Silence.
“I think we have played a good game. We have tried to be fair with one another. I think you would agree to that.”
“Oh, yes,” Bombolini said.
“But we won’t lose the game,” he said. “We are not allowed by law or by God to lose it.”
Silence.
“But the game is almost over. The referee has the whistle to his lips. You won’t win, you understand, but you can save yourself from a terrible defeat.”
There was another long silence, so long that Bombolini felt required to speak.
“I don’t understand what you are saying.”
“You understand, and I am going to make the final play. Where is the wine?” Von Prum had been sitting on one side of the bed and now he stood up. “Would you like to play?” he said to Roberto.
Roberto shook his head.
“All right. That’s the way it is, then.” He made a motion as of putting something in his mouth, and we supposed it was a whistle that he had in his mind.
“The game is over,” the captain said. “I did my best. I have played fairly. My hands are clean.”
He appeared to be relieved.
“I want you to remember that I gave you your chance until the end, Captain Bombolini.” It was the first time he had ever honored the mayor with his title. “Tomorrow the new team comes.”
He turned then and went out of the room, and when we saw him crossing the piazza toward Constanzia’s house his stride was strong and rapid. He seemed to be a new person. Perhaps an hour after that we heard the sound of the motorcycle engine and Captain von Prum left Santa Vittoria.
“It’s time for me to get up,” Bombolini said. He asked Roberto to tell his wife to bring him his clothes and to leave him alone for a while. When she came with the clothes he was already out of bed.
“You heard what he said,” Bombolini said. “You had better leave before the captain comes back.”
“No,” Rosa Bombolini said. She began to help him with his clothes. His entire body was sore and stiff although only his face had taken the beating. She pointed at his face. “If you could take that I can take it.” She stood before him with her arms crossed, those broad powerful arms.
“Do you care at all for me?” he said.
“No.” She was aware that she had hurt him.
“You couldn’t bring yourself to say something good, something nice at a time like this?”
“Because your face looks like an ox stepped on it does that mean I should care now?”
He sighed both at the effort of dressing and at her words, and he put his arm on her strong shoulder and told her that she would have to help him down the stairs.
“Well did you ever care?” It embarrassed him to continue, but he finally said it. “Did you ever—” It was difficult for him to say the word. “Did you ever love me?”
“I don’t know,” Rosa said. She turned away from him. “There was a time, I guess. Then you became a clown, and a woman can’t love a clown.”
“Not one like you,” Bombolini said. “Some of us are going to get killed here tomorrow. You know that I might be one of them.”
“That doesn’t make me tell less than the truth,” she said.
“No, I could have counted on that,” Bombolini said. When they were in the room with the wine barrel he leaned on it and asked for a glass of it.
“So you don’t think then, when this is done, providing of course that I am here, that you and I might, oh, come back to each other?”
“No.”
He was hurt once more. On a night such as this, he thought.
“Oh, stop being hurt. Can’t any of you hear the truth without being hurt? Do you all have to lie to yourselves all of the time?”
He drank a second glass of wine, and then he asked her why she had ever married him.
“It was a mistake,” she said. “I didn’t know any better. It’s something every Italian woman has to learn by herself and then it’s too late.”
“And what about her?” He pointed in the direction of Angela’s room. As always, the wine made him feel better, and he reminded himself that in order to get through the next days it might be good to be a little drunk through most of them.
“She’s going to marry the American.”
“Roberto? Abruzzi?”
“Is there another one?”
It caused Bombolini to laugh, because it was so perfect a response from his wife. All of their life together she had done it, and he laughed because he knew the words she would say before she said them. When they were young he had not noticed, and when they were older he had not listened.
“He doesn’t know it yet but he’s beginning to fall for her,” Rosa Bombolini said. “I see to it that they’re together. I push her at him, and she doesn’t know it and he doesn’t mind it.”
Bombolini was angered by that. “You don’t even know what kind of man he is,” he said.
“He’s good enough for her. He’ll take her to America,” Rosa said. “What does it matter what kind of man he is, just so he takes her to America?”
“And Fabio. Have you ever considered that Fabio della Romagna is sick with love for your daughter and that he is a fine boy and that I have promised him anything he wants for saving my life?”
He drank an entire glass of wine after that, without taking his mouth from the glass.
“Fabio is an Italian. As such he is no good for my daughter. Go on, have more wine. Get drunk.”
He poured more wine.
“There is no Italian man who is good for a woman.”
It made him laugh. “I don’t feel so all alone then,” he said.
“To feel like a king it is necessary for them to make the woman into an ox.”
“I didn’t do that to you.”
“You couldn’t.”
“I didn’t do it by choice. I didn’t want you to be an ox.”
She laughed at him. “You tried,” she said. “I escaped.”
Roberto had gone ahead with the word about von Prum, and they were waiting for Bombolini in the piazza. All of the members of the Grand Council were at the fountain, not talking to one another but feeling the need for each other’s company.
“A man should choose a woman and an ox from his own country. My mother told me that.”
“You should have told it to me,” Rosa said. He put down his glass. He had drunk enough. They were waiting for him, although he had nothing to tell them.
“You win,” he said. “You never came close to losing. In the world of love the one who can run away is the winner. Goodbye.”
She nodded goodbye. When he was at the door to the shop he turned back to her.
“Tell me one thing,” Bombolini said. “These past months. I did surprise you, didn’t I?”
It made her smile, because it was true. “Yes, you surprised me,” she said. He had picked up the glass and he held it out to her before going outside, and she came to take it.
“You know,” he said to her from the doorway, “that was the best thing you ever said to me.”
* * *
He joined the men in the piazza and they began to drift along the sides of it, none of them talking, looking at the old buildings they had grown up with, making what some of them felt would be a last tour of the town. It was very quiet then. The sound of cannon to the south of here, which had become a daily sound, like living along the sea, had ceased. There was a dog wailing in Old Town, and there was smoke from fires where the old women were cooking the meals ahead of time so they would only need to be heated in the morning. Someone suggested that they go inside Santa Maria and offer a prayer, but others said no, it would only frighten people to see men in the church. They walked to the Corso Cavour and decided to go down it. They were stretched out behind one another in the darkness.
“I have never been more afraid in my life,” one of the men said. “I am sick and trembling with fear.”
“It might help you to know that all of us are sick
with fear,” Bombolini said. “You were the only one courageous enough to say it.”
“But you’ve already felt it,” the man said. “You know the taste of it. You know if they do it again you will be able to bear it again.”
“Are you afraid for yourself or for what you might say?”
“What I might say.”
“Then you won’t tell,” Bombolini said.
There was the sound of thunder in the south, but the moon was out, so we knew the cannons had begun again. The sound was very big, much larger than ever before. Despite the sound we could hear the Germans drinking inside the wine cellar office. They no longer asked for the wine, they took it as their due.
“I’m glad it isn’t the rain. It would hurt the grapes now,” someone said. At the Fat Gate we looked down on the terraces in the moonlight and then started back up the Corso, and when we passed the cellar Heinsick opened the door and came out into the street. He was drunk.
“I suppose you think that’s going to help you,” he said. He motioned toward the south. No one answered him.
“It might,” he said. “It might. But it might be too late then, too.” He smiled at us and we could see that it was a fraudulent smile because his eyes were as cold and as distant as the moonlight that lit them.
“Wait until you see who comes back with him tomorrow,” Heinsick said. “Wait until you see them.”
We turned away from him because he made us sick and because he frightened us at the same time.
“Wait until you feel them,” Heinsick called. He laughed at us. “Then you’ll know what it’s all about.”
He came after us, holding a bottle of our wine, following us up the Corso Cavour.
“These are the professionals,” Heinsick said. “These aren’t the poor little bastards like us. They won’t even let us touch their tools.”
He stopped and we went ahead of him, moving away from him as swiftly as possible without appearing to be running from him.
“Knives and scissors, fork and candle, little children must not handle,” the corporal called.
We were far up the Corso now, but not so far that we still couldn’t hear him.
“You’ll tell them. Oh, yes, you’ll tell them.” He was laughing once more. “You’ll beg them to let you tell them.”
When we reached the Piazza of the People Padre Polenta came running across the piazza toward us.
“You should see it,” the priest said to us. “Thousands of lights, millions of lights. Something big is taking place. Something tremendous is underway in the south.”
It meant nothing to us. It was too late to help us.
“It’s time we got some sleep,” Bombolini said. “If they’re going to burn us tomorrow we should be ready for the burning.”
“Padre?” one of the men said. “Say a prayer for us. Make us a goodnight prayer.”
Most of them kneeled in the piazza, and Polenta blessed them. The sound of the war was very loud then, so loud that the sound of the water flowing from the fountain could not be heard. The great attack had begun, some great attack. We didn’t even know by whom.
“Did you see Heinsick’s face?” Bombolini said. “Did you see the hatred? Why is he filled with so much hatred? Where do they get it from?”
There was no answer, of course. The men shook hands with one another, every man with every other man, and when each had touched all of the rest they went their own ways home.
7 THE RAT IN THE THROAT
WHEN WE SAW them come up the mountain from Montefalcone early the next morning, there was almost a sigh of relief from the men. When one has steeled oneself for an ordeal it is sometimes best that the ordeal take place at the proper time.
There is always the memory of Lupo, the last of our great bandits. He was scheduled to be shot to death before the people in the Piazza of the People for savage acts. Before the shooting he shouted obscenities at God and the judge and the people, and then for some reason he received a stay of execution. One month later they had to carry Lupo into the piazza and tie him to the fountain, because he could not stand. He trembled and held the priest’s hand. The one month of hope had whetted his appetite for life and destroyed him. He should have known that in Santa Vittoria the only safe policy is to never hope for anything and then there is nothing to be lost. Lupo had committed the sin of hope.
The men were passing around the grappa bottle, drinking deeply from it and encouraging the others while being encouraged, when Bombolini surprised them by telling them each to hide in a house that faced on the piazza from which they could watch the piazza but not be seen from it. They were to stay there until he waved them to come out. Some of them were disappointed and even angry.
“I thought we were to be courageous?” one of them said. “Now you have us running and hiding.”
“I’m ready,” another said. “I’m ready for the sons of bitches. I’ll take everything they can hand out.”
But he sent them away and they went, and so it was that when they came, the four of them, von Prum and Traub and two young soldiers from the SS, Bombolini was alone in the Piazza of the People, this time without even Vittorini to stand behind him in his uniform. They came on the motorcycle and they were followed by a small compact truck that held the SS men’s equipment. Sergeant Traub stopped the motorcycle near the edge of the Corso Cavour, and Captain von Prum stepped out of the sidecar and as he came across the piazza toward Bombolini, even the most unobservant among us could see that some change had taken place in the captain. The age that had altered his face seemed to have passed in this one night and he walked with an easy confidence and his motions were slow and controlled; the stiffness that had caused him to move like the overwound toy was gone and with it the wildness about the eyes. We didn’t know then that he had made a sixth and a seventh entry in his log that morning, on the page that follows the other five.
6. Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who carries out are different people. The former does not behold the sight and does not experience the strong impression on the imagination. The latter obeys a superior and therefore feels no responsibility for the acts.
—Nietzsche
7. I give myself up to Old Fritz. I prepare myself to perform my duty and I feel a happiness about it.
—Sepp von P.
“So. You put everyone away this morning,” Captain von Prum said. Bombolini nodded.
“Or did they run away?”
“No, sir. I hid them.”
“The same as your wine.”
“No, Captain.”
“We’ll soon find out.” The captain began to walk across the piazza toward the Palace of the People and so Bombolini went along with him. “I’m going to use your place, because it’s bigger.”
They stood in the doorway of the Palace and examined the large dark room, and Bombolini found himself wishing that he had kept it more neatly because he could see von Prum’s disapproving face.
“And because it’s very filthy,” Captain von Prum said. “They bleed and vomit, and all of the rest of it. I’m told that every orifice comes into use.”
Bombolini understood that this would be his one opportunity to do what he had to do, and although he could see that the captain didn’t wish to hear him he seized the chance.
“Which is why I have this one thing to ask of you,” Bombolini said. “I don’t want to have to be responsible for picking any man,” the mayor said.
“I’ll do the picking if you wish,” von Prum said.
“I told the people not to come into the piazza until after you had come,” Bombolini said.
“And? What about it?”
“The first one who comes into the piazza is the one who will have to taste it first.”
The captain was interested, Bombolini could see that.
“In that way I don’t have to have his blood on my head. And you don’t have to be the one to
choose, Captain. God will decide. Or fate. I don’t know if you believe. The first who walks into the piazza is the one fate has determined to choose.”
“I would have said the devil, not God,” von Prum said. But he was smiling. The idea appealed to him. Sergeant Traub had come into the room then, and he was followed by the two SS men. Bombolini was surprised to see how young they were. They were boys. The captain turned back to Bombolini.
“So you can control who faces these men,” von Prum said. “You have all of your brave boys ready to walk into the piazza by fate.”
“No, it isn’t true. Have them”—he nodded toward the SS men—“try me if you don’t believe me. I have no one ready for you.”
Von Prum then explained the situation to the younger of the two soldiers who, despite his age, appeared to be the leader.
“It makes no difference,” the soldier said. “It makes no difference at all. They all talk.”
He was very casual and totally confident in his work, and his voice had the unconcerned quality that those who possess the truth often use.
“No. It doesn’t matter,” the second soldier said. “A matter of time sometimes, a few minutes this way or that. But they break.”
“Yes, they all talk.”
“We never fail,” the older one said.
“No, we have never failed.”
Captain von Prum turned back to Bombolini.
“All right. It’s in the hands of God,” the German said.
“My hands are clean,” Bombolini said.
“And mine,” von Prum said. But he was smiling. “God has the dirty hands now.” Both of the soldiers gave the captain a questioning look and he decided that he had gone far enough in that direction.
They were very young and very clean. When they laughed, which was often, their teeth were even and clean and strong. If one word alone could be used to describe them, it would be clean, and after that young, and after that strong. They weren’t dressed the same as the other soldiers. Their uniforms were black with white piping, and the darkness of their dress made their skins seem fairer and their eyes bluer and their blondness more striking. The men had studied them from behind the doors and from the roof tops around the piazza.
The Secret of Santa Vittoria Page 31
