The whitened snow trails beneath Mt. Forato were black, thick with German troops, thousands of them, marching steadily forward, clumsily stumbling and slogging down the mountain from the Sleeping Man’s giant eye as they made their way toward the Lama di Sotto ridge, which led toward the Serchio Valley, Bornacchi, and the villages below. There were so many troops they blotted out the snow, pulling eighty-eights, cannons, and heavy artillery, with horses, mules, and civilians, the mass of men and machines forming a half circle nearly a mile wide, so that when they came down the ridge to blitzkrieg the valley, their flank would be several miles wide and create the pincer movement the Germans favored. There were more than he’d seen before. More than he had told the American commanders when he went to them disguised as a priest. Ten or twelve thousand maybe. And closer than he’d thought.
Still on his stomach, Rodolfo quickly slid away from the edge of the cliff, then scrambled to his feet and backtracked over the path he’d come. As he descended the ridge to Bornacchi, he saw Stamps watching him from the wall near Ludovico’s. Standing next to Stamps was Renata.
Rodolfo trotted over, avoiding the tenente’s anxious gaze. Renata asked nervously, “What did you see?”
Rodolfo shrugged. “Nothing,” he said. “They must be coming from the other direction.”
Renata translated to the tenente, who nodded a cautious thank you and inclined his head toward the German. “You can go guard your friend again,” Stamps said. Rodolfo headed back toward the house, where the German sat out front, where Stamps had placed him so he could easily be seen. He felt the tenente’s eyes boring a hole in his back again.
Stamps and Renata watched Rodolfo take a seat on Ludovico’s front steps.
“Something’s wrong with him,” Renata said.
“Who?”
“Him,” she said, pointing at Rodolfo. “He’s afraid. I think he’s afraid of you.”
“He ain’t got nothing to be ’fraid of, unless he owes me some money. And even then . . . hell.” That’s why they were there in the first place, Train owing Bishop money. Stamps wondered if he would have gone after Train if Bishop hadn’t gone first. It all seemed so ridiculous. He turned to Renata, careful not to look her in the eye but rather staring someplace over her head. Her beauty seemed to cover everything. He noted that she was wearing another dress today, an even prettier one than last night’s.
“We’re going west, probably. That’s where the least firing is. You all can travel with us.”
“Who?”
“Whoever wants to come. Everyone here. Evacuation. We gotta evacuate the town.”
“No one’s going with you,” she said simply.
“Why not?”
“Look around you,” she said.
Stamps watched as the villagers went about their business, scurrying to and fro, even as the distant shelling began again. He was incredulous. “They’re loco,” he said.
“Loco?”
“Pazzi. Crazy.”
“Where can they go? The people who ran to St. Anna’s went there because they thought it was safe. They’re all dead. No place is safe.”
“There are other places,” Stamps said. “Forte dei Marmi. Viareggio. Lucca.”
Renata shrugged. Stamps had to admit, even her shrug was beautiful. “You can go there if you want,” she said.
Stamps snorted. “You don’t have to worry ’bout me, honey. I’m catching the next thing smokin’ when they come for me.”
She didn’t understand what he said. She had a hard time understanding his English, so full of slang as it was, but as she gazed at him, she understood his intentions. He was a man who could not speak in circles. He was full of points, tall, straight, so true, she felt. She looked at his chestnut-colored face, his long arms and broad shoulders, the slender, dark fingers that were now brushing the snow off his nose, his copper-colored eyes that scanned the ridges behind her. She saw that beneath his grim stare and constant frown he was essentially a shy man, and young, ten years younger than she—strong in his intentions, yet burdened with the responsibility of the others. He fascinated her, as did Bishop, though Bishop was more freewheeling in his ways, his easy humor, his loud laugh, the cool manner with which he addressed life. Bishop laughed at the Italians, at himself, at their predicament. He was not afraid to touch, not afraid to flirt, not afraid to suggest the forbidden. Her friend Isoela said Bishop tried to kiss her and more—and that prospect, the prospect of Bishop working his warm, dark hands around her, grasping, holding her, groping, looking for some clear space, Renata found unbelievably exciting. Her husband, Renzo, had been gone a long time, and even as she hoped against hope that he was still alive, she’d found herself admitting to herself recently that Renzo had not been the most exciting of lovers. He was too attached to his stupid mother, God bless her soul. Italian men were like that, she guessed, though she’d known no other man except him, and in her life had seen few foreigners save one or two white Americans in Florence, and these Negroes, who were each so different from the image she had of their fellow Americans.
Lying in bed at night, alone, as she had for months, shivering in the cold, Renata wondered about each of them, the supple, sleepy Spanish speaker; the silent, meek giant with the odd statue head, who moved as if he carried mountains upon his huge shoulders; Bishop, with his wide grin and sparkling white teeth; and Stamps, the prettiest of them all, a dark, brooding, thoughtful flower. She decided she liked Stamps the most. As she watched him, she thought of a chestnut tree in the snow, a Donatello sculpture standing in the whiteness that surrounded them, his eyes covering her with warm, eternal cocoa-brownness, his long arms reaching out to protect her like tree limbs. She could not imagine him killing anyone. Every time she stood near him, her curiosity about him awakened the kind of excitement she hadn’t felt in her heart in years, even though they’d never exchanged more than a few words. It was only a feeling she had, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was a foreigner or because he was a safer version of Bishop, about whom she also had an almost irresistible curiosity. She decided that she was just a country girl, and against her better instincts and character, she wanted to ask him question after question—where he came from, who his mother was, where he grew up.
“You Negroes seem different from other Americans,” she said. “Why?”
She asked just as Bishop emerged from the rear of Ludovico’s house to check on the firing and ask what Stamps wanted to do next.
“Hear that?” Bishop chuckled to Stamps. “She ain’t known us a week, and already she’s asking them Mary McLeod Bethune questions.” Stamps ignored him and said nothing. Bishop turned to Renata. “We ain’t so different from them,” Bishop said. “We just different where it counts most.”
“Where’s that?” she asked. She asked it of both of them, but she wanted only one of them to answer. Stamps felt himself clamming up as she stared directly at him.
It was the first personal thing she had ever asked him, and he desperately wanted to respond. This was a full woman, a real woman, not like the young girls Stamps had seen back home, the colored girls from church in their bland peach-colored hats and conservative Sunday dresses, wearing white gloves and chatting about the Jack & Jill society, which gave brown paper bag tests to see if your skin was light enough to gain admission. She wasn’t like the distant white waitresses who stared across the counter at him in Washington, D.C., with a mixture of fear and loathing as they slid cold cups of coffee at him, their frumpy dresses knotted at the waist, their long hair tied into buns, their skin stretched against their faces like plastic wrapped around old beef. She looked more like the beautiful, sophisticated young women who worked in the cosmetics department at Lerner’s, smelling of sweet oils and perfume, their dresses fitted just so around their slim hips, the thick leather belts tied around them carelessly, their slender, dainty white feet tucked into tiny black high heels. They would glance up from behind the shiny glass perfume counter as he, a starving college student, his long arms and
legs crammed inside a fourteen-dollar green wool suit from Wool-worth’s, strolled past, his head held aloft, trying to maintain his dignity and composure and hiding his disappointment at being turned down for yet another sales job. He imagined what she’d look like behind the perfume counter, all oiled and lubed and smelling good, her beautiful breasts bouncing like puppies, her smiling at him as she did now, with total absorption, complete curiosity. He imagined her standing in front of the department store at closing time with the rest of the perfume department ladies he’d seen waiting for their boyfriends and husbands to pick them up, and he imagined himself pulling up in a new Packard, leaning over the passenger seat so he could flip the latch of the door and open it, her slipping inside, a grown woman, a white woman, a nigger’s wet dream, the kind he’d seen in the movies, Ava Gardner, Betty Boop, that kind of woman, the two of them driving home, rushing inside, her flinging off her shoes, her dress, her underwear, them falling on the bed, and him sinking his hard stiffness into her wet bottom like there was no tomorrow.
But then he saw himself walking through his own neighborhood holding her hand as his black neighbors cackled and glared and moved away from him, knowing he was a dead man or a fool or both, imagined himself swinging from a cherry tree in nearby Richmond, Virginia, with diesel fuel poured down his throat and hot tar on his face as a white mob set his fuel-soaked body afire, and his reverie exploded in his mind like a firecracker, and he heard the shells falling and felt the cold winter air of Tuscany slapping his face again, and the white reality of it all froze his insides. You had to be a reckless know-it-all fool like Bishop to dream that way. Bishop would stick his willy in the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun if he thought there was pleasure at the other end. He knew how to talk to women. Stamps suddenly realized he was jealous of Bishop. Standing there at that moment, he hated the smiling Bishop even more.
“Ain’t no difference,” he said gruffly, “between white and colored. We’re all the same back home.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He saw Bishop grinning and Hector circling nearby. “Hector, you just in time,” Bishop said. “The lieutenant here’s giving out free Uncle Tom lessons.”
Stamps ignored him. The villagers were gradually returning to their homes. The distant shelling had died down again, and from out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Italian standing near the German, who was seated on the ground beside Ludovico’s house. The German hadn’t moved. He sat listless, motionless, probably expecting to be killed, Stamps thought. Too much was happening at once. Something about that Italian guarding him alone was wrong.
Turning to Bishop and Hector, Stamps nodded at the Italian. “I don’t trust him,” he said.
“Aw, git off your hind legs ’bout that guy,” Bishop said. “He’s on our side.”
“I still don’t trust him.”
Renata said, “He’s just afraid. He’s from this area. I know him.”
“I don’t give a damn if he’s Eleanor Roosevelt,” Stamps said. “I still don’t trust him. The Krauts are hitting us hard from the next ridge over, and he don’t see nothing? He’ll forget us five minutes past breakfast if them Germans come over that ridge.”
Hector silently agreed. He pulled Stamps’s arm. “Stamps, I gotta talk to you a minute.”
“Not now.”
“It’s about Train’s kid.”
“You got him talkin’? What did he say?”
“He says the Germans were up at that church we saw.”
“Oh, that’s just skippy. We know that.”
“He says we got to skedaddle.”
“Who says?”
“The kid.”
“Maybe you can get a job as his personal secretary when this is all over.”
“I’m telling you, the kid knows something.”
“Forget the kid,” Stamps snapped, watching Rodolfo, who was standing near the German. “I don’t trust that guy. Get over there with him. Take him and the German to the south post, the main post at the south of the village, and keep an eye out for Krauts. And watch that Italian guy. Anything funny happens, fire two shots in the air. One-two. Like that. Got it?”
Hector took a look at Rodolfo, who seemed uneasy, and he didn’t like it. “We don’t need two people to look after one prisoner,” he said.
“Nokes is coming all the way out here to get him. He must be important,” Stamps said. He felt stupid even as he said it, looking at the ragged German who sat next to the house, a kid—it was hard to believe he could be that important.
“If he’s important,” Hector said slowly, “what does that make us?” He was starting to put two and two together. Something big was coming. Headquarters needed more intelligence on it. If they’d ask me, Hector thought, I’ll tell them all they need to know: We need to get the hell out. Now. Get some bomber planes or something up here, and we’ll be back later.
“Why does it sound like an auction every time I tell y’all to do something?” Stamps snapped. “This ain’t twenty questions. Just do like I said.”
Hector glumly walked over to Rodolfo, and the three of them trudged off. The German marched behind Rodolfo toward the outer wall, with Hector following them. They turned a corner and marched down a small alleyway to a tiny piazza, Hector keeping his eyes on both of them. His nerves were tingling. He was exhausted. He’d gone outside to tell Stamps about Train’s kid and instead had drawn the worst assignment. He was freezing and his toes were numb.
The Italian stopped at the far wall, where Hector motioned him to one gatepost while he took the other. The entrance to the village faced a small river several yards off, and behind that the ground sloped up to ridges that ascended gradually. They could be climbed if necessary, Hector noted, if he and the others had to flee in that direction. Or, he thought with a pang of fear, they could be descended easily, too, if a company of two hundred Krauts decided to come down to kick their asses. He tried not to think about it. About four feet separated him from Rodolfo, with the German sitting on the ground between them.
They stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the ridge. Hector bet the Italian knew those mountains like the back of his hand. All the partisans did. That’s why the Americans used them as guides—except for Stamps, he thought, who trusted no one. He peered at the young Italian sideways and decided he was okay, though he still agreed with Stamps on this one and watched him close. The Italian tried to smile at him, but it came off as a grimace. He was nervous, Hector could see it. The young Italian offered him a cigarette, his hand shaking, and Hector suddenly felt a burst of sympathy for him. He was scared, too. At least I have a home to go to, Hector thought. This poor bastard, this was his home, right here. He’s fighting for a little shithole.
With a friendly smile, Hector reached for the cigarette, and at that moment felt something cold hit his arm. He heard the German suddenly scream and saw him kick at the Italian. Hector heard a pflap!, as if someone had slapped him, a flesh-on-flesh sound, and instinctively turned his head to look over the wall at the hills beyond, waiting for the pain to surge through his body, thinking he’d been hit by a German sniper. In doing so, he saved his own life, as the Italian’s knife, aimed at his throat for a second attempt, missed and sliced off a piece of his ear instead.
It was not till many years later that Hector admitted to himself that the German soldier had saved his life, because had he not shouted and kicked Rodolfo off balance, the Italian’s aim would have been true; and in those later years, when the war, which he tried so hard to bury, haunted him mercilessly, presenting itself to him in his dreams, rising like a phoenix—the flesh wounds, the starving children, the cheerful Italian villagers with crippled legs and no arms who smiled at him and fed him their last crumbs—causing maniacal outbursts and trembling hands on his part, Hector often resolved to quit his life at the post office and spend his last dime to find the young German soldier so that he could fall on his knees and thank him, kiss his hands in gratitude, warm the soldier’s young, freezing finge
rs with his own lips for saving his life. But that opportunity would never present itself, because by the time Hector fell down in the thickening snow, holding his bleeding ear, hearing the fleeing Italian’s feet splashing past his face and the shouts of Ludovico and the others coming to his rescue, the German boy lay facing him, slouched against the wall with his throat slashed, blood pulsing out of his neck as he stared at Hector with neither guilt nor anger in his deep blue eyes, but rather, Hector noted, something akin to relief.
18
BETRAYAL
Peppi sat at the edge of the east ridge above Bornacchi and peered into the snowy darkness of the town below. The sound of artillery was growing closer; the heavy booms felt like they were landing atop his heart. He wanted to sob with the weight of it. Two of his partisans sat nearby in a semicircle, warming themselves at a fire. They listened to the soft song of the boy Ettalo, who sang a melody that only a child would know and tried to interest them in dominoes.
The booms of the artillery did not bother him. The approaching Germans were nothing new. He had seen them with his own eyes. They were descending from Mt. Forato, right through the eye of the Mountain of the Sleeping Man, a huge force, yes, maybe ten thousand men, but they would have to move slowly. Their size would hamper them, the snow would hamper them, the mountains would check them—there was only one trail big enough to accommodate that many men and machines as they descended through the Lama di Sotto ridge anyway. His band could attack them easily there, hold them up for a short time by sticking a few detonated charges in a narrow pass near Mt. Procino—he knew a place there where the earth and rocks were so loose he could kick them down onto the trail with his feet—but the stall wouldn’t last long. They would come, and there would be hell to pay as usual, though he was not afraid for himself. The Germans would never catch him in those mountains. He knew them like the back of his hand. Every nook, every rock and cranny he’d climbed in and out of as a boy, hunting wild boar, gathering chestnuts, crawling, hiding, playing in the dozens of caves and caverns with his brother Paolo, his cousin Gianni, and of course Marco and Marco’s little brother Rodolfo.
Miracle at St. Anna Page 19
