Soul of the Border

by Matteo Righetto

  At the far end of the street, Jole spotted two uniformed customs officers, but fortunately they vanished immediately down a side street. She sat there a moment or two longer, looking around while avoiding eye contact, with one foot propped on the rim of the fountain. She remained until just before the woman with the two buckets got there. By the time she had, Jole was already ten paces further on, and soon afterwards turned left into Pichler Strasse, a dark, squalid alley.

  A black cat crossed her path, hissing, its tail held erect. Jole froze. Then she took a deep breath and continued walking, while the light of day faded moment by moment, giving way to the darkness of night. With each step she took, she heard ever more distinctly the noises and the cries of men coming from a specific point at the end of the alley.

  She kept moving in the direction of those phlegmy, guttural noises, mostly made up of harsh consonants, until she came to a pearwood sign hanging on the wall to her left, on which the words Black Bear Inn had been branded.

  Jole adjusted her hat, turned down the right corner of her mouth and narrowed her eyes in a grimace that was trying its best to look like a smug smile.

  She had come to the right place, grim as it was. She was certain that it was here she would find the man she was looking for: Mario De Menech, who had always done business with her father in the past. She took a couple of deep breaths and went in.

  Everything was shrouded in a dense half-light only slightly overcome by a dozen candles positioned on the tables and the walls, which cast the customers’ grotesque shadows all over.

  The first thing she was aware of was the overpowering stench of sweat and hops that assailed her nostrils.

  Between her and the counter there must have been a dozen men, while to her right, where the inn’s main room stretched all the way to the majolica stube dominating one whole corner at the far end, there must have been another thirty. Some of them were sitting at tables, busy drinking and playing cards, others thronged around the tables or leapt from one to another. If there was anyone without a tankard of beer in his hand, it was only because he had put it down for a moment.

  Nobody was drinking wine.

  Some were smoking, although not many, and sniffing the dense, heavy smoke that hung in mid-air throughout the inn, Jole observed that the tobacco rolled in the cigarettes was of poor quality. Probably Tyrolean or Bavarian—Kraut, anyway.

  Jole noted the presence of many miners: they were easy to spot because they were physically much shorter than other men and their faces were black.

  They were all chattering away, some in loud voices, some more quietly; there were those who cursed or quarrelled or became worked up over nothing, especially those who were losing at Zeltwurm, a card game similar to the briscola played in the Veneto. In general, the place was full of bustle and din and the host was struggling to keep up with every order.

  On the walls, which were covered in strips of poor-quality matchboard, hung stuffed animals: the inevitable stags’ heads with giant antlers, a grouse with its tail fanned open and its neck erect in the act of emitting a mating cry and even a marmot.

  She looked at these animals with the same embarrassment with which she might have looked at her mother’s naked body. She had no problem with shooting an animal. Killing was part of nature and the world, especially her world. What she found distasteful was exhibiting the corpses of murdered animals, turning them into trophies to be put on public display.

  She made up her mind and edged closer to the middle of the room, over towards the counter.

  She was genuinely beautiful, but fortunately in the general bustle nobody had noticed her, probably due to the gloom in which the room was shrouded, but also because she had her hair gathered inside her hat and was dressed like a peasant from the mountains of the south, who were generally poorer—insofar as it was possible to say which were the poorer mountain dwellers and which the richer, given that they were all poor wretches.

  This was obviously the effect she hoped to obtain, in order to move with more confidence and make her way through, searching for De Menech’s face among all these faces.

  She examined many men out of the corner of her eye, pretending to look at something else and above all without ever remaining still for a moment, which would definitely have immediately attracted everyone’s attention. She looked right and left and over to the far end. The inn was filled with vigorous, truculent faces, dishevelled heads on bloated bellies, young men who looked old and old men who looked like corpses, yellowed or rotten teeth, heavy breathing, swollen jaws heavy with capillaries ready to explode like a charge in the tunnels of the mines.

  Jole held her breath for a moment and then focused on one man. It had to be him: De Menech. He was sitting at a table near the stube, playing Zeltwurm with two cronies who seemed shabbier than he was. She took a better look at him.

  Time passed for everyone, and especially if you lived the kind of life De Menech lived three years are an eternity, and yet she had recognized him. Yes, she was sure of it: it really was De Menech.

  Moving slowly, without lifting her gaze from the floor, she was approaching his table when she heard the front door slam behind her.

  She turned.

  Everyone turned and saw two officers of the Hapsburg army swagger in. One was about one metre eighty, the other slightly shorter. They were in full dress uniform, complete with regulation hats and flashes, pistols and bayonets in their belts.

  No sooner had they made their entrance than almost everyone in the inn fell silent, even those with more beer in their bodies than the others.

  Jole moved slowly towards the back of the room, trying not to attract attention to herself amid the natural motion of bodies and tankards. She pulled her hat down even further over her eyes, walked to the old majolica stube, grabbed a wooden chair and sat down on it with her back to the counter, on which the two soldiers were now leaning with their elbows.

  From that position she could keep an eye on them without being seen by them.

  “Eine grösse spritz!” the shorter of the two pronounced, addressing the host, a fat hirsute man the fingers of whose hands were as swollen and bright red as stag sausages.

  “Zwoa,” the other added, in South Tyrolean dialect.

  Then they laughed coarsely and said some things to each other that nobody could understand.

  The host served them two large glasses two-thirds filled with white wine and a third with water.

  From the singsong tone of their words, it was clear that the two officers were already in their cups.

  They were thin and erect, and it was obvious that they were accustomed to military discipline. They both had thin, curled moustaches and every time one of them said something they both burst out laughing as if there were nobody else in the room.

  Jole remained motionless, demonstrating a cool head. In the hope that the two men would leave as soon as possible, she killed time looking at the decorations on the stube, which must have been lit less than half an hour earlier because its tiles were only now starting to get warm.

  She did not remember it at all and told herself she had never seen anything so beautiful, not even that time she had gone to Bassano with her father and visited the house of a rich gentleman to whom they had sold copper.

  That powerful dignitary lived in part of a palace in the historic centre of the city, and in the main drawing room of his residence there was a huge old red-and-blue ceramic stove, decorated with floral patterns that at the time had seemed to her like waves of botiro, the butter her mother made in summer.

  But the stube in the Black Bear Inn was much more beautiful.

  On its green-and-white tiles, dozens of spectacular staghunting scenes were depicted in brown and yellow, placed in sequence from right to left and from bottom to top.

  She looked at them spellbound, and as she followed the narrative thread she had the feeling that she was reading a story from beginning to end, even though she could barely read.

  All at once,
the two imperial soldiers drank one last toast to Austria and staggered noisily out into the street. Only then did the men inside the inn again start to make the usual racket, as if nothing had happened.

  After a few moments, she stood up from the chair and moved gradually towards the man she had identified, until she was in front of him. At this point he looked up at her and said, “What do you want, boy?”

  The other two, who were definitely miners, remained silent, concentrating on the cards they held in their hands and their foaming tankards of beer.

  She took a closer look at him, and it struck her that he had grown brutish, like an animal that has lost all domestication.

  Even those few teeth that three years earlier had still been attached to his gums were gone now. He had two new warts on the tip of his nose, his hands were covered in gnarled veins, there was a scar on his right cheek and his eyebrows were as thick as two box bushes.

  For a moment, just from looking at him, she felt like vomiting.

  “De Menech?” she asked, pushing her hat back slightly from her forehead.

  He put his cards down on the table and took a closer look at her.

  “I’m Jole De Boer, Augusto’s daughter.”

  He gave a start and his mouth fell open. It took only a moment for the expression of incredulity carved on his features to soften and turn into one of sarcastic merriment.

  “As you can see, I’m busy,” he said brusquely. He picked up his cards and said something to the other two.

  “I have to talk to you,” Jole went on resolutely.

  De Menech looked at her again and realized that she was serious.

  He asked his cronies for permission to leave the game, got to his feet and, passing her without looking at her, whispered, “Follow me!” Saying this, he dragged his heavy body through a small opening that led into a darker room separate from the main room of the inn.

  After a few moments she followed him, and once she had joined him they sat down at a table.

  “Are you trying to get me into trouble?” he asked with an agitated air. “What are you doing here on your own?”

  “What my father always came to do.”

  “So why didn’t he come? Where is he?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me that. My father left to come here two years ago, but never returned home.”

  De Menech listened to these words with incredulity, as if he knew nothing about it.

  Jole studied him closely, trying to discern if he did actually know something about her father or, worse still, if he had something to do with his disappearance and death. But she could tell nothing. De Menech’s face expressed only surprise and sorrow.

  “Two years ago he left here with a whole lot of stuff, and last year he didn’t show up again. I assumed that what he’d earned had been enough for him and that he’d decided to quit smuggling.”

  “Tell me the truth! Tell me what you know.”

  “I swear to God I don’t know a thing,” he said ingenuously. Then he looked her in the eyes and added, “I bet you’re hungry, eh?”

  Jole did not reply.

  “Wait here a minute, I’ll be right back.”

  He stood up and left the room.

  She thought of the question he had asked her and felt her stomach rumble: she had not eaten anything hot for days.

  After a few minutes, De Menech returned with a steaming plate of bean soup and a wooden spoon and put them down on the table in front of her.

  “Lamon beans,” he said. “Eat, it’ll do you good.”

  Jole moved the plate closer to her, gobbled the beans down in a few seconds and carefully wiped the plate clean. The skin of her face relaxed a little.

  De Menech began to look at her more closely and noticed that she had grown and, in growing, had actually become quite beautiful.

  He looked at her lips and the swelling of her breasts gently pushing at the thick, coarse material of her jacket.

  “How about a beer?” he asked in a more docile voice.

  “Not now.”

  “You were here three years ago, weren’t you?”

  “Three years ago, yes.”

  “You were just a little girl then, and now look what a beautiful young lady you are!”

  She stiffened. “Stop it!”

  He laughed, but then turned serious. “I won’t even think about it, but only out of respect for your father, may he rest in peace.”

  At these words, she pointed a threatening finger at him. “So you know he’s dead! Tell me the truth!”

  He grabbed her arm and twisted it. “You’d better calm down, girl, if you don’t want them to hear us out there. Do you want to get us both into trouble?” Then he let go of her arm and continued, “Like I said, I don’t know a damned thing about your father. I respected him a lot, he was a great man: strong, brave and honest. Losing his business was a real upset for me, don’t you see that? I didn’t have any reason to kill him, but someone else may have done, who can say? How should I know? I said may he rest in peace, didn’t I? If he hasn’t been home in two years, I doubt things are going too well for him right now. In the mountains either you live or you die, there’s no middle way.”

  She took the holy image of St Martin from her pocket and put it down on the table in front of him. “This was his,” she said. “I found it in the woods above Imer, just a few hundred paces from here.”

  “I swear to you, girl, I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Maybe someone found out about the business the two of you were doing and—”

  “Nobody ever found out anything, I can guarantee that. The miners who supplied me with copper and silver in return for his tobacco didn’t know him and he didn’t know them.”

  Jole calmed down and lowered her gaze, realizing that this man really did admire her father and that there was no reason for him to lie.

  “The road back to your home is a long one,” he said, “and the mountains and woods are full of criminals, you know.”

  “I hope you’re telling me the truth.”

  “I am. But for now, speak quietly and tell me: you brought some tobacco with you, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, if you’re Augusto De Boer’s daughter, you must have brought some, eh?”

  She stared him in the eyes and said softly, “How much copper for a kilo?”

  De Menech’s eyes lit up like those of a child faced with a gift he has been dreaming about for two years. “A hundred grams,” he replied.

  “Not enough. My tobacco is worth much more.”

  “A hundred and twenty!” he said resolutely.

  “Either two hundred or nothing.”

  He thought about it a moment and then said, “Not a gram more.”

  “And how much silver for a kilo?” she went on. He did not have time to respond before she proposed, curtly: “A hundred grams.”

  “But I can’t!”

  “It’s that or nothing. I risked my life to come here.”

  With a snort, he gave up. “All right.”

  Jole could barely read, but she could count. She was silent for a few seconds and then said, “Get eight kilos of copper and four of silver ready for tomorrow.”

  De Menech, too, did some calculations, which left him flabbergasted, unable to say anything except, “Eight… eighty kilos of Brenta Valley?” And saying this, he opened wide his bloodshot yellow eyes.

  “Give or take a gram.”

  “Damn! And what’s it like?”

  “Excellent, perfectly mature and very well dried. Shag and leaf, for snuff, for chewing and for smoking.”

  “Good!”

  Still grave, Jole said, “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Half an hour from here, on the way up to the Noana Valley, there’s an old wayside shrine showing the three wise men bringing gifts to the baby Jesus.”

  “I know the place you mean, but take a good look at me: I don’t like climbing.
”

  “I’ll see you there at dawn,” she said without stooping to compromise or argument.

  “But I don’t know if between now and then I can get together all that—”

  “It’s that or nothing, I can’t stay here any longer.”

  “All right. It won’t be easy, mind you. These days, it’s like all the customs officers in the Hapsburg Empire have woken up. The place is full of police and soldiers, damn them… Did you say something?”

  “No, I didn’t say anything.”

  “Oh, I thought—”

  “Eight of copper and four of silver,” she repeated. “That’s the only thing I had to say to you.”

  De Menech looked around furtively and then, taking one of her arms and moving his face innocently close to hers, whispered, “The Krauts may be good at making cannon, but they should leave tobacco-making to you people from the Veneto.”

  “So is it a deal?” she said.

  “It’s a deal. Your father would be proud of you, girl.”

  They shook hands, then left the room as inconspicuously as possible.

  She went first, and he followed a minute later.

  16

  DE MENECH could count on seven trusted men who worked for him and with whom he did business.

  They were workers who surreptitiously swallowed the metals in the tunnels and then recovered them at home, carefully sifting through their own faeces. In the tunnels and outside the mines, there were always imperial inspectors who had the task of searching the miners at the end of their shifts, which made hiding anything quite impossible, since it would be impossible to evade their stringent checks. That was why the safest thing was to hide the copper and silver inside your own body, the most secret place of all.

  The most trusted and the most productive of De Menech’s men was named Sepp Näckler, and it was he who supplied the merchandise for the De Boers.

  Näckler was about fifty years old. He had been born and raised in the South Tyrol, in a village near Tiers, and had ended up working in the Primiero mines after a life filled with criminal activities. At the age of twenty he was incarcerated in the imperial prison in Innsbruck for molesting a child, and after being subjected to every kind of torture was sent to work in the mines as a “marmot”, the nickname given to those with the task of setting off explosive charges in the tunnels.