Not to mention the often-cited lack of support from the German ally: the offensive and not defensive nature of the war, the Italian army seen as a full-fledged invader against a country that tried to defend itself strenuously against the occupation policy pursued by the Axis powers.4
Beyond the reasons and responsibilities for the conflict – to keep in mind to avoid supporting a distorted and “mythical” vision – memories of that traumatic war campaign had a powerful effect on the survivors’ minds, leaving us some of the most intense pages about the Italian war, full of strong impressions, pathos, horror, and titanism.
As Maria Teresa Giusti has also pointed out, it is no coincidence that the accounts relating to the military experience in Russia, within the framework of the memories of the Second World War, have been far more than all those dedicated to the other fronts.
The Russian campaign is the background of Invictus, a historical novel. The novel is the processing of the experience lived by a young Sicilian peasant, originally from a village in the Nebrodi municipality of Galati Mamertino, in the province of Messina, who went to war on the eastern front. We face a memory handed down from generation to generation, at first known only by the family, then entrusted – after a long period of detachment from those events and sedimentation – to the pen of a talented writer and fellow countryman, Cristiano Parafioriti. He managed to give vigour and substance to the narration of that extreme experience, to the point of making it an abiding testimony of the struggle of men to preserve their humanity in the face of the destructive horde and horrors of war.
In a grand choral fresco, the novel tells the story of a Sicilian farmhand, Salvatore, known as Ture, the eldest son of the Di Nardo family. Although his father, who had already experienced the tragedy of the Karst during the First World War, tried to save his son from this ominous prospect with various pressures and expedients, Ture could not avoid military service and be called up for war.
The fate reserved the worst of destinations for him: the Russian steppe.
Accustomed to sacrifices, to harsh winter in the mountains, shaped by the hard life in the fields, he managed to survive the rigours of a campaign, living in prohibitive conditions. And to return to his beloved land, not without further risks and adventures, knitting back the threads of affection that the war had threatened to interrupt forever.
Taken from the treasure chest of memory, in the frame of a historical novel that edits and enriches but does not alter the truth – if anything, in some cases, it transcends it – the story of the main character Ture Di Nardo becomes exemplary of the condition of many farmers. They often are the only support for their families but are torn away from their work and affections. They are thrown into a sort of no man’s land, the battlefield, dominated by anonymous and mass death, at the mercy of a war that brutalises and, in some ways, depersonalises them.
The narrative represents well the perspective from below, of those peasants from the most remote areas of the country suddenly catapulted into a hellish conflict, ruled by resignation and frustration and by a substantial indifference towards the reasons for the war, experienced at like a natural disaster. The protagonist’s attitude in the novel reflects the conditions of that rural world accustomed to patient sacrifice, which struggles to identify with the State and whose dimension still lived the local, municipal one. Far from the ideas of power and greatness promoted by the regime, averse to fascist myths, far from the exasperated patriotic spirit nurtured at that time, Ture found himself immersed in the tragic reality of the Italian war on the eastern front. The only comfort offered by solidarity with his comrades in arms and the faint hope of one day being able to return home to fulfil his love dream with his beloved Rosa.
The novel gives us an extraordinary cross section of the physical and mental universe, of the values, fears, needs, and aspirations of peasant families in a mountain area – the Nebrodi area: the hard work in the fields, made of toil, sweat, and abuses perpetrated by a class of landowners, of noble origin, who still in the first half of the 20th century firmly held possession of most of the land, profiting handsomely by renting it out, often with random criteria.
Parafioriti’s realist prose is fluid and easy to read, in the best Sicilian literary tradition. He thickens the narrative plot as he follows the development of the love affair between Ture and his cousin Rosa, with the twist of events and circumstances reminiscent of Manzoni that hinder its full completion.
He deals efficiently with the various characters, captured in their intimate essence, creating an impressive social fresco based on solid historical knowledge and appropriate use of language.
After the short stories of Era il mio paese (2014), Sicilitudine (2016), and the transition to the historical novel with D’Amore e di briganti (2019), set in the post-unification period of the nineteenth century, this new literary effort marks the author's arrival at a test of definite maturity, with an organic novel able to hold the reader's attention by the force of the story and its universal value. All Parafioriti’s writings have a common denominator, an unmistakable common thread: they express a deep connection with his homeland in Sicily, Galati Mamertino and its hamlet of San Basilio, on the Nebrodi mountains, which becomes an integral part of the characters the author narrates. From this context, the novel events unfold to fit into the broader framework of the history of the twentieth century.
In conclusion, it seems accurate to reflect on the genesis and scope of this work to recall the following observation:
“Every human being is unique, an unrepeatable being who, however much he may run about in the dark, mixing accidents with his intentions, never follows in the footsteps of another, never repeats the same path, never leaves behind the same story. This is another reason why life stories are told and listened to with interest, because they are similar and yet new, irreplaceable and unexpected, from start to finish.”5
As Hannah Arendt pointed out, “no one has a life worthy of consideration of which a story cannot be told”6. By recounting the cruel reality of war, the author tries to emphasise and exalt the unparalleled nature of each human destiny but also the eternal, exceptional value of the testimony of suffering and dignity capable of overcoming the barrier of time and projecting itself into today’s world. In the hope that memory can always represent – in the words of Liliana Segre – a precious vaccine against indifference.
Prof. Antonio Baglio
(Università degli Studi di Messina)
PART I
I
Village of San Giorgio, April 1941
Nebrodi mountains
Zi1 Peppe Pileri would go back from the countryside in the evening. The days were getting longer, and he tried to make the most of every last ray of sunshine. Thus, just before retiring, he would pluck the last dry twigs from the ground and pile them up in the corner with the rest, load up the sack with the day’s harvest, and, with a broom rope, put a few pieces of dry wood on the mule to fuel the fireplace.
It was early April, and the cold was still being felt, especially within the stone walls of the small village of San Giorgio, where Zi Peppe lived with his family. There, the gusts of mistral blew in the nights while the foxes and martens ate the chickens. There was starvation, and now there was also war.
Zi Peppe Pileri had to provide for his family, consisting of seven children, and there was never enough bread. He always said that he believed in God for heavenly things, but with earthly things, he needed luck, and to have it, you had to be born under a lucky star and, above all, escape the evil eye. Thus, every single evening, as soon as he reached the last houses of the large village of San Basilio, in a place called Bolo, before taking the rough mule track towards San Giorgio, he would dismount from the animal and stand on the opposite side of the houses. Then he would walk, almost rubbing the wall, trying to escape