by Dani Amore
As they ate the chocolate, and licked their fingers, I idly stroked their hair, marveling at the smoothness of their skin, the delicacy of their features. They were growing up fast, even in the middle of a war without enough food to go around, they were still growing up too fast.
I knew all too well what it was like to have a childhood cut short. If there was a way to prevent it from happening to them, by God, I was going to find it.
Chapter Thirty-one
Two days later, the next note came.
I was in the habit of stopping by the low stone wall several times a day, more than I’d like to admit, but it was true; there was a lightness in my stomach, a tightening of my throat when I came close to where the loose rock was. When there was nothing underneath it, I felt a mixture of sadness and relief. A lack of love sometimes makes life simpler.
But on a crisp morning when the dew was still on the grass and the sun was just beginning to make its presence felt and layering warmth on my back, I saw the white of paper peeking out from beneath the chosen stone.
I checked over my shoulder and scanned the surrounding field as well as along the edge of the forest. No one was around; the Germans were still sleeping, and Iole, Emidio and Zizi Checcone had walked to the other side of town where a friend of Zizi Checcone supposedly had some extra zucchini with which she was willing to part.
I had told them I was going to stay at the house and get breakfast started, and that I also needed to go out back to the bread oven to make sure the sealing clay was still affixed around the door, but I knew I wasn’t fooling anyone. Iole certainly had an idea what was going on, and Zizi Checcone probably did, too. She didn’t miss much.
I lifted the rock and picked up the letter underneath, but then I saw a second note underneath the first.
The first letter was already smooth, but heavily wrinkled with small grease spots along one side. Dominic had resorted to using bits of wrap from something as a substitute for paper. “Benedetta” was written across the top in the same loopy scrawl as his first letter.
I unfolded it, and imagined that I could smell the smokiness of the cabin, the men cramped into that tiny space, the smell of cards on the table and weak coffee brewing over the fire.
It started off simply.
Benedetta,
Your letter made me happy. Thank you for forgiving me. We were with each other for a short time, but my feelings are strong. Not a day, not an hour, not a minute goes by that I do not think of you.
I am not good with words, but I feel that nightingales whisper your name, and the chambers of my heart resonate with their song.
I miss you.
Dominic
P.S. To answer your question, I bring the notes myself.
The last line hit me like a sledgehammer. Foolishly, I looked to the trees, half-expecting to see him there, waving at me, smiling. I would rush into his arms and we would fall together to the forest floor, in each other’s arms, kissing. But that could not be; he would not remain here during the day, it was too dangerous. He would walk down the path at night, leave the note, then walk back up the mountain. At night, in the mountains, the land reverts back to the Italians.
“I bring the notes myself.” I read it again, horrified and warmed at the same time. This man, this young man, was risking his life to communicate with me, to express his feelings. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Sure, there had been flirtatious young men, but theirs was meaningless chatter; all talk to impress other young men. They made up lies and inflated their chests, but they were still boys. Dominic. Now Dominic was different.
The words themselves even reminded me of him; simple, to the point, saying a lot with a little. Relief came over me in waves, he was not frightened off by my losing my temper with him at the spring. He was a man who could handle a strong woman; that was good.
I picked up the second letter; my name was on the front, too, but in a different handwriting. I recognized the penmanship: it was my father’s.
Dearest Benedetta,
I love you with all my heart, I know you know that. I want nothing but the best for you. I know Dominic is bringing letters to you. I had him bring this one. I trust this young man, I know he didn’t read it. He is a good boy. But I do not want you to get involved with him. I will tell you later why. Please respond to him that you are not interested, or I will do it myself.
I am sorry, Benedetta. But that is how it must be.
Give my love to Iole and Emidio.
Your Papa
Like Dominic’s, I read the letter again. Why would Papa want me to stop talking to Dominic, especially if he thinks he’s a good boy? I was not too young; lots of girls my age were starting to develop friendships with boys. There was nothing wrong with what I was doing. And why was he being so mysterious about why? Why would he tell me later?
I crumpled both notes into the front pocket of my dress and headed back for the house. This was too much. I was being torn between my father and the man I now knew I was in love with.
Nothing was ever easy. I had allowed myself a simple dream, one in which Dominic and I were married after the war, our families joining us in celebration, and then we would start a family. I momentarily forgot, impossible as it seemed, the war around us. I had thought there would be nothing standing in our way. And now this, a letter of disapproval from my father, a man who loved and cared about everyone. How could this be?
I stormed toward the house, seething with frustration. As I got closer, I heard screams and crying. Running now with images leaping to my mind of Iole and Emidio being shot or stabbed, I came upon the house and now could tell that the crying was coming from Zizi Checcone. I rounded the corner and Iole and Emidio, ashen face, were in Zizi Checcone’s arms, as she sobbed uncontrollably.
“What? What is it?” I cried.
Iole and Emidio jumped out of her arms and ran to mine.
“We couldn’t see,” Iole said. “Someone…”
Zizi Checcone walked slowly toward me, tears streaming down her face.
“Someone what?” I said.
“It is your friend, Lauretta,” Zizi Checcone said.
“What happened to Lauretta?” I said, my heart skipping a beat. Zizi Checcone’s face was red as tears continued to pour.
“The Germans…”
“What are they doing to her? Where is she?” I said. I could hear my voice rising to panic.
Zizi Checcone opened her great wide arms and started to hug me.
“They have hung her.”
Chapter Thirty-two
The streets, the trees, the houses, the faces along the way were a teary blur to me. My feet felt wooden as I ran. My face was wet but I wasn’t crying, my eyes were wide open and unblinking; I pictured arriving in time to lift Lauretta down, explain that it was all a mistake and nurse her back to health so we could go back to the clearing in the woods and watch the American pilot wave to us again. I would tell her that we had made it this far that she just couldn’t die on me now, it was too close to the end. And then she would open her eyes and I would help her back to her room where we would lie on her bed and look at Enrico Caruso.
There was a small group of people who appeared to be dispersing from the center of town, and I could see that they were crossing themselves briefly in prayer, then leaving the scene as quickly as possible. I pushed my way to the front.
She was dead.
There was no doubt in my mind as I saw her body hanging limply from a wooden beam. I stood directly in front and looked up.
The world dropped from beneath my feet.
Lauretta’s neck was stretched to twice its normal length, a grotesque sight that I knew would forever be burned into my memory. She didn’t look human, with her neck like that, she looked like a painting in which the artist exaggerated the subject’s features. Her head was tilted down and to the side, her face was pale and her eyes stared sightlessly over the tops of the trees toward the distant hills.
Her feet wer
e pointed outward, both shoes missing. I wondered if they’d been stolen. Her dress was the same one I had last seen her in: a green print with yellow flowers and patches worn smooth and shiny from use. There was blood on the dress, and from what I did not want to think.
“Cut her down,” I said to no one in particular, not sure if I had even said the words out loud.
No one responded, but a few people in the crowd moved away from me.
“Cut her down.”
Two German soldiers, stationed inside the abandoned store, sauntered out and stood to either side of the body.
One of them was Schlemmer. He gestured to Lauretta’s body which was twisting slowly in the gentle breeze.
“Ribellí,” he sneered. “For three days she must hang here, so the rest of you know what will happen if you fight us.”
“Cut her down!” My voice was high and unsteady. I could hear people behind me moving farther away, not wishing to be in the line of fire if it should come to that.
“Her father and some other men bombed a supply truck, killing the driver. This is what happened as a result of that,” he said.
“Who ordered her to be hung? Colonel Wolff?” I asked. “He would not do such a thing.”
“Becher understands how we need to treat you filthy people,” Schlemmer said. The other soldier laughed.
“Filthy?” I asked. “Is that why you had so much fun with her before you killed her?”
The smile dropped from his face.
“Cut her down, capibile,” I spat. “It is enough.”
Schlemmer laughed and looked at the other soldier who was shaking his head. Fury rose up inside me and I stepped up to Lauretta, took hold of her feet which were ice cold. I hugged them to my chest anyway. The rope had been tied over the thick post supporting the sign, then trailed down and was tied off to a stanchion against the wall.
I stepped forward to untie it.
The hard heel of Schlemmer’s boot caught me just above my stomach, in the midriff and lower part of my ribcage. I fell backward into the street, landing on my back; my head crashed onto the hard dirt street. The air escaped from my lungs with a woosh. It took a minute to focus, and I had a flashback to when Becher had done the same thing. But this time, I would fight back.
I threw my weight forward and bounced up, then rushed him, ready to tear the flesh from his face with my bare hands.
Schlemmer kicked me again, harder this time, directly in the stomach. I sank to my knees and he grabbed my hair in his fist and dragged me back into the street. The second soldier followed, kicking me in the legs, thighs, and bottom.
A blind fury seized me and I twisted and clawed, kicked and swung my arms.
I felt hands pin my arms behind my back as Schlemmer stepped back and slapped me hard across the face. The second slap didn’t sting as much as the first. After the third and fourth, I felt almost nothing. The taste of blood seeped into my mouth. It was starting to become a familiar flavor.
The arms released me and I dropped to the ground. New hands, gentler this time, scooped me up underneath the arms and pulled me away.
“This is your friend, girl?” Schlemmer’s voice taunted. I looked up at him through a veil of blood and tears. I was on my hands and knees, my eyes bore into his, and I studied every inch of his face, willing it into my memory so that when the day came, I knew I would be killing the right man.
He lifted his rifle and its steely bayonet glistened in the light. With a backward glance at me to make sure I was watching, a joyously giddy expression overcame his face as he reared back and then thrust forward, sinking the blade deeply into Lauretta’s stomach. I closed my eyes but I had seen everything I needed to see. Pure, raw evil was before me, had touched me, had killed my best friend.
Her body was pushed backward, and Schlemmer withdrew the blade from her stomach.
Her face remained unchanged, but her body swung lightly, the rope chafed against the wooden beam and made a soft squeaking sound.
I sank to my knees again, as blackness descended across my eyes, through my heart and over my soul.
Chapter Thirty-three
The darkness remained, for how long I’m not sure, but Casalveri never seemed to be such a dark, evil place as the days after the public execution of Lauretta Fandella. The body was removed, but the stench that hung over our small town would remain forever, the image of my best friend hanging in tribute to the authority of the Germans would never leave my mind; I knew it from the minute I made my way through the crowd that what I would see would change my life forever.
Life at the house returned to the routine; baking what little bread we could muster from the scant supplies. Laundry, cleaning, caring for Iole and Emidio went on. It always would, no matter what happened.
Fatigue grew rapidly on Zizi Checcone; it had been a long time since she’d cared for small children, and the daily hassles that Iole, Emidio, and even sometimes myself created were draining her of energy. I tried to take over more responsibility from her for the cooking and especially the cleaning, but she was a tough old woman and wanted no help from any of us.
It was a mid-afternoon on a cold day when Colonel Wolff returned from the front. It had been almost a week since the murder of Lauretta. The trucks pulled up to the front of the house, and the men entered wearily, some of them were injured and wore makeshift bandages. Their uniforms were filthy and most of them were covered in mud and smelled like rotten meat.
They assembled at the big table where Zizi Checcone and I served them minestrone and bread which they ate with abandon, raising the bowls up and drinking any remaining soup. There was a small hunk of cheese that we placed on a cutting board at the center of the table. A small flask of wine managed to produce enough for each of the men to have a small glass.
Wolff came in the door walking slowly, his boots shuffled across the floor. His uniform was covered in dust and dirt, his face was ashen and dark bags hung underneath his eyes. His shoulders were even more stooped than when I’d last seen him.
“Benedetta.”
I stood in front of him and said nothing.
“Would you help me get my boots off?” he said.
He put his foot up on the chair next to him and I tugged them off, then set them on the floor next to him.
“How are you?” he asked.
“If you don’t need me for something else, I’ll get more soup for your men,” I said, ice in my voice.
“Do that, then come back here and talk to me.”
Zizi Checcone put out two more bowls of soup and I took them to the table. Wolff gestured for me to sit. As the men began finishing their meals, they went to their room to sleep.
“What is wrong with you? What are those marks on your face?” he asked.
“Your men take great joy in beating up children. Even killing them.”
He looked at me tiredly.
“I’m not as used to death as you.” I continued. “That is the problem.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your men hung my best friend. One even stabbed her in the stomach after she was dead.”
He slurped the soup loudly.
“I heard of this happening,” he said. “I am sorry.”
“I can tell.”
Wolff looked like he was going to respond, but then said nothing. One by one, the last two men finished their soup and finally got up from the table.
“Believe me. If I had been here, it would not have happened. But understand, the girl’s father was caught killing Germans,” Wolff said. “You remember what I told your father when I first came here?”
I nodded, but he continued anyway.
“For every German that dies, ten of you die. Luckily, many of the ribellí with her father’s band were killed. But Becher felt that an example needed to be set. Truly, I am sorry.”
There was nothing left for me to say. These Germanesí, even the ones who maybe once had feelings, who maybe once knew the value of a life, had lost it by now. Ther
e was no hope; no chance that sympathy and compassion could be learned. If you had it, you had it. If you lost it, it was gone. It was that simple. I would remember this lesson. It was the kind of lesson you instantly know you will use for the rest of your life; no matter what the situation or the predicament. It gives you the kind of knowledge and perspective that will always be a part of your thinking.
“She was so innocent,” I started to stay, but stopped. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, but there it was.
“No one is innocent when their country is at war,” Wolff said, mopping up the rest of his soup with a hunk of bread. “Once the leaders of a country say it’s time to fight, everyone he governs is a participant.”
I thought of Lauretta hanging from her neck. She was innocent. She would always be innocent as long as my memory and I survived. I would remember the Lauretta I knew all along. The one who dreamed of a man who would love her. The Lauretta created by the Germans had been hung to death, gone forever.
I cleared the table and heard Wolff rise from the table and make his way to his room; his boots moved slowly and loudly. I tried to picture him as a young boy in a German army, the first time he fired a rifle, the first time he watched someone die. His big blue eyes wide, watching blood pour onto the ground. He would have cried, I suspected, he was that kind of person.
There was a little bit of weak coffee left in the pot and I poured myself a cup, then sat at the big table. I ran my hand over the countless knicks and gouges in the wood; the wood my mother used to oil from time to time. She and my father must have had thousands of conversations right over this table.
I just wanted it all to be over. I wanted the Germans to pack up and leave, scared off by the Americans and British. I wanted Papa to come back, the men to go back to the fields, Lauretta to be alive again. I wanted my mother to come back to me, the baby to be all right, and for all of us to be one big happy family again.
