ABSTRACT
My father and I walk together across the courtyard, eyeing his late Uncle Franco’s house as we approach. He is telling me the story of Franco’s improbable adventures during the war – except that those rocambolesque adventures did not take place in exotic battlefields or in the heat of gunfire up in the hills – it happened right there in that yard. I listen, amused, as Dad speaks with a tone that is imbued with a curious kind of pride about his uncle’s inventiveness. An almost Ulyssean cunning (I am thinking, sharpened by fear) led Uncle Franco to dodge the persistent, ominous German and Fascists’ drafts by constructing a bunker under the chicken coops in the yard. It is a story, my Dad says with a chuckle, that Uncle Franco was fond of telling over Sunday supper when Dad and my aunt visited. The story was told in the epic tone of a great exotic adventure a’ la Jules Verne. After the narration was over, Uncle would inevitably take them to the spot. Now I was being led to that same spot, a witness implicated in a bizarre, yet moving, postmemory of the conflict. Good old Uncle Franco.
