History (51 page)

In the last phase of the duel with the little truck, and while it was already giving its fi jerks, a bullet had pierced Quat's chest; but he had felt no pain, any more than if they had hit him with a fi so he had imagined the blow came from a piece of stone or a clod of earth dislodged by the shooting; and this sensation hadn't even reached his consciousness, it had been so brief. He hadn't dropped his gun (in fact, he had settled it over his shoulder), and had hastened off in fl with the others, sliding down the embankment with them. But, having reached the bottom, sud denly he had felt faint, unable to take another step. There, in fact, at the foot of the embankment, his companions later found his little topee. And Negus remembered having heard, when he fl from there, a groan just behind him, but so slight he hadn't given it any thought.

Quat, left behind, alone, had bent double, his knees in the water. And while his consciousness ebbed, his muscles had nevertheless obeyed him, in the instincti action of setting the gun on the grass, on ( relatively) dry ground, before stretching out where he was, as if he were lying down in his bed. So he had let himself sink, in the darkness, his head on the muddy grass and the rest of his body in a puddle, while the other two boys, unaware, continued their fl

He was already dying. And he didn't know if it was night, or morn

or where he was. After an interval of time no longer calculable for him, he suddenly saw a grea t light, and it was a German's portable lamp, which

2 5 7

illuminated him, full in the face. Behind the fi Germ another promptly appeared; but who knows what Quat thought he saw in those two very tall fi with metal helmets and spotted, camoufl overalls. He gave a shy, contented smile, and said: "Hello." In reply, he received spit in his face; however, it's likely he didn't feel it. Perhaps he was already dead, or perhaps drawing his last breath. The two soldiers grabbed him, one by the arms and the other by the feet, and rapidly climbing back up the embankment, they fl him from up there into the middle of the road below. Then they hastened along a little path beside the column of vehicles where their other comrades were already gathering, after their useless pursuit. The dead bodies of the two young Germans had been removed; from the black hulk of the truck, twisted towards the grade, an occasional fl still spurted, and a ghastly, revolting odor came from it. An order was shouted twice, and the motorized convoy moved, advancing over Quat's small body, which lay there, the arms a bit away from the body, the head thrown back because of the knapsack and that trusting, peaceful little smile still on the lips. The fi of the vehicles gave a slight jolt, which already, with the next one, was less perceptible. The rain per sisted, but more calmly. When the last vehicle had gone by, it must have been about midnight.

Quattro's real name was Oreste Aloisi, and he was not yet nineteen, born in a village near Lanuvio. His father owned a patch of vineyard there and a house of two rooms, one over the other, with a little cellar for the wine barrels; however, years before, after deciding to emigrate, he had rented his little property.

Another death in those days was that of Maria, the girl Ace called Mariulina generally known to the comrades as
the redhead.
She was taken with her mother in a round-up, and in her fear of dying, she betrayed; however, her betrayal proved of no help to her or to the Germans.

Towards evening, three or four German soldiers had shown up at her house. They came, in reality, because this place had been indicated to them; but at the beginning, perhaps to amuse themselves by making a show of an innocuous pretext, they entered nonchalantly and asked for some wine. And Mariulina, not even getting up from her chair, replied by jutting her chin out in a spiteful gesture, to say they didn't have any. Then they exclaimed:
search, search
and amid the mother's screams, they promptly started tearing up the house, which consisted of a single room with a stall for the mule attached to it. With a kick they knocked over the sideboard, reducing all the crockery inside to smithereens (a total of fi or six items, counting dishes and bowls, two glasses, and a little porcelain doll ). They shattered the mirror; and having found two fl of wine behind the bed, they ripped up the sheets, broke the picture on the wall;

258 H I S T O R Y
. .
. .
. .
1 9 44

and then they forced the women to drink that wine, in their company, as they also drank. lVIaria had witnessed the whole scene standing still and silent, frowning; at the order to drink, she began gulping down the wine at once, with an air of shameless determination, as if she were at the tavern. But her mother, who was crawling among the wreckage on her hands and knees, waving her arms awkwardly, like a swimmer, had no stomach for drinking; and so she swallowed and spat and swallowed and spat, all soiled with saliva, wine, and dust mixed together. And meanwhile she was shout ing, explaining to those men that she was a poor widow, etc., etc. While Maria, with a scorn and icy smile, reproached her : "Aw, shut up, rna! What's the use talking? 1l1ey can't understand you anyhow."

Actually, one of them did understand some Italian, and spoke it halt ingly, distorting the words in such a comical way that Mariulina, already half-drunk, laughed in his face. For drink, instead of
bere,
the man said
trinchere,
and Maria talked back to him, as if speaking to an idiot : "Sure, trinchete, trinchete. I'll trink, too."

Meanwhile it had grown dark. The acetylene lamp had been smashed with the rest, and the men turned their portable lamps, big as headlights, on the women's faces, ordering them to lead them to the stable and the other storage places. They found the mule Uncle Peppe, and oil, and more wine, and they decreed :
rekvisition, rehisition!
Afterwards, in a half buried little grotto, under a pile of faggots and potatoes, they uncovered some cases of ammunition and hand grenades. Then, squawking in Ger man, they roughly pushed the two women into the house and, holding them against the wall, they began to shout: "Partizani! Banditti! Where partizani?! We fi You tell, or dead!" It seemed, to hear them, that they were proposing alternatives. And the mother, who had begun whining on a long, faint and unchanging note, turned to Mari lina, imploring her: "Talk, girl, talk!!!" 11 a kind of shrewd opportunism, she had always kept herself ignorant of her daughter's guerrilla doings, although she sus pected them. And now, she was reduced to helplessness, inert, within those few inches of wall.

"I don't know nothing! Nein! NEIN!" Mariulina proclaimed, shaking her red head with an extreme ferocity ("If they ask you, deny everything, everything!" Ace of Hearts had indoctrinated her). However, as soon as she saw a pistol aimed at her, her lips went white, and her big eyes of a pale wheat color, almost pink, opened wide in terror. She wasn't afraid of snakes, or of bats, and not even of Germans, or of other people. But she had an enormous fear of skeletons and of death. She didn't want to die.

At that point, she felt a little warm spasm in her kidneys, which seemed gently to dissolve her joints, relaxing the weight of her lower body. And she immediately blushed, clenching her legs tight and glancing at her

2 5 9

feet, which in the sudden and violent fl were already being stained with menstrual blood. At this unforeseen incident, which took her by surprise, in the presence of those young men, shame mingled with her fear. And hurled between shame and fear, trying to hide her feet and at the same time to wipe the wet fl with the soles of her heavy shoes, all trembling like a reed, she told everything she knew.

She didn't know much, really. The guerrillas, realizing she was a young girl, not even sixteen, had confi in her only what was indispensable, and they had left her in ignorance of the rest, or perhaps had told her some tales. For example, her "fi Ace of Hearts had revealed to her, in great secrecy, that his real nam was Luiz de Villarricca y Perez, with a brother, Jose de Villarricca y Perez (known as Useppe); both born in some Argen tine pampa (among caballeros, caballos, etc. ) and other stories along the same line. When it came right down to it, she knew her guerrilla neigh bors, mostly, only by sight and by nickname. The only names and addresses she knew were :
I)
the leader Eyeglasses, resident in Albano and at present wounded in the leg: who, however, in those days, because of Albano's forced evacuation after the air raids, had been taken away on a stretcher God knows where; 2) Quat, that is to say Aloisi Oreste, who had died a few days earlier (while his brothers were scattered at some front, and his parents, farm laborers, after emigrating in search of work, had returned and had taken shelter in some undefi d locality); 3) and fi a certain Oberdan, from Palestrina, who, having now returned to Palestrina, slept like hi;; fellow townspeople in caves, among the ruins of the city. But of all these rapid events, no news could yet have reached Mariulina.

As
for the information that especially interested the Germans, namely the refuge where the comrades hid out, the last certain headquarters Mari ulina knew about was the little stone house where the
Liberty
command had moved for the winter, leaving the hut of their early days. The
redhead,
however, was not aware that the boys had recently deserted that hiding place also, shifti without fi residence from one hill to another, to avoid th,e German round-ups; nor, for that matter, did she know that all links had now been broken not only between
her
band and her, Mariulina; but also among all the bands that had existed in the area ( which, to tell

the truth, for her had always been ghost-bands, without precise head quarters or distinguishing names . . .
)
; or that, lately, Ace's comrades had separated and scattered; or fi that, while she was speaking about him unawares, her Ace had already gone off with Pyotr for their adventure beyond the front.

When Mari confession was over, she and her mother were beaten and flung on the ground by their enraged guests, who then took turns raping them. Only one didn't share in this last violence, though he

260 H I S T O R Y
. . . . . .
1 9 44

had enjoyed himself worse than the others in the beatings, seeming almost transported by a perv ecstasy. He was a corporal of about thirty, though he had an old man's face with oblique wrinkles that gave his expression a tormented quality, and with the staring, colorless eyes of a suicide.

That hasty and rudimentary orgy was accompanied by more drinking of the wine requisitioned in the stable. And at this point, Mariulina, who until that evening had never had more than one glass at a meal, beca drunk for the fi ti in her life. However, her dri had actually not been excessive : so her intoxication was of the sort that does no harm, but on the contrary has a magic eff at the age of sixteen, when the body's channels are healthy and fresh. As soon as they had been pulled to their feet, the two women were pushed outside again and ordered to lead the patrol towards the farmhouse the girl had mentioned. When the com pany moved, Mari lina had the real sensation that other armed men were rising from the night outside, forming a little crowd around the two of them; but this fact, in her present mood, aroused neither alarm nor wonder in her. It all seemed to her an innocuous scene, like the fi in a dance. That house was three or four miles away, beyond the valley where, about three months ago, Nino and Useppe had looked down with the binoculars. The night was not very cold, it wasn't raining, and the previous days' mud had parti hardened on the trails. The crests of the hills were covered by a mist, but, over the valley, the few moving clouds, light and unfurled like ribbons, left broad starry spaces exposed. Towards the sea, the artilleries rumbled almost uninterruptedly, amid fl glows and signals that fl on and off in the haze. However, that noisy spectacle, which for more than a week had constantly accompanied existence in the valley, on this night, over here, made no more eff than a sea storm on the horizon. Of the two women, the older (her age, really, was not even thirty-five) was stupefi staggering as if on the point of throwing up, so the soldiers of the escort had to push her forcibly by the shoulders; while the girl, all warmed with wine, was borne by a passive excitement, with no thought.
As
guide, she walked at the head of the expedition, a slight distance from her mother, who, put in the middle like a prisoner, followed with the rest of the unit. In her little black dress, with her short stature, the woman disappeared from view among those gigantic soldiers; Mariulina, however, didn't even look back for her, since everything seemed inoff and fantastic, estranging her and yet inspiring trust. Accustomed as she was to those hikes, she walked on, limber and heedless as a little animal; and indeed, at some points, in her natural readiness, she jumped ahead of the soldiers. The shame, the fear, and even the nuisance of her physical fi were dissolved in the sole carefree pleasure of her body in movement, as if she were dancing along. And she didn't noti her damp, disheveled hair

2 6 1

falling in her face or her torn jersey that left her bosom half revealed; even the sensation of blood between her legs or the saliva in her mouth gave her an aff feeling of warmth. The familiar landscape ran towards her obediently; while the destination seemed far, far away, left in the infi

like the little clouds speeding through the sky. And meanwhile she was distracted by fl impressions, following with curiosity the little gusts of steamy breath in the air, or the whims of the shadows on the ground. One fi moment, from the zone between the Castelli and the sea, some luminous balloons, of every color, were seen rising towards the sky by the hundreds. At fi they hung suspended, making a pattern like an ear of corn, then they came down in casca�es, loosened in a long varicolored necklace through the air; and at the end they were fused in a grand fi which dazzled the whole countryside with its single, white splendor. Her eyes raised, wide, towards the sight, Mariulina made a misstep and stum bled; and the soldier at her side, in putting her back on the trail, seemed to embrace her. Glancing at him, she recognized him. He had been the last to rape her, tearing her aggressively from the one ahead of him; and she was convinced, seeing him now, that he hadn't then behaved with the fi coarseness of the others. He was a handsome boy with irregular features, a pert nose, a curled mouth that seemed always about to smile, and small pale-blue eyes beneath golden lashes, short and hard. "He must love me," Mariulina said to herself, "if he wasn't disgusted with me, back home, the way I was . . ." (during her menstrual period, Ace, her fi and only lover, avoided her) . And in a spontaneous gesture, she rested her head against the boy's chest. He looked at her with an unsure, elusive air, but almost kindly. A moment later, down among the folds of the hill, about two hundred yards away, they could glimpse the house they were looking for.