The Secret of Santa Vittoria Read Free

“The Duce is dead.”
    The priest went away from the window and looked around the wooden walls of the room. It was strange to him. He lit a tallow candle and wrote in the daily log.
    2:25 A.M. Cavalcanti turns out to be F. della Romagna. I learn that the Duce is dead.
    He took the candle and started down the dark steep stone steps that wound down inside the walls of the tower. Fabio met him at the door. He was tired and wet with sweat, but he was happy.
    â€œYou should see them in Montefalcone,” the young man said. He described how the people were dancing in the streets and setting fire to portraits of Mussolini and burning Fascist symbols and how the soldiers had deserted their barracks, and the police headquarters had been burned and how even the carabinieri had gone to the hills.
    â€œI suppose they’ll go after the churches next,” Polenta said. “They usually do.”
    Fabio was shocked. “They’re going into the churches to pray, Padre,” he said.
    â€œI’m sure.”
    â€œTo give thanks for their deliverance, Padre.”
    â€œI’m sure. Go on, go ring your bells.” He allowed Fabio to come into the bell tower, but he wouldn’t help him find the bell ropes in the darkness.
    â€œFind them yourself. I’m not going to help you,” the priest said. He wasn’t sure how he felt about Mussolini. There was the Lateran Treaty; the Duce had signed it and by that act had done more for the Church than any one other leader of Italy, but the Duce had been a fool and a clown, two traits that the priest despised above all others. Had he been born God, the priest had said, it was the clowns who would occupy the lowest rungs of hell.
    Despite the fog he started across the Piazza of the People to his church, Santa Maria of the Burning Oven, to be there in the event of any trouble. He was near the fountain when he heard Fabio call to him.
    â€œOh, what a morning this is going to be for Italy, Padre.”
    The bell began to peal and then thunder over Santa Vittoria, swinging free and out of control, the entire tower trembling and then the windows of the houses around the piazza. No one came into the piazza. Fabio ran to Santa Maria.
    â€œThe people,” he called to the priest. “What’s the matter with the people?”
    â€œYou’ve been away at the school too long,” Polenta said. “They don’t believe the bell any longer.”
    The summer before, all the people had run to the Piazza of the People—to help fight the fire, when the bells had begun to ring. When most of the town had collected, torches were lit and they found themselves surrounded by a company of Blackshirts from the barracks at Montefalcone.
    â€œWe shall now proceed to pay our back taxes,” the officer announced. And they went through every pocket and every house in Santa Vittoria until every unburied lira in the city was taken.
    â€œThis is no city to catch fire in,” the priest told Fabio. “Now when the bell rings, everyone gets up and bolts the door. That’s the kind of Christians you have in this town.”
    There is something about the truth that makes itself understood. When the bells ceased ringing, Fabio ran up and down the piazza in front of the houses, telling everyone to come out, that he had good news for them, and gradually lights were lit and finally some of the Pietrosantos, most of whom live along the lanes leading into the piazza, opened their doors; and when they saw it was Fabio running about in the fog they came out.
    There is a thing about Santa Vittoria that must be understood in order to understand this place. Whatever is known in Santa Vittoria is known by everyone in Santa Vittoria as soon as it happens. Some say it is because the walls of the houses are so thin that what is said in the first house is heard in the second and passed through the walls to the third, down through Old Town and up through High Town.