Wolf on the Mountain (18 page)

For three corners the usual scheme worked well. Luigi stopped at each corner. If there was something to hinder them he halted and did something with his left hand, scratched his ear perhaps, and the captain waited at the corner behind. If all was well he did something with his right hand and moved on to the next corner and the captain followed him, always the distance of a corner behind, limping like an invalid of war. There was just enough gloom in the unlit streets to see the signals.

Luigi was in a hurry tonight, scampering from one corner to the next, impatient for the warmth of his home. The wind was howling up the valley, preventing a frost settling, and their breaths were blowing horizontally towards the village. The stars appeared and disappeared in a moonless sky behind the scudding clouds.

As the captain reached the third corner he saw that between it and the fourth was a twenty yard stretch of the main road, and just beyond that next corner a roadblock, two liftable and swingable barriers of wood with coils of barbed wire between the upper and lower bars, a barrier new this evening. But unmanned. The guards were obviously sheltering from the wind in the building alongside it, its open door allowing a shaft of light from a carbide lamp onto the road behind his guide.

Why had Luigi carried on? Why hadn’t he turned back and picked another route? Now he was standing by the corner by the barrier, scratching his right buttock.

Why was he carrying on? A German could come out at any time. But he was now committed. He had to trust to luck and walk as confidently as he could to the corner Luigi had just left.

He had limped but ten yards when a despatch rider, his motorbike roaring the urgency of what was in his pouch, skidded round the cobbled corner beyond and came up to the other side of the barrier. A guard’s shadow appeared on the road and then the guard himself, his rifle slung from his shoulder, a storm-light in his hand.

The carpenter dared not react. It would arouse suspicion. He limped on and made to turn the corner, not pausing for Luigi’s signal at the next.

The guard let the despatch rider through, turned and shone his storm-light on the captain, saw his lit features avoiding his eyes, ran the light down and up his body:
‘Halt!’

The captain stopped.
‘Perche?’

The guard put down his light, quickly unshouldered his rifle and pointed it at the captain. ‘
Englander! Hands up!’

The captain held out his hands uncomprehendingly.
‘Che?’
The guard waved his rifle up to emphasise the command.
‘
Hands up, Englander!’

‘Englander? Non, non. Sono italiano.’

‘Nein. Du bist englisch.’
He pointed his rifle at the captain’s feet, his boots picked out in the beam of the light.
‘Du hast englischen Botten. Kommst du hier.’

His boots. After all this time, the transformation of his clothes, his mannerisms and his tongue, he had been betrayed by his boots.
‘Si, buone scarpone. Esse ho comprato. In Bolzano, da dove vengo.’

The guard looked unconvinced. Did he not understand his insistence that he had bought the boots in the north, in his home town? Or had he understood and not believed him? The guard ushered him into the guardhouse and his colleague came out to man the roadblock, caught out by the dispatch rider and determined now to be seen alongside it should another come along. An armed man was now by the door behind the captain, and he was now likely to be searched, his Beretta found. And then what? A firing squad?

Maybe the guard would accept his story when he saw the identity card. But he’d been keen enough to spot the boots. He’d spot the forgery as well. An older man spots such things. At least he was an older man, the kind used for traffic duties. His reflexes would be slower, but he would be harder to fool.

The muzzle of the rifle nudging his back, he was ushered into a room along a corridor, a table with a pack of cards scattered in the frustration of an interrupted game and two enamel mugs, a coffee pot brewing on an old wood-stove, the walls covered in notices in Gothic script and local maps, and a field telephone on the wall by the door. The guard took out his pistol and placed his rifle in a corner, the safety catch now on.
‘Carta d’identita..’

Good, he was speaking to him in Italian now. Perhaps he did believe the story, and he was asking for the card without searching him first. But he did have his pistol out. The captain untied the string around the waist of his sacking coat. He gently let it open so that the weight of his gun hanging down on the string behind his back was not given away, and reached to the breast pocket of his shirt. His hand was now shaking and he clumsily popped the top button on his shirt, baring his upper chest below the black scarf around his neck.

The guard spotted his tags, his soldier’s identity tags, and lurched forward to grab them, tearing them from his neck.
‘Du bist englisch!’
he yelped, excited by his triumph. A triumph to report to his superiors. He rushed sideways to the telephone on the wall, picked up the handset with his left hand as he waved his pistol at the captain with his right.

The fool. The little man, passed over for more glorious duties, but now about to show them his contribution to the glorious war effort; a fool who had forgotten to call in his colleague or to search the captain before announcing his feat of arms; and who had forgotten something else, because he needed a third hand to wind the cranking handle on the telephone to make the call. Would he call in his companion to keep the captain covered? He had to make sure he didn’t. But he couldn’t rush him now, when the pistol was in his hand. He had to make him complacent, to look resigned to his fate.

The guard saw his eyes fall to the floor, decided his man was beaten. He laid the gun down on the telephone casing, started turning the handle to ring the phone at the receiving end, and as he accelerated the crank he turned his back.

The captain’s chance at last. He leapt forward and drove his right fist down and over the guard’s shoulder onto the side of his jaw. He grabbed his epaulette with his left, spun him around and punched him again, the man falling to the floor, snagging the captain’s scarf as he tumbled.

He sprinted from the room and down the corridor and as he reached the front door the other guard came in, aroused by his comrade’s shout. The captain dropped his shoulder and barged him out of the way, turned left and left and down the alley Luigi had taken, down towards the bomb-sites and cover.

Damn that he was so weak. His first punch should have knocked the first guard out for a minute at least. His shoulder-charge have sent the second sprawling to the ground. But they were both now on their feet. And there was time for at least three shots each before he made the cover, although it would take some time for their eyes to adjust to the dark.

Zig-zag. Zig-zag. At random.

One, two, three, four, five shots bounced off the cobbles and wall-stones, until at last he reached the first pile of rubble. He dived over it, hitting a protruding beam face-on.

He pulled himself up and on to the next pile of stones and then the next, smearing the blood from his eyes. The shots had stopped. The guards too were now blind in the unlit streets. He staggered on, blood gagging in his throat, until he found a bomb crater near the river, burrowed under some timber and lapsed unconscious, wondering how long it would be before the hue and cry found him.

–

The Golvi family were at the kitchen table. Luigi was sobbing with remorse after his father’s berating for having taken Roberto past the roadblock. But it was unmanned. Elvira and her mother had already given the captain up for dead. The sounds of the five shots had rung downwind into the village. People, afraid to venture out, had called to each other from their windows and rumours had begun. A man shot dead. No-one knew who it was. He must be dead. Five shots. The Germans wouldn’t miss five times. They had taken another son.

There was a hammering on the door. Carlo went to the window, drew back the curtain and saw a foot patrol in the street below. Had Roberto just been wounded, been made to talk? ‘Porca miseria,
we’re done for.’ He gestured his wife to go down the stairs to open the door and stood out of sight at the top of the flight to hear the conversation.

‘Scusa, Signora Golvi’
the German officer started with impeccable politeness. Carlo recognised the voice and relaxed.

‘He’s alive,’ Elvira said as she returned upstairs, ‘but they think they wounded him. They found blood in the street where he fell. It’s him. They showed me his scarf. They’re taking it round all the houses. The lieutenant apologised for disturbing us, but orders were to search all the houses, because he couldn’t have got far.

‘To think that Roberto didn’t trust us for being nice to that German officer. If only he knew that this house was now the safest in the village for him to hide tonight. That nice lieutenant has pronounced it clear. You must go and find him, Carlo.’

‘It’s too dangerous, with those patrols out. Maybe in an hour or two.’

‘I can go’ said Anna. Her tears were gone now that she knew her uncle was alive, and there was the prospect of a great adventure. ‘I can pretend I’m looking for Luigi. Luigi can hide where Roberto hides. Roberto will know my voice and he’ll know that I’m really looking for him, even though I’m calling out Luigi’s name.’

‘My clever daughter! We’ll give the Germans twenty minutes to leave the street, and then we’ll go.’

–

we searched and searched for hours

we found roberto in one of those holes made by the bombs

wed passed it before but he must have been asleep

he called out to me very quietly

babbo hid his gun and poured some drink into his mouth and then over his head so we could pretend roberto was drunk if we saw any germans on the way

he looks worse than the first time i saw him

his face was covered in blood

so were his clothes

babbo says hes lucky to be alive

the doctors here

i hope robertos all right

The doctor had arrived during the night to repair the captain’s face. He had managed to stitch his eyebrows before the eyes swelled up, had put plugs of fabric up the nostrils of his shattered nose. He had asked if the Golvis could lay their hands on a chicken to make a broth to feed his patient, to give his body the strength to replenish its blood. Carlo had mysteriously disappeared and returned with a hen, its neck just wrung, dipped it in a pot of boiling water and ripped its feathers off in handfuls. Its provenance was lost within a minute of its arrival in the house; it had been gutted and was slowly cooking in another pot within two.

All next day the captain remained motionless on the bed, slipping between unconsciousness and a glazed shock, the cat curled on his feet in calm repose. Alfonso and Isabella Giobellini came in, the sister taking it in turns with Elvira to change the rags doused in cold water laid across his swollen eyes and fevered forehead, to spoon the chicken broth through his swollen lips and loosened teeth. Anna came in from time to time to hold his hand and ask him, unanswered, to get better soon. In the background, in the late afternoon, came the sounds of planes and bombs exploding on the railway junction further up the valley.

–

The next morning the bombers returned to Sannessuno for the first time in weeks. Everyone had thought that the January bombing raids had satisfied the Allies, but they had not. This time there were no dive bombers aiming at the railway first to give the people time to flee. A formation of heavy bombers came over and all dropped their bombs at once. It was as if this time their intention was to flatten the village. Buildings exploded or collapsed. People going about their daily lives, collecting water, queuing for their rationed bread, if not directly killed by the explosions, were being hit by flying debris. People fleeing for their lives were being crushed by falling masonry. Areas fifty yards square were reduced to a raised level of rubble.

As suddenly as they had come the bombers were gone. The survivors rushed to where their relatives had lived to scrabble in the ruins of the buildings, to try to pull them out, to see if they could be revived. The German soldiers joined them, not looking this time for men to take away: the numbers killed or maimed enforced a common purpose.

–

‘I can do nothing for this one.’

‘Help this woman to my left’ said a voice to his left.

He levered his body up, his lifting muscles close to cramp, his knees bruised, grazed and stiff from kneeling on the rubble, and passed behind the voice to attend to an old lady, blood pulsing from her near-severed wrist, a relative trying to apply a tourniquet with a filthy scarf in the wrong place. He re-applied the tourniquet and sighed that this victim too would not last the night.

‘In the midst of life there is death’ said the voice now to his right.

‘In the midst of death there is life’ he replied.

‘I thought it was you, doctor’ the portly priest whispered. ‘I’d heard that you were hiding in the village. So had the Germans. They asked me if I’d heard the rumour too.’

‘Have you seen me today, Don Bartolomeo?’

‘I’ve only seen Christians today.’

‘The men in those planes were Christians.’

The priest turned his head and, as the asthmatic man with thick spectacles turned to meet his gaze, repeated his words: ‘
I’ve
only seen Christians.’

–

‘Hundreds killed’ hissed Carlo Golvi. ‘What do they think they’re up to? They’ll have the local people hating them more than the Germans. Then where will we be?’

‘I don’t know’ the captain replied. ‘I don’t know.’ It was the next day. He was now fully conscious, able with help to sit up in his bed. At least the trauma of his injuries had spared him the shock of being under bombs again. He could not understand the bombers’ tactics.

‘And you know they even missed the bridge. It was the safest place to be. You could have sat on it all the way through the raid, watching your fellow citizens being blown to bits of meat, and then walked back to the river bank without a scratch.’