Reprinted and available again the book by Bruno Tardivelli “Ok Capo, via libera. Fiume 1939-1949”. You can also book by calling the secretariat of the Association of Italian Fiume citizens in the World – Free Municipality of Fiume in Exile of Padua (0498759050 – licofiu@libero.it).

We publish below a reflection on the book by Egone Ratzenberger published in issue 4/2019 of The Voice of the River.

 

Bruno Tardivelli's book: "Ok boss, green light"

I would like to say a few words with great emotion about Bruno Tardivelli's book that takes you by the hand and by the heart and immediately brings you to the Fiume that you knew, that many of you readers have known and lived.
But I want to express some criticisms. Oh, what the hell!
First of all, the title does not do justice to the writing, even though, placed at the end of the book, it actually means the beginning of an era of peace and conjugal love. The text then insists on attributing capital letters to months, jobs, situations, etc., which seem to me more like things from German grammar. But in any case this is not too important. There are also some typographical oversights of the type well known to those who write even a simple article and who, after the tenth “definitive” reading of the same, still find an imperfection, a small mistake and oh well, but sometimes even a gross error which in any case does not seem to be here. The name of the publisher is missing. This makes one think that, in the Russian way, the text is “samizdat” that is, self-managed. In reality it constitutes an additional merit, perhaps unintended, but which sharpens the sense of reality, like that of someone who travels a rough path that finally gives you an excellent vision.
Fiume 1939-1949 is truly a great book that enters your heart as I said and makes you relive all those tragic years. And in reality you don't read it but you drink in big gulps running after Bruno's experiences and also after your own. Think for example of the terrible and gripping description of our soldiers who after September 8 flow back towards the rest of Italy to end up, of course, in the gaping jaw of the German troops who had blocked Trieste. (Because already in the Badoglio interval (25 July-8 September) the Germans, without ifs and buts, had positioned themselves on the railway south of Ljubljana which was a so-called province of ours to occupy the Julian city without delay, as they then did, while our responsible general immediately escaped, heroically "moving" his command to Portogruaro; and in any case no one had thought of Rome between one intrigue and another, between one spaghetti dinner and another, between one lover and another to lighten our positions in the kingdom of Yugoslavia, perhaps with the pretext of defending the peninsula; after all the allies were already in Calabria). Excuse me for the aside, but I can always imagine the dismay and suffering endured in those days by our abandoned soldiers.
And it was the Voce di Fiume, to tell the whole truth, that published that very truthful description written by Bruno Tardivelli, of the retreat and that I found in the book; but it seemed a bit cut to me. Please put it back! As well as a moving description of Christmas as it was celebrated in the houses of Fiume. “Scoltè, muli, xe roba nostra”, of our memories, that gradually move away from us in a mix of images and the voices of those who preceded us and who however taught us to live in a spontaneous and natural way, that is, in the quiet and no-frills Fiume way.
You fall in love with the book by curiously searching for the various periods.
Following the unfolding of the period before the war and then of the first and all in all quiet war period (1940-first half of '43) except for the parenthesis of the first exodus in April 1941, but the feared conflict with the Croatian neighbors did not materialize; and then gradually it records the barbarization of the war, the bombs, the air raid shelter, the conscription to work, life under the Germans, the arrival of Tito's partisans and the exodus towards Italy. That is, our ordeal.
Always with liveliness of language and choice of terms. To tell the story of the fascist period with its rallies and the naive certainty that as with other adventures, this time too the star would help Italy, Tardivelli records with a few smiles the atmosphere of positive trust that, even due to the lack of freedom of the press, did not suffer cracks; words like “choral century” however offer you memories after memories also because my illustrious sisters talked too much about it. But then he speaks of the underground dismay that had bitten consciences following the defeats disguised as strategic retreats (I confess that I was very confused by the term “disengagement” that I attributed more to aviation) and the appearance of phenomena that were thought to be defeated such as hunger, shortage of goods, the impossibility of fighting diseases (including tuberculosis that had already taken away the writer's mother and would take away from the family the second mother who was the sister of the first). While the father will die due to poor medical support (x-rays). Then the vortex spirals and it is September 8; and the desired German occupation is reached - wanted precisely by the dynamic general Gambara to prevent the arrival from Sussak, that is from beyond the bridge, of the partisans who had already behaved so horribly in nearby Istria and the ugly fascist harassment certainly does not excuse them.
Your reviewer is now at a crossroads. He does not know whether to praise more the pages concerning the German period (September '43-April '45) or that of the "druzi". On the "Germanic" period, as German things were liked to be defined in previous years so as not to awaken memories of the First World War, the book gives, between theater performances, bombings and prison experiences, the precarious and sad picture of those months, even if life had a strong semblance of normality.
Instead, the period of the Druze, despite the ironies of the Fiume people (druze Tito, druze Tito, pay me the afito) is full of false promises and deceptive prospects that are not immediately revealed by the author, but presented in their stubborn and subtle lie that ultimately leads to despair even the elements that at first thought they could reach a “modus vivendi” with the Croats. An impossible intent with the communist Croats (and Serbs), blinded by ideology, by the feeling of victory and by their foolish communist extremism that will lead them to economic poverty. As in other states of the same obedience.
And this is the intimate value of Tardivelli's book, that is, not to make irony that would have been completely justified (there is some anyway) on the reality of the situation or to immediately reveal the brutality of the interlocutor, but rather to accompany the events of the day with the habitual optimism of someone who wants to live and fit in well in that climate, but then is distracted from it. In fact, the days of disillusionment arrive, of the desire to turn to the Italian homeland, to reach it and also to succeed in finding that situation of peace to which one strongly aspired.
But there is still a very beautiful page and perhaps not well understood by today's youth, that is Bruno's fervent, unfailing love for his girlfriend, then fiancée, then his wife who accompanied him for about sixty years. Sixty years of a quiet and industrious life. Sometimes destiny rewards us. Tardivelli feels it and with his sweet realism expresses it. Congratulations for the book! In any case, a book of ours, a book of Fiume.
Egone Ratzenberger