Stones in Water
Page 7
Sometimes he thought of throwing the stone away. He didn’t know why he kept it.
The skin on his arms had already turned a white-blue, just from being exposed for those few minutes since he woke. This was the coldest day yet. But his legs were covered, at least. That’s because Roberto had been the first to discover one of the frozen boys. And the first to discover a body got his choice of whatever clothing he wanted before the others pillaged it. The boy had a short-sleeved shirt, like Roberto. But he had trousers instead of shorts. So now Roberto wore trousers.
The trousers were short for him—his ankle and part of his calf stuck out—but he loved them. He’d offered to share them with Enzo, trading pants every other day. Enzo seemed to suffer from the cold even more than Roberto did. But Enzo was so tall, the trousers weren’t much of an improvement over shorts. So after the first time of trading, Enzo said the trade didn’t make sense. And Roberto got to wear the trousers every day He felt slightly guilty about it, but it wasn’t his fault the boy who had died had been short.
And Enzo had better shoes than Roberto, anyway. His original shoes were still holding out pretty good. Roberto, on the other hand, had outgrown his shoes sometime that fall. He’d worn holes through the toes. It wouldn’t have been much of a loss, given the holes he’d worn in the bottom as well, except for the bitter cold of the ground, even then. But Roberto had been lucky: Another boy discovered a body a few days later with boots. Not the high, thick boots that the German soldiers wore, but good boots, nonetheless. They came up over the ankles, and the laces were still in place. So that boy took the boots and left his own shoes—shoes big enough for Roberto’s feet and with only one hole in the bottom of the left shoe. Roberto had moved swiftly to grab them. The hole hardly mattered, for Roberto and Enzo had ripped up a bloody shirt Enzo found in the back of a truck they were unloading and wrapped their feet inside their shoes. There was enough material to go around each foot twice.
Roberto stood at the edge of the sleepers now and hiked up his blanket carefully. He relieved himself into the small ditch they’d dug when they first made camp here—when the ground was still workable. Enzo joined him, his blanket tied around his shoulders like a cape. Enzo’s blanket was a potato sack, so it was pliable enough to tie, but it was no warmer than a cement sack. Their breath made white balls of vapor in front of their faces. Their urine streams made the frozen dirt hiss. Winter came early to this part of Ukraine, wherever this part of Ukraine was. The only thing Roberto knew for sure was that it was far from any settlements. The whole idea was for the Germans to have an airstrip here, near enemy lines, so they could refuel planes on their way to and returning from attacks on Russian airports, factories, and cities.
They had come all the way here in the backs of trucks—one truck after another, across the whole of Poland. Then they’d turned southeast down into Ukraine. At times it was slow going. The rain came relentlessly, and the roads turned to mud deeper than a hand, then deeper than an arm. The dry days that followed were actually the hardest because the mud solidified into ruts and high ridges, so that even the big wheels of the trucks couldn’t roll over them. That’s when the boys would get out of the trucks and pick at the road until it was passable.
The boys were good at picking and digging and everything else, for only the strongest, best workers wound up in Eastern Europe. Especially if they had caused trouble at their last work camp. Roberto had been told this. The Italian boys in this camp tried hard to understand one another. They brought out their school Italian and struggled along with that when necessary. But most of the time each spoke in his own dialect, slowly and carefully. Roberto found that if he just loosened his ear up a bit, he could understand most of what was being said to him, even though the boys who weren’t from the Veneto region had a lot of trouble understanding Roberto. They said Venetian dialect was a totally different language. Still, Roberto noticed that when they truly needed to understand him, they did.
Language was prized among the boys; language was necessary for plotting. They were constantly plotting a theft of cigarettes or food. Now and then they plotted escape. There was still a sense of each boy for himself—but there was also a sense of strength in unity. And the German soldiers knew that. They watched the boys more attentively than in the old camp. But they never beat them. They wanted them strong and able to work. And it was something more, too; the soldiers were kinder here than in the last work camp. It was as though being isolated in the wilds of Ukraine had made all of them comrades somehow.
Roberto wasn’t hungry anymore—or at least not in the same way. They ate worse than at the work camp in Poland—nothing but watery soup; a small piece of Brot, of course; and the garbage left by the soldiers. But he had grown accustomed to his lot and his stomach hardly ever growled, even though his mind sometimes still conjured up images of grilled sea bass and fluffy gnocchi. And when his stomach did growl sometimes at night, he took out a soupbone he had snatched from the garbage and sucked on it, even though it had long ago become dry as old leather.
Enzo carefully inspected anything that resembled meat before eating it. Roberto knew the things they ate were hardly recognizable as food, so the inspection was unreliable. Still, he nodded in agreement when Enzo declared the meat to be something other than pork.
None of the boys complained about the food with each other. But they plotted to steal the occasional fresh vegetables reserved for the soldiers, or a container of sour milk, or a sweet cake. And sometimes the theft plots ended in success. Roberto had never considered carrots anything special before—now they were a treasure.
He thought about the Polish girl back in the pen at the last work camp, and his yearning for more food suddenly seemed obscene.
Shame made his ears hot. At least that was a comfort. If only he could get away from here. Away and away and away, escape from the soldiers, from the knowledge that soldiers existed.
Once an escape plot among the boys had actually succeeded. Three boys had crawled under the tarp of an empty truck one night and been transported out of camp the next morning. They planned to jump off as soon as they found themselves on the outskirts of a town. They would follow train tracks and somehow get on a train going west. No one knew if they made it home. But everyone said they did. No one talked about the fact that they had to make it across Poland, which had fallen to the Germans at the very beginning of the war—so noplace, utterly noplace, in Poland was German-free—and then across Czechoslovakia and Austria, both under German rule.
Roberto didn’t like to speculate on those boys. When he and Enzo had been driving here in the back of the truck with a handful of other Italian boys, they’d listened for train whistles. They’d paid attention to whatever the tires of their truck crossed over—especially to train tracks. They, too, had thought about jumping out and hitching a ride on a train. Venetian boys didn’t really think in terms of kilometers; Roberto had always before measured distance in how many minutes it took to walk someplace. But the boys from cities on the mainland could estimate long distances well. They said the tracks crossed this land at intervals of fifty to one hundred kilometers. That was a lot. A person could walk all day through interminable black pine forests, only to wait for a train that might be going too fast to jump onto—or going in the wrong direction—or that had no open freight-car doors—or that was full of soldiers with guns.
Roberto tried to talk the three boys out of their escape plan. He listed all the obstacles. They acted like they didn’t understand him; they brushed him off and whispered to each other in excited bursts. And a few days later they were gone.
The soldiers hadn’t made a big deal of the escape. The tarmac was already completed by then, and the only real work left was to refuel the planes when they landed and keep the airstrip in good shape. It was work they could do easily. Roberto expected that the only reason some of them hadn’t already been sent on to a new location to build another airstrip was that it was too late in the season to work the earth.
Roberto rubbed his arms up and down; then he put his hands back in his armpits. He had to find cloth to wrap his hands soon. He didn’t know how much longer he could go without getting frostbite. But as long as his fingers hurt, he was okay. He thought of his own father’s aches and pains. Sometimes after a day of good business, his father would be so stiff from standing in the rear of the gondola all day that he couldn’t sit. He’d stand in the kitchen and Roberto and Sergio would rub his legs and massage his back and neck until the knotted muscles finally yielded and he could bend his knees and rest in the chair that was reserved for him alone.
Had winter come to Venice yet? Roberto wasn’t sure, but he thought it was around the middle of November. Probably there were high waters in Venice now. Probably his father had lots of extra jobs transporting people across flooded campos.
Roberto thought suddenly of the Campo Santa Margherita and the wonderful ice cream store there. How could he be thinking of ice cream on such a cold morning? But there it was, creamy gianduia—chocolate with hazelnut flavoring. He opened his mouth instinctively. The cold air pierced his throat. He rubbed his throat, then his cheeks, then his eyes. “Oh, Enzo!” He pointed.
Roberto and Enzo walked around the ditch. A few meters back in the dirt lay two German soldiers. The boys walked closer. The soldiers were gray-faced and lifeless. A bottle lay shattered on the ground nearby. Roberto smelled it: really strong vodka—probably close to pure alcohol. One of the bodies still clutched another empty bottle. It was the same soldier who had let the Italian boys have a taste one night not long before. The soldier had done it secretly—not letting the other soldiers know. He was always the nicest to the Italian boys. Vodka was terrible stuff, though. Roberto had gagged when he tasted it.
Roberto knelt beside that soldier and fingered the sleeve of his uniform. The Germans were clothed well compared to the Italian boys, but their clothing was still too thin for this weather. They’d passed out and frozen to death. Roberto stared at this soldier’s face. He wasn’t really all that many years older than Sergio—maybe eighteen or nineteen, at the oldest—but he looked ageless now. Like a grandfather. Death made him ancient overnight.
“The poor idiots. We could take their clothes. Trousers. Gloves. Everything.” Enzo spoke in a whisper. “We could get out of here.”
Only what if a Soviet farmer saw them in German uniforms and shot at them before they could explain? And how would they explain? They were Italians, after all, and Italy was at war with these people. And how far would they have to walk to the nearest train? And the dead soldiers were bigger than Roberto and Enzo. Their clothes would hang limp on them. But Enzo was already tugging at the boots of the other soldier.
The boots were good. No matter what, those boots were worth having. Roberto pulled at the boots of his soldier.
“Look!” One of the Italian boys stood pointing from the far side of the ditch.
And now a group formed.
Roberto had the boots off and was pulling at the trousers. Enzo was still struggling with the second boot of his soldier.
A German soldier came up. He shouted in alarm. He leveled his rifle.
Enzo stood up fast, both hands raised with a boot in each one. “Stand up, Roberto. Raise your hands!”
Roberto gritted his teeth. It would take only another few minutes. The soldier’s trousers were long—long enough for Enzo, and Enzo couldn’t bear much more of this cold. Roberto yanked off the trousers and started on the shirt. He worked like a madman, his half-frozen fingers fighting the frost-covered buttons.
The soldier fired.
The bullet went over Roberto’s head.
Enzo dropped the boots and pulled Roberto to his feet.
“No!” Roberto struggled to get free. “We can be warm. Warm, Enzo.”
Enzo held him tighter. He raised Roberto’s hands with his, over their heads. “Stay alive. Please, Roberto, stay alive.”
Roberto blinked. His eyes darted all around. Then they came to rest on Enzo’s face, on his steady black eyes. He breathed evenly again.
“That’s good. Real good.” Enzo loosened his grip and the two of them faced the soldier.
The soldier came around the ditch, his gun pointed at them. His face showed fear. The only two other soldiers in the camp came running. They held their rifles out in front, at the ready. They yelled as they came. The boys on the other side of the ditch backed off.
The first soldier looked across the scene. He kicked the vodka bottle from the dead soldier’s hand. He said something over his shoulder to the other two soldiers. Then he picked up one pair of boots and handed them to Roberto. He handed the other pair to Enzo. He shouted and gestured for them to get back on the far side of the ditch.
Roberto ran with his boots clutched to his chest. The madness that had grabbed him when he was stripping the soldier was entirely gone now. It was too bad he couldn’t have kept the trousers for Enzo. And, oh, if they could have had the long-sleeved shirts. And the gloves. But they both had boots now, and boots were wonderful. It was only the start of winter; the boots would serve them well. He sat down and put them on.
Enzo sat beside him, pulling on boots, too. “Two against three. That’s the best odds we’ll ever see again. We could have grabbed the guns. We could have shot them before they knew what was happening.”
Roberto didn’t answer. For the first time Enzo’s fighting words irritated him. What was the point? They both knew very well why they hadn’t grabbed the dead soldiers’ guns. Even if they could have brought themselves to shoot the three other soldiers—and Roberto wasn’t sure they could—it would have been no use. Where would they go from here? They’d starve before they got there. Or freeze. Or get shot. But one thing was certain: They’d die without the German soldiers to watch after them. They were trapped. They’d been trapped since that afternoon in the movies in Mestre. Roberto thought of the boys who had snuck away in the back of the truck. The conviction that they were now dead lay heavy on Roberto’s chest.
Why couldn’t Enzo admit it? Why did he have to persist in those stupid, meaningless fighting words? Roberto shook his head. He stood up and walked off to breakfast.
* * *
The boys spent the day leveling the airstrip, filling in recent holes, clearing off broken branches and rocks that had been blown there by the night winds. They knew that they’d be allowed to sleep late and when they woke in the morning, a plane would land for refueling. That’s how it always happened.
But it didn’t work out that way.
Roberto woke in the still of night. Something was different. At first he didn’t know where he was. Everything was cloudy white and noisy in the dim moonlight. It had snowed and it was still snowing, hard. And there was scuffling next to him. Enzo screamed. Roberto jumped to his feet. That’s when he realized he was barefoot. They’d slit the bottom of his cement-sack blanket and stolen his boots. And someone had snatched up his old shoes as soon as he’d taken them off. Now he’d have to find something else to serve as shoes—maybe another ripped-up cement sack—otherwise, his feet would freeze. They’d be bloody, frozen stumps. If he didn’t get something on his feet soon, he was as good as dead. Enzo screamed again. Enzo was fighting them. It was hard to see in the night, with the blanket as part of the fray. But Enzo was fighting for his boots—for his life.
Roberto shouted and jumped into the middle of it. He shouted and shouted at the top of his lungs. He swung his fists and beat whoever he could reach. He got knocked in the head, in the chest. He got thrown to the ground.
A shot went off in the night sky. A soldier yelled. The thieves disappeared into the dark.
Roberto got to his knees. “Enzo?” He crawled to the crumpled form.
“They didn’t get my boots, Roberto.” Enzo’s voice was ba
rely a whisper. “I tried to keep them from taking yours, but one was already off before I woke and realized what was going on. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Enzo. I’ll get my old shoes back from whoever took them.”
“No, you won’t. No, you’ll wear these boots. When I die, they’re yours.”
“No.” Roberto lifted Enzo’s head and back onto his lap. “Don’t die. Please don’t die.”
“I have to. That’s what this war is about.” Enzo held on to Roberto’s shirt.
Roberto had to lean over to hear Enzo now.
“I’m going to freeze to death.”
“No! I won’t let you freeze.” Roberto tucked his own blanket and Enzo’s blanket around them both. Enzo’s head-cloth had come off in the fight. Roberto picked it up now and tied it on carefully. Then he lay down beside Enzo, cradling him in his arms. He breathed hot on Enzo’s forehead. He couldn’t see Enzo’s bruises in the dark, but he had seen others recover from savage beatings. Others recovered. Others recovered.
“You’ll have to tell yourself stories now,” said Enzo in the softest whisper. “Do it. Do it to keep your spirit strong.”
“I will.”
“Don’t forget. Please.”
“I won’t.”
“And fight, Roberto. Even though you hate it. I know you hate it.”
Roberto nodded. “I do, I hate it.”
“So do I. But you have to fight. I don’t mean with your fists. I mean inside. Don’t ever let them win over the inside of you.”
Roberto thought of how annoyed he’d been with Enzo’s fighting words only yesterday morning. He was grateful he hadn’t said anything about it to Enzo then. “I understand. I’ll fight.”
“Speak Venetian all the time. Remember who you are.”
“I can’t speak it without you.”
“You have me.” Enzo patted Roberto softly on the chest. “Here. You have me.”
“Yes.” Roberto’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, you’re in my heart.”
“You’re a good friend, Roberto.”