* * *
—
He sees no sign of life around him at any point that night, except for the typical little rodents and nocturnal birds he’s grown accustomed to over the last few weeks; he can’t get free of the chain, which is around his right wrist and linked to a metal clamp meant for animals that is hammered deep into the wooden floor; if he had the right tools he could pull out the clamp, but the tools, which he discovers at one end of what appears to be a shed, are out of his reach.
* * *
—
He hears a train passing, not very far from him; it could be a train carrying armaments, he says to himself at some point in the night: it had been some time since he’d heard a train.
* * *
—
He must have fallen asleep, because he feels himself waking up when he hears noises at the shed’s door; when it opens, the light that enters blinds him for a moment, despite which it’s clear that the sun isn’t high yet. A man approaches him and places a plate of soup at his feet; he is tall and wears metal-framed glasses whose temples look like they’ve been twisted many times; as he stands up, the man coughs and observes him from a seemingly great height. “Thanks for this and for fixing my leg,” he mumbles. The other man doesn’t respond; when the man on the blanket finishes the soup, he takes it from him and heads toward the door. “Do you speak Italian? Sprechen Sie Italienisch?” asks the injured man; but the other man has already left.
* * *
—
He tries not to think. He avoids it. He learns once more the meaning of the expression “killing time.” He mostly sleeps, but he doesn’t remember a single one of his dreams, if he has any.
* * *
—
The man returns at dusk with more soup and a piece of bread, which he places beside him; this time, as he does, he leans over to check on his leg injury and then another bandage on his head that the wounded man hadn’t noticed before: he nods in both cases, and the prone man has the opportunity to get a closer look at him. “My name is Francesco Linden,” he says. “Do you speak Italian?” The other man doesn’t respond. “Wie heißen Sie?” asks Linden. The man shakes his head, without making eye contact. “My name is Luca Borrello,” he finally responds. Linden begins to interrogate him: “Where am I? Why am I chained up? Where are my belongings?” he asks, but Borrello has already left the shed. By his belongings, of course, he is referring to the rifle he used as a crutch during his descent along the ravine that he was carrying when he lost consciousness, but he doesn’t think that requires explanation.
* * *
—
The clamp is nailed decisively into the wooden floor and impossible to rip out: if Linden had some sort of metal implement he could try to chip away at the wood around it to loosen it, but there is nothing in reach. The night is particularly cold, and Linden hears Borrello coming and going from the shed, dragging objects and sometimes stopping to cough violently. He also hears the train, but that’s less worrying to him.
* * *
—
He doesn’t hear anything throughout the course of the following day, and thinks Borrello has abandoned him; he feels horribly hungry and thirsty, and afraid when an animal—a boar or a dog, he can’t be sure—wanders around the shed and tries to get inside by destroying one of the door planks: just as the animal is about to burst through, it gives up, for some reason, and runs off.
* * *
—
Borrello returns at night. When he comes in he doesn’t notice the damage to the lower part of the door and heads directly over to Linden; he comes in empty-handed except for an object Linden can’t see, and circles him: a moment later, Linden hears the chains fall onto the wooden floor. “You could freeze to death if I leave you here. It’s going to be very cold tonight,” Borrello says to him, and then asks if he thinks he can stand. Linden nods and the other man helps him up. They walk out through the shed door with Borrello holding Linden up so he doesn’t lose his balance, and they’re greeted by a gust of freezing air: in it float some stars that Linden is familiar with, yet they surprise him as if he were seeing them for the first time. Neither of the two men stops to contemplate them, however: they quickly enter the building located a few yards from the shed, the one Linden saw from the top of the ravine a few days earlier. Inside it, Linden can only make out a bed, a larder, a small table with a few papers on it, and two chairs. Someone created a makeshift mattress out of blankets beside the bed, and next to that there is a woodstove. “You’ll sleep here,” orders Borrello, pointing to the blankets; when Linden lies down on them, Borrello takes a rope and ties his hands. Linden shoots him a questioning look, but the other man doesn’t seem to notice. Linden notices that Borrello always looks at the ground when they are together; when he finishes tying him up, he hands him a spoon and a plate of cornmeal or polenta with bits of chestnuts and a few strands of meat. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you anything better,” he says.
* * *
—
Borrello throws some more wood onto the fire and turns off the kerosene lamp before removing his shoes and getting into bed with his clothes still on, including his jacket. Linden realized a moment earlier that the other man had given him all the blankets he had and sleeps only covered by a sheet. Even though he is used to sleeping next to other men, in the improvised shelters thrown together by the members of the Resistance or the buildings they happen upon, that night Linden can’t do it. Neither can Borrello, bothered by his virulent cough and the other man’s proximity. Not much time has passed before Linden understands that the chains in the shed and the ropes that night mean that Borrello is afraid of him, and he wonders why; up until that point, he’d thought it was the other way around. “The planks on the shed door are loose, I can fix them if you want: I’m a carpenter,” he says finally, breaking the silence. But Borrello doesn’t respond.
* * *
—
When he wakes up, he sees Borrello cutting a piece of bread with a knife he puts away in his pocket: the air in the room smells of coffee, although only weakly; the coffee he is served also seems weak, but it’s been so long since Linden’s had any that he finds it delicious. “What is your job?” he asks, but Borrello doesn’t answer. “What do you need to fix the door?” Borrello asks instead. Linden thinks for a moment. “A hammer, nails, some wire, some planks,” he says. Borrello nods: when Linden’s finished his coffee, Borrello refills the cup and leaves, locking the door behind him.
* * *
—
Linden sits up with difficulty and opens the larder. He expects to find something he can use as a weapon or, at least, something that will allow him to get out of the ropes, but all he finds are a couple of pewter mugs and books, a lot of books. Some of them are by fascist writers whom Linden’s never read but has heard about or read about in the press, authors that he and his comrades would kill if they had the chance, along with their readers.
* * *
—
Borrello opens the door and helps him stand up; when they’re outside, Linden sees that the other man has taken the door off the shed and placed it on two sawhorses in front of the entrance, where the sun shines directly but is still just warm; on top of the door he’s placed some nails and some wire; there are some new wooden planks leaning against the outer wall of the building. There was a frost overnight. Borrello tells him, “You’ll work better in the sun,” and moves a few steps away, but Linden calls him over and shows him his wrists. Borrello comes back and unties him; then Linden leans over and takes a long sniff of the wood, as if that aroma could transport him, for a brief instant, back home.
* * *
—
Earlier he saw something that surprised him and it comes back to him then, a handkerchief on Borrello’s bed covered in mucus and blood.
* * *
—
Despite the sun not
being very high in the sky yet, Linden starts to sweat a little once he’s begun; some time later the effort of standing and working on the door makes him feel like he is going to lose consciousness: he drops the hammer and leans against the wall of the shed; a minute later he feels himself slipping toward the ground.
* * *
—
Borrello comes out of the house when he notices the hammering sounds have stopped. He sees Linden laid out, and approaches and picks him up. Linden leans against his shoulder and together they enter the shed, where Borrello has him lie down on the blanket: he studies the bandages on his head for a moment and then the one on his leg, which has gotten muddy. “Are you going to change it?” asks Linden. Borrello shakes his head no. “We don’t have many bandages,” he replies. When he stands, Linden looks up at him from the blanket the way he had the first time. Borrello turns and observes the hole where the door had been. “What could have broken it?” he asks. “I don’t know. An animal, maybe,” responds Linden. Borrello leaves the shed and the other man hears him working on the door, stopping occasionally to cough violently. At some point Linden falls asleep.
* * *
—
He wakes up when he hears Borrello trying to fit the shed door onto its hinges; he gets up with difficulty and helps him put it in place. Then they both stare at the door, one on either side. From outside Borrello says: “Take it easy. It’s normal to feel faint.” Linden nods, and only later realizes that Borrello couldn’t have possibly seen the gesture.
* * *
—
In the shed there are some tools. Linden weighs them in his hands and decides he’ll use them when he’s stronger, if the other man doesn’t turn him in first: he’s heard stories of people who buy the protection of the authorities by handing over a member of the Resistance, usually a relative; in the valleys, half of Italy has been turning in the other half, and—Linden figures—things will only get worse as the Italians are forced to adopt one position or the other. An awl seems ideal for his purposes: he just has to sharpen it in secret, without the other man realizing; and then come up with a way to reunite with his group in the mountains, if his group still exists and he can figure out where they are. It can’t be that difficult, he tells himself: the Germans pulled it off handily, for example.
* * *
—
Borrello helps him out of the shed; he takes him behind the house, where he’s set up two chairs facing each other: he sits him in one and lifts his broken leg onto the other; then he leaves and comes back with two plates of boiled cabbage and potato soup. He hands Linden a spoon and sits down to eat by his right side, kneeling against one of the walls. They eat in silence, Borrello coughing only gently and without choking. Then he stands up, gathers the plates and spoons, and goes back into the house for coffee; when he gives him the pewter mug, Linden observes his hands. “How long have you lived here?” he asks him. “You’re not a peasant.” Borrello, who is again kneeling by Linden’s right side, is slow to answer. “I’ve been living here for a few years. I found the property abandoned and I’ve been trying to restore it.” Linden notices or thinks he notices that the other man is lying to him, but he can’t imagine what about. Borrello’s next answer is even slower in coming. “I used to be a writer,” he finally says. Linden is immediately intrigued. “What’s in the shed doesn’t look like the work of a writer,” he says. Borrello looks at him with curiosity for the first time. “What does it look like then?” he asks. “I don’t know,” stammers Linden. “Like paper objects. Drafts. Blueprints for buildings. Nightmares. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” Borrello nods. “Nightmares,” he muses to himself, and Linden doesn’t sense disdain for his comment but rather some satisfaction in Borrello’s voice, something close to pride.
* * *
—
That afternoon they see the dog for the first time: it has some tufts of white fur that are particularly visible behind the bunches of weeds where it is trying to hide, but its coat is almost entirely gray; it has long legs with haunches that must have once been strong, although now the animal is squalid. Borrello and Linden watch it for a long time; when the breeze changes direction and stops blowing at their backs, they can hear the animal’s whimpering from the edge of the property. Sometimes it remains lying down and sometimes it wanders along a line dividing Borrello’s property from the others, which only the animal is still able to recognize. The dog seems to vacillate between a desire to come closer and a fear of doing so, and Linden is about to make that observation out loud but then fears that perhaps the other man will think it’s improper to attribute desires and fears to an animal, so he stays quiet. Borrello is the writer, he thinks; he knows how to put these things into words. But he also thinks the writer doesn’t have all the words: for example, he doesn’t know what words they used to communicate up there, in the mountains, nor the words employed in the trial that took place days earlier and cost a man his life and those up in the mountains a disappointment about the integrity of the “Resistance” and later, when the Germans found them, in the middle of the night, also cost them their lives. If the other man knew those words, thinks Linden, he would be, like him, a slave to them. At nightfall the dog trots off toward the mountains.
* * *
—
At night they watch the trail of sparks the train leaves behind in the valley, a trail that dies out immediately but remains recorded on the retina awhile longer: if Linden closes his eyes, he sees the train at one end of the darkness behind his eyelids; when he opens them, the train has moved a few millimeters. “They adapted the gasoline engines to run on wood,” observes Borrello, bringing his handkerchief to his lips. “It may be carrying weapons,” says Linden after a moment, but Borrello shakes his head. “It’s moving too fast. It might be transporting refugees from the south, or perhaps from Rome. A lot of people will try to cross into Switzerland,” he says. “Why don’t they band together?” The question arises naturally on Linden’s lips, without his being able to control it. “There’s a new government in Salò. Isn’t that what you and your German allies wanted?” Borrello doesn’t answer right away. “What’s it like up there, in the mountains?” he asks finally, but Linden doesn’t say a word.
* * *
—
Borrello helps him into the house, but ties up his hands before turning off the lamp. In the darkness, Linden lets his thoughts wander again; inevitably, he wonders once more who could have betrayed them, and he reviews the moments of the trial—which was very short, actually—and who spoke and the testimonies of those who most decisively maintained the guilt of the accused man, a baker from Aosta who had joined up with them a few weeks before. Perhaps one of them did it to cover up their responsibility, or maybe knowing that blaming a newcomer would be easier and would involve fewer drawbacks than blaming one of the other fifteen men in the group who, more or less around the same period, had left Milan and Turin to meet in the mountains, all for very different reasons whose differences history will erase in a few years’ time. But then Borrello’s breathing, and the sudden violent coughing that interrupts it again and again, suspends those thoughts.
* * *
—
The next day Borrello locks him in the shed with some coffee and a bit of bread and says he’ll be back that afternoon. Linden hears him leave and then struggles to stand up and head over to the place where he hid the awl the day before: he starts sharpening it against the edge of a shovel he holds between his knees; soon he feels exhausted and stops; he lets his gaze wander around the shed, pausing to observe the swirls drawn by the dust in the air where some light slips between the wall planks. Despite it being October, according to Linden’s calculations, the cold is only unbearable at night. During the day the air is pleasant and the sunlight warming until the sun drops behind the mountains, which, from the house at the foot of the ravine, give the impression of a perfectly vertical wall. Shots are h
eard somewhere, still very far away. Linden goes over to the table and, almost distractedly, as if it were inevitable, starts to read.
Don't Shed Your Tears for Anyone Who Lives on These Streets Page 18