The Unseen Read Online Free

we start to smash up cobblestones and fill our bags with them meanwhile large groups mainly from the outlying ghetto districts make their way to the meeting place
    we try to link arms and manage to form into a long snake that’s not bad at all we can see the others from our collective they’ve all come they’re in small groups mixed up with the rest the front of the march is heading straight for the cathedral square holding up a banner that says the time for rebellion has come it’s a carnival you can see from the confetti and the paper streamers on the ground families have brought children for the outing dressed up as Zorro and Sandokan or the black pirate we go right round the cathedral square and that’s when all hell breaks loose because the carabinieri attack the back of the march they let off teargas at once the air is impossible to breathe everyone has weeping eyes the families are seized with panic they’re chasing after their Zorros and Sandokans and black pirates scattering in the stampede
    China and I stay with a group that’s throwing broken cobblestones and next to us we find Cotogno Valeriana and Nocciola we see the carabinieri starting out at a run to charge then some comrades move a few cars into the middle of the road a couple of petrol bombs on the cars and the carabinieri are lost behind the flames and the clouds of black smoke a hundred yards ahead there’s a group that’s got it in for a Rolls Royce the bodywork battered with sticks and crowbars stones hailed on the windows and a petrol bomb there too and the boss’s car makes a nice bonfire we play hide and seek a little while longer with the carabinieri through the streets of the centre finally we scatter and we all meet again at the station
    all our eyes are stinging and we keep rubbing them even though it makes it worse and there’s also the stinking smell of teargas in our nostrils we wash our eyes at the water fountain Malva turns up she’s had a fall she’d come in high heels she hit her nose and it’s all grazed Gelso’s glasses fell off as usual and in the melee someone smashed them and and he can hardly see now Verbena breathed in a lot of gas she feels sick and she’s going to throw up Ortica arrives lifting the skirt of his raincoat to show us a big black truncheon we very nearly brought back something else didn’t we Cocco Cocco found a rifle on the ground they’d even lost one of their rifles you should have seen Cocco running along like an ostrich with the rifle in his hand everyone was laughing and clapping but then we threw it away what were we going to do with a rifle
    another time one evening in mid-April on television there’s the news of a comrade’s murder a fascist shot him he was seventeen and there’s an immediate spontaneous reaction in the morning we all meet on the train for the city the same faces the same tennis shoes the jackets the shoulder bags the scarves the kerchiefs the gloves the berets the carriages are packed people are standing in the corridors nobody’s talking and at each station more get on on the walls of the villages we pass through you can see the fresh graffiti the same words that can be read on the silent faces of the comrades at the last stations in the suburbs a tide of people gets on pressing on the platforms they’ve got plastic bags with helmets in them and under their jackets spanners bars iron rods in their pockets slings ball-bearings bolts
    when we arrive there’s a long procession filling the platform and it’s moving up the stairs of the metro no one’s bothering with tickets and in the carriages there are flags and the long poles for the banners someone has a go at singing but the mood is grim threatening we reach the university in the square in front of the university there’s a tide of people but not just students not just young people all ages are there old people too there are workers