A Soldier of the Great War (51 page)

Of the thousand sheep, four hundred were to be driven to Rome for slaughter. The three shepherds had argued for months about the best means to accomplish this. Should two go on the long drive, and leave only one to watch over six hundred sheep? On the other hand, one man could not expect to drive four hundred animals over rough country for sixty kilometers without losing half or more. The only solution was to get someone else.

They didn't know Alessandro, they found his speech hard to understand, and he admitted that he knew nothing about sheep, but he was willing to accompany them to the Mattatoio in Rome. There, after a glass of wine with his companion, and the simulated splitting of shares, Alessandro had only to cross the Tiber and he would be home.

"I don't like the idea," the oldest shepherd said to the other two, speaking across a campfire that blazed higher than a man's waist. It was the middle of September, they would have to leave in a few days, and at two thousand meters light snow sometimes fell at night, only to be burned away by a hot sun the next morning.

"We've been through this a hundred times, Quagliagliarello," said Roberto, a man of Alessandro's age, who was to go with Alessandro to Rome. "We can't do it with only three of us."

"But he's a deserter."

Alessandro's eyes shot back and forth crossing the flames to follow the point of view.

"So what. He was in for two years. What did you do?"

"We raise sheep for the army."

"We raise sheep because that's our business."

The old shepherd looked about. He hated to argue, because other people were always much faster than he, and confounded everything he said. "We raise sheep because
that's our business
," he stated.

"That's what I said," argued Roberto.

"Well, it is our business."

"All right, Quagliagliarello. He was in the army for two years. What have you done?"

"I raise sheep because it's my business."

"What's more important, defense of the country or business?"

"You're trying to trap me."

"Answer either way. I don't care."

"Business. Business is more important."

"Then he'll help in our business."

"But he's a deserter."

"So what?"

"What's more important, business or defense of the country?"

"You tell me," the younger one demanded.

"Business!"

"So why do you ask?"

"Because he's a deserter."

"So what?"

"So, what's more important, business or the defense of the country?"

"Business," Roberto answered.

"That's what you said."

"That's what I
say.
"

"Yes."

"But he's a deserter."

"So what?"

"So, what's more important..." This went on until the fire had burned down sufficiently to require the third shepherd, a mute by the name of Modugno, to throw on more logs.

As soon as they blazed up, Quagliagliarello knitted his brows and turned to Roberto. "I don't like it," he said.

"Why not?" Roberto answered.

"He's a deserter."

Roberto was writing a letter to his sister. He kept on writing even as he argued with Quagliagliarello. "So what," he answered mechanically.

"What's more important?" Quagliagliarello asked.

"Business or the defense of the country?" Roberto continued.

"Business."

"Right."

"But he's a deserter."

"So what," Roberto said, moving on to another page. It was easy to argue with Quagliagliarello, if you had patience, and if you could pronounce his name.

Alessandro crawled into a sheepskin sack and turned away from the fire. They were camped on a small sandbar that jutted into the lake, and as the fire died down he could see the stars without the intrusion of wavy air or flashing smoke. The argument between Roberto and Quagliagliarello had slowed until it sounded like a ritual incantation, and the wind was cold and dry.

 

W
HEN THEY
moved through the mountains toward Rome they moved at the pace of the sheep, and the sheep moved at the pace of the clouds, the swaying of trees, and all the other things in nature, except lightning.

The beauty of the lakes, the forest, and the stretches of tranquil blue sky gently took the army out of Alessandro. For weeks he
heard nothing but the wind, the bleating of sheep, and the regular overturning and knocking together of the small rocks kicked about by the herd.

Hawks circling on invisible rivers of air never saw fit to swoop down as long as the shepherds flanked the lambs. So attuned to the sound of the wind and its slightest variations was Alessandro that had the hawks descended he would have heard them, and he would have been where they were going to land, ready to use his stick.

The only time Roberto and Alessandro disagreed was once when they came to a small lake, far beyond L'Aquila, where Alessandro had wanted to halt on the eastern side and Roberto brought the sheep around to the western. Though they were too far apart to shout across the water, their dispute was about how to look at the light, for Alessandro wanted to see the world gilded as sunlight flooded over the lake, to feel the heat on his face, to be surrounded by glare, but Roberto wanted to keep his eyes clear as the sun penciled-in every rigid and perfect detail of the hills. He stood watching the gulls on the lake. They were whiter than a glacier. In the stars, clouds, and wind, Alessandro hoped to be able to restore what he had lost, for beyond the disintegration and the glare, by the tenets and faith of the West, were clarity, reconstitution, and love.

The closer they came to Rome the more towns and farms they had to skirt lest the sheep graze in a field yet to be harvested or find diversion in narrow streets. Where they were unable to break out over open country they held by rivers and streams and sometimes passed near a village, all four hundred sheep forging ahead as if they knew where they were going.

One morning, as they looked out from a forest on the crest of a mountain, they saw Rome silently straddling the Tiber, fresh, pale, and without mass. In the eastern light ten thousand roofs flashed like the refractive scales of a fish as its stripes cloud into a dying rainbow when it is pulled from the sea.

They came down past Subiaco, San Vito Romano, and Gallicano nel Lazio, and entered the city from the south. Although sheep were often driven through the center of Rome, two men could not hope to keep a large flock from breaking up in the maze of streets. Alessandro and Roberto marched their animals down the Via Ardeatina until they got to the Aurelian Wall, which they followed west. They stopped to ask a soldier what day it was.

"It's the fifth," the soldier answered from the top of the wall, where he was standing with a rifle slung from his shoulder.

"Of October?"

"Where have you been?"

They didn't bother to answer his question, for they had another of their own. "What day?"

"I told you."

"Not number, day."

"Friday," he said, incredulously.

"I'll have to pay for feed until Monday," Roberto said.

The air was mild and gentle, and the scent of pine needles, wood fires, and hot olive oil vaulted over the wall.

They drove the sheep down the Viale del Campo Boario and turned them inside the wall at the Protestant Cemetery. Circling around Monte Testaccio, upon which many goats were standing, they came to the Mattatoio and drove the sheep through a wide gate. As soon as the animals entered the vast courtyard of ramshackle pens they knew they had been betrayed. Though the slaughter had ended for the day, voices were left that they could hear, and the smell of death made them bleat in terror. Their eyes were wide, as if they could see what was bearing down on them, but the fences were too high to leap and the walls too solid to breach. The hearts of the ewes must have broken for their lambs.

 

A
LESSANDRO FOLLOWED
as direct a route as he could through the winding streets of Trastevere. The corners where toughs had
been stationed since the time of Caligula were now empty. They were in the army, in prison, dead, or hiding in the hills. Now and then he passed young soldiers with tortured expressions that meant their leave was running out. They glanced at his beard and sheepskins, at the shepherd's staff, and at his glittering eyes, that said he spent all his time in the open air, and they envied him.

As he climbed the Gianicolo's thousand steps in a dim October sunset he smelled the leaves, felt the cool air above the stones, and was comforted by the special darkness of the steep hill on which he knew every turn, every rock, and every palsied iron rail.

He was half convinced that climbing the Gianicolo, coming up the steps, and rounding the corners was a pendulum in some great clockwork that would set everything right. On an evening like this, his father would be tending the fire, and his mother looking after dinner, in dispute with Luciana over how to set the table or the length of time that something needed to be cooked. The lights would be shining from the windows, and smoke would be rising from the chimneys. The leaves in the garden would be raked, the sidewalks swept. At dusk the house was like a lantern.

As he took the steps one by one, Alessandro prayed with all the gravity and passion that were in him for that which he had once merely taken for granted.

 

W
HEN
L
UCIANA
returned home at a quarter to eleven she opened the front door, stepped inside, and threw the bolt. Then she walked in the dark until she came to the wall by the stairs, where she searched for the light switch. As soon as the light went on, she stood for a moment to listen, and looked about apprehensively, lifting her eyes to the top of the stairs.

Though the house was cold and empty, Alessandro had been sitting in the living room for five hours. He was warm in his sheepskin clothing, and he had remained in the darkness, hardly moving, staring at the faint shadows on the ceiling. He had called out
and gone into every room. It was as he had remembered it, but no one was in, and he had no way of knowing where they had gone.

The fires were out and the ashes cold. No fresh food was in the kitchen. Several cartons of mail were on his bed, including a packet of letters that he had sent from the Bell Tower. Resting on this was a letter from an adjutant's office in Verona.
Famiglia Giuliani
:
Alessandro Giuliani, $ Batt. Fant. Arresto, 19th River Guard, is detached for special service and out of communication until later notice. Please have patience for the allotted time.

Alessandro imagined that everyone was out for dinner and would arrive later in a carriage. His father would take a long time to get out, and then they would come up the walk. Even if the lights of the house did not burst on simultaneously, the fires ignite, and the rooms suddenly smell like fresh flowers, it did not matter, if only they returned.

Perhaps his mother had been desperately ill but had not died after all. He would never believe any report until or unless it came directly from his father or Luciana.

When he entered his parents' room he felt as if he were a child again, driven there by a thunderstorm or the sound of a squirrel scampering across the roof, and he remembered when he lay between his father and mother, taunting ghosts and lightning.

Faint illumination came from the windows facing the city. The bed was curiously stiff and unused, with summer linen, but the paintings had not moved a millimeter and the furniture was positioned exactly where he had last seen it. He held his breath when he opened the clothes cupboards. They were full of familiar bathrobes, suits, dresses, and slippers. His mother's perfume was still strong on her clothes, and his father's jackets had their customary aroma of pipe tobacco.

He approached his father's long desk, which was in order except for one thing, the picture of Alessandro's mother as a young woman. The photograph of a smiling girl at age seventeen, in 1885,
was centered on the blotter. In starlight alone, he could not recognize her face, but he could make out the pattern of the background against the subject. Its shape was familiar, like a country on a map. Still, a photograph propped up in the middle of a desk was not the kind of confirmation that would make him lose hope.

As he left the room for the upstairs hall, he stopped short. His head sank, and he turned around. When he reached back for the light switch he had difficulty finding it. Then he found it and the room became so bright that for a second he was not able to look up. His eyes went everywhere but to the desk. He swept them over all the familiar things—over the paintings, across the windows, to the bed, the books—but he had seen from the corner of his eyes exactly what he feared to see, and then he had no reason not to look anymore. The photograph of the smiling young girl was in a new frame. The frame was black.

As Luciana's eyes adjusted to the brightness her brother called to her but she didn't hear. "Luciana," he said, in a subdued voice, so as not to startle her.

She threw her arms in front of her chest. Tightening her fist, she stepped back.

"Rafi?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," Alessandro said, stepping into the light.

 

S
ATURDAY MORNINGS
on the Gianicolo were as quiet as if time had stopped. Carriages might not pass for an hour or more, and you might not hear boots on the pavement for a day. If it were wet you would be aware not only of the raindrops but of the slower counterpoint of water falling from eaves and the undersides of iron rails after it had clung in rows of heavy teardrops that had marched to the point where they had to let go. And when it was sunny and dry you could smell the pine needles as the sun struck the soft ground underneath symmetrical rows of trees.

Alessandro lay for as long as he could in his own bed. After he opened his eyes and saw the marvelous eastern light on the ceiling and walls of his room, he suffered the kind illusion that nothing had changed. On this cool October day in Rome he thought of riding to the sea, of wandering on horseback through fields and past bonfires of olive branches that had been cut during the harvest, but as the light grew stronger, he remembered.