by Irma Joubert
“Tell me again why,” she said, snuggling against him.
“Because you’re brave and hardworking and smart and . . . just lovely. Because you’re Rachel. There’s no one else like you in the whole world.” He shrugged. “I just . . . love you.”
“And I love you, Marco. You’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met. I can’t believe what you’re doing for my family. I don’t know how to thank you. Alone we would . . .”
He stopped her words with his lips and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s enough for me to have you with me every day,” he said simply.
In the first spring days of 1941, when the snow began to trickle down the mountainside, slowly turning into streams, Marco went down to the village.
The sun was still feeble, but the icy winds had abated. Rachel and Ester draped the skins and blankets over the rocks outside the cave. Everything smelled of smoke and mildew.
Four days later Marco returned with the first news from the outside world they’d had in months. “Italy is fighting in North Africa now. They plan to invade Egypt and other parts of the Mediterranean coastline,” he told them.
“Why would they want to do that?” Ester asked.
“Something to do with the Italian commercial fleet and military security in the Mediterranean,” he explained. “At the moment Britain controls both exits from the sea, the Suez Canal and Gibraltar.”
“You sound like a schoolteacher again,” Ester grumbled.
Marco laughed. “You asked,” he reminded her. Then he looked at Mr. Rozenfeld. “People seem to think the war in Africa will soon be over. Italy will be no match for the British forces.”
“As long as Hitler doesn’t decide to come to the aid of the Italians in Africa.” Mr. Rozenfeld sighed. “Then there’ll be trouble.”
“The Deutsche Wehrmacht is already there,” Marco said cautiously.
Mr. Rozenfeld shook his head. “Then it’s going to be a long battle,” he said. “Did you bring us a new calendar?”
Marco nodded. “Here it is, in my bag,” he said, handing Mr. Rozenfeld an envelope. “My two brothers have also left for the front—for North Africa,” he added.
“Oh no, Marco!” Rachel cried and her hands flew to her face.
“Lorenzo went to war?” Ester cried, dismayed.
Marco nodded. “Apparently the commander of the garrison unrolled a large notice one morning and nailed it to the church door. The villagers were very upset—they say it borders on heresy!”
But the Rozenfelds weren’t Catholic, and they didn’t quite understand what he was saying. “What did the notice say?” asked Mr. Rozenfeld.
“That all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty were being called up for military service,” Marco answered.
Rachel drew a sharp breath. Her dark eyes widened. “Surely that includes you, Marco.”
“Yes, it does. The notice also said Mussolini would send garrisons of armed soldiers to every remote corner of Italy to make sure every able-bodied Italian man joined up.”
“If you fail to report, you’ll be contravening the law, Marco. It’s a criminal offense,” Mr. Rozenfeld said.
“I know,” said Marco.
Ester began to cry. “Will this war never end?” she sobbed.
Only Mrs. Rozenfeld gazed at them stolidly.
At dusk Marco and Rachel had a moment alone. Marco said, “They’re expecting heavy fighting in the desert. Both sides seem to have thousands of troops deployed there.”
Rachel turned her head to meet his eyes. She took his hand and asked softly, “Is that where Antonio and Lorenzo are now?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, in the desert. In North Africa.”
One bright summer’s day they heard Ester shriek outside the cave. Marco whirled around. Had something happened to her? Had she seen someone? Marco and Rachel rushed out, with Mr. Rozenfeld on their heels.
“Look what I found,” Ester cried when they reached her, laughing and pointing.
Two goats stood a stone’s throw from the mouth of the cave, their sharp hooves on the loose stones, their beards moving rhythmically as they chewed, their large eyes gazing calmly at the cave dwellers.
“Ester, where did you find the goats?” and “Where on earth did they come from?” Rachel and Marco chorused.
Ester waved her arms excitedly. “I was looking for wood, so I walked down the cliff, that way. I sat down to rest and I looked down the valley, and then I heard a noise. At first I thought it was a baby crying. But then I realized it was a goat, and I thought it would be nice to have a goat, because we would have milk and we could make butter and cheese and everything! So I went to look for it and I found her and another one. I think it must be her baby, though he’s already quite big.” She paused to take a breath.
“And how did you get them here?” Rachel asked, still astounded.
“I put the rope I had taken for tying up the wood around the goat’s neck, but she didn’t like it and wouldn’t budge. So I just walked ahead, calling, ‘Come, goats, come,’ and they came. And now they’re here.”
“Very good, Ester,” said Marco, smiling.
“What a stroke of luck!” Rachel said. “Well done, little sister.”
“They’re my goats now,” Ester said firmly.
After that, Ester milked her goat every morning, brought the milk into the cave, then headed off with the pair in search of grazing. “Don’t go too far,” Marco warned almost every day, “and be careful of the sheer cliffs—for your own sake as well as the goats’.”
Rachel churned butter with a wooden ladle her father had carved for her. “How do I make cheese, Mama?” she asked.
Listlessly Mrs. Rozenfeld explained how to go about it. “But I don’t know if it’ll work. We don’t have the proper supplies,” she said. “I’m going to lie down. I don’t feel well.”
Rachel poured the curdled milk into a frayed cloth, tied the corners together, and hung it up for the moisture to drain.
All summer long the cave dwellers had milk with their polenta, and butter and a kind of cheese with their flat bread.
The days began to get colder. Winter was coming, and the green pastures higher up the mountain were hidden under a blanket of snow. “We’ll have to slaughter the goats,” Marco said late one afternoon.
“You’re not killing my goats!” Ester screamed, wrapping her thin arms around the goats’ necks. “They’re my goats. You leave them alone!”
Even after Mr. Rozenfeld had spoken to her earnestly, she remained furious and bitterly unhappy. “Murderers!” she shouted at Marco and Rachel.
When the first snow fell outside the cave a week later, Marco took the goats some distance away from the cave, slit their throats, skinned them, and cut the meat into chunks. Inside the cave Rachel and Mr. Rozenfeld rubbed salt into the smaller cuts, let them cure for a day wrapped in the freshly slaughtered skins, then hung them up to dry in the wind. Marco dug a shallow hole in the frozen earth a short distance from the cave mouth, wrapped most of the meat chunks in cloths, placed them in the hole, and filled it up with snow, marking the place. “It should last us through the winter,” he said. “There are thirteen pieces, which means we can take out a piece every week and cook it.”
Mr. Rozenfeld worked for days, rubbing salt into the skins and drying them in the feeble sunlight that occasionally broke through the clouds. Then he worked the skins until they were soft. They attached the two skins to the screen at the cave mouth to stop the wind and cold from entering the cave.
At first Ester flatly refused to eat the meat, but after a week or two she spooned some of the sauce over her pasta. “Ugh, it’s terribly salty!” She shuddered.
“Yes, we might have been a bit heavy-handed with the salt, but at least the chances of the meat going bad are virtually zero,” Marco said philosophically.
Day broke without any sign of the sun. Only their inner clocks made them realize it had to be daytime.
Marco rose from his sheepskin and
moved the screen away from the cave mouth. The night’s snowfall had completely sealed off the mouth of the cave. At least it made the cave a little warmer, Marco thought. He picked up the shovel and began to work the snow away so they could reach the fireplace. A narrow corridor now connected them with the outside world. Marco wrapped his coat around him and went outside.
The day was gray and dark, the clouds low and murky, the cliffs overhead and the gorges below covered in a thick layer of snow. He scooped up a bucketful of clean snow, crawled back inside, and replaced the screen in front of the cave mouth. He was glad of the feeble light that trickled in. It would save their candles.
“We can make a small fire,” he said. “It’s cloudy and misty outside. No one will notice the smoke.”
He opened his diary. December 25, 1941. The Rozenfelds carried on with their small lives in the belly of the mountain, as they had been doing every day for the past two months. As they would be doing every day for the two months that followed.
Only Marco realized it was Christmas.
Early in spring Marco went down the mountain. “Let’s cut your hair before you go,” said Rachel. “You’ll frighten the people with your wild hair and dark beard. You look like a caveman.”
“That’s exactly what I am.” Marco smiled, stroking her long dark hair.
“Please bring me an apple,” said Ester. “I have such a craving for an apple.”
Two nights later Marco arrived at his parents’ home. Giuseppe immediately lit a lamp, and Maria fell into his arms. “You must be careful when you come down in the dark,” she said, heaping his plate with polenta and pork knuckles. “If you slip and break something, no one will find you.”
“I am careful, Mama. This is delicious.” He didn’t add that it was his first proper meal in almost two months. In the cave their supplies were at rock-bottom. They had run out of a lot of things, even before Christmas. They’d had no meat since the wolves discovered their hole in the ground two months earlier.
“Papa has the supplies ready. A lot of it is in the first cave already,” said Maria.
“I noticed when I came past. Thanks, Papa.”
Giuseppe nodded wordlessly.
There was a moment’s silence, then Maria asked, “Marco, how are you really doing up there in the mountain? You’re nothing but skin and bones. Do you have enough food?” Her voice sounded tired, and the lines on her face were proof of her anxiety for her three sons.
“We’re doing okay,” Marco said slowly. If one considered the alternative, it was true. “Our supplies are very low, but we got through the winter. It’s almost summer, so conditions will improve. It’s just . . . Mrs. Rozenfeld isn’t well. She’s been out of sorts and she has a bad cough. And she’s very depressed.”
“I’ve put in some chest drops,” said Maria. “And try to get hold of those herbs we used for Tia Anna’s chest, remember? It’s good for fever as well. You brew it like tea, simmer it very slowly.”
“I remember.” Marco nodded.
“And Rachel?” asked Maria.
“Rachel is well, Mama. She’s strong. And very, very lovely.”
Before the sun rose he disappeared back into the dark belly of the mountain.
We are wasting away, Marco thought as he sat looking at Rachel and Ester. They had hitched their dresses up above their knees and bared their arms, trying to absorb as much of the summer sun as they could. Under their sleeveless vests their shoulders were bony, and their knees looked big and knobby compared to their thin white legs.
How much longer could they last? The supplies he managed to bring from the village were meager, and Rachel couldn’t save anything for the winter to come. But Marco was responsible for these people, for the two old parents in the cave dealt so many hard blows, for the two young girls whose lives still stretched ahead.
No goats appeared in the summer of 1942.
Marco noticed that their conversations were changing, becoming smaller, less intense, restricted to essentials: what to eat, where to find dry wood, who should sweep the fireplace or fetch water, whether to light the candle. But especially: What are we eating?
Earlier, on hearing that Jews all across Europe were being herded like cattle into camps, they had wondered how many others were hiding from the soldiers. “I think people are hiding in back rooms and in lofts and behind secret walls,” Rachel had said.
“Or in tombs,” Ester had added dramatically. “The Germans won’t look in tombs.”
“We’re really blessed to have this cave,” Mr. Rozenfeld had said. “At least we have a measure of freedom.”
And now all they could talk about was food. Earlier they had hoped for peace. They wondered if humankind would ever learn. Now they could only live day to day. Day to hungry day. They led a primitive existence. They had too much time to think and brood. Time was their greatest enemy. Marco knew he must do something to change this.
But for the life of him he could not think what.
“I must go back to the village one last time before winter comes,” Marco said one cold evening at the beginning of October. “I hope I can get supplies. The war . . . The villagers don’t even have food for themselves.”
“I’m worried about the winter,” said Rachel. “Mama’s cough isn’t getting better.”
“I’ll try to get some more medicine,” said Marco. “I just hope the doctor has supplies, that the army hasn’t requisitioned everything.”
“Bring wool, if you can find any, so we can knit sweaters.”
Four days later Marco returned, shaking his head. “The shops in Turin are just about empty,” he said. “And what the people do manage to buy, they have to lug thirty miles back to the village. The railway bus is no longer running.”
Rachel looked dismayed.
“Did you bring me an apple?” Ester asked anxiously.
Marco shook his head. “There are no apples, Ester. What grows in the orchards and fields and gardens is confiscated by the soldiers. The villagers steal their own apples and tomatoes and the last of their vegetables at night to put food on their tables.”
“I have such a craving for an apple,” Ester said quietly.
That night when they were alone, Rachel said, “Marco, how will we get through the winter? We don’t have enough food.”
“We’ll just have to be more careful,” he said.
“More careful?” she asked, shaking her head. The implications of her words were clear: Look at us. “And the war? Do you think it will last much longer?”
Marco sighed. “No one knows,” he said, “and you can’t believe what the papers and the radio say. They boast of the victories of the Italian forces. But the doctor’s son, Pietro, who’s a journalist in Rome, tells a different story—which he’s not allowed to write, of course.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Overhead the stars were visible in patches between wispy clouds. The night around them was silent and freezing. They huddled together, sheltered from the bitter world.
Then Marco spoke. “Just before I left, the baron came to tell us he had heard on the radio that a major battle was about to take place in Egypt. The soldiers have dug themselves into the sand and are ready for action. One of the heaviest artillery barrages in the history of warfare is expected, according to the radio. At a place called El Alamein.”
“El Alamein. Are . . . your brothers still there?” Rachel asked, rubbing his stiff shoulders.
“Yes,” he said, “that’s where Antonio and Lorenzo are.”
The third winter in the cave became the worst one. The days were short and dark and freezing; the nights were long and filled with terrifying dreams. Outside the cave the wind howled and gusted furiously. It snowed for days on end. The sun vanished completely.
Their world diminished to the dark confines of the cave. Every day they cleared the snow from the cave mouth and replaced the screen in front of the small opening. They were extremely careful with the kerosene and candles.
But it wasn’t
the cold or the dark or the musty air that tormented them day and night during that third winter in the cave. Nor was it Mrs. Rozenfeld’s hacking cough or the nightmares that kept them awake. It was hunger.
Hunger became their faithful companion by day and by night.
One day Mrs. Rozenfeld developed a high fever. One moment she would be burning hot and the next moment freezing. Her once plump figure, now wasted away, shivered and shook inside the thick coat under the warm duvet. The next minute she was pouring with sweat, gasping for breath. She sat up anxiously and gazed at them with wild, frightened eyes.
They fed her medicine, but she couldn’t keep it down.
Mr. Rozenfeld, despondent, sat apart from the rest of them in the gloomy cave.
None of them slept that night, nor the next day and night.
Early the following morning Marco found Rachel just outside the cave mouth, huddled beside the dead fire in the freezing cold, her neck drawn into the collar of her coat. He knelt beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.
She burst into uncontrollable sobs.
He opened his big coat and held her to him, stroked her back and her hair. She wasn’t wearing her cap.
“I think Mama has pneumonia, Marco. She’s going to die and there’s nothing I can do,” she sobbed.
“You’re doing what you can.” He tried to comfort her, but he knew there were no words to make it better.
When her sobs subsided, she raised her head and looked him in the eye. “I can’t go on, Marco.”
Carefully he wiped her tears. How terribly thin her face had become. “You can, Rachel. One can always go on. You’re just exhausted. Try to rest. I’ll sit with your mother.”
“We’re all going to die in this cave,” she said hopelessly. “We don’t have enough food for the winter.”
“We’ll manage, Rachel, I promise.”
“Do you . . . really think so?” she asked.