The purest, truest courage is that which "moves" silently, driven by spontaneity and generosity. It is a courage that springs naturally from the soul and unfolds in everyday gestures and feelings such as loyalty, respect, and care. Emilio Jona 's latest work, Quattro donne (Neri Pozza, 2026, 144 pp., also available as an e-book), demonstrates this.
The book begins in 1943, when the members of the Jona family realize that the semblance of normality they've tried to maintain is putting them in danger. They decide to go underground, but they can't do it alone. Trust can be fatal, and the Jona family can only count on a handful of people. Four women will demonstrate such loyalty and courage that their memory will last forever.
Cecilia has come from the Veneto region to care for the youngest child in the family, Cianino. For her, that job is life, but she has grown fond of the putel, as she calls him, as if he were her own son. And she behaves like a mother, lying and dissimulating to keep him safe. Teresa, a housewife, and her husband Fiorenzo, a literature professor, are Giulio's saviors, hiding him in their modest but cheerful home. For the child, the days spent with them are happy in a time of tragic abandonment, until an informer ruins everything. Marì, with her candid gaze and firm voice, for her part takes care of Emilio. She hides him in the mountains, revealing little about herself, except her childhood in Brazil, which continued in that rugged, remote valley she so closely resembles. Last but not least, Delfina, an employee at lawyer Jona's office, takes on the burden of that scattered family on her young shoulders and weaves the threads of distant loved ones and binds them firmly to her own existence.
Four Women is both an ethical and lyrical hymn in which private events – those of the author's family during the last war – become a universal tale.
We asked Emilio Jona why only now, so many years after the events he described, he decided to put them on paper:
Cesare Pavese said that true wonder is made of memory. And for me it was indeed so: a closed circle in time between these two words. I translated the echoes of the world of my adolescence very early, almost contextually with their succession, in the 1950s, with a collection of poems, Tempo di vivere, in the prestigious Mondadori series Lo Specchio, and in prose in a novel, Inverni alti, into a crucial experience of my life. And I returned to it today, in my later years, to tell a different story of that time, the darkest in the history of our country, through the voices of four women (and one man) who saved my family from the death sentence decreed for them by the Nazis and Fascists. It was therefore first and foremost a moral duty and the sense of guilt for having neglected them for seventy years that drove me to celebrate them and tell their story. The reconstruction of their lives originally took place through testimonies and documents that served to welcome them among the righteous of the nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. And then I built the novel on them and on my personal memory."
What unites the four protagonists of the book?
"First of all, their being female, in a still predominantly male-dominated era, when they were destined to care for, preserve, protect, and procreate, but also to be on the side of life rather than the then-prevalent death. They are all relatively ordinary, religious women, but all, each for different reasons, endowed with great courage and strong empathy."
How do these women view war and the violence that at times threatens to overwhelm everything?
«They consciously but naturally opposed the ruthless laws that governed that war, taking mortal risks, because, if they had been discovered, they would have been put to death along with the people they had hidden and protected».
What lessons can we draw from events like those recounted in your book?
If I had to find a moral from this story, even if it's not strictly necessary, I would find it in the celebration of solidarity and empathy, in a time that was dark and evil. An ancient midrash of Jewish wisdom says that in the world, in every generation, there are 36 righteous people who remain unknown, but they are the ones who support and save it. If that were the case, Cecilia, Teresa and Fiorenzo, Marì, and Delfina would be among them.
Is there one of the four events that you are most personally attached to?
As for the person I feel closest to, I'm completely unsure, because I've had a close relationship with all of them in the two years I've dedicated to them. If I were forced to choose, I'd choose Delfina, with whom I've had the fullest, richest, and most lasting encounter. Delfina was the dominant figure, essential to the survival of the Jona family. She was meticulous and healthily narcissistic in her dress and personal care, she had a soft and sensual affectivity, a secret, vaguely heretical religiosity, and, most importantly, she had entered into the dreams of my twenties and the depths of my father's final years.
