CHAPTER 43
And now you find yourself
with your own friends dying…
We got to know each other at Sunday school as kids.
Later we both joined Avanguardia Operaia. There was
love, but there was also the idea of being able to win the world with love ...
I mean... in Church they always talk of giving your life for mankind, sharing
everything you have etc… and this is how it’s turned out. He decided to go and
work at FIAT. He was an engineering student then. We used to see each other at
AO meetings. Then, the day he was supposed to go for his military service, he
went into clandestinity: he set off, but he never
arrived…
I’ve got his letters, his poems ... He was a person
who always went the whole way on things, and this time, with this choice, he’s
gone the whole way. And what worries me now is the funeral. I’m sure that there’s a lot of people who know him, but a lot of them will
be too scared to go to his funeral. It’s important that they go – not just 4 or
5 people... I heard the news, how they were killed, on the radio yesterday… I
heard the word “FIAT” and I knew it was him... But to have gunned
them down in cold blood like that... in their underwear, without a chance.
I knew, given his choice, that as time went by it was less and less likely that
he’s get out alive.
I remember when I was 16, I
had all sorts of fantasies – about the struggle, about the partisans, and all
that. I used to think about the human thing that they lived, with their dead
and their dead friends… And now you find yourself with your own friends dying,
and all
[Translated from Lotta Continua, 2 April 1980]
_______________________________________
Translated by Ed Emery
Extracted from: THE BOOK OF FIAT: Insurrection,
insubordination, occupation and revolutionary politics at the FIAT motor
company – 1907-1982
Published: Red Notes / May Day
Rooms
First published in 2020