by Dani Amore
I complied, my bare legs scraping the dirt and sticks as a million imaginary bugs as well as a few very real ones crawled onto my skin. A memory came to my mind of playing hide-and-seek with Iole, before Emidio was born. I had hidden in the woods just behind the barn, in the dirt, while Iole searched and searched. Finally, when I knew she had given up, I started to get up, and that’s when the ants started biting me. My legs, arms and other delicate parts of my body were on fire. I ran to the house screaming. Mama ran out of the house, her eyes wide with fear. She took one look at me, scooped me up and threw me into the big copper pot used for washing clothes. The pain didn’t last long, but the welts were visible proof of my humiliation.
Now, on my stomach next to the strange man, I waited, conscious of any noises and twitching at the slightest feeling on my skin, real or imagined. We waited but I still heard nothing. Just when I thought I could bear it no longer and was ready to whisper to my mountain climbing companion that this was no place to take a girl, we heard the first, soft sounds of far-off footsteps approaching.
I peered through the branches and leaves able to see a glint of metal, a soft gray of uniform fabric. Germanesí. I heard a clunk of leather and the labored breathing of men who had been walking for quite some time. In the darkness, I caught a quick glimpse of a rounded silhouette that I recognized to be a German helmet.
They passed haphazardly, this wasn’t the single file marching I’d seen them do on occasion. These soldiers were either stationed here, searching for Italian men who were in hiding, or had been temporarily sent back to Casalveri for rest.
As they passed, I slowly let my breath out, not realizing that I had been holding it the whole time. When the sounds of their footsteps had disappeared entirely, my body sagged. Almost as if on cue, swarms of mosquitoes and flies found us, attacking every inch of exposed skin with a violent thoroughness. It was time to go. I brought a leg up underneath my body and started to push up off the ground when my guide’s hand shot out, clamping onto my arm. Great, I thought. Now I’ll have matching bruises.
I looked at him, but again, his face was in shadow, I could just see the outline of his nose peeking out, his eyes black hollows trained directly on the path ahead.
Suddenly, anger welled up inside me, and I pulled away from him. Who did he think he was? Easy for him to lay among the biting insects; he had on thick black pants and what looked to be a heavy shirt. His cap even covered his ears from the swarming insects.
Just when I was ready to lay into him, the sound of someone running down the path reached our ears. I held my breath and the man ran toward us, it was a shambling gait, as if one of his legs was shorter than the other. In the darkness, I could see what he was doing: he was zipping up his pants.
I turned to look at my guide wanting to apologize for my foolishness; if he hadn’t stopped me, I would be standing right in the middle of the path now. Just in time for the German soldier to run directly into me.
Perhaps sensing my look, my guide turned to me and his eyes glowed from the blackness of the forest. They were the brightest, deepest blue I had ever seen, reminding me of the one time I had been to the Mediterranean Sea and swum in its brilliantly clear waters. My heart skipped a beat as he focused on me. My palms were suddenly sweaty.
As he stared at me, his eyes suddenly seemed to twinkle, and his lips parted, his clean white teeth gleaming. I think, in the darkness, he was laughing at me.
And then something happened that I would never forget. The German soldier tripped. The sound he made crashing into the ground startled me so much, coming as it did at a time when I was looking into these beautiful blue eyes, that it scared me, startled me, caught me off guard so much that I jerked and a small, soft sound escaped my lips.
The soldier, starting to get up, snapped his head around toward where we were hiding, although a little bit too far to the right. Which worked out perfectly when my guide burst from the bushes and rammed his head into the soldier’s stomach. He straightened up and his fist swept around in one fluid motion, catching the German flush on the jaw. As it turned out, the element of surprise was entirely on our side. The soldier went down to the ground in a heap.
My guide ripped the rifle from the soldier’s hands, jacked open the chamber and emptied the bullets into his palm. He then threw the rifle farther down the path and heaved the bullets into the forest.
I still hadn’t moved.
He reached into the woods and grabbed my arm, then pulled me roughly through the bushes. The small twigs scratched my face and arms.
We ran then, my guide holding me, jerking me along until I could run no more, and then he scooped me up and slung me over his shoulder and ran faster.
I vomited onto his back.
Chapter Seventeen
Finally, when I thought my kidneys were going to come flying out of my mouth, we branched off from the main path and my guide set me on the ground then took off walking ahead of me. I followed him along a fainter trail that seemed with every step to be on the verge of disappearing altogether.
Weaving his way through the forest with an obvious ease of familiarity, my guide seemed less preoccupied with remaining silent. He walked with a lightness in his step and from time to time, I thought I heard him whistling. The pauses to listen were also becoming less frequent.
After another ten minutes of walking, we went through deeper woods that spilled us out into a small clearing. The man paused at the forest’s edge and whistled softly. Instantly, a soft whistle answered him from the other side of the clearing.
Now there was no thought to hiding as my guide walked quickly, brazenly across the small mountain meadow to a low cabin. It looked no bigger than a shed, the kind of structure used by farmers during slaughter season, or a building used for nothing more than shelter during a storm.
It was a squat structure made of thick stone and featured a heavy wooden door at the front. A crude roof that looked like it was falling apart hung down in places over the edges of the walls. No smoke curled from the chimney and the windows were black.
He rapped on the door, a series of quick raps followed by a long pause and then one more knock.
The door swung open and a face appeared from the darkness.
“Papa!”
His image blurred as the tears came and I felt myself being picked up off the ground, the thick wool of his sweater on my skin, the stubble from his newly grown beard scraped against my cheek. Bright flashes of color exploded inside my closed eyes as the world swirled around me. I sagged in his arms; relief and exhaustion both swept over me in a torrent. It was over. The not knowing, the wondering if I had lost another parent. I wept for myself, for him, and for my mother, with whom I would never have this kind of reunion. He was alive. He was in my arms and I in his. Life was suddenly alive again within me.
Every time I thought the tears were about to stop, they started again. I was dimly aware of others watching, but there was no way I could stop. It had all been too much.
The tears were still coming in ragged sobs and I began to hyperventilate.
“Sshh, Benny. Sshhh.” I felt his strong hands on my back, patting me.
“Everything’s okay.” I felt him carry me across the small room and we sat down together. Just when I thought I was calm, a breath would reach out and snatch itself away and I would shudder.
As my eyes became adjusted to the dark interior of the cabin, I could make out the primitive cot upon which my father and I were sitting. There were other cots in the room with men either sitting on them or sleeping in them. There were also men in blankets on the floor. Most of them did not look at us, affording us what little privacy was possible in this confined setting.
Gradually, the time between sobs grew longer and the last one left me with one long, rattling sigh. My father sat me upright next to him, his arm around my shoulders.
He was smiling.
“Tell me…how,” I managed.
He talked then, because he was able to and I wasn�
��t, and explained how he had been told that it was his turn to go to the site of the last shelling and scavenge the corpses of the Americans. Ordered to scavenge, he said bitterly. “Like hyenas. That’s what we are to them.”
By then, he told me, the fighting was so intense, he knew there was no way he was going to make it back to Casalveri alive. “All I could think about was being brought back into the village dead in the back of that filthy, bloody truck.”
After he had been ordered to scavenge the bodies, he came up with a very simple plan. After making it to the battlefield, strewn with dead bodies, he and the man sent with him found fresh corpses that had not yet begun to rigor mortis.
“The whole time, I was convinced a sniper was going to put a bullet in my head. I kept ducking down at the slightest sound and I probably took twice as long because of it.”
They switched clothing and scrounged up hand grenades to put with the German land mine they had stolen before leaving.
“All we had to do then,” Papa explained, “was sit back and watch the German jeep blow up.”
During the telling of the story, several candles were lit, throwing light on the dark interior, making my father’s face look dark and haggard.
“It was gruesome, but effective. The body parts were everywhere, and the explosion was enough to convince the Germans, who weren’t willing to come and see what happened to two Italians. So then we were able to escape into the woods and circle back.”
He took a drink from a small cup of wine.
“We had been able to keep in touch with the other men from the village,” he continued. “That’s how we knew about this place and how to get here, but it was still awful, finding our way back, waiting to run into the Germans, who would have been more than happy to execute us on the spot.”
He stood and paced in front of me, the nervous energy coming back to him from the experience.
“The biggest fear we had, though, was that we would stumble across American soldiers, very much alive American soldiers, and they would see us in their fallen comrades’ uniforms. They would not have treated us kindly.”
I shuddered at the thought.
“As soon as I could, I tried to send word to you that I was all right, but communication with the village can be a risky thing, Benedetta. There are dangers. The Germans know men are in the mountains but for now they leave us alone; they have bigger fish to fry. We must be careful not to draw their attention.”
“How did you send word to Zizi Checcone, Papa? And why did you send for me?”
Papa smiled.
“We got word to Signora Checcone several days ago…”
“Several days!” I was shocked. “She didn’t say a word to me!”
“She’s a smart woman, Benedetta. She was worried your emotions might give you away so she waited, wanting to give you the chance to see me, to find out I was alive.”
I couldn’t help but laugh; she had been right to do it. I filed away the feeling I had that Papa’s voice had warmed dramatically at the mention of Zizi Checcone.
“And Dominic brought you here, all right?”
“Dominic?” I asked.
But Papa was looking toward the door, through which walked a young man. He looked thin and gawky, his face pale. Surely, there was a mistake, I thought. This could not be the man who brought me up the mountain.
“Dominic Giancarlo,” my father said, gesturing toward the young man. “From Roselli.” Roselli was a village even smaller than Casalveri, about fifteen or twenty miles to the north.
“It is nice to meet you properly, Benedetta,” he said, shaking my hand and I looked into those eyes, those eyes that were forever burned into my memory and I knew that yes, this was the man, the boy, who had brought me up the mountain.
His dark pants were virtually in tatters, and his shirt was much too small for him, his hands and wrists jutted out from his sleeves. His face was classically lean, his forehead full and I thought back to the poster on Lauretta Fandella’s wall. Yes, with a change in the hair, and maybe a few more pounds, he could pass for Henry Caruso.
Right then, I made a vow never to introduce him to Lauretta.
He took my hand.
“I did not hurt you, did I?” he asked, his voice deep and rough, completely at odds with the gentleness of his manner. The movement of speaking transformed his lean, angular face, softened it somehow and revealed the white teeth behind narrow, sensuous lips. And those eyes.
I looked at Papa, caught the curious expression on his face as he noted that Dominic had still not released my hand.
“Hurt?” Papa asked.
“I’m fine,” I answered.
“We ran into a German on the path. I knocked him out and we ran. But in the process, it got a little rough getting Benedetta out of there.”
It seemed then that Papa saw the scratches on my face, but the sleeves of my sweater hid the bruises.
“Dear Jesus,” he said, crossing himself.
“Papa, I’m fine. Dominic took good care of me.”
“Thank you, Dominic. Thank you,” Papa said. He got off the cot and embraced Dominic. “I knew I was right to send you. You are the best of us in the mountain. I knew you could handle anything.”
Dominic nodded his head. “It was my pleasure, Alfredo.” He smiled at me and there was a twinkle in his eye. “It’s not every day that a beautiful girl throws up on me.”
I burst out laughing and my father looked from me to Dominic and then back to me. He didn’t know what we were talking about but joined in the laughter anyway.
My eyes went back to Dominic. I wondered if at that moment he could tell that high on a mountain in an ancient stone cabin surrounded by war and death, I had just reached one of the most important milestones in my life.
I was in love.
Chapter Eighteen
In the very early morning, when it was still dark outside, the men inside the small cabin began to stir. A pot of coffee brewed over the small, crude fireplace. A man in a torn flannel shirt and thick striped pants quietly shuffled cards at the lone table in the center of the room; he proceeded to lay the cards out on the tabletop for a game of solitaire.
I sat up and the pain in my back shot through me; these cots were awful. Even as tired as I was from the walk up the mountain, getting to sleep had been a major effort. Next to me, Papa swung his feet off of his own cot and stood slowly. He put his hands in the small of his back like I had seen him do thousands of times, and stretched, letting out a low, deep groan. He caught my eye and smiled. There wasn’t a lot of talking done last night; after Papa had told me about his escape, the shock of the trip up the mountain had worn off and soon, I was fast asleep.
“Now it is your turn to talk, Benedetta. How are you? How are the Germans treating you?” Papa’s eyes, full of concern, looked into mine.
I hesitated and my father placed a finger under my chin and raised my face, forcing me to look him in the eye. Images of Wolff, Schlemmer and even the Bishop flashed through my head, but I answered quickly.
“As to be expected. I cook. I clean. I do what they ask. They do not bother me.”
“Good. Good. Do not be frightened. I have eyes in the village who are helping. You are not alone. How are Iole and Emidio?”
“They miss you, but we keep them busy and I try to make up for you being gone, but I don’t know how much that helps. In some ways, it is good that they are young, there is still much time for them to recover.”
His look was not the reaction I had hoped for; he seemed saddened by the thought of Iole and Emidio.
“War changes everything, doesn’t it, Benny?”
“Will things ever be the same? Will they ever go back to normal, Papa?”
He considered the question for a moment.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think so.
He shook his head sadly and then looked around the cabin. “Let me take you around, Benny. Meet the men of the mountain before they all disappear to their hi
ding places.”
I recognized some of the faces of men from Casalveri.
Father led me to a man with a dark beard and a dark red hat. He wore thick black glasses and was in the process of cleaning the lenses.
“Benny, this is Vincenzo Benucci. He is from Roselli.”
We shook hands.
“Nice to meet you, Benedetta. I’ve heard a lot about you from this scarpencia,” he said, gesturing to my father. In our dialect, scarpencia means a parent who is too proud, going on and on about their children. In this instance though, it wasn’t meant to be insulting. It was a compliment to me.
“Alfredo,” Benucci said. “You have a beautiful daughter.”
“Thank you, Vincenzo. She’s just like her mother.” I looked at the floor, embarrassed for many reasons.
“How are things in Casalveri, Benedetta?”
“Food is in short supply, but we are surviving. The German supplies, when they come in, are good, but they are not coming in very often anymore. Not like at the beginning.”
“They are being stretched too thin,” Papa said.
“Everyone thinks the Germans are beginning to lose their enthusiasm for fighting,” I said. “They are not as proud as when they first arrived; their eyes and spirits look tired.”
“They may be losing this war,” Benucci replied. “But they will never lose their will to fight. It is why the Germans were put on this Earth. They are a stubborn, arrogant people; bred to conquer or to die trying. They will never change, they will never give up until they are dead or control the entire world.”
“They are not like Italians,” Papa said. “The Germans are cold and metallic as their armored tanks, their only passion is war.”
“And us?” Signor Benucci asked my father.
“We are passionate about everything but war. Food. Wine. Art. Music. We are alive!”
“Don’t forget cards,” the man from the table said, slapping down another card to the sound of laughter in the room.
