Head For The Hills

Cesar Pavese’s novella The House on the Hill has an unconventional structure, one that lulls the reader into thinking things will be one way, and then showing them as being different, thereby underscoring the story’s point about wartime trauma. As mentioned last time, the story, which takes place during a “state of siege” in 1943 Italy, has to do with a man—the narrator—who escapes the nightly bombing of Turin by going to the countryside. There he meets Cate, a fellow refugee from Turin and also an old paramour. They resume their romance, and at this point, the story possesses a fairly identifiable form. A narrator, who struggles with being alone meets an old lover by chance. He could run away from her but pursues she and her son whom the narrator believes may be his own. The narrator is hopeful he and Cate have overcome the problems that had previously drawn them apart and, for a time, all is well—except for the war.

Then, as I mentioned last time, disaster strikes when the Germans arrest Cate for being a partisan. One might expect the narrator to try to rescue her, but he does not. He is not a partisan but expects arrest even so, and runs away, and this is where I believe the story diverges from more conventional storytelling to focus on the destruction—both external and internal—caused by war.

The narrator initially finds refuge in a seminary but fears he will be pursued there and arrested. He receives a letter from his parents who live in the even more remote countryside and decides to journey there for safety.

“The last time I’d been up there the year before the war, even then I’d said: ‘If only I could die up here,’ because, when you imagine it in advance, war is a rest, a piece.”

An interesting comment. When you imagine war in advance, it doesn’t seem dreadful but like a different time, set apart from normal time.

On the way to his childhood home, the narrator meets with considerable danger. There are German patrols, Fascist Italian patrols—he must even deal with partisans who are fighting the Germans but who are suspicious of him. He survives the partisan ambush of Fascists, experiencing the horror of war, the dead.

Later, he reflects: “But I have seen those unknown dead, the little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it: One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It’s not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands…that we might be in their place ourselves; that there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.”

So the experience of war gives the narrator a sense of tragic connection to those who have been vilified as the enemy—the other. The narrator escapes the polarization that occurs during war and broods on the human tragedy of death for both sides.

He finally reaches his parents’ home. Although, he remains fearful about arrest, it seems he is much safer in that remote location. The narration switches to present tense: “Nothing has happened. I’ve been at home for six months and the war still goes on.” Of course, this is the vantage point of the beginning of the story when the narrator refers to the hills where he grew up. He is safe but alone. He wonders what became of Cate and Dino but one gets the sense he thinks of them at a vast distance, one he could not cross. The war and the fear of death has contributed to his passivity and fatalism. He experiences the world, not as an arena for action and purpose, but as a place where one must endure things done.

We have a novella that follows a standard form—the protagonist is conflicted about human connection and then connects with an old lover and her son. For a time, he nearly finds happiness, but the state of siege shatters his life and this part of the story. From there on, he is on a quest to survive, alone. It should be noted that the novella is very close to memoir, following the real events of Pavese’s life, but memoir must have a narrative form too.

Perhaps, although written in 1949, The House on the Hill speaks to us in our time of daily dismay and struggle against oppression. There is a choice shown in the story: when you live in a state of siege where the rules are arbitrary, either you respond by fighting back or by running to refuge. The story shows the psychological cost to someone who loses almost everything and despairs.

Next time, a new story, best B.

Till then.

#TheHouseOnTheHill #CesarePavese #AlanBray