Beneath a Scarlet Sky: A Novel

by Mark Sullivan

  “Who you looking for?” said one filthy boy.

  “Sixteen-B,” Pino said.

  The boy’s chin retreated. He pointed down the hall.

  At Pino’s knock, the door opened slightly on the chain.

  A man said in thickly accented Italian, “What?”

  “Tullio sent me, Baka,” Pino said.

  “He is alive?”

  “He was two hours ago.”

  That seemed to satisfy the man. He undid the chain and opened the door just wide enough to allow Pino inside a studio apartment. Baka was Slavic, short, powerfully built, with thick black hair, heavy brows, a flattened nose, and massive arms and shoulders. Pino towered over him, but he still felt intimidated in his presence.

  Baka studied him a moment, then said, “You bring something or no?”

  Pino dug the envelope out of his pants, and handed it to him. Baka took it without comment and walked away.

  “You want water?” he asked. “It is there. Drink and you go. Make it back before curfew.”

  Pino was parched by the long ride and took a few gulps before he looked around and understood who and what Baka was. A tan leather suitcase with heavy-duty buckles and straps lay open on the narrow bed. The interior of the suitcase had been custom designed with padded cutouts that held a compact shortwave radio, a hand generator, two antennas, and tools and replacement crystals.

  Pino gestured at the radio. “Who do you talk to on it?”

  “London,” he grunted as he read the papers. “Brand-new. We just got it three days ago. The old one died, and we were silent for the two weeks.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Parachuted in sixteen weeks ago outside the city and walked in.”

  “You’ve been here in this apartment the whole time?”

  The radio operator snorted. “If so, Baka would have been a dead man fifteen weeks ago. The Nazis, they have machines now to hunt radios. They use three of them to try to, how do you say, triangulate our transmission location so they can kill us and destroy the radios. You know what is penalty for having transmitter radio these days?”

  Pino shook his head.

  “No questions, no nothing,” Baka said making a slitting sound, and passed his finger across his throat with a smile.

  “So you move around?”

  “Every two days, in the middle of the day, Baka takes the chance and goes for a long walk with his suitcase to another empty apartment.”

  Pino had all sorts of other questions he wanted to ask, but he felt he’d already overstayed his welcome. “I’ll see you again?”

  Baka raised a thick brow, shrugged. “Who can know these things?”

  Pino left the apartment and the building quickly. He recovered his bike and mounted it in the light of a warm spring afternoon. Riding back through the burned wasteland, he felt good, useful again. As small an assignment as that had been, he knew he’d done the right thing, fighting back, taking a risk, and he felt the better for it. He wasn’t going to join the Germans. He was going to join the resistance. That was all there was to it.

  Pino headed north toward Piazzale Loreto. He reached the fruit and vegetable stand just as Mr. Beltramini was lowering his awnings. Carletto’s father had aged terribly since the last time Pino had seen him. Worry and stress were sewn through his face.

  “Hi, Mr. Beltramini,” he said. “It’s me. Pino.”

  Mr. Beltramini squinted at him, looked him up and down, and then threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Pino Lella? You look like you ate Pino Lella!”

  Pino laughed. “That’s funny.”

  “Awww, well, my young friend, how can you survive what life throws at you if you cannot laugh and love, and are they not the same thing?”

  Pino thought about that. “I guess so. Is Carletto here?”

  “Upstairs, helping his mother.”

  “How is she?”

  Mr. Beltramini’s wall-to-wall grin vanished. He shook his head. “Not good. The doctor says maybe six months, maybe less.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “And I’m grateful for every moment I have with her,” the shopkeeper said. “I’ll go up and get Carletto for you.”

  “Thanks,” Pino said. “Give her my best.”

  Mr. Beltramini started toward the door, but then stopped. “My son missed you. He says you’re the best friend he’s ever had.”

  “I missed him, too,” Pino said. “I should have written him a letter, but it was difficult . . . what we were doing up there.”

  “He’ll understand, but you’ll look out for him, won’t you?”

  “Promised I would,” Pino said. “And I never go back on a promise.”

  Mr. Beltramini touched Pino’s biceps and shoulders. “My God, you’re built like a race horse!”

  Four or five minutes later, Carletto came out the door. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Pino said, punching him lightly on the arm. “It’s great to see you.”

  “Yeah? You, too.”

  “You don’t sound convinced of it.”

  “My mama has had a tough day.”

  Pino felt a pang in his gut. He hadn’t seen his own mother since Christmas, and he suddenly missed Porzia, and even Cicci.

  “I can’t imagine,” Pino said.

  They talked and joked for fifteen minutes, until they noticed daylight beginning to fade. Pino had never dealt with the curfew before, and he wanted to be inside the new apartment long before night fell. They made plans to meet up in the coming days, shook hands, and parted.

  It pained Pino to ride away from Carletto. His old friend seemed lost, a shell of himself. Before the bombs had started falling, Carletto had been quick and funny, just like his father. Now, he looked duller, as if inside he’d turned as gray as those men Pino had seen clearing the streets. At the checkpoint into San Babila, the guard recognized him and waved him through. I could have had a gun on me, Pino thought as he started to pedal, and then heard shouting behind him.

  He looked over his shoulder. Soldiers from the checkpoint came running after him with their machine guns held at their waists. Terrified, he stopped and threw up his hands.

  They ran past Pino and around the corner. His heart was racing so fast he got dizzy, and it took several moments before he could move. What had happened there? Where were they going? Then he heard klaxon horns. An ambulance? A police car?

  He walked his bike to the corner, looked around it, and saw the three Nazis searching a man in his late thirties. The man had his hands up against a bank wall, legs spread. He was upset and got more so when one of the Germans pulled a revolver from the man’s waistband.

  “Per favore!” he cried. “I only use this to protect my store and to go to the bank!”

  One of the soldiers barked something in German. The soldiers all took a few steps back. One threw up his rifle and shot the man in the back of the head. The man went rag doll and crumpled down the wall.

  Pino jumped back, horrified. One of the soldiers saw him, yelled something. Pino leaped on his bike, pedaled like a maniac, and, taking a roundabout route, got to the apartment building on Corso Matteotti without being caught.

  The SS sentries in the lobby were new, and they paid closer attention to him than before. One patted him down and inspected his documents twice before allowing him through to the elevator. As the birdcage rose, the memory of the shot man kept playing over and over in his mind.

  Numb and sickened, he only became aware of the delicious odors coming from the new apartment when he raised his hand to knock. His uncle opened it and let him in.

  “We were worried,” Uncle Albert said, shutting the door. “You’ve been gone too long.”

  “I went to see my friend Carletto,” Pino said.

  “Thank God. But otherwise no problems?”

  “I saw the Germans kill a man for having a pistol,” Pino said dully. “They just shot him like he was nothing. Nothing.”

  Before his uncle could reply, Porzia ap
peared in the hallway, threw her arms wide, and cried, “Pino!”

  “Mama?”

  Pino was flooded with emotions that propelled him across the room to his mother. He scooped Porzia up off her feet, swung her around, and kissed her, which provoked a squeal of fear and delight. Then he swung her around again.

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough! Put me down!”

  Pino placed her gently on the rug. Porzia smoothed her dress before looking at him and shaking her head. “Your father said you were big, but I . . . My Domenico? Is he big like you now, too?”

  “Not any taller, but stronger, Mama,” Pino said. “Mimo’s a tough guy now.”

  “Well.” Porzia beamed, and her eyes began to water. “I am just so happy to be in my new home with my big boy.”

  His father came out from the kitchen.

  “Did you like your surprise?” Michele asked. “Mama came on the train from Rapallo just to see you.”

  “I like the surprise. Where’s Cicci?”

  “Sick,” Porzia said. “My friends are taking care of her. She sends you her love.”

  “Where’s Greta?” Michele asked. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  “She’s closing the shop,” Uncle Albert said. “She’ll be here soon.”

  There was a knock at the door. Pino’s father opened it.

  Aunt Greta charged in, looking distraught, but waited until the door was shut and locked before sobbing, “The Gestapo caught Tullio!”

  “What?” Uncle Albert cried. “How?”

  “He decided to leave the shop early. He was going to stay at his mother’s tonight. Somewhere along the way, not far from the shop, I guess they arrested him, and took him to the Hotel Regina. Sonny Mascolo, the fancy button man, saw it all, and told me as I was locking up.”

  Gloom saturated the room. Tullio in Gestapo headquarters. Pino couldn’t imagine what he was suffering at that very moment.

  “Did they follow Tullio from the shop?” Uncle Albert asked.

  “He went out through the alley, so I don’t think so,” Aunt Greta said.

  Her husband shook his head. “We have to think so, even if it isn’t true. We may all be under SS scrutiny now.”

  Pino felt claustrophobic. He could see similar reactions around.

  “That settles it, then,” Porzia said as if handing down an edict from on high. “Pino, tomorrow morning, you are going to that enlistment office, and you are joining the Germans and staying out of harm’s way until the war is over.”

  “And what do I do then, Mama?” Pino cried. “Get killed by the Allies because of my swastika uniform?”

  “When the Allies get close, you take the uniform off,” his mother said, glaring at him. “My mind is made up. You are still a minor. I still make decisions for you.”

  “Mama,” Pino complained, “you can’t—”

  “I can and do,” she said sharply. “End of discussion.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  July 27, 1944

  Modena, Italy

  More than eleven weeks after his parents ordered him to enlist with the Germans, Pino shouldered a Gewehr 43 semiautomatic rifle and marched toward the Modena train station. He wore the summer uniform of the Organization Todt: calf-high black leather combat boots; olive pants, shirt, and peaked cap; a black leather belt; and a holster with a Walther pistol. A red-and-white band high on his left arm completed the uniform and branded him.

  Across the white top it read “ORG.TODT.” A large black swastika dominated a red circle below. The patch on his other shoulder revealed his rank: Vorarbeiter, or private first class.

  Vorarbeiter Lella had little faith in God’s plan for him by that point. Indeed, as he entered the station, he was still fuming mad at his predicament. His mother had railroaded him into this. At Casa Alpina, he’d been doing something that mattered, something good and right, guiding as an act of courage, no matter the personal risk. Since then, his life had been boot camp, an endless parade of marches, calisthenics, lessons in German, and other useless skills. Every time he looked at the swastika he wanted to tear it off and head for the hills to join the partisans.

  “Lella,” called out Pino’s Frontführer, or platoon leader, breaking him from his thoughts. “Take Pritoni and guard Platform Three.”

  Pino nodded without enthusiasm and went to his post with Pritoni, an overweight kid from Genoa who’d never been away from home. They took up position on the elevated platform between two of the most heavily used tracks in the station, which had a high arched ceiling. German soldiers were loading crates of weapons into open boxcars on one track. The other was empty.

  “I hate standing here all night,” Pritoni said. He lit a cigarette, puffed it. “My feet and ankles, they swell and hurt.”

  “Lean up against the roof support posts, move one foot to the other.”

  “I tried that. My feet still hurt.”

  Pritoni kept up a litany of complaints until Pino tuned him out. The Alps had taught him not to fret and whine at difficult circumstances. It was a waste of energy.

  Instead, he started thinking about the war. During boot camp, he hadn’t heard a thing. But in the week since he’d been assigned to guard the train station, he’d learned that Lieutenant General Mark Clark’s US Fifth Army had liberated Rome on June 5. Since then, however, the Allies had only managed to advance sixteen kilometers north toward Milan. Pino still figured the war would be over by October, November at the latest. Around midnight, he yawned and wondered what he might do after the war. Go back to school? Head to the Alps? And when would he find a girl to—?

  Air raid sirens started to moan and wail. Antiaircraft guns opened up. Bombs fell, angry buzzing hornets that rained down on central Modena. At first, the bombs detonated at a distance. Then one exploded outside the rail yard. The next three all struck the train station in rapid succession.

  Pino saw a flash before the blasts hurled him backward off the platform and through the air. Still wearing his pack, he landed hard on the empty train tracks and momentarily blacked out. Another explosion roused him, and he instinctively curled into a ball as glass and debris showered down on him.

  When the raid ended, Pino tried to get up, smelling smoke and seeing fire. He was dizzy, and his ears had a roar in them like an angry ocean. Everything was disjointed, a broken kaleidoscope, until he saw Pritoni’s body on the tracks behind him. The kid from Genoa had taken the brunt of the blast. A chunk of shrapnel had taken off most of his head.

  Pino crawled away and vomited. His head pounded so hard he thought it might burst. He found his gun, struggled to get back up on the train platform, and did so before puking again. His ears roared louder. Seeing dead soldiers and others wounded, he felt dizzy and weak, on the verge of passing out. Pino threw out his hands to grab one of the steel support posts still holding up the train station’s roof.

  Intense, fiery pain shot through his right arm. It was only then that he realized the index and middle fingers of his right hand had nearly been chopped off. They dangled there by ligament and skin. Bone stuck out of his index finger. Blood spurted from the wound.

  He passed out a second time.

  Pino was taken to a field hospital where German surgeons reattached his fingers and treated him for concussion. He lay in the hospital for nine days.

  Upon discharge on August 6, Pino was judged temporarily unfit for duty and told to go home for ten days to recuperate. As he rode in the back of a newspaper lorry that gave him a lift back to Milan on a humid, showery summer day, Pino felt nothing like the happy, purposeful man-child who’d left the Alps. He felt weak and disillusioned.

  The Organization Todt uniform had its benefits, though. It got Pino waved through several checkpoints, and he was soon walking the streets of his beloved San Babila. He encountered and greeted several old friends of his parents, people he hadn’t seen in years. They stared at his uniform and the swastika on the armband and acted like they didn’t know him or want to.

  Pino was closer to Alba
nese Luggage than he was to home, so he went there first. Walking down the sidewalk on Via Monte Napoleone, he noticed a Daimler-Benz G4 Offroader, a six-wheel-drive Nazi staff car, parked right in front of the leather store. The hood was up. The driver was under it, working on the engine in the rain.

  A Nazi officer wearing a trench coat over his shoulders stepped out of the showroom and said something sharp in German. The driver jerked up and shook his head. The officer looked disgusted and went back inside the leather shop.

  Always interested in cars, Pino paused and said, “What’s the problem?”

  “What’s it to you?” the driver said.

  “Nothing,” Pino said. “I just know a little about engines.”

  “And I know next to nothing,” the driver admitted. “She won’t start today, and when she does, she backfires. The idle is horrible, and it bucks between gears.”

  Pino thought about that and, mindful of his healing hand, looked around under the hood. The G4 had an eight-cylinder engine. He checked the spark plugs and wire heads, saw them gapped correctly. He checked the air filter, found it filthy, and cleaned it. The fuel filter was also clogged. Then he studied the carburetor and saw the screw heads glinting. Someone had recently made adjustments.

  He got a screwdriver from the driver, and with his good hand, fiddled with several of the screws. “Try it.”

  The driver got in, turned over the ignition. The engine caught, backfired, and blew a black cough of smoke.

  “See?”

  Pino nodded, thought of what Alberto Ascari might do, and tuned the carburetor a second time. Hearing the front door to his uncle’s shop open, he said, “Try again.”

  This time the engine roared to life. Pino grinned, set the tools down, and shut the hood. When he did, he saw that same German officer standing on the sidewalk beside his uncle Albert and aunt Greta. He’d taken off his trench coat. Pino saw by his insignias that he was a major general.