Private Angelo

by Eric Linklater

  He was sadly taken aback when the butler told him that the Count was in bed, and the doctor who had been called in had given orders that he was on no account to be disturbed. – But the butler was a dull creature, with no faculty but for misunderstanding. He was always making mistakes. Angelo decided to go and see for himself.

  With feather-soft fingertips he tapped upon the bedroom door, tapped again, and waited. In a little while it was opened, and Angelo was surprised to see, against a shaded light, the Marchesa Dolce. She came out, closing the door behind her, and spoke in a whisper. Angelo listened with bewildered sorrow.

  Then she said: ‘You must not stay very long, and do not let him see that you are surprised by his appearance. The bandage, after all, makes a lot of difference.’

  Angelo promised to behave with composure, and went gently in. Bending low to the pillow, so that the Count might recognize him, he uttered the hope that his master was already feeling better.

  ‘To meet old friends again cannot fail to make me better,’ said the Count with a courteous gesture of the hand which had not been hurt. ‘But the truth is, my dear boy, that I am not so well as I used to be. Neither so well nor so well-off. My physical health is depreciated, and my account at the Banco di Santo Spirito is overdrawn. The poet Shelley, now happily buried in this city, once compared life to a many-coloured dome. And how right he was! For my poor body is black and blue, and to the Holy Ghost I am altogether in the red.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ANGELO GAVE no more Italian lessons to General Hammerfurter. He had a generous nature and the springs of gratitude flowed freely in his heart – having been educated in an old-fashioned way he had never learnt that gratitude is a sign of inferiority and should therefore be suppressed – but after carefully weighing the evidence, for and against the General, he had come to the conclusion that he owed him nothing. True, the Count was at liberty, and that was through the General’s influence; but the Count had paid five million lire for his freedom, and would need several weeks of careful nursing before he could enjoy it. ‘I abhor a mean or grudging temperament,’ said Angelo to the Marchesa, ‘but facts are facts and should be recognized. We owe that man nothing!’

  The Marchesa, though she disliked the General for more reasons than one, would have preferred a continuance of his friendship with Angelo, for the sake of peace and the possibility of further benefit; but when she perceived the strength of Angelo’s feelings she made no more attempt to persuade him. She merely said, ‘You must try to avoid an open quarrel. Tell him that you have to return to Pontefiore.’

  ‘I shall tell him nothing,’ said Angelo.

  He trembled, even as he spoke, to think of the consequences of such heroic stubbornness, but escaped them, as it turned out, with the help of the butler’s timely stupidity. The General sent his orderlies, and finally his aide-de-camp, to ask what had happened to Angelo; and always the butler answered with disarming frankness, ‘He has gone out. No, I do not know where, and I do not know when he will come back. To tell you the truth, I know nothing about him.’

  Angelo, in the meantime, had more than once met the two soldiers, the Czech and the Russian, with whom he had driven to Pontefiore. They had reminded him of his promise to help them escape, and because he now felt a certain prejudice against the German authorities, he had bestirred himself to find someone who could give them practical assistance. He met one evening an old comrade of his own regiment, who had deserted by feigning death in battle, and succeeded in returning to Italy from Cyrenaica. This man now earned a precarious living by reproducing, where they were needed, the purple die-stamps on official documents, which he did in a very simple but ingenious way; and after some discussion with Angelo he promised to introduce him to a person called Fest.

  Within a limited circle, it appeared, Fest was well known, though no one could tell much about him except that, for reasons of his own, he was hostile to the Germans. He spoke Italian fluently, but with a clumsy guttural accent, and his appearance was remarkable. His thick growth of pale brown hair was streaked with grey, and he wore a monocle of clouded tortoiseshell to conceal the loss of his left eye and the burnt lids that betrayed the manner of its destruction. A deep scar, breaking the bridge of his nose, extended to his left cheek-bone, and half a dozen parallel scars, bone-white and thin as a knitting needle, ran from his forehead into the thickness of his hair. He dressed with distinction, his manner was cold, his carriage upright.

  Angelo met him in a trattoria near the little Piazza dei Satiri that was commonly used by cabmen, flower-sellers, and petty agents of the Black Market; and there he spoke diffidently of his friends’ desire to escape from German service. Fest appeared to be sympathetic and said he would make some necessary inquiries.

  Two days later Angelo met him again, and Fest invited him to bring the Czech and the Russian to the trattoria on the following evening. The four of them spent nearly an hour together, and the two soldiers spoke at great length on the injustice they had suffered, the hardships they had endured, and their hatred of the Germans. Fest listened attentively, without saying much in reply, and made another appointment. He would then be able, he said, to let them know what arrangements had been made for their escape, and give them their instructions.

  To Angelo’s surprise the soldiers brought a stranger to this meeting. He was a short broad-shouldered man in the uniform of a German private. His expression was amiable, and according to the others he was a Lett from Dvinsk. He also, it appeared, was eager to desert, and having overheard the Czech and the Russian discussing their plans, he had asked as a great favour to be allowed to join their party. Angelo thought they had been indiscreet, but there was nothing he could do to redress the situation. They sat down together, ordered wine, and waited for Fest.

  The trattoria was unusually empty, and Fest was late. The Lett paid for another flask and asked Angelo how many soldiers he had smuggled out of the country. Angelo answered with a knowing look and a shrug of the shoulders. They finished the flask, and still Fest did not come. The Czech and the Russian had begun to look worried, and the Lett was turning sullen. ‘I think you have been deceiving us,’ he said. ‘I do not think your friend means to come.’

  ‘Perhaps he has been prevented.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Who else should know? It was you who introduced these men to him, and asked him to arrange their escape. You are responsible for the whole plan.’

  ‘I offered to help them if I could –’

  ‘That is enough,’ said the Lett, and knocked the flask off the table. This was evidently a signal, for a few seconds later the door was thrown open and a sergeant of the Schutzstaffel came in, followed by four troopers, all carrying revolvers.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ demanded the sergeant.

  ‘He hasn’t come,’ said the Lett.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘This one tipped him off, I think,’ and the Lett pointed to Angelo.

  ‘We’ll hammer your liver into paste for that,’ said the sergeant.

  Angelo and the would-be deserters were in a white trance of fear, and when the troopers dragged them from the table, to which they feebly clung, their loosened knees could scarcely bear their weight. They were hustled to the door while the other drinkers, the few who had come to the trattoria that night, shrank into dark corners or huddled against a wall, and watched them in a silence broken only by a flower-vendor’s nervous hiccup.

  They were driven to the prison called Regina Coeli, where for an hour or two they were questioned, not about their intentions – which had already been revealed by the Lett, who was an agent of the police – but about Fest. As none of them knew anything, however, they could tell very little; and because their interrogators had had a busy day, and were tired, they escaped with little worse than a formal beating for their incompetence.

  Angelo, the Russian, and the Czech spent fourteen miserable days in the Regina Coeli gaol among som
e thirty or forty nondescript prisoners, none of whom dared speak freely to anyone else for fear he was talking to a German agent. Angelo and his two companions were so disconcerted by the Lett’s betrayal of them that they regarded each other with mutual dread, avoided conversation almost entirely, and were reticent about the torture they suffered. They were all beaten every second or third day, but Angelo’s interrogators were either bored by their duty or physically exhausted by it, and his injuries were superficial. The Czech and the Russian were less fortunate and they regarded Angelo with ever-increasing suspicion.

  He was rescued from this unpleasant atmosphere by a sudden order, one night, to parade in the prison yard. A group of about two hundred men stood there under a fine rain, while guards moved about them, shouting. Presently they were marched to the railway station, where two smaller companies were waiting, and after a tedious delay during which the most alarming rumours were discussed, they were hustled with a sudden feverish haste into the open trucks of a waiting train. There they remained, cold and shivering, till dawn, when the train started.

  All day the rain fell from low clouds. From time to time the train stopped, and the prisoners were ordered from their trucks to repair the line, which had been bombed in several places. Night was falling when they entered a mountain gorge, and quickly the sombre hills disappeared in a general gloom. It became very cold, and some of the prisoners were much distressed. Fortunately for Angelo the truck in which he was travelling was grossly overcrowded, and his companions engendered a natural heat which greatly comforted him. Towards morning, however, he was annoyed by an oldish man who, held against him by the crowd, fell sound asleep in his arms. Angelo supported him, partly because he was good-natured, partly because it was very difficult to get rid of the fellow; but it was unfair, he thought, that a stranger should use him so. Not until morning did he perceive that the oldish man was dead.

  They were now in a very wild and rugged part of the country, but the weather was fair again, and as they descended from the mountains into the coastal plain the sun warmed them, and the steam of drying clothes rose above the jolting train. Several of Angelo’s companions now felt sure that they were going to Ancona, though for what purpose none could guess.

  But when the train reached the coast it went northward away from Ancona. Angelo squeezed and pushed his way to the right-hand side of the truck, and looked with pleasure at the pale blue sea that stretched so far, in silky calm, beneath a milk-white sky. It was the first time he had ever seen the Adriatic, and though he disliked the means by which he had come there, he was glad to increase his knowledge of the world.

  They arrived at the little port of Pesaro, where they left the train and were marched to the outskirts of the town, from which the native inhabitants had been removed. They slept in some empty houses, and in the morning began to knock them down.

  Most of the houses were quite new, and well-built. The furniture remained in some of them, and when the Germans had taken all they needed for themselves, such as beds and cooking-pots and blankets, they sold what was left to the people who had been evicted. These unhappy creatures used to come every day to watch their houses being demolished, and some of the women cried aloud when they saw the walls tumble. The German officer who was in charge of the work was a pale young man, with the eager but careworn look of a student, who believed there was no virtue like efficiency. Angelo and his fellow-prisoners were compelled to break the houses down to single bricks, and spread the debris flat. Then the officer would smile and say, ‘Good, very good! That is beautifully done!’

  He appeared to be a kindly young man, and one day Angelo plucked up courage to ask him what was the purpose of this destruction.

  ‘I suppose it is hard for you to understand,’ said the officer. ‘You feel guilty, you poor Italians, because you have betrayed us and broken our alliance. And because you feel guilty you fear that we shall desert you, and leave you to your fate. But no! A German promise is a sacred thing, and cannot be broken. You do not understand that, but nevertheless it is so. And therefore we are still fighting for you, and here in Pesaro we are making the most careful preparation to defend your country to the last. Have no fear! We shall never allow the English and the Americans to destroy your beautiful Italy.’

  ‘Would they destroy it as carefully as we are doing?’ asked Angelo.

  ‘No, no! They are a lot of bungling amateurs,’ said the officer. ‘It is only we Germans who are truly efficient.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Angelo respectfully, ‘I think Italy would be better off if you did desert us.’

  ‘Shut up, swinehound!’ shouted a sergeant who had been listening to their conversation, and with the back of his hand struck Angelo across the face so heavily that he fell upon a pile of bricks, and the Sergeant kicked him in the ribs.

  ‘Do not be too severe,’ said the officer. ‘He comes of an inferior race, they lack understanding.’ And he went busily to inspect the destruction of another house.

  The demolitions were intended to open fields of fire for certain guns which the Germans were mounting, and when their work in Pesaro was done the prisoners were marched along the high road that runs inland from there, and whenever they came to a village they stayed in it until they had knocked it flat. Then they were ordered to fell all the trees on the flat river-fields south of the road, and Angelo grew sadder every day to see how thoroughly a country had to be ruined in order to be saved.

  He was too unhappy to make friends with the other prisoners; many of whom, indeed, were in the same mood as he. Though never for a moment alone, he and those of his temper lived solitary lives and nursed their grief like a young widow suckling her orphan babe.

  The Germans, about this time, were much alarmed by the success of the Allied landings, and contemplated a long retreat to the mountains north of Florence. Hurriedly they had chosen defensive sites, and were fortifying them to create from coast to coast what was later known as the Gothic Line. But then their Führer perceived the moral impossibility of abandoning Rome to the barbarians, and with the approach of winter – a potent ally – resolved to fight for it in the southern passes. So work on the Gothic Line came to a stop, no more houses were demolished, and for a week or two Angelo and his companions, with nothing to do, were lodged in a large school on the seashore south of Pesaro. The ejected pupils, enjoying their unexpected holiday, gave three cheers for every German they saw, and the prisoners were comforted by several days of fine warm weather.

  They spent most of their time on the beach, and their favourite occupation was to watch the fisherfolk hauling their nets.

  The nets were towed out to sea in a great semi-circle, and then the fisherfolk would lay hold of the end-ropes and slowly, with a small formal step, drag them ashore. Most of the haulers were old men and women and girls. As the nets came in, running water from the mesh, the bare-legged, bare-armed women would kilt their skirts high above the knee. There was a girl there who reminded Angelo of Lucrezia; not by any physical resemblance, but because she stirred something of the same emotion in him. She was little and childishly plump, though she wore a wedding-ring, and when she had gathered her skirt to the waist, and was leaning far back on the rope, and the salt sea-drops fell with a tiny splash upon her smooth round thighs, then Angelo thought of Lucrezia at the washing-trough, and his lungs contracted as though a ghostly arm encircled him.

  One day, observing a yard of rope unoccupied behind her, he stepped forward, took hold and helped to pull. She turned her head, and smiled.

  Angelo soon discovered that it did no good to heave and strain, but when he lay upon the rope there presently came, as if the sea were lifting it, an easing of the weight, and then he must take – one-two, like dancing – a little step, and somewhere behind him a fathom of slack would be coiled upon the sand. The net came in, the circle narrowed and became a bag. Two score small fishes, wriggling silver, were gathered from it. Softly the girl asked him, ‘Why do you look so unhappy?’

  ‘I
am a prisoner,’ said Angelo.

  ‘So is my husband.’

  ‘To be separated from you must make him the unhappiest man alive.’

  ‘Are you married too?’

  ‘She said she would not have me until the war was over,’ said Angelo.

  ‘I think she is wise,’ said the girl. ‘But my husband is going to escape.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Come back to-morrow, and I shall tell you.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Annunziata.’

  The next day Angelo took his place on the rope behind Annunziata as though it were his right, and addressed her so warmly that she frowned at him, pointed her glance at an old grey-bearded man, and whispered through careful lips, ‘Be sensible! He is my father-in-law.’

  But Angelo, with hope like a bubble in his blood, answered, ‘Dear Annunziata! Tell me how your husband is going to escape, and if he fails perhaps I can succeed and take his place.’

  When they began to haul he fell easily into the rhythm of it, and once or twice put an arm round Annunziata’s waist, when she leaned far back, and pressed her to him. She grew offended, or made a pretence of it, and would not talk to him until they were pulling-in for the third time. Then she said, ‘You must volunteer for the front line.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Angelo. ‘I should hate to do that.’

  ‘That is how my husband is going to escape. He was taken away and set to work as you have been, but then the Tedeschi asked for volunteers who would join their army and serve them where they are fighting. Mario, my husband, said to himself, “If they send me to some place where there is a battle, I shall be quite near to the English or the Americans, and therefore it will be much easier to escape and join the other side.” So he volunteered, and by now, perhaps, he has already deserted.’