Blood on the Cobblestones

Antonio Pallante was no workaday, hireling killer; he belonged to the fevered race of political assassins who act alone. In solitude, Antonio Pallante nursed an obsession. The target of his hatred and his plans was suave, astute Palmiro Togliatti, boss of Italy's Communist Party.

A swarthy, black-haired law student of 25, Antonio Pallante lived in Catania in Sicily, an ancient hotbed of violence. Communism, he decided, was the enemy of Italy, and Togliatti was the head and heart of Italian Communism. "I could not bear the thought that he, an Italian, attended meetings of the Cominform," explained Pallante later. Being obsessed, he did not realize that Communism would exploit the martyrdom of Togliatti.

Pallante got some money from his father, a retired forester, saying that he needed it for examination fees at the University of Catania. For 3,500 lire (about $6) he bought a .38 pistol and five cartridges. Then he took a train to Rome, and there rented a room in a cheap boardinghouse. He went to the Monte Citorio Palace, where Italy's Parliament meets, and asked for a visitor's card from a Sicilian delegate, Francisco Turnaturi. (Later Turnaturi denied that he knew Pallante. "When he insisted he came from Randazzo, a place where I had many votes, I did what we all might have done; I gave him a card," explained the deputy.)

"Worst Possible Thing." One morning last week, while a hot sun beat down on Rome for the first time in weeks, Pallante sat in the visitors' gallery and watched Palmiro Togliatti. After a while the Sicilian went outside and lurked in the narrow, cobblestoned Via della Missione. Shortly before noon, he saw his prey coming out-- Togliatti and Leonilda Iotti, full-bosomed, warm-eyed secretary to the Red parliamentary bloc. Togliatti & friend were bound for a gelateria and a cooling dish of ice cream. They paid no heed to the young man in the ill-fitting blue suit.

When Togliatti had walked a few steps past him, the assassin whipped out his pistol and fired twice. Togliatti fell. Signorina lotti bent over him. Two chauffeurs tried to seize Pallante. He waved them back with his gun and calmly pumped two more bullets into Togliatti before police seized him. Blood soaked through Togliatti's grey double-breasted suit and made small, neat pools on the cobblestones. In the hot sun the blood soon dried. (The spot where he fell was only two blocks from where he had narrowly missed death 25 years ago, when Fascist police stood him against a wall to be executed; he escaped when the executioner lost his nerve.) Two bullets had pierced Togliatti's right lung, a third had struck him in the neck. He was able to mumble a question: he asked if his briefcase was safe. It was. He was taken to the Policlinico, Rome's largest hospital and the only one not affected by a slowdown strike of doctors, nurses and attendants which had begun that morning as a protest against low wages. One of Italy's most famous surgeons. Dr. Pietro Valdoni. worked over Togliatti for 2 1/2 hours while Signorina Iotti and Togliatti's wife, white-haired Rita Montagna, stood in the doorway. Togliatti's Socialist ally, Pietro Nenni. wandered aimlessly about the corridors. Premier Alcide de Gasperi, his face greyer than usual, hurried to the Policlinico. "This," he said grimly as he left, "is the worst possible thing that could have happened."

"Considerable & Crushing." De Gasperi sensed the gathering storm. Since the crushing defeat in the April 18 elections. Italy's Communists had been restively quiet. The row between Yugoslavia's Tito and the Cominform had shaken the Italian Communist Party to the roots.

The Party still had its machinery of civil war, prepared long ago. Although the cogs were rusting, the Communist leaders shielded it against the day when they could use it. News of Togliatti's shooting reached the Italian Senate to interrupt a violent harangue by Communist Umberto ("The Brain") Terracini against a government plan to speed up the collection of arms from private organizations, including the Communists.

Within two hours after Togliatti was shot, the machinery of insurrection clanked and rumbled into action as if the control lever had been accidentally jarred. The Red press screamed "Murderers!" at the government. In Rome a mob of sweating, cursing workers hurled cobblestones at grey-clad mobile police, who fired into the air and swung their clubs in earnest. The mobs that poured into the streets frightened the elegant aristocracy and the free-spending tourists in the Via Vittorio Veneto; these gentry, knowing they might be targets for Communist vengeance, retreated to their select caverns of safety, the cool bars of the Excelsior and Ambasciatori Hotels. There waiters whisked tables and chairs from the sidewalk cafes and clanged down the corrugated iron shutters, which did not come up again for two days. In the Excelsior bar an American matron twittered: "Oh, I saw it all--rocks flying and sticks coming down on heads, bang--bang--bang. It was so exciting!" A spade-bearded Italian gentleman, ordering another vermouth and ice, said: "This would never have happened in the old days."

All over the Red north, riots flared. North-south railroads were dynamited in four places. In Genoa, workers joined forces with armed ex-partisans, took several carabinieri prisoners, captured armored cars, posted guns on rooftops, seized the power plant and plunged the city into darkness. In Turin, 30 industrial executives were held as hostages. In Abbadia San Salvatore, in Tuscany, two regiments of government artillery were required to repel workers attacking the nation's main telephone center. At week's end 20 police and rioters were dead and more than 200 were injured.

In Parliament Red deputies, screaming invective, blamed the government for complicity in the attack on Togliatti. But Premier de Gasperi and his tough little Interior Minister, Mario Scelba, stood their ground. Said Scelba (who, like Assassin Pallante, is a Sicilian): "It becomes the state's duty to use the whole of its force, which is considerable and can be crushing, to guarantee the liberty of all citizens."

Back to Work. To the government's firmness was added the fact that most Italians simply did not believe that De Gasperi's government was implicated in Pallante's stupid crime. In a message from Moscow, where the protection of bigwigs is a highly developed science, Premier Stalin rebuked his Italian satraps for not taking better care of Togliatti. Crestfallen, they responded with an article in L'Unita promising to purge themselves of "the timid, the opportunists, the dishonest and the provocateurs." They also disclosed that party membership had dropped by 50,000 (to 2,200,000) in the past year.

The Red leaders called a general strike which fizzled. When he knew that he was beaten in the effort to make a revolution out of the attack on Togliatti, Communist Labor Boss Giuseppe di Vittorio rose in the Assembly to announce that the Labor Federation had called off the general strike. Interrupted a Christian Democrat: "Because it failed." Crimson with rage, Di Vittorio screamed: "Why do you laugh? What is there to laugh at?" Bedlam broke loose in the Assembly. While a line of ushers kept them from getting at each other, Christian Democrats and Communists hurled pencils and pens at each other and screamed curses. When quiet was restored, De Gasperi, as usual, had the last word. He expressed his fervent hope for Togliatti's recovery and then said: "I can give assurance that the government's conduct in the near future will be based not only on comprehension and political wisdom but also on energy which a self-respecting government cannot do without. I didn't follow the example of the present Czechoslovakian Prime Minister and chairman of the Labor Federation who pronounced himself against any form of strike as soon as he came into power; I am not thinking of doing so even in the future. But besides the liberty of trade unions, there is an urgent need for work and political order."

De Gasperi flung a final taunt at Di Vittorio, who sat sullenly near the empty chair of Togliatti: "Before the Confederation of Labor decided to resume work, the conscience of the majority of the workers had already called off the strike." This was a telling shaft; even before the strike officially expired (Thursday midnight), workers were returning to factories here & there, shops were pulling up their shutters, and the brightly dressed creatures of Via Veneto were emerging once more from their palatial hideouts.

The government prepared a speedy trial for Assassin Pallante, jailed in Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) prison. In the Policlinico, 55-year-old Togliatti contracted pneumonia, but after massive doses of penicillin (from the U.S.) he felt well enough to ask for a newspaper. He wanted to know how Italy's star rider was doing in France's cross-country bicycle race, the Tour de France.

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