by Gordon Kerr
At first he thought it was a dream. He was running down a hillside, his feet thumping on the ground, somehow more noisily than they should be and making a different kind of noise, the wrong kind of noise. Gradually, consciousness began to seep into his head. Before he was fully awake, however, he could sense the pain in his gut: the same old pain that always heralded a few days out of the world, a few days lying in bed, searching for a place where it hurt no longer. A place in his mind or a place on the mattress, it did not matter; he just sought an escape from the pain.
Suddenly, he burst into consciousness. There was someone at the door. The knocking was gentle. It was not the officious knock of a policeman bringing bad news. It was more of an inquisitive knock, as if the person knocking were either unsure of whether there was anyone home or, indeed, if someone was home, whether it was the right door on which he or she was knocking.
He looked around. It was dark. He had been asleep for some time. He grabbed the small alarm clock that sat on the coffee table at the side of the sofa. Eleven-thirty! Who the hell could be at his door at this hour? And, anyway, regardless of the hour, he knew no one and no one knew he was here.
He hesitated a moment and then shouted out as the door once again rattled, ‘Okay, I’m coming.’
He was yawning and running his hand carelessly through his hair as he opened the door. There facing him stood two young men, one with a small pistol pointing at him.
‘Get your coat, old man. You’re coming with us!’ barked the one not holding the gun and nodding towards Sandro’s coat, which lay across a chair.
‘What … Why should I come with you? Who are you?’ The one who had spoken pushed past him and grabbed the coat. He walked towards Sandro and took his arm, propelling him out of the door.
‘Wait … I need my pills. I am ill. I need them for the pain.’
‘Okay, where are they, old man? Quick! Go and find them. And don’t try anything!’
Sandro was afraid and fumbled nervously with his one good arm at the bag that contained his various medicines.
‘Come on, hurry up!’ the one without the gun hissed again, looking nervously down the corridor in each direction.
They pushed Sandro ahead of them down the corridor after closing the door behind them. They went downstairs and he was bundled into the Fiat that was waiting just outside the front door of the building. A third man inside put the car into gear and drove out into the deserted road. Sandro sat blinking in the dark, feeling the barrel of the pistol making an indentation in his side.
They seemed to be travelling on roads with which he was unfamiliar, but at one point crossed a bridge over the Adda and turned onto the main Sondrio road, heading towards the lake. The two dark heads of the driver and the second man were outlined against the road ahead of him and he could feel the eyes of his third assailant boring into him from his left in the back of the car.
After a while, they turned off the main road and passed a sign indicating that they were entering the commune of Dulcino. At least he knew now where he was going. The question was, of course, why were they bringing him here? He knew inside himself the answer to that question, though. He had hidden from his past for fifty years, had wiped it away, had even changed his name. But, hardly a day or night had passed in all that time when he had not seen the faces of his six comrades in the instant before the explosion that had torn their bodies apart. Now, he knew it was time to face that past, to face the truth about himself.
The car pulled into the little square at the heart of Dulcino. He remembered the annual carnival that was held when he was a boy. The garish colours of the robes that clothed the heavy statue of the Virgin that the men would carry through the streets to the church. The tables would groan with food and wine, and music and dancing would go on into the depths of the night.
‘Get out!’ Sandro’s memories were interrupted by the one with the gun, who had walked round to his side of the car and had thrown open the door.
Sandro slid out of his seat and stood up stiffly.
‘Where …?’ he asked.
‘Over there. The church.’
The three men walked behind Sandro as he limped towards the dark silhouette of the church, which somehow looked menacing as midnight approached.
A dark figure leaned against the wall beside the door, the red tip of his cigarette illuminating his face as he inhaled a lungful of smoke. Seeing them approach, he stood up straight, throwing his cigarette away and knocked on the large church door. The door swung open and Sandro was directed to go in with a shove in his back.
The light inside was hardly better than outside. Large candles in recesses cast a dim, flickering light on the walls and a small, weak bulb splashed a pale, yellow glow down onto the pews.
The church was unchanged from when he had last been in it, all those decades ago. Behind the altar, the massive oil painting of the Madonna and Child that had hung there in 1940 still hung there, though the vivid colours he recalled were now a uniform brown and in sore need of cleaning. The gold of the ornate altar glinted as the candle light caught it and the ten or so rows of pews – it was a small church, barely big enough for this village now, he presumed – were filled with men, their heads all turned to face him as he stood at the door. This in itself was unusual. He remembered how, when he was a boy, the women would crowd into these pews and the men would wait outside, gossiping and smoking before pushing in at the door to stand at the back when the service began.
Again he felt a hand in the small of his back, pushing him towards the front. He turned to face them when he got there. In all, there must have been about fifteen of them, most of them young or middle-aged, but in the very front pews sat four elderly men, leaning forward and staring hard at his face.
‘You are Alessandro Bellini?’ The voice came from the back of the room. It was the priest and as he approached Sandro, Sandro noted that he was not a young man. A flick of white hair dropped down over his right eye and he reached up to smooth it back into place across the top of his head. ‘I am Don Matteo, the village priest.’
‘It is him, the bastard.’ One of the elderly men stood up and pointed angrily at Sandro.
‘Sit down, Marco, sit down. We have to establish a few things before we throw accusations around.’ Another, younger man had stood up in the row behind Marco and put his hand gently on his shoulder, pushing him back down into his seat.
Sandro looked around the faces in the pews. The light from the candles gave them a manic glint as they stared at him.
‘What is this?’ asked Sandro, ‘Why am I here?’
‘Are you Alessandro Bellini?’ asked the priest, ignoring Sandro’s question.
‘I haven’t been for more than fifty years,’ he blinked nervously in the dim light, ‘but yes, I was born Alessandro Bellini.’
One of the old men at the front slumped back in his seat, placing his head in his hands.
‘You are the bastard who informed on our partisan unit, then!’ Another of the elderly men half stood up, gesticulating at Sandro. Again, a calming hand from behind forced him back down onto the pew.
Sandro stared at him and felt a tear well up in his eye. He had slept next to these men in the hills in 1944, had fought beside them, would have gladly laid down his life for them. It was time for the truth.
‘Could I have a seat, please? I have a bad leg and I am ill, I have cancer. If I don’t sit down, I’m afraid I will fall down.’
The priest brought over a cane chair and Sandro lowered himself onto it with relief.
‘Yes, I am Sandro Bellini, but I swear to you I did not betray the unit’s activities to the Germans.’
‘Bugiardo!’ A shout came from the front pew.
‘I am not a liar.’ Sandro answered quietly.
‘Well who did then, if it wasn’t you? Who told them about San Giorgio and about our rendezvous, if not you?’ The first old man, who Sandro realised was one of the two men from the bar earlier that day, was spitting these words, leaning forward, his hands
gripping the front of the pew. ‘How come you are the only one who got away? Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you alone survived both incidents when so many died? You were the only one to survive the second. It certainly seemed strange to us back then. Your friends, the Germans, let you crawl off into the night like the snake you are. And then you disappeared before we got to you.’
‘Is it any wonder I disappeared!’ Sandro, himself, leaned forward in his seat. ‘They tried to kill me but murdered my mother instead. I was innocent, but who was going to listen to anything I had to say? I knew the brigade was going to send someone after me and finally Cavalcanti, l’Assassino, came. But he killed my mother.’
‘What is the truth then, Alessandro Bellini? If it wasn’t you, are you saying you know who informed on the unit?’ It was the priest, speaking from a dark corner on his right.
Sandro sat back in his chair, feeling a wave of pain and nausea. He suddenly realised how cold the church was. Its grey stone walls were radiating the chill of the night and his frail body, weakened by his illness, began to shiver.
He started to speak, hesitantly at first and then more and more confidently. He told them everything, about Angela, about Luigi’s treatment of her, about the English captain and his discovery of his body with the single bullet hole in the back of his skull and, finally, about the German officer and how he had sought him out and left him for dead.
When he had finished speaking, the men’s breathing was audible in the silence that followed.
‘Why should we believe you?’ asked the priest. ‘Why didn’t you tell this story back then?’ Why leave it fifty years to make your peace and regain your reputation?’
‘This story would have stayed with me; I would never have told anyone, if you had not found me. Luigi Ronconi was a broken man. He had lost everything and finally, I think, he lost his mind. It was not Il Falcone who told the Germans what our plans and activities were. It was a broken man convinced that one of us had betrayed him and cost him his wife and child. He couldn’t work out who had done it, so in his confused state, he tried to take care of all of us. But he was still killing Germans, even then. His anger turned into an anger against the whole world. God help him wherever he may be now.’
‘God help Luigi Ronconi? The other way round, you mean!’ The priest laughed and a few of the others joined in, but not the old men at the front who continued to stare without expression at Sandro. ‘You really don’t know what became of Luigi Ronconi?’ The priest looked incredulously at Sandro and then told him about the amazing success story that had been Luigi’s life after the war.
‘He’s still alive?’ asked Sandro, astonished at what he had been told.
‘Yes, he is, but it is incredible that you haven’t heard of such a man, even in America.’
‘I kept myself to myself all those years. My wife and I ran a diner in New York. We worked morning till night for close to forty years. After the war I didn’t have much time for the outside world.’
A silence descended on the room.
‘I don’t believe him. Il Falcone was a hero. He has been decorated by the government for his actions in the war,’ said one of the old men.
‘I agree,’ said another on his left. ‘Ronconi was our leader until his wife disappeared. He went off the rails and disappeared too, but any man would go to pieces in such circumstances. He would never have betrayed us.’
‘I don’t know,’ said a third. ‘Sandro was a good man, too. He was young and also went through a lot. I fought alongside him and thought highly of him.’
‘But if this is true,’ said a voice from the darkness, ‘we have to do something about it. The world should be told about Luigi Ronconi.’
‘If it is true. Pah! It’s a lot of nonsense. He’s had fifty years to prepare his story, just in case he got found out.’
Another silence enveloped the chill air of the church.
‘You say you are ill?’ the priest asked Sandro.
‘I have cancer of the stomach,’ Sandro replied. ‘I came to the Valtellina to die.’
‘The sooner and the more painfully the better,’ muttered a voice from the front pew. Sandro threw a pained look in the direction of the voice and the priest glared at the speaker.
‘How can you prove that what you say is true?’ asked the priest.
‘I don’t think I can,’ answered Sandro. The German, Weber, is the only one who can prove it for me. But I presume he died in that attic when I left him behind with the rats.’
‘We need to talk,’ said the priest to the figures in the pews. ‘Take signor Bellini outside and wait with him.’
Sandro stood up. He felt that the priest was beginning to believe him. The fact that he called him signor was significant. The three figures who had brought him here appeared at his side again and they walked out into the cold night air. The door closed behind them and cigarettes were passed round. Sandro declined. He had not smoked since his illness had been diagnosed.
He leaned against the wall and looked up at the pinpoint stars that shone coldly in the heavens.
A shooting star fled across the sky and he made a wish, as his mother had always advised him to do when he saw one. The others stood stamping their feet and talking quietly a few metres away. He felt strangely still. It was as if he had emptied himself out and he now felt fresh and clean and even, he smiled to himself, pure. As for whether they believed him or not, that was up to each of them.
The door of the church opened and the priest stepped out, rubbing his arms to get some warmth into them.
‘It is hard to arrive at a consensus, signor Bellini. Some of the men believe you and want to challenge Luigi Ronconi, take the story to the newspapers. Others don’t believe you, especially your former comrades, and want you handed over to the authorities.’
‘But what about you, Don Matteo? What do you think?’
‘I became involved in this because I feared it would get out of hand. There has been an unspent anger in this village since the war. So many families lost their men on the night of the San Giorgio incident and then, later, in the other incident which you survived. Everyone knew there was betrayal involved and your name has been demonised here for fifty years because you disappeared. It was even believed by some of the more bitter amongst them that you killed your own mother.’
‘What?’ Sandro could not believe what he was hearing. ‘How could they believe such a thing?’ He shook his head, his face creased with grief.
‘Cavalcanti obviously never owned up to his mistake and it has been added to the terrible mythology that was created around you.’
‘So, Don Matteo, what happens to me now?’
‘Nothing, signor Bellini. We will return you to Morbegno. It’s accepted that you are unlikely to disappear again after sharing your story with us. We need to discuss it – especially the older members of the community – and investigate what you’ve told us. We know where to find you.’
With that, he told the three younger men to drive Sandro back to Morbegno, which they did in silence, but this time without the threat of a gun. He climbed out of the car and made his way upstairs, a rising tide of pain beginning to engulf his body.
He fumbled with the key in the lock, and on entering his flat, collapsed on the bed, stretching his body in an effort to dissipate the pain to its extremities. It was unsuccessful, however, and he disappeared deeper than ever before into a world of pain, a world that made him hope that the wish he had made outside the church when he saw the shooting star would come true.
He had wished for death.
*
But death did not come.
These episodes of complete collapse and endless pain, were like a kind of labour. They had to be endured for a longer period each time, but the end would be death and not birth.
He lay on the bed for four days wearing the clothes he had worn that night at Dulcino, now and then reaching out for a fistful of pills and occasionally, with shaking hands and perspiring brow, holding
a glass under the tap to drink some water. He drifted into corners of his being he did not know existed, hours passing like seconds and seconds passing like hours. Eventually, he awoke and the pain had subsided, like the tide leaving a beach after a wild and stormy night.
He staggered to the bathroom and ran a hot bath, barely able, in his weakened state, to twist the tap and make the water flow. He climbed in and let the filth that had gathered on his body seep away. A renewed strength entered him and he took to the streets to sit in a bar and watch this world go by, this world for which, having dispensed with his past, he felt a brand new affection.
Simple things touched him – a well-dressed, middle-aged woman, a young man roaring up to the pavement on a scooter, a dog sniffing lamp posts. The world was his again, after more than fifty years.
A couple of weeks passed in which he had mostly stayed in the flat, reading and watching television.
One night, he had been out, buying some pasta for dinner and had come upstairs with happy anticipation of cooking and eating, although his increasingly emaciated body retained almost nothing that he ate for very long.
Rounding the bend in the corridor at the top of the stairs, his heart skipped a beat as he saw the dark figures lounging against the wall. It was the same pair that had collected him in the middle of the night a fortnight ago.
‘Buonasera, signori,’ he said with false bonhomie.
‘Signor Bellini, il padre says he would be very much obliged if you would accompany us to Dulcino.’
Sandro was struck by the difference in their approach compared to the last time they had arrived on his doorstep. They were courteous, deferential. Something had happened.
‘Yes, just let me put this inside.’ He unlocked the door, put the bags he was carrying on the floor and locked up again.
He was filled with curiosity as they sped along the road to Dulcino. They would have come to some kind of decision, he thought. But it would take some powerful evidence to convince the elderly partisans. He had not been able to come up with anything in fifty years except his own words and he thought it unlikely that they would have found anything.