{"id":6759,"date":"2025-10-16T13:10:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/primolevicenter.org\/printed-matter\/?p=6759"},"modified":"2026-01-16T12:56:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T12:56:31","slug":"la-storia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/primolevicenter.org\/printed-matter\/la-storia\/","title":{"rendered":"La Storia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elsa Morante. Excerpts from La Storia<\/em>, remembering October 16, 1943<\/p>\n

Not even from her mother had she ever heard this denomination \u201cAryans\u201d; in fact, the de-nomination of Jews itself, for little Iduzza in the house down in Cosenza had remained an object of great mystery. Except by Nora, in her secret councils, it was never uttered in vain in the Ramundo home!<\/p>\n

I have learned that once, in one of his great anarchist perorations, Giuseppe happened to proclaim, in a thundering voice: \u201cThe day will come when masters and proletarians, black and white, male and female, Jews and Christians, will be all equal, in the sole honor of being part of humanity!!\u201dBut at that shouted word, Jews, Nora let out a cry of fright and blanched as if seized by a serious illness; whereupon Giuseppe, all repentant, came to her and repeated, this time in a very low voice: \u201c… I said, Jews and Christians…\u201d. As if by whispering the word very softly after having shouted it very loud, he was repairing the disaster!<\/p>\n

In any case, now, Ida learned that the Jews were different, not only because they were Jews but also because they were non-Aryans. And who were the Aryans? To Iduzza, this term used by the Authorities suggested something ancient and lofty, on the order of Baron or Count. And in her concept, the Jews were opposed to the Aryans, much as the plebeians to the patricians (she had studied history!).<\/p>\n

However, obviously, the non-Aryans, for the Authorities, were the most plebeians of the plebeians! For example, the baker\u2019s apprentice, plebeian by class, compared to a Jew, was as good as a patrician, because he was Aryan! And if, in the social order, the plebeians were already like scabies, the plebeians of the plebeians must have been leprosy!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Along the wall of the stairs, peeling and covered with stains, you can read various writings, most of them obviously by childish hands: Arnaldo loves Sara\u2014Ferruccio is handsome (and below, added by another young hand: he\u2019s a shit)\u2014Colomba loves L.\u2014Roma\u2019s the winner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Frowning, Ida examined all the writings, in an effort to decipher her own confused reasoning in them. The house had two upper stories in all, but the stairway seemed very long to her. Finally, at the next landing, she discovered what she was looking for. Actually, the number of people named EFRATI in the Rome Ghetto was beyond counting. There was no stairway, you might say, where one wasn\u2019t to be found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Here, there were three doors. One, without a name and off its hinges, opened into a windowless cubbyhole, with a springs of a bed on the floor and a basin, both battered. The other two doors were closed. On one, there was a little plate with a name: Di Cave, and above it, written on the wood, also the names: Pavoncello, Calo\u0300. And on the second, a broad piece of paper was glued, which said: Sonnino, EFRATI, Della Seta.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In her wariness, Ida couldn\u2019t resist the temptation to sit down on those iron springs. From the broken window over the stairs came a swallow\u2019s shriek, and she was amazed by it. Heedless of the air raids and explosions, the little creature had flown across the sky\u2014its fragile body unerringly oriented\u2014as on a domestic path. While she, a woman, and over forty years old, found herself lost.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She had to make an enormous effort not to give way to her desire to stretch out on those springs and spend the whole night there. And certainly it was this effort which, in her state of extreme weakness, then provoked an auditory illusion. First, she was surprised by an unreal silence in the place. And within this, her ears, buzzing from her fasts, began to perceive some voices. It was not, actually, a true hallucination, because Ida realized that the manufactory of those voices was in her brain indeed; she herself did not sense them elsewhere. However, the impression she received from them was that they were spreading through her auditory canals from some unspecified dimension, which no longer belonged to exterior space, or to her memories. They were alien voices, of various tones, but predominantly female, unconnected with one another, without dialogue or communication among themselves. And they distinctly pronounced phrases, some exclamatory, some relaxed, but all of ordinary banality, like assembled fragments of a common life of every day:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c… I am on the roof collecting the laundry!!\u201d … \u201cIf you don\u2019t finish your homework, you are not leaving this house!\u201d … \u201cI\u2019m going to tell your father when he gets home!\u201d … \u201cThey\u2019re distributing cigarettes today …\u201d \u201cAll right, I\u2019ll wait for you, but hurry…\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019ve you been all this time? …\u201d \u201c…I\u2019ll be right there ma\u0300…!\u201d \u201cHow much are you asking?\u201d \u201cHe told me to start dinner …\u201d \u201cPut that light out; electricity costs money …\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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This phenomenon of hearing voices is fairly common, and at times even the healthy experience it, more frequently when they are about to fall asleep, and after a hard day\u2019s work. For Ida, it wasn\u2019t new, but in her present emotional fragility, it seized her like an invasion. The voices in her ears, before dying away, started reechoing one after the other, overlapping at a turbulent rhythm.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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And in this haste of theirs, she seemed to sense a horrible meaning, as if their poor gossips were exhumed from one confused eternity into another confused eternity. Without knowing what she was saying, or why, Ida found herself murmuring to herself, her chin trembling like that of a child about to cry: \u201cThey are all dead\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSignora Di Segni was there, running back and forth on the open platform, her legs without stockings, short and thin, of an unhealthy whiteness, and her mid-season dust-coat flying behind her shapeless body. She was running clumsily the whole length of the row of cars, shouting in an almost obscene voice: Settimio! Settimio!…Graziella!… Manuele!… Set- timio!… Settimio! Esterina!… Manuele!… Angelino!…\u201d<\/p>\n

From inside the train, some unknown voices reached her, shouting at her to go away; otherwise, they would take her too when they came back in a little while. \u201cNo-o-o! I won\u2019t go!\u201d she railed in reply, threatening and enraged, hammering her fists against the cars (my family\u2019s in there! Call them! Di Segni! The Di Segni family!\u201d … \u201cSettimiooo!!!\u201d She appeared suddenly, running, her arms out towards one of the cars and clinging to the var of the door, in an impossible attempt to force it. Behind the grille, up above, a little head had appeared, an old man\u2019s. His eyeglasses could be seen glistering over his emaciated nose, against the darkness behind; his tiny hands clutched the bars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSettimio!!\u201d the others?! are they with you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGo away, Celeste,\u201d her husband said to her. \u201cGo away, I tell you: right now. They\u2019ll be back any minute …\u201d Ida recognized his slow, sententious voice. It was the same that, on other occasions, in his cubbyhole full of old junk, had said to her, for example, with sage and pondered judgement, \u201cThis, Signora, isn\u2019t even worth the cost of mending…\u201d or else, \u201cI can give you six lire for the whole lot …\u201d but today he sounded toneless, alien, as if from an atrocious paradise beyond all access.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The interior of the cars, scorched by the lingering summer sun, continues to reecho with that incessant sound. In its disorder, the baby\u2019s cry overlapped with quarrels, ritual chanting, meaningless mumbles, senile voices calling from mother; others that conversed, aside, almost ceremonious, and others that were even giggling. And at times, over all this, sterile, bloodcurdling screens rose; or others, of a bestial physicality exclaiming elementary words like \u201cwater!\u201d \u201cair!\u201d From one of the last cars dominating all the other voices, a young woman would burst out, at intervals, with compulsive piercing shrieks, typical of labor pains.<\/p>\n

And Ida recognized this confused chorus. No less than the Signora\u2019s almost indecent screams and old Di Segni\u2019s sententious tones, all this wretched human sound from the cars caught her in a heart-rending sweetness, because of a constant memory that didn\u2019t return to her from known time, but from some other channel: from the same place as her father little Calabrian songs, that had lulled her, or the anonymous poem of the previous night, or the little kisses that whispered carina, carina to her.<\/p>\n

It was a place of repose that drew her down, into the promiscuous den of a single, endless family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elsa Morante. 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