Today I received a parcel from home.

At this point of our story, let us look back at the moment when Signora 3432.5 (I'm No. 6865, and she's my better half, isn't she?), who knew me in my carefree bachelor days, has joyfully finished wrapping a food parcel addressed to the father of her numerous Albertino and Carlotta.

"There," the good woman says to herself. "The package is ready to go. The Minister of Communications will telephone the Postmaster General and say: 'Look out for the food parcel that's on the way to Signor Giovannino. I want to be sure that it's treated with the proper consideration,'  'Of course,' the Postmaster will reply.   'I've already fired the clerk that canceled the stamps without asking permission. Everything's taken care of.'"

These, then, are the circumstances under which the parcel leaves the post office.   It doesn't travel in a mail truck, but in the arms of a trusted employee, reposing on a purple cushion.  "Dark blue would set it off better," says the sender, and in a trice the purple cushion is set aside in favor of a dark blue one.

"Here's Signor Giovannino's food parcel," announces the trusted employee, when he comes to the railway station.

"Signor Giovannino, did you say?" echoes the stationmaster. "I'll not lose a minute."  And he runs to the telephone. "Attention! Food parcel for Signor Giovannino!  Put a special car on No. 334.  It's already gone?  Then hook it on at Bologna.  What, Bologna's gone too?  Well, do something about it!"

And so the parcel is on its way, enjoying sole occupancy of a first-class compartment and reposing on a blue cushion.  Travelers waiting on the various station platforms pay it their respects as the special train goes by.  "Hats off!" shouts a veteran of the Risorgimento to a youth corrupted by American movies and syncopation. "Hat's off, when your country's parcel passes by!"

(The Wife is thrilled by this scene.  Time to teach that youth a lesson!   And, sure enough, a husky porter gives him a kick in the pants.  Well, he had it coming to him!)

The trip continues.  Now we are somewhere in Germany.

"Das Paket des Herrn Giovanninen!" they telephone to the camp.  And they inquire whether it should be sent on via ordinary channels, that is, on a truck.

"Are you crazy?"

And so a taxi brings the honorable food parcel all the way to the internment camp, where a brief but poignant ceremony accompanies its delivery to the addressee.   Giovannino, dinner is ready!

~~~~~

This is how Giovannino's better half must have imagined a food parcel's story.   There's no other explanation of the way she chose to pack it, in a box made of paper-thin plywood, held together by nails symbolical of a fierce desire for national unity, even against God's will.

Let us admit that, if the parcel had traveled according to the Wife's desire, it would have reached its destination undamaged.  That is, if the lid had stood up under the impact of the address sticker.  But since, in reality, things went very differently, the object I have just received is not so much a proper food parcel as a sack, containing the remains of what was originally one of the most phenomenal packages in all history.

If I had said simply that today I received a smashed food parcel, I should be at exactly the same point as I was at the beginning of my story, and I should have saved several hundred superfluous words in the bargain.  But what do you expect?   Literature is like that, and so is politics, for that matter.

~~~~~

And so today I received a smashed food parcel.  (Please overlook the fact that I have switched to the past tense.  The whole thing is so distressing that I am trying to push it as far away as I can.)  I took it at once to Talotti's room and dumped the contents out onto the table.  Nobody was there but soon Talotti returned.  He stood at the door, lighting his pipe, and said sorrowfully:

"If I so much as step out of the door, someone's sure to play some crude trick on me.  Who is the unsavory creature that has littered my table with garbage?"

"What do you mean, garbage?" muttered Schenardi. "Can't you see that's our daily ration of peat?"

"Peat, my eye!" exclaimed Coppola. "That's sliced turnips! Nowadays they serve them without benefit of table silver."

"Excuse me," I put in. "That's my food parcel.  What you mistook for sliced turnips is excelsior, soaked in cocoa and butter.  When you sprinkle cocoa over the contents of various broken jars, bags and cardboard boxes, not to mention the excelsior, splintered plywood and other packing material, then the general effect is that of peat or garbage, as you will."

A moment of perfect quiet followed.  Then I went over to the table and extracted from the mess a scrap of something white, which turned out to be the list of the parcel's original contents, whatever they might be.  From it I read out loud:

"Jam, butter, honey, cocoa, rice, flour, tobacco, sugar, insect powder, Parmesan cheese, soap."

"A splendid assortment!" said Talotti, in the calm voice and manner of a Venetian gentleman.

"Let's see if anything's missing," said Schenardi, injecting a practical note characteristic of his native Liguria.

"I'm going for a few minutes to No. 31, where there's a Neapolitan meeting," called Coppola over one shoulder. "I'll be back soon to give you a hand."

"If I hang around much longer, I'll simply pick up that mess and chuck it into the stove," I said.  And with that I went away.

When I came back Coppola was playing some of his own excellent musical compositions on the accordion.  Talotti had ensconced himself comfortably in his bunk to smoke his pipe while Schenardi, covered with dirt and sweat, was putting the last touches on the job of salvaging the parcel.

"Almost everything's here," he said. "The only things I can't find are the honey and the insect powder."

Rice, cocoa, flour and sugar had all been mixed together but, with the aid of an improvised sieve, he had separated the rice from the rest.  As for the cocoa, flour and sugar, he had put them in water, in order that any particles of dust and scraps of paper should come to the surface.  After that, with the addition of some evaporated milk and a few minutes of cooking, he hoped to produce a first-rate chocolate pudding.

Talotti and I showered him with compliments and dubbed him on the spot "Treasure-hunter."  Only Coppola continued to call him "Maria," because of his proven culinary and housekeeping ability, but even he was sufficiently carried away to put in a good word for Schenardi's famous checked flannel cowboy's shirt.   This had been sent to our first camp, in Poland, by Schenardi's fiancée, with a note which said: "You can use this for skiing.  Shall I send skis too, or are they provided by the management of the hotel?"

That evening we feasted.  While the water in which the rice was cooking won a series of defensive victories against the pervasive odor of the peat in the stove below, we decided, somewhat illogically, to sample the jam.  Coppola, the musician, led the way.  He spread some jam on a slice of bread, bit into it and then unexpectedly leaped to his feet and dashed out of the room like a Bach fugue.  A moment of confusion followed, until Schenardi had studied the remaining half of the slice of bread and announced: "There are traces of honey and insect powder.  In fact, the present contents of the jam jar might be called insecticidal honey.  Our mistake is natural enough, because the mixture has the color of apricot jam."

"And what about the jam that was in the parcel in the first place?" Talotti asked calmly.

Schenardi started searching among the debris heaped up in one corner of the room, but without success.  He went to wash his hands at the pump, but when he came back they were stickier than before.  However, there was a beaming expression on his face.

"The jam's accounted for, too," he announced triumphantly. "This cube isn't soap, as we imagined; it's solid jam that has dried up in transit.  It was coated with butter, and that is what gave it the shiny look and greasy feel which made us take it for soap."

"What about the real soap, then?" asked Coppola, who came back just as we were throwing the false soap away.  But we did not pause to look for it.  The rice was cooked to a turn, and we had need to console ourselves for the disappointments we had suffered thus far.  As usual, Coppola was the first to lift a forkful of steaming rice to his mouth.  He swallowed it and then made a wry face.

"It stinks of tobacco," he protested.

"Oh, very faintly," I assured him. "A couple of spoonfuls of grated cheese will put that straight."

We sprinkled the rice abundantly with cheese.  But this time the musician was more cautious and waited for the rest of us to begin, meanwhile thoroughly stirring the two ingredients of the dish together.  Little by little, our imaginations were stirred by the sight of a white foam rising over the rice.

"That accounts for the soap," said Schenardi after a quick analysis of the supposed Parmesan cheese.  The cheese had been removed, in a crumbled condition, from the parcel, but while some of the crumbs were really cheese, others were fragments of excellent white laundry soap.

"Very good!" exclaimed Coppola ironically. "So everything was there, eh?"

But Talotti had sufficient wit and grace to dispel our embarrassment.

"Let's have a good smoke and forget all about it," he suggested.

We lit our pipes and inhaled deeply.  A moment later the room was smoking like a fish-and-chips shop.  Even Talotti threw his pipe out the window and sputtered in frankly vulgar terms.  Do not be surprised at this reaction on the part of a perfect gentleman, who is also my very good friend.  Have you ever tried smoking tobacco mixed with butter?

We still had in our possession the ingredients of a pudding.  But Schenardi was prudently engaged in lettering a sign: DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE PUDDING; WILL EXCHANGE FOR TWO CIGARETTES.

~~~~~

And so today I received a smashed food parcel.  I'm glad, even if at the end nothing was left except a dirty piece of cardboard.  I washed it off and, all of a sudden, like the moon peeking out from behind a cloud, there was a chubby round face.  The first photograph of Carlotta.

Why shouldn't I be happy, when I had received the most wonderful parcel in the world?

(1944)