Antonio Di Landro

The twenty-third of March, 1912

He was born on the twenty-third of March 1912, and that is the furthest back this record reaches.

Two years before the first war. Thirty before the second. Italy was eleven years into a century it would spend badly. He would have been of an age to be called up for one war and to have sons of an age for the other, and whether either of those things happened to him is not written anywhere.

One hundred and fourteen years, one line

From him to me is four generations and a hundred and fourteen years — and the entire surviving record of the man is nine words long.

That is not a scandal. It is the ordinary rate at which families forget: roughly one generation of detail per generation of distance, until what is left is a name, a year, and a position on a diagram. He is what the process looks like when it has run to completion.

He is the far end of this book. There is nothing above him and, at this rate, there was never going to be.

What is left

He had a daughter, Amalia's daughter, Gelsomina, born in Maiori in 1944 — my grandmother. Through her the line runs to my mother and then to me, which means that every word on this website is, at four removes, downstream of a man about whom nine words survive.

I do not find that depressing. I find it a reason to write things down.