ITALY: Fido

Deep, drifting snow stopped the bus on which Bricklayer Carlo Soriano usually rode home from work in Borgo San Lorenzo. As Carlo braced himself for a long trudge homeward to the tiny Apennine village of Luco on that chill evening about 17 years ago, there was at least one individual in worse straits than he—a small mongrel dog marooned on a ledge beneath a bridge crossing the icy torrent of Le Cale. Crossing the bridge, Carlo heard the dog’s whimpering, and clambered down to save it. From that moment on, Carlo and Fido, “the faithful “one,” were fast friends. On holidays they went hunting together, and on workdays Fido invariably escorted his master to the San Lorenzo bus and met him at the bus stop when he came home at night.

One night in December 1943, after an Allied bombing raid on German fortifications in San Lorenzo, Carlo failed to return. Fido waited all night under the bus parked in the square, and he went back to meet the bus again on the next night and the next and the next. Each night from then on, as 13 years passed, Fido met the bus from San Lorenzo and waited patiently under it for his master. The local butcher gave him meat and bones to support his vigil. Villagers greeted him with cheering words. Sometimes, on chilly nights, the bus company even permitted Fido to do his waiting inside, instead of under the bus. And each year, though hard pressed to support her own household, Carlo’s widow raised the money for Fido’s dog license.

Last week, despite the desperate straits of his own treasury, the mayor of Luco himself decreed that Fido should henceforth live tax-free as the only legally unlicensed dog in Italy. “He has set an example of fidelity to our village,” said his honor, “and deserves to be placed on the list of Luco’s honored citizens.”