To Find a Mountain (7 page)

C
HAPTER FOURTEEN

W
hen I answered the knock on the door, a flood of warmth swept through me when I saw that it was Lauretta. She didn’t say anything at first, just hugged me hard.

I desperately did not want to cry, but I couldn’t stop myself. I felt ashamed at displaying so much emotion, but it felt so good to be crushed to her breast, to be patted on the back and have my hair stroked by Lauretta’s big, callused hand.

“Benedetta, we are very sorry to hear about your father.”

Before I could answer, Iole and Emidio raced down the stairs and gave Lauretta hugs. I turned my face away so they couldn’t see my emotions.

Lauretta caught my eye and an exchange was made. The little ones had not been told about Papa, and would not be told until I heard from the men in the mountains that Papa had not been seen. Only then would I be truly convinced that he was dead.

“Are these two good little helpers, Benny?” Lauretta asked.

Iole and Emidio looked at me, devilish smiles on their faces, daring me to answer in the negative.

“When they want to be,” I said, raising my eyebrows at them as if to say, “Care to disagree?”

She looked around the house, and I assured her that we were alone for the moment. Colonel Wolff had left in the morning before I could speak to him, which I chose to accept as a sign that I would not be punished for my outburst. I was not sure how I would handle facing him again. I would apologize if I had to. I needed to take care of my family now. The Germans could be ruthless and usually were, so I saw no good in putting ourselves in any more danger. There was plenty to go around for everyone.

Zizi Checcone opened the door behind me.

“Lauretta Fandella! How are you?”

“We are doing well, Signora Checcone.”

“How are your parents?”

“Mother is busy, but we are managing to make ends meet.”

“Good, good,” said Zizi Checcone.

“Benny,” Lauretta began. “Can you go for a walk with me?”

I started to say no, thinking of the bread that still needed to be baked as well as the laundry to be washed, but before I could reply, Zizi Checcone answered for me.

“Go, Benedetta. Walk with your friend.”

“But there is bread to be baked . . .”

“I have been baking bread all my life; I think I can do it one more time without your help,” Zizi Checcone said. “Go. You need to get out and talk to someone your own age before you go crazy here.”

“Thank you, Signora Checcone.” Iole and Emidio stood looking at me, silently asking if they could come along, too. I gave them each a squeeze. “You two be good while I’m gone.” I just couldn’t stand keeping things from them much longer, and Lauretta would be someone with whom I could speak openly.

“I’ll be back in an hour or two,” I said.

Zizi Checcone nodded and put her arms around my brother and sister. Lauretta and I left the house and began walking, silently at first, out of town, with an unspoken agreement to head for a large outcropping near the peak of the mountain just outside Casalvieri. It was a favorite place for the young people of the village to go. Many families, before the war, went there for picnics. Now, it was all but abandoned.

It took us almost half an hour to get there, and on the way, I asked Lauretta if she had heard anything about her father, and if he had joined a band of
ribellí.

“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Lauretta said firmly. “But I can tell you that he is keeping busy in the mountains.”

“Has he heard anything about my father?”

Lauretta looked at me. “I was wondering if you had considered that possibility.”

“That Papa didn’t die?”

“A lot of men have disappeared from the front,” Lauretta said. “The Germans assume most of them died, but probably suspect some ran away. But we know the truth—that many of them end up in the mountains, where it is awful, but safe.”

I was silent, still imploring her to answer my question.

“We have not gotten word from the
ribellí
for several days now,” Lauretta said. “Hopefully we will again soon. I will ask about your father, Benedetta.”

“Thank you.”

We had made it to the top of the peak, where a small clearing had been made well back from the tree line. There was a cool breeze up here, and from the viewpoint, looking north, away from Mt. Cassino and the front, everything looked deceptively peaceful. A hawk slowly cruised below us, hunting its prey.

We sprawled out on the green grass, facing each other.

“I hope this will all be over soon,” I said.

“This is terrible,” Lauretta agreed. “No men! Even the Germans are too occupied, so to speak!”

We both burst into a fit of laughter.

“If our men weren’t fighting the Germans, they’d be fighting over those things,” I said, pointing to her breasts.

She cupped them and looked them over, as if appraising diamonds. “I need a man to plant a flag between them and claim them as rightfully Italy’s. Our national treasures!”

We both collapsed laughing again.

“This war better not last too much longer, Benedetta. Or we’ll be old maids and too late.”

“I hope we live to be old maids.”

“I don’t,” Lauretta said. “I’d rather die young, beautiful, and the object of some man’s lust than a dried-up old hag.”

Then we heard the explosions.

The sound was incredibly loud, and we both jumped to our feet. Even though we knew they had to be several miles away, the immediacy of the explosions caught us off guard.

Gradually, we began to hear the drone of engines. Lauretta and I looked at each other in fear and wonderment, then turned to the tree line behind us as the sound of the engines got closer. I judged the trees were too far away for us to make it to them in time, and as if to support my guesswork, out of the clouds directly in front of us flew an American bomber with three fighter escorts.

The sound was so loud that we both clasped our hands over our ears.

Suddenly, one of the fighters broke from its formation and came straight at us. I could feel the eyes of the pilot upon us, imagined the muzzles of the machine guns located in the plane’s wings pointed right at me, the bullets ready to rip our bodies to shreds.

We stood frozen in terror as the plane came nearer and nearer.

Then the plane tipped from side to side.

“He’s waving!” Lauretta yelled at me and she swung her hand over her head, in a wide sweeping motion, waving back.

The last thing I saw as the plane rocketed off was a quick glimpse of the American pilot twisted back in his seat in his leather helmet, his goggles catching the sun as he waved his hand at us.

And he was smiling.

Lauretta looked at me and then me at her and without a word, we raced back to Casalvieri.

C
HAPTER FIFTEEN

B
enedetta, this wine is excellent.”

Colonel Wolff was seated at the kitchen table. His uniform jacket was unbuttoned at the collar, his cap was off, and a letter, along with a bottle of wine and two glasses, sat on the table.

“Thank you.”

He caught the look in my eye, heard the unfeeling tone in my voice. Maybe he could even sense the hatred.

“I know it is hard, Benedetta. But your father is making more of this,” he said, raising his glass, “and drinking more of this in Heaven right now.”

I said nothing, not wanting to cry again. And it wasn’t even that I wanted to cry out of sadness or pain, as much as it was frustration, not knowing. What was worse: mourning the loss of a parent, or not knowing if you should mourn because you don’t know if that parent is dead?

Instead, I chose to focus on the sadness. The Lord knew I was familiar with that, and I did it because I didn’t want Wolff to see through my emotions to my frustration. He wanted to see a girl in mourning over the loss of her father.

“Join me.”

He picked up the remaining glass and poured a small amount of the white wine. I picked up the glass, took it to the hearth where a pot of water sat, and added a healthy amount. When I sat back down, Wolff again raised his glass.

“Health,” he said.

“
Saluté
,” I responded, wanting to throw the wine in his face. How dare he toast me with wine made by the man he ordered to his death? I should bring a knife and ram it into his black heart.

We sipped, and I felt the wine roll on my tongue as its sweet flavor blossomed briefly, then faded into a warmly satisfying afterthought. I said a silent prayer to God that Papa would return and have a chance to taste this wine.

“Tell me how you make this,” Wolff said.

He drained his glass with one long pull then refilled it. Once his glass was full, his free hand absentmindedly strayed to the letter on the table next to him, his fingers alternately tapping, caressing, and circling the envelope.

“Well, first of course are the grapes.”

“Grown around here, I assume?”

“Yes, in the Abruzzio region, west of here. That’s where the best grapes are. After Papa selects the plumpest, juiciest ones, he brings them to the back of the house and puts them in the big wooden tub.”

Colonel Wolff listened intently as I described the tub, about how it had a giant screw and circular fitted wooden top that, when cranked, slowly lowers itself onto the grapes, squashing them. Nearly every house in the village had something similar. He interrupted to ask questions, clarifying certain points. I told him about when the juice runs out of the tub, it is funneled into a wooden keg where sugar, as well as water and a few secret ingredients, are added, and then it ferments for a period, after which the excess is filtered out.

“That’s it?”

“No, this process is repeated, along with periodic stirring to mingle the flavors, until the wine tastes rich and smooth. Usually the entire process takes several months. Longer, depending on how long you are willing to wait.”

“It’s so good, very different from the dark beers and ales I drink back in Germany.”

“Which do you like better?”

He laughed. “Ah, that is simple. I am a German. As much as I like your wine, it will be at best a close second.” He drained yet another glass and promptly refilled it.

“You see how people are different, Benedetta? As much as we live here among you, we will never be Italian and you will never be German.”

Thank God
, I thought to myself. I would rather be condemned to Hell than to be a German.

He gestured with his arm in a vague sweeping motion. “We do not belong here.”

His words had begun to slur slightly.

“You cannot take people from their home and expect them to adjust. Habits are too well ingrained. Look at Schlemmer,” Wolff said. “This war has completely destroyed him, and he is still a relatively young man. People can experience different things; they can even grow. But they cannot change. Not in a significant way.”

His eyes had a far-off look that slowly dissipated as he focused on me.

“To answer your question,” he said, “I prefer the dark beer of my . . . homeland.”

Was there a slight sneer, a faint tinge of disgust at the mention of “homeland”?

“We Germans are a stubborn people. But you can see that, can’t you?” He smiled. “Take my wife, for example. There’s a proud German, a tribute to her race.” Now there was definite sarcasm there, with a pinch of bitterness thrown in.

“Yes, she will never change, I am sure of that,” he said, his voice thickening. “Of course, why change something when it’s already perfect, right?”

He took another deep drink of wine.

“Always striving, always working toward a pointless goal. Society. She wants to have more than everyone else, be more important, flaunt money more than the people she allows to know her.”

He shook his head, a slow, ponderous movement that seemed to require great effort. I wondered if I looked closely enough at the small veins in his cheeks if I could actually see the wine working its way through them.

“She’s leaving me, you know. After the war.” He slid the letter out of the envelope and looked at it closely.

“Why?” I asked.

“Listen to this,” he said, opening the letter and reading from it. “ ‘Each and every person has a potential that I believe is predetermined. It is a barrier. While we have risen together, I feel, sadly, that you, Hermann, will soon begin your descent. I, on the other hand, am being lifted higher by a power I did not know I had, did not know even existed.’ ”

He laughed mirthlessly and closed the letter.

“She goes on to say she’s leaving me for a textile manufacturer.”

My glass was empty, and I poured a healthy amount of wine in, this time not watering it down.

“War changes everything,” I said.

“But that’s just it, Benedetta. From the minute I met her I knew what kind of woman she was,” he said. “I even knew this day would come. I married a thought struggling to be an ideal. Whose fault is it that I am now forced to watch it fall short?”

He leaned back in his chair and his eyes bored into me.

“But you know what’s really funny?”

I shook my head.

“She thinks that I’m the one who has fallen short.” He leaned back in his chair and set his glass on the letter. A bead of perspiration trickled down the glass and darkened a circle onto the paper.

“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.

“No.”

“Never been a boy who has caught your eye?”

“I work so hard. I don’t see many.”

“That is a shame. You are a beautiful girl. You have the kind of beauty that is timeless. Eternal. If I were a young man . . .”

I felt his eyes on me, a hungry look on his face. He quickly looked away and his body relaxed. Whatever thought he had, brief as it was, had left.

“But I am not a young man,” he finished, then proceeded to drink three glasses of wine. On the fourth glass, he tipped his head back to take in the drink, and he fell backward—Colonel Wolff, the chair, and the wine all crashed in a heap. His glass flew out of his hand and landed behind his head, shattering and spilling wine. As he fell backward, his boot caught the edge of the table and lifted it briefly off the ground, causing the bottle to tip over and roll off the table, where it smashed and sprayed glass in a shower onto the floor.

He struggled to stand up, his face red from the fall, the humiliation, or, more likely, both.

“Are you all right, Colonel Wolff?” I asked, rushing to him, helping him stand up, where he swayed like a sapling blowing in the wind. His arm rested heavily on my shoulder and I put my arm around his waist.

“You didn’t tell me the wine was this strong!” he said, then burst into laughter.

“We make it strong,” I said. “That way we don’t have to drink as much, and it lasts longer.”

“That’s the second thing tonight that knocked me over,” he said, gesturing toward the letter. He reached for the paper and crumpled it up, walked unsteadily to the fireplace, and threw it in among the logs, where it shriveled and blackened.

“Good night,” he said, bowing formally at the waist. “It was a wonderful evening. Love, betrayal, and humor. What more could a young girl ask for?”

Lots of things
, I thought to myself. But instead, I wished him a good night.

As he trudged toward the stairs, I swept up the glass, the bright pieces twinkling at me. Yet another delicate object smashed by the heavy hands of the
Germanesí.

There was no doubt in my mind now.

The Germans were going to lose the war.