by Leo Kessler
‘I know, Otto. But you see, Carlo Ernesto Streithammer doesn’t agree with Herr Hitler. He thinks he’s too left-wing. Besides, he strongly objects to the Führer’s policy in the South-Tirol, over there.’ With a nod of his head, he indicated the snow-capped Brenner shimmering now in the warm spring sunshine.
Otto looked puzzled. Out of habit Gore-Browne strolled over to the black-tarred ‘piss-corner’ at the far end of the rickety platform to look at the graffiti on it. He bent his head this way and then that, obviously looking for something that was beyond Otto’s comprehension.
‘Let me explain,’ the Count said, tossing away the thermos which was their only luggage. ‘I first got to know him when I worked for the Abwehr at the time of the Pact of Steel, Mussolini and Hitler’s deal back in the 30s.
Streithammer had hoped that South Tirol, his homeland, would be united with Germany, of whose National Socialist Party he was a loyal member. Instead, Hitler promised the Duce he would respect Italy’s claim to the mainly German-speaking population of the South-Tirol. Immediately Streithammer left the Nazi Party, went into exile here, formed his own grouping and since then fought both the Nazis on this side of the border and the Fascists on that.’
‘With fifty members?’ Otto said cynically, as Gore-Browne did a sort of headstand in order to be able to read some particularly interesting piece of graffiti.
‘All the villages are with him on both sides of the border.’ The Count frowned at some memory or other. ‘Herr Streithammer is a very violent man, very violent indeed.’
‘How do you mean, Count?’
‘You’ll see,’ Graf von der Weide said darkly. ‘You’ll see.’
They trudged down the dusty street between dirty-white houses, long lines of last year’s maize-cobs and bundles of parched tobacco leaves hanging from beneath carved wooden balconies like dried-up bats. Skinny, bare-footed children played in the gutters, and a lone cow wandered by, head weighed down as if by the bell at its throat, which tolled miserably. A few chickens scratched the barren earth, dust flying from their feathers in thick clouds every time they hopped out of the way of strangers.
‘Don’t look as if they’ve got a pot to piss in,’ Otto commented.
‘It’s one of the poorest areas in Western Europe,’ the Count agreed.
‘I suppose the young chaps here would be grateful for a couple of coppers,’ Gore-Browne said hopefully.
‘Yes, I suppose they would,’ the Count said a little absently. ‘For the most part they keep afloat by farming and, more importantly, smuggling across the Austro-Italian border. Human beings into Italy, goods such as coffee into the Reich.’
For a few moments more they walked in silence down the village street, past the onion-towered baroque church into a cobbled square, village pump holding pride of place, piles of dried-up animal droppings everywhere. The Count stopped and pointed to the inn at the far end decorated with the usual flags and green garlands.
‘Gasthaus zur Linde,’ he said. ‘Party Headquarters. Come on!’
As the three of them got closer they could hear the clash and thump of a brass band belting out the Bademoeiler, a marching tune to the bombastic tones of which the Führer had always made his dramatic pre-war appearances at the Nuremberg Party Rallies. And just like at those rallies, this Bademoeiler was accompanied at regular intervals by the strangely distorted sound of thousands of voices crying fanatically ‘Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil unserem Führer!’
Otto looked questioningly at the Count. ‘I thought you said he had only fifty followers. That sounds like fifty thousand!’
‘It does seem strange, Otto,’ the Count agreed.
They opened the squeaky door which hung on one hinge and were confronted by the typical Upper Austrian inn-interior: curved wooden chairs in little alcoves, a fly-blown picture of a little boy urinating into the usual puddle and the grim warning, ‘DON'T DRINK WATER’, a zinc-covered bar, a ceiling-high green-tiled oven, and the inevitable pretzels hanging from little wooden stands on each table like criminals from gallows. But it was none of these things that caught their open-mouthed attention.
It was the trio at the far end of the room before the huge mirror.
On one side a sickly handsome, barefoot youth turned the handle of an ancient horn-gramophone from which issued the blare of the Badenweiler. On the other, a white-haired, toothless hag produced the cheering from a similar instrument. In their midst, posing dramatically in front of the mirror, hands raised in an impressively theatrical gesture, mouth curling and snarling in soundless passion, stood a tremendous man, bulging out of his chocolate-coloured uniform, his quiff and toothbrush moustache an exact imitation of those affected by the Führer, save for one thing, his were a bright, flaming red!
‘Carlo Ernesto Streithammer,’ the Count announced simply, as the huge man spun round to stare at the strangers with baleful, red eyes. ‘Führer of the Neo-National Socialist Party for the Regeneration of Germany.’
Otto took a quick look at those little red eyes, and thick neck like that of a Prussian corporal, the hands like small steel-shovels and a face that had taken much hammering in its time, and told himself he wouldn’t like to eat cherries with Carlo Ernesto Streithammer. The winders stopped winding, and the records slowed down to a halt. For a moment, a tense and dangerous silence blanketed the room.
Suddenly, the big man moved forward. Advancing on the Count, face set in a tough grimace, he clicked abruptly to attention and shot out his right hand. ‘Heil Streithammer!’ he bellowed so that the wooden walls seemed to shake.
‘Heil Streithammer!’ the Count answered, raising his right arm and saluting the figure towering above him somewhat lamely. Next instant they were in each other’s arms, slapping one another on the back heartily, the Count gasping as if in the last throes of a fatal asthma attack each time the giant struck him.
Otto breathed a sigh of relief. Streithammer was on their side.
‘So that communist traitor is still in power in Berlin, eh?’ Streithammer growled, recovering from what was apparently his daily speech-making practice before the mirror in front of a litre pot of beer.
The Count nodded, sipping his own beer slowly, while Gore-Browne smiled winningly at the sickly handsome youth who brought it. ‘I bet that kid would be glad of a pair of shoes, the poor chap. Pathetically grateful, I shouldn’t wonder,’ the Englishman added to Otto.
‘Depends on the price,’ Otto commented, and concentrated on the giant.
Streithammer was talking. ‘Our day will come – Berlin and in Rome. Look what the swine over the other side did to me last spring when they caught me near the Brenner!’ He ripped open his tight shirt and bared his massive chest.
They craned their heads to pick out the letters scarred among the tangled jungle of red hair that covered Streithammer’s chest.
‘O… V… R… A,’ the Count deciphered the word for them. ‘Organizzione Vigilanza Repressione Antifascismo.’
‘Exactly,’ the big man said grimly. ‘Their secret police. Four of them held me down and burnt it on my chest with cigarettes, then they locked me in a barn near the frontier and said they were going to cut my eggs and tail off next morning. The sphaghetti-eaters are always threatening sexed-up things like that.’
The Count shuddered dramatically.
‘But the Macaroni who wants to fix Streithammer has to get up early in the morning,’ the big man said and his leathery face cracked into a smile. ‘I strangled the guard at the door just before dawn and battered the other three to death with a shovel while they slept.’ He took a huge swallow of beer, the suds forming a white beard and moustache, making his lips gleam a bright-red as if he had just dipped them in blood. ‘Four OVRA fewer.’
The Count turned to the other two. ‘The OVRA’s Mussolini’s equivalent of the Gestapo,’ he explained quickly in English for GB’s sake. ‘You’ll find them in every town and village the length and breadth of Italy, but they are especially thick on the ground in the South-Tirol on
account of the German-speaking population. That’s why we’ve got to be especially careful over the next part of our journey.’
He turned back to Streithammer and said, ‘Mein Führer, I would like to make a sizeable contribution to Party funds – in gold.’
Streithammer’s red eyes gleamed at the mention of gold.
‘If you could get us across the frontier into Italy,’ The Count went on to explain how once they had crossed the frontier they would take local buses out of the frontier zone till they reached the chief city of the South-Tirol, Bolzano. From there they would take the coastal train to Genoa, where they hoped to catch one of the ferries down through the Adriatic Sea to Athens.
Up to that point, the giant had listened in attentive silence; in spite of his bulk and pretensions, he was obviously no fool.
‘Not on!’ he objected. ‘No more ferries going from there to Greece.’
‘Why?’ the Count asked quickly.
‘I don’t know, Count. Something’s in the air. There have been Wehrmacht convoys through here twice this week, but what the meaning for it is? Well that's beyond me.’ He saw the Count’s disappointed look and said quickly. ‘Don’t worry, you can always get across to Yugoslavia – Dubrovnik, Split, or somewhere like that and work your way from there to Greece. But that’s your problem. Mine is to get you across the frontier.’ He rubbed the foam off his brilliant red moustache and sucked his teeth thoughtfully.
‘There'll be a moon tonight, crescent moon,’ he said, as if he were considering all the possibilities, ‘but by four in the morning, it shouldn’t be so bright any more. Hmm. All right, we’ll set out at midnight.’ He turned his attention to Otto and Gore-Browne for the first time and didn’t seem particularly impressed.
‘It’s going to be a long haul,’ he said. ‘Better get some vittels inside you, and plenty of shuteye.’ He added, ‘There isn’t much room in the village. You’ll have to double up. You stay with me. You – ’
But before he could say any more, Gore-Browne interrupted the giant. In his best German, he said, ‘Could I have that party-comrade, please,’ he pointed to the sickly-handsome youth.
The giant shrugged. ‘As far as I’m concerned. But I warn you, he’s got fleas.’
An excited Gore-Browne dismissed the issue, and said in English. ‘Fleas. How delightfully perverse – and what an adventure! Not a bit like Shaftesbury Avenue.’ And with that enigmatic remark, the discussion ended.
The old woman with the goitre under her chin had finished feeding Otto. He had spent the entire meal looking at that growth, looking like an extra breast hanging where her neck should have been. He had gazed at it, spilling his soup down his stubbly face, and excusing himself every time it happened. Now it was time to turn in. There were still four hours till midnight and Streithammer had insisted they should all get some sleep before they embarked on the rugged ascent into Italy.
With a crooked finger, the old woman indicated he should follow her. He gulped. Leading him by the flickering light of an old petroleum lamp – for the village possessed no electricity, nor running water for that matter – she clambered wearily up the creaking wooden stairs and opened the door to a bedroom. It was completely filled by a great double-bed, covered with a lumpy feather quilt so that it looked as if a skinny white elephant rested on the sagging springs.
‘Sleep,’ she said and went out.
Gratefully, and not without a certain relief, he began to take off his clothes. He hadn’t slept at all in the train. Suddenly he felt absolutely exhausted. With a sigh of relief, clad only in his shirt, he clambered into the sagging bed and closed his eyes. But not for long.
Minutes later the old woman returned, still bearing her petroleum lamp. Now she was clad in an old-fashioned nightgown and her scraggy hair was tied up in white rag curlers. Otto opened his weary eyes.
‘Anything wrong, granny?’
She shook her head and gave him a toothless smile. Putting the lamp on the other side of the bed, she clambered in beside an astonished Otto.
‘Hey,’ he cried, ‘what’s going on?’
‘Nuffing,’ she croaked. ‘I’ve had none o' dat kind of piggery dese fifty years.’ She settled her goitre more comfortably on the blue-and-white checked pillow. ‘You can put out de light, if you would be so kind, gracious gentleman.’
‘Put out the light,’ Otto stuttered. ‘But you don’t mean – ’
His words were drowned by a tremendous fart. The old woman sighed happily; a moment later she was snoring mightily. With a groan, Otto got out of bed and put his trousers back on.
Miserably, Otto wandered through the deserted village. Everyone else, it seemed, was fast asleep, though from somewhere or other he could hear the faint strains of Wiener Blut, obviously a record being played on one of those two ancient gramophones from the inn. He grunted hard and told himself that he knew who Gore-Browne would be waltzing with – and where.
He walked on, the sounds of Strauss’s waltz dying away altogether. Now everything was silence save for the rustle of the wind in the trees on both sides of the village street.
Ahead, in the silver glow of the crescent moon, he could make out the stark jagged outline of the mountain peaks that marked the border with Italy they would soon have to cross.
He stopped and stared up at them. How remote they seemed in that spectral light. Suddenly Otto Stahl was overcome by a feeling of sadness. He was being forced to leave his homeland yet once again. At that moment it seemed to Otto he would always be a victim.
Then he turned and started to walk back, disappearing into that glowing darkness, wondering what the morrow might bring.
CHAPTER 2
‘Heil Streithammer!’ the assembled villagers cried, arms held out stiffly, as their guide, followed by the three strangers, passed through the double-line of them – there was even a barefoot young woman, a fat baby held at her naked right breast, but with her arm raised dutifully in salute to their Führer.
Gravely, the giant acknowledged their greeting, striding forward like Hitler himself, flapping his right arm at regular intervals. Behind him, Gore-Browne blew a loving kiss at the sickly youth.
‘How was the dance, eh?’ Otto asked in stunted English.
‘Lean closer and I'll tell you,’ replied GB.
Otto replied in German. ‘What, so you can offload your fleas onto me? Not likely!’
Streithammer swung round at the edge of the village, big hands set on his hips, legs spread apart. He puffed out his chest, and declared imperiously, ‘Comrades, I leave you once again to venture into enemy territory. Remember your duty. Remain loyal and true.’
A woman sobbed and in the silver light, Otto could see that several of the poverty-stricken villagers were dabbing their eyes, as if a little overcome by emotion.
‘Heil Streithammer!’ the giant bellowed at the top of his voice.
‘Heil Streithammer!’ the villagers cried back. In a barn a cock started to crow in sudden alarm, as if the bird had missed dawn and he had failed to do his duty. To its crowing, the party set off, heading for the mountains.
By two o’clock that morning they were climbing steadily, with no one saying very much. They all knew they would be wise to save their breath for the two-thousand-metre ascent ahead. Their track was very narrow, though in no way dangerous, for the moonlight was bright enough for them to see what they were doing. Their breath came in little puffs of smoke: the air was icy and Otto was glad they were moving relatively fast; it would have been too cold otherwise.
An hour later, Streithammer allowed them ten minutes’ rest in the cover of some snow-covered firs. Taking a drink of water from a small mountain pool, Otto gasped with shock. It was so cold that it struck him an almost physical blow, making his head ache.
‘From now onwards,’ Streithammer lectured them as they lay gratefully on the ground, resting their aching calf-muscles, ‘we don’t stop until we reach the Italian side. The Macaronis put their best troops up here on the frontier to i
mpress that Bolshevik Hitler, and one doesn’t play games with the Alpini – they know their mountains. Besides the OVRA also run patrols around here to make sure the soldiers don’t slack.’ He looked around at them with his little red eyes. ‘Comrades, from now onwards it’s marschieren oder krep-rieren.’
‘What did he say?’ GB asked not understanding the thick South-Tirolean dialect.
‘March or croak,’ the Count translated, his voice subdued.
‘Patrol!’ Streithammer hissed abruptly. ‘Look!’ he ducked, and automatically the others followed suit.
Down below, some two hundred metres away, a group of six soldiers were leading a train of laden mules spread out in a slow thoughtful line up the mountainside, plodding ever upwards, as if they could go on like that for days, in spite of the tremendous loads on their backs.
‘Sacrament!’ Streithammer cursed, as they watched the Alpini, the elite Italian mountain troops disappear into a canyon.
‘What’s the matter, Führer?’ the Count asked apprehensively.
‘Supply patrol,’ Streithammer answered, not answering before he was sure there was not another file of mules following.
‘Does that bode ill for the true cause?’
‘Hmm, it means they’ve established a new lookout post in the mountains that I don’t know about.’ The man who was going to regenerate National Socialism cursed and spat angrily on the hard rock. ‘That means we can’t use the old route, in case they’re watching it. We’ll have to go higher.’
‘How high?’ the Count asked, looking at the others.
‘The snow-line. We’ll have to go up to the snow-line.’
‘Oh dear,’ the Count said. ‘Ah, um...’
‘Oh god-damn bloody dear indeed!’ Otto cursed angrily. ‘If there's nothing we can do?’ He glanced at Streithammer, and the other swung his head from side to side. ‘Come on, let’s get on with it.’