by Anthony Paul
‘Can I go to see them?’
‘It is better not. I will say goodbye for you.’
‘And thank them for me. And for my parents. I owe my life to you all.’ Carlo smiles quizzically. ‘And tell Elvira I’ll pray for Enrico’s return too.’
Carlo looks from his face to over his shoulder. More orders to give. ‘I’m sorry, Capitano Inglese. I have so many things to do. And so do you I think. You remember, back in December, you kept arguing with us? Whenever you wanted to do something we thought was too dangerous you used to say it was your duty to get back to your lines. It’s your duty now, and mine is something else. Thank you for giving us your help. Vincenzo has been very grateful for it.
‘Come back one day, when your country’s war is over. This country will be a better place. Come and see it then. Don’t forget.’ He kisses Roberto’s cheeks. ‘Until we see each other again.’
The doctor and Vincenzo, a rag bandaging a bullet wound to his wrist won in the skirmish at the bridge, come over. ‘Sannessuno belongs to the people at last, but God knows how we’ll feed them. Let’s hope your army comes soon. You should go now, go and find them. Tell them to come soon, that we’re starving. We can take care of what’s to be done in the meantime here.’
46
As soon as the village is out of hearing he finds himself in silence. The road down the valley is clear. There is no wind to rustle the trees. How far will he have to walk? Motorised patrols must have been sent out as soon as it was clear that the German artillery had gone. Two days’ walk, the time it took to the lines in December, would be no more than four hours in a vehicle, even stopping all the time for its officer to check the road ahead for mines and enemy troops through his field-glasses. It should only be an hour before he met it, made his report that the Germans were now beyond the next ridge, that the valley was ready for occupation and then was whisked off to become English again.
Then what? Vincenzo had asked him what he was most looking forward to when he reached the lines and he’d been unable to answer. He still doesn’t know. There are so many things he no longer knows, things his mind has forgotten in its obsession with survival. Even his native tongue. He’d been surprised by Elvira’s English the day before, unable to respond. All evening he’d tried to practise the language but all that he had learned again had been lost in the frantic events of the morning.
He tries again: ‘I call myself Roberto DiGiovanni. Am captain in Wessex Light Infantry. The Germans are departed from Sannessuno. The partisans control the village. They attend you.’ No. ‘I call myself Roberto Johnson. Am captain…’ The words come slowly back but the grammar remains Italian. He stumbles on, rehearsing the words over and over again like a drunken man fabricating his excuse.
He turns into the side valley leading up to the pass, still keeping to the rough road, its stones and dust now bleached white. Today he will not leave the road, not dread the sound of an approaching vehicle. Today he must walk only on the road and pray for a vehicle to come. He dare not even step down to the stream lest the vehicle come and pass him by while he is slaking his thirst.
In the first village the hot breathless streets are deserted, although he is aware of eyes looking down through ajar shutters on the iron balconies. The village is utterly silent, still feels fearful. He walks on and finds an old man working his olive grove. ‘Have you seen any Germans?’
‘I’ve seen none today, but some came through last night, and there were many explosions up the valley. The bridge just up the road is broken. Everyone is hoping they’re gone, but there’s a great fear that they might come back. It’s a dangerous day. May it soon be over. Most people are hiding indoors until the Allies come, just in case, but I’m too old to be afraid. Where are you going?’
‘To find the English army.’
‘May God go with you.’
He takes his leave and walks on again. Such a simple man, he thinks, working his soil while armies clash. So long as he is left in peace he cares not for politics or who is in power. To a traveller, a stranger, he gives his blessing. How many people like this has he met since his escape from the prison camp? Hundreds? And how many not like him? So few. They deserve a fair society, just as the Golvis and the partisans had said. But would it come?
–
After two hours, three hours, there is still no sign of the coming army. Haven’t they yet realised that the Germans are gone? Having set off at pace expecting a short march, his energy is fading from a trek that is never on the level, always climbing or descending as the road falls in and out of gullies, over small ridges, turns back on itself to take the grade. The sun is at noon. Its heat and its light are reflecting off the towering limestone walls of the valley, the white stones of the road. Lizards scuttle through the parched verges as he passes. Above him crows are circling, ahead of him swallows swoop for flies on the road, flutter and swerve away again to regain height. The motion and the heat are dizzying him. Every pore in his body is exuding sweat, his eyes are stinging from his perspiration’s salt.
He comes to an oak copse that flanks the road and stops to rest in the precious shade beneath a tree. Even the copse is oppressive. There is still no breeze. The sun’s glare is reflected by the flinty topsides of the leaves across the road. He leans back against the trunk and closes his eyes. The flies come in to lick his sweat as he tries to think of what awaits him when the walk is done.
‘I call myself Roberto DiGiovanni. Am captain in…’ Captain in an English regiment. What does that mean? It is so long since he was one. He tries to picture it: uniform, salutes, but what is the rest? What rules, what protocol await him? Will he remember them? What will life be like in that strange new country - no, that old country, that forgotten old country? It is only nine months since he was in the prison camp, an English mannered man, six months since he and Mike were keeping their Englishness going, yet now that culture frightens him. He still feels Roberto DiGiovanni. He has Roberto DiGiovanni’s memories, not the English captain’s ones. Try as he will to picture what it will be like when he meets his army, then when he gets home, all he can picture is the scenes in Sannessuno this morning, the culmination of all the scenes of the last few months, the hunger, the cold, the threats of the German patrols and the Allies’ planes, the joy of everyone in the village knowing at last that the great fear was gone.
But the joy of liberty had in minutes become the pain of parting. Every face of farewell crosses the backs of his eyelids. Lastly Isabella’s, her blush, her inability to look into his eyes, her burying her face in his chest. And her words: ‘…your English fiancee…’ She had never mentioned it before. Yet Natale had asked if there was one the first time they’d met. English fiancee. When did he last think of her? Months. England had become a concept, not a real place steeped with memories and people.
Hearing again Isabella’s last words he notices their tone: the envy in her voice, almost a sense of betrayal. Yes, Roberto, you are going back to a different community, unlike ours, a rich one, where you will find friends who make us seem like peasants, and a different woman, a better helpmate in your different society.
He remembers all those times that he had heard her called a whore and never spoken in her defence. He had almost blushed when Salvatore had asked if he was in love with her. He remembers Elvira accusing her of blushing once. It had seemed just badinage then, in the days when he was concentrating on survival; but had he been cavalier towards her, knowing her feelings, accepting the food that came with them? And when he saw her in the pool, was it guilt that he had taken advantage of her generosity that drove his compassion? He remembers her soft eyes moistening as she nursed him after his frost-bitten walk from the gorge. He thinks ahead to her old age, a spinster with no children or grandchildren, as scraggy as she was in the pool but now from life’s exhaustion, and all from risking her reputation to feed her family and their English friend. Would that be her fate? Surely when all was understood she would be forgiven, but not if the village didn’t chan
ge and Elvira’s brave new world did not come. That body in the pool flashes hauntingly again. Once more he finds himself close to sobbing at the thought, but she is not here to look up at the sound through her draping wet forelock. Will he see her again?
Concentrate. Concentrate. Today is the day every effort has been building up to, the day which made every hardship and danger worthwhile to endure. Today is the day you find the English army, but it will still be dangerous: there could still be mines on the road, other dangers. Stay alert, compose yourself, concentrate on what has to be done. You could still get yourself killed if you don’t. Keep moving despite your exhaustion. There is food and sleep at the journey’s end.
He rises to his feet to walk on again, forcing his stiffened legs to work. The road and fields are still deserted, as if the world is suspended in a state of frightened disbelief that its deliverance is at hand. How many times since he escaped from the prison camp has he dreamed of this day, of all that it would mean, of how he would feel? Yet today, this hot summer day when there are no Germans left to fear, he feels nothing, no hope for the future, no joy. It is as if these emotions too have been lost, as if he cannot get them back. What will he feel when he meets the English army? He cannot tell. He feels dizzy, his head clasped in the fist of the sun, his temples aching, his mouth dry, sweat welling in his eyebrows and then bursting down into his eyes. Birds, butterflies, bees, fly in and out of his gaze fixed on the road ahead, its blanched stones dazzling him. His legs have to be forced to continue the half-conscious walk. He wonders if his wasted muscles, his shrivelled stomach, will ever grow again. He is walking automatically up the road funnelled by its shimmering mountain-sides to the pass into his new life as the English captain, where he will find he knows not what or why.
The heady silence is broken by a peal of church bells a few miles up the valley, and then a few minutes later another, in a different tone, nearer. He lifts his eyes from the road up to the hazy pass in the mountains ahead.
Is this it?
47
Coming towards him at speed is a billowing white cloud, the dust of a single small vehicle stirring up the road. It cannot be German. Their cars have all passed through if they’ve blown the bridges. Maybe a scout car from the English? He stays by the side of the road, leaning on his peasant stick, just in case he is wrong, ready to dive into the ditch. The vehicle slows down and disappears to take the hairpin bends in and out of the gully just ahead of him. He is sure he has seen a English helmet on the driver, a different one - perhaps American? - in the back seat of the open car. He has never seen a vehicle like it before, all square lines with high mudguards. Not a German vehicle. He had heard of something called a jeep in the prison camp. Is this a jeep?
He hears its engine race up out of the gully and then, as it comes back into sight, he sees the vertical bars of its radiator grill rise over the brow and onto his road. He throws away his stick and stands in front of it, waving his arms, oblivious to braking distances. The driver slams on his brakes, skates on the loose stones to a halt a yard short of him, assumes he is Italian and shouts a tirade of English obscenities at him.
‘But I’m English. I’m an army officer.’
The driver turns to the man behind him, the one in a different helmet. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘He says he’s an English army officer.’
‘And I’m the queen of Sheba.’
‘That’s what he says.’
‘Then why’s he talking I-tie?’
The captain is confused. He struggles for his English. Why do his words come out Italian? ‘I’m an English army officer, an escaped prisoner-of-war. I’ve been fighting with the partisans.’
The English officer in the front seat, a man with two pips on his shoulders, a lieutenant, becomes impatient. ‘Get him out of the way. We’ve got to find out how far Jerry has retreated and report back to base. We can’t hang around here with this I-tie madman.’
The American stops him. ‘He says he’s an escaped prisoner-of-war, been fighting with the partisans.’
‘God! The things some of these people will come up with to get a meal. Ask him to show us his tags.’
‘Where are your tags?’
‘Tags?’
The American opens his shirt to show his tags.
‘The Germans took them when they captured me. Then I escaped again.’
The American translates his words into English. The lieutenant swears. The American asks for more time. If the man is a partisan - his red scarf suggests he is - then he may have news on the German dispositions ahead of them. He turns to him: ‘So you’re a partisan, then. Where from?’
‘We’ve been based on a mountain above Sannessuno. That’s where the band is now, securing the village, rounding up German stragglers. I’ve just come from there. We tried to stop the Germans blowing up the bridge, but it’s gone. They’ve got temporary field artillery positions on the ridge overlooking the village, but that’s just to cover their engineers doing the demolition work the partisans have been fighting to stop.’
‘What do you mean? Temporary?’
‘They’re just by the side of the road. Not even dug in. They’re not even defending the ridge. They must be falling back to the Gran Sasso at least. They must be just about to withdraw from Rome as well.’
‘That happened days ago. Don’t you listen to the radio?’
‘We’ve had no electricity for nearly six months. Our bombers knocked out the power stations in January.’
‘What’s going on, sergeant? He’s held us up for long enough.’
‘Give me a bit longer, sir, this guy could just be for real.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘I’m not. The way he’s describing the way the Germans are falling back he’s sure no peasant. He’s an officer at least, maybe Italian, but maybe not. He referred to “our” bombers raiding Sannessuno in January.’
‘Then why isn’t he speaking English?’
‘Christ knows how many men have walked through our lines in the last few months unable to speak English. How many times have our sentries had to say “sorry, sir” and salute them when they’ve found some English words? Give him some time. My parents are immigrants from this area. He’s not really like their friends.
‘And he says the Germans have retreated far beyond the other side of the river, at least back to the Gran Sasso. And he says his partisans have captured some of them. If he’s right we’ve made more than a hundred miles today. We could be in Florence in a week. I reckon we should take him at his word and drive him back to Sannessuno. We’ll soon find out if he’s lying when we get there. And if he’s not…’
‘All right, sergeant, all right. Anything to get us bloody moving again.’
So he gets into the jeep, rejected by his own, only believed, perhaps, by the American. In a motor vehicle again, a free man again. The events of the past nine months race through his mind, but the words to describe them are all Italian. The American questions him again and again, teasing out the details of his rank, his regiment, his escape from the prison camp and the events of his life in Sannessuno, translating them all from Italian to English for the benefit of the lieutenant commanding the jeep. The officer listens with disbelief to the story of a man who cannot speak a word of English, yet claims to be an officer in a famous county regiment, who outranks him; and in turn the man in the communist scarf listens with incomprehension to the English words into which what he has said is being translated.
He turns away, distractedly looks out of the side of the jeep, stops listening to the babel the soldiers speak. The scenery too is suddenly strange, unfamiliar when seen in the fast-moving parallax that turns miles into minutes.
By now the peasants know the Germans have gone for good. The church bells have told them so. All spring the women had worked with the old men in the fields, struggling to establish the soil and crops for a good harvest to see them through next winter while the young men hid from sight. Now, within minutes, the
ir sons have emerged from hiding and are at their shoulders in the fields, weeding, attending to the vines in their trailed rows, praying the work is not being done too late to save the crops. In one morning normal life has been restored to the farmers of the valley. A change of rulers means no more than they can get back to proper work on their land. No joy, no lining the road with bunting for their liberators. Just relief that life is back to normal. They can ignore an army vehicle for the first time in years.
And they are ignoring him, a conqueror rather than someone who has been striving with them. In minutes he has ceased to be part of their community, is insulated from it by his twentieth century vehicle and its foreigners in uniform. Yet he does not feel English again, more a stateless refugee. English, English, think English.
‘Captain Roberto Johnson, Wessex Light Infantry’ he says, turning back to face the officer. He takes out his identity card: ‘DiGiovanni, Italian Johnson.’
–
It cannot last. The lieutenant scrambles questions at him and he lapses back into Italian. ‘After the next village we go straight down into the main valley.’ It is strange to go down into the valley without fear of the Germans. It looks different. The trees look normal, but the bombed out buildings are now abnormal, and the damaged bridge over a stream that he forded that morning is suddenly an obstacle.
The sergeant gets out of the jeep, goes into the fields and commandeers some young men to carry their vehicle over the stream as the soldiers look on. Another forced labour gang he thinks as he watches them struggle with their load, afraid to be different when his story is so disbelieved.
–
There are already uniformed men in Sannessuno when their jeep arrives. British army uniforms with Italian flashes on their shoulders. Italian men. ‘Who are these?’ he asks and the lieutenant’s translated reply is ‘God knows.’
They are at the end of a narrow lane leading into the village square, a rectangle of cobbles surrounded by shattered buildings, overlooked by the main church. Red buntings are everywhere, a constant flash of colour in the khaki mass of stone rubble and uniforms. The villagers are looking on in silence. On one side of the square stand the well-fed men in British uniforms, buttoned, shaven, their uniforms immaculate, scowling in disbelief that they are not being hailed as liberators by their countrymen. On the other side are the red-scarved partisans, scrawny, shabby, hirsute, many with makeshift bandages for their wounds of the day, tense, their hands holding their guns in readiness to raise and fire them.