It all began one summer day in 1994, when a young Swiss man by the surname of Ritter arrived at the Residenza d'Epoca "San Lorenzo", introducing himself as the great-grandson of Giulia Bondanini of Todi, caught up in a story that seems a legend and yet was living, throbbing experience. The story of a woman who, after the clandestine expatriation of her husband, the Republican deputy Fernando Schiavetti, had remained in Todi with her two daughters, still small, taken in at her father's house, but shadowed by the Fascist police, who followed her movements, watchful that she should not flee in her turn and eager to extract from her, if caught out, the way in which the anti-Fascists were attempting their escape abroad. She lived in the Palazzo Antonini, to the left of the Duomo, and her watchers were seven agents, in uniform and in plain clothes, spaced out between the main entrance and that of the garden behind. She managed to flee all the same, taking with her the elder child, aged four: Ritter's grandmother. Franca stayed behind, little more than a newborn, until September 1928, when, with permission granted by the Fascist government, she was able, accompanied by her grandfather, to rejoin her family in Marseille. Raised abroad, between France and Switzerland, then Germany and Great Britain, and having become a journalist, Franca recounted it all in the book Una famiglia italiana, starting from the extraordinary episode at Todi: the flight of her mother and sister, and her own reunion with them both two years later. The book contains the exact version of the event, free of the fanciful additions (such as, for example, the child hidden in a basket) that could not fail to appear in a tale handed down by word of mouth, first in the drumbeat of anti-Fascist whispers, then in the hurried exhumations of the post-war years. One cannot say when its memory was lost: certainly long before the young Ritter came to Todi, when it was found that only a few elderly people still kept a faint trace of it.

There is, in any case, the book that tells it through the voice of one of its protagonists. A book that casts a particular light on a palace on the square, on its great entrance hall, beyond which we must imagine a young woman, practically a prisoner: where a tavern across the way is mentioned[1], which certainly corresponds to the present-day Trattoria Italia; where there is talk of flight through a garden that must necessarily be the one owned by the Toppetti-Grondona family; where the countryside is described, the Rocca and the Piazza, whose enfolding wonders could not, however, cancel the disquiet of affections uprooted and far away; where an immense and protective figure of a grandfather is evoked, almost superimposed on the majestic, turreted outline of the city. And so, what fascinates, beyond the depth of a biography peopled with figures such as Nenni, Pertini, Lussu, Saragat, Modigliani, Silone, Carlo Rosselli, and interwoven with all the ideological conflicts of the century: it is this solemn and visionary beginning at Todi, with its vast square… the finest playground one could imagine[2]. The square of the nineteen-twenties, probably not very different from the one reproduced in a celebrated photograph of the late nineteenth century, with three cloaked figures in an empty space, and a distant perimeter of crenellated walls. Perhaps slightly softened, but still an arena worthy of an acropolis, with a massive and looming monumentality: a natural backdrop for powerful and dramatic stories, like the one that filled the two years of little Franca. A story whose shadow has fallen upon the descendants, since Ritter came to visit the places that saw it unfold and to experience the "wonders" that this city inspired in the child who was his aunt. It all began, as we said, in that summer of 1994, at the Residenza San Lorenzo, once the dwelling of the Pellegrini family, of secular and socialist tradition, which may well have taken in the Schiavetti-Bondanini couple and may have had to console Giulia during her rare outings, scheduled by the Fascist surveillance. The story resurfaced, but Ritter's arrival was only one of the factors, together with others that wove, all in all, a web of singular coincidences. The arrival of Ritter, an unwitting tourist, at the house that probably took in the Schiavettis occurred in the very days when Franca Magnani's book just mentioned was being displayed for the first time in Todi, in the window of Foglietti. Noticed by Ritter and bought at once, it was shown by him to Mitzi Morena, owner of the Residenza and granddaughter of the aforementioned Pellegrini, of those who surely knew and discussed this affair. So it all began from there, when Todi had occasion to learn, or, if you will, to recognise, an affair that is part of its history.

Notes

[1], [2] Phrases taken from Franca Magnani, Una famiglia italiana, Milano, Universale Economica Feltrinelli, 1992.

Manfredo Retti, a teacher of classical subjects, is the author of articles and publications. He has edited several volumes on the historic theatres of Umbria and recently the one on the Teatro Comunale di Todi, where he promotes cultural activities, especially musical ones, and holds various offices within the life of the city.