A Winter's Night

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  He replied:

  Dear Mother and Father,

  I’m well and hope you are too. Here every day is tougher than the last but life goes on and there are those who are much worse off than me. I’ve found Dante. He’s alive and well, and so are the others, as far as I know. No news is good news, as the saying goes. And in a war like this one, it’s pretty lucky for us. You’ve told me that you’ve taken on a farmhand. You did the right thing, but why now, at the end of the season? Aren’t there enough moochers out in the stable during the winter? It would have been better to hire him on at the beginning of the spring.

  My captain is a good person and he treats me well. He gives me packs of cigarettes and even coffee, the real stuff. I think he might even send me home on leave and that would be a wonderful thing, but I don’t want to get up my hopes or yours. Last week he was about ready to let me go, but then he changed his mind. Every now and then I think about harvest time, how we’d sing and then all have dinner together and drink the new wine and it makes me cry.

  I hear that Rosina has married. Let’s hope this husband of hers treats her well. If he doesn’t, I’ll go looking for him as soon as I get back, all the way to Florence or wherever he is.

  I hope you stay in good health.

  Your son,

  Raffaele

  He signed his name Raffaele instead of Floti like everyone called him at home to show them that since he’d been in the soldiers he’d learned to do things right.

  Everything changed suddenly in the fall. One night in October, the Austrians and their Germans allies carried out a surprise attack, with an amazing show of firepower. The Italian forces were not expecting it and were overwhelmed. Terrain which had been nibbled away from the enemy meter by meter over two years of hard fighting, at the cost of tremendous loss of life, was gone in a matter of hours. More than half a million men abandoned the positions they had held for months and months, and scattered down roads, country lanes, paths, running from the enemy in pursuit. Entire field armies were surrounded and tens of thousands of soldiers were taken prisoner. Panic, confusion and terror reigned and not even the officers knew what to do. The lines of communication were interrupted, the enemy artillery strafed roads, bridges and fords. It was like doomsday. Many tossed away their weapons, and thought that if the others did the same the war would be over.

  Floti retreated with the others in his unit but they all stayed together, without losing sight of one another. Captain Cavallotti knew what he was doing: he had had them collect all available ammunition and load the machine guns, gasoline jugs and provisions onto the trucks.

  “If we stick together,” he said, “we can make it. If we split up we’re lost. The Austrians will capture us and send us off to rot in prison camps, off to die of hunger and hardship and humiliations. They hate us, because we were their servants and we had the courage to attack them, and they’ll make us pay dearly for it. There’s even worse: if the carabinieri catch up with you, they’ll put you in front of a firing squad for deserting. As long as you stay with me—as long as you have your uniforms, your insignia, your weapons and your commanders—you are a unit of the Italian army in retreat and any citizen is bound to provide you with aid and assistance. If we run into the enemy, we’ll take up position and show them who we are. If we’re stopped by our own, they’ll let us know where we have to go and what we have to do. Let’s get moving now. The Austrians could be upon us at any moment.”

  There wasn’t enough room for all the men on the trucks, so about one hundred of them had to walk, but every six hours, the captain halted the column and those who were marching switched places with their comrades on the trucks. This system eliminated the need for rest stops, and when you were riding you could even get a little shuteye.

  About four in the morning they saw a stronghold on their left with a unit of Bersaglieri who were taking heavy fire and Cavallotti said: “Those boys are going to lose their lives to allow us to pass and get to safety. Remember this when you’re out of harm’s way, and again when it’s time to prepare the counterattack.”

  Floti knew he would remember this, even though it seemed completely senseless to him. It was bedlam, a furnace that devoured everyone and everything, a storm of fire and sword with no way out for anyone.

  The boy sitting next to him on the truck was just a little over twenty. His arm was in a sling and his eyes were glazed over.

  “Where are you from?” Floti asked.

  “From Feltre, province of Belluno,” he replied.

  “What’s wrong with your arm?”

  “A mortar fragment, two days ago.”

  “Is the bone all right or did it break?”

  “I don’t know. It hurts a lot.”

  “If it’s broken maybe you can go home.”

  “Let’s hope,” said the boy with a wispy voice and fell back into silence.

  There was a Sicilian on the other side of him and two Sardinians opposite them. You couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, worse even than the guys from Bergamo. They almost always advanced at a crawl because the road was jammed with vehicles and soldiers, and sometimes they didn’t move for hours, but the sound of the cannons never ceased. Instead of getting farther away it seemed closer and closer.

  When it was time for them to switch places, Floti went to the captain, who was sitting in front next to the driver. “Sir, there’s that boy from Feltre who’s wounded. Can’t he stay on the truck? I don’t think he’ll be able to walk for six hours in his condition. He’s white as a ghost and he can hardly get a word out.”

  “All right,” replied the captain. “Let him stay on the truck.”

  One of those who’d been walking for six hours found himself without a ride and he began whining and complaining.

  “Cut it out,” Floti told him. “What are you moaning about? When it’s time to switch again, I’ll do a double shift walking.”

  And he started to march, careful to stay within calling distance because it was too dark to see. Three hours later, the truck had to stop because the road was blocked by a vehicle at the head of the column that had broken an axle and couldn’t go forward or backward. Floti went over to the boy in the truck and put a hand on his forehead: it was very hot. He went back to the commander.

  “Sir, that kid’s burning up. A bad sign, from what I know.”

  “Yes. It means there’s an infection.”

  “Isn’t there a hospital around here?”

  “A hospital? You’re joking. We won’t find one before Udine. And even if we manage to get that far, can you imagine how overrun they’ll be with casualties coming in from the front?”

  “Then there’s nothing we can do for that poor boy?”

  “We can bury him, when it’s time, and write to his family; there’s nothing else we can do, Bruni. You can see that yourself.”

  He could see that himself.

  But he couldn’t believe it. There the kid was, sitting on the back of the truck, his face red with fever and his eyes glistening in the glow of the taillights. He was moving and thinking and breathing and yet in just a short time he would be nothing.

  Finally the column started up again and the trucks, with their retinue of foot soldiers, rolled forward. Fatigue was setting in with every step for the walkers, because the food they had was distributed very sparingly, just enough to keep them alive and moving. It was running out nonetheless and soon they’d have none left. In the middle of the night, when they had almost come within sight of the plains and the lights of distant convoys glittered in the darkness, there was a moment of near silence. Not a voice could be heard in the cold night. The truck had stopped once again and the engine was idling, when the still air was rent by the tolling of a bell, like hammer blows from the sky: one, two, three strokes, then two shorter, shriller ones. It was three thirty.

  “There’s a town here,” said Fl
oti. “What town, I wonder.”

  “Who knows?” replied the soldier closest to him, a young man with curly black hair and a Neapolitan accent.

  “Anyone live around here?” called out Floti a bit louder, turning around. A sergeant of about forty with reddish hair and whiskers stepped up.

  “We heard the bells tolling: what town is near here?”

  “Sant’Ilario? I might be wrong.”

  “Is there a hospital?”

  “In Sant’Ilario? I doubt it,” replied the sergeant with a shrug.

  “Wait, see those lights down in the valley? That looks like a big town.”

  The sergeant nodded. “That’s Cividale.”

  “Is there a hospital there?”

  Captain Cavallotti suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “Bruni, I know what you’re feeling. I’ve felt the same way myself many a time, but there’s nothing to be done. If you don’t resign yourself to that, you’ll go mad. We’re trying to break out of the Austro-Hungarian encirclement, and we can’t afford to stop. Set your heart at rest, boy: there are no hospitals, there are no doctors or medicines, there isn’t a damn thing. It’s time to get moving again.”

  They continued without interruption down the long mountain ridge, and then the long snake of men and vehicles stretched out into the valley heading towards Cividale. The cannon salvos behind them shook the mountains and filled the sky with lightning, like a storm. The boy with the bandaged arm was leaning against the inside of the truck as if he were yielding to sleep. Every turn and pothole jerked him around like a puppet.

  They continued in this way until close to dawn, when there was another forced halt. Cavallotti appeared again: “No fear, men, we’re past the worst. I believe we’ve distanced them sufficiently so that they won’t catch up to us.”

  Floti approached the wounded boy and touched his brow with the back of his hand: he was burning up, and when Floti felt his pulse there was a constant throbbing instead of a steady beat. He had begun ranting as well. Confused sounds came from his lips: curses, perhaps, or prayers. Nothing that made sense.

  Floti jumped off the truck and walked ahead of the convoy for a while to clear his mind. After a short stretch of road, behind a rocky outcropping, he spotted a tent with a light on inside. There was a red cross painted on the canvas. He immediately turned back at a run: “Captain! There’s a field hospital just a hundred meters from here!” Without waiting for a reply, he got the others to help him unload their feverish comrade from the truck. They placed him on a stretcher and ran him over to the tent. A number of wounded men were piled up at the entrance, several of them more dead than alive. Bone-chilling screams, weeping and cursing could be heard from inside.

  The soldiers stared at each other in that first pale light of dawn, seeing faces the color of mud, sunken, darkly-ringed eyes, dry, cracked lips and bewildered expressions.

  “I’ll go,” said Floti. “You wet his lips with a little water,” he added, leaving his flask with them. He went in.

  There was a big table covered with blood at the center of the tent and, behind it, a man wearing an apron so soaked with blood it was dripping. A couple of nurses were laying a semi-conscious man whose leg had been amputated onto the ground. The limb was sticking out of a wooden laundry tub.

  Two soldiers and a nurse were depositing on the table another soldier whose abdomen was ripped open; he’d lost his voice with screaming but hoarse noises were still coming out of his open mouth. If the sight was unbearable, the smell was worse, and Floti had to swallow hard to stop himself from retching.

  “What the hell do you want?” shouted the doctor. “Piss off, can’t you see what we’re doing here?”

  Floti nodded and turned back towards the exit, mumbling a swear word in dialect under his breath.

  “What’d you say?” yelled back the doctor in the same dialect.

  Floti stopped in his tracks without turning around and answered in good Italian: “I think you know if you asked me that question, sir.”

  “Come over here,” said the doctor. “Where are you from?”

  “Province of Bologna.”

  “Me too. You’re the first one I’ve seen. What d’you want?”

  Before Floti could answer, the patient on the table gave one last gasp and went limp.

  “This one’s gone,” said the doctor. “Take him away. We’ll stop for a minute here. I have to catch my breath.”

  He handed Floti a bench, took a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket and held it out to Floti. He lit one up himself and took a long pull.

  “Lieutenant, sir,” began Floti, having checked the rank on the doctor’s shoulder, “outside there’s a boy who’s just twenty years old. He’s got an infected wound and he’s at risk of dying. Can’t you do something for him?”

  “You know that if I stop to look at him, someone else will die in his place, don’t you?”

  “Each of us is concerned with those who we’re close to and who we care about, sir. And that’s a good thing.”

  “Right. Mors tua vita mea,” said the doctor, quoting in Latin.

  “In three minutes, you’ve spoken three different languages, sir,” commented Floti, “but one is enough for me, you can answer me in dialect if you want. Can you give this kid a look, yes or no?”

  The doctor ground out the cigarette stub under his boot and replied: “Have him brought in.”

  Floti motioned to his fellow soldiers, who lifted the stretcher and transferred the boy onto the table, just after a nurse had thrown a bucket of water over it to rinse it off. The doctor cut the bandages with scissors and exposed the wound. The boy’s arm was swollen and inflamed and the infection had obviously worsened; the stink it gave off was unmistakable.

  “I have to amputate,” said the doctor, “or he’ll die of gangrene.”

  The boy had heard everything and terror filled his eyes as they spilled over with tears.

  There was a bottle of strong grappa on a nearby table. “It’s all I have,” said the doctor, “have him drink as much as he can.” He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, then told his assistant to give the boy a piece of leather to bite down on and to hold him down.

  “Blindfold him,” he added. “It’s better he doesn’t see this.”

  Floti had the courage to watch while the doctor cut through the boy’s flesh to the bone, then set down the saw and with a single thrust snapped the bone right above the elbow.

  The boy’s scream, muffled by the leather stuffed in his mouth, sounded like the moaning of a butchered animal. The doctor clamped the veins that were spurting blood a meter away, disinfected the cut with alcohol and tincture of iodine and started to stitch up the wound. When he had finished he turned the boy over to the nurses and walked outside, exhausted, to breathe in the morning air.

  Floti watched him while he lit up a cigarette; it was hard to believe that a human being could be capable of so much.

  “How much of a chance does he have?” Floti asked him.

  “Of surviving? Fifty, maybe sixty percent . . . depends on when he’ll be able to get to a hospital. Without amputating, zero.”

  Floti nodded as if to approve the decision that had been made, then took his leave. “Maybe we’ll see each other back home . . . after this is over. My name’s Bruni, Raffaele Bruni. Who have I had the pleasure of meeting, sir?”

  “Name’s Munari,” replied the officer. “Alberto Munari.”

  Floti looked back into the tent and caught a glimpse of the white bandages swaddling his comrade’s fresh wound. He remembered that he didn’t even know the boy’s name, but what did it matter anyway? He looked at Lieutenant Munari again and saw that he even had blood on his mustache, which was neatly clipped.

  “Good luck, sir,” he said, and turned to get back to his unit.

  “Good luck to you,” said the doctor. “You’ll need
it.”

  Captain Cavallotti welcomed him back by hurling swear words his way. “Where the fuck did you go off to, Bruni? Half the army has passed this way already! Move it, for Christ’s sake.”

  Floti jumped into the truck because he knew he couldn’t take another step and he lay down on the floor at the feet of the other soldiers. He put his haversack under his head, covered himself as best he could with his cloak and tried to get some rest. He was so tired that despite the jolts, the din of the engine and the racket inside and outside the truck, he sank into a deep sleep, but then awoke with a start: the nightmare he’d just witnessed flooded his mind and spirit with pain. He couldn’t start to imagine how he’d feel if he found himself from one day to the next without an arm, and his only consolation was thinking that he’d heard of soldiers who stepped on a landmine and lost both of their legs. This boy would surely pull through, otherwise why would destiny have put him on the path of someone like himself? Raffaele Bruni, known as Floti, someone who would find him a field hospital with a doctor who spoke Bolognese and could operate on him just in time, just before the infection had killed him. Why else?

  They reached Cividale del Friuli the day after, at about one in the morning. An ocean of men, of trucks, of mules, of artillery pieces, soldiers from every corps and unit chasing frenetically from one end to the other of an enormous muddy clearing filled with tents, improvised fences and patrols of carabinieri crossing back and forth to prevent the general confusion from degenerating into chaos and panic. They would shoot on sight at the least hint of insubordination. Here and there, wherever it was possible to string up a power cable to provide some light, groups of officers huddled, intent on reorganizing the chain of command.

  In the midst of that bedlam, Captain Cavallotti managed to find the pennant of his battalion and to report to the colonel. He returned just before dawn, visibly upset.