The War

Silence. More and more of it these days as Italy tightens the regulations around lock-down. Parks are closed, people can exercise or walk their dogs only within 200 meters of their home, all non-essential businesses are being shut down, enforcement is stricter. Many talk of this as a fight against an invisible enemy, the war against COVID-19.

War is something I’ve never experienced but a number of the older inhabitants in our village have. During the winter of 1944-45 the Gothic Line ran through these mountains. Our village was in the no-man’s land between the Germans encamped along the ridges and the Allied Forces in the valley. As there were no roads up here, the Germans marched up the ancient Roman path right through the village. They found no men to recruit as the fascists had already joined and the partisans were in hiding, but the women welcomed them with false smiles. Later these same women would climb to the ridge to ‘look for their sheep’ in order to note more precisely the location and number of troops, information they would then relay to the partisans to relay to the Allies. The German troops came often to demand food for their camp and meals for their officers. Families gave willingly, praying the Germans wouldn’t suspect their duplicity.

Of course this all happened 75 years ago. But there are some comparisons that can be made. That war involved 30 countries; at this moment, COVID-19 is affecting 188 countries. While WW2 was violent with humans killing humans in brutal ways, this virus is invisible and kills in the sanitised wards and corridors of hospitals where even doctors and nurses are becoming infected, and dying.

During the war, life changed dramatically as food was rationed, buildings were blown up, friends and neighbours were taken away to camps, families fled to the country to places like our village where the population nearly tripled while the amount of food dwindled. The virus has also changed life here in Italy dramatically with the lock-down. Movement, something we’ve taken for granted, like many human rights, has been severely restricted. No one is allowed to touch each other. Virtual communication has taken over person-to-person contact. All the places people used to meet, most favourite spaces and activities are forbidden. Lines to get food are long and anxiety is rising along with the death toll.

Like WW2, the younger generations are putting themselves at risk, as key workers this time instead of soldiers, in order to try to keep the larger population alive. Unfortunately, however, there are also people who are ignoring the rules in favour of selfish pastimes with friends. Outside Italy, many politicians too ignored the signs, have shut their eyes to what is happening in Italy and are admitting the dangers only too late. Leaders have talked about those killed by the virus as expendable – they would die anyway because they are old or have underlying health conditions. Underlying health conditions? This includes huge numbers of the population from those with auto-immune diseases to diabetes to asthma, leukemia to lymphoma to Lyme disease. It includes all ages. Should not everyone get a fighting chance to survive? The Social Darwinism of culling the most vulnerable being acceptable and even beneficial for the population (like ‘herd immunity’) reminds me of the Nazi’s so-called scientific reasoning that the Jews were genetically inferior as an excuse for their mass extermination.

The other day, I met a friend and her husband as I returned home from walking my dog. They are a kind, generous, quiet couple from the village who despite being elderly continue to tend their plants, their vegetables, fruit trees and woods. I stopped to ask them how they were doing. From several meters away, she told me they were fine as were their children and grandchildren although they never see them these days. After asking me about my family, she remarked on a news item she’d see the other night in which the British prime minister had said that the virus wasn’t as serious as made out to be; it only killed old people. ‘I’m old. Is my life not valuable just like any other life?’ Yes, life is valued here in Italy, no matter what age. We discussed the horrible rise in deaths and the need for people to seriously obey the regulations. ‘It’s like a war,’ I said. ‘I lived through the war, Olivia, and this is worse. No one can see the virus and we all have to stay inside, separated, there’s no companionship, no getting together. And the sick when they die, they die alone. No, this is worse than the war.’

Some days I can imagine a world before cars and machines, a world quieter than our modern world… although now there is even an absence of human voices. Other times the silence reminds me of the opening of John Wyndam’s post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids in which a man whose eyes have been bandaged wakes up in the hospital. “When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.” He hears no traffic, no voices, no footsteps. The world has completely changed.