Between Enemies (29 page)

I ran all the way to the wooden fence, crouched down, and stayed there, listening. The first patrol went by only a couple of minutes later. I had to figure out how much time I’d have to reach the woods. There was a stretch of open ground I’d have to cover and it was such a bright night. I pulled out my watch. I saw two soldiers making their rounds outside the wooden fencing, circling the enclosure in an anticlockwise direction. The first patrol I’d seen was making its rounds inside the fence, and walking along a clockwise circuit. They went by me at a distance of less than three metres. Two minutes and forty seconds had passed between the first patrol and the second one. I took off after waiting for fifty seconds. To make sure that they didn’t spot me, I’d have to reach the dense vegetation in no more than a minute and a half. I ran. I didn’t bother to keep my back bent to stay low. Once I reached the treeline I stretched out on the ground, face down. I lay there motionless, scanning the bare terrain behind me. I struggled to catch my breath. I watched as the patrols went by. Hapsburg punctuality had worked in my favour. Once my heart stopped racing, I got up and started walking. I hiked for two, perhaps three hours. Every so often I would stop and stand listening to the woods, but each time I did that a wave of anguish swept over me. I saw two owls and
I frequently heard animals moving in the leaves, but I know that those weren’t the dangers I needed to worry about. I was hunting for certain paths I’d travelled with Renato. I stopped by a large rock. I spread out my blanket and wrapped myself up in it. I pulled out my knife. I waited for a shaft of moonlight to catch the blade, and I sank it into the soil, not more than a foot away, well within reach. I gnawed on a bit of dried polenta and I gulped down a bit of marmalade. Then I swallowed a mouthful of water and wine – my canteen was still full. I didn’t want to get sleepy, but I needed to rest my legs. The wind shaking the highest branches and the rustling of the underbush kept me alert. From there, I could see several stars, three, perhaps four, that the moonlight was unable to dim. I tugged the blanket around me. The air was warm, but a chill rose from the damp soil, and I could feel it in my spine. I heard an owl hoot. Then an odd thought caught me off guard: my father. I saw him smoking his pipe in an armchair in the drawing room, serious, focusing as he read a book that smelt of mould. I never thought about him. I’d thought of my mother, yes, more than once, I’d even thought I’d heard her voice in the long hours of partial sleep, but since the time of the Great Disaster the image of my father had vanished from my mind. Grandpa had done his best to take his place, and he’d succeeded, even if Grandpa was an old friend to me, while my father had always been, and continued to be in my memories, a stranger: merely a collection of details that my memory had set aside. In this corner I could hear his voice; in that other corner I caught a whiff of the scent of his cologne, or glimpsed his serious face, lost in a secret elsewhere that, with a rough and off-putting manner, he even protected from my Mamma’s gazes. ‘Now I’m alone, hunted, and afraid,’ I whispered in the darkness. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs.
The smell of damp earth, moss, and wet bark pervaded me. The stench of the war was gone. And I dropped off to sleep.

There was light all around me when I came to. I’d fallen asleep with my hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife. It was Grandpa’s knife, and the hilt was made of a warthog tusk filled with twenty centimetres of steel, the edge of which showed on both sides. It sliced like a razor. I wondered, as I got to my feet, whether I’d ever be capable of using it to kill someone. I shook off the cold by banging one shoe against the other. I drank a little water and wine and ate a healthy helping of dried polenta after spreading marmalade on it with the blade of the knife. I felt strong. I’d survived the dangers of the night. I stuffed everything back into the rucksack, except my knife, which I slid at an angle into my belt. By day it was best to avoid the trail. I studied the map, but it wasn’t going to be much good to me unless I left the woods. I was suddenly afraid that I was lost. I tried to get a look at the sun, which had just risen, and used it to orient the map: the proper direction was south by southwest. I started hiking again.

Every half an hour I halted, to check my direction and make sure, by remaining perfectly still as I listened, that no one was following me. Around noon, with the sun straight overhead, I caught the smell of the river. The forest was dense at that point, and I could see neither fires nor houses. I heard the sound of planes overhead and hunkered down. I wasn’t capable of distinguishing the insignia. These weren’t scout planes, but a dozen fighters. The noise made me think of SPADs. I got back to my feet and followed my nose towards the river’s smell. After a few minutes the woods thinned and opened out into a clearing. There was a house.

I crouched down and remained in hiding. I’d learnt a lot of things from Major Manca. To calm my nerves I took a swallow
of water and wine. And I kept listening, my eyes peeled for anything. The shutters on the house were open. I was too far away to see inside, but someone was there. It wasn’t just the smoke that told me so: all around the place, the grass had been mown for a distance of thirty paces and, on one side of the house, under the overhang of the roof, there was a stack of firewood. Leaning against the firewood were a spade and a rake, their handles crossed together like newlyweds in a church. The door swung open and a woman emerged with a wicker basket; she went over to the stack of firewood and filled the basket. Just as she was about to go back inside, she stopped on the threshold and turned around. She couldn’t see me, but out of caution I retreated a little further into the shadows of the thicket. She looked in my direction, like a doe scenting danger before seeing it or hearing it. She set down the basket and loudly called a name. Another, much older woman came out, her back curved, dressed all in black. The old woman went back in and emerged with a rifle. She started walking towards me. I didn’t move. The old woman was coming closer. By now she was just ten paces away.

‘Come out into the open! Who are you?’

She had a courteous voice.

I slowly rose to my feet.

‘I’m alone, I’m unarmed.’

‘Come out of there! Hands up high.’

I put my rucksack on my back, raised my hands, and came out into the open. The rifle barrel was aimed straight at my chest.

‘What are you doing here? Why are spying on us?’

‘My name is Paolo Spada, I come from Refrontolo, and I must have got lost.’

‘Give me that!’ She jerked the rifle barrel at the knife that I had stuck into my belt.

‘I’m looking for help, I don’t want to do you any harm.’

‘The knife!’

She came closer and aimed the rifle right in my face: ‘Take it out with your left hand and keep your right hand up in the air.’

I did as I was told. When I handed it to her, she took it without removing her right hand from the trigger, but the weight of the weapon forced her to lower the muzzle. For a second I felt certain that, if I moved quickly, I could have ripped the rifle out of her hands.

‘You’re just a boy…’ she noted, though there was no surprise in her voice. ‘Come in and walk behind me, I don’t want any sudden moves.’

I walked in under the curious gaze of the younger woman, who was Giulia’s age, with raven-black hair and large light eyes, the colour of tea. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

Inside the house, the odour of poverty was notable for its absence. And that was an odour that I knew all too well. In Venice, I’d smelt it in homes I’d entered, on occasion, with a servant visiting her family. It had something to do with the odour of ashes, chickpea soup, and inadequately dried clothing.

What struck me immediately was how neat the room was. Four chairs stood around the table, set for a meal. There was water in a glass pitcher on the table. A carafe of wine. Silverware flanking two white dishes. Set over the fire was a steaming pot; under the table, a hemp mat.

‘Put down your rucksack,’ said the young woman, as the old woman lowered her rifle. ‘You’re probably hungry, I imagine.’

I nodded my head.

‘Luisa, take our guest to wash his hands.’

It suddenly dawned on me that I must have looked like a wild man. Luisa waved for me to follow her. I walked through
a bedroom that was bare but clean. Then Luisa showed me to a vat full of water, over which dripped the spout of a pump. On a counter stood a bar of soap.

‘I’ll leave you alone here…The latrine is back there, you have to go out that door.’

‘
Grazie
.’

I felt an almost childish sense of relief: I was eager to entrust myself to those two women, and to let them trust me. I washed my face, hands, and neck, and I went out the back door to use the latrine.

We ate in silence. A soup whose contents remained a mystery to me but was delicious. They’d even baked some bread made of white flour. Until I ate I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. Luisa had a warm, round face, a faint blush to her cheeks, while her mother had chilly features, carved into hardwood.

‘Who are you?’ Luisa’s voice was just as warm as her face.

‘I’m running away…from Villa Spada, maybe you’ve heard of the place.’

‘A hospital, during the battle,’ said the mother.

‘Ah…yes…I know who lives there…’

The mother gave her daughter a glare that shut her up: ‘Luisa listens to all the gossips, when she goes into town, and there’s a lot of nonsense in circulation.’

‘What town is this, where are we?’

‘Just a kilometre from the Soligo river, the waters have subsided, you could get across easily…I could accompany you… You’re heading for the Piave, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ said her mother, ‘it’s out of the question…If your father were here…’

I turned to look at the rifle that stood leaning against the door jamb.

‘The fighting took my husband. The highland of the seven villages, in 1916…and that’s not his rifle, a deserter sold it to me…in the days after Caporetto.’

‘Let me go, Mother, I’ll take him as far as San Michele al Ponte and come back; it’s not a long trip, I know the way.’

‘We’ve suffered enough…We’ve been left alone here.’ The woman stood up, brushed back her white hair, and started clearing the table, wordlessly.

‘I’ll do fine on my own. All I need are some directions, I have a map.’

The girl had got up to help her mother. I joined her at the sink to pitch in.

‘Your eyes look tired, lie down on the pallet over there, we’ll wake you up as soon as it’s dark.’

At sunset, the woman gave me a bag of dried figs and a slice of hard cheese wrapped in a length of sky-blue canvas. She returned my knife with a slap that was meant to resemble a caress.

‘I can’t give you the rifle…My daughter will see you to the levee along the Soligo, but I want your solemn promise that you’ll send her back to me as soon as you get there.’

‘Rest assured, Signora…and
grazie
.’

‘Good luck to you then.’

Luisa led the way, and she kept a fast pace. We slipped into the depths of the woods almost immediately and for ten minutes we walked north, then we turned left, skirting a clearing. It was quickly getting dark. Suddenly, the vegetation forced us to slow our pace; I pulled out the knife and cut a few thorny branches. We made our halting way forward for another fifty paces or so, then we heard the river and stopped for a moment, relieved to listen. Luisa turned around and lifted her finger to her lips.

I didn’t hear anything. Only the water flowing past. ‘What is it?’ I asked in a low voice.

‘Germans, straight ahead…twenty paces.’

We hunkered down close together, behind an especially big tree.

‘Odd, there’s usually never anyone here, they fill their canteens upstream from here.’

‘Let’s wait…maybe they’ll leave.’

She put her mouth to my ear: ‘Yes, the water is shallow here, and the current isn’t strong, the river widens out.’

After a couple of minutes the soldiers started talking. They were Hungarian, their voices reached us loud and clear. They were fiddling around with a camp stove – one of those little metal devices that run on oil – and we could smell coffee and the odour of their sweaty jackets because we were downwind.

‘Go back to your mother, I’ll get across as soon as they leave.’

‘I’m not going to leave you alone now of all times. Maybe they sent them down especially to guard the ford.’

To my surprise, Luisa pulled a knife out from under her skirts, with a long slender worn-out blade.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Best to be ready,’ she whispered, and stroked my cheek with her left hand.

She didn’t even give me the time to be surprised. She waved for me to follow her. We moved slowly, on all fours, getting steadily further and further from the river. Once we felt safe enough, we walked upright, keeping the river bank on our right. By now, we had the darkness to protect us, but it made it almost impossible to travel, as the moon hadn’t yet risen.

Luisa turned around and waved for me to get down.

‘Let’s wait here,’ she said.

The air was chillier than the night before. It had rained in the mountains. Luisa wrapped her arms around me: ‘This’ll warm us up.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s cold…what, are you afraid of going to hell?’

‘No, not of going to hell, but…’

She moved away from me. ‘Maybe you’re right, it’s time for me to get back to my mother…good luck.’

I must have nodded off. I got to my feet. I no longer had the knife. I looked for it in the grass, then I peered inside the rucksack. With a sigh of relief, I found it and slid it into my belt, then I headed for the water. The moon was low, riding just over the hilltops that rose on the far side of the Soligo. The river bank was deserted. I sat down and waited until I could clearly see the far bank. I didn’t know how deep the water was at that point, but the current was slow and I noticed a log lying crosswise in the middle of the river.

It wasn’t hard to get across, except for the last few metres, where the icy water unexpectedly rose almost to the middle of my chest. Once I was on dry land I realized how cold I was. I was shaking, but I couldn’t run the risk of lighting a fire. I stripped off my clothes, wringing out each article one by one, dressed again in haste, and set off: I needed to get warm.