Wolf on the Mountain (24 page)

‘It’s too dangerous in the village now. The bombs. The reward. Surely you see that?’

‘But why did the Golvis lie to us? We asked after you, but they said you’d set off for the lines and hadn’t come back. There we were wondering if you’d frozen to death, or been shot, or been blown up in the minefields, when all the time you were alive and still free. Why did they lie? They don’t trust us. And you don’t either.’

‘Babbo thought you’d be here’ Alfonso intervenes. ‘And the Germans reckon there are village men hiding in the mountains.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, for a start there are so many men escaping from the work-gangs. Where did they all go? They’re not in the village.’ He looks up to the rocks again. ‘Then there was that riot at the railway station. The Germans reckon that was organised by the communists. Babbo reckons there’ll be another raid up here before long, a big one.’

‘Will you tell me if you find out?’

‘Of course he will’ Isabella says, still sniffing back her tears. ‘You’re our friend.’

‘Even though Alfonso thinks there are some other people I might tell?’

‘You’re our friend’ her brother repeats.

–

‘What were those fascists doing at the old camp? I had that Giobellini bastard in my sights when you suddenly appeared. What were you doing meeting him? And telling him to meet you up here, of all places? And where’s Luigi?’

‘It’s a good job you didn’t shoot him, Ugo. Weren’t you puzzled by the fact that his sister was with him?’

‘These fascists are treacherous. They’d use any trick to cover up their spying.’

‘He was sent by Elvira Golvi. To tell me that the Germans had taken Luigi a day early.’

‘Porca miseria. They will stop at nothing. But why did she send that swine?’

‘Because she and Carlo are at the mayor’s trying to get Luigi released. And they trust Alfonso.’

‘Trust that fascist and his trollop sister?’

The captain’s patience snaps: ‘Yes. But I’m not going to tell you why, Ugo. I don’t trust you not to blather about it. Isn’t Signora Golvi’s trust enough for you?’

‘I tell you, Roberto, when we kick the Germans out of Sannessuno that family will be one of the first…’ He points a pistolled finger at his cheek and circles it. The captain clenches his fists and makes to rise.

Vincenzo intervenes ‘Wait, Roberto’, rises to his feet and gestures him to follow. He puts his arm around his shoulder as they walk away. ‘Don’t worry about Ugo. If you’d spent that night with the Gestapo you’d feel the same way.’

‘You’ve got to control him Vincenzo. If he’d shot Alfonso we’d have had Germans all over the mountain.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll control him. But we’ll need every man as brave as him as we can find.’

‘And as dangerous? People who are as reckless as that about what they do are as reckless about what they say. Can you imagine what would happen to Alfonso if the fascists found out he’d been up here on Elvira’s behalf?’

‘Why did she send that pair? I still can’t believe she did.’

‘She trusts them.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t explain. Surely you realise there are secrets it’s better not to know?’

‘Roberto, I’m responsible for the safety of my men. You met a known fascist near my camp. You have to tell me.’

The captain realises that he can no longer keep the Giobellinis’ secret. ‘I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell the others.’ Vincenzo says it’s his decision. ‘I hope you make the right one, Vincenzo. I have loyalties too. Answer this question. How do you think the Golvis sheltered me all that time in January and February without the Giobellinis knowing?’ Vincenzo stays silent. ‘Of course they knew. On many of those nights I slept in their house, ate at their table. The balconies between their houses were my escape route whenever the Germans came. Caterina and Isabella nursed me through my illnesses as much as Elvira.’

‘Those fascists?’

The captain sighs with exasperation. ‘Why does everyone have to be either fascist or communist? Can’t you just be anti-communist or anti-fascist? Are all fascists bad, all communists good? That’s the kind of thinking that makes countries a mess, causes wars. Why can’t you think in terms of good people and bad people?’

‘They’re bad people. You weren’t here ten years ago.’

‘They’re good people now. The last few months have put them off fascism for ever. They’ve been helping me as much as anyone.’

‘Because they know the Germans are going to lose.’

‘Maybe it’s because they’re good Christians who now realise they were wrong before.’

‘Don’t be stupid. Do you know some of the things that Natale Giobellini did?’

‘I’ve seen the photographs in his house of those parades.’

‘But not, I’m sure, of some of their victims?’

The captain sighs again. Why in war is everything black and white, your side always right, the other always wrong? A year ago for him the Italians were always wrong, for Vincenzo and his friends the British were just as bad. Why can’t Vincenzo just accept that allegiances change? You go to war for one principle and another gets lost. Then circumstances change and the previous principle gets lost. Dare he remind him of that? He fears the repercussions of saying what he wants to say, then thinks hang it, Vincenzo would shout it at him if the roles were reversed. ‘Vincenzo, two years ago I was captured in the desert by the Germans. At that time they had Italian allies. I was handed over to them. Those allies did not exactly observe the Geneva Convention.’ He pauses. ‘For all I know some of those very same Italian soldiers are in this partisan group.’ He swings his arm back towards the camp. ‘Was Ugo one of them? Or you? Eh? But it doesn’t matter now, because we are on the same side now and together we’ll be risking our lives against the Germans. So people can change. If we can change, the Giobellinis can too. I think they have. And I trust them.’

Vincenzo is equally exasperated. ‘Why should I believe you?’

‘Alfonso knew he was risking his life coming up this mountain today. All the time he was looking over his shoulder to rocks where a sniper could be. He brought some valuable information. The Germans suspect that that food riot was not a spontaneous event. They know that a lot of the work gang labourers have escaped and they’re putting two and two together. Alfonso also warned me that the Germans may be coming up this mountain again with more than a routine patrol. Would he have told me that if he was really still a fascist?’

‘That’s an easy thing to say.’

‘He’s promised to find out when it’s coming, and to warn us if he can.’

‘He won’t. He was only buying a favour coming up here today. Even assuming he wasn’t spying. Don’t trust him, Roberto. And don’t be distracted by that pretty little sister of his.’

–

The captain said no more, walked off on his own. Why had Vincenzo said that about Isabella? Had he spotted something? Or was it something said simply to knock him off balance in their argument?

How had he reacted to seeing Isabella again? He had certainly been pleased to see her after so many weeks on the mountain. She had always been kind to him, had nursed him after that night in the snow and then again after his escape from the German soldiers. But for her German suitor he would never have distrusted her. And he had also been pleased to see Alfonso, Alfonso who had kept him company on so many bored afternoons, had tried to warn him when the carabinieri had raided the Golvis’ house.

It was nice to have their companionship again, to reassure them that he was still alive. Yet companionship other than that of your comrades-in-arms brings its own risks, a distraction from the awareness that keeps you alive, and Isabella had once succeeded in distracting him dangerously.

Then there were his other friends: the Golvis, Vincenzo and the partisans hated the Giobellinis, were scared of what they could do. He had to respect their fears. They were his first loyalty. Oh to be normal again! Life was a battle between wanting to trust people and fearing to trust them.

News had come over the mountains that there were Allied troops in the Liri valley. No-one knew how many, or how far they had reached up the valley, or how they had got there. Indeed no-one knew when they had been seen there. Many different truths had spread by word of mouth, but it was worth trying once more to cross the mountains into the valley. They would still be under snow for a thousand feet or more below the lower cols, but he was used to snow, and there would be a crust on top of it from the re-freezing each night of the shallow thaw of the previous day’s sun. More importantly there was the prospect of a guide, the old shepherd in the valley above the gorge.

He had walked all night, staying off the roads, navigating by the stars, a skill from his time in the desert. He had entered the gorge at dawn, found February’s trickle a raging torrent of the entire valley’s feeble thaw into the funnel through the cliffs. He rested for a couple of hours and then stumbled from slimy boulder to slimy boulder, slipping at times into freezing pools left alone by the torrent, coldly sodden by the spray, deafened by the water’s roar, until at last the valley had opened out and there was sun to steam him dry again. The narrow plains were pooled with lying water, reflecting the stark blue sky and the snow-caps, and he moved up to higher ground amongst the chestnut trees, their twigs still bare even of buds. An old woman, frightened by his sudden appearance at her tiny cottage, gave him bread and cheese, told him there were Germans in the village on the next spur and asked him to be on his way. The sun left the western side of the valley and a cold green mist was swelling up from the flood plains as he reached the spur hiding the old shepherd’s cottage, already salivating at the thought of mutton dripping and chestnut bread.

No smoke from its chimney. He knocked on the door, called out to no reply, pushed the door open to an empty room. He went to look in the shed. No sheep. He circled the hut in a widening spiral, calling out to the shepherd, but the dell was silent in the fading light. He returned to the cottage, built a fire with wood from the shepherd’s dwindled pile and looked for food. No mutton, no fat. All there was to eat was a dry half-loaf tinged with green in the bottom of the storage chest and a ball of smoked ewe’s cheese hanging from a beam behind some sacks, obviously forgotten in the shepherd’s leaving of his home. He ate the bread and some of the cheese, snuggled under the rug of sheepskins on the floor and fell into exhausted sleep.

–

He awakes long after dawn, his legs still aching from his passage up the gorge the day before, the stench of the rug adding to the nausea in his throat from the cheese. He walks outside to the well, hauls up a bucket, crouches down, drinks a handful, tips the rest of the icy water over his head and stands immediately to shake it from his hair like a gundog emerging from a stream. The sun is now above the eastern ridges, burning off the frost from the yellow pastures. The grass is still the colour of straw, deadened by the weight of winter snow which can only have thawed in the past few days, not yet stirred into life by the sun. He tinkers his foot into it, teasing up the lifeless blades, but there is still no new green growth below it; but here and there primroses are appearing, searing the eye with a sudden burst of yellow and green.

So there was still snow here a few days ago. The shepherd cannot have been gone long, then, but why did he leave his rug behind? Perhaps he has taken his sheep down the valley side to feed on the new grass. Perhaps he is still around, still able to leave his sheep for a day and guide him over the ridge to the other side and deliverance. He sits back in the morning sun to scan the valley, look for a sign of where the old man might be. It is a long, bare valley, its poplars and pollarded willows down by the river still bare, clumps of what must be chestnut trees on the slopes still in winter, the grass still dull, the buildings still with a patina of moss which the summer sun will not bleach off for weeks. Broad streaks of snow show the contours which lose their sun before the day heats up. It is a valley nearing the cusp of spring, waiting for it and its promises of fertility, but still huddled in winter, impatient for it to be gone.

He is distracted by a cawing of crows, fighting over carrion, behind an outcrop a hundred feet up the mountain. He sees more birds, grey and black, circling above the rocks, then swooping down as if to say that there is plenty of food for them all. A sheep uncovered by the thaw? His curiosity is aroused and he walks up towards it.

To see a sheep’s carcass attacked by crows is a disturbing sight. The eyes are taken first and then the tongue; then the stomach is hacked open and the entrails dragged out and torn to shreds to be swallowed. To see a man’s boots sticking out from beneath a heaving mass of crows sickens even a man hardened by the sights of battlefields.

He picks up a stone and throws it at the squall.

Birds flutter their wings and return to their feast.

He throws another stone and then another. A few birds heave cawing into flight and wheel away, some towards him.

He stoops, picks up as many stones as a hand and the crook of a forearm can carry and starts running at them throwing stones and shouting, runs out of stones and waves his arms. The last crow does not take off until he is nearly at the body.

No face. The innards torn to shreds. Only the sheepskins on his back and legs, the buckle on his belt identify the corpse of the half-eaten man.

He must bury him straightaway, before the crows can return. He looks around for stones to build a cairn, sees not enough for yards. If he goes to fetch them the murder will return each time he leaves the body for more stones. It seems less appalling to drag the putrid body to the stones, not to leave it unattended again for a second until it is interred.

He takes the man’s arms and drags him on his back across the pasture. Frantically he piles stone after stone onto the corpse until it is covered from view, then adds more and more until in his worst imagining he can see no inventive beaks reaching down into the cairn.

At last he is finished and sags to the ground, as spent as a man who has been running for his own life. He looks at the pile of stones. Such a gentle man, a man who had not deserved the life he’d had, losing his family and land to the machinations of greedy men, his last livelihood to the hunger of the occupying army, dying alone an outcast, his body lost in the winter snow until the thaw revealed it and the crows opened him up.