BENGASI – The capital of both the Italian PROVINCE and CIRCANDARIO (section) of BENGASI. After TRIPOLI and TUNISI the third largest city in ITALIAN NORTH AFRICA. Its population is roughly fifty percent ITALIAN ARABS, the rest being Italian (including AEGEAN ITALIANS and MALTESE ITALIANS) or other European (largely Spaniards). The city proper is divided into five districts (Balbo, Berca, Centrale, Colombo, and Ferni) while the rest of the circandario comprises the suburban districts of Benina, Giurati, Graziani, Marconi, Navaggia, and Sant’Anna. The major industries are food processing, petroleum refining and export, and manufacturing, with large factories for FIAT and SAVOIA-MARCHETTI (among others) in the districts of Balbo, Benina and Colombo. Bengasi is the home base of the 67th Infantry Division ‘Sibelle’ of the REGIO ESERCITO ITALIANO and home port to small units of both the REGIA MARINA and the CORPO DELLE CAPITANERIE DI PORTO. Population (2000) – 708,102.
Bradley’s Guide to the Italian Empire Vol. 1 A-M (Leiter & Sons, New York, 2006)
The Student
“Ricordati di santificare le feste.”
“Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day.”
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen,” the Monsignor intoned in perfect Church Latin.
The answer came, of course, in Italian. Nobody actually confessed in Latin. The penitent was a young woman, doubly obscured by a wooden screen and a dark veil. Her voice was low, nervous, her accent Italo-Libyan. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five months since my last Confession, and these are my sins... I’ve lied and taken the Lord’s name in vain. I’ve – stolen?”
The Monsignor smiled slightly. “You’re not sure?”
“Is it stealing to take thoughts illegally?”
“I’m sorry?” the Monsignor asked and then held up a hand. Even with the screen and the dim lighting, the gesture would have been seen. And, sure enough, the girl waited for him to go on. “Do you mean listening to or watching things that are against the law to listen to or watch?”
“Yes, Father.”
The Monsignor, worry on his face, considered it for a moment. This was a dangerous question. Finally, though, he trusted the Lord and spoke what Christ demanded he speak. “Reddite ergo quae sunt Caesaris, Caesari; et quae sunt Dei, Deo. Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s. No Caesar can own the truth, and it’s not stealing to take it into your heart. God won’t hold it against you.” He waited a discreet moment and then said “Is there anything else, child?”
“I haven’t been going to Mass.”
“Of your own choice?”
Silence, a nod, a quiet “Yes.”
“Why not?”
“I have obligations.”
“I see. Well, we all do, don’t we? Sometimes there really is no choice, sometimes there really is no way to honor our obligations – but you must remember the obligation to the Lord – the obligation to your soul – is greater than anything else.” He smiled sympathetically as the girl shifted uncomfortably. “The Lord understands. But I think the Lord would ask you if perhaps you can turn to Him before your other obligations. We do celebrate Mass on Saturdays,” he noted with a bit of a chuckle.
It got the desired nervous laugh from the penitent, and the Monsignor smiled again.
“Yes, Father,” the woman said. After a moment she said “I’ve had indecent thoughts about a boy. Two boys.”
“... At the same time?”
“No!”
“Well, that’s not so bad. Just remember that there’s a difference between longing and lust. Do your best to control your... enthusiasms. Think of the person, the soul, and not the body that person lives inside.”
The girl nodded. After a moment she said “For these and all the sins of my past life, I ask pardon of God, penance, and absolution from you, Father.“
The Monsignor nodded. “For your penance, offer ten Hail Marys to the Lord and spend ten minutes in prayer. Think about how you can better channel your passions, and how you can better put them to the uses the Lord intends...”
✚ ✚ ✚
“Attilio Teruzzi 240,” Letizia Fassio murmured to the cab driver as she got into the back of the big, ugly Isotta Fraschini.
The cabbie stared at her through the rear view mirror. “Are you sure?”
They were on Via Luigi Druetti, which was in a good neighborhood.
Via Attilo Teruzzi was not in a good neighborhood.
Letizia nodded. “Yes,” she said. Then “Please.”
The cabbie stared for another second or two and then shrugged. “All right,” he muttered.
Letizia sat back and tried not to fidget. She was late. This was probably a mistake, but it was safer than taking the Metropolitana. There were cameras in the stations and on the subway cars. This was quicker and safer.
It was a five minute drive at the best of times. In the noon rush, it was ten minutes. Letizia spent each one of them trying not to gnaw on her fingernails.
When they reached 240, the cabbie looked at her again. “Here we are. Uh. Do you want me to wait for you?” he asked in a worried voice.
Letizia shook her head. “Thank you, it’s okay,” she said as she shoved a few lire bills through the opening in the plastic divider. Then she was out and gone, moving quick.
Mostly it was because she was late.
Partly it was because this was really not a good neighborhood.
Sullenly curious faces, brown and bearded, mostly, stared at the pale girl hurrying along the sidewalk, away from the cab. It was the Catholic Sabbath, which made her presence all the weirder. Their holy day had been on Friday. Sunday was just another day to them, a brief pause before another week of toil and indignity.
Letizia didn’t see the cab linger a moment before it pulled away. Instead she focused on the sidewalk in front of her. She saw graffiti on the beige stone walls to her right. Arabic writing she couldn’t read. White crescents. Black squares. Red scimitars. All the visual markers of the simmering rage in the Arab baraccopoli of Bengasi.
Letizia reached her destination and entered a filthy, smelly lobby. There were stains on the floor that she hoped were just alcohol. A lone derelict, someone who might have been Sicilian, Spanish, Maltese or Arab, sat on a chair, a half empty bottle of beer in his hand. He turned his head in a herky-jerky manner and looked at Letizia for a second, then turned back to his beer and whatever thoughts were running through his mind.
Letizia continued on. She didn’t trust the elevator or the stairs, but at least the stairwell had windows. Windows covered with iron mesh, something like the wooden screens of a confessional booth, but windows all the same. And there was no shortage of sunlight in Bengasi, especially at noon.
Up to the second floor. Broken glass on the stairs.
Up to the third floor. A discarded needle on the landing.
Down the hall.
Around the corner.
Down the hall.
Apartment 3D.
Knock, knock, pause, knock, pause, knock, knock.
The door opened after five or six seconds.
“You’re late,” a tall, reedy boy Letizia’s age said.
“Sorry.” Letizia smiled nervously.
The boy looked left and right, then opened the door all the way and let her in.
The rest of the group was already there, staring at a TV that wasn’t on.
Someone turned it on only after the door was closed and locked again.
“– strike continues in Danzig and Hamburg, and there are reports of isolated sympathy strikes among GLH ground crew in Hitlerstadt, Kaufmannshafen and Frankfurt. The Reich Propaganda Ministry denied the existence of any ‘alleged subversive actions’ by the dockworkers in either city, while the Reich Main Security Office simultaneously declared it had crushed the ‘subversive agents of Jewish world capital’ in both cities. After an initial drop, the Nanking, London and New York exchanges have all recovered. It is believed a joint meeting of the Central Council of the Association of Free Nations will be called within the next few days. Meanwhile, in Italy, unrest continues in Dalmatia, with reports of –”
The signal abruptly went black, and was then replaced by the weather report from Rete Cirenaica.
Everyone there sighed. (All of them were European, something Letizia never consciously noticed.)
“Back to the blackshirt news,” one of them, a slightly pudgy girl a few years older than Letizia said, shaking her head.
“It’s not great, but at least we heard something before they cut it out,” the boy who’d opened the door said. “Dalmatia. That’s what I heard from my friends in the army. There’s fighting there.”
“Real fighting or more cops and robbers?” Letizia asked. There was no shortage of criminals cloaking themselves as revolutionaries in the empire. They’d had problems with that right here in Bengasi.
The boy shrugged.
“That’s not the important part, if you ask me,” the pudgy girl said. “Did you hear that part about Germany?” she asked Letizia.
“Some of it.”
“Sympathy strikes! Think about it!” The girl rose to her feet. “That’s what we need. Nothing will ever happen as long as its just us students sitting here and listening. We need to get in touch with the workers.”
“Which ones?”
“The dock workers, like in Germany, and the oil workers, too. You know they don’t get paid much. Not the ones who do anything, I mean. The peninsulari big shots, sure, but not the real workers. We need to start leaving leaflets in the refineries and the docks.”
Letizia exhaled. “Who’s going to do that? And how? It’s hard enough getting anything out, and that’s in places we know. Look at us!” She waved an arm at the students huddled around the TV (the weather report had been replaced by sports news – Beda Littoria had beaten Valletta F.C.). None of them were exactly poster children for the proletariat.
“You,” one of the others said.
It took a second for Letizia to realize he was looking at her.
All of them were.
“Me?”