Man, he had to stop this swearing; it was coming like vomit. From other pits and gullies, shadows of men were emerging. Frank could see a couple of stretcher bearers silhouetted.
‘Somebody, help!’
They were on the other side of the river. All the ones who were moving. On the goddam other side. The boy slumped heavier on him, a damp and desperate weight. Frank had two choices. Stay here and hope someone risked coming back for them, or try to wade across. He took a breath. Could make out another man, still in the water, but nearly at the northern bank. Looked waist-deep, no more. Forward, then. Forward was always better than back.
‘Sorry, man. We’re going for a swim.’
Shuffling towards the river. Hard to make out where land finished and the water began. Footstep. Heartbeat. Double heartbeat, the boy’s echoing through his, and a spreading density of heat with it, liquid heat with a metallic smell. Poor bastard. Frank’s boots slipped beneath him, plunging through mud, and the river found them. He felt the boy’s groan, tried to stop them both from sliding out of control. After the first suck of mud, the riverbed became stony, and he was able to get his balance, pick his way forward. The current nudged but didn’t push too hard. Knees, thighs, waist immersed. Chill water, soaking up his olive drab, dragging the boy’s legs away from him.
‘Hey! We need some help here!’
Another soldier, the one who’d just reached the rising bank, looked round. Rest of the guys had disappeared from view. If there were still Jerries lurking, Frank was a floating target. The other soldier slid back into the river. Splashed up beside Frank, took one of the kid’s arms over his shoulder.
‘OK? Let him slip. I got his other side.’ Together, they waded to the northern bank. Frank scrambled out first, pulled the kid’s arms as the other soldier shoved him from below. They got him close to where the stretcher bearers were working on a pile of heaped, soft forms; you couldn’t be sure where one body ended and the next began. The stink of cordite was everywhere, and underneath it, burnt earth and blood.
‘Can you help this soldier? He’s in a real bad way.’
A medic grunted. ‘Put him down there, beside the others.’
They laid him on the dirt. The kid had stopped mewling now; he’d gone beyond the pain. But he was still clinging on, Frank reckoned.
‘You got morphine? Can you give him some morphine, please? Or can I?’
‘Come on,’ said the other soldier who’d been helping him. It was that injun, Comanche. You could tell by the feather in his helmet. ‘They know what they’re doing.’
‘Hey, man. Thanks. For coming back, I mean.’
Comanche shrugged. ‘How come you didn’t leave him? You’d’ve got over fine on your own.’ He was leading Frank away, into a thicket of trees. ‘Up here. Sergeant’s up ahead. Cigarette?’
‘I don’t. . .’ Frank took one anyway. He might as well; they issued them with their rations. Non-edible essentials: smokes, gum and toilet paper. Frank had been trading his cigarettes for extra crackers. Tonight would be a night of firsts. First combat. First rescue. First Lucky Strike. Still, he hesitated. ‘Are we not meant to. . . I mean, the tip. Jerry’ll see the glow.’
‘Jesus, Chapel. I think the motherfuckers found us already. Light?’
Frank tried to hold the cigarette steady as Comanche leaned in, but his hands were so alive they were definitely someone else’s. The unlit cigarette fell to earth.
‘Sorry. I’m just. . . It’s cold.’
‘Keep moving then. You’ll be dry by sun-up.’
They found the rest of their squad resting under a broad-leaved tree. A dozen men in each squad. Four squads to a platoon, four platoons to a company. There was a mathematical neatness to the divisions, men being quartered and quartered until they were part of the dry dust too.
‘What kept you lazy fuckers, huh?’ Their sergeant, a six-foot mass named Bear, was enjoying a fat cigar. He puffed at it like a movie star. Frank had never had sex and he’d never had a cigarette, but he knew that’s what you did, afterwards. Bear had that same satisfied languor about him.
‘You been swimming lengthways ’stead of ’cross?’
The sergeant’s real name was McClung, James T. McClung. To them all, he was simply ‘Bear’. He’d earned his name not for bravery, but on account of the fact that mornings were not his best time. Bear with a shitting sore head, that’s me. I give you fair warning, boys. They knew not to speak to him before he’d had two cups of joe and his first Cuban.
Bear blew a lazy smoke ring at the moon. ‘You got five minutes to shit, piss, shake down, patch up. Then we move on. We got mountains to climb, my sunny band of brothers. A literal fucking mountain.’ He made another ring. ‘You know, I’m thinking ’bout switching to Toscanos. When in Rome an’ all. They ferment the tobacco. You boys find any left behind, you let me know, OK?’
‘Yes sarge.’
‘Yes sarge.’
‘Sarge,’ said Luiz. ‘What happened there? How comes we got hit? I thought we was clear to get across.’
‘What happened? War happened, little man. The dregs of war. Don’t worry – we got the fuckers now. All of them. You have my word. From here on in, there will be no more nasty Bosch popping up to give my poo’ children nightmares. Mama Bear promises. Cross heart and hope to die.’
‘It’s just—’
‘Is just shit-all to do with you, amigo. You go where I tell you and you do what you are trained to do. And you is not trained to think, Garcia. That is my job.’
‘Yes, sergeant.’
‘Now shift your sorry asses and let’s get this show on the road.’
The squad began to lift up their packs and rifles.
‘Yo. Chapel.’
‘Sarge?’
‘Well done back there. With Ellington.’
‘Ellington?’
‘The half-head you dragged out the river. Now go get your feet dried and replenish your sulpha powder.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
Frank’s boots hissed as he walked, like the current was sucking down on them still. He watched Luiz slap Claude’s ass, watched the confusion as Claude turned to see who done that, Luiz knocking off Claude’s doughboy, the helmet spinning like a turtle in the dirt. Thank God they’d to keep moving. He didn’t think he could bear to stop. It was why they relished the drilling, the marching, relished the mindlessness of it, and the mild, collegiate hysteria, because if you powered on and on and you went to sleep punch-drunk and you woke up to order, then you didn’t have to think about what was real. About the mess on your shirt drying hard.
Chapter Five
‘We saw your Giuseppe earlier.’
The nuns eschewed all forms of ornamentation, yet Sister Agatha was allowed to hoard a collection of owls – glass ones, wooden ones, this chunky ceramic effort all the way from Assisi.
‘That’s nice.’ Vita moistened her lips. Jabbed the duster into the corners of the highest shelf, skiting the tip with a too-heavy hand, so it set all the trinkets jangling.
‘Yes. Lurking by Via Mura. Looked like he’d been sleeping in the woods. Is he ill?’ Sister Agatha did a little cough of concern. ‘Should we give him some clothes from the charity box?’
Vita steadied her breath. ‘Did you speak to him?’
‘No. I thought he was a tramp.’
Vita continued her assault on the bookcase. Next, she would rub beeswax into the wood, buff it to a shine. Move books she yearned to read. Dust lightly. Return. Turn her attention to the refectory table. Dust. Rub. Repeat.
‘You missed a bit. Devora always used to start at the top.’
‘Did she?’
A dash of light-dark-light at the top of the stairs. More sisters sailed past like holy penguins. Hands inside their sleeves, heads at a modest incline. Dark ring of footsteps, smell of polish rising, so thick she could taste the yellow paste in the back of her throat.
‘Oh, there’s Sister Cristina. I’ll ask her. It really is a shame your mamma can’t
help—’
‘My mamma helps many people.’
‘Yes. I suppose. But Giuseppe is a Guidi, no?’
Vita beat her duster into the furthest reaches of the ceiling, dislodging a spume of cobweb. ‘Careful, Sister. Might get dirty.’
‘You know, you were a much better student than you are a housekeeper, Vittoria.’
Off she went, focused on her next errand of mercy. Vita twisted her wrist to capture all the threads. Flicked the duster again; watched a tawny owl take flight, begin its long, slow dive to oblivion. It looked so free as it was falling, so she watched it fall, continued to watch it, all the way from shelf to floorboard, where it bounced gracefully, once, and split in three.
At least he was alive. Something unknotted inside her. It always did, when Joe returned. Joe, who was not hers at all. She no longer knew what to feel. Relief – and something close to fury. She hadn’t seen him in over a month. He appeared rarely at the Biondis’, would vanish for weeks and weeks at a time and didn’t feel the need to tell anyone. Has your Giuseppe enlisted? folk would ask. What could she reply? It was a brutta figura; what Joe would have called ‘a redneck’.
As the months went by, she noticed she was caring less.
When he’d first come to Barga, it had felt like the horizon unfolding. Joe, bringing a momentary, mad lurch of optimism, and options. So, Vittoria, would you like to be a teacher or a bride? Please your mother or your father? Maybe you don’t know what you want until it’s taken away. Now she had neither, she was confused about what she missed the most. And she was tired. Really tired.
She lifted her bucket of cloths and brushes, dragging the broom behind. This wasn’t even the Canonica. Vita was supposed to be the Monsignor’s housekeeper, but he hawked her out to the nuns. My needs are frugal, he would say. Then he’d add extra requirements to her list of duties, then offer her up to the nuns. At least there were no pupils. She kicked the broken owl under the bookcase. School had been suspended, and if it were to restart, she would refuse to come here. She would not look the Monsignor in the eye, for he terrified her, but she would draw herself tall and say no all the same. Imagine emptying waste bins as her classmates recited poems.
Polishing done, Vita went outside, the cool dark of wood and marble blasted by brilliant sun. She took off her headscarf, stood on the steps, letting light soak her skin. There was a faint, sweetish odour inside the Conservatorio, which all the polish in the world could not erase. It smelled of cloistered lives.
From here, she could see the ochre walls of the Canonica, and the Duomo that rose beyond. The square bell tower sat like a giant chimney on the roof. Overshadowing eveything was Barga’s walls. Huge walls, a magnificent canvas of grey stone shining dark to light, lovely greenish light that grew from moss and the reflected glow of trees. The walls wrapped the town, soared round the cobbled approach to the Duomo, dominating and demanding that you look up, and be in awe.
Vita glanced at her wool stockings, her shapeless smock. Half a year of being a skivvy. Papà had promised her it was temporary. This was Vita’s war work. Most girls she knew were in the same position. She could have been milking cows or mopping blood. The Pieri girls were off training to be nurses. Giulia was working in a munitions factory on the coast. Vita flexed raw knuckles. At least she was bringing some money home – and a tiny bit of status. Not the respect due a teacher, but being the Monsignor’s housekeeper did get you served first in shops. And conferred on you a kind of holy insight. Often, folk would ask: What does the Monsignor think? Even Renata sought her opinion.
Life carried on. There had been no great invasion. Only this long-held breath. Every day, more people cascaded into church. Standing room only in the Duomo. The Monsignor brought in extra altar boys; Communion was a perpetual crush. Don Sabatini at Tiglio had run out of wafers, and the sisters were skittish as they rinsed goblets and laundered linen cloths. Either the wily old Church knew just when to trickle into the fissures – more than possible, given it had survived so long – or it was the opposite, and it was the people who were seeping back to the bedrock of their faith. Desperate to be told what they should do. Vita understood this. She, too, would stand in the rear of the chapel, close her eyes and let the smell of cabbage be replaced by incense. The hum of bodies, the chants of her childhood, of beyond that, all pressed together in unseen layers. You went in exhausted and lonely, you came out safe. Like gelato, God made you feel better. Maybe Mussolini would ban Him next.
Raised voices. At the foot of the steps, two women were arguing.
‘Il Duce will repel them.’
‘Are you stupid? The americani are coming to help. The King is winning!’
Was he? News to Vita. People had been yabbering back and forth like this since the Allies took Rome a few weeks ago. Invaded it? Liberated? That depended if you listened to your mother or your father, and then your head swam, until it was simpler to listen to neither.
‘Me ne frego.’ She recognised the woman speaking: Signora Nardini, a friend of her mother’s.
‘You watch your mouth.’
The women began to grapple. ‘You don’t give a damn?’ The other woman was pulling at Signora Nardini’s dress. ‘Fine. Off with the bug!’
A silver lapel pin hit Vita’s foot; a bundle of sticks, crossed with an axe. She retrieved it. ‘For shame, ladies. Should I fetch Mother Virginia?’
The other woman spat on the ground, walked off. Signora Nardini snatched up her brooch. ‘Tell your mother we haven’t seen her at the Massaie Rurali for a while, Vittoria. Her presence has been missed.’
‘I will, signora. And will I ask the Monsignor to expect you at Confession?’
The signora spread her fingers as if she might lash out, then struck her hand against her own thigh. ‘You. You Guidis think you are so special.’
‘Buonasera, signore.’ A soldier passed, saluting them both. ‘Ciao, belle.’
Best to ignore the soldiers. It was hard to keep up with the different uniforms. Once more, all the men were being summoned – though this time it was the Republic calling, not the King. Boys from her childhood; going, going, gone. Some had found their way home from the front, only to be sent back in different uniforms to fight again. Like some giant maw was snuffling through the valley, scooping them up, leaves, twigs, truffles, boys, and it kept coming back and swallowing more. Didn’t matter that they marched off in glory. They were still swallowed whole. Vita had seen parts of the forest stripped by loggers until there was nothing left but stumps, and the plaintive calls of homeless birds, which turned to silence after a while. All the girls trapped here would become those birds. Poor Chiara from Sommo had already lost her sweetheart to this re-energised war. And yet Joe evaded it all.
‘Hey, bella!’ The man was calling after Signora Nardini. Must be drunk.
Vita turned away. The neat soldiers were usually fine. It was the bedraggled ones you’d to avoid; those you saw limping on the tracks above Catagnana. Pale, distant-looking men in part-uniform, flitting like spectres through the mountain passes. Mamma said they were deserters. Each haunted face, you wanted to help them. Last month, an older man had grabbed Vita with his filthy nails. Panicked, she’d given him the bread she was carrying, which only made him weep. After that, she didn’t go near any soldiers.
People were avoiding the mountains altogether if they could. Any crops that could be gathered early were being harvested or hidden. The air remained charged; small fires and thuds continued to happen, where bold men became subdued. Farmers, bolting their storehouses, tethering their beasts. It felt, every day, like a storm coming.
Yet still, nothing changed.
A skein of aeroplanes passed overhead. Off to bomb the bits of Italy they sought to free. She held her hand to the glowing sky. But never here. You’d look up as the squadrons shifted – always, thank God, to another place. Say a prayer, put your head down, eyes on where the next bag of flour was coming from. Folk had grown used to the drone of them. ‘Strafing’, though, tha
t was new. The Allies had started machine-gunning the rail tracks from Fornaci to Calavorno, taking potshots at Pisa. How was that liberation?
A clang came from the campanile. Then another. She closed her eyes, let the sound roll over her. Their bells had a lovely, buttery tumble to them. Whether you were in the valley or up in the mountains, it was the Duomo that called you home, marking time and blessings and death. The barghigiani were very proud of their bells. Right at the start of the war, the Comune tried to melt them down. They were cutting metal from railings, shutters, even copper milk-buckets, until the women threatened riots. When the three huge Duomo bells were earmarked too, the Monsignor called it an attack on God’s music. Folk raged, angry letters were sent and, ultimately, the bells were saved.
Four o’clock. She’d better shift. She was meeting old Sergio at ten-past.
As she stepped out, a stream of cars and trucks rattled by, full of Germans. A dark car scraped the edge of the building, barely slowing, Vita pushing her spine into the wall behind.
‘Porco zio! Slow down.’
The soldiers waved, but kept going, bumping up the ramp to the front of the Duomo. There were no tedeschi stationed here, but their visits had become more concentrated. Observers, planners, engineers. Official-looking personnel, who spent whole days on Barga’s bell towers.
‘What are they doing?’ she’d whispered to the Monsignor, that first time, when she was still curious.
‘Calculating the triangulation of the hills.’ He’d smiled. ‘No. I don’t know what that means either. But I suspect it is not good.’
‘Do we have to let them? It’s our Duomo.’
‘I’m rather afraid we do, my dear.’
The soldiers were especially interested in Vita’s own hills, in Monte Lama and the places beyond Catagnana. ‘Are we going to be attacked?’ she’d asked.
‘No, Vita. We will be fine. I hate to say this, but, to them, Barga is a backwater. We are just a little pawn. War might hit the mountains over the plains of Lucca, but it won’t come here.’
The Sound of the Hours Page 6
