by Greg McGee
When the shed seemed deserted for the last load of the morning, Joe assumed they’d all broken early for lunch. He was unbuckling the horse from its harness when he heard a low shriek from behind the stall. As he left the horse and went across to the shadows to investigate, he heard a slap, and then a laugh, a woman’s, and knew enough to back off and make some noise. By the time he led the horse over to the stall, one of the more attractive women was coming out, flushed and adjusting her blouse.
‘Scusami,’ she said, and hurried out of the shed.
Shortly afterwards Harry appeared. ‘You spooked her,’ he said. ‘She was coming along nicely.’
Joe wondered how that connection had been made. The locals and the prisoners were increasingly animated, particularly Arch with Don Antonio and the estate overseer and the friendly corporal, who’d helped Arch to translate ‘Lili Marlene’ into Italian, but Joe had never noticed Harry exchanging one word with the woman in the shed. During lunch in the shade of the chestnuts at the bottom of the argine, he watched carefully, but the woman’s eyes never met Harry’s, and Joe was none the wiser.
12
Harry’s dalliance was a sign that the prisoners were becoming strong enough to contemplate pursuits other than working and eating and sleeping. Some of these new activities made the guards anxious.
After Arch cleared it with the sergeant, they were allowed to go swimming in the Livenza at a spot where the argine flattened out to a kind of beach. But when the prisoners all rushed into the water, the corporal and two privates who’d taken them down there were extremely twitchy. The corporal told Arch they were sure some of the prisoners would drown, because not many Italians could swim.
That first time, as Joe floated on his back and looked out towards the mountains, he felt a bit as Arch had when they first arrived in the wagons on that beautiful Sunday. The Livenza reminded him of the Kakanui where it was confined by the limestone gorge, a deep purity of greens and blues, though much bigger and with whirls and eddies out in the middle that might have been dangerous. Joe’s tears were lost in the water, and the evening swim became a salve for the long hot days of July and August.
By the middle of August, the prisoners were sufficiently restored to look at a freshly cropped cornfield out in front of the building and see a rugby ground. On a Sunday afternoon, after great anticipation, bundles of clothing were set in piles at either end to simulate goalposts, which the ref had to imagine extending upwards to a cross-bar at about the right height. Harry and Arch were the captains and tossed a coin provided by the bemused sergeant to see who got first pick of the assembled men. Harry won the toss and chose Joe.
Joe hadn’t been sure he wanted to play. The wound on his head was long healed into an angry scar, but he feared he might be a bit ginger in contact. Being Harry’s first pick decided the matter. Those blue eyes that had seemed so predatory in the game at Ngapara must have approved of what they’d seen. And if Harry was prepared to play on his leg, Joe would risk his wound too.
The sergeant, guards and quite a few of the locals and their children gathered along the touchline with the rest of the prisoners as a ball that had arrived in a Red Cross parcel was kicked off. Harry took it in, then released it to Joe. It was another of those deeply nostalgic moments. The feel of the leather ball in his hands as he quickly juggled it into alignment and flipped his right palm over the top so that it spun long and low out left to Morrie Simpson from the Manawatu. In that split second, he realised how much he’d been missing the semi-civilised chaos of rugby.
The Italians had no idea what would ensue. After the first few minutes of contact, there were two bloody noses — one from a Harry Spence elbow at the back of a lineout — and a player left lying on the ground. The sergeant ran onto the field, waving his pistol, and told the players to stop. He told Arch that this was no game, that the men were deliberately trying to injure each other so they couldn’t work and ordered everyone back to camp.
* * *
By then the news had come to Arch via the corporal that the Allies had landed in Sicily back in early July and that a couple of weeks later Mussolini had been outvoted by his own Grand Council of Fascism, then arrested and jailed. As August progressed, the guards seemed to become more jumpy and argued with each other in front of the prisoners.
Harry, predictably, was the first to notice that surveillance standards were slipping and put it about that it might be time to scappato. Arch cautioned him to bide his time a little, because he’d understood what the guards were arguing about: whether they should stay or go home. ‘The way things are going,’ said Arch, ‘we might be able to walk out of here, not run.’
13
On 9 September 1943, in the fourteenth month of Joe’s captivity, they were told by the corporal that there’d been a capovolto the day before, a capitulation, by Italy, and that an armistizo was in place. The prisoners cheered. They understood that Italy had surrendered and was out of the war, but no one seemed sure exactly what it meant for them.
Neither were the guards. They read out a provision of the armistice agreement that ordered all prisoners to stay put until further orders, which presumably entailed the Italian guards staying on duty until they could hand the captives over to the Allies. But the heated arguments between the guards increased, until a couple of days later the corporal, who lived locally, told Arch that the sergeant was andato via, along with a couple of the privates. The corporal distributed the latest Red Cross parcels to the prisoners, including a letter for Joe from Dan, then said, Basta, enough: he and the remaining guards were now going home and they’d leave the gates open behind them when they left.
Harry, first through the gates, led the men down the road back towards the town, where they stopped at the first taverna and found the locals more than willing to swap Red Cross goodies for wine and grappa.
On the way, Joe read Dan’s letter. He knew it wouldn’t be a long read, and it wasn’t, but it lifted him up like a warm current in the Kakanui:
Dear Joe,
Hope you’re okay little brother. Didn’t know whether you’d copped it at El Mreir, so relieved to see you on the Red Cross list of POWs. Can’t say too much but I’m with 18th Battalion Shermans now, and it’s no secret that we’re on our way to Italy. Sandy’s good, gone to Trentham to train as a voluntary nurse aide, do her bit. See you soon, Joe, with a bit of luck.
Your loving brother,
Dan
The locals called their red wine nero, black. It stuck Joe’s tongue to the roof of his mouth and was so astringent he tasted nothing but tannins and acids and alcohol. Predictably, the prisoners got drunk quickly and happily, most of them, Joe included, not giving a lot of thought to what would happen next.
Arch was one exception, talking earnestly to the locals, who included the estate manager and Don Antonio. The Italians who’d worked alongside the prisoners had come to know and like them and seemed opposed to Mussolini and the fascists and relieved that Italy was out of a war they’d never wanted to be in. But they warned Arch that not all their fellow countrymen thought the same way, that there were many fascists still around, particularly in powerful administrative positions, and the prisoners had to be careful because these people would sympathise with the Germans.
They suggested to Arch that the prisoners should consider moving out of the estate and into hiding around the district with sympathetic families, so that if the Germans came, they wouldn’t all be sitting ducks. That seemed to be the nub of it — would the Germans abandon Italy or occupy it? No one seemed to know the answer except Harry, who was certain Jerry was going to punish the Italians for ‘going soft’ and that the Allies would have a real ‘shit-fight’ as they fought their way up Italy.
Celebrations were at a peak, the locals and the prisoners had launched into ‘Santa Lucia’, when a heavy hand landed on Joe’s shoulder. When he turned, he saw two faces, both Harry’s. ‘Come with me.’
>
Outside the taverna, the woman he’d seen Harry with in the shed was waiting with two bicycles. When he looked doubtful, Harry told Joe they had to get out while they could. ‘Those buggers’ll still be singing “Lili Marlene” when Jerry arrives.’
There didn’t seem to be much choice. Joe wobbled down the street on the bike, following Harry, who was doubling the woman. They veered off down an alley and stopped outside a door that opened onto a small courtyard. With much shushing and giggling, they ended up in the woman’s parlour, where clothes had been laid out on the kitchen table.
‘Whose are these?’ asked Joe, when the clothes turned out to be one size, a bit small for Harry and way too big for Joe.
‘Her husband’s,’ said Harry, smiling at the woman. ‘Signora or signorina?’ he asked her.
It seemed to be an old joke between them. ‘Signorina stanotte,’ she said, laughing as she wrapped bread and tomatoes and cheese for them.
‘But signora next week,’ said Harry, ‘when hubby gets home from the front.’
Outside, they put the food down the front of their shirts, mounted the bicycles. Harry kissed the woman, pulled a cloth cap down over hair blonded from the sun and said, ‘Andiamo via.’
‘Where are we going?’ asked Joe as they turned into the main street, away from the tavern.
‘To the mountains,’ said Harry. ‘Switzerland.’
* * *
A three-quarter-moon lit up the Livenza as they left the town environs and rode upstream. There was no one around, but Harry thought the argines were too exposed, so they crossed the river at the first bridge west of San Pietro and descended to the greater and lesser roads that criss-crossed the plains to the north and west. Harry reckoned the mountains they’d seen on clear days couldn’t be more than a hundred miles away ‘as the crow flies’ and they’d make it easily in three or four days.
The trouble was, despite the moon, a crow would have seen a great deal more than they could once they got down on the featureless plains. Harry, though, seemed to have a grid in his head, and no matter how many times they reached intersections that forced them to leave their original course and go right or left, he always seemed to know where the mountains were, and which road would bring them back on course.
After several hours, they reached an intersection with a major road, which Harry said looked like the main road from Venice to Udine and the mountains. He was in two minds as to whether to take it. It was probably the quickest way of getting to the mountains, but they’d be a lot more exposed when dawn broke. While Harry was considering the pros and cons, Joe went to sleep for a moment and fell down on the road. The minute or two it took for him to pick himself and his bicycle up may have saved them. They saw hooded lights coming from Udine and heard big engines at almost the same time.
They threw the bikes into a drain that ran alongside the road and flattened themselves, as the light and noise grew into a column of five huge articulated lorries bearing the black Maltese cross. Each one of these monsters carried another monster, a great armour-plated behemoth of a tank the size of a small house with gun barrels as big as turrets, pointing backwards at Harry and Joe as they were enveloped by the darkness.
‘Holy hell,’ said Harry.
Joe hadn’t seen a tank of any description since the Panzers at El Mreir. Those had assumed enormous dimensions in his nightmares, yet were puny by comparison with what he’d just seen.
They pulled the bikes out of the drain and returned the way they’d come. Harry seemed deflated, and once they’d gone a mile or two back into the maze of smaller roads, he decided they’d put enough distance between themselves and San Pietro, and they carried the bikes down into one of the summer-dry drains beside the road and slumped beside them.
‘That confirms one thing,’ said Harry, as he lit the last of his foul-smelling Italian cigarettes. ‘Jerry’s gearing up for a scrap.’
Joe looked up at the sky and tried to imagine it as a quilt, studded with gold, protecting him and Dan. He’d seen Sherman tanks and prayed that Dan would never come up against those monsters he’d seen heading south. He had to trust that Harry knew what he was doing, but fourteen months of incarceration had convinced him he could survive prison. When he saw those tanks, he was equally sure he couldn’t survive any more war.
Venice, 2014
14
Clare woke just before dawn after the most complete sleep she’d had in a long time. She listened for the familiar hum of a city awakening, but heard nothing, so thought she’d slip out into the empty streets and watch the sun come up from the top of Ponte dell’ Accademia.
Outside the hotel, the narrow stone ravines skirting La Fenice were wreathed in fog and alive with people, mostly men in blue overalls manoeuvring tall, thin, rubber-tyred handcarts back and forth from long, high-prowed wooden boats with outboard motors. The carts were loaded with cartons of produce from the boats, then rolled through the alleys, returning minutes later with crushed cardboard and detritus.
Instead of making for the bridge, she found herself following one of the boats as it took off along an impossibly narrow canal, with a muscled helmsman controlling the outboard. As he approached a blind right angle, he let out what sounded like a high-pitched yelp, which must have served as a warning to any oncoming traffic, then seemed to swirl the boat around the corner like a matador with a cloak.
Remembering her father saying that you’re never lost in Venice, just temporarily unaware of where you are, she decided to follow whatever interested her — boats, carts, old women shuffling to churches with doors that seemed unprepossessing, but opened to huge naves with statuary and frescoes that were probably priceless. At first she wished she knew more about what she was seeing, but there were compensations in looking at it all with an almost childish innocence and openness. She eventually reached a wide canal that opened out into the misty lagoon, then tried to retrace her steps, but couldn’t. It didn’t matter: she saw a yellow arrow with Rialto stencilled on it and followed that.
When she got to the bridge, she could see the vegetable stalls across the far side of the Grand Canal where her father had taken her yesterday, when he’d seemed to be listening for ghosts.
From the Rialto, she followed the yellow arrows for Accademia and eventually arrived at Campo Santo Stefano, and walked on through Campo San Maurizio to her father’s B & B. She thought it might be too early for him after last night’s emotional demands, but when she climbed the stairs to the breakfast hallway, the woman warming the croissants recognised her and said, ‘E’ già andato via’, then took pity on her and provided a translation: ‘Is already gone out.’
She retraced her steps to Campo Santo Stefano, thinking she must have missed him sitting at the little bar near the entrance, having his coffee and croissant. When he wasn’t there, she was at a loss. She walked right along Santo Stefano towards Ponte Accademia, looking in at all the cafes. Her father was nowhere to be seen, but she did see someone she recognised, coming towards her from the Accademia vaporetto stop.
Ishmael was one of the African hawkers who had tried to sell her a rip-off Chloe handbag yesterday near San Marco when she was searching for a hotel. She’d made the mistake of stopping to check out the leather and the stitching. Both were perfect, as was the washed-out green colour of the soft kid. All the while, Ishmael had been lowering the price, from fifty euros to forty-five, from forty-five to forty, his eyes dancing up and down the alley, looking to his African mates who were working in leathery clumps of bags and briefcases about fifty metres apart. The more she dithered, the more agitated he’d become and the lower the price fell — and the more suspicious she’d grown. In the end, he was imploring her to give him twenty euros for it. ‘What do I have to do?’ he’d asked, arms wide.
‘I’m just not sure,’ she’d said. His face had closed, then he’d got some signal from his mates at the San Marco end of the alley, suddenly throw
n his strung-together sack of bags over his shoulder and walked off quickly. Shortly afterwards, two carabinieri appeared from the direction of San Marco, wandering down the alleyway like window shoppers in uniform.
She’d stood there watching Ishmael hustle off, feeling awful. Why hadn’t she just given him the twenty euros? The money was obviously so important to him. She’d been to a bottega just off San Marco and inspected the real thing, with a price tag of twelve hundred euros, and couldn’t tell the difference, so what was her problem? No one she knew would be aware it was a rip-off. Was it just that she knew it wasn’t a real Chloe?
Now, when she saw Ishmael coming towards her with his long languid strides under the sack of bags that made his legs look even thinner, she thought of Renzo’s shy or wilful little photons. She could see analogies everywhere: not just her behaviour about buying the bag, but Ishmael’s too, when he thought the carabinieri were watching and when they weren’t.
‘Do you think you’re quite suggestible?’ her counsellor had asked her at one point. If I say yes, Clare thought, does that prove her point?
Ishmael saw her and she could tell, by the way his face hardened, that he remembered her. When she stopped him and offered him forty euros, he beamed the most perfect smile, and it was this, as much as the fake Chloe over her shoulder, that seemed to make the view from the top of Ponte Accademia more pleasing. She looked down the Grand Canal towards the Rialto, then turned towards Santa Maria della Salute. The fog had almost been burnt off by the sun, but there were shrouds of sea mist still lingering out on the lagoon and feathery strands still trailing along the sides of the canal, masking the transition between water and air, softening the facades of the palazzi. As her eyes followed the sinuous water and vapour back past the low white incongruousness of the Peggy Guggenheim museum and arrived at the far side of the bridge, she saw an angular, slow-moving figure she recognised.
