‘Oppressive? Really?’
She stretched out on the sofa. ‘Come over here, I’ll make coffee later.’
I went and sat by her without taking off my overcoat.
‘You’ve got a fine nose, long and finely chiselled. It’s worth having a face to carry around a nose like yours.’
She looked into my eyes. Her blouse was unbuttoned down to the cleavage between her breasts. In the fireplace the wood was already crackling. I shot to my feet and went over to the window. From there I could see the Villa, with the big garden forming an L-shape around the main building, and the barchessa backed up alongside the church.
‘What’s so fascinating about your grandparents’ house? You ought to have eyes only for me.’
‘It looks different from here. Now the Germans have gone the garden looks smaller, but maybe it’s only the perspective,’ I replied, still gazing out. ‘I like your home. It’s so neat and tidy… you know…I thought you were…’
‘A savage? It feels like a boat, doesn’t it? My grandfather was a rear admiral, and when he came here he used to bring his mistresses, and maybe he felt some nostalgia for his ship.’
‘A rear admiral?’
‘Yes, at the Battle of Lissa he was a junior officer in the Austro-Hungarian navy, just think of it! He died in July 1914, two months after your mother and father.’
She got up and joined me at the window, pressing the tip of her nose against the pane. ‘Your house is so huge…What do you do with all those rooms? And that three-mullioned window on the façade…It’s ridiculous, it looks stuck on.’
I put an arm round her shoulders.
‘Please don’t,’ she said, and the look she gave me hurt. I took my arm away.
‘Do you live here all alone?’
‘But didn’t you know? Pagnini lives downstairs.’ And she gave a coarse laugh.
‘Whaaat?’
‘Yes, it’s him I let the ground floor to. But I come in that way,’ pointing to the little door onto the balcony which we had entered by. ‘We never meet. He keeps to himself down there, as quiet as the dead. I don’t even hear him coming and going. I sometimes think he likes living in the dark, because day after day he never even opens a window.’
She took my hand and we sat together on the sofa in front of the fire. She unbuttoned my overcoat and brought her lips close to mine, but without touching them. So I kissed her, and she let me do it; but she was distant, she was playing with me. I drew back. ‘Don’t you like me?’
‘Silly! Of course I like you, but you’re just a boy.’
I kissed her again, and again she let me.
‘I don’t like the way you laugh. You seem afraid of showing your teeth, but you’ve got lovely teeth and have the look of a lady-killer.’ She almost tittered, and again I pulled back, feeling she was only teasing me.
‘Did you do those?’ I asked, nodding at two watercolours hanging above the mantelpiece, the only purely decorative objects in the whole house.
‘Yes, a few years ago. I don’t paint any longer. When I was in Venice I liked to, but not now.’
She ran her fingers through my hair and brought her face close to mine. I smelt her breath and her eau de cologne, and could feel myself blushing. ‘Don’t you dare kiss me any more, not today at any rate…You’ve got really beautiful hair. I’d like to paint those black curls of yours. But you’ve got the thin lips of a cynic, and sometimes you give a crooked smile, as Renato does. But then, he’s a grown-up man, and is entitled to.’
Those last words were like daggers. I got up and without thinking up an excuse walked out through the door to the balcony and down the steps without looking back.
I reached the piazza in just a few minutes. I strode along quickly, thinking of those two brief stolen kisses. The morning air sneaked in at my coat collar. I was miserable, deeply miserable. I stopped at the inn and entered the place to get a taste of the loneliness one feels in the company of strangers, and to be forced to show it a bold face.
The intense cold had moved Don Lorenzo’s school into the sacristy. Adriano, who ruled as the king of the youngsters from the pinnacle of his fourteen years and 170 centimetres, was put in charge of the stove. The priest had asked me to give him a hand with history and geography. I had said yes because it would put me in well with Grandma, who at the beginning of the summer had intuitively plumbed the depths of my mathematical skills and had immediately drawn back appalled: ‘Perhaps you are more cut out for non-Euclidean foolishness…’ and ever since then there had been no mention of exponents and logarithms, abscissas, ordinates or sines and cosines.
The priest, his mood as black as his cassock, strode up and down grasping a tailor’s measuring stick which he whacked against the blackboard at regular intervals to assure himself of the attention of his pupils.
‘You!’ And he aimed the measure at Adriano, who was puffing at the embers. ‘Come here to the board.’
This boy’s face was long and pale. He slammed shut the stove door. He got to his feet. His body too was long and skinny.
‘Get a move on! Have your feet turned to lead? Now write!’ I was sitting at the back of the class awaiting my turn. I had to do a bit of Roman history and was trying to concentrate. ‘Write, boy, write. My dog is good.’
Adriano wrote the sentence on the blackboard. One word under another, each on a separate line. He knew the way. Grammar was Don Lorenzo’s torment and delight.
Adriano’s letters were all out of shape, the A spindly, the O obese, and he forgot to put an accent on the E. When he had finished writing he pressed the chalk to his forehead in search of inspiration.
‘IL is the subject,’ he said after a long minute.
The priest didn’t move a muscle. The class was frozen in the silence that comes before a battle.
‘MY means that it is mine.’
Silence.
‘DOG is its name.’
Silence. They all knew that Adriano’s dog, a grey Pomeranian, was in fact simply called ‘Dog’.
‘IS…is a verb.’
Silence.
‘GOOD is a complimentary object.’
The boys were as silent as the walls. The priest strode towards the blackboard. Adriano saw the tailor’s measure transformed into the lance of St George attacking the dragon. He turned tail and fled, vanishing through the doorway. The saint’s lance clattered to the floor. Don Lorenzo rubbed his bald pate with both hands, his shoes astraddle beneath his cassock, his eyes cast down and haggard. ‘Give me patience,’ he said. ‘It takes all the patience the Good Lord can give!’ And he shooed the class out with his hands: ‘Out, out with you!’
Thus it was that the children of Refrontolo were spared my little learning, and Dog received an unexpectedly large ration of snowballs.
While I was on my way home that same afternoon, a sergeant and a private in the army of Karl I of Hapsburg, the thirty-year-old emperor, arrived at the Villa mounted on a couple of donkeys – one of which was missing an ear – and with unusual cordiality, the result of a hefty dose of grappa, informed Aunt Maria that General Serda Teodorski had decided to make Villa Spada one of the headquarters of the Sernaglia sector of the front. Then the sergeant asked Aunt Maria for an egg for himself and one for the private, and Teresa allowed them to sit in the kitchen, on the most uncomfortable bench, the only one she hadn’t yet cleaned. For no one scents – and despises – the hoi polloi sooner than a consummate servant.
The Austrians arrived at about seven o’clock. Three companies, only one of which stayed, the others going on towards Pieve di Soligo. The troops were drawn up in the piazza, only a few dozen metres from the gateway by the old façade, beneath the three-mullioned window which in the near future would begin to transmit Grandma’s code. They came from Codroipo, and for a good quarter of an hour were kept there stock still in the cold, lined up before a major who was shouting orders about what I took to be the allotment of quarters and the sentry posts.
For a month already, two t
hirds of the houses in Refrontolo had been empty, stripped of everything that could be loaded onto a cart, everything a donkey could possibly drag away. The new arrivals spent the whole evening forcing doors and gates to lay hands on what little was left. Four officers and their batmen came to take up quarters in the Villa.
Donna Maria received their commanding officer seated in an armchair beside the burning fire. The room – upstairs, above the dining room with the oak table – was lit by a few candles and the tremulous flame of a lamp just about to run out of paraffin.
I was sitting on a rather uncomfortable little sofa, pretending to read a book Grandpa had thrust upon me, when in came an officer. Crisply ironed uniform, shining buttons. He sported, hanging from a blue-bordered triangular yellow ribbon, a two-headed eagle with a gold F on a shield in the middle. There was something un-military about him, maybe the hesitant way he moved his hands. They almost seemed to embarrass him. He was not much more than thirty, had the insignia of a major, light chestnut hair cut short, and no moustache or sideburns. His pink complexion didn’t give the impression of a warrior, but rather that of a young man who had just bid his mother goodnight.
He crossed the room with short, quick steps. I got to my feet. My aunt remained seated, but raised her eyes, put her book down open astraddle the arm of her chair and offered him her hand. The officer, clasping his cap to his left side, bowed and executed an awkward hand-kissing. Aunt Maria bowed her head ever so slightly. ‘Major,’ she said.
The major brought up his right hand in a smart salute. ‘Madame, allow me to introduce myself. I am Rudolf Freiherr von Feilitzsch, Baron von Feilitzsch, aide-de-camp to General Bolzano, and in the name of His Imperial Majesty Karl I of Hapsburg I am taking possession of this Villa.’ In his Italian – which Grandpa defined as ‘stuff with all the subjunctives in the right place’ – there was barely a trace of a German accent. ‘I hold myself responsible for the wellbeing of yourself and that of your family.’ He swallowed. ‘My officers and I,’ he added, raising his voice a little, ‘are aware that it is our duty not to put you to any inconvenience other than those demanded by the state of war.’ He then turned to me, and his face broke into a smile less of circumstance than of amusement. It was as if he were asking, ‘Did I do that well?’
All at once I felt him to be my fellow, thought of him as a youngster merely playing at making war.
‘My duties as commander call me away, Madame,’ said the baron firmly. And with a click of the heels he vanished.
Giulia joined us for supper, along with the Third Paramour. The officers ate in the big dining room on the ground floor, served by their batmen. We were confined to the upstairs, with Teresa serving at table and Loretta running back and forth to the kitchen. The grandparents were in high spirits. The purple lion on the shield borne by the two-headed eagle lacked the tenebrous glower of the Prussian eagle. ‘The damsel has chased away the dragon,’ was the maxim of the evening. And though Aunt Maria did not share our Buddhist’s enthusiasm, she appreciated the gentlemanly manners of the new master of the house: ‘The baron is aide-de-camp to a general and has exquisite manners.’
The Third Paramour objected that manners aren’t everything. ‘A curious statement,’ commented Grandpa, ‘coming from you, who are a bundle of good manners and nothing else.’ Grandpa’s well-bred ferocity intended to leave his rival no room for manoeuvre. Grandma didn’t interfere; those squabbles amused her, as homage to the last stirrings of her womanhood.
When Giulia, sitting opposite me, stretched out a foot to touch mine, I felt the blood rise to my cheeks. Teresa, who was offering me the soup tureen, noticed it and grunted one of her grunts. Giulia was radiant, and I was longing for her lips, to touch her skin. I couldn’t even follow what was being said. At a certain point I stood up. ‘Excuse me, I don’t feel very well.’ I dumped my napkin on the table and left the room.
I was hoping that Giulia would follow me. A woman of her stamp has no need of excuses. Without thinking I set off towards the barn. I was wearing only a sweater. I broke into a run to ward off the cold. About thirty metres ahead I saw a point of light coming and going. It was Renato’s pipe.
‘Do you want to catch your death? Come inside.’ Renato stooped slightly to avoid the oaken lintel. He took off his overcoat and lit a paraffin lamp in a stone niche beside the door. I breathed in the odour of embers, garlic, dried figs. He offered me a flask of grappa. One sip and my throat was on fire. I handed it back at once. It was a large room, seven metres by five. The hearthstone in the corner was about fifty to sixty centimetres higher than the brick floor. I was struck by the cleanliness of it all: the hood over the fireplace was redolent of Marseille soap. I see a woman’s hand here, I thought. The window, right opposite the door, was masked by a heavy curtain of sacking brushing the floor. The bedstead was of iron, long and broad like the giant who occupied it. The fawn blanket had the same rust-coloured stripes as mine. It came from the Villa.
‘Let’s have some heat,’ he said, with a nod at the logs in the fireplace. ‘Close the door.’
The chimney drew like a dream, and the wood was ablaze in an instant.
He pulled a green-painted bench out away from the wall and we sat down side by side. ‘Would you like a puff at a pipe? I’ve got a Peterson, a present from Brian. The tobacco smells a bit like manure, but it’s not actually mule dung. Considering everything I’ve put you through, you deserve a present.’
He showed me how to fill it, and how to keep the smoke in my mouth without inhaling. ‘Gently…you must smoke gently, feel the calm effect between your teeth. As when you touch a woman’s breast,’ he smiled, ‘you have to go gently with the nipples, circle round them…and then downwards over her curves, until you reach the cleft you’re after. The gradual assault pays off. And the pipe is quietude, rhythm, restrained passion… It helps you think.’
The Peterson was curved, with a dark brier bowl which came down to just under my chin. I smoked as slowly as I could, so as not to disappoint my teacher, and every now and again we caught each other’s eye and laughed like children with a new toy.
‘So you are a major…’
‘I am the steward of the Villa. Nothing else.’
We chatted for a while about the officers who had just arrived.
‘Austria, like Italy, is a woman…Two women, in fact, because there is also the Kingdom of Hungary…But Hungary is more like a peasant girl, while Austria is a great lady. Two women coming to blows with Italy, a pretty hefty woman herself, despite everything.’ With the tip of his pipe-stem he sketched the outline of our boot-shaped peninsula.
‘When it’s between women…’ I began, but two raps at the door shut me up.
‘That must be Loretta…This is when she brings me a bowl of soup with polenta.’ He undid the bolt.
‘Signorina Candiani!’ Renato turned to me and registered astonishment.
I stood up.
Giulia shot me a withering glance.
Renato shut the door. ‘What are you doing here?’ From his voice he seemed genuinely taken aback.
‘Looking for Paolo.’ She was tense, but I didn’t want to think she was lying. ‘Your aunt’s asking for you,’ she added.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I’m a witch. Haven’t you realized that yet?’
I nodded.
‘What a lovely pipe.’
‘A present from Renato. It came from Brian.’
‘An Irish pipe…A good dry smoke,’ said Renato. ‘But don’t keep your aunt waiting…Off you go.’
‘Thanks for the pipe…and everything.’ But the door had already closed behind us.
I was glad that the darkness concealed my blushes. Giulia took my hand and started to run. Then, suddenly, she stopped and planted her lips on mine. So firmly it almost hurt. She was trembling with nerves. I felt her warm, soft tongue on mine. I slid a hand in under her overcoat. A moment, then she broke away, pushing me away with both hands on my chest. ‘Quiet! There’
s someone coming.’
We were in the middle of the garden. The light shed on the snow from a single window was all that broke the darkness. We strained our ears, heard a crunching sound. ‘Quick, let’s get inside,’ she whispered. As soon as we reached a door at the back Giulia let go my hand and gave me a hasty kiss. ‘See you tomorrow…Donna Maria is expecting you.’
‘But you can’t go home now…There’s the curfew.’
‘What I can do and not do is up to me and only me.’ Her voice was cold. It stung me. She turned and ran off in the direction of the hill, since she couldn’t go out through the gates.
I glanced back towards the barn. For a moment I thought I could discern the intermittent glow of a cigarette, or a pipe. Then nothing but darkness. I went indoors.
Fifteen
ON DECEMBER THE EIGHTH THERE WAS UPROAR. THE Germans of the Silesian division had been called home and let off their entire reserves of ammunition. After that the month passed uneventfully until Christmas. Action on the Piave was slackening off. The salvos from the Montello, from Vidòr, from Segusino were rare enough to be remarked on. Only in the foothills and valleys around Monte Grappa, as far as Monte Tomba and the narrow valley at Quero, was the battle still raging.
Grandpa was the most optimistic of the lot of us. ‘If they haven’t broken through yet, they never will. There’s two metres of snow up there on top. With snow that deep it’s not easy to survive, let alone fight.’
On December the fourth a few British and French contingents had joined our front line; or at least so they said in the bottiglieria Grandpa haunted, in the conviction that ‘barmen know more than generals’.
At that time no one knew that the Emperor Karl had as early as the second issued a ‘secret’ order to halt the Austrian offensive. If they were still firing up in the mountains it was only to improve their positions while awaiting the thaw.
Giulia and I met every day, and every day I was granted the taste of her kisses, but she didn’t let me touch her very much, and this began to get on my nerves. Meanwhile, Don Lorenzo had caught me in his net: I was recruited for the fourth. I gave history lessons to all the boys left in the village, about thirty of them, although never more than ten or a dozen turned up. The troops were billeted in the abandoned houses round the piazza, and the few officers quartered in the Villa were all but invisible. ‘They are very well-mannered,’ said Aunt Maria, with a touch of admiration. Grandpa had once said that if she had seen a hangman proffer the noose politely she would have lauded his exquisite manners.
Between Enemies Page 11
