A Winter's Night (7 page)

“What is it?” he asked.

“Read it,” said Floti, “it's addressed to you.”

“It's written too difficult,” said Gaetano, running a trembling finger down the typewritten lines. “You read it.”

Floti, who'd already realized what it was, looked into his eyes and said: “It's the king calling you to arms. You have to leave for the war,
Tanein
. In four days.”

“Are you sure?” asked Gaetano. “Is that really what it says?”

“I'm sure,” replied Floti.

“Can't I say I'm sick?”

“They'll send out a doctor, who'll write that you're fine and then you've got to go. And if you don't go, they'll say you failed to report for military service and the
carabinieri
will come and arrest you. If you're lucky they'll send you to the front; they say there's a special battalion destined for desperate actions. You'd be a goner in no time. If you're unlucky, they'll put you in front of a firing squad.”

Gaetano lowered his head, tears brimming in his eyes. Clerice, who happened to be passing by, saw the scene and understood instantly what was happening. She whispered: “Oh Lord, oh most holy Virgin, no . . . ”

In a matter of minutes the whole family was standing in a circle on the threshing floor around the two brothers.

“What's there to gape at?” said Floti. “It's the postcard: it's Gaetano's turn to leave, but more will be coming soon. It depends on how many die at the front and need to be replaced.”

Callisto looked at his boys one by one, shaking his head with a confused and incredulous expression. The storm clouds foretold by the umbrella mender were gathering over the Bruni home, blacking out the sun and unloosing a boundless disaster. There was nothing he could do to avert the catastrophe. All of the sufferings borne over a lifetime were nothing compared to what was happening before his eyes in that instant.

When the day of Gaetano's departure dawned, Iofa came to get his friend with his horse and cart: he wanted to be the one to take him to the train station, just as he'd taken him a year before to visit the notary in Bologna, the day they brought home all that wheat for the family. Gaetano wore a pair of fustian trousers, a white hemp shirt with a detachable collar, a cotton jacket and a pair of cowhide shoes stitched up for him by the travelling shoemaker. His brothers hugged him first: Floti, Checco, Armando, Dante, Fredo and Savino. Then his sisters, Rosina and Maria, who burst out weeping. Callisto, whose chin was trembling like a child's about to cry, was biting down hard on his lip, and Clerice dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her apron.

“Don't cry,
mamma
, it's bad luck,” said Gaetano, embracing her. “You'll see, I'll be back.”

Callisto patted his son's shoulder. “Watch out for snipers, my boy,” he said, “and never smoke at night because they can see the glow of your cigarette.”

“Don't worry,
papà
, I'll make sure they don't get me.”

“Write when you can,” Floti told him, but he immediately bit his tongue. Gaetano hadn't picked up a pen since third grade. “Find someone who knows how to write for you.”

Gaetano got onto Iofa's cart and set off. Everyone stood at the side of the road, waving goodbye with their hands and their handkerchiefs until he disappeared from sight. Then each of them went back to what he'd been doing, still incredulous at what they'd just seen.

Over the next two weeks, Dante left, then Armando, Checco and Floti, and then it was Fredo's turn. Savino, who was only sixteen, remained. The same harrowing scene was repeated, in the same way, for each one of them.

When even Fredo had gone, Clerice knelt alone in the middle of the deserted threshing floor and prayed for her sons.

Gaetano got out of Iofa's cart at the station of Castel­franco. He took out the government voucher that authorized him to travel free to Modena and from there to Verona where he would have to report to the regiment headquarters.

“How will I know which train to take in Modena?” he asked.

“There are timetables that tell you which track to go to.”

“But I don't know anything about any timetables,” replied Gaetano, terrified.

“Then you show this ticket to one of the railway officials and you tell him: ‘I'm a soldier and I have to go to Verona, where's the track?' He'll tell you. The railwaymen have a gray uniform with a hat like the ones the army officers wear. The one with the red hat is the stationmaster. You can't miss him.”

“And when I get to Verona? How will I find the regiment?”

“Oh, don't worry. They'll find you.”

“You know, Iofa, you really know your way around. Where did you learn all these things?”

“I've delivered goods many a time to be loaded onto train wagons. The station is like a seaport: there's people and merchandise of all kinds, coming and going.”

They heard a whistle and a locomotive soon pulled up, puffing and wheezing and wrapped in a cloud of smoke and steam. Quite a sight. Like the steam engine they used for threshing but ten times bigger, and pulling train cars behind it instead of the thresher. Iofa unloaded his passenger's baggage: a sack with some underwear, a few shirts, a piece of
parmigiano
, a
salame
and a few loaves of bread.

“This is your train,
Tanein
,” Iofa said, using the nickname Gaetano's brothers had given him as a child. He handed him the sack. “It's' time to say goodbye.”

“How about you, did you get the postcard?” Gaetano asked him.

“No. Can't you see I've got one leg shorter than the other? I'm not good for the king.”

“Ain't that the luck? I wish I was you.”

“Don't say that. Because no one wants someone like me. I've never had a woman. And when I wanted one I had to go pay a whore on the streets of Bologna. It cost me a fortune and I caught the clap off her. I'll never have a family. I won't have children, much less grandchildren. You really think I'm the lucky one? Go on, get on that train before it leaves. Take care,
Tanein
. Try not to get killed.”

“I'll try. You take care too, Iofa.”

And so Gaetano Bruni got onto a train for the first time in his life, to go to war.

He got to Modena and then to Verona and from there to regiment headquarters, where a sergeant gave him a uniform and confiscated his
salame
. In a month's time they had taught him to use a gun and then they put him on another train that went to the front.

Things went the same way for his brothers but none of them had the fortune of being assigned to the same unit. They soon lost all contact.

Floti was sent to a regiment of the Fifth Army. Another sergeant lined them up and had them stand at attention and then stand at ease and the commander of the company, Lieutenant Caselli, addressed them: ‘You are here to liberate the last piece of Italy still under the heel of the foreigner and to drive out the Austrians who occupy our territories. If we don't drive them back they will brazenly advance all the way to your villages, rape your women and seize your homes and your crops. Many of you will fall, but your children, your fiancées and your wives will survive thanks to you and will remember this forever.
Viva Italia
, long live the king!”

Floti realized that he had no children, no fiancée, no wife, and that the crops and the house belonged to notary Barzini. He felt a lump in his throat and tears rose to his eyes unbidden.

Caselli, a young man with a child's face, noticed him and came close: “What's your name?”

“Bruni, Raffaele. Lieutenant, sir.”

“What do you do in your everyday life?”

“I'm a farmer, sir.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes, sir.”

The sergeant shot him a threatening look, as the officer paused to consider the sincerity of that answer.

He continued: “I'm afraid myself, Bruni, but if we can become a free country, united from the Alps to the sea, if we can show the world that no one can trample what is ours, we will be respected and there will be peace and prosperity for all. Ours is a worthy cause. And you should all know,” he raised his voice so even those farthest away could hear him, “that every time we're sent to attack, I'll be there leading the way.”

Floti lowered his head without a word, but something about the boy had already impressed the young officer: his intelligent black eyes and thick prickly beard and even more so, his Italian; it was very rare for a farmer to speak correctly without a dialectal twang. And so it was that Floti often found himself at Caselli's side for administrative duties, when the lieutenant needed to dictate letters to headquarters or pass on the day's orders. The officer usually spent his evenings alone, reading or writing. Maybe he had a girlfriend, maybe he was writing to his parents who lived in Perugia and had a fabric shop there. He was their only child. And Floti realized then that having only one son was a mistake, because if he dies, that's the end of you, too.

One evening he found the lieutenant's room empty, although the light was on. There was a book open on the table, entitled
The Birth of Tragedy.
The author's name was so complicated Floti couldn't even sound it out; he must have been a foreigner. He thought it might be a book about war.

“Are you looking for something?” asked the voice of the officer behind him.

Floti spun around and saluted. “Excuse me, sir, I wasn't . . . ”

“That's all right, you haven't done anything wrong. Being curious about culture is a good thing: it means you want to learn. I'd explain what the book is about, but I'm afraid you wouldn't understand. Go now, Bruni. There's something you must give to the sergeant. In three days' time, we'll be leaving for the front. This is really it, Bruni.” A look of melancholy shadowed his eyes as he spoke.

Floti brought his hand up to his cap and took his leave.

He made his way to company headquarters and delivered his commander's orders: “This is from Lieutenant Caselli.”

The sergeant practically ripped the envelope from his hands and tore it open. He gave it a quick read and sent Floti on his way. “What the hell are you doing standing there! Get outta my sight,” he muttered, and Floti was happy to oblige him.

The night sky was clear and full of stars. The breeze from the mountains carried a whiff of fresh hay and the smell made him feel at home, back at home, for an instant.

They left on the third day at dawn, in double file: the foot soldiers of every corps of the army. The
Bersaglieri
with their red caps, long tassels swinging back and forth with every step, the
Alpini
with lavish black plumes hanging from their hats, the Lancers of Montebello and the Grenadiers of Sardegna. And then the mules, wagons, artillery pieces, trucks. Floti had never seen so many people together in one place, so many cannons or so many vehicles. He tried to imagine how much all of this could be costing, and then wondered how many of those boys would still be alive a month from now.

He fought in the first battle of Isonzo and were it not for a God-given strength of spirit he would have gone mad. On their first attack, Lieutenant Caselli's head rolled beneath his feet, chopped cleanly off by shrapnel. His commander's sad eyes stared into his for a moment before they went blank.

Hell could not be worse than what he was living through. The roaring din of the artillery, the flames, the screams of wounded men, the mangled limbs of his fellow soldiers torn from their bodies. He didn't know where to look or how to move. At first he was practically paralyzed. Then his instinct for survival prevailed and after two weeks of battle he had become another person, someone he didn't know was inside of him. As a child he couldn't bear to hear the shrieking of a pig under the butcher's knife; when it was time he'd cover his ears and burrow deep under his bedcovers. Nor could he stand the smell of blood. Now blood was everywhere and it was the blood of twenty-year-old boys. He had learned to shoot, to use a bayonet, to crawl through tall grass, to interpret the whistle of a mortar bomb. But he still couldn't understand anything of what was happening around him. It was like being in another world or inside the nightmare of a madman. At least the umbrella mender, buried head down like they'd found him, wouldn't be seeing any of this slaughter. Lucky him.

Once he saw the enemy. An Austrian or Croatian soldier, blond as a corncob, white as a washed rag, stone dead at the bottom of a cannon's crater. He didn't look much like Floti, who was shorter, with black hair and a tough beard, but he didn't look so terrible, either. He looked like a kid who'd grown up too fast.

At the end of every offensive, when the battlefield was strewn with dead bodies, there would be a period of weeks on end where they'd settle into the trenches and wait for a sign of the enemy or for orders for a new operation. It was almost worse than attacking. The heat was insufferable, the stench of sweat and excrement, the flies that fed on that filth and then got into your eyes, your mouth, your ears, the fleas and lice that never let up, neither day nor night, the impossibility of washing, the futility of scratching, the revolting food and scant water . . . Floti realized that there was a lot worse in life than beating hemp in the midday sun or tossing sheaves of wheat with a pitchfork under the scorching roof of the hayloft. The worst jobs were tolerable when you knew how long they'd last and when they were followed by a dive into the Samoggia and dinner with freshly-baked bread and cold sparkling wine.

Floti's intelligence and his ability to read and write correctly soon helped him shift into tasks involving more responsibility and less danger. By winter he found himself working in an office, and the full accounting of that massacre began to flow across his desk: thousands, tens of thousands of deaths, boys like him mown down by machine guns, riddled with bayonet wounds.