The Breathing Darkness

by Runa Falzolgher (Spain)

Making a local connection Italy

The tunnels under Trieste are a living, breathing beast that feeds on memories. As my uncle walks us into the moistened darkness of this time frozen war zone, I take a deep breath and savor the damp, cool air. My uncle. My family. My country. My mother was born in this frontier city, once a lively province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Italian for a glimpse, then Yugoslavian, then Italian again, a fought territory, a land of war, a cauldron of languages and peoples where the wounds of fascism are still bleeding from never filled holes left by 70-year-old grenades. Then, eventually, she turned seventeen, and there was an earthquake, and she fled, but the sweet sound of Trieste’s dialect somehow managed to stay in her speech. Her memories of an Austrian grandmother, scolding her in broken Italian, stayed. Memories of an Italian grandmother firmly holding her tiny hand during Bora days – the strong wind that sometimes sweeps the streets of Trieste and can reach a surprisingly alarming speed. Enough to make a child fly, my great-grandmother would say, holding my three-year-old mother’s hand somewhere in the 1960s, so that Bora would not sweep her away. I came back to Trieste because I’m coming back to myself. I’m coming back to my country, to my family, and to the memories buried under layers of years and dust and pain. My uncle shows us into the tunnels and I cannot tell whether these goosebumps are a result of the cold, damp air, or the melancholic sight of empty chambers, with a few rudimental furniture scattered around the dirt floor. Soldiers and civilians used these hidden corridors during both world wars. We find ourselves in the Italian zone. Just a few inches away, on the other side of this wall, the Nazi tunnels breath their dark memories too, untouched for nearly 70 years, still sealed by an unspoken oath of treason, shame, and fear. A fought city. Always divided, painfully, invisibly split, just like this place. My uncle shows us glass cabinets that he, together with his fellow amateur historians, positioned along the empty walls of a chamber. Leather suitcases, worn out by time and humidity. Little shoes. Empty boxes of soap, shaving cream, chewing-gum. Old, rusty canteens and field glasses. Helmets. A Nazi one. An Ally one, American. A pair of moldy boots. Object that speak of those who left them behind, soldiers, and civilians hiding underground, a big breathing crowd waiting for the clamor of warplanes to fade away. “They could fit around 300 people in here” Says my uncle, while we enter a narrow tunnel crossed by a weak stream of water, walking on a sort of wooden deck “They would come from the old theater that used to be around the corner. And from the houses. Just any people passing by, as soon as you heard the sirens you would look for the nearest shelter.” He points at the stream below us. “This” he explains “came afterwards. When the whole place was abandoned.” They fixed these tunnels, my uncle and his friends. They asked the city hall for permission, brooms in their hands, and voluntarily entered the long-forgotten memories that lay under the city, picking up the scattered objects, lovingly collecting details, stories, dates. Names. Opening up the place for visits. They never got any money out of it, that was not the point, he says. This is who we are, it’s a part of us, of our story. We slowly make our way out of the wet tunnel, the long-gone whispers of hundreds of people feebly echoing in the dense darkness we are leaving behind: it moves something inside me, hearing this 65-year-old man talking about the story of these tunnels with the fierce pride that characterizes Trieste as a city, as a wounded territory that finds healing in the pain of story-telling, living its history over and over again. Our story. Mine. We leave the tunnels at around midday, and my uncle closes the gate behind us, the dim light of a Bora day bathing our faces: the wind, the sun, the darkness. It almost feels like home.