Authors: Andrea Molesini
The pain climbed up from the back of my neck to my forehead and my temples. I was lying flat on my back. I moved my hands. Straw. I half-opened my eyes. There were men standing and sitting just a few paces away from me. I couldn’t hear any sounds. I’d gone deaf, completely deaf. I laboriously lifted one hand to the nape of my neck. It hurt. I was wet. I could feel water in my shoes. I was cold, I was trembling. I could feel the tremor in my chest, on my lips, in my elbows, in my knees. And I slipped into a state of lassitude that shut my eyes.
A sharp jerk brought me awake, and I realized that there was a very heavy blanket on me. To the right and left I saw two rows of seated soldiers, four on one side, five on the other. Someone spoke to me, but it was in German and I didn’t understand. A second thump confirmed that I was riding in a lorry. The sun was shining. I saw it because the grey canvas was raised on both sides. I was breathing fresh air. I hurt all over.
The soldiers stood, silent. Every so often one of them would look at me. I lifted my left hand to my belt: the knife was no longer there, and deep inside I blessed the girl who had hidden my revolver from me.
The lorry was moving slowly, but it kept bouncing and jerking and every jerk was a stab of pain to my chest and back. I shut my eyes. They’d certainly searched me, someone must have read and deciphered Don Lorenzo’s letter, that is unless the water…I hadn’t even read it, because I wanted to make sure the seal remained intact, but the curate’s words surfaced in my mind: ‘If they catch you, this could save your life.’ Perhaps they were taking me back to Refrontolo. That’s good, at least I wouldn’t die among strangers.
Thirty-Nine
B
Y THE TIME
I
WALKED INTO THE BARON’S OFFICE
, I
HAD
regained my strength. My head, chest, and back no longer hurt. They’d locked me up in a little room over the inn for a couple of hours, across from the Villa, and no one had come to visit me. I had eaten two mess tins full of boiled potatoes and a round-eyed corporal with reddish whiskers who reminded me of an owl had offered me ‘a drop of dark-red wine’. During the months of occupation, he’d learnt the language of the peasants, and he spoke it fluently, practically without accent; he was in the same line of work, and he told me about his home near Salzburg; he also said that the peasant girls along the Soligo were more beautiful than so many Madonnas, and a little less holy, luckily for him.
The corporal led the way into that office wallpapered with maps of the Veneto region, of Trentino and Friuli, where the old boundaries were outlined in pink and the rivers were a bright blue; on the desk, which looked as if it had just been neatened up and had a vague scent of wax, a portrait of the emperor with his young son sitting in his lap enjoyed pride of place. The non-commissioned officer had me sit down in front of the baron’s desk, then he stepped back a pace and stood at ease. And so we found ourselves contemplating together, in the room’s dusty half-light, the sepia-tinted photograph of Karl I,
over which the evening light, filtering through the dirty glass, extended a grey film.
The baron entered the room like a mountain stream in spate. He sat down without glancing at me. The collar of his jacket was unbuttoned. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and signed a sheet of laid paper densely covered with an angular handwriting. Only then did he raise his head and look at me. He pushed his shoulders against the backrest and caressed the armrests. He dismissed the corporal with a wave of the hand.
‘So we’re supposed to believe you’re a novice? Whose idea was that letter? Your grandmother’s or Madame Maria’s? That doesn’t matter…I’ll lock you up with your grandfather and Major Manca, I have no choice in the matter.’ He swivelled the chair so that his back was turned to me for a few seconds as he looked at his emperor, and he added: ‘The corpse of a young peasant woman was found…in a sheepfold by the river Piave, not far from where you were arrested…Would you happen to know anything about it? She had a revolver hidden between her legs…two of the bullets in the cylinder had been fired, one of which, in all likelihood, had killed a private…You see, Signor Paolo…there aren’t many revolvers of that kind, it’s Spanish, and I know that the Italian army imported quite a few…but I’d imagine you know nothing about it…’ There was a half-smile playing about the baron’s lips. ‘Ever since you became a novice, weapons are no longer of any interest to you, I believe…That peasant girl was lying dead less than three hundred metres from the point where you climbed down into the river…Her throat was cut with a knife blade, and you had a knife on your person when they caught you…An unusual hilt.’
I said nothing.
‘You can smoke…I have some tobacco…’
‘I’m afraid I lost my pipe in the river.’
The major opened the desk drawer and pulled out a small burlap bag tied up with a hemp cord. He loosened the knot with studied slowness. He thrust in his hand and pulled out a balled-up handkerchief, then a leather pouch and my Peterson pipe. He leant against the backrest and looked up at the ceiling. ‘This is what they found in your pockets, Signor Spada.’
My fingers were trembling, I felt my face turn red, and my head was spinning a little. I cleared my throat and doing my best to speak in a normal voice, I said: ‘Yes…I’d be glad to have a smoke…but the tobacco…must be drenched.’
‘Try some of mine…I almost never smoke…Only when I feel too much alone.’ And the baron pulled a tin box with a yellow label out of the drawer: ‘It’s Dutch tobacco, blond and dry.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I hope the water didn’t ruin the pipe.’
‘It’s a handsome pipe, I’d admired it already…before… your escape…Is it a gift from a woman? Perhaps the Candiani woman, your friend?’
‘No. I got it from…Grandpa.’
‘Ah, your grandfather…a singular man.’
I filled the Peterson with the baron’s tobacco, and my hands were no longer shaking, but it was as if my head were stuffed with cotton balls. I lit it, hoping that it would help calm my nerves, but my hands started shaking all on their own. I blew out the smoke in a puff meant to draw a curtain between me and the officer.
‘Well, what do you say, did the Piave ruin it?’
‘No, it draws wonderfully well.’
Von Feilitzsch looked at me with a mocking smile: ‘Wonderfully well? Yes, I believe you…’
Suddenly it dawned on me: I hadn’t had the pipe in my
pocket, I’d left it in the rucksack, and I’d left the rucksack in the sheepfold, near the woman with the slit throat.
‘I have nothing to say to you, Major,’ and I stuck the lit pipe into my pocket, snapping the lid shut with the heel of my hand.
Two sharp raps at the door. The corporal stuck his head in: ‘Fräulein Spada.’
‘Paolo! God be praised!’
The baron stood up.
‘It’s all right, I’m fine,’ I said, walking towards my aunt. As she embraced me, I felt myself being swept away by a sense of euphoria, as if a weight had just lifted.
‘Have a seat, please, Madame.’
The corporal closed the door behind him on his way out.
My aunt pushed her chair against mine and gave me a long, searching look. She’d overdone it a bit with her eau de Cologne. Anguish and tenderness were battling in her gaze. On the Sangallo lace that lined the collar of her white blouse was the enamel pin with the soaring swallow and the blue sky: she was convinced that the motto in the oval –
Je reviendrai
– brought her good luck.
‘Even far from here, your boy got himself noticed.’
‘He ran away…who wouldn’t have done the same thing, Baron? And you won’t even let me see Uncle Guglielmo…how is he? Donna Nancy is worried to death.’
‘He’s all right, I gave orders to allow your cook to make food for the prisoners…including Signor Paolo…now.’
Aunt Maria caressed her temple, and her fingers lingered over a hint of a wrinkle that marked her forehead.
‘Madame, I know why you’ve come here…uninvited.’
‘I have to talk to you.’
‘After the time we spent together…Our walks, the horses…’ The baron held out his right hand until it almost brushed her left hand, lying white upon the black desktop. ‘Yes…our horses…but here we all have to make a special effort,’ and he withdrew his hand while hers slipped down onto her knees. ‘I…I, Madame…’ the baron’s face twisted slightly, and suddenly he seemed to have aged ten years, ‘I saw my men come up in that river, bob to the surface out of that water, like your potato gnocchi in the pot, do you understand me, Madame? Gnocchi in boiling water. By the dozens, by the hundreds, the men I commanded came up, bobbing to the surface like gnocchi, my soldiers…and General Bolzano, my general, lost his mind. I watched him lose his mind, he wound up among the Italians, killed with his own dagger, and so I led the soldiers back myself. The retreat over the river…the pontoons torn to piece by the mortar fire, and the planes with their machine guns strafing us over and over.’ With his right hand he covered his mouth. Then his whole face. ‘I saw my boys die, platoon by platoon, as they were boarding their boats, as they ran over the footbridges from one islet to another, and the screams…the cannons were tearing everything to pieces, everything, bridges, pontoons, soldiers… and the heavy machine guns…those bodies in the stream…’ – he looked at me for an instant, lifting his face from his hands – ‘young men like you…all that blood…bobbing to the surface like gnocchi.’
Then her eyes sought his. And his eyes saw hers, those dark green eyes, underscored by black crescents.
‘Madame, listen…Soldiers were murdered in occupied territory. The law of war demands that I have Major Manca executed by firing squad, along with his accomplices, your uncle and your nephew. That’s without adding that, during his escape, the young
man…further aggravated his…’ Our gazes met for a moment. ‘I am responsible for the lives of the soldiers I command. There’s the laws of war…and that serving girl, whatever her name is’ – and he waved his right hand as if shooing away a fly – ‘told us the whole story, in front of my officers. That girl hates you, she wants to see you suffer, all of you. Major Manca claims that he did it but…I found the Englishman in your attic, with Signor Guglielmo and Signor Paolo.’
‘Baron, listen…Rudolf…listen to me, I beg you.’ Leaning slightly forward, my aunt placed her fingertips on the edge of the desk. ‘Renato’s life for the lives of your soldiers…why can’t that be enough? It was him’ – and she swallowed a gob of spit – ‘not Uncle Guglielmo who killed those men, and Paolo here… he wouldn’t even know a revolver if he saw one…’
The officer cocked an eyebrow.
My aunt stiffened her back and placed both hands on her knees. She was trembling.
The baron stood up and put both hands behind his back. Then, with three taut paces he rounded the desk and came even with my chair. Leaning forward stiffly, he placed both fists on the black desktop and lifted his eyes to the portrait of his emperor. The sepia was faded, Karl had both arms around his little archduke who was staring out wide-eyed at the world and holding his right hand pressed against his father’s knee while his left hand vanished into the large hand that, on the ring finger, bore the dynastic seal. The young emperor wore the uniform of a Hungarian general and at the centre of his chest, bedecked with medals, was the Prussian Iron Cross. His gaze wasn’t especially imperial, it was just the gaze of a concerned father looking at his little boy. There was no joy in the monarch’s features: the rotund face, the jug ears, the fleshy, unsmiling lips. The baron lifted
his fists from the desk and opened both hands, palms upward, pointing to the photograph. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘do you think that this man looks like a sadist, or particularly bloodthirsty?’
‘No, he has the face of a good man.’ Donna Maria stood up and looked her adversary up and down. ‘A sad man…and gentle.’
‘I think he’s a good man, but the soldiers still love Franz Joseph, even if he uncorked this bloodbath’ – and he bowed his head for a moment – ‘they don’t feel protected under Karl. You see, Madame,’ and the baron resumed his seat behind the desk, while my aunt remained standing, ‘I believe that subjects are like children, and soldiers more so than anyone else. They want a firm hand on the reins, a hand that never falters, they can never forgive that…and they’re right, because dithering and indecision, in wartime, cost lives, and pity can seem…and believe me, often is…like the doctor’s pity…what is it you say in Italian… the doctor’s pity lets the wound become infected…right? If the prince gives the impression that he doesn’t know what’s best for his soldiers, for his realm, then the magic of the royal throne flickers out and everything collapses. Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Madame Maria?’
His eyes sought hers. And her eyes responded, green, absolute.
‘Rudolf, I beg you’ – her voice was breaking with emotion, as I did my best not to breathe – ‘at least spare this boy…If your emperor were here, he wouldn’t deny this pardon.’
The baron coughed into his hand. He stood up, but immediately let himself fall back onto his chair. With nervous fingers, he pushed aside the sheet of paper that I’d seen him sign and, after clearing his throat, he said in a firm voice but without looking up: ‘I can’t.’
‘Baron’ – my aunt’s voice had darkened and roughened – ‘I’m not indifferent to you, there is a’ – she looked down and shot me
a glance out of the corner of her eye – ‘a certain feeling…that has grown between us, in these terrible, endless months. But now I’m imploring you for a favour, imploring you! You can’t deny me this. You mustn’t, there must still be some way to…’
The major looked her in the eyes: ‘There isn’t.’
I was tempted to say something.
‘He could escape,’ said my aunt, ‘and they could start looking for him the morning after he runs away…That would give him a few hours’ head start. Austria would still have her revenge, Renato is a soldier; my…uncle is a Spada, you’d have their lives to set an example!’
‘There’s already been an escape, and it cost more blood. Innocent blood.’
‘Rudolf, I beg you, I’m on my’ – my aunt looked at me, and put her hand on mine, without sitting down, and then looked the baron straight in the eye – ‘I’m down on my knees.’