by Angela Petch
He taught her a few basic expressions and smiled at her attempts to copy them.
‘I think your words are ugly,’ she said, imitating the sch sounds he was teaching her. ‘Italian is softer, don’t you think? Grazie for danke and prego for bitte.’
‘I disagree. Our words are beautiful. We have wonderful poems and we have songs that are known the world over.’ He recited a couple of lines of what she presumed was poetry:
‘Herr, es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß… It’s a poem about the end of summer,’ he said, quiet for a few moments.
Then he started to sing, and she listened, not understanding, but thrilling to the sound of his voice. When he stopped, she clapped her hands.
‘What does the song mean? It’s beautiful.’
‘It’s a lullaby that most German mothers sing to their babies. Shall I teach you?’
‘Sì.’
His voice was deep, melodic. The sound mixed with the song of a lark soaring above. It was a brief interlude from the war, and it cheered her, the words exotic and exciting in their difference, reminding her that there was another world beyond the misery of the present.
‘Guten Abend, guten Nacht,
Mit Rosen bedacht,
Mit Näglen besteckt,
Schlupf unter die Deck…’
She mastered the first two lines, and it was his turn to applaud her.
‘I will teach you the rest another time,’ he said, getting up from where he was sitting. ‘But now I have to go.’ He took hold of her hand and bowed before kissing it gently and she felt like a princess in a story.
‘By the way,’ he said. ‘I think you should warn your family and friends that there will be more troops arriving in Badia next week.’ He paused. ‘And life might turn harder for all of you. They are Stormtroopers from the 16th SS division. Hard fighters… ruthless men.’ He picked a daisy from the grass and handed it to her. ‘Auf Wiedersehen, and please be careful, Lucia. And I, for my part, promise not to do you any favours when the whole town is watching.’
He bowed again in an old-fashioned form of respect and she watched as he walked away, his cap of blond hair golden in the sunlight. He was tall, erect and so different from any young man she had ever met. And she wanted to see him again.
Nineteen
Until now, Florian had seen little action in this corner of Tuscany, but that was about to change. Reports were coming in of the combined Allied forces, together with the Italian Liberation Corps, bent on breaking through the defensive Gothic Line that Hitler had ordered to be constructed in central Italy from coast to coast. The atmosphere was tense in the German camp.
Fifty soldiers, under the command of SS Obersturmführer Gerhard Wolf, were sent to order the evacuation of two small hamlets near Campo Gatti, pursuing a new scorched earth policy, suspecting that inhabitants were harbouring partisans. Half a dozen of the group were fired up with anger and bent on revenge, after one of their comrades had been gravely injured by Italian partisans a week earlier. One, Korporal Hans Weber, famous for finishing off scraps from everybody’s plates in the canteen, was among the most vocal.
‘At least five of the bastards will have to die to pay for Dieter’s wounds,’ he kept saying. ‘The poor bugger will probably lose his foot. I can’t wait to get my hands on the rats.’
Florian ordered him to stay close by his side, separating him from his cronies in an attempt to appease an unruly situation. ‘Shut up, Weber, with your comments,’ he ordered. ‘And keep marching with your mouth shut. You’re alerting everybody for kilometres around. We won’t catch anybody with your bleating.’
They continued along a mule track that led up to the hamlet. As they rounded a corner, they came across a group of peasants working in a field, scything hay. One of them turned to run and he was shot in the back as he fled. The remainder dropped their tools and raised their hands in the air.
‘Non sparare, non sparare… don’t shoot,’ one of them pleaded.
‘Arrest these men and take them to the village,’ shouted Wolf.
They were marched into the tiny, sleepy piazza in Campo Gatti, bordered by a dozen stone houses. A couple of scrawny chickens scratched in the dust, washing was draped over bushes and bright yellow maize cobs hung from hooks on the walls to dry in the sun. Two children were picking fruit from a persimmon tree. It was an everyday scene about to be transformed. A woman at the fountain stooped to pick up her toddler and ran to a doorway, shouting inside to her other children to hide in the stair cupboard. Florian understood everything she said, and he spoke out in Italian, ‘Don’t be afraid. Just do what you are told, and everything will be fine.’
‘You! Hofstetter,’ barked the senior leader, ‘you know their language. Translate for me.’
Florian moved over to Wolf’s side and awaited instructions.
‘You have already been warned.’ The words of the tall Obersturmführer rang out across the sun-filled square. ‘You are aware that anybody harbouring brigands will be shot. These so-called partisans are nothing but traitors, rapists and deserters. You have failed to report them and now they are wounding and killing my men.’
Florian translated as best he could, omitting certain words and adding his own message, knowing the major spoke no Italian. He told them again not to be afraid and to keep calm.
To his horror, the senior assault leader ordered five of the peasants to be lined up by the village fountain and then, gesturing to one of his men who held a light FG42 machine gun, he gave the order: ‘Feuer!’
Four of the peasants died immediately in a hail of bullets and the fifth wriggled in agony on the ground, his cries of pain mingling with the agonised shrieks of his wife, ‘Marito mio, marito mio… my husband.’
Obersturmführer Wolf walked calmly over and administered the coup de grâce with his pistol.
Water continued to trickle from the washing fountain, hens continued to scratch in the dust, but now the air was filled with the sounds of weeping and dogs barking. A young boy ran from one of the houses and flung himself over the body of one of the dead. ‘Babbo, Babbo,’ he screamed, shaking the corpse, trying to revive it. Another shot rang out. Florian turned to look in horror into the jeering face of Korporal Weber, his gun still smoking. ‘That’s saved us from another future bastard brigand.’ He laughed and shot at two of the hens.
The senior assault leader strode towards him, his voice shaking with fury. ‘Did I order you to do that, Korporal? Did I? You will be on night guard duties and rations for the rest of the month. I will not have indiscipline in my ranks. Hand over your gun immediately.’
The simple houses were ransacked for hidden partisans. Cupboards were opened, pots smashed, beds bayoneted. Florian came upon a soldier urinating into a cauldron of food cooking over the fire. Another soldier dragged an old man into the piazza, his wife holding onto him, weeping and begging for mercy. The young paratrooper held a pistol to his head and Florian intervened. ‘Leave him be. He’s no danger to anyone, soldier.’
‘He spat at me.’
‘I said, let him go. That is an order.’ Florian’s voice was steely.
Their stand-off was interrupted by Obersturmführer Wolf calling to the men to line up and make ready to leave for headquarters. ‘Our work is done,’ he announced. ‘Hofstetter. Warn these peasants that we are not finished here. They should be very careful.’
Florian’s translation urged the villagers to be careful. He wanted to say more; to ask for forgiveness for what had been done today, but there was little point in appeasing his conscience in this way. He was sickened to his bones at what he had witnessed, utterly revolted at the violence perpetrated in this tiny hamlet by his fellow men. However, he knew it made little sense to act there and then. But it was a turning point for him; the beginning of the end.
Afterwards he learned that one of the dead men was father to ten children, another to seven, and the boy they’d shot was only twelve years old. War was one thing when it involved combat against armed soldie
rs, but it was completely unforgivable against men armed with hoes and scythes and a boy anguished at seeing his father shot before his own eyes. If the men had indeed been partisans, there had been no questioning. There was no justice or humanity in this act at all.
* * *
On the day after the shooting, Florian could take it no longer. He had been trying to play some small part with his protest by stealing back purloined pieces of art. But that was paltry; like trying to quench a desert with one drop of rain. He had tossed and turned in his narrow bed during the night, trying to rid his mind of the brutal images that kept flashing into his brain. There had to be something of more use that he could do against this cruelty. The desire for victory had warped patriotism into barbarism. He was ashamed. He was a German, not a Nazi, and his conscience would not let him be a part of the pointless violence any longer.
What he planned to do filled him with fear. Already his stomach was churning at the idea of it, his hands were clammy, his mouth dry. He pressed his hands against his beating heart as if to try and calm himself. He would need courage like he’d never had to summon before.
At midday, Florian told his fellow officers he was going for a short walk. He took his haversack, butterfly net and camera, telling them he would be fossil- and insect-hunting for an hour, instead of eating with them in the canteen. He was not hungry; he had a stomach upset and they were not to worry about him, he said. But instead of his chisel and hammer, he packed food, his precious notebook, money, spare socks and underwear. Before making his way out of town, he slipped into Major Schmalz’s office in the town hall, where the red, white and black swastika fluttered above a tub of colourful geraniums.
The young guard at the door clicked his heels and saluted Herr Kapitän Hofstetter, who usually worked in the office downstairs, and Florian told him to stand easy.
‘I have orders to pick up documents and bring them to Major Schmalz in his residence,’ Florian told the soldier. Inside the office he closed the door. Removing his camera from his haversack, he photographed the map on the desk, paying careful attention to the bunker locations along the local stretch of the Gothic Line, now renamed the Green Line by Hitler. Then, from a leather folder next to the map, he scribbled a couple of details from the major’s handwritten notes, showing planned troop movements for the next few days in the aftermath of the events at Campo Gatti. Finally, he rolled up the slip of paper and pressed it down into the bowl of his unlit pipe.
Within two minutes, he had left the office, once again saluted by the guard. Slowly he walked down the stone staircase of the town hall. His heart hammered in his ribcage and he was prepared to break into a run, expecting to be stopped at any minute and asked where he had been. He made his way across the piazza, which was bathed in midday sunshine. Once he was sure he was out of sight of the town, he hurried to the meadow where he had met Lucia and concealed himself in a copse, hoping she would turn up with her sheep. If anybody were to see him, away from headquarters, he hoped his butterfly net would explain his movements.
The tinkle of bells from a neighbouring meadow alerted him and he rose, making a pretence of catching a non-existent butterfly, and wandered over towards the animals. The Maremmano sheepdog growled, but when he called to him, the animal came over, wagging his tail. Lucia was sitting on a rock eating an apple and when she saw him, she jumped up, throwing the half-eaten core into the bushes behind her.
‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Are you here to teach me more songs?’
He shook his head and grasped her arm. ‘I need you to take me somewhere safe. I have left the German army. They’ll come looking for me as soon as they realise that I haven’t reported for duty. Quick, Lucia. Think of somewhere.’
She frowned and then tugged him by the sleeve. ‘Take off that jacket. There are partigiani everywhere. If they see your uniform, they’ll shoot you on the spot. And remove your shirt, so you look as if you’re working on the land.’
He removed the light khaki jacket, its external pockets stuffed with his pocketknife, torch, wallet and notebook, and then he took off his shirt and pushed everything into his haversack. She stood back to examine his pale skin and hair and then tutted. ‘Still not right,’ she said, and she pulled off her green headscarf, told him to bend down and knotted it over his blond hair.
‘Come,’ she said. ‘It’s not perfect, but it will have to do. There is somewhere I use from time to time, further up towards the pass.’
She left the dog to guard the sheep and was off through the trees. He could hardly keep up with her and she kept turning round to check on his progress. ‘Please hurry. I must get back to my flock. If Babbo discovers I’m not with them, he will beat me again.’
He followed her up a steep track, slithering a couple of times on the stones, and then across another meadow, where wild purple thistles studded the mountainside. In his haste, he trampled over orchids and helleborines that he’d never seen before, but this was not the time to record new specimens. Beauty and war didn’t mix. In the lee of a rock formation near the pass, Lucia led him through a narrow crack in the boulders, camouflaged by a curtain of thick creepers.
‘This is used by shepherds when the weather is bad,’ she explained, and when he looked worried, she tried to calm him. ‘All the young men are either helping the partigiani, or dead, or in the militia,’ she said. ‘The old shepherds don’t come up here. You’ll be safe for a while. When I was a child, I played here with my friends.’
It was cool and gloomy inside, the only light coming from a hole in the ceiling above a place where fires had been lit, within a simple circle of blackened stones.
‘There is a stream at the edge of the woods,’ Lucia said, ‘but you’re best staying in here during the day. If anybody sees you, they will know straight away that you are not one of us. And don’t trample the grass – keep to the stone track. If they see flattened grass, they will investigate and discover you.’
‘I don’t want to stay hidden, Lucia. I want you to take me to the partigiani. Can you do that for me?’
She stared at him, her lovely green eyes wide with fear, and he thought to himself that maybe war and beauty did go together after all.
Twenty
Tuscany, Present Day
Sitting by the fire in the red house, his feet resting on the back of Freddie, who lay in front of him, Massimo nursed a small glass of home-made basil liqueur they had found in the storeroom. He turned to look at his young friend. ‘Now, Alba mia. I have talked a lot about what happened to me, and poor Lucia, during the war. Maybe it’s time for you to share your sadness.’
‘Anything I tell you will be plain boring compared with what I’ve just heard. I hope I’m not bad company, Massimo. Is it that obvious?’
‘Of course you’re not bad company. But I’m good at spotting when somebody is fretting. I grew used to that with my Lucia.’
There was a silence, save for the occasional crackle and spit of wood in the hearth. Alba had lit the fire for Massimo because he had told her that in the centre he missed staring at the flames. ‘Radiators are not the same,’ he had said.
‘I still worry that James’s death was my fault, even though I try to kid myself I’m over it,’ she told him. ‘It’s hard to come to terms with.’
‘Did you stick a knife in him? Poison him? Push him off a cliff?’
She smiled. ‘No. But we argued, and I go over and over in my head that if he hadn’t rushed away on his bike in a temper, then he would still be alive.’
‘He could have had the same accident at any time. It was not because of something you said. Was he given to depression?’
‘No. The opposite. He was so upbeat, Massimo. He had such an appetite for adventure – he’d been to loads of places around the world.’
‘Well, then, I think you have to be strong and say to yourself each morning when you get up: “It was not my fault”. You need to convince yourself of this, Alba. Otherwise you will drive yourself crazy. And forgive m
e, but maybe you need to be… humbler about these feelings of yours. You’re not a murderer, we’ve established that. You are not the being that decided if he was to live or die that day. It was James’s destiny, and you did not design that.’
She looked across at him and smiled, biting back a tear. ‘Thank you, Massimo. You’re so wise.’
He shook his head. ‘Magari! If only! I’m not wise, little Alba. I’ve just lived longer than you.’
‘I don’t like to bother my parents about James; they’re so patient. I keep a lot bottled up inside me. So… thank you. I feel as if you really understand.’
He nodded. ‘Now, pour me another drop of this liquore and let’s sit here quietly without more prattle. I’m tired now. I’ve talked too much.’
‘Do you want me to take you back to the centre?’
‘I’d like to stay here another night. Is that possible?’
‘It’s fine by me, but I need to let Tanya and my parents know. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be back.’ She bent to kiss Massimo’s cheek. ‘And thank you again for your wise words.’
He squeezed her hand and brought it to his heart. ‘Prego, tesoro,’ he said.
There was no phone signal within the thick stone walls of Massimo’s house, and she left him by the fire and trudged up the incline leading away from the village until she had a couple of bars. She shivered after the warmth of the fire.
Her stepmother answered almost immediately. ‘Alba, we’ve been trying to get in touch with you. Babbo was just about to drive up there and check why you haven’t answered our calls. Is everything all right?’