The Partisan Heart

by Gordon Kerr

  He moved silently from tree trunk to tree trunk. He may have been incapacitated by his injuries, but this was his territory and he understood it like an animal would. He knew where and how to place his feet on the earth, knew how to move without attracting attention, knew how to use the light and shade of the forest to swallow his movement. He became a mere shadow.

  After a few moments he saw them – a large man, followed closely by a much smaller man, moving through the trees about twenty metres distant. One of them, the large figure, he recognised instantly – Cavalcanti, a giant of a man with a huge beard, clad in a goatskin waistcoat, which exaggerated his girth even more. He carried a rifle and a bandolero of bullets was wrapped around his body from shoulder to waist. He was known as l’Assassino and was used by headquarters, as his nomme de guerre suggested, to take care of embarrassments, to permanently remove those of the cause who had transgressed.

  Sandro had never seen the other man before. He was thin and weedy, wore spectacles on the end of his nose and a fur cap that sat awkwardly on his head. His clothes seemed wrong for the terrain, too considered, too stylish. The two men moved slowly and carefully through the trees, the last remaining flashes of sunlight spraying onto them like rain in a spring shower.

  Sandro knew at once why they were here. Somewhere far away, in Milan probably, the evidence, such as there was, had been amassed and a decision had been made by a roomful of men. He fully understood. In the absence of any substantial evidence it had to have been him who had informed. Why had he appeared to have been ill in the days leading up to the incident, if not to have escaped the consequences? Why had he alone survived? Injured admittedly, but in all probability that was only to make it seem that he was not involved. In the absence of anything else, surely it would be far better to do something than to make no decision at all. It was good for morale. It would teach a lesson to anyone considering such activity. Send l’Assassino to take care of this ugly business as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  Sandro had taken to the woods up above his mother’s house after dinner simply for a smoke and some gentle exercise. He was, consequently, unarmed. But he feared for his mother although he was certain they would not harm her. Their instructions were to kill him and they would never hurt an old woman, even the mother of an alleged informant. He knew what would happen. They would burst into the house and ask her where he was. When she said he wasn’t there, they would then disappear into the night again, as if they had not been there. There was little he could do, because if he showed himself, he was a dead man. And, at any rate, they were now very close to the house and there was no opportunity for him to get back there to warn her before they announced their presence.

  His chest tightened even more. He could barely breathe as he watched them slide across the clearing that led up to the house, the house where he had played as a child, where he had clambered around his mother’s skirts as she hung out washing, where he had helped his ailing father in his work; this clearing which he had crossed on so many early mornings, a smile of anticipation on his face, on his way into his beloved mountains, such a short time ago, it seemed.

  Suddenly, he had a presentiment that something terrible was about to happen and, without thinking of the consequences, started to move. They, meanwhile, stood in front of the door, looked at each other and then threw it open. Sandro was running now, or, at least, running as much as his bad leg would allow, but he was still quite a distance away and the house was lost from view behind the undergrowth. He shouted as he heard the first shot, his voice lost in the echo of the gunshot as it ricocheted around the forest. He had stopped dead in his tracks by the time the second and third shots rang out, his mouth frozen in the act of screaming silently.

  At that moment, he fell to the ground. His body had still not properly healed. He lay there for an instant, catching deep breaths. There was silence from the house as, he presumed, they searched it for him, and then they re-appeared at the door. They stopped and looked around, rifles raised, scanning the surrounding forest. He stopped breathing for a moment as their eyes turned in his direction, but he was well hidden, low down in the evening shadows. After some moments, they turned and quickly disappeared into the trees on the other side of the clearing from where he was positioned.

  Sandro stood there for what seemed like a long time, the dampness of the early evening beginning to seep upwards from the earth into his boots and his trousers. It was as if he had taken root and would remain there forever. In fact, he did want to remain there forever, because the alternative – moving, finding out what had happened in the now silent house – was just too terrible for him to contemplate.

  Mist began to tumble through the branches of the high trees, falling down the sides of the hills drenching everything in its path like an avalanche. Branches trembled as droplets formed on them. Bird sounds faded into silence and the billion noises of the forest melted away as the sun slipped behind the peaks.

  Finally, he had regained the ability to articulate his muscles and tendons. First one leg, very slowly. Then the other. And then he was plunging through the trees. He again stumbled and fell to the ground at one point, ripping his trousers on a branch, felt the jagged point stab his thigh like a sharp knife. The pain, however, did not touch him. He had gone beyond feeling anything in the last few weeks. He clambered to his feet again without even reaching down to touch the sticky hot flow of blood that ran down his leg inside his trousers. He ran on, through the clearing, through the door and into the house.

  And there, where she had cooked and cleaned and knitted and sewed and cared for his father and for him, he found his mother, the essence gone from her, spread around her in the pool of drying blood which haloed her head. One of his shirts was draped across her shoulders. It had hung across the back of a chair and she, feeling the cold, must have put it on as she worked in the kitchen. They had run in, Cavalcanti and the other man, had seen a figure with its back to them, clad in a man’s shirt, had presumed it to be him and had shot his mother.

  He knelt beside her and did the only thing he could – cradled her lifeless head in his hands. Softly, he began to hum the old valley song that was one of his first memories. The song that one of his doomed comrades had been whistling on that fateful day when they had set out to their deaths just a few short months ago. The song she had sung while hanging clothes out to dry.

  Outside, a sharp burst of a solitary birdsong rang out in the distance before fading away until it was only an echo. The silence of twilight cloaked the forest.

  He sat there until dawn, reliving every moment of his life, humming now and then. And, as the sun clambered up above the high peaks, casting long shadows across the valley below, he dug a grave behind the house and placed his mother’s body carefully in it, kissing her on the cheek and brushing the hair off her forehead, as she used to do unconsciously as she stirred the contents of a cooking pot on the stove, or darned one of his socks. He then shovelled the dirt over her body, sprinkling it with great care over her face, which he had covered with a handkerchief, as if he was putting makeup on her. That done, he went back into the house, packed a haversack with a few things, took the small roll of bank notes and fistful of coins that his mother kept in a box under her bed, locked the door and walked across the clearing without once looking back.

  It would be fifty years before he would see that house again.

  16

  July 1944

  Sondrio

  North Italy

  Obersturmführer Erich Weber was a creature of habit. Each night, he would leave the old school building and walk towards the eastern end of town, where the houses and buildings became slightly shabbier and the streets narrower and darker. He visited a woman, a girl, really.

  Sandro had followed her, too, during the day when Weber was busy. A young prostitute, living with her family, but seeing her clients in the empty house next door to the one in which her parents lived. She was neither beautiful nor plain. He had noted the exhaust
ion in her face as he sat a few tables away from her one day in a cafe, where she had stopped to meet a friend.

  One night, he lingered in the street outside her house long after Weber had emerged and lit his customary cigarette before disappearing back towards the centre of town.

  He walked up to her door and after once raising his hand to knock and taking it away, finally banged loudly. The sound echoed and there was a pause before he heard footsteps coming from above.

  She peered out around the door, her body hidden.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was soft and sounded young. He had not realised quite how young she was. For a moment he stood there, unable to say anything.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she repeated, slightly irritated by the seemingly dumb figure before her.

  In truth, he had almost forgotten how to speak. He had been in Sondrio for more than three weeks now and, during that time, had spoken little more than to ask for a coffee in a bar or to buy some food. His voice, therefore, came huskily from his throat and surprised him with its sound.

  ‘I … I was looking for some company.’

  ‘Some company, is it you were looking for, lonely boy?’ she said, emerging now from behind the door, the shape of her body, wrapped in a sleek, silk dressing gown, taking him by surprise. Provocatively, she placed her right hand on her hip, leaning with her other hand on the door. She smiled.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you, I can’t afford to be charitable and my company doesn’t come cheap. I hope you’ve got the wherewithal, lonely boy.’

  Sandro reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, the money his mother had saved all those years.

  ‘Well, I never.’ There was sarcasm in her voice now, but it was not in any way vindictive. She was older than her years, however; so much older and it saddened Sandro. He thought again of Angela, never far from his mind. This girl would not be much older than her, but Angela’s eyes had been alive with optimism and anticipation. This girl’s eyes were dead with the exhaustion of living in these times.

  ‘Who would have thought a boy from the hills would have so much money? I hope you came by it legally, lonely boy.’ His accent, strained by years of speaking dialect, had betrayed his origins. ‘Oh, all right, then. Come on in and let’s see if we can cheer you up, eh?’

  He entered a hallway lit only by the light of the full moon, which tumbled in through a window at the top of the stairs they climbed.

  Her room was as luxurious as the straitened times would allow. A gas lamp flickered eerily, shedding light on a sofa which sat up against the wall on one side, a threadbare blue sheet thrown over it. In front of the sofa was a chipped oak table and on it were a couple of wine glasses and a bottle of wine with about a third of its contents remaining. The bed that stood against the other wall was unmade, its sheets trailing onto the floor and the pillows still showing the indentation of a head, probably Weber’s.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable. Have a glass of wine.’ She poured what remained of the wine into the two glasses without washing them. He then raised his glass to his lips, knowing that Weber’s lips had possibly touched its cool surface just an hour or so ago.

  She sat down beside him, stretching her hand up to his neck and tugging at the hair at the back of his head.

  ‘Don’t have much to say, do you, lonely boy?’ She smiled, throwing back the wine in one swallow. Her words were slurred and he realised now that she was, in fact, quite drunk. She sat forward, with a look of mock horror on her face. ‘Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you’re a virgin! Well, don’t worry, lonely boy. Virgins are my speciality – la specialità della casa!’ She raised her glass, as if making a toast. ‘All these German boys, they’re like you lot up in the hills. Pure as the driven snow. Until they come to see Domenica, that is.’ She stood up, unsteadily and went over to a cupboard by the bed, taking out another bottle of wine and attempting with some difficulty to remove the stopper.

  ‘Come on, then, be a gentleman and help a girl, can’t you?’ He stood up and limped across to her, trying to take the bottle, but realising that with his bad left arm, it was going to be equally difficult for him to remove the stopper. She looked at him curiously and then held the bottle while he tried to pull the stopper out. Finally, amidst her giggles as she tried to hold the bottle, it edged free and she fell back.

  She picked up the glasses and brought them over to where he was standing, pouring some wine into each on top of the cupboard. She then seemed to become sober as she picked up her glass.

  ‘Where did you get that, lonely boy?’ She reached her hand up to his damaged cheek, feeling the indentation where Weber had hit him with his pistol butt. ‘And your leg and your arm. You’ve been through it, haven’t you?’ She moved close, staring up into his eyes. He looked down at her, noticing how liquid her eyes seemed, and wanted to drown himself in them.

  She reached behind his neck and gently pulled his head down towards hers and brushed her lips tenderly against his. She pulled away and looked deep into his eyes and then kissed him.

  She pulled him down onto the bed and he pulled apart her robe, its silky coolness unfamiliar beneath the calloused skin of his fingers. Her skin was smooth and warm and her lips were generous, her tongue exploring his mouth, the scent of wine on her breath. Her dark hair fell back from her forehead as he kissed her and all at once she was a young girl again. The exhaustion dropped away from her and innocence and the hunger of youth filled her eyes.

  Above him, he thought he heard once more the song of the birds exploring the sky and thought that he felt rain fall down onto his naked back. Beneath him, it felt as if the grass of the clearing was shifting once more under the weight of the raindrops.

  The next night he waited outside Domenica’s house again. This time, however, it was different, for he knew now where Weber was, what his surroundings were. He knew the sofa where they would start out, a glass of wine in their hands as they kissed. He knew the scrap of carpet by the bed that he would stand on to remove his boots. And he knew the bed that they would fall on and on which they would make love, its slightly soiled off-white sheets, its four pillows.

  The moon had slipped behind dark clouds by the time the door opened and Weber stepped out into the night. As ever, he engaged in his ritual of taking a cigarette from his silver case, tapping it on the lid and lighting it. He then turned and set out once more back in the direction of the old school that housed the German headquarters. He was in the habit of returning there every night and, as he never emerged again, Sandro presumed he must be billeted there.

  Sandro fell in behind him, invisibly as ever. It was more difficult in a town to become one with the shadows, he found. Had he been following Weber in the hills that he knew so well, he would have found it easy. He would have been as invisible as a breath of wind, but down here amongst these buildings and geometric shadows that varied in intensity, it was more difficult.

  A few streets further on, Sandro deviated from his usual route, striking out quickly down an alley at the bottom of which there was a wall which he climbed, sliding down the other side quietly and crouching for a moment at the bottom to catch his breath and let the pain in his injured leg subside. He then stood up and slid along a wall at the end of which he stopped, his ears listening out for the familiar footsteps that would signal the arrival of Weber, for his short-cut had brought him to this point ahead of Weber by a few minutes.

  He heard the harsh sound of the German officer’s boots on cobble stones approach and pulled from his waistband the pistol that he had put there before setting out this evening. The cold steel made his fingers numb at first, but soon the natural warmth of his hand entered the steel and it felt like an extension of him.

  His breathing became faster and his heart pounded like a piston as the footsteps came closer. Then, as they drew level, he slid out from his hiding place, making almost no sound, placed the barrel of the pistol roughly against the German’s temple, knocking him slightly sideways and hissed hoarsely
:

  ‘Keep your hands away from your pistol and stand absolutely still or you’re a dead man!’

  The German froze, his head pointing straight ahead, but his eyes swivelling as far round in their sockets as they would go, trying to see who his assailant was.

  Sandro looked round to ensure that no one had seen his attack, but the buildings in this street were all empty, their owners having fled the war. He then hissed once more:

  ‘Take out your pistol – hold it by the barrel!’ His useless arm made it impossible for him to hold a gun to the German’s head and take the pistol out of his holster at the same time. ‘Now put it in my pocket!’ The German did as he was told. ‘To your left is a building. Turn and walk towards it, open the door when you get inside, climb the stairs and, remember, I will have this gun pointed at your head every step of the way. One wrong move and your brains will be decorating the pavement. Now go!’

  The German turned stiffly, his eyes darting to first one side and then the other. He reached the door, turned the handle and they entered the building. A gas lamp, lit earlier by Sandro, cast light onto the stairs. The German hesitated, but Sandro hissed once again, ‘Go on!’ and they began to climb.

  They climbed three flights of wooden stairs, all the way to the top of the house and at the top Sandro instructed Weber to climb a ladder that led from the topmost landing up to an open hatch door. He followed, the gun still trained carefully on the German.

  ‘Don’t turn around!’ he told the German once they had both climbed into this attic. He quickly turned the pistol round so that he held the barrel in his hand, raised it above his head and brought it down sharply on the German’s head. His body folded immediately and he fell heavily to the floorboards.