Wolf on the Mountain (13 page)

‘It’s not even their war, their fault that they’re in the middle of it. They never wanted it. They just wanted to get on with their lives. But Rome, that evil man in Rome, wanted glory and took away their sons to fight and die. And when he lost that war - as he was bound to because the people’s hearts weren’t in it - he visits this on them. And when the young men try to help, his friends the Germans arrest them to work rebuilding their railway. The people here just can’t believe what’s happening to them.’

‘I know how they feel,’ says the captain, ‘and it’s worse being under those bombs when it’s your own side doing the bombing.’

‘Do you, Roberto? At least you know there’s a purpose to the war. And to the bombing.’

‘But didn’t the Germans moving that panzer division through here show them why the village had been bombed?’

‘At the moment they can only think of lost lives, lost homes.’

‘Will they never forgive us?’

‘In time. Certainly once the Germans have gone. Maybe sooner. In some ways what they’re suffering from is like shell-shock, but in others it’s different. I saw a lot of it in the army, and its symptoms went on for months, maybe because the soldiers were still in the army. But a few days after the bombing stopped, and the threat of the bombers coming back seemed to go away, people in the village started treating what had happened as just like any other disaster. They started getting on with rebuilding their lives. A lot have gone to live with relatives in other villages, and the ones who can’t do that are beginning to make do. Whether they’ll manage when the snows come back we’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think they’ll be angry with the Allies for long. They know, from the way the Germans are stealing all their food, from the way that they’re now printing money, that they’re beaten, that it’s only a matter of time before their liberation comes. Perhaps in time they’ll see that these bombing raids will only hasten the day they’re free of it all.’

‘Do you know yet why the Germans moved that division through?’ the captain asks.

‘There’s only rumour. We’re not the only village to have lost our power station. There’s not a single wireless working in the valley. And with the loss of the capo in the bombing raid…’

‘The capo dead?’ Elvira exclaims.

‘Yes. On the first day.’ The doctor clasps her hand as she holds back a sob. Carlo too looks shocked, takes her hand from the doctor’s. ‘The first day. So the party is having to reorganise its command structure, which means that we’re short of reliable information on what’s happening. Like everyone else we’re having to depend on rumour. One story is that the Allies have broken through at Cassino and are swarming up the Sacco valley towards Rome. Another is that the Allies have landed troops behind the Germans’ lines and are attacking Rome itself. Both seem incredible. But when the communication chain is re-established we’ll know.’

The captain is listening with growing alarm. Had the Golvis known who the local leader of the communists was, even known him? They are shocked by the news of the death, it matters to them, and the doctor trusts them with it; and it is dangerous news because the Germans would want to know it too. He has known all along that they were sympathetic to the communists, that it was at the root of their feud with the Giobellinis, but to hear how close they are to the hierarchy of a party he had been taught to fear is something unexpected, frightening. It is so incongruous in this bourgeois room. Did the serene faces of the ancestors on the sideboard hide similar passions? At least they hadn’t known about the capo’s death until now. He makes to drum his fingers on the table, stops himself, afraid that signs of impatience will be seen as ungrateful.

The doctor senses his discomfort. Even in the flickering candlelight and through his pebble spectacles his eyes are clearly shifting from face to face. ‘I think we may have said too much in the presence of the English officer.’ The captain assumes that he will say no more, but the doctor’s mood changes. ‘But his reaction confirms what we’ve suspected all along, that the Allies aren’t the least bit interested in helping the communist resistance.’

The captain is shaken by his sudden aggression. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That every English officer who passed through our hands last autumn - and it wasn’t just the partisans on your mountain; there are groups all over the Abruzzo, under the same command - was asked, when he got through the lines, to pass on a message that we needed field radios and operators. So we could report to the Allies on the German dispositions, be their eyes and ears behind the lines. We gave map positions for dropping zones, message codes for Radio Londra to tell us when the drops would come. Nothing came. I admit that we asked for arms as well, but they could at the least have dropped us some radios. Apart from anything else they’d have made a week of bombing this village completely unnecessary. We could have transmitted a message that the panzers were on the move and your air force could have come just once and bombed them to pieces on the open road. With precision.

‘Perhaps if we’d told them we were royalists we’d have got the supplies we’d asked for. And last week would have been unnecessary. And Capitano Inglese wouldn’t have been nearly killed by his own side. Something to think about, Roberto?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’m not a politician.’

‘How nice to live in a country where you can say that. We do not.’ The doctor should take the captain’s hint, but he does not. ‘
Our
country is too crazily corrupt. The rich are lazy, happy just to steal from the poor. They’ve even rigged the system so that the peasants can’t make a decent living. It’s always been that way in the south. No law and order, no laws to protect the weak. Just absentee landlords, capitalists, in the towns owning all the land, renting little bits of it, too small to farm properly, to the peasants. And in these mountains there’s little land to cultivate, such infertile soil. Everyone is poor except the corrupt elite. For centuries the mountains were abandoned to the brigands. When Garibaldi threw out the Spanish kings, people thought things would be different, but they weren’t. Other Italians, not people from around here, but from the north, came and took over where the Spaniards had left off. And then Mussolini replaced those upper class landlords with new fascist ones. They were so brutal, with their blackshirts beating up even the poorest peasants who complained, that sections of the peasantry, so long fatalistic about their lot, started saying “something must be done”.’

The doctor is now in full cry. ‘And something must be done. The landlords must have their holdings taken away, made over to the peasants. If we had bigger, co-operative farms, ones laid out to the best effect, run by the peasants themselves, we’d have more food and the people could live decent lives. The family is so strong in the south that the peasants already co-operate with each other. Working on co-operatives wouldn’t be any different to them, just fairer, with food to spare. And if each area was run by local people, other things would be done, like programmes to prevent malaria, have better schools.’

‘Why do you need to tell me all this?’ the captain asks impatiently. ‘I keep telling you I’m just a soldier.’

‘I don’t know. Frustration maybe. But you’re not just a soldier. You read Latin. You’re educated, so ideas must interest you. You just pretend they don’t.’ The doctor looks for a sign of admission, but as ever it does not come. He sighs. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so much. I don’t want to stress the differences between us. We should be helping each other against the Germans. And it’s not just a matter of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. You’re lucky to come from a more tolerant society. We only want to live in a fair one. In a way I was hoping you’d understand. If you have to stay here much longer, get to know us better, perhaps you will.

‘Perhaps, too, I was telling why we don’t trust the Giobellinis, why you shouldn’t trust them either. They’d do anything to harm us.’

‘They’ve been very kind to me.’

‘For the moment. Don’t trust them.’

The captain, wishing to avoid any further politics, stays silent. He looks again at the dim photographs on the sideboard, faces with older values, anything to avoid the doctor’s fiery focus. The Golvis too stay silent, wondering if too much has been said. The doctor catches their mood and stands to leave. ‘So it’s back to the mountain tomorrow, Roberto?’

‘No. I’m going to have another go at crossing the line.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘There’s nothing else to do but sit in this village waiting to be betrayed, or sit on the mountain waiting to freeze to death. That panzer division told us something was happening to the west. I’ve got a better chance of getting through the line when something is happening. That’s where I’ve gone wrong the previous times I’ve tried. When nothing’s happening, everyone has his binoculars out, looking for something different. You’re easy to spot. But when there’s a battle going on they’re distracted. And if battalions are moving forwards and back, then shell-holes you’re hiding in can suddenly become the other side of the line.’

‘If you don’t get hit by the bullets flying around.’

‘Avoiding them is what I’m trained for.’

‘You
are
crazy. But then I think all English officers are crazy. Perhaps that’s why you’re winning the war.’

‘Even after the Christians came they carried on believing in animal spirits. The peasants still do. The church could only try to adapt their rituals. They had a festival each spring when their priests wrapped themselves in serpents. Now they cover their statue of their patron saint with the snakes and parade it through the streets. People come from miles around and follow it round the village on their hands and knees. Such simple people. They still have the superstitions they had before Rome was founded. You’ll know the village when you see it. It’s the most evil looking place you’ve ever seen.’

–

The captain was looking across the flood plain at the village of the snake-worshippers. Even with the pass above it lost in cloud there was no mistaking Elvira’s description. This was the place and the zig-zag road it guarded was the road up to the pass that led to Rome.

It was the darkest village he had ever seen, its roofs and walls a monotonous rough-hewn sooty grey, the buildings with their tiny windows like haphazard steps up the steep crag to which it clung. The damp clouds lowered over it, swirling onto and off its towers and single spire. Crows wheeled in and out of the mist. He could imagine human carrion on its towers, unspeakable deeds in its dungeons. The German trucks winding around it and up the mighty incline towards the clouds looked out of place and time.

The doctor had said that if there was heavy traffic on this road it would show that the Germans were reinforcing their defences around Rome, not to the south. If he still wanted to try to make the battle-line he would have to avoid the pass, which would be heavily guarded. He would have to turn south and find another way over the ridge through the snowfields.

The thought of the Allies marching on Rome gave him new hope and he set off to the south with vigour. His journey took him through a long gorge, following the path of the stream hundreds of feet below the road, a dark damp place that even in summer would only see the sun at noon. The wind was funnelled into it, pushing him backwards as he stepped from boulder to boulder along the rushing stream. At last the valley opened out, wide enough for narrow fields edged with small willows along the river banks, now fallow, their clods iced solid. To each side the mountains were covered by snow for many hundreds of feet below the lowest peaks. If he was to cross them to the next valley he would be trudging through deep snow. He had to rest the night before he could attempt the climb. As the afternoon grew dark he found a reed storage hut in a row of bare poplars by the stream, ate some potatoes and slept a frozen night.

–

The next day has passed in a slow cold trudge up the valley, avoiding the occasional motorised patrol, taking side-tracks up to the ridge where it seems lower to see if there is a way over the crest, but always the snow is too deep. As evening comes he sets back down from the ridge and sees, hidden behind a spur so that its chimney smoke cannot be seen from below, a tiny stone cottage, its roof weighed down with boulders to save it from lifting by the wind. He knocks on the door. ‘I’m an English officer, hiding from the Germans. Can I come in?’

‘Come in, come in, you must be cold.’ An old man in brown sheepskin jerkin and leggings opens the door and ushers him in with his arm around his shoulder and leads him the few feet to the damp wood fire. ‘Sit down, warm your hands. You must be cold.’

The cottage smells of sheep. Even the spitting, smoking fire cannot disguise it. All around are the signs of the old man’s trade: his rug is made of fleeces sewn together; balls of ewe’s cheese are drying in the smoke. He puts a loose sheepskin around the captain’s shoulders, hands him a cup of bitter milk. ‘Drink, drink, restore your strength. What in God’s name are you doing up here?… Trying to cross the mountain? Impossible. The snow’s too deep, and it’s going to snow some more.’

The captain drains the cup, pinches his nose to cure the icy coursing into his forehead, draws the fleece closer around him and looks at the man. His weather-beaten face looks eighty but his eyes are smiling the welcome of a grateful host. The man shows no sign of the great fear he has been bringing into every other home. It is a reception he has not had since, perhaps, early November, many miles to the north. In those days in the north he and Mike had always been welcomed as ordinary travellers far from home, their clothes dried out, cups of wine thrust into their hands, filled to bursting with maize porage and then been expected to tell tales of strange places into the night. But that was miles from the battle lines, miles from the areas of heavy patrolling and the confiscations of food. It is strange to have such a welcome here.

‘Aren’t you afraid of the Germans?’ he asks after a while.

‘Why should I be? One is only afraid if one has something left to lose. As the saying goes: even a hundred thieves can’t strip a naked man. I was afraid of the Germans in the autumn when I had my sheep, but then they came and stole them, although they missed a few, thank God. There’s nothing left to take, so why should they come up here again, why should I worry about them coming? And even if they came and killed me, why should I care? My wife and children are long since dead, from malaria or starvation. I’ll just stay up here as long as I can. I have firewood, a ewe to give me milk, some mutton in my cold-store, chestnut flour to make my bread. When I run out of food I die. If the Germans come up here again I die. What difference does it make? I’ll die some day. Sometimes I look forward to death. It will be a release from a life of misery.