The Sound of the Hours

by Karen Campbell

  ‘We’re going up the mountain tonight. To Lama. One last big push. So they say.’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘I don’t know if—’

  ‘I love you, Francesco.’

  The outer door was pushed open, with more urgency this time. ‘Chapel. Shift your ass, that’s an order.’

  ‘I’m coming, Com. Vittoria—’

  She put her finger to his lips. ‘I love you.’

  He nodded. Then he was gone, and Vita returned to the music of the Duomo. The Monsignor raised one hand to her from the piano as he played. His cheeks were pink, he looked happy. Fortress on the outside, soaring within. She loved him as well. Loved everyone, everything. The high, glorious echoes, the veined marble floor, here, this carved stone of the pulpit, this great square basin with majestic lions for feet. Cesca had left the tapers beside it. Vita moved them onto the altar, dipped her head before San Cristoforo. Three metres tall and nearly a thousand years old, his wooden form dominated his cathedral. After this Mass, the Monsignor said he was to be stored for safe-keeping. How could that be? It was their saint who kept them safe. She stared up at his crude jaw, his golden crown. At the boy king seated on his shoulder. San Cristoforo, who carried Christ. In sieges past, the barghigiani would parade this statue round the city walls, to scare the enemy and fortify the defenders. Arrow fragments were embedded in his wood. San Cristoforo should not be hidden away.

  She walked backwards from the altar. Don Leoni tutted as he took his chair: he didn’t hold with women anywhere near San Cristoforo. Well, tough, old man. Needs must in times of war. The organist was sorting his music at the piano. Around a hundred folk in church. They were just about to start, Nico fussing with the Monsignor’s stole, four chierichetti waiting to process down the aisle, when a volley of shots rang out. Some distance away, but loud enough to remind you, lest the uplift of music and incense, the audacity of warm bodies come together in love, had encouraged you to forget. A few nervous blinks, but the congregation continued singing, the organist playing the piano with bravado. Vita searched the cathedral for her sister, saw her with some schoolfriends. She went to join the girls, and the side door from the corridor opened. For a wonderful second, she thought it was Frank returned, but it was a group of partisans. They did come sometimes, to receive Holy Communion. Usually, they left their guns outside.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to a man strung with cartridge belts, edging in next to her. ‘But you’ll need to—’

  The partisan took her hand. ‘Buon Natale, Vittoria Guidi.’ Beneath the cloth cap, Dina’s face shone. Dina from Pescaglia. She kissed Vita twice, leaned over to shake hands with Cesca.

  ‘This is your sister, I can tell.’

  Vita felt the church swell, grow larger than anything outside. With her friend on one side and Francesca on the other, they stood to greet the (premature) birth of God.

  Later, when the music had died and the people filed out, they shared a bottle of grappa behind the Duomo: the Guidis and this bunch of undesirables. The Monsignor would be furious – at the brutta figura, and because Vita and Ces were meant to be serving an early supper for the priests. But the sisters and Nico could manage what meagre offerings there were. Of greater importance was feeding the refugees and the sick, and Vita had seen to them before she left.

  ‘You sure it’s safe here?’ They were clustered directly under the wall of the Duomo. A contingent of Buffaloes shifted more sandbags round the gun emplacements, fiddled with tripods, adjusted heights. Snow fell, scurrying the dark mess of the soldiers’ footprints. Vita kept looking, but he wasn’t there.

  ‘We’re fine. That shooting earlier, it came from over there.’ Dina pointed in the direction of Campo Sportivo. ‘Miles away. So, sister partigiana. You up for this?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Battle.’ Dina frowned, as if the answer was obvious. ‘How else will we kick the tedeschi out? Brofferio Partisan Formation.’ She saluted the dozen ragged men they stood with. ‘At your service.’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘You can hold a gun, no?’

  ‘Well, yes. Grazie.’ Vita took the bottle of grappa from Dina’s brother, bypassing Cesca. If their mother were here, she would tan their backsides. ‘Dream on, Ces. You’ve had one sip already. You don’t understand,’ she said to Dina. The grappa tasted foul, but she swallowed it. ‘I can’t fight. I’ve got Cesca. I’m all she’s got.’

  ‘I do understand. I have a daughter. In Pescaglia.’

  Vita tipped the bottle to her mouth again, shocked. Sunset scudded across the mountains to the west, sending flares of pink and gold light into the air behind the snow, the clouds lit yellow underneath. The twin peaks of Monte Forato melding into the form of the sleeping shepherd.

  ‘I’d like to bring her here one day. To see your double sunset.’

  In response to Nature’s show, a volley of guns fired on the other side of the valley, behind Lama, where it was already evening. Strings of red and azure bursts illuminating the sky.

  ‘It’s like angels dancing!’ shouted Cesca.

  ‘Or they’re shooting at the stars.’ Dina’s brother flourished his gun.

  The shine of light grew watery until Vita couldn’t see. She realised she was crying. Overwhelmed and frightened.

  ‘What’s wrong, amica?’

  ‘Just ignore her,’ said Ces. ‘She’s in lurve.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘With an americano. He’s going up there too.’

  ‘Sì? Well, come with us then. We leave tomorrow. Nothing’s going to happen then. It’s Christmas Day.’ Dina took back the grappa. ‘We’ll have a party in Sommocolonia, get some rest, devise strategy – for God-sake – you’re a local, you know those hills better than anyone. Salute!’

  ‘Vita, please,’ said Cesca. ‘Renata and Rosa are still up there. It must be fine. You said it’s worse down in Barga. And I hate being with the penguins. They’ll just make us pray all day.’

  ‘See?’ Dina wiped her mouth, thrust the bottle at Vita. ‘We’ll join up with your brigade, liaise with your americano, then next day – we strike! Plenty of time for you to come back down. Or come with us to Lama, if you decide. Come on, Vita. To be there when we liberate Tuscany. What a story to tell your grandchildren.’

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ She returned the grappa to her friend. The snow was getting heavy, soaking through the weave of her shawl. ‘C’mon Ces. Let’s go home.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do, Vita. I want to go home.’

  ‘Fuck it. You live, you die. That’s it.’ A kind of gleaming madness had come over Dina. She waved her hand, spilling grappa, splashing her comrades with it. Some of Dina’s men were chatting to the Buffaloes, who’d stopped work, were nodding and joking with the partisans. ‘Hey, Vita,’ shouted Dina’s brother. ‘What’s this big guy saying?’ His arm was slung round a tall americano. Cigarettes were being shared.

  ‘Ancora, ancora.’

  ‘Repeat what you said?’

  The americano struck a match for his new pal. ‘Tell him I say: We all bleed the same.’

  Dina smacked Vita’s arm. ‘Ho! So, where’s it going to be? Where do you want to do your living, Vittoria Guidi?’

  ‘Vi, please, please. Just for tomorrow? Then we come straight back down. You can fetch Mamma’s fur, and we can get her big quilt. The patchwork one. Please. It can be my Christmas present.’

  ‘Alright,’ Vita yelled into the fading day, louder than she meant. ‘Alright, then. We’ll go.’ So loud, it might have floated all the way up to wake the stars. Might even have burst into flame. Found a long dark fuse, and followed him all the way up to Sommocolonia. Or it might just wake the giant.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Buffaloes left when the moon was high. Bright air, snapping underfoot. Pin-quiet; Frank’s brain slooshing inside his skull. Echoes of the next footstep and next and next, the creak of your pack, your boots, and the infinite replications of the man moving next to you
and the man next to him, all those neat, soft ripples, widening out and rising up and splashing wide, filling this whole vast valley with

  You.

  The you that was praying to be invisible, in this high bright moon, on this scrape of path and trees. Luiz up front, scything for mines; then Ivan, his hood flipped with his helmet pitched on top like some overdressed doozy, hefting his Bangalore pipes, which would blast through barbed wire like a bullet through flesh, one pop, then bam – bits flying every which way. One blast, one scream right now and that was you, hollering. ‘Hey! Over here, guys! Hey, Krauts! We’re right here.’

  They’d know soon enough.

  Two platoons of them, Foxtrot and Golf, snaking their way through the foothills below Sommocolonia. Fear not. The Buffaloes are coming. Maybe one day some of the suckers marching alongside Frank would return here, come on vacation with their grandkids to a land lush with olives and sun, and discover they’d named this long drag after them. Wouldn’t that be something?

  Soldiers up ahead were whispering. Not Bear’s men. They were deathly quiet. It was the new guys. Frank cursed as he stumbled on a tree root. Twice his ankle had gone and buckled on him. Their low jabbering unsettled the air.

  Vita unsettled his bones.

  He was aware of each movement, how his tendons flexed and his muscles pulsed; he was aware of the night call of troubled animals. His blood leaped at the slightest thing, on the cusp of boiling over. Fat smacks of snow batted his eyelashes; he could see the crystals in them, dripping in raw lines down his face. He bowed his head. Against the snow, his bootprints made shadows, great savage holes which retained their shape for less than a minute. If he looked back, he could see the muffled whirl of snow fall in, eradicating the marks he’d just made, only for the next man to muss up the cleanness with his own stamp.

  ‘Hey, Frankie. Cheer up. This is it, huh? The big one. Get your mojo on.’

  ‘Charlie – keep it down.’

  Clear, ferrous tangs as the snowflakes struck his mouth. Falling in globes, not heavy, but busting on impact into almost-rain. Soon, it would be through them like a wicked spell, chilling from ground up and neck down. He had walked this path several times; he’d driven up this steep-sloped terrain, sat on Vita’s terrace. Viewed this land from on high. It was part of her, so it was good and fruitful and kind. He’d always been careful and he’d always come back down. Tonight felt different. It had been quiet today, but quiet wasn’t always good. Quiet gave you spaces; spaces and vacuums that filled with swirls and ghost-men, forming images you thought you’d locked up tight. Quiet gave you a thin sheet of paper and a pen. Gave you jitterbugs in your gut, assholes whispering in your ear.

  What exactly were they marching to? Dedeaux had been on fire at the final briefing. Trust no one, boys. Your arrival has to be a Kraut Christmas surprise. You got me?

  Suh. Yessuh.

  The enemy are everywhere. They’re that shopkeeper you josh with, that kid you give candy to. The belladonnas you insist on fucking. These people are Fascist to the core – it’s their religion.

  Had he meant to send them forth with resolve and pride-filled breasts? All he’d done was made them jumpy. From the minute the company left Barga, Frank felt like a kid inside a nightmare. Every building, every clutch of hayricks could be monsters. The circling hills with their ripped-up trees? Tombstones. He saw gaping faces in the snow. He wasn’t sure, if there was to be an after, how you would trust things just to be things again.

  He pressed his lips, trying to taste Vita on him. He knew fine why he felt this dread. Love, and the simple terror he might lose her again.

  The snow had stopped. They were deep in the forest, the darkness between the oak trees thicker, branches obscuring the moon. Small points of light from occasional stars stabbed through, spinning on their way to someplace else.

  ‘Hold!’ A mittened hand was flung across Frank’s belly, and he, automatic, hit the next down the line, and the next and the next. Why they broke you down in training, so you’d be no body but the body. The spit on his lips freezing. Leg cramps. A tiny turn of his head, either side. No one was looking. Frank inched his foot on a fallen tree trunk, grotesque with pleated vines. Nice just to rest the muscles in a different way from down. This ceaseless stomping, heel to toe on miles of foreign soil, up foreign hills. Past foreign faces that would’ve shot you back in spring. Yet he would stay here in a heartbeat. A leaf grazed his forehead. He wondered if ‘corps’ came from ‘corpse’. He would like to know words again.

  Lieutenant Fox moved forward. The fact he was here, marching in the midst of them, that his driver and radioman were walking with him too – it was a kind of loyalty unknown to Dedeaux. Having dispatched his men, that redneck fuck was most likely headed to Viareggio for some R and R.

  ‘Hey, Frankie,’ said Charlie. ‘How about you conjure—’

  From nowhere, Bear flicked Charlie’s ear. ‘Bit of shut-the-fuck-up you don’t get, bwoy?’ Not stopping though, the sergeant never lost pace, just kept bouncing up and down the line like this was what he lived for, the bulk of him everywhere – in your face, at your back. Frank’s eyes doing pantomimes at Comanche. Comanche turning away. You could tell he did not care for Charlie.

  ‘On’ came the command. The path lifted here, a high arch with the ground falling steeply to one side. On with their careful shuffle – very careful now Frank could see the sheer rock drop and how this flank was so exposed. Across the valley, at the corner of the sky, Sommocolonia revealed herself again. The moon was behind the big tower; it was a horror film, or the cover of one of Willis’s comics. Behind Sommocolonia lay the long ridge of Lama di Sotto. Beyond that, the Krauts. Or maybe not, maybe they were swarming on their bellies right now, crawling over the ridge, between the trees. Coiled inside Sommocolonia, playing dead. Thank Christ, Vita was safe in Barga.

  With every glimpse of Lama, Frank’s lungs grew tighter. Behind him, a line of men. Sixty of them, strung like paper dolls. What was better? he wondered. To be the first to fall, or to be behind and see it coming? Leaves squelched under churned-up snow. The path narrowed through the trees, Frank ducking under half-torn branches. The weight of his pack pushed him forward as they moved downhill. The plan was to make it down to the river, then cross near Ponte di Catagnana.

  ‘Hold.’

  Flat of Comanche’s hand on his belly, Frank’s on Charlie’s, Charlie’s on Claude’s. In the moonlight, he could see where the trees became more sparse. Like a curtain opening on scene two: The Road. Whichever way they went, they’d need to cross the road at Ponte, the one they’d been avoiding. Against open tarmac, you were flat-out exposed. Bridges meant mines and tripwires, even bridges you’d checked yourself not twelve hours past. They would cross upstream, way behind the pontoon, where it was shallow enough for their line to get across. He flexed his toes inside his boot. Three men went forward – Fox again: that guy was straight up. You’d want him at your back, if he weren’t so damn good up front.

  They were brave, all these guys were brave. Yeah, like you had a choice not to put one boot in front of the other while every cell of you was screaming no. Man, what is brave about just existing, just holding all the damp insides of you, the liquid bowels and leaping heart in a thin bag of skin, skin you know is fucking fragile and will bust and split and let your life force out? No, what is brave is turning round and walking back to Barga. To Vita, who loved him. A noise came up from his mouth. If he saw her again, he would ask her to marry him.

  He felt Comanche’s hand. A sliver of foil. Passing him some gum.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Sure.’

  When you stopped, you remembered you were tired and cold. Not his job to think. Frank had learned when his mind could cruise. To accept those gracious seconds where your body carried your brain. You were a limb – hell, a digit – of this body, you were a drone in the hive. Soon enough the dance would start again and your switch would be flicked. He stared across the darkness. The moonlight caught like
white fire: tips of trees, a fingernail of light on a curve of rock. Painting on the mountain tops, spilling into the valley, where it pooled like ice and snow. Stare hard enough and it became an illusion, a lake of light that was not really there. You could just step out into its coolness. In some far-off shack, a dog howled.

  ‘On.’

  Slithering down the slope. Get across the river, then double back to the mule path that would take them up to Sommo. First: make it past the strip of houses that ran along the road.

  ‘Is that Ponte then?’ Charlie, sotto voce.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘What a dive. More like No Point-ay if you ask me.’

  ‘Nobody did,’ said Comanche.

  Slowly, they moved in threes and fours, backs tight to the trees, face-on to the open road. Beyond the bridge, the river was a little wider. All the rain and snow had made the Corsonna run deep. Sliding, clattering their backsides down the pebbled bank. Bear first, testing the depth; but he was six-six, and that ain’t no benchmark, said Luiz.

  Bear’s one finger, pointing. A mouthed ‘In’.

  Rifles up. Shit, don’t forget the handgun acquired from Vinnie, no questions asked; waist-deep water, only everywhere was swirling higher than it should, a month of rain and snow and mud filling up, faster and faster, making soil thick and water hard. A constant firecracker of sucked-in breaths, Jesusgodalmighty, the ice ripping up your veins. Frank stood, trying to be solid in the flow. Legs sinking, could no longer feel his feet. Don’t look up. He was a little boy again, lying in bed with the dreadful certainty that eyes lived inside the darkness. Watching him. One fragile chain, cast across the waters. He waited for Jerry’s artillery, but it didn’t come.