The Bloody Road to Death (20 page)

‘I can eat fire if I want to.’

‘Christ I’d like to see
that
,’ shouts Tiny. ‘I’ve seen one on the Reeperbahn but she was a ’ore.’

‘Red devil extra No. I!’ orders Luigi, with an expectant look on his face.

Porta gets up and goes out into the kitchen to help Beppo.

‘Chili,’ he orders, emptying a whole tin of powder into the sauce. A spoonful or two of Cayenne pepper and a dash of black curry. He remembers red peppers just in time.

‘Paprika she
full
of vitamin C,’ says Beppo, handing him a large tin of the condiment.

‘Lovely grub,’ grins Porta winding up with a big helping of powdered garlic.

Beppo is laughing so much he almost drops the five lobsters on the way to the table.

‘Slow service!’ shouts the Albanian Negro.

‘Here is the special sauce,’ says Porta, ‘but I feel sure it will be far too strong for
you
. Only white men can stand it.’

‘Nothing is too strong for me,’ barks the Negro, conceitedly, and catching hold of a lobster he tears the meat from it, cracks the claws with his teeth and drops the contents into the Red Devil Sauce.

Porta watches him with wide eyes like a man watching an attempt at suicide.

‘We reeng for fire-engines, no?’ asks Beppo staring hard at their victim.

The Negro pushes the lobster into his mouth and swallows.
His face turns suddenly grey, stiffens, his mouth falls open and terrible grimaces move across his features. For a moment he appears as if already dead. He tries to speak. Not a word passes his lips.

Politely Porta offers him some wine.

He grabs it and swallows half the contents of the jug. Now the sauce really begins to work. Like a rocket he flies into the air panting for breath, runs in circles, then out through the kitchen where he jumps through an open window. He emits a long shrill howl and stops for a moment by the table.

Automatically Porta offers him the wine jug. Down goes the rest of the wine and the sauce burns a thousand times worse than before.

‘A-a-a-a-a-ah!’ he screams like a gut-shot wolf. One hand grips his stomach and the other his throat. He rolls over onto his back and kicks his legs in the air. The Italian mountaineering boot flies off. He arches his body and moves down the road wriggling like a snake on his back. Then he is on his feet again. He, springs into the river and drinks as if he were trying to empty it.

Shortly after he comes out of the water and goes up an almost vertical cliff wall like a mountain goat.

‘’Mazin’ what these bleedin’ cannibals can do when they want to, ain’t it?’ cries Tiny.

‘What devil you put in devil sauce?’ asks Luigi.

‘Some tranquillizers that’ll make a good boy of
him
,’ grins Porta.

Shortly after, the Negro comes back. He looks like a man who has crossed the Gobi Desert on foot. He offers them his hand politely.

‘You’re leaving already?’ asks Porta.

‘I am going back to Libya!’

‘Whatever for?’ asks Tiny.

‘The food here does not agree with me!’

Beppo’s lobsters exceed their wildest expectations. Porta praises them lavishly.

Luigi holds up a claw as if it were a marshal’s baton.

‘They soon shut up shop here. I am pack and weel
not go
back to Italy a poor man!’ he whispers confidentially.

‘True for you,’ Porta smacks his lips. ‘Only fools leave a war poorer than they got into it.’

‘The most are eediots,’ states Luigi, dipping a piece of lobster into the garlic mayonnaise.

‘God be praised,’ smiles Porta happily. ‘It is His work.’

‘It weel be good to again be in Italy,’ says Luigi. ‘War I not interest in. I ’ave what I need for me in Italy.’

‘That’s the way I see it, too,’ agrees Porta. ‘All they get out of it is us Germans and you Italians getting the shit knocked out of us.’

‘Give ’em our love in Italy,’ says Tiny, through a mouthful of lobster. ‘Maybe we won’t be far be’ind you.’

‘
Gesú, Gesûy
cries Luigi in horror, almost choking on his own lobster. ‘
Madre di Christi
forbid thees!’ He crosses himself and rolls his eyes heavenwards.

‘I hope and I pray that the last of the Germans ’as left Italy before I come ’ome to ’er!’

‘What, don’t you
like
us then?’ asks Porta in surprise. ‘We’re allies and are fighting shoulder to shoulder in a war which has been forced on us.’

‘I no say Italian love German,’ says Luigi, shaking his head. ‘When like now very nice fellows, but when many together make too much noise, take up much room.’

‘Somethin’ in that,’ admits Tiny, licking the bowl of garlic mayonnaise clean.

‘you allatime shoot,’ insists Luigi, ‘no understand thees dangerous. You shoot at man, he shoot back most time.’

‘True enough,’ sighs Porta.

‘We take coffee, cognac, ’ere?’ asks Luigi, standing up.

‘I’ve eaten that much I
can’t
move,’ laughs Porta, unbuttoning his trousers. ‘I love food. I could live merely to eat!’

‘You’ve fixed yourself up here very nicely,’ Carl praises Luigi, as he tastes his cognac with the air of a connoisseur.

‘’Ere ees good,’ Luigi admits, stretching his legs comfortably. ‘I want only freedom. Maybe Tommy come soon and ’it us so ’ard we no want shoot back.’

‘Any left?’ asks Porta, pushing his empty cognac glass towards Luigi. ‘God only knows when we’ll see this stuff again.’

Smiling, Luigi fills his glass to the brim so that Porta has to
bend down to it to drink. He sucks it up like a cow drinking water.

They’re gettin’ a bleedin’ beltin’ just now,’ says Tiny, spitting in the direction of an idealized SS-man on a recruiting poster.

‘A general I see go through, with much leeberated loot in truck following, only yesterday,’ says Luigi. ‘That good sign.’

‘There’s summary court-martials on everywhere,’ says Porta, slipping a cracking fart. There’ll soon be more watchdogs out here than soldiers. Even the ammunition shortage doesn’t stop ’em. There’s always a beam and a rope. Spare the rope, spoil the child as the pedagogues say.’

The Greater German Wehrmacht is on its bleedin’ arse, as
you
might say,’ sighs Tiny, throwing a piece of apple-pie over his head to the great happiness of a dog behind him which wolfs it down.

‘I’ll wind up this famous campaign in Germersheim, and make hay when I get home as a politically persecuted person,’ laughs Carl with satisfaction. That could lead to a lot. Yesterday’s villains are tomorrow’s heroes.’

‘Don’t laugh too soon,’ warns Porta ominously. ‘It won’t be long before the dopes get over the shock of having lost a war.’

‘They say the ’ole of the 9th bleedin’ Army’s deserted to the enemy,’ confides Tiny secretively.

‘9th Army? That was wiped out long ago,’ Carl says wonder-ingly.

‘Generalfeldmarschall von Mannstein’s sitting on a rock in Poland crying his eyes out,’ says Porta confidentially.

‘’E ain’t no von Mannstein,’ shouts Tiny, the all-knowing. ‘’E was born Levinski, a name Adolf ain’t too ’appy about. Say what you bleedin’ like, but it’s a very surprisin’ thing!’

‘Eet funny theeng. Good news never come in army news-sheet,’ philosophizes Luigi.

The Führer has said that there is no more need for tactical operational geniuses,’ explains Porta. ‘Now we are to have army commanders of the boneheaded type who will lead us with a happy shout into battle, and stand on the line.’

Then that
is
the bleedin’ end,’ confirms Tiny importantly. ‘An army 0’ bleedin’ cattle as just stands still our good
neighbour’s armour’ll fix up in two shakes of a ’ore’s arsehole.’

‘What a shower of soddin’
lies
they’ve filled us up with the last few years,’ says Carl despondently.

‘Apart from a few of us everybody believed ’em,’ Porta smiles a superior smile.

‘And eet ees the worst that many steel believe them,’ whispers Luigi.

‘Ought to be bleedin’ shot,’ says Tiny.

‘Our war leaders have lost their grip on the reins,’ decides Porta. ‘Bottoms up, mates!’

‘They once
’ave
grip?’ asks Luigi in surprise. ‘I think always Germans fonny people. Square een head!’

‘Gröfaz
⁷
’11 soon be frizzlin’ in ’is own fat,’ says Tiny, optimistically.

‘We are moving towards difficult times,’ says Porta. ‘We won’t be able to turn round soon without being called deserters.’

‘They must all be mad at the Führer’s HQ,’ considers Garl.

‘Who God will let get fucked, he first strikes with blindness,’ explains Porta, with pathos in his voice.

A company of recruits comes singing down the winding mountain path. Their boots and equipment are clean and polished and their helmets shiny and new with the eagle on the side.

Porta scratches his back with his bayonet, and looks at the singing recruits thoughtfully.

‘When you see a bunch of well-groomed German heroes like that, all spit and polish, you could almost begin to think the myth of German heroism still existed.’

‘Three day from now partisans weel ’ave wiped these boys out,’ states Luigi shortly.

‘Thank God we were in at the start,’ says Porta, ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t be alive now.’

‘old soldiers never die,’ exhales Carl, stretching so that the wicker chair he is sitting in comes close to breaking apart.

Tiny lets out a long rolling belch, which stops the company feldwebel in his tracks.

‘Are you able to salute?’ he asks angrily.

All four salute silently, but without rising from their wicker chairs.

A thunderous noise starts up away to the east and rolls nearer like a rapidly approaching storm. A salvo of shells falls with a roar into the town. Earth and fire cascade skywards. A long row of houses disappears in a great chalky cloud. The school across the road is lifted into the air and collapses into pieces quite slowly. The roof falls down intact on top of the pulverized walls.

The company feldwebel is cut in two and the pieces thrown high up on to the mountain side. The company of recruits melts away in a sea of flame.

Luigi disappears with amazing celerity into a slit-trench, closely followed by Porta and Tiny. Carl picks up a wicker chair and holds it above his head in the weird hope of protecting himself from the shrapnel which is raining down all around him.

The blast from an exploding shell throws him into a depression in the ground.

A shell scores a direct hit on the house in which the divisional kitchen has established itself. Black clouds of smoke rise as the house falls slowly in upon itself. Only the chimney and a huge shining copper boiler are left undamaged.

The large green, red and white sunshade comes sailing through the air and settles gently down on the slit-trench.

‘The colours of old Italy!’ says Luigi proudly. ‘They breeng luck!’

A new salvo falls. Their mouths are full of brick-dust. Trees on the slope snap like matchsticks and fly through the air. Broken bodies sail above the roof-tops. A pair of horses is thrown far up the slope. The street becomes a volcano of flying stones and splintered wood.

‘Let’s get out of here!’ shouts Porta. ‘Coming, Spaghetti? They don’t need your culinary art here any more!’

Luigi stands thinking for a moment. Then he claps his plumed Bersaglieri on his head. He throws a last fond look at the colourful sunshade.

‘Si! I go ’ome to Italy
now
!’

Carl comes rushing down the street, with the wicker chair still elevated precariously above his head.

‘Who the hell’s doing all the shooting?’ he shouts excitedly.

‘Ring up and ask Information,’ suggests Porta.

To their amazement they find the Mercedes undamaged amongst a mass of wreckage.

‘The devil looks after the Gestapo,’ grins Porta, as they leave the town at top speed.

They ascend a narrow mountain road. Porta’s instinct warns him not to use the broader metalled road.

‘Where we go?’ asks Luigi, preening his plumes.

‘A far-off place,’ murmurs Tiny mysteriously.

‘Jesus but these new-fangled wars are
terrible
!’ says Porta.

‘Think they were more fun in olden times?’ asks Carl.

‘
Quite, quite
different,’ answers Porta. ‘A chap called Marius beat the Vercellae on the plains of Provence with the help of war dogs.’

‘It’s a bleedin’ lie,’ shouts Tiny, ‘but it must’ve been more bleedin’ fun then. War dogs!
We’d
soon fix them bleeders.’

A Jaeger major stops them and orders them to give him a lift.

Tiny takes the back seat between Carl and Luigi. They drive into Kralfero at the head of a battalion of Jaegers.

The major inspects the Mercedes with a doubtful eye.

‘What are you men doing here?’ he asks suspiciously.

Porta hands his forged documents over quietly.