Wolf on the Mountain (30 page)

‘It is good of you to come, Capitano Inglese. The doctor has told you why?…. Good. We are anxious, in our different ways - but the doctor and I have many different ways - to avoid bloodshed when the Germans go. He tells me you’re an English army officer, in hiding somewhere around here. I haven’t asked him where. But he tells me you will know
how
the Germans will organise their retreat when it comes, which must be soon. We need to be able to plan how the civil authorities will establish law and order when they go. I am also meeting the captain of the carabinieri, but it would not be appropriate for him to meet you, I think?’

Roberto pinches a smile, says nothing. The priest turns to the doctor: ‘Do we know how the battles are going?’

‘There’s nothing certain. With no electricity since January, and therefore no radio broadcasts to listen to, we can only go on rumour. The Allied force which landed from the sea just south of Rome is still surrounded. Their army appears to have broken past Cassino, judging by the sudden posting of half the garrison here to the west. The English are still held south of Pescara. But the German supply lines are effectively broken, the railway lines constantly bombed, their road supply routes strafed all the time. They’re out of food and must be short of ammunition. How they can fight on I don’t know. Or why. Do you know, Capitano Inglese?’

The doctor nudges Roberto, who takes his prompt: ‘It’s simple’ he says. ‘The longer they can hold this line, the less far they have to retreat before next winter.’

‘God have mercy on us’ says the priest. ‘Will they make it last another year? And how?’

‘By misleading the Allied generals. They’ll leave sufficient men on the present line to make it look fully defended. They’ll pull back the heavy artillery under cover of darkness and keep up the illusion by using field artillery to maintain the barrages. The rest of their men will fall back to another line. Then the present rearguard will fall back behind them to yet another line. It’s easy in such mountainous country.’

‘So where is the next line, Capitano Inglese?’ the doctor asks. ‘The working gangs have been building fortifications over the next ridge to the north.’

Roberto again notices the doctor’s formal address, his feigned ignorance. Political games are being played. He warms to the idea. ‘Not there, doctor. That can only be to cover their retreat, to buy them time. They were concentrating on the area around Florence when I came south in the autumn. Besides, if that Allied force on the beaches south of Rome breaks out, they’ll have to fall back quickly, well to the north of there, to avoid having their retreat cut off. And if they fall back north of Rome on the west coast, they’ll have to fall back as far north on the east coast, again to avoid the east coast army being cut off. Their main forces will go up the coasts, at night.’

‘Not through the middle?’

‘No, doctor. It would take too long. They’d be going up and down mountains all the time. On the coast they can make the next defensive line in a night. Inland they wouldn’t.’

‘So we won’t see their retreat?’

‘Hardly, but we’ll know it’s happening. Troops will still be coming through, so that the centre is still defended. And when they have passed through they’ll suddenly start blowing up bridges, so that the Allies can’t try to outflank their retreat by driving up the centre. Once they start doing that we’ll know they’ve got nothing more to move north through here.’

‘So it will happen very quickly?’ Don Bartolomeo asks. Roberto nods and the priest goes on: ‘So we’ll have to have the carabinieri ready to move at a moment’s notice.’ The doctor’s elbow nudges Roberto’s ribs, his eyes distracting the priest’s. ‘We need to plan this carefully.’

A door opens behind them, letting in a little light, a draught, another apprehension. An old lady in black enters, crosses herself with holy water, makes for the confessional box. The priest drops to his knees in prayer, ignores her, and the doctor and follow his lead. The old lady halts, turns distractedly to one of the shrines and kneels to mutter a prayer and then leaves. The closing door echoes behind her. Roberto sighs.

‘Don’t worry,’ says the priest, ‘she can be relied upon.’ Roberto and the doctor look at each other. ‘Where were we?’

‘Planning for the retreat, Don Bartolomeo’ the doctor replies. ‘I’ve been giving this much thought since we first discussed this. We have to remember that this village has been gripped by a great fear for twenty years. It’s not just the matter of the schoolmaster. Everyone, except the mayor’s friends, has suffered. Their sons taken away to war and never seen or heard of again while the fascists’ sons always seemed to be able to stay at home - so many of them by enlisting in the militia and doing things their neighbours will never forgive. People have starved while the fascist families’ stores have been left alone by the Germans. Many have suffered at the hands of informers, and know who they are.’

‘The carabinieri will have to round them all up, for their protection’ says the priest. ‘We can’t have the good Christians of this village doing things they’ll regret once tempers have cooled. But where can we put them all? I assume you’ve got an idea of who should be interned?’ The doctor nods. ‘And that there are dozens of them?’ The doctor nods again. ‘Too many for the gaol? Can we use the school? Are there enough carabinieri to guard them all?’

‘We’ll have to see, Don Bartolomeo. We’ll have to see.’

‘Can you make a list of names for me to give the captain of the carabinieri?’

The priest turns to Roberto. ‘Just like the Germans, aren’t we, rounding up people we don’t agree with and putting them in prison?’

‘It’s for their own protection’ the doctor intervenes. ‘It’s not the same.’

‘You’re quite right, doctor. It’s the Christian thing to do, to remove temptation from people who might afterwards regret their impulsiveness.’ He sighs.

–

‘You didn’t need me in there’ Roberto whispers as they reach the edge of the darkening village and make to part, Roberto back to his mountain. ‘ “Capitano Inglese” this, “Capitano Inglese” that. You could have said it all yourself. You had to remind me of it all before we went!’

‘I know, but it’s better to keep up appearances. Don Bartolomeo wants to think, for his conscience’s sake, that I’m just a doctor. As if priests had consciences. I’d been wondering for days how I’d approach it. Then I remembered that you were English. I told him about you, told him you could help. It was so much better coming from you. Honour was served all round. I thought it went rather well.’

‘Why didn’t you mention the possibility of captured Germans also having to be imprisoned?’

‘Because that assumes that they’ll be captured by the partisans. The priest mustn’t know that the partisans even exist. He wouldn’t approve. Remember, the church doesn’t trust the communists. I keep quiet about the partisans, so as not to compromise him. Maybe he knows about them, about my connection with them, but feels he shouldn’t let me know he knows. Maybe that’s why he’s discussing this all with me, so as to show that he trusts me to control the partisans when the Germans go. Maybe he knows that I don’t trust the captain of the carabinieri.’

‘You mean that you’re not going to give the carabinieri that list?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Don’t ask. Do you remember once protesting to me that you were a soldier and not a politician? Soldiers shouldn’t ask such questions. Politicians don’t need to. I accept that I’m a politician. So’s the priest, as much a politician as I am, although he’d deny it. All the Catholic church are politicians. It’s how they’ve retained their privileges and wealth for centuries while their so-called flocks have stayed so poor.’

Early morning is a good time now, a time when it is cool and one is refreshed by sleep after the hot hungry exhaustion of the day before. The sky lightens, pinkens and throws its hues first on the eastern peaks of the grey mountains, then lower down their slopes. The birds stay twittering in the trees, waiting for the first warmth that will send them in search of their food. Every day means the crops that will feed the locals will advance further to ripeness. Each dawn could be the one on which the distant thunder of the artillery barrages does not start. Sometimes the guns start late, but they will stop when they stop. There is no point in being disappointed when they start. It would destroy the optimism that attends each new day.

Elvira and Anna now come up the mountain every day. Roberto stays behind while the partisans go on their sabotage missions. His caution is too inhibiting to them, but each night he joins in their tactical discussions and they pore over his map selecting their targets. Word had come back of German reprisals, ten people shot in a village to the north, a village Vincenzo’s finger had lingered on in one of their planning meetings. No-one had commented. The time had come when fearing reprisals would abash strategic action, action necessary to accelerate deliverance and end the famine. Debate had ended on the matter.

Elvira is glad for his company. They talk for hours, while Anna goes exploring for butterflies and birds’ nests, about her dreams for the valley after the war, of farm co-operatives so that there will be more food, more fairly divided, of better schools and medical care. It provides a distraction from her grief, a justification for the sacrifices they all have made.

‘You can see it’s a beautiful place. The mountains with their pasture for the sheep and goats. The soil is poor, except just by the river, but there’s just enough of it, if it is fairly shared, to feed everyone properly. You’ve seen how well the fruit trees grow, how many vines there are, how many vegetables we grow. Last year’s potatoes and beans have only just run out, despite losing so many to the bombs. It will be a good place to live if the party has its way, no longer a place where the old peasants yearn for death as a release from a lifetime of unrewarded toil.’

He leans back on his elbows to survey the scene. Now that it is warm up to the mountain tops the valley has textures he could not have imagined when the snow reached down to the lower slopes. Everywhere on the plain there are small fields with the different colours of different growing crops, trees lining the streams and roads or simply providing shade. The sun has bleached the winter grey of every building in sight and the mountain villages on their spurs are a dazzling white that denies the poverty and squalor that lie within their walls. As the sun changes its position and height throughout the day new contours are shown on every hill. It looks like the background to a renaissance painting, but like every such painting its idyll hides the poverty and fear that haunt the little people there.

‘When did you last eat, Roberto?’

‘The day before yesterday. Boiled nettles and some small rodents Salvatore caught. We’re even running out of game on the mountain now. The boys have laid snares everywhere, but they’re nearly always empty. We’re living on the leaves of wild plants, dandelions, things like that. Anything that seems to fill you up for a while and doesn’t make you sick. Scraping with fingernails and teeth at the scanty herbs.’

‘Is that your Ovid again?’

‘His story of the man who chopped down the sacred oak and brought famine to his country. It keeps coming back to me. Don’t worry. I’m used to not eating. I got used to it when I was up here on my own. Your stomach shrinks. I have this thought of getting to the English army and seeing tables of food, things I’ve stopped dreaming of eating, and not being able to eat a thing.’

‘It’s like that for everyone now, except the Germans and their little circle of friends. And they’re not getting any more food from the north. We haven’t seen a train or lorry coming south for more than a week now. We can’t understand why your army isn’t here. The rivers are so low a child could wade across them. The ground is so dry that the farmers are praying for rain.’

‘Their generals are crazy, Elvira. Their planes must be telling them the Germans have nothing left. By delaying their advance they’re just giving the Germans time to withdraw all their equipment up to the next line.’

‘We’re already losing some of the older people. I don’t know how much longer Nonna will last. She’s lying about how much she’s eating, giving her food to Anna when I’m not looking. So many of the old ones are refusing food so that the youngsters can eat. There’s a story going round that you can make flour from the bristles on your brooms. Can you imagine it? But people are trying it. People are dying with sore stomachs and even the doctor doesn’t know if it’s because of what they’ve eaten or because they haven’t eaten. Everyone’s wasting away, so weak they can’t do anything to help themselves. How many more days will the partisans be able to fight without food? If your army doesn’t come soon they’ll be too weak to stop the Germans blowing everything up.’

There again, he thinks, a sign that Elvira has been privy to the doctor’s tactical discussions. Blowing things up. Or did she get such information from Carlo? He thinks back to the things that Vincenzo had said as they walked on the afternoon of Luigi’s funeral, the day he had learned that the schoolteacher had been Carlo’s brother. He tries again to remember what everyone had said that night, back deep in the winter, when the doctor had told of the capo being killed in the bombing raid and Elvira had cried; and to recall all that had been said at Vincenzo’s father’s house when the doctor had come disguised as a priest.

Then he remembers the thing that had been troubling him without his knowing what it was. On the night of the eggs the doctor had talked of a committee, and later had used words like ‘knowing you the way we do’. ‘…we do…’. ‘…we…’.

He hadn’t been talking of just Elvira and himself. Besides, Elvira couldn’t have been on the committee when the capo had been killed because she’d been so surprised by the news. There was someone else on that committee who knew him well. It had to be a man. It couldn’t be Vincenzo. It could only be Carlo.

‘How is Carlo?’ he asks. ‘How is he coping?’

‘He’s throwing himself into his work. It’s the only way he can forget his grief.’

His work. The work that had kept him out of the house for days last winter. Carlo is on that committee. Yet he’d risked everything to hide him in his house last winter. Why had he done it, particularly after the Giobellinis had found out what was happening? Why hadn’t he found someone else in the organisation, a lesser functionary, to take the risk?