The Longest Winter (42 page)

‘Pia, you may sit down,’ said Mariella.

Pia sat down. Mariella and Carl talked. She was curious about his wound. Carl unbuttoned his pyjama jacket and showed her his chest bandages. Mariella frowned and shook her head.

‘Someone did it to you,’ she said darkly.

‘The bullets did it,’ said Carl.

‘An Italian,’ said Mariella and with a little fierceness that startled Pia.

‘Oh, fortunes of war,’ said Carl, and he and Mariella talked about other things in the fashion of friends who never experienced awkward pauses. They went on until Pia gently interrupted.

‘Mariella—’

‘Yes, I have to go now,’ said Mariella without fuss. In the most natural way of a friend she kissed Carl on the cheek again and said goodbye. Her going brought back Pia’s nervousness.

‘You’re worried?’ said Carl. With his bleak smile he added, ‘The miracle has happened? The Austrians are suddenly winning the war?’

The Austrians were not. The Italian 18th Corps and two British divisions were well across the Piave and had split the Austrian forces. Defeat looked inevitable, in which case the Italians and British would swarm into the Tyrol.

‘I’ve stopped thinking about who is going to win and who is going to lose,’ said Pia. ‘Perhaps nobody is actually going to win. I’ve only been able to think of why you are lying here. My mother asked me to tell you that whatever happens because of the war she will always be on your side, always believe in you. She says she is not as proud of us as she was, but is very proud of you. Oh, you see—’

‘Yes, I see.’ Carl wondered about her, about her insistent self-flagellation. ‘Let me tell you
this so that we can have done with it all. I’ve lost faith in many things, in governments, generals and the common sense of people. But I’ve been privileged to know the men of our mountain regiments and I’ve known Italian men of the mountains too. The men of my own unit I shall always remember, those who have gone and those who are still alive. And I love my family. I’ve been very lucky. These things are all that count with me. Colonel Gruber was here just before you arrived, asking questions. I told him what I said I would, and that I’ve no idea who shot me. Nothing more need be said, Pia.’

‘I understand,’ said Pia. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her red coat and glossy black hat an enrichment of her Latin beauty. ‘You have had enough of war, of killing, you would like it all to end. And you are sorry for people like my father and me.’

‘No, just your father. You have ideals. Your father only has politics. I know you now, Pia, and I hope your ideals won’t just become politics. Or do you wish to be Italy’s Joan of Arc?’

‘Oh,’ she said unhappily, ‘I only wish you would not be so hard on me.’

‘I don’t mean to be. I’m an old man, I think. You’re a very lovely young woman.’ Carl smiled as colour rushed into her face. ‘Has no one told you that before, that you’re lovely?’

A number of men had. But not Carl. Not until now. Pia wondered if life would ever be the same for her, ever hold again for her the stimulation of being her father’s daughter, of being a passionate
patriot. It was right, it must be, for four hundred thousand Tyrolean Italians to be brought under Italian rule. But to achieve that Austria must be defeated and broken. So must Carl.

‘You aren’t very well,’ she said, ‘or you would not be paying me compliments.’

‘My condition is desperate but not serious,’ said Carl, quoting the general who lacked a sense of reality but not of optimism. ‘Shall we play chess?’

‘If you would like to,’ she said. There was nothing else she could say, despite all she wanted to. She had no rights, no privileges, except that of being able to visit him. And that was more of a humane obligation. So she played chess again with him. With an effort she concentrated. She was always a move or two ahead of him. Carl was not without occasional flair, but time and again she forced him into purely defensive tactics.

‘Check,’ she said in the end. Carl switched the position of his queen. Pia moved a knight. ‘Checkmate, yes?’ she said with strained brightness.

He conceded with a smile.

‘I’m well beaten, damn it,’ he said.

She could not hold back a little emotion then. She said, ‘No, you will never be that, you will survive all bad luck and disasters, Major Korvacs.’

‘Hm,’ said Carl.

She decided she must be more natural with him, more as Mariella was.

‘And you must stop trying to sound like an old man.’

‘Oh?’ he said.

‘Yes, you must stop saying hm, hm. You’re not an old man.’

‘Hm,’ he said. He coughed. He reached under a pillow, extracted a handkerchief and put it to his mouth. He coughed into it, wiped his lips and said, ‘Thank you.’ She asked him thank you for what? ‘For the game and the advice,’ said Carl.

He looked a little more drawn. It worried her. She said, as she rose, ‘I may come tomorrow?’

‘I’ll beat you tomorrow,’ said Carl.

She was restless at home, depressed by her imaginings, which all concerned a future that seemed to offer so little when once it offered so much. She could not sit still and especially she could not sit for long under her mother’s eye. When Mariella’s bedtime came her mother went up with the girl. Pia went up a little later. She always spent a few minutes saying goodnight to her sister. Mariella had some information to impart. News and that which mistakenly passed for news at the time had a way of being communicated lip by lip at school. The current news, exciting to the shining-eyed Italian children, was that Italy was winning the war.

Pia, tucking her sister in, listened as Mariella said, ‘Is it exciting, Pia? Are you excited?’

‘Are you?’ Pia ducked the question.

‘Not awfully.’ Mariella, dark head comfortably bedded in the pillows, looked gravely up at her sister. ‘You see, the Austrians aren’t fighting us, are they?’

‘They’re fighting Italy.’

‘That’s not us,’ said Mariella.

‘It is really,’ said Pia and heard her own lack of conviction.

‘No, it isn’t. We aren’t Italy, we’re Austria.’

‘We’re Italians living under Austrian rule, you know that. It’s right for Italy to win as far as we’re concerned.’

‘Then Major Korvacs isn’t our friend, is he?’ Mariella looked sad. Pia leaned and kissed her.

‘He’s your friend, Mariella, so you are his. It’s not his fault that Austria is fighting Italy.’

‘Would you like to marry him, Pia?’ The question came knowingly from the observant girl. Pia flushed.

‘
Mama mia
, what are you saying, little one?’ she said. She turned away, picked up Mariella’s folded dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Mariella smiled.

‘If I were old enough,’ she said, ‘I would marry him.’

‘Mariella, that’s silly.’ Pia was hot, suffering.

‘It’s not. I am Austrian,’ said Mariella.

‘You aren’t!’ Pia swung round. Mariella lay in calm, composed grace. ‘You’re Italian.’

‘No. I’ve looked at maps. Anyway, I want to be Austrian, I want to be on his side.’

‘Mariella, hush!’ Oh, thought Pia, Carl has wrecked this family. ‘If your friends heard you say such things you’d have no friends.’

‘If they were like that I shouldn’t want them,’ said Mariella proudly.

Pia sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘Oh, Mariella, it’s become so difficult, hasn’t it?’

‘I want Austria to win,’ said Mariella, ‘I don’t want the Italians to come and take Major Korvacs away. They’ll take all our soldiers away and make them prisoners.’

‘No, the war will be over then,’ said Pia, ‘and prisoners will be released, not taken. Mariella, wait – our soldiers?’

‘We’re Austrian,’ said Mariella stubbornly.

Pia accepted that she was in confused limbo herself. It was heart-breaking to realize Mariella was also affected.

‘Don’t speak like that,’ she said. ‘What has got into you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mariella, ‘but Mama says we must think things out for ourselves. You ask her.’

Pia swept down into the small sitting room. Her mother looked up from needlework. She was never able to sit doing nothing.

‘Mama, what have you been saying to Mariella? Do you know she’s just told me she’s Austrian?’

‘We’re all subjects of Austria.’

‘That isn’t the same as being Austrian.’

‘I haven’t told Mariella what she is,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘She’s thought it out on her own. She’s been looking at maps. She showed me one. She said, “Look, we belong to the same country as Major Korvacs.”’

‘Oh, how simple that is,’ said Pia bitterly. ‘Mama, don’t you see, Mariella is too young to understand that it isn’t simple at all. She mustn’t
go around telling her friends she’s Austrian.’

‘She won’t.’

‘She might. Then they’ll think we’re traitors.’

‘They may think what they wish,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘I clear my conscience before God, not my neighbours.’

‘Mama,’ said Pia, ‘it could be dangerous for Mariella.’

‘Yes,’ said her mother, ‘that is what such things are about, girl, that is what patriotism can be about. Intolerance. People wish to live with each other but there are a few who won’t let them. Mariella might say something, yes, she might. And someone will say why should she think differently from us? And they’ll pull her hair out. She’ll come home crying. That is what your father’s patriotism is about. Intolerance. It’s taken me a long time to open my eyes. Are yours still shut, Pia, even now?’

‘No, Mama, no!’ Pia felt tears that hurt. ‘But what are we to do? We must be on Italy’s side. Oh, I am so unhappy.’

‘Because of Major Korvacs?’ Signora Amaraldi sighed.

Pia, so restless, so depressed, said, ‘I can’t forget my father deliberately shooting him, I can’t forget the look on Carl’s face— Major Korvacs. I thought how he had fought all through the war only to be murdered by us. I can’t sleep at night. Can you sleep, Mama?’

‘Sometimes I lie awake. Pia, I know why I’m unhappy, I’m not sure I know why you are. Are you in love? Is that it?’

‘No,’ said Pia desperately, ‘no.’

Her mother laid aside her needlework and stood up. She put her hands on Pia’s arms and turned her. They faced each other. Pia’s mouth was tightly compressed. ‘Pia?’ It was an affectionate enquiry. ‘Are you in love?’

Pia swallowed her pride and rushed into anguished confession.

‘Oh, yes, I am, and I don’t know what to do about it or what’s going to happen to me. He thinks I’m only a silly dreamer who loves Italy. Oh, that’s funny. Yes, funny, because for days I’ve been asking myself what has Italy ever done for me that I should want to wave the flag for her? But it’s terrible as well as funny because I feel like Mariella, I want to be on his side. I want to be Austrian as well as Italian.’

‘You are. We all are. But sometimes we have to make a choice.’

‘Mariella has been looking at maps,’ said Pia, ‘I’ve been looking at books. Major Korvacs was right when he said the Tyrol has been Austrian for centuries. We’re saying part of it must join with Italy because there are more Italians than Austrians. That’s what happened to Texas. It belonged to Mexico. Americans went to live there and when there were enough of them they said Texas rightfully belonged to the United States. Is such a thing right? Am I wrong because now I’m asking is it right for the Trentino to be taken from Austria and given to Italy, which has never owned it? Papa would never forgive me for even thinking it.’

‘He needs forgiveness, not you,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘Oh, how silly we all are, making such tragedies of politics until suddenly one person is more important than all our ailments.’

‘Oh, I’m not a bit important to Carl, you know.’ Pia’s smile was mirthless. ‘Just a young political creature. Mama, how did it happen? He walked into the house as if he owned it and I thought I’ll show him. And now look. I’m off my head about him. Mama, what am I to do?’

‘If I were you,’ said Signora Amaraldi briskly, ‘I’d forget what he thinks of your politics and simply look your very best for him. He’s not a man who sees a woman and worries about whether she’s Italian or Russian or Greek. He’s come a lot farther in life than that.’

‘But he’s not going to be impressed by my wearing my best hat, not when his country is breaking apart,’ said Pia. ‘Oh, if Austria goes down, Mama, what can I do for him?’

‘If he’s as important to you as that, Pia, buy two new hats and wear them both.’

‘Both?’ Pia laughed shakily. ‘Mama, we’re being rather silly, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ said Signora Amaraldi, ‘and it’s not much of a change, is it?’

Pia did not put on two new hats or even one when she visited Carl the next day. She wore her blue coat and hat, which he had seen before. But she had taken care with herself and looked like an Alpine picture postcard with the extra dimension and the quality of animation. Carl’s eyes acknowledged the picture but he made no comment. He did not seem to be any better physically than the day before, and she thought he should have been. He coughed a bit from time to time. They talked and then played chess. He was friendly, naturally so, and it warmed her. It pleased her immensely that the game ended in a draw. Only at the last moment, when she was on her way out, did he say something that upset her.

‘The news is good, Pia?’

‘Good?’ What did he mean when for him all the news was awful? ‘Good?’

‘For Italy.’

The Austrians were in disorganized retreat from the Piave.

Pia trembled.

‘Mariella doesn’t think so,’ she said bitterly and left with her eyes wet.

She arrived on the following day in her dark red coat and black fur hat. It was her favourite outdoor wear and made her look as if she had just emerged from a Christmas box. The coat was damp with snow all the same. She took it off and shook it. Her deep green dress had a rich velvety sheen.

‘Yes,’ said Carl.

‘Yes?’

‘Didn’t I mention it before? You’re young and beautiful.’ Propped against the raised pillows he smiled at her. ‘Is there someone in the Italian army thinking about you?’

‘No! There isn’t!’ There was a flash of her old spirit. ‘There’s no one. But if there were, why should you think he has to be in the Italian army? Why not the Austrian? This is the Austrian Tyrol, we pay our taxes to Austria, we learn and speak German, so how do you know I’m not as good an Austrian as I am Italian?’