The man was kicking. He went on kicking for nearly a minute. Then he gave up, as his head bent over to one side until his ear grazed his shoulder. The troops looked on with the expression of those who had been tasting the same fetid soup for far too long. No matter how hard I tried to understand, I detected not a trace of either pity or contempt in that grim dead-eyed tribe. Perhaps as far as they were concerned nothing notable had happened. Here and there a few were even rolling themselves a cigarette. I saw a tobacco pouch being passed from hand to hand, and more than one pipe was lit. The soldiers stood silent.
The same scene followed, identical, for the second condemned man, as the first one went on swinging, though the oscillation grew slower and gentler with time. Something however disturbed the established liturgy. As the corporal was fiddling with the loop, making sure the rope was securely fastened to the hook, the young man with the noose around his neck spoke loudly and said something. What it was I couldn’t tell, because he said it in the language of his people. But an infantryman, his arm bandaged to his chest, broke out of the crowd and, after hurling his cap to the ground with his one good arm, gave the chair a furious kick. The body tipped forward, face first, because the loop was not yet fixed to the hook and, given the man’s weight, slipped through the hands of the corporal; he, in turn, lost his balance and came close to tumbling off the ladder. The baron, who already had his hand on his holster, instantly drew his weapon and fired as he took a step forward.
The man on the ground had a hole where his ear had once been. No blood, just a hole. From such a small hole – I thought to myself – a whole life had escaped: his parents’ worries and efforts, all the fighting with his brothers and sisters, the barnyard animals, his first night of love, the first time as a child that he had said the word ‘me’. All of it gone, forever, and who knows where.
They got their hands under the body’s arms and hoisted it up onto the pole and hanged it. I continued to stand at attention, but I shut my eyes. The other man was no longer swinging. Two slabs of hanging meat. Renato went back to his digging. A nod of the head and a couple of words from the baron scattered the men.
On the way back to the Villa, Grandma refused to take my arm, and refused Grandpa’s proffered arm too, preferring to precede us, walking straight ahead. I turned to look back at the bodies lying there, motionless against the empty sky.
That evening I returned, alone, to the scene of the execution. I went back to the poles driven into the mud. The hanged men had been pulled down during the afternoon and Renato had buried them. The iron hooks seemed to be eagerly awaiting new prey. The birds were flying low and the song of the thrush was late in celebrating the dying of the light. The cannons were still firing in the distance, and every so often an aircraft engine made itself heard. I leant against the wooden fence and lit my pipe. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from those hooks. Suddenly I was caught off guard by an odd sensation, as if someone were spying on me. I turned around. Major Rudolf von Feilitzsch was standing there, motionless, not ten paces away from me, but he hadn’t seen me. I thought I was seeing things, and I lowered my pipe. He too was staring fixedly at those black hooks, or at least I thought he was. His bandaged shoulder made him look ungainly, deformed. He lifted his right hand to the visor of his cap and stiffened in a military salute. He was saluting the shades floating before his eyes. When he caught sight of me, he immediately lowered his hand. He concealed his embarrassment with a smile and looked at me in that slightly childish way that I knew very well.
‘So in the end that traitor got what he wanted. He wasn’t destined for the noose,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘The truth is that all soldiers deserve a monument, a funeral song. There should be a day dedicated to the memory of every one of them, just for being soldiers, just because they were there doing what they had been asked to do. But there are too few days, too many dead men.’
Twenty-Nine
SOMEONE WAS KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. I STRUGGLED TO open my eyes, and I saw in the windows that colour that lies midway between night and day. Then I saw Grandpa’s nightcap dangling over my nose.
‘Someone’s knocking.’
‘I can hear,’ I replied, my mouth gummy with sleep.
‘Don’t you think you ought to ask who it is?’
I sat up in bed: ‘Don’t you have a tongue of your own, Grandpa?’
‘Whoever it is, it’s better that they not hear an old man’s voice.’
‘Who is it?’ I asked loudly, still sitting up on my crackling pallet.
‘Renato.’
Grandpa nodded his head.
‘Come in.’
The steward looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He looked at me, then he looked at Grandpa. ‘Get your britches on…Brian was shot down last night, they need us.’
I got up and grabbed my clothing from where it lay heaped on the chair. ‘How did you find out?’
‘That’s none of your business,’ he said and, staring at Grandpa, added: ‘This time it could be really dangerous.’
Grandpa looked me up and down with his grey eyes, which were somehow able to express astonishment at even the tiniest things. The sky in the dormer windows was starting to turn pale. ‘Do you feel like giving Renato a hand? You don’t have to…’
‘In two months I turn eighteen, Grandpa, and I’m Italian.’
Grandpa nodded and turned to look out the window, tugging his nightcap off his head.
As I walked down the stairs with Major Manca, I thought about him, about Grandpa. I truly did love that old lunatic.
We went out into the garden. Giulia was walking towards us. The top button of her blouse was undone and her bosom, heaving as she breathed, was threatening to rip off the second button. Her skirt let me guess at her ankles, concealed in her boots. She was about ten metres away, and already I thought I could smell her perfume. Renato too was eyeing her hungrily, but I was no longer jealous – quite the opposite, I felt as if I never had been.
‘Did you think you were going to take off without me?’
‘Well, to tell the truth…’ Renato said.
‘Everyone in Refrontolo knows that yesterday, at sunset, someone shot down the plane with the kingfisher on the fuselage.’
Renato started off. I let him go a few steps ahead so I could walk with Giulia, who was flaunting her contemptuous smile.
We crossed the park. Many of the wounded had been taken away during the night, and the road was crowded with lorries heading east, towards the old borders. In silence, we passed small groups of soldiers stretched out, or sitting on the grass, next to their sopping wet tents. Between the latrines and the hooked poles two stretcher-bearers wearing lab coats and fezes were burning bloody bandages. There was the smell of carbolic acid in the air, and the wind reeked of burnt flesh.
No one paid us any mind. There was no sign of armed guards around the camp. The only sentinel post that we saw, on the top of the hill, consisted of four soldiers who looked for all the world as if they were sleeping, with their backs resting against the columns of the little temple.
The clouds had cleared. ‘If Brian survived, he’s certainly waiting for us at his house,’ said Giulia.
‘He went down three kilometres north of here,’ Renato’s voice was tense, ‘and I doubt he survived, but the only way to know is to go and see.’
Once we were within sight of the Englishman’s hovel, the major ordered us to crouch down. We stayed there for a few minutes, silent and vigilant.
Renato was very still, and I could read in his face how hard he was trying to conceal his fear.
‘I’ll go,’ said Giulia. ‘If it’s a trap…they won’t shoot at a woman.’ She started off before we could raise any objections.
I was about to stand up but Renato’s hand stopped me. ‘She’s right, we can see the door clearly from here, we can get moving if we need to.’
‘Are you armed?’
‘Of course,’ he said, with his chin in the grass, pulling a semi-automatic pistol
out of his pocket. ‘You see? It’s just like the one our baron carries. Steyr makes pistols for officers who stay behind the lines, or for the top brass who only read about the trenches in the newspapers…Still, they never jam.’
Just then I realized that I was no longer afraid. ‘Giulia is useful to us, isn’t she? With someone like her around, there’s lots of things they might not notice.’ A recklessness verging on euphoria was beginning to sweep over me. If there was one thing I ought rightly to have been afraid of, it was that giddy feeling, but I lacked the necessary mental clarity and, for that matter, the wisdom. There was no one around, and the few groups of men we saw, the lorries and carts were all heading for Conegliano, Sacile, or Vittorio; it was the 22nd of June, so we couldn’t have known that Boroevic’s army corps had already begun to fall back.
I looked at my watch and slipped it back in my pocket. I saw Giulia swallowed up and then, a few seconds later, spat back out by the door. She waved for us to come ahead. We stood up, our britches and shirts dripping wet.
The smell of mould and damp wood washed over me. From a shutter pushed ajar, a strip of light entered the room and cut the floor in half. On a bench shoved against the wall, I could just make out the silhouette of a man. I walked over while Renato shut the door and shot the bolt with a screeching of rust. Giulia had one hand pressed against the forehead of the man stretched out on the bench. ‘It’s him. He tried to get up as soon as he saw me, but he fell back down like a tree.’
Renato leant over his friend, pushing Giulia aside. Brian was motionless, his eyes shut. Renato slipped his right hand under the back of his neck and gently lifted his head. The Englishman let a moan of pain escape his lips and his eyes flickered open: ‘Oh, nice to see you…You wouldn’t have a tumbler of whisky, would you?’ He flashed a row of white teeth.
Renato pulled open his jacket. He turned to look at Giulia, who had wrapped her arms around me. ‘We need some air here.’
Giulia went over to the window and pushed one of the shutters open, then immediately pulled it shut again, taking care not to make a noise.
‘What is it?’ I asked in a low voice.
‘Soldiers.’
‘How many?’ asked Renato.
Giulia held up three fingers.
Renato bent over Brian again.
‘I’ve hit my head, right here, behind my ear, I can’t stand on my legs; gira, everything’s spinning.’
German voices, loud and raucous. Just a few paces away from the door. Renato gently laid Brian’s head down on the bench, then stood up and went over to stand by the door jamb, pulling out his Steyr as he did so. With his eyes he signalled to the two of us to hide, waving the barrel of his gun towards a large black armoire on the far side of the room. I crept over to it on tiptoe and pushed Giulia into it ahead of me; she flattened back to make room for me. The door refused to close all the way, leaving a gap of two centimetres. I hugged Giulia to me and held my breath. The men outside were talking loudly and laughing. Perhaps they’re just hooligans, renegades out looking for a place to hide from the fighting, I thought, maybe they’re not looking for Brian at all.
I could feel Giulia’s breasts warm against my chest. In the silence, I thought I could also hear Renato breathing and Brian gasping and wheezing.
Then the German voices fell silent. Giulia pressed her nose against my neck. I breathed in the scent of her hair. There was banging on the door, first once, then twice. Again, those voices, but now they were shouting. More banging, louder now. The door squealed – the hinges, then the bolt. A shout and the thud of a kick: the door collapsed with a crash. Two shots, then a third. I hurled myself out of the armoire. Renato was standing there pointing his gun, and he fired again, straight into the backs of the two men stretched out on the floor in front of him, face down atop the door wrenched off its hinges. The third man was a short distance further back, just outside the doorway, dragging himself on one elbow and spitting blood and saliva. Renato stepped through the door and nailed him to the floor with a shot to the head. He reloaded as I hurried over to him. His movements were quick and sure. He looked around, like a hunted animal.
I turned to look at Giulia who had emerged from the armoire and covered her face with her hands.
‘Give me a hand, we have to get out of here.’
‘What about Brian?’
Renato grabbed the foot of the soldier with the hole in his head and told me to grab the other. We dragged him inside. ‘Now they’re going to be looking for whoever murdered their men,’ I said, and I realized that Renato was no longer swaggering boldly: that frightened me more than anything else.
‘You, Signorina, stand guard, over there.’
Renato went over to the Englishman who seemed to be sleeping, as if nothing at all had happened.
The light that came in through the door landed right on the murdered bodies.
‘Hurry,’ said Giulia, ‘we need to hurry.’
Renato was sitting at the foot of the bench upon which the English pilot lay outstretched and unconscious. He held his head in his hands and was staring at the corpses. He stood up: ‘These days a plate of beans is bigger news than a couple of gunshots, but for Brian…we need to take him up to the Villa, we have no choice.’
‘To the Villa? But if they find him we’re all—’
He cut me off mid-sentence with a glance. ‘I can’t abandon him.’ For the first time since I’d met him, I saw dismay in his eyes. ‘He’ll get better, taking him up there is my concern… tonight. You two head back and tell no one about this.’
‘Not even my aunt? She might be able to help us.’
‘No one! Whatever happens, you were never here. Brian and I can take care of ourselves.’ He gave Giulia a fleeting glance and Giulia threw her arms around his neck. Renato grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away from him: ‘Get the boy out of here,’ he said. ‘Now!’
Giulia stepped through the door without turning around: ‘Get going, Paolo, are you deaf?’
I was certain – I was suddenly certain at that moment – that the two of them were lovers, or at the very least had been. I said nothing, I didn’t even bid farewell, I just left with my eyes lowered. My head said: it isn’t true, you’re seeing more than you ought to here, you’re making a mistake; but my heart knew.
I crossed the open ground between the house and the woods at a run, dragging Giulia by the hand. The air had again begun pulsing with artillery fire.
Part Three
Thirty
THERE WAS SOMETHING VULNERABLE AND FUNNY ABOUT Brian’s face. I watched him as he slept, clutching his pillow. Grandpa, next to me, shook his head as he stared at him: ‘To hide him here, of all places…Wouldn’t the barn have been better?’
Brian had been taken to the Villa, by night, by the steward and an Italian prisoner who’d been helping him to dig graves for the past few days. He’d had ten or so almost unbroken hours of sleep, and that morning, the twenty-third, when the heavy artillery finally fell silent, he woke up.
Soldiers went by along the municipal road that skirted the garden, marching towards Conegliano, Godega, Sacile, and Pordenone, where a rest awaited them. My aunt, who had come back to the Villa, told us that the Hapsburg soldiers blamed the defeat on their officers, not the unit-level officers but their elderly generals with their trembling fingers, their hearts muffled by compromise. ‘They don’t think much of the Italian infantry,’ she told us, reporting something she’d heard from the baron, I imagine, ‘though they have great respect for the officers in our trenches; in any case, they fear our artillerymen, who tore them to shreds.’
‘The river fought its battle too; the high water destroyed more bridges and footbridges than our planes could,’ Grandpa had said at dinner, ‘and now the real trouble starts, for us, and especially for the peasants: an army with the breath of defeat on the back of its neck…We can kiss goodbye to the peace and quiet of the past few months.’
Brian opened his eyes wide. He looked bewildered. ‘H
ow do you feel?’ asked Grandpa, leaning over him slightly.
The pilot didn’t reply and looked at me: ‘Thirsty,’ he said. The water pitcher was half full and I poured him a glass. Brian took a long drink, which ended with a grimace. ‘Pecàto…too bad it’s not whisky.’ Then he burped softly and smiled, sitting up with some effort on the pallet. ‘Feel better, too much better,’ he said in broken Italian. ‘Am we winning or’ – and here he reverted to English – ‘are we beaten?’
‘The cannons can no longer be heard; Austria has gone home…on a stretcher,’ Grandpa had regained his laughing face, ‘and this time we gave them a licking!’
‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’ said the Englishman, biting down on the ample Latin vowels.
Two sharp raps at the door. Grandpa slipped off his jacket and threw it over the pilot’s face, where he lay flat on the pallet. I sat down in front of him. The knocking came again, sharp and angry.
‘Who is it?’ asked Grandpa, with a fake sound of surprise.
The door opened slowly. Loretta came in, white as a sheet. ‘They’ve arrested Renato,’ she said in a faint voice.
‘Renato?’ Grandpa’s face darkened.
Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy footsteps. Loretta stood aside. A sergeant entered the room, revolver levelled, and behind him came a private with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a bayonet in hand. The sergeant, a man with a small cascading moustache whom I’d never seen before, passed us in review, lowering his gaze to look at me where I sat, shielding the Englishman; then he holstered his gun and reached me in three paces. He looked me straight in the eye with his yellowish eyes. He grunted something I didn’t understand. I didn’t move but just kept looking steadily back at him. Then he grabbed me by the armpits and lifted me to my feet. His hands were hard, a pair of vice grips. He delivered a sharp kick to the jacket that lay in a heap on the straw pallet, and the jacket emitted a groan. The revolver whipped out of the holster. It had a long black barrel. I stood aside as Grandpa pulled me close to him. My legs were shaking. Then Brian hoisted himself to a sitting position and pulled the jacket off his face. The sergeant had kicked him right in the cheekbone. The Englishman got to his feet, his face disfigured by a grimace of pain. ‘Coming,’ he said, staring at the sergeant’s revolver, while the private slipped the bayonet into a loop in his belt and grabbed him by the arm.
Between Enemies Page 20
