by Umberto Eco
But the only way to San Martino was by the road that went straight up, with no bends, and from the church piazza you could see if anyone was coming. Thus we thought we could never take them by surprise. Until Durante, a farmer’s kid with a head as big and dark as an Abyssinian’s, said Yes we could, if we climbed the Gorge.
Climbing the Gorge required training. It took us a season, starting out with ten meters the first day, memorizing each step and each crevice, trying to place our feet in the same places on the way down as we had on the way up, and the next day we worked on the next ten meters. We could not be seen from San Martino, so we had all the time we wanted. It was important not to improvise, we had to become like those animals who made their homes on the slopes of the Gorge-the grass snakes, the lizards.
Two of my friends got sprains, one almost killed himself and skinned the palm of his hand badly trying to stop his fall, but by the end of it we were the only people in the world who knew how to climb the Gorge. One afternoon we risked it: we climbed for more than an hour and arrived out of breath, emerging from a dense thicket at the very base of San Martino, where between the houses and the precipice was a walkway with a wall along it to prevent the locals from falling over the precipice in the dark. Our path reached the wall at the very point where a gap opened, a breach, wide enough for us to slip through. Beyond that was a lane that ran past the door to the rectory, then opened right into the church piazza.
When we burst into the piazza, they were in the middle of a game of blindman’s bluff. A masterstroke: the blindman could not see at all, of course, and the others were jumping here and there in their efforts to avoid him. We launched our munitions, hitting one kid directly on the forehead, and the others fled into the church seeking the priest’s aid. That would suffice for the moment, and back down the lane we ran, through the gap, and down the Gorge. The priest arrived in time to see our heads disappearing into the shrubs, and he hurled some terrible threats at us, and Durante shouted "Hah!" and clapped his left hand against his right bicep.
But by now the San Martino boys had wised up. Seeing that we had come up the Gorge, they placed sentinels at the breach. It is true that we could get almost right up to the wall before they were aware of us, but only almost: the last few meters were in the open, through blackthorn scrub that slowed our progress, giving the sentinel enough time to raise the alarm. They were ready at the end of the lane with sunbaked balls of mud, and they launched them at us before we could gain the walkway.
It seemed a shame to have worked so hard learning to climb the Gorge only to have to give it all up. Until Durante said, "We’ll learn to climb it in the fog."
Since it was early autumn, there was as much fog in those parts as a person could want. On foggy days, if it was the good stuff, the town of Solara disappeared beneath it, even Grandfather’s house disappeared, and the only thing that rose above all that gray was the San Martino bell tower. Being up in that tower was like being in a dirigible above the clouds.
Already on such days we would have been able to get as far as that wall, where the fog began to thin, and those kids could not spend the whole day looking down into nothing, especially once darkness had fallen. And when the fog really got bullish, it spilled over the wall and flooded the church piazza.
Climbing the Gorge in the fog was much harder than climbing it in sunlight. You really had to learn every step by heart, be able to say such and such a rock is here, watch out for the edge of a dense thorn thicket there, five steps (five, not four or six) farther to the right the ground drops suddenly away, when you reach the boulder there will be a false path just to your left and if you follow it you will fall off a cliff. And so on.
We made exploratory trips on clear days, then for a week we practiced by repeating the steps in our heads. I tried to make a map, as in the adventure books, but half my friends could not read maps. Too bad for them, I had it printed it in my brain and could have traversed the Gorge with my eyes closed-and going on a foggy night was essentially the same thing.
After everyone had learned the route, we continued training for several days, in the thickest fog, after sunset, in order to see if we would be able to gain the wall before they had sat down for supper.
After many test runs, we attempted our first expedition. Who knows how we made it to the top, but we did, and there they were, in the piazza, which was still free of fog, shooting the breeze-because in a place like San Martino either you hang out in the piazza or you go to bed after eating your soup of stale bread and milk.
We entered the piazza, gave them a proper pelting, jeered them as they fled to their houses, and then climbed back down. Going down was harder than going up, because if you slip going up you have a chance to grab a shrub, but if you slip going down you are finished, and before you come to a stop your legs are bleeding and your pants are ruined forever. But we made it down, victorious and exultant.
After that we risked other incursions, and they were unable to post sentinels even when it was just dark, because most of them were afraid of the dark, on account of hellcats. We who attended the Oratorio could not have cared less about hellcats, because we knew that half a Hail Mary would basically paralyze them. We kept that up for several months. Then we got bored: the climb was no longer a challenge, in any weather.
No one back home ever learned the story of the Gorge, otherwise I would have received a thorough thrashing, and whenever we went up after dark I would say that I was going down to the Oratorio for a rehearsal. But everyone at the Oratorio knew, and we peacocked around because we were the only ones in the whole town who had mastered the Gorge.
It was noon on a Sunday. Something was happening, everyone already knew: two German trucks had arrived in Solara, searched half the town, and then taken the road up toward San Martino.
A thick fog had settled in early that morning, and daytime fog is worse than night fog because it is light out but you have to move around as if it were dark. You could not even hear the church bells, as if that gray worked as a silencer. Even the voices of numb sparrows in the tree branches came to us as if through cotton wool. Some guy’s funeral was supposed to be held that day, but the people in the procession would not venture onto the cemetery road, and the gravedigger sent word that he would not be burying anyone that day, lest someone make a mistake when lowering the coffin and cause him to fall into the grave himself.
Two men from town had followed the Germans to find out what they were up to, had seen them make their way slowly, headlamps on but penetrating less than a meter, as far as the beginning of the ascent toward San Martino, and then stop, not daring to go on. Certainly not with their trucks, because they had no idea what was on either side of that steep incline, and they did not want to roll off some precipice- they may even have expected treacherous curves. Nor did they dare to attempt it on foot, not knowing what was where. Someone, however, had explained to them that the only way up to San Martino was by that road, and in that weather no one could possibly get down any other way, because of the Gorge. So then they placed trestles at the end of the road and waited there, headlamps on and guns leveled, so as not to let anyone pass, while one of them yelled into a field telephone, perhaps asking for reinforcements. Our informers said they heard him repeat volsunde, volsunde a number of times. Gragnola explained at once that they were certainly asking for Wolfshunde, that is, German shepherds.
The Germans waited there, and around four in the afternoon, with everything still a thick gray but also still light, they caught sight of someone coming down, on a bicycle. It was the parish priest of San Martino, who had been taking that road for who knows how many years and could even come down using his feet as brakes. Seeing a priest, the Germans held their fire, because, as we later learned, they were looking not for cassocks but for Cossacks. The priest explained more with gestures than words that some fellow was dying on a farm near Solara and had called for extreme unction (he showed them the necessaries in a bag attached to the handlebars), and the Germans beli
eved him. They let him pass, and the priest came to the Oratorio to whisper with Don Cognasso.
Don Cognasso was not the sort to get involved in politics, but he knew what was what, and without saying more than a few words he told the priest to tell Gragnola and his friends what there was to tell, because he himself would not and could not get mixed up in such matters.
A group of young men quickly gathered around the card table, and I slipped in behind the last few, crouching a little to avoid notice. And I listened to the priest’s story.
There was a detachment of Cossacks with the German troops. We had not known that, but Gragnola was informed. They had been taken prisoner on the Russian front, but for reasons of their own the Cossacks had it in for Stalin, so that many had been convinced (motivated by money, by hatred of the Soviets, by a desire not to rot in prison camp, or even by the chance to leave their Soviet paradise, taking horses, carts, and family with them) to enroll as auxiliaries. Most were fighting in eastern areas, like Carnia, where they were extremely feared for their toughness and ferocity. But there was also a Turkistani division in the Pavia region-people called them Mongols. Former Russian prisoners, if not actually Cossacks, were roaming around in Piedmont too, with the partisans.
Everyone by now knew how the war was going to end, and what is more the eight Cossacks in question were men with religious principles. After having seen two or three towns burned and poor people hung by the dozen, and more, after two of their own number had been executed for refusing to shoot at old people and children, they had decided they could no longer remain with the SS. "Not only that," explained Gragnola, "but if the Germans lose the war, and by now they’ve lost, what will the Americans and the English do? They’ll capture the Cossacks and give them back to the Russians, their allies. In Russia, these guys are kaputt. So they’re trying to join the Allies now, so that after the war they’ll be given refuge somewhere, beyond the clutches of that fascist Stalin."
"Indeed," the priest said, "these eight have heard about the partisans who are fighting with the English and Americans, and they’re trying to reach them. They have their own ideas and are well informed: they don’t want to join the Garibaldini, but rather the Badogliani."
They had deserted who knows where, then headed toward Solara simply because someone had told them that the Badogliani were in those parts. They had walked many kilometers on foot, off the roads, moving only at night and so taking twice as long, but the SS had managed to stay hot on their heels, and it was a miracle that they had managed to reach us, begging food at the occasional farm, always on the verge of running into people who might be spies, communicating as best they could, since they all spoke a smattering of German but only one knew Italian.
The day before, realizing the SS was onto them and was about to catch up with them, they had gone up to San Martino, thinking that from there they could fight off a battalion for a few days, and after all they might as well die bravely. And also because someone had told them that a certain Talino lived up there who knew someone who might be able to help them. At this point they were a desperate bunch. They reached San Martino after dark and found Talino, who however told them there was a Fascist family who lived there, and in a village that small, secrets lasted no time. The only thing he could think to do was have them seek refuge in the rectory. The priest took them in, not for political reasons, nor even out of the goodness of his heart, but because he saw that letting them wander about would be worse than hiding them. But he could not keep them long. He did not have enough food for eight men, and he was scared out of his wits, because if the Germans came they would waste no time in searching every house, including the rectory.
"Boys, try to understand," the priest said. "You’ve all read Kesselring’s manifesto too, they’ve put it up everywhere. If they find those men in any of our houses, they’ll burn the town, and even worse, if one of them shoots at the Germans, they’ll kill us all."
Unfortunately, we had indeed seen Field Marshal Kesselring’s manifesto, and even without it we knew that the SS did not mince such matters, and that they had already burned several towns.
"And so?" Gragnola asked.
"So, seeing that this fog has by the grace of God descended upon us, and seeing that the Germans don’t know the area, someone
Following the well-known appeal directed by Field Marshal Kesselring to the Italians, the same Field Marshal has now imparted to his own troops the following orders:
1. Initiate the most vigorous action against the armed bands of rebels, against the saboteurs and criminals who by their deleterious conduct in any way hinder the prosecution of the war or disturb order and public safety.
2. Establish a percentage of hostages in those localities where armed bands continue to exist and execute said hostages each time an act of sabotage occurs in those localities.
3. Undertake acts of reprisal, including the burning of dwellings located in areas from which gunshots have been fired against German military individuals or units.
4. Hang in public piazzas those elements held responsible for homicides, and the leaders of armed bands.
5. Hold responsible the inhabitants of those towns where interruptions of telegraphic or telephonic lines occur, as well as acts of sabotage related to traffic flow (scattering of broken glass, nails, or other materials on the road surfaces, damaging of bridges, obstruction of roads).
Field Marshal Kesselring from Solara has to come up and get those blessed Cossacks, lead them back down, and take them to the Badogliani."
"And why someone from Solara?"
"Imprimis because, to be frank, if I speak about this with anyone in San Martino, word will begin to get around, and in these times the fewer words getting around the better. In secundis, because the Germans have closed the road and no one can get out by that route. Hence the only thing left is to go through the Gorge."
Hearing mention of the Gorge, everyone said, What, do we look crazy, in fog like this, how come that Talino fellow can’t do it-things of that kind. But the damn priest, after reminding them that Talino was eighty and could not come down from San Martino even on the sunniest of days, added-and I say it was in revenge for the frights we boys from the Oratorio had given him: "The only people who know how to get through the Gorge, even in fog, are your boys. Seeing as they learned that deviltry for their roguish ends, let them for once use their talents for the good. Bring the Cossacks down with the help of one of your boys."
"Christ," Gragnola said, "even if that’s true, what would we do once we got them down, keep them in Solara so that on Monday morning they can be found among us instead of with you, so that then they can burn our town instead?"
Among the group were Stivulu and Gigio, the two men who went with my grandfather to make Merlo take the castor oil, and it was clear that they too had connections to those in the Resistance. "Calm down," said Stivulu, the sharper of the two, "the Badogliani are as we speak in Orbegno, and neither the SS nor the Black Brigades have ever laid a hand on them there, because they stick to the high ground and control the entire valley with those English machine guns, which are fantastic. From here to Orbegno, even in this fog, for somebody like Gigio who knows the road, if he could use Bercelli’s truck, which has got headlamps on it made special for fog, that’s a two-hour trip. Let’s go ahead and say three because it’s already getting dark. It’s five now, Gigio gets there by eight, he warns them, they come down a little ways and wait by the Vignoletta crossroad. Then the truck’s back here by ten, let’s go ahead and say eleven, and it hides in that cluster of trees at the foot of the Gorge, near that little chapel of the Madonna. One of us, after eleven, goes up the Gorge, gets the Cossacks in the rectory, brings them down, loads them into the truck, and before morning those fellows are with the Badogliani."
"And we’re going through all this rigamarole and risking our necks for eight Mamelukes or Kalmyks or Mongols or whatever, who were with the SS up until yesterday?" asked a man with red hair, whose name, I think, was Migliava
cca.
"Hey buddy, these guys have changed their minds," Gragnola said, "and that’s already a fine thing, but they’re also eight strongmen who know how to shoot, so they’re useful, the rest is horseshit."
"They’re useful for the Badogliani," snapped Migliavacca.
"Badogliani or Garibaldini, they’re all fighting for freedom, and as everybody’s always saying, the accounts will be settled later, not sooner. We’ve got to save the Cossacks."
"You’re right, too. And after all, they’re Soviet citizens and so belong to the great fatherland of socialism," said a man named Mar-tinengo, who had not quite kept up with all the turning of coats. But these were months when people were doing all sorts of things, like Gino, who had been in the Black Brigades, and one of its more fanatical members, then ran off to join the partisans and returned to Solara wearing a red neckerchief. But he was impulsive, and came back when he should have stayed away, to meet a girl, and the Black Brigades caught him and executed him in Asti one day at dawn.
"In short, it can be done," Gragnola said.
"There’s just one problem," said Migliavacca. "Even the priest said that only the kids know how to climb the Gorge, and I wouldn’t involve a kid in such a delicate situation. Questions of judgment aside, they’re likely to go around blabbing about it."
"No," said Stivulu. "For example, take Yambo here, none of you even noticed him, but he’s heard everything. If his grandfather heard me saying this he’d kill me, but Yambo knows the Gorge like the back of his hand, and he’s got a good head on his shoulders, and what’s more he’s not the kind to wag his tongue. I’d stake my life on it, and besides everyone in his family is on our side, so we’re not running any risks."
I broke out into a cold sweat and started to say it was late and I was expected at home.