Miracle at St. Anna (Movie Tie-in) (25 page)

But then he saw himself walking through his own neighborhood holding her hand as his black neighbors cackled and glared and moved away from him, knowing he was a dead man or a fool or both, imagined himself swinging from a cherry tree in nearby Richmond, Virginia, with diesel fuel poured down his throat and hot tar on his face as a white mob set his fuel-soaked body afire, and his reverie exploded in his mind like a firecracker, and he heard the shells falling and felt the cold winter air of Tuscany slapping his face again, and the white reality of it all froze his insides. You had to be a reckless know-it-all fool like Bishop to dream that way. Bishop would stick his willy in the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun if he thought there was pleasure at the other end. He knew how to talk to women. Stamps suddenly realized he was jealous of Bishop. Standing there at that moment, he hated the smiling Bishop even more.

“Ain't no difference,” he said gruffly, “between white and colored. We're all the same back home.” He couldn't think of anything else to say.

He saw Bishop grinning and Hector circling nearby. “Hector, you just in time,” Bishop said. “The lieutenant here's giving out free Uncle Tom lessons.”

Stamps ignored him. The villagers were gradually returning to their homes. The distant shelling had died down again, and from out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Italian standing near the German, who was seated on the ground beside Ludovico's house. The German hadn't moved. He sat listless, motionless, probably expecting to be killed, Stamps thought. Too much was happening at once. Something about that Italian guarding him alone was wrong.

Turning to Bishop and Hector, Stamps nodded at the Italian. “I don't trust him,” he said.

“Aw, git off your hind legs 'bout that guy,” Bishop said. “He's on our side.”

“I still don't trust him.”

Renata said, “He's just afraid. He's from this area. I know him.”

“I don't give a damn if he's Eleanor Roosevelt,” Stamps said. “I still don't trust him. The Krauts are hitting us hard from the next ridge over, and he don't see nothing? He'll forget us five minutes past breakfast if them Germans come over that ridge.”

Hector silently agreed. He pulled Stamps's arm. “Stamps, I gotta talk to you a minute.”

“Not now.”

“It's about Train's kid.”

“You got him talkin'? What did he say?”

“He says the Germans were up at that church we saw.”

“Oh, that's just skippy. We know that.”

“He says we got to skedaddle.”

“Who says?”

“The kid.”

“Maybe you can get a job as his personal secretary when this is all over.”

“I'm telling you, the kid knows something.”

“Forget the kid,” Stamps snapped, watching Rodolfo, who was standing near the German. “I don't trust that guy. Get over there with him. Take him and the German to the south post, the main post at the south of the village, and keep an eye out for Krauts. And watch that Italian guy. Anything funny happens, fire two shots in the air. One-two. Like that. Got it?”

Hector took a look at Rodolfo, who seemed uneasy, and he didn't like it. “We don't need two people to look after one prisoner,” he said.

“Nokes is coming all the way out here to get him. He must be important,” Stamps said. He felt stupid even as he said it, looking at the ragged German who sat next to the house, a kid—it was hard to believe he could be that important.

“If he's important,” Hector said slowly, “what does that make us?” He was starting to put two and two together. Something big was coming. Headquarters needed more intelligence on it. If they'd ask me, Hector thought, I'll tell them all they need to know: We need to get the hell out. Now. Get some bomber planes or something up here, and we'll be back later.

“Why does it sound like an auction every time I tell y'all to do something?” Stamps snapped. “This ain't twenty questions. Just do like I said.”

Hector glumly walked over to Rodolfo, and the three of them trudged off. The German marched behind Rodolfo toward the outer wall, with Hector following them. They turned a corner and marched down a small alleyway to a tiny piazza, Hector keeping his eyes on both of them. His nerves were tingling. He was exhausted. He'd gone outside to tell Stamps about Train's kid and instead had drawn the worst assignment. He was freezing and his toes were numb.

The Italian stopped at the far wall, where Hector motioned him to one gatepost while he took the other. The entrance to the village faced a small river several yards off, and behind that the ground sloped up to ridges that ascended gradually. They could be climbed if necessary, Hector noted, if he and the others had to flee in that direction. Or, he thought with a pang of fear, they could be descended easily, too, if a company of two hundred Krauts decided to come down to kick their asses. He tried not to think about it. About four feet separated him from Rodolfo, with the German sitting on the ground between them.

They stood in silence for a moment, looking out at the ridge. Hector bet the Italian knew those mountains like the back of his hand. All the partisans did. That's why the Americans used them as guides—except for Stamps, he thought, who trusted no one. He peered at the young Italian sideways and decided he was okay, though he still agreed with Stamps on this one and watched him close. The Italian tried to smile at him, but it came off as a grimace. He was nervous, Hector could see it. The young Italian offered him a cigarette, his hand shaking, and Hector suddenly felt a burst of sympathy for him. He was scared, too. At least I have a home to go to, Hector thought. This poor bastard, this was his home, right here. He's fighting for a little shithole.

With a friendly smile, Hector reached for the cigarette, and at that moment felt something cold hit his arm. He heard the German suddenly scream and saw him kick at the Italian. Hector heard a
pflap!,
as if someone had slapped him, a flesh-on-flesh sound, and instinctively turned his head to look over the wall at the hills beyond, waiting for the pain to surge through his body, thinking he'd been hit by a German sniper. In doing so, he saved his own life, as the Italian's knife, aimed at his throat for a second attempt, missed and sliced off a piece of his ear instead.

It was not till many years later that Hector admitted to himself that the German soldier had saved his life, because had he not shouted and kicked Rodolfo off balance, the Italian's aim would have been true; and in those later years, when the war, which he tried so hard to bury, haunted him mercilessly, presenting itself to him in his dreams, rising like a phoenix—the flesh wounds, the starving children, the cheerful Italian villagers with crippled legs and no arms who smiled at him and fed him their last crumbs—causing maniacal outbursts and trembling hands on his part, Hector often resolved to quit his life at the post office and spend his last dime to find the young German soldier so that he could fall on his knees and thank him, kiss his hands in gratitude, warm the soldier's young, freezing fingers with his own lips for saving his life. But that opportunity would never present itself, because by the time Hector fell down in the thickening snow, holding his bleeding ear, hearing the fleeing Italian's feet splashing past his face and the shouts of Ludovico and the others coming to his rescue, the German boy lay facing him, slouched against the wall with his throat slashed, blood pulsing out of his neck as he stared at Hector with neither guilt nor anger in his deep blue eyes, but rather, Hector noted, something akin to relief.

18

BETRAYAL

Peppi sat at the edge of the east ridge above Bornacchi and peered into the snowy darkness of the town below. The sound of artillery was growing closer; the heavy booms felt like they were landing atop his heart. He wanted to sob with the weight of it. Two of his partisans sat nearby in a semicircle, warming themselves at a fire. They listened to the soft song of the boy Ettalo, who sang a melody that only a child would know and tried to interest them in dominoes.

The booms of the artillery did not bother him. The approaching Germans were nothing new. He had seen them with his own eyes. They were descending from Mt. Forato, right through the eye of the Mountain of the Sleeping Man, a huge force, yes, maybe ten thousand men, but they would have to move slowly. Their size would hamper them, the snow would hamper them, the mountains would check them—there was only one trail big enough to accommodate that many men and machines as they descended through the Lama di Sotto ridge anyway. His band could attack them easily there, hold them up for a short time by sticking a few detonated charges in a narrow pass near Mt. Procino—he knew a place there where the earth and rocks were so loose he could kick them down onto the trail with his feet—but the stall wouldn't last long. They would come, and there would be hell to pay as usual, though he was not afraid for himself. The Germans would never catch him in those mountains. He knew them like the back of his hand. Every nook, every rock and cranny he'd climbed in and out of as a boy, hunting wild boar, gathering chestnuts, crawling, hiding, playing in the dozens of caves and caverns with his brother Paolo, his cousin Gianni, and of course Marco and Marco's little brother Rodolfo.

Rodolfo.

He had heard the German clearly. He had told the boy to “Run, run like I told you before.” The German had played dumb the whole time. He'd pretended he didn't speak Italian when they caught him. Now he knew why. Now he understood the look of accusation on the German's face when they had first captured him and he'd seen Rodolfo. The German had seen Rodolfo before. The German had seen the boy before, too, and vice versa. Something was wrong.

He mentally reviewed his band's movements in the week preceding the mess at St. Anna. The four of them had killed two German soldiers near Ruosina, two kilometers north of St. Anna, then split up. It was their common practice. He was too hot. They all knew it. It was too risky for them to be with him when the Germans came hunting for them. It was Rodolfo who had created the escape plan, and it seemed to be a good one: The three others would leave, split up, follow separate trails around the town of Sampiera, hide in the caves for two days, then meet up in Giorgina. Meanwhile he, Peppi, would travel through Mt. Ferro and head up to St. Anna di Stazzema to find food and supplies for them. He had a cousin there, Federico, who would help. But the plan had backfired immediately. When he had split from the others, he ran into a German patrol on the trail between Ulibi and St. Anna and had barely escaped. It was an unmarked partisan trail. It was impossible for the Germans to know that trail. He had gotten lucky only because an old farmer up there had warned him just before he'd approached St. Anna that a German patrol awaited him. Otherwise, he would have been at his cousin Federico's house stuffing his face with olives and bringing the wrath of the SS down on him and hundreds of others, which had happened anyway.

Instead, he'd doubled back, given up on St. Anna di Stazzema, and had met his band at Giorgini. He tried to remember whether Rodolfo was surprised or not when he'd stumbled into the village, but he had been exhausted when he'd arrived and he had encountered another problem on his hands the moment he set foot there.

Rodolfo had found some money on the dead Germans they'd killed in Ruosina. He had used it to throw a feast for the villagers in Giorgini. When Peppi arrived, the villagers and partisans were laughing and carousing in the village square, drinking grappa and roasting chickens they'd bought with the dead German's money. When Peppi found out where the money for the party had come from, he was furious. He'd chased them away from the square, emptied the remaining bottles of grappa onto the ground, and flung the roasted chickens into the dust, grinding them into small pieces with his foot. The money he found, he tossed into the fire.

The villagers had encircled him, aghast. “What are you doing?” they cried.

“This is blood money,” Peppi said. “If you become dependent on someone's death to feel alive and throw a party, then you are worse than the Germans, worse than even the Fascists. I am an Italian,” he cried. “I don't kill for money and grappa and chickens. I fight for my freedom. I fight for Italy. To hell with you.”

He had stomped off, leaving the ashamed villagers to stare in his wake.

Rodolfo had not taken that well. He had followed Peppi into the forest and they had argued. It had been a snub to him, Rodolfo protested. It had made him look stupid in front of everyone in the village. What difference does it make, he said. It was our money the man had. We took back what was only ours.

But Peppi would not hear it. You can take the Germans' money anytime you want, he'd said. But if you kill the man and take the man's money, you are not a soldier, you are a thief. That man died poorly, he said. Don't you remember? He did not die like a soldier. He was pissing when we caught him. He was holding his dick when he died.

From that moment on, there had been a space between them, and over the ensuing days and weeks it had widened into a gap, and now it was a yawning valley, and in the middle of it sat the boy, who recognized Rodolfo, who had seen him, who had seen the German, too. But where? There were no survivors of St. Anna that Peppi knew of. His cousin Federico was dead. Furthermore, most of the inhabitants in the surrounding villages didn't know the people of St. Anna. The tiny town was a bubble, a haven for the residents of Forte dei Marmi and Lucca and Florence. They had come there for its church, for the convent where the four nuns lived since before anyone could remember. They came because it was away from the battle lines, ten kilometers from the Gothic Line, where the Americans and Germans were fighting. They came because it was safe. Peppi wanted to throw up thinking about it. He felt nausea working its way up his throat, then retreating, then working its way up again.