Sanctuary

by Luca D'Andrea

  Another incriminating piece of evidence: the day and time of the theft.

  Friday night. The night Wegener would take the Fulvia Coupé, leave Merano with his right-hand man, Georg, and go to a dive in Appiano where, every Friday night, he would meet up with his men.

  There they would talk about new markets, new strategies, problems that needed solving. He would get the latest gossip, the latest hearsay, the latest tips. Sometimes, new faces would be introduced, so that he could take a look at them and decide what to do with them.

  Do you want a well-paid job, my boy? Have you got guts and balls? Then have a chat with Herr Wegener. He can help you.

  There had been a time, early in his career, when it had actually been exciting to shake hands with these men, to watch them show off in his presence and know how easy it was to crush someone with a word or a raised eyebrow.

  But now he was bored by his minions. He hated them.

  All the same, this pantomime was part of his duties. His men were mostly coarse people. Brawny, ill-shaven. When they wore jackets and ties, they looked like peasants who had come down to the town for Sunday Mass. As a matter of fact, many of them were, or had been, peasants. When they spoke, they used a dialect that set his teeth on edge, they ate with their mouths open and could knock back whole barrels of beer and spirits, making as much racket as a horde of trolls. And he would do the same.

  He had to.

  He had to speak that foul-mouthed, vulgar dialekt, he had to drink more than the lot of them put together, just because that was the only way these men, mistrustful by nature and by culture, could feel sure that, despite the jacket and tie, despite the Fulvia and the bodyguard by the door, despite frequently having his picture in the papers, Herr Wegener was, and would always be, someone they could trust. One of us.

  And so, every Saturday, at about four in the morning, Wegener would return to the villa in a foul mood, nursing a hangover and stinking of cheap cigarettes and alcohol. It was a smell that not even a long shower could remove, a smell he didn’t like to inflict on Marlene. That was why, just one night a week, he slept in one of the guest rooms rather than next to his wife. In fact, on this damned Saturday morning, if he hadn’t needed to get the black notebook out of the safe in order to add some more names, he would not have noticed Marlene’s disappearance until late in the morning.

  So: No forced entry.

  So: Friday night.

  Weren’t two clues enough? The steady nerves, the composure, were ready to provide others . . .

  Let’s consider the sapphires.

  The thief (or thieves) had left almost twenty million lire in cash and as much in foreign currencies. He (or they) had stolen only the sapphires. Only them. Nobody knew about the sapphires. Nobody except Georg and Marlene.

  Georg had been up all night watching over him, just as, right now, he was at the door of the villa, smoking and looking for any trace left by the thieves. Georg was always supervised. Wegener knew who he saw and what they talked about. He could remove him from the list of suspects. Who else was there?

  Marlene, obviously.

  It wasn’t true, Wegener objected. There were others who knew.

  Not much of a defence.

  Of course, the Consortium knew about the sapphires. But the members of the Consortium had no reason to steal them, since they were the very people to whom he was supposed to be delivering the dark velvet pouch. Why go to the trouble of stealing something that already belonged to you? That would be a stupid move. And he didn’t think the members of the Consortium were stupid, did he?

  No, of course not.

  That left Marlene.

  Marlene, Marlene, Marlene.

  So he still didn’t want to believe it? Alright, but the clues did not stop there. There were more.

  The car.

  The grey Fiat 130 was missing, the car Herr Wegener had given Marlene after persuading her to take her test, because a boss’s woman has to be a modern woman, fashionably dressed and able to drive. If Clyde had had to escape in the middle of a shoot-out, he wouldn’t have called a taxi: it would have been Bonnie who’d have floored the accelerator, dodging the bullets. Besides, dammit, this was the ’70s, not the Stone Age.

  The Fiat was not there.

  Why would the thieves have stolen it?

  And last but not least, the most irrefutable evidence of all. The thing that drove him insane.

  The book was missing. That book. Her book. The tales of the Brothers Grimm. The only thing Marlene had brought with her from her parents’ house to her husband’s. An old edition with a damaged cover and the title page missing. Marlene never let it out of her sight. It was her lucky charm, she would say. It drove away nightmares. That was why she kept it on her bedside table.

  Where had the damned book gone?

  Herr Wegener had looked everywhere. He had turned the room upside down, even ripped open the pillowcases and mattress cover. Because if he found the book, then the accusations against Marlene would fall away and he would know what to do. He would know what orders to give and who to give them to. He would drag every single bastard on his payroll out of bed and launch them on a manhunt until he had recovered his sapphires, and then he would take great pleasure in slaughtering the son of a bitch who had dared to make a fool of him.

  But the book had vanished. Along with the Fiat and the sapphires.

  And Marlene.

  She wasn’t here. Nobody had seen her.

  But Marlene would never have . . .

  And so it would begin again.

  In Herr Wegener’s mind, logic and feeling collided terrifyingly. The blood rushed to his head and he felt an irrepressible desire to scream until his vocal cords snapped, a need so pressing that he couldn’t control it.

  That was what he found even more unbearable than the theft, than Marlene’s betrayal: that safe, wide open like a sneer, mocking him.

  And so he screamed. At Marlene. At the safe. And, above all, at himself.

  And as he screamed, it was not only Moritz, standing next to the unlit fireplace, but also Helene, who had taken refuge in the kitchen, and Georg, back inside now to shake off the snow and warm himself, who wondered what kind of a man could let out such screams.

  The combination to the safe. That was the answer.

  5

  The combination.

  One, three, two. Double four. As in 13 February 1944.

  In 1944, Wegener was twelve and not yet Herr Wegener. No man in his right mind would have called that skinny little brat “Herr.”

  Actually, his surname did not even have a second “e.” Back then, Wegener was Robert Wegner, like his father, Paul Wegner.

  Paul Wegner (without an “e”) had joined the Wehrmacht as a volunteer. He had not even had time to write his wife and son a letter before the war swallowed him up. A grenade had fallen in the German lines, and Paul had instinctively thrown himself on it, saving the lives of his platoon.

  It was the Standartenführer of the barracks at St. Leonhard in Passeier who broke the news to the skinny boy and his grief-stricken mother. He was a good-looking man, that Standartenführer. A smooth face, intelligent blue eyes. An elegant black uniform that instilled fear and respect, with the two silver lightning flashes of the S.S. Beautiful, glossy, knee-high boots.

  While the guard of honour stood to attention, the Standartenführer gave Robert’s mother a letter and a freshly ironed flag and Robert a little box engraved with an eagle and a swastika.

  The boy was not wearing shoes, only rags tied with string. He felt ashamed, but he was used to it. They were poor, there was nothing you could do about that. Inside the box was an Iron Cross.

  The boy read out the letter because his mother was illiterate. In it, his father’s name had been misspelled, with an extra “e.” The boy checked the back of the Iron Cross. It was the same there, too: Weg-e-ner instead of Wegner.

  Neither he nor his mother pointed out the mistake: the mother because she had too many tears to she
d, and the boy because he recalled the last words his father had spoken as he had boarded the train that would carry him away to die like an idiot. “If you do the right thing nine times, it’ll bring you nothing but sorrow. The tenth time, you’ll understand why you did it. And you’ll be glad.”

  He hated him for those words, and hate, he had discovered, was a powerful form of self-control.

  That was why the barefoot little boy’s voice did not shake as he read the letter of commendation in front of those strangers, and it was thanks to that hate that he did not cry when the Standartenführer shook his hand.

  You’re the son of a hero, the officer said, you must be proud of him.

  No, his father wasn’t a hero, just an idiot. A dead idiot. What could be more stupid than that?

  He did not say that. He nodded, thanked the officer and squeezed the Iron Cross so hard that the metal cut into his skin and drew blood. Only his mother noticed, but she said nothing.

  His mother never said anything. All she knew was how to cry and pray. Cry and pray. Nothing else. And what about him? He was clutching the Iron Cross. And staring at the Standartenführer’s boots.

  They must be really warm.

  It was thanks to the Iron Cross that early on the afternoon of 13 February 1944 the sentries let him through, and it was only because of that Iron Cross that the Standartenführer motioned him to an armchair and held out a small piece of chocolate.

  “It’s Belgian,” he said. “The best in the world.”

  He spoke a beautiful, melodious German. Not the guttural dialekt Robert used with his friends and relatives. It was as sweet as honey to his ears. He wished the Standartenführer would never stop talking. Instead, there was only that offer and a wary reaction to his silence.

  The chocolate was there, between them, suspended over the desk.

  “No, thank you.”

  The Standartenführer was taken aback. “Don’t you like chocolate, liebes Kind?”

  Child.

  He wasn’t a child. Not anymore.

  Hate was added to hate.

  And it was hate that gave him the strength to reply, looking the officer straight in the eye, as men do. “Of course I like it, but I have enough already.”

  And he showed him a dark, heavy bar, twice – no, three times – the size of the one the Standartenführer had offered him. “The Bogeyman gave it to me,” he said after a brief pause.

  “The Bogeyman?” The Standartenführer laughed. “There’s no such thing.”

  “Yes, there is. I saw him. He’s big and black.”

  The boy showed the officer the words in block capitals on the back of the chocolate bar: U.S. ARMY FIELD RATION D.

  The Standartenführer opened his eyes wide.

  The Standartenführer blinked.

  The Standartenführer smiled.

  “You’re a good boy.”

  6

  That was what he was. A good boy.

  His father had left him nothing except bare feet and the mountains. The mountains, he had told him, give us water, food and wisdom. Everything you need in order to live. And mountains are the only thing money can never buy. They’re there for everybody.

  Another stupid idea worthy of a corpse. Try asking a mountain for a pair of boots as warm as the Standartenführer’s and see what you get.

  Nothing. That’s what you get.

  Yet it was in the mountains, surrounded by bushes, firs, ash trees and hidden paths, that the skinny boy spent his days.

  Depending on the season, he would pick blackberries, mushrooms, chestnuts, walnuts, set traps for birds or plunder their nests. Every so often, he would manage to catch a squirrel.

  His mother forbade him from using his father’s rifle, otherwise the boy would have been able to get hares, deer, even the odd stag. But his mother hated weapons, and so they were reduced to living off the charity of the Reich or off the crops from the barren fields his father had ploughed from morning till night before he went off to cover himself in glory.

  Idiot.

  On one of those paths, at dawn on 13 February 1944, with the Iron Cross in his pocket (not even he knew why he kept carrying it around), the skinny boy had met the Bogeyman. He had popped out of nowhere, suddenly.

  A rustle in the brambles, and there he was.

  The Bogeyman had pointed a sub-machine gun at him, his camouflage clothing all muddy, and that face with its broad nose and skin as black as charcoal, blacker than the boy had ever seen. He did not know there were men that colour, so he had burst out laughing.

  It was that laugh that had stopped the American from squeezing the trigger and mowing him down.

  The Bogeyman lowered his weapon and let out a whistle, then laughed along with him. Three more men emerged from the undergrowth. There was a Stars and Stripes painted on the helmet of one of them, a short guy with a thin moustache and rabbit teeth.

  Americans.

  In other words: the enemy.

  That was something the teacher at school, on the rare occasions Robert attended, kept repeating. Enemies, enemies everywhere. Especially the Jews and the Americans. The Americans were half-Jews anyway. But the Jews and the Americans were not the only ones. The list of bad people was a long one. For instance, his father had died trying to drive away the Reich’s other great adversary: the Bolsheviks.

  Then there was the matter of the Italians.

  Ever since the Italian flag had been replaced by the swastika, about six months earlier, the teacher in the black shirt who had forbidden him to speak German had been replaced by a Lehrer who not only encouraged them to use their mother tongue but had added “Italian traitors” to the list.

  Italians were evil, they were traitors and liars.

  And what about him? Was he German, as the Lehrer said, or Italian, as the teacher in the black shirt had maintained?

  What a mess!

  Anyway, nobody had ever told him that Americans, or at least some of them, had that funny-coloured skin. Or maybe Robert had skipped that class. School is the least of your concerns when your belly’s empty and your feet are always frozen.

  The Americans talked among themselves while the boy studied them. He knew it: they were deciding his fate. A bullet in the forehead and bury him in the brambles? Well, maybe that was the Wegners’ destiny. Like father, like son. Both idiots.

  Only, Robert had forgotten that he was no longer a Wegner.

  The name on the Iron Cross was Weg-e-ner, and that extra vowel must have brought his wretched surname a bit of luck, because the four Americans decided that the boy would live.

  One of them took a little book from his rucksack, leafed through it and started muttering a few words in German.

  Were there any Germans nearby?

  Robert pointed his thumb at his chest. “I’m German. Italian, too. But German.”

  They shook their heads: No, bad Germans, with weapons.

  “Ra-ta-ta-tat,” the Bogeyman said, pointing his index finger at the tree trunks and miming the firing of a gun.

  Robert laughed. He was nice, this Bogeyman.

  “There aren’t any soldiers. Not here.”

  They had a map, but the boy had never learned to use one. He only knew where he was because his father had shown him the hidden paths in the woods and mountains, but he would never be able to point them out on a map. All those lines, those silly names.

  “No.”

  The four of them shrugged, as if they had expected nothing different.

  A safe place, they asked. To sleep. They put their palms together, pressed them against their tilted faces and made snoring noises.

  The Bogeyman was good fun. Maybe even Jews were that much fun, but Robert had never met any. The S.S. had kicked down their doors and flung them onto trains like the ones for cattle. That was what his father had told him one evening. Good people who had vanished overnight.

  “Really?”

  “They say they get taken to camps where—”

  “Shhh, you’re frighte
ning the boy.”

  “Of course I know a safe place.”

  They did not understand what he was saying.

  The boy knew only one word in English and was happy to utter it.

  “Yes.”

  They followed him, walking in single file, stooped, their sub-machine guns at the ready. Four American commandos who had landed by parachute miles from their intended destination, behind enemy lines, and a boy whose bare feet sank into the February snow as he tried to ignore the biting cold.

  Less than an hour’s walk away, his father had built a shack, hidden by the branches of a fir tree. It wasn’t much bigger than a dog kennel, but it had a door, a kind of fireplace and a few blankets.

  It was shelter.

  When they got there, the Americans smiled gratefully, patted him on the back and rubbed their hands on his head (they would have liked to ruffle his hair but, beneath the woollen beret, Robert’s head was completely shaved, for fear of lice), and the Bogeyman gave him a kind of chocolate brick.

  He’d never seen so much chocolate in his life.

  U.S. ARMY FIELD RATION D.

  “Bravo bambino,” the Bogeyman said, having glanced at his comrade’s vocabulary book.

  Then he smiled and said in English, “Good boy.”

  7

  One. Three. Two. Double four.

  All he had to do was get a squad together and follow that strange skinny boy to the shelter. A few shots, and the Bogeyman was dead. Eyes rolled back, mouth wide open, frizzy hair smeared with blood.

  The Standartenführer put his gun back in its holster and looked at the boy, who stood beside him, unfazed by the slaughter.

  “Chocolate is for children. You’re not a child.” He gestured, and one of the soldiers started pulling the boots off the corpse of the American with the rabbit teeth.

  “You’re as strong as Siegfried and as cunning as . . .” The Standartenführer lifted his index finger to his chin, searching for inspiration. “. . . as an elf? No.” He shook his head, annoyed with himself. “No, not an elf. What do you call those . . . ?”