“My son Bastian!” shouted a man with haunted eyes. He was the only one who interrupted, every now and again. The others were standing there silent and serious, with their hands on their rifles.
The third naked man was not of exactly the same nationality as the others; he came from a part where villages and children had been burned at one time. So he knew what people think about those who burn and kill, and should have felt less hopeful than the others. Instead of which there was something, an anguished uncertainty, that prevented him from resigning himself.
“Now, we’ve only caught these three men,” said the old man with the beard.
“Only three!” shouted the haunted-looking man; the others were still silent.
“Maybe among them, too, there are some who aren’t really bad, who obey orders against their will, maybe these three are that sort . . .”
The haunted-looking man glared at the old man.
“Explain,” whispered the tallest of the three naked men to the oldest. But the other’s whole life now seemed to be running away down the vertebrae on his spine.
“When children have been killed and houses burned one can’t make any distinction between those who’re bad and those who aren’t. And we’re sure of being in the right by condemning these three to death.”
Death, thought the tallest of the three naked men. I heard that word. What does it mean—“death”?
But the oldest one took no notice of him, and the fattest now seemed to be muttering prayers. Suddenly the fattest had remembered he was a Catholic. He had been the only Catholic in the company, and his comrades had often made fun of him. “I’m a Catholic,” he began muttering in his own language. It was not clear whether he was begging for salvation on earth or in heaven.
“I say that before killing them we should . . .” exclaimed the haunted-looking man, but the others had got to their feet and were not listening to him.
“To the Witch’s Hole,” said one with a black mustache. “So there won’t be any graves to dig.”
They made the three get up. The fattest put his hands over his front. Nothing made them feel more under accusation than being naked.
The peasants led them up along the rocky path, with rifles in their backs. The Witch’s Hole was the opening of a vertical cave, a hole that dropped right down into the belly of the mountain, down, down, no one knew where. The three naked men were led up to the edge, and the armed peasants lined up in front of them; then the oldest of them began screaming. He screamed out despairing phrases, perhaps in his own dialect; the other two did not understand him. He was the father of a family, the oldest was, but he was also the least worthy, and his screams had the effect of making the other two feel annoyed with him and calmer in the face of death. The tall one, though, still felt that strange disquiet, as if he were not quite certain of something. The Catholic was holding his joined hands low; it was not clear whether this was to pray or to hide his front.
Hearing the eldest one screaming made the armed peasants lose their calm; they wanted to have done with the business as soon as possible, and began to fire scattered shots without waiting for an order. The tall one saw the Catholic crumple down beside him and roll into the precipice; then the oldest of them fell with his head back and vanished, dragging his last cry down the walls of rock. Between the puffs of gunpowder the tall one saw a peasant struggling with a blocked bolt; then he, too, fell into the darkness.
A cloud of pain in the back like a swarm of stinging bees prevented him from losing consciousness at once; he had fallen through a briar bush. Then tons of emptiness weighed down on his stomach, and he fainted.
Suddenly he seemed to be back on a height, as if the earth had given a great heave; he had stopped. His fingers were wet and he smelled blood. He must be crushed to bits and about to die. But he did not feel himself getting weaker, and all the agonies of the fall were lively and distinct in his mind. He tried to move a hand, the left one; it responded. He groped along the other arm, touched his pulse, his elbow, but the arm did not feel anything; it might have been dead, for it only moved if raised by the other hand. Then he had the sensation of holding the wrist of his right arm in both hands; this was impossible. He realized that he was holding someone else’s arm; he had fallen on the dead body of one of the other two. He prodded the fat flesh of the Catholic; that soft cushion had broken his fall. That was why he was alive. That was one reason; also, he remembered now, he had not been hit but had flung himself down beforehand; he could not remember if he had done it intentionally, but that was not important now. Then he discovered that he could see; some light filtered down there in the depths, and the tallest of the three naked men could make out his own hands and those sticking out of the heap of flesh beneath him. He turned and looked up; at the top was an aperture full of light—the opening of the Witch’s Hole. First it hurt his eyes like a yellow flash; once they got used to it, he could see the blueness of the sky, far away from him, twice as far as the earth’s crust.
The sight of the sky plunged him into despair; it would certainly be better to be dead. There he was with his two dead companions at the bottom of a very deep pit, from which he could never get out again. He shouted. The streak of sky above became fringed with heads. “One of them’s alive!” they said. They threw something down. The naked man watched it dropping like a stone, then hit against the wall, and heard an explosion. There was a niche in the rock behind him, and the naked man squeezed into it; the well was full of dust and pieces of splintered rock. He pulled at the body of the Catholic and held it up in front of the niche; it was starting to fall apart, but there was nothing else he could use to shelter himself. He was just in time: another grenade came down and reached the bottom, raising a spray of blood and stones. The corpse broke up; now the naked man had no defense or hope. In the patch of sky appeared the white beard of the big old man. The others had drawn to one side.
“Hey!” called the big man with the beard.
“Hey!” replied the naked man, from the depths.
And the big man with the beard repeated, “Hey!”
There was nothing else to say between them.
Then the big man with the beard turned around. “Throw him a rope,” he said.
The naked man did not understand. He saw some of the heads leaving and the ones remaining making signs at him, signs of assurance, not to worry. The naked man looked at them with his head stuck out of the niche, not daring to expose himself altogether, feeling the same disquiet as when he had been sitting on the stone during the trial. But the peasants were not throwing grenades anymore; they were looking down and asking him questions, to which he replied with groans. The rope did not come, and one by one the peasants left the edge. Then the naked man came out of his hiding place and looked at the distance separating him from the top, the walls of sheer naked rock.
At that moment appeared the face of the haunted man. He was looking around and smiling. Then he moved back from the edge of the Witch’s Hole, aimed his rifle into it, and fired. The naked man heard the bullet whistle past his ear; the Witch’s Hole was a narrow shaft and not quite vertical, so things thrown in rarely reached the bottom, and bullets easily hit a layer of rock and stopped there. He squatted in his refuge, with foam on his lips, like a dog. Now up there all the peasants were back and one was unwinding a long rope down the shaft. The naked man watched the rope coming down but did not move.
“Hey!” the one with the black mustache shouted down. “Catch hold of it and come up.”
But the naked man stayed in his niche.
“Come on; up you go,” they shouted. “We won’t do you any harm.”
And they made the rope dance about in front of his eyes. The naked man was frightened.
“We won’t do you any harm. We swear it,” the men were saying, trying to sound sincere. And they were sincere; they wanted to save him at all costs so as to be able to shoot him all over again; but at that moment they just wanted to save him, and their voices had a tone of
affection, of human brotherhood.
The naked man sensed all this, and anyway he had little choice; he put a hand on the rope. But then among the men holding it he saw the head of the man with the haunted eyes, and he dropped the rope and hid himself. They had to begin convincing him, begging him, all over again; finally he decided and began going up. The rope was full of knots and easy to climb; he could also catch hold of jutting bits of rock. As the naked man moved slowly up toward the light, he saw the heads of the peasants at the top becoming clearer and bigger. Then the man with the haunted eyes reappeared all of a sudden and the others did not have time to hold him back; he was holding an automatic gun and began firing it at once. At the first burst the rope broke right above the naked man’s hands. He crashed down, knocking against the sides, and fell back on the remains of his companions. Up there, against the sky, he saw the man with the beard waving his arms and shaking his head.
The others were trying to explain, in gestures and shouts, that it was not their fault, that they’d punish that madman, and that they were going to look for another rope and bring him up again. But the naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth’s surface; he would never leave the bottom of this shaft, and he would go mad there drinking blood and eating human flesh, without ever being able to die. Up there, against the sky, there were good angels with ropes, and bad angels with grenades and rifles, and a big old man with a white beard who waved his arms but could not save him.
The armed men, seeing him unconvinced by their fair words, decided to finish him off with hand grenades, and began throwing them down. But the naked man had found another hiding place, a narrow horizontal crack in the rock where he could slip in and be safe. At every grenade that fell he crawled deeper into this crack, until he reached a point where he could not see any more light. He went on dragging himself along on his stomach like a snake, with darkness and the damp slimy rock all around him. From being damp the rock surface beneath him was now getting wet, then covered with water; the naked man could feel the cold trickle running under his stomach. It was the passage opened under the earth by the rains coming down through the Witch’s Hole: a long narrow cavern, a subterranean drain. Where would it end? Perhaps it would lose itself in blind caves in the belly of the mountain, or perhaps it would funnel the water through narrow little channels that would issue into springs. And his body would rot away there in a drain and infect the waters of the springs, poisoning entire villages.
The air was almost unbreathable; the naked man felt the moment coming when his lungs would no longer be able to hold out. Instead, the flow of water was increasing, getting deeper and quicker; the naked man was now slithering along with his whole body underwater and could clean off the crust of mud and of his own and others’ blood. He did not know whether he had moved far or not; the complete darkness and that slithering movement had deprived him of all sense of distance. He was exhausted. Before his eyes luminous shapeless forms were beginning to appear. The farther he advanced, the clearer these shapes became, taking on definite though continuously transforming edges. Supposing it was not just a dazzle inside the retina of his eyes but a light, a real light, at the end of the cavern? He had only to close his eyes, or look in the opposite direction, to make certain. But anyone who stares at a light has a dazzled feeling at the roots of his eyes even if he shuts his lids or turns his gaze; he could not distinguish between the light outside and the lights in his own eyes, and remained in doubt.
He noticed something else new, by touch: the stalactites. Slimy stalactites were hanging from the roof of the cave and stalagmites coming up from the ground on the verges of the water, where they were not eroded. The naked man began pulling himself along by the stalactites above his head. And as he moved he noticed that his arms, from being folded to grasp the stalactites, were gradually straightening out, which meant that the cave was getting bigger. Soon the man could arch his back and walk on all fours, and the light was becoming less uncertain; he could tell now whether his eyes were open or shut, and he was beginning to make out the shapes of things, the arch of the roof, the droop of the stalactites, the black glitter of the current.
Finally he was walking erect, up the long cave toward the luminous opening, with the water to his waist—still hanging on to the stalactites, though, to keep himself straight. One stalactite seemed bigger than the others, and when the man seized it he felt it opening in his hand and a cold soft wing beating on his face. A bat! It flew off, and the other bats hanging with their heads down woke up and flew away; soon the whole cave was full of silent flying bats, and the man felt the wind from their wings around him and their skin brushing against his forehead and mouth. He walked on in a cloud until he reached the open air.
The cave came out into a torrent. Once again the naked man was on the crust of the earth, under the sky. Was he safe now? He must take care not to make any mistakes. The torrent was running silently over white and black stones. Around it was a wood full of twisted trees; all that grew in the undergrowth was thorns and brambles. He was naked in wild and deserted parts, and the nearest human beings were enemies who would pursue him with pitchforks and guns as soon as they saw him.
The naked man climbed a willow tree. The valley was all woods and shrub-covered slopes, under a gray hump of mountain. But at the end of it, where the torrent turned, there was a slate roof with white smoke coming up. Life, thought the naked man, was a hell, with rare moments recalling some ancient paradise.
Animal Woods
On days of Fascist roundups the woods might have been a fairground. Off the paths, among the bushes and trees, there was a constant passage of families urging along a cow or a calf, and old women leading a goat on a rope, and girls with a goose under one arm. Some of them were even escaping with their rabbits.
Wherever one went, the thicker the chestnut woods, the more one ran into heavy-bellied bulls and tinkling cows, which were finding it difficult to move on those rocky slopes. Best off were the goats, but perhaps the happiest were the mules, which just this once could move without carrying a burden and go cropping leaves along the alleys. The pigs went rooting about in the ground, pricking their snouts all over with chestnut husks; the chickens roosted in the trees and frightened the squirrels; the rabbits, which after centuries of cages had forgotten how to dig themselves lairs, took refuge in hollow tree trunks, where they were sometimes bitten by squirrels.
That morning a peasant named Giuà Dei Fichi was gathering fuel in a remote corner of the woods. He knew nothing about what was happening in the village, for he had left the evening before, intending to gather mushrooms in the morning, and had slept in the middle of the woods in a hut used, in autumn, for drying chestnuts.
So as he was chopping a dead tree trunk with a hatchet be was surprised to hear a vague tinkling of bells far and near through the woods. He stopped chopping and heard voices getting closer. “Oo-u,” he shouted.
Giuà Dei Fichi was a short, tubby little man, with a face like a full moon, dark of skin and flushed with wine; he wore a green conical hat with a pheasant’s feather stuck in it, a shirt with big yellow spots under a homespun jerkin, and a red scarf around his tubby stomach to hold up trousers covered with deep-blue patches.
“Coo-u!” came the reply, and between the green lichenous rocks appeared a close friend, a peasant with a mustache and a straw hat, dragging behind him a big, white-bearded goat.
“What’re you doing here, Giuà?” asked his friend. “The Germans’ve reached the village and are going around to all the animal stalls!”
“Oh!” shouted Giuà Dei Fichi. “They’ll find my cow, Coccinella, and take her off!”
“Hurry up and you may still be in time to hide her,” advised his friend. “We saw the column as it was coming up through the valley and we took off at once. But they may not have reached your place yet.”
Giuà left his firewood, hatchet, and basket of mushrooms and rushed off. As he ran through the woods he met rows of ducks
that scattered quacking between his feet, and flocks of sheep marching compactly side by side without moving to let him through, and children and old women who shouted, “They’ve reached the Madonnetta! They’re searching the homes above the bridge! I saw them turning the last corner before the village!” Giuà Dei Fichi speeded up his short legs and went rolling down the slopes like a ball and panting up the hills with his heart in his mouth.
On and on he ran till he reached the top of a hill from which opened a view of the village. A great expanse of tender early morning air, a misty ring of hills, and in the middle the village, knobbly houses all stone and slate, heaped on top of one another. And through the thin air came the sounds of shouts in German and of fists banging against doors.
“Oh dear! The Germans are already in the houses!”
Giuà Dei Fichi was trembling all through his arms and legs; a bit of a tremor he already had from drinking, and more now came over him at the thought of his cow, Coccinella, the one possession he had in the world, about to be taken away from him.
Very quietly, cutting through fields, keeping under cover of vines, Giuà Dei Fichi drew near the village. His little house was one of the last, on the outskirts, in the middle of a green mass of pumpkins, where the village merged into vegetable patches; possibly the Germans might not have reached it yet.
Peeping around each corner, Giuà made his way into the village. He saw an empty street with the usual smells of hay and stalls; those new noises were coming from the middle of the village—inhuman voices and the stamping of iron-clad feet. There his house was—still shut up. The door of the stall on the ground floor was closed, and so was the one to the rooms at the top of the worn outside staircase, with its clumps of basil planted in cooking pots filled with earth. A voice from inside the stall said, “Mooooo.” It was Coccinella recognizing the approach of her owner. Giuà blushed with pleasure.
Last Comes the Raven Page 13
