Wolf on the Mountain (6 page)

The doctor points to the west coast, south of Rome: ‘Monte Petrella, five thousand feet.’ His finger moves north-east: ‘Cassino. Behind it Monte Cairo, five thousand five hundred.’ The finger continues moving north east, lingering on even higher mountains, until it reaches the Sangro valley, halfway across the country. ‘A curiosity, the Sangro valley. It cuts an arc across the Apennina before flowing into the Adriatic. Behind it are the highest mountains in Italy, barring the Alps: the Grande mountains, the Maiella, both with many peaks over seven thousand feet. And all the way from Cassino until you are ten miles from the Adriatic sea there is not one pass to the north that is lower than three thousand feet. Everything above that height will be covered with snow until the spring. And if your army breaches the defences in those ten miles by the sea, look what is behind them. The Gran Sasso, the highest, widest massif in the entire Apennina. There is only one way to attack northwards from that line - up the Liri and Sacco valleys, towards Rome. And look what commands the entrance to those valleys.’ His finger jabs back onto Cassino. ‘So it’s not only the cornerstone of the line. It’s the key to Rome. The Germans will defend it to the last man, and all the Allies can do is wait until the spring. Not just the thaw of the snow on the mountains. The rivers will be flooding for weeks as the snow melts. So they’ll have to wait for the floodwaters to go down as well.’

‘Good God, I’m not staying in this house for the next six months! You’ve got to let me try to get through again, before the weather gets any worse.’

‘Perhaps, but it’s up to you to convince us that it’s safe to let you go, that you can speak enough Italian, behave enough like one to fool any Germans who stop you. For a start you can stop referring to God in your oaths. No Italian ever does it. It’s blasphemy, even for the communists. Down with the priests, long live Christ, they say.
Porca miseria, porca puttana
, they’re your oaths now.’

‘We have an expression: pigs might fly.’

The doctor grimaces, pushes the map back across the table, leans back and lights yet another cigarette, coughs yet again. ‘Now I want you to tell me all about Robert Johnson. A strange request after all I’ve said, particularly since you know nothing about me or the family you’re staying with, but we need to change the story of your life to an Italian one. A cover story the Americans call it, I think?’

The doctor probes and the captain answers. He tells of his parents, their home, his days at school, his office job in London, how he’d volunteered for the army as soon as war was declared, how he’d been picked as an officer, his war in the African desert, his capture just before the fall of Tobruk, what life was like in the prison camp. ‘So how did you pass your time there, then, if you were too busy to attend those Italian classes?’

‘The art club. I’ve always found doing anything with my hands easy - drawing, carpentry, that kind of thing - and I used to help the escape committee by forging identity cards and other papers.’

‘That’s good. It gives you a trade. Roberto DiGiovanni will be a carpenter. Perhaps from the Tyrol, because his skin is so much fairer than is normal in the south. A migrant worker looking to do his trade where there is bomb damage. Yes, a good story.’

By now the flask is empty. The doctor is tempted to test the captain’s Italian skills now that the wine has loosened his inhibition, but thinks better of it. There is now a greater trust between them and it is better to leave him in high spirits. ‘Until we see each other again, Roberto’ he says, standing to drain his glass and stuffing his packet of cigarettes into his jacket pocket, ‘and perhaps at some stage we might be able to use the skills of our prison camp forger.’

roberto is very funny

every time he gets something wrong he uses those naughty words babbo uses when he is angry

and he copies babbo at everything

when we eat hes watching babbo all the time and keeps looking down at his hands to see if hes using his knife and spoon the same way

his talking is getting better but he can still only do now words

luigi keeps telling him he must also do yesterday words and tomorrow words

he keeps showing him lists in his schoolbook and makes him say lots of doing words in a row

and then roberto gets angry again

he still walks in a funny way

his shoulders are always back and his arms swing all over the place

when he does it I pretend to be him and march around the room like the militia pretending to blow a trumpet and then he gets angry again

i feel very sorry for him

his mamma and babbo dont know where he is

they dont even know if hes alive

he says he wants to go home to them but the germans will stop him if they dont think hes from round here

auntie came round today and was very angry when she heard roberto is here

she says it is dangerous to have him here and we must tell him to go away

i hope he doesnt go away

I know his mamma and babbo are missing him but he is such fun and I will miss him

–

‘Elvira says it’s hard to believe he’s an officer, doctor. Apart from his temper. He’s listless, just mopes around the place. She’s even caught him talking to the cat. He won’t concentrate on his verbs. He’s just like a sulking schoolboy.’

‘He’s depressed, Carlo, it’s as simple as that. My medical opinion. He might even have lost hope. Remember he’s a prisoner again, this time only two or three days away from rejoining his own army. And last time he was a prisoner he was with other Englishmen, talking his own language, doing English things. Even on the walk south he had the other English captain as his friend, almost his brother, and now he’s lost him too.’

‘At least he’s safe with us, doctor, as long as he stays hidden.’

‘Does he feel it? He still doesn’t understand enough to be reassured by you. Imagine Enrico on the run in Russia, away from all his friends, told he must forget he’s Italian, speak Russian, eat like one, behave like one. Can you imagine what it’s like?’

‘We’ve got to let him go, doctor. It’ll give him hope again. And even if he fails he’ll know we wanted what was best for him. And if he comes back to us he’ll try harder so it’s better next time.’

‘It’s too dangerous for you.’

‘Isn’t it more dangerous having a frustrated man in your house?’

‘Maybe you’re right. Apart from anything else he’s losing his stamina, his ability to stand the cold. But I can’t see him getting through the lines at the moment. The Germans are well dug in on all the ridges now and the snow is deep. He will be back, and he’ll find you again, just like last time. Can you imagine it? He’d only been to your house once before, reaching it and leaving it in darkness, yet without a guide he found his way from the camp straight to your front door without bringing the Germans down on you. Can you imagine where we’d be now if we’d had an officer like that in charge of the camp?’

Giulio Camarro set out two hours before dawn, aiming to be out of the main valley before daybreak. It was not unusual for workers to be out that early, even in the fallow winter. The farmers’ fields were so far apart and small that early morning starts were normal. Dogs barked as he climbed through the peasant cottages so that he could strike down the valley at height amongst the trees. He strode purposefully, clenching his fists to keep his fingertips warm, his breath frosting the air. After the heavy rain of recent days the sky had brightened late yesterday afternoon. The gloom was gone. He was relishing the fresh air, the space. It was a morning for hope, to feel that he was once more in control of his destiny.

As the sky pinkened to the east he had already turned into the side valley heading up to the pass to the south, the pass he must be over by nightfall. Ten or so miles as the crow flies, on foot twenty five, maybe thirty, in the day. He would have to keep moving but it was not a daunting distance, even when hungry. The road, a patchwork of stones and mud, followed the contours, forever turning back on itself, but it was quicker to stay on it. If he could keep to it he would be back on lower ground by sunset. Today, in the lea of the mountain ridge to the east, there was no wind to blow away the sounds of approaching vehicles. When it passed through fields the road had stone walls to the side and for the rest of the time it was in woods, often with a steep downward slope to where the river had cut into the bottom of the valley. There would always be somewhere to hide when a vehicle was coming, at least until he reached the pass. He would have to leave the road when it passed through the villages but they were all huddled on rocky spurs, so he could always slip down to the riverbank in order to pass them by.

The rising sun caught the snow on the peaks to the west turning them pink, then gold and yellow. As it rose the colours passed down the slopes and the crests became a blinding white against a deep crystal blue. The prospect of warmth slipped slowly down the mountain sides. Yes, it was a day on which he could make distance if he stayed alert.

Staying alert was going to be the difficulty while he was practising his new identity. For days he had been rehearsing the answers in Italian to every question that could be put to Roberto DiGiovanni, the Tyrolese carpenter. His biography had been mapped by Luigi, learned by him, all in advance of the identity card the doctor was to produce. But last night, apologising that there had been no time and that the break in the weather gave the captain the sudden chance to cross the line on Christmas Eve, the doctor had sent a stolen fascist party membership card as at least something. Giulio Camarro, motor mechanic from L’Aquila. It would be just his luck to turn a corner and find a silent German car with its driver swearing under its bonnet. No Italian mechanic would be unfamiliar with the Mercedes engine. ‘Where’s your identity card?’ ‘Stolen at a railway station. Pig Allies bomb the lines, make the trains late. I fall asleep on the platform. When I wake up my pockets are empty. Perhaps some filthy communist. Or an Allied escaper. They steal everything.’ Not very good, but simple men use simple grammar; and the insults would be consistent with the party card; and the photograph looked like him, or as like him as any Italian’s photograph ever looked, if one ignored the ears.

But no-one asked to see the card that day. It was the same route he and Mike had taken to the line a few weeks before and he knew where to leave the road in order to avoid the villages with their inquisitive eyes. The battle he could hear going on to the south on the other side of the snow-covered ridge between him and the sea, too high for him to cross, meant that the Germans were sparing no troops to patrol this part of the road. It was as if he was the only man in the valley.

At midday, watched by a black and grey hooded crow, he ate one of the signora’s boiled potatoes in a grove of poplars by the river bank, a few yellow leaves still clinging to their topmost branches. Despite the sun he was quickly cold and was on his way again, up the snaking passage between the beech trees, their brown leaves still on their twigs, the last vegetation below the snowfields that covered the mountains. By late afternoon, as the artillery barrages lulled on the coast, he was above the tree-line on the pass, a dusting of snow underfoot. No Germans there either, so he went quickly down the other side to the gorge with the caves. It had been a good day, many miles covered, with shelter in prospect.

–

‘You can’t stay here.’ An old man wrapped in a blanket blocks his entrance to the cave. Behind him a family, his daughter and her barefoot children, huddles for warmth around a damp wood fire, its smoke now settling down from the low roof of the cave. ‘It’s occupied.’

‘I go another.’

‘They’re all occupied.’

The captain brushes his snowflakes away and pulls the old jacket as far across his stomach as he can. Its pinching shoulders so hamper his movements that it is hard to try for warmth when he isn’t walking. He hugs his sides, hunches his shoulders. ‘Possible to sleep one night? Am English officer.’

‘We’ve helped too many like you already. That’s why we’re here.’

The captain looks behind the man through the smarting smoke to the small fire. The woman sees his despair and slips the blanket from her mouth. ‘From where do you come today?’

He dare not name the village. ‘Thirty miles.’

‘Let him in,
Babbo. The poor man is exhausted. Are we not Christians?’

Are we not Christians? How many times had he heard those words in the last few months? He and Mike had never been former enemies on their journey south, soldiers who might have shot at the farmers’ own conscripted sons. Always they had been seen and received as travellers, sons of mothers, fellow Christians in need of shelter and food, fellow victims of governments and their wars. The welcome of these people, hiding in this cave on this cold mountain, is the same.

The woman asks if he is hungry. He looks around at their meagre stores lining the cold damp walls of the cave and says he is not. They sit in silence, the smoke from the fire scouring their eyes. ‘Why are you here?’ the captain asks.

‘It’s a sad story’ the man replies. ‘In September, at the time of the Armistice, there were thousands of English prisoners in camps on the plain below. They scattered into the mountains and the local people looked after them. We sheltered them, we fed them. We used up food we’d need for the winter, but it didn’t matter. The Allies took Naples within days. How could they not? They’d thrown the Germans out of Africa, then Sicily, and now they were not far south of us. Even the shepherds could no longer take their sheep down to the plains of Foggia for the winter, the way they have done for centuries. The lines were that close. How could the Allies not be here within a week or two?

‘But they weren’t. The Germans started round-ups in the valleys. They blew up the houses of the people found sheltering escaped prisoners, and then they started emptying the villages, taking our animals as they went. Taking our animals. For us a sheep is years of milk and cheese and wool, the promise of lambs. For them it’s a day of meat. So we starve as well as freeze. The caves in this valley are full of the people of two villages, the ones who don’t have relatives in other places they can stay with.