BURIED ALIVE

This is the most powerful true story I have ever heard.

Diana was a small woman with thinning grey hair, dark brown eyes, and smile lines around her mouth. Born in America to Italian parents, she had lived in Italy during the war and then returned to the States, where she became a professor of French literature. Although she had traveled all over the world, this graceful lady was always focused on this moment, this conversation, and this person sitting beside her on the couch.

After writing The Dark River, I went through a difficult period. Diana was one of the few people willing to listen to plans that involved meditation caves in Tibet or Nepal. One morning, I called her up and she invited me over to her apartment for dinner. Diana arranged the roses I’d brought in a vase of water mixed with a shot of vodka, then opened her cupboard and took out a dry salami and a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano wrapped in waxed paper.

“If the American economy falls apart, your food supplies will make you the black-market queen of the Upper East Side.”

Diana smiled. “I’m a war child. It makes me feel better to have my kitchen stocked with food that doesn’t need a refrigerator.”

A few minutes later, we were sitting on the couch with our glasses of wine. Diana smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt and took a sip. “What’s going on in your life?”

I said that I wanted to travel to Tibet and wall myself up in a cave. Diana listened to my story without making a comment. When I finished talking, she got up from the couch, went into the kitchen, and returned with the platter of food.

“Don’t tease me about the hors d’oeuvres. I’m Italian. Our first response to every problem is to serve food.”

Diana offered me some cheese on a cracker, then sat back on the couch and studied my face. “You’re not happy right now and you want to go to a place where the vividness of life is muffled and distant. Your desire to find a cave reminds me of Proust’s decision to retreat to a cork-lined bedroom. He shuttered the windows and hid them behind blue satin curtains. Of course, he also had his faithful servant bringing him croissants every morning.”

“I won’t be eating croissants or writing a novel in the cave. I just want to walk away from everything. Including my present life.”

“Sometimes a powerful event can change the way we see reality.”

“Has that ever happened to you?”

Diana looked down at her glass of wine as she considered the question. “Let me tell you a story. That’s how we humans make sense of things, isn’t it? You know that I grew up in Italy during World War II. When the Americans invaded, I had an experience that changed me forever.”

“I never understood why you were living in Italy during that time. Your parents were Italian, but weren’t you born in America?”

“Yes, but my father took us back to Rome in 1940, when I was eight years old. He was an anti-Fascist and wanted to be a witness to what was going on. This was not a smart decision, but he was an idealist and, sometimes, idealists must throw themselves into the fire.

“My father walked into a shop, pointed to a Fascist newspaper, and said: ‘Give me five cents’ worth of lies.’ It was just a joke, of course, but an informer told OVRA—Mussolini’s secret police—and my father was arrested. ‘All you had to do was stay quiet!’ my mother said. But he couldn’t do that. That wasn’t his character.”

“How did your family survive if he was in prison?”

“We received income from property we owned in the Abruzzo region. But, of course, there were always shortages. In 1945, my mother took my older sister and me east of Rome to Cupello, a hillside village near the Adriatic coast. I was thirteen years old then—old enough to know what was going on, but not old enough to put it into perspective. Cupello was where I experienced something that transformed me. Once something like that happens, you are never the same.”

“The war was still going on?”

“Oh, yes…”

“And you went to Cupello because it was safe?”

“No. We went there because of food. Italians always make sure they have enough food. When I saw that movie, Gone With the Wind, I laughed out loud when that silly woman…”

“Scarlett O’Hara.”

“…when she said, ‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.’ If she were Italian, she would have had food hidden all over the plantation!” Diana smiled and offered me some more cheese. “When we were living in Cupello, my mother bought a pig in the countryside and brought it back to our apartment. She and a peasant woman slaughtered the pig in the courtyard and spent two days making ham and sausages. Antonetta was a four-year-old girl with curly brown hair who lived in our building. She came upstairs to our rooms, and we watched the peasant woman get blood on her arms as she cut up the pig with a homemade knife.”

“So, you had meat?”

“That night my mother said I could eat pork chops but no sausage, because that was being saved for the winter. But I was a difficult daughter—very stubborn, very proud—and I only wanted sausages. Because I kept arguing with my mother, I was sent to bed without supper. Later, it turned out that no one ate any of the meat.” Diana laughed. “The moral of my story is this: if you have sausages, eat them right now!”

“Someone stole the sausages?”

“Everything was destroyed when the Americans bombed us the next day. Our house was right in the middle of the village—at the top of the hill—so we could see what was going on in the valley below. The Italian army had disappeared, but German soldiers were everywhere. Even though they were supposed to be retreating, they placed a machine gun behind some sandbags near the entrance to the church and moved their artillery into the graveyard. Late in the afternoon, the American planes arrived and began to bomb their way up the valley. My mother and sister and I were out buying spices for the meat. We saw the planes in the distance and then a white puff of dust when a bomb hit the ground.

“All of a sudden, my mother said: ‘See! Do you see? The planes are coming closer! We need to get inside!’ So, we took our bags and baskets and ran back to our home. Our building was very old. It had walls that were five feet thick and a big cellar with wooden racks that had once been used to store wine. When we reached the cellar, I saw a little white dog called Lulu that belonged to our neighbors. I grabbed the dog, and then I saw my little friend Antonetta standing all alone—so I took her hand. We tried to get into the cellar, but it was already crowded with frightened people, and then something crazy happened… a priest arrived.”

“What’s crazy about that?”

“The people hiding in the cellar were peasants, and very superstitious. They thought that God would let them die if the priest—a holy man—was in the cellar with them. So, the peasants started shouting, ‘Out! Keep the priest out!’ But my mother was born in Rome, and she didn’t believe in that nonsense. She started arguing with the peasants, but they pushed her and the priest and my sister out the door.”

“What about you?”

“I was just inside the door, holding the dog and little Antonetta. And then…”

Diana shut her eyes and the expression on her face changed. She was back in the cellar, experiencing the moment once again. “…And then a bomb landed on the building. A direct hit. Everyone outside the door was standing under a stone archway, so they survived. But the cellar collapsed, and the forty-five people who thought they were safe were killed instantly. I was buried alive, protected by two blocks of stone that had fallen at an angle and formed a little tent…” She gestured with her hands.

“Antonetta was still in my arms—dead. I could feel her blood on my skin and her brains leaking out of her skull. But Lulu was still alive, and I could feel the dog struggling. I had death in one hand and life in the other.

“I was fighting for breath, dying of suffocation. And all I wanted was to die in the open air. I didn’t want to perish covered with dirt, in the darkness. After a while I heard shouting, far away. My mother was digging with her hands, trying to pull the stones away. A few minutes later some Italian soldiers appeared. She screamed at them and called them cowards until they helped her lift the big stones. Ten minutes passed. Thirty minutes. An hour. I was about to lose consciousness when they dragged the final stone away and found me, covered in dust and surrounded by the dead.

“My mother pulled me out. I let go of Lulu and the dog ran away. I was wearing my only good dress, a green silky thing, but now it was torn and covered with Antonetta’s blood. And my mother told me: ‘She’s dead! The little girl is dead! Leave her here!’ But I wouldn’t let go of the child. Finally, my mother found an old sheet and a smashed chest of drawers. We wrapped the child’s body in the sheet and placed it in one of the drawers, like a little coffin. I tucked the sheet around Antonetta as if she were still alive. And then the bombing started again, and we all began running—barefoot, in rags—looking for another place to hide…”

“All of you survived?”

“Yes. The whole family. But I never forgot what happened. From that point on, I was never frightened or bitter. Every human being is part of a miracle that begins each morning when the sun streams through the window. I believe that even though I can see that the world is filled with cruelty and pain.”

“What are we supposed to do, Diana? How do we live our lives?”

“In a world of loss, how can we find joy? That’s the question. But each of us must come up with our own answer.”

“I’m not happy here in New York. Should I go to Tibet?”

“Traveling there is a dream journey, but perhaps it will help you make a real journey.”