My First Seven Years (Plus a Few More) by Dario Fo Page A

doing a shit for three days … things sticking out of you … bits of wire that ripped your skin … but it still all adds up in our favour. We’re going to make it home with our hide intact, some more intact than others, but for you lot, the poor bloody infantry, it’s worse than being on a shooting range in a fairground … three balls a penny! So far, it’s gone OK for you, Felice, but it’s not exactly easy to pull out the winning ball in the raffle every time. It’s like being in a casino … look at it any way you like, the banker always wins in the end. The croupiers are the generals, the owners of the casinos are the king and the manufacturers of the transports, cannons and bombs. They’re the ones who spin the wheel and they’re playing with our lives. Get smart, raise the stakes if you want to bugger death.”
    â€˜So that was it. My cousin Briasco had convinced me. The very next day, I went off to join up with the Arditi. Panic attacks, crawling about like a lizard, holes all over my body, but I made it. Unfortunately the right number in the raffle didn’t come up for cousin Briasco, and he was left there. My mother’s sister received a solemn encomium and a silver medal, but they never brought his body back.’
    I was deeply moved by my father’s story, and stayed silent for a while, then said: ‘But tell me, Papà, why do you still wear all these decorations on your jacket?’
    â€˜They’re trinkets, but they’re like lightning conductors. It’s thanks to them that I haven’t been reported or suspended, and even that I escaped arrest a couple of times. In my line of work, I come across any number of high and mighty Fascists who are fanatical about this goddam regime, and who drone drearily on about the “glory of the faith and the ideal”. I don’t suffer fools gladly, and every time I end up sniggering at them. So what do I get from them? “Mind your tongue, or I’ll report you.” “Come on you bunch of wankers,” I tell them, “want to report these as well?” and I puff my chest full out and shove my collection of honours, including the Arditi badge and the solemn encomium, in their face! Once I dropped my trousers in front of a blustering Fascist lady to show her my injured leg and silver knee-cap, and even gave her the Fascist war cry – Eia, Eia, Alalà! Who do you think’s going to take the chance of dragging a haul of trophies like that before a court?’
    At which point, I started laughing out loud.
    From that day on, every time someone came to our school to recite a eulogy to the regime or to deliver a panegyric on the sacred martyrs of the fatherland, I could not help seeing my father on the platform, his trousers around his ankles, jumping from one foot to the other, showing off his wounds and his silvery knee. He does not wear underpants … his privates are adorned with a garland of merrily ringing medals.
    It often happened in class that the teacher or someone else would interrupt the talk and yell at me in a highly outraged tone: ‘You, boy … what do you mean by that idiot grin?’
    â€˜No, sir,’ I would reply, lying through my teeth, ‘it is not a grin. I was just trying to hold back the emotion!’

CHAPTER 11
    The Mystery of the Amorous Statues
    A beautiful eighteenth-century villa, surrounded by a park with a river on one side, stood facing the lake on the outskirts of the town. Here and there stood clumps of woodland – oaks, silver firs and beeches. Statues in the Palladian style depicting nymphs, satyrs and various gods had been placed among the trees to give a spurious impression of randomness. In the villa lived the owners of the glassworks. The park was enclosed by a long fence around the entire perimeter.
    The keeper in charge of the life of the trees was called Serene, surname Weather. His