Heritage

by Judy Nunn

  ‘I like Maureen,’ Pietro continued, ‘she is nice. And Maureen, she say to Violetta that she must be patient. She tell me too, the second time I meet her. I must “bide my time”, is what Maureen tell me. She say I must trust her. She say she will help “when the time is right”. What that does mean, Lucky? When the time is right?’

  ‘It means that it’s sound advice, and that you must trust her.’ Lucky tossed the dregs from his tin mug out onto the snow as he stood.

  ‘You think so, yes?’ Pietro looked up in deadly earnest; Lucky’s every word was of the utmost importance to him.

  ‘Yes, I certainly do. Maureen sounds like a very wise woman.’

  ‘This is good.’ Pietro rose to his feet, nodding thoughtfully. He felt happier knowing that Lucky approved of Maureen’s advice.

  Breathing a thankful sigh of relief and blessing Violet’s Auntie Maureen, Lucky disappeared into the tunnel with Karl, his second-in-charge.

  Karl Heffner, an Austrian in his mid-thirties, was the most experienced miner on the team, having recently arrived from Europe where, since the war, he’d been working on the alpine railway tunnels in his home country. The two men would ‘bar down’ the freshly exposed tunnel ceiling, checking for any weakness that could result in a cave-in, and freeing the loose rocks so the men were not at risk from falling debris.

  Pietro stood by the skips at the spoil dump with the rest of the team, waiting to be given the go ahead. The others were grabbing a final smoke, but Pietro was still lost in his thoughts. Lucky’s words had been exactly the same as Violetta’s.

  ‘Auntie Maureen is wise, Pietro,’ Violetta had said. ‘We must trust her.’

  He’d wanted to trust Maureen; she had been very nice to him.

  ‘Hello, Pietro, I’m Maureen, I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she’d said on their first meeting.

  She was a strong, capable woman in her mid to late forties. Thickset, with iron-grey hair, she had once been handsome, but she no longer cared about appearances, opting instead for practicality and comfort.

  ‘Auntie Maureen is a career woman,’ Violet had told him in private. ‘She left home when she was eighteen, the same age as me, and she studied nursing at Sydney Hospital.’

  Violet had wanted Pietro to know as much as possible about her Auntie Maureen before the two of them met. It was imperative they become friends, she’d thought, her aunt could prove a valuable ally. Against what, Violet wasn’t sure. She only knew that she feared telling her father she was seeing a boy. Any boy, let alone an Italian.

  ‘Auntie Maureen married a city bloke when she was in her twenties,’ Violet had said. ‘He was in real estate, and I met him once when I was just a kid – I thought he was awfully handsome. But they broke up a few years ago, I don’t know why, and she came back to Cooma. She’s a senior nurse at the hospital here now.’ Violet knew there had been a disagreement between her father and aunt when Maureen had refused to return to the family property, buying a cottage half a mile out of town instead, but she’d decided not to tell Pietro that. Every time she mentioned her father Pietro asked when he could meet him.

  ‘My auntie never had any kids, Pietro, so I s’pose I’m a bit like a daughter to her. And she’s like a best friend to me; I tell her things that I could never tell my mother.’

  Pietro had recognised Violetta’s desperate desire for him to like her aunt, and it had been easy to do so: her aunt was a nice woman. He had been very polite upon their first meeting. They had talked about Cooma and his work at Spring Hill, and even his life at the Convent of the Sacred Heart – Violetta had told her aunt all about him. Pietro had resisted the urge to query Maureen about her advice to Violetta, which he’d found bewildering. She had told Violetta to be patient, and he wondered why. Why would Maureen not want her brother to know that Pietro wished to court his daughter with the most honourable of intentions?

  But on their second meeting, over cups of tea in the kitchen at the rear of the little stone cottage, he’d blurted it out.

  ‘Why we must be patient, Maureen?’ he had asked. ‘Why I cannot meet Violetta’s father?’

  She hadn’t answered for a moment or so. She had glanced at Violetta, and then when she had turned back to him, there had been sympathy in her eyes and her voice had been kind.

  ‘You must bide your time, Pietro,’ she had said.

  ‘Why I must bide my time?’ He’d felt frustrated, he wanted a clearer answer than that. ‘Why I must …’

  She’d interrupted, still kindly, but firmly. ‘You must bide your time and you must trust me.’ He’d started to say something, but she’d continued: ‘I will help you, I promise. And when the time is right, I will approach my brother for you.’

  When would the time be right? Pietro had wondered, but he’d known he must push no further, and he’d left after the next cup of tea, dissatisfied with the outcome of their meeting.

  Lucky and Karl reappeared, and the men slung their shovels and spalling hammers into the empty skips and started pushing them along the rail tracks into the tunnel.

  Pietro concentrated on the task at hand. Until a man’s eyes became accustomed to the half-light afforded by the generators, it was easy to stumble. He put all thoughts of Violetta out of his mind, but he had made his decision. He would bide his time. Lucky had said he must heed Maureen’s advice, and he always listened to Lucky.

  In the gloom of the narrow tunnel, the air was thick and the work was hard. It was always hard, the men shovelling the debris into the skips, lifting rocks by hand, breaking up those too big to be lifted with their hammers, the relentless sameness of their labour repeating itself day in, day out. Wet-weather coats were quickly discarded, then woollens and sweat shirts until the men were working bare-chested or in singlets. Hours passed, sweat flowed, the workers no longer chatted among themselves; the only sounds were the crash of rock against metal and the grunts of men’s labour. Finally, the skips were loaded and ready to be pushed the 400 yards through the tunnel to the spoil dump. Clothes were hauled on again in preparation for the cold outside.

  The skips were heavy now, and cumbersome. They were harder to push uphill and easier to lose control of downhill, and there were places where the slope of the tunnel was quite pronounced – it was wise to take care. But despite all Lucky’s nagging, at times some of the less disciplined men became inattentive, particularly at the end of the shift. At the end of the shift men were tired and looking forward to a beer, and Lucky knew that was when accidents were most likely to happen.

  It was the end of the shift now, or it would be when they had unloaded the spoil, and, from the rear of the line of men and skips, Lucky could see several workers at the skip just ahead chatting, paying no attention to the fact that there was a slight bend ahead and an incline in the tunnel that ran 200 yards down to the entrance. He yelled at them, but it was too late. The skip had developed a momentum of its own. It barged forward, one of the men falling to his knees as he fought unsuccessfully to control it.

  ‘Runaway skip!’ Lucky yelled and, further down the line, men repeated the call, bracing themselves against the tunnel walls.

  Pietro was next to Karl Heffner when it happened. Another young man, no older than himself, a new arrival and inexperienced, whom Lucky had purposely teamed with Karl, panicked. He didn’t move fast enough, standing indecisive for a moment, frightened by the sudden chaos and the claustrophobia of the tunnel. Karl lunged forward and grabbed him, throwing him against the wall. Then there was the clash of metal against metal as the runaway skip collided with the one in front, and Karl screamed, his leg ripped open. He fell, striking his head against the side of the skip, and lay unconscious on the ground beside the tracks.

  The collision had momentarily halted the runaway skip, and the men fought to control the two now locked together and threatening to career down the tunnel on a collision course with the next skip ahead. Other workers scrambled to their aid, and Pietro knelt beside Karl; he was alive, groaning, already regaining consciou
sness.

  Then Lucky was there, taking command. ‘Get him outside, Pietro,’ he said, before issuing directives to the men, telling them to clear the way for Pietro, checking there were no other injuries among the workers.

  Pietro hauled Karl across his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and headed for the daylight at the end of the tunnel. He bore the weight with ease – Karl was not a big man and Pietro was young and strong – but he moved with care, wary of the narrow rock walls and the risk of further injury to the man he was carrying.

  Outside, he headed for the clearing, Karl still groaning, semi-conscious.

  Kneeling beside the campfire, Pietro rolled the man from his shoulders and laid him on the ground, looking back at the tunnel as he did so to check if help was on its way. Lucky and two other members of the team, the Czechs Franta and Bedrich, had emerged and were running towards him.

  Pietro had been about to tend to Karl, but as he’d looked back, he’d seen the blood on the snow, a bright trail of red, stark against the white. He stood and looked down at himself. Beneath his open wet-weather coat his clothes were saturated. He was drenched in blood. Horror overwhelmed him. A terrible, unknown horror, but the sensation of it frighteningly familiar. Adrenalin pumped through his body; he wanted to run, but he couldn’t. He was unable to move, unable to control the involuntary twitch of his muscles and the quivering of his fingers as he stared at the trail of blood in the snow. He remained frozen, unaware of Lucky and the others as they arrived at his side.

  The men paid him no heed as they kneeled beside Karl.

  ‘Use your belt,’ Lucky ordered one of them, clamping his hand around Karl’s upper thigh where the leg had been ripped open and blood pumped from the artery. ‘Get the Land Rover,’ he said to the other, who then raced off.

  Franta wound his belt around Karl’s thigh, tightening it to form a tourniquet, and gradually the bleeding eased off.

  As Lucky examined the gash to the forehead where Karl had hit his head in falling, he was aware of Pietro standing motionless beside him, not even watching them, doing and saying nothing, just staring out at the snow. What the hell was wrong with the boy? He’d performed well getting Karl out of the tunnel, but why had he done nothing to stem the bleeding? Why had he just stood there while the man was bleeding to death?

  The head wound was not deep and Karl was regaining consciousness. His eyes flickered open and he saw Lucky.

  He muttered something in German and tried to sit up.

  ‘Es wird alles wieder gut, Karl,’ Lucky assured him. ‘Nichts bewegen.’

  The Land Rover pulled up next to them and the Czechs lifted Karl into the back as gently as possible, Karl gritting his teeth with the pain. Franta remained in the back of the vehicle and Bedrich returned to the wheel. Lucky didn’t have to tell them to get Karl to the doctor at Spring Hill as quickly as possible.

  ‘Keep releasing the pressure on the tourniquet,’ Lucky instructed Franta, although he was aware that, too, was unnecessary – the Czech knew what he was doing.

  As the men drove off, he turned to Pietro. He’d been about to reprimand him, but he realised that something was terribly wrong. The boy’s hands were shaking, his whole body was twitching.

  ‘Pietro.’ Worried, Lucky grasped him by the shoulders, and in an attempt to break through the boy’s trance-like state, he spoke in Italian. ‘Pietro, my friend, what is it? Tell me, what is wrong?’

  The firm grip of Lucky’s hands, and the sound of his voice and of his own mother tongue reached through Pietro’s horror and brought him to his senses. He could feel the pulsing in his temple and the awful tic in his left eye, and he prayed there was enough time to get away on his own before the fit overtook him. He wrenched the focus of his eyes from the blood upon the snow, and saw the men and skips emerging from the tunnel. The first of the men were already making their way over to the campfire. He was in control now, but for how long? The fit could come upon him at any moment. He must get away, they must not see him.

  ‘Help me, Lucky, I beg of you. Help me to get away. They must not see me.’ He said it in Italian and his eyes implored Lucky desperately.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, my friend, I will help you.’ The boy was as white as a sheet, but at least he seemed normal. ‘I will take you to the creek.’ He led Pietro several paces away. ‘Stay here,’ he instructed. Then he turned back to the men who had arrived at the campfire and said in English, ‘Franta and Bedrich have taken Karl to the doctor. It’s a bad leg wound, but I think he’ll be all right.’

  The men muttered their relief to each other; they’d seen the trail of blood and had feared the worst for Karl.

  ‘I’m taking Pietro to the creek to get cleaned up. You boys have a smoko break.’

  ‘Well done, Pietro,’ the men called, ‘yeah, good on you, mate.’ And they gathered about the campfire, others joining them, talking nineteen to the dozen about the accident and how it had happened. They took little notice of Lucky and Pietro as the two made their way to the creek several hundred yards from the site.

  Lucky kept a firm hold on Pietro’s arm, aware that the boy was shaky on his feet, but they didn’t make it to the creek. Barely fifty yards away, in a small copse of trees out of sight of the men, the last of Pietro’s strength deserted him and he sagged to his knees.

  Lucky squatted beside him, regretting his instinctive impulse to do as the boy had so desperately wished. He’d behaved rashly, which was unlike him. Pietro needed medical help.

  ‘We must take you to the doctor, Pietro.’

  ‘No, no. It will pass, I promise.’ Away from the others, Pietro’s panic had subsided, but his hands were shaking as his fingers fumbled for the piece of twine about his neck. He drew out the strip of leather from beneath his bloodied clothing, trying to close his mind to the stickiness and the sickly smell. He sat back in the snow and pulled his wet-weather coat around him. ‘I would like you to leave me, Lucky.’ It was becoming an effort to speak, and his voice sounded strange. ‘They do not take long. So others tell me.’

  ‘What does not take long?’

  ‘My fits. It is epilepsy.’ He saw the concern in Lucky’s eyes, and became agitated. ‘I can still work,’ he insisted. ‘I am a good worker, Lucky, you know that. I have not had a fit since I have been on the Snowy. Something has made this happen, something I saw …’ The blood on the snow. And he could no longer close his mind to the stickiness and the sickly smell of his clothing: he was drowning in blood. But he mustn’t think about that: he must convince Lucky that he was strong and capable and able to work …

  ‘Be still, Pietro, be still.’ Lucky tried to quieten him. The boy’s eyes were rolling back into his head.

  ‘Go. Please go.’ His voice was strangled now, barely coherent. ‘Please, Lucky. It is not a good thing to see.’ He placed the piece of leather between his already chattering teeth, he could feel his jaw start to clench.

  ‘No, my friend, I will not go.’ Lucky sat beside him. ‘I will stay with you.’

  Then the convulsions started. Pietro’s muscles spasmed, his body suddenly rigid. Then his limbs lashed out, kicking and clawing, and his bared teeth gnawed angrily at the leather, spittle foaming from his mouth. Small, stifled growls of torture came from the innermost core of his being and his eyes rolled back into his skull as if trying to define what madness lay there.

  Lucky watched, terrified. And, as he watched, he wondered what it was that Pietro had seen. What had brought to life this hideous torment?

  Pietro Lorenzi had always been a strange boy, and his mother, Lucia, had tried hard to protect him from his father’s disappointment.

  When his wife had finally borne him a son, Franco Lorenzi had given thanks to the Heavenly Father; after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, he had wondered what crime it was he’d committed to so offend God. Several days after the birth, he’d made a special trip from their little log hut on the mountainside into the village, travelling on the old donkey, and he’d placed the few meagre coin
s he could ill afford in the church donation box.

  But, as the boy Pietro had grown, he had proved a weakling, prone to illness, and when, five years later following two more miscarriages, Lucia had given birth to the child that would prove to be their last, Franco’s prayers for a strong, healthy son had gone unheard. She had borne him a daughter and again Franco had wondered why he was so out of favour with God. Then, when Pietro was six years old and had the first of his fits, his father had seen it as a curse from above.

  ‘We are being punished,’ he said. ‘The child is not normal.’

  Lucia did not see her son as a punishment from God. She loved the boy even more for his infirmity, and she tried every way she knew how to protect him.

  ‘He is different, Franco,’ she pleaded. ‘He has a way with animals. He is good with the goats, the goats love him, you know it.’

  Franco couldn’t deny that she was right, the boy was a natural goatherd. ‘Then let him stay with the goats,’ he growled. ‘He can live with them and share his madness with them, beasts together.’

  But Lucia knew her husband would not throw the boy out into the snow to live with the goats. The goats were the one bond they shared and Franco was teaching his son the ways of a goatherd, even how to assist in the animals’ birthing. Franco was frightened, that was all, she told herself. Pietro’s fits disturbed him; he always left when the first signs appeared. As soon as the boy’s eyes started rolling in his head, Franco stormed out of the hut and prowled the countryside until it was over. Pietro’s fits disturbed Lucia too; they were fearful to behold. Once he bit his tongue so badly that it took her an hour to stop the bleeding. After that she learned to wedge a piece of rag between his teeth before the madness took hold. But frightening as the fits were, Lucia always stayed with the boy, comforting him when he had regained his senses.

  By the time Pietro was eight he was able to recognise the signs. He knew when a fit was coming upon him, and the desire to avoid his father’s disgust outweighed the comfort his mother offered. Whenever possible, he would escape to his secret hiding place. He would wriggle under the two front steps of the hut and then squirm on his belly to the hollow in the ground where he could roll onto his back and look up through the gaps in the wooden floorboards above. He could hear the thump of his father’s boots overhead, and he could see them. Or his father’s stockinged feet if the boots were muddied and his mother had made him leave them outside. And he could see the worn soles of his mother’s shoes, which she had had for as long as he could remember, and Catie’s chubby little bare feet. He could hear the muffled sounds of their voices too, and at first he had worried that he might scream out. He wasn’t sure if he screamed when he had his fits, he could remember nothing once they had passed.