Revealing a Secret by Zlata Karbovska

When the class teacher asked me

what my father does, I lied, “unemployed”. While all my classmates answered, “tomato seller”, “cabbage seller”, “shoemaker”, “newspaper reporter” and so on - to let the school’s head know if we needed state assistance, I decided not to tell the truth.

It was the postwar period in Italy, the year 1919 - a time of socialist and anarchist uprisings, workers' strikes, and factory occupations in post-World War I. Locals, inspired by the Russian Revolution, disrespected and threatened anyone who worked for or supported the government in any way. If you worked for the state, it was considered the same as opposing your country’s future.

My father was the one who didn’t believe in a socialist future. He said it was nothing more than a pretty cover hiding rotten pages inside. That’s why he sided with industrialists and conservatives. I hated him for that. None of our neighbours spoke to my family. No child wanted to play with me. Even my classmates, who didn’t know the truth about my father, ignored me.

My mother, from a family of workers, also disapproved my father’s choice. She said he had abandoned his beliefs and lost his friends, respect, and family. That was my life: in the morning, I went to school, stayed alone all day, ate lunch by myself, and then came home to a house where my parents barely spoke. At night, I laid in my bed, bought with my father’s bloody money.

 But one day, everything changed.

It was a Sunday morning. We were supposed to go to church - something I had begged to skip, just to avoid seeing all those conservatives and the people who blindly believed everything the state fed them.

I woke up from a woman screaming outside my window. I recognized my mum’s voice immediately, I ran to the window and saw her standing over a man lying on the ground, I couldn’t tell who he was or what happened. I rushed downstairs to the street, but before I could get there, a man stopped me, pushing me back inside. Just the last moment before the door shut behind me, I turned around and saw. That was my dad lying there with a wound under his chest. Someone revealed the truth.

A few days later, we came to visit him at the hospital. Seeing us, a woman who was sitting in the hallway, stood up and spoke loudly, so everyone could hear her “Be cursed, you and your family”. We hurried past her. She didn’t look at me, but I recognized her - my teacher. The woman, who taught us many things, who I loved and admired, now cursing us, not caring what people we are, how much we helped and continue to help. Then I thought, maybe, my dad was right somewhere. We are not equal. Not because we were born this way, but because while we worked hard, others wasted their time writing pointless slogans on fences.