My Life as a Foreigner in the 1950s

By Bruno Vartuli

As a young man in Italy’s Southern Calabria, Bruno Vartuli dreamed of starting a new life in a new land.

On his arrival in Australia in the 1950s Bruno struggled to understand the language and culture, but with tremendous strength and perseverance he overcame each adversity and achieved amazing results.

This personal story of assimilation and integration highlights the importance of equality in society and inspires us to embrace the differences between people with dignity and compassion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vivid Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781925341676

Bruno Vartuli

Bruno Vartuli was born in Arena, Vibo Valentia, Italy on 24 April 1925. After World War II, Bruno completed twelve months of national service in the Italian army. He migrated to Australia in 1949. Later, Bruno was joined by Rosina and together they confronted a language they could not speak and a culture they did not understand. Against the odds, they worked hard to achieve their goals. They have three children and six grandchildren and are now retired.

Book preview

integration.

Chapter 1

Snakes and Superstition

When I was a young child, my mother told me a story from my infancy. She had taken me with her to the wheat field on the farm to weed. It was May – when the wheat heads sprout, the wild flowers bloom and you could smell the powerful springtime aroma from everywhere, my mother recalled. She put me in the baby basket under the shade of a small fig tree and pulled the virulent weeds here and there in the shoulder-high green wheat patch, while keeping a vigilant eye on me. Later, I was sound asleep, and knowing that I would remain so for a long while, she strode off to weed a fair distance from where I lay. On her return she saw a black snake in the basket with me, presumably drinking the moisture leaking from my mouth.

At this point in the story my mother becomes animated as she describes how she stumbled frantically through the tall, dense wheat, scythe in hand. The snake, alerted by her noisy approach, slithered rapidly away, but she dived furiously, pounding it on the head with her weeding scythe. When she stopped, she was staring at an almost decapitated reptile.

I feared that you had already been bitten, she continued dramatically. I could hardly breathe and I felt I was going to faint. I scanned your tender body and limbs repeatedly, inch by inch, looking for the twin puncture marks. It was a miracle that day that you and I escaped this deadly, venomous snakebite!

As a child, in all my innocence, I hadn’t been aware what could have happened that day. I stood there staring at her frightened face with huge eyes, wanting her to tell me more about it. It sounded fabulous. I loved terrifying snake stories.

Meanwhile, my fragile, old and stubborn Nonna was there with us, slumbering in her favorite chair but still listening, when she suddenly leaned forward and sat up rigidly to interject;

No! No! she yelled, her arm lashing about in the air with matriarchal authority. It wasn’t a real snake; it was the great, great mother spirit in the form of a snake! She leaned over and growled in my face, It was looking after you, patting you with its long forked tongue because snakes are limbless."

I stood still between them, stunned at what I was hearing – first the fear of snakes, now the spirits! This was what I grew up with – this fear of snakebite and the terror of spirits coming back in some animal form or reptilian. From then on, when I happened to see a black snake rustling past me in the bush (quite often during the summer), it reminded me of my mother’s story, and my grandmother’s superstition.

My mother controlled my behavior by inducing the fear of superstition. "Don’t you do that, the bau-bau will come and take you away!" she would threaten. The bau-bau was a monstrous woman in a long black frock; she had wolf-like, snaggle teeth and long, white disorderly hair down to her backside. She was a witch looking for naughty kids to take away, never to be seen again. My grandma, the matriarch in the family, was much more superstitious than my mother. She loved to poke her nose in anything that was going on in the family and had a supreme self-belief. She was strictly vegetarian, six feet tall, slender and fragile. A fanatically spiritual woman, she would relate the conversations she had had with the spirits of dead relatives. She even claimed knowledge from above about whom in the family or in the neighborhood was going to die next. It was terrifying. She and my mother filled me with fear to keep me easily under control. That was the way children were treated in remote south Italian towns like Arena before the mid-twentieth century.

My strict father was different. I don’t know if he believed in superstition or not, but he never mentioned or discussed it once.

He always came to see me in bed and tell me stories about romance to make me laugh. But he ordered me around like a soldier. And in time I responded to his commands like a soldier. I liked to stamp my feet on the timber floorboards, marching and yelling out after him; One! Two! Three and four! Left! Right! Left! Right! Over and over, back and forth around the room. It was fun for me; I loved it! For my father it was much more than fun, he was excited about impressing that sense of military discipline on me.

He had served seven years in the army, including World War I, and worked in the USA for twelve years. I used to wonder why he yelled so much – I think he forgot that he was out of the army. Although he never strapped me heavily, his vigorous yelling was enough to silence me and everybody else in the house. That was his army way, his attitude to disciplining the children and controlling the household.

Chapter 2

Inequalities Among Men

In 1932 I began my education at the new state school in our small town of Arena. It was a new school, in this town built under Mussolini’s fascist regime; it was an innovation in patriotic teaching. From the second day onwards, we were taught to sing fascist national songs, and we sang them with gusto.

As time went on it came to my attention that the school life was orientated around people’s social class. Children of professional families (known as Galant Omani) weren’t allowed to associate with other children. This was also practiced in the general community. If your father were a farmer, you would probably be a farmer also. Whatever the parents were doing, most children were following in their footsteps without any feeling of discrimination. It was this upgrade of education that gradually changed these old trends and attitudes and helped to break down class distinctions. The opportunity to pursue a profession, trade, art or other employment was opened up to everyone.

As a young boy, I did not understand why there was a class distinction. It was never explained; people just accepted this as the norm. However, I was inquisitive and more than once ran into trouble by intruding in to these elite groups, not realizing that I wasn’t welcome. I had no inferiority complex but these high-class kids definitely had a belief of social superiority. I noticed that the elite kids were never made to wear the Pinocchio nose or donkey ears as a punishment; I don’t remember seeing them caned or strapped like other students. No one dared to embarrass or humiliate them. All this was imbedded in the school system.

When I looked into the faces of these children, however, I saw acceptance, and I felt they wanted contact with me. Eventually, I became friends with a doctor’s son. Sure, I was aware that I was the son of a farmer and he was the son of a doctor, but so what? I was a kid and he was a kid. In us there was no difference of class at this age. The distinction came from our parents’ status in society. I understand this now, but at the time I just went with my feelings. My friend Mimi and I developed a friendship, and I treated him differently from my other friends, I felt he was special to me. My mother was terrified that something might happen to Mimi while he played with me. Unfortunately, Mimi became very sick and passed away in his teenage years – a loss that saddened me for many years.

In 1938 I completed my elementary education, then continued some secondary private tuition and also finished two years of agriculture training at night classes. It was during this period that I observed more and more the inequality in the community. People bowed to those superb individuals well dressed in a three-piece suit, tie and tall hat who had a degree. Some of them walked with their fashionable adorned bastoncino: (walking stick) Buongiorno Dottore, or Professore, Good morning Professor – or engineer, or someone else who had a Laura (degree). Traditionally a degree had become a title. For artisans or tradesmen you would say Buongiorno maestro. If someone held a public office they would be addressed as Don or Donna, which would be like Sir or Lady. No title for the peasants of course, just their simple personal name.

From this age on I strived to understand why this distinction of class existed, why these groups of people felt they were above others in the community and that the others were unimportant. But, in my mind their isolated life in their grand mansion was like being under house arrest, deprived of their natural liberty and the human right to circulate freely in the community.

Chapter 3

Hopes and Dreams

I grew up on a charming farm in the southern Calabria region of Vibo Valentia. My father built the stone farmhouse and he mined all the stone on the property to do it. Life on the land was hard but it was a way of life that they had used to survive through many famines.

On the farm, people gathered together to help each other, particularly at harvesting time. The work had to be done quickly, which meant many long hours of manual work. However, the camaraderie transformed the agonizingly hard work into fun. Stories were exchanged, jokes were told, and making people laughed and forgot the pain and the exhaustion of hard labour. In a way they behaved like children. Most of the older people couldn’t read or write, but their great sense of humour, and expansive manner of expression, combined with their commonsense enabled them to create a tremendous, happy environment. Those communal tasks looked like such fun to me and I couldn’t wait to grow up and join in with them.

La Vendemmia, the harvesting of the grapes and winemaking was exciting; every one enjoyed crushing the grapes with bare feet along with all the young men and women in a huge concrete vat. I was dying to be old enough to participate.

Although the farm was fertile, the family made only a little money from the sale of excess produce beyond our own needs. There were good years and bad, which are the nature of farming, it was incredibly difficult financially, but it was amazing how they struggled to survive; but it was a simple, peaceful, natural way of living.

Many children were jubilant when they finished their education, but not me. I dearly wished that I could continue studying. My father would have been very proud if I could have continued but there was no money for this, and the prospect of imminent war was very frightening. I was twelve years old. Some of my friends were going on to high school; however, though I yearned to go too, I had no expectations. I was a farmer’s boy and back then farmer’s boys didn’t go on to higher education.

So what would happen now? School had ended and the transition to my teenage years had just begun, opening another dimension of my life. I was no longer a child; my parents had to make the decisions about what they wanted me to be. At twelve I was physically developing too slowly and, being small and plump, I wasn’t ready to handle hard farming work. I was nicknamed lu zuccu, meaning a tree-stump.

So instead of farming or the higher education that we couldn’t afford, my optimistic father began considering the priesthood as a vocation for me. This would be cost-free.

When I realised what I was in for, I was hugely resentful. I felt like I was on fire and a voice in my head screamed, No! Decline it! The priesthood is not for you! But how could I decline? I would be told to do it, no questions asked. This was the era when parents decided what their kids would do for their living. I could see myself dressed like a black penguin, books in hand, attending Mass in the morning, in the evening – every day, praying, praying and praying. In desperation I contemplated running away or purposefully hurting myself. I prayed, God help me! I am not dedicated enough to be a priest! This went round and round in my head. I was going out of my mind, but I never said a word to my parents.

My devout mother had encouraged me to be an altar boy when I was younger, I had the knowledge to respond in the Mass in Latin, and so she thought I was halfway to being a priest already. It would be prestigious to have a priest in the family, a step up in society. Priests were highly admired, by me as well, but no, I did not want to be one; I didn’t want to have the shaved moon circle on my cranium or to wear that black tunic. It was during the Depression, war propaganda was circulating and money was very scarce. In my tormented silence, unhappy and unwilling, my negative thoughts surfaced in my face and my personality changed. My father, a man of ample experience, fortunately understood me more than I realised.

I think that we need more time to think about it before we decide to make the application, he said kindly.

He said we! I hadn’t thought that I’d have any say in this. After many sleepless nights of self-inflicted torment and bitterness, I was enormously relieved. I had thought that my life was about to end, but here was a glimmer of hope that I would be spared from the priesthood! I had been to hell and come back to heaven, all at the tender age of twelve. My father found me an unpaid apprenticeship to become a barber with a family friend who had a salon in town. The barber trade is good, he said with some certainty, because people always have to shave and cut their hair! You can be employed anywhere in the world.

I listened in silence, unimpressed by the prospect of being a barber. But he did arrange two nights a week private tuition to study Italian and mathematics, and I was happy with that. Anyway, considering that I had been lucky to dodge the priesthood, I wasn’t game to protest too much about being a barber!

I found myself the only farmer’s boy in town to be a barber’s apprentice. There were some eyebrows raised, as it was untraditional for someone from a farming family to move into the artisan class – in fact a decade earlier it would not have been acceptable at all. Such class discrimination annoyed me a lot, some clients avoided my service. I knew that some people would snub me, but in a small town like that my reputation was well known and respected. I was confident and felt no social inferiority before and after my school years, and every time that my liberty was in question I argued in my restless soul how to deal with in that old fashion discriminatory way of life. I had to learn something I didn’t like, but I threw myself into the trade: I never wanted to fail at anything, and working out how to exist in this community was a challenge that passionately interested me. My master was a flamboyant, cheerful little man and I liked him very much. In time I made progress in my learning. Being a barber back then was a glamorous and subtle art – subtle because it was important to win the trust of the clients. It was very hard for a young aspirant to earn this trust as we are talking about using a tremendously sharp instrument on someone’s face. It takes time to develop trust on both sides.

Unfortunately in 1940, after some years of long and loud war propaganda, World War II began for Italy. My older brother, two uncles, two cousins, and all the other young men in town were conscripted to the army. I was only fifteen. My future was suddenly put on hold and the opportunity to study was automatically shelved. There were no spare workers in town after the call-up so, although I was of small stature, I had to help on the farm as much as I could and hope that the war would be short-lived.

I continued to finish off my secondary-level night study. My tutor, who had been a lieutenant in the navy and was now a qualified teacher, filled my mind with stories of his experiences. I had always liked adventure so the thought of navigating the world was hugely appealing to me. I aspired to a career in the navy. At the end of this Italian course, I took a free government course in olive and vineyard cultivation and became qualified in tree pruning and grafting. My father now no longer thought that my lack of height was a problem in dealing with the rough and tough nature of rural work so I was settled in this occupation for some time.

The war dragged on and on. We were lucky that our district was not a military target, so life in town was placid as usual. By 1943–44 the war’s activities were now more and more evident in our area. Once the allies had landed in nearby Sicily our region became an active war zone. It was alive with army movement. There were more planes aggressively flying in our sky, and we often witnessed dogfight overhead. More soldiers were seen along the coast, retreating. The war was no longer in Africa. It was here in Italy and there was no hope of winning now.

Finally it was over in 1945. By then I was twenty years old, but there were no opportunities: the national economy was destroyed, everything was in disarray, and there was no employment, no cadetships, no enrolments, no migration, and no direction whatsoever. It was a slow, all-consuming, frustrating time. I was lucky to have just missed out on going to war but I had missed out on my opportunities too, I had no choice but to wait and hope for something to happen.

Chapter 4

The Army Service

Change finally came about in 1946 when, at the age of twenty-one, I was called up to the army for twelve months of national service. There were thirty-five boys in all from Arena. Out of those, only six were selected for the military service. I was one of them. Most guys were happy to have missed out on military service, but I considered myself lucky to be selected. This could be my chance to transfer to the navy and obtain a cadetship; it was a dream that had come alive again. I was made a group leader of twenty-five conscripts, to supervise them during the trip and make sure that we all reached our destination. We boarded a special goods train with carriages that had no seats or toilet facilities. We were packed in like farm stock and sent to Modena, a long way north. It was all new to me: my first time away from home, amongst these unfamiliar faces never seen before and being responsible ensuring they arrived at the assigned destination. It was time to observe and learn the ropes of military life amongst foreign people from another part of Italy.

On the way I saw debris sprawled everywhere, destruction of towns, cities, main roads and bridges. Casino, the war battlefield for many months, was destroyed and had heaps of rubble on the ground. It looked like the aftermath of earthquake. I understood the hardship of those poor displaced people from the war zone who had arrived in my town seeking refuge in their bitter struggle to survive. As we travelled further north, the devastation of war became more and more noticeable. I looked with horror at the wreckage of so many industries. How lucky we had been back home! There had been a shortage of many goods, and we had food coupons, but we had been able to feed ourselves in peace, we hadn’t experienced the bombing, the fear of being maimed for life or killed, the trauma of seeing our homes flattened and being displaced from your families, relatives and friends, and losing all our belongings. I reflected; what is the point of war? You are mentally conditioned to defend your country, moulded into the patriotic form, but you return home in one piece if you’re lucky? Win or lose there is no personal gain and you realise that wars never ever solved the world’s problems. So in my mind, I debated this issue while I was forced to serve the army and accept the loss of liberty; my human right to choose one way or another was violated. You put your life on the line because some crazy leaders (like Hitler, for instance) inject fear into you with their art of manipulation and lying. I sometimes think that war is a kind of economic business: destroy and rebuild.

In Modena we underwent a three-month period of training, followed by war maneuvers: how to defend your country and defeat the enemy. During this time I thought of joining the navy again and applied to the naval minister for a transfer. Although I explained my lack of opportunity during the war period, my application was not successful. I was over the age limit. I had been punished for not sending the application through correct channels of the army hierarchy. I complained to the captain in charge. He said: In the army we all do what we are told. This was the first bitter lesson that I had to submit my soul to the army rule with no questions asked.

Living with my comrades was another area in which I had to confront my feelings about connections with strangers. Not all strangers are the same: there are people who want to manipulate you because they fear you may manipulate them. Some people from the North called me marocchino (Moroccan) because I was from the south. I also learnt that in order to work as a civilian in northern Italy, at that time, I would have to be a residence for six months. In the First World War a lot of southern Italians fell in defending of northern Italy and yet I was discriminated against in seeking work in the area where some of my people had lost their lives.

A few weeks before the end of training, we were offered an opportunity to volunteer for service in any specialised field of the army for the rest of our national service, providing that we had the necessary entry prerequisites. I applied to be a radio communication parachutist in the Garibaldi Regiment. I had no idea what was involved, or whether I had the required qualification. The day that I was called in for the examination I was tense, thinking that my education was not up to that level. When I heard that I passed the test, I was incredulous and excited.

But it was too good to be true. Two weeks into the course, I was admitted to the military hospital with an infection and a severe skin rash. I had never suffered such a thing before. It must have been a reaction to the change in diet. I emerged four weeks later looking forward to continuing my training, but the camp commanding officer didn’t allow me to rejoin the parachutist company. The course had advanced too far in my absence and they had already left. This shocked me very badly.

I had never felt so miserable. Not only had I missed out on this incredible opportunity, but also everyone I had known in the camp had moved on. Crying with disappointment alone in this place, I realised for the first time what it means to be surrounded by a bunch of foreigners. You learn to be a tough; soldiers don’t cry in front other soldiers, but you are crying in your heart and soul. Apart from the experience of parachuting, the training could have opened up a career in communications in civilian life, a chance in a lifetime, particularly when jobs in Italy were impossible to find. It was as if fate had dangled this opportunity in front of me, then cruelly snatched it away. It was a brutal setback for a twenty-one-year-old.

My alternatives now were to be an adjutant to the company’s barber at the district headquarters of Udine, or a clerk in the observation department of Padua’s military hospital. I reluctantly accepted the clerical position.

This was the bitterest disappointment since I joined the army. I was upset, and my feelings showed in my face. I started work in the hospital but I felt I was not adequately prepared for this duty; everything seemed to be complicated and too hard! Actually, it was neither complicated nor hard; it was just that my emotional torment had taken away all my confidence. So despite the pain concealed in my heart, I tried my best to get a grasp of my new duties, stumbling here and there, and assisted by the other soldiers. It took me a long time to get over this episode, but, in time, day by day I progressed and began to unscramble my confusion. Then, a few weeks later I was berated by one of the doctors for misspelling urine. What did you learn at school? He said; Don’t you know how to write urine? He humiliated me, yelling in front of all the others in the office. In my mind I reacted: Ammazzati! Drop dead, you bastard fat pig! How dare you question my education! You don’t know my scholastic achievements! Because you are a doctor, you think you are a superior human being. But in the army all I could say was; Yes Sir! In my quest, struggling for equality in life and a fair go as a human being, I realized that in the army there was the same presumption and arrogance as I saw in my little home town. Who do you think you are? They wanted to show their superior status. It was a good lesson for me, from this strange doctor; he wanted to show he was the boss. People like this manipulated others and they used their qualifications and the position of authority to do it. They believed it was their right to dominate. They never thought that others also have rights and as fellow human beings we are equal. But, In spite of their pride and traditional domination, underneath their attitude I found magnanimity: they really wanted to help people.

In time the working atmosphere improved my confidence, I no longer found the work too hard, and I really enjoyed the rest of my term in that prestigious medical observation department. Learning how to live with those people from other places and those who they feel superior is an art form, you get accustomed to the arrogance of some graduates and in time it becomes a way of life.

At the end of my national service, returning home wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. My prospects for the future seemed as bleak as they were before the army. It was now time to reflect and assess my situation. There was no doubt that the time in the army woke me up. I had learnt and achieved much. Working in that medical environment allowed me to soak up a huge amount of knowledge. I could talk about army life and about many medical meanings, I felt privileged to have worked in such a prestigious and influential department.

When I returned home, I was twenty-two years old. At this point, thinking about my future was more important than reflecting on what had happened in the army. The town was crowded now, there were a lot of marriages taking place, and many babies were being born. But there was a crisis. There was not enough work or enough farming land for everybody.

For the time being, I resumed farm work and worked a bit as a barber, I had time to socialize, mingling with friends, often talking about the ruined economy and the madness of Mussolini plunging Italy into unnecessary war. I knew that in Italy there would be