The Art of Waiting (12 page)

They continued their largely uninformed conversation about the relative merits of the girls of Venice and Milan, Gianni bursting out laughing at something Aldo claimed to have done, sucking hard on his cigarette, throwing his head back and blowing smoke straight up into the air.

‘Shut up!' said Aldo suddenly. ‘And put out that cigarette.'

Gianni stubbed it out against the tarpaulin and followed Aldo's gaze. Figures were running alongside the train, five or six of them, dark shapes against the pale summer grass. Aldo couldn't see their faces, couldn't even tell if the running figures were men yet or boys.

‘What should we do?' whispered Aldo.

‘Fuck knows. What are they saying?'

‘They're not saying anything. They're laughing.'

‘Laughing? Let's shoot the fuckers, then.'

Let's shoot the fuckers. Just what Massimo had said, when they saw the wild pigs, out there in the forest, that night.
That
night. No, let's
not
shoot the fuckers, thought Aldo. Let's not shoot
anyone
.

‘Wait,' he said, pressing down on the barrel of Gianni's gun as it was lifted. ‘They're only young.'

‘I'm only young too. They'll soon be shooting at me.'

‘Put your gun down, Gianni.'

The figures ran alongside for some time as Aldo and Gianni watched them, their laughter turning to shouts, calling out over and over again, their youthful voices rising and falling as the train lurched and screeched. Aldo stood and watched, looked at Gianni in the darkness, wondered how he should react. Did they constitute a threat? Perhaps Gianni was right and they should shoot them. But was he really expected to fire upon laughing boys running beside a train? This wasn't how he had imagined his enemy to be and so he fidgeted with his gun and looked again at Gianni and Gianni shrugged and they did nothing. Then rocks smacked into the tarpaulin and one caught Gianni in the face. He raised his gun again but Aldo pushed it back down and the figures veered away towards the edge of the forest, still shouting, jubilant, seemingly devoid of fear, their noise receding into the trees.

‘Bastards,' said Gianni, rubbing the spot where the stone had struck him. ‘We should have shot them after all.'

‘What would be the point?'

‘What were they saying, anyway? You know their bloody lingo.'

‘Germans,' said Aldo. ‘Something about the Germans. I didn't catch the rest.'

They stood again in silence, then Aldo lit another cigarette and leant back into the tarpaulin. The metal of the field gun poked at him again.

‘Can I ask you a question, Aldo?'

‘Sure.'

‘Is it just me, or are you scared too? Just a bit, I mean? No one ever mentions it.'

‘Of course I'm scared. Isn't everyone?'

And Aldo thought about how afraid he was that he might never make it home, and that Fausto Pozzi might therefore get away with the terrible thing that he had done.

‘But, Gianni, my friend, stick with me and you'll be just fine. I'm definitely going to make it home. I've got unfinished business there.'

‘But Aldo, we've all got unfinished business back at home. We've all got lives to live.'

Sunflowers

Near Rostov-on-Don, August 1942

The sunflowers wilted for weeks, the heat of summer killing off flowers while the war killed off men, and the Soviets pulled back towards the River Don. The sun blazed down on Aldo and the others as they came to yet another village lost in the endless expanse of corn and flowers that covered the steppe. The transport situation had worsened and they had been marching for days. Gianni grumbled constantly now about the blisters on his feet where his boots had rubbed them raw and he was grumbling now as they entered the deserted village in the silence of the afternoon. The doors of all the
izbas
were firmly shut and the only thing moving was the dust, blowing up in breaths of wind that whispered in across the steppe. The sergeant called out to the stragglers to hurry up behind. Gianni cursed the sergeant under his breath and Aldo smiled and then Gianni went on cursing his blisters again.

‘Right, split into threes,' said the sergeant. ‘One hut to a group. You know the drill.'

‘Threes?' said Gianni. ‘Again?'

‘Yes, threes,' said the sergeant.

‘Why always threes?'

‘Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.'

‘What about the Virgin Mary?' someone said. ‘Can't she be with us too?'

‘She was totally fictional,' said the sergeant. ‘Have you ever met a virgin?'

‘I've met several,' said Gianni.

‘And I bet they were still that way after you left them,' said the sergeant.

‘Sure were, I was talking about my sisters. All good Catholic girls. Just like your mother . . .'

‘All right, that's enough. Shut the fuck up now and concentrate. This stuff is serious.'

They split into threes and spread out through the village. Aldo went with Gianni and Luigi. The sergeant hurried up behind them.

‘I thought you said threes?' said Aldo.

‘Odd man out,' said the sergeant.

‘Virgin Mary, number four,' muttered Gianni.

‘You'll regret that when I get my hands on you later,' said the sergeant and he kicked open the door of the first
izba
. An old man was sitting at a table in front of a range and he tilted his head back and observed the intruders with contempt. In the corner furthest from the door hung a small mirror, the sullen reflection of a woman looking out at them from among the folds of a scarf as she sat out of sight in a back room. Aldo started searching the kitchen for food but there was nothing except the lump of bread that the old man held in his sun-blotched hands. The sergeant tugged it from his grasp and put it in his pocket.

‘Why don't you leave that for the old man?' said Aldo.

‘Because I'm hungry, that's why. And they're sure to have a whole stash hidden away somewhere. Where's the rest of it, eh?' he shouted at the man.

The man jutted his jaw out even further and glared.

‘He looks like he hasn't eaten for a month. Let him keep his bread,' said Aldo. ‘Have a heart.'

‘Fuck you, pig boy,' said the sergeant. ‘And fuck your stupid conscience. How many times do I have to tell you lot? Look after yourself and your mates out here or you won't last long. When you find food, take it, eat it, find some more. And to hell with everyone else.'

They followed the sergeant to the next
izba
. Gianni found a sack of dried apples and tipped them onto the floor. They all piled in,
Aldo using one hand to stuff his pockets while he ate with the other. All he could hear was scuffling and chewing as they wolfed the things down. Then the sound of their chewing was cut short by a sudden eruption of machine-gun fire outside, a hard dry sound, the devil spitting up stones as the men spat out what was left of their mouthfuls of apple, the sergeant squeezing a flurry of instructions out past his departing food. Then more shots, first to the right, then the left, then somewhere just outside their
izba
, then something smacking into the walls, like someone was hurling hard apples back at them. Then bullets coming through the windows, glass all over the place, and shouts amid the gunfire, hard Russian words, and the wind blowing dust in through the windows. Aldo followed the sergeant into the hall. He looked outside and ducked back in as bullets splintered the wall of the house around him. He saw crouching figures running between houses across the square and he followed the sergeant and the others to the back door. Outside, a small plot of land, half-garden, half-vegetable patch, was bordered by a low undernourished hedge, and beyond the hedge a dirt track, then an ocean of sunflowers stretching away as far as the eye could see.

Dozens of Russians in their brown uniforms were running now among the buildings and gardens, kicking in the doors of the
izbas
. A group of them hurtled through a garden to the left, one of them falling as he ran, collapsing into the dry earth, his neck almost folding under his own weight as he ploughed up the ground with his head. Aldo hovered just inside the door. He saw the rolling, staring eyes of the others, the pulsing veins on the sides of their sweating skulls. The sergeant moved out into the garden and they followed. A grenade exploded beside them, then a burst of gunfire. Gianni was down behind a pile of logs, shouting.

Aldo was on the ground now, his head spinning, and he looked up at the sun as it burned down on him. More bullets smacked into the side of the
izba
, ripping up the earth around him. An incessant vicious hum assailed his ears. He could still see Gianni, shouting at him now, then he felt someone dragging him to his feet and he looked up and saw the sergeant, and they stood up and stumbled
past the hedge, across the dirt track and into the field of yellow flowers, Gianni and Luigi hurrying up behind. Aldo heard the gunfire spark up again and then die as he crawled between the stalks, staring at the earth as he followed the sergeant deeper into the field, Gianni panting like a dog behind them and Luigi chucking out Hail Marys ten to the dozen.

The sergeant stopped and, seeing him, so did Aldo. As he looked up, he saw why. The woman and old man from the first
izba
were just ahead of them, sitting there, the yellow glow of flowers upon them like gold upon the heads of icons. Time stood still between them. The woman sighed, looked at the ground, looked at the men. Aldo saw options flickering across her eyes. At last, she raised a finger to her lips and motioned them deeper into the flowers. Aldo crawled past, whispering his thanks, and as he crawled away he could hear the woman and the old man pushing their way back through the flowers in the opposite direction until the sound of them had gone. Aldo and the others remained there for the rest of the afternoon, the sunflowers slowly turning their wilting heads above them, turning away from the scene in the village as the sun inched across the sky.

When darkness came the men began to move, slowly at first, creeping to the edge of the field, then skirting the village, lit now by a swollen orange moon hanging low in the sky. They slipped into a field of wheat, the sergeant in the lead as always, the wheat parting as he walked, the sound of it sweeping against his legs as the others followed. At first they used the dimming lights of the village to guide them, and when the lights were gone they followed the stars, just as Aldo had done for years on the lagoon. They found the dirt track that would lead them back towards the west and they walked for hours.

Near dawn, Aldo sensed something close behind him in the darkness as he brought up the rear. He turned and saw a black shape, something indistinct, some way back along the track. Perhaps it was nothing, nothing really there. Tiredness distorts the senses, plays tricks on you. He watched it for several seconds, whatever it was,
then took a step or two towards it, hesitated, then turned and set off after the others again, glancing back, the shadow still there, maintaining a constant distance. Aldo blinked, unsure still, quickened his pace and suddenly spun round. The thing was nearly upon him. They stood considering each other for a moment, Aldo and the beast, and then it snuffled about in the dust and squealed. Aldo turned and ran to catch up with the others. He did not look back for a long time, and when he did the creature was gone. For good, he hoped, whatever the hell it was.

As the light of dawn seeped over the eastern horizon at their backs, the men came upon a mixed column of Italians and Germans with light tanks heading east, and they fell in with them and turned around and marched back the way they had just come. Aldo found himself trudging again for a whole day through the powdery dust of the track until he approached again the place where the fighting had been the previous day, the
izbas
barely visible at first, isolated specks in the distance. Scouts were sent out, orders were given, instructions as to how the attack would proceed.

‘Let's hope this is brief,' said Aldo.

‘It will be,' said the sergeant. ‘We've got tanks. They haven't.'

‘Still, you never really know.'

Aldo rolled his sleeves up a fold or two higher, spat out a ball of dusty phlegm, and entered the village for the second time in two days. He knew the Russians would have heard the Panzers coming long before they saw them, their grim din descending upon the village, and they would be ready for them, as ready as the could be. The guns opened up, pounding the village. Aldo and Gianni and Luigi and the sergeant followed in the lee of a tank through the field and into the village, the
izbas
already ablaze now in the dusk, their dry wood sending columns of sparks spiralling into a thinning evening sky. The fighting was soon over, the Russians outnumbered, hurrying away, no NKVD men at their backs in an outpost like this, free to retreat without getting a shot in the back from the commissars. When the fighting died away, the few remaining inhabitants of the village, mainly women and their children, stood and watched their
houses burn. Aldo walked to the edge of the sunflower field where he had cowered the previous day. He smeared away the sweat and the tears that covered his face and he saw the woman and the old man from the
izba
of the previous day, their
izba
now burning bright like all the others.

Away to one side, a few Russian partisans who had not made their escape through the fields were being herded along the track between the gardens and the fields. The women of the village were following behind them, shrieking and grabbing at the sleeves of the German soldiers who lingered around the edge of the group. Aldo saw the procession stop and a German officer, his face filthy, took one of the partisans to the edge of the field. There were no grand gestures, no set-piece drama, no firing squad, just a gathering of bodies in a ditch, a cold and ugly extinguishing of life administered by a middle-aged man who perhaps had once attended the opera in Berlin and now stalked the Russian countryside in a dirty grey uniform that stank of blood and sweat and shit and death. The German's expression sat somewhere between distaste and disinterest as his heavily veined hand, brown from the summer sun, took each man by the hair and pulled back his head, then with eyes closed pressed the barrel of the pistol up against the nape of the neck and fired. Each body sagged as the German maintained his grip on the hair, the grubby brown fingers now covered with bright splashes of blood. One by one, the men were taken down to the edge of the field and the officer's dirty bloody hand became redder and stickier with the blood of peasants, and the ditch began to fill with the blood from their wounds. The last partisan to die was a boy, like Aldo, in his late teens.

The German turned to the villagers and his gaze wandered across the watching faces, then alighted on the small group of Italians. It lingered for a moment upon Aldo, and for a moment Aldo felt panic amid his disgust and he feared he might lose control of himself, but then the gaze continued on its way and it stopped at the old man from the
izba
. The German strode across the garden and the old woman moved across to block him but he pushed her aside, slapping her down when she persisted. He dragged the old man across the garden to
the ditch as the woman followed, and she tried to get hold of a scrap of clothing or a trailing limb, but the German, tiring of these difficulties, raised his gun and shot the man in the face. He fired again and the man lay still. He levelled the gun at the woman as she screamed her abuse. The officer's bloody finger tensed, trembled, then tightened against the trigger. But no bullet came. The gun was empty. The German did not smile ironically. He did not shout or scream or kick the woman in frustration, for he too must have been exhausted now and empty. He just walked away, behind the burning
izba
, and from where he stood Aldo could see the German stop and lean against a wall and bend down. It looked like he was throwing up, then wiping something off his trousers, standing upright again, running that bloody hand through his hair.

The woman was kneeling beside the old man now as the other women of the village knelt beside the pile of bodies in the ditch, lifting an arm, cradling a head, wailing in the glow of the fires that raged all around them. Aldo stared blankly ahead. His eyes met those of the woman, still on her knees by the old man. She spoke, her words inaudible amid the crackle of the fires and the wailing of the other women and the sound of the wooden walls of the
izbas
collapsing in on themselves all around them in the heat. Then her words grew louder, a vortex of misery that rose and spiralled from her throat, swarming all over Aldo, and he turned to where Gianni, Luigi and the sergeant stood beside him.

‘What a bloody racket,' said the sergeant.

Aldo looked at him.

‘What?' said the sergeant.

‘You understand the lingo, Aldo,' said Gianni. ‘What the fuck's she saying?'

‘What do you think she's saying?' said Aldo. ‘Why didn't you stop him? That's what she's fucking saying.'

The sergeant scuffed his feet and looked away.

‘What could we have done?' he said. ‘All this is way out of our hands.'