The Longest Winter (33 page)

Carl, observing the paintings, noted that the faces were all Italian. Although the Tyrolean Austrians and Italians co-existed they never managed to look like each other. The Italians were as dark as those in Rome.

He stripped off his gloves and entered the drawing room. There Corporal Jaafe helped him off with his greatcoat. There stood a young woman. She was as stiff as a poker, inasmuch as her rounded form would let her be. She wore a
crisp white blouse and black skirt. Her dark hair was neatly braided, and her eyes, overwhelmed by soft black lashes, were slumbrous with the smouldering hostility of the Tyrolean Latin for the Austrian overlord. Carl had seen that look before. He was not impressed. He turned to Corporal Jaafe.

‘This is an Italian house,’ he said in German.

‘This is our house,’ said the young woman in Italian.

‘What is wrong with the house of good Tyroleans?’ asked Carl of Jaafe.

Jaafe knew he meant an Austrian family’s house.

‘Herr Major,’ he said, ‘as I understand it there’s no other house—’

The young woman interrupted, again in Italian. ‘We are good Tyroleans in this house.’

‘Who is this person?’ asked Carl.

‘She’s Fräulein Am—’

‘I am Signorina Amaraldi.’

Carl turned to her. Her dark fiery eyes clashed with his indifference. They were immediate antagonists, except that he cared very little and she cared passionately, patriotically. She was hotly Italian, which meant, as far as he was concerned, that it took little to make her spit and scratch.

‘Are you an Austrian subject?’ he asked.

‘That is what our papers say.’

‘Then speak German,’ said Carl, ‘or you will not be heard. You have a grievance, obviously. What is it?’

Pia Amaraldi, nineteen, an educated and
intelligent young woman and an avowed irredentist, could speak the official language very well, but was not going to yield to a brusque command from a hard-faced Austrian major.

‘I have a protest, not a grievance,’ she said, still in Italian.

‘I did not catch that,’ said Carl. He handed his cap to Jaafe.

Pia’s crisp blouse stirred as her simmering fires grew hot.

‘You have heard everything else I said.’

Carl could not be bothered to argue with her. They all had some complaint or other, those who were pro-Italy, stupidly forgetful of the fact that they were better off under Austrian rule than they would ever be under that of the erratic Italians. Italians would never make good politicians, only opera stars. They should stick to opera and leave politics and bombs alone.

‘Very well,’ he said curtly, ‘what is your protest?’

‘That we have told the military authorities more than once that we have no room to house soldiers. Now they have ignored us and ordered us to find room for you. There is no room.’

‘Have you been spared billeted men up till now?’

‘Yes.’ Proud, defiant, she was not afraid to let him know which side she was on.

‘Then you’ve been fortunate, fräulein. Show me the house.’

‘That is not necessary.’ It was another protest. ‘You may take my word for it.’

‘I can’t,’ said Carl, ‘not without overriding the decision of the billeting officer. I’ll see for myself. You may lead the way.’

She turned with an angry swish. She began with the ground floor, with the dining room, study, kitchen, outhouse and a sitting room. In the latter with its view of the mountains were two people, a handsome middle-aged woman and a twelve-year-old girl. Pia did not introduce them. Carl asked who they were.

‘My mother and sister.’

Carl nodded briefly to them.

‘I am Major Korvacs,’ he said, ‘I shall be staying here for a while.’

Pia’s mother inclined her head. The girl smiled hesitantly, shyly. Pia frowned at her.

On the first floor were five bedrooms. He looked into all of them. Three bore the mark of occupancy.

‘As well as your mother and sister, who else lives here?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ said Pia.

‘Who else?’

‘There are relatives,’ she said.

‘No doubt.’ The Italians were well known for the numeracy of their relatives. ‘Living here?’

‘They come to visit, to stay. Where are we to put them if you leave us no room?’

‘I shall leave them one room. I shan’t be here more than a week or so. I’m not on a long holiday. If I were I should be in Vienna, not here. What is this fuss you’re making? Three of you and five bedrooms. And what is upstairs?’ He
pointed to the short flight leading to the second floor.

‘There is only an attic up there,’ said Pia, smouldering and fuming.

‘Let me see it.’

‘What is the point?’ she said angrily. ‘You have made your decision.’

He regarded her coldly. Angrier, she led the way up the stairs to a small dark landing. ‘There,’ she said, ‘see for yourself if this is fit for anyone to sleep in!’ She flung the attic door open. He looked in. It was full of junk, with an old bare truckle bed turned on its side against a wall. A small gable window let in grey light.

Carl, thinking of cold mountain bivouacs, said, ‘There are worse places.’

She stalked away, she swished down the stairs. He followed. On the ground floor she turned to him.

‘I am allowed to protest?’ she said. ‘Well, I have protested. You have decided. Supper is at seven.’

‘You may dine without me. I shall be in bed.’

He was stiff and weary. The cold took time to thaw out from the bones. Corporal Jaafe prepared one of the spare bedrooms and half an hour later Carl was beneath the sheets and asleep. He slept solidly through the night.

The morning was crisp and clear. He saw the soaring white heights through the window, icy peaks ranging the wintry blue sky. Corporal Jaafe, arriving early from the barracks, brought him his hot shaving water.

He was spruce when he entered the dining
room. A buxom woman in a white cap and front bobbed agitatedly to him. No one else was present.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Maria, signore— Herr Major.’ Flustered, she bobbed her way out. Pia came in, clad in a dress of dark blue trimmed with white. She looked richly brunette.

‘Good morning,’ she said, ‘that was Maria, our maid.’

‘She wasn’t here yesterday.’

‘She doesn’t live in now, she has her widowed mother to look after.’ Pia hesitated, then said, ‘Herr Major, I must apologize.’

He did not want apologies. He did not want to have to participate in trivial pleasantries. He wanted a few days doing nothing, thinking of nothing.

‘There’s no need,’ he said.

‘I was very rude to you,’ she said, ‘I am sorry.’

She was attractively penitent. He recognized it as a pose. Her hostility yesterday had been far more sincere.

‘You’ve breakfasted?’ he said.

‘My mother and sister have, I have not.’

‘Do you object to my sitting down with you?’

She saw that her apology had been wasted. She flushed. ‘No,’ she said touchily, ‘I’ve no objection.’

She sat at one end of the table, he the other. Maria brought them coffee, rolls and some cheese. The coffee was weakly redolent of ground acorns, the bread black. Carl made no attempt
at conversation. He ate the sparse meal without fuss and drank the coffee without comment. Pia watched him from under lowered lashes. He was not like most Austrian officers she knew, with their gallantries she thought shallow. Major Korvacs looked as if he had stopped treating life as a ballroom and war as a game long ago.

He rose to his feet as soon as he had finished.

‘Thank you,’ he said politely.

‘If you wish the use of the drawing room?’

‘Thank you, no. My own room is adequate and comfortable. I wish only to reside in your house, not to occupy it.’

Pia flushed again, hating him.

‘I see,’ she said.

He left the house a few minutes later. She watched him from a window. He walked briskly, stick in his gloved hand, his greatcoat buttoned to the neck against the cold. He would be a problem, she thought. He was arrogant enough not to care that he was in a house where he was unwanted.

Carl made the rounds of his resting men. They were in a relaxed mood at the moment, glad to be free for a few days from the soul-destroying atmosphere of useless conflict. They knew he would look in on them, but said little. He had made them the hardiest and toughest of mountain units, and if he was a more demanding officer than others, he was also one of the most respected. He had been promoted company commander two years ago. No further promotion happened. He had grown out of the acceptable mould. It did not worry him. His
disbelief in the war as a great crusade had not affected his belief in his men. He knew Austria could not last much longer. He would be happy to finish the war as commander of the 3rd. He would be happy to finish it alive. But after four years each new day shortened the odds. Three times he had been wounded. The fatal bullet must be lurking somewhere.

He dropped in at Headquarters and lodged a curt complaint with the billeting officer, Major Wessel. To the effect that company commanders in from the line should not be housed with Italian families. That he would welcome arrangements to quarter him elsewhere.

‘Impossible, Major Korvacs,’ said Major Wessel. He saw the cold glint in Carl’s eyes. ‘True, true, I know that’s a word you don’t recognize but unfortunately I have to. However, I’ll do what I can.’

‘Thank you. At a pinch,’ said Carl impassively, ‘I’ll share with you.’ It was common knowledge that Major Wessel was very comfortably lodged.

‘I’ll do what I can,’ repeated Major Wessel, equally impassive.

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Carl.

He took a long walk in the cold, crisp air, leaving Oberstein well behind. The mountain road, narrow, drew him upwards. The sky was an icy blue, the peaks brilliantly glacial. He went on until he had a clear view of the pass, away to the left, to the south. He stopped, turned and looked. He grimaced. That was what had drawn him. The unbreachable pass. He had left the
ridges only yesterday, and gladly. But there it was, a sweeping white valley, the trenched lines black, like a series of dark winding gashes in the snow. He could not see the barbed wire but he knew it was there, extending far up the slopes. The sandbag emplacements looked ridiculously tiny. How deceptive was distance. He looked at the heights which, on either side of the pass, defied the most agile of mountain fighters. He wondered if it mattered now. It mattered to the respective corps commanders. One or the other would mount a new attack any moment. Whose turn was it?

The Italians’ turn, he thought.

He returned to the house just before lunch. He glimpsed Signora Amaraldi at the front window. The door was opened by Maria. She looked flushed and upset. Pia swept into the hall, the skirt of her dress offendedly rustling.

‘Major Korvacs, your servant—’

‘Do you mean my orderly, Corporal Jaafe?’

‘Yes, I do mean him,’ said Pia. ‘I do not mind him helping in the kitchen, but he is not here to run things or to take liberties. There will be no peace unless you make this clear to him.’

‘Corporal Jaafe has a few duties here to attend to,’ said Carl, ‘but he’s not known for being tactless. I’ve never had any trouble with him.’

‘But you are not Maria,’ she said with meaning. ‘Maria is a good Catholic.’

‘So is Corporal Jaafe,’ said Carl. Hardened by four years of savage war, he felt this kind of
complaint was a trivial absurdity. His expression told Pia so, but she stood up to him.

‘He has insulted Maria.’

‘How?’

‘By forcing his attentions on her, by kissing her.’

‘Oh?’ His sardonic scepticism could not have been more pronounced. His reactions to the whims of women were no longer basically chivalrous. ‘That has upset her?’

‘Do you doubt it?’ flared Pia.

He did. The complaint was not that Jaafe had kissed the maid, but that he was Austrian.

‘She made it clear to him he had offended her?’

‘She made it very clear. To him and to me.’

‘Then I expect Corporal Jaafe feels as hurt about it as she does. To my knowledge she’s the first woman he’s kissed who didn’t like it. Maria can therefore consider she’s given as good as she got.’ He walked to the stairs.

‘Major Korvacs!’ Pia’s voice shook with anger.

‘Fräulein?’ he said politely, turning. The German form of address raised her temper higher. She knew it to be deliberate.

‘I’ve always understood,’ she said, ‘that whatever the circumstances no Austrian officer would give one less than ordinary courtesy.’

Carl considered the point.

‘I accept your rebuke, Fräulein Amaraldi. I’ll speak to Corporal Jaafe. If he’s there, please ask him to come up to my room.’

Corporal Jaafe, when he presented himself to
Carl, wore the old soldier’s air of innocence, a time-honoured façade one tacitly accepted without being required to believe in it.

‘What’s the trouble?’ asked Carl.

‘Trouble, Herr Major?’

‘In the kitchen.’

‘Ah, the kitchen.’ Jaafe seemed relieved that there was no more to it than that. ‘Well, where else should I polish your buttons and clean your boots, Herr Major, where else should I press your—’

‘I understand all that, Corporal Jaafe, but exactly why is there a complaint laid against you?’

‘She is very Italian, Herr Major.’

‘Who is very Italian?’

‘The maid. Maria. She waves her arms about like a Neapolitan. I’ve only to put my head round the door and she’s flapping about like an alarmed chicken and crying, “Out, out.” If she could she’d have me shining your boots outside in the snow, which—’

‘Which is out of the question, of course. It seems they don’t like what they think is your proprietary air.’

‘Herr Major, I merely come and go.’

‘Quite so.’ Carl allowed himself the flicker of a smile as the corporal polished a brass knob of the bedstead with the subconscious gesture of a man who automatically aimed for lustre on the face of metal. ‘It goes without saying that you’d not force your attentions on the maid.’

‘Herr Major?’ Corporal Jaafe was the soul of innocence.

‘Yes, what happened?’ asked Carl.

‘Ah,’ said Jaafe as if remembering a trifling incident. ‘Well, this is how it was, Herr Major. As you know, a woman who flaps her arms and runs about falls over herself like a blind acrobat. The least a man can do when this occurs is to catch her, and to be frank, Herr Major, it occurred this morning.’