by Greg McGee
The relief on Rifi’s face when I laughed. I wanted to tell him a joke in Italian in return, make him laugh, show those big teeth. I tried the simplest one I could remember from Enfield primary:
Fatty in the teapot,
Skinny in the spout,
Fatty blew off
and blew Skinny out.
I thought I was doing quite well:
Un grosso in dentro della teiera,
Un magro in dentro del becco.
Rifi was looking pretty interested, but more puzzled than laughing. ‘Come mai un grosso in dentro della teira?’ How did a fat man get into a teapot?
Patienza, Rifi, I told him, but I feared the moment was gone. Worse, I didn’t know the Italian for fart and had to ask him, acting it out with sound effects and holding my nose. Rifi pissed himself. So that’s a start. Your basic poos and wees breaking down international boundaries.
Though the actual season began with a spectacular win and a loss, the real news kept coming from Gemona, the place which had drawn him to Italy in the first place, but which seemed as impossible to reach as ever.
September 13, 1976.
Gemona was rocked by another major after-shock early evening yesterday. We felt them in San Pietro — no wonder, they were 7.5 and 8 on what the Corriere Della Sera calls the Mercalli scale. If that’s the same as the Richter scale, jesus. There’s more pictures. Some of the buildings that were salvageable are now rubble. I’d been thinking of going back there, but it’ll be months now before anyone from outside is allowed anywhere near the place. Poor bastards.
37
Another entry a week later, which looked to be about rugby, turned into something else. She recognised the name Franco, whose photo she had seen at the reunion, the handsome one who had died, and who, with her father, had formed the due coglioni, the two balls of San Pietro. And someone else, who Clare desperately hoped would be significant, finally made an appearance.
September 20, 1976
Lost again, by two points. Missed a drop goal in injury time. Perfect set-up, scrum on their 22. Claudio hooked it wide from dead in front. Could have thrown it over, as they say, or in Claudio’s case talked it over. Oh the lamentations. Last week the dropped goal went right between the posts. Ours, not theirs. I’d tried to charge it down and lay there with my face in the mud not daring to look, but listening for the crowd reaction. Whistling in derision. Our fans. Not happy campers, we were going at fifty per cent, but have lost the last two, not by much — we’re good at making a game but not so good at winning it. We’re inventing new ways to lose, traversing the many and various ways of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The game is usually on Sunday. Monday is market day in San Pietro, just around the corner from my apqrtment. I try to get out of town without being seen. The Straniero who’s bringing shame to the town on their only national stage. Shame is vergogna in Italian. Another of those words that sounds better than the English. Like magari. How do you translate that — indeed? Right on! I wish! If only . . . Depends entirely how you say it.
I hightail it in the little Opel Kadette across the plain to Venice, my refuge, particularly Beppino and his brother Franco. They both speak good English, which is a relief — after two hours of Italian in San Pietro where no-one speaks English, I’m bushed, have to hide away to recuperate.
Beppino is captain and co-coach with me, gets advice from his father, so there’s always lots to discuss. He runs the family vegetable stall in the market below Rialto. His father was the coach, but is in grief over the death of Beppino’s mother. Beppino and Franco were late starting training for that reason, but seem okay. Beppino is an irrepressible little bugger, stocky wee guy, perfect half-back physique, loves talking rugby, is steeped in it from his father I guess and knows damn near as much about it as anyone I know. Franco is different, still stocky but taller, cascade of black curls and beard, Che Geuvara but better looking, wants to talk politics not rugby. He’s the other serious communist in the team, with big bad Domenico. God knows what Stalinist or Mao splinter group Domenico is part of, but Franco’s party calls itself Lotta Continua, the struggle continues, the struggle never ends, which says it all really: while the rest of the communists are celebrating Berlinguer and the Communist party finally getting a share of power in the June elections, these guys are calling it a cop-out. Franco and Domenico believe in revolution, not evolution. They don’t want to see the communists sharing power with the Christian Democrats, whom they believe are corrupt and unprincipled. They believe that sharing government with the DCs will taint the communist movement by association. When I ask Franco what sort of revolution he’s talking about, is it blood on the streets, he tells me that I shouldn’t believe everything I read in Time magazine. Franco’s not as unattractive as that makes him sound: true he wears a red bandana when he plays, but when he smiles, those white teeth flash through the black beard.
Beppino’s a smart little operator on the field, a good distributor, whereas Franco is very direct. He tackles and runs like a kamikaze pilot, so he’s a great guy to have on my shoulder. But he seldom passes, not because he can’t but because he won’t. On Sunday he ate — that’s what they say here — mangiato — a try by not passing when he’d beaten his marker on the outside and only had to draw the fullback and pass, to me back on the inside, or to Massimo on his outside. When he went to ground with the ball and we lost the ruck, in the heat of the moment I called him a selfish bastard. He took me aside after the game and explained in that soft reasonable voice of his that far from his action being selfish, he’d held on to the ball and run into the opposition rather than pass as a political statement of communist strength and integrity. Well, what the fuck do you say to that? I’ve never seen that addressed in any coaching manual.
Beppino says his father is broken by the loss of their mother and so he’s helped in the stall by Franco, if he’s there. Franco’s studying Chemistry at Bologna Uni, so he’s away during the week quite often, but not as often as you’d think for a full-time course. There’s always shit in the paper around the universities, faculties being occupied here in Venice and in Padova, riots on the street, hits on banks and barracks by the Red Brigade. I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it, but to listen to Franco, he goes to Bologna for meetings of his cell of Lotta Continua, I never hear him talk about his chemistry degree.
Franco wasn’t at the market this morning, but their sister Cinzia (chin, I’ve got to remember, not sin), was. First time I’ve met her. She’s unusual looking for round here, five or six years older than Franco and taller with dark red hair, probably hennaed or whatever they do. She speaks English with a bit of an American twang, probably because she thinks it’s hip. I asked her if she’d ever been to the States and she said no, but she’s been to a lot more places than Beppino. I’ve been bloody nowhere, says B, someone’s got to run the bloody stall! He calls her Tess. When I asked her what I should call her, she said Cinzia. Beppino said I should call her Tess. She told me Tess is short for Testa Rossa, Red-head (so I guess the hair colour is natural). Beppino said bull-shit, Tess is short for Testa Calda, Hot-head. They had a stand-up row in dialect — all I could understand were bits of the swear-words I know, cazzo (cock), culo (arse), figa (cunt, which doesn’t seem to have the same currency in Italian — women use it quite often, who would never blaspheme), stronzo (turd), etc punctuated with a lot of blasphemies, God’s a dog, madonna’s a prostitute. The customers were being ignored but didn’t seem to worry, enjoyed the spectacle, and a couple of the other vendors joined in and as far as I could see, Cinzia was proving every second that she was Testa whatever. Not many people out-talk Beppino. He gave up after a while and they started serving customers again, but still muttering away to the customers about each other. Cinzia had quite a queue of mainly men in front of her and didn’t give a shit, just chatted on to whoever she was serving as if there was no-one waiting. She doesn’t look like
she belongs in the market — she was wearing la moda, but it’s the men’s style, which is kinda uni-sex — black winkle pickers, tight blue stovepipe jeans and grey V neck with a stiff light blue collared shirt. She had a man’s tweed jacket she took off when she put on a leather apron. I ‘d never seen her at the stall before, but she knew what she was doing. Afterwards, when she was having a smoke, I asked her how her Dad was. It was a stupid question, just something to say, because Beppino had told me that he was drinking too much and wouldn’t come out of the house. Cinzia looked at me with green eyes, and asked me if I knew her father. I said I’d never met him. Ah well, she said. He’s, how would you say it, pretty fucked. She said it just like that, only she said fuck-ed. He’s pretty fuck-ed. She had green eyes, did I say that. Or sort of browny green. With a bit of gold or something maybe. Though when I try to picture her, I’m not sure. I can see a weird likeness between her and Franco, the wide cheek-bones under the cascading hair, but not much between her and Beppino, except for the verbals.
Clare tried to temper her sense of triumph. It didn’t vindicate her actions, but there was a woman. For some reason she no longer felt outraged on behalf of her mother. She leaned over his beaky mask and whispered, ‘Cinzia. Chinzia. Is that how you say it? Tell me about her. Please, Dad. Speak to me.’
There was no change in him. She stood and stretched and crossed to the window. She closed the slats, then pulled up the blinds so she could see the moonlight shimmering off the glossy leaves.
It has to be her.
Gemona 1945
38
The Nazis were leaving partisan corpses hanging on butchers’ hooks on trees and under bridges and arches as a deterrent. That was how they found Charlie. They almost walked into him the night after it happened.
The hook under the chin was a slow way of dying and a man might scream out many names before the spirit left him. Charlie had known a lot of names, his own, Charlie and Carlo Farinelli, for a start. Then there were Joe Lamont/Gianni Lamonza, and Harry Spence/Rico Zanardi and Luca and Beppi Bonazzon and Gigi Zanardi and the other ten men in the 8th Brigade of the Garibaldi Nationalists and their staffetta, courier, Donatella Bonazzon. And all the people who had helped them, hidden them, fed them.
If the Gestapo major, Il Pazzo, The Madman, had heard those names from Charlie, he would have lined the Bonazzons and Zanardis up, even old Nonna Isabella and little Paola and Leo, and shot them against the walls of their own houses, then burned both houses to embers. Or maybe he’d make them watch their houses burn down before he shot them. But Joe knew that Charlie hadn’t named any names. When Il Pazzo had put his hook into Charlie, he was already dead.
* * *
Blowing up the railway bridge over the Orvenco River had been an Allied priority for some time, judging by the number of times the British bombers had tried to hit it. Joe had heard the roar of the engines and the whump of the bombs, but every time, come morning, the bridge still stood. The surrounding mountain peaks made it a difficult target. The message had come down from British intelligence via Major Ferguson, a kilted Scot up in the mountains behind Gemona, that the Garibaldis should finish what the RAF could not. But the orders never took account of the moon, which had become the Garibaldis’ enemy as they tried to take advantage of the night.
Darkness was their friend, the blacker the better. That night it was a full moon on white snow: it might as well have been daylight. As Harry and Joe worked their way down the riverbed towards the concrete arches of the railway bridge, they could see the glint of helmets and rifles up on the steel superstructure. Donatella had cycled past the bridge yesterday so they knew it was manned by stormtroopers, with sand-bagged machine gun emplacements at both ends.
The moon left strong shadows along the bank, which they tried to take advantage of. It was impossible to eliminate all sound: the large pebbles sometimes moved and clicked under their feet, but the winter torrent took the sound away. In summer the Orvenco pretty much dried up and any approach along the bed would have reverberated to those above.
Harry was leading as usual, wearing a combination of victims’ clothes that he thought appropriate for the occasion: a Wehrmacht tunic, the knee-length breeches he’d taken from the Slovenians, with lederhosen borrowed from Marisa’s uncle up in the Brennero and a dead stormtrooper’s boots. He no longer wore his Slovenian cap. After one of their ideological discussions in the hayloft, Luca had taken the cap off Harry’s head and handed it to him. The message was clear: it was sacrilege for a man of Harry’s political naïveté, if that’s what it was, to wear the red star. Harry shrugged but got it, and Joe never saw him wear the cap again. Tonight he was wearing one of Gigi’s berets, which he’d stick in his pocket when they got close to the enemy.
Harry had urged the Garibaldis to tog up in enemy uniforms when they went out. ‘There might be a night where Jerry catches a first glimpse of you and thinks you’re a friend and that split second might be enough.’ He told them it made no odds if they were caught in civvies or a German or Republican uniform, they’d be tortured and shot anyway.
But, for Luca, the Garibaldis could not on principle wear Nazi or fascist uniforms, and he tried to insist that Harry change his vocabulary: the Italian militia they were fighting were fascisti, not Republichini. Luca had fought for the International Brigade of the Republicans in Spain, and the name had been stolen by the fascists, just as they’d stolen the black shirts worn by the heroes of Isola dei Morti, like his father. He also told Harry he’d fought alongside Germans and some of them were honourable soldiers.
‘Noi combattiamo i Nazisti,’ he said. We’re fighting Nazis.
That fine distinction meant nothing to Harry as far as Joe could see. He was still fighting Jerry.
That night, for some reason Joe couldn’t fathom, there were just the four of them: Luca, Harry, Joe and Charlie. Joe wasn’t sure why the other Garibaldis weren’t there, whether they’d deliberately not been told of this attack. Was there suspicion of a leak? He could think of no other reason why their complement should be so reduced for one of the biggest and riskiest operations they’d attempted.
Harry was reading contour, giving hand signals to Joe, carrying the explosives. It had gone like clockwork: they’d got to some willows a hundred yards downstream and waited for the diversion they’d planted in the rails on the other side of the bridge. Harry had counted it off on his watch until they heard the explosion. There was no time to assess the German reaction; they had to assume it had got their attention. It was so precise these days with the new pencil detonators supplied by Major Ferguson that they’d started their hunched run towards the arches almost before they heard the device go off.
They made the concrete arches undetected and could hear the consternation above them. Joe’s fingertips searched for the small indentations at the back of the arches where the join in the mould had been, taped the explosive in there and set the timers. Four arches. They knew there was no chance of getting back the way they’d come and instead they found some moon shadow close to the bank, checked their weapons and waited.
When the small arms fire from Luca and Charlie began they scrambled up the bank as quickly as they could. At the crest Joe saw a German officer, back to them, gesticulating and shouting to two stormtroopers manning the machine gun emplacement at the eastern entrance to the bridge. In the time it took Joe to absorb what he was seeing and aim his rifle at the officer, Harry had raked the machine gunners with his short-barrel Mauser and ripped the officer in half as he turned with his pathetic pistol.
‘Ndemo via!’ shouted Harry and they did. Joe had time to see the machine gunners draped dead over their weapon like fawning lovers as he followed Harry, weaving along the road as the bullets from the other end of the bridge carved the air beside them.
They dived into the copse of trees they’d scouted earlier and climbed to a vantage point where they waited a matter of seconds before Luca and Charlie a
rrived. Luca had become adept with a tommy despite his one arm, but wasn’t usually called upon to fire it much when all the Garibaldis were involved. Charlie still had one of the rifles Harry had taken from the Slovenians. Harry asked Charlie to lead, he’d take the rear. That was pretty standard but asking Charlie to exchange weapons wasn’t. Charlie was happy enough to grab Harry’s semi — maybe it was out of ammo — and they began climbing. They knew they had about ten minutes’ start before the Germans got themselves organised with men and dogs and they knew by now how to make the most of it. There were still bullets spattering through the trees sending splinters and twigs flying, but you’d have to be unlucky to be hit.
Charlie was unlucky. He took a bullet in the nape of the neck and was dead before he hit the ground. A man who was never lost for a word died without a sigh. Joe pitched forward beside Charlie and tried to turn his head to see his eyes, pleading with him to say something.
‘He’s a goner,’ said Harry, pulling Joe up by the collar. Joe tried to stay down with Charlie, but Harry hauled him up to his feet and pulled Joe’s face around to his. ‘Get a grip, or you’re gone too.’
Harry, still holding Charlie’s rifle, switched it over to his back and grabbed his Mauser semi out of Charlie’s dead fingers.
Joe looked across to Luca, standing impassively. Luca just shook his head once. ‘Andiamo,’ he said, as Harry pushed Joe between the shoulder blades with the butt of the Mauser and Joe stumbled forward and nearly fell.