‘It was a lucky landing.’ Brian took off his white scarf and threw it onto a chair, on which I saw his leather flying helmet and goggles. ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’
‘Oh, have done with it…You and your spouting poetry…’ said Renato.
‘Don’t forget I am a Herrick, the poet of Cheapside.’
‘Yes, yes. I know all about your ancestor. You’ve bored us all stiff with him, every time you had one too many up he popped… How does the poem go again?’
The Englishman took a stance with his feet apart, lifted his chin and rhythmically intoned:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
Renato repeated the last two lines in Italian for our benefit.
But a sudden burst of light whitened the window. ‘Flares!’ cried Renato. ‘Outside! At the double!’
Out we scrambled. Giulia first, then the Englishman and Renato. I was last out. Two shots sounded from the edge of the clearing.
‘Hold on a tick,’ said the pilot. He darted round behind the house. I saw the spark of a lighter and then the flames that in a trice engulfed the aircraft. He had left the fuel tank open. ‘No free gifts for the enemy.’
Renato led us off among the trees. The Englishman was just a step ahead of me. Short and stocky, with small, swift hands; more like a cutpurse than a knight of the skies. Then, behind us, the explosion.
The wood suddenly became bright as day. Not from the fire rising from the burning aircraft, but from the rockets of the Germans searching for us.
‘These Huns know how to make war.’
Renato quickened his pace, and we followed suit, and finally we entered a ravine.
The crash of the bursting flares echoed among the branches and off the rock walls. I was wondering why Renato had wanted me to come along with him. I learnt next day that the cottage where Brian had hidden up had belonged to Giulia’s mother. So she was there because she was the only one who really knew the last part of the way through the woods, and also because she wanted to come anyway. But I felt nothing but a burden.
We went ahead slowly, following the stream and careful not to make any noise. The water was flowing beneath the ice, with a gentle, muted gurgle. Every so often Renato called a halt, and stood listening intently. Nothing. Only the faint plumf of snow falling from the branches and the voices of night-hunting creatures. All the same, they were searching for us. A pilot is a lion, not a mere hare, and calls for highly skilled hunters. And the zone was occupied by two battalions of Feldjäger.
At a certain moment I realized we were near Refrontolo. I made out the form of the ruined house I had seen with my aunt, the one belonging to a young Englishman with a poet in his ancestry, and I understood. We reached the ruin in very few minutes, sidling along the black hedges that bordered the abandoned farms. Bare rock walls, leafless trees, the tops of the beeches shattered by lightning. We passed empty sheep-pens, empty cowsheds. The hunger of both victors and vanquished, of the soldiers and the peasants, had made a clean sweep.
‘Ergiebt Euch! Kommot mit!’
Stock still, I held my breath. If a blade of grass had bent beneath the weight of a grasshopper, I would have heard it. Pitchy blackness. A hand touched my right ear. A cold hand. I turned, and Giulia put her lips to mine and murmured something I didn’t catch. I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair, but I was concealed by darkness and was seized by an uprush of joy that came from deep inside me.
Then, muffled, the voice of Renato: ‘Crawl after me, slowly, single file as far as the rise. They haven’t seen us. They’re smoking.’ Keeping on all fours, I peeped over the hedge. Ten metres away, two cooking-pot helmets were outlined above the intermittent glow of two cigarettes. Renato told me later that they were imitating our soldiers trying to say in German that they wanted to surrender. They hadn’t heard us.
Brian brushed past me, forcing Giulia to move away. I felt a quick surge of hatred for him, until I saw that his forearm ended in an eight-inch blade. He was about to attack, but Renato held him back: ‘Don’t move, they’re leaving.’
The two cigarettes disappeared along the mule-track. I turned to Giulia, and felt her hip pressing mine, her shoulder too. We dipped under the fence and entered the house. The door hinges didn’t squeak. Renato went over to a cupboard, took out a paraffin lamp and struck a match, the flare of which lit up the room. The window was blocked up with boards covered with tarred sacking. The steward had prepared everything down to the last detail. That explained why we had seen so little of him at the Villa.
‘Look here, Brian, no one will come looking for you here, but don’t light the fire. I’ve given you a couple of blankets.’
Brian gave a nod. His eyes shone merrily. The room was spotless and on either side of the fireplace long black moustaches stained the white paint of the walls. The top of Renato’s head brushed the beams. The palliasse was broad and thick, and Giulia threw herself on it to test it out, making the stuffing crackle. Brian and Renato lit their pipes as a man. I would have liked to have had one myself. It wasn’t like lighting a cigarette; there was something both sensual and soldierly in the way they handled the smoking bowls. Their gestures were affectionate, at one and the same time both tender and masculine. Renato read my thoughts. ‘You ought to smoke a pipe too,’ he said, giving me a steady look.
Brian said, ‘It’s so nice to be home.’
A jute sack also emerged from the cupboard. ‘I’ve left you some rusks and a pot of honey. There’s also a slab of cheese and half a sopressa. That should last you a day or two…Then I’ll take you to Falzè, where there’s always a lot of bustle, and you ought to be able to get through. The boat will be there for you.’
Brian answered Renato with a machine-gun burst of English and the pair of them ended with an exchange of jokes too private for us to understand anyway.
I edged closer to Giulia, but she bounced off the palliasse at once. Then she moved to the door and said to the steward, ‘I’m sleepy, and there’s nothing more to do here.’
Renato checked her with one look. ‘We’ll come too. Better not to be caught by daylight,’ he said almost under his breath. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, Brian. At dusk.’
The pilot replied with a broad grin. I left with Giulia. Renato caught up with us almost at once and went swiftly on ahead. Dawn was still a long way off. We reached the Villa in less than twenty minutes. ‘We’ll go round behind the church,’ said Renato. He had no wish to wake the sentries dozing against the gateposts in the flickering glare of torches.
Giulia went off down an alleyway, without so much as a wave. I followed her with my eyes.
‘Women scarcely ever match up to one’s hopes,’ murmured the steward.
Now he’s starting to talk like Grandpa, I thought.
We crouched down behind the chapel and then, on all fours, skirted the family graveyard wrinkling our noses – for the drainage of the latrine was far from perfect – and finally got behind the camp kitchen, where two men were already at work. We crept past a sergeant sitting on the ground, his legs apart and his back against a wall, a pipe in his mouth; he was snoring. When Renato drew back the bolt I thought the rasping sound would have woken the whole camp. A clip on the shoulder. ‘See you tomorrow, Paolo.’ His familiarity surprised me. I felt flattered.
I went up the stairs two at a time, without a lamp. It was already first light in the attic.
Grandpa was sleeping, smelling of beans and sauerkraut. I undressed and slipped under the bedclothes. In no time at all I was asleep.
Eight
DON LORENZO HAD RETURNED. TO THE GIRLS’ PARENTS HE had merely said that they shouldn’t worry, the girls were in safe hands. He had skipped the ritual needed to reconsecrate the church – the bishop had given his dispensation in view of the war conditions – and he had reopened the school. He was fond of children,
and he liked teaching.
He had prepared for the event by visiting from door to door. He, the parish priest, was after all the sole Italian authority left in Refrontolo, and the lessons – he thought chiefly of the catechism – had to start again, as life had to start again. Bertaggia the schoolteacher had taken to his heels even before the advance guard of the army, followed in turn by the pharmacist, the village doctor, and anyone else who had two pennies to rub together. The only remaining people of any education were my grandparents, my aunt, Giulia and – technically enrolled in the class – the Third Paramour, even though Grandpa used to say, ‘If that fellow can read and write, then call me Marcus Aurelius.’ Our cook and her daughter had also had a smattering of education. Loretta, however, showed no sign of it. Teresa, on the contrary, was mad on Mastriani and De Amicis, and I once took her by surprise with a copy of D’Annunzio’s Il piacere in her hands. It was the only time I had seen her blush.
The children turned up in dribs and drabs, half an hour before the evening rosary. Two novice nuns from Sernaglia acted as sheepdogs, rushing round the church forecourt and driving the tousled sheep towards the pen. The church doors were flung wide, with the priest towering in the middle. The notoriety of his bad breath threw panic into the little creatures being pushed and shoved up the steps towards the alms box, which Grandpa dubbed ‘God’s nest egg’.
His breath was not the only acid thing to issue from the priest’s mouth. He once said to an Alpino guilty of having pinched his housekeeper’s bottom, ‘May your bayonet be thrust up your backside and turn into a hedgehog!’ And when confessing a certain woman of his flock, as sure as death he would load her with a barrelful of Ave Marias, not suspecting that fleeing from what came from his mouth was a prize, not a penance.
With slaps and with scoldings the brisk sisters from Sernaglia, as anxious as anyone to make a getaway, wove the net that captured the last of the shivering lambs.
Until at last all were gathered in the dim light of the church. The front rows, those of the young recalcitrants, filled up in no time. I watched the scene from the rearmost pew, along with Giulia. The priest was afraid that the novices might not be able to ensure the conduct that befitted the holy place. They didn’t know our village children, and besides, with the war on they needed a box on the ears to keep them in line. But the younglings of the flock well knew what wolves and fanged jaws were about in the streets, in the fields, in the mountains. They all had a couple of brothers in uniform, and almost all had seen one of them buried.
Don Lorenzo’s figure loomed large in front of the altar. A stick of chalk served him as a baton. Without so much as a how-do-you-do? he launched into a description of hell that made the press-ganged lads’ flesh creep. He spoke of the eyes of the devil, as cold as bayonets, and of his flaming whip that lashed off chunks of flesh. ‘It will spell trouble for you if I catch you eyeing the…’ – he flavoured the pause with a rotund gesture which they all understood – ‘the…of the baker’s girl! It is a Sin, a Sin!’ He then attempted to define this Sin using words which the lambs had never heard before: ‘grave matters’, and ‘deliberate consent’.
‘First the fire and then the smoke,’ I whispered in Giulia’s ear.
The priest’s voice grew clearer, his speech slower, as he went on to speak about worldly temptations: ‘Because one day the devil comes disguised as a woman knocking at your door, her dress all torn, and another as a rich man wearing a top hat, and the one will promise you the pleasures of the flesh and the other riches and power. You must be as alert as a sentry on watch, because the Enemy is crafty, seeking out our weak spots and scenting it when we weary. If we lower our guard he knows it. Yes, and he knows how to lie in wait, and how to strike!’ Don Lorenzo heaved a deep sigh, and the lectern was shaken by the weight of his hands. ‘You, Attilio…yes, you…’ – and he aimed his chalk at a child sitting in the third row – ‘You, sitting there yawning without putting your hand over your mouth… the demon will come for you too, you who yawn and imagine that he’s not thinking of you. Fool! He will come for you too!’ He broke off to stab the chalk at him once more. ‘I see you’ve finished yawning. Good boy, that’s the way, be attentive, like our soldiers on the Piave, who never let their rifles out of their hands, or it would be the end of our country. Be vigilant, Attilio, and the devil will not come for you.’
Don Lorenzo furrowed his brow. ‘Do you understand, lads? The devil is cunning and comes furtively, like a thief in the night, and if you are not watching out, then you can kiss goodbye to the crock of gold, and goodbye to Paradise, the only place where there is no sin.’
‘Bloody bore, this Paradise,’ muttered Attilio.
Don Lorenzo started walking to and fro in front of the altar. Saying nothing. All of a sudden he halted and raked us all with his eyes, right down to the back pew. Like a cow chewing the cud.
‘However, the universal evil…’ Here he raised his chalk towards the ceiling before pointing it at all of us. ‘The universal evil comes knocking at all doors, even that of the smallest cottage hidden in the woods.’ Thereupon, to bring grist to his mill, he launched into an invective against the war: ‘The mayor has bolted, the doctor has bolted, they have all followed suit, even before the army bolted, but your priest is still here, the Church is still here, because the Church is a rock in the torrent.’ He had scored a point in his favour. But the very next moment he got bogged down in one of his proverbial demonstrations of the existence of God, which Grandpa called ‘sacristy garbage’.
‘Have you any idea, lads,’ began the priest, pointing his chalk at the astonished stucco angels on the ceiling, ‘how much money that young man at the back of the church has in his pocket?’
They all swivelled their heads towards me, including Attilio who was yawning again. Don Lorenzo lowered the chalk. ‘Do you know?’ And he stabbed the chalk at a boy in the front row. ‘Or do you know?’ pointing at another. ‘Or maybe that sleepy-head Attilio knows…Ah, no!’ And the chalk made a full circle, describing a halo above his bald head. ‘But He knows.’ And pointing once more to the stuccoed ceiling, he confirmed: ‘Yes, He knows all right!’
Even if this proof of the existence of a superior being had not been forged in the metal of incontrovertible logic, the children appreciated it, because whenever Don Lorenzo brought up the subject of money it meant that the sermon was near the end, for our vicar did not let a day go by without telling us that ‘money all comes from the devil’s own coffers’. Except, of course, what came by way of God’s nest egg.
The whish of the devil’s coat-tails and the clinking of his money were still with us when Atillio raised his hand. ‘Father,’ said he in scarcely more than a whisper, ‘you always say that the devil is more cunning than a witch…So why couldn’t he disguise himself as Don Lorenzo?’
In three bounds the priest thrust his face almost nose to nose with the child, who hastily withdrew with a grimace. ‘What’s that you say, boy?’
‘That Don Lorenzo might also be…’ A great wave of laughter threatened to sweep through the church. But the priest lifted his head and the look in his eyes raised a bulwark and checked the wave. His face returned nose to nose with the child’s, his lips drew back and showed his teeth, yellow and crooked. When the blast of his breath struck the boy with the ready yawn, I realized that Atillio had hit the nail on the head: the priest’s breath came from the sulphurous depths of Gehenna.
Back at the Villa all was a-bustle. Beside the gates a majestic motor car glittered in all its chrome-plated splendour. It was a Daimler, guarded by a soldier with rifle slung on one shoulder and uniform crisply pressed. With short, nervous steps he paced back and forth from one bumper to the other. I wanted to take a closer look at that marvel of machinery, but my aunt grasped my arm and held me back: ‘Have you lost your mind?’
All the soldiers to a man had their capes buttoned tight, the buckles shining, their cartridge pouches aligned with unaccustomed symmetry and their boots might have come straight f
rom a shop window. The machine guns, set up in line under the portico, were oiled and spotless, and if the evening light had been a little brighter the bayonets would have glittered like the chrome fittings of the Daimler. They all spoke in subdued tones, even the sergeants.
‘I’ll go and find Renato,’ I said in my aunt’s ear.
‘And I’ll find the captain.’
I made a tour of the garden, playing with an Alsatian which was let off its chain every evening by a sergeant who couldn’t bear to hear it barking. I ran here and there to get the dog to follow me, whimpering with pleasure, and every so often it would try to knock me over by planting its huge black paws on my chest, then on my back. In this way, under the astonished eyes of non-commissioned officers and sentries, I got right through the camp, now reduced to half a dozen tents. Many of the troops had left during the afternoon to relieve a company of Schützen stationed at Pieve. I spotted the medical officer, a tall, lean fellow of about fifty, with impressive side-whiskers, sitting on a pile of wooden boxes and peeling an apple with a barber’s razor. Through the windows of the side chapel came the faint glimmer of lighted candles. I got rid of the dog by throwing a stick over the ditch that marked the northern edge of the garden, and hurried in.
Loretta and Teresa were telling their rosaries and mangling words in Latin. Teresa gave me a cross look. Loretta pretended to be rapt in prayer, pulling her dark headscarf so far forward as to cover her cheekbones. I approached the cook.
‘This evening we got generals,’ she said.
I gave her a questioning look: ‘Generals?’
‘Teresa says it and Teresa knows it, those landsknechts have no manners.’
‘Are they going to eat in the big dining room?’
The cook nodded. ‘They’ve killed the sucking pig. I’d hidden it to celebrate Christmas with.’
Between Enemies Page 6
