Between Enemies (25 page)

The sun was hot, the air was muggy, and the grass was still drenched. There was mud everywhere. The western sky was dark with smoke. Every ten or twenty minutes, the artillery batteries reawakened and began to fire, only to nod off again. The
gallows poles were two larch trunks, their bark freshly peeled off, with a wooden ladder leaning against the top, which terminated in an iron hook. The smells were strong: shit, tree sap, and tar. Von Feilitzsch’s uniform was spotless, but the visor of his cap was spattered with mud. Renato, off to one side, was leaning on his spade: he had just dug two graves, next to the latrines. ‘We don’t lay traitors to rest next to heroes,’ the baron had told him.

Grandma was standing between me and Grandpa, and she was wearing a black skirt made of a coarse cotton fabric that hung down to her shoes, gleaming in defiance of the mud. Her blouse was white, ironed by Loretta’s inefficient hands: the sleeves were marred by a couple of creases running down to the starched cuffs. My aunt had stayed in the church, with her dying men. There were forty or so soldiers, all with only minor injuries, some dressed in the uniform of the Honvéd, others wearing the Schützen uniform; their tattered jackets, many without buttons, were pulled back here and there to reveal their flesh, even filthier than the cloth. A spectral army: one man leaning his weight on the shoulder of the next, hands, legs, and faces wrapped in bandages; their caps and the melancholy resignation on their faces were the only things that said: ‘We are soldiers.’ And yet in those compressed lips, in those mute eyes, there was still something that demanded respect: the echo of an ancient renown.

Short gusts of wind kicked up revolting clouds of stench: the stink of sweat contended against the foul miasma of the latrines. Don Lorenzo hadn’t been allowed to comfort the two Czechs. ‘Traitors die alone, scorned by God and man alike,’ the baron had said.

The first of the two – tall, broad-shouldered, his wrists tied behind his back – stepped forward in an awkward shuffle, standing straight even as he wobbled slightly. His chest was bare and
he had bruises on his neck and the length of both arms, one cheekbone puffy and smashed, and a grimace spreading over his whole face. The two soldiers who were escorting him, bayonets fixed on the rifles slung over their shoulders, looked puny beside the prisoner, who still had the healthy appearance of a well-fed young man. The second boy was smaller and skinnier than the first, with his jacket neatly buttoned all the way up to the collar badges: a non-commissioned officer. His eyes were blue and he was staring straight ahead of him. ‘That’s him,’ Grandma said under her breath, ‘the one who requested…’

I felt admiration, not pity. Those two boys knew that death awaited them, only a short distance away, and they knew they were about to die before an audience of foreigners. They had made up their minds not to miss this chance to die bravely.

‘Let’s stand at attention,’ Grandpa said.

I stiffened my back. Grandma let go of my arm and let her hands hang straight down at the sides of her skirt. Even Renato, who had certainly not heard Grandpa’s words, stood at attention, his spade resting by his foot: he gripped it like a rifle.

They hanged them one at a time. First the tall one covered with bruises. No offer of a hood or a cigarette, no last words. Just the noose. It was passed over his neck by large filthy hands. The Czech climbed up onto the chair that stood next to the pole, under the hook, while a corporal scaled the wooden ladder, fastened the loop at the end of the rope to the hook, and jerked it twice to make sure it was good and taut. The first jerk of the rope prompted a moan, the second only silence. The baron turned for an instant and looked in our direction. His right hand rested on his holster. The corporal climbed back down the ladder and gave the chair a kick. I heard the simultaneous crack: of the rope, the pole, and the man’s neck.

The man was kicking. He went on kicking for nearly a minute. Then he gave up, as his head bent over to one side until his ear grazed his shoulder. The troops looked on with the expression of those who had been tasting the same fetid soup for far too long. No matter how hard I tried to understand, I detected not a trace of either pity or contempt in that grim dead-eyed tribe. Perhaps as far as they were concerned nothing notable had happened. Here and there a few were even rolling themselves a cigarette. I saw a tobacco pouch being passed from hand to hand, and more than one pipe was lit. The soldiers stood silent.

The same scene followed, identical, for the second condemned man, as the first one went on swinging, though the oscillation grew slower and gentler with time. Something however disturbed the established liturgy. As the corporal was fiddling with the loop, making sure the rope was securely fastened to the hook, the young man with the noose around his neck spoke loudly and said something. What it was I couldn’t tell, because he said it in the language of his people. But an infantryman, his arm bandaged to his chest, broke out of the crowd and, after hurling his cap to the ground with his one good arm, gave the chair a furious kick. The body tipped forward, face first, because the loop was not yet fixed to the hook and, given the man’s weight, slipped through the hands of the corporal; he, in turn, lost his balance and came close to tumbling off the ladder. The baron, who already had his hand on his holster, instantly drew his weapon and fired as he took a step forward.

The man on the ground had a hole where his ear had once been. No blood, just a hole. From such a small hole – I thought to myself – a whole life had escaped: his parents’ worries and efforts, all the fighting with his brothers and sisters, the barnyard animals, his first night of love, the first time as a child that
he had said the word ‘me’. All of it gone, forever, and who knows where.

They got their hands under the body’s arms and hoisted it up onto the pole and hanged it. I continued to stand at attention, but I shut my eyes. The other man was no longer swinging. Two slabs of hanging meat. Renato went back to his digging. A nod of the head and a couple of words from the baron scattered the men.

On the way back to the Villa, Grandma refused to take my arm, and refused Grandpa’s proffered arm too, preferring to precede us, walking straight ahead. I turned to look back at the bodies lying there, motionless against the empty sky.

That evening I returned, alone, to the scene of the execution. I went back to the poles driven into the mud. The hanged men had been pulled down during the afternoon and Renato had buried them. The iron hooks seemed to be eagerly awaiting new prey. The birds were flying low and the song of the thrush was late in celebrating the dying of the light. The cannons were still firing in the distance, and every so often an aircraft engine made itself heard. I leant against the wooden fence and lit my pipe. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from those hooks. Suddenly I was caught off guard by an odd sensation, as if someone were spying on me. I turned around. Major Rudolf von Feilitzsch was standing there, motionless, not ten paces away from me, but he hadn’t seen me. I thought I was seeing things, and I lowered my pipe. He too was staring fixedly at those black hooks, or at least I thought he was. His bandaged shoulder made him look ungainly, deformed. He lifted his right hand to the visor of his cap and stiffened in a military salute. He was saluting the shades floating before his eyes. When he caught sight of me, he immediately lowered his hand. He concealed his embarrassment with
a smile and looked at me in that slightly childish way that I knew very well.

‘So in the end that traitor got what he wanted. He wasn’t destined for the noose,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘The truth is that all soldiers deserve a monument, a funeral song. There should be a day dedicated to the memory of every one of them, just for being soldiers, just because they were there doing what they had been asked to do. But there are too few days, too many dead men.’

Twenty-Nine

S
OMEONE WAS KNOCKING AT THE DOOR
. I
STRUGGLED TO
open my eyes, and I saw in the windows that colour that lies midway between night and day. Then I saw Grandpa’s nightcap dangling over my nose.

‘Someone’s knocking.’

‘I can hear,’ I replied, my mouth gummy with sleep.

‘Don’t you think you ought to ask who it is?’

I sat up in bed: ‘Don’t you have a tongue of your own, Grandpa?’

‘Whoever it is, it’s better that they not hear an old man’s voice.’

‘Who is it?’ I asked loudly, still sitting up on my crackling pallet.

‘Renato.’

Grandpa nodded his head.

‘Come in.’

The steward looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink. He looked at me, then he looked at Grandpa. ‘Get your britches on…Brian was shot down last night, they need us.’

I got up and grabbed my clothing from where it lay heaped on the chair. ‘How did you find out?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ he said and, staring at Grandpa, added: ‘This time it could be really dangerous.’

Grandpa looked me up and down with his grey eyes, which were somehow able to express astonishment at even the tiniest
things. The sky in the dormer windows was starting to turn pale. ‘Do you feel like giving Renato a hand? You don’t have to…’

‘In two months I turn eighteen, Grandpa, and I’m Italian.’

Grandpa nodded and turned to look out the window, tugging his nightcap off his head.

As I walked down the stairs with Major Manca, I thought about him, about Grandpa. I truly did love that old lunatic.

We went out into the garden. Giulia was walking towards us. The top button of her blouse was undone and her bosom, heaving as she breathed, was threatening to rip off the second button. Her skirt let me guess at her ankles, concealed in her boots. She was about ten metres away, and already I thought I could smell her perfume. Renato too was eyeing her hungrily, but I was no longer jealous – quite the opposite, I felt as if I never had been.

‘Did you think you were going to take off without me?’

‘Well, to tell the truth…’ Renato said.

‘Everyone in Refrontolo knows that yesterday, at sunset, someone shot down the plane with the kingfisher on the fuselage.’

Renato started off. I let him go a few steps ahead so I could walk with Giulia, who was flaunting her contemptuous smile.

We crossed the park. Many of the wounded had been taken away during the night, and the road was crowded with lorries heading east, towards the old borders. In silence, we passed small groups of soldiers stretched out, or sitting on the grass, next to their sopping wet tents. Between the latrines and the hooked poles two stretcher-bearers wearing lab coats and fezes were burning bloody bandages. There was the smell of carbolic acid in the air, and the wind reeked of burnt flesh.

No one paid us any mind. There was no sign of armed guards around the camp. The only sentinel post that we saw, on the
top of the hill, consisted of four soldiers who looked for all the world as if they were sleeping, with their backs resting against the columns of the little temple.

The clouds had cleared. ‘If Brian survived, he’s certainly waiting for us at his house,’ said Giulia.

‘He went down three kilometres north of here,’ Renato’s voice was tense, ‘and I doubt he survived, but the only way to know is to go and see.’

Once we were within sight of the Englishman’s hovel, the major ordered us to crouch down. We stayed there for a few minutes, silent and vigilant.

Renato was very still, and I could read in his face how hard he was trying to conceal his fear.

‘I’ll go,’ said Giulia. ‘If it’s a trap…they won’t shoot at a woman.’ She started off before we could raise any objections.

I was about to stand up but Renato’s hand stopped me. ‘She’s right, we can see the door clearly from here, we can get moving if we need to.’

‘Are you armed?’

‘Of course,’ he said, with his chin in the grass, pulling a semi-automatic pistol out of his pocket. ‘You see? It’s just like the one our baron carries. Steyr makes pistols for officers who stay behind the lines, or for the top brass who only read about the trenches in the newspapers…Still, they never jam.’

Just then I realized that I was no longer afraid. ‘Giulia is useful to us, isn’t she? With someone like her around, there’s lots of things they might not notice.’ A recklessness verging on euphoria was beginning to sweep over me. If there was one thing I ought rightly to have been afraid of, it was that giddy feeling, but I lacked the necessary mental clarity and, for that matter, the wisdom. There was no one around, and the few groups of
men we saw, the lorries and carts were all heading for Conegliano, Sacile, or Vittorio; it was the 22nd of June, so we couldn’t have known that Boroevic’s army corps had already begun to fall back.

I looked at my watch and slipped it back in my pocket. I saw Giulia swallowed up and then, a few seconds later, spat back out by the door. She waved for us to come ahead. We stood up, our britches and shirts dripping wet.

The smell of mould and damp wood washed over me. From a shutter pushed ajar, a strip of light entered the room and cut the floor in half. On a bench shoved against the wall, I could just make out the silhouette of a man. I walked over while Renato shut the door and shot the bolt with a screeching of rust. Giulia had one hand pressed against the forehead of the man stretched out on the bench. ‘It’s him. He tried to get up as soon as he saw me, but he fell back down like a tree.’

Renato leant over his friend, pushing Giulia aside. Brian was motionless, his eyes shut. Renato slipped his right hand under the back of his neck and gently lifted his head. The Englishman let a moan of pain escape his lips and his eyes flickered open: ‘Oh, nice to see you…You wouldn’t have a tumbler of whisky, would you?’ He flashed a row of white teeth.

Renato pulled open his jacket. He turned to look at Giulia, who had wrapped her arms around me. ‘We need some air here.’

Giulia went over to the window and pushed one of the shutters open, then immediately pulled it shut again, taking care not to make a noise.

‘What is it?’ I asked in a low voice.