by Anthony Paul
And what could he do now, today, with the Germans still looking for him? Where could he go?
Most of all he needed to steady himself, to forget the frustrations of the last few days: a flustered man makes mistakes. A break for the lines was out of the question today: it was too late now to get over the high ridge by sundown, even if he could do it with his injured wrist and no provisions. He needed food, shelter, someone to tend to his wounds. Where would he find them? And how could he find out if Mike too had escaped? The village. Could he find it? And the safe house? Would it still be safe? All day these thoughts would clash with the frustration of being thwarted so close to freedom, with his fears for Mike’s safety if he’d been caught with the partisans. Forget that you were both a couple of days from your own troops, a fortnight from knocking on your parents’ doors. Concentrate on finding that house, on not being seen.
–
The rumours began as the clouds started to roll in and settle on the mountains which surround Sannessuno.
A shepherd had heard explosions up near the summer pastures, dull ones, not like the sounds of the artillery barrages two days’ walk to the south. Someone had heard a company of German soldiers marching out of the village in the dead of night. Later in the day hearsay came from other villages: of machine-gun fire on the mountain, the sound of prisoners being shot; another of truck-loads of local men being taken south. A camp had been found. The camp had been found.
All that was certain was that there were more German patrols in the streets, that no-one had come down from the mountain today, that no-one dared go up it. Mothers, fathers and sisters feared for their young men in the partisan camp, prayers were said, everyone dreaded the knock on their door.
–
‘Why did I let him stay in the camp last night?’ she sobbed. ‘I could have brought him down with me.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been more dangerous? Considering who you were bringing down?’
‘I should have known better, after that story about the South Africans the English had sent away. I should have known the air was bad.’
‘Come now, Elvira.’ Carlo Golvi stood up and rounded the table to place his hands on his wife’s shoulders. ‘Hindsight’s an easy thing. You weren’t to know. We weren’t to know.’
She buried her tears in her hand. ‘Why did you let him go up there in the first place? He’s only a boy.’
‘He’s sixteen. We couldn’t stop him. Boys of that age are full of dreams of glory. They can’t wait to be old enough to put on an Alpini cap and prove themselves in battle. Enrico was just the same.’
‘People get killed in battles.’
‘Only the enemy gets killed when you’re that age.’
‘I’ll never forgive you if he doesn’t come back.’
‘He will, dearest. He’s just a boy. The Germans will let him go, no matter what they do to the others.’
Carlo Golvi said no more. When your child is in danger the hardest thing is to reassure your wife when you are just as worried. And he wasn’t sure that he believed what he was saying. There would have been an Englishman in the camp, two if the captain had got back in time, and the penalty for sheltering escaped prisoners-of-war was death. Luigi was too young, too likely to panic, to have got away. If anyone had got away he prayed it was the English.
–
All day Robert Johnson edged down the mountain, avoiding the track, slipping from one area of cover to the next, using every trick of concealment learned in the last three months on the long hunted journey south. He needed to keep moving to keep himself warm, yet every movement might be seen and betray that he was there, invite a manhunt.
By mid-afternoon he was in a pine clump on a spur above the village. The fine weather of the morning had given way to rain. The white peaks and grey crags of the mountains, so clear in the cold morning sun, were now lost in cloud. It was drizzling, his clothes wet and sticking to his shivering body. The same mist enveloped the village, blanketing out the tops of its surrounding hills. His shoulders were shuddering, reacting to the water he imagined slowly dripping from the unguttered roofs onto the moss-covered cobbles in the streets below.
It was the first time he had seen Sannessuno in daylight. He had been there twice before: the time he and Mike had been escorted through it to the tall partisan’s cottage at its edge to sleep before climbing to the camp; then when he had come down with the signora to listen to the wireless. Each had been in darkness. Scurrying from corner to corner, he had only been aware then of a warren of narrow winding streets between tall houses holding each other up, dimly lit by old electric bulbs on the walls above, and everywhere people staying indoors away from the occupying force. It could have been underground, its size and extent unknown, but with armed soldiers and vehicles and electricity it had been a place in the twentieth century.
In daylight the village, crammed between the mountains and the river, looked as it would have done centuries ago, with its walls of undressed stone and its jumbled terracotta roofs hiding the lines of its streets. The old lichened tiles, patch-repaired, spoke of moist decay, of a congested place where damp and germs will muzzle their way into walls, furnishings and lungs, of a place where disease spreads fast, where poor people need an old faith, to believe in an afterlife. Churches with tall towers and square steeples and open belfries rose here and there above the roofs; and their bells, the deep basses and the smaller tinkling trebles and the ones in between he had heard from every village on the way south, here too tolled in different time each quarter-hour.
Snatches of sound reminded him it was 1943. He heard the revving of a motorcycle. A whiff of wind brought up the clash of marching boots on the cobbles in the hidden lanes. He imagined the uniforms, the grey greatcoats, the rifles slung from shoulders, stepping in hobnailed time through streets emptied of people by their fear.
But as the damp afternoon wore on and wood-smoke began to stutter from the chimneys, a pattern emerged in these sounds and with it the thought: wouldn’t the street behind a patrol be empty?
At last it was dark. He limped, as casually as he could, down through the fetid cottages. Dogs barked. He was clearly a stranger, but people turned their heads away. It was the same route he had been taken the previous evening, his escort then a person owed respect. He hid behind the wall from which the signora had checked that the coast was clear. A patrol marched down the street five minutes after the deepest church bell had struck the hour. He sidled behind it and knocked on the door of the house with the secret wireless.
–
tonight we have a strange man in our house
i dont understand a word he says
mamma says i must never never tell anyone about him
just like the wireless
hes covered in blood and shivering
mamma has sent for the doctor i must never never tell anyone ive seen
2
‘We’re even short of salt, Captain Johnson.’ The doctor’s eyes drop down his spectacles to the tip of his cigarette. He takes it from his lips to stop its ash spoiling the plain boiled water he is using to bathe the Englishman’s cuts, places it on the table corner between their chairs and coughs asthmatically. ‘Cigarettes plentiful, but no salt. Our salt comes from the south, from the other side of the battle-lines.’
He has already manipulated the captain’s wrist, pronounced it in his faultless English merely sprained and strapped it with an old cloth bandage. Apart from the bandage and a towel around his loins the Englishman is naked, shivering on the rushen seat of his chair in the gloomy musty room. The signora is mending and washing his clothes in the kitchen.
The sallow doctor returns his squint to the captain’s wounds. He probes with a needle for grit and splinters by the light of a candle. ‘The danger is infection. You must bathe them often. We’re out of medicines. The Germans cleared out the apothecary’s store for their own wounded months ago. If you get an infection we’ll be back to the old peasant women’s remedies: herbal infusi
ons, special moss poultices. If they’ll tell us their secrets. But they won’t: it would mean giving up something they can barter for food.’
He leans back to look at the Englishman’s wasted body, the muscles strong from the physical effort of walking the hundreds of miles from his prisoner-of-war camp, but now they protrude through the shrunken skin with little flesh between. He must have been a powerful man before the war, perhaps even before his long walk, although food had been short in Italy for more than a year. Now he is a refugee, not a soldier, a naked man shivering in the chiaroscuro light.
‘Why on earth did you come back to the village?’ he asks. ‘It’s crawling with Germans tonight, the worst place you could have come. I thought you were setting out for your lines today. Why didn’t you just carry on?’
‘I thought of it, believe me, but everything was against it. By the time the Germans had left there was no chance of going over the mountain and getting down to lower ground on the other side before nightfall, even if I could have done it with one arm. I’d no food. And then there was Mike. He too might have escaped. Coming back here was the only way I could hope to be safe for the night, hope to get news of him.’
‘Safe?’ the doctor huffs. ‘No-one’s safe in this village tonight. Safer for you, maybe, but what about this family?’ The captain, abashed, does not reply. ‘Still, it gives us a chance to find out what happened this morning. All we’ve heard is rumours. You’re the only one who’s made it back to the village so far.’
‘So you don’t know if Mike got away?’
‘No. Or any of the village men. At least your friend stands a better chance of not being shot. One of the rumours is of mass executions.’
‘Dear God! But there were none at the camp. No sounds of a firing squad. The men who surrendered must have been taken away.’
‘That doesn’t mean they weren’t shot elsewhere, somewhere more public, to make an example. But that’s a start. One of the rumours is wrong. It’s something to reassure the families, a start. Now tell me what happened up there.’
‘It’s simple.’ The captain slips into the soldier’s report: ‘The Germans surrounded the camp, attacked it with mortars and then rushed it just before dawn. Textbook operation. It was all over in a couple of minutes. They must have caught at least fifty of the partisans, maybe more. I haven’t seen anyone else who’d escaped.’
‘It couldn’t be worse. All those young men.’ The doctor swallows deeply. ‘So the Germans knew the camp was there. But how did they know? It can’t be seen from below. Even the high mountains don’t overlook it.’
‘That was the problem. What hid the camp hid the Germans when they found out about it. I know it was the only place for miles around where you could hide so many men, where there was water for them all, but it wasn’t a site you can defend. All you can do is post look-outs and scatter when the enemy comes. God knows what those two officers thought they were up to. We told them to post look-outs, but I’d almost reached the camp when the Germans attacked. No sign of anyone on watch.’
‘Yes, those officers. Men from good families, peacocks, the type of leaders who made our army a laughing stock. Do you really think that the Italian working man is such a useless soldier, particularly if he’s fighting for a cause he believes in, with competent officers?’ He sees the captain tensing. ‘I’m sorry, I’m getting carried away. We should never have been at war with anyone.’
‘Have we finished, doctor?’ the captain asks impatiently. He leans back to look the doctor’s threadbare jacket up and down, fixes his eye on his smoking cigarette, drums his fingers on the table.
‘No, we haven’t. There are still wounds to clean. And more you have to tell me.’
‘Can’t it wait ’til tomorrow? I’m dog tired. I need to sleep.’
‘No, it can’t. Isn’t it clear to you that the Germans knew exactly where the camp was and what was happening there? Either they got a spy into it or it was betrayed by someone from the village. Getting a spy into it would have been difficult. We’ve been very careful who we’ve let go up there, as you’ll remember, and if it was betrayed then everyone in the village who was supporting it is at risk. We need to know which it was as soon as possible.’
‘How would I know? I don’t speak the language.’
‘Yes, but you’re a cautious man. You’ve been wondering the same ever since the raid. Can’t you think of anything strange that’s happened in the last few days?’
‘I haven’t had time for that. I’ve been too busy staying alive. Maybe when I’ve slept…’
‘But surely the infantry officer noticed something odd about that raid?’
Infantry officer? How does the doctor know that? He studies him again. The man is so paradoxical: shabby, yet clinical; excited one minute, cold the next; so unlike any Italian he has ever come across; articulate, his English perfect, even the idioms, yet living in such a small, impoverished village. Who is he? Where did he learn to speak English so well? It’s almost as if he is being debriefed by one of his own senior officers.
Debriefed, or interviewed? A week ago he and Mike had been interviewed in a hut to the north of the village before being taken up to the partisan camp. There’d been an unseen man in the corner that night, asking questions in broken English with a heavy accent. There is something about the doctor’s voice which suddenly seems familiar. A man can disguise how well he speaks a language, but not his tone. Is this the same man?
The doctor reads his thoughts: ‘Yes, perhaps you are too tired if it’s taken you this long to recognise my voice. It was me that questioned you in that hut before we took you up to the camp, speakinga inglese bad. Part of the disguise: there aren’t that many English speakers around here. And of course the things you and your friend said to each other when you thought none of us would understand you was what convinced me you were English. So I know you’re an infantryman. And an infantryman knows that you don’t take mortars on a foot patrol, particularly three thousand feet up a mountain, unless you know you have a position to attack. They knew all about the camp, and we need to know how they found out about it.
‘The signora came back last night with a story about some South Africans, said that you and your friend had sent them away.’
Could it have been them? The captain falls silent, allows the doctor to pick at some splinters.
‘It happened yesterday’ he sighs. ‘Two strangers walked up to one of the sentries claiming to be prisoners-of-war, Afrikaaners. Mike and I were asked to go out to interview them. They seemed real enough at first. It was only when Mike and I relaxed and started mentioning the names of some of the South African officers we’d met in North Africa that we started to wonder about them. You never meet a brother officer and not have someone in common, even if only through some crazy anecdote you’ve heard; but these two seemed to know no-one, even in the places they said they’d been. They didn’t seem right, so we told your commandant to send them away.’
‘Did you consider shooting them? Saying you’re an Afrikaaner is a good way of disguising a German accent.’
Why didn’t you? the doctor is asking. The partisans too had wanted to shoot them as spies. The thought still shocks him. ‘Yes. It was discussed’ he replies impatiently. ‘But what was the point? They’d walked up to the camp. Even if they were Germans they must have already known it was there and were on a final recce for an attack that was going to happen anyway. And if they were spies and we’d shot them, what reprisals would have been in store for the village? Twenty people shot?’
‘Suppose they’d just chanced upon the camp? The Germans have been sending men out for months masquerading as escaped prisoners-of-war in order to trap the locals. This is a partisan war. You can’t take prisoners in a partisan war. You don’t have a stockade for them, and you can’t let them go because the whole point is staying hidden. The Germans would never treat partisans as prisoners-of-war. They’d simply shoot them. You may not like it, but it’s a matter of kill or be killed, with
nothing in between. Surely the commandant told you that?’
‘Yes, we went through all this yesterday.’ He sighs again, yawns. ‘Mike and I were only suspicious of them, not sure they were spies. If they were spies then they’d been very well briefed: their stories were utterly plausible. They might have been who they said they were, and if they were, suppose Mike and I had been in their position and they were interrogating us, not knowing anyone they knew? If we were wrong, I’m sorry. I just don’t think we were.’ He turns his head away, unsettled by the doctor’s stare, turns back and defiantly fixes his interrogator’s eyes. ‘So we sent them on their way, although we made sure they saw nothing in the camp. And, just in case, we decided to hide the weapons and to post extra look-outs last night. None of this would have happened if those bloody officers had done their job properly and posted the look-outs.’
The doctor has finished cleansing the captain’s wounds. He silently collects his makeshift tools and blows out the candle so as not to waste it. The room is now lit only by a small electric bulb set in the wall. His features are indistinct. ‘But then you came into the village with the signora?’
The captain senses another accusation, that if the camp was threatened he should have stayed. ‘To listen to the wireless. She was at the camp yesterday afternoon and offered to bring me down - not Mike, because he’s taller and fairer than I am, more English as she put it to Mike - to listen to Radio Londra. To find out what was going on down at the battlefront, to see if there was anything happening somewhere on the lines which would give us a chance of getting through.’
‘But tonight you came into the village on your own. No-one to usher you in, avoid the houses of the fascists, stop you if the wrong person was on the street.’