«The choice»(Rizzoli), the new novel by Walter Veltroni: a divided family (and a courageous young woman) in Rome devastated by bombs. A great historical fresco
Immersing yourself in the new historical novel by Walter Veltroni, while words and images of war flow on the screens, adds a personal urgency to the intensity of the story. Urgency to understand and understand each other, why in the choices of the characters in the book there is more than ever ours too. Veltroni tells “a particular week” in the history of Italy, the one that goes from 19 to 26 July 1943, from the allied bombing of the San Lorenzo district to the arrest of Mussolini which triggers an immediate and colossal political striptease. In the space of a few hours, hierarchs and hierarchs throw the black shirts and party badges down the drain. All but one, Manlio Morgagni, a longtime friend of the dictator, who for twenty years has challenged the Stefani news agency as a megaphone of the regime.
From the very first pages it is clear that Veltroni feels esteem or in any case great respect for man. Not for the fascist, nor for the journalist. For man. His coherence and his fidelity to a friendship rather than to his own personal advantage are absolute values that transcend ideologies. And Veltroni lets them shine through by contrast, describing the mediocrity of the fascist Italic: the same as always, but not always the same for everyone. Because there is a people that sometimes turns out to be better than those in charge and that in the novel is represented by a family that is well integrated into the system, albeit at the lowest levels. That of Ascenzo de Dominicis, a clerk of the Stefani agency, an early fascist who grew up with the myth of Mussolini and Morgagni.
Even before his characters, it is the author himself who has accomplished The choice which gives the book its title (Rizzoli). Veltroni could have recounted the fall of the Duce from the foregone perspective of an anti-fascist or one of those turncoats whom we see stirring in the background in the last few pages. Instead he decided to let us into the house of a sincere fascist – convinced even if not fanatic – and to show us, even there, the man who is behind the fascist. A man who, scene after scene, is forced to take note of the crumbling of everything he believed in, starting with his role within the family and society. There is an almost comic step, if it weren’t dramatic, in which the usher of the Stefani agency witnesses the jubilation of many former fascists at the news of the fall of the Mussolini government. «I don’t know what to do: whether to participate falsely in this joy that I don’t share, at least I think, or to flaunt my sadness, consistent with my ideas. I don’t know what’s right. So I take refuge in the bathroom, close the door and sit on the toilet. I don’t cry, I’m even afraid to do it. ”
Ascenzo has a wife, Maria, who from the very first lines we see moving “like a marten” to get food for her loved ones, and two very different children who as the hours pass, the pages and unfortunately the bombs find themselves more and more alike. Margherita is an insecure and frightened girl: she will become courageous and determined. Arnaldo a young man with confused ideas and impulses, but destined to give meaning and substance to his generational rebellion by joining anti-fascism. The strongest scene of the novel, if we obviously exclude those of the bombing of Rome, is the conflict between father and son.. At first it is a challenge of silence rather than of words. Then of a physical confrontation, with the son who gets to put his hands on his father. Veltroni seems to suggest that the regime ends at that moment: when for the first time, in any family, the absolute power of the Father-Duce is brutally questioned.
For the rest, and what else, the novel is all about seeking and chasing each other through the streets of a troubled Rome from the unthinkable: the bombs that rain in clusters on the Pope’s city. Veltroni tells of the amazement, the fear, the anger and then the desperation and the search for a scapegoat, which for the head of the family Ascenzo are the cruel Allies, but for the son Arnaldo and for the common people he immediately assumes the contours of Mussolini, a ghost that is shown to us from afar: fragile, sick and dominated by Hitler’s delusions.
There are moments in life when you have to choose not so much which side to be on, but what you want to be. Often it is only under pressure that our character finally reveals itself, first of all to ourselves. And so it can happen that Manlio Morgagni decides, alone, to come to terms with history. And that in Ascenzo’s house it is the women, mother and daughter, who take the reins of the family in hand, thanks to that all-female talent of commanding without imposing, with listening and conviction, of which we have never heard more than in these days. much need.
March 22, 2022 (change March 22, 2022 | 21:31)
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