Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Pino Lella is a 17-year-old boy living in Milan, Italy in 1943. At night, he listens on his shortwave radio to news reports about Adolf Hitler sending troops and resources to fortify the boot of Italy against advancing Allied forces. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s Fascist dictator, is slowly losing power. These reports don’t seem to affect Pino’s daily life much, though. Pino is much more interested in “his three favorite subjects: girls and music and food” (7). Pino is “1.85 meters tall, seventy-five kilograms, long and gangly, with big hands and feet, hair that defied taming, and enough acne and awkwardness that none of the girls he’d asked to the movies had agreed to accompany him” (7-8). Pino walks around the piazza in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria Nascente with Carletto and Mimo, who joke with Pino about his inability to find a date for the movies. Together, they see a group of priests erecting spotlights outside of the Duomo. When Pino goes over to ask what they are doing, he meets Cardinal Schuster, a powerful cardinal in Milan. When Pino tells Cardinal Schuster his name, Schuster says he will remember it. Schuster tells Pino that they are putting up spotlights outside the Duomo so that when the citywide blackout begins that night, the bomber pilots will see the cathedral and “be so awed by its beauty that they choose to spare it” (10).