Anna Maria Marcozzi Keller: from Pola to Rovereto

Protagonist: Anna Maria Marcozzi Keller
Author:

I was born in Pola on June 14, 1934, in via Monte Cappelletta; my parents were "regnicoli", that is, coming from the old Italian provinces, transferred to Pola and employed at the local tobacco factory. They married in Pula in 1929. My mother Consiglia found full employment at home, early retirement and five children. My father Guido, born in 1899, was keen to say that he was one of the "boys of '99", in fact he had to interrupt his studies to go to war. He was an excellent technician and told me that he was responsible for sorting, preparing and tasting the various types of tobacco blends from which cigarettes are made. A heavy smoker, of course, I remember his grey hair and his nicotine-burned fingers. Small in stature, always serious, not inclined to the spontaneous cheerfulness of us children; he had to deal daily with problems at work and the large brood, energetically supervised by my mother. In Pola, and until 1940, there also lived the family of my aunt Rosina, my mother's sister, married to Alfonso, they had two daughters Lucia and Mariuccia, respectively twelve and ten years older than me: I was their doll. I lived with them for a long time, they lived in the arsenal of Pula (it was the tobacco warehouse and the salt deposit), opposite there was the Admiralty which, I remember, had on the roof a large beautiful ship with golden sails. They were these Habsburg buildings, enormous, that's how they appeared to me then. What I remember about the Arsenal is the large spaces, the flowers, the hollyhocks, the fig trees and the mulberry trees. My family instead lived in via Dante, on the corner of via Carpaccio: casa Zanetti, third floor of an elegant building, at the time, with large masks on the external window jambs, large staircases and Art Nouveau doors, I will find out later. We have always lived in Via Dante even though my mother insisted on having a brighter apartment. His dream was that of our neighbors Bancher positioned to the south-east and with a large balcony facing the street. The comparison was constant. My childhood was short, every now and then a brother was born: Pio, Umberto, Luciano, Ferruccio. Being the firstborn and only female was not an advantage. School: the first two years in Pola, in different schools; my classmates in the first and second grade are in total fog, I remember the names of one teacher, the first. I recently got a splendid photograph by chance from a beautiful lady, Ornella, and it portrays me between the little girl Ornella and Mariuccia "Balonci" (she was very fat) in the end-of-year photo, I think from second grade. It was the era of regime parades, of the Fascist Befana; my mother's curse was the "M" (Mussolini), a kind of pin that was attached to certain white bandoliers of the uniform of the daughter of the she-wolf, my uniform initiative of the obligatory dressing of the time, as well as the gatherings at the stadium to attend who knows what public event.