Luciano's Luck

by Jack Higgins

  He took a roll of banknotes from his pocket and threw them in the mud at the old man's feet, then got into the kubelwagen and nodded to the driver who drove away at once.

  The old man picked up the money and stood there, an arm around Giorgio's shoulders, listening until their sound had faded into the distance. Then he patted the boy on the head and they turned and went inside.

  Savage was soaked to the skin and bitterly cold as he hauled himself up over the last slab. The girl reached out and took his hand.

  ‘Over here,’ she said. ‘Not far.’

  He followed her, head down in the howling gale which at that height threatened to blow them off their feet. They scrambled over rough grass and he was aware of another rock face looming out of the night. Then the wind seemed to drop away.

  ‘Head down,’ Rosa said. He put out a hand in pitch darkness and felt rough stone.

  A match flared and he saw Rosa standing a few feet away. She held the match above her head and looked around her, searching. They were in a low roofed cave with every evidence of habitation. There was wood laid ready to burn on a crude stone hearth, a wooden table, sheepskins, blankets and an assortment of cooking pots. The match went out and she struck another and lit an old oil lamp which stood on the table.

  ‘What is this place?’ Savage asked.

  ‘The shepherds use it during the lambing season. They stay up here for weeks.’

  He put down his M1 and took off his rucksack. He was shaking with cold and folded his arms as if to hold himself together. She turned and put a hand to his cheek and there was the concern on her face that a mother might show for a child.

  ‘Too cold, Savage. This is not your country, not your way.’ She picked up one of the blankets and unfolded it. ‘Undress and dry yourself with this. I'll light a fire.’

  She crouched at the hearth, striking another match, and the dry twigs flared. She took off her raincoat and knelt there, putting logs on the fire. The rain had soaked through to the cotton dress so that it moulded her like a second skin.

  Savage struggled to get his wet jacket off. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I'm used to it.’ She filled a pan with water from a rivulet that trickled down one of the stone walls and set it on the fire.

  ‘I thought you came from Palermo?’

  She paused, turning from the fire. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Colonel Carter. He said …’ Savage hesitated. ‘He said your Uncle Vito brought you last year from Palermo to live with him.’

  There was a calculating look in her eyes as if she was trying to assess how much he knew about her. Savage was confused and embarrassed. She was instantly aware of it, smiled slightly and turned back to feed more logs on the fire.

  ‘I've lived in Bellona with Uncle Vito for nine months now.’

  He peeled off his shirt with difficulty. ‘You like it better?’

  ‘Than Palermo? Oh, sure. I help Vito with the funeral business. And when he needs a runner, I handle that too.’

  ‘A runner?’

  She picked up a blanket and started to dry his back and shoulders vigorously. ‘Runners carry messages between the various resistance groups. They usually use boys, but Vito prefers me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I'm smarter, for one thing. Anyway, it's my choice. I like the mountains. I like the air up here and I like being alone.’ She started to unbuckle his belt. ‘Better get your pants off.’

  Her breasts were strong and firm, thrusting against the damp linen of her dress, perfectly outlined and he could see her nipples. He panicked slightly, acutely embarrassed like some gangling boy.

  His hands went to the belt, pushing her away. ‘That's okay. I'll do it.’

  She smiled, went across to a rock shelf and rummaged amongst various utensils and other items there. She held up a tin. ‘Coffee. Old, but it will do.’

  She crouched down at the fire again, spooning coffee into the pan of simmering water. Savage, divested of his boots, managed the wet trousers with difficulty and quickly wrapped the blanket around him.

  Rosa piled a sheepskin beside the fire. ‘You come over here and get warm,’ she ordered.

  He hesitated, then did as he was told. She covered him with a blanket, piled another couple of sheepskins on top. They were old, certainly dirty and very possibly flearidden, but Savage suddenly realized that he didn't give a damn. They were soft and warm and smelled of wood smoke.

  She took a cigarette from an old tobacco tin, lit it with a splinter from the fire and passed it to him without a word. He held it with shaking fingers, grateful for the comfort from the cheap, strong tobacco as he inhaled deeply.

  For some reason, he remembered the dinner party his mother had given for him during his last leave in Boston. Dinner jackets, handsome men in uniform, pretty women, the Savage silver gleaming in the candlelight, discreet servants. And there was Joanna, of course, Joanna Van der Boegart who had been somewhere around since his earliest memories. Joanna whom he would marry one day, much to everyone's satisfaction.

  He remembered her that last time in his arms on the terrace, up from Vassar for the weekend specially for the party. Cool, elegant, her lips firm and full, but never opening for him, not even on an occasion with the possibility of such finality to it.

  Not like this not anything like this. He watched Rosa, leaning over the fire pouring coffee carefully into an old tin cup. The damp cotton dress was so tight that he could see the shape of her pants underneath.

  There was an immediate sexual stirring of a kind he had not known for some considerable time and he moved uncomfortably. Whatever a soldier monk might be, Jack Savage was a strong contender for the title. He had been celibate for over a year now. The kind of life he had led, the lengthy periods of training interspersed with brief forays into Europe, left little time for any kind of relationship with a woman. He had long since decided to cut that side of things out of his life altogether, at least for the duration.

  In any case, he had never thought of himself as being any great shakes with women. The kind of upperclass girl he had been raised with, girls like Joanna, used their virginity as a bargaining factor. Episodes with the other type of girl at college had been unsatisfactory to say the least.

  Even Montmartre had failed to work its magic on him during his painting days. There were girls in plenty interested in the handsome American painter with money. but whatever it took to keep them happy, he didn't have. He had long since come to that regrettable conclusion.

  Rosa passed him coffee in the old tin mug, hot and black, and Savage swallowed it greedily, burning his mouth, his hand shaking. She stood looking down at him, a hand on her hips, the steam rising from her damp dress. God, but he was cold, shaking so badly that coffee slipped down his chin and she took the cup from him.

  ‘I think you have a fever,’ she said. ‘And for that, you must sweat.’

  She piled more sheepskins on him, then started to unbutton the dress. As she peeled it down, firm breasts gleamed in the firelight. He closed his eyes, aware of the pants sliding down, the dark hair between her thighs and then she was coming in under the sheepskin beside him.

  There was an incredible unreality to it all, like one of those fantasies born in the mind when halfasleep.

  Her lips nibbled at his ear and then her tongue was probing his mouth. Her hand slid down the blanket across the flat muscular belly and touched him.

  She laughed and breathed in his ear. ‘You take me to New York, eh? You take me to New York, Savage, and I make you a little bit crazy.’

  And then she moved, rolling on top of him, spreading her thighs, guiding him into her.

  Later, lying there, half asleep, still in a fever his arm around her, he was aware of her whispering.

  ‘Savage, are you awake?’

  He made no reply but lay there, thinking about what had happened. He had never known anything like it or like her. The warmth, the primitiveness, the total lack of shame.

  Her head went down
and he was aware of her tongue tracing a course across his belly. Then she had him in her mouth. He groaned and started to move.

  She pulled away and looked up at him. ‘So, you are awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, pushing her over on her back. ‘I'm awake, damn you!’

  She laughed and kissed him as he thrust into her, still half in a delirium, mounting to a climax that seemed to be without end. One thing he was aware of. The way her body moved, the sudden gasp, the hands tightening into his flesh, her smothered cries.

  Then afterwards. he stayed on top of her and finally drifted into sleep as she gently stroked his face.

  12

  Luciano and Maria followed the same rough track for almost two hours. For most of the time its path lay through pine forest and they avoided the worst of the weather. When it emerged from the trees to climb a steep and rocky hillside, the wind drove rain into their faces so that they could only walk head down and she had to hold on to him for support.

  They stopped in the shelter of an outcrop of rock and Luciano shouted. ‘This is no good.’

  She put a hand to his face. ‘Just a moment. I think I smell wood smoke.’

  She was right. He moved out of the shelter into the full force of the wind, aware instantly of the strong, pungent aroma, and they struggled on.

  They came over a rise and saw a light in a hollow amongst trees. Dogs started to bark and. they came to a fence and beyond, on the other side of a mud yard, was a cottage. Luciano unslung his M1 and cocked it and they went across the yard. The top half of the door opened, light flooding through, and a man appeared holding a shotgun.

  ‘Who goes?’ he called.

  ‘Travellers, caught by the night,’ Luciano replied. ‘We need shelter.’

  ‘None for you here. We have trouble enough.’

  He was perhaps thirty, a typical mountain man with a heavy black moustache and long unkempt hair under the cap.

  He started to close the door and Luciano said, ‘I got a woman with me. What kind of man are you, anyway?’

  He took a step towards the door and the man raised the shotgun to his shoulder. ‘I said no. Another step and I blow your head off.’

  ‘And answer to Mafia,’ Luciano said. ‘To Luca himself.’

  The man froze, lowered the shotgun slowly. ‘What has Don Antonio to do with this?’

  Luciano pulled Maria forward. ‘His granddaughter. We're on our way to the Franciscans at Crown of Thorns.’

  The shotgun came all the way down. The man hesitated; then a woman cried out in agony inside and he turned quickly.

  Luciano and Maria paused at the door. The scene was incredibly primitive: bare stone walls, mud floor, an open fire on the hearth with the most rudimentary of chimneys so that the room was half-filled with smoke. There were two goats tethered beside a couple of young children wrapped in a blanket who watched what was happening at the other end of the room with great round eyes.

  A young woman lay on a crude wooden bed, her face running with sweat and racked with agony. An old crone sat on a stool beside the fire stirring something in an iron pot. She had a face like wrinkled leather and wore a black scarf around her head, black dress and broken boots.

  The young woman moaned again, her knees sprawling apart under the blanket, her belly swollen. Maria unlatched the lower half of the door and went in and Luciano followed her.

  She leaned over the girl, placing a hand on her brow and the young man said. ‘She's been in childbirth since yesterday. That's why I sent for the Strega.’

  Stregas were witches more than anything else. There was usually one in most villages who sold potions and spells that were really only herbal medicine. In the back country, they were the peasant's substitute for a doctor.

  Maria started to pull back the blanket to examine the girl and the old woman reacted angrily, turning on the stool.

  ‘Infamita!’

  The man got hold of Maria by the wrist and twisted it. ‘What are you doing? You think I want my wife shamed before strangers?’

  Luciano took a handful of hair, dragged back his head and rammed the muzzle of the M1 up under his chin.

  ‘What's your name?’

  The man gasped in pain. ‘Solazzo.’

  ‘Well, listen to me. God has smiled on you tonight because the good sister here is a nurse. A real nurse from a real hospital, so stand back and leave her to it or she'll have two patients.’

  The old woman at the fire started to protest. Solazzo silenced her with his hand, gazed at Luciano searchingly, then turned to Maria.

  ‘This is true, what he says?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He took off his cap, wiped his face with the back of one hand. Maria turned back to the girl on the bed who was crying now, moving her head from side to side. Maria pulled down the blanket and raised the stained shift, exposing the swollen belly.

  ‘How long did you say she has been in labour?’

  ‘Since yesterday afternoon.’

  She leaned over the girl, examining her quickly and finally turned, her face grave. ‘Mr Solazzo, we have a serious problem here. The reason for your wife's long labour is plain. A child is normally delivered head first. This one is the wrong way round.’

  ‘God in heaven!’ Solazzo said wildly and crossed himself.

  ‘Isn't that what they call a breach?’ Luciano asked.

  ‘That's right.’

  The woman cried out sharply, pushing her body up from the bed and Solazzo said, ‘Help her, Sister, for the love of God.’

  She raised a hand to still him. ‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘For His sake and for hers. Now you will bring me hot water and cloths. Tear up a sheet, a shirt, anything. And as clean as possible.’

  Solazzo hurried to the fire. Luciano said, ‘You've got to be joking. Clean? In a hovel like this?’

  ‘We will do the best we can, all of us,’ she said. ‘Including you, Mr Luciano. Now listen to me closely and I will tell you what I want you to do.’

  Maria leaned over the young woman. ‘Elena, isn't that it? I want you to trust me. Do you trust me?’

  Elena Solazzo nodded wearily and Maria wiped sweat from her face. ‘When I tell you to push, use all your strength. You understand?’

  Luciano was at the other end of the bed with a bowl of hot water and torn strips of linen ready. Solazzo and the old woman stood by the fire. One of the children at the other end of the room started to cry and Solazzo whispered to the old woman who went to comfort them.

  Maria went to work, probing gently inside Elena for the first problem was to deliver the legs. She felt for the back of the baby's knee and prodded. The leg flexed instantly and so did the other when she repeated the trick.

  ‘And now, Elena, push,’ she said. ‘Push hard!’

  She held out her hands and Luciano wiped them clean and dried them. She grasped the baby firmly by the legs and pulled down until the shoulders were clear, but the arms were still inside, extended.

  As Luciano watched she probed again gently, twisting to the left, hooking a finger into the left elbow and delivering the arm. A moment later, the other arm was also free.

  Elena was gasping for breath like an animal, staring up at the ceiling, face contorted with pain.

  ‘How's it going?’ Luciano asked softly.

  ‘Fine so far, but this is the most dangerous part, delivery of the head. If it's not done just right…’

  She paused and he completed the sentence for her. ‘She could have an imbecile on her hands.’

  Maria took a deep breath, trying to remember every aspect of her training. The essential thing was to bring the head out slowly and steadily. She put her right arm underneath the infant and got a finger into its mouth, which meant she was now supporting it.

  Her other hand was on the neck, fingers spread and she started to pull. It was amazing how much strength it took; then suddenly it was clear and safe in her hands.

  The baby was not breathing, was a deep shade of purple all over. S
he cleansed the nostrils and the mouth of mucus with strips of linen and placed a hand over the chest.

  ‘Is it okay?’ Luciano demanded.

  ‘Oh, yes, a strong heartbeat.’

  She blew into the tiny mouth, very, very gently. Quite suddenly the chest heaved and the baby started to cry. Solazzo cried out as if responding to it.

  Maria tied the cord, then cut that last essential link between mother and child. ‘A daughter, Mr Solazzo, in case you hadn't noticed.’

  Elena was crying now, tears mingling with the sweat, and as Maria wrapped the child in strips of linen, Solazzo leaned over.

  ‘What a little beauty. We name her after you, Sister.’ He laughed out loud, tension pouring out of him.

  Even the old woman was smiling and she came forward, the two children shuffling beside her, wrapped in their blanket, and the goats bleating in the shadows.

  Maria washed blood from her hands in the basin. Luciano said, ‘You did all right.’

  ‘Why thank you, Mr Luciano.’ She smiled back at him. ‘Could I have more hot water?’

  She turned and started to clean Elena's belly and thighs. Luciano went to the door and emptied the bowl into the yard. He lit a cigarette and leaned on the door, staring out into the rain. He hadn't felt so alive in years.

  Solazzo appeared beside him with a bottle. ‘A drink, Signor?’

  Luciano took a pull. It was cheap Sicilian brandy and it burned all the way down. He choked and handed the bottle back.

  Solazzo took a swig himself. ‘What you said earlier about the good sister is true, Signor? She is Don Antonio's granddaughter?’

  ‘You are of the Society?’ Luciano asked.

  ‘Since I was seventeen years. And you also, Signor.’ He shrugged. ‘I do not need to ask. May I have the pleasure of your name?’

  ‘Luciano.’

  Solazzo's mouth gaped in astonishment. ‘You are Luciano, Signor?’

  ‘That's right.’

  Solazzo grabbed for his right hand and kissed it. ‘Don Salvatore the Saviour. God sent you to us out of the storm tonight.’