THE USEFUL LIFE OF A DEAD MAN
The leader was a member of the so-called "old guard": one
of those members of the Party who had distinguished themselves
by many deeds of violence during the first years of the Revolution
and who had been set aside when the Revolution, after having con–
quered power, had tried to look respectable. Now that the question
of respectability had become completely irrelevant in the desperate
effort of the Fascist regime to keep itself afloat, he had been called
to an important post.
Nothing of the dashing fighter was left in the pale, fat man
who confronted Mario's sister when she managed to gain admission
to the leader's office. He looked nervous, almost as nervous as he
was. Evidently he lacked totally the support of that
Gotterdamme–
rung
feeling in which his German comrades found a gloomy solace.
The leader listened to her without interrupting. When she had
finished her plea, he still kept silent. Turning his eyes from her, he
fixed an empty stare at the window. He then wrote a few lines on
a piece of paper and, without uttering a word, stepped into the next
room. She could hear his voice in a rather long speech but could
not understand what he was saying. After a moment, another voice
answered, a very loud voice, this one with a heavy German accent.
This time she could grasp a few sentences. She heard something about
Italians being soft and about the danger of letting "Jews die for
you when they are always ready to take advantage of it." When
the leader came back he looked even paler than before. Handing
to her the piece of paper on which he had been writing- a safe
conduct for her mother, her sister, and herself, which besides his
signature bore also the stamp of the power of all powers in Brescia,
the German Kommandatur- he whispered: "You will remember
what I have done for you, will you?"
The mother and sisters of Mario were perfectly undisturbed
during the last bloody weeks of German domination.
It was not possible to test what Mario's influence would have
been in the very doubtful case of the Fascist leader. The city was
controlled by the Partisans for a few days between the Gern1an
withdrawal and the Allied occupation, and the leader was executed
on the same day that the Germans left.
1107
