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Appena sceso dal treno alla stazione centrale di Milano cercò una cabina telefonica e fece il numero che stava scritto sul foglietto.
-Pronto, rispose una chiara voce di donna.
-Mi chiamo Giovanni Filippi, disse John Cally.
-Avete molte valige?
-I have no baggage.
-Then take tram number 12, which passes through the square opposite the station. Tell the controller to warn you when you arrive in Piazza Napoli. Go down into the square, cross and take the road opposite to the one where you came from, who is the Way of Giovanni Bellini. Stop at the second gate of the first house on the right, at number 3. Ring the bell by Morelli. Do not ask questions and avoid unnecessary conversation with people because bad times are here again, not only where you come from you. If someone were to ask you to remember something about giving all of you, otherwise they understand that you are a foreigner.
hung, but he had said enough to put a better fear him.
were not easy times those of Milan. He had to register once to the National Fascist Party otherwise would never find a job. Twice he was questioned in the House of the beam on his mysterious past. He answered politely and without showing signs of nervousness always telling the tale that Mrs. Morelli had made him memorize. When his parents were dead a brother of his father had brought with him to New York and there remained all that time. They did come to Rome, a comrade who had been living for years in England and spoke perfect English. Luckily it was not an American, otherwise he would have immediately recognized her Southern accent, very different from the unmistakable slang true New Yorkers. Comrade Roman could confirm that he spoke perfect American, and that was what others wanted to hear.
They gave him the party ticket and left him in peace. Now he was finally in place: it was a white Aryan and Catholic and had the piece of the Fascist Party, could not happen anymore.
found him a job in a printing press, and it mattered little that he had never made the print shop, had more to learn because he was not there. And he learned the trade so quickly that after a year was able to work alone, and when he got the first linotype machine we put him to work on a car because he was English and all instructions were written in that language. He thus became the first linotypist of Milan and was called to take evening classes to teach apprentices. To earn some extra money went to the house of a former colleague, who restores old books and bound them with a technique different from the one used in the workshop for binding new books and lecture notes university. He learned so well that he decided to open a shop in Via Solari, two blocks away from Piazza Napoli.
He had a small stroke of luck, because he lived right next to his shop a professor of Italian literature at the University of Pavia. He spent up front all day and when he paused to look at work. She asked him if he could do a little restoration to an ancient text of the seventeenth century, and when he got back in the hands of the text was full of enthusiasm. A few days after John Cally had a shop full of texts to be restored, that the professor had made to bring the university library. There was a good name and began to devote more time to his shop, leaving half a day working on the press.
Now that good money could afford to buy a car. Balilla bought a 1100 black two-door, with leather seats and steering wheel to change completely in sync. He changed his home and went to live in a Washington Avenue in the attic, not too far from his shop. Had been reduced to a minimum the time spent in typography, Linotype and two hours to one hour of instruction to apprentices. Nothing extra: Balilla leave his workshop in the yard and spent time splashing his way back to the store.
not looking for a girlfriend even though many had come forward, because now was a good match besides a handsome man almost thirty years, the right age to start a family. But he had known at the University of Pavia, an assistant professor of Latin literature who lived alone, from "white widow", as saying. She was married to a socialist intellectual of stated faith fascism. He had been jailed for this, and was continually being moved from one prison to another to make life hard. The wife maintained little contact with him only by letter, because she had been forbidden to meet, and also reduced the letters to the bone because of the rigorous censorship. In fact she was in the odor of subversion and his house was avoided a bit 'all. The woman lived segregated in fact.
Cally Filiput John, alias John Philippi, but did not find any difficulty to approach her. He was not imposed any ban because he was a native, a good fellow who never missed the Saturday meetings in the House of Fascist beam of his ward, because had bound all the books in the library of the GUF in Milan at their own expense, a tribute to future doctors, engineers and lawyers of the party, and especially because it had become a friend of the professor of Italian literature at the University of Pavia, who was a hierarch. He asked him not to give publicity to the thing, but said he could see a real fascist in bed, and therefore wished him many beautiful fucking fascist.
Things were put right in every respect for John Cally Filiput, alias John Filippi, when Italy entered the war unexpectedly. On the evening of June 10, 1940, the day on which the Duce declared Fascist Italy's entry on the side of Nazi Germany in the conflict plutocratic democracies against the Anglo-Saxon and French, John Cally passed the home of the beautiful assistant professor of Latin literature.
Bovi Eleanor wept in silence, with tears that could no longer stop. She, like all intellectuals, had hoped until the last minute that Mussolini did not make the big step, and now was in despair. He felt the impending tragedy.
Who knows what the hell happen to me now, he thought Cally Filiput John, alias John Filippi, but always considered himself under the personal protection of Kurt Marx and consoled. After all, if they had not until then would not find at the time next to a young and fresh beautiful woman even twenty-nine, with a capital of one hundred and ninety thousand pounds in the bank and a secure future.
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