The Longest Winter

by Mary Jane Staples

  Pia’s eyes suffused.

  ‘You mean you forgive us?’ she said huskily. ‘You are not going to report my father?’

  Carl felt a tightness arrive in his chest because he was talking so much, but he wished to put this girl and her mother out of their distress and worry.

  ‘I’m not concerned with your father,’ he said, ‘only his family. You’re not responsible for him, neither you nor your mother. All I want to do is survive this war, not take on the extra problem of worrying about hot-blooded Italian separatists. We’ll forget what happened. How will that do?’

  The warmth that invaded her cold body was borne along on a sea of hot, rushing tears.

  ‘I— oh, I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.

  ‘You can say whatever you like as long as you leave the wonders of Italy out of it. If you wish to enjoy your fractious politics, Pia Amaraldi, then do so. Politics make some people very happy. They only make me feel sorry for the world. But you are young, burning, idealistic. Perhaps I envy you your enthusiasms, your future. I don’t know. I think you should prepare yourself for disappointments as well as rapture. You may find an Italian government just as difficult to tolerate as an Austrian one. What’s the matter?’

  Pia was sobbing, her face buried in her hands. The two shots fired at Carl had shattered her. Her beliefs were in doubt, her faith in her father gone. Her burning desire to see an Austrian defeat and an Italian victory had been suffocated by anguish. Her pride was broken and Carl’s cynicism was crucifying her.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Stop crying,’ said Carl, but not unkindly. ‘All I’m telling you is that you won’t always be young and burning.’

  ‘Oh, that isn’t important. It’s you—my father—I didn’t know he meant to do that. Please believe me. I didn’t even know he had taken his gun out—’

  ‘You must forget all that,’ said Carl, ‘didn’t you understand me?’

  ‘How can I forget?’ Pia’s sobs racked her. ‘You will get better, you will come and stay with us again, won’t you? No, how could you do that? You could never come to our house again, not after what my father did. Oh, my mother is so unhappy.’

  ‘Tell her not to be.’ Carl watched her dabbing at her eyes and nose. She was a young woman of ideals who had been shocked by a moment of violent reality. Patriots who threw bombs or fired guns were heroes from afar to those who supported them. It did not look quite so heroic close to. But she was resilient, she would get over it. When Austria finally crumbled she would be out on the streets with other Trentino Italians, waving her flag. But her distress touched him. He said, ‘Would you like to play some chess? I’m not supposed to do much talking. Or lecturing. But chess is for thinking. Do you have time to stay for a game? Or a few moves? It would be better than crying, Pia.’

  ‘Chess?’ Pia’s tears reached their moist end. ‘Oh, Major Korvacs, does that mean you’ve forgiven us, that when you are better you will come to our house again? It has been so terrible for my mother, and Mariella hasn’t been able to understand. We could not tell her, could we?’

  ‘I thought we had settled all this,’ said Carl. ‘Now look here, tell your mother that when I come to see her I’ll talk to her about Austria, about Vienna. But not about Italy. Or the war. Or your father. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ breathed Pia in emotional gratitude and love. ‘Oh, thank you. I’ll see the nurse about a chess set.’

  ‘There’s a set over there.’

  She brought it and laid it out on the bed table. The nurse came in.

  ‘It’s time, fräulein,’ she said.

  ‘Be an angel,’ said Carl, ‘let her stay a while longer for some chess.’

  ‘Very well, you may play a little chess, then,’ said the nurse and left them to it. Pia was so out of all her senses with relief and happiness that quite genuinely her opening moves were as scatterbrained as a child’s. Carl was on to the nonsense.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m trying my best,’ she said, ‘but I have had rather a bad time lately and I’m not quite myself yet. In any case, I just like to play, I don’t care all that much about winning.’

  ‘It’s no help to me if you don’t put me on my mettle, Pia.’

  ‘But you have had a bad time too, much worse than I have.’

  ‘I’m not a cripple,’ said Carl and made a very decisive move.

  ‘Even so,’ said Pia, ‘we should just play for fun.’ And she made a countering move that was a deep, threatening challenge.

  ‘God in heaven, that’s fun?’ muttered Carl.

  They called it a draw twenty minutes later. Pia realized he was tired, he had lines around his mouth. She tried to say goodbye as calmly as she could. But it took her an effort to say, as she reached the door, ‘May I come tomorrow?’

  ‘You’ll find it very boring,’ said Carl.

  ‘Please, may I come, may I come each day?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Carl.

  Pia almost flew in her haste to get home. She had been existing in a state of despair. Now, suddenly, she was reprieved, the whole family was reprieved. Her mother had been a figure of tragic self-torment. It was like coming out of darkness into light to be able to fly home and tell her that Major Korvacs was better, was going to recover, had received her and been so kind, so generous. He had even wanted to play chess with her. And when he was out of hospital he was going to call on them. And oh, Mama, what do you think? Nothing was to be said about Papa. Major Korvacs wanted it all forgotten. He was going to say an unknown person shot him in the street.

  It brought her mother out of shame and despair.

  ‘We’ll do as Major Korvacs says, Pia, we’ll do everything he says. I think I’m glad for him in one way now. He won’t have to fight again. By the time he’s recovered the war will be over and they’ll send him home to Vienna to convalesce, if they have enough sense and compassion.’

  Vienna? Pia’s divided loyalties were torturing her now, and it did not make her any happier to realize that if he returned to Vienna she would never see Carl again. Her relief at his recovery was intense, so was her gratitude for his generosity, but her animation died.

  She took Mariella to the hospital the next day. Her sister had begged that she might go. She had been told that Major Korvacs had been seriously wounded. She accepted that unquestioningly. Ambulances were commonplace in Oberstein. But she had not been told until yesterday and she had been full of questions until then.

  An Austrian colonel was leaving Carl’s room as Pia and Mariella arrived. He looked searchingly at Pia. Her heart had an uneasy moment.

  Mariella was excited but shy. Carl was propped up on heaped pillows. He smiled to see her. Pia thought he looked drawn. Mariella was bright in a green coat and knitted hat. Pia was in dark red, a colour that defied the brooding clouds of winter. Her fur hat was glossily black. She was nervous again, still haunted by her father’s deed, and the glance she gave Carl asked anxiously for reassurance. But Carl was smiling at Mariella.

  ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind,’ said Pia, ‘but she so wanted to come and she will only stay a little while, I promise.’

  ‘Good afternoon, little sister,’ said Carl.

  ‘I am happy to see you,’ said Mariella with the grave courtesy of the young. ‘You have been in the war again.’

  ‘Carelessly so,’ said Carl, ‘I should have kept out of the way.’

  ‘Soldiers can’t keep out of the way,’ said Mariella, a little proud for him.

  ‘Ah, there you are, my sweet friend,’ smiled Carl, ‘that’s war for you. How are your tonsils?’

  ‘Oh, they are famously better,’ said Mariella.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ said Carl. Solemnly she opened it, bending so that he could observe her healthy, yawning gap. ‘Mmm, yes,’ said Carl, ‘now close your eyes.’ Mariella closed them. He popped a boiled sweet into her mouth, a luxury which had come to him by way of a shared Red Cross
parcel. Mariella blinked, savoured the sweet and smiled in delight. She kissed Carl on the cheek. Pia envied her sister the simplicity of unprejudiced youth. Mariella was already strong-willed enough to resist either deliberate or environmental indoctrination. Her likes and dislikes were founded on her natural instincts, not on lectures, harangues and overheard conversations.

  ‘Tell Pia that if she’s going to stay a while she may sit down,’ said Carl.

  ‘Pia, you may sit down,’ said Mariella.

  Pia sat down. Mariella and Carl talked. She was curious about his wound. Carl unbuttoned his pyjama jacket and showed her his chest bandages. Mariella frowned and shook her head.

  ‘Someone did it to you,’ she said darkly.

  ‘The bullets did it,’ said Carl.

  ‘An Italian,’ said Mariella and with a little fierceness that startled Pia.

  ‘Oh, fortunes of war,’ said Carl, and he and Mariella talked about other things in the fashion of friends who never experienced awkward pauses. They went on until Pia gently interrupted.

  ‘Mariella—’

  ‘Yes, I have to go now,’ said Mariella without fuss. In the most natural way of a friend she kissed Carl on the cheek again and said goodbye. Her going brought back Pia’s nervousness.

  ‘You’re worried?’ said Carl. With his bleak smile he added, ‘The miracle has happened? The Austrians are suddenly winning the war?’

  The Austrians were not. The Italian 18th Corps and two British divisions were well across the Piave and had split the Austrian forces. Defeat looked inevitable, in which case the Italians and British would swarm into the Tyrol.

  ‘I’ve stopped thinking about who is going to win and who is going to lose,’ said Pia. ‘Perhaps nobody is actually going to win. I’ve only been able to think of why you are lying here. My mother asked me to tell you that whatever happens because of the war she will always be on your side, always believe in you. She says she is not as proud of us as she was, but is very proud of you. Oh, you see—’

  ‘Yes, I see.’ Carl wondered about her, about her insistent self-flagellation. ‘Let me tell you this so that we can have done with it all. I’ve lost faith in many things, in governments, generals and the common sense of people. But I’ve been privileged to know the men of our mountain regiments and I’ve known Italian men of the mountains too. The men of my own unit I shall always remember, those who have gone and those who are still alive. And I love my family. I’ve been very lucky. These things are all that count with me. Colonel Gruber was here just before you arrived, asking questions. I told him what I said I would, and that I’ve no idea who shot me. Nothing more need be said, Pia.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Pia. Her hands were clasped in her lap, her red coat and glossy black hat an enrichment of her Latin beauty. ‘You have had enough of war, of killing, you would like it all to end. And you are sorry for people like my father and me.’

  ‘No, just your father. You have ideals. Your father only has politics. I know you now, Pia, and I hope your ideals won’t just become politics. Or do you wish to be Italy’s Joan of Arc?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said unhappily, ‘I only wish you would not be so hard on me.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be. I’m an old man, I think. You’re a very lovely young woman.’ Carl smiled as colour rushed into her face. ‘Has no one told you that before, that you’re lovely?’

  A number of men had. But not Carl. Not until now. Pia wondered if life would ever be the same for her, ever hold again for her the stimulation of being her father’s daughter, of being a passionate patriot. It was right, it must be, for four hundred thousand Tyrolean Italians to be brought under Italian rule. But to achieve that Austria must be defeated and broken. So must Carl.

  ‘You aren’t very well,’ she said, ‘or you would not be paying me compliments.’

  ‘My condition is desperate but not serious,’ said Carl, quoting the general who lacked a sense of reality but not of optimism. ‘Shall we play chess?’

  ‘If you would like to,’ she said. There was nothing else she could say, despite all she wanted to. She had no rights, no privileges, except that of being able to visit him. And that was more of a humane obligation. So she played chess again with him. With an effort she concentrated. She was always a move or two ahead of him. Carl was not without occasional flair, but time and again she forced him into purely defensive tactics.

  ‘Check,’ she said in the end. Carl switched the position of his queen. Pia moved a knight. ‘Checkmate, yes?’ she said with strained brightness.

  He conceded with a smile.

  ‘I’m well beaten, damn it,’ he said.

  She could not hold back a little emotion then. She said, ‘No, you will never be that, you will survive all bad luck and disasters, Major Korvacs.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Carl.

  She decided she must be more natural with him, more as Mariella was.

  ‘And you must stop trying to sound like an old man.’

  ‘Oh?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you must stop saying hm, hm. You’re not an old man.’

  ‘Hm,’ he said. He coughed. He reached under a pillow, extracted a handkerchief and put it to his mouth. He coughed into it, wiped his lips and said, ‘Thank you.’ She asked him thank you for what? ‘For the game and the advice,’ said Carl.

  He looked a little more drawn. It worried her. She said, as she rose, ‘I may come tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll beat you tomorrow,’ said Carl.

  She was restless at home, depressed by her imaginings, which all concerned a future that seemed to offer so little when once it offered so much. She could not sit still and especially she could not sit for long under her mother’s eye. When Mariella’s bedtime came her mother went up with the girl. Pia went up a little later. She always spent a few minutes saying goodnight to her sister. Mariella had some information to impart. News and that which mistakenly passed for news at the time had a way of being communicated lip by lip at school. The current news, exciting to the shining-eyed Italian children, was that Italy was winning the war.

  Pia, tucking her sister in, listened as Mariella said, ‘Is it exciting, Pia? Are you excited?’

  ‘Are you?’ Pia ducked the question.

  ‘Not awfully.’ Mariella, dark head comfortably bedded in the pillows, looked gravely up at her sister. ‘You see, the Austrians aren’t fighting us, are they?’

  ‘They’re fighting Italy.’

  ‘That’s not us,’ said Mariella.

  ‘It is really,’ said Pia and heard her own lack of conviction.

  ‘No, it isn’t. We aren’t Italy, we’re Austria.’

  ‘We’re Italians living under Austrian rule, you know that. It’s right for Italy to win as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘Then Major Korvacs isn’t our friend, is he?’ Mariella looked sad. Pia leaned and kissed her.

  ‘He’s your friend, Mariella, so you are his. It’s not his fault that Austria is fighting Italy.’

  ‘Would you like to marry him, Pia?’ The question came knowingly from the observant girl. Pia flushed.

  ‘Mama mia, what are you saying, little one?’ she said. She turned away, picked up Mariella’s folded dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Mariella smiled.

  ‘If I were old enough,’ she said, ‘I would marry him.’

  ‘Mariella, that’s silly.’ Pia was hot, suffering.

  ‘It’s not. I am Austrian,’ said Mariella.

  ‘You aren’t!’ Pia swung round. Mariella lay in calm, composed grace. ‘You’re Italian.’

  ‘No. I’ve looked at maps. Anyway, I want to be Austrian, I want to be on his side.’

  ‘Mariella, hush!’ Oh, thought Pia, Carl has wrecked this family. ‘If your friends heard you say such things you’d have no friends.’

  ‘If they were like that I shouldn’t want them,’ said Mariella proudly.

  Pia sat down on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Oh, Mariella, it’s become so difficult, hasn’t it?’
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br />   ‘I want Austria to win,’ said Mariella, ‘I don’t want the Italians to come and take Major Korvacs away. They’ll take all our soldiers away and make them prisoners.’

  ‘No, the war will be over then,’ said Pia, ‘and prisoners will be released, not taken. Mariella, wait – our soldiers?’

  ‘We’re Austrian,’ said Mariella stubbornly.

  Pia accepted that she was in confused limbo herself. It was heart-breaking to realize Mariella was also affected.

  ‘Don’t speak like that,’ she said. ‘What has got into you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mariella, ‘but Mama says we must think things out for ourselves. You ask her.’

  Pia swept down into the small sitting room. Her mother looked up from needlework. She was never able to sit doing nothing.

  ‘Mama, what have you been saying to Mariella? Do you know she’s just told me she’s Austrian?’

  ‘We’re all subjects of Austria.’

  ‘That isn’t the same as being Austrian.’

  ‘I haven’t told Mariella what she is,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘She’s thought it out on her own. She’s been looking at maps. She showed me one. She said, “Look, we belong to the same country as Major Korvacs.”’

  ‘Oh, how simple that is,’ said Pia bitterly. ‘Mama, don’t you see, Mariella is too young to understand that it isn’t simple at all. She mustn’t go around telling her friends she’s Austrian.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘She might. Then they’ll think we’re traitors.’

  ‘They may think what they wish,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘I clear my conscience before God, not my neighbours.’

  ‘Mama,’ said Pia, ‘it could be dangerous for Mariella.’

  ‘Yes,’ said her mother, ‘that is what such things are about, girl, that is what patriotism can be about. Intolerance. People wish to live with each other but there are a few who won’t let them. Mariella might say something, yes, she might. And someone will say why should she think differently from us? And they’ll pull her hair out. She’ll come home crying. That is what your father’s patriotism is about. Intolerance. It’s taken me a long time to open my eyes. Are yours still shut, Pia, even now?’