All Our Yesterdays (32 page)

12

Franz stayed for a month at La Maschiona's grandmother's, but then he came back. He said he could not bear those long days spent all alone with La Maschiona's grandmother, in that black, cramped kitchen that filled with smoke when La Maschiona's grandmother lit her fire of green boughs under the iron pot. This smoke stuck in one's throat and then Franz would cough all night. And La Maschiona's grandmother moved very slowly about the kitchen, a round back in a black shawl and a pair of shambling slippers, and Franz would feel he was going mad at the sight of that round back, he would be sitting there on a stool in the smoke and feel he was going mad. He had run off one morning while La Maschiona's grandmother was out cutting grass for the rabbits, his foot was well again and he ran off at full speed through the meadows and the pine wood and arrived once more at Cenzo Rena's house, Cenzo Rena was sitting reading and saw him appear in front of him. Franz took a lot of trouble to explain the matter of the round back, he knew that Cenzo Rena did not like people living with him but he begged to be allowed to live there for a few days until the Germans went away. Cenzo Rena said the question of living with him no longer applied, in any case the
contadino
Giuseppe was now living with him, the Germans were now searching not only for Jews but for soldiers who had run away, and Giuseppe had come to hide in the house. The house had the pine wood behind it and was convenient as a hiding-place, because it was nothing at all to jump from the window into the pine wood, perhaps the police-sergeant would end by coming there too. Franz, at the mention of the police-sergeant, was very frightened indeed and wanted to go back at once to La Maschiona's grandmother's, but Cenzo Rena told him that now he had come he had better stop, because it was dangerous to be running backwards and forwards from one place to another. Besides, what did he think the police-sergeant would do to him now, the police-sergeant was no longer a police-sergeant, he had buried his uniform and was in shirt-sleeves and braces and was always green with fear and was in hiding. Cenzo Rena called to La Maschiona to bring a tub of water for Franz to wash in, because he looked to him very dirty; Franz said that at La Maschiona's grandmother's he had never been able to wash at all. La Maschiona was much offended with Franz and looked sulkily at him because he had not wanted to stay at her grandmother's.

La Maschiona was looking sulkily at the
contadino
Giuseppe too, because he had come to stay in their house and she had to make the bed and cook the dinner for a
contadino,
she was a servant but she was not a servant to
contadini.
And Giuseppe had put a gun in the cellar among the sacks of potatoes, La Maschiona had gone to fetch some potatoes from the cellar and had found herself with a long, cold gun-barrel in her hand, she had got into a great fright and had come upstairs again in a rage, did Giuseppe want the Germans to set fire to the house, as they had set fire to a mill where hidden arms had been found? The night they had burnt down the mill La Maschiona had been at the window watching the flames far away on the river bank, how often she had gone to the mill to get her corn ground for her, the miller was one of her godfathers. All night long she had knelt on the floor praying for her godfather, and the day after she had heard that the Germans had had a grave dug for him along the cemetery wall, and now her godfather was there along the cemetery wall, La Maschiona heard him calling when she pushed open the cemetery gate on Sundays, her godfather wanted to be buried inside the cemetery and not outside. La Maschiona was again going down to sleep at her mother's, she did not want to spend the night in that house where there was a gun, and at night her godfather talked to her, she was too much afraid unless she slept close beside her mother. La Maschiona had always believed that Cenzo Rena was a very strong and cunning man, the most cunning and the strongest man in the whole village, but now she was a little disappointed in him, ever since that night when the mill was burning and she had rushed to him and begged him to go to the Germans to speak on her godfather's behalf, to explain that the hidden arms were not her godfather's ; and Cenzo Rena had looked at the fire from the window and said that, alas, he could not do anything for her godfather. Cenzo Rena appeared not to think much about the Germans, he was always sitting reading in the dining-room with his head supported in his hand, and since the typhus he seemed to have become much older, and quieter and lazier and more kindly, La Maschiona had told him she wanted to go and sleep at her mother's and he had said yes. But he had fetched the Bible and had made her swear on the Bible never to tell anyone, not even her mother, that in that house were hidden a gun and the
contadino
Giuseppe and Franz.

La Maschiona went off before it was dark and Franz helped Anna to peel the potatoes for supper. He was grey in the face because he never went out of the house, the last walk he had taken had been when he had run away from Scoturno di Sopra, and he complained much that he was never able to walk, he who had been so athletic once upon a time. He never even looked out of the window, for fear that the Marchesa might see him from her windows and report him to the Germans, but the Marchesa never looked out either, because she too was very frightened of the Germans. Franz stayed all day long in the kitchen, playing with the little girl and peeling potatoes; he was wearing Cenzo Rena's clothes and Cenzo Rena's slippers on his feet, his suitcase had been left at the inn and he was always lamenting about his suitcase, La Maschiona had offered to go and fetch it for him but he was frightened, the landlord of the inn and his wife must not discover where he was, the landlord and his wife were certainly spies. Every now and then he would become quite affectionate over La Maschiona and over Cenzo Rena and Anna, how good they were to him, and how good the
contadino
Giuseppe was too, telling him to keep calm at night when he could not sleep and was in despair. He was in despair about the Germans and also because he did not know what had become of Amalia, she was his wife and now he knew nothing about her, but she was certainly very ill in a nursing home, otherwise she would have come to San Costanzo, to hide with him and share his danger. Moreover Emanuele and Mammina had completely deserted him, they knew quite well what danger he was in and they didn't care a damn, Emanuele was there in Rome, no distance away, and he never thought of coming to see whether he was dead or alive, Anna said no one knew whether Emanuele himself was dead or alive, it might well be that the Germans had discovered him at one of his political meetings and had carried him off. Not a bit of it, said Franz, not a bit of it, what would the Germans do with Emanuele, Emanuele was hiding in Rome and eating and drinking.

Franz complained to Anna that Cenzo Rena always sent him into the kitchen to peel potatoes, he would not let him stay in the dining-room where he and Giuseppe were discussing goodness knows what. Then he discovered that they were discussing the new society, they had nothing better than that to discuss with the Germans only a few steps away, they were planning a heap of things to be done in the village as soon as the Germans went away. But goodness knows when they would go, said Franz, and he told Anna to take a look at the Germans on the ridge of the hill, they were up there with big red drums and they were unrolling wire, their voices echoed loudly from one part of the hill to another. God, how close they were to him, said Franz, never had he imagined finding himself in such great danger, and he wasn't even so very much afraid, fundamentally he was hardly afraid at all and he sat there peeling potatoes. At times he applied himself to studying a guidebook to Salerno that Cenzo Rena had given him, if the Germans came he was to say he was a cousin of Cenzo Rena's evacuated from Salerno and that he had lost his papers in the bombings. Cenzo Rena had also told him to let his beard grow so as to have a different face, in case the Germans might have seen some photograph of him at police headquarters, and he had started to let it grow, but as soon as it became fairly long Cenzo Rena told him to cut it off again at once, with a beard he looked so terribly like a Jew. Franz swore it wasn't true, he did not look in the least like a Jew. But he was very pleased to be able to shave off his beard because it made his skin feel so prickly.

But when would the Germans go away, asked Franz, they wouldn't ever go away, those big red drums were for a radio station ; once or twice Anna told Franz that they were rolling up all the wire and Franz thought they were on the point of leaving, but then they started unrolling it again. Day and night cars and lorries shot along the road, from San Costanzo to the town and from the town to San Costanzo, and from San Costanzo to Masuri where the police-sergeant was hiding, and just think how frightened the police-sergeant must be at hearing German voices in the lanes of Masuri, Franz was delighted to think how frightened the police-sergeant must be. And he himself, on the other hand, was hardly frightened at all. But when would they go, he asked, would they never go, when would the English move forward, what had happened that they were standing still, only a few steps from Rome, and never moving forward ? There were stories that in Rome there was no light or water and nothing left to eat, great carts full of turnips were touring the streets of Rome, and the shop windows were full of a thing that called itself
vegetina,
a green powder that nobody could manage to eat. And the prisons of Rome were full of people, some of them discovered printing manifestos or making bombs and some of them picked up in the street for no reason at all, and every day lorries were leaving the prison yards for Germany, but Franz was still sure that Emanuele was comfortably hidden and was eating and drinking. And Giustino, said Anna, what on earth had become of Giustino and Concettina, there were always stories about Rome but about the North no one knew anything, Concettina's last letter, a little before the armistice, had said that Giustino was at Turin, but after that no more letters had come and Cenzo Rena said it was useless to write, Italy was all broken up and a letter took days and days to arrive and when it did arrive what was written in it had ceased to be true.

13

From time to time Fascists in black shirts and yellow fezzes, with big pistols in their belts, came through San Costanzo, but they did not frighten anyone very much because they were well-known faces, faces that everyone had always seen in the bars and under the arcades of the town, and one of them was the son of the San Costanzo chemist and everybody remembered him behind the counter weighing things on a little pair of scales. The Fascists would roam about the lanes for a little, helping themselves to wine and hens, they would roam about the vineyards shooting into the air, and people at their windows told the chemist's son that he would do better to come back behind the counter and weigh things on his little pair of scales again. One day the Fascists went into the forest guard's house and started shooting at the looking-glass in the way the Germans did, and then they took the forest guard's boots, the forest guard himself had for some time been in hiding at a farm-house and there was only his wife in the house, and when she wept and screamed a German came to see what was going on. The German stayed all night with the forest guard's wife, and the Fascists ran off with the boots, and next day the forest guard's wife ate some rat poison, but the doctor came and made her vomit in time. When she was better, the forest guard's wife packed a bag and went off to her parents at Teramo, the German gave her a lift in a lorry.

One day while Anna and Franz were in the kitchen doing the potatoes, Cenzo Rena came in and said that the dog was not to be found. He flew into a rage with Anna because she remained sitting there, so she didn't mind about the dog now, she only minded about the potatoes, what an amount of potatoes she and Franz peeled every day. He went out into the pine wood to call the dog and Anna went after him, Franz was left alone in the kitchen, and all of a sudden there came into the kitchen a German carrying the dog all covered with blood. Franz rose very slowly from his chair, the German shouted to him in Italian that bandages and an antiseptic were needed. He had run over the dog with his motor-bicycle, it was not his fault because the dog had run across the road, he had jammed on his brakes but too late. He had found out in the village whose dog it was, they had pointed out Cenzo Rena's house up above. If they bandaged up the dog at once perhaps they could still save it, there were so many people dying now in the war, dogs at least must be allowed to live. Cenzo Rena came in and stood silent as he looked at the dog jerking and trembling on the floor, he bent down and very gently touched its belly where the grey hairs were all soaked in blood. The German went on explaining how he had jammed on his brakes, he had jammed them on so hard that he had almost fallen off. Cenzo Rena said to him in German that he did not know what that dog meant to them, for them it was like a person, they had known it for so many years. Franz had disappeared, the German asked where the chap with the antiseptic had got to. But Cenzo Rena said that antiseptic was no use now, and it would be better if the dog died at once because it might be that it would go on all night trembling and suffering, he asked the German to shoot it in the ear with his pistol. The German went outside with the dog and they heard the sound of a shot, and Cenzo Rena and Anna dug a hole in front of the house, and in it the dog was buried.

The German stood looking on while they dug the hole, he went on repeating how hard he had jammed on his brakes, his whole back was still hurting him because of the jar that sudden braking had given him. Then he sat down in the kitchen and began playing with the little girl, the child had a little bucket full of horse-chestnuts and he started carving faces on the chestnuts with his penknife. The German was tall and young, with a long, glossy, brown head, and he told them that before the war he had been a waiter in a small restaurant at Freiburg, and after the war he would start being a waiter again if there was still a need for waiters after the war, and he wondered if he would still be able to turn and twist among the little tables with the dishes, it was a job that needed a great deal of patience and he had lost his patience in the war. He had deep white scars on the backs of his hands, Cenzo Rena asked him if they were war scars, but he explained that one day in the kitchen of the restaurant he had upset some boiling soup on his hands out of a tureen. It was the fault of the under-cook, who had knocked into him as he was coming forward with the tureen. The under-cook used to go to bed with him and she made a great lamentation over his hands. But then she had left him, because she couldn't help weeping every time she looked at his hands. Women were like that, he said, they hurt you and then they ran away out of remorse. Men were very often like that too, said Cenzo Rena, but the waiter said no, men were different, for instance he had killed the dog and had not run away. Then Cenzo Rena told him not to talk about the dog any more, he did not know what he had done in killing the dog, he could not possibly know. It was very old and would have died anyhow in a short time, but it might have died in peace on a pillow instead of dying like that. The dog had belonged to a brother of Anna's who was dead. The waiter again asked their forgiveness, now that he had met them he was very sorry indeed about the dog. He asked if Anna's brother had died in the war. Not in the war, said Cenzo Rena, not in the war. The waiter said that never now could he hope for a pillow to die on, for something soft and quiet to die on, he wondered whether it would ever be possible to start dying on something quiet again, and saying good-bye and speaking a lot of kind words. Cenzo Rena told him about how he himself had had the typhus and had very nearly died. But he had thought about it too much, and when he thought too much about a thing it never happened. He had very often thought of getting married, to a great many different women, and instead he had got married all of a sudden at a moment when he wasn't thinking about it. The waiter began to laugh, he threw back his head and couldn't stop laughing, and he slapped Cenzo Rena on the shoulder and told him what a nice person he was, it didn't happen at all often that you met a person who was so nice to talk to. But Cenzo Rena said that he had no desire to laugh on the day that his dog had died.