by Angela Petch
‘They cause more trouble than good,’ her mother said. ‘All these reprisals are their fault. The partigiani blow up a bridge, and what good does that do? As a consequence, the Tedeschi and militia punish ordinary people. Those young men are a nuisance. The other day I read a poster in the square, asking mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts to tell their young men to turn themselves in.’
‘Hush your talk, woman. So, you’d prefer to listen to propaganda and be ruled by fascist thugs, like that bastard Petrelli, would you?’
‘I bet his life is more than comfortable down there on his fancy Boccarini estate,’ she said, making a clatter as she washed pots. ‘And I bet he never has to wait in queues for scraps of meat that I wouldn’t have fed to a dog before this war. I’d prefer it if life returned to normal.’
‘Well, you’ll be waiting forever if there is nobody to stand up to our occupiers.’ When he realised Lucia was listening, he sent her out to fetch more wood, and when she carried in the basket of logs, her mother was sitting meekly by the fire, darning one of her father’s socks. There was no more talk of the partigiani on the ridge. Her cousin, Moreno, was one of the ‘disappeared’. Her aunt had never seemed unduly upset about his absence. She’d even knitted him a waistcoat, a hat and a pair of thick socks ‘for when he returned’. Lucia had an inkling that he might well be up on the ridge, too.
At supper, while nobody was looking, she smuggled a lump of cheese into her skirt pocket and the heel of a toscano loaf that her mother had planned to use in tomorrow’s bean soup. Later, when she was sure her parents were asleep, she climbed from her bedroom window, jumped onto the pigsty’s roof abutting the house and made her way to the cave. The full moon cast a watery light on the footpath. She heard the padding of feet behind her and with her heart drumming, she dropped to the ground and rolled behind a bush. A wet nose found her face and she pushed her Maremmano sheepdog away. ‘Oh, Primo, you daft animal,’ she whispered, pulling herself upright. ‘Well, now you’re here, you can be my guard. Su, andiamo. Let’s go!’
Florian was asleep when, three quarters of an hour later, she pushed her way into the cave, but he woke when Primo knocked over an empty tin can, and then he was up and pointing his gun at Lucia.
‘It’s me. Put that down,’ she said. ‘We’ve brought you something to eat.’
As he wolfed down the food, she told him that she would do her best to contact the partigiani. Tomorrow she would take Primo and the sheep further up the mountain towards the ridge. ‘But I can’t promise anything. I might not find them. If I do, what do I tell them?’
‘Let me come too. It’s not safe to go alone, and anyway I can relay information directly. They need to know it as soon as possible.’
‘No, Florian. First, I must find them and warn them about you. They’ll shoot on sight if you simply appear from nowhere, even if I’m with you. I’m not sure who is in that band – they might not even know me. There are all kinds of people in our hills from all over the place: evacuees from the cities, deserters from both sides. They could shoot me, too. I’ll pass by the cave again as soon as I know something. Be ready to join me when you hear the tinkle of the ram’s bell. And make your body darker. Rub in some dirt. You look too pale and clean.’
She got up to leave.
‘Do you have to go already? It’s lonely up here. Talk to me for a while,’ Florian said, grabbing her arm.
‘I can’t. If my parents discover me gone, there’ll be hell to pay.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘Danke schön. Entschuldigung. I’m sorry. I’m selfish. You are already doing too much for me. A presto,’ he said. ‘See you soon.’
She was glad to have Primo by her side as they made their way home. She let him guide her, her mind full of the feel of Florian’s hand touching hers, rather than the path ahead.
* * *
‘I’m taking the sheep higher up the mountain today, Babbo,’ Lucia told her father early the next morning. ‘The meadow is full of milk thistle, and I noticed them eating fallen acorns yesterday.’
It was all right for pigs to eat acorns, but it gave sheep diarrhoea. ‘So, can you pack me extra food today, Mamma? It’s a fair way, and I’ll be back just before dark.’
‘Maybe I should come with you to check,’ her father suggested.
‘No,’ she said, too quickly, before changing her reply in case he suspected something. ‘I thought you had to repair fences today… But if you really think I can’t manage, come too.’ She mentally crossed her fingers, hoping he wouldn’t thwart her plans.
‘No, you’re right. I’ll leave it to you. I’ve plenty to do here.’
Her plan was to take the sheep higher towards the ridge and see if she found anyone. She was very nervous about the outcome, but she wanted to help Florian, and if she could be of help to the partigiani, then so much the better. She decided to make as much noise as possible as she approached the area that people were warned to avoid. Her father had been told the track was mined, but one evening, well in his cups, she’d overheard him tell Mamma that it was a way of keeping nosy villagers away from the partigiani camp. She hoped he was right, but she still decided to keep to the fields with her sheep instead of using the stony paths. The only trouble was that her sheep kept stopping to graze on the new pastures; at this rate they wouldn’t reach the ridge before nightfall. She shouted at Primo to drive them on.
‘Avanti! Cammina!’ she kept calling at the top of her voice. And Primo barked at his charges, nipping at their cloven hooves, so that they kept bleating, their bells around their necks clanging as they moved in a noisy huddle up the slopes.
She stopped in a meadow just below the treeline of Monte dei Frati. Ordinarily, she would have enjoyed the chance to rest and sit in the shade to eat her pack of food. But she was keeping this for Florian, and her nerves drove hunger away today. Despite the noise she and her flock made, nobody appeared. There was not a single trace of anybody up here. She tried singing a couple of songs. There was one that Primo liked. When he was a puppy, she’d sung it over and over because it made him howl and that made her laugh. She tried it today to attract attention to herself, rather than to raise a laugh. Still nothing. After a couple of hours, she led her charges away from the ridge and back towards the cave.
* * *
Alone, sitting in the half-light, Florian had had plenty of time to agonise about his actions. He worried he’d been impetuous; what would happen now to his family? When would his senior officer, Major Schmalz, send out men to search for him? Would the partigiani believe he wanted to help them? Most of all he was tortured by the thought of sweet Lucia reaping consequences stirred by what he had done in a moment of despair. He seriously considered putting his pistol to his head, but then the creepers parted and Lucia was next to him. All thoughts of death disappeared.
‘Try to save as much of this as you can, Florian,’ she said, handing him the cloth containing bread, cheese and slices of trippa that her mother had prepared. ‘I don’t know when I can manage to come up to see you again.’
‘But what happened with the partigiani?’
‘Nothing. I made enough noise to wake the whole of Tuscany, but nobody showed themselves. I’m sure they are up there somewhere, though.’
‘Lucia, while you’ve been away, I’ve done nothing but think. I’ve come up with a plan.’ He picked up a jagged stone from the ground and handed it to her. ‘I need you to hit me hard on the leg. And I mean hard.’
She pulled a face. ‘What are you talking about? Are you mad?’
He outlined an idea he’d considered during the night. It might not work, but if it did, it would solve many issues. ‘I’m putting you in danger, and that weighs heavily, Lucia,’ he said, reaching out to take her hand. ‘I intend to limp back today to headquarters and tell them that I fell badly while looking for fossils. I passed out and that is why I didn’t return last night.’
‘So, you’ve changed your mind? Today was all a waste of time for me? I don’t understand.�
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‘I haven’t changed my mind at all. My plan is to spy for the partigiani. I can get information to them if I return to my platoon. In that way I will be useful. But first, I need to let the partigiani know.’
‘It’s too dangerous. What if nobody believes you? You could be shot by either side.’
‘Maybe that’s the best solution anyway. What else can I do? I can’t go on as before.’ He rubbed his hands over his face and she moved nearer, pulling them away.
‘I don’t want you to be shot, Florian.’
He held onto her, and then his mouth found hers.
It was the first time she’d been kissed in a way that melted her insides and stirred sensations that rippled up and down her body. She wanted more. Florian pulled her closer, nuzzling her neck, whispering her name over and over and she pressed into him, sinking into the moment.
He pulled away. ‘Lucia, I want to make love to you, but…’ He cupped her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes. ‘You are very beautiful, and you are very young, and… who knows what will happen to us? It’s too soon.’
There was so much she wanted to say to him in that moment: how it didn’t matter to her if it was too soon – that if they were to die tomorrow, then there was all the more reason why they should make love while they could. But she didn’t know how to tell him. She was overcome with shyness.
Lucia stepped away. ‘I’m going to talk to my father about the partigiani. I feel he knows more than he likes to let on. Something that you said reminded me of an angry remark he made to Mamma about standing up to the enemy. I will try my best, Florian. If I’m wrong, God knows how he will react, but I don’t know what else to do.’ She was silent for a while, thinking of the beating her father had given her. But she would prefer to die than not see Florian again. She had no choice.
‘We need to have a way of leaving messages for each other. Can you manage to come to the cave in any free time you have?’ She showed him a niche in the wall at the back of the cave. ‘We can leave messages here.’ She found a stone to conceal the hole.
‘All free time has been cancelled. The Allies are getting closer… But I will see what I can do,’ he said. ‘Even if it means stealing up here at night.’
‘I will bring the sheep to graze in these meadows, but not every day. I need to be careful not to arouse suspicion.’
Florian handed her the sharp stone. ‘And now you have to hit me hard.’
‘I can’t,’ she said, shrinking back. ‘Don’t ask me to do that to you.’
‘Then find me a stout stick outside that I can lean on. At least do that for me.’
Peeping through the creepers to make sure there was nobody about, she left to go and search at the edge of the wood near the cave. Primo rose from where he had been watching the flock and shook his shaggy coat. ‘Bravo, Primo,’ she said as he padded over to her, his tail wagging.
When she entered the cave again, blood was flowing from Florian’s right leg and his face was drawn with pain. ‘Crucifix,’ he swore in German. ‘It hurts like hell.’
She made to tear a strip from her shirt to bind his leg and staunch the bleeding, but he told her to stop. ‘Remember, I hurt myself when I was out alone. There would be nobody to tend to my wound. My story has to ring true.’ He grimaced and she saw that he had gouged a large lump of flesh below his knee.
She cried silently as she helped him to his feet and handed him the stout stick that she’d found beneath the trees, and then she couldn’t help herself. She clung to him, her hot tears soaking into the army shirt he had retrieved from his haversack. He pulled away, staring into her eyes with unspoken words, and as she watched him hobble down the track, she wondered if they would ever see each other again.
Back at headquarters, Florian was sent straight to the dispensary. The military doctor stitched up his leg and gave him a tetanus injection, suggesting he forget about hiking alone in the Tuscan countryside. ‘We are at war, my friend,’ he said, ‘not on an entomologists’ jamboree. Come back and see me in one week and be sure to keep that wound clean. You are lucky I am not going to report you to Schmalz.’ After he had finished his official reprimand, he picked up a board from the shelf above his desk, onto which three swallowtail butterflies had been pinned, and he smiled at his patient. ‘But I understand why you are so eager, Hofstetter. I too have found some very fine specimens in this region.’
Florian had overcome the first hurdle. Nobody suspected him of anything covert. It was strange to be back. He felt as if he had ‘TRAITOR’ emblazoned across his forehead for all to see; that any minute he would be arrested and questioned about the true origins of his injury. That night, images of dead partisans and grieving wives loomed in and out of his feverish dreams. He awoke before dawn, his pillow drenched with sweat.
If he could pull off his double life, then it would have to be done with subtlety and stealth. He hoped his nerves would stand up to it. As daylight filtered through the shutters of his billet, he thought about the best way to proceed. The way into the next stage of his plan to help the partisans was through a weak link. And for Florian, this was the miserable apology for a man, Hans Weber, who had thought nothing of shooting a child in front of his mother on that awful day in Campo Gatti. Bile came into Florian’s mouth as the blood-filled scene once again flickered in his mind like a horror movie. He rushed to the toilet to be violently sick. For a while he sat on the edge of his hard bed, before pulling out his pipe, from where he had removed the slip of paper with details of troop movements. He packed the bowl with tobacco and lit the aromatic flakes, the familiar actions soothing his nerves. His plan of action would start tomorrow.
* * *
On the following evening, Florian shivered as he let himself out into the cool Apennine air. Weber was on night duties, and Florian wandered to his post outside the munitions store, a large opening in the rock face. Previously it had been used as a stable by its rightful owner. Now it was a space requisitioned for the storage of weapons and ammunition, fortified by a new, sturdy door. As Florian approached, Weber straightened from his slouch against the wall. ‘Who’s there?’ he shouted at the sound of footsteps.
‘At ease, Korporal. I couldn’t sleep. I needed company.’ Florian lit up his pipe. As the tobacco entered his lungs, it calmed his queasy stomach. ‘Feel free to smoke,’ he told the guard.
Weber pulled a cigarette from a packet. ‘You should try one of these instead of that pipe, Herr Kapitän,’ he said. ‘Turkish tobacco. Sulima. Made in Dresden, my home city. Our Führer tells us we should not smoke, that it will give us lung cancer, but I need not follow everything he says.’
‘I visited your city before the war. Beautiful. I remember dining in a restaurant on the River Elbe.’
‘I’m from a poor family. No restaurants for us, but we used to picnic on the banks.’
Florian lit Weber’s cigarette with his match. As nicotine and pipe tobacco mingled in the Tuscan air, Florian leant with one foot against the wall. ‘It was a good exercise at Campo Gatti,’ he said. ‘You did well.’
‘Not what Wolf thought. Now I’m on night shift for a whole month. And it’s fucking freezing. When will they issue us with our winter coats, do you think?’
‘Have a mouthful of this,’ Florian said, removing a hip flask from his pocket. ‘It’s local grappa. Not bad. Not as good as our Schnapps, but it does the trick.’
‘Nothing is as good as our own food and drink, Herr Kapitän. Danke,’ Weber said, swigging a generous amount of the fiery liquid. He spluttered and then laughed. ‘It’s warming parts that have been cold for too long,’ he said, handing back the flask.
‘If I can’t sleep, I’ll bring you more tomorrow. Good night, soldier. I hope the morning comes soon for you.’
Weber clicked his heels as he returned Florian’s greetings. ‘Heil Hitler!’ he said, his arm outstretched in salute.
Florian had begun his seduction of Weber. He was careful not to visit him on his watch every night, to av
oid suspicion. During the next few days, he rose from his bed on alternate nights to exchange small talk with the corporal. By now they were on Christian name terms, despite Florian’s senior rank. They talked about the might of Germany, and Florian listened to Hans’ account of his time with the Hitlerjugend; how he had been singled out for his prowess with a gun. ‘I shot rabbits on my uncle’s farm from the age of six,’ he said proudly. ‘So I have no difficulty in that field.’ He patted his fat stomach and chuckled. ‘My problem is this. If I had to run after a rabbit, then I would fail.’
Florian sweetened him up with extra rations, bringing him half a tablet of chocolate one night, a box of Rumkugeln that his mother had sent him in a parcel on another occasion. Weber ate the gifts with gusto, his piggy eyes lighting up every time a gift was proffered.
It rained hard towards the end of the week and Weber, instead of standing at his post, was sheltering in the doorway to the munitions store.
‘Why don’t we sit in comfort inside?’ Florian suggested. ‘There’ll be nobody about on such a filthy night.’
Weber unlocked the heavy padlock with a key concealed in a niche above the door arch and the two men entered the store. Perched on a couple of boxes of ammunition, they passed several minutes in chit-chat.
‘I intend to get back for Christmas to my folks,’ Weber said. ‘If I bring down a plane, I’ll enjoy ten days’ leave. All it takes is one lucky bullet to the pilot’s brain.’ He picked out a rifle from a crate and aimed it towards the rough roof of the cavern, making a shooting noise as he pretended to pull the trigger. ‘Ten days at Christmas with good food and beer, and I can see my sweetheart again,’ he said. ‘I might even propose.’ Replacing the rifle, he pulled a photo from his shirt pocket and showed it to Florian. A buxom girl with blonde hair waved from her perch on a bridge, the spires of the Catholic Hofkirche cathedral soaring in the background.