by Mark Helprin
The weather cleared as they crossed the Gulf of Taranto, and in the middle of the morning, as the sky became blue and the sea sparkled for the first time in days, Alessandro visited his prisoner.
"It was kind of you not to shatter the bone in my leg," Gianfranco di Rienzi said to him. "I'm so grateful that you shot me in the ass."
"I shot you in the rear of the thigh."
"That's the ass."
"I wasn't trying to miss the bone. I wasn't thinking about it one way or another."
"Thank you. I'm sure you'll enjoy my execution."
"Who says you'll be executed? You'll be tried. Maybe you'll do a few years and they'll let you go."
Gianfranco stared at Alessandro, who was kneeling on the deck in front of him.
"You think so?" he asked quietly.
"No."
"I don't think so either."
"What about your record?"
"I was a good soldier. I killed a lot of Germans. I also killed a military policeman."
Alessandro lifted his head.
"On the Via Cardano, in Pavia, in front of a hundred people, I shot him in the chest with my service pistol. I knew at that moment that I was dead, which is why I went to the volcano."
"Were you expecting us?"
"For five months."
"We weren't coming for you, we just made a sweep."
"I should have killed you."
"You tried."
Gianfranco smiled. "How did you make that jump? Are you a cockroach? Humans can't jump backward like that."
"Have you ever seen a bayonet coming at you?"
"I have."
"What did you do?"
"I shot."
"I jumped."
"If I could," Gianfranco said as the mist lifted off the sea in glittering silver, "I'd break the shackles and swim to Africa."
"You'd bleed to death in the water."
"I'd take the chance. Cut the chain." The other prisoners stopped talking.
Alessandro clearly would not cut any chain.
"Why not?"
"Then they'd shoot me."
"Come with us."
"To Africa? Even if I thought that you wouldn't bleed to death in the sea," Alessandro said, rising to his feet, "I wouldn't cut the shackles, because I want to return to my family."
"The army really has you by the balls," Gianfranco declared.
"The army has always had me by the balls," Alessandro answered. "Since the very first day, and I've always known it, but—you know what?—-we were wiped out in the Veneto, and I lived. I was lucky, and I'm going to stretch my luck."
"Look at me," Gianfranco commanded. "Look at me."
Alessandro did as he was told.
"I'm not going to be here very long. I'm almost relieved, but I'm agitated. I see things. I see clearly now." He paused, showing obvious satisfaction. "And you're not going to make it."
WHILE THE cattle boat rounded the headlands of Otranto and turned north, the prisoners on the starboard side saw an apparently limitless sea and did not know that the untouched beaches of southern Italy were merely a few hundred meters away, or that on the port side it was possible to watch the land move by as smoothly as if it had been on rails.
One of the prisoners, an emaciated, pop-eyed, insanely nervous bandsman who had been captured as he was washing his clothes, kept asking to see a priest.
"We have no priest," he was told. "This isn't a battleship."
Then he would ask someone else exactly the same question—"May I see a priest?"
"Why do you want a priest?" Gianfranco asked.
"To help me face death calmly."
"And what if you don't face it calmly?"
"My insides," the bandsman answered, "would go crazy."
"So?"
"I might lose control of my sphincter. I don't like to do that. Do you?"
"I don't know what sphincter you mean, but it doesn't matter, because it would be over in an instant."
The bandsman looked at Gianfranco as if Gianfranco himself were the firing squad.
"And then you'd find out about the other side. If it was nothing, well, what a disappointment, but you wouldn't know it. If it was something, it would be like being shot out of a cannon."
"I've never been shot out of a cannon, but I always wondered what it would be like to be dead," the bandsman said sarcastically.
"You see," Gianfranco told him, "now you'll find out."
"You're not scared?"
"I'm scared to death, but I'm risking that there's another side."
Alessandro and Guariglia had been listening from the narrow deck above. "Why?" Alessandro asked.
Gianfranco looked up. "You, you go fuck yourself," he said. "All my life I've known about the other side, in a thousand ways, but I'm not sure, I'm merely taking the chance. Soon, thanks to you, I'll be in front of a firing squad. When they pull their triggers, I'm going to fly."
Alessandro slipped through the rails and dropped to the prisoners' deck. Guariglia followed on the stairs.
"Is that what happened to the military policeman in Pavia?" Alessandro asked. "Did he exit into a realm of joy? Or was it just over—frozen, finished, dark. I would like to know what it was like for him when your bullet smashed into his chest and stopped his heart. Did the blood backing up and bursting out of him do it? Was that how he was propelled into joy?"
"I hope so," Gianfranco answered, "because if its true, I'll be just as happy, and if it isn't, I'll be just as still."
"I remain curious," Alessandro insisted. "You said you knew in a thousand ways. Tell me just one."
"I can't tell you. It comes like a spirit."
"I know it comes like a spirit, goddamn you," Alessandro said. "Look over there," he told the prisoners, motioning at the horizon. "All you can see is blue water. To the north, east, and south, an empty horizon. Tell me, what's on the other side?"
"The same thing," a prisoner answered.
"No," Guariglia said. "We follow the coast. Because we have a flat bottom, we can stay in the shallows to evade submarines. From the port side you can see the beach, you can see every shell, you can even smell the trees, and on the other side you can hardly hear anyone talk, because of the sound of the surf. The smoke from fires in the fields smokes your clothes; you see birds darting about; the mountains are close, and in the Gargano they rise very high."
"Bring us over to that side," Gianfranco said.
AFTER THEY came around the Gargano, where the steep mountains and rich forests looked like a paradise, they turned into a steady north wind that made the Adriatic a choppy road. Even after the heights of Aetna, the breeze seemed cool, for it had been born on the glaciers and icy summits of the Alps. Though the sea was like a washboard, and progress upon it was both nauseating and cold, the acerbic smoke from the engines of the cattle boat was slicked back from the funnel like the hair of a pilot in an open cockpit, and it no longer tangled over the decks in crosswinds, tormenting the condemned and their captors alike.
They had an excellent dinner, by army standards—cheese, tomatoes, red wine, and freshly baked bread. The sight of the land gliding by and slipping off to the south comforted the prisoners as if everything they saw were being added irrevocably to their accounts.
They thought that the hills in the distance and the shadows before them, the feathery lines of fire in the fields, the moon, and the mysterious and beguiling songbirds that rose from thickets and trees, and hovered like black sunlight, would stay with them forever.
The wind swept through the rigging and the iron rails, the surf was as busy as if it were anticipating a miracle, and the mass of dark air above them was at first blank and then brilliant as the light of the stars collided and crossed.
They forgot everything they had ever been told, they shed their opinions, they abandoned their expectations. The River Guard withdrew from them because the prisoners were on their way, soon to leave the world, and had no more need for pity or understanding.
; Although Alessandro wanted to know about Berta of the Sistine Chapel postcard, and what Gianfranco di Rienzi had done before the war, he was content to rely upon imagined answers rather than interrupt the peace that descended hour by hour as the cattle boat pushed through the wind.
"Why did you desert?" he had asked Gianfranco as they were still drifting in the Gulf of Taranto.
"I was tired of the army," Gianfranco answered. "I calculated that if I waited it out somewhere until after the war my chances would be as good or better than if I stayed in my brigade. We were advancing. Everyone was dying."
AS THEY approached the abbreviated lights of Pescara, they settled down for the night. Coastal towns were supposed to be darkened in fear of naval bombardment, but they never complied absolutely. The moon was floating over the crest of the hills, throbbing bright.
Soldiers spread out their blankets and packs. Rifles, bayonets, and other implements of war lay in between them, pointing at all angles. The River Guard had become so closely knit and efficient that they could do almost anything without orders. They could make and break camp, line up for an attack, receive an assault, embark upon a ship, scramble down the nets, all with astonishing speed and unspoken coordination. It took less than five minutes for them to bed down, after which they were completely silent.
Alessandro and Guariglia had laid their blankets on top of two adjoining hatches, apart from the sleeping troops, because they had the later guard. Knowing that they would have to wrest themselves from sleep in a few hours' time, they found it difficult to settle, and they took a little walk. On their way forward they passed the prisoners on the deck below. Leaning over the rail unobserved, they bent into the cream-colored moonlight and looked down. Not a single prisoner was asleep. They were all staring at the coast, their eyes flooded with the light reflected from the sea.
"Listen," Guariglia whispered to Alessandro. They heard something over the wind. As the breeze shifted now and then they could hear it better. Someone was chanting.
Moving his lips as his head bobbed up and down like a float on the waves, Gianfranco di Rienzi was repeating one word over and over: "Gloria, gloria, gloria, gloria..."
"I DON'T like him," Alessandro said to Guariglia as they lay on their blankets, heads propped up on knapsacks.
"Who said you have to like him?"
"With what I've been thinking, I'd better like him."
"Are you crazy?"
"Guariglia, I've killed many men, some of them no doubt a lot better than Gianfranco di Rienzi, but I've never delivered anyone to execution."
"You can't free him. There are two guards, around the clock. Even Fabio would shoot you."
"We have the detail at midnight."
"You're insane. If he escaped on our watch, they'd shoot us."
Alessandro smiled.
"He killed a military policeman, Alessandro, and how many times did he try to kill you?"
"Twice."
"Isn't that enough?"
"No, it isn't," Alessandro said.
"You miss it."
"I do." Alessandro rolled over and went to sleep. Guariglia looked after him for a while, and when he was satisfied that Alessandro was sleeping, said his customary prayer, in which he begged God to allow him to see his wife and children one more time.
PAYING NO heed to the desires of the soldiers, the cattle boat moved forward. Whether they were hallucinatory deserters or responsible officers, it took no account of their deepest longings, and it did not credit their deeds. It just moved against the wind as its steady track ordered the many states of feeling to which it was cold.
Alessandro's face was bathed in bright moonlight the color of pearl, with grays, silver, and gold all beaming from it in a flash. The same light also shone on Guariglia, whose half-smiling face rested on a pillow made from a sweater. As Guariglia slept, Alessandro dreamed.
He was on the beach between Ostia and Anzio where he had gone so many times, in all seasons, where he first had learned to swim in the surf, riding on his father's back as they bobbed in the waves.
In the dream he was set down on the sand, close to the water. A hurricane wind was rising, and high clouds covered spots of blue like windblown gauze. Straight down the beach the air had the gray quality of fall, and the moment Alessandro was set down, it began to stir the sea into rising mountains of green and white as smooth and cool as aspic. The breakers were held high in the wind and they curled and revolved in contradictory fonts of air and rocking parabolas of foam.
From Ostia to Anzio the sea was drawn back in a high wall of water. At first Alessandro feared that with the weakening of whatever held back its invisibly buttressed mass, it would collapse and cover the plain of the Tiber. Physics decreed something like falling, and yet the hills of surf, with their own valleys, peaks, and plateaux, confounded his expectations.
When he opened his eyes he saw the tremendous lighted globe of the moon.
"Guariglia," he said, turning over to call to his friend. "Guariglia."
Guariglia awakened.
"What time is it?"
Guariglia looked at his watch. "Eleven-thirty. You woke me up to ask what time it is?"
"Who's guarding now?"
"Fabio and Imperatore."
"Let's relieve them early."
Guariglia looked at Alessandro, and then glanced over the deck to the water and beyond. "Why?" he asked, but he already knew. Rome lay directly across the Apennines.
GUARIGLIA TRADED never knowing what might become of him for the one sweet certainty that would mean his death. Like Alessandro, he decided to go home even if it meant walking across the mountains, even if it were the last thing he would ever do.
Although Alessandros chances of remaining alive were probably neither better nor worse in the line than in trying to keep ahead of the military police, he was pulled to Rome by what he loved. He thought of the trains rushing out of Tiburtina, their whistles shrieking; of pigeons the color of gray pearls whirling around the high domes, mixing with the pale blue sky; of the Tiber urgently overflowing its banks in heavy rain; of the silent streets and stairs that had learned their unexpected sympathy for mortal man by watching him for generation after generation; and of the thunderstorms that washed the city clean and left it sparkling and steaming in the sun. He wanted to return to his family.
Instead of putting on their boots, he and Guariglia quietly joined the laces, and hung them over their shoulders.
Every infantry unit had heavy wire cutters. With a little extra pressure, these could be made to snap manacles and leg irons. One did not have to be a mechanic to know it. The wire cutters were kept in a wooden crate with the signaling equipment and the battle flags, but when Alessandro and Guariglia reached the crate, they saw that the open latch was swaying with the mild roll of the ship, and the wire cutters had been removed.
They descended to the main deck, moving in a strange and stilted gait because they were not used to walking with their boots off. Someone was standing at the rail where the prisoners had been chained to the deck. They thought it was Fabio, but as they got closer they realized that it was the bandsman. He was staring at the mountains and the shore, his manacles and leg irons cut away from him.
The spot on deck where Gianfranco had been transformed into a not entirely pure beatitude was empty, as were all the others.
"I can't swim," the bandsman stated, as if he were discussing his rejection from a military unit.
"Where are they?" Alessandro asked, though he knew.
The bandsman gestured toward the mountains.
"Where's Fabio?"
"Who's Fabio?"
"The one who was guarding you."
"The waiter?"
"Yes."
"He cut the chains," the bandsman said. "He went over the side with the others."
"All the prisoners?" Guariglia asked.
"Everybody," the bandsman replied.
"What do you mean, everybody?"
"Everyone."
"T
he prisoners."
"Everyone. If you don't believe me, go look. Don't you know what happened? Someone killed your colonel."
"Gianfranco?"
"Fabio cut the chains, the waiter."
"He killed the colonel?"
"I don't know."
They rushed up the companionway, and then recoiled. The colonel was sprawled across the deck, his throat cut. The line of the cut was thick and maroon-colored, and the deck was sticky with blood. They ran to the next deck, where blankets were spread as if invisible men were lying on them.
They returned to the bandsman. "I can't swim," he said, "and they're going to have to shoot somebody. That's why I left in the first place," he added, laughing. "Everyone was being shot, and I didn't want to be. But I've changed my mind. I can't avoid it, can I? I might as well finish it."
"Use a life preserver."
"There aren't any. It doesn't matter, anyway. They'd catch me. I know they'd catch me. You caught me, didn't you?"
As the boat continued ahead, they looked at the bandsman. The cold light accentuated his bird-like features, and they thought that if the world were just, he would be surprised and rewarded, and that merely by moving his arms gently back and forth he would fly like a bird over the mountains and into the moonlight.
"You can swim," Alessandro said to Guariglia yet again. Somehow, solely because of the way that Guariglia looked, Alessandro never believed that he could swim.
Guariglia looked back in disgust. "How do you think I got to that island and back?"
"I wanted to make sure."
"Alessandro," Guariglia asked dryly, "do you think I'm too ugly to know how to swim?"
"That has nothing to do with it."
