Between Two States: An Italo-Scots Story (Troubador, 2025; 359 pp) is Diane Pacitti’s novelistic treatment of her husband, artist Antonio Pacitti’s, family history of immigration, in which family members of different generations literally move between two states. As the title implies, the two states in question are Italy and Great Britain. The true stories are fictionalized, making the multi-generational account come to life. The stories present a range of perspectives about the two countries, but also convey various states of mind of individuals caught in the “horrors of history.”
The narrative moves backward and forward through time and place, and the stories range from those of adults who are aware of the political currents and the coming of war (ultimately two world wars), to young adults caught up in them and serving in the war, to children who are the victims of separation and violence. Pacitti’s stories are compelling though at times one has to consciously focus on remembering the characters (there is a large cast). This is made more difficult through the jerking back and forth in time.
The narrative begins in the early years of the twentieth with the departure of Antonio and Letizia, a teenager he made pregnant in Italy, for Glasgow, where they have a son, Vincenzo, one of a large family. But the marriage is not a happy one, and the resulting infidelity causes the family to break up. After shooting a man he believed was his wife’s lover, Antonio is deported to Italy, and settles on a farm and vineyard he inherited near the small town of Cerasuolo, in Molise. He finds a younger woman to care for him, though he is a bitter and aggressive man. His life is made happier by the arrival of his son Vincenzo from Scotland.
However, Vincenzo is unhappy in Italy. As an adult, he becomes an ardent socialist and, in 1928, when his labour activism brings him to the attention of local fascists, he is threatened with violence, imprisonment, or worse. Thus, he decides to return to Glasgow.
The short poetic “Prologue” is the reminiscence of a child, Antonio, son of Vincenzo and his wife Filomena, and thus the third generation of the family, on the evening that the family left Italy in 1928. The first chapter, “Flight from the Mountain,” is an account of the family’s departure from the Cassino station. Filomena is a good mother agonizing over which children to take with them and which to leave behind. Vincenzo told his wife that they could only take two children, the two older boys, Antonio and Leni, and leave the other two, Gabriella and the tiny Raffaele, with his Aunt Emilia and Uncle Rinaldo.
Vincenzo is bitter about leaving. Pacitti writes: “He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Yes, you’d think the glorious new Italy would be only too pleased to get rid of a troublemaker like me. Pity Mussolini’s made emigration into a privilege for the select few. But don’t you worry.’ This in a tone that precluded future questioning. ‘We’ll be all right.’”
The individual stories are well-grounded in place, focussed around the clash between Italian fascists and socialists, each with their own vision of a powerful, united country: one based on ancient Roman roots and the other on the Marxist ideology of the rise of the working class. The “March on Rome” in 1922 had brought Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader to power.
Vincenzo is hot-headed and alienates friends and neighbours in Glasgow upon his return. While he finds refuge there (he told the consular agent on their arrival that he was born in Glasgow but he is not believed), he does not find a home. He rejects British capitalism, while the family experiences discrimination, though not all those who went before them lived in misery. Men found work in the trades, and women were occupied as seamstresses and washerwomen, eking out a living. As Pacitti describes, some even prospered through the establishment of restaurants and ice cream parlours.
Vincenzo’s son Antonio, the artist who is named for his grandfather, comes of age in working class Glasgow but, as an adult, is viewed with suspicion by the authorities who had been monitoring the activities of the local Fascio. On Italy’s declaration of war in June 1940, Italians associated with the Fascio were quickly arrested and some were interned. Antonio, who is of military age, ends up fighting in the British Army. Ironically, during the war he finds himself in the bitter campaign at Monte Cassino in the family’s home province.
Meanwhile, his sister Gabriella, embittered by being left behind, comes of age in Italy and is envious of the success of fascist families. At a rally in 1935 in support of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia, she finds herself shouting: “And why does Britain stand in our way? Because it has an empire of its own, and is scared when we claim our colonies. Because it is a dying power, and fears the advance of our young virile nation, led by the Duce, our greatest leader since the heroes of Ancient Rome.” Gabriella admires the handsome fascist youth and is particularly drawn to Marcello, who she later entraps to elevate her standing. She is selfish and self-interested in her treatment of her aunt and uncle.
Inevitably, the reader is led to compare the discrimination experienced by the family in Glasgow with the oppression by fascist officialdom in the town and local economy that determines winners and losers, and later with the physical danger in the Nazi-occupied town. The monastery at Monte Cassino, on its prominent hilltop, becomes a centre of Allied-German clashes. The challenge to survive in Italy becomes a daily balancing act. Pacitti, who clearly has a thorough grounding in history, is masterful at recounting daily activities that involve walking a metaphorical tightrope to avoid offending, first, the ruling Fascists and, later, the occupying Germans. Meanwhile, Gabriella flees to her grandfather’s farm in the countryside with her lover Marcello, who is serving in the Italian army, when he hears that the Allies are coming. Lying in Marcello’s arms after love-making, Gabriella notes:
Out there in the darkness was the grape-laden valley drinking in the night coolness and beyond it, the enclosing range of mountains. She was hidden in the heart of Italy, at the very core of the landscape that Marcello loved. But the mountains would not keep her safe for long. The enemy were sweeping through Sicily. The Germans were poised to swoop down from the north. She could feel these two armies converging towards her, squeezing the unoccupied part of Italy smaller and smaller.
The Metropole Internment Camp on the Isle of Man, which housed British “enemy aliens,” is also mentioned. Boys, some as young as 16, were sent there at the start of war. Italian war prisoners captured in Italy were also brought here, bringing the total number of internees to about 4,000.
For the members of the Pacitti family, after all the trauma of the Second World War, there was reunification and moving forward. The author is also a champion of her husband Antonio’s art: she observes on her website: “After gaining the Gold Medal for Drawing as a schoolboy, [Antonio] was awarded a scholarship to the Glasgow School of Art, and later studied at the Slade in London. Through his powerfully expressive art, in which he experimented with different media and subjects, Pacitti explored the joy and the suffering of the human condition.”
There is no doubt that the family’s complex immigration history and suffering, both in Italy and the UK, through the Fascist regime and as enemy aliens in the Second World War, influenced Antonio Pacitti’s art.
Between Two States was originally published in Italian by Cosmo Iannone Editore (2020), translated by Laura Ferri, under the title Tra Due Paesi.
Adriana A. Davies has worked as a writer, editor, curator, fine and decorative arts specialist, and cultural executive director. She holds a PhD in Literature and was science editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia. She is a recipient of the Order of Canada. Her memoir, My Theatre of Memory: A Life in Words, was published by Guernica in 2023.
