MODERN DOCUMENTS
Renzo Rava
THE USEFUL LIFE OF A DEAD MAN
The case of people who, after their death, lead a long
and useful life through their deeds and work, is common. Nor is ·the
instance rare of men who gave such meaning to their voluntary
death that the memory of their supreme act lives on long after they
have disappeared. But the accidental, unintended death of an obscure
man as the start of a brilliant career of service is indeed exceptional.
Such is the case of my friend Mario Palermo.
Mario went out one night during the autumn of 1920 to buy cig–
arettes. It was election time in his native city, Brescia, in northern
Italy, and clashes between Fascist and Leftist groups were frequent.
A few shots were exchanged that night and a stray bullet hit Mario
just as he stepped out of the tobacco shop.
He died instantly.
Little space was given to the fact
in
Brescia's newspapers. Young
Palermo had no party affiliations. He had graduated from Law
School a few weeks before his death. Of a retiring disposition, he
had few friends. He lived with his father-a doctor who had aban–
doned a profession which he actually never practiced- his mother
and his two sisters,
in
an old, comfortable, middle-class house. In short,
he had nothing which could attract public attention.
Thus his death remained within the private domain of his close
relatives.
But the situation changed two years later. Power had been
conquered by Fascism. The country had been divided into the
so–
called Fascist Federal Federations, each headed by a Federal Secre–
tary, and the search for martyrs, martyrs after whom streets could
be named-martyrs to whom monuments could be erected-had
begun. The problem of martyrs is, in all revolutions, a difficult one.
If
many die for the revolution, the choice becomes perplexing. More-
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