“Siamo arrivati,” said the old man, gesturing at the steep rise ahead. “Quello è il posto. There. Over there.”
Joyner cursed again and muttered. Marson didn’t hear him, and then he did. “We must be in fuck’n Switzerland by now.”
“La Svizzera,” the old man said.
“Yeah, you understood that, motherfucker.”
They kept climbing. The ground leveled again and they saw that it stretched out away from them; they saw trees that looked short, like a tight row of firs, until they realized that they were the tops of trees. They had reached the crest and started across it, hurrying without realizing it, the old man leading the way.
They had gone about twenty yards when they heard a shot. One report, from no direction they could pinpoint. They all dove into the snow, even the old man.
After a few seconds of waiting, Marson murmured, “Anybody hit?”
Silence.
“Joyner?”
“I’m here. Goddamn it.”
“Me, too,” said Asch.
The old man murmured. “Madre di misericordia…”
“That was a shot,” Asch said, low. “A pistol.”
“Did you get a sense of where?” Marson asked him.
“Shit—over there?” Asch pointed to the trees on the far side of the hill.
“You’re sure it was a shot and not a branch breaking.”
“It was a shot. Christ.”
“But it was far. It was a long way away.”
“You sure of that?”
“You can’t tell distance at this height,” Joyner said.
“Sound carries farther the higher you go, doesn’t it?” said Asch.
They were whispering, but the whispering itself carried. It made them all the more nervous about what might be out there on the other side of the hill.
“Keep down,” Marson said. “And stay quiet. Get back to the trees.”
The wind had picked up again, rising from the north, and it lifted the snow, as if the hill, this meadow, were in the wildest heart of weather, above the snow line. It was the wind of the tops of mountains.
“Climb the hill,” Joyner said. “Fuck.” His scratching now looked frantic, as though something were crawling on him under the sleeve of the field jacket. “Go right on up the brow of the fuck’n devil.”
“One more word like that from you,” Corporal Marson said, “and I swear I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Fuck you, okay? This old man’s led us on a wild goose chase.”
“Shut up!” Asch said. “Marson’s in charge.”
They were still whispering.
“Close,” the old man told them.
“It’s all shit. We don’t even know what’s going on down on the road. The fuck’n Jerries could’ve turned on them and we’re in enemy territory now.”
“Shut up,” said Marson.
They were quiet again, listening.
“We were fucked the minute Glick shot the whore,” Asch said suddenly.
“Oh, that’s great, Asch. We’re cursed. Christ.”
“Madre di Dio…”
“Everybody shut up,” said Marson. “That’s an order!”
The wind came over them with more force, and it made a sound, moving through the trees. The high, bare branches clicked and groaned and cracked. They were still heavy with snow and ice.
“How long do we stay here?” Asch said, low.
“Let’s go,” said Marson. “We’ll go around again. Keep to the trees.”
For a while they moved with stealth, from tree to tree, pausing a little at each one to listen. There was only the wind.
At last they came to a long narrow swath of open ground, between two rows of trees, with drifts of the snow in it. It was two banks, really, and it looked like a riverbed, or a lane. They went along it, crouching low, toward a large black object, a rock or a hillock, you couldn’t tell. It blocked the bed, and when the old man reached it he abruptly stopped and held one hand out, waving them down. They scrabbled into the snow-laden second growth and waited, watching him where he knelt, using it for cover. They could see now that it was the root system of a big fallen tree. They heard water trickling somewhere. The old man waved them forward, and Marson went over to him. Just on the other side of the tree trunk was a small stream. It amazed him that the water was not solid ice. But the ice was melting. Just beyond the melting were the smoldering remains of a fire, and, within a few feet, a dark elongated shape.
In the instant of understanding that the fire was the reason for the melting, Marson realized that he was looking at the body of a man, lying flat on his back, arms outstretched, as if he had fallen backward and been left that way.
SEVENTEEN
IT WAS A GERMAN SOLDIER, from the markings on his uniform, an officer. He had no effects with him, or near him. His helmet was gone. His overcoat was missing. The pockets of his trousers had been turned inside out. In the middle of his forehead was the perfect round blackness of the hole the bullet that killed him had made. The snow under his head was stained, and much of the snow beyond where he had fallen was splattered and dark. It looked black in the moonlight. His eyes were black, too, and open wide.
“Goddamn, I wanna go down,” Joyner said, scratching. “This is fucked. This is fucked, man.”
“Why would they shoot their own guy?” Asch said.
No one answered. Marson told them to get down, and they did so, because the old man had got down. They waited. None of them could see beyond the slope of the corridor of snow between the rows of trees. The little embers of the fire were still warm. There were many tracks in the snow around it.
“They’ve left him,” Marson said, low. “And they haven’t tried to hide that they were here. So either they’re running, or they don’t know we’re here.”
“Tedesco,” said the old man, peering out from the tree roots.
They crouched lower, quickly, and looked out. But the old man was apparently only commenting on the body.
After a few tense moments of watching, Marson said, “Yes. Tedesco.”
“What the hell are you saying to him?” Joyner demanded.
“The word means ‘German.’”
“Well talk English, for Christ’s sake.”
They held quite still. There had been another sound. But it was just the wind stirring in the branches again. Snow dropped from one of the treetops, like a collapsing roof, and broke among the lower branches.
“We didn’t see any tracks getting here,” Marson said.
“We made contact,” said Joyner. “We can turn around and go back down this fuck’n thing.”
“It’s all fucked because of the whore,” Asch said, low. He spoke evenly, but in the moonlight his face looked contorted with fright.
“I want you both to shut up,” Marson hissed at them.
“Tedesco,” said the old man.
Marson turned to Asch. “How many men do you think? From the tracks.”
Asch leaned up and looked at everything. “I don’t know. Ten?” They were whispering.
“It’s more than ten,” said Joyner. “If you ask me it’s a lot more.”
“Do you think they knew we were coming?” Marson asked.
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“They don’t know about us,” Asch said. “Or they don’t care about us.”
“I don’t think they know,” said Marson.
After another pause, listening for sounds, he murmured,
“We’ll wait a little. Let them get a good head start if they’re running. And we’ll be ready and waiting if they’re coming back.”
“Jesus Christ,” Joyner said. “Aw, Jesus. You think they’ll come back?”
“Just keep your eyes open,” Marson said.
The old man had hunkered down against the tree trunk, with his knees up and his lower face covered by the cloth of his hood. It was so cold, here. From the moon shade, his old eyes seemed ghostly. He stared at Marson. “Freddo mortale.”
>
“Cold,” Marson said.
“Sì. Freddo.”
“We stay here for a time. Capeesh?”
“Stay, sì.”
Marson looked through the scope, panning slowly across the open space and along the line of treetops beyond. The trail of footprints led away from the little campsite, and the wind, even now, was covering many of them, blowing the snow like sand. It was stronger and more steady now.
“It blew like this in Africa,” Asch said. “But it was sand. I’d rather have the sand.”
They fell silent again, waiting and listening. It was hard to say how much time went by. Before them, the body of the dead German was being gradually effaced by the blowing snow. The wind had shifted, coming fast from the west. Marson kept looking at what was left of the dead man’s hair, and how the wind disturbed strands of it. There wasn’t much that was clearly distinguishable anymore, because the drifting from the wind in its new direction kept sweeping across the little campsite, covering the embers, the tracks, the folds of frozen cloth on the body, and the features of the face. Had they just now stumbled upon him, they would not be able to say what army he came from.
Asch moved back into the trees and urinated. When he returned he came low, gasping. He looked at Marson with a pleading expression on his face. But he said nothing.
“Go ahead,” Joyner told him. “Make your complaint. It’s cold. You frosted your little dick.”
“I’m going to report what happened,” Asch said.
“Jesus. That again. Mr. Broken Record.”
“I’m reporting it. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not going to go the rest of my life carrying this.”
“Hey, who made you the moral compass of the fuck’n Fifth Army.”
“I said we’d talk about it when we get back down to the road,” Marson said. “This isn’t the time. I’ll go with you when the time comes.”
“You’re both fucked,” Joyner said.
Marson kept glancing at the old man, who appeared simply to be observing the others as a man gazes upon birds feeding and arguing on a shoreline.
“Like I said, you might’ve noticed that two of us got it when she fell out of that cart.”
Asch said, “She didn’t do the shooting. For all we know she was a refugee, a victim.”
“She was a Nazi, man. They don’t like Jews. That’s your people, isn’t it?”
“Hey, fuck you, Joyner. You’re a Nazi.”
Joyner started toward him, but Marson got between them and held his carbine up, so that the barrel end nearly touched Joyner’s chin. “Not one more word, not one more inch—nothing, Joyner.”
The other’s eyes were full of defiance, but he crouched back down and kept digging at the place on his forearm, muttering something about the itch that wouldn’t stop.
Marson turned to Asch, still holding the carbine up.
Asch said, “Otherwise, we’re no different than they are.”
“Gotta have the last word,” said Joyner. “Take it away, asshole.”
“Close,” said the old man.
“Sure,” Marson said. “Near.”
But they remained where they were, looking out at the snow corridor between the trees, the body lying there with the snow drifting over it.
EIGHTEEN
THE WIND GLITTERED WITH SNOW, and the cold moon rose higher. It was sharper and brighter at the height of the sky. Corporal Marson thought of the stars as ice crystals. The trees made complicated striations of shadow, and the effect was like a ghostly daylight. Nothing moved before them. There was no sound anywhere but the wind. Marson watched Joyner where he crouched in the lee of the tree trunk with his carbine across his thighs, scratching the place on his forearm. The corporal believed now that the itch, as much as anything else, defined him.
At Palermo, when he first began to talk about the skin problem, there was no swelling or rash, no marks, no discoloration, just the itch. It had first come up when they were playing poker, and everybody but Joyner was drinking Mario’s wine. Joyner would scratch the arm, and then scratch it again. He would look at it and shake his head, and then start once more, scraping and rubbing, looking at it and frowning. “Goddamn,” he would say. And he would look along the arm, trying to find what it was on the skin that made it itch. He showed it to the others, and no one could see anything but the places where he had scored it, digging at it. He showed it once just as the itch began. The hair of the forearm stood up, as if some kind of static electricity were at work. “Look at that,” Joyner said. “You guys tell me. That’s the only thing it does, and then the itch. It’s driving me out of my fuck’n mind.” He grabbed the arm and scratched. “Goddamn it.”
This kept up for days. He thought it might be sand flies, or chiggers, but the medic found no trace of any poison or bite. Joyner would keep scratching until it bled. And only after it bled would the itching stop. But then it would commence again a little farther up the arm or down toward the wrist, within an inch of the original site. The medic called it Irish skin.
“I’m nuts with it,” Joyner said. “I want to cut the goddamn skin away. Peel it the fuck off.”
That was way back at Palermo.
Now, he sat hunched over in the cold, huddled in the torn root system of the downed tree, and dug at himself, muttering low, glaring out at the moon-bright field, the top of the mountain. They were only a few hundred yards to a falling off, the descent on the other side. Marson watched him and worried.
“Put some snow on it,” Asch said irritably. “Numb it.”
“Fuck you.”
They watched the field, the open ground. The old man began to cough. He choked up something and spit it out, then pulled snow over it, looking apologetically at Marson.
“How old do you think he is?” Asch wanted to know.
Marson said, “Angelo—how old?”
“Non capisco.”
“Età. Your age.” He knew the Italian word from Mario.
“Oh, settantasette anni.”
Marson turned to Asch. “He’s whatever that is.”
“Seventy?” Asch said.
“Sì.” The old man shrugged.
“More than seventy.” Asch gestured, raising one hand over the other.
“Sì.” The old man seemed confused.
“Goddamn,” Asch said. “More than seventy. You’re in some shape, ain’t you.”
“Good strong,” Angelo said. “Molti bambini.”
“Bambini?”
“Sì.” The old man held up both hands, fingers extended. He closed the hands and then opened one of them, extending four.
“That’s fourteen,” Asch said. “Damn.”
“How many grandchildren?” Marson asked.
Angelo stared, smiling, and slowly lifted both hands again, all fingers extended, closed them, and then opened them again, and then closed them, and then held up the one hand with three fingers extended.
“God,” Asch said. “Twenty-three?”
“That’s too many Catholics,” Joyner said. “Too many mackerel snappers.” He laughed at his own joke. “How many of them are still alive.”
This occasioned a silence. Marson did not know whether or not Angelo understood the question. His face was difficult to read. He looked at Joyner and seemed to be waiting for him to go on.
“Still alive,” Joyner said. “Capeesh?”
“Sì,” the old man said. “All.”
“You’re a lucky Fascist.”
Angelo shook his head. “No.”
“Not lucky?”
“No.”
“Do us a favor, Joyner, and shut up,” Marson said.
“Where’s your family?” Joyner asked. Then he looked at Marson. “Get him to tell you where they are.”
“Roma,” the old man said.
“You understand more English than you’re letting on, huh.”
The eyes gave no sign of comprehension.
“He knows,” Joyner said. “And I bet he can tell us what’s on the
other side of this fuck’n mountain we’re climbing.”
“We know what’s on the other side,” Asch said. “The fucking war.”
“I just don’t think we should trust him.”
“La mia famiglia,” the old man said. “Roma.”
Joyner kept digging at himself. “Shit. You guys—just remember this son of a bitch was part of the Axis, okay? And he’s seventy—which means he was around for Albania and the Africa stuff, at the beginning. Ethiopia—all that.”
“What about Ethiopia?” Marson said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It goes back ten years and more,” Joyner told him. “These guys’ve been fighting a long time. I’m sure they’re sick of it, but some of them are probably sick in other ways.”
The old man understood that they were talking about him. He kept smiling, clearly trying to show good will. Marson felt ashamed and tried to soften the old man’s anxiety. He nodded at him and then offered him some water from his canteen. The old man took it, keeping one eye on Joyner.
Joyner said, “You don’t fool me, pie-zan. I ain’t like these guys.”
“Molti bambini,” Angelo said, smiling and nodding.
“Wouldn’t surprise me if you know every word we’re saying.”
He kept the smile, but glanced away.
The wind suddenly died down once more, and all around them was deep stillness. Beyond the root tangle at the foot of the downed tree, the dead soldier was like another part of the woods. The snow had covered the legs and filled wrinkles in the tunic, and it had gathered at the neck and in the ears. It kept drawing their gaze to it. Nothing stirred anywhere else.
“Shit,” Asch said to Joyner. “Think of it as a statue.”
“How long do we have to fuck’n stay here,” Joyner said, digging at the place on his arm.
“Not much longer,” said Marson.
The old man coughed again, and this time it became a fit. He held his hands over his mouth, attempting to muffle the noise. The coughing went on.
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