Certe promesse d’amore

“1943. On the train to Trieste, during my third trip, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t open the windows, I was running desperately away from a brief and authoritative letter, contained in a cream envelope that set fire to my mind, my reception desk at home and maybe the whole city of Turin”. The letter closing the book is from Dlilah Széchenyi, a thin and pale Jewish girl from Trieste with whom the protagonist Aldo shares his feelings and a “utopia supermarket” as he calls the postwar period. After the horror, a whole world seems to unfold with infinite possibilities. For a young Jewish there are many ideals: the Zionism bet, the hope for a homeland for the errant people, and Israel, where a new society can be imagined. The fall of those ideals of Zionism and Socialism is the counterpart to the love story told in the novel. In the Trieste house where Aldo spends his summers, between beaches and campsites, quarrels and kisses, the figure of Dlilah’s father stands out: he is a slender doctor, born in Hungary and raised in Trieste, anti-Zionist. His melancholic figure enriches the gallery of the “great fathers” in European literature and is characterized by his high self-esteem, hubris, rage, and the resemblance to a frightening prophet.