The Cross of Lazzaro

by John Harris

  Maggie didn’t turn up for dinner, and Henry guessed she was eating it with the children at the Orphanage of St Francis. He knew it would please her because it would seem somehow like a penance for the unhappiness she had brought on them. He dined alone, his nerves fretted to screaming point and all his good intentions about remaining detached and uninvolved gone with the wind. Caporelli came to sit with him after a while, not eating, not even accusing any longer, and they shared a bottle of Lacrimae Vescovi, the holy wine of the valley, that he’d brought with him. He didn’t say much but his eyes still had their haunted look.

  Afterwards, Henry borrowed an umbrella and walked alongside the lake, under the still-dripping trees, wishing it would just stop raining for a while. The lights on the mountain above Trepizano were blurred and he knew it was because the clouds were hugging the surface of the lake. He walked into the village, past the boat-station, and had a drink in the Stöckli Bar, but he couldn’t raise much enthusiasm, because he was suddenly as nervous as Caporelli.

  The Stöckli was a small bar, panelled with wood and lit by an old-fashioned chandelier. It had once been used as a council meeting-place in the days when Cadivescovo had been Arzen and Austrian, and the names of all the councillors were there on the walls, carved into the panels with the date of the first schoolroom and the first church and the first boat-station. Henry recognized several of them and saw the name Stettner repeated several times, and somehow it seemed ominous.

  He pushed his drink away eventually, not feeling like finishing it, and walked back to the lakeside. There was an odd policeman about, as usual, and Henry had an uneasy feeling that there ought to have been more of them. If they’d known what Caporelli knew, and what he himself knew, and what the men who’d stolen the plastic from Caporelli’s car knew, they’d have been sitting in their cars and vans outside the Questura, and there’d have been pressmen and television cameras on hand, waiting, as Henry was and Caporelli was, for the bang.

  While he was standing under the trees a man passed him carrying a brown-paper parcel and heading towards the Piazza della Citta. He was in the shadows and it was difficult to see his face, but the very way he hurried made Henry turn and look at him. As he crossed the square, he had to run from the path of a car and Henry remembered, he’d seen that run before, and with a start he realized he’d seen the man up on the mountain with Dittli. It was Wasescha, the man with the beard and the rucksack whom he’d seen on the day he’d gone climbing with Stettner, the man he’d seen by the dam when he’d first arrived.

  He was still wondering what he was doing there in Cadivescovo, and he had actually started across the square after him, when he heard footsteps on the gravel behind him, hurrying, and he swung round and saw Maggie approaching at a run. He stopped and she caught up with him, panting.

  For a moment he hesitated. He could still see the man with the parcel hurrying across the square, short and stocky, hugging his burden to his side.

  ‘Maggie,’ he said. ‘That man! I’ve seen him before!’

  She was too excited to listen. ‘Henry, I’ve something to tell you–’

  Henry glanced back once more at the hurrying figure, then he decided he must have been mistaken. It couldn’t have been Wasescha. Wasescha would surely never have been in the town with all the police in the district looking for him. He was obviously letting Caporelli’s warning prey on his mind to the point of seeing enemies in every shadow.

  ‘Let’s have a coffee,’ he suggested.

  ‘No! Not now! Not now!’

  He stared at Maggie, who was gazing at him with bright eager eyes. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Something has, I can see.’

  ‘We’ve found the altar cross! Come over here.’

  She drew him under the horse chestnuts again, where the barometer stood with the tourist map of the town and the lake, and the telescope that the children liked to put coins into, to see the mountains and the boats approaching from Trepizano. Henry dried one of the seats with a newspaper and they sat down. He had forgotten Wasescha now.

  ‘Giovanni had it,’ she was saying, hardly able to get the words out for excitement.

  ‘The devil he had!’

  ‘Yes. Sister Ursula told me. He took it for her. For Cadivescovo. He’d heard Dei Monti saying that everything ought to be moved and Sister Ursula saying it ought to stay here. You know how he is. He takes everything so deadly seriously. He thought he owed it to Cadivescovo and more particularly to Sister Ursula. She caught him with it.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Now they won’t have to take everything away. It can all stay here in Cadivescovo.’

  ‘What about Giovanni?’

  Her face fell. ‘They’ll have to punish him, of course. Sister Ursula couldn’t decide what to do. He’ll not run away, though. He promised, and she knows when he promises her something he’ll not break his word. He’ll take his punishment all right. He was a bit hysterical when I saw him. He wasn’t afraid, only upset because he’d done wrong.’

  ‘By God, he had!’ Henry said. ‘He nearly started a civil war. Does Dei Monti know?’

  ‘Not yet. I offered to tell him, but Sister Ursula said it was her job.’

  ‘Has she gone?’

  ‘She’s gone to the police first. Because they’ve been up at the orphanage questioning the children. She thought she’d better take the cross to them.’

  Henry nodded. ‘What now, then?’

  She put her hand through his arm, naturally and without embarrassment. ‘I must leave the key to the Customs House,’ she said. ‘The police insist on it being signed for every day. It’s the only job Dei Monti’s left me. I might as well do it properly.’

  She smiled at him, all the misery gone from her expression. ‘Then I’m going to see Dei Monti,’ she said. ‘I want to get to him before Sister Ursula sees him. I want him to be kind to her.’

  They got to their feet and set off along the lakeside towards the Municipio, and had turned into the Piazza della Citta when the roar of the bomb stopped them in their tracks. The buildings behind the Municipio were lit up by the flash that outlined the Hoferdenkmal in flaring yellow, and the crash of the explosion stopped everybody dead. For a second there was stunned silence, as though the whole town were listening, then they heard shouts and cries, and a low moaning sound as though someone were injured, and saw the flickering of flames against the crumbling stone walls at the back of the Municipio.

  ‘Oh God, no!’ Henry breathed.

  Maggie had stopped alongside him, her face deathly white in the light of the street lamps and the shops.

  ‘What was it?’ she said.

  ‘A bomb. Let’s see where it was.’

  ‘No! Henry!’ She’d never used his first name before and he stopped. ‘Don’t! Don’t go!’

  ‘Maggie, I must! I must find out where it was. There might be someone in need of help.’

  ‘There might be another.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Henry said grimly. ‘Look, go back to the hotel. Wait for me there. I won’t stay. I promise.’

  She nodded, without arguing, and, without really noticing whether she went on or not, he entered the narrow streets of the old part of the town. Everybody was running now, towards the glow of the flames, and the shouts were growing louder.

  He saw a policeman staggering about without his cap, his face blackened, and blood running from a cut on his temple. Then he saw a police car on its side with a man climbing slowly to his feet by the open door. Windows were gaping like blind eyes and he felt glass crunch under his feet.

  There was a flattened figure in black against the wall, holding a parcel, and then he saw flames licking the woodwork where the door of the Questura had been. Policemen were running out through the flames now, their arms over their faces, shouting, all of them without their hats and some of them without their jackets, and he saw one or two people sitting in the roadway, their heads bent over their knees, as though they were shocked or
injured.

  The ambulance came round the corner, the siren shrieking, almost knocking him down, and he pressed back against the wall to let it go by. There were already so many people about, bending over the sitting figures and kneeling by the flattened shape by the wall, he realized there was nothing much he could do.

  He stood irresolutely for a moment, but other policemen were appearing now from an alley alongside the building, as though they were escaping from a back entrance, and he saw Inspector Castelrossi among them, hatless, shouting, and slightly unnerved like the rest of them, but clearly taking control, pushing people back against the walls and pointing.

  Someone wrenched a torn awning from where it hung in tatters over the empty window of a smashed shop and threw it over the figure in black against the wall of the Questura, and others were helping the sitting figures to their feet and pushing them into the ambulance. The crowd was filling the ends of the street, and Henry could hear the low murmur of outraged protest and anger rising from them in a swelling sound. It was like the baying of angry dogs.

  Thirteen

  Maggie was on the veranda outside the Stettnerhof when Henry returned, just sitting quietly with her hands in her lap, her eyes staring across the lake. She was silent and motionless, as though she were suffering from shock.

  Caporelli’s Alfa Romeo was there, under the trees, and, as Henry appeared round the back of it and sat down alongside her, she lifted her head slowly and turned to look at him.

  ‘It was the Questura,’ he said. ‘They blew in the front. They must have planted a bomb in the doorway or something. I don’t know how they did it. A parcel or a suitcase or something. There was one killed that I saw and several others injured.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she said softly, as though somehow she were personally involved. ‘Just when I thought things were going to sort themselves out. It’ll all start again now. Everything.’

  There was a bitterness in her voice Henry had never heard before, as though her nerves were rubbed raw.

  ‘I must go and see Sister Ursula,’ she said. ‘I must tell her what’s happened before she goes to see Dei Monti. It won’t do much good, though. Even finding the altar cross won’t help. He’ll never agree to anything now.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Henry said quickly, standing up.

  ‘No. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘I’d like to,’ Henry said.

  She gave him a crooked smile and got to her feet and they walked across the courtyard, their feet crunching on the gravel, their faces wet with the mist that followed the rain.

  There seemed to be something different about the orphanage as soon as they arrived there. Like most Italian buildings, it had always been under-illuminated, but now it seemed darker than ever and there seemed to be a brooding stillness over the old buildings that rose in front of them out of the darkness alongside the stream and the artificial millrace Von Benedikt had built. Usually there were children about, crossing the courtyard or running in and out of the doors, but this time there were none to be seen and they could hear the mumble of voices muttering among the dark buildings.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb…’

  There was something frighteningly silent about the place that made them stop in front of the door and pause before pulling the bell.

  The iron clanging made a hollow sound in the corridor inside, then they heard the bolts being drawn back.

  ‘I’ll go on my own,’ Maggie said. ‘Please.’

  Henry nodded and stepped back as the door opened. The old woman who stood in the entrance, her face bleak in the yellow light of the single small bulb high up in the ceiling, was red-eyed and bowed with grief. Maggie glanced quickly at Henry and he saw her face was frightened, then the door shut behind her and she was gone.

  For some time he stood in the darkness, obsessed by a feeling of guilt, knowing he ought never to have let Wasescha out of his sight in the Piazza della Citta, then he walked slowly back to the hotel, oppressed by his thoughts. Caporelil was sitting in his office when he reached the Stettnerhof, one hand on a brandy glass. He said nothing as Henry sat down opposite him, but Henry could see that he, too, was suffering from too much thinking.

  After a while he lifted his head and Henry saw his face was grey and strained-looking. ‘Have you heard?’ he said.

  Henry nodded. ‘I was there. I was in the Piazza della Citta when it happened.’

  ‘Someone came into the bar. They told me. Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘A few. Someone was killed. I heard there were others. It was Wasescha. I saw him just before it happened. He was carrying a parcel.’

  Caporelli looked up and there was a flash of life in his eyes for a moment, then he shook his head and stared at the brandy glass again.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I did it. I did it.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. If anyone’s to blame, then I was. I should have done something about it. I should have tried to stop him.’

  ‘Thank God you didn’t, or it might have been you, Aynree.’

  Caporelli came to life abruptly and opened a drawer, and Henry saw there was a heavy revolver inside. Caporelli took it out and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  Caporelli shrugged. ‘It is British,’ he said. ‘Smith and Wesson. A relic of the first war, I suspect. A lot of these were dropped to us in the mountains when the Germans were on the run. I’ve had it ever since. I always expected that one day some drunken Sudtyroler would come in here and do something stupid. Well, now one of them has.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to wait for Alois. At his room. I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘Look, Mr Caporelli – Ettore – put that back.’

  Caporelli gave Henry a slow smile. ‘Aynree,’ he said. ‘You forget. I have seen it all before. All these killings and beatings and bullyings. Sometimes the issue was political. Sometimes it was patriotic – or so they said. Sometimes it is necessary for a man to go outside the law when he is dealing with people who are outside the law themselves.’

  ‘But you’re going to kill him.’

  Caporelli shrugged. ‘I was a partisan. I know these mountains as well as Alois. I shan’t do it where he’ll be found, have no fear’

  ‘Ettore – there must he another way.’

  Caporelli held up one hand. ‘He is “Andreas Hofer”,’ he said in a heavy voice. ‘And he has always taken the law into his own hands. We will all be better off without him.’ He saw the shocked look on Henry’s face. ‘Aynree, this area has seen more outrages than you in England ever dreamed of. Mussolini started it, and now it flows the other way. These people – and I’m not one of them – are correct to demand their rights. I would do the same. But demanding rights is different from setting up a private army before we’ve reached an end to talking. Killing is different. Especially this sort of senseless killing.’

  Henry stared at him for a moment, chilled by the unemotional logic in Caporelli’s voice, then, as he got to his feet, Henry stood up also.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said impulsively.

  ‘Thank you, Aynree,’ Caporelli smiled. ‘I know what that means – coming from you. But no. Not you. You said so yourself. You are not involved in our politics. This is my affair. Never yours. You could never make it yours, however hard you tried.’

  He patted Henry’s shoulder and left the office.

  As Henry followed, he heard the Alfa Romeo start, the gravel crunching under the wheels as it moved away, and he suddenly felt lost and drained of feeling, and desperately in need of someone to talk to.

  But the hotel seemed to be empty. The bar was devoid of customers and only the ski-instructress waitress was there, leaning on the coffee machine reading the newspaper. In the end he walked into the village. The traffic jam which had arisen after the explosion from the carelessly parked police cars that had arr
ived from Trepizano had been dispersed but there were dozens of people standing about in groups still, obviously discussing the explosion. All along the front and by the boat-station there were crowds of men, all smoking, some of them standing with glasses in their hands, as though they’d just come out of the Stöckli Bar.

  Cars were still parked inconsiderately along the roadside under the trees where normally the police would have moved them on, and even in this slight suggestion of the breakdown of law and order there was a chilling sense of apprehension that made Henry shudder. Voices were low and wary and the very way the men grouped together suggested nervousness, a need to be near to other people, as though in the shadows there was danger. But there wasn’t only fear. The mood was one of anger and disgust, for all that many of the men must have been Austrian by descent. No one showed any sign of pleasure or triumph, though the Italian police had never been popular. All attitudes of dislike and protest had been pushed aside by the outrage.

  There wasn’t much to see and Henry was just on the point of moving away when the police themselves came and began to break up the crowd. Feeling tired and beaten and on edge, Henry moved across to the Church of Lazzaro di Colleno and went in, and sat down at the back in the shadows. There were several women in there, with black shawls over their heads, kneeling in the pews, their fingers entwined, their lips moving in prayer. The bleak illuminations caught their faces and made them angular and starved-looking with the shadows they cast. The great Cross of Lazzaro still lay on its raised plinth of brilliant red, the light shining down on it, but somehow no one seemed interested in it any longer. All the upsurging religious revival it had started had fallen away to nothing.

  Father Anselmo crossed the church and as he passed the cross he stopped and genuflected, and it seemed to Henry that he stopped longer than he need have done, staring at the cross as though he felt that somehow it had started everything that had happened, as though it were the key that had unlocked the door through which all the hate and bitterness had flooded across the town.