Written in sparse, minimalist prose, Without Blood by the Italian writer Alessandro Baricco is a poignant short story exploring themes of morality, the vicious cycle of revenge and violence, and the destructive nature of war: its cruelty, savagery, and long-lasting legacy on the lives of its participants and survivors. Other themes include the existence of the individual within a chaotic, unfair, and brutal world, where the line between good and evil is often fluid and partially erased; the nature of truth; and how we tend to believe all the stories we hear and tell each other without further verification, as long as they fit into our own ideological understanding of the world. Baricco weaves a tale of profound complexity, with many layers of moral dilemmas and an exploration of the human condition.
Without Blood takes place in an unnamed country, during an unspecified period. One can deduce that the story begins shortly after a war, presumably in the aftermath of the Second World War, possibly in Italy or Spain after the Spanish Civil War, as a number of Spanish names are mentioned and the city of Santander appears within the text.
At the beginning of the story, we are transported to a farmhouse in the remote countryside, where a man, Manuel Roca, is hiding with his two young children. Three men arrive to kill Manuel Roca as an act of revenge. From their verbal exchange, the reader understands that Manuel Roca is a doctor who has been accused of committing war crimes similar to those committed by the fascists during WWII: torturing prisoners during the war and conducting experiments on them, including on the brother of one of the men who has come to kill him.
Manuel Roca is on the losing side of the war that has just ended. However, for the reader, all of this is merely hearsay. There is no evidence presented in the book of these crimes, nor is there any independent confirmation of Manuel Roca’s involvement in them. The three men kill him, as well as his young son, who tries to protect his father by pointing a gun at one of them.
The first question that comes to mind is whether revenge and extrajudicial killings can ever be justified. What about a young child protecting his father by pointing a gun at others? Where does the line of a moral dilemma lie?
Roca’s young daughter, Nina, survives the atrocity by hiding in the cellar, but she is able to hear and see the slaughter of her family from beneath the floor. The youngest of the men, Tito, is only twenty years old. He sees Manuel Roca’s daughter hiding in the cellar under a trapdoor. Nina’s life is spared when Tito, albeit accidentally, does not reveal her hiding place to the other men.
This one event sets in motion a cycle of vengeance by the survivor. As readers, we only witness the atrocity committed against Nina’s father and young brother. Everything else is merely hearsay, which is inherently unreliable.
More than fifty years after the killings, Nina tracks down Tito, the man who gunned down her father and brother, but also the man who saved her. From their conversation, we understand that although Nina managed to have a family of her own, she spent the later part of her life in a mental institution and was directly or indirectly involved in tracking down and killing the two other men who participated in the slaughter of her family.
Tito, now seventy-two years old, has expected Nina to come to him one day as well. Will she kill him too, in revenge? Does she seek revenge on the last killer, or has Nina sought Tito out in order to forgive him?
While sitting together in a café, looking like an elderly couple, Nina in her fifties and Tito in his seventies recall their lives, haunted by past events. Yet both are unreliable narrators, using unreliable sources to tell their stories. During their conversation, Tito justifies the atrocities of war as necessary to build a just society and eradicate poverty, which leads him to justify killings, including those of children, in the name of ideology, ideals, or a belief system.
Even though half a century has passed, as readers we are still not sure whether there will be more bloodshed. This reflects the vicious cycle of violence and the cruelty associated with the quest for vengeance. We only find the answer in the final sentences of the book, which offer a lesson of hope. Baricco presents the idea that violence breeds violence; in order to break this cycle, he imposes a Shakespearean moral dilemma on Tito and Nina: to kill or not to kill?
Without Blood portrays the predicament of an individual thrown into the savagery of war and shows how one singular traumatic event in a person’s life can have a profound impact on perpetrators, survivors, and bystanders for the remainder of their lives, as well as on future generations.
This is a very short book, just under ninety pages, which makes it a great read for those who have little time for reading. Yet its brevity does not diminish its impact. It explores moral choices, including forgiveness and memory, and asks how we remember our past and how easily we take for granted the information others feed us to justify their actions.
Baricco has created a compelling tale that serves as a reflection on the human condition and its complexity, emphasising that there are no easy answers when dealing with the savagery of war, the loss of loved ones, trauma, and grief.
I highly recommend this book to everyone.
1 Comment