Eva Sleeps

by Francesca Melandri

  Gerda’s brother, whose eyes were so dark they didn’t reflect the light, had only ever seen his son Sigi a few times, and just for a couple of hours. Unlike what he had done with Ulli, Peter didn’t shoot at any target with “Siegfried” written above it in Gothic lettering: he wasn’t there for his second child’s christening.

  For some time now, Leni had stopped waiting for her husband. Her parents had taken her and the two children back with them to their maso not far from the town. On the rare occasions Peter would reappear, fleeting visits and mostly at night, after weeks of absence, nobody asked any questions; not only because they wouldn’t have gotten a reply, but especially so as not to query their own opinion about the state of affairs. Officially, Leni was still Peter’s wife, but she knew now that her husband’s true family was no longer Ulli and the newborn Sigi, but unknown people who didn’t share his bed or the warmth of the Stube, but weapons, explosives, mines, wicks, detonators, plans of escape, forged documents, border crossings along smugglers’ paths, and the avoidance of roadblocks.

  On 27 August 1964, the Musikkapelle of a nearby town staged a special concert on the peak of the mountain where Staggl and other members of the Consortium were building, at amazing speed, a splendid ski carousel. The event had been organized in order to contradict those who had already started to call it “the Factory”: a mountain that had now been ruined by the steel of the cable cars, no longer suitable for real nature lovers. Staggl wanted to prove to his fellow citizens and some guests who, despite the chair- and ski lifts, the refreshment spots, the poles of the cable cars (soon they would occupy three sides of the mountain), the restaurants with the innovative self-service formula copied from the soldiers’ mess, the three-star hotel built at about 6,500 feet altitude, that in spite of all that, nature still reigned supreme up on the peak and the beauty of the Heimat, with a view that spanned three hundred and sixty degrees from the glaciers on the border to the faraway Dolomites, was still the ultimate winner. The city tourists, after all, didn’t come here just to ski, now a compulsory sport for the middle classes of the economic boom, but also to enjoy all this majestic splendor.

  And nothing could highlight this better than a concert performed right at the summit by musicians dressed in the costumes of their ancestors. The program included the first performance of a composition by the director of the Musikkapelle, called “An meinen Berg,” To My Mountain.

  On that day, the cable car tested out by Gerda and Hannes took a lot of money: tourists and town residents went up en masse. Leni brought the children and her parents. The newborn Sigi, inebriated by the rarefied 6,500-foot air, didn’t wake up once, not even when his baby carriage kept knocking against the stones concealed in the tall grass. Ulli was holding his maternal grandmother’s hand tight, his forehead rounded like that of a roebuck, his eyes with their long dark lashes open wide in that expression of anxious anticipation he would so often have during his brief lifetime.

  The public finished settling on the folding chairs arranged in the field and silence fell, punctuated only by the intelligent caws of the crows. The conductor lifted the golden baton with which he beat the tempo of marches during parades: and one, and two, and—a bang.

  On the highway at the foot of the mountain, a couple of miles east and 6,500 feet lower down, a Carabinieri jeep had exploded on an anti-tank mine. Nobody died, but there were four injured, all of them seriously.

  At the beginning of September, a Carabiniere was killed in a neighboring valley with a shot to the head through the window of his barracks. The death was attributed to terrorists, but apparently it was a settling of private scores.

  In the night between the sixth and seventh of September, in an isolated Alpine hut, a Secret Service infiltrator executed in his sleep Luis Amplatz, one of the two BAS Schützen in hiding who had decided to embrace armed struggle. His funeral had more resonance and attendance than a state funeral: even the South Tyroleans who didn’t share the armed struggle considered Amplatz’s death an execution by the regime.

  A few days later, near the town where the Hubers and Staggls lived, another military jeep was blown up, this time by a remotely controlled bomb. Six Carabinieri were injured, four of them seriously. One of them lost an eye, the other, a leg.

  The cows are sniffing anxiously the acrid smell of the candle. Soon, the flame will reach the hay. It’s hard to imagine who could save the hayloft at this stage.

  Once a month, a boy would deliver to Frau Mayer whatever was necessary for making sweets: flour, sugar, pine nuts, raisins, candied fruit, confetti made of colored icing, silver beads, cocoa powder. He was from Trento, and had a surname ending in “nin,” like a child’s nickname, but everybody called him Zuckerbub: sugar boy, or sugary. The latter interpretation was owing to the glances, sweeter than his merchandise, that he would shoot toward every woman without exception. When they announced his arrival from the kitchens, even Frau Mayer would check herself in the wall mirror behind the bar.

  The hotel owner did not interfere with Herr Neumann’s management, and let him supervise the sacks being unloaded from the van. However, when the Zuckerbub arrived, she always found a way of going to the spot at the back of the kitchen; she’d ask for details of an old invoice, send her regards to the boy’s boss—her old school mate—or give the general duties man instructions on how to dispose of certain barrels: anything, just so she could show herself, even briefly, to those eyes that would wrap around a woman’s figure like silk. Frau Mayer spent the rest of the day when the Zuckerbub made his deliveries in a state of vague anticipation, of trusting melancholy, in the blurred memory of something all-consuming but which she wouldn’t have been able to name.

  Frau Mayer’s feelings were as unspecific and rarefied as the young man’s precision and determination toward Gerda: he would come to pick her up on her first evening off, and take her dancing.

  For all his experience as an Italian male with a smile like honey, even the Zuckerbub wasn’t used to stepping into a nightclub with a woman who caused everyone’s pupils to dilate: men’s from desire, women’s from comparison.

  Gerda had never been taken out like this either. With Hannes, she hadn’t been out in public. When they’d met, they’d always been on their own, not only on that suspenseful—appropriately so—day in the cable car, but on other occasions too. Hannes would drive his Mercedes, with her sitting next to him, as far as the bends of the passes and there, in the secluded, windy fields, they would make love. Once, he had taken her to Cadore, to a hotel like the one where she worked ten months a year, albeit smaller. Gerda was spared the embarrassment she felt toward the staff, people like those with whom she worked and sweated every day: they didn’t leave their room for two days, and ordered food and drinks to be left outside the door.

  Gerda had experienced this secluded love as proof of its absoluteness. It never occurred to her that Hannes might have been motivated by embarrassment or different intentions. Be that as it may, Gerda had never been out in public with a man.

  There was a juke box.

  “Which song do you like?” the Zuckerbub asked.

  “Mina.”

  He slipped in a coin, and she selected a 45: “È l’uomo per me.” Then he put his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him. Gerda thought of the singer’s Egyptian eyes, of the thousand implications in her expression, and smiled: now she too, Gerda Huber, Hermann and Johanna’s daughter, was dancing.

  They spent the night making love amid the sacks of sugar and flour in his van. There were silver beads, chocolate flakes, and colored sugar sticks tangled in Gerda’s hair. Thanks to the Zuckerbub’s cheerful and expert touch, she returned to the hotel feeling as creamy, soft and light as a Carnival cake.

  A few hours later, Frau Mayer appeared in the kitchen tight-lipped. Herr Neumann wondered if any of the guests in the dining room had made a complaint. With a gesture as hard as stale bread, she indicated Gerda who was cut
ting up radishes into flower shapes for garnishes on the salad counter. All the kitchen staff had the same thought: she was jealous. With cutting politeness, she said, “Zwei Soldaten fragen nach Ihnen.”19

  Gerda looked up at her chef. Herr Neumann tucked his chin into his fat neck in a sign of agreement. Less than twenty minutes later, Gerda was at the barracks at the end of the road. There were two soldiers behind the desk in front of her. One was sitting down and she thought he had a higher rank, even though she knew nothing about medals or decorations. The other one was standing, his mouth half open, as though unable to decide whether to view her as a citizen, a stunning-looking woman, or a suspect. The one who was sitting spoke.

  “Is Peter Huber your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know about his activities?”

  “What activities?”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “When my mother died.”

  “When was that?”

  “A year and a half ago.”

  “Are you very close?”

  She blinked. “He’s my brother.”

  “Your brother stands accused of attacks against infrastructures of the Italian state.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The officer sucked the air in through his teeth in contempt. “Yes, of course. You people here don’t even know what the Italian state is.”

  “No . . . ‘infra . . . ’?”

  The soldier who was standing looked away from Gerda for the first time and, even more submissively than required, said to his superior, “‘Infrastructures’ is the word she doesn’t . . . ”

  He was silenced by the other man’s irritated look. The soldier cast down his eyes then raised them again at Gerda and resumed his astonished silence. The tone with which the sitting officer addressed Gerda contained gratings, handcuffs, harsh but fair sentences:

  “It means bridges, Signorina. Roads, electricity pylons . . . And especially soldiers struck down while doing their duty.”

  It didn’t take them long to realize that Gerda knew nothing about her brother. They kept her a little longer than necessary but just for form and not out of any particular cruelty. Gerda felt quite indifferent to all this: if she could enjoy a couple of hours of unexpected rest, then she certainly wasn’t about to complain about it. Still, she was upset: what was Peter doing? Why were these soldiers asking about him? She felt sorry picturing Leni’s disorientated face, her two children. Then she thought of Eva and her arms felt empty. She had placed her daughter on the large Schwingshackl family like a pebble atop a Mandl, a stone cairn along a path—a path from which you should never stray or you risk roaming blindly in a blizzard, amid pine trees and quarries: her life.

  The lower rank soldier escorted her to the barracks exit. He stepped over the threshold that separated the Fascist buildings from the sidewalk and thus, free from architecture-bound constrictions, asked if he could see her again.

  He’d already arrested her once, Gerda said, so he could always do it again.

  The young soldier gave a silly laugh but she didn’t care. It’s not as though she had to marry him, have a child with him, exchange promises of eternal love. All she had to do with him, on her next evening off, was to sway her hips against the gritty velvet of Mina’s voice.

  It was a mixture of mold, rot, stale alcohol, and urine. It hung over the scent of cut hay that spread from the fields around the town, weighing over the breeze on that clear September night, and, slippery, filtering in through the nostrils like a poisoned tentacle. This smell greeted the four Carabinieri who knocked on the door of the Shanghai house just before dawn. Its residents couldn’t have been sleeping very soundly: as soon as Marshal Scanu, the highest ranking officer, lifted his arm to knock again, the peeling door turned on its hinges. The air that came out from inside the house triggered in him an archaic terror, like a curse.

  The corporal and the two Carabinieri with him also came from the South and the islands, and all four were almost half a head shorter than the man who opened the door. Only the hats with the peaks evened out the proportions. Some had been posted to Alto Adige just few months earlier, some years, but they all missed home very much. One thing, though, couldn’t be denied about South Tyrol residents: these people were precise, clean, and valued tidiness very highly. These people didn’t ask you, “Everything all right?” but “Alles in Ordnung?.”20 Therefore, they had never seen a house like this.

  The Stube that led to the front door was covered in piles of wood, dirty clothes, loose engine parts. On the shelf of the wooden stove, there were saucepans and plates covered in old dirt mixed with the crumbs and leftovers of food in a single smelly slush. Various pails more or less full of dirty water cluttered the floor over which were scattered dozens of empty bottles. Until a year and a half ago, the house had been lived in, even though it was dark and damp, but it was now reduced to a dump, a junk dealer’s storeroom, a trash can. The man who had opened the door was wearing a yellowed undershirt, old pants covered in crusts, and had an unkempt beard.

  Standing there in the middle, they questioned him. They were looking for his son. He said he hadn’t seen him for a long time. Did he know where he was? No. Where he was living? He had no idea, even his daughter-in-law had left. The Marshal made a show of not believing him and threatened him with serious consequences for lying. The man remained silent. The two Carabinieri started searching the house. When people have their house searched they always follow and make sure that nothing is broken, put everything immediately back in its place, rush to open every lock to avoid it being broken or even just to speed up the process. But not this man. He stood motionless in the middle of the room, lit up by a single bulb, silent, as though the coming and going of the soldiers did not concern him.

  He didn’t ask the reason they were looking for his son, not because he already knew it but because, in this old man—who wasn’t even sixty yet—there were no more questions left.

  Scanu looked at Hermann Huber’s face and thought of a cemetery.

  Raids, searches, military incursions into the homes of civilians aren’t carried out when the sun is up, when people have washed faces and their bellies are warm with caffelatte, when the humors used by the body to express itself to itself in the pagan intimacy of sleep have been washed away with water, soap, work clothes. Nor are raids conducted when the soup is simmering on the stove, when the welcoming smell of translucent onion wafts out of a cast-iron pan into which potatoes and cumin seeds will also soon be poured, and the bread is on the board, ready to be sliced. If the peasants are in the fields and so are their women, when low, black, late summer clouds menace cut hay, and every arm is needed to make sure it’s safe in the hayloft before the first crack of thunder, then that’s not a good time for raids either. Nor is it a good time when the earth is already black but the sky still opalescent and, inside the Stube, babies have already fallen asleep in the arms of their older sisters, women are darning holes in socks, and men are talking about the stretch of road that slid down during the most recent thunderstorm. Raids, arrests, searches: they, too, like all human activities, have a correct and appropriate moment which, since the dawn of time, has only ever been the darkest hour before sunrise.

  When nocturnal animals are back in their dens, with a moribund bit of fur or feathers in their mouths, and the daytime ones haven’t yet emerged; when humans have stopped running and flying with the eternally agile body of dreams, but haven’t yet been remembered by their earthly one, full of aches and pains; when the currents between the valley and the mountain are in harmony, when, for a moment, cold and warmth no longer stir and mix as usual and the air is still; there: that dark, silent and motionless brief space of time when nothing happens is the time when people expect soldiers to arrive, complete with jeeps and boots, and abrupt shouts not aimed at being understood but at terrorizing, with that primeval power that the man w
ho has a weapon in his hand possesses over the one who has not.

  Instead, it was in full daylight, just before noon, that the soldiers arrived to the group of masi clinging to the slopes of the valley and gathered around the little church. It was an inter-forces operation involving Alpini, Carabinieri, police. There were almost a thousand of them, they had jeeps, armored vehicles, and even a tank. In other words it wasn’t hard to notice their arrival. Shots were fired from behind a haystack. Was it Peter? If so, were the others who were responsible for the anti-tank bombs that had injured half a dozen soldiers a few days earlier, there with him? Were the people behind the haystack terrorists? If so, how many? Just one? More than one? No one ever found out. They’d fired from behind a makeshift shelter, like children playing at cowboys, but the weapons were real and a soldier was injured. Whoever they were, they ran away along the steep slopes behind them, along the hunters’, then steinbocks’ paths, then, like after every attack, dispersed in Austrian territory, leaving the residents of the group of masi to face the reprisals and frustration of Italian soldiers on their own. Suddenly, the tolling of bells filled the cool September air, as though sounding the alarm.

  It was Lukas, the elderly sacristan with thin, often disheveled hair, arms that were short but muscular from decades spent pulling the bell rope. The fact that the village was surrounded by armed soldiers didn’t seem to him a good enough reason to fail in his daily task: toll the bell twelve times to mark noon. The soldiers, however, didn’t know Lukas or how zealous he was: they were sure this was a signal for terrorists to attack from above, so they mounted an assault against the group of masi, as though storming a fortress.