“This is what happens when people fight back”: Ali Smith on his commitment to justice | Books

Llast December. Five days after Christmas. England under a cloudy sky. Beyond, immediate, invisible, pressing on every single person on the planet, the current international constellation of authoritarians, among them the tens of thousands of dead.

In a liberal democratic time.

What could I or any of us do about what was happening to the people of Gaza every day and night that we could see on every news program? In Ukraine? I couldn’t even do much about some incompetent contractors we hired last year to renovate our very small house and who had destroyed everything they touched. I also suffered from insomnia like never before for several weeks. What could I do about it? I couldn’t even make an appointment with my family doctor any time soon. The only appointment I was able to book back in early November was pushed back to January due to the operation.

Anyway. December 30th, Saturday, half past two, it was getting dark in the middle of winter, and my partner Sarah and I were walking home from the city. In front of us, a small man approached the passers-by in vain; a few people in front of us avoided him, someone else walked past him as if he wasn’t even there. He crossed the street towards us.

Can you help me? he said.

He had two children with him, a boy and a girl, the boy was perhaps eleven years old, the girl about nine years old, both wearing warm winter clothes and hats; it was cold.

The man pointed to the construction fence where the parking garage used to stand.

Do you think my car will be safe if I leave it there tonight or will someone fine me? he said.

He had a slight accent, barely noticeable. The car he pointed to was parked in a loading dock. It had an Italian license plate and a large luggage bin on the roof shaped like an upside down boat.

We shrugged our shoulders. We said, well, maybe since it’s the weekend and New Year’s is so close, but maybe not. It’s difficult to estimate how tough the traffic police will be.

By now the girl had her head, then her whole self, leaning against Sarah’s side and her eyes closed.

We started in Italy, drove overnight from Geneva, the man said, and we booked a hotel next to the train station, we came here because they want to see a Harry Potter shop, and we’re going to London tomorrow to see more Harry Potter stuff. Then we’re going to Edinburgh tomorrow evening for New Year’s Eve. But I can’t get my car into the hotel’s underground car park. My car is too high for the ramp.

We said you’d probably be fine here for a few hours. But if you want, if you can’t find another place, you can leave it in one of the parking lots near our house.

What? said the man. Really?

Yes, we said. There is space. Many of our neighbors went away over the New Year. And it will be pretty safe there.

We gave him our zip code.

“I can’t believe it,” the man said.

And if you decide to come, I said, knock on our door. I’ll give you a bottle of wine. It’s almost Hogmanay.

The man shook his head.

Unbelievable, he said. Thank you very much.

We said goodbye.

Two hours later he knocked on the front door.

“It fits the space perfectly,” he said. Thank you very much. Oh. May I ask? Are you an artist? They have so many paintings and books.

“My partner is an artist,” I said. That’s not me. But I write books.

I went through to find the wine.

A writer, he said. There is a book about us. It’s by a famous writer. Uh! It’s Italian, this wine. Do you like Italy? But this is wine from Emilia-Romagna, I’m from Sicily, have you been there? The South. Thank you very much. A safe place to park And You give me this.

It’s not a problem. It’s a pleasure. “We’ll keep an eye on the car,” I said.

Two minutes after he left there was another knock on the door. This time it was the two children.

“Thanks for leaving our car here,” the boy said in English so precise and polite that it was somehow doubly nice.

“Thank you very much,” said the girl

She said it with the same care with every word.

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Next night. Hogmanay. Six o’clock, there’s a knock on the door. The husband, the two children. The girl held out a box of Ferrero Rocher.

“It’s for you,” she said.

What was Harry Potter like? we said.

It was okay, the man said. London was tiring. We’re going to Edinburgh now. Thanks again. But before we go.

He opened his phone and showed us a photo of what looked like a book on a shelf in a bookstore.

It’s Andrea Camilleri, he said. Do you know Camilleri?

The man who wrote the Inspector Montalbano books, we said.

Yes, he said. He also wrote our book. We searched a few bookstores in London, but we couldn’t find this book for you. The name goes back to the name of our family a hundred years ago: a gang, the Saccos gang, that is our family. It happened in Sicily in the 1920s. The family started with nothing, but they turned that nothing into a farm and a good life. They shared what they had. So the mafia got angry. They sent letters threatening who would die first and who would die next if they didn’t get a lot of money. Then my great-uncles went to the police and reported these letters and threats.

But the police told them there was nothing they could do. Then the mafia kept sending threats. Our uncle went back to the police. Only the police did that [here he shrugged his shoulders]. So the family decides to defend themselves. This is how they become strong. They defend themselves. Imagine our uncles walking down a street and from one side of the street the mafia is shooting at them and from the other side the carabinieri are shooting at them! But they survive.

But then a smart one Prefettoa high-ranking Mussolini man from the cities, orders all newspapers to use the word “gang” to mean that they are bandits who commit crimes. Three uncles go to prison for almost 40 years.

Then more and more people complain to the authorities about the injustice and are released. But only in the 1960s. I was a little boy, but I remember her. When he got out of prison in 1963, Uncle Alfonso married the same girlfriend who had waited for him for almost 40 years. So. Goodbye. I am pleased to meet you. Thank you very much.

“We wish you a happy new year,” said the two children. Goodbye.

Goodbye, we said. Have a nice trip. All the best.

We closed the door. We stood there and looked at each other with wide eyes.

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IAt the start of the new year, after this chance encounter, we tracked down a copy: The Sacco Gang by Andrea Camilleri. It was first published in Italy in 2013 and was published here in Stephen Sartarelli’s translation in 2018.

It’s such a good read that’s by turns shocking, encouraging and upsetting. Camilleri gets as close to the truth as possible, using family and local memories as well as sources in newspaper, police and court documents from the period. “The order is that the Saccos must be taken, dead or alive… because at this point there are some people who say, in this era of the March on Rome, that if all the socialists had done as the Sacco brothers did “The fascists” would never have come to power.”

His story is exemplary: This is what happens when people defend themselves.

The story of the trial of the Saccos is also exemplary and disgusting: this is what happens when farce and violence come together.

The resilience of the family when free And when they are locked up is exemplary.

The resonance of all this is exemplary and obvious and at the same time exciting: Since truth does not cease to be truth and justice does not cease to be justice just because powerful people or politicians or institutions spread lies, attack, distort, or work on truth and denying justice.

The wars continue.

In January I finally saw a doctor who prescribed iron.

By then I had already started sleeping again.

At the same time I started writing a new book.

It surprised me – and still does – with its own iron stare.