by John Smolens
She turned around and shook her head. “You in flannel, I don’t know. Just don’t open your mouth because that accent will give you away.” She stepped closer and helped me pull on the jacket. “What are you going to do?”
“Anything but return to that camp. I go back, they’ll kill me.”
“This Commander Dalrymple said you could be shot if they find you’re on the run, but if you give yourself up you’ll come to no harm.” She pulled the collar of the jacket tight around my neck. “We don’t kill prisoners, he said.”
“They don’t have any idea what goes on in that place. It’s the Germans. They’ve already tried and sentenced me to death.”
Chiara could not stay long but promised to come back soon. The next morning I looked through the basement and found a folding lounge chair and some wool blankets that would be more comfortable to sleep on than the dining room floor. There was also a box of candles. I covered up the one small window in the stone foundation so that I might have some light. It was safer, I decided, to stay in the basement.
Late afternoon I was sorting through the tools when a car pulled into the driveway. I took a crowbar off the pegboard and hid in the darkest corner, behind the water heater. Overhead I heard two car doors slam, and then footsteps as they entered the house. It was two men, and though I couldn’t understand everything they said, I soon realized that it was some kind of town official—perhaps a fire inspector—and an insurance agent. They spent a good deal of time in the kitchen and determined that the fire had started on the stove.
When the basement door swung open, an oblong of light illuminated the stairs and I could see the shadow of one of the men in the doorway. “What they ought to do with this place is knock it down,” he said. “Looks like the basement wasn’t harmed. They can build a new house on the old foundation.”
The other man, who from the sound of his footsteps was the heavier of the two, came over to the basement door. He was shorter, fatter, and he wore a fedora. “The home office isn’t going to like that, Lou, us paying these folks to build a brand new house in place of this dump.”
“You’re telling me the Imlachs’ insurance wasn’t paid up?”
“No, they’re covered.” The man in the fedora paused to light a cigarette. “We got to pay them something, but we don’t want to lose our shirts in the deal. Next thing you know, other folks are getting ideas about burning down their houses.”
“Most people up here aren’t like that, Charlie.”
Charlie moved away from the basement door, the kitchen floor creaking beneath his weight. “To knock this place down and build new would cost five, maybe even six thousand. I’d like to see us settle with them to rebuild this place, come in at two or three, tops. It just takes a little persuasion, Lou.”
“And my cut?”
“Oh, 10 percent.”
Lou turned in the doorway but didn’t say anything.
“All I got to do is toy around with the stove here,” Charlie said. “Make it look like it might have been intentional. That’s all it’ll take to convince ’em to settle. Keeps it quiet. The Imlachs don’t want people thinking they’re trying to pull some insurance scam.”
“Seven hundred,” Lou said.
“That’s a little steep—I’ll have to talk with my boss.”
“You do that then.” Lou walked across the kitchen and opened the door to the driveway. “And you do what you have to do later, when I’m not around. Then after New Year’s we have a little talk with the Imlachs and tie this thing up.”
Lou left the house, but Charlie remained in the kitchen a moment longer. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs a few times, until he dropped the cigarette on the floor and crushed it out with his shoe. I was tempted to shout up the stairs, Why bother?
After dark Chiara returned with a pail of water, which we brought down to the basement. She unzipped her coat and from inside removed a bottle of Chianti. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” she said, taking a corkscrew from her pocket. “I should only stay for a few minutes. Our neighbors are coming over to listen to Jack Benny.”
As I opened the bottle, I said, “Any word about Glenn Miller?”
“No. Apparently, he was flying to France where his band was going to give a concert for the troops. They believe his plane might have gone down in the English Channel, but they’re not sure, or they’re not saying. Planes go missing and then show up.”
I filled a coffee cup I had found on the workbench and handed it to her. “Here’s to men that go missing.”
We drank from the same cup—Chianti, good, warm Chianti—until she put her arms around my shoulders and buried her face in my neck. “Candlelight, wine. I’ll have to try and steal away long enough to—” She kissed me, and this time it wasn’t rushed like in the cloakroom at the parish hall. Everything was slow, and we held each other tighter, until finally I pulled away.
“Listen, Chiara.”
Again, she pressed her face into my neck. “Don’t say it. Don’t say anything.”
“I’m an escaped prisoner. Of war. You offering me any assistance, it’s—do you know who Gordie Stephan is?” She shook her head, her cheek warm against my skin. “He’s an American. Lived in Detroit. He aided a POW and they convicted him of treason.”
She pulled her head away. I looked at her face in the glow of the single candle, and I knew she had already been thinking about the consequences of what we were doing. “I don’t know what has happened to me. I move to this sleepy little town with my mother because a friend of my mother’s has a house we can have cheap, and I make the best of it. One day I’m in the grocery store and I see this man wearing this tattered uniform, and for some reason it frightens me. But I keep thinking about him, and I don’t know why, though it occurs to me that it has something to do with the fact that he is off-limits—inaccessible, forbidden.” She stepped away from me and picked up the coffee cup of wine, which was sitting on the workbench. “And then this strange thing happens—our neighbor’s house goes up in flames. And he comes running out of the house, carrying that baby in his arms.”
“We’re at war, Chiara.”
“We are not at war,” she said, coming toward me again. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded.
“It doesn’t matter. If this is treason, hang me.”
She kissed me then, our mouths tasting of warm Chianti.
I was sound asleep when I heard the kitchen door open. It was the middle of the night, and I remained still under the blankets on the lounge chair in the basement. No car had pulled into the driveway this time, but I was certain that it was Charlie’s heavy step overhead. He had a flashlight, and its beam sent a shifting oblong of light down the basement stairs. There was the sound of metal, and then a scraping on the floor as he moved the stove. The silence that followed was occasionally broken by a tiny snapping noise as wires were being cut. It took a few minutes, and then Charlie got to his feet, shoved the stove back in place, and left the house.
10.
In the morning I found a road atlas with a map of Michigan. Detroit was more than five hundred miles away. In order to get there, you had to drive east, cross the Straits of Mackinac at a place called St. Ignace, and then go south to the base of the palm of the Lower Peninsula. I considered going west and then south through Wisconsin to Chicago, but I decided I should stay in Michigan for what I realized were irrational reasons: it was peninsulas, two of them, and there were villages named after saints. I had at least seen Detroit, if only briefly from a train, and I knew someone there.
I couldn’t stay in that house another day. There was plenty of food, and I had even located the water main—but I was afraid to turn it on, fearing that somehow the authorities would discover that the water line had been tampered with, leading them to investigate the house. I needed to keep moving. It would be better for Chiara if I just disappeared. I told myself that eventually I would write and tell her that I had left because I loved her, and hoped that someday w
e would be together again. But I didn’t believe that would happen. I didn’t really expect to get out of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, let alone to Detroit.
After dark, she didn’t come to the house. I was distraught, but also relieved. I suspected that she had come to her senses, or that her mother had got the truth out of her, and she, too, realized how dangerous it was to be involved with me. I imagined that the police, or even Commander Dalrymple, had returned and brutally interrogated Chiara—and that at any moment a team of prison guards would break into the house and haul me back to Camp Au Train. So I kept telling myself it was time to leave. I should walk out of the house while it was dark, go a few blocks down to the main street, and stick my thumb out. Get a lift from a salesman or a truck driver. Somehow get to Detroit. Five hundred miles. I wasn’t sure exactly what a mile was—only that it was longer than a kilometer. The idea of America, of its size, was much too big for me to comprehend. The entire Italian peninsula would fit in the state of Michigan. It seemed unfair.
Instead of leaving, I finished the bottle of Chianti and fell asleep.
Until I heard shuffling footsteps overhead. I could also hear rain and wind against the foundation of the house. From the top of the basement stairs, Mrs. Frangiapani said, “Dov´è sei?”
“Yes, down here,” I said.
“Well, you don’t expect me to climb those stairs, do you? Come up here.” She called me ragazzino—little boy. I got out of the folding lounge chair and went to the bottom of the stairs. There was daylight behind her, so I couldn’t see her face very clearly. Her black raincoat was drenched. “Hurry,” she said angrily.
I started up the stairs, but then heard the sound of a car pull into the driveway, and I stopped. “That’s the fire inspector,” I said. “He and the insurance man have done something to the stove. They’re going to accuse the Imlachs of starting the fire.”
“On purpose?”
“Yes. Then to keep it all quiet, they’ll offer them less money to rebuild the house. The fire inspector gets a payoff, and the insurance company—”
Outside a car door slammed, and then another. Mrs. Frangiapani raised her hand, made a pushing motion toward me, and I went back down into the basement and stepped out of view from the top of the stairs. I didn’t bother hiding behind the hot water heater as before, because if anyone came down into the basement they would immediately see that someone had been living there.
The kitchen door opened and George Imlach said, “Mrs. Frangiapani?”
The fire inspector, Lou, said, “Ma’am, this house is unsafe and you’re not supposed—”
“She’s our neighbor,” George said. He couldn’t have been much older than me, mid-twenties. His voice was soft, timid, and he’d never see through Charlie and Lou’s scheme. I remembered him at the church, taking instructions from his wife Dorothy, holding the baby during the Mass. I remember envying him, his freedom, his family—but not envying the fact that his life seemed so predetermined.
“It’s really not safe for you to be here, Ma’am,” Lou said. “And I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”
“I know what you’re up to,” she said. “George, he’s going to tell you about the stove—”
“We are here on official business,” Lou said. “I’m asking you to leave at once.”
“Or what?” she said. He didn’t answer.
“What about the stove?” George asked.
“This fire inspector and your insurance man,” she said, “they’re in it together.”
“Now that’s enough,” Lou said.
“In what together?” George asked.
“All right,” Lou said, nearly shouting. “Let’s go. I’m getting the police over here.”
“You do that,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “Show them the stove. George, they did something to the stove so it looks like you started the fire on purpose.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Lou said. “You don’t know anything.”
“I don’t understand,” George said. “Why would I do that?”
I went to the bottom of the stairs and said, “The wiring, George. They did something to the wiring on that stove.”
As I climbed the stairs, Mrs. Frangiapani swore repeatedly in Italian. Lou and George watched me step into the kitchen, stunned.
“They’re going to make you take a lower settlement,” I said to George. “Two or three thousand instead of the six it would take to build a new house. They worked it out here in the kitchen, and your insurance man came over in the middle of the night and—”
“You’re that prisoner,” Lou said. “The one that they haven’t caught.”
He had the delight of a child on his face. He was incredulous, overcome with excitement. And then George punched him, his fist landing square on his jaw, and he dropped to the floor on his side. He didn’t move.
Now it was George who seemed incredulous, and he whispered, “I can’t believe I—”
Mrs. Frangiapani slapped his shoulder and shouted, “Bravo!”
George looked at me helplessly. I ignored him, and asked Mrs. Frangiapani in Italian, “They captured the other prisoner, the Russian?”
“Yes,” she said. “We heard about it last night from our neighbor who makes deliveries out there. He was brought back to camp, but then he had to be taken to the hospital in Marquette. He was beaten up—so bad they weren’t sure he was alive when they put him in the ambulance.”
“It wasn’t the guards,” I said.
“That’s what Chiara told me,” she said, and then she wagged a finger at me. “That girl can’t keep the truth from her mother. When she said that, I knew something was up, and I got it out of her.”
“What’s going to happen?” George asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “But there’s hope for you yet.” Taking me by the sleeve she pushed me toward the kitchen door. “Now you, you have to get a move on.”
George still seemed befuddled as he walked over to the stove. “They were going to cheat us? But I paid my insurance premiums on time.”
“You just stay, George,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “You just keep him here a little while. I’ll be back, and we’ll make sure Lou understands a thing or two about you and your premiums.” She opened the door and pushed me outside. “Andiamo!”
It was snowing, quite heavily. We started across the backyard toward her house, but then I stopped and ran back to the fire inspector’s car. I opened the driver’s side door, reached around the steering column, and found that the keys were in the ignition. I took them out, threw them in the bushes along the side of the house, and then ran across the yard after Mrs. Frangiapani. When we reached the driveway, Chiara opened the side door. We went into the kitchen, snow melting on the linoleum floor.
Chiara grabbed me by the front of my sweater. “What happened?”
Her mother was peeling off her wet overcoat. “You must go, quickly,” she said. “You take our car. You might have an hour’s head start.”
“Go?” Chiara said. “Go where?”
“Detroit,” I said.
“Detroit?” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “In this weather, you probably won’t make it to St. Ignace.” She sat down at the kitchen table, weary. “But you have to try. Steal another car, if you can.” Then she looked up at me. “Good God, you don’t even know the roads.”
“I studied at a map.”
Chiara went over to her mother and sat next to her. “I’m going with him.”
“No,” I said.
They stared at each other a long moment. Two women, mother and daughter. I wasn’t in the room.
“No, Chiara,” I said. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”
“I’m going,” she said to her mother. “You know I have to.” Mrs. Frangiapani looked away from her daughter, and for the first time I thought I saw fear in her eyes. “You and Papa did. You hid him and then you ran. Momma, you couldn’t help it either.”
“We ran—we ran all
the way here, to the United States,” Mrs. Frangiapani whispered.
Chiara stood up. “If I go we can make it to Detroit.”
“Signora, per favore,” I said. “Don’t let her do this. I should just give myself up.”
The old woman got to her feet slowly. She came across the kitchen and stared up at me. “I will go back to the Imlachs, and I will tell this fire inspector what he and this insurance man are in for. I don’t know if it’ll keep him from going to the police, but if he does, George and I’ll see that he loses his job. You will take the Ford. We just filled the gas tank today.” She turned to Chiara and said, “You would not believe George. He will make a good husband yet.” Raising her fist and gently tapping my jaw, she said, “One punch!”
There was a moment then, the three of us standing in the kitchen and nothing happening. It seemed nothing could ever happen, and I wished that time would stop. The three of us there, listening to the snow pelt the kitchen windows.
It was the one thing we had in our favor, the snow. At times it was so heavy that there were few cars and trucks on the roads. We drove on through the snow, and at times we couldn’t do better than twenty miles an hour. Little was said those first hours. We were hypnotized by the rhythm of the windshield wipers, and we were both in shock over what we had done.
I had never been in love before, not like this. I wondered if all of this would be happening if I hadn’t fallen in love with Chiara. Escaping from Camp Au Train was a matter of survival, but I had found my way through the woods to Munising because of Chiara. At moments in those first few hours of freedom, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t live long, that what I was doing would certainly end in death. I would either be killed by a bullet from some American law officer or, if I were returned to the camp, I’d be beaten to death by Vogel’s goons. I hoped it would be the former—a clean shot and immediate death. But the belief that my life was about to end drove this other thing, this desire to love, which was as strong as the desire to survive. Perhaps it was even stronger, I don’t know.