Hero on a Bicycle (7 page)

T
he next morning, the Crivelli family stayed close to the house and tried to maintain a normal routine. Neither Paolo nor Constanza went near the cellar, though they knew that by now everything had been made ready for — for whom, exactly? They both wondered but knew better than to ask.

The house was unnaturally calm and silent. Then, at about noon, a motorcycle roared up the drive and the front doorbell rang. Rosemary, who was carrying a couple of blankets and a loaf of bread across the hall to the cellar, froze. Hardly anyone came to their front door these days. Maria labored slowly out of the kitchen to answer it. Rosemary only just had time to kick the cellar door closed before Lieutenant Helmut Gräss entered the hall, followed by Maria. He was in battle dress, wearing his service revolver and steel helmet.

He saluted quickly and said, “Forgive this intrusion, Signora Crivelli. We are checking the whole area to see that all civilians are at home. There is a great deal of troop movement on the roads, which cannot be impeded.”

He paused as his gaze fell on the blankets and bread that Rosemary was clutching. But before he could say anything else, Constanza appeared behind her mother. She had heard the conversation from upstairs and had come down to give her mother some moral support.
I’ve got to get Helmut outside somehow,
she thought anxiously.
Mamma’s not a good liar.

“You must have so much to do,” she said to the lieutenant. “But can’t we offer you something to eat or drink?”

“A glass of water only, please, if you would be so kind.”

As Maria hurried away to fetch it, Constanza maneuvered Helmut gently outside. It was shimmeringly hot. The sky was a fathomless Italian blue, and the shadows of the cypress trees that sheltered the house from the road laid cool, dark fingers on the gravel. It was hard to believe that not far away young men around Helmut’s age were hell-bent on killing one another. The German officer and Constanza stood beside his motorcycle, and he took off his helmet. Without it, he looked years younger.

“We will be in action soon,” he said. “I hoped I would see you today because I wanted to say . . . I wanted to tell you . . .”

Maria appeared with his glass of water, and he stopped speaking to gulp it down. When she had gone indoors, he began again.

“There’s so much to say, if it were possible. But so little time. You are half English, of course. And your father . . .”

“My father is away from home, as you know. We none of us know his whereabouts at the moment.”

“My father is in a difficult position, too,” said Helmut quietly. “We are a military family. He is a colonel, a professional soldier. He served in the last war and now, more recently, with General Rommel in North Africa, but he has never been in agreement with the Nazi high command and what they are doing to our country. It has put him, and his career, into considerable danger. I want you to know this. I can tell you because I trust you, and your family. I cannot bear that we should be enemies, because I . . . you are . . .” And then, without realizing it, he lapsed into German, speaking so softly and urgently that Constanza, who understood the language only slightly, could hardly follow what he said. Though she thought she caught the words “so dear to me.”

Eventually he fell silent and took her hand. He was looking at her so intently that she hardly knew how to reply. Then, abruptly, he straightened himself, handed her back the empty glass, and put on his helmet. Without another word, he kicked the engine of his motorcycle into life and drove off down the drive.

Constanza stood there for a moment, looking after him. She really liked Helmut. He was the kind of young man, she reflected, that her father would have gotten along well with had they met in some other, happier world: one in which they were not fighting on bitterly opposed sides. She realized what a compliment he had paid her by telling her about his own father and background. He was such a serious man, made more serious still by the enormous weight of responsibility that had been put upon him as a German officer at war. He was not many years older than she was — twenty or twenty-one, perhaps — and it touched her that he had not been able to express his feelings for her except in his own beloved language. It was difficult for her to think of him as The Enemy, someone against whom she and her family were about to pit all their courage and ingenuity. Slowly, she turned around and wandered thoughtfully back into the house.

T
hat evening neither Paolo nor Constanza made any fuss about taking themselves off to their rooms very early. But not, of course, to sleep. The tension in the house meant that was out of the question. As darkness fell, Maria, too, retired to her own quarters off the kitchen, leaving Rosemary alone to pace nervously from room to room. She turned off all the downstairs lights, keeping only one burning in the hall, then opened the windows of the living room, which looked out onto the terrace.

It was a still, hot night, full of stars. Somewhere out on the main road she could hear heavy vehicles — German tanks and military trucks, probably — rumbling toward the city. Then all was silent. She lit a cigarette, smoked half of it in a vain attempt to calm herself, and then stabbed the rest out in disgust. She went once more to the window. Out there beyond the terrace, where the trees cast dense shadows on the parched grass, she thought she caught a glimpse of a slight movement. A man detached himself from the dappled gloom of the hedge and came stealthily toward the house.

Summoning all her courage, she went outside and paused at the top of the steps, peering into the dark.

“Buona sera,”
she said stiffly.

“Buona sera, signora.”

She could see his rifle but not his face, which was hidden under the peak of his cap.

“You’d better come in.”

The man turned back a few paces and gave a low whistle. At the sound, two other figures emerged from the darkness. She beckoned, and all three men filed inside.

Rosemary shuttered and closed the French doors, drew the curtains, and switched on the lights, then turned to face them. All three were dressed more or less alike in Italian work clothes, but the two younger men were unarmed. One was tall, broad-shouldered, and dark. The other man was slighter and very fair, with a small mustache. Both looked thin and unkempt and had dark circles of fatigue under their eyes.

The older man was sweating heavily. He removed his cap and loosened his scarf to reveal close-cropped hair; small, slightly slanting eyes; and several weeks’ growth of rusty-red beard. Rosemary turned toward his two younger companions, who, she realized, were not much older than her own daughter.

“You must be tired,” she said. “You’ll be sleeping in the cellar here — not very comfortable, I’m afraid, but we’ve made up some mattresses on the floor, and it’s quite dry. But first, you must be hungry. We’ve prepared something for you to eat, if you’d care to follow me. . . .”

They looked at her blankly and shuffled their feet.

“They don’t understand,
signora,
” explained their companion. “They don’t speak any Italian.”

“Oh — of course. Forgive me.”

After she had repeated herself in English, both young faces visibly relaxed. The tall, dark man gave her a grin of gratitude. “Thanks, ma’am. It’s real kind of you, what you’re doing for us. And yes, we sure would appreciate something to eat.”

He’s American, or possibly Canadian,
thought Rosemary. She smiled at him and turned to his companion.

“It’s most awfully good of you,” said the fair one. He had the kind of unmistakable English voice that Rosemary had not heard for a long time. It made her heart contract with a sudden pang of homesickness for the country she had left so many years ago, a country that, for all she knew, no longer existed as she remembered it. She wanted to ask him where he came from and about his family and how he had been taken prisoner. But she knew that this was not the moment for conversation. And anyway, the less she knew about these uninvited guests, the better. Instead, she picked up a small oil lamp and said simply, “Follow me.”

The makeshift accommodation that she and Maria had prepared in the cellar was indeed very primitive, but it was as welcoming as they could make it. Some plates of food, a pitcher of water, and a bottle of wine were laid out on an upturned packing case, and the two young men fell on it ravenously. They ate in silence, then slumped down on the mattresses, heads and shoulders drooping with fatigue, already nearly asleep.

Rosemary turned to address the older man, but he had already disappeared. She found him in the hall, preparing to leave.

“One night only, remember,” she warned him, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

“Yes, yes,
certo.
But I have to tell you we may need your help in another small way,
signora.
”

“That’s out of the question. I’m already putting myself and my family in a dangerous situation, as you well know. You mustn’t ask any more of us. . . .”

“It’s essential to our plan, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t ask it of you otherwise, and besides, it’s already arranged. Tomorrow night we have to get these two men into Florence, where some of our people — never mind who — will be waiting to take them out of the city. They will then be able to rejoin their units in time for the next big push northward. It will not be long now before Florence is in Allied hands.”

“I know all this. But I insist that you remember my position.”

“Of course. But these two men can’t speak Italian. If they go unaccompanied into the city and are stopped by the police or a German military patrol — which is more than likely — they’ll need someone with them, someone above suspicion . . . a member of your household, perhaps?”

There was a long pause as this sank in. Rosemary was too shocked even to feel fear. She burst out angrily, “How can you suggest that? Do you think I would allow anyone — anyone at all — to risk such a venture? No one, not even you, has a right to ask such a thing of us.”

The man made no reply. He was not looking at her but over her shoulder, at the staircase. She glanced around. Halfway up the first flight of stairs, in the dark, sat a figure watching them through the banister rails.

“Paolo!” gasped Rosemary. “How long have you been there?”

He got to his feet, embarrassed. When at last he spoke, it was not to his mother. Instead, he addressed himself directly to the man he now recognized as the one who had given him the message for his mother — the same man he had encountered up in the hills, the one who had rescued him and then restored his bicycle to him when he had thought it lost for good. Now he was almost sure he knew who this man was: Il Volpe himself.

“I could go,” he said. “I’ll take my bicycle. No one will suspect me. I’m a local boy. They know me. I could do it.”

T
he next morning, while their two clandestine guests slept the sleep of total exhaustion in the cellar, the rest of the Crivelli household was in turmoil. Maria was in no shape to be of any use at all. She was convinced that the Gestapo would come at any second and they would all be shot. Rosemary herself was distraught. She felt she was being sucked into an escalating nightmare of danger, involving not only herself but now her family. She had never, ever fought with Paolo about anything as big as this before. Arguments and family squabbles, yes, but this brick wall of blatant disobedience and indifference to her entreaties was new to her. Last night this mad scheme involving Paolo as an escort for two escaping Allied prisoners of war had been simply foisted on her. It had all been arranged before Il Volpe had disappeared off into the darkness, and this morning all Paolo would say was “It’ll be all right, Mamma. It’ll only take an hour or two, and then I’ll be back — I promise.”

Constanza was anxious, too.
He seems to think he’s the hero in some kind of adventure movie,
she thought as she watched her brother nonchalantly eating his breakfast.
Does he really have no idea how dangerous this is?
Harboring two escaped prisoners of war in the cellar was crazily risky. But the whole enterprise had gone much too far now for either her or her mother to do anything about it.