by Anthony Paul
The captain had finished the bread which would have been her breakfast. He looks up to the beam where the sausages had been, but they are gone. ‘The snow has changed a lot’ she says. ‘So many mountain roads are now blocked that the Germans are worried about their own supplies. They’re stealing the people’s food again. We’ve hidden all ours. We’ve got to make it last.’
‘I’m sorry. I go again, soon. News on Radio Londra?’
‘The Allies have taken Ortona.’
He takes the map from his pocket, spreads it on the table and squints at it in the dim light. He cannot find the name but then remembers the dull booming of artillery fire he had heard carrying over the eastern mountains on his trip and looks further north. Ortona. Not fifteen miles from Pescara. He stretches the fingertips he uses to measure a day’s march. ‘One day to walk.’
‘It’s impossible. The Germans have been sending reinforcements down the valley. The doctor says they’ve got to hold Pescara, and that it will be easier in this weather. That area will now be full of them and every step you take will be in snow.’
–
There was less bread for breakfast the next morning and it was snowing again, although not settling in the village streets. For the first time he could look from the window, knowing that his features would be obscured by the curtain of snowflakes scurrying in the wind. But Anna would not let him look for long: those fascists next door might see him; Mamma would be angry. There was not much to see anyway: even the edge of the village on the mountainside was obscured by the snow driven with the wind, and unlike previous times when the child had described the comings and goings in the street - perhaps with a little elaboration for dramatic effect - people were staying indoors if they could. The old men were not stopping to discuss the matters of the day, and the women in black filling their water-pitchers at the pumps were perfunctory and had no time to trade examples of their men’s uselessness before swinging their pitchers onto their heads and gliding home.
His days were spent learning the verbs. If he’d known them better he could have asked the old man in the cave questions about his route and improved his chances of finding a way through. The thought gave him the determination he needed for the hours of repetition. Tomorrow I will say hello. Yesterday I said hello. Every day I’ve said hello. After he’d said hello, mamma said hello and then I said it. If you say hello I’ll say it. He hopes I’ll say hello. Then you, he, we, you and they. It didn’t matter that it was like being back at school. It passed the time when there was nothing else to do. There was no point in being impatient because he thought he should be going home. Today it was impossible. He might as well spend the day making it more likely that he would make it when it stopped snowing.
In time the verbs improved his days. To tell a story or to understand one you need to differentiate the past tenses. To talk about things that matter you need the subjunctive and conditional moods. As his mastery of the verbs improved he could understand the family more, its tales of the day, its plans for the next, their fears for him and themselves, and the greater understanding meant that new words were being added to his vocabulary all the time. The signora took to stretching him more and more, and the more he learned the faster he learned.
In no time, it seemed, he could understand nearly everything the family said, if they didn’t speak too fast. He trusted them now. Did they trust him enough to let him leave the house again?
–
‘Does it worry you that you don’t know our names, Roberto, that we don’t tell you? It’s strange. Until you came we had so many English soldiers staying with us for a night, before they went up to the partisans and then on their way down to the lines. Our name went on all their chits, but you’ve been here for weeks and to you we still have no name. But that’s the way it is. Half of us in the village connected with the partisans don’t know who else is involved. It’s safer that way. If the party hadn’t arranged things that way it wouldn’t have survived a year under Mussolini.
‘Why are we communists? It’s simple. In Italy being a communist is the only way to oppose fascism. Yes, we are rich compared to most people in the village. Ca…’ she stops herself. ‘My husband… has always had skills… which meant he didn’t need to work on the land, skills he could sell for money to buy as much food as we wanted, to have a toilet in our house rather than having to use the fields in summer, a straw-heap in the cellar in winter.
‘Those skills don’t help us much in a winter like this. There’s no money to pay for them, nothing to buy with it if we had it. All the food the Germans haven’t confiscated is being hidden. The shops, except the ones selling rationed goods, are closed; even if they had something to sell the Germans would just take it without paying. The little bars - the after-work’s we call them - where the farmers used to stop for a glass of wine on the way home and talk about the weather and their crops, have all been drunk dry and broken up by those soldiers.
‘It’s not as if there was that much food before they came. There’s not much fertile land in these mountains, so you have to make the most of what there is. It’s why the villages are all built on rocky land. But there is enough land to feed everyone. The farmers don’t need to be so poor. The problem is that, apart from the pastures on the mountains, it’s all owned by landlords, people who don’t live around here. They conspire to keep the rents too high, and they’ll never rent families fields next to each other. If they didn’t waste time walking from one field to another they might produce more than they need for themselves, sell some of it and save some money, maybe enough to buy some land of their own. That would never do. If the peasants became independent, where would it end? Status must be preserved.
‘It’s a system which perpetuates poverty, one which decent people want to bring to an end. Only the communists can bring that about. They want to introduce farm co-operatives, big farms owned by all the peasants where they can work efficiently, produce more food, have all their hard work rewarded by sharing the plentiful crops the land could produce for everyone if the rotten system was ended.
‘We have a saying in these mountains: call no man fortunate until he’s dead. That’s how hard life is for the little people. What kind of society is it that has a proverb like that?’
–
Over supper the captain asked about the fascists next door. He soon wished he had not. Yes, on the other side of the party wall was a family destined to rot in hell, supporters of Mussolini since his thugs first started roaming the land beating up democrats. The son still wore his fascist militia breeches, the daughter whored with the Germans, and the father, not content with strutting his way through every fascist parade in the village in twenty years, was a moneylender who gave pennies for a family’s most treasured heirlooms when they needed money for food. He was getting very rich at the moment, with the food distribution system breaking down and decent families pawning anything they could find to feed their children. He was probably eating veal cutlets, courtesy of the Germans’ stores but looted from the locals, even as they spoke. He wouldn’t last long when the liberation came. But if any of that family knew that the English captain was here it would be the end for all of them.
gennaio
9
It snowed the next day and the next. On the third Luigi brought the captain a present. ‘You keep talking about your Latin, so I’ve brought you this.’ It was a book of extracts from the Metamorphoses. ‘Ovid was from the Abruzzo. He was born in Sulmona. Have you been along the mountain ridge that overlooks it, the one with the monastery on its side? The one they took that hermit from in the middle ages and made him pope because he was the only Christian left in the church?’
‘They should do the same again’ said his father.
‘I don’t know. I may have.’
‘According to our schoolmaster, Ovid had a villa below that monastery and wrote his great works there. I don’t know if it’s true, or if he was just lying to get us to read the stuff. I thought you’d like to read s
ome, seeing as you keep going on about how good Latin was. Something to pass the time while it’s snowing.’
The next morning, as it snowed again, time was indeed as Ovid had said the devourer of all things. At least he was doing something he had done, however reluctantly then, at home. A proper book in his hands again, not the shoddy grammar of recent weeks. He could glide his fingertips over the thick paper, relishing the feel of it again, read words, albeit ones of which his memory was at first unsure, and the words when understood again painted pictures in his mind. For Ovid it seemed always summer, his landscapes green, his weather sunny and his streams and pools warm enough to bathe in; and never having seen the Abruzzo except in winter, the captain could only imagine the scenes as he had imagined them as a schoolboy in England, with rolling hills and puffy clouds and English trees and hedges. For hours he was lost in an England of endless sunshine, of lying in the grass listening to the sky, and every nymph surprised bathing naked in a pool had Jenny’s face.
Jenny’s face. England. For a month he had been stalled in this house. If the Germans hadn’t raided the camp that day he and Mike could have been home by now. He could be in a pub with all his friends and Jenny, sharing English jokes, enjoying everything that made you English. It was that loss of English company, a shared humour, a common sense of nonsense, that was the hardest thing to take. Even in the prison camp that humour had infected their days, and on the long walk south he and Mike could cheer each other up. Here life was humourless. Even Ovid reminded him of the cheerful conspiracies of school. Here the conspiracies were deadly.
–
On the sixth morning of the snow, after a night of deep silence, so quiet that even the chimes of the church clocks were muffled, it was over a foot deep in the street outside. Loud oaths were heard as the early risers left their doors before dawn, then the grating scrapes of shovels on stone as people cleared paths from their doors. Everyone knew that before long the German garrison would come knocking on all their doors and order them to clear the streets for their vehicles. The linen chest was emptied to provide a hiding place for the captain if they came.
They did.
–
It was late afternoon and there was another knock on the door and then a loud argument in the kitchen. The captain listened with growing alarm as the word inglese penetrated two doors again and again.
At last the visitor went. Sounds of anger came from the kitchen, Nonna was wailing. A family council confronting a crisis. Was he going to have to leave?
The father came into the room, his face etched with anger and fear. ‘The fascists know you’re here. We’re all in danger.
‘That was that bastard Giobellini from next door. Full of neighbourly gossip about that round-up today. And then, so casually, “I assume they didn’t find your guest?” “What guest?” I said. “Do you assume I haven’t heard the night-time knocks on your door?” he said. “Do you think I haven’t noticed how your children are always indoors these last few weeks? The way everyone in your family always looks round twice when they reach your door? You’re hiding something. And the authorities reckon there were two English officers hiding in that camp of deserters they raided last month. So one of them got away. One and one makes two. I reckon the other one’s in your house.” “Of course he’s not” I said. “Can I look around?” he said, as if I couldn’t possibly have any objection. “You of all people?” I said. “I could mention my concerns to the mayor,” he said, “but I won’t. I fought alongside the English in the Great War. I liked them.” Porca miseria, the hypocrisy of the man. So then he says “I could help him. We’ve got a good hiding place he could use. And you must be short of food to feed him. I’ve got good connections. It would be less of a problem for me.” The effrontery of the man, and patronising me like that. I could have killed him. But what do we do?’
‘He could be just guessing. Are you sure he knows?’
‘If he didn’t know for certain, the sound of those women wailing in the kitchen would have confirmed it. But does it matter if he knows or not? He’s only got to go to the mayor, or a German corporal supervising his slaves in the street outside. They’d be here in five minutes, less, and with the streets full of people clearing the snow you’ve no chance of getting away.’
The captain had already thought of that. Throughout the signore’s account he had been trying to think of an escape route, but the snowdrifts and the working parties blocked every path. ‘At least he spoke to you first’ he said. ‘He could have given us away behind our backs. Perhaps he is prepared to help.’
‘He’s invited you to eat with them tonight. But why should he help you? He’s got too much to lose if he’s found out. He’ll be regarded by his fascist friends as a traitor. No knocking on his door by the authorities. He’ll just be taken out and beaten to death by the militia. It’s far too dangerous for him to help you.’
‘Exactly. Once I’ve eaten his food he’s compromised. He goes down with you, and he knows it.’
‘We can play for time.’
‘There’s no point. Tell him I’ll go. If I don’t he’s bound to inform on you. Anyway there’s a simple reason why he’s offering to help. He knows the Allies will be here in the spring. He wants to be able to show he was on the winning side.’
‘Don’t give him a chit.’
–
The captain slips from house to house along the wall, looking for any movement that will show that he is being seen. It is snowing again, the flakes scurrying crazily below the streetlight like a flock of moths. He knocks on the neighbour’s door. Will the police, the Germans, be waiting for him?
The door opens. A man extends his hand to greet and pull him into the darkened hall, a cold stone room vaulted like a church crypt. The door is quickly closed on the freezing night and prying eyes.
The man is stocky, with a bristling thin moustache, his head covered with a felt trilby. ‘My dear Capitano Inglese, I am Natale Giobellini and I am honoured to meet you.’ His left hand covers their handshake. ‘Come up, come up, my wife is so looking forward to meeting you.’ Limping from a stiff knee and hip, he leads him up the stone steps from the hall which also serves as the family storeroom. The stores, the sacks and barrels and pots and bundles of firewood, charcoal even, are more plentiful than in the house next door.
He takes him into the kitchen. ‘My wife Caterina.’ The woman, a squat matron with a black head-scarf, turns and wipes her hands on her broad white apron as if to offer them but thinks better of it. She puckers a contrived smile and returns to her pots on the range. He feels not entirely welcome in the house. Perhaps she was against the invitation: why take the risk, aren’t we well off as it is? From the ceiling hooks, now empty in the house next door, plaits of onions, garlics and chillies are suspended amongst dusty hands of smoked mountain sausages. From the old copper pot on the stove the smell of slow-cooking meat pervades the room.
‘Our daughter, Isabella.’ The girl dusts the flour from her hands and makes to rise from the table, but a turn by her mother brings her to order. She is a plain girl in grey ill-fitting clothes, perhaps about twenty years old, her wavy chestnut hair swept back behind a knotted scarf. It is hard to imagine how her hazel eyes would look if she smiled. She merely nods ‘Signore’ and carries on pressing her dough outwards across the wooden flour-tray. ‘Be more civil to our guest’ her father orders. She smiles petulantly and returns to her work, rolling up the stretched pastry into a tube and then slicing it into thin ribbons with vigorous downward drives of her knife. Signor Giobellini sighs, swings his hip round, takes a flask of wine from the shelf and pinches three glasses with his left hand. ‘Let’s go into the dining room. You’ll find our son Alfonso more hospitable.’
The young man rises to his feet as they enter the room, taller than either of his parents and with the easy swagger of someone born into a family more prosperous than its neighbours. He smiles and extends his hand, but immediately senses the captain’s reaction to his breeches, grey breech
es with a black stripe down the side, part of a fascist militia uniform. ‘Forgive me,’ he says, ‘a necessary precaution when our German friends are looking for volunteers.’
The captain looks around the room in his by now instinctive search for escape routes should the Germans come, for evidence of things that might be a threat. A large portrait of Mussolini hangs on the wall, a photograph of father and son in their black shirts stands on the old oak sideboard. The father senses the captain’s alarm: ‘Don’t be concerned, think of us as friends, sit down, have some wine. Let’s forget politics, it comes between friends.’
They sit at the table and the father pours them wine. Salute! ‘Good wine?’ The captain nods. ‘It comes from up the valley. The montepulciano, the speciality of the region. If you keep it a few years it becomes richer in flavour, a dark red. Nowadays, in the war, not enough is made and we have so many guests who also want it. But still good young. You haven’t told us your name.’
‘Captain Johnson, Robert Johnson.’
‘And your regiment?’
The captain reels off six numbers. ‘That’s all you’re supposed to ask. Name, rank and serial number. Geneva Convention.’
‘Am I your enemy?’
‘I was your country’s prisoner-of-war. I thought Mussolini had revoked the Armistice.’
‘I’m sorry we were at war with England. It shouldn’t have happened. We were on the same side in the Great War…’
‘Against Germany.’
The old man sighs. ‘Ah, but since then we’ve had communism to contend with. If the fascist countries are defeated, what will become of us all? We’re the only countries prepared to stand up to the communists.’ He stops, sighs again. ‘I intended to welcome you as a friend. I have many happy memories of English soldiers during the last war. I was a sergeant in the Alpini. You’ve heard of the Alpini? The best regiments in the Italian army, hard mountain men, men used to working hard in harsh conditions. The English army has many regiments like that.’ He mentions three or four infantry regiments, slightly mistaking their names, but includes the captain’s own. The captain does not react. ‘Of course you will not react. But you are from an infantry regiment.’ The captain raises an eyebrow. ‘Of course you are. You’ve been avoiding the Germans for more than a month now since your companion was caught. And you haven’t been with the Golvis all that time. You must have spent time in the mountains. Only an infantryman could have done that, in this weather. I salute you.’