Wolf on the Mountain (31 page)

Then a more frightening thought strikes him. Why would Carlo never have given him a glimpse of that fact unless his anonymity was crucial, so crucial that none of the partisans, or even he Roberto, should know his role? Was he the new capo, its leader? He hadn’t seen him for months. Was that why? No, it couldn’t be. He was too vulnerable: every one of the partisans knew his wife, could betray her under torture. Every reason why was matched by a reason why not. At least part of his mystery was solved: he was certainly on that committee.

Within a week of the last snows melting from their peaks the mountains are in high summer. Although the scarlet poppies hang on, wave after wave of wild flowers has faded, desiccated and dropped and the verges and pastures are resigned to the arid season when the rocky mountainsides will shimmer with heat until the autumn rains.

The dawn sky lightens like opal, cool and with no hint of the heat to come. The sun rises softly, pinkening and rounding the hills. The pastures show green until the evaporating dew turns them grey and then green again, refreshing the landscape.

Within a couple of hours it is hot. Within three the starving partisans stop moving and spend the rest of the day conserving their energy in the shade of the trees as the sun hammers down on the anvil of the mountain. It is too hot to move. The mountain grass is already parched. The mosses and lichens on the rocks have been baked dry and the limestone is bleached and shimmers grey and white in the heat. The pools in which they could bathe and cool themselves are now dried out. They sit or lie on the ground listening to the lizards scampering with snaking backs through last year’s leaves, watching the hawks and eagles drifting in the noonday air and then swooping on their torpid prey. All creatures on the mountain except for man have their normal supplies of food, are carrying on their normal lives and deaths, untroubled by the affairs of man.

The war is still to the south. In the distance there is the intermittent boom of artillery, almost as if to break the torpor of the troops on the lines sweating under the same sun. The partisans ignore it. They stay still because to move, hungry, in this heat makes a man breathless, thirsty. They leave the flies settling on their faces unmolested, crave for the grace of a whiff of breeze to fan the hair from their foreheads, save them the trouble of wanting to swat the flies, slip into their private naps.

Down in the valley the farmers too are sleeping the breathless day. Their stores of food are gone and the drought is making them fear for the growth of the plants in their fields that will break their famine. Another plague, they say. When will the army come? It is time to spray the vines, their leaves now full and the stalks past blossom where the grapes will be, but that is young men’s work and our sons are still in hiding. They wait for the evening cool before checking the growth of their fruits, the figs and pears still green and hard, counting the weeks until they can be eaten. They hoe the weeds and chew the leaves as salad.

–

Even the mornings and evenings are dangerous now. As the sun sets over the mountains with a golden light and a purple, indigo hue drifts down their sides, throwing shadows on dells that were part of a flat backdrop in the glaring sun, the tattered remnants of a defeated army stir from rest and hiding and commence another night of trekking north, free from the risk of strafing planes, free from the eyes of pilots to report on their retreat.

Vincenzo and Roberto come down to check their movements. It is easy for them to stay concealed: the exhausted soldiers, their uniforms soiled tattered and bloodstained, look only at the road ahead. Emboldened the two venture into an olive grove where during the day a group of Germans had rested up in the shade. Trees with the gnarled thick trunks of centuries, that have seen generations of soldiers and brigands come and go, have been hacked for firewood and around the patches of scorched earth are a few tins from which every morsel of food has been scraped. The clusters of unripe peas amongst the old trunks have been ravaged to try the pods for food.

From the grove they watch the procession pass. Scruffy unshaven men, with a glazed look of exhaustion, of shock, placing one foot in front of the other, as dazed as the people of the village had been as they stumbled through the ruins of their homes after the bombing raids, men who have been under artillery fire all winter, defending a position they knew they’d have to concede in the spring, watching their comrades killed or maimed for a mountain that meant nothing to them. Sometimes a group comes past with a farmer’s two-wheeled cart, a requisitioned horse or ox to draw it, with some kit and the wounded sitting or lying on the back between its high wheels.

‘The master race come to this! It would be so easy to shoot them now.’

‘Not when there are more to come, Roberto. They’ve lost all trace of human dignity, of belief in life. They’re desperate. Fire on them and they’ll butcher the next people they see. It’s best to let them pass. There’s still the rearguard to come. The artillery barrages were still there this morning, buying time for the retreat, making the Allies think they’re still on the line in force. As soon as those barrages stop we can make our move.’

–

In the camp the mood is sombre. It will be another night without food except for the edible weeds collected during the day. The weapons are being cleaned and checked. Vincenzo is touring the corporals boosting morale. ‘Maybe there’ll be some Germans to kill tomorrow, but remember our main task is to save the bridge.’

It is so warm that they sleep in the open that night. Roberto looks up from his sheepskin rug at a sky with more stars than he has ever seen before. ‘Not sleeping, comrade?’ Vincenzo asks. ‘You’ll be home soon now. You could probably walk over the mountain and the next ridge to the sea and be with your own people tonight.’

‘I probably could. But I might walk into a minefield. Or a patrol. It’s pointless when the English army could be here tomorrow. Besides, I want to see this through.’

‘What do you dream of most, besides seeing your parents again?’

‘That’s the silly thing. I don’t know. It’s as if I can’t remember what to look forward to.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ll remember when the time comes. And who knows? It could be tomorrow. I wake up before dawn every morning, straining my ears for the first artillery shot, hoping it will not come. They were late this morning. I thought it might be today.’

–

The next morning the barrage begins before dawn, more intensely than at any time for days. Just like a card game, Roberto thinks: play your weak card with a flourish. Today must be the last day.

The time after dawn is the time of hope. A few weeks ago it was the heat of the middle day that they looked forward to. Now the cool of the early morning is the time to relish before the high exhausting sun takes its toll of their optimism. Roberto now rejoices the dawn, watching the crags pinken and yellow in the rising sun, the low shadows show curving contours in the foothills like women’s bodies still abed, and then the grass grizzle for a while as the dew starts to steam.

He waits and then wanders the two hours down to the glade to meet Elvira and Anna. The wild cherries are glowing yellow, even reddening, in the low sun on the trees, a promise of food to come. Just as in the valleys hard green figs and pears are growing where a few weeks ago there was only blossom. And late this summer when they are ripe and full of food there will be no enemies to take them.

Alfonso and Isabella are also in the glade. ‘We wanted to say goodbye, Roberto’ says Alfonso. ‘Hardly any Germans came through last night, and they’ve mined the bridge. God knows if they’ve mined anything else. Babbo reckons the English will be here tomorrow. Who knows what the future holds?’

‘It will be better’ Elvira says.

‘But for us?’ Alfonso asks.

‘For everybody.’

‘You’ll write to us?’ Alfonso asks.

‘Of course I will.’

‘And you’ll send me some toothpaste?’

‘Of course, Anna. Twenty tubes.’

Isabella laughs and smiles nervously at him. The smile fades as he turns to her. ‘Will we ever see you again, Roberto?’ she asks.

Both are embarrassed by the question and turn away. The others too are silent. It is the first thing Isabella has said and she has voiced a thought no-one had dared express, perhaps even think, until now: that deliverance from the dangers of the past few months, from the great fear, would be the end of what had bound them together. Roberto, who had become one of their families, would go back to his strange country and his proper kin, renouncing his new. He would once again be someone not from around here.

For all of them longing for the time of freedom had also been longing for their time of separation, but their thoughts were not quite the same. For the Golvi and the Giobellini families it would be the loss of a single son, a single brother. For Roberto it would be the loss of family, of neighbourhood, of a set of friends. When one has an all-consuming purpose its achievement leaves an emptiness which can only be filled by community. The families in Sannessuno would have that new common purpose, the rebuilding of the village and its spirit. Yes, there would be problems - the Golvis would have to do it while still grieving for Luigi, perhaps for Enrico too, and the Giobellinis would have to cope with the villagers’ hatred after the change of political power - but there would always be kin to help them and drive them on. Roberto would be going to something quite different.

Perhaps that - the utter strangeness of the community to which he would be returning, a community which would impose its different values on him again and alienate his new friendships - was what had inspired Isabella’s thought. Or was it? She had flushed and immediately turned away. Had she at last betrayed to all of them how close to expression the thought was in her, how keenly it was felt? Perhaps if Roberto had been less single-minded, had trusted her family sooner and been more prepared to accept her affection, he would have known better how she felt. Or how he felt about her. That might have headed off his night-time dreams. Had she had dreams too? Or was he once again misinterpreting her behaviour? He’d never had a sister. It was all too complicated and distracting. He still needed to be prepared for the dangers of tomorrow.

Isabella, still embarrassed, tries rephrasing the question: ‘You won’t forget us, will you, Roberto?’

‘Of course I won’t. How could I?’ He replies easily and then realises that he is almost confirming her fear.

Silence falls again. Elvira has been waiting for an opportunity and the need to change the subject is her chance: ‘You should give the Giobellinis a chit, Roberto’ she says. ‘I’ve brought pencil and paper.’

‘A chit?’

‘Porca miseria, Roberto, have you forgotten what a chit is?’

He looks at her blankly. She reminds him of the custom and hands him the paper. He looks at it, lost for words to write. ‘I’ll dictate it for you:
“Signor Natale Giobellini and his family… hid me from the Germans”
’ She stops to spell the words. ‘
“…and fed me many times from January to June 1944.”
’ He struggles writing the letters down. ‘Now sign your name and rank and number.’

He looks at her in disbelief. ‘You spoke English all along?’

‘My husband’s brother was a schoolmaster. Did you think we were uneducated?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You needed to become one of us, Roberto. How could you have survived if you hadn’t? But now you’re about to become English again,
shall we speak English?
’ He looks at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Perhaps when the shock has worn off. There are so many things you don’t know about us.’

–

In the afternoon he walks for miles in the sweating sun. Where his energy comes from in his skeletal body he does not know, but like an animal pacing its cage he explores the limits of his mountain, scouring each road, each valley and pass to the south for signs of the English army on the move. He listens for church bells pealing out the deliverance of a village, but there is no sound but the sporadic bursts of artillery duels to the south and birdsong in the hills. He sits on the top of the range and watches the sunset, a soft purple haze following the golden light up the mountain sides, and wonders if it is the last gloaming of occupation. As the sky reddens and fades and the hills turn different shades of grey and blue he returns to sleep in his hide, unfed. Maybe for the last time he checks his boots by his candlelight. Three times he has resoled them with the belting he took from the print-shop after the bombs, the but the soles are now holed again, separating from their rotting welts. Despite the constant use of Elvira’s tallow block the uppers too are holed and scuffed and torn. No German sentry could mistake them for English army boots now, but they have lasted, should last another day or two. He places them on his shelf amongst paraphernalia that have kept him going all these months.

Late in the evening Vincenzo wakes him. Nonna is dead.

‘Roberto! Come quickly! Roberto, wake up!’

He stirs slowly from his sleep, a sleep so deep after his miles of walking over the mountains the day before. Someone is shouting, a dangerous thing to do.

‘Porca miseria, why do you take today of all days not to wake up?’ The door to the hide is wrenched from its nails, allowing in the faint light of the early dawn. Vincenzo, his rifle in his other hand, drags him by the sleeve up to the spring, throws water in his face. ‘Now do you understand, Roberto? You’re so stupid sometimes. What do you hear?’

Birdsong, birds proclaiming the new day, the daytime when they will fly and fly from their roosts, free of care, searching their plentiful food. ‘Birds’ he replies.

‘And what do you
not
hear?’

He raises his face to the lightening sky. ‘Of course. The guns.’ He is like a bellringer so used to the sound of the bells that his ears hear no silence when the changes are over.

‘Their rearguard’s fallen back. It must have happened in the night. They’re gone.’

‘I’ve been so deep asleep. Have there been any explosions in the village?’