Wolf on the Mountain

by Anthony Paul

  Then the time came for Luigi’s next food-run, when they were to meet at the spur above the village, not at the old camp. He arrived early. Looking down he was appalled by the destruction. The mountain and the angle of descent of the bombs had spared the buildings below him, even the street in which the Golvis and the Giobellinis lived, hence the Germans using it to drive their panzers through, but beyond this lee, by the river and the railway line, the village was a shell. The thickness of the lower stone walls had saved so many buildings from total collapse, but walls above higher windows had fallen and roofing timbers given way.

  It could have been a village long deserted but for the swarms of people moving the rubble into piles, searching for the bodies of their kin to give them proper burial, hunting their stores of food hidden in the secret places of their shattered homes. Everywhere there were shanties improvised from the ruined fabrics, makeshift tents and lean-tos open to the weather and to prying eyes, people improvising meals in pots cooking over fires of timber too shattered to be of use in rebuilding their lives. All comfort and dignity seemed gone. Even the barefooted children were simply standing around, dazed, not playing.

  Luigi arrived with empty hands. The doctor wanted to see the captain and he was to spend the night in the Golvis’ house. Luigi would lead him down to the edge of the village and they would then, for safety’s sake, split up and the captain follow Luigi a corner behind him.

  ‘I don’t think you need worry quite so much about the Giobellinis now’ Luigi said as they started walking down. ‘The Germans raided their stores on the last day of the bombing. Presumably they’d been annoyed to find the house locked earlier in the week, so they came back, broke down the door and cleared out their cellar. You should have seen Natale. He was beside himself with rage. He stormed round to his friend the mayor and demanded that he tell the Germans to return the food. “Tell them who I am. Haven’t I been one of the leading lights of the fascist party hereabouts, even before the time of the Great March on Rome that brought the Duce to power? How can I be treated like this?” The mayor replied that there was nothing he could do, that Natale should be grateful that the stores would be used by the brave soldiers defending the fatherland.

  ‘So now he’ll be scraping for food just like the rest of us’ said Luigi. ‘If the same happened to all the other fascists in the town, we’d soon be rid of the whole pack of them, Germans and all.’

  –

  They eat their supper by candlelight in the dining room, the captain, the doctor, Carlo and Elvira. For the first time in over a week the captain has washed himself, has had a fire in a room closed to the wind to warm his hands by and Elvira has cosseted him as best she could. It seems strange to eat at a table again, to sit on furniture, to have room to pace indoors, to face the prospect of sleep away from the howling of the wind and the wolves.

  ‘What’s it like on the mountain?’ the doctor asks as they finish their supper, a meagre one but warming.

  ‘Cold, damp, windy. I’m grateful to be down for the night.’

  ‘But habitable? Luigi has told me about your hide.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d be able to stay there for long if it was snowing at that height. It’s only the ability to light a fire outside that keeps me alive. And when it snows I leave tracks to follow.’

  Elvira looks concerned, is about to say something, but the doctor raises his hand, pulling his rank. He has something to say and the Golvis are to remain silent. He fiddles with his glass, distractedly running his thumb and finger up and down its sides. ‘We have a problem. We need to be able to move some of the young men out of the village. Too many of them are being flushed out into the open by these bombing raids. I was wondering if something could be done for them up there.’

  ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Getting on for twenty.’

  The prospect of so many men, all untrained in concealment and survival techniques, blundering around the area of his hide troubles the captain. ‘It would be too easy for the Germans until the weather improves, doctor. I can only stay concealed because I’m alone. More hides like mine and they’d be more obvious. And how can you conceal the fires for twenty men, their tracks? If the Germans find evidence of the group re-forming they’ll patrol the mountain even more. Then it will be harder to set something up in the spring.’

  ‘I suspect you’re right, but it’s hard for them down here. It’s hard for us all.’

  ‘How many people have been killed?’

  ‘Maybe a hundred, if you include the ones who were injured and would have survived with decent medical care. And then you have to consider the ones who’ll die from disease.’

  ‘Porca miseria! Even with the village evacuated in the day? How are the survivors taking it?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. They’re not like soldiers, used to being under fire. But what I’ve seen is completely different even from shell-shock. The apathy of people who don’t know what’s happening, why it’s happening, how anything so inhuman could happen to them. In these mountains, they’re used to people dying. Minor illnesses kill poor people. And from time to time we have earthquakes: when an earthquake comes, people just shrug their shoulders, like they do when another tax or law comes from Rome to make them even poorer. But this is worse even than an earthquake. An earthquake is an act of god to them, something they must put up with. This is an act of man.

  ‘It’s not even their war, their fault that they’re in the middle of it. They never wanted it. They just wanted to get on with their lives. But Rome, that evil man in Rome, wanted glory and took away their sons to fight and die. And when he lost that war - as he was bound to because the people’s hearts weren’t in it - he visits this on them. And when the young men try to help, his friends the Germans arrest them to work rebuilding their railway. The people here just can’t believe what’s happening to them.’

  ‘I know how they feel,’ says the captain, ‘and it’s worse being under those bombs when it’s your own side doing the bombing.’

  ‘Do you, Roberto? At least you know there’s a purpose to the war. And to the bombing.’

  ‘But didn’t the Germans moving that panzer division through here show them why the village had been bombed?’

  ‘At the moment they can only think of lost lives, lost homes.’

  ‘Will they never forgive us?’

  ‘In time. Certainly once the Germans have gone. Maybe sooner. In some ways what they’re suffering from is like shell-shock, but in others it’s different. I saw a lot of it in the army, and its symptoms went on for months, maybe because the soldiers were still in the army. But a few days after the bombing stopped, and the threat of the bombers coming back seemed to go away, people in the village started treating what had happened as just like any other disaster. They started getting on with rebuilding their lives. A lot have gone to live with relatives in other villages, and the ones who can’t do that are beginning to make do. Whether they’ll manage when the snows come back we’ll have to wait and see. But I don’t think they’ll be angry with the Allies for long. They know, from the way the Germans are stealing all their food, from the way that they’re now printing money, that they’re beaten, that it’s only a matter of time before their liberation comes. Perhaps in time they’ll see that these bombing raids will only hasten the day they’re free of it all.’

  ‘Do you know yet why the Germans moved that division through?’ the captain asks.

  ‘There’s only rumour. We’re not the only village to have lost our power station. There’s not a single wireless working in the valley. And with the loss of the capo in the bombing raid…’

  ‘The capo dead?’ Elvira exclaims.

  ‘Yes. On the first day.’ The doctor clasps her hand as she holds back a sob. Carlo too looks shocked, takes her hand from the doctor’s. ‘The first day. So the party is having to reorganise its command structure, which means that we’re short of reliable information on what’s happening. Like everyone else we’re having
to depend on rumour. One story is that the Allies have broken through at Cassino and are swarming up the Sacco valley towards Rome. Another is that the Allies have landed troops behind the Germans’ lines and are attacking Rome itself. Both seem incredible. But when the communication chain is re-established we’ll know.’

  The captain is listening with growing alarm. Had the Golvis known who the local leader of the communists was, even known him? They are shocked by the news of the death, it matters to them, and the doctor trusts them with it; and it is dangerous news because the Germans would want to know it too. He has known all along that they were sympathetic to the communists, that it was at the root of their feud with the Giobellinis, but to hear how close they are to the hierarchy of a party he had been taught to fear is something unexpected, frightening. It is so incongruous in this bourgeois room. Did the serene faces of the ancestors on the sideboard hide similar passions? At least they hadn’t known about the capo’s death until now. He makes to drum his fingers on the table, stops himself, afraid that signs of impatience will be seen as ungrateful.

  The doctor senses his discomfort. Even in the flickering candlelight and through his pebble spectacles his eyes are clearly shifting from face to face. ‘I think we may have said too much in the presence of the English officer.’ The captain assumes that he will say no more, but the doctor’s mood changes. ‘But his reaction confirms what we’ve suspected all along, that the Allies aren’t the least bit interested in helping the communist resistance.’

  The captain is shaken by his sudden aggression. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That every English officer who passed through our hands last autumn - and it wasn’t just the partisans on your mountain; there are groups all over the Abruzzo, under the same command - was asked, when he got through the lines, to pass on a message that we needed field radios and operators. So we could report to the Allies on the German dispositions, be their eyes and ears behind the lines. We gave map positions for dropping zones, message codes for Radio Londra to tell us when the drops would come. Nothing came. I admit that we asked for arms as well, but they could at the least have dropped us some radios. Apart from anything else they’d have made a week of bombing this village completely unnecessary. We could have transmitted a message that the panzers were on the move and your air force could have come just once and bombed them to pieces on the open road. With precision.

  ‘Perhaps if we’d told them we were royalists we’d have got the supplies we’d asked for. And last week would have been unnecessary. And Capitano Inglese wouldn’t have been nearly killed by his own side. Something to think about, Roberto?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I’m not a politician.’

  ‘How nice to live in a country where you can say that. We do not.’ The doctor should take the captain’s hint, but he does not. ‘Our country is too crazily corrupt. The rich are lazy, happy just to steal from the poor. They’ve even rigged the system so that the peasants can’t make a decent living. It’s always been that way in the south. No law and order, no laws to protect the weak. Just absentee landlords, capitalists, in the towns owning all the land, renting little bits of it, too small to farm properly, to the peasants. And in these mountains there’s little land to cultivate, such infertile soil. Everyone is poor except the corrupt elite. For centuries the mountains were abandoned to the brigands. When Garibaldi threw out the Spanish kings, people thought things would be different, but they weren’t. Other Italians, not people from around here, but from the north, came and took over where the Spaniards had left off. And then Mussolini replaced those upper class landlords with new fascist ones. They were so brutal, with their blackshirts beating up even the poorest peasants who complained, that sections of the peasantry, so long fatalistic about their lot, started saying “something must be done”.’

  The doctor is now in full cry. ‘And something must be done. The landlords must have their holdings taken away, made over to the peasants. If we had bigger, co-operative farms, ones laid out to the best effect, run by the peasants themselves, we’d have more food and the people could live decent lives. The family is so strong in the south that the peasants already co-operate with each other. Working on co-operatives wouldn’t be any different to them, just fairer, with food to spare. And if each area was run by local people, other things would be done, like programmes to prevent malaria, have better schools.’

  ‘Why do you need to tell me all this?’ the captain asks impatiently. ‘I keep telling you I’m just a soldier.’

  ‘I don’t know. Frustration maybe. But you’re not just a soldier. You read Latin. You’re educated, so ideas must interest you. You just pretend they don’t.’ The doctor looks for a sign of admission, but as ever it does not come. He sighs. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said so much. I don’t want to stress the differences between us. We should be helping each other against the Germans. And it’s not just a matter of my enemy’s enemy is my friend. You’re lucky to come from a more tolerant society. We only want to live in a fair one. In a way I was hoping you’d understand. If you have to stay here much longer, get to know us better, perhaps you will.

  ‘Perhaps, too, I was telling why we don’t trust the Giobellinis, why you shouldn’t trust them either. They’d do anything to harm us.’

  ‘They’ve been very kind to me.’

  ‘For the moment. Don’t trust them.’

  The captain, wishing to avoid any further politics, stays silent. He looks again at the dim photographs on the sideboard, faces with older values, anything to avoid the doctor’s fiery focus. The Golvis too stay silent, wondering if too much has been said. The doctor catches their mood and stands to leave. ‘So it’s back to the mountain tomorrow, Roberto?’

  ‘No. I’m going to have another go at crossing the line.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘There’s nothing else to do but sit in this village waiting to be betrayed, or sit on the mountain waiting to freeze to death. That panzer division told us something was happening to the west. I’ve got a better chance of getting through the line when something is happening. That’s where I’ve gone wrong the previous times I’ve tried. When nothing’s happening, everyone has his binoculars out, looking for something different. You’re easy to spot. But when there’s a battle going on they’re distracted. And if battalions are moving forwards and back, then shell-holes you’re hiding in can suddenly become the other side of the line.’

  ‘If you don’t get hit by the bullets flying around.’

  ‘Avoiding them is what I’m trained for.’

  ‘You are crazy. But then I think all English officers are crazy. Perhaps that’s why you’re winning the war.’

  16

  ‘Even after the Christians came they carried on believing in animal spirits. The peasants still do. The church could only try to adapt their rituals. They had a festival each spring when their priests wrapped themselves in serpents. Now they cover their statue of their patron saint with the snakes and parade it through the streets. People come from miles around and follow it round the village on their hands and knees. Such simple people. They still have the superstitions they had before Rome was founded. You’ll know the village when you see it. It’s the most evil looking place you’ve ever seen.’

  –

  The captain was looking across the flood plain at the village of the snake-worshippers. Even with the pass above it lost in cloud there was no mistaking Elvira’s description. This was the place and the zig-zag road it guarded was the road up to the pass that led to Rome.

  It was the darkest village he had ever seen, its roofs and walls a monotonous rough-hewn sooty grey, the buildings with their tiny windows like haphazard steps up the steep crag to which it clung. The damp clouds lowered over it, swirling onto and off its towers and single spire. Crows wheeled in and out of the mist. He could imagine human carrion on its towers, unspeakable deeds in its dungeons. The German trucks winding around it and up the mighty incline towards the clouds looked out of place and tim
e.

  The doctor had said that if there was heavy traffic on this road it would show that the Germans were reinforcing their defences around Rome, not to the south. If he still wanted to try to make the battle-line he would have to avoid the pass, which would be heavily guarded. He would have to turn south and find another way over the ridge through the snowfields.

  The thought of the Allies marching on Rome gave him new hope and he set off to the south with vigour. His journey took him through a long gorge, following the path of the stream hundreds of feet below the road, a dark damp place that even in summer would only see the sun at noon. The wind was funnelled into it, pushing him backwards as he stepped from boulder to boulder along the rushing stream. At last the valley opened out, wide enough for narrow fields edged with small willows along the river banks, now fallow, their clods iced solid. To each side the mountains were covered by snow for many hundreds of feet below the lowest peaks. If he was to cross them to the next valley he would be trudging through deep snow. He had to rest the night before he could attempt the climb. As the afternoon grew dark he found a reed storage hut in a row of bare poplars by the stream, ate some potatoes and slept a frozen night.

  –

  The next day has passed in a slow cold trudge up the valley, avoiding the occasional motorised patrol, taking side-tracks up to the ridge where it seems lower to see if there is a way over the crest, but always the snow is too deep. As evening comes he sets back down from the ridge and sees, hidden behind a spur so that its chimney smoke cannot be seen from below, a tiny stone cottage, its roof weighed down with boulders to save it from lifting by the wind. He knocks on the door. ‘I’m an English officer, hiding from the Germans. Can I come in?’

  ‘Come in, come in, you must be cold.’ An old man in brown sheepskin jerkin and leggings opens the door and ushers him in with his arm around his shoulder and leads him the few feet to the damp wood fire. ‘Sit down, warm your hands. You must be cold.’