ESTER
2004, Piazza della Scala. The worker holds a cigarette between his teeth. Over the years he has learned to smoke with both hands full, so as not to slow down his work even by the two minutes needed to blow a grass.He comes forward under the terraced portico supported by large pillars, which harmonises with the neoclassical style of the entire façade of the theatre, one of the symbols of the city of Milan. The renovation work that began two years earlier is almost complete. It’s a matter of completing the finishing touches and arranging the details. He looks for the point in the plaster near the entrance that the architect indicated to him. He heard him talking to the big fish while he dragged theirs feet with the story of Piermarini and the need for conservative restoration to keep the theater as similar as possible to the nineteenth-century one. As far as he is concerned, a hole is a hole and must be plugged: he dips the trowel into the bucket of liquid plaster and with a plastic movement of the wrist throws the quantity necessary to fill the hole, smoothing it with a couple of passes of the blade on the wall. He walks away satisfied, transferring the cigarette from one corner of his lips to the other, unaware that he has also drowned in the white mixture a 9 caliber bullet that exploded from a Browning FN model 1910 semi-automatic and remained stuck there for almost eighty years.
November 1922, hall of the Commercial Bank, next to the Teatro della Scala,
The orchestra plays a series of Strauss waltzes, which evoke the atmospheres of the beautiful blue Danube set to music by the Viennese composer; the very elegant men in their tailcoats or in the high uniforms of the officers, and the women wrapped in silk dresses and colorful hats, join in the dances.Ester looks around, enraptured by the sparkle of the lights that shine reflected in the glasses carried on silver trays by waiters in livery. Her head is spinning, partly due to the emotion of her debut in Milanese high society on her nineteenth birthday, wanted by her father, a magnate of the nascent metallurgical industry, partly because her dance book has filled up quickly, thanks to the sweet smiles illuminated by eyes as blue as the sky and a cascade of blonde hair, and she doesn’t stop dancing. Also thanks to the glass of frozen French champagne that she has sipped and to which she is not used to, every time a knight bows and wants to pirouette with her under the majestic crystal chandeliers, she responds with flirtatious glances to those saturated with envy of the others debutants
Followed by the watchful eyes of her mother, she twirls lightly, elegant and slender, in the arms of nobles, bank managers, wealthy entrepreneurs, officers of the royal army, notables and all the elitists invited to the annual ball offered by the credit institution . Men address her with some witty phrases, in the hope of receiving a smile in return, which she doesn’t skimp on, winning their sympathy. The most daring, bachelors, compliment her on her enchanting beauty. She smiles at these too, in the mischievous awareness of giving an illusory hope to the hearts that already beat for her brilliant eyes.
A single shadow clouds the euphoria of the moment. The girl hoped until the end to spot among the guests Gianpaolo, the man with whom she had been engaged from when she was sixteen until a few months before and who worked as administrative director for her father.
A tormented love, dotted with discussions and violent quarrels: he had been disturbed by the enthusiasm that Ester showed for her passions, first of all dancing, the piano lessons that she loved to play, fashionable clothes and by the desire that she aroused in the men she met, due to her natural ease. She liked parties and dancing. He had judged her to be a spoiled and capricious girl, breaking off the engagement, giving her the first real pain of her young life, but she was determined to win him back.
The guests are seduced by the young woman’s appearance and grace. Virgilio, a thirty-four-year-old decorated lieutenant of the Twenty-seventh Field Artillery who serves in Milan, despite being originally from the south, is struck by her. From the first glance he casts into those blue eyes, he falls madly in love with her.
After just one dance in the arms of that man in uniform, so old, she forgets him.
August 29, 1925, afternoon. Church of San Giuseppe in Via Verdi, a stone’s throw from La Scala.
Virgilio has followed her since she left home, stationed in a nearby entrance hall. He tricked her by pretending to leave for the officers’ school in Turin. The August heat seems to be raging without any hope of a truce. He wouldn’t be surprised to discover that he has some temperature lines. He feels himself getting hot, but he knows that the cause is not only the blazing sun that scorches the cobbled streets of the center.
The slut who betrays him, who besmirches the honor of the uniform he wears and who makes herself unworthy of being the mother of his daughter, whom they had only nine months earlier, looks radiant, beautiful and seductive like he doesn’t remember ever seeing her. It took dozens of bouquets of flowers and denied dates, but in the end, thanks above all to the death of her father and her mother’s need to regain a place in society and economic well-being, he managed to get her to marry him. He welcomed them both into his apartment on Via del Lauro, a narrow street between elegant buildings, a few steps from the Duomo.
From day one he felt a fierce jealousy, which led him to progressively deny her everything she asked for, from the evenings dancing in the clubs of Milan’s high life, when the electric lamps illuminate the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II making it sparkle with gold, to the money she justifies to buy fashionable dresses from the seamstresses in the shops in the center and every other occasion of social life. The worm of doubt obsessed him, leading him to suspect the existence of other men, of unhealthy relationships woven behind his back. Why else would his wife have taken every excuse to ask him for money and leave the house?
Two days earlier he had found the proof he was looking for, continuing to rummage through her things, hidden in her purse. A letter that she would soon send to her lover: “Dearest, I have arrived after two months of vicissitudes. I will tell you in person my odyssey, among those narrow-minded people who left me no freedom. I have to talk to you about urgent things. Let’s meet on Saturday at 4:00 pm in front of the Church of St. Joseph.
Kisses.
Yours, Ester”
Not even the forced exile he forced her into, two months in a small town in the province of faraway Campobasso, along dusty country roads, a town that had remained unaware of the wonders brought by progress even before the Great War, immobile over the centuries, watched over by the black-veiled women of his family, was able to tame her.
The heat is unbearable, he passes a hand over his burning forehead. He watches her walking with the other, now under the portico of the Scala, very crowded at that hour, despite the mugginess.
Ester feels light, like a leaf carried by the wind. For a few moments, she forgets the year and a half of marriage her mother wanted with that man who gave her only good in her daughter, little Maria Fabrizia. She has always hated being sacrificed like a sacrificial lamb, pushed to the altar by her mother’s ambitions, which she never had the courage to oppose. “Love will come with time,” she told her, when she cried desperately, resting her head on her mother’s lap, confiding in her that she felt nothing for the man who was asking for her hand in marriage. In her eyes she still has the memory of the lights of the dance parties that changed reflected on the silks of her dresses, in her ears the violins and the piano that played the splendid harmonies to which she twirled. Distant memories that faded in the monotony of that austere, dusty and unwanted marriage.
She has finally managed to get closer to her only love; she asked him for money, in the past, crying desperately for shame. She needed it to repay a debt with a seamstress who had threatened to turn to her husband. The tears in which she was drowning had made a breach in the heart of her former boyfriend, who had become her confidant. He listened to her despair over the unhappy marriage she had been forced into. She had confessed to him that she had loved only him and that she had married perhaps also a little out of spite towards him. Now, however, she longs to hear his warm voice whispering sweet words or perhaps unrealizable promises: his eyes are a lake of peace in which to lose oneself and she allows herself to dream that the future could be happier.
Anna has a newsstand right under the porticoes of La Scala. Something in the feverish gaze of the man who advances resolutely among the other passers-by, catches her attention. Not far away a woman sees him approaching, starts, pushes away her partner, who quickly disappears into the crowd. She appears disoriented for a moment, then shows off a smile that lights up her face. Anna manages to hear a sentence uttered by the young woman to the man who has now stopped in front of her.
“Hi, are you back?”
In the newsagent’s memories, the man says nothing, takes a gun out of his jacket pocket and shoots the woman, who falls to the floor of the portico, scattering her golden hair around, then he shoots her again, again and again, in the chest and head, it seems as if he will never stop, she loses count of the shots she hears, overwhelmed by terror.
The blood spreads on the light fabric of the light dress tied to the still body by a sash with a large bow, then runs red on the white marble, confusing its rusty smell with the acrid smell of cordite left by the now empty revolver, left inert in the hand of the murderer, under the scowling gaze of the statue of Leonardo Da Vinci that dominates the Piazza della Scala.
The crowd’s instinct, faced with such a brutal gesture, is to lynch the lieutenant, who is punched and kicked, but is saved by the intervention of a traffic policeman.
“You don’t know what I’ve been through,” he manages to stammer before being arrested.
“Is it wrong to kill?” asks the Honorable Bentini, Prince of the Forum and Virgilio’s lawyer, during the trial in the courtroom. He fails to obtain proof of Ester’s infidelity, which is always denied by Gianpaolo, her ex-boyfriend, accused by Virgilio of being the recipient of his wife’s secret letter: on the day of the appointment, he says he stayed in bed because he was sick, and brings witnesses to confirm it. He seems to want to push away even the memory of Ester, that woman who has given him nothing but trouble. Even in death, she haunts him.
Despite everything, the lawyer describes her as a sort of prostitute, playing on the sense of honor, the vile betrayal and the conduct that a good Italian wife and mother should have.
The trial immediately causes a great stir and public opinion follows it with morbid interest.
Up until that moment, the Milanese, following the debate in the newspapers in the taverns along the Navigli or in the bars in the shadow of the Madunina, are inclined to condemn the uxoricide, guilty in their eyes also of being a terùn, but in the third year of the fascist era, the regime, through the words of the honorable who defends the lieutenant, is not inclined to accept parochial divisions: the Italian people are one and indivisible, like the race to which they belong. Even more essential is not to question the honor and prestige of the uniform and everything it represents.
The moods of the common people, so skillfully primed, change. The man becomes the victim of the whims and betrayals of his young and beautiful wife, who had proven to be fickle, quickly tiring of him and the marriage, pushing him to desperation and to the extreme gesture. People become passionate about the fate of the honest husband, a brave and respectable soldier.
The verdict that will emerge from the council chamber will clearly answer the initial question.
From “Avanti!” December 19, 1925. Chronicle of Milan.
“The defendant appears extremely moved. The president addresses him briefly, urging him to resume his activity as an honorable citizen, close to his little girl. Then, he orders the carabinieri to immediately release him.
Outside, on the street, the very large crowd, who has already learned the outcome of the verdict, abandons itself to demonstrations of favor towards the acquitted man, applauds and shouts enthusiastically.
One hundred and forty carabinieri, four officers, two commissioners and twenty agents are busy keeping the Via della Signora blocked to leave free passage for the lawyers. The Hon. Bentini is even surrounded by numerous ladies who hug him while crying.
Meanwhile, another car from the square, carrying the lieutenant and some of his relatives, quickly moves away towards Via Larga.”
According to data from the Non Una Di Meno National Observatory, femicides in Italy from 2020 to today have been much more than 500. Almost half were committed by husbands, cohabitants or partners. The main causes of this phenomenon lie in profound gender inequalities and a patriarchal culture that constantly emphasizes male superiority, imposing the submission of women.
A document from the Senate of the Republic identifies cutting weapons and firearms as the preferred weapons for killing women, followed by “improper weapons”. Strangulation and suffocation are also among the most used techniques.
On average, a man who kills a woman in Italy remains in prison for ten years. The sentence can be reduced by abbreviated trial, good behavior, illness of the accused and also thanks to courses dedicated to abusive men whose attendance (not the outcome) reduces the years of detention.
The echo of those shots fired a century ago has now dispersed. The disconcerting topicality of the story remains, which could have happened yesterday.
Dedicated to Ester Ghezzi, who never had justice or compassion, and to her broken dreams.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 