Early One Morning

by Virginia Baily

  ‘Not any more,’ she says.

  ‘But you would like to make a contribution to the war effort?’ the man says.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she says.

  She follows his gaze out of the side gate to the meadow where one of the remaining sheep can be seen munching grass. Gabriele took the rest of the flock with him earlier to higher pastures, but this one is lame.

  ‘Of course,’ she says.

  Two of the soldiers march Filippo up the track, dragging the ewe. The others head out through the gate in the opposite direction, across the olive grove. They fan out into the woods.

  Chiara stands very still at the gate. She fixes the hollow of the Mago with her gaze.

  Don’t come out, she wills him.

  From behind her, she can hear the solitary bleat of the sheep as it is manhandled into the Germans’ vehicle, up beyond the ridge. Then the sound dies away, and silence falls on the hillside. It feels to her like the silence of an unrung bell; her clapper heart suspended and a deafening absence of noise.

  Then comes the shuffle and clack of Nonna’s sticks on the cobbles, and Chiara breathes again. Her grandmother parks one of her sticks against the fence and takes hold of Chiara’s arm.

  ‘He has been baptised,’ she says.

  Chiara wrenches her eyes briefly from the Mago. ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘The little man.’ Nonna gives Chiara’s arm a bony squeeze and nods knowingly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Chiara says. ‘What are you telling me, Nonna?’

  She can’t look at Nonna because she has to keep her attention focused on the Mago, in case it is her fixed gaze that keeps him there.

  ‘Tell me,’ she says.

  She can hear the shouts of the soldiers in the woods now. They must be down by the stream, thrashing through the undergrowth, beating at it with their weapons, leaving the deep footprints of their heavy boots in the muddy banks.

  ‘They can’t take him away. He’s a Christian now,’ Nonna says.

  ‘But the priest hasn’t been for weeks,’ Chiara says, eyes fixed, steadfast, on the hole set among the wrinkles of bark, the smooth lid of curled wood around its upper rim, the paler whorl that encircles the dark hollow at its centre.

  An eye for an eye, she thinks.

  ‘Not the priest. Me. I did it. I poured water over his forehead and I baptised him in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’ Nonna lifts her hand from Chiara’s arm and makes the sign of the cross.

  A fleeting image comes to Chiara, of Nonna clutching the child in her fierce and feeble grip, dousing him with water from a silver bowl.

  ‘But what does that even mean?’ she says. She cannot fathom how or what Nonna knows about Daniele.

  ‘Lay people can perform the sacraments in an emergency,’ Nonna whispers, ‘and I did it.’ She reaches for her stick. ‘He told me to.’

  ‘Who?’

  The soldiers are coming back out of the woods now. They are empty handed. They pass the Mago without a second glance and gather in the middle of the grove where their leader addresses them, pointing up the hill. Are they leaving? Is that it?

  Chiara steals a glance at Nonna who is manoeuvring her sticks into position to set off back across the yard.

  ‘Who told you to, Nonna?’

  Nonna gives a little shake of her head and sets off. ‘Here we go,’ she says.

  ‘Didn’t he make a fuss?’ Chiara asks.

  Nonna stops in her tracks. ‘Make a fuss? God? I wonder what that would look like.’

  Chiara is surprised by her own sudden snort of laughter. ‘I meant the boy,’ she says.

  ‘Alfonso,’ Nonna says over her shoulder, ‘is not a fussy child.’

  The leading soldier is at the gate. The others have formed themselves into a phalanx and are marching up through the olive grove, a quicker, steeper way of getting to the ridge above. She steps back to allow the man through.

  ‘We will return,’ he says and he too departs, taking the slower but more dignified route up the track.

  While Chiara is still in the yard, waiting and listening for the engine noises to die away, the Viterbo woman appears and starts jabbering at her, telling her that they can’t do it any more, sheltering deserters, it’s too dangerous, they put themselves at risk. Chiara strains to hear beyond the woman’s hectoring voice. If it wasn’t for the obvious poor state of health of her Ettore, Beatrice says, they would probably have carted him off too. Chiara can’t listen to her.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she says, ‘can we talk about this later?’

  But the woman won’t be shushed, and Chiara turns away, pushes open the gate and runs into the grove, up the slope, scrambling up the grassy banks between the olive trees.

  She arrives up on the ridge, panting. She wants to make sure that the men have really gone and that they haven’t left a spy behind. She examines the tyre marks and the footprints in the dirt all around. She plants her feet there and stares up the track to where it bends sharply to the right and disappears around the curve of the hillside. The image of the sheep and the man being led away comes to her, and in its wake the phrase ‘like a lamb to the slaughter’. She shakes her head to shift the notion that she has been party to–has brokered, even–some kind of unholy deal.

  She turns back towards the farm and sets off, running back down the slope. She needs to see Daniele’s face. She is picturing it in such detail, his dark eyes staring up at her, the freckles across his nose, the jut of his chin, and is so certain that she will find him crouching inside the Mago that when she grasps its rim and tips her head into the woody hollow, she cannot at first take in that it is empty. She thrusts her head further inside and peers down at the muddy pool at its base where a twig and two soggy brown leaves float.

  She pulls out again and looks around. ‘Daniele,’ she calls.

  And then she is running down into the woods, looking about her as she sprints, stopping to bellow his name and then careering on again, all the way down to the stream.

  She stands in the dell, where the leaves on the trees drip like slow rain all around, and the water of the stream comes gurgling and whispering over the stones. She shouts his name over and over until her throat is raw.

  Eventually Gabriele, back from the high pasture, comes and finds her and leads her back to the house.

  ‘He wasn’t wearing any shoes,’ she says.

  Gabriele tells her about two places he can think of where Daniele might hide: an oak tree that the boy likes to climb, and a little grotto in the hillside that they discovered the night of the olive-oil escapade.

  ‘That’s good,’ she says, ‘two,’ but thinking three would be better. And anyway, despite herself, she sees the child running, endlessly running, like a wind-up toy with a broken mechanism. He will not stop running until he drops and then he will be lost.

  Gabriele escorts her back to the farmhouse and heads out to search.

  Cecilia has pushed the broken machine to one side and is sewing something by hand on her lap. Nonna sags lumpily in her chair at the unlit hearth.

  Chiara looks at the mess of the half-prepared meal. She fetches the bulb of garlic out of her pocket and places it beside the lump of unkneaded dough, the onions, the carrots and the bunch of rosemary.

  She lowers herself into the chair opposite Nonna.

  ‘It wasn’t enough, was it?’ she says after a while.

  Nonna looks like an old rag doll on a string, her head shaking tremulously. The slight movement probably doesn’t indicate a considered response but if it does, it’s a ‘no’.

  Chiara returns to her calculation. Filippo and the sheep, they weren’t a high enough price to pay. She is trying to think what might have shifted the balance in Daniele’s favour, but it is not clear to her. If Mario and Furio have been taken too–their source of meat–might that provide a sufficiently heavy counterweight? But what if Mario and Furio were indeed the ones who, either knowingly or not, alerted the Germans to the presence of their little
community here high in the hills? Would that negate their value in the equation or even, God forbid, count against him?

  Beatrice and Ettore appear at the door.

  ‘Can we come in?’ Beatrice asks and then does so before anyone has replied. She surveys the quiet, cold room. ‘Fetch some wood,’ she says to Ettore. ‘I’ll take over the cooking, shall I?’ she says, rolling up her sleeves. She busies herself at the kitchen end, muttering to Ettore when he comes in and out with logs and kindling.

  ‘What will they do to Filippo?’ Chiara says.

  Ettore, who is kneeling at her feet to lay the fire, looks sideways at her and shrugs.

  ‘Transported to Germany, most likely,’ Beatrice says. ‘To a labour camp.’

  ‘They might make him fight,’ Ettore says.

  Chiara has not been this close to Ettore before. He has pale pitted skin on his cadaverous cheeks and a sweaty brow. When he inhales, something rattles in his chest.

  ‘You don’t think… ’ Chiara says and then she stops, feels herself redden, realising the bargain she is again making in her mind.

  If Filippo dies, will that be a high enough toll to bring the boy back? She is offering a life for a life as if any of it were hers to give. She stands up, horrified, her hand over her mouth.

  ‘No,’ Beatrice says, reassuring. She must think that Chiara’s horror is at Filippo’s possible fate, not at the perfidy of her own heart. ‘They’ll make him work one way or another. He’s more use to them alive.’

  ‘It won’t catch,’ Ettore says, looking at the dead fire.

  ‘Let me,’ Beatrice says. She helps Ettore to his feet, and he shuffles out of the way over to Cecilia’s corner. ‘Let’s hope Gabriele finds the boy before it’s dark,’ Beatrice says, unpacking the kindling and the logs. ‘Because if he’s fallen and hurt himself, he can’t cry for help, can he?’

  Nonna lets out a whimper, a forlorn out-breath.

  Beatrice restacks the logs with more space in between them.

  The possibility of the sure-footed child falling and hurting himself had not occurred to Chiara. She imagines him plummeting from the crown of the oak tree that Gabriele described, then tumbling into a deep hole at the back of the cave, falling down and down through coldness into the earth’s fiery core.

  ‘He can speak, you know,’ she says. Her tone is sharp.

  Beatrice raises her eyebrows. ‘Oh really?’ she says. ‘Silly me.’

  Chiara watches Beatrice as she gets up, walks to the oven with the fire tongs in hand, brings back a burning log and inserts it into a space she has left in the middle of the pyramid of logs in the hearth. ‘That should catch now. Come on, Ettore,’ she says. ‘Let’s leave the ladies to it until dinner time.’

  ‘Your sister is sewing an outfit for the child,’ Ettore says in a placatory manner, joining his wife at the door. He attempts a smile.

  ‘He used to speak,’ Chiara explains, just as Cecilia bellows something unintelligible from her corner.

  Beatrice is not mollified. ‘Can’t speak, won’t speak,’ she says.

  ‘He keeps his own counsel,’ Ettore says, soothingly.

  Beatrice tuts. ‘Oh, we know you love him and you’re worried. We’ll pray for you,’ Beatrice says.

  Love him, she thinks, closing the door after them.

  ‘I said no,’ Cecilia shouts as they leave.

  ‘No, what?’ Chiara says, swinging round to confront her sister who, in answer, raises the little shirt she is hemming and flaps it. ‘What do you mean?’ Chiara says.

  Out of the corner of her eye she becomes aware of Nonna, sunk even further into her chair, holding her hands to her temples and rocking. Nonna is speaking in a tiny little voice out of one side of her mouth. She might have been speaking for some time.

  Chiara leans down to hear. ‘What is it, Nonna?’ she says.

  Nonna’s face close up is like an empty paper bag, more crumpled on one side than the other. ‘Bed,’ she seems to be saying and then something else.

  Chiara helps her nonna remove the outer layers of wadding, including Filippo’s jacket, half carries her to the outhouse and finds, for the first time ever, she has to go in with her, hitch up the skirts and petticoats, haul down the drawers and hold her steady.

  Nonna repeats the phrase from earlier, but her voice slurs. It sounds like, ‘I have lived too long.’

  ‘You’re just exhausted, Nonna,’ Chiara says.

  She tucks her nonna into the big bed in the middle of the room.

  ‘Come and sing Nonna a lullaby,’ she tells Cecilia.

  Cecilia lays down her work and sits on the other side of the bed. She hums a tune, but the words elude her. Nonna lies unmoving on her side, staring at the fire for a long time until, eventually, her eyes close. Chiara and Cecilia stay sitting on the bed, looking at the flames. Occasionally Chiara gets up and adds another log.

  At dusk, Beatrice and Ettore come in and light the lanterns. Gabriele returns soon afterwards as they are serving up the minestra.

  ‘No sign,’ he says and sits down heavily by the fire.

  They eat their supper perched here and there about the room with Nonna asleep in the middle of them all. The Viterbo couple eat quickly, clear away their bowls and say their goodnights. After they have gone, the others sit in silence, Chiara on the corner of Nonna’s bed, facing Gabriele in the chair opposite Nonna’s at the fireside, Cecilia over at her sewing table by the window. The only sounds are the crackle of the fire and Nonna’s creaky snuffle. Outside it is dark.

  Chiara is waiting for the moment when Gabriele will stand up and take his leave. She is dreading it because it will be their white flag. Their signal of surrender. It will mean the boy is not coming back.

  Please, no, she prays.

  She is watching him for signs that he is about to get to his feet, but it is Cecilia instead who leaps up, screaming. She shrieks and gesticulates towards the window. ‘No!’ she shouts.

  Gabriele is on his feet, but Chiara is faster. She is already out the door, scooping up the child from where he stands pressed against the tree, carrying him back inside and planting him on the mat in front of the fire, where he drips a black slime onto the floor.

  Daniele is filthy. Covered from head to toe in mud, splattered and plastered in it.

  ‘I thought you would be inside the Mago,’ she says.

  He shakes his head. He has another place.

  ‘You are such a clever boy,’ she says. ‘So good at hiding.’

  She wants to clasp him in her arms, filthy as he is. She puts her hand on his shoulder instead, grips it.

  ‘Hiding in the mud, were you?’ she says. ‘Mud boy?’

  It’s hard to tell in the gloom, with the mud caked on his face, but she thinks she catches a flash of teeth. She looks again. No, his face is as grim and blank as ever. She must have imagined it.

  The screaming has woken Nonna. She gazes in wonder at the muddy child and mumbles something.

  ‘She’s tired beyond words. But she is so happy you are back,’ says Chiara, translating. ‘We all are,’ she adds.

  She glances across at Cecilia, who has laid her head on the sewing table and is making a droning noise, something between a hum and a moan. Gabriele, standing beside the fire, his bowl still in his hand, sits down again.

  ‘Little man,’ he says. He nods at the boy and resumes eating.

  ‘Time for bed, Cecilia,’ Chiara says.

  ‘After you’ve eaten, I’m going to give you a proper bath,’ Chiara tells the boy. ‘And then tomorrow you can wear your new clothes that Cecilia has made you.’

  She has her hand on his shoulder still and the shiver that goes through him transmits itself to her. Tomorrow, she thinks, some decisions will have to be made. But not tonight.

  ‘I’ll put the water on to heat right now,’ she says, ‘or you’ll catch a chill.’

  She lays a piece of paper on Nonna’s armchair so he won’t dirty it, sits him down opposite Gabriele, wipes his hands clean wi
th a squeezed-out flannel and brings him his food.

  She is glad to be doing again after hours of inaction. She fills pans with water and sets them to heat, while Gabriele and the boy sit companiably opposite each other, eating. She fetches the tin tub from where it hangs on the wall of the outhouse, swills it out with a bucket of water and drags it into the kitchen in front of the range.

  When they were children, she and Cecilia, and they were staying with Nonno and Nonna, bathtime was a once-a-week ritual. Nonna would draw water from the well and put the big copper pan over the fire to boil. There wasn’t the tap out in the yard at that time. They would take it in turns. She and Cecilia went first, because theirs was ‘innocent dirt, not dirty dirt’, Nonna used to say. Nonno went last because his was the dirtiest dirt.

  There was a game they played, sitting opposite each other in the deep tub, the warm water up to their chests, their legs entwined. Gripping each other’s wrists, they would move back and forth, the tin bath rubbing against and scratching their bottoms despite the velvety water. They were two halves of the same aquatic creature, stirring up the water and creating waves that moved in counterpoint to their own motion. While they slipped and slid they sang the ‘Slippery Slide’ song. Or Chiara would sing it, and Cecilia, who always forgot the words, tra-la-la-ed the tune. Their stomachs would ache from repeating the movement over and over again and from laughing and singing so loud. When the waves were lapping the rim of the tub, they would pause, hold their position, and then change their rhythm. The trick was to create a watery turbulence, their own maelstrom, without sloshing water over onto the flagstones, which put Nonna in a rage and which they would be made to mop up afterwards.

  They were the fore and aft of a small human boat, sailing in choppy seas.

  ‘Go to bed, Cecilia,’ she says on her way out for the last bucket of water. ‘You can’t see to sew now,’ because Cecilia has her scissors out and is snipping at something.