Linate beaten up: the last minutes of life of Enrico Mattei Romanzo breve di
Filippo Burla
« Una ventina di anni fa ero un buon cacciatore e andavo molto spesso a caccia. Avevo due cani, un bracco tedesco e un setter e, cominciando all'alba e finendo a sera, su e giù per i canaloni, i cani erano stanchissimi. Ritornando a casa dai contadini, la prima cosa che facevamo era da dare da mangiare ai cani e gli veniva given a bowl of soup, maybe that was enough for five. Once I get a little kitten, so skinny, hungry, weak. He had a great fear, and approached slowly. He looked again the dogs, made a meow and laid a paw on the edge of the basin. German arm gave him a blow by throwing the kitten to three or four meters, with the backbone route. This episode made me very impressed. Here, we have been the kitten for the first year ... "
Enrico Mattei, 23 March 1961
Valeria
" I'll be off today only by evening I'll be home. " Margaret stared at him. Something in those words do not convince. It was not the first time since married the man of her life, she was worried and helpless at the same time, as his gaze. This time was different, a dark foreboding as he had never heard. Without the children who never could have had, the loss of her husband would mean the end of his life. A life on the line ever since she was a young dancer to date, wife of the most important Italian public official, up and down the peninsula, the Mediterranean and Arab countries as a result of Henry and of their baby. Built with the love of a family, taken on their descendants, was their whole life. It would be was their death.
It happened one night in late October.
Time is not the best: storm along the approach path to runway 36 left the airport of Linate, heavy rain, thunder and lightning accompanying a small but solid MS.760 Morane Saulnier Paris. Party from Catania Fontanarossa Airport, the slopes of Etna in a sunny morning, is to return to its passengers around San Donato Milanese. Between the city and where the ring rests south is now a palace of glass and green roof gardens: our informal and malicious Foreign Ministry undercurrent that even then he applied to replace the foreign ministry. The three crew of the twin-jet sono uno spaccato di vita politica Italiana della metà degli anni ’40: il pilota, pluridecorato al valore durante la guerra e volontario della Repubblica Sociale; il presidente, colonna logistica ed organizzativa di brigate partigiane bianche; il giornalista, Americano.
«India Alfa Papa, Linate. India Alfa Papa, Linate». 27 Ottobre, 1962. Notte. Le parole della torre di controllo si perdono tra le campagne di Bascapè. Il buio della tempesta è squarciato. Per qualche secondo il cielo si illumina, un filare di giovani pioppi si accartoccia e il buio torna in fretta lasciando sotto di sé un relitto e qualche fiamma del comburente rimasto. L’attimo della decompressione dopo l’esplosione e prima dell’impatto stretches for hours. The aircraft, at that moment, it is still intact. Henry turns and looks out the window to the south. From this height you can see the Po, for a moment the storm gives way to peaceful death. Henry recognizes a small country town of Piacenza. He understands that it's time to say farewell. Blurts out a tear, quickly dried. Fixed Irnerio and then William, the journalist
"You see that city?".
"Yes ...." A sigh
mixture of serenity and understated melancholy: "It Cortemaggiore.
I'm still in that moment that lasts for eternity. Henry, William and Irnerio. The journalist listen, question and taking notes, even in the end loyal to his work.
"The officers of the Registry say they are born 56 years ago. They lie. Bureaucrats bad, the worse race. Actually I was born 13 years ago in this very city who see illuminated in this autumn night. "
is a man stands out during that long moment when he tells the fellow that the last journey that life is passing. Bureaucratically yes, was born 56 years earlier, in 1906 Acqualagna. Marches, as a distinguished fellow of the century: Filippo Corridoni, born nineteen years earlier in Pausula, little more than an hour's drive from the city native of Mattei. Corridoni and Mattei, born in poverty in the same region and both winners in that of Milan. For both a life full of all the troubles that affect men free. Different ways, like the end to foreign hands. Almost identical to the human end of their paths. A word and the duty of every man, but declined by the two differently: freedom. Industrial action in the first, sovereignty and independence for the second. Untimely Meditations, both ill-suited to deal with time, absolutely and with what little they have been willing to take because they go further into the ranks of the big time can not cover up.
"I was not a model student. A few years later the middle school I entered the factory, worker apprentice. Time to take twenty years and I was manager. "Let a few years" I said to everyone, "and become an industrialist."
The year was 1936 when I opened my own business. The industry, want the case - an ironic smile - chemistry. Then the war, Italy was devastated by Allied bombs. I went into resistance, from the diplomatic and logistical support. "
Irnerio Bertuzzi has a fit of impatience almost imperceptible, reflected by the look that comes together while the president continues the story.
"I've never had clear political sympathies. During the Fascist regime had joined the party and my company supplied even the army. I always tried to evaluate situations and turn their decisions so that I could help it in perspective. To this must be my support for the resistance and to subscribe to the first People's Party and the Christian Democrats then. "
McHale makes a face.
"Do not look at me like that. I'm not a pure or idealistic as I want to pass the newspaper that they take me for a dangerous heretic by confusing the words. They are heretics and therefore beyond the narrow contingencies. In this world, indeed in any world, I reserve the purity only the hermits and those who live outside of reality. I've always been an adventurer who after the war was given something I imagined could really reach the goals it was given to those who had decided it was founded during the Fascist era, in 1926. "
"The Italian General Petroleum Company."
"Exactly. They asked me to take the lead to dismantle it. I was doubtful, so that, speaking with both De Gasperi with my wife, I told her I had never seen that I could close a business. I open the business, or rather the development. I spoke Agip as a crowded bandwagon just debts and at the same time offered millions to hundreds to detect it. It was a bandwagon in perpetual animosity with the most banal accounts but there was something below under the Agip, under the concessions, the Po Valley. Summarized the technical Agip Fascist, secured debts with my factory and my property, I worked out a plan and presented it to President De Gasperi, who managed to snatch some time before selling out to try to draw from something. "
"Who was to be sold Agip?.
"sold out, please. Who do you think? To you Americans. Italy was a country torn apart. The bombs had reduced to a heap of rubble were yours and also request to take away what I thought would be one means for the post-war reconstruction. I did not see an appropriate, on the contrary: it was something indecent. Already then it was obvious that the development of a nation could not have been apart from oil and energy sources (
*). Remove from the hands of the state, Italy would pay for itself in a situation of dependence. Unacceptable ".
"He says he has never had political beliefs, yet these will resemble a lot."
"My views are that go beyond politics. Sovereignty, Independence, ability to determine their own future are the rights and obligations of any nation. These are objectives that every government, in any system should have as its focal point in your business. I admit to Fascism, at least governments after the war although laudable exceptions are before the eyes of all. "
"I dare too much if I ask you to make a name?".
"Fanfani: he has always supported my work. I knew when I came across his eyes, in Metanopoli, last year a few moments after the speech in which sided with Eni, "at home and abroad". "
From cabin suspended in the air can still see the three Cortemaggiore.
"Before I have pointed out that city because it all started there. It was 1949. The oil, in Italy? She did not believe anyone. It did well not to believe it, we found nothing more than a puddle, but do not tell anyone! (Laughs, Henry). To Italy, rather than oil was used to allocate the trust. The discovery was a drug that I could manage with one of those operations that the gurus call it marketing. It was during the period of reconstruction, it pierced the mountains to build main thoroughfares, and spreading the first cars on a large scale. We knew we build them, there was no point not being able to refine gasoline. So here is the Supercortemaggiore, "the powerful Italian gasoline", here are the service areas with hotels and services, an absolute novelty in view of the time. With oil, then gas. Rebuilding was the watchword, the industry needed of energy.
"It could be enough energy to shake confidence?".
"No, work was also used. Over the years we have given employment to millions of people, including Eni, the armature and all the companies that distribute or newly opened thanks to the energy at their disposal, no rationing and no valves closed at the discretion of some plump administrator delegate with the chair firmly across the Atlantic. Take, for example, Sicily, where we just were. Who was going to drill on the island? We did, we found oil and gas and now we plan no less than ten thousand recruits. Ten thousand, you realize? Pozzi, una raffineria che progettiamo la più grande d’Europa e progetti di sviluppo ben aldilà dell’esaurimento delle vene del sottosuolo».
«In molti criticarono il suo approccio all’oro blu».
«Mi dicevano che era una risorsa inutile. Io mi limitavo al primo termine: risorsa, quindi strumento. Non ho ascoltato divagazioni accademiche, giostrai politici, veleni di chi non ha mai messo piede in un sito di estrazione, e l’ho usato e indirizzato agli scopi che mi prefiggevo. Avevamo quello, nessuna altra scelta. L’abbiamo fatto diventare il nostro petrolio. Necessità virtù, e ora ci ritroviamo con una invidiabile rete di gasdotti, che siamo in grado di riempire di materia prima e che sostiene our development by providing affordable energy. In this way the industries, which would have to seek alternative sources or not our high-priced, but can convey their resources on other investments. "
"It seems a bit 'as forced interpretation. Is at odds with economic theory. "
"Economic theory can stand on the books. I study in the field, along roads, in the homes of those who still go into the woods to cut wood to keep warm and in the sheds where they are employed in the earliest post-war Italians who could work only a few hours a day, due to rationing by the Allied command decided . Ask me energy, I can tell him? What we do not have oil and we need to go and buy from those who set the price based on what's on your mind at that time? This is not written on university textbooks, yet blocks development opportunities. "
"They say that his methods of installation of the network were not always orthodox methods."
"They say good. For a pose I had to wait years between councils retrograde unable to understand the subsistence level, impact assessments made about nothing pushed permissions that would come with a dropper, prefects personnel engaged in looking for a space between the folds of the new Italy, and so on. Have you talked to Boldrini?
"His vice? No, perché?».
«Quando sente la parola “gasdotti” gli si illuminano gli occhi come un bambino davanti alla marmellata di prugne, e pensa sempre alle nostre bravate. Ti avrebbe raccontato di quando una notte, a Cremona, perforammo la città per stendere le nostre tubature. Nostre, poi… Siamo un’azienda di Stato e lavoriamo per la Nazione. Il giorno dopo si presentò trafelato il sindaco chiedendo spiegazioni. Io, faccia di bronzo, gli dissi che pensavo fossimo in regola con le autorizzazioni e che potessimo lavorare senza problemi. Si mise a urlare, che non era assolutamente vero e che stavo bluffando. Aveva ragione, ma fui bravo a nasconderlo. Gli dissi che avrei dato ordine di sospendere i lavori. Sospendere, means, leaving the ruined cities. Blasphemy and so I told him to finish quickly what we were doing and leave as soon as possible. Objective achieved! The action has been in history. I lost count of these scenes, I have lost count of how many complaints have come to me and Eni to work underground, I have lost count of the ordinances violated. Eight thousand? Maybe even more. It was fun. He was right to do so. "
Bertuzzi interrupts the dialogue: "If I was her, I would have done the same."
"We are free men, Irnerio. Reasoning without burdens. Hundreds and hundreds of miles of pipes throughout the peninsula, leaving bureaucrats of the district with a fait accompli. The action is always right, most of the contracts, boards, city councils and technical departments. " The smile and the narrator says a lot about his skills in dealing with and get the better of dialectics, handsome man, charming and mysterious at the same time as in nine out of ten were not able to understand what his goal, understood by the but more worthy of our highest consideration.
Continue to end ...
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(*
) He was right. Ahead of his time by at least 50 years. Only in 2009 was in fact released a study, published by the physicist Tim Garrett, indicating a constant between growth and availability of energy at 9.7: 9.7 milliwatts required to produce an economic value equal to an inflation-adjusted dollars in 1990. Growth, the basis of any development process, and energy, two variables are inseparable.
"thinking ... ai Ministri della cultura di questo governo del bunga bunga alla cocaina etc etc ...viene in mente una frase di Nietzsche: Il fango giace sul fondo della loro anima, e guai se il fango ragiona. ... pensando a Bondi, alla Gelmi...ni e alla Minetti e Santanchè etc etc...viene alla mente un dipinto del Botticelli ' la calunnia di Apelle'. Vedo costoro raffigurati che impersonano i più tortuosi raggiri dela doppiezza umana. Bondi il giudice somaro, (re Mida), le tre donne : Gelmini l'ignoranza, Santanchè l'insidia, Minetti la malizia le tre guidate da un vecchio becero berlusca curvo sotto il peso della sua lurida prostata (l'inganno). Accanto al vecchio siliconico una bellissima fanciulla che rappresenta la VERITA', e da lei le infinite verità and differences of human knowledge differ, they flow toward the naked truth, which always looks up. " 
