Tomeu Carrió

He was about forty and worked for a socialist newspaper in Milan. The fascists got their way and the March on Rome was approaching. Soon Mussolini, Il Duce, with King Victor Emmanuel III’s approval, would become the dictator of Italy. Those times were turbulent -like many others. The squadristi, blackshirts, appeared. They beat him up with cudgels. He was grabbed together with a few others, he was immobilised and while one of them covered his nose, another one, Merlo, after making him sing the alalà (1) while punching him, made him swallow a few bottles of castor oil.

Grandpa felt humiliated by the consequences of the purgative. Merlo and the other blackshirts were very young; perhaps even twenty years younger than him. This increased the shame of the uncontrolled bowel movements and the pain he was in. They smashed up the premises of the newspaper too … Uff! You can imagine the scene.

As soon as he was able to control his state a bit, the grandfather grabbed a pot, filled it with some of his depositions and added some castor oil to keep it liquid. He looked for a bottle and filled it with the disgusting beverage. He put the stopper back in the bottle and sealed it to prevent the contents evaporating. And he waited for his revenge. Meanwhile, the imposed silence; keep it to yourself and be quiet! He left the newspaper and opened a second-hand bookshop. He talked politics only with close friends; socialists or democrats like him. The times were not so good. What else could he do? Fascists thought that in this way socialists would be purged of “their misconceptions.”

Twenty-one years later the shoe was on the other foot. Mussolini was removed. The Fascist regime was changed by the king, the army and the partisans while political parties returned from hiding. Things were not easy, and a civil war started within the context of the Second World War. However, during these uncertain times, the grandfather was already preparing his revenge. He had kept a close eye on Merlo, who had risen in the fascist hierarchy, and as manager of supplies had done very well for himself and had bought a villa, a large country house, which was not far from the place where the grandfather also had one.

Yambo’s grandfather waited a few days to make it coincide with the anniversary of his castor oil experience. Accompanied by three burly farmers he paid his long-awaited visit to Merlo in the evening in order to catch him after dinner. Merlo had taken refuge at home because he was afraid of reprisals; he thought that people would soon forget him. But it wasn’t to be. With less violence, indeed; sparing him the cudgels, the grandfather made him sing the alalà and made him swallow in the same way the “potion” that had kept so well during all those years. Elated he returned home with his friends. It is said that the aforementioned Merlo escaped with his life. Playing safe he decided not to join the fascists of the new Italian Social Republic, the Republic of Salò -a Nazi puppet regime- run by Mussolini after being freed from jail by the Germans. It is also said that this was not the only visit Merlo received.

Another grandfather was, however, a master builder, a mason, specialized in the construction of wells. He was a republican grandfather (a “padrí ” in Mallorcan Catalan) without any specific affiliation who protested strongly against the new military regime, the oligarchy and the fascists’ (in Spain and in Catalan “falangistes” were the specific name with fascists as a generic name) uprising against republican legality and democracy. Fascist soldiers who had taken over Mallorca while many other parts of Spain had not been like that. Fascist people that were “matons que se feien d’il·lusions de fer una Espanya santa” (assassins who dreamt of making Spain holy) as the poet from Algaida (a village in Mallorca) master Llorenç Batle put it. The Spanish Civil War had begun. A civil war driven by almost the same reasons and ideological camps as the Second World War. Some say that the grandfather protested, others that he swore. The fact is that the local falangistes went looking for him and he had to undergo the castor oil ordeal to purge himself of his “misconceptions.”

This probably happened around the time that Conde Rossi, an Italian fascist sent by Mussolini, was strutting around Mallorca with the blueshirts Dragones de la Muerte (Dragoons of Death). The grandfather’s name was Tomeu, a very common name in the misnamed island of calm. And it was about fourteen years after Yambo’s grandfather’s castor oil ordeal. He also scooped up his evacuations, keeping them in a pot while he waited for the shoe to be on the other foot. He kept it for a long time. We do not know exactly how long,  but he died more than twenty years later. He too had kept a close eye on the person who made him take the castor oil. He never let him out of his sight. But the shoe was not on the other foot. Franco the dictator was still alive and up to his old tricks.

Umberto Eco tells the story of Yambo’s grandfather in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2). Maybe someone told him the story; most probably, but it remains a novel, and yet Eco, while writing fiction, not only hardly strays from history, but at the same time actually contributes to its dissemination. This other little story about the Majorcan grandfather was a true story, like many more in Mallorca and in other totalitarian regimes in Europe at that time during the last century.

However, could it be that someone made the grandfather drink castor oil for any special reason? Could this person, this fascist, also have wanted to make him “purge himself of his opinions”? Or did he do it to protect the grandfather from something worse? No one knows. Anyway, for the Mallorcan grandfather, the shoe was never on the other foot.

(1)  Giovinezza, anthem of the National Fascist Party, the regime and the army:  “E per Benito Mussolini, Eja eja alalà, E per la nostra Patria bella, Eja eja alalà”.

(2) La misteriosa flama de la reina Loana (Catalan version). Edicions Destino, second edition. Collection “L’Àncora” 179. Barcelona 2005. Pages 254 to 261.

Bartomeu Carrió Trujillano

Sant Jordi (Mallorca), 11 November, 2016

(*) Catalan original: “Relats. La truita. D’una narració d’Umberto Eco a uns fets reals”. English revised version by Dick Fleming and Margalida Colom

Us ha agradat aquest article? Compartiu-lo!