ABSTRACT: A memorial of Enzo Tortora on the day of his demise.

(Radical News n. 107 of 27th May 1988)

Enzo Tortora's last public act was the signature with which he accepted the candidature in the "civil, lay, green" list "For Catania", for the 29 May elections.

He was supposed to be the head of the list. Tortora used to repeat that "Catania (was) the new Naples". For a year he had been reading, with horror and desolation, the documentation of the pre-trial investigation for the maxi-trial called by the magistrates of the Public Prosecution Office of Turin in Catania, in support of the one called by the Public Prosecution Office of Naples years behind.

I took the responsibility of disobeying a brother and a companion.

Last week we published the document with which he accepted that candidature, excluding him from the list. I am neither explaining nor apologizing.

I am simply giving him back something that belonged to him to the end; Enzo wanted to prove, and he did prove, that he was living as never before; not dying. To the end. This is what he wrote in his last article on "Il Corriere della Sera". Barely forty years ago, we met among the university students of Genova, and later recognized each other and fraternized, as from 1966, in the LID (1) of Loris Fortuna and Mauro Mellini. Since then, albeit with interruptions, until the horror of the encounter with "justice", we recognizing our differences, still not acknowledging their common nature.

He was a man of culture; not a man of power, neither in the institutions nor in the profession. He was perhaps the last, in those decades, to have loved a "beau geste", style, elegance. He loved them, he was not amused by them. And his resigning from the European Parliament was a unique act, considering the circumstances in which it occurred. It is not by chance that this gesture was used to help the country's memory forget, not understand.

He was a liberal. And he too was forced to be a liberal "elsewhere", to be a better one to the end.

He was a radical. He was the one to re-discover so many pages and sentences by Voltaire that better explained to us what we had being doing and attempting, in prisons and elsewhere. He was, they say, "a presenter". But no one "represented" the way he did, not presented and commented, the passion for justice, the love for all those who shared it, or for those who suffered fo the lack of it or the violence of it.

He was capable of being ruthless.

But charity is harsh, not mellow. He passed through the agony of possessing intelligence and reason: because what intelligence and reason see today is and cannot be other than pain, and cause for pain.

He died on a morning in which he was feeling better, serene. This is a good thing. But it also makes the grief of Francesca, his companion, for whom every sign had become a hope, all the more violent and pungent.

Tomorrow, Enzo, we will celebrate you in Catania as well.

Translator's notes

(1) LID: stands for Italian Divorce League