Wolf on the Mountain (34 page)

–

It cannot last. The lieutenant scrambles questions at him and he lapses back into Italian. ‘After the next village we go straight down into the main valley.’ It is strange to go down into the valley without fear of the Germans. It looks different. The trees look normal, but the bombed out buildings are now abnormal, and the damaged bridge over a stream that he forded that morning is suddenly an obstacle.

The sergeant gets out of the jeep, goes into the fields and commandeers some young men to carry their vehicle over the stream as the soldiers look on. Another forced labour gang he thinks as he watches them struggle with their load, afraid to be different when his story is so disbelieved.

–

There are already uniformed men in Sannessuno when their jeep arrives. British army uniforms with Italian flashes on their shoulders. Italian men. ‘Who are these?’ he asks and the lieutenant’s translated reply is ‘God knows.’

They are at the end of a narrow lane leading into the village square, a rectangle of cobbles surrounded by shattered buildings, overlooked by the main church. Red buntings are everywhere, a constant flash of colour in the khaki mass of stone rubble and uniforms. The villagers are looking on in silence. On one side of the square stand the well-fed men in British uniforms, buttoned, shaven, their uniforms immaculate, scowling in disbelief that they are not being hailed as liberators by their countrymen. On the other side are the red-scarved partisans, scrawny, shabby, hirsute, many with makeshift bandages for their wounds of the day, tense, their hands holding their guns in readiness to raise and fire them.

Between the two factions the priest is mediating a furious argument between the doctor and the leader of the uniforms, a major with feathers in his cap and a swagger stick, the plumpest man the captain has seen in months, strutting with impatience.

‘You have no authority’ the doctor is saying. ‘
We
liberated the town.
We
chased the Germans out. We’ve already set up a civil administration. All fascist sympathisers have been locked up for their own protection, so there’s no risk of law and order breaking down. We’ve captured a dozen of the German rearguard and they’re in the prison, Geneva Convention being respected.’

The man with the feathers splutters with indignation. ‘But
you
have no authority. So far as the Allies are concerned, so far as I’m concerned, your men are a bunch of brigands. Look at them.’

‘Yes, look at them. Some of them were wounded in today’s battle. How many of yours were? Yes, they haven’t got uniforms, and they look starved, which they are. Things have been bad on this side of the lines. Any form of clothing, any food, is a luxury here. But we’ve stayed together, and we’ve been fighting the Germans, sabotaging their equipment, for months, while you’ve been parading in your uniforms, with your full stomachs, safe on the other side of the lines. How many men have you lost?’

‘We’ve been in action on the other side of the line, with the Eighth Army. We were ordered by General Alexander to liberate the valley. Your men must lay down their arms.’

‘To a bunch of renegade fascists? Look at them. They look more like the fascist militia than the Italian army. Half of them must have been in it when Mussolini was overthrown.’

‘I must warn you that if your men do not surrender their arms, my men will have to disarm them.’

‘What? Open fire on
patriots
?
Battle-
hardened patriots?’

Don Bartolomeo intercedes, uncertain if the major with the feathers knows that the doctor is bluffing, or if he himself knows it. ‘We’re all Italians. We shouldn’t be fighting. This is a day of deliverance. It should be a day of joy. Can’t we reach some compromise? Cannot both groups work together? There’s so much to be done.’

‘But I have my orders, from the Allied High Command, and from the Italian Government.’

‘Badoglio’s runaway government?’ sneers the doctor.

The major breathes in to expand his chest and becomes the stentor: ‘We are the official liberators.’ He swishes his swagger stick impatiently, thrusts it under his arm and turns round to his men. He sees the jeep parked at the entrance to the square and with his stick gestures it to drive over. ‘My liaison officer will confirm it.’

The jeep moves slowly over. The driver is annoyed by the manner of his command, wants to savour the look on this pompous man’s face as he realises that they are not who he thought they were.

‘Who are you?’ the exasperated Italian officer asks.

‘Reconnaissance patrol. Came up the valley the other side of the mountain’ the American sergeant replies, remaining seated.

Roberto steps out of the jeep. ‘And who are you?’ he asks the man with the feathers.

The Italian officer looks him down and up. A man in a makeshift sacking coat, torn clothes, dirt-matted hair and beard, sunken cheeks, festering sores on his face. ‘I don’t need to talk to you.’

‘I think you do’ says the doctor. ‘He’s a British army officer, a captain.’

‘Him?’

‘Don’t take my word for it. Let’s ask the real liberators.’ The doctor turns to the partisans. ‘Who’s this, Vincenzo?’

‘Capitano Inglese’ Vincenzo shouts across the square.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I don’t suppose you can, but that’s what a British officer looks like when he’s had to fight the war we’ve been fighting. A real war. He’s been in action with us all winter, helping us fight the Germans. You said that we looked like a bunch of brigands. You’d look like a bunch of brigands too if you’d done the same. But something tells me you wouldn’t have the stomach for it, strutting around like cockerels in your fancy uniforms, claiming the victory the people of this village have had to endure things you cannot imagine in order to win.’

‘What’s going on, sergeant?’
the English lieutenant asks.

‘Bit of a power struggle, sir. The Italian bunch in uniforms claim to be an advance party of the Eighth Army and are demanding that the partisans disarm. The partisans are refusing, claiming that they’d already liberated the place before the uniformed bunch arrived. And they’ve confirmed the identity of our passenger.’

‘Jesus Christ. We’re supposed to be back at base, reporting. We can’t get bogged down in this, particularly if our passenger’s going to take sides. Christ, if he’s who they say he is, he bloody well outranks me. Why haven’t that lot got a British liaison officer with them? It’s crazy sending a bunch like that in without one. Just look at that bloody officer. He hasn’t got a clue. I want to be out of here.’

The doctor comes forward to the lieutenant’s side of the jeep.
‘Lieutenant. Let me explain some things to you. And, yes, I do speak English. I was a captain in the Italian army, a surgeon captain. We are not communists. We are anti-fascists. You have not had to live in this country the last twenty years. Communist was a convenient label for the fascists to attach to anyone who opposed them. And it became a convenient label for the anti-fascists to attach to themselves. The red scarves the partisans have hidden until today are a kind of uniform, something that binds them together. They’ve been fighting not for any political creed but for freedom. Today they achieved it. And they can see in this gaggle of geese parading in your uniforms exactly the same kind of people who made their lives intolerable under the fascists.

‘Ask your English captain. His real name is Robert Johnson. He’s a captain in the Wessex Light Infantry. He escaped from a prison camp in the north last September, walked all the way down here and then joined the partisans when the snow stopped him getting through to your lines. For the last six months he’s been helping the partisans, constantly hunted by the Germans, always fearing betrayal, often hiding in this village while your bombers, his own bombers, were trying to level it to the ground. Are you surprised he cannot speak English today?’

‘This is turning into a pantomime
’ the lieutenant snorts.
‘I set out this morning on a simple recce to find out how far Jerry had gone, find some scarecrow on the road claiming to be a British officer and he takes me into a dress rehearsal for a bloody Gilbert and Sullivan opera. I was expected back at base an hour ago. I can’t hang around any longer. I’m tempted to leave your Capitano Inglesio here to sort it out.’

Another jeep pulls into the square. The officer with the feathers announces that his liaison officer has arrived. Another English captain in a bright beret and a polka dot cravat leaps impatiently out of the vehicle and in faltering Italian asks the Italian major what is happening.
‘Let me explain, captain’
the doctor intervenes in English.
‘I am the acting mayor of Sannessuno. It was liberated by these partisans this morning. They have restored civil order after the German retreat, which they fought against and captured many prisoners, who are now in our gaol. We have also prevented reprisals against fascist collaborators. Now these men in uniforms are claiming to have liberated the village and are seeking to disarm this force.’

‘Under orders from the Italian government…’

‘Badoglio’s government?’

‘It’s a coalition government now. Your communist friend Togliatti’s joined it. The Italian army is now recognised by the Allies. Your men are free to enlist, but partisan units are, on the orders of your government, to be disbanded, and to hand in their weapons.’

The doctor calls his partisan lieutenants over and translates. ‘We cannot win, Roberto, can we? We fight for freedom all this time, risk everything, and then, when we win, the same old masters, who’ve risked nothing, claim their power back again. Water always flows to the sea.’

‘Unless you build a dam.’

‘But then an air force will bomb it.’ He sighs. ‘You have to go now, Roberto. Your lieutenant is impatient. Speak up for us if you can, when you can speak English again. And thank you for all you’ve done for us.’

‘Thank you for all you’ve done for me.’

The doctor reaches forward to kiss him on the cheeks, stops himself and offers his hand. Roberto stops himself later and shakes the doctor’s hand in a half-remembered way. ‘You’ll make sure no harm comes to the Giobellinis, won’t you?’

‘You have my word.’

Roberto looks around for Carlo, but he is lost in the crowd. He climbs back into the jeep, turns to wave farewell to the partisans and then fixes his eyes on the back of the lieutenant’s neck. There his eyes remain until the village has passed from sight for the last time.

–

He stays silent in the jeep. When it reaches the broken bridge again he helps the peasants carry it over the stream.

By now the lieutenant can treat the road as safe. No longer do they have to stop while he inspects it for hazards ahead. The jeep speeds on, billowing and depositing on the people along the route a cloud of white dust. With the greater speed the distancing of its occupants from the landscape grows.

He feels the same betrayal as the partisans. Carlo, English-speaking Carlo, was right to stay anonymous in that square. He remembers the proverb Nonna was always quoting: what comes after is rarely better. Nothing had changed. There is a further underground struggle ahead to reform the farming system. The peasants along the road are right to ignore the Allied soldiers in their car. Life for them will be as it was before the war, a constant battle for a subsistence crop. He looks out over the narrow hillside fields. Men are spraying their vines, green clouds of copper sulphate billowing from the nozzles on the hoses from their metal canisters as they ply the rows.

He tries to imagine what farmers would be doing in England in early June, but he can only picture the farms they are passing through now. He realises that he no longer has an image in his mind of the English countryside. It is three years since he saw it, and in the last few months the mountains here have become his cultural matrix. He is now incapable, even awake, of imagining Ovid’s pool in the English countryside. He has lost all concept of what England is like. Even his memory of his parents’ faces is set against a backdrop of these mountains.

–

He passes the journey lost in these thoughts, not even noticing their passing of where the Germans shot at him the last time he tried to escape down this route. They reach the forward position of the English army. It is now late afternoon. There will be no further advance today. Well-fed men in army uniforms are drinking tea from enamel mugs, leaning against armoured vehicles and trucks, munching sandwiches. He looks in disbelief at the food, the number of vehicles. If they were so well supplied why had it taken them so long to dislodge the demoralised troops on the other side of the lines, so short of resources that they were reduced to carrying their wounded on stolen ox-carts?

Why did they leave it so long? One day earlier and Nonna would have seen the end of fascist rule. One week and she would have lived.

What is he doing here? There is no look of welcome for him. He is just another peasant. The English rankers turn and mutter to their friends. With a glance they have categorised him as someone below them in the scheme of things. From the ranks of such disdain wars find willing bearers of arms.

The lieutenant and the sergeant take him to a house requisitioned by the new army as its advance base office. Its owners sit in the road outside and smile at him nervously as he goes in. The lieutenant explains to his colonel the story of what had passed on the road and in the village.
‘See what you mean about a pantomime, but at least it means the situation’s under control up there. You’d better go off and have something to eat.’

He is left alone with the colonel and his adjutant, still unfed, his surrendered pistol on the desk. They call through to headquarters to report the German withdrawal. The colonel replaces the field telephone and looks up at him.
‘So what are we going to do with our Capitano Inglesio? I believe that’s what that rabble in Sannessuno called you?’

‘Roberto Johnson, capitano, Wessex Light Infantry, sir.’

‘So those communists led our American friend to believe. I’m afraid we’ll need a bit more convincing. Out on recce you’ll take any help you can get, but here we’re a bit more organised. We can’t take anyone wandering in and claiming to be a British officer at his word. Particularly one with no tags, a set of Italian identity papers which are perfectly in order, a communist’s scarf, an Italian army pistol and, more to the point, one who can’t speak a bloody word of English, or keep his bloody hands still while he’s talking.’