The Cross of Lazzaro

by John Harris

  ‘It should all have been mine,’ he said, indicating the carved woodwork on the walls. ‘My ancestors made all this. They were all woodcarvers. They learned their trade at the State School.’ He grinned. ‘But that’s life, isn’t it, Herr Doktor? They built it, the politicians and the soldiers destroy it, and I come here just to eat my meals. Because I used to live here, because my ancestors carved all these walls, I am allowed to have my meals for nothing, even with a carafe of wine thrown in. Because I bring tourists here to dance and drink, you understand. It is the way of the resort. You kiss my backside and I’ll kiss yours.’

  He smiled and went on cheerfully: ‘I don’t live here, of course. My brother-in-law guards his pretty little tourists like a hen with its chickens. I have a bad reputation, you see.’ He gestured with a big hand and smiled, showing his gold teeth. ‘I have a room in the town,’ he explained. ‘But it doesn’t get used a lot. You understand, I am always out at night, perhaps with climbers or tourists or swimmers, who are pleased to buy Alois Stettner a glass of wine because they’ve heard of him. As for sleeping’ – he chuckled – ‘there are plenty of girls who’re pleased to share their beds with me.’ He sighed, mocking himself. ‘There are so many, Herr Doktor,’ he said in a pained voice, his eyes merry. ‘They are so demanding. E morte! It’s death. I have a reputation for virility, you see.’

  He stubbed out the cigar he was smoking and was silent for a while. When he went on he seemed to be choosing his words carefully and speaking slowly, as though he wished to open a new and controversial line of conversation.

  ‘They have not yet found the explosives that were stolen,’ he said. ‘The police came to see me this morning.’

  ‘I saw them.’

  Stettner paused, his eyes thoughtful, then he laughed. ‘I don’t believe in politics,’ he said, ‘but they know I am an Austrian, you see, and prefer to be called Austrian. They think, even, I might know who Andreas Hofer is and who has got the explosives, because I know everybody in the mountains. Because I am a member of the Volkspartei, you understand, and have taken part in the parades in Bolzano.’

  ‘Although you’re not a student?’

  Stettner shrugged his big shoulders. ‘If I were a babe in arms,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t alter the fact that I was born an Austrian.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘This is Austria,’ Stettner said firmly. ‘We were given to Italy by your Lloyd George and Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson.’ He sounded unexpectedly bitter and his voice was harsh as he continued: ‘All the German place names in the valley were changed and the use of the German language was forbidden. Lawyers had to plead in Italian. Schoolboys – me, I was one – we had to learn our lessons in Italian. Nobody ever passed their examinations, of course, and all the government jobs went to Mussolini’s men. It still never made us Italian, though, and when they said religious instruction had to be in Italian two hundred and twenty-seven priests announced their intention of disobeying.’

  ‘For a man who doesn’t believe in politics,’ Henry pointed out, ‘you know your facts.’

  Stettner shrugged. ‘I grew up with them,’ he said. ‘They’re engraved on the hearts of everybody who lives here.’

  He suddenly seemed to think that perhaps he had talked too much, because he began to smile again. ‘Except mine,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t affect me. I just like young people. Especially young girls – and particularly in summer when they wear thin clothes and you can feel the flesh underneath. This is why I have not married, you see. Why do I want a wife? I get plenty of girls.’

  He was goading Henry deliberately, and Henry found it difficult to accept his irresponsibility like Caporelli. He seemed to be far too intelligent a man to be merely a fool.

  Stettner was gesturing to the waiter now and, as he brought him rolls and coffee, he slapped the boy on the shoulder.

  ‘This is Dittli,’ he said. ‘Hjalmar Dittli. He is from Bolzano University. He lives in Trepizano and works here during the holidays. He, too, is Austrian and a member of the Volkspartei, aren’t you, Hjalmar?’

  The boy nodded, a faint, embarrassed smile flickering across his weak mouth, as though he disliked Stettner discussing his politics.

  ‘The police came to see him, too,’ Stettner went on. ‘Also about the explosives. They’re afraid it’ll be used to blow up the Questura, you see, and, being Italian, that doesn’t appeal to them at all.’

  He hooted with laughter. ‘I see Rome is already claiming Lazarus,’ he went on, using the German name of the drowned bishop. ‘I thought they would.’

  ‘I don’t care who claims him,’ Henry said sharply. ‘I just wish he’d stay in his grave and not get in my hair.’

  ‘You haven’t a chance, Herr Doktor,’ Stettner said with a grin. ‘It isn’t only the archaeologists you’ll have to contend with.’

  Henry looked up sharply.

  ‘I saw Father Anselmo with the Bishop of Trepizano last night. They must have considered it urgent to bring him round to this side of the lake as fast as that. You haven’t just Dei Monti to worry about. You’ve got the whole Church of Rome against you. They’ll want to take the cross to St Peter’s. You see.’

  ‘Because this is Trentino,’ Dittli joined in bitterly. ‘Because here it might be damaged.’ He turned to Stettner. ‘Alois, we must resist it to the limit. It belongs to us. It belongs in this valley.’ He leaned towards Henry. ‘This man they call Bishop Lazzaro,’ he said angrily, ‘was actually a German friar, Herr Doktor.’

  Stettner indicated the waiter and winked. ‘He’s a believer,’ he said. ‘A good party member. Hjalmar, what do you think of the Cross of Lazarus?’

  The boy’s eyes lit up. ‘It is a sign that Arzen should he free,’ he said earnestly. He gestured fiercely. ‘I expect they’ll find Arcuneum now, Herr Doktor. They’ve been searching for it ever since I was a child. My father says they were searching when he was a child. And now that it’s found, everything in it will go to Rome instead of to Vienna.’

  ‘After fifteen centuries,’ Henry said, tiring of the argument, ‘I wouldn’t have thought it mattered.’

  ‘The Volkspartei will support Vienna, all the same. This is Austrian soil.’

  ‘It’s been Italian for forty years.’

  ‘Alsace was German for forty years,’ Dittli said quickly, as though it were an argument he’d used often. ‘But it never ceased to be anything but French, and the people who lived there never ceased to be Frenchmen. We aren’t Italians and never will be. Who ever heard of an Italian hotel called the Stettnerhof? You can change the name of Die Sägekette to the Catena di Saga and Die Eisenspitze to La Spiga, but you can’t tell a man whose name’s been Dittli for years that it’s suddenly something else. You can’t stamp his forehead with the word “Italia” and make him an Italian.

  ‘I just hope,’ he ended, ‘that whatever they bring up from the lake is stamped all over with the German language. I hope nothing stops them uncovering Arcuneum.’

  ‘Something will,’ Henry said.

  ‘What can, Herr Doktor?’

  ‘Mud. From the dam. It’s to be drained.’

  ‘It won’t affect Arcuneum.’

  ‘It’ll be drained over Arcuneum.’ Henry felt faintly defiant as he spoke, but he was beginning to feel that he ought to establish his position firmly and at once.

  Dittli was staring at him, his eyes narrowed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.

  ‘The dam must be drained. It’s unsafe.’

  Dittli’s face was shocked. ‘You can’t drain it over Arcuneum,’ he said. ‘It would bring down God knows what sort of rubbish. There might he damage done. It might spoil our hopes of proving the nationality of Father Lazarus.’

  ‘I’m neither Austrian nor Italian,’ Henry pointed out. ‘I’m merely an engineer and as I see it the dam should be drained – now – not tomorrow, now. A heavy downpour could set every mountain stream up there draining into it. It could rise twenty feet in no time, because
there are no sluices that work. Another twenty feet would be a disaster.’

  ‘It can’t be drained,’ Dittli said slowly. ‘All my life I’ve believed that Lazarus was an Austrian. His name will be all over everything they bring up.’

  Stettner waved the boy aside and grinned at Henry. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s what it means to believe. Frightening, isn’t it? You’ve got quite a lot of opposition, haven’t you, Herr Doktor? Rome and big business and the Sudtyrol Volkspartei all together. We shall be against you, you see. Every one of us. Patriots, one and all.’

  Five

  When Henry told Caporelli of his conversation with Stettner the Italian seemed unwilling to discuss it at length. He was an odd character in many ways, normally affable and pleasure-loving but occasionally withdrawn as though there were some secretive spring of caution within him that had a tendency to damp down his enthusiasm at times, a mountain wariness that he had picked up during his years with the Partisans. His indifference had a flattening effect and Henry tried to brush off what Stettner had said as unimportant.

  ‘It’s as well they have no friends,’ he said.

  Caporelli’s reaction this time was surprising. His head came up at once and his voice became brusque. ‘You think not?’ he asked. He jerked his head towards the door. ‘Come with me,’ be went on. ‘Tonight we’ll take our aperitifs in another bar. Avanti! Andiamo!’

  He drove the Alfa Romeo up through the narrow streets to the top of the town towards a little inn on the edge of the meadows, without any apparent concern either for their own or anyone else’s safety. He made no attempt at conversation and was in a strange quiet mood as they took their seats and ordered aperitifs.

  The Edelweiss Bar was like hundreds of others of its kind in the mountains of Germany and Austria and Trentino. It obviously catered less for tourists than for locals and the walls were of unstained wood and the plain wooden tables were bare of cloths.

  The custom seemed to comprise of students and the air was filled with smoke and the buzz of their conversation. In one corner was a separate group, who all seemed to wear Tyrolean clothes, leather shorts or green-lapelled grey jackets with horn buttons, and they all seemed to know each other, a fact which first drew Henry’s attention to them. All the youths wore arrogant expressions and seemed entirely to ignore the girls with them in the eagerness of their conversation. Among them were one or two strikingly handsome youths with blond hair who clearly came from the north, and an occasional taller youth who seemed to be regarded by the others as a leader. There was something about them that seemed strangely and strikingly familiar to Henry and with a shock he realized he was looking on a new image of the Hitler Youth who had been brought up before the war to be the backbone of a perfect nation. The realisation struck him like a physical blow and he thought at once of massed formations and long red banners and the volleys of Sieg Heils. The group even had that typical Nazi air of being in possession of some instinctive, drilled-in mystique that they kept safely hidden at the backs of their brains.

  ‘Good God!’ he said involuntarily.

  ‘You notice?’ Caporelli asked. ‘You have seen?’

  ‘By God, I have seen!’

  Caporelli jerked his head towards the group of youngsters. ‘Those are Alois’ friends,’ he said. ‘These are the friends they haven’t got.’

  ‘They’re not what I think they are, surely?’

  Caporelli shrugged. ‘Why not? That sort of thing takes a long time to die, and what else is any nationalistic organization? These are just the children who don’t understand, the types who think it clever to be rude to their elders, the types who see the fun in the jokes on lavatory walls. But the others have not entirely disappeared and a lot of them see their chance in the Volkspartei and the Montanari. Give them the chance and they would put me across a rack because I don’t think the same as they do.’

  ‘But surely they’ll never come back?’

  Caporelli shook his head. ‘I think not,’ he said. ‘Not really. We are all too wary. But they exist, eh? They are an added complication in Trentino. They supply some of the motivating power behind the irredentism, some of the iron if you like.’ He leaned forward, his face full of disgust. ‘Dr Cappell, is this why I lived in the mountains through those dreadful winters, is this why your young men fought at Tobruk and Alamein, and why soldiers died at Stalingrad and Normandy and along the Rhine?’

  Henry felt a tense sensation of anxiety. ‘Where do they come into it?’ he asked.

  ‘The old frontier satisfied no one. Neither did the new one. When Mussolini collapsed, the price he paid for Hitler’s aid was a promise to return Northern Italy to Austria.’ He jerked his hand towards the students. ‘They know that. That’s what they want.’

  ‘And is Alois a pro-Nazi?’

  Caporelli shrugged. ‘There are the would-be Nazis these days in any political movement in Europe,’ he said. ‘And the genuine patriots, and the ambitious and the restless, and the fools like Alois. I dare swear that one tenth of the Montanari – or the Berg-bewöhner, as I suppose they’d prefer to be called – are active members. Another tenth are interested, and a third tenth would be if they could be assured of success.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Caporelli’s expression was one of faint contempt. ‘That’s the mistake a lot of nations are making,’ he said. ‘Only infantile minds fail to take this seriously. It is an error to think of the Germans merely as unemotional militarists. They are far more passion-torn than any Latin. Only a German could cry into his beer over a song about true love or exile from home, and only a German could see a valley like this as a symbol of patriotism.’ He paused, then went on slowly: ‘The Montanari claim to be German. Or Austrian, if you like.’ He shrugged. ‘What’s the difference?’

  It was a frightening experience and Henry shuddered. Caporelli seemed to have lost interest now that he had brought it to Henry’s attention. He finished his drink and rose to go.

  ‘I thought you would like to see,’ he said. ‘Whatever the Volkspartei are, the Montanari are different. Don’t under-estimate them. I don’t.’

  Henry followed him to the door. ‘How far does Alois go along with – with’ – he gestured helplessly – ‘with this?’ he ended.

  Caporelli humped his shoulders. ‘He doesn’t realize what he’s mixed up in,’ he said contemptuously. ‘All the Stettners were fools. How else could they lose the house they built and lived in for three hundred years?’

  The incident left a nasty taste in Henry’s mouth. It was as though it was part of a recurring nightmare, as though he’d turned over a stone and found something repulsive beneath. It stayed with him all the way back to the Stettnerhof, and, in an attempt to force it to the back of his mind, he busied himself with Caporelli’s file on the dam. He was so absorbed in making notes from it over dinner that he didn’t notice Maggie Daniells sit down opposite him. Then, as he turned a sheet of paper, he became aware of movement at the other side of the big oak table and looked up.

  She was dressed, as usual, in black ski-pants and black jersey, her hair over her face, her eyes heavily made up and those ugly black spectacles on her nose. She had a large-scale chart of the Cadivescovo area of the lake and had been outlining in red the position of the walls they’d found already.

  She nodded to Henry and smiled immediately, and she seemed to be trying to think up some way to start a conversation, because she opened her mouth, paused, then shut it again and blushed.

  Henry put down the file and took off his glasses. ‘If you’ve got something to tell me,’ he said helpfully, ‘I’m quite prepared to listen.’

  She gave a little relieved laugh. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I thought you would be.’

  ‘What’s it about? The cross?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose so. And Arcuneum. We’ve found more walls – one of them a beauty, fifty feet long.’

  Henry raised his eyebrows but carefully avoided comment. ‘Made of hand-carved blocks,’
she went on. ‘And two more running at right-angles.’

  She looked up as though she hoped to find him interested. ‘The cement’s visible,’ she said eagerly. ‘We think we’re right on the site of the monastery. With a little luck we ought to find some sign of Lazzaro’s barge soon. The National Geographic’s been fishing. They’re wanting pictures and a story. They’re going to pay well, too. It’ll help with the cameras we’re hiring and the high-speed film we’ll need.’

  Henry put down his spectacles and smiled. ‘I suspect,’ he said, ‘that it’s about more than this that you want to talk. I can’t imagine you thought I’d really be interested in your walls. Not in view of what I’m wanting to do to them.’

  She smiled at him, her eyes frank. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t. It was something else. As a matter of fact, Professor Dei Monti’s coming to see you tonight. I told him you wouldn’t mind. I hope you don’t.’

  Henry’s eyebrows rose. ‘No,’ he said cautiously. ‘I don’t.’

  She looked grateful. ‘Thank you. I thought I’d better warn you. Sometimes, you see, he’s a bit hot-tempered.’ She hesitated and went on slowly: ‘To tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering all day if we couldn’t work together somehow. I should have thought we could.’

  Henry pushed Caporelli’s file aside. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve nothing against Arcuneum or your group. Nothing in the world. I know you’ve got a job to do and you’re trying to do it. Unfortunately, so have I. And I’m being paid, so I’ve got to do it properly. I was called here to advise on that dam. I inspected it today.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘My advice will have to be that it must be drained at once. And the only safe way to drain it is by removing a gate in the stopper wall and emptying it down the bed of the old stream.’

  ‘Can’t you do it by the present route?’ she asked patiently.

  ‘The sluice gates are too heavy and they’re jammed with rubbish. It’d be a major engineering job. The other way, it could be done within a matter of a few hours.’