Patrik Ouredník - The Opportune Moment, 1855

In the end I tarried six years in Brazil; there was no reason to return, nor anywhere to return to — I had lost my practice in Cuneo. I lectured in São Paulo on socialism at first, then set out with a puppet theater across the Rio Grande do Sul. I lectured six months at the Agricultural School in Porto Alegre, and for three years ran the agronomic center in Bahia. Some longtime friends tracked me down there and persuaded me to return to Italy to help them run a Collective Agricultural and Industrial Cooperative in Lombardy. It exists to this day, perhaps it is even prospering.

For several years I attempted to build a new anarchist settlement in Venezuela. However, it quickly became clear that my reputation and name would henceforth be an obstacle to similar projects.

Since then I have eked out a living. Nothing that would interest you.

Oh, yes, I have a son, he lives in Brazil. He, too, longs for a world that is not a prison. Today he, too, has a grown-up son; so he has someone to whom he can pass on his despair. Nothing new under the sun. In our youth we live in expectation of better tomorrows, in old age that time seems to us happier than the tomorrows that never came. We have forgotten how hopeless hope can be, how unbearable the waiting. Disappointment has become commonplace for us. We are accustomed to it. In reality we are better off than our sons.

Well then, Madam, what more could you want from me? Regret? Repentance? A humble return to the human fold?

The world is pure madness. Man is born in chains. Into a world of hatred and evil. Searching his way in the cold toward the rot. Few yearn to become killers, but few refuse to kill. Evil winds through history without end. Wagons along muddied trails. I do not know whether to understand evil makes a man more clairvoyant. I do not know whether it makes him stronger waiting for death. I know only this: I await my own calmly, resigned and without regret.

We arrived in Paris four days late because of cholera and compulsory quarantine in Grenoble. 11 of us died in quarantine: 5 men, 1 woman, and 5 children. We divided up their money without regard to age; for their clothes and other things we drew lots. I got a set of sewing needles and a collapsing telescope.

Paris is a big city, bigger than I’d imagined. Cursio was also surprised. He said: I knew it was the capital, with many people living in it, but I didn’t expect that many. What insanity!

Old man Agottani and Zeffirino Soldi went to the offices of the Society for a New Life, where they handed in a list of settlers and reserved berths on the ship that’s sailing from Le Havre. They brought back a receipt for the settlement supplier and some other documents. Some are in Italian, others in French. As they were coming out of the place, the police stopped them and took down their names.

We visited the market, the Palace of Industry, an island in the center of the city, and a cemetery.

We took the train to Rouen, where we boarded a ship to Le Havre (the railway stops there). The train passed through Pontoise, Alincourt, Hacqueville, Gaillardbois, from Rouen to Le Havre along a river through La Bouille, Jumièges, and Quillebeuf. Decio asked why I was writing down the names of the cities and towns. I explained that I was keeping a journal. He asked why I hadn’t kept one in Italy. I explained that at first it hadn’t occurred to me, but reading the List of Necessities had given me the idea. Eventually, I said, I would copy the Settlement Regulations and the Settler’s Handbook into it, too, and any other documents, and that way I would have a chronicle of the settlement. He asked me where I’d learned to write and whether I’d gone to school. I said the local priest in Brescia had taught me. He said religion keeps people in darkness and priests bamboozle people. He said he didn’t want any religion except fraternity and free love. He said, write that down. Just wait till the priest sees that, and he laughed.

There’s a big port in Le Havre, and a museum with ships in it.

We spent the night at an inn. The next day we visited the port and the museum and bought supplies for the settlers from a list worked out by Zeffirino Soldi: tools and utensils, clothing (longsleeve shirts, undershirts, underwear, stockings, socks, three pairs of pants, suspenders, work smocks, hooded raincoat, jacket), footwear (two pair of boots), bedding and other personal items, toothbrush, comb, two razors, mirror, towels (2), razor strop or hone (I bought a hone), pocket knife, eating utensils, knives, needles (didn’t buy), two dozen spools of white thread (bobbins) and two dozen black, knitting needles, inkwell, ink, quills (6), notebook, penknife, dishes, clogs, watering can, chamber pot, brushes for clothes and boots, beard comb (for men), salve, quinine, steamer trunk (not too bulky). For women Zeffirino also recommends three pair of cotton stockings, 4 white and 2 colored panties, 4 summer and 4 winter skirts, 3 three-corner scarves and a dozen shoulder scarves, two aprons, 1 hairbrush, 1 hair clasp, 1 emery board and 1 nail brush, other toiletries and hygiene supplies at personal discretion, but nothing showy.

The shopping took up our whole afternoon. We left the goods on the pier and took turns standing watch. I watched from 2 in the morning to 4:15. I was cold and couldn’t sleep.

We left the inn at quarter to 7 in the morning. The streets were icy and Adelina and Argia fell on the slippery pavement. Decio said: It’s as if this nasty weather was trying to tell us there’s no need to regret the world we’re leaving behind. Giacomo said: I don’t regret it! Umberto said: No one does!

The ship is called the Southern Cross . We loaded our things into cutters and the sailors rowed us to the ship. Besides us there were also several dozen Frenchmen and some Austrians coming aboard. An argument broke out over when we would sail. Some said the next day with the incoming tide, but Giacomo pointed out that there were almost no sailors on board and lots of supplies still left on the pier, but the cabin boy explained that they belonged to other ships. Others said we were still waiting for the rest of the settlers, and there would be three or four hundred of us, since there were many courageous and skillful people in Europe just waiting for the right opportunity to build a new world. There are fifty-five of us Italians:

Elisabetta Arrighini

Amilcare Beretti

Egizio Cicali

Cursio Corsi

Marco Agottani

Aldino Agottani (brother)

Tranquillo Agottani (father)

Monica Levi

Luisa Torti

Erasmo Torti (brother)

Carlo Torti (brother)

Adelina Artusi

Virginio Artusi (brother)

Aniceto Artusi (father)

Zeffirino Soldi Vito Ferroni

Lorenzo Cappato

Pietro Varisone

Anna Dolfi

Ezio Ruggera

Argia Fagnoni

(I’ll continue the list tomorrow.)

There really aren’t many sailors on board, and when we asked the captain about it, he explained that a man in Le Havre was supposed to supply a full crew, but the recruiters had come and taken away six sailors whose numbers were drawn in the lottery for the army.

Today the Germans who missed yesterday’s boarding rowed up in three big cutters. They clambered up the ropes and one woman fell and split her head on the edge of a cutter. Umberto Verona, who worked at the slaughterhouse in Livorno, examined her, but it was too late. The sailors carried the corpse back to the city with them. One of the German men also wanted to go back, but the rest of them surrounded him and persuaded him not to.