Between Enemies

by Andrea Molesini

  The servant lowered her eyes.

  ‘They won’t harm us,’ said Donna Maria softly. ‘They’ll take it out on the Villa, and with the farmhands’ houses, but nothing will happen to us. Go back to bed.’ And back Loretta went to her palliasse, which emitted a crunch of dried leaves.

  Grandpa’s was a laughing face even when he was sad. Not even he slept a wink, but he pulled his sheet right up to his moustache and made a gentle pretence at snoring. I watched him in the darkness. Grandpa’s moustache was a bristly rake, the tips of which attempted a risky handlebar effect. It was a sign of his contrariness, his wish to poke fun at the conventions which his plump chin, carefully shaved, paid homage to. I was amused by his childish eccentricities, partly because they constantly irritated Grandma, who would retaliate by inviting the Third Paramour to dinner.

  The doors were no longer banging, the German voices sounded more sleepy, as did the noise of the boots, of the hoofs and even of the motorbikes.

  I listened to my thoughts buzzing around in the muddle of somnolence. Big thoughts, about faraway things, sufficiently intangible as to not make me feel responsible. I thought of the rout of our Second Army more than of the occupation of the Villa; I thought of the ceaseless stream of peasants and infantrymen, the carts of the poor and the motor cars of the generals, of the wounded men abandoned in the ditches. I had never seen so many eyes ravaged by terror. The eyes of women with bundles slung round their necks: lifeless bundles and whimpering bundles. I would never have believed that the pain of a whole people in flight, a people to whom until then I had not been aware of belonging, could have affected me so deeply as to become mine, a pain of my own. There was no believing in what the generals Cadorna, Capello or the Official Gazettes said, but in pain, yes there was. It was like a massive boulder on my breast. The voices of the barbarians rang in my ears, those abrupt orders, the squeal of brakes, the thud of packs dumped down on stone. Images of stamping men and mules, and doors smashed in. My lips were parched, my tongue a piece of bark. I was a fly in an upside-down tumbler, twisting and turning on the mattress, dashing myself against the glass.

  Two

  RENATO LIT HIS PIPE WITH A PIECE OF BURNING STRAW and his face vanished into the smoke, from which there first emerged his long, sharp nose, then his pale eyes. He had arrived to act as steward at the Villa in mid-October, with references from a Tuscan marquis, an old friend of Grandma’s. Although maintaining a proper distance, the very heart of authority, my aunt didn’t manage to conceal her liking for this lame giant with his one metre ninety and over a hundred kilos.

  ‘What are they doing with those big tubs?’

  ‘Looking for copper. They think we’re simpletons like the farmhands, who bury the stuff near their houses. Your grandfather told them about some valuables and now they’re hunting for the bits and bobs. They’re methodical, but not very astute.’ His voice was of a sombre baritone, yet each syllable came out clear and clean. He was very observant, and uncommonly intelligent, so it was not easy to think of him as a servant. And then his vocabulary was too precise and extensive. Grandpa and Aunt Maria said he was a true Tuscan, but there was something else about him I couldn’t put my finger on, and that perplexed me: he was too clear-minded, too sure of himself.

  ‘Did they threaten you?’

  ‘I gave them a couple of things of small importance, the mandolin and the big copper cauldron from the cowshed, which I’d hidden under the straw to make them think they were more valuable than they are. They stuck a barrel right between my eyes. I put on a show of reluctance at first, but didn’t overdo it. You don’t get yourself killed to save your employer’s possessions.’

  ‘They don’t look so ferocious today.’

  Renato disappeared behind the smoke again. I liked the shape of his pipe, with a four-inch-long almost vertical mouthpiece and a blackened brier bowl. ‘The ones who left here this morning had a nasty look to them,’ he said. ‘And tomorrow we’ll know whether, as rivers go, the Piave turns out a better barrier than the Tagliamento was.’

  ‘Grandpa says the war is already lost.’

  He looked me straight in the eye. I looked at the ground. ‘Italy is feminine,’ he said, raising his voice a little, ‘whereas Germany is masculine. Where women are concerned,’ he added, almost in a whisper, ‘you can never tell. We have lost one army, but if the rest of our forces rally…The front is far shorter now, and we could prove a tough nut to crack.’

  I turned towards the gate, where there was a sudden hubbub. I made out the silhouette of Giulia, who was hugging some dangling object to herself, something the two sentries were trying to wrest from her hands. ‘I’ll go and see…’

  ‘You will do nothing of the sort. Donna Giulia is quite able to fend for herself.’

  His tone conveyed an order, not a piece of advice.

  ‘Better to leave the women to it. And that one doesn’t speak much, but when she does, it’s fireworks.’ He chewed on his pipe-stem. ‘Poor sentries,’ he added, fanning the smoke away with his big, horny right hand. His eyes were smiling. I realized that he guessed what I felt for Giulia, and I blushed again. ‘You see? She’s already got out of it.’

  I went to meet Giulia. She had the sun behind her and it took me a while to make out what it was she was holding. A gasmask, one of those with a snout. ‘Hello,’ I said, suppressing my excitement.

  Giulia held up the gasmask to hide a rather crafty grin. The snout hung down onto her swelling breasts, which even her padded jacket barely restrained. The two glass eyepieces made her look like a giant insect, and the pot at the end of the snout added a Martian touch. ‘I picked it up for half a bucketful of carobs. This German wanted a kiss and I slipped him the carobs. Even horses don’t like them much.’ She laughed, and taking the mask from her face released a swarm of freckles.

  ‘A bit macabre, your headdress.’

  ‘I think it suits me. You told me yesterday that my eyes are too blue. With this I’ve got eyes like a hornet.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go indoors. Too many soldiers here.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Renato following a sergeant towards the wood with a shovel over his shoulder.

  ‘Let’s hope they’re not making him dig his own grave,’ said Giulia.

  ‘They’re going to dig a trench further off, in case the wind blows this way. These toff officers have delicate noses,’ said Teresa as she stood aside to let us in. It took a little while for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the kitchen. There were five men round the fireplace, one of them Italian, a prisoner. They looked at me unseeingly. They were blotto. One of them, his tunic unbuttoned, was stirring polenta over a sparkling blaze. Without weapons on their belts they had a cheery look, as if the war had gone away along with the officers who had left at dawn.

  With the staring eyes of famished men the soldiers gazed at Giulia as she made her way between the blackened pillars. To take the edge off my agitation I took a deep breath of the odour of mould and polenta. The Italian gave us a sketchy greeting, while the others looked away, pretending a sudden interest in the cauldron. In them I no longer felt the arrogance of the marauders of last evening, but more the embarrassment of uninvited guests, prisoners of a foreign language, almost regretful at being unable to exchange courtesies. Bavarians or Prussians as they might be, their firesides at home couldn’t be all that different from ours, and their employers must have had kitchens no less spacious than this one. Giulia went through into the drawing room, and I followed her.

  ‘Is it German, that pendant of yours?’

  ‘No. It was on the corpse of a bersagliere officer. Would you rather have a rag doll?’

  I wasn’t interested in what she said, but only in her voice. Giulia was chaos personified, an irresistible force. Grandpa had described her as the crupper of a horse, the shudder it gives, the lash of its tail on a horsefly. But she was far, far more than that: she was beautiful, she was ablaze. She regarded me with the hauteur of one who, kn
owing herself desired, strives not to reproach the unrequited lover.

  ‘I must see your grandmother. At once!’

  ‘She’s been shut up in her room ever since…this lot arrived.’

  ‘They’ve kidnapped some girls. Over at the church. And knocked out the priest.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘What I know I know.’

  ‘Go upstairs then. Try knocking.’

  I was left alone in the dark room. They had carried off the carpets and nearly all the chairs were smashed. The pianola had vanished. The great oak table was still there, and on it two filthy mattresses which made me think of the kidnapped girls and what it said in the Corriere about the iniquities committed by the Huns in Belgium. I had never really wanted to believe it, even if at the inn they spoke of certain details…

  I left by the back door, wound my scarf around my neck and buttoned up my overcoat. I took the path that goes up to the little temple. It wasn’t far, but it took me almost ten minutes. I saw Renato digging the latrine along with a German soldier and an Italian prisoner with his neck swathed in grey, bloodstained bandages. I exchanged a glance with the steward and almost unwittingly turned to look at the church, one whole side of which adjoined the rear of our porticoed barchessa. Six or seven soldiers were sitting round the apse, chewing on pipe-stems. From their helmets I realized they were prisoners too. If they were outside the church, it meant that the story about the girls was true. I looked up at the bell tower, and made out the bell in its belfry. Whenever anything extraordinary happened, it was that bell that first spoke of it. I wondered how soon the value of its metal would rob us of it, leaving Refrontolo without its ancient voice.

  I noticed they were digging a second latrine right up against the wall of our cemetery. ‘Aunt won’t like that,’ I said to myself as I walked on. Muffled by distance, the din of the artillery sounded like the rhythmic hooting of ships’ foghorns. Every cloud, be it large or small, left its dark shadow on the empty plain. Nearly everyone had fled the village. But not the peasants. All they had was that patch of land, three farm animals and four chairs: how could they possibly leave them? Of people of any standing in the village only the priest was left, apart from a few with their heads not screwed on properly, such as the Third Paramour, who was not the type to become a refugee. His feet were big enough, but his pockets were not deep.

  Only one cow was left in our cowshed, because the Germans had taken the other two off to a nearby farmhouse; but the milk of that one cow, which Loretta milked at dawn, was enough for us.

  More noise from the big guns. It came from over Montello way. I sat down on the empty altar in the middle of the little round temple, so tiny that when I stretched my arms my fingertips brushed the pillars. The sun was paling in a sky growing greyer by the moment. The air was heavy with the odour of stabling and sweaty clothes. And also that smell like iron filings that even today – more then ten years later – makes me think of the war. The roads were choked with refugees then and I learnt to recognize the stench of iron and piss that got right into your throat, tasting of sweat, and terror, and rags clogged with excrement.

  I lit a cigarette and tried to think about nothing.

  The darkness was as dense as the breath of cattle. There was no one in the streets. The windows were all shuttered up. Only from the church windows filtered some wan and ominous light. The drizzle had intensified the smell of mule dung. The Villa was almost empty, and my grandparents didn’t even have supper. Aunt Maria and I ate in a corner of her room, where the frescoed ceiling depicted a jungle with huge red ibises and water buffalo. Among the tangle of boughs there was also a little temple that was perhaps Hindu, in the shadow of which were two Barbary apes and a blue parrot. Loretta served us a dish of rice, with a few drops of olive oil from a jug which Teresa at once went and hid behind the dresser, where a brick had been removed to make a secret hiding place.

  A sudden din of engines and crunching gravel brought us to our feet. Motorbikes. Then two, three, four lorries. The rain was rebounding on the window sill. I watched an orderly file of lorries drive into the grounds. ‘They’re a different sort from yesterday’s. No mules, no bicycles,’ I said.

  ‘Germany here on our doorstep, whoever would have thought it?’ My aunt’s voice betrayed more anger than sorrow. Then the noise of the rain came crashing against the windowpanes, drowning even the roar of the engines.

  Three

  THE MEDALLION CLINKED AGAINST THE DOG’S COLLAR. IT was a messenger dog belonging to the Imperial Army, a sheepdog with the tips of its ears folded down, part Alsatian and part retriever. Giulia, sitting under the magnolia tree with her gasmask in her lap, stretched out a hand. ‘It’s a medallion with a picture of the Madonna,’ she said.

  I leant down and took hold of the medallion as the dog raised its nose. I read the inscription: ‘To Luisa, for her First Communion, 9 May 1908’. I looked over at the sentries standing guard at the gate. ‘What bastards! How dare they hang it round the neck of a dog.’

  ‘They’ve got guns.’

  ‘How many are there in the church?’

  ‘What does it matter? There’s nothing we can do.’ At that moment the dog, alarmed by a rifle shot, darted away. Giulia dropped the mask.

  One of the two sentries at the gate fell to the ground. The other unslung his rifle, dropped to one knee and fired twice at a window on the other side of the road.

  The fire was returned from the window.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Giulia. We ran back into the Villa and up the stairs, two at a time. We entered the loft without knocking, and crowded in close to Grandpa, already at one of the dormer windows.

  ‘That must be Rocca. The fellow who works at Pancrazio’s. They’ve got one of his nieces in the church.’

  ‘What can we do?’ said Giulia and Grandpa in unison.

  A platoon of infantrymen was surrounding the house across the way; a few of them broke down the door.

  Another shot, then one more. Then silence.

  Five minutes passed, or perhaps ten. Then we watched as the soldiers, led by a dark-haired lieutenant, emerged with their rifle butts thrust into the ribs of two old men with their hands up, and an old woman not just bent but crippled.

  The officer barked two orders. The prisoners were pushed under the portico of our barchetta. One soldier forced them to sit against the wall while another started kicking the younger man, who looked about sixty. The old woman hobbled out and stopped right in front of the officer.

  ‘This has nothing to do with the kidnapped girls,’ said Grandpa, turning away from the window. ‘I bet that if one were to prick her belly with a pin a barrel of grappa would spurt out.’ He chuckled. ‘If that German has them shot there’ll be three corpses ready for bottling, but if he decides to hang them the old girl will get away with it. Just wait and see.’

  Grandpa was right. The lieutenant was partial to the noose, and the woman was spared. ‘You’ll find they leave them hanging there in full view,’ said Grandpa. ‘Shootings are soon forgotten, but the bodies of hanged men…There’s no more explicit threat.’

  The trial lasted a bare minute or two. Just enough time for the young officer to bark out three orders and draw up his small troop at the edge of the street that a little further on widened into a little piazza. The old dame was escorted into the inn where the non-commissioned officers were lodged, even though some said she too had fired with a revolver towards the great magnolia tree in our grounds. The soldier was not seriously wounded, and that evening I saw him on a camp bed by the drawing-room fire, surrounded by his mates, who were laughing and handing him one glass of wine after another.

  It was a hanging without ceremony. Almost no one spoke up in their defence. Only the innkeeper said that they were drunk on his grappa, that they certainly didn’t know what they were doing, that the guns were only shotguns that wouldn’t really hurt anyone, and that they didn’t deserve to die.

  The officer listened, silent and m
otionless, and when mine host had finished he saluted him, clicking his heels as though the man before him was a general. The innkeeper went back inside with dragging feet and a hung head, and the troops burst out laughing, every man jack of them. Then the officer shouted one single brief word and all fell silent. Men, women, donkeys, everything.

  It may be that, drunk as they were, they died without realizing it. The soldier who tied the knot did not show them the noose. No one murmured pious fibs into their ears. They remained there hanging, their breeches sodden with urine, until evening. And until darkness fell no one crossed the piazza, where the lime-tree branches creaked without ceasing in the Sirocco wind.

  That night we held a family conference. Grandma called us into the only room where she was sure of not being disturbed, her own bedroom. She was wearing a blue dress and high heels. At her neck she wore a black lace frill and in her ears two artificial sapphires that competed with her eyes for blueness. Grandpa, with ill-groomed moustache, was seated beside her on the bed, clasping an old issue of the Touring Club magazine with a picture of a column of Alpine troops and mules heavily laden with Talmone chocolate. I stood next to my aunt, who was sitting by the chest of drawers containing Grandma’s underwear, priceless possessions that only Teresa was authorized to iron and replace. Although not ‘family’, the steward was standing at the door – his enormous hands clasped behind his back, his felt jacket buttoned up to the neck, and his feet apart – as if to say, with his embarrassingly huge bulk, that no one was setting foot in here, not even if they mobilized the whole Alpenkorps. I think it was the first time I had seen him without his pipe.