Difficult Loves (9 page)

But Bisma kept riding along the stony road. The old mule kept putting its hoofs down uncertainly on the surface pitted with flints and new holes; its skin was stretched tight from the burning of the sores under its pack saddle. The explosions made no impression on it; it had suffered so much in its life that nothing could make any impression on it any more. It was walking along with its muzzle bent down, and its eyes, limited by the black blinkers, were noticing all sorts of things : snails, broken by the shelling, spilling an iridescent slime on the stones; ant hills ripped open and the black and white ants hurrying hither and thither with eggs; torn-up grasses showing strange hairy roots like trees.

And the man riding on the pack saddle was trying to keep himself upright on the thin haunches, while all his poor bones were starting in their sockets at the roughness of the road. But he had lived his life with mules, and his ideas were as few and as resigned as theirs; it had always been long and tiring to find his bread, bread for himself and bread for others, and now bread for the whole of Bévera. The world, this silent world which surrounded him, seemed to be trying to speak to him, too, with confused boomings that reached even his sleeping eardrums, and strange disturbances of the earth. He could

see banks crumbling, clouds rising from the fields, stones flying, and red flashes appearing and disappearing on the hills; the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots. And the silence, the terrible silence of his old age, was ruffled by those distant sounds.

The road at the mule's feet sent out huge sparks, its nostrils and throat filled with earth, a hail of splintered stones hit the man and the mule from the side while the branches of a big olive tree whirled in the air above. Yet the man wouldn't fall unless the mule fell. And the mule held on, its hoofs rooted in the torn-up earth, its knees just not giving way.

In the evening, up at Bévera, someone shouted, "Look! It's Bisma coming back! He's made it!"

Then the men and women and children came out of the houses and caves and saw the mule at the last turn of the road, coming ahead more bent than ever under the weight of sacks, and Bisma behind, on foot, hanging on to its tail so that they couldn't tell whether he was pushing or being pulled.

Bisma had a great welcome from the people of the valley when he got in with the bread. It was distributed in the big cave; the inhabitants passed through one by one while the man from the committee handed out a loaf a head. Near him stood Bisma, munching his loaf with his few teeth and looking around at everyone.

Bisma went to Ventimiglia the next day, too. His mule was the only animal the Germans were sure not to want. He went down every day to fetch bread, and every day he passed unhurt through the shells; he must have made a deal with the devil, they said.

Then the Germans evacuated the left bank of the Bévera River, blew up two bridges and a piece of road, and laid down mines. The inhabitants were given forty-eight hours to leave

the village and the area. They left the village but not the area : back they went into their holes. But now they were isolated, caught between two fronts, with no way of getting supplies. It meant starvation.

When they heard the village had been evacuated, the Black Brigade came up. They were singing. One of them was carrying a tin of paint and a brush. On the walls he wrote:
They shall not pass. We go straight ahead. The Axis does not give way.

Meanwhile, the others were wandering around the streets, with Sten guns on their shoulders, glancing at the houses. Then they began breaking in a door or two with their shoulders. At that moment Bisma appeared on his mule. He appeared at the top of a road on a slope, and came down between two rows of houses.

"Hey, where are you going?" said the men of the Black Brigade.

The old man did not seem to see them; the mule went on putting one wobbly leg in front of the other.

"Hey, we're talking to you!" The haggard, impassive old man, perched on that skeleton of a mule, seemed a ghost issued from the stones of the uninhabited and half-ruined village.

"He's deaf," they said.

The old man looked at them, one by one. The Black Brigade men went down a side alley. They reached a little square where the only sounds were water trickling in the fountain and distant guns.

"I know there's stuff in that house," said one of the Black Brigade, pointing. He was only a boy, with a red blotch under his eye. The echo among the houses of the empty square repeated his words one by one. The boy made a nervous gesture. The one with the brush wrote on a ruined wall:
Honor Is

Struggle.
A window that had been left open was banging and making more noise than the guns.

"Wait," said the boy with the red blotch to two others who were pushing at a door. He put the mouth of his Sten gun against the lock and fired a burst. The lock, all burned out, gave way. At that moment Bisma reappeared from the direction opposite to the one where they'd left him. He seemed to be promenading up and down the village on that ruin of a mule.

"Wait till he's passed," said one of the Black Brigade, and they stood in front of the door looking indifferent.

Rome or Death,
wrote the man with the brush.

Very slowly, the mule crossed the square; every step seemed to be its last. The man riding it appeared to be on the point of falling asleep.

"Go away," shouted the boy with the blotch. "The village is evacuated."

Bisma did not turn around, intent on piloting his mule across that empty square.

"If we see you again," went on the same boy, "we'll shoot."

We shall win,
wrote the man with the brush.

Now only Bisma's decrepit back could be seen above the black legs of the mule, which seemed almost halted.

"Let's go down there," decided the Black Brigade men and they turned under an arch.

"Hey. No time to lose. Let's begin with this house." They opened it up, and the boy with the blotch entered first. The bouse was empty, with nothing in it but echoes. They wandered around the rooms and came out again.

"I'd like to set fire to the whole village, I would," said the boy with the blotch.

We shall go straight ahead,
wrote the other man.

At the end of the little alley Bisma reappeared. He advanced toward them.

"Don't," said the Black Brigade men to the boy with the blotch, who was taking aim.

Duce,
wrote the other man.

But the boy with the blotch had fired a burst. They were mown down together, the man and the mule, but they remained on foot. It seemed as if the mule had fallen on its four hoofs and still, black spindly legs, all in one piece. The Black Brigade stood looking on; the boy with the blotch had loosened the sten gun on its holster and was picking his teeth. Then they bowed together, man and mule, and seemed to take another step; instead they fell down in a heap.

That night the people of the village came to take them away. Bisma they buried; the mule they cooked and ate. It was tough meat, but they were hungry.

GOING TO HEADQUARTERS

It was a sparse wood, almost destroyed by fire, gray with charred tree trunks amid the dry reddish needles of the pines. Two men, one armed, the other unarmed, were zigzagging down between the trees.

"To headquarters," the armed man was saying. "To headquarters, that's where we're going. Half an hour's walk at the most."

"And then?"

"Then what?"

"Then will they let me go?" said the unarmed man. He was listening to every syllable of every reply as if searching for a false note.

"Yes, they'll let you go," said the armed man. "I hand them the papers from battalion, they enter them on their list, then you can go home."

The unarmed man shook his head, looking pessimistic.

"Oh, they take a long time, these things do. I know ..." he said, perhaps just to hear the other man repeat, "They'll let you go at once, I tell you."

"I was hoping," the unarmed man went on, "I was hoping to be home this afternoon. Ah, well, patience."

"You'll make it, I tell you," replied the armed man. "Just a few questions, and they'll let you go. They've got to cross off your name from the list of spies."

"Have you got a list of spies?"

"Of course we have. We know 'em all, the spies. And we get 'em, one by one."

"And my name's on it?"

"Yes, your name, too. They must cross it off properly now, or you risk being taken again."

"Then I really should go there myself, so I can explain the whole thing to them."

"We're going there now. They have to look into it properly to check."

"But by now," said the unarmed man, "by now you all know I'm on your side and have never been a spy."

"Exactly. We know all about it now. You don't have to worry now."

The unarmed man nodded and looked around. They were in a big clearing, with mangy pines and larches killed by fire and draped with fallen branches. They had left, refound, and lost the path again, and were walking apparently at random among the scattered pines through the wood. The unarmed man did not know this area. Evening was creeping up in thin layers of mist. Down below, the woods were lost in the dark. It worried him, their leaving the path; the other seemed to be walking at random. He tried bearing right, hoping to find the path again; the other also bore right, apparently at random. Then the unarmed man turned wherever the walking was easier, with the armed man following him.

He decided to ask, "But where's the headquarters?"

"We're going toward it," replied the armed man. "You'll soon see it now."

"But what place, what area is it, more or less?"

"Well," he replied, "one can't say headquarters is in any place or area. Headquarters is wherever it is. You understand?"

He understood; he was a person who understood things. But he asked, "Isn't there a path to it?"

The other replied, "A path? You understand. A path always goes somewhere. One doesn't get to headquarters by paths. You understand."

The unarmed man understood; he was a person who understood things, an astute man.

He asked, "D'you often go to headquarters?"

"Often," said the armed man. "Yes, often."

He had a sad face, with a vacant look. Apparently he didn't know those parts very well. Every now and again he seemed lost, yet he went walking on as if it did not matter.

'And why have they told you to take me along today?" asked the unarmed man, scrutinizing him.

"That's my job, to take you along," he replied. "I'm the one who takes people along to headquarters."

"You're their courier, are you?"

"That's right," said the armed man. "Their courier."

"A strange courier"—thought the unarmed man—"who doesn't know the way. But"—he thought—"today he doesn't want to go by the paths in case I realize where the headquarters is, for they don't trust me. A bad sign, their not trusting me yet," the unarmed man couldn't help thinking. But though it was a bad sign, it did mean that they really were bringing him to headquarters and intended to let him go free.

Another bad sign, apart from this, was that the woods were getting thicker and thicker. Then there was the silence and this gloomy armed man.

"Did you take the secretary along to headquarters, too? And the brothers from the mill? And the schoolmistress?" He asked this question all in one breath, without stopping to think, for it was the decisive question, the question that meant everything; the secretary of the commune, the brothers from the mill, the schoolmistress, were all people who had been taken away and never returned, of whom nothing more had ever been heard.

"The secretary was a Fascist," said the armed man. "The brothers from the mill were in the Militia, the schoolmistress worked with the Fascists."

"I just wondered, since they'd never come back."

"What I mean is," insisted the armed man, "they were what they were. You're what you are. There's no comparison."

"Of course," said the other. "There's no comparison. I only asked what had happened to them out of curiosity."

He felt sure of himself, the unarmed man did, enormously sure of himself. He was the astutest man in the village; it was difficult to get the better of him. The others, the secretary and the schoolmistress, had not come back; he would come back. "I big
Kamerad,"
he would say to the German sergeant. "Partisan not
kaput
me. I
kaput
all partisans." Perhaps the sergeant might laugh.

But the burned trees seemed interminable and ambiguous and his thoughts were surrounded by darkness and the unknown, like the bare spaces in the middle of these woods.

"I don't know about the secretary and the others. I'm the courier."

"They'll know at headquarters though?" insisted the unarmed man.

"Yes. Ask them at headquarters. They'll know there."

Dusk was falling. He had to walk carefully in the undergrowth, watching where his feet went in case they slipped on rocks hidden under the thick scrub; and watching where his thoughts went, too, as they followed each other in growing disquiet, in case they suddenly plunged headlong into panic.

Surely if they'd thought him a spy they would never have let him go through the woods like this, alone with this man who didn't seem to be taking any notice of him at all; he could have escaped from him any time he wanted. Suppose he tried to escape now—what would the other man do?

As he wound down among the trees the unarmed man began to draw a little way off, to bear left when the other bore right. But the armed man went on walking almost, it seemed, without taking any notice of him; down through the sparse woods they went, now some distance from each other. Sometimes they even lost sight of each other, hidden by trunks and shrubs; then suddenly the unarmed man would turn around and see the other above him.

"If they let me free for a moment, this time they won't get me again," the unarmed man had thought till then. But now he surprised himself thinking, "If I manage to escape, then this time ..." And already in his mind he saw Germans, columns of Germans, Germans in trucks and armored cars, a sight that meant death for the others and safety for him, who was an astute man, a man no one could get the better of.