Wolf on the Mountain (27 page)

As soon as she is out of sight he slips quietly to his feet and sets off to follow her. After so long hiding on the mountain he can move as silently as a native tracker in the bush, instinctively finding the silent footfalls, and he catches sight of her by the spring. She does not stop.

So she had not set off in this direction to drink. She must be going somewhere else. Is she going to meet someone? But if she is, why isn’t she looking back to see if she is being followed?

She carries on walking to the south below the cliff that makes up the western face of the main mountain, then disappears into the burgeoning oak and chestnut thickets where there is no clear path. It is easy now to close the distance between them as the sounds of her feet crackling the twigs carries to him in the silent air. If she stops so will he, and if she suddenly comes into sight he can slip behind cover until she is gone, but she never slows down. She is walking somewhere with a purpose, never slowing her pace or looking back. Then she disappears into the bushes where the cliff is at its steepest. The sounds of her footfalls stop. He stops and waits for a sound that will tell him where she is.

The sun is shining warmly in this shelter below the cliff, the trees in small bright green leaf. A cuckoo calls from the wood. It is so quiet, so tranquil, that the war could be over. But for the sinister purpose of Isabella’s mission. Who is she meeting? She must be meeting someone. Why else the subterfuge? Is she still seeing that German?

At last he hears a sound, a sudden brief splash, then another. Water here? No-one has ever mentioned a spring at this place. Perhaps it is a puddle of thawed snow, not a proper water-source, that she has stepped in. It came from below. The slope is steep and he quietly edges down it through the undergrowth.

Then he sees the pool. The secret pool exactly as it was described by Ovid, the cliff, the grove, the stones, the moss, where nature had conspired with art. The pool in which Actaeon, heated in the chase, had chanced on the naked Diana and her nymphs and for his insolence been transformed into a stag, then been hunted to death by his own hounds.

And in the pool, her shoulders showing naked above the water, her chestnut hair now dark and plastered wet down her back, is Isabella, sitting with her back to him, her hands manically washing all the dirt of the winter from her whole body. The pool, despite the sun, must be close to freezing cold, but he envies her cleanliness, her refreshment. He is so enchanted that he forgets himself, forgets to turn away, watches as she turns back to her hair and scoops one handful after another over her head still shuddering from the cold. Then she levers herself onto her heels and rises. He ducks behind some ferns, but stays watching transfixed as she rises further and turns to present her naked body towards him.

But he does not see her nipples. He only sees her empty breasts hanging over her exposed ribs.

And he does not see her body hairs. He only sees her protruding hip bones and her skinny thighs arched out in the shape of her femurs, her knees out of proportion, her bony arms hanging listless by her sides as she wades through the ploughing water and steps up onto the bank.

He buries his face in his hands and chokes a sob, not noticing her look up in the direction of the slight sound. He does not see her suddenly crouch sideways like a foetus to hide her entire nakedness, sweep her dank hair from an eye and still cowering look upwards, chin against shoulder, in his direction, see nothing. He does not see her turn, her shoulders thrust against her orb-like knees, her shrunken buttocks on her heels, edge as smally as possible towards her clothes, then throw them on and run away.

–

Why had he stayed and watched? He tried justifying himself that it had happened so quickly, but he knew that it had not. Was it because of the dream? The dream of Arethusa, or Diana’s nymph, rising like Botticelli’s Venus with an arm across her beauteous breasts, a hand cupped coyly to her groin, pink skinned with plump hips and thighs, her chestnut hair entangled by a zephyr of warm breeze? A nymph he had long since realised now had Isabella’s face?

It had been inexcusable to stay. And yet the dream had not come true. He had seen the pool in life as the poet had portrayed it, had seen the nymph with Isabella’s face rising from its waters; but instead of the fulsome girl using her hands and arms to cover her naked modesty he had seen the body of Ovid’s Famine witch.

Isabella with a hag’s body. The girl who had brought him food and told him she had already eaten when he made to share it with her. She whose family had fed him so many times, she who had been going with German officers in order to get food, then not eating it herself. Ashamed of her entire body, not just her private parts, not simply coy of her sexuality.

He feels more ashamed than she. Not for watching her. He is glad he had done so because it had made him aware of her body’s state. His shame is that she has starved herself for him. He no longer stifles his sobs.

He feels unclean, unclean for having spied on her, unclean for eating so ravenously the food she had brought him when she was unfed herself, unclean for having suspected her motives when she was with the Germans all those weeks before, suspecting them today. ‘Look, she’s brought us some tinned meat’ her mother had said after one of her supposed trysts. Us, not herself.

He edges down to the pool, thinking to bathe himself clean of his thoughts as well as the weeks of dirt that have fouled his body since he last slept in the Golvis’ house. On hands and knees he leans over the pool to cup water to his eyes and brow and sees a face he does not know. The mouth is lost in a tangled mass of beard, the face framed by the hair of a mad priest back from the wilderness. His nose is flat against his face, like that of an old prize-fighter’s, encrusted with festering sores, and the hollow lifeless eyes protruding from the deep hollows in his skull are ones he has never seen before.

For weeks he has subconsciously avoided any act that would show him what had become of his body, but now he must see it in all its squalor. He takes off his clothes and walks into the pool not caring for its shocking cold, the sharp stones on its floor. He tears clumps of leaves from its bordering bushes and frenziedly scrubs his skinny body, like a murderer removing all traces of his victim’s blood. For maybe half an hour he tumbles through the water, not like an otter enjoying its agility, but imagining that each new movement will expose some more hidden dirt between his bones to cleansing.

He finally emerges and is for the first time aware of the stench of his clothes. He rinses them too, not nearly so vigorously because he is afraid they will fall apart if he wrings the water out of them, lays them out on bushes in the sun and lays back on the grass to wait for them to dry. Naked on the grass, his pistol by his right hand in a clump of sedge grass, ready to use, but concealed if he is surprised without time to use it. Wouldn’t it be bizarre, he thinks, to be surprised by a German patrol now? He closes his eyes, lets the sun warm and redden their lids, perhaps burn his skin so much that its horrid outer layer peels off, and falls asleep.

Luigi mentioned all those months ago lying on grass like this, listening to the sky and dreaming of a nymph called Echo wafting by, just like in Ovid. In the few moments before he falls asleep Roberto strains for the story and remembers her wasting away with unrequited love for a handsome boy. The boy’s catharsis had been to look into a pool and fall in love with his own reflection.

Spring has reached up to the highest oak forest. The gnarled thin trunks are showing lighter grey as the sap rises within them; the top leaves, ten to twenty feet above them, are rejoicing yellow-green. Green fronds unfurl like shepherds’ crooks amongst the ferns in the undergrowth. The birds are back at this height, chirruping their freedom. Miniature cyclamen and aquilegia are showing flashes of purple and pale yellow in the dappled sunlight amongst last autumn’s leaves. It is not good cover if the Germans come, but they have not patrolled this far up the mountain before. Salvatore has come with Roberto to see if the way over the highest ridge into the next valley is now clear. The wind is still strong.

Suddenly the wind drops. The sound of feet stepping on rotten twigs, kicking up leaves, comes from fifty or so yards to their left.

Salvatore grabs his arm and whispers ‘Germans. Too noisy for locals. What do we do? We’ll make the same amount of noise if we run.’

Roberto places his fingers to his mouth and points to a clump of bracken and brambles to their right and they creep towards it, burrow in as if crawling under barbed wire and, lying flat, cover themselves with their sacking cloaks. He peeks out in the direction of the noise, reaches for his pistol, brings it up level with his eye and releases its safety catch so that if he has to shoot there will be no prior click of warning.

The sound of the breaking twigs moves straight towards them and then the first figures emerge between the trunks of the trees, at least a dozen men in olive green with forage caps and rifles carried across their chests, butts by their hips, fore-sights at their shoulders. They reach a small clearing twenty yards away from the partisans, their officer gestures a halt, puts his pistol in its holster and calls out ‘
Funf minuten
.’

Why pick here to stop? They could have walked past the bracken clump making so much noise that they wouldn’t have heard each other breathing, let alone any rustle from the bracken, their eyes so distracted by their steps ahead that they would not have noticed the different shape and texture in the clump. Instead their senses are freed to be curious. Some of the soldiers tripod their rifles together and sink to the ground, others lean them against the narrow trunks of the trees. Many reach into the pockets of their tunics and light up cigarettes, starting what can only be an obscene babble of disgust at the pointlessness of their labours. Good, he thinks, their vigilance is relaxed already.

In contrast a young soldier leans simply back on his hands, looks up to the leaf canopy, breathes deeply and says ‘
Fruhling!
’ as if a load has been cast aside. Roberto points him out as their danger, the country boy who will be captivated by the sparrows hopping around on the ground, the new wild flowers carpeting towards their clump of bracken. He draws his pistol up under their sacking cover towards the man’s face, ready to fire if he sees them and shouts a warning. Shooting him would stun the rest of the patrol long enough to give them a chance to escape.

A sparrow in a whirring of wings comes down through his line of sight and settles in front of him. It rummages amongst the dead leaves and the patches of bright new moss, becomes aware of his presence, cocks its tail and half-turns towards him, no more than twelve inches away. Its eye focuses on the hiding Englishman, then twitches away as the bird hops one way and another, turning to check his intentions each time it alights. He fears that it will attract the young German’s attention, but is himself bemused by its carelessness, its enrapture by the warmth that has brought it so far up the mountain, its relishing in the clear light of the low sun which is throwing every leaf and twig on the floor of the forest into such sharp relief, turning the rough stones erupting through the leaf-mould white. And always behind it the rich purple glow of the tiny cyclamen petals. Such a contrast between the joy and freedom of the sparrow and his own plight, fearing for his life.

The young German is equally entranced and stands up to walk towards the bird. It flies away and his eyes turn up to follow it. He is but five yards from the clump when his officer calls out “
Gehen wir!
’ and the young man stops, opens his flies, sprinkles the clump and turns to fetch his rifle.

–

The patrol moves off, but they lie doggo for fully two minutes, waiting for silence to return to their forest. ‘You’d have shot him, wouldn’t you, Roberto?’

‘Yes, Salvatore.’

‘Why? You could have hidden your gun, surrendered. Then you’d just have been a prisoner-of-war again.’

‘I doubt it. I couldn’t prove I was one, with my tags gone. And you’d have been shot out of hand either way.

‘Why do you think they sent out that patrol? It’s higher than they’ve ever been before. They’re not just looking for men who’ve escaped the work-gangs any more. Remember Ugo firing at that motorcyclist? He knew he’d been shot at. That patrol was were sent up to look for armed men, partisans. Their officer had his pistol out, remember? If they’d caught us we’d have been shot.

‘Shooting that man would have given us a chance to escape in the confusion. Their rifles were still stacked. The officer’s pistol would soon have been out of range. I’d have shot him next.’

‘But you could have spoken to him in English.’

‘Maybe. But every time I’ve considered giving myself up I’ve thought I’d rather die than be a prisoner again. When you’ve been so close to freedom for so long it seems more important than life itself. Help me God, I’d have killed him in cold blood.’

‘You’ve changed, Roberto. Do you remember those South Africans, back in December?’

‘You’re right. If the same thing happened again there’d be no argument.’

Isabella had pervaded his dreams since the day at the pool. Sometimes he dreamt of being at her bedside as her starving body died; at others of her on his arm in her pomp in that blue cotton dress; then of her in the pool, in full beauty, calling him to join her. He would dream of her waving to him on the mountainside and, as he ran distracted to meet her, his feeling the thwack of a sniper’s bullet between his shoulders before he slipped into the falling dream in which a rock looms up to him and breaks his neck.

Would such dreams, rather than the simple fantasies that had only occasionally touched his sleep, have come had he not seen her skeletal body, become obsessed that he was to blame for her starvation? Her father and brother were also eating at her expense, her mother must have expressed concern to them - mothers always do - but they were kin. Or were these dreams simply the rising sap of spring, the spring that had now turned even the highest beeches a chestnut glow, then white, then a brilliant green? A spring filling his head with the Alexandrian musk of the yellow broom.