The Longest Winter (43 page)

‘I made a very ordinary comment,’ said Carl, ‘you don’t need to fly as high as that to put a flea in my ear. Sit down and let us be friends. Friends are better than donkeys.’

‘Well, you should not assume people can only communicate with their brothers and sisters,’ said Pia. She thought him paler beneath his tan, but his drawn lines made him so finely good-looking that she badly wanted to touch him, kiss him. ‘Mariella sent you this,’ she said. She had
been doubtful about it but Mariella had said she must take it. It was a watercolour painting of the imperial Austrian flag. Underneath it Mariella had carefully lettered in German, ‘Long Live Austria.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Carl, touched.

‘It’s to let you know she’s loyal to her best friends.’

‘Kiss her for me,’ said Carl.

Pia, striving for the lightest of rejoinders, said, ‘Actually, she asked me to kiss you for her. May I do that?’

He looked up at her. Under her fur hat her face was warm with colour.

‘It’ll be a brave deed, I’m not the most kissable object.’

She stooped to kiss his cheek, but her lips would not obey the rules of modesty and found his mouth instead. For a second she communed in warm bliss with him, then straightened up, her colour warmer, her heart thumping painfully.

‘That was quite courageous,’ smiled Carl. ‘Thank Mariella for me. Can you read German well?’

‘I think so,’ she said.

‘There’s a Vienna newspaper over there. It’s a week old, but would you care to read it to me?’

‘You wish that?’

‘You’ve a very good voice,’ said Carl, ‘all Italians have.’

She sat down and read the paper to him. Her heart did not take long to sink. The news items
sounded like a catalogue of gloom, doom and disaster, and it appalled her to realize what it must be doing to Carl. But he made no comment. She wanted to stop. He began to cough. She looked up. Horrified, she saw what he had hidden from her before. He was coughing blood into his handkerchief. She stared in heartbreak and panic. He wiped his mouth carefully.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘No, I can’t. Major Korvacs—’

‘It’s nothing, it’s not going to kill me,’ he said. ‘Go on.’

How could she? He was ill, bleeding inside, and if he died her father would be a murderer and she would never sleep again. She put the paper aside and stood up.

‘I’m going to see the doctor,’ she said, white with emotion.

‘Don’t do that,’ said Carl, ‘sit down and finish reading.’

‘No!’ She was fierce. ‘You’re supposed to be getting better, but you’re not. Oh, don’t you see, my mother and I will never be happy again unless you recover, never be able to look people in the face. I’m going to find someone. I am, I must!’

She rushed out. But seeing someone, finding someone, was easier said than done. She had only ever been concerned with Carl, with going straight to his room. She had not noticed very much else, except that the hospital seemed a busy one. Now she realized just how busy. The bustle of the place alarmed her. It gave her a strange
feeling that Carl was no longer considered important. They had extracted the bullets, patched him up, given him a bed and his own room because he was a company commander, and provided a nurse who looked in on him now and then. And that was as much as they could do for him. There were newly wounded casualties from the mountains. There always were. And with the worsening of hospital supplies and the hurried transfer of some doctors to help with the casualties of the Piave battles, Carl was not likely to be operated on again unless he reached the door of death. They were taking a chance on him now, hoping he would cure himself. Pia’s certainty about all that made her frantic.

She could find no nurse, no doctor and no orderly who would listen to her. She had no standing. They knew she was Italian, and how many Italians had Austrian sympathies? She was only in the way, and the wards were full of men far closer to the grave than Major Korvacs. Stop worrying. He is all right. Please go away.

She managed in the end, however, to find the only person she really knew there, Carl’s nurse. The nurse spared her a moment.

‘Please, something must be done,’ begged Pia, ‘Major Korvacs is coughing blood.’

‘So would you if you had a lung wound.’

‘He’ll die. He’s dying now. And no one is doing anything about it.’

‘Calm yourself, fräulein.’ The nurse was composed, though shades of sorrow made her want to weep. She had seen men die in the
hospital, had felt regret for them all. But now Austria itself was dying. Who could not weep about that? ‘Major Korvacs is not in crisis.’

‘I know what that means,’ said Pia, her face pale but her eyes looking ready to catch fire, ‘it means he isn’t going to die until next week.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the nurse. ‘In any case, after tomorrow there will probably be no more operations here. Major Korvacs will be going with other patients to the hospital in Bozen in the morning. We are evacuating all casualties except those it’s impossible to move.’

Bozen? Bozen? That was fifty miles away, which might as well have been a thousand. Pia stared at the nurse in entreaty.

‘Then Major Korvacs is one of those,’ she said, ‘he can’t be moved, not when he’s coughing blood.’

‘More can be done for him at Bozen than we can now do for him here, fräulein.’

‘Are you sending all the wounded to Bozen because the Italians and British are coming? But they won’t harm wounded men and may bring their own doctors.’

‘We are retreating,’ said the nurse, wanting to be on her way, ‘and no one is going to leave wounded men behind unless it’s unavoidable. With exceptions everyone in this hospital is going to Bozen. You will excuse me, please?’

Pia returned to Carl. She felt drowned by despair.

‘Major Korvacs, they’ve told me the hospital is being evacuated.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said as if it had little significance. ‘Events have caught up with us. We must go. Tomorrow there won’t be time for even a brief game of chess. But look, Pia, I’ve written a note to your mother to reassure her. And another one to Mariella. They’re in here.’ He handed her a sealed envelope. ‘Remember me to them both. And thank you, Pia, for what you did for me that night, and for trying in the first place to stop your father using that gun. And for coming to visit me. You’re an excellent chess player. You’re also very sweet.’

Pia felt he was freezing her out of life itself. He was saying goodbye and he thought, perhaps, that he was saying it kindly. She supposed that judges sometimes passed death sentences as kindly as possible. It was not much help to the condemned.

‘They can’t send you to Bozen,’ she whispered, ‘they can’t. You’re too ill.’

‘I must go,’ he said and she knew he had accepted coming defeat. His empire was in its death throes. Imperial Austria, so long the arbiter of Europe’s history, was bankrupt and beaten. Centuries ago, in its infancy, it had checked and hurled back the swarming Turks and saved Europe from the barbarism of the sultans and their janissaries. Europe had forgotten that, forgotten the great Metternich and the humanity of Maria Theresa. Pia knew she herself had not wanted to remember. Carl had never apologized for imperial Austria, he had fought for it and commanded the finest and
hardiest of mountain soldiers. She did not think her father, in any reckoning, would be counted the better man. But her father and the other patriots would inherit the Trentino. After four years of war what did Carl have? An injured lung and a broken empire. The hospital staff were making plans to evacuate. It was probably what the doctors and nurses wanted to do for Carl and the others, to save them the final bitterness of falling into Italian hands.

All the same, she did not know what she would do if he went.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t go, you’re not well enough. Please stay.’

‘I prefer to go,’ he said, ‘can you understand that?’

She could and did. But what he could not understand himself was that because she and Mariella and her mother would never see him again, they would never have the chance to give him love in place of her father’s hate.

‘The weather, it will kill you,’ she said desperately.

‘The weather and I are old friends,’ he said. ‘Old enemies even. My dear Pia, don’t be so worried. I’ll survive. We had an abrasive first meeting, I know, but we are friends now, aren’t we? I wish you a good future under your Italian flag, but make sure you tell Mariella I’m very proud of the flag she’s given me. The Austrians have had days when they’ve danced in the streets. It’ll be your turn any moment. Do you remember the music from the bandstand? That
was a brave Austrian finale, wasn’t it? Goodbye now.’

She could not speak. Silently she put on her coat. She was being sent away, with a note for her mother and another for Mariella. Nothing for her, nothing. Shaking, she went to the door and opened it. She turned.

‘I am not going to dance in the streets,’ she said, ‘never, never, never!’

She ran from the hospital into the cold, wintry darkness of the afternoon, but it was no darker than her bitterness. She could not remember how she walked through the streets, how she reached home. She gave her mother the envelope from Carl. When she said the hospital was to be evacuated and that Carl was going to Bozen her mother said, ‘I’m glad. A man like that should not end up as a prisoner of war.’ And when she told Mariella, her sister said very clearly, ‘Good. I don’t want the Italians to get him.’

‘I know. Oh, Mariella, things are never what we want them to be, are they?’

‘When I’m older I shall go to Vienna,’ said Mariella, ‘no one will make me go to Italy, no one. I’m Austrian.’

The news next day was climactic. The Austrians had been negotiating a ceasefire with Italy, and an armistice was agreed. On Italy’s terms. Which meant, among other things, that Italy would take over the Trentino region of the Tyrol. The Italians in Oberstein did not take long to pour into the streets and dance in the snow. Intoxicated
by Italy’s victory, boldly defiant of the Austrian garrison and ignoring the bitterness of Austrian residents, they celebrated in anticipation of changing the Austrian administration for the government of Rome.

Excited friends called for Mariella. No one was going to school, everyone was to dance and sing.

‘Come, Mariella, come, come,’ they cried, and Mariella had too much instinctive sense to declare herself unwilling.

‘Wait till I get my coat,’ she said and they waited in the hall while she went up to her room. When she was putting on her coat she said to Pia, ‘I must go out with them or they’ll throw stones at our windows.’

‘Mariella, you’re wiser than I am,’ said Pia affectionately. ‘You make your decisions but you think first. I feel I’ve made all my decisions without thinking at all. But it’s right for your friends to celebrate, so don’t feel they’re insensitive. It’s difficult for us, it’s natural for them. We’re no longer good Italians, and we ought to be, we should be.’

‘I know what it is,’ said Mariella, ‘you think it’s wrong for a good Italian to love an Austrian. That’s silly. He sent me a very nice note.’

They went down the stairs, Mariella’s friends claimed her with shouts and laughter and they all ran out into the street. Pia stood at the drawing-room window and watched them. They were caught up with other children, with people, all singing as they made their way to the
square. This was the day her father had sworn would come. This was the day she herself had awaited. She did not feel rapturous, only bitter that events had robbed her of anticipated joy. The day was an impossible one for her. Carl’s world had fallen and smashed. And instead of being in his hospital bed, as he should, he would be up, waiting for the ambulances to assemble and collect patients. Oh, it was suicidal to go on such a journey on a day so cold.

Her mother entered the room.

‘We should go out too, Pia, it’s what we all wanted, the end of the war and an Italian victory. But it’s too wintry for me, and I’m not in the right spirit.’

It was that night on the attic landing which had spoiled it all for them. And it was wintry, though the sun was shining and the mountains glittering. The night’s snow, a white cloak over the little town, was, thought Pia, a brilliance to the Italians. It must seem like a shroud to the Austrians. They would not be out in the streets, they would be weeping in their homes.

‘Mama,’ said Pia, ‘those wounded men from the hospital, they’ll freeze to death before they get to Bozen.’

‘No, no, they aren’t going to climb up and down mountains to get there,’ said her mother, ‘they’ll go by road, to Tai today and for the night, then on to Arraba and then to Bozen. There’s a very good hospital at Bozen. They’ll sew up any holes Major Korvacs has been left with.’

‘If he doesn’t die on the way,’ said Pia.

‘Pia, your father had his say with Major Korvacs. Now perhaps God will have His turn. If your father couldn’t kill him, and there’s no more fiery sword than his, God won’t let the weather do so.’

‘Mama, what am I going to do?’ Pia’s eyes were on people, dark shapes against shining white, but her mind was on the ambulances and the preparations for the retreat to Bozen.

‘You must do what all of us should now, Pia. Think of Italy and the Pope and the King instead of Vienna and the emperor. We shall become Italian citizens now. It’s what Major Korvacs said in his note to me.’

Signora Amaraldi
.

We are going, you will remain. You will have new loyalties to observe, I must keep my old ones. Any moment you will be free to give allegiance to Italy, while I cannot desert Austria. I need to see Vienna. Briefly I have known your family. I am honoured. There is nothing I hold against it, nothing. I hope, in turn, I’ve given you no cause to think badly of the country I represented while I was in your house. Forgive me that I can’t keep my promise to come and see you. I send, if I may, my love to Mariella
.

My felicitations to you
.

Carl v. Korvacs
.

‘Mama, it isn’t as simple as that, you know it isn’t,’ said Pia.

‘No, not for you. For you it’s going to be very
difficult, for you realize, don’t you, that this armistice will bring your father home?’