State of Siege

Last time, we talked about how Pavese’s The House on the Hill fits/doesn’t fit into expectations of traditional story structure. Essentially, this is the story of a 40-year-old man, a teacher, who is living in the midst of WWII in Turin, Italy. To escape the nightly Allied bombing raids, he and many others go to the countryside to sleep, returning to the city in the morning to work. The narrator—this man—is single; he ruminates at length about how a solitary life is the best, one without responsibility for others. However, he is very conflicted and also yearns for human connection. An initial turning point occurs when, in the countryside, he meets a woman—Cate —he’d had a love affair with ten years before and had broken off. She too is trying to escape the war’s devastation. Cate has a son whom the narrator suspects is his own.

The narrator rationalizes his breaking up with Cate in terms of what he saw as her faults, denying his own, and rationalizes their renewed relationship in terms of how she’s changed for the better:

“Now I was forty and here were Cate and Dino. No matter whose son he was, what mattered was that we were together again this summer after the absurd harshness of before, that Cate now knew what she was living for and for whom. Cate had a purpose, the will to be outraged, a full life and her own. Was I being futile once more, hanging around her half-lost, half-humiliated?”

He spends more time with Cate: “Now Cate and I were walking in silence, arm in arm like lovers and between us walked a hope, a summer restlessness…Everything seemed resolved, promising, forgivable…The new thing that had entered the world that evening was canceling out all harshnesses, rancors, defenses. There seemed almost nothing to be afraid of. We could talk.”

The story takes place during a “state of siege” and refers to this state explicitly. A state of siege is a legal/political condition where the military imposes martial law on an area in response to invasion, rebellion and war. Normal civil liberties are suspended; dissent is suppressed. In this particular case, the story occurs just before and during Benito Mussolini’s 1943 abdication during WWII in response to the Allies landing troops in Sicily. Mussolini escaped and established a smaller fascist state known as Salo, and the Germans—unwilling to lose Italy—took up the fight against the invading Allies. It was a period of chaos and violence, of people who were opposed to Mussolini’s rule feeling empowered to fight him and dissent.

“There was no more room for doubt. What had been happening all over Europe, was now happening to us—cities and countrysides in equal terror, crossed by armies and by fearful voices. Not only the autumn was dying…The winter came and it was I who was afraid…It wasn’t discomfort or the ruins, perhaps not even a threat of death from the sky; rather it was a final grasp of the truth that sweet hills could exist, a city softened by fog, a comfortable tomorrow, while at any moment bestial things might be taking place only a few yards away, things people discussed only in whispers.”

The narrator resumes his affair with Cate, although she denies Dino is his son. They are, apparently close, and as we see in the above quote, the narrator contemplates a long-term relationship, possibly marriage. The group of friends that spends the nights at the inn in the countryside discuss what should be done in the face of the civil war that is raging. However, there is a sense that the narrator believes taking any action—particularly political—is ill-advised. He denies his personal agency and believes it’s best to stay out of trouble.

But the war worsens. Partisans store weapons at the inn, and some of the narrator’s friends are arrested. He thinks: “Suppose I had to flee, I asked myself, had to hide. Where would I go, where would I sleep or find something to eat?…I felt hunted and guilty, ashamed of my quiet days. But I thought of the rumors and stories of people who had taken refuge in towers, convents, sacristies.” The narrator experiences a moment of peace and grace while in a local church.

Then the Germans raid the inn while the narrator is out walking. He returns to observe from a hiding place that everyone—including Cate—is arrested. Only Dino escapes. He despairs, but Elvira takes Dino in and finds the narrator a refuge in a seminary.

Given the relationship between the narrator and Cate, and his desire for connection, we might expect that, next, he would insist on staying and trying to free Cate. But he does not. He journeys to the refuge and essentially abandons Cate and Dino and all his friends.

A key question is whether this abandonment and emotional break is due to the war, the state of siege that shatters connection, or is it an expression of who the narrator is on a deeper level? Probably both, best B.

Let’s stop there and resume next time.

Till then.

#TheHouseOnTheHill #CesarePavese @AlanBray