Soul of the Border

by Matteo Righetto

  “I’m not putting down a damned thing,” she said, still keeping him in her sights. “And if you don’t think I’d have the courage to shoot someone like you, all you have to do is put me to the test. I mean what I say.”

  He took from the donkey the jute sack Näckler had given him and removed the twelve pieces of metal: eight of copper and four of silver.

  “Here they are,” he said.

  “Step forward, I want to see them properly!”

  He moved half a metre forward and showed them to her. She nodded.

  “Now weigh them in front of me, one at a time.”

  Calmly, De Menech did as he was told, moving slowly so that there should be no doubt.

  “Good,” Jole said. “Now load the sack on my horse, take the tobacco, get on your donkey and go. Until I see you vanish into the fog you came out of, I swear I’ll be aiming the rifle at your head. Don’t think I’m joking. I’m no man, I’m a woman!”

  He gathered all the tobacco in its individual cases, bags, leather pockets and jute pouches and loaded them on the donkey, which brayed as if it had no intention of burdening itself with these eighty kilos.

  “Goodbye!” she said.

  “Why, aren’t you coming back?”

  “I don’t know, but for now, goodbye!”

  He smiled as if to tease her. “You’ll be back, you’ll be back,” he sneered as he took up the donkey’s reins. “I need your tobacco, and you need my copper and my silver.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “One last thing,” he added before setting off back down the slope towards the valley.

  “Go on!”

  “About your father. I’m sorry about this, but I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

  Jole’s hands started sweating with anxiety and the rifle grew slippery.

  “Please don’t misunderstand me,” he went on, slowly. “I have nothing to do with it and I don’t know anything, but the fact is, I did hear something about him… although I don’t believe it for a moment.”

  “What?”

  “Well, they say that a couple of years ago, having come down here on the usual smuggling expedition, he met a pretty girl in the woods, more or less your age. Her name was Cecilia Mos, and she was from Canal San Bovo, a village not far from Imer. Well, you know how it is… They say he couldn’t stop himself, if you know what I mean. First he had his fun, and then he killed her.”

  Jole felt a lump in her throat and realized that her nerves were so on edge she might well burst into tears.

  “It’s not true!” she cried. “It’s all lies! And what’s it got to do with his death anyway?” She was sobbing now, trying desperately to keep the rifle still and aimed at De Menech.

  “What it’s got to do with it,” he replied, “is that the girl’s father made him pay for what he’d done and killed him like a dog. That’s what it’s got to do with it. Although it’s all rumour, of course!”

  “You’re nothing but a liar!”

  “It’s what people are saying,” he said, sure of himself, as if he was now accustomed to having that rifle aimed at him.

  “Get out of here!” she cried threateningly.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” he said with a snigger, gradually moving further and further away. “See you next year!”

  After a few moments, he vanished into the dense haze of a cloudy dawn that was now beginning to lighten the surrounding landscape.

  She counted to fifty, then lowered the rifle.

  She checked the bars of copper and silver once again, tied around her horse’s abdomen the laces of the bags where they would remain hidden and at last mounted Samson, who for once didn’t have all those flies on his coat.

  “Ya!” she said to urge him. “We’re going home!”

  PART THREE

  1

  RIDING AT A CONS TANT PACE, Jole began her return journey. She climbed back up the mountainside until she reached the pass, from where a trail branched off leading south-west, towards the Noana Valley.

  After crossing a last section of conifer forest, she entered the broad mouth of the canyon and followed the course of the river. As she proceeded, the walls of the valley became ever steeper and narrower.

  When the man reached the shrine, the girl must have only just left, certainly less than an hour ago, since on such a damp morning the hooves of her Haflinger were still imprinted in the muddy ground, and for someone like him the tracks were easy enough to follow.

  He looked up, attracted by the repeated cry of an eagle that was beginning its hunt, then spurred his black horse and set off in pursuit.

  Jole stopped near the cadino where she had bathed the previous day. Beneath those dark clouds, the water had lost its deep-blue colour and looked merely grey.

  She looked around. It seemed like a completely different place.

  The sky was clearing a little, but a few dark clouds still drifted by, moving at a constant speed.

  It was cold and she took one of her woollen blankets, made a tear in the middle and put it on like a poncho. Samson drank from the stream, and some ten metres further upstream Jole filled the canteens. She had the feeling she had passed this way, not twenty-four hours ago, but weeks, if not months earlier!

  She took a sip of the icy water and looked at the steep wall over which she would have to climb to get out of the valley. On foot, she ascended the long granite wall and tied her thick hemp rope to the trunk of a great elm, then came back down, mounted Samson and began the difficult ascent.

  In the meantime, the usual flock of ravens had gathered nearby, perched on the branches of the higher ash trees in the hope of feeding on a human corpse or horse carrion. When she saw them she waved playfully at them.

  “I made it on the way out,” she said to them out loud, “and I’ll make it now, too.”

  Despite her fatigue, the difficulties of the moment and her awareness of having to concentrate metre after metre on the return journey, she could not get what De Menech had told her about her father out of her head. It was impossible to dismiss those awful words from her mind, and they continued to ring in her ears and echo in her temples like a malignant, obsessive mantra, a black-magic spell that led to madness.

  She could not believe that version of events. She was certain that the bastard had made it all up, just to see her suffer, to kill her inside.

  But now her tiredness was really making itself felt, her strength was worn down to the bone, and her head and nerves, too, had grown fragile. She had been unable to sleep during the night and the previous day had been back-breaking, not to mention the fact that she had now been travelling for four days in extreme conditions. By now, despite her great determination, even the smallest effort was proving to be beyond her physical capabilities. Given all this, it was hardly surprising that De Menech’s words, however hard she tried to ignore them, were slowly coming to dominate her thoughts.

  The man continued to follow the horse’s trail until the muddy ground was completely replaced by grassy pastureland. Samson’s hoof tracks now disappeared, but for someone like him it was easy to guess the route the girl had chosen. If she wanted to get to the border, she would have to get through the narrow canyon of the Noana Valley and head straight for Mount Pavione, the only point on the border with Italy where patrols were almost non-existent, given the altitude and the treacherous conditions of that mountainous terrain. He smiled on seeing the tufts of grass flattened by her passing and continued on his way, riding his black horse.

  *

  After a few unsuccessful attempts, mainly due to the crumbly, slippery pebbles that had almost toppled Samson off a crag a dozen metres high, Jole at last made it.

  Once she had reached the top of the granite wall, she untied the rope, retrieved the end of it and tied it as usual around Samson’s harness.

  She heaved a sigh of relief, drank and set off again.

  Then he, too, reached the entrance to the canyon, where the waterfall thundered down, forming deep cadini. On the
bank of the stream, he noted that the tracks of that slow, heavy horse had reappeared.

  He was pleased with himself. He had not forgotten his hunting skills.

  He, too, saw the ravens perched on the highest branches of the ash trees. He looked them up and down: they were enemies that would always lose against him.

  He, too, looked in awe at those granite walls and wondered how he would climb them.

  He, too, made it.

  And he, too, had a rifle. A repeating Steyr Mannlicher.

  Jole climbed through the dense undergrowth of broad-leaved trees and penetrated the level forest that surged towards the north side of Mount Pavione, which appeared and disappeared ahead of her like a dream that continued to deny itself. She and Samson zigzagged between the huge trunks of silver firs that must have been at least a hundred years old.

  Along the route, she had easily crossed the many brooks and streams she had first encountered on the way out, proceeding over terrain that until the day before had been covered by a layer of tall moss as soft as cotton wool. Now it had become much muddier and swampier, and Samson’s legs kept sinking into it.

  The man came to that same forest through which she had passed no more than half an hour earlier.

  He was gaining ground.

  He looked at the peak of Mount Pavione glittering between the branches of the spruces and rising like a Titan. He would definitely catch up with her, but he told himself he would have to hurry to do so before the border. Not that it would be very different beyond the border, not for his purpose.

  But catching up with her before she crossed would be better.

  2

  JOLE NOW FACED the long ascent that led to the border on Mount Pavione, still careful to make sure that there were no men from the Zollwache anywhere about. She constantly looked in front of her, and to her right and her left. Every two hundred metres, she stopped Samson and cocked an ear to catch any possible suspicious noises.

  Gradually, she left the conifer forest behind her and plunged into meagre stands of larches and constant thickets of Swiss pine, which within a few minutes gave way to the vast scree of the highest mountain in the Vette Feltrine.

  In a landscape like this, it was much easier to spot dangers ahead, but at the same time it was even easier to be spotted. She stopped to look carefully in front of her at the point she would have to reach at the top of the ridge, a gap at least five hundred metres from where she was now. A short-toed eagle was circling above her head, halfway between the mountain’s rocky wall and slopes that were partly stony and partly green. The sun was shining again, and the wind that Jole had encountered once before in this vicinity now resumed blowing, emitting those unmistakable sounds that seemed like human voices. The soul of the border, its spirit, was once more greeting her with its loud voice.

  She advanced without stopping for an hour and then, midway through the ascent—in other words, almost at the invisible border with Italy—she decided to stop and rest her horse.

  They squatted behind a bush of mountain pine, surrounded by that sea of sharp stones and dandelions: those flowers that were never afraid.

  It was early afternoon, and the mountains seemed asleep. She took out one of the two canteens and drank, unaware of anything untoward.

  The man had stopped his horse quite a while earlier and had proceeded on foot, silently, very close to her, taking shelter behind a bush every time she stopped and looked around.

  Now he came from below and pointed his rifle at her, taking her by surprise.

  “Got you!” he cried.

  She turned abruptly and saw a stranger dressed in black, ready to shoot her.

  There was not even time to wonder if it was a hallucination before he repeated, “Got you!” This time he said it in a harsh tone full of hatred and contempt.

  Jole was motionless, unable to say a word, her heart racing with fear.

  “You’re De Boer’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  She did not understand any of this, let alone the meaning of that question. It seemed only natural to answer in the affirmative, and she nodded her head up and down.

  The black-clad man took a few steps forward, his rifle still trained on her.

  “That bastard raped and murdered my only daughter. Cecilia was just sixteen.”

  She swallowed air, and her mouth became as dry as the scree around her.

  Everything lost colour, including the walls of the mountains and the dandelion flowers. Everything faded before her eyes. Every light was snuffed out the moment she heard those words.

  “I swore to avenge my daughter and that’s what I’m here for. When I saw you outside the Black Bear, I immediately knew who you were. I would have known even if De Menech hadn’t confirmed it this morning and told me where I could find you.”

  She was incapable of moving, feeling as if she were paralysed from head to foot.

  The wind was blowing hard, and she closed her eyes as if to listen to its voice, as if to hear whether there were any words for her coming from the sky: they would definitely be the last words she would hear in her life. All at once, though, she felt the rough surface of a stone under the palm of her hand. It was sharp and angular. That stone helped her to think again, like a spark capable of reigniting a fire now extinguished.

  The man came even closer, and she could smell the stench of goat on his black clothes. Making sure she was not seen, Jole ran her hand over the stone and realized that it was big enough to be seized in a single move and small enough to be thrown at a decent speed.

  The man said something she did not understand, then cocked his rifle, ready to sate his thirst for blood.

  And at the very moment he uttered the word “revenge”, Jole flung the stone at his head with all the strength she had.

  It took a moment.

  The stone struck the man in the right temple, and he fell to the stony ground like a chamois brought down by a hunter. In an agitated state, she immediately leapt to her feet and, seeing that he was lying there lifeless, his face covered in blood, she quickly gathered her things, mounted Samson and resumed her ascent towards the ridge.

  After some fifty paces, she summoned the courage to turn and thought she saw the man’s legs move and his head turn from side to side.

  “Ya!” she cried to Samson. “Ya!”

  Within a short time she had reached the pass. The usual wind that never stopped blowing up here was howling words of fear and flight that echoed like promises of revenge.

  3

  THE DESCENT on the Italian side was far from easy.

  Jole was in a confused state, her mind filled with anxiety and terror, and Samson, sensing these moods, grew nervous, too. Jole knew that sooner or later the man would get back on his feet and resume his pursuit of her, just as she knew that her one hope of escaping him was connected with reaching the woods further down the mountain, where she would be certain to shake him off and there was no chance he would spot her again.

  I have to make it, I have to make it, she said to herself. Be brave, Jole! I have to hold out, chase away the fear, be strong, I owe it to myself and my family. That bastard mustn’t catch up with me.

  More than once, Samson showed indecision, digging in with his forelegs or else making sudden movements which almost threw Jole several times.

  After a thousand strains and hesitations, constantly looking behind her, Jole managed to get across almost the whole of the scree. It took more than an hour, but at last she reached the first pines below.

  Metre by metre, the slopes grew gentler and the terrain ever softer and grassier, but just when it seemed that the situation was under control, Samson suddenly reacted as if possessed. He reared up on his hind legs, neighing repeatedly. Jole lost her balance and fell, her backside hitting the ground hard.

  She immediately felt her breath knocked out of her by the pain, cursed and wondered what could have happened to Samson. Trying to raise herself, she saw that there was a large viper in front of the horse, coiled in a th
reatening position. She grabbed a stone on her right and threw it at the reptile, hitting it just enough to make it slither away quickly between the brambles of a juniper thicket.

  Samson calmed down immediately and brought his muzzle close to Jole. In the meantime, she had made an attempt to sit up in spite of the sharp pain in her back.

  She remained in that position for a few minutes, trying to catch her breath, even though she could feel terrible spasms in her ribcage that were stopping her from taking deep breaths.

  She struggled to her feet, walked around Samson and then, very calmly, remounted. She looked behind her to see if Mos was already on her trail, then nervously resumed her journey.

  As she descended the mountainside, she kept thinking about the man in black who had ambushed her and how lucky she had been to escape him.

  It was that bastard De Menech! It was he who betrayed me, telling him where he could find me and kill me… Mos. That was the man’s name, wasn’t it?

  Above all, she kept thinking about what both men had told her about her father, those terrible words louder than rifle shots.

  So it’s true, she told herself as she anxiously rode Samson, it’s true that Mos killed my father out of revenge… But my father couldn’t have raped and killed a girl, it’s impossible.

  Proceeding more slowly now, she began crying.

  Oh, my God, I’m lost. I’ve come all this way, and it’s been for nothing.

  By the time it reached her lips, every tear that streaked down her face had the bitter taste of misery, of total defeat, the inevitability of eternal hatred, the evil that ruled and would for ever continue to rule the world of men.

  She repeatedly looked back and prayed to the Madonna even though she did not believe in her, uttering familiar words from memory, words taken for granted, words devoid of real meaning. They emerged warm from her heart and were ice-cold by the time they reached her mouth.