18
MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE
Six Panzer tanks engulfed the square, gun turrets facing the massive two-story red-stone structure. Fifty soldiers were lined along the perimeter, running thin lines of cable from the street to the brick walls and lodging them in place with plastic explosives. Von Klaus stood in the opening of his tank, looking up to the sky, his cap removed, sun washing rays of warmth on his clear face. “If nothing else, I’ll miss this Italian weather,” he said to Kunnalt, across from him in the next tank.
“Nonetheless, sir, it will be good to get back home,” Kunnalt said. “We’ve been in the field for so long, I forget what it’s like not to wake up on hard ground.”
“The bed will be warm, even if the temperature outside isn’t,” Von Klaus said with a smile. “It’ll happen soon enough. Once we’re finished with the destruction of this city we can return home, to be present at the destruction of our own.”
Kunnalt lowered his gaze for several seconds, his mind flashing briefly on images of friends and family all soon to face the brutal intrusion of a war they had for so long managed to keep a safe distance away. Kunnalt had witnessed the ravages of daily battle for the last several years. As a military man, he was prepared, both mentally and physically, to endure the hardships and cope with the death and ruin that a war always leaves in its wake. But those bodies belonged to strangers and the soil they fell on was always foreign. Soon, the faces of the dead would be familiar and the land left in flames would be his own. Kunnalt knew the limits of his makeup. He was a hard soldier, but a soft man and the very thought of such moments left him shaken.
“Once we’re finished here,” Von Klaus said, snapping the younger soldier back to the present, “I want the main units to work their way toward the center of the city.”
“There’s nothing left there, sir, but a few empty homes and some churches,” Kunnalt said.
“Which mean nothing to us,” Von Klaus said. “But they mean a great deal to these waywards killing our soldiers. Those are their homes and their churches, in the center that is the very core of their city. We may not be here long enough to crush their spirit, but we must do all we can to break their hearts.”
“Is that our goal, sir?” Kunnalt asked.
“We weren’t meant to leave here draped in glory,” Von Klaus said. “Blood and dust will be our medals.”
A long line of street boys stood along the edges of the museum roof, staring down at the soldiers closing in. Their hands were wrapped in cloth and there were huge pots of boiling water resting by their feet. “Wait until they get to the steps,” one of the boys shouted down the line. “Then lift the pots and drop the water over the side.”
A dozen soldiers marched toward the stone steps that led up to the ornate double doors, three of them lugging fuel packs and flame throwers. Above them, the boys struggled with the cumbersome pots, lifting them up to the edge, hot water splashing on their chests and arms. Behind them, two of the younger street boys checked on the pots resting above the smoldering fires in the center of the roof. “Try and hang on a few more seconds,” the lead boy said, the bulk of his pot teetering on the edge, his eyes focused on the Nazis moving up the steps. “They’re just about where we need them.”
“I can’t hold it up any longer,” another boy moaned. “It’s starting to burn through the cloth on my hands.”
“Then let’s give them a shower,” the lead boy ordered. “Keep your feet planted. We only want the water to go over. Not any of us.”
The boiling water cascaded down in streams, landing in the center of the walkway, just inches beyond the steps, soaking and scalding the soldiers caught in its wake. The boys turned away from the edge, running toward the other side of the roof where a small row of thick ropes lay curled in a corner, one end tied around the base of the bell tower. The boys unfurled the ropes and jumped off the side of the museum, leaving behind the pots and the smoking fires.
Von Klaus glared up at the rooftop and then turned to look down at his soldiers as they scattered away from the museum entrance. “There are many things from which a soldier should cower, Kunnalt,” he said, in a low tone ripe with anger. “Water is not one of them.”
Three of the soldiers bent on one knee and aimed their machine guns at the rooftop, their bullets chipping the curved stone. Three others ran back up the stairs, heading for the closed front door that led into the wide marble entryway. Another small unit followed, urged on by the frantic waves of both Kunnalt and Von Klaus. The lead soldier stopped in front of the door and riddled the ancient iron design with bullets. He then reached out for the silver-encrusted handle and yanked it open.
The explosion sent the door flying out toward the steps, a large unguided iron missile, landing across the upper bodies of three soldiers. Four others lay dead, spread out across the smoke-filled entrance. Von Klaus pounded at the side of his tank with a closed fist, more frustrated than angry at the successful street tactics of the boys. “They must all be found, Kunnalt,” he said, his military demeanor broken by the site of the dead soldiers spread out before him. “This cannot be allowed to continue.”
Claudio and Angela each wrapped a hand around the thin stem of the pine tree, hidden from view by both height and the sharp, thick-hanging leaves around them. Their free hands held a machine gun, pointed down toward the Nazi soldiers and tanks below.
“I’m so afraid of heights,” Claudio said, his face squeezed against the side of the tree. “I can’t even remember how I climbed up here.”
“Getting up was the hard part,” Angela said, holding on to her side with just the fingers of her right hand, checking the activity below. “Getting down will be easy.”
“How
do
we get down?” Claudio asked. “I didn’t even think about that part.”
“We either jump or get shot down,” Angela said.
Claudio closed his eyes and rested his head against the side of the tree. “We’ll never survive the fall,” he said in a low voice.
Angela looked across the wide piazza, at the other street boys hiding in the cover of the dozen pine trees that lined the museum. She turned back to Claudio and gently tapped the side of his hand. “Get ready,” she said. “It’s almost time.”
The young street boy took a deep breath and cocked his German-manufactured machine gun. “How far away can we aim?” he asked.
“I’ve never used one of these before,” she said, holding up her machine gun. “My guess is that it doesn’t go as far as a rifle. I would target those closest. There are enough of us in the trees to deal with all the soldiers in the square.”
“You don’t seem as nervous as I am,” Claudio said. “And you’re a girl. I’m sorry you got stuck with someone who gets scared so easy.”
“You’re who I want to be with,” Angela said, giving the younger boy a smile. “No one else. In Forcella, it was always the ones who talked tough that never really gave you the good fight and shivered when real trouble started. The scared ones were always the ones with the most courage.”
“Then, you’re lucky,” Claudio said, returning the smile. “Because there’s no one out here as scared as I am.”
The small garden cemetery was across the piazza from the museum, pine trees giving shade to six rows of headstones, many of whose markings had faded along with the years. A dozen soldiers were marching along the path, heading toward the chaos in the main square, their manner rigid, their machine guns off their shoulders, gazing up at the rooftops for shadows that were no longer there. As they walked past the locked gate of the cemetery, with a short iron fence lined with small bushes and sunflowers, two of the soldiers turned their heads and looked across at the headstones, many of them tilted back toward the sky. They also noticed the short row of freshly dug graves, spare of any markings, dirt piled about six inches high, and stepped closer.
As they approached the gate, the dirt moved and then parted as Vincenzo, Maldini, Pepe and Nunzia jumped out from under the graves, rifles and machine guns in their hands. They aimed and fired at the surprised Nazi unit, caught off guard and with their weapons at their sides. The four separated and kept up their fire, using the surrounding trees and gravestones as cover. Maldini was next to Vincenzo, spread out on the brown dirt, his head against a stone marker. He fired off a string of bullets and watched as the boy pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it over his shoulder toward the unit. They were covered in dirt, dark patches clinging to their hair and necks. “What book did you get this idea from?” Maldini asked, smiling as he dodged a flurry of bullets.
“
Dracula
,” Vincenzo said, returning the fire and the smile. “It’s one of my favorites.”
Pepe fired a round from his rifle and then stepped back toward the trees, staring out at the square in front of the museum, now a raging firestorm between the street boys and the Nazis. Tanks sent shells hurtling in all directions, soldiers shot up into the trees and the adjoining hills. Flame throwers torched the walls of the buildings in the area, leaving behind scorched rock and fallen bodies. The piazza was a cauldron of fire and debris, the screams of the wounded and dying filling the air along with the smoke and flames. Pepe rested his head against the back of a pine tree and closed his eyes, shuddering from the sight of his first full battle.
Nunzia crawled up alongside him, one hand on her rifle, the other reaching out for the frightened boy. Pepe opened his eyes and looked over at her, warmed by her touch. “I can’t watch it anymore,” he said.
“None of us can, Pepe,” she said, her eyes etched with a sadness that ventured beyond her years. “None of us were meant to see such sights. But it’s here now and we can’t hide from it.”
“I used to come here all the time,” Pepe said, flinching from a loud explosion off to his left. “With my teachers and the other kids from school. We’d eat our lunch by the fountain and then spend the afternoon in the museum. The rooms were dark and cool. They were filled with what a boy would want to see. Now I’ll never be able to come here again.”
“You’ll be back, Pepe,” Nunzia said, her voice strong, her eyes seeing only the boy, ignoring the smoke and the bullets aimed her way. “And it’ll be a place of peace once again. For you and your friends.”
“Why are they doing this to us?” Pepe asked, his words weighted down. “Why do they hate us so much?”
“Some people hate without reason.” Nunzia glanced up as a quartet of soldiers ran past the cemetery. “Which then gives us all the reasons we need to fight back.”
“I’m sorry,” Pepe said in a sad, little boy’s voice. “I try to be more like Vincenzo and Franco, but it’s so hard. They have so much more courage.”
“You have a machine gun in your hands and you’re fighting Nazis. I don’t know how much braver a boy could be.”
Pepe turned his head, inched away from the tree and looked out at the square surrounding the museum. Panzer tanks fired heavy shells in all directions, sending parts of buildings toward the morning sky. Grenades flew through the air like windblown leaves, leaving behind a destructive trail of flame, waste and casualties. Bodies lined the piazza, boys in tattered clothes resting next to soldiers in full battle gear. He took a deep breath and turned back to Nunzia and then, lurking over the curve of the graves and the floating lines of smoke, he saw the shadow of the Nazi soldier.
Pepe kept his eyes on Nunzia, fear taking a huge step back to danger, and gripped the arms of the machine gun he held in his hands. The shadow drew closer. Pepe glanced at the end of the cemetery and saw the front half of a black boot and the tilted barrel of a rifle heading their way.
Nunzia saw the soldier’s image cross past Pepe’s legs. She looked up at the boy and gave him a firm nod. She whirled on the ground, turned from her chest to her back and fired. Pepe jumped to his feet and pumped machine-gun shells into the center of the shadow. The shots drowned out the soldier’s low screams and moans. He fell to the ground face forward, his right arm embracing an old headstone, his legs folded at an angle. Nunzia looked up at Pepe, the smoking gun still coiled in his hands, the boy’s inner fears intermingling with a determined resolve. She got to her feet, walked over to the soldier and stripped him of rifle and ammo belt. Pepe stood behind her, his tender eyes following her every move. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Nunzia smiled at Pepe and placed an arm around his shoulders. “I’ve never felt safer,” she said.
Dante and Gaspare were pinned in, their backs to the museum wall, three Nazi rifles aimed at their chest. The middle soldier, three stripes running down the sides of his uniform arm, signaled them to drop their weapons. He fired a bullet above their heads to serve as fair warning. “If we drop our weapons,” Dante said, “they will kill us.”
“They’ll kill us no matter what we do,” Gaspare said. “Look around. I don’t see any prisoners, only bodies.”
“We can’t take three of them,” Dante said, gripping the hunting rifle in his hand, as the soldiers moved in closer.
“We’re lucky if we can take one of them. But if you shoot at anyone, make it the one in the center. He seems the most eager to kill us.”
“We could run,” Dante said, eyeing the alley to his right. “The way we are now, it’s just target practice for them.”
“They’re too close to run away from. But they’re getting close enough for us to run at.”
“And then what?”
“They won’t be expecting us to rush them,” Gaspare said. “And if we can just get one or two on the ground, we might be able to get out of this alive.”
“Are you sure that’s what we should do?” Dante asked.
“It’s all I can think of,” Gaspare said.
Dante looked over at Gaspare and nodded. He tossed his rifle to the ground by his feet and raised his hands. Gaspare swallowed hard and did the same. Both boys stepped away from the wall, moving forward on wobbly legs. The Nazis lowered their rifles and closed in on them, eyeing them cautiously, one of them smiling, exposing a low line of crooked teeth. “You two are smarter than the others were,” the soldier said to them in choppy Italian, arching his head toward the piazza behind him. “You know that you’re too young to die.”