The Path to the Spiders' Nests

by Italo Calvino

  The battle has been a bloody one and ended in retreat; but it was not lost. The Germans, passing through a defile, had suddenly found the heights around pullulating with shouting men and blazing with firearms; many of them had rolled into the ditches at the side of the road, one or two lorries began belching fire and smoke like furnaces and were soon reduced to nothing but black scrap-iron. Reinforcements then came up, but there was little they could do except wipe out a few partisans who had stayed on the road against orders or been cut off in the confusion. For the partisan commanders had been warned in time of the new motorized column approaching, and to avoid being surrounded had withdrawn their men up the mountain paths. The Germans, however, are not people to be put off by a reverse, and Ferriera has decided that the entire brigade is to evacuate the area, which could now become a trap, and move on into other valleys which could be more easily defended. Now the blackness of the night was left behind as the retreating men wound up, silent and orderly, along a mule path leading to the pass; in the rear came a line of mules carrying rations and ammunition, and the wounded from the battle.

  Dritto’s men are now chattering with cold behind the boulders; their heads and shoulders are wrapped in blankets, like Arab burnouses. The detachment has had one casualty – the commissar, Giacinto the tinker. He had been hit by a burst of German fire and his body lay in a meadow below, rid now of all his colourful dreams of vagabondage and of all his lice too, which no insect powder had ever done. There was also one man slightly wounded in a hand, Count, one of the Calabrian brothers-in-law.

  They have now been joined by Dritto, whose yellow face and blanket round his shoulders make him look really ill. Silent, his nostrils quivering, he watches the men one by one. Every now and again he seems on the point of giving some order, then says nothing. The men have not said a word to him yet. If he gave an order, or any of them talked to him, the rest would certainly turn on him, and violent words would fly. But this is not the moment for a show-down; both he and the men realize that by tacit consent, so he avoids giving orders or reprimands and the men avoid any occasion for them. The detachment has been marching with discipline, and there has been no dispersion or quarrel about shifts; one could never have told it was leaderless. But Dritto is still in fact their leader, he only has to glance at a man to make him straighten up; yes, he is a great leader, he has a magnificent leader’s temperament, Dritto.

  Pin, wrapped up to the eyes in a woollen scarf, is looking at Dritto and Giglia, and from them to Mancino. Their faces seem quite normal, perhaps rather drawn from cold and exhaustion; there is nothing on any of their faces to show what part they had played in the events of the morning before.

  Other detachments pass which are to halt farther on or continue their march.

  ‘Gian! Gian!’

  In a squad which has halted nearby, Pin suddenly recognizes his old friend from the tavern, Gian the driver, dressed as a partisan and armed from head to foot. At first he does not realize who is calling him, then he is just as surprised himself: ‘Oh … Pin!’

  They greet each other with rather cautious warmth, as people do who are not used to exchanging compliments. Gian looks a different man; he has only been with the partisans a week, and his eyes have already lost that look of a cave-dwelling animal, due to smoke and alcohol, which those of the men in the tavern have. He seems to want to let his beard grow all over his face. He is in Spada’s detachment.

  ‘When I joined the brigade Kim wanted to put me in your detachment …’ says Gian. Pin thinks: He doesn’t realize what that means, perhaps the man from the committee that night at the tavern reported badly on all of them.

  ‘Hell, Gian, I wish we were together!’ says Pin. ‘Why didn’t they put you with us?’

  ‘They told me it was pointless; your detachment is to be broken up soon!’

  There, thinks Pin, he’s only just arrived and knows all the latest news about us. Pin, on the other hand, knows nothing about things down in the town. ‘Gian!’ he says, ‘what’s the news from Long Alley? And the tavern?’

  Gian looks at him sourly: ‘Haven’t you heard?’ he asks.

  ‘No,’ says Pin, ‘what is it? Has the Bersagliera had a child?’

  Gian spits. ‘I don’t want to hear another word about those people,’ he says. ‘I’m ashamed of being born among them. For years I’ve been fed up to my teeth with them and the tavern, the stink of piss in the alley … And yet I stayed there … Now I’ve been forced to run away I can almost thank the swine who informed on me …’

  ‘Michel the Frenchman?’ asks Pin.

  ‘Michel was one. But he’s not the one who did most. He plays a double game, Michel does, with the Black Brigade and with the Gap; he hasn’t properly decided yet which side to be on….’

  ‘And the others …?’

  ‘There was a round-up. They were all taken. We’d only just decided to form a Gap … Giraffe was shot … The others taken to Germany … The alley’s almost emptied … A bomb from an aeroplane fell near the bakery; everyone has either evacuated or is living in the tunnel … It’s another life here; I feel as if I were back in Croatia, only now, thank God, I’m on the other side …’

  ‘In Croatia, Gian, what on earth did you find in Croatia, a mistress? And my sister, tell me, has she been evacuated too?’

  Gian strokes his newly growing beard: ‘Your sister,’ he says, ‘has forced others to evacuate, the cow.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ says Pin, acting the buffoon. ‘You’re offending me, you know.’

  ‘Idiot! Your sister is in the S.S., and wears silk dresses and goes driving round with officers! When the Germans came to the alley, she was the one who led them from house to house, arm-in-arm with a German captain!’

  ‘A captain, Gian! She has got on in the world!’

  ‘Are you talking about women informers?’ This is said by Cousin, who is thrusting his big face with its flattened nose and its sprouting moustaches towards them.

  ‘Yes, that bitch of a sister of mine,’ says Pin. ‘She’s been a spy and sneak ever since she was a child. What do you expect?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ says Cousin, looking into the distance with that disconsolate expression of his, from under the woollen cap.

  ‘It was to be expected of Michel the Frenchman too,’ says Gian, ‘but he’s not really bad, Michel isn’t, he’s just a rascal.’

  ‘And Pelle, d’you know the new one in the Black Brigade, Pelle?’

  ‘Pelle!’ exclaims Gian the driver. ‘He’s the worst of the lot.’

  ‘He was the worst,’ says a voice behind them. They turn round; it’s Red Wolf arriving, hung all over with weapons and machine-gun belts captured from the Germans. They greet him warmly; everyone is pleased to see Red Wolf again.

  ‘Why, what’s happened to Pelle? How did it go?’

  Red Wolf says, ‘The Gap organized it all,’ and he begins telling them what happened.

  Pelle used sometimes to go and sleep at his own home, and not in barracks. He lived by himself in the attic of a tenement block, where he kept the whole armoury of weapons which he’d managed to lay hands on, for if he’d taken them to barracks he’d have had to share them with his companions. One night Pelle was on his way home, armed as always. A man was following him, dressed in civilian clothes; he was wearing a raincoat and had his hands thrust in his pockets. Pelle felt himself covered by a firearm. ‘Better pretend not to notice,’ he thought, and went on walking. On the other pavement there was another man he’d never seen before, also in a raincoat, walking along with his hands in his pockets. Pelle turned a corner and the pair turned too. ‘I must get home as quickly as possible,’ he thought. ‘As soon as I reach the street door I’ll jump inside and begin firing from behind the doorposts to keep them off.’ But beyond the street door, on the pavement, was another man in a raincoat, coming towards him. ‘Better let him pass,’ thought Pelle. He stopped and the men in the raincoats stopped too, all three of them. The only thing to do was reach the
street door as soon as possible. In the entrance, back against the stair rails, were another two men in raincoats, standing there motionless with their hands in their pockets. Pelle had already entered. ‘Now they’ve got me in a trap,’ he thought. ‘Now they’ll say: “Hands up!” ’ But they did not seem to be looking at him. ‘If they still follow me,’ he thought, ‘I’ll turn on the stairs and fire down between the rails.’ When he reached the second flight he looked down. They were following; Pelle was still covered by the invisible weapons in the pockets of their raincoats. Another landing; Pelle frowned down. On each flight of stairs below him was a man coming up. Pelle went on climbing, keeping very close to the wall, but at whatever point of the stairs he’d reached, there was always a man of the Gap, one or two or three or four flights below him, coming up close to the wall, and keeping him covered. Six floors, seven floors. The well of the staircase in the dim light of the black-out looked like a series of mirrors, with a man in a raincoat repeated numberless times on every flight, spiralling slowly up towards him. ‘If they don’t fire at me before I reach the attic,’ thought Pelle, ‘I’m safe; I’ll barricade myself inside and I’ve got enough weapons and grenades there to resist till the Black Brigade arrives.’ Now he had reached the last floor under the roof. Pelle ran up the last flight, opened his front door, entered and banged it to behind him. ‘I’m safe,’ he thought. But on the roof, through the windows of the attic, he saw a man in a raincoat aiming a pistol at him. Pelle raised his hands. The door opened behind him. From the stair rails on the landings all the men in raincoats were aiming pistols at him. Then one of them, no one knows who, fired.

  The men, halted at the pass, are all standing round Red Wolf, following the story breathlessly. Red Wolf sometimes exaggerates a little in his stories, but he tells them very well.

  One of them says: ‘What about you, Red Wolf, which of these men were you?’

  Red Wolf smiles, and raises his peaked cap on his head which had been shaved in prison. ‘The one on the roof,’ he says.

  He then describes all the weapons Pelle had collected up there; Stens, tommy-guns, hand grenades, pistols of every make and calibre. There was even a mortar, says Red Wolf.

  ‘Look,’ he says, and shows them a pistol and some special hand grenades. ‘This is all I took, the Gap have less weapons than we have, and need them.’

  Pin suddenly remembers his pistol. If Pelle knew the place and went and fetched it, it must have been among those; and now he, Pin, had a right to it, it was his, and no one could take it from him!

  ‘Red Wolf, listen, Red Wolf?’ he says, pulling him by the jacket. ‘Was there a P.38 among Pelle’s pistols?’

  ‘A P.38?’ replies the other. ‘No, there wasn’t a P.38. He had every type in the collection, but not a P.38.’ And he goes on describing the variety and rarity of the weapons collected by the maniac Pelle.

  ‘Are you quite sure there wasn’t a P.38?’ asks Pin. ‘Could someone from the Gap have taken it?’

  ‘No, no, d’you think I wouldn’t have noticed a P.38? We went through them all together.’

  Then the pistol must still be buried under the spiders’ nests, thinks Pin; it’s still mine, Pelle didn’t know the place, no one knows that magic place but me. This reassures him greatly. Whatever happens, there are still the spiders’ nests and the buried pistol.

  It is nearly dawn. The brigade still has many hours of marching in front of it, but the leaders consider that lines of men filing along open paths after sunrise would give away their new positions, and decide to wait until the following night before continuing their march in complete secrecy.

  This used to be a frontier area, where for many years the Fascists had been playing at preparing a war which in the end they entered completely unprepared; and the mountains are scattered with a variety of long, low, military buildings. Ferriera now sends orders for the detachments to scatter round these huts to sleep and keep hidden for the whole of the next day, till it is dark or misty enough to start marching again.

  Places are assigned to the various units; Dritto’s detachment is allotted a small isolated building made of cement, with rings in the walls; it must have been a stable. The men stretch themselves out on a few bits of rotten straw on the floor and close their tired eyes, filled with scenes of battle.

  In the morning they find it a nuisance having to stay cooped up in there, and only being able to go out one by one to piss behind a wall; but at least they can rest. They are not allowed to sing, or make any smoke from cooking; down at the bottom of the valley there are villages full of spies, with binoculars trained and ears strained for any sound. The men have to go and cook in shifts at a military kitchen with an underground flue which comes out some way off.

  Pin does not know what to do with himself; he has sat down in a patch of sun at the door and taken off his broken boots and now completely heelless socks. He looks at his feet in the sun, rubs his blisters, and takes the dirt from between his toes. Then he searches for lice; a daily round-up is necessary if he is not to end up like Giacinto, poor old Giacinto. But what is the use of catching lice if you’re going to die one day, like Giacinto? Perhaps the reason that Giacinto didn’t rid himself of them was that he knew he was going to die. Pin is sad. The first time he caught lice in a shirt was with Pietromagro in prison. Pin wishes he were reopening the cobbler’s in the alley with Pietromagro. But it must be deserted now, the alley, with everyone run away or taken prisoner or killed, and only that bitch of a sister of his left going round with captains. Pin feels that soon he will find himself abandoned all alone in an unknown world, without any idea where to go. The men of the detachment are an ambiguous, stand-offish lot, like the men of the tavern, though much more fascinating and incomprehensible, with that lust to kill in their eyes, and that bestial coupling in the rhododendrons. The only one he feels at home with is Cousin, nice, big, but ruthless Cousin, but he’s not here now; in the morning on waking up Pin found he had gone, with his woollen cap and his tommy-gun, off on one of his mysterious expeditions. And now the detachment will be broken up, too. Kim had said so to Gian the driver. The others know nothing about this so far. Pin turns to them as they lie crowded up against each other on the scanty straw on the cement floor.

  ‘God, if I didn’t come and give you news, you wouldn’t even know you were born.’

  ‘What’s up now? Spit it out,’ they say.

  The detachment is to be broken up,’ he says, ‘as soon as we get to the new area.’

  ‘Sure. Who said so?’

  ‘Kim. I swear.’

  Dritto shows no sign of having heard. He knows what this means.

  ‘Don’t talk balls, Pin. Where can they send us?’

  They begin to discuss the detachments to which the various men could be assigned, and which they would prefer to go to.

  ‘Don’t you know they’re going to make a special detachment for each, though?’ says Pin. ‘They’ll make all of us commanders. Long Zena they’ll make commander of the arm-chair-borne partisans. Sure, a detachment of partisans who go into action sitting down. There are soldiers mounted on horses, aren’t there? Now they’ll have partisans mounted on rocking-chairs!’

  ‘Wait till I’ve finished reading,’ says Long Zena, holding a finger in his Super-Thriller to keep the place. ‘Then I’ll answer you. I’m just on the point of guessing the murderer.’

  ‘The murderer of the bull?’ asks Pin.

  Long Zena can no longer follow either his book or the conversation.

  ‘What bull?’

  Pin breaks out into one of his high-pitched laughs; Long Zena has fallen into his trap. ‘The bull you got the lips from! Bull’s-lips! Bull’s-lips!’

  Long Zena leans over on one of his huge hands to get up, still keeping his place in the book, and waves the other about in an attempt to grab Pin; then he realizes it’s not worth the effort and begins reading again.

  The men all laugh at Pin’s jokes; they are enjoying this performance; when Pin starts maki
ng fun of people he goes right through the lot of them.

  Pin, happy and excited, laughs till the tears come into his eyes; he’s in his element, now, in among the grown-ups, people who are enemies and friends at the same time, whom he can laugh at till he has vented his hatred for them. He feels ruthless; he’ll hurt them without any pity.

  Giglia laughs too, but Pin knows that it’s a forced laugh; she is frightened. Pin glances at her now and again; she does not lower her eyes, but the smile is trembling on her lips; you wait, thinks Pin, you won’t be laughing long.

  ‘Carabiniere!’ exclaims Pin. At every new name he brings in, the men give subdued grins, enjoying in anticipation what Pin will come out with.

  ‘Carabiniere will be given a special detachment …’ begins Pin.

  ‘To keep order with,’ says Carabiniere, defensively.

  ‘No, my lad, to arrest parents with!’

  Every time Carabiniere is reminded of that business of arresting the conscripts’ parents, it makes him furious.

  ‘It’s not true! I never arrested any of their parents!’

  Pin’s voice is full of subdued, concentrated irony; the men are listening with approval, backing him up. ‘Now don’t get angry, lad, don’t get angry. A detachment to arrest parents with … You’re so good at arresting parents!’

  Carabiniere is getting more and more furious; then suddenly he thinks it might be better to let Pin have his say, till he tires and passes on to someone else.

  ‘Now we’ll go on to …’ Pin swivels his eyes round, then stops with his face set in one of those smiles which bare his gums and cover his eyes with freckles. The men have already guessed who he is referring to, and hold back their laughter. Duke seems almost hypnotized by Pin’s grin, his moustache is standing straight up and his cheeks are drawn. ‘I’ll bbblow your bbballs off, I’ll kkkick your arse,’ he hisses between his teeth.