Al nostro amico, Silverio

Our friend, Silverio, died on March 5th at the Ospedale Maggiore in Bologna. Rushed from his home in the Bolognese Apennines by air ambulance he died in intensive care.

Only after his death did it emerge that he too had the deadly coronavirus.

He was very unlucky. Although he had an underlying health condition, he lived a long way from the virus hotspots on the Po Plain in northern Emilia–Romagna. He was 67 years old.

We last saw Silverio and his wife Oriella three weeks ago on a long-delayed trip for a weekend with friends who live in the high hills near Gaggio Montano on the eastern side of the Apennine watershed.

Silverio was not at ease. He’d been learning to live with home dialysis and the strictures this placed on his activity and diet. No more than a litre of liquid a day and never a sniff of the staples of Emilian cuisine - prosciutto, parmigiano, salame. ‘They can tell me everything I’ve eaten from their analyses,’ he said part in wonder and part in despair.

He had the dubious distinction of being the first death from Covid-19 in the province of Bologna on a day that saw the total deaths from the virus in Italy rise to 146.

On that day three weeks ago his back was giving him real gyp. I could sense the muscle spasms as he’d twist to hold the chair back. He seemed to relax a bit when we got talking about growing and grafting chestnuts.

A staple of the high Apennines and a difficult substitute for wheat there is a long and learnt tradition of keeping and regenerating chestnut groves. Lives depended on them to see families through the long (now ever less so) cold winters at 800m+ altitude.

We got chatting with Silverio and Oriella about growing and grafting, drying and pruning. Oriella made out that Silverio was but a mere apprentice in the mysteries of the castagneto. But he more than held his own in their terse and friendly rivalry.

I came away with my head slightly realing: there is so much to know in this world and in Italy there is a precision to what might be called ‘peasant knowledge’ that is both formidable and demanding. I knew I was in the best of hands if I could stay the course. We even talked about a possible visit down to our place in Tuscany. Difficult but not impossible given the constraints and anxieties of dialysis.

The first time I met Silverio I felt I had met a friend. Here was a man, a metalmeccanico, who had worked machine tools all his life in the famed small and medium enterprises of the Third Italy. I’d studied them and their trade unions in the 1980s.

We just seemed to hit it off. That mix of a past and recognition and his and Oriella’s love of the difficult steep treacherous land that was their patrimony.

Salt of the earth is a hackneyed phrase but there was something of that in Silverio, but with no side nor bombast, no contempt nor suspicion of the outsider but a generosity to share, yes with humour and a little sparkling eyed perplexity at times. And a huge groundswell of what seemed like ceaseless energy. The restlessness of idle hands when so much needed doing, tending to, putting right. In his world every problem had a solution, and if he couldn’t find a lasting solution he knew the person who could.

Until his body went crook and the bloody virus come along.

I was living not far from the station in Bologna when the neofascist bomb killed 85 people on August 2nd 1980. I stood in the baking sun watching a million people stand in solidarity with the victims in Piazza Maggiore. I’d not be surprised if Silverio and Oriella were there.

I cannot claim Silverio as a friend. But I liked him and Oriella lot. The virus has already claimed more than the station massacre and I suspect it will go on claiming until growing immunity and a vaccine finally turn the tables.

Until then all we can do is help each other. Alone and together. Together and alone. And to remember that every life stolen by the virus is a life to be cherished, is a life of love and learning, endeavour and travail, and wisdom gained.

May there be a castagneto above worthy of Silverio.