Your Mind; My Mind

Lionello, my great grandfather, wrote a secret love letter to his forever lover, Vitellia, in 1938. She passed on this letter to my grandfather, Antonio, upon her death. The letter was handwritten, and consequently very difficult to read, so thankfully Antonio typed the entire letter out on a typewriter. My grandmother found this letter, and I knew that we had to translate it and discover this story. And I’m very glad we did. Here it is for you to read and enjoy.

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The evening of the 24th of November 1938

What I am writing to you is only for you and I, Pucci.

I would call it a confession if the word didn’t relate so much to the church. But it is something similar, maybe a test of my conscious in front of my guardian angel: a great, great Angel, and her name is Pucci.

In the margin, you must correct everything concerning our relationship. You will show me the corrections and your notes. You will conserve these sealed pages, not opening them again, until I authorise you to do so at my death.

Because this is also my act of faith, but it can also be my testimony for you.

With the sharpest scalpel, I want to cut my soul so that you can see it in its reality so that you can evaluate it, not for what you admire, but only for it’s value.

I want to analyse our state of affliction in the best way, and with this analysis you can evaluate with calmness and coldness what is convenient to do.

I’m fairly calm and I’m writing at night, in my office, after I’ve worked until 10pm. I’m saying this to demonstrate that, I am thinking of last night to start these pages, as I wanted to arrive here without flattering myself. I am horrified of long soliloquies that often brings one to the wrong conclusion.

I am a convinced believer. I believe that outside of us exists a superior will and power. I believe in unrelenting justice, without pity or mercy of the morals of Christianity, but true and inexorable, for the Better or the Worse.

I believe in the superiority of the forces of the Spirit, over the materials.

I believe in our soul and that it can be perfected.

I believe in the immortality of the Spirit and in the commonly called Destiny. Not in the Greek or Islamic sense, but in the explication of the contingent will, superior to ours and to which it is useless to rebel. The will that is expedient to follow and not to escape.

I believe in the power of faith, not in the sense of religion but in the literal meaning of the word, and for this I can accept and explain the miracles of each religion.

I’m not saying that my convictions will not undergo some new evolution: I started in the Christian religion which was laid upon me as a child, then I became atheist, which I believed it was achievement when I was younger, as all directed experiences allowed me to reach to my conclusions. I don’t believe that these can vary more than that.

And you must also take note when you judge me.

And to judge me of my virtue and imperfections, (more of these and less of those), you must understand my life and my upbringing.

With you I have no secrets and what I am saying to you, nearly everything, my wife doesn’t know and she can’t even imagine.

It is my opinion that every family has their own secret and their own romance. My family is no exception.

My father didn’t have the same surname as my grandfather.

I learnt of this when I was of age and in strange circumstances. In the first moment this made me depressed. Now it serves me more to worship my father and to admire him.

He was born from an adulterous relationship between the marquis Beltrame of Filottrano and a lady, (a single woman), I assume, but I am uncertain of the identity.

If the Book of Law of our time was the same as 20 years ago, my father would have been a multi-millionaire. The dispositions that regarded my father in the will were null and void, because the law regarded that the children of adultery cannot become successors. The estate of my grandfather belongs to the Dante Alighieri’s association, administered by the engineer Amos Luchetti of Filottrano. I heard this very cruel story from this engineer, who taught me at school, and when the marquis died, only then did I know that he was my grandfather, as Amos called me and told me the story, so that I could tell my father about this sadness.

I told you this, so that you can admire my father and see how inferior I am to him.

You can enquire and discover that the surname Beltrame was one of the pioneers of the expedition of Abbissinia (now known as the Ethiopian Empire). At the time of the birth of my father, the second or third expedition left again, and I believe it was to avoid their own responsibilities. My father was taken and left to a family of poor farmers, where he was left abandoned for many years. Two old people took him in, and kept him with them. (I heard that they received a sum of money from Beltrame). My father learnt to read and write at the age of eleven, he learnt from other children. Without ever going to school, he went to write the elementary examinations and was promoted as such. He registered himself without the knowledge of his guardians to the technical school, and to study in the evenings he would steal the remnants of the candles from the priest. Naturally he did not go to school often, and without books he made many miracles. I religiously kept his school reports. This caused an amazement of his behaviour, that he was registered to the technical institute and the City Council of his town paid for his studies.

During his second year, maybe due to exhaustion, he became gravely ill. Beltrame paid for medical help, and in the mean time, Beltrame’s wife died. My father, at 18 years old, discovered the real name of his father. He did not forget the sufferings of his life, all the misery and deprivation that he endured, and he was proud by nature (he was in fact the image of his father), so he refused any other alternative help.

I remember the sadness of our family life, but I never assumed that if my father could, simply, apologise to a man, (who loved him), that his circumstances would change completely.

My mother, I believe, fell in love with my father for a mixture of comprehension and admiration, rather than his physical attractions. But she seriously fell in love.

Her family was old fashioned and was patriarchal. An uncle was a secret waiter of the Pope. Another uncle was a commander of the Corps of Cuirassiers. You can imagine the anger of my grandfather when he heard that his favourite daughter wanted to marry a stray.

But if my grandfather was relentless, so was my mother as his daughter, and two days after she became of age, she published her wedding with my father. My father in the mean time became employed by the council of Matelica with a good salary of 45 Lire monthly.

The day of the wedding she received a wedding present from her father – that she would be disinherited from everything. Only at my birth, was she reunited with her family.

I was born very poor, from a father who refused wealth because he was proud, and from a mother who refused because of love.

Only after my birth did the conditions slightly improve because my mother’s grandparents provided, (without annoying my father’s sensitivity), more than enough for our immediate necessity.

My childhood and my youth had a series of alternative fortunes. My father, with his voluntary and exceptional intelligence, constantly improved his own position. Unfortunately a serious sickness that fell upon us set us back.

My mother’s father died, leaving a lump sum to my father (not to my mother, being stubborn and not recognising her rights as a daughter). And also, the sickness of my sister as well as the war sent us into a downward spiral.

At that time it was my final year at the technical institute and my father’s father died. The engineer, Luchetti, my teacher at the time, gave me the responsibility to tell my father about the death and the outcome of the will. My father was heartbroken that he never made peace with his father, but refused decisively to value his rights. I remember precisely his words, “if my father wanted to, he could’ve thought of me as when I was child when I was suffering a physical and spiritual hunger, when I was small and helpless, not afterwards, when I had a head and arms to work.”

I regret to have only understood after the greatness of these words.

The condition of my family forced me to interrupt my studies. Secretly without my father’s knowledge, I contested for a bursary called Piceni, helped by engineer Luchetti, and it was awarded to me. My father made me refuse it.

So my first chapter was closed and the second was about to begin.

One of the reasons for not taking the bursary, was because it was administered by the masons (of the Masonry) and my father was fearful that this could somehow bind my future. In June I received my diploma in physics and mathematics (a diploma of study which would at that time could not help me). I began to put my head down, and at the end of September I had to write the exams for three years worth of land surveying, for which I then received the diploma. I had never paid tuition, and it was logic that in this case I would not need to pay it either.

Short of two months, I would turn seventeen. I was lucky to find work immediately. I could further my studies and I felt that I had followed the value of my destiny.

From that moment, every target that I had reached, I did it all myself, and likewise I blame myself for all my mistakes.

I can say that I am a self-taught person deeply rooted with merits and defects of the system. I have in fact deepened everything that I valued, especially everything that was immediate and practical for my work.

I remain superficial about the rest. On the other hand for the greater part of my life I lived far from home and I did not receive the guidance or hindrance.

I did not know the real life of a university student: I required at least 30 hours in a day. I did not have time to see any friends and I was only able to see them occasionally. I can say that they helped me, the old school friends, from the technical institute.

Something or someone outside of my life protected me: I always used to work in command positions. (If I had a chance to read to you a certificate of work released in 1922, you could see that at the time that I already had the right to lead projects that many of my colleagues, after 5 years after their degree, still dreamt about).

Maybe, for me, it was a misfortune to have such a high position at work too soon without leading a normal path up the hierarchy. My proud and rebellious character could stir and cancel the possibilities to adapt and obey someone.

I finished my studies like a normal administration. The work gave me much more satisfaction.

I directed a company that was building terraces, and I created one company, directing builders and carpenters, that started from nothing, and in no time it grew to a great position. I left that and went to direct a firm called Corridoni (when I was only 23 years old). I found time to occupy myself with politics and even in that field I affirmed myself. I became a member of numerous, I don’t even know how many, provincial commissions, as well as a secretary of the Textile Industry of the Province of Anconna, the regional secretary of construction and the Prefectural Commissioner of six different companies.

I left everything to dedicate myself only to my work.

I obtained the registration in the album of the contractors and of the chamber of commerce.

It is pointless to describe the number of enemies that this in the mean time caused, the envies and jealousies that I aroused, and the dirty manoeuvres of which I had to defend myself. You must only know that I was even accused to have stolen.

My father taught me that you need to be profound, honest and severe with yourself – that you cannot to be scared. And in this I always listened: under this armour, whatever the appearance or battles forged, I can confirm with an utmost sincerity, that I never received a scratch.

At 26 years old, I had a lump sum of 500 000 Lire. I executed the job for the protection of the Guasco in Ancona, with a very high wall on the coast, which was 70 metres high and that the big companies were too afraid to tackle. I resolved brilliantly the logistic problems that were considered impossible.

I thought that I was at the peak of my life, instead I was at the beginning of a collapse.

My father became gravely ill with nephritis syndrome, and was forced to leave any work activity, and so he delegated me to conduct the family affairs.

I assumed works of the aqueducts in southern Italy, transferring my father, my mother, three sisters and two brothers to Naples. It was 1930.

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I still had work in the region of Marche, (a road in Fabriamo, a bridge in Sassoferrato and others), so I left a certain Mr Falzetti in charge, whom I met at the consortium Corridoni. I bumped into him by chance a few years later, in a wretched misery. So I gave him work, picking him up and giving him a place in society.

With a lot of gratitude and honesty he found a way to swindle the sum of 380 000 Lire from me in three months. He did it with class and confidence, and when I tried to defend myself and recover the sum, he patted me on the back and I did not have the possibility to accuse him.

Immediately after the crisis began which costed me 270 000 Lire on the aqueducts of Solopra.

There was a period that the ushers of the court seemed to have taken up residence in my house. I was left with only a few breadcrumbs of what I painfully constructed, but were so hidden that I still cannot find them.

My father was getting worse everyday. I would have done anything to help him, but what was leftover from the family budget was only the income of a small consulting job from the bank of labour.

For me, being used to seeing everything easily, the incapacity to sell the vehicle became an agonising problem. I could not sort it out. My father passed away when my financial position had become even more critical.

And you can most probably imagine what the situation meant to me. Now my spirit even has dark traces and my scars still bleed.

I do not know who gave me the strength to resist, but for the first time, (I hope the last), I felt the knock and I collapsed.

We were in an acute period of an economic crisis and it was not easy to come back from. I could fall down again, but I needed a strong antidote, I needed a violent shock to awaken from the dazed blow that I received.

And so I got married. (I will tell you how).

The others get married when they are settled and desire to become middle-class. I did it went I saw black in front of me and found the strength to start a new life.

Unfortunately we could not have children immediately. If that was the case, I would have rapidly picked myself up again. I would have not cradled myself for 2 or 3 years in the idea that I could rely on my past.

In any events I settled my position in a good way. I could have chosen to not pay anyone. Instead I sacrificed everything to pay every creditor and I am glad that I did it.

At the end I decided to break away from the past and restart, the way I did fourteen years ago, and became an employee again.

I worked for a company of Florence, namely Arde. The opportunity came that I was assigned, as before, to go to Rome and I took as it a sign of good fortune.

I was appointed as a director of the Rome branch, where I had to obey other superiors, as was not to my liking but I convinced myself that it was right to do so. It was the right solution: I had an increase in salary and was promoted to direct work in Calabria.

In the meantime we had a daughter. It was the first real joy after so many pains.

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My destiny was calling me upwards, and it was manifested in the most unusual form. As it happened there was an inspection, and the procurator of the company, (an anonymous society), was Mr Falzetti, who was the cause of all my losses. With my money he bought a lot of shares in the company, Arde, for which I was working.

As I said at the beginning, I believe in the existence of wills and forces that, external to our world, overlap with our will. Otherwise, without these, I would have killed Falzetti. The first day he arrived at work, with his wealthy Augusta car, he somehow found fault with everything? And then, I somehow casually read a report about myself?

I turned to the state railway, that in the mean time approved of me. I enquired if they could relocate me to any other company, and so I was posted to Meriggi. I asked to be employed for the work being done in Rome. My destination was Piacenza. So as to not to be in contact with Falzetti, I accepted this new job and a decrease in my monthly salary of 500 Lire.

The rest of my story you know about: and do you think that it is possible that after an intense and eventful life like mine, that I did not accumulate, other than a great experience, also a series of great defects?

After all this, being used to count on my own strength, I think that all the others are inferior to me. Of everyone, I immediately find their defects and their weakest points, as if I was the only perfect one who was authorised to despise others.

I do not accept advice, I rebel to others and I am proud. The defects of my character were heritage to me from my family, as they did not have time to soften me in the course of the years. For the effects of my events I became worse. I became closed up and sensitive, and then I complain of the misunderstanding which surrounds me.

The disregard mostly of my fellow men derived from another factor: I told you the story of when I was a ship boy for two fishing companies, and in 17 years of work I met 25 000 workers. I worked for two years in a prison. I am at present the technician of the Benedettini Convent, of which I know their lives in particular minimum details. For my profession I negotiated for all the social classes. For my political life I am attached with the obligations of friendship with people today that hold important positions: prefects, deputies, ambassadors (ie. Mazzolini). I deduct therefore to know my fellow men in their own manifestations and I think that in a certain degree I can judge them instinctively of whom I have in front of me: and false ignorance was something I saw a lot of.

You consider me a man that is attached to the tradition and principles of firm beliefs. You’re making a big mistake.

If there is one in a constant rebellious and convenient state of soul, with the phrases and the situations experienced, and with everything that was established from the common use, that is who I am.

Those that are my principles slowly matured were the sequences of my apparent mistakes and others, and for my constantly tormented research to distinguish the good from the bad.

I do not know what is to be physically feared. From various incidents, such as a broken jaw, a bone in the head raised with a drill, a death sentence from the court of the people, and I nearly drowned, as well as to have confronted alone extremely furious workers and worst still, a crowd terrified and panicked by an earthquake, all of which should have put in a condition to feel this feeling of physical fear. Instead nothing, I did not feel it. I have often daring solutions and determined coldness. And then, it must seem strange to you, but my instinct is very shy, extremely shy. Have you ever noticed?

For me to be able to take action I always need to be stimulated and to be pushed. Although I’m closed, rude and sensitive, I have an absolute need to be surrounded by affection. I always used to struggle, and confronted anyone with determination, whom must not think that they can exhaust me. (The other day without any compliments, I sent out of the office door Montagnoni). But I always need to hear a tender and soft word and to have next to me someone that I can treat with great tenderness.

The only point that I am not in contrast with, is hate for any person who is ostentatious. With my employees, with my workers, and with my colleagues I try to be plain and as pleasant as possible, not withstanding, and yet I don’t know why, everyone feels the distance and they respect it. Yet it is very strange as I see many trying to find the distance and stare at it with pride and then can no longer keep.

Even if you say the contrary, I consider myself a wicked man. I feel like I’ve never really loved anyone. Maybe I am also not a good son because I often rebelled my parents and my mother, who even now, I do not give her what her title deserves. The first to make me feel the significance of love were my children, especially my daughter. (This before a certain date).

As I was saying, I did not know the freedom of my youth and the real student life. This influenced many friendships with women. Maybe because I never had time to run after them I could never be a Don Giovanni, and if the occasion came by I did not leave it, and so, maybe it was more for my pride to feel like a man than anything else. I had anxiety to find my woman, who was made to my resemblance, and that is why all the others were only females as such to a male and nothing else.

I was engaged three times, but they were not the woman I was searching for. All three times I broke the engagement because I was scared to attach myself for life to a woman that I knew was not the right one. Every time it was a fight, (the last one was also violent), with my mother getting attached to them, and she always claimed I had to marry them. The only one I did not get engaged to was my wife. During my father’s illness and with my misfortune, she was very close to us. She was the sister of the owner of the house we lived in and she tried to aid us in our worries. She had experienced a great heartache from her boyfriend, who ran away to another woman and she was trying to calm her worries by taking care of ours.

I told you before about my moral situation at the time. I thought I needed something to pick me up, I needed an incentive (I also told you that I was shy), and I thought the only resolution was to get married. My mother, noticed my intention, and she was violently against it: she did not want me to unite with a different class. I thought that if I listened to her I would have done the same again and break off the engagement without delay. I asked her if she wanted to marry and she agreed immediately. Seeing the objection from my mother and of her family, (at that time I was a man in ruins), we got married in secret. I realised afterwards that my mother was right, as my wife and I never understood each other.

But it was my fault, and it was right that I sustained the consequences. Believe me, I did everything possible not to weigh our position to my wife, and I sacrificed her for my own calculations, as it was not right that she should suffer too much.

I told you that I believe in a superior strict justice. My hope was to have children immediately so as to have a purpose in life and a stimulant. Instead for many years we could not have children. The cause was an internal imperfection in my wife. She understood that the reason that I married her was because I wanted children. She went allover Italy to be consulted and she finally received an operation and the outcome was positive.

With this action, that I can call heroic, she could conquer me completely if she wanted to. Instead she did not. Her custom, her feelings, and her education that she received made her unable to understand and capture me. Now it is too late, and between us we established too many different habits that we cannot come together again, as it should be between husband and wife.

I think I have told you everything about myself, at least the essential required to plan our problem which torments us.

Let the two of us discuss: I already told you that I believe in destiny in which I believe that you should always follow. It is the will that is not always present but circumstances make it difficult to run away from it’s force.

I do not know anything about your life, but I think when I started the research of the woman that I want, you were leaving the place that you were born in Switzerland to come to Italy: you were a child and it was right that I did not meet you then.

I think you established yourself immediately in Milano. I had already left Torino. My path was taking me far away from you. (Maybe a punishment for my presumption).

I think that when my greatest sorrows began, so did yours. Both of us changed direction on the road we were on at the same time. You abandoned the idea to have a university career, and I became an employee leaving the free profession.

I think just as you did, at the first moment, you did not desire to come to Piacenza. But the hand that guided us from above was tightening the reigns. You did not find any accommodation expect the hotel Albergo Daturi. I was easy going and could settle anywhere.

As I got off the train, I found the messenger of my destiny under the clothing of the engineer Massaro, that you had already met, and he insisted in every way that I should stay at that hotel Daturi.

We stayed a year in that hotel without meeting each other. This force that dominates us put two poor spirits together: because Mr Secchi tormented you and Mrs Daturi felt sorry for you, she decided to move my room closer to yours so that the animal could leave you in peace.

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For me you were a revelation. I felt as if I had always known you, slowly as our friendship deepened I discovered views very close to what was on my mind. I felt everyday that I needed you and I was scared of my feelings, so I told you.

At that moment you discovered yourself. We decided to separate straight away. It was not possible. Think of the torment of those days and see if it is possible to do what you told me. I left because my son was ill, and I thought that I would never see you again.

The destiny, making you run into a series of danger which through pure conjunction (but was that evening an accident?) informed us back to the same path.

You took all of my soul. Next to you my torment and every sorrow has calmed down. Whatever was evil in me died in my soul and every goodness rises to the surface. The thought of you suppresses any bad intentions, the thought of the prize of your joy stimulates me to conquer my goal.

You are the woman that always understands me. You are the woman that was destined for me and for which I was always searching.

Your appearance in my life is the prize for the goodness that I achieved, or is it a punishment? Sometimes, when I desire for you to be near, I think that it is the punishment for having disposed all the others and for the wrong of marrying my wife when I should not have.

Certainly when I think of all the wrong I did to you and at present, tying you to me with the bond of our affection, I feel as if my head is bursting. To think that loving you so much could be risking to hurt you.

Pucci, you know that I always respected your purity and your holiness. Nevertheless even this affection that burns like a flame is adultery, maybe the greatest because it is of the soul. And you could not be mine to make me trample on the duties imposed upon me, look well, not by the law, not by religion, not by society, (with these you can always compromise), but from my conscience that is imposed because of my fault.

Nevertheless we could not renounce each other. One of us, or both of us, will commit some foolish mistakes. What we went through during the month of May must teach you.

Our affection is necessary for both of us and is lived with the same intensity, which has only made us walk on a destructive road. We have to go back to a constructive road instead. But how?

Help me Pucci, think a little as well. Put down on paper your ideas, it will be easier to discuss.

And now the last matter:

Whatever your decision, keep this in mind: I can disappear from this world at any moment even without me wanting to. It only takes a moment of distraction, getting to close to the conductor or a foot put in the wrong position. In this case I desire that, and the sacrifice will cost you, you must look after my children. My wish is that you love them as you love me and that you will guide them in their first footsteps in their lives. You must look after their education, teach them and instill in them my same principles, which is above all, to idolise work, which is the absolute respect and must be their own obligation and duty.

The rest of their own character will be moulded automatically when these two ideas for them have become instinctive. I have already thought of how to give you the possibility to resolve this matter that I’m entrusting to you. For my disposition, that at the right moment you will legalise, you and my brother Ottorino will become executors of the will, and to you I will legally entrust custody of my children.

With this my dear, don’t think I’m trying to hurry the situation. No. But I can feel that my life is taking a decisive turn, so I wish to provide and settle everything.

Pucci I am now in your hands. My future and my life depends on your decision.

You must reflect well with calmness and without false conscience.

Your intelligence is at the same level as the affection you have for me. And yet your affection is much more, very pure, sincere, and that I cannot be shown the right way. I’m waiting for a sign.

With all my soul.

Lionello

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According to the above original certificates, Lionello Ottavini was born on the 25th of November 1903. He married Giulia Pappone on the 3rd of July 1932, who died when their children Antonio and Franca were very young. Lionello passed away on the 21st of April 1972.

Lionello was always in love with Vitellia, and got married to her many years after the passing of Giulia on the 12 of December 1961. Vitellia was loved by Antonio and Franca, and the entire family adored her. She passed away in circa the late 1980s.

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The introduction to the letter was written by Antonio Ottavini and the letter was written by Lionello Ottavini. The letter was translated and edited by Mila Ottavini, with the help of Marta Ottavini and Ugo Tomassini.

The snow is falling 
with big white snowflakes 
it’s already covered 
like a cape
everything
the silent countryside 
and the seashore 
You don’t hear 
the songs of the birds 
from their nest 
they’re chirps are too quiet 
no voices of the children 
on the street
of the solitary neighborhood 
The snow is falling: 
and between the branches 
of the faraway forest 
the wind is playing 
a sweet song 
quieter and quieter 
silence...
You can hear
the waves of the sea 
that washes the shore
the noise of the paddles
of the rowing boats.
the waters are calm 
and are a very strange grey; 
it’s only snowing 
always softer and softer - 
it’s evening: 
a vague sunset 
is in the sky 
while softly 
a song starts rising 
while everything else
covers itself in a veil
The music 
that talks about love 
the music 
that gives oblivion 
and brings peace
to my heart. 

The above poem is the English translation of the original Italian poem. The translation was written by Mila Ottavini, with the aid of Marta Ottavini and Ugo Tomassini.