by Caroline Lea
He smiled and nodded. And the next day he was late.
At eighteen, much to the disappointment of his parents, who wanted him to work on the family farm, Cesare gained an apprenticeship in the local church, where he would perfect his skill in carving stone and wood, and shaping metal.
His master was severe, used to apprentices who cut corners in order to leave early and chase after women or wine. But Cesare worked hard, and although he was often late and arrived with eyes heavy from lack of sleep, he came clutching sketches, which he then painstakingly copied onto the church walls and ceiling: doves soared in flight; olive branches twisted behind the heavy stone columns. People began to visit the tiny church to marvel at the way the paintings made it hum with life.
Within four years, the master had retired, leaving the maintenance of the church in Cesare’s hands. He carved leaves into the altar legs, engraved little birds along the lectern. Under the pews, he shaped tiny creatures, so that a bored child, half asleep during a sermon, might find a frog or a mole under his wandering fingers and, for the rest of the service, would sit transfixed.
By 1937, Cesare was well-known and well-liked. At least four different women had decided they wanted to marry him and took it in turns to wait for him outside the church, then take him to their parents’ houses for dinner, brushing the wood-shavings from his hair, reminding him of their father’s job and what day of the week it was.
The parents eyed him with a mixture of admiration and suspicion. He had a fine set of shoulders, to be sure, and a strong jaw, and of course his paintings were beautiful. But, my God, what would he be like as a husband? As a father? No child was ever raised on a diet of paint. Besides, the man was far too skinny and, really, was that sawdust in his hair?
War crept in from the north and south. Men in uniform marching the streets, shouting, Il Duce! Some winds carry such a relentless momentum that they sweep everything along with them. Cesare didn’t hold strong political beliefs, but he also didn’t hold with the idea of being called a coward, so he was sent along to North Africa with the other men from his village.
Desert heat. Salt sting of sweat in his eyes. Hot gun in his damp hands as he inched forwards on his stomach, firing into sandstorms and hoping he wouldn’t kill anyone, hoping that none of the returning bullets hit him. It helped if he pretended the sand itself was some sort of beast he was firing at – a desert jinn he had to defeat. If he imagined other men firing back at him, his finger froze on his trigger. At night, he traced pictures on the cold sand: mountains; the curve of a woman’s hip; the church in Moena. Then he watched the wind scrub them out.
After two months, surrender; the nightmare heat behind the barbed wire of a desert camp. Then onto a boat and north. Into the wind, into the cold.
Onto an island where the sky arches above, like an open mouth, and guards yell and hit him.
It is best, Cesare decides, to keep his mouth shut and his head down.
He and the other men are herded past steel gates and into a square of bare earth, surrounded by metal huts, which are surrounded in turn by a barbed-wire fence. Everything is sharp and cold and grey; the men shiver as the uniformed guards line them up and count them. Each guard carries a long wooden baton and a gun. As a guard counts each Italian man, he taps him on the head with the baton – not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to convey a message: Your body belongs to us.
Each prisoner is then given a plain brown uniform – trousers and a shirt, which are dumped into the dirt.
‘Get changed, quickly,’ the guard in front of Cesare snaps. He has a thin moustache and a nose red from the cold.
‘What’re you staring at?’ he demands, then jabs at the uniform with his baton. ‘Move!’ Then he continues down the line.
Cesare glances left and right, where all the men are unbuttoning their old grey shirts and shivering. Next to him, he can hear Gino’s teeth chattering, and, further down the line, there is a cry from Antonio as a guard prods him for hesitating.
‘Basta!’ Cesare calls to the guard. ‘He speaks no English.’
The guard strides back, stops in front of Cesare, holding up the wooden baton. ‘And you do?’ the guard says.
‘Some.’ Cesare avoids the guard’s gaze.
‘So you’ll understand when I say that if you question me again you’ll regret it?’
Cesare eyes the baton, nods quickly, once.
‘Then shut your mouth and get into that uniform. Now.’
The guard watches as Cesare fumbles with his buttons, shivering at the cold cut of wind on his skin, pulling on the brown uniform as quickly as his numb hands will allow. The material is rough and thin and offers little protection from the biting chill in the air.
He watches the guard’s black boots move on. He exhales.
A whistle blows and Cesare stands straighter, craning his neck to see the figure of a tall, uniformed man climbing onto a platform in front of the lines of prisoners. Like the guards, this man has a gun and a baton. His moustache is grey, his face weathered. His coat glitters with medals, bristles with ribbons.
‘Attention, men!’ he calls. ‘I am Major Bates, your commanding officer. I expect to run an orderly camp. I expect you to do as you are instructed, without fuss or protest. Never forget that you are here as prisoners. Your lives are in our hands.’ He looks down at the men and Cesare sees something hard in his eyes. This man, he knows, would not hesitate to punish them.
Major Bates continues: ‘Your task, while you are here, is to build barriers in the sea between these islands. You will work in groups in the quarry, mining rocks to build these barriers.’
There are murmurs from around him, from the Italians who can speak some English, and Cesare shifts uncomfortably: if they are to build barriers, they will be helping the enemy, the people who are killing their friends and bombing their families.
Major Bates blows the whistle again and the Italians fall silent.
‘If you follow orders and work hard, there will be no problems while you are here.’ He pauses, shifts the baton from one hand to the other. ‘You will see, however, that on your uniforms, you have two red circles. One on the shoulder and one on the leg.’
Cesare glances down, touches the red patches of fabric. Around him, the other men are doing the same.
‘These are targets,’ the major says, his voice level. ‘If you try to escape, the guards will aim for your arm. If you do not stop, they will aim for your thigh. If you continue to run, they will aim for a larger target.’ He raises his hand to his head, briefly touches his grey hair.
The prisoners – even those who don’t understand English – stand very still, as if the guards are, at this moment, pointing guns at their legs and their arms. As if they are aiming at their skulls.
Major Bates’s smile holds no warmth. ‘You will take your meals in the mess hut behind me. You will rise with the first whistle in the morning, be out for reveille and to be counted in the yard by the second whistle. You will obey orders, and by obeying, you will be safe. If you do not obey orders, you will be put in the Punishment Hut, and given only bread and water. If you do not work hard enough, you will be taken to the Punishment Hut. If you are late to be counted, you will be taken to the Punishment Hut.’
All the Italians, no matter how little English they speak, are able to discern the threat in the repetition of these words: orders, obey, punishment.
Cesare’s mouth is dry as he is led towards his hut, with fifty other men. They file into the dark building, which has wooden bunks around the edges, and a small stove in the centre.
Gino and Antonio are in the same hut, and take bunks near to Cesare’s. The guard in charge – short, cheeks flaming with acne, barely more than a boy – gives them each a piece of soap, tells them they will be able to shower later, but that now they are to walk down to the quarry and begin.
No one moves, and the guard flushes brighter red. Before he can shout, before he can brandish his baton, before anyone can be taken to the P
unishment Hut and whatever that might involve, Cesare calls to the other men, in Italian: ‘Come on, we’re going to the quarry. We need to line up now!’
The prisoners stand in line – slowly and reluctantly, with some of them shooting dirty looks at Cesare. Their expressions darken further when the guard nods gratefully at him.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Cesare.’
‘Well, Cesare lad, you’ll be getting extra bread at dinner tonight.’
The other prisoners jostle past him, some of them still glaring.
‘You are a dog for the English, then?’ one man mutters.
But before Cesare can explain anything – before he can say that he was trying to help, that he wants to keep them safe, that these guards are dangerous, that the commander is willing to shoot them in the skull – the man has shoved Cesare so that he falls backwards and bangs his head on the hard wooden bunk.
‘Traditore!’ the man snarls. Traitor!
Gino and Antonio help him up. Cesare’s hands are balled into fists, but the man who pushed him has already gone.
Gino’s face is stern. ‘It is best to stay quiet, Cesare. You know this.’
Cesare nods, remembering the months in the North African camp. The fat black flies that rose in clouds from the bodies of the men who’d protested, or drawn too much attention. The best way to survive is to be invisible – to imagine your body as part of a machine that does whatever is expected, without protest or hesitation.
‘We must line up now.’ Antonio claps him on the arm – his hand, for a moment, on the scrap of red fabric that would tell the guards where best to put a bullet – and then they follow the rest of the men out into the grinding cold and line up, ready to walk down to the quarry.
That first night in his hut, Cesare shuts his eyes and listens to the exhalations of fifty frightened men around him. It is dark, but there are no snores yet – impossible to sleep when your whole body is coiled like a spring, when your breath is tight in your chest and you’re waiting for the sound of a baton on flesh.
He hears again the sound of the guard’s shouts in the quarry, feels again the sensation of his shovel striking rock, the echo reverberating through his shuddering arms. The explosions that had rocked his bones and made his teeth ache. He’d lost count of how many wheelbarrows of rocks they’d filled. His hands had blistered and the blisters had burst, and still he hadn’t stopped digging.
He moves his lips in prayer, closing his eyes, trying to remember the arched roof of the church in Moena. The painted branches, the illuminated birds, their wingtips touching as they soar upwards.
Just before he falls asleep, he traces the outline of the card, which has dried out and is tucked into his pocket still. He tries to see again the face of the girl who’d dragged him from the sea. He tries to picture her eyes and what he’d seen there: that warmth, that kindness, that sadness. The expression that had quickened his breath and set a repeated thrumming detonation in his chest.
Late January 1942
Orcadians
Frost has hardened the paths up to Kirkwall Town Hall as people gather for another meeting. There is a white rime on the leaves of the bushes, which glitter as bodies brush past, breath steaming from open mouths. It is past blackout, so they shuffle and huddle close together to avoid stumbling.
In the dim light of the hall, John O’Farrell is waiting, his jaw tense, his hands in fists on the table in front of him. There is a serrated, raw feeling in the air, like the metallic tang of a gathering storm, and no one has ever known John O’Farrell to flinch from a fight.
When this meeting about the newly arrived prisoners was called, there had been plans to stage a protest – as if a meeting would do any good! As if talking would make a difference! Some had even said that they should boycott the meeting, should deal with the problem themselves, quickly and finally. Someone else had pointed out that there could be nothing quick or final about getting rid of a thousand foreign men.
Now the people mutter to each other, waiting for John O’Farrell to speak. The women rustle their skirts and the men clutch their caps. They know what they will do, if the meeting doesn’t go their way.
O’Farrell gives a sigh, a tight smile. ‘I’ll get directly to the point,’ he says. ‘It’s not escaped my attention that there’s been some distress around the idea of our Italian guests.’
‘It’s not the idea of them,’ a man calls. ‘Ideas don’t eat all our food and leave our children hungry.’
‘Aye,’ agrees O’Farrell. ‘And ideas don’t paint threats on the side of buildings, either, Robert MacRae. But I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, would you?’
Earlier that day, someone had noted the black letters on the town-hall door, reading, ‘Fuck the Italians!’ The words were three feet high and had taken hours of scrubbing to remove. A faint scent of turpentine still hangs in the air.
MacRae colours and shifts in his seat, and the men surrounding him, who had been grinning at his smart response, look down at the floor. The mood of the crowd warms towards O’Farrell – MacRae and his cronies are a bunch of thugs and have been the cause of various troubles over the years.
O’Farrell continues: ‘While I’m not in approval of some of the protests and grumblings that have reached my ears, neither am I ignorant of the problem we have. I’ll not stand and watch your children going hungry any more than you will. But the barriers must be built and the Italians are here to stay. We must play our part in the war, like everyone else –’
There are grumbles at that. Some telegrams and letters from the brothers and sons who are fighting have found their way home, but some have not.
We’re shedding blood in this war. Orcadians are laying down their lives. Isn’t that enough?
As if he can hear their thoughts, O’Farrell raises his hands. ‘You’ll all have got wind of the rumours about the horrors happening in France and Belgium, of Russia being invaded, of England being bombed.’
Nods and grumbling from around the room.
‘Folk say there’s nothing left of some parts of London,’ someone mutters.
‘Exactly,’ O’Farrell says. ‘And there’s no purpose in panicking, but what we must remember is that we’ve a chance to do our bit here –’
‘By feeding Fascist soldiers?’ one of MacRae’s cronies calls.
‘By fortifying these islands. Stopping ships and submarines striking us from the north and going down through Scapa Flow to the rest of Britain. Or have you forgotten the submarine attack? Eh? That sinking ship slipped your memory already, has it? Or maybe it’s your geography that’s off, Matthew MacIntyre? Perhaps you should have stayed longer in school, rather than running about on the streets and giving yourself flat feet so you can’t go off and fight.’
Laughter then, and MacIntyre hunches lower in his seat.
‘As I was saying,’ O’Farrell goes on, ‘we’ve all to do our bit. But there’s the problem of feeding these men, while making sure there’s enough to go around for the rest of us. So, to that end, I’ve spoken to Major Bates, and he’s willing to let some of the men come across to Kirkwall and help with the farm work and so on –’
‘Are you mad?’ a voice calls. ‘I’ll not have foreign men working my land –’
‘And no one will force you to, George,’ O’Farrell cuts in. ‘But you’ve a fence that needs mending and a field that’ll go unplanted this year without your lads here.’
George scowls but has no reply.
And by the time the meeting ends, half an hour later, John O’Farrell has a list of tasks for the Italian men, which he will take across to Major Bates the next morning. The feeling of unease in the room has shifted: no one will reject the offers of help – they’re not fools, after all. But, still, it’s important that people prepare themselves. It’s crucial that no one falls into the trap of trusting these soldiers, these foreigners who will be working their land.
Back in their homes that night, the women will press k
isses into the cheeks of their sleeping children and promise to protect them. The men – old, thin, weak-chested – will fetch out the knives they use to gut fish and trim hoofs. The darkness will be full of the scrape of metal being sharpened on stone.
Late January 1942
Cesare
The quarry has been hollowed out from the rock face using explosives. Time and again, the guards shout at the men to stand clear, to run, to get down, for Christ’s sake, you fucking Eyeties.
It’s not a word Cesare has heard before, Eyetie, but he has come to realize that it is the word the guards use for italiano, only it means more than that. It means foreigner. It means idiot. It means animal.
Cesare crouches alongside Gino, hands over his ears, and counts. He has grown used to the tremble of the ground, the blast of the air, the sound that moves through his body, shaking everything inside him for ages afterwards, so that, even hours later, as he digs, as he eats, as he sleeps, he feels as though his heart and lungs have been thrown out of rhythm.
Everything has fallen out of time: each morning is grey and cold when they jump out of their bunks to be counted. Dark. It is always dark, it seems. As they line up in the yard, in what feels like the middle of the night, swaying with sleep and waiting for the guards to tap their heads with the baton, Cesare is gripped by a fear that this darkness will last for ever. The sun will never rise again and all of them will be trapped in this cold place until they die, or the world forgets them.
Marooned as they are on the island, he worries that they might simply drop off the end of the earth.
When the sun finally casts pale fingers of light over the horizon, the prisoners cheer sometimes, or they hum the threshing songs that the girls used to sing back home. They pause in their digging, and turn their faces to the light, until a guard shouts at them to Dig, damn it!
At night, they kneel together in their huts and they pray. Cesare moves his lips along with the others. He has never doubted before, but it is hard, in this place, to know where God might be found.