Letters from
a kidnapped
prime minister
Caroline Moorehead
THE MORO AFFAIR AND THE MYSTERY OF MAJORANA by Leonardo Sciascia
Carcanet, f9.95
Very soon after the body of Aldo Moro was found crumpled up in a boot of a car parked in a street in central Rome in May 1978 Leonardo Sciascia produced The Moro Affair, a detailed account of the 54 days of the politician's captivity, based h, eavily on the letters Moro wrote from his People's prison'. It was published first in France, too shocking, so it was said, for an Italian market. Just the same, publication followed not many months later in Italy; where it was received with no great excite- ment.
It is not clear why publishers have waited nearly ten years to bring out an English language version. Whatever the reason, it is excellent that they have finally done so, for this most fascinating and poignant book tells a story that would otherwise be irretrievably lost under the mass of politic- al confusions of recent Italian history. With it comes another example of Sciascia's genius as an investigative story teller, The Mystery of Majorana, a long essay concern- ing the disappearance of a brilliant young physicist in 1938, widely assumed at the time to be suicide, but here presented as a desire to vanish into anonymity by a man who had perceived the potential power of
atomic structures and could not bear to live with it. It is Sciascia as sleuth, worrying away at clues, darting behind official pro- nouncements, analysing.
However, The Moro Affair is the essay that counts, not simply because it contains Sciascia at his best, but because the story itself is so extraordinary. Briefly: Aldo Moro, president of the National Council of Christian Democrats, was kidnapped while on his way to the Chamber of Deputies, where he was to help establish a new government — unique for being the first to have the support of the Communist Party, a move largely engineered by Moro him- self. His five guards were killed and he vanished into captivity.
What made the event remarkable after all, many other politicians have been kidnapped — were Moro's letters. For with the communiqués issued to the press by the Red Brigades demanding the release of some of their imprisoned comrades came a series of open letters from Moro to mem- bers of Parliament, friends and colleagues for over 30 years, and to his family. At first, these letters were a little like speeches, closely argued, counting on the commonsense and sympathy of those he addressed, and putting his own view: that in some circumstances, negotiating with terrorists is the right strategy.
They never lost their lucidity. But as the days passed, and it became clear that the government had no intention at all of bartering for Moro's life, their tone be- came stern, accusatory. From nowhere, God-like, he seemed to be taking the errant, vacillating politicians to task. Zac- cagini, he wrote, was in fact the 'worst secretary the Christian Democrats ever had'; Senator Taviani was a treacherous figure, without moral convictions. The newspapers loved it. The government appeared frozen with horror, particularly after the Red Brigades declared that the Moro 'dossier' was full of revelations, and that they would shortly publish them. Six weeks after his abduction 50 of Moro's friends signed a statement to say that in the hands of the Red Brigades, Moro 'is no longer the man we know'.
Sciascia does not agree. On the contrary, the captive Moro he describes, the man of whom it was once said that 'centuries of sirocco are in his gaze' and whose lop- sided, quizzical, resigned look stared out of every photograph issued by the Red Bri- gades, was not just the Moro he always was, but a better, finer man, not a great statesman certainly, but a 'great politician, careful, shrewd, calculating, seemingly pliant but in fact unyielding; patient, but with a patience bordering on stubborness . . . a man of intelligence, restraint and lucidity,' qualities that emerged during his captivity more than at any other moment in his long political career. Fifty four days after his abduction, Moro was 'sentenced to death' and killed. In this new version of his book, Sciascia has added a postscript, written in 1982. It reinforces the points he made more gently in his original essay: that the 25,000 police who searched Rome for nearly two months were inefficient and bungling and that there had been no political will to see Moro released.
In the event, Moro was right to feel bitter. He died for nothing at all. If his death momentarily showed the Italian Gov- ernment to be stronger, and the Red Brigades weaker, than anyone had be- lieved, the whole event was rapidly forgot- ten as President Leone was driven from office by scandal, John Paul I died after 33 days as Pope, the Mafia sharply increased their violence and the Calvi catastrophe broke in the banking and Vatican world. Who remembered then that the kidnapped politician, whose revelations were con- stantly promised by the Red Brigades, had in fact in the end said nothing at all?
The English translation is not as good as it should be, particularly in the opening part where much of the flow is lost by making it too literal. And, for foreign readers, recalling events that happened almost ten years ago, notes about who the protagonists were would have helped. Just the same, this is a touching and gripping book.
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