Between Enemies (7 page)

From a cloud of smoke and feathers, chewing on his pipe, the steward said, ‘After supper I must have a few words with you.’

‘Very well,’ I replied, attempting to hide my surprise.

‘Pretend to go to bed, and we’ll meet behind the house, outside the silkworm hatchery. What time do you make it?’ But he gave me no time to pull out my watch. ‘Never mind, I’ll just expect you after supper.’

I felt gooseflesh all up my arms. I crossed the kitchen without paying much attention to the German soldiers, who were also busy plucking chickens. What was going on? I hunted for Teresa. No luck. Not even Loretta was around. Had they been turned out of the kitchen? Grandpa was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, sitting on the top step. He had a big, black book in his hands. I recognized it at once: it was his Gibbon, that bible of his which by way of corrupting us he often liked to quote from, even at random, when he wanted to attract attention. ‘There’s a mass of things in here that don’t make any sense,’ said he, closing the volume and waving it in front of me, ‘but there are a lot of truths as well, and truth is something I have very much at heart, even when I can’t grasp it.’ He rapped his knuckles on the binding of the book. ‘There’s no finer English than this,’ he said, raising his voice a little. ‘The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour…’ He gave me a stern look. ‘Just what was needed at Caporetto… and at the Saga Pass.’ His crouching bulk continued to block
my way. ‘It’s these Germans who are the heirs of Rome, that’s the fact of the matter. It is they who have the renown, and as for the disciplined valour…there’s even less doubt about
that
.’ He shook his head and got to his feet with difficulty. ‘Come along, laddie, your grandmother wants a word with you.’

Grandma had a red shawl over her legs and body as she leant back against the bed’s headboard. Its vivid colour combined with the pallor of her face to give her a devilish air. Grandpa sat beside her and held her right hand in his left. She was wearing her sapphire-coloured earrings and just a touch of lipstick. ‘Come closer,’ she said.

I went and stood beside her. ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Grandma?’

‘A bit of a sore throat. I have to talk little, and quietly. Listen, Paolo, I know you’re not short of guts, but having guts doesn’t mean underrating danger. It doesn’t take much for these people to hang you.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Grandma?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t follow me. Renato can be relied on…but he has a mission to perform. Your mission, on the other hand, is to stay alive. Italy needs its young men to live. At present the heroics can be left to the youngsters on the Piave, and up on Monte Grappa.’

‘Are you telling me to trust the steward, but not to chance my arm too much?’

A smile spread across Grandma’s face. ‘Just that. You’re still a boy, Paolo, and we love you.’ She took hold of my hand and pressed it between hers, looking up at me and trying to hide her emotion.

Grandpa got up and saw me to the door, patting me on the shoulder. ‘See you get something hot to eat. Teresa has put aside
a bit of rabbit for you. These Huns are more ravenous than landsknechts.’

The gasmask hung from her belt and the glass eyes, those huge hornet-eyes, brushed the top of the grass. Renato walked fast, three or four steps ahead. Every so often I looked over my shoulder at the lights of the Villa, but very soon even those of the village faded from sight, dim as they were due to the shortage of paraffin. We skirted the woods, following paths through the underbrush. Heading north-northwest. At one moment I thought I recognized the bell tower of Corbanese off to the right. High up, in the belfry, a speck of light glittered then almost went out. Someone was smoking up there. A sentry, maybe. The sight of that sort of firefly, alone at the top of the tower, cheered me up. The tranquillity of that glow coming and going, tiny but distinct in the darkness, went to my heart, so that I thought not of an enemy but of the man who, with a cigarette for company, was fashioning his own peace.

‘We’re nearly there,’ said Giulia at a certain moment. ‘I’ll take the lead now.’

Renato stepped aside to let her pass. The moon was high and almost full. A rocket burst and a flare lit up the wood. Renato shoved us both face down on the ground. A second rocket opened like an umbrella above the streak of its trajectory.

‘What are they looking for?’

‘A friend of mine,’ said Renato. ‘A pilot…These patrols come from Mura, or perhaps from Cisone.’

Another flare. Then the brilliance faded and became one with the bright moonlight. Giulia rose and followed the edge of the wood for two kilometres or so before turning almost back on her tracks and taking us into the thick of it. It consisted mostly
of beeches and hornbeam, and the lower branches lashed me in the face. I warded them off with my upraised hands, so my wrists became a mass of scratches. But I didn’t bat an eyelid. Then, all of a sudden, a clearing.

There before us, about fifty metres away, loomed the black bulk of a cottage. The air smelt of burning paraffin. Suddenly a rectangle of light appeared, and in it the dark silhouette of a man. His shadow stretched out through the darkness until it almost reached us. His head practically touched the lintel of the door, even though he was short and thickset. Renato went ahead to meet him, while Giulia and I hung back.

‘Brian,’ said Renato.

‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’ quoted the man in English, stepping back from the doorway to let us pass. ‘Come in, take a pew.’

After a fusillade of jokes in English that made Renato laugh, the man offered us tea. One single chipped cup, which we passed around. Giulia did not partake.

‘Assam,’ said the Englishman, patting his cartridge-pouch. ‘Never go anywhere without tea.’ He spoke a somewhat basic Italian with a strong accent. And he eyed Giulia hungrily.

‘Where is the plane?’ asked Renato, holding his palms towards the camping stove, from which arose a mighty stink of paraffin.

Brian pointed to the window beside the fireplace.

‘But if they go round behind the house they’ll see it,’ said Giulia.

‘Forgotten magic wand on battlefield of Montebelluna.’

‘The Fokkers will spot it tomorrow,’ said Renato.

‘Tomorrow maybe it’ll snow,’ said the Englishman. ‘Got any tobacco?’

Renato pulled out a leather pouch, stuck his pipe in his
mouth and handed the pouch to the airman, who weighed it in his hand as he asked, ‘Any news?’

There was an odour of damp cloth and rotten wood in the room, competing with the reek of the paraffin.

We were sitting elbow to elbow, Renato and I, while the Englishman was standing at the fireplace with his left elbow on the mantelpiece, eyeing Giulia. She, for her part, seemed all taken up by the portable stove, only twenty centimetres by ten. ‘Italian women good housewives,’ he said, puffing smoke up over his head. Then, turning to Renato: ‘Well, go on. News from Florida?’

‘I haven’t set foot there since. Tampa wasn’t the place for me. Those disgusting cigars turned my stomach.’

A heavy silence fell on the room. Giulia’s eyes met mine. Neither of us knew anything of Renato’s past. But now we were almost sure of one thing: that he was working for the Military Intelligence Service.

‘It was a lucky landing.’ Brian took off his white scarf and threw it onto a chair, on which I saw his leather flying helmet and goggles. ‘There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.’

‘Oh, have done with it…You and your spouting poetry…’ said Renato.

‘Don’t forget I am a Herrick, the poet of Cheapside.’

‘Yes, yes. I know all about your ancestor. You’ve bored us all stiff with him, every time you had one too many up he popped… How does the poem go again?’

The Englishman took a stance with his feet apart, lifted his chin and rhythmically intoned:

Renato repeated the last two lines in Italian for our benefit.

But a sudden burst of light whitened the window. ‘Flares!’ cried Renato. ‘Outside! At the double!’

Out we scrambled. Giulia first, then the Englishman and Renato. I was last out. Two shots sounded from the edge of the clearing.

‘Hold on a tick,’ said the pilot. He darted round behind the house. I saw the spark of a lighter and then the flames that in a trice engulfed the aircraft. He had left the fuel tank open. ‘No free gifts for the enemy.’

Renato led us off among the trees. The Englishman was just a step ahead of me. Short and stocky, with small, swift hands; more like a cutpurse than a knight of the skies. Then, behind us, the explosion.

The wood suddenly became bright as day. Not from the fire rising from the burning aircraft, but from the rockets of the Germans searching for us.

‘These Huns know how to make war.’

Renato quickened his pace, and we followed suit, and finally we entered a ravine.

The crash of the bursting flares echoed among the branches and off the rock walls. I was wondering why Renato had wanted me to come along with him. I learnt next day that the cottage where Brian had hidden up had belonged to Giulia’s mother. So she was there because she was the only one who really knew the last part of the way through the woods, and also because she wanted to come anyway. But I felt nothing but a burden.

We went ahead slowly, following the stream and careful not
to make any noise. The water was flowing beneath the ice, with a gentle, muted gurgle. Every so often Renato called a halt, and stood listening intently. Nothing. Only the faint
plumf
of snow falling from the branches and the voices of night-hunting creatures. All the same, they were searching for us. A pilot is a lion, not a mere hare, and calls for highly skilled hunters. And the zone was occupied by two battalions of Feldjäger.

At a certain moment I realized we were near Refrontolo. I made out the form of the ruined house I had seen with my aunt, the one belonging to a young Englishman with a poet in his ancestry, and I understood. We reached the ruin in very few minutes, sidling along the black hedges that bordered the abandoned farms. Bare rock walls, leafless trees, the tops of the beeches shattered by lightning. We passed empty sheep-pens, empty cowsheds. The hunger of both victors and vanquished, of the soldiers and the peasants, had made a clean sweep.

‘
Ergiebt Euch! Kommot mit!
’

Stock still, I held my breath. If a blade of grass had bent beneath the weight of a grasshopper, I would have heard it. Pitchy blackness. A hand touched my right ear. A cold hand. I turned, and Giulia put her lips to mine and murmured something I didn’t catch. I felt myself blushing to the roots of my hair, but I was concealed by darkness and was seized by an uprush of joy that came from deep inside me.

Then, muffled, the voice of Renato: ‘Crawl after me, slowly, single file as far as the rise. They haven’t seen us. They’re smoking.’ Keeping on all fours, I peeped over the hedge. Ten metres away, two cooking-pot helmets were outlined above the intermittent glow of two cigarettes. Renato told me later that they were imitating our soldiers trying to say in German that they wanted to surrender. They hadn’t heard us.

Brian brushed past me, forcing Giulia to move away. I felt a quick surge of hatred for him, until I saw that his forearm ended in an eight-inch blade. He was about to attack, but Renato held him back: ‘Don’t move, they’re leaving.’

The two cigarettes disappeared along the mule-track. I turned to Giulia, and felt her hip pressing mine, her shoulder too. We dipped under the fence and entered the house. The door hinges didn’t squeak. Renato went over to a cupboard, took out a paraffin lamp and struck a match, the flare of which lit up the room. The window was blocked up with boards covered with tarred sacking. The steward had prepared everything down to the last detail. That explained why we had seen so little of him at the Villa.

‘Look here, Brian, no one will come looking for you here, but don’t light the fire. I’ve given you a couple of blankets.’

Brian gave a nod. His eyes shone merrily. The room was spotless and on either side of the fireplace long black moustaches stained the white paint of the walls. The top of Renato’s head brushed the beams. The palliasse was broad and thick, and Giulia threw herself on it to test it out, making the stuffing crackle. Brian and Renato lit their pipes as a man. I would have liked to have had one myself. It wasn’t like lighting a cigarette; there was something both sensual and soldierly in the way they handled the smoking bowls. Their gestures were affectionate, at one and the same time both tender and masculine. Renato read my thoughts. ‘You ought to smoke a pipe too,’ he said, giving me a steady look.

Brian said, ‘It’s so nice to be home.’

A jute sack also emerged from the cupboard. ‘I’ve left you some rusks and a pot of honey. There’s also a slab of cheese and half a
sopressa
. That should last you a day or two…Then I’ll take
you to Falzè, where there’s always a lot of bustle, and you ought to be able to get through. The boat will be there for you.’

Brian answered Renato with a machine-gun burst of English and the pair of them ended with an exchange of jokes too private for us to understand anyway.

I edged closer to Giulia, but she bounced off the palliasse at once. Then she moved to the door and said to the steward, ‘I’m sleepy, and there’s nothing more to do here.’

Renato checked her with one look. ‘We’ll come too. Better not to be caught by daylight,’ he said almost under his breath. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow, Brian. At dusk.’

The pilot replied with a broad grin. I left with Giulia. Renato caught up with us almost at once and went swiftly on ahead. Dawn was still a long way off. We reached the Villa in less than twenty minutes. ‘We’ll go round behind the church,’ said Renato. He had no wish to wake the sentries dozing against the gateposts in the flickering glare of torches.

Giulia went off down an alleyway, without so much as a wave. I followed her with my eyes.