The Longest Winter (44 page)

Pia closed her eyes. She could not hate her father. She had been his pride and joy, his most faithful follower. But that was all gone, that relationship, shattered by the cold, deliberate nature of his act.

‘Mama, his friends will have heard how he shot Carl. They’ll think him a hero. He’ll walk around as one. I know now I don’t speak the same language as he does.’ Pia saw a glinting rooftop from which the snow had slid. She saw how sharply blue the sky was, how icy it looked. She thought of the road to Tai, the Austrian columns, the despair of defeat and retreat, and the ambulances jolting over the frozen road. Some Austrian families were moving out, wanting to get to Innsbruck or other places before the Italian troops arrived. Pia turned from the window. No one could say she had not thought about the decision in her mind now. ‘Mama, I am going with him, I am going with the hospital staff and the ambulances.’

Her mother did not throw up her hands or beat her forehead. Quite calmly she said, ‘He has his soldiers, Pia, perhaps they’ll go with him.’

‘According to the armistice, the soldiers are supposed to stay where they are. Let me go, please. When he’s in hospital in Bozen he’ll have no one to visit him.’

‘He won’t be alone, Pia.’

‘I’m going,’ said Pia intensely, ‘I must.’

‘Yes, I know you must,’ said Signora Amaraldi.
‘Go and stay with your Benino cousins in Bozen. It will be a long journey, Pia, and a cold one. Take your warmest clothes and what money there is. When you see Major Korvacs tell him we understand about our new allegiances but we are first his friends. If I were sensible I’d stop you, because I think you may break your heart. But you must go, I see that. Nothing else is going to be of any help to you.’

The road was narrow, winding and icy. In the distance it had a hard glitter to it, which seemed a promise to be kinder underfoot. It never was. One unit of troops escorted the hospital wagons and ambulances, and that was Carl’s company. His officers and men marched doggedly and silently, rifles slung. Orderlies drove the ambulances and supply carts. Doctors and nurses either rode aboard vehicles or marched with the soldiers. The ambulances with their Red Cross markings ground and creaked along, carrying wounded who could not walk. The senior medical officer wondered why he had ordered the evacuation. No one at Headquarters had said it was advisable or necessary, but nor had anyone commanded him to cancel the order. He had carried it out with his staff, he supposed, because he felt that was what everyone wanted. Some staff had been left behind to look after the more serious cases. He liked the way several nurses marched with the soldiers. He was grateful for the soldiers. Their presence gave comfort, even pride. They were grim and bitter but not demoralized.

Austrian refugees, mainly women and children, trudged in batches within the column of soldiers. Breath escaped like steam from every mouth, but the blood stayed warm. It circulated and invigorated.

Pia, carrying a heavy case, wore her dark red coat and black fur hat. The coat was warm, the hat cosy and a vanity. She walked steadily in stout boots, moving past groups of civilians, the collar of her coat turned up. She hoped no one would know her. The Austrian women might not take kindly to the presence of an Italian on a day like this one. She kept her eyes on the ambulances in the van of the march. Soldiers looked curiously at her, for she seemed very much alone for one so attractive. Some eyed her admiringly, some sympathetically, not realizing she was Italian, not dreaming she could be. But eventually there was one man who looked at her and knew her. She felt his eyes on her. She turned her head and saw Corporal Jaafe. He was not quite like the Jaafe who had kissed Maria and seen to the requirements of his company commander. He looked grim and silent, his rifle slung, his pack high on his back.

She did not know whether to expect animosity or resentment from him. He altered his line of march until he was walking beside her.

‘This is a bad day, fräulein.’

He did not sound hostile. Perhaps he related her presence to a need she had to escape, even though she was Italian.

‘Yes, very bad, Corporal Jaafe.’

‘They say we’re better off here than in Vienna, that it’s not good at all in Vienna. Can you believe that?’ He nodded at the snow, the frozen wastes and icy road. ‘Can you believe there’s more to be had here than in Vienna? If there is, then all I can say is that thunder and lightning must have razed Vienna to the ground.’

‘You know that can’t be true.’ Pia, the weight of her case dragging at her arm, worried and wondered about which ambulance Carl was in. ‘Oh, things are bad at the moment, but life must have something good to offer you and your comrades after so many years of war. Defeat can’t be the only consequence for brave men. Vienna isn’t razed to the ground, and even if it had been it would rise again.’

‘But who’d have thought things would turn out like this?’ Corporal Jaafe shook his head. ‘They must be bad for you too if you’re having to leave.’

‘I’m going to relatives in Bozen,’ she said, ‘it’s more Austrian than Oberstein.’ The implication that she preferred an Austrian environment was a natural reaction to Jaafe’s sympathy.

‘But how long will Bozen be safe, that’s what I’d like to know,’ he said. ‘You’re by yourself, fräulein, without your family?’

‘Yes, for a while,’ said Pia. She was fiercely glad she had come, she would have gone crazy had she stayed home. It was not going to be easy. If the weather turned, conditions would become pitiless, and what Carl would say when she turned up to visit him in the Bozen hospital
she didn’t know. She could not hold back the question hungry on her tongue. ‘Corporal Jaafe, where is Major Korvacs?’

‘He’s here, of course,’ said Jaafe, his boots crunching. ‘That’s why we’re here. They said no Austrian units were to move, but when we heard Major Korvacs was getting out of bed to march to Tai today, we all said we would go too, never mind what the Italian High Command said. We will lay down our arms only when the Herr Major commands us, not the Italians, not even the emperor. Major Korvacs is the one who’s looked after us. We were the best fighters of them all, fräulein, and don’t you forget it. We still are. No one is going to stop us going where Major Korvacs goes.’

‘But where is he, in which ambulance?’ asked Pia, her eyes on the lumbering vehicles ahead, all of them horse-drawn. The slanting sun cut across them, picked them out.

‘Ambulance? He’s not in any ambulance. He’s up there, leading the company, with the other officers. He’s taking us all home, all of us. He’s going to march us into Vienna, take my word.’

‘Oh, no!’ Pia was tragically alarmed. ‘Corporal Jaafe, he’ll kill himself.’

Corporal Jaafe turned his old soldier’s grin on her.

‘He’s better on his feet than his back, fräulein, I tell you that for nothing.’

Pia, in wild agitation, said, ‘You mean he says he is. Oh, don’t you see, he knows he’s going to die and he wants to do it heroically, on his feet.
Oh, it’s wicked, it’s stupid. You must stop him—’

‘Not Major Korvacs,’ said Jaafe, ‘he’ll outdo the devil himself. Don’t you worry, fräulein. Here, give me that.’ He took her case. ‘I’ll stow it in one of the carts, you don’t need to carry it.’ He stopped to wait for a baggage cart to grind up. ‘You go on, fräulein, keep walking, don’t get cold. I’ll catch you up again.’

Pia went on, well aware how the coldness could creep into boots, woollen stockings, into feet and legs, if one did not keep moving. She was grateful for Corporal Jaafe’s paternalism but frantically worried about Carl. Her eyes searched the winding column, but she could not distinguish individual figures at the head of it. She walked more quickly, working her way past soldiers and coming up with a group of trudging women.

Carl marched with the sun on his face. The light was brilliant, reflected and accentuated by the inescapable walls of icy white. He did not look back. Had he done so he would have seen the slopes that swept down to the pass, the pass that had meant everything and now meant nothing. The air was so clear, so sharp, so tingling. He drew it fearlessly into his lungs. It pierced them but he did not cough. And the pain that had nagged seemed only a lurking tightness.

On either side of him and behind him marched his officers. He knew they were watching him, waiting for weakness to show. But what was his life, any single life, against the canvas of Austria’s defeat? A million better lives had already been
lost for the empire, a million widows or mothers wept for them, and not one of those lost lives had changed the course of the war for the better. Relentlessly, remorselessly, the Allies had hacked away at the empire, destroying the intangible qualities that had held together a dozen different nations, scores of different peoples. What was an empire but the indefinable host wherein unity fostered amid disunity, keeping its members from each other’s throats?

His officers were silent. The extended columns were silent. It was all silence except for the sound of marching feet and creaking wheels. They had spoken all their words during the years of war. There were no more. Defeat marked their end. Defeat was silence. Even in France the German armies were approaching the end of the road.

The silence did not last for ever. It was suddenly broken by women’s voices raised in anger, and the anger turned into a chorus of jeers. A sharp, solitary cry of pain pierced the jeers.

Carl stopped and turned.

‘What’s happening?’ he asked. A soldier came leisurely along the side of the halted column. Ahead the ambulances creaked on. ‘What’s happening?’ asked Carl again.

‘They’ve found an Italian woman, Herr Major,’ said the man.

‘Well?’ said Carl sharply.

‘Herr Major, I wouldn’t put it past them to skin her alive.’ The soldier seemed regretful but otherwise indifferent. Perhaps everything else loomed far bigger. Even the troops nearest
the noisy melee were looking on without doing anything. Carl strode down the line. He reached the women, a dozen or more of them. They were hysterically angry, surrounding a woman down on her knees in the icy road. Carl caught just a glimpse of her, her back to him and snow on her red coat. The women were pushing, slapping and tongue-lashing her. Her hat was off, hands at her hair. She seemed to disappear as her tormentors closed tighter around her.

‘What are you doing?’ Carl’s voice was biting, harsh. The women turned. They were fairly young, their husbands in the Austrian army, and they had preferred to leave their homes rather than come face to face with Italian troops. They wore their masks of anger glitteringly, tears not faraway. They looked at Carl, at his bleak eyes, his hard, drawn face. His expression was unforgiving for the angry, the unbridled, the revengeful. He understood their feelings but not their brutality. They became silent, uneasy. ‘Has defeat made savages of us?’ he asked.

The woman on the ground, hidden from him, shivered as she heard his voice. Corporal Jaafe arrived. He stared at the scene, at Pia on her knees, trembling, her face in her hands. He approached Carl, whose eyes were on the Austrian women.

‘Herr Major—’

‘See to her, whoever she is,’ said Carl.

‘But Herr Major, she’s—’

‘See to her,’ repeated Carl, and marched back to the van of the column, where his officers
awaited him. He moved on with them and the dour cavalcade of retreat resumed its trudge. Something nudged its way into his mind. A colour. A glimpse of dark warm red. And words.

They’ve found an Italian woman
.

He stopped again. He swung round. He saw her clearly then, not so far away, a black fur hat back on her head and Corporal Jaafe brushing snow from her coat. Warmth rushed into Carl’s body. He knew then the real reason why he had kept silent about Pietro Amaraldi, why he had protected Signora Amaraldi and her daughters. Because of all of them and one in particular.

‘Pia!’ He called to her. ‘Pia!’

She looked up. She saw him. He was outlined by the sun and the mountains. She saw him stretch out his hand and heard him call again.

‘Pia, come!’

She gasped. She ran, her eyes hot, the floodgates threatening. She ran past the soldiers, over the ice and snow. She ran into his arms. Carl held her and his compassionate comrades turned away.

‘Pia,’ he said, ‘my sweet foolish Pia.’

‘Carl?’ Her tears spilled. ‘Oh, let me come with you, please let me – I’ll ask for nothing, only to come to the hospital and visit you—’

‘There’ll be no hospital,’ said Carl, ‘and ask me for love.’

‘Love?’ Her swimming eyes were in disbelief.

‘Whatever I’ve lost,’ he said, ‘I’ve plenty of that to give. That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’

‘Carl, you are saying you will give me love?’ she said.

She was a warmth against him, a woman.

‘You have it,’ he said, ‘is it what you want, Pia?’

‘From you? Oh, yes, yes,’ breathed Pia, oblivious of armies, victories, defeats and even the unfurling banners of patriots, ‘from you that is everything I want.’

It came. Defeat. Total, absolute, overwhelming. With it came the collapse of the empire. The abdication of the young and earnest emperor. The demoralization of Vienna, the starvation of its people. All food supplies had been cut off weeks before the Armistice. The Socialists took power provisionally to work desperately for a democratic Austria.

Baron von Korvacs stared greyly into the face of ruin. The baroness and her daughters and her servants looked for fuel for the fires and something to eat. The markets swarmed with the hungry and the markets had almost nothing to sell. Money values plunged. Costs soared.

The victors arrived. The Viennese received them numbly. Sophie saw British uniforms and stared strickenly at them. The Allied Peace Commission began to reorganize the city administration with the help of the new government. Returning soldiers flooded the streets, adding to the difficulties. They had come to see what Vienna had to offer them after four years
of fighting. Vienna had nothing, only a grey despair and a soul in limbo. The soldiers’ hopes turned into disillusionment, disillusionment into violence and anger. There were riots because of the shortage of food, fuel and miracles.