Authors: Andrea Molesini
‘Soldiers.’
‘How many?’ asked Renato.
Giulia held up three fingers.
Renato bent over Brian again.
‘I’ve hit my head, right here, behind my ear, I can’t stand on my legs;
gira
, everything’s spinning.’
German voices, loud and raucous. Just a few paces away from the door. Renato gently laid Brian’s head down on the bench, then stood up and went over to stand by the door jamb, pulling out his Steyr as he did so. With his eyes he signalled to the two of us to hide, waving the barrel of his gun towards a large black armoire on the far side of the room. I crept over to it on tiptoe and pushed Giulia into it ahead of me; she flattened back to make room for me. The door refused to close all the way, leaving a gap of two centimetres. I hugged Giulia to me and held my breath. The men outside were talking loudly and laughing. Perhaps they’re just hooligans, renegades out looking for a place to hide from the fighting, I thought, maybe they’re not looking for Brian at all.
I could feel Giulia’s breasts warm against my chest. In the silence, I thought I could also hear Renato breathing and Brian gasping and wheezing.
Then the German voices fell silent. Giulia pressed her nose against my neck. I breathed in the scent of her hair. There was banging on the door, first once, then twice. Again, those voices, but now they were shouting. More banging, louder now. The door squealed – the hinges, then the bolt. A shout and the thud of a kick: the door collapsed with a crash. Two shots, then a third. I hurled myself out of the armoire. Renato was standing there pointing his gun, and he fired again, straight into the backs of the two men stretched out on the floor in front of him, face down atop the door wrenched off its hinges. The third man was a short distance further back, just outside the doorway, dragging himself on one elbow and spitting blood and saliva.
Renato stepped through the door and nailed him to the floor with a shot to the head. He reloaded as I hurried over to him. His movements were quick and sure. He looked around, like a hunted animal.
I turned to look at Giulia who had emerged from the armoire and covered her face with her hands.
‘Give me a hand, we have to get out of here.’
‘What about Brian?’
Renato grabbed the foot of the soldier with the hole in his head and told me to grab the other. We dragged him inside. ‘Now they’re going to be looking for whoever murdered their men,’ I said, and I realized that Renato was no longer swaggering boldly: that frightened me more than anything else.
‘You, Signorina, stand guard, over there.’
Renato went over to the Englishman who seemed to be sleeping, as if nothing at all had happened.
The light that came in through the door landed right on the murdered bodies.
‘Hurry,’ said Giulia, ‘we need to hurry.’
Renato was sitting at the foot of the bench upon which the English pilot lay outstretched and unconscious. He held his head in his hands and was staring at the corpses. He stood up: ‘These days a plate of beans is bigger news than a couple of gunshots, but for Brian…we need to take him up to the Villa, we have no choice.’
‘To the Villa? But if they find him we’re all—’
He cut me off mid-sentence with a glance. ‘I can’t abandon him.’ For the first time since I’d met him, I saw dismay in his eyes. ‘He’ll get better, taking him up there is my concern… tonight. You two head back and tell no one about this.’
‘Not even my aunt? She might be able to help us.’
‘No one! Whatever happens, you were never here. Brian and I can take care of ourselves.’ He gave Giulia a fleeting glance and Giulia threw her arms around his neck. Renato grabbed her by the wrists and pushed her away from him: ‘Get the boy out of here,’ he said. ‘Now!’
Giulia stepped through the door without turning around: ‘Get going, Paolo, are you deaf?’
I was certain – I was suddenly certain at that moment – that the two of them were lovers, or at the very least had been. I said nothing, I didn’t even bid farewell, I just left with my eyes lowered. My head said: it isn’t true, you’re seeing more than you ought to here, you’re making a mistake; but my heart knew.
I crossed the open ground between the house and the woods at a run, dragging Giulia by the hand. The air had again begun pulsing with artillery fire.
Part Three
Thirty
T
HERE WAS SOMETHING VULNERABLE AND FUNNY ABOUT
Brian’s face. I watched him as he slept, clutching his pillow. Grandpa, next to me, shook his head as he stared at him: ‘To hide him here, of all places…Wouldn’t the barn have been better?’
Brian had been taken to the Villa, by night, by the steward and an Italian prisoner who’d been helping him to dig graves for the past few days. He’d had ten or so almost unbroken hours of sleep, and that morning, the twenty-third, when the heavy artillery finally fell silent, he woke up.
Soldiers went by along the municipal road that skirted the garden, marching towards Conegliano, Godega, Sacile, and Pordenone, where a rest awaited them. My aunt, who had come back to the Villa, told us that the Hapsburg soldiers blamed the defeat on their officers, not the unit-level officers but their elderly generals with their trembling fingers, their hearts muffled by compromise. ‘They don’t think much of the Italian infantry,’ she told us, reporting something she’d heard from the baron, I imagine, ‘though they have great respect for the officers in our trenches; in any case, they fear our artillerymen, who tore them to shreds.’
‘The river fought its battle too; the high water destroyed more bridges and footbridges than our planes could,’ Grandpa
had said at dinner, ‘and now the real trouble starts, for us, and especially for the peasants: an army with the breath of defeat on the back of its neck…We can kiss goodbye to the peace and quiet of the past few months.’
Brian opened his eyes wide. He looked bewildered. ‘How do you feel?’ asked Grandpa, leaning over him slightly.
The pilot didn’t reply and looked at me: ‘Thirsty,’ he said. The water pitcher was half full and I poured him a glass. Brian took a long drink, which ended with a grimace. ‘
Pecàto
…too bad it’s not whisky.’ Then he burped softly and smiled, sitting up with some effort on the pallet. ‘Feel better, too much better,’ he said in broken Italian. ‘Am we winning or’ – and here he reverted to English – ‘are we beaten?’
‘The cannons can no longer be heard; Austria has gone home…on a stretcher,’ Grandpa had regained his laughing face, ‘and this time we gave
them
a licking!’
‘
Sic transit gloria mundi
,’ said the Englishman, biting down on the ample Latin vowels.
Two sharp raps at the door. Grandpa slipped off his jacket and threw it over the pilot’s face, where he lay flat on the pallet. I sat down in front of him. The knocking came again, sharp and angry.
‘Who is it?’ asked Grandpa, with a fake sound of surprise.
The door opened slowly. Loretta came in, white as a sheet. ‘They’ve arrested Renato,’ she said in a faint voice.
‘Renato?’ Grandpa’s face darkened.
Footsteps on the stairs. Heavy footsteps. Loretta stood aside. A sergeant entered the room, revolver levelled, and behind him came a private with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a bayonet in hand. The sergeant, a man with a small cascading moustache whom I’d never seen before, passed us in review, lowering his
gaze to look at me where I sat, shielding the Englishman; then he holstered his gun and reached me in three paces. He looked me straight in the eye with his yellowish eyes. He grunted something I didn’t understand. I didn’t move but just kept looking steadily back at him. Then he grabbed me by the armpits and lifted me to my feet. His hands were hard, a pair of vice grips. He delivered a sharp kick to the jacket that lay in a heap on the straw pallet, and the jacket emitted a groan. The revolver whipped out of the holster. It had a long black barrel. I stood aside as Grandpa pulled me close to him. My legs were shaking. Then Brian hoisted himself to a sitting position and pulled the jacket off his face. The sergeant had kicked him right in the cheekbone. The Englishman got to his feet, his face disfigured by a grimace of pain. ‘Coming,’ he said, staring at the sergeant’s revolver, while the private slipped the bayonet into a loop in his belt and grabbed him by the arm.
The non-commissioned officer barked something in Grandpa’s direction; he remained silent but did not drop his eyes. Loretta burst into tears, covered her face with her hands, and ran down the stairs as the soldiers left, slamming the door behind them.
I threw my arms around Grandpa.
‘We’ve been sleeping side by side for months…and this is the first time that you’ve hugged me, laddie.’
‘What now?’
‘We can only put our hopes in Donna Maria,’ he said in a soft voice, walking over to the dormer window, which was open. Brian, staggering, was walking flanked by the sergeant and the private. We watched as they crossed the garden; they were going to the baron’s office.
Thirty-One
I
T HAD BEEN RAINING FOR HOURS
. T
HE TABLE IN THE BIG
dining room had been set at the baron’s orders; he had sent to Pieve di Soligo for lamp oil. That afternoon, Teresa had ironed the one lace tablecloth that cunning and a bit of luck had allowed her to save from the looting. The invitation had been conveyed to my aunt by a sergeant who, according to Grandpa, had the charming manners of a guard dog on a chain. Von Feilitzsch wanted the whole family to be present; and he even had the impertinence to arrive a little late.
When he came in, I stood up, as did Grandpa, but the baron gestured for us to remain seated. He flashed a quick smile at the ladies and told the cook’s daughter to go ahead and serve. He knew that he would offend both Grandma and my aunt by addressing one of our servants directly, and they both feigned indifference.
From the roasted flesh the cartilage of three thighs protruded. The two chickens were a gift from the baron and he, with a hint of coquettishness, told how he had won the fowls with a single roll of the dice from Major General Serda Teodorski, the commander of the garrison of Sernaglia. Loretta wore white gloves as she served. The baron and my aunt, seated face to face, were scrutinizing each other without a smile. My grandparents were sitting at the two ends of the table, while I sat next to my aunt
and looked at the portrait of my great-grandma on the wall behind the major, set between windows illuminated by the last light of day.
Grandma always said that a gentleman reveals himself at table: whether that’s a dining room table, a card table, or a conference table. We all sensed that, on account of the two chickens and their thighs, our reputation as respectable people would somehow be put to the test that night.
Loretta’s hands shook slightly as she stood by Grandma’s shoulder; the old woman took an angular wing and a small piece of breast meat. Then it was my aunt’s turn, who opted for the risk of taking the thigh, leaving at least one of the three gentlemen present – I enlisted myself, duty-bound, in that category – with the burden of drawing on his native reserve of good manners. The baron hesitated for a scant second before plop-ping the thigh onto his plate, surrounded by a plentiful helping of boiled potatoes. Grandpa looked over at me, but I don’t think he felt much pain as he renounced the opportunity to make the handsome gesture, and his plate too welcomed a juicy thigh, accompanied by its drumstick and a fitting portion of potatoes. Still, I was happy to console myself with breast and drumstick.
The clacking of forks filled the dining room. The weight of the humid air bore down on everything. Grandpa and my aunt never lifted their eyes from their plates, while Grandma ate as if it wasn’t her mouth that was chewing her food, staring all the while straight at the baron who looked up every so often, pleased to see us all nicely subjugated, humiliated by our gluttony.
‘We are indebted to you for the kind of dinner you’d expect in peacetime, Major,’ Grandma Nancy said abruptly, as Loretta was making the rounds, serving second helpings.
‘I was hoping to earn your forgiveness for the departure of
Donna Maria’s horse,’ the baron replied, with his customary courtesy, but I thought I detected a hint of resentment in his tone.
Taking a thigh and setting it on her plate, my aunt looked up: ‘With everything that’s happened in the past few days…Those two young men hanged from iron hooks, all those dead men, down in the church…Do you really think I have had time to think about my horse?’
‘I thought…forgive me, Madame…but I thought that you liked horses more than human beings.’
‘That’s what I thought myself,’ said my aunt, looking down at her food.
The reserve supply of good wine was down to the last drops and Grandpa had been reduced to diluting what wine he could get with water: ‘It’s going to be weak in any case, we might as well have plenty of it.’
‘But here we’re missing a thigh…and a drumstick,’ the baron pointed out. ‘There were two chickens.’
Loretta took a step backwards, straightening her back, and the serving plate in her hands trembled.
‘It was my fault, Major,’ said my aunt. ‘The cook and her daughter shared them, at my invitation, of course.’
Loretta blushed. Then mouths and forks resumed the fervent ballet in which they were engaged, giving way to a silence that was barely broken by the clatter of metal, until an abundant salad of lettuce, arugula, and cress cleansed our palates.
Gradually, as the time approached for coffee to be served, small and increasingly anxious cracks begin to run through the silence. We weren’t at all comforted by the thought that the chickens were a gift. ‘Nothing comes free of charge, and a gift costs more than anything else’: this was one of Grandpa’s axioms, and for years Grandma had insisted that there was a
mathematical basis to that truth. I knew that if Grandpa and Grandma agreed on an axiom – something that happened only rarely – it became a law of the universe, neither more nor less certain than the law of gravity.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the baron, patting his lips with his napkin and setting down his demitasse, ‘I’ve invited you together to inform you that you’re all under arrest.’ The baron felt the need to pause at this point, and he filled the interval with a faint cough. ‘Until matters have been thoroughly cleared up, your comings and goings will be kept under surveillance. You’ll be able to go to chapel and to stroll freely in your garden and the immediate surroundings, you can even attend mass, but any other excursions you may make will have to be under guard, and I’m referring especially to you, Signor Guglielmo, and to you, Signor Paolo.’