Authors: Andrea Molesini
‘You have no authority, Baron, only power,’ said Grandma as she got to her feet and looked the officer in the eye. ‘Your only law lies in your weapons.’
‘Madame, mind your tone! We’ve found three soldiers buried in the woods…and that pilot…we’re familiar with his insignia.’ The major was speaking in a low monotone; his voice sounded like someone else’s, and he was enunciating his syllables distinctly.
‘Are you telling us,’ my aunt broke in, ‘that from now on this house has become a prison?’
‘For a few days, Madame, but only for a few days, I hope. Tomorrow the Englishman and your…steward…will be interrogated by two officers from our office of counter-espionage.’ The officer pretended to cough and then, after a pause that he used to raise his empty glass to his lips, he added: ‘Apparently Signor Manca knows quite a bit about it.’
Grandma sat down again.
‘Your severity, Baron von Feilitzsch,’ said my aunt, ‘is prompted by your anger at your defeat, and…it does you no honour.’
‘Severity, in wartime, is a duty to which there is no alternative, Madame.’
My aunt stiffened. The portrait of Great-Grandma Caterina was suffused with the glow of the fading light of day. And while Loretta made the rounds of the room to trim the lamp wicks and light the candles, the major muttered something that no one understood. Then he looked me straight in the eye and added, in a clear voice: ‘To conceal an enemy is a crime: neither your youthfulness nor your grandfather’s advanced age constitute an excuse, nor will they serve to shield you. I had warned you, Signor Paolo!’
Grandpa cleared his throat, but said nothing.
‘Then this is a very serious matter,’ said Grandma, standing up again. Her pale face, looking as if it had been carved with a hatchet, riveted our attention. ‘Indeed! My husband and my grandson hid an enemy of yours, but he was their – our – friend. You are an officer, you understand the meaning of honour, wouldn’t you have done the same thing in their place?’
‘Madame,’ and the major got to his feet in turn, ‘what I might or might not have done is of no importance. The soldiers who were killed were under my orders, and now it is up to me to do justice.’ There was sadness, but also satisfaction in the officer’s eyes, and he turned his back on us and left without clicking his heels.
Thirty-Two
T
HE SENTINEL STOPPED
G
IULIA AT THE FRONT GATE
. I
T
was the first time such a thing had happened. One of the soldiers unslung his rifle and, holding the muzzle low, sketched out an indolent figure eight with the tip of his bayonet on the parched dirt. Giulia took a step back. The other soldier went to the
barchessa
at a run and re-emerged immediately with a young lieutenant, polished and buffed to a high glow.
The officer offered Giulia his arm, he stroked her hand, and together they walked into the garden. I realized that duty and love of country count for very little in the presence of a shapely bosom and the inviting smile of a woman willing to lead you on.
Grandpa, who had been shut up in his Thinking Den for the past several hours, joined me at the window. He leant out, at my side: ‘Ah, Signorina Candiani…come, we need to talk.’
I followed him to the desk which – one of Teresa’s miracles – was bare and uncluttered, with not even a speck of dust. Now Beelzebub reigned uncontested, a black and silent queen, while the little Buddha had been exiled to a place among the books and stacks of paper on a shelf.
‘Look how neat it is, have you given up writing?’
‘Writing…doesn’t suit me. It’s such an unnatural thing to do…my pages wander here and there, just like Pagnini’s feet… Go ahead and light your pipe, I want the smell of your tobacco.’
I sat down and pulled out the leather pouch.
Grandpa’s eyes were slow and dull. ‘You know that they’ll kill us, don’t you?’
‘The baron said that we are forbidden to leave the Villa, but… Aunt Maria has a certain amount of influence over that man.’
‘Last night, that friend…of Maria’s tried to warn us, don’t you see? It’s time to cut and run.’
I struck a match and lingered for a moment, with the flame just a finger away from my pipe.
‘Those three soldiers…if Renato buried them in the woods… then we’ve been betrayed! And then the Englishman…We were reckless and foolish, and now Austria wants its pound of flesh.’
I raised a hedge of pipe smoke between us.
‘Grandma has asked your aunt to begin negotiations with the baron. There is nothing that can be done for Renato, but perhaps for you…’ The smoke thinned. Grandpa’s eyes were glistening. ‘You have to run away, go hide at Giulia’s, you could make your way to Venice, perhaps even with her.’
‘What about you? Grandpa, are you going to stay here and let them hang you? And anyway, how would I get to Venice?’
Knuckles rapped at the door. Grandma entered without waiting for a reply. ‘Guglielmo…did you tell him?’
‘We’re talking about it now.’
Grandma looked me in the eye.
‘Grandma…I don’t want to escape. I don’t even believe that the baron wants to kill us. He stormed and shouted yesterday, but I don’t believe…’
‘This is wartime. And in wartime, certain things…sentiments…everything loses importance, and everything becomes dreadfully clear. Renato and the pilot are going to be interrogated…harshly. It’s not about the code or the information that
we transmitted…Now the baron has three corpses to avenge.’
‘But, when it happened…I was there! You weren’t, Grandpa.’
Grandpa slapped his hand down on the desk. ‘Paolo, listen carefully to what I have to say. There are three corpses with the two-headed eagle on the collar badges, and three Italians is what Austria is going to want to see dangling at the end of ropes. Renato is the first…but we are the ones who concealed the pilot, you understand? Von Feilitzsch has no choice…now…I’ve seen plenty of the world, but you…you need to take it on the run!’
Grandma nodded her head yes: ‘I’ll let you talk, you men understand each other,’ she said, and left the room.
Everything had happened far too fast. I couldn’t seem to make sense of things. And I wanted to see Giulia again. My pipe went out.
Grandpa stood up and opened the window behind him. ‘Come, laddie, let’s go for a walk in the garden, fresh air will help clear our heads.’
Giulia was deeply upset. She had used all her charms and wiles to learn what was going on, but she had been unable even to gain an audience with the baron. All we knew was that two officers were on their way to interrogate Brian and Major Manca. ‘I know that one of them is tall and skinny with dark eyes, a medical officer,’ she said, caressing my cheek and speeding up her stride a little. Taking advantage of the benevolent distraction of the soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder, who was following us twenty paces back, we took refuge in the silkworm hatchery. There was still a hint of the disgusting smell of sulphur in the air, and there were streaks of soot on the dry walls. A breeze pushed in through the little window, and outside the soldier was strolling back and forth, whistling. ‘
Non più andrai,
farfallone amoroso
.’ I shot the bolt. ‘It’s the baron who set that guard on our heels,’ and, as I was getting out the last words, Giulia was already kissing me. She kissed greedily, and I was even more voracious than she was. She slipped her warm hands under my shirt as I unbuttoned her blouse and lowered my lips to her hardening nipples. We tumbled on the cold damp dirt. Then she sat atop me and rode me until I couldn’t see straight. I felt the churning blood inside me take control. That’s when I turned over and got on top of her while she was still moaning. I thought I could hear the soldier singing his mocking little ditty still louder: ‘
Non più andrai
…’ The blood was exploding in my groin, in my chest, in my temples. Until, stifling my shout of pleasure, I collapsed on top of her, with all my weight. That’s when I heard two sharp blows at the door.
The guard was kicking the door and the bolt made the sound of a hammer. We jumped up and quickly got dressed, smoothed our hair with our hands, and looked at each other as if we were saying goodbye. We walked out and the soldier assaulted us with a phrase in German. Then he added, in a courteous tone and in fractured Italian: ‘Now you will stay where I can zee you, official orders.’ He’d done us a favour by letting us be alone, out of some sense of rascally camaraderie, perhaps, seeing that he next slapped me on the back while staring sly-eyed at Giulia.
We headed off towards the chapel. The Austrian let us get a dozen steps ahead of him before starting after us. Giulia, wordless, eyed me with a gaze that was really a question mark.
My legs felt rubbery and loose; I was happy. And happiness doesn’t know or say, happiness just is.
Thirty-Three
‘W
HAT EVER HAPPENED TO KNOCKING
?’
‘The door was open.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Do you mind if I light up?’
The priest smiled. ‘Afraid of a whiff of my bad breath?’ He looked me right in the eye, as his fingers groped for his breviary.
I stuck my pipe back in my pocket. ‘Now don’t tell me that you’re going to urge me to flee too.’ The damp patches on the plaster sketched out an unknowable archipelago.
Don Lorenzo kept running his fingers back and forth over his filthy, tattered breviary. He looked into my eyes: ‘There’s no reason to get yourself killed.’ He lifted the breviary high over his head and slammed it down onto the table; the violent noise made me jump in my chair. ‘You’re still just a boy, and you think that death has nothing to do with you, you think it’s something for others to worry about. You’re a fool, this is war, and they’re out for blood, Italian blood to avenge German blood. It’s a pretty simple matter, it’s not hard to figure out. You’re not immortal, my boy!’
I found the priest’s sudden presumption offensive. But I also realized immediately that he was right. I wasn’t afraid of death because I couldn’t sense it coming, I had a whole life ahead of me, I had no time to die, I had too many other things to do.
That’s why I’d been indifferent to the words of my grandparents. I believed that death wasn’t meant for me. I’d seen it, I’d caught a whiff of its scent in that cursed church, I’d seen how it drops down unexpectedly onto men shattered into bits by cannons, I still had the death rattles of the wounded in my ears, I’d seen those empty men, the ones whose souls had fled far away, who stood there mindlessly staring at the canteen. I knew what war was, and I knew fear from having experienced it myself, with Renato and with Giulia, and I’d seen those boys, who weren’t much older than me, hanged by the neck until they were dead. Still, I didn’t believe in death. I looked at the breviary that the priest’s fingers were gripping and twisting. His lips were pressed tight, his face was hard under his bald head shining with sweat.
‘How am I supposed to escape? The river is swollen and then…there’s a man with a bayonet out there who follows me everywhere I go.’
The sacristy door creaked behind me.
‘Signorina Candiani!’ The priest was surprised. Giulia sat down beside me.
‘Now I understand…Paolo, you don’t want to disappear… you want to be with her. So it’s the devil who has made you blind and deaf!’
Giulia brushed my cheek with the back of her hand.
Don Lorenzo got to his feet and levelled his forefinger at my face: ‘You foolish refugee from a penitentiary, you need to stop thinking with your groin, your brain is up…’ – and here he leant forward to touch my forehead with his sweaty finger – ‘here. Not down there.’ His finger, propelled by the length of his arm, pointed at the place he meant.
I stood up, but Giulia placed both hands on the table, her fingers spread like duck feet, and looked me up and down:
‘The priest is right, you need to run away, and fast, the clock is ticking!’
Don Lorenzo turned to look at the blank wall. ‘God Almighty be praised,’ he said. He touched the little crucifix hanging there. He ran his fingers through his hair and then started pacing from one end of the sacristy to the other, eyes fixed on the floor. This was his sacristy. An inland sea, whose shores, inlets, and grottoes he knew intimately. He skirted sharp corners and objects without looking. ‘Yes, the clock is ticking…’ and he went on walking, brushing past the armoire, the credenza, the tripod that held the holy water, his head bowed, his hands gripping his breviary. ‘Perhaps the baron…is only waiting for Major Manca to give in and talk.’ His voice betrayed his anguish. He stopped, stuffed the breviary into a pocket of his tunic and placed his fists akimbo on his hips, as his gaze grew flinty: ‘Paolo…if they question you, remember to say nothing. They’ll think you’re doing it out of pride, out of patriotic loyalty, but if you try to lie they’ll trip you up, make you contradict yourself.’
He pulled open the drawer under the table and extracted an envelope that he tossed in front of me, grim-faced. ‘This is for you, a letter. It’s sealed. Carry it with you in your jacket wherever you go, from now on. This was an idea of your aunt’s: it says that you are serving your novitiate in this parish…Even if there’s a war going on, we’re still the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church…and Austria respects us! If they catch you while you’re trying to escape and find it on you, it could save your life, they won’t shoot a novice, or at least, they’ll take him to his parish priest…first.’ He suddenly swung around towards the door, as if he’d sensed a threat. He pulled a foot-long knife out of the drawer. The blade glittered in his hand, then next to his face, over his shoulder. He let it fly.
A thump. There was a rat, twisting and writhing, pinned to the foot of the door. Giulia and I exchanged a glance, speechless, horrified.
‘I got you, you bastard!’ The priest cackled and, under his breath, added: ‘Not all bastards come from Vienna.’
That corpulent priest was as quick and agile as a street thug. A smile stretched from ear to ear and his enemy, whether that be Satan or the Austrians, was gone: in that rat, run through and through, its paws stretched wide in the sign of the cross, the priest saw not a creature from the sewers, but a delicacy to be savoured at his blessed leisure.