s precisely so as not to have to remain poor wretches that we’re going to have to fight this battle... take arms now, if we want to count for something afterwards, when the liberation comes!"

My father shook his head... "Schoolbook words," he muttered. "Printed words...!"

Then Togno de la Rosa spoke up. "First we’ll chase out the Fascists and the Germans, and then we’ll use the same guns to chase out the bosses! I wouldn’t be here to risk my skin if I wasn’t convinced that one day I won’t have to shoot poachers any more... because we will all be bosses of the eels and of the valley!"

Then there was a long silence... And when the two of them got back in their boat, my brother Peo jumped into his own boat, and went over to join them. My father didn’t say a word... My mother was crying quietly to herself...

Ten days later, my brother Peo came back to the eel shed of Maria Negra: he had his boat full of sacks... stuff stolen from the warehouses in Argenta and Comacchio, stuff that belonged to the landowners. And he left us... oh, Holy Mary...! a sack of maize flour, a little sack of salt and a half sack of sugar...

And then he went over to the eel shed of the Franconis, and then to the Manzers, and he took them some sacks of stuff too. Then we heard that the owners of the warehouses had got angry, and that before they had been waiting for the English to liberate them, but now that they had been stripped of some of their property, they moved fast and asked for help from the Fascist Blackshirts and the Germans, who began going looking for rebels.

A couple of days later, there were some shots, and two Germans ended up dead on the river bank near Filo. As a result, the Germans carried out a reprisal massacre at Filo: they put ten men up before the firing squad, as well as Algide Cavalli, my mother’s sister, who had kept trying to push the Germans out of her house so as to give her son time to escape... Even she was killed, poor thing!

That day, my father got into his boat too, the last boat remaining on the river bank. I went running down behind him: "Let me come with you, Dad, I can handle the oar for you!"

He didn’t want me to: "No, there’s no place for girls in this business... It’s war... It’s very dangerous."

"But what if the Germans turn up and burn our houses and kill us, like they did at Filo? Isn’t that dangerous too?" And I went off with my father to join the armed band which was staying in the Codigoro Valley, in the eel fishers’ huts.

Their leader was a man called Manazza, from Mulino. No sooner did I arrive than my father wanted to send me back, because the men all started undressing me with their eyes, because I was eighteen then, and breaking out fore and aft! I stayed, though. They used to send me round, down to Borgo Caprile, Riva, Ostellato and so on, to see what the Germans and the Fascists were doing... I also served as a courier, bringing orders for the Gordini band, down in the Argenta valleys... and I also used to bring stuff to eat. There wasn’t a lot to eat, and the weapons were even fewer... Out of the 90 people in our band, only half of them had rifles, and they only had 30 bullets apiece. We were expecting an airdrop, but it never arrived, because the English don’t willingly hand out arms to communists.

One day I was coming back from the house of the Balladora family, where the Garavini detachment was billeted, and behind the Travego wood I saw four Blackshirts coming towards me... They pulled me down off my bicycle, and began touching me and groping me... and I didn’t want them touching me, because in my knickers I had hidden the maps showing the gun emplacements, which they’d given me, so as to pass them on to Manazza. So I started crying, and telling them that I was engaged to a German from the Ostellato command, and that if he found out that they’d laid hands on me, he’d kill the lot of them.

The Blackshirts suddenly went pale, and went off, and didn’t even turn round to look back... But that evening I was so trembling with fright that no sooner did I arrive at the eel fishers’ hut than I flung myself into the arms of Nane the Red, crying my heart out... He gave me a big strong hug... He was very good-looking, that Nane... And I liked having him hug me like that... And so the emotion made me cry even more...

In among the maps that I had hidden in my knickers, there was a letter telling us that an English captain was due to arrive in order to inspect us to see whether they could send us arms. Orders were given to get rid of all the red flags and the red kerchiefs that we wore around our necks, all the men to cut their hair and shave their beards, to clean ourselves up, and to set up a Committee of National Liberation. What this meant was that in our command group, as well as having a communist, we had to also have a republican, a socialist, a Christian Democrat, a liberal, and if possible, even a monarchist... But we didn’t have any people like that in our band... We were all reds, and that was that!

So, Manazza said: "You, Greco, from this moment on you’re going to be a Republican. You, Anguilla, you can be the Socialist, and you, Bagnoli, you’ll be the Action Party!" But nobody, I mean nobody, wanted to be the Christian Democrat, and so we did without!

So everybody started patching up their clothes... shaving their beards and cutting their hair, and putting tricolour rosettes all over the place, so that soon we looked more like a bunch of Bersaglieri than partisans! As for me, they sent me to the priest’s house, at Borgo Caprile, to tell the parish priest, who was called Don Ragano, to come to the huts at once, as quickly as he could, because Nane the Red was dying and wanted confession so that he could die as a Christian.

Don Ragano was not very happy about having to come, and didn’t want to budge. But in the end he came, because I told him that if he didn’t, Manazza and my brother would come to get him anyway, and they were a pretty mean pair. And so it was that Don Ragano came to serve as our chaplain for two days.

And the fact that we had a chaplain, as well as tricolour rosettes and haircuts, made a very good impression on the English inspectors who arrived... so that they sent us two or three tons of weapons, on big naval motorboats, which came from Pescara. Ah yes, now we began to give the Fascists and the Germans a run for their money... No barracks or Fascist’s house was safe any more. Every night one of them would be blown sky-high! And within a month they didn’t find it so easy to go down the Romea road either!

During that period, we were expecting the English to break through the German front, which was not very far off... It was just behind Rimini... But no, Alexander, the English general, sent a message to tell us that they weren’t in a hurry... and that they would break through the German lines next year, in Spring, and that for the moment they couldn’t... You see...?! They didn’t want to...! And what about us poor devils, where were we supposed to spend the winter? With all the valleys flooded and icing over? Maybe we were supposed to go to the seaside? "Go back to your houses," Alexander told us... just like that... "Dissolve your bands, and go back to your homes."

You swine...! What do you mean - back to our homes...? We’re already in our homes... and with the Germans going around squashing us like eels, if we break up our band, they’ll be able to pick us off more easily, one by one... No, Alexander can go to hell... We’re all going to stay down here in the valley... united!

And the Germans began combing the valleys with their big motor boats full of soldiers armed with machine guns as big as cannons. And there were lots of these big boats. They closed in to flush us out. That was how they took all the partisans in the Bendo group, who were living in the Manzers’ eel shed... They killed all of them, including the Manzers’ old grandmother, a child, and a dog!

"See here, if we don’t make the first move, we’re as good as dead," we thought. And so it happened that all the armed bands decided to meet together at Valle di Mulino. There were about two hundred of us... We had waited for a day when there was a lot of wind, blowing large waves right up the valleys... And as the Germans were going down the Mezzan Canal, changing the guards on the bridges, our lads, up on the Franconis’ island, which is at the top of the waterway, began firing on them with a mortar. This was like telling the Germans: "Come and get us!" And the Germans came... There were eight motor boats... They came out from the canals... They spaced themselves out over a broad front, as per usual... And off they went...! But this time it was not so easy... There were large waves breaking in their faces, breaking up against their boats, and those particular boats had flat bottoms, and the waves caught them sideways on, and set them dancing...

We let them dance for a while, and then, out of the reeds which were all around, all our boats came out... Lots of them... a real lot...! There must have been about 40... cutting through the waves at speed, because they were so slender. And I was in my brother Peo’s boat, sweeping with the oar like a mad woman... And everyone was singing and shouting like we do when we go in for the kill with the tuna fish: "Andiamo! Avanti! Forza! Serrate...!"

All of a sudden all the waters of the valley were full of fast-moving black boats, and there was a lot of shouting, and the sound of shots... And the Germans were bouncing about, and weren’t able to take aim... with the waves that were knocking them all over the place. And our lads were firing accurately, sprawled out in the bows of their boats, hidden down in the waves, which were pierced with each sweep of the oar. And they were all shouting: "Ahii... Aprite... Serrate... Avanti... Tagliate... Tagliate..."

The Germans were under a hail of grenades and bullets from all sides... They were just about out for the count... And when the motor boats were hit front-on, they turned over, and down they went, with machine guns, men and all, drowned... "Ahii... Serrate... Avanti... Tagliate... Tagliate...!"

Then the English came. Then the Canadians. Then the Americans. Then all of them went away, and all that was left was us... and the bosses... Us, down at Maria Negra’s eel shed, cutting the heads off our eels just like before... eels in your soup, eels with your bread... And every year some fellow comes from Rome to put a wreath on the monument at Filo. A general... They make speeches, and everyone stands to attention, and I remember my father, and the way he always used to say: "Schoolbook words... Printed words..."

[Ends]

[Excerpted from Vorrei Morire Anche Stasera Se Dovessi Sapere Che Non e Servito a Niente ("I Would Rather Die Tonight If I Had to Think It Was All in Vain"), Capannone di Via Colletta, Milano, 14 October 1970.]

[Updated 11.viii.2012]

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All rights reserved. This text shall not by way of trade or otherwise be copied, reproduced or recorded in a retrieval system. Nor shall it be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the owners' specific written consent.

Please be aware that this translation can only be performed with explicit permission in writing from the agency representing Dario Fo and Franca Rame, the Danesi-Tolnay agency in Rome.

Last updated: 11.viii.2012

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