Difficult Loves (8 page)

All winter it was a game of hide and seek; the
bersaglieri
at Baiardo, the Militia at Molini, the Germans at Briga, and in the middle of them the partisans squeezed into two corners of the valley, avoiding the round-ups by moving from one to the other during the night. That very night a German column was marching on Briga, had perhaps already reached Carmo, and the Militia were getting ready to reinforce Molini. The partisan detachments were sleeping in stalls around half-spent braziers; Binda marched along in the dark woods, with their salvation in his legs, for the order he carried was: "Evacuate the valleys at once. Entire battalion and heavy machine guns to be on Mount Pellegrino by dawn."

Binda felt anxiety fluttering in his lungs like bats' wings; he longed to grasp the slope two miles away, pull himself up it, whisper the order like a breath of wind into the grass and hear it flowing off through his mustache and nostrils, till it reached Vendetta, Serpe, Gueriglia; then scoop himself out a hole in the chestnut leaves and bury himself in it, he and Regina, first removing the cones that might prick Regina's legs; but the more leaves he scooped out the more cones he found—it was impossible to make a place for Regina's legs there, her big soft legs with their smooth thin skin.

The dry leaves and the chestnut cones rusded, almost gurgled, under Binda's feet; the squirrels, with round, glittering eyes, ran to hide at the tops of the trees. "Be quick, Binda!" the commander, Fegato, had said to him when giving him the message. Sleep rose from the heart of the night, there was a velvety feel on the inside of his eyelids; Binda would have liked to lose the path, plunge into a sea of dry leaves and swim in them until they submerged him. "Be quick, Binda!"

He was now walking on a narrow path along the upper slopes of the Tumena valley, which was still covered with ice.

The widest valley in the area, it had high sides wide apart; the one opposite him was glimmering in the dark, the one on which he was walking had bare slopes scattered with an occasional bush from which, in daytime, groups of partridges rose fluttering. Binda felt he saw a distant light, down in lower Tumena, moving ahead of him. It zigzagged every now and again as if going around a curve, vanished, and reappeared a little farther on in an unexpected spot. Who on earth could it be at that hour? Sometimes it seemed to Binda that the light was much farther away, on the other side of the valley, sometimes that it had stopped, and sometimes that it was behind him. Who could be carrying so many different lights along all the paths of lower Tumena—perhaps in front of him, too, in higher Tumena—winking on and off like that? The Germans!

Following on Binda's tracks was an animal roused from deep back in his childhood; it was coming after him, would soon catch up with him: the animal of fear. Those lights were the Germans searching Tumena, bush by bush, in battalions. Impossible, Binda knew, although it would be almost pleasant to believe it, to abandon himself to the blandishments of that animal from childhood, which was following him so closely. Time was drumming, gulping in Binda's throat. Perhaps it was too late now to arrive before the Germans and save his comrades. Already Binda could see Vendetta's hut at Castagna burned out, the bleeding bodies of his comrades, the heads of some of them hanging by their long hair on branches of larch trees. "Be quick, Binda!"

He was amazed at where he was, for he seemed to have gone such a little way in such a long time; perhaps he had slowed down or even stopped without realizing it. He did not change his pace, however; he knew well that it was always

regular and sure, that he mustn't trust the animal that came to visit him on these night missions, wetting his temples with its invisible fingers slimy with saliva. Binda was a healthy lad, with good nerves, cool in every eventuality; and he held on to all his power to act even though he was carrying that animal around with him like a monkey tethered to his neck.

The surface of the Colla Bracca meadow looked soft in the moonlight. "Mines!" thought Binda. There were no mines up there, Binda knew; they were a long way off, on the other slope of the mountain. But now Binda began thinking that the mines might have moved underground from one part of the mountain to the other, following his steps like enormous underground spiders. The earth above mines produces strange funguses, disastrous to knock over; everything would go up in a second, but each second would become as long as a century and the world would have stopped as if by magic.

Now Binda was going down through the wood. Drowsiness and darkness drew gloomy masks on the tree trunks and bushes. There were Germans all around. They must have seen him pass the Colla Bracca meadow in the moonlight, they were following him, waiting for him at the entrance to the wood. An owl hooted nearby: it was a whistle, a signal for the Germans to close in around him. There, another whistle; he was surrounded! An animal moved behind a bush of heather; perhaps it was a hare, perhaps a fox, perhaps a German lying in the thickets keeping him covered. There was a German in every thicket, a German perched at the top of every tree, with the squirrels. The stones were pullulating with helmets, rifles were sprouting among the branches, the roots of the trees ended in human feet. Binda was walking between a double row of hidden Germans, who were looking at him with glisten-

ing eyes from among the leaves; the farther he walked the deeper he penetrated their ranks. At the third, the fourth, the sixth hoot of the owl all the Germans would jump to their feet around him, their guns pointed, their chests crossed by Stengun straps.

One named Gund, in the middle of them, with a terrible white smile under his helmet, would stretch out huge hands to seize him. Binda was afraid to turn around in case he saw Gund looming above his shoulders, Sten gun at the ready, hands open in the air. Or perhaps Gund would appear on the path ahead, pointing a finger at him, or come up and begin walking silently along beside him.

Suddenly he thought he must have missed the way; yet he recognized the path, the stones, the trees, the smell of musk. But they were stones, trees, musk from another place, far away, from a thousand different faraway places. After these stone steps there should be a short drop, not a bramble bush. After that slope a bush of broom, not of holly; the side of the path should be dry, not full of water and frogs. The frogs were in another valley, near the Germans; at the turn of the path there was a German ambush waiting and he'd suddenly fall into their hands, find himself facing the big German named Gund who is deep down in all of us, and who opens his enormous hands above us all, yet never succeeds in catching us.

To drive away Gund he must think of Regina, scoop a niche for Regina in the snow; but the snow is hard and frozen —Regina can't sit on it in her thin dress; nor can she sit under the pines—there are endless layers of pine needles; the earth beneath is all ant hills, and Gund is already above, lowering his hands to their heads and throats, lowering still.

... He gave a shriek. No, he must think of Regina, the girl who is in all of us and for whom we all want to scoop a niche deep in the woods—the girl with big hips, dressed only in hair that falls down over her shoulders.

But the pursuit between Binda and Gund is nearing its end; Vendetta's camp is now only fifteen, twenty minutes away. Though Binda's thoughts run ahead, his feet go on placing themselves regularly one in front of the other so he won't lose breath. When he reaches his comrades his fear will have vanished, canceled even from the bottom of his memory as something impossible. He must think of waking up Vendetta and Sciabola, the commissar, to explain Fegato's order to them; then he'll set off again for Serpe's camp.

But would he ever reach the hut? Wasn't he tied by a wire that dragged him farther away the nearer he got? And as he arrived wouldn't he hear
ausch ausch
from Germans sitting around the fire eating up the remaining chestnuts? Binda imagined himself arriving at the hut to find it half burned out and deserted. He would go inside : empty. But in a corner, huge, sitting on his haunches, with his helmet touching the ceiling, would be Gund, with his eyes round and glistening like the squirrels' and his white toothy smile between damp lips. Gund would make a sign to him: "Sit down." And Binda would sit down.

There, a hundred yards off, a light! It was them! Which of them? He longed to turn back, to flee, as if all the danger were up there in the hut. But he walked on quickly, his face hard and closed like a fist. Now the fire suddenly seemed to be getting too near—was it moving to meet him?—now to be getting farther off—was it running away? But it was motionless, a campfire that had not yet gone out, as Binda knew.

"Who goes there?"

He did not quiver an eyelash. "Binda," he said.

Sentry: "I'm Civetta. Any news, Binda?"

"Is Vendetta asleep?"

Now he was inside the hut, with sleeping comrades breathing all around him. Comrades, of course; who could ever have thought they'd be anything else?

"Germans down at Briga, Fascists up at Molini. Evacuate. By dawn you're all to be up on the crest of Mount Pellegrino with the heavies."

Vendetta, scarcely awake, was fluttering his eyelids. "God," he said. Then he got up, clapped his hands. "Wake up, everyone, we've got to go out and fight."

Binda was now sucking at a can of boiled chestnuts, spitting out the bits of skin sticking to them. The men divided up into shifts for carrying the ammunition and the tripod of the heavy. He set off. "I'm going on to Serpe's," he said. "Be quick, Binda!" exclaimed his comrades.

HUNGER AT BÉVERA

The front had stopped there, as it had in '40, except that this time the war did not end and there seemed no chance that things would move. People did not want to do as they had in '40, load a few rags and chickens on to a cart and set off with a mule in front and a goat behind. When they got back in '40 they had found all their drawers overturned on the floor and human excrement in the cooking pots; for Italians, when soldiers, don't bother whether the damage they do is to friends or enemies. So people stayed on, with the French shells hitting their houses day and night and the German shells whistling over their heads.

"One day or another, when they really decide to advance," people said, and had to go on repeating this to each other from September 1944 to April 1945, "they'll put their backs into it, those blessed Allies will."

The valley of Bévera was full of people, peasants and also refugees from Ventimiglia, and they had nothing to eat; there were no reserves of food, and flour had to be fetched from the town. And the road into the town was under shellfire night and day.

By now they were living more in holes than in houses; one day the men of the village collected in a cave to decide what to do.

"What we'll have to do," said the man from the Committee of Liberation, "is take turns going down to Ventimiglia to fetch bread."

"Fine," said another. "So one by one we'll all be blown to bits on the way."

"Or if not, the Germans will get us one by one and off we'll go to Germany," said a third.

And another asked, "What about an animal to transport the stuff? Will anyone offer theirs? No one'll risk it who still has one. Obviously whoever gets through won't come back, any more than animals or bread."

The animals had already been requisitioned, and anyone who'd saved his kept it hidden.

"Well," said the man from the committee, "if we don't get bread here, how are we going to live? Is there anyone who feels like taking a mule down to Ventimiglia? I'm wanted by the Fascists down there or I'd go myself."

He looked around; the men were sitting on the floors of the cave with expressionless eyes, scooping at the tufa with their fingers.

Then old Bisma, who'd been down at the end, looking around with his mouth open and not understanding anything, got up and went out of the cave. The others thought he wanted to urinate: he was old and needed to fairly often.

"Careful, Bisma," they shouted after him. "Do it under cover."

But he did not turn around.

"As far as he's concerned they might not be shelling at all," someone said. "He's deaf and doesn't notice."

Bisma was more than eighty and his back seemed permanently bent under a load of faggots—all the faggots he had hauled throughout his life from woods to stalls. They called him Bisma because of his mustaches, which had once, they said, looked like Bismarck's; now they were a pair of scraggy white tufts that seemed about to fall off at any moment, like all the other parts of his body. Nothing fell off, though, and Bisma dragged himself along, his head swaying, with the expressionless and rather mistrustful look that deaf people have.

He reappeared at the mouth of the cave.

"Eeee!" he was calling.

Then the others saw that he was dragging his mule behind him, and that he'd put on its pack saddle. Bisma's mule seemed older than its master; its neck was flat as a board and hung to the ground, and its movements were cautious, as if the jutting bones were about to break through its skin and appear through the sores, black with flies.

"Where're you taking the mule to, Bisma?" they asked.

He swayed his head from side to side, with his mouth open. He couldn't hear.

"The sacks," he said. "Give them to me."

"Hey," they exclaimed. "How far d'you think you're going to get, you and that old bag of bones?"

"How many pounds?" he asked. "Well? How many pounds?"

They gave him the sacks, indicating the number of pounds on their fingers, and off he set. At every whistle of a shell the men peered out from the threshold of the cave, at the road and at that bent figure drawing farther away; both the mule and the man riding on the pack saddle seemed to be swaying and looked as if they might fall down at any minute. The shells were falling ahead of them, raising a thick dust, pitting

the track in front of the mule's cautious steps; and when they fell behind Bisma did not even turn around. At every shell fired, at every whistle, the men held their breath. "This one'll get him," they said. Suddenly he vanished altogether, wrapped in dust. The men were silent; when the dust settled they would see a bare road, without even a trace of him. Instead both reappeared like ghosts, the man and the mule, and went hobbling slowly along. Then they got to the last turn in the road and moved out of sight. "He won't make it," said the men, and turned their backs.