by Mark Helprin
"Several hundred deserters have gone into the hills in half a dozen places, and they now rule the countryside, taking direction from bandits who formerly had only swords and single-shot rifles. The war has brought them repeating rifles, grenades, bayonets, and even machine guns.
"This in itself would not be intolerable, but word has spread in the lines, and the Austrians have begun to supply some of the hill bands with their weapons. They do it by submarine.
"We're going to try to accomplish what the carabinieri and the local army garrisons cannot. We're going to break up these groups, forcefully and by surprise. We're going to capture as many of the deserters as we can, and bring them north to court martial.
"You don't want to use your names in Sicily, not if you value your families." He shifted in his chair.
"And you needn't look so disconcerted. They don't know we're coming, they don't know who we are, we'll strike both overland and from the sea, and I promise you that we'll be steaming back this way with our prisoners before the summer is over."
THEY SWUNG wide from the land so as not to be seen. It wasn't that they thought anyone might expect a cattle boat carrying 150 crack soldiers, but they wanted to avoid the land itself, as if the uninhabited mountains were so spirited as to have eyes. They dropped languidly south into the Mediterranean between Sicily and Africa, lost in the blue. Once, they saw a British destroyer steaming on a distant parallel course. They kept it in view for half a day, until it veered away and became a dot, a mirage, and then part of the throbbing memory of whatever it is that makes up the eye—a disturbance in the field of azure, something like a slightly white wake, in the end only an illusion.
When the destroyer disappeared they were alone again on the sea, off the trade routes, away from the war, in utter silence but for the sound of their own engine and the play of the waves. For 360 degrees round they saw not even a single whitecap on the blue water, and the sky was just as empty—neither clouds, nor birds, nor any variation in texture.
Guariglia and Alessandro were at the bow as they pitched gently on a mild swell. "Look at this," Guariglia said. "Nothing but blue. We can't do anything with it. You can't make anything from it."
"It's beyond our reach," Alessandro answered. "It's important and we're not."
"You can't even touch it," Guariglia said, looking out into an infinity of blue. "And yet, if it weren't for my family, I could stay on the sea forever."
"Guariglia, you wouldn't want to be on the sea in storms."
"Even in storms it must be calm under the surface. I don't think I'd mind drowning. I'd have no body, no weight. I'd be just a piece of blue—Guariglia blue."
The captain of the cattle boat knew of a small island with a spring. He had taken the last of its shepherds to the mainland when the war began. Now only a few feral sheep were there, he said, strange creatures that were both savage and terrified, and the wells were overbrimming. They could also get some brushwood to stretch out their coal. You could see the southern part of Sicily from atop this island, and they would approach it from the blind side to the south.
They coasted to a stop, the anchors were thrown overboard, and the sailors lowered two dinghies. When the colonel saw his three platoons silently perched on rails and machinery, scanning the island in the noon light, he gave them permission to go ashore. Those who could swim were over the side as soon as they could get their boots off.
Alessandro jumped from the prow. After a week at sea, he surrendered to it. Wearing only a pair of soot-stained khaki shorts, he longed to float, and it seemed that he flew through the air for hours. His arms were spread in complete abandon, he exhaled, he spun on the wind like a leaf. Then he broke the glassy surface of the sea into fountains of white foam, pulling the air deep down with him until it rebelled and pushed him back up into the wind. The other men hit the water like artillery shells, and as Alessandro dived down, shut his eyes, and did weightless acrobatic turns, he listened to the concussions of soldiers entering the waves as if they were angels plunging into the atmosphere.
Something made them start out all at once, more than a hundred of them, in a race for the narrow crescent of beach. They looked like a school of migrating porpoises. When they pulled themselves from the water they began to scale the hills, and made good time even though barefooted, for the island was covered by clearings with neither thorns nor rocks but only pines that had for millennia shed their needles and softened the ground.
They came to the top of the ridge in an uneven line and stood looking northward to the peaks of Sicily in shimmering heat. The sea was completely empty. The soldiers stared ahead, shielding their eyes with their hands. One word traveled up and down the line, and though it was shouted, it sounded like magic—Sicilia.
THEY WENT west and hugged the bone-white coast of Tunisia for several days until, at three in the morning, with the stars blazing and not a single light from the town of San Vito Lo Capo, they glided to shore on the eastern side of the northernmost promontory of Sicily. The cattle boat put on as much speed as it could and then cut its engines to run in silence. It hit the sand, without lights, as if it had been driftwood.
"How will you get off the beach with no power?" Fabio asked one of the sailors.
"The tide is rising and the current is offshore. By dawn we'll be far enough away to light the boilers without awakening anyone in the town," the sailor answered.
Caissons and crates of supplies were lifted over the side with winches and booms while the River Guard disembarked, carrying rifles and full packs, on ropes. They landed in water up to their waists and held their rifles and ammunition in the air as they waded. A group was formed to drag the caissons through the low surf, and the crates went ashore on perilously overladen dinghies.
When the boat was unloaded it rose on the tide just as the sailor had promised, and floated out to sea with neither engines nor lights.
Overlooking the beach between the place where they had come ashore and the town a few kilometers to the north was a group of buildings joined by massive stone walls topped with ramparts. Once a prison, it now was empty. They walked toward it, careful not to make noise, skirting the few darkened houses nearby. At the front gate, signs warned away intruders with the promise of harsh punishment from Rome. A huge lock sealed a steel hasp welded to iron doors. One of the River Guard speculated that they would have to climb the walls and pull up the caissons and crates with ropes.
"That would be too loud," the colonel said, fumbling in his dispatch bag. "I have the key."
As the cats ran out in terror, the River Guard filed into a vast courtyard and the door was shut behind them. They could see nothing in the shadows but shadows. On the sea side of the cortile they couldn't hear the surf but they could see mountains looming up inland. On the inland side they couldn't see the mountains but they could hear the sea. The colonel ordered them to bivouac on the inland side. "No fires," he said, "and no noise. Stack your rifles and sleep. I want one sentry at the gate and one on the ramparts. As soon as the sky lightens, close the window in the gate and come down off the ramparts.
"We'll look around then and decide what to do about housekeeping, although I hope we won't be at home very much."
"Sir? We won't?" asked a thin soldier with glasses, who looked like a puppet but who, either because of his rifle, his nerves, or his background as the son of a gunsmith, was one of the best shots in Europe.
"You like to walk, don't you?" the colonel asked.
"I love it, sir," the puppet soldier answered.
They stacked their rifles, laid down their packs, and stretched out. For a brief moment Alessandro looked up at the stars. Though they were not rolling and his eyes did not need to follow them as on the ship, now they were framed by dark walls. He did not think that his mother was wandering among them, though, that they were immutable, unreachable, and incomprehensible led him to allow that he might be wrong.
THEY STAYED in the prison for several weeks. Each man had a cell, where he kept his
equipment and submitted to inspection twice daily for making sure that he was packed-up and ready to go—with rations, ammunition, and water arranged in a rucksack that hung on the cell door. No one went near the windows in the daylight hours.
Their routine was much like that in the shed at Mestre, only everything was accomplished in silence. They exercised, ran circles around the cortile, cleaned their weapons, and drilled in almost total quiet. Commands were spoken in a whisper. As at Mestre, they ate little. Before the moon came up, and when the moon had disappeared, they were allowed to swim, five at a time, in the gentle surf behind the prison. They went down a rope that was thrown over the seaward wall, and ran into the breaking waves. Here they discovered how strong they had become, and that they could propel themselves through the sea at great speed, not even breathing hard. When they climbed the rope it was as effortless as flying. "The sons of bitches we're going after," Fabio declared, "must have big bellies by now. They probably eat all day and drink wine. When we chase them across the hills, in the heat, carrying weapons and water, who do you think will win?"
"They will," the puppet soldier answered. "They'll hide in the bushes, and when we walk past them they'll pop up and shoot us in the back."
"Not a hundred and fifty of us."
"And what if we're in places with neither bushes nor trees?" Alessandro added.
"What will we eat?"
"I don't know, what we always eat—dates, figs, spaghetti, and dried meat. What do you expect up there," he asked, gesturing toward the steep mountain that loomed over the prison, "restaurants?"
During the night Alessandro lay in his open cell, listening to the sea. At one time he would have longed for that which he remembered, and he would have worked hard to reconstitute the past, fixing in his mind exact memories, colors, sensations, and the changing light of the seasons. At one time he thought that for everything to fall back into place he had merely to escape the army and return, but now he was convinced that though they might buy back the garden, clean out the weeds, restart the fruit trees, plant vegetables, and put in their places new sun chairs, lazy cats, and water in the fountain, it would never be the same. It had been undone, and memory offered little comfort except to those who had not quite understood what they had loved.
As he stared at the rounded ceiling of his cell, Alessandro decided that, should he ever get home and be tempted to rely on them for memory, he would throw away the pictures of his mother and his father. Resurrection, he thought, comes not by plan or effort, and should the past ever come alive, it will be a great surprise, in which images and ritual memory will pale.
One of the lieutenants passed by. "Get up," he said. "We're going into the mountains."
AS THEY stood for review in the cortile, five men were picked at random to stay behind and guard the machine guns and other heavy equipment. The colonel would also stay behind, but he had given his lieutenants precise instructions. They moved out five at a time, crossed the empty road, and began to climb. They were to assemble at the summit, where they would re-form into smaller groups. It was five o'clock in the morning.
They crossed the road unseen, although the very last of them had to lie flat in the grass as a peasant passed with his donkey. The donkey smelled them and brayed, for which his flanks were slapped as if he were misbehaving. As soon as it was clear, the men rose from the ground, took up their rifles, and ran for the hillside.
It was steep enough that they had to pull themselves up by hand, and the grass was so slippery that they stuck their fingers into the earth, grabbed the edges of rounded boulders set weakly into the dirt, and held on to clumps of weeds that were like horse tails. Cursing and sliding, they reached the rock, which was a pleasure, and they scrambled up it until they found themselves at the summit, a thousand meters above the sea.
While they were waiting for stragglers they looked toward home. With no lights in San Vito Lo Capo, and no moon, only by starlight could they make out the edge of the sea and the sea itself, in occasional faint sparkles, when the waves broke the right way to catch a bright constellation and reflect it toward the mountain.
In Alessandro's group were Guariglia, Fabio, and the puppet soldier, who was a great prize because of his marksmanship. He had been magnificent in training, with near perfect scores. On the line he had been the scourge of the Austrians, as he could hit small, distant, fast moving targets. He could also get off more shots in a short time than anyone might have believed possible.
The senior lieutenant circulated the gastronomic order: six small sips of water, one dried fig, one biscuit. They had learned on the line that many small meals would take them much further than a few big ones. This was a matter of the highest discipline, which they had.
The officers checked their maps. An informer had marked the first camp they were going to raid, and was now on the sea somewhere between Italy and Argentina, where he hoped he might live out his days alive. The best approach was by the Trapani road, but the colonel had been wary. Instead, they were going to come in from the north along a ridge of mountains so deserted and difficult that, save shepherds and goatherds, no one ever set foot there, and they required three days to move into position, outflanking a steep valley that became a cul de sac rather than taking a road that led into it.
"Three days?" Fabio asked. "We're going to walk through this stuff for three days?"
"If you save two days by walking up the valley," Guariglia told him, "you can be buried with scratch-free legs."
"At the zoo in the Villa Borghese, Guariglia, they have a baboon...."
"Yes, I know," Guariglia interrupted. "After the president of the zoo came to my shop, he ran back to name the baboon Adonis."
"Take the highest ridge," the lieutenant ordered, "and remember that sound can carry very far along the cliffs. Get to this position before dawn," he continued, indicating a place on the map which corresponded with a peak downrange. "If you don't make it by first light, stay concealed where you are, and the others will wait until you show up at night. Divide your provisions for three days. You can find water here and there just below the line of the ridge. If you encounter anyone, bring him with you."
"What if he's a shepherd or a goatherd?"
"What if he is?"
"His animals will escape."
"He'll find them eventually. No fires, of course. Go."
A moisture-laden breeze from the sea came straight up the hillsides. The soldiers were impressed by the vastness and the wind. Even in the dark they could see the land spreading out and rolling into enormous ranges of mountains. Just as on the sea, the stars were on fire, but now they were sometimes blocked and hidden by looming black shapes days and days away.
THEY LOST themselves on the high ridge for two days as they made their way through the greenery and over mountainsides of blond and yellow grasses, where all seemed safe and life had been made to stand still. They covered a broken front at least a kilometer wide, individually or in groups of two or three. They couldn't see each other unless they strained to pick out their fellow soldiers from the rocks and brush, and from the towns along the sea, and the coastal road, they were invisible as they crossed saddles and valleys, accompanied only by the wind. Were it not for the heavy steel they carried, they might have thought that they had escaped from history itself.
As he made his way across the hills Alessandro asked himself over and over again if it were not right for the deserters to have chosen refuge in God's peace. His only answer, though he strained for others, was yes.
Off Tunisia, Guariglia had said, "Some of these men have left the line not because they were cowards but because they couldn't bear never to see their children again. If that's so, how can we, in good conscience, chase them down?"
"It has nothing to do with conscience," Alessandro had answered. "The colonel wants to fight the Mafia, the generals have to keep their troops from running away, and we have to do as we're told. If we don't hunt, we'll be hunted."
"And what if everyone ref
uses?"
"The army would disintegrate and the Austrians would be in Rome within a fortnight."
"Is it worth dying to keep them out?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you'll die anyway, sooner than you think. In addition to the incongruity of Austrians walking through Rome in swords and plumes, they would need us—you and me—to help them conquer France and Greece, and if we didn't want to help, they would chase us down and shoot us.
"In history, Guariglia, will is only an illusion and success does not last. You can only do your best in the short time you have. If you decide to remake the world you'll just end up killing people out of revolutionary impatience and triumphalism."
"So we kill the deserters."
"Yes. If we join them, we'll die with them."
DAWN OF the third day found them on a hilltop, looking across a precipitous valley cluttered with rocky ledges and banks of laurel and juniper. At the head of this valley, on a rise where trees had grown in a line that marked a stream, were half a hundred white tents.
As the sun came up behind them in the clear, binoculars were circulated and the squads of men lying flat on the ridge discovered that in the enemy camp were women, strings of mules, laundry hung out to dry, pits for roasting meat, a platform that looked like a stage, and sentries, of whom at least a dozen lined the dirt track that led up to their camp. A dozen more were around the camp itself. They had diverted the stream for their gardens, and they had a sweeping view of the valley.