Miracle at St. Anna

by James McBride

  Peppi said slowly, “Are you telling me that the people in St. Anna deserved to suffer?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you saying the people in St. Anna should suffer because Marco is dead? Is that what you’re saying? Clue me in. There were only old people and children there, Rodolfo. Federico my cousin, you’ve known him your whole life, he was there. Carlina Martinelli lived there. Bruno Franchi’s whole family was there, his children Guibaldo and Guido and little Maria Olimpia, who made candy floss all by herself once and gave us some. They should be dead? They should be dead because of me? You think Marco would have them dead, for me? Fascist that he was, you think Marco would kill innocent children to trap me? Would he?”

  Peppi’s voice, though it rose in the form of a question, had a hard steel spine to it, and the other partisans, standing nearby, backed away.

  “Marco has nothing to do with this,” Rodolfo said.

  “Why didn’t you ask me? I would have let you collect, you fuckin’ swine. Now I have their deaths on my head. Forever. The devil will have me! Because you betrayed me for a lousy bag of salt!”

  Peppi felt the blood rising to his face, and with it the heady feeling he experienced just before he went to battle, made a kill, stole weapons from the carabinieri, blew up another German convoy. The rage was coming upon him, the fury that sought to bring the silences back to him, the silences the war had taken away. Peppi was gone. In his place was the Black Butterfly, who had no conscience, no friends, no fear, just an unassailable rage and one single purpose, to bring peaceful, poetic silence back to Peppi, and to Mother Italy.

  With one swift motion, he snatched Rodolfo’s rifle from his hands and set it on the ground. He removed his boot from his foot, and, squatting down, stuck the rifle barrel in his mouth and placed his toe in the trigger.

  “I’m going to let you collect your money, Rodolfo. You will be rich after the war. No partisan, no man, not even a traitor, can live with five hundred and sixty deaths on his hands. Just tell me one thing. Tell it to me from your own lips, and I will take my own life happily. Tell me that you betrayed me for a lousy bag of salt and that the rest of it was a mistake. That is all I ask. Please tell me. Because if I am fool enough to consort with the devil, then I belong in hell.”

  Sitting in the snow with the barrel of the gun in his mouth, Peppi felt something inside him snap open, like a clogged ear that suddenly pops free and allows sound in. He heard the crackling of the fire, the snapping of twigs, and these, he understood, were the sounds of one man’s soul twisting and burning in the wind. The roar of it, in Peppi’s mind, was deafening and painful. Over the roar, Peppi heard a sob.

  Rodolfo had turned his head away from the fire, and Peppi heard him say softly, “God help me, it was. It was an accident,” he murmured. “The SS only wanted you. And when they didn’t find you . . . they . . .” His quiet sobs filled the trees and bushes, which swayed with the knowledge. He began backing away, toward the ridge that led to the mountain below. He stood alone. His big ears and face were pointed downward, his lean frame was silhouetted against the black sky like a ghost, his sagging clothing pressing against his body in the cold wind while Peppi and the partisans watched him, watched a man break apart before their eyes, the little pieces of his soul dropping into the snow like tiny extinguished matches, the breathlike smoke dissipating into the air, or blowing downward into the mountain night below. They felt as if they were watching a goblin being born, and they stood in awe.

  As Rodolfo stood alone, crying, he silently prayed Peppi would kill him, shoot him now. Peppi had shamed him. He was relieved to accept death now.

  As if hearing his silent prayer, Peppi took the rifle out of his mouth, rose, and turned the barrel toward Rodolfo. By the firelight, Peppi could see Rodolfo’s eyes, and just as quickly the rage in him died, and tears filled his eyes. He threw the rifle at Rodolfo and collapsed on the ground. “You broke my heart, Rodolfo,” he said. “My last friend in the world, and you sold my life for a lousy bag of salt!” He began to cry aloud.

  It was shame that made Rodolfo turn and run at that moment, for he had no fear left. And even as he barreled down the mountain, not even bothering to pick up his rifle, bouncing and falling over the ridge and smashing through the snow-covered bushes and brush into the darkness of the mountainside, the shame that welled up inside him crusted over into rage and a new knowledge—the knowledge that he had unknowingly made a pact with the devil, and now had to live it, and that his best friend in the world knew it, and knew the best way to punish him for it. As he tumbled down and down, he realized he’d begun his journey at the top of the mountain as an angry man who sought revenge, and now, on his journey downward, he was metamorphosing into a defeated soul, a ghost, a goblin, as haunted as the ancient, furious mountain goblins he had always feared as a child, the ones his mother had always warned him about. Except that now he was one of them. By the time he reached the bottom of the ridge and began running for the next ledge, he knew that with each step forward he was running one step closer to hell.

  The other partisans dashed to the edge of the cliff and watched him run. “Shall we get him?” Gianni, the older partisan, asked, turning to Peppi for a response.

  “No,” Peppi said, wiping the tears from his face. “Let him go.” He had an overwhelming urge to tell the other two to drop to their knees to pray for Rodolfo, but he couldn’t bring himself to utter the words. Besides, the day would come when he could reward Rodolfo’s years of friendship by putting him out of his misery for good. He decided to save that generosity for another time.

  19

  THE MASSACRE REVEALED

  It was later that morning, after they had hastily placed the German’s body on Ludovico’s bedroom floor and laid Hector on the kitchen table to wrap the superficial wounds on his ear, that the memories began to come back to the boy. They returned slowly, in increments, and as they did, he became harder and harder to handle. He became irascible, throwing temper tantrums and fits. He had one unstoppable, roaring crying spell. Renata’s soothing and Ettora’s sweet chestnut soup he ignored. The playful tugs and tossing of Hector and Stamps did not amuse him. Chocolate, even chewing gum, did not move him. He had retired to that silent, safe place, where there was no front, no back, no middle. He waited for Arturo to come, but he would not come. Only the giant could soothe him, and it took all of Train’s caresses and hugs, his deep chest, his huge arms, to bring comfort to the boy. The giant never talked. He simply stayed there, like an immovable object, and held the boy close. The boy wouldn’t leave his huge arms.

  It was from within the giant’s arms that he told them all he could, as the Italians and Americans listened and Hector translated. He told them his name: Angelo Tornacelli. Yes, he had been at St. Anna di Stazzema. One morning many Germans came. They marched his mother and his grandfather to the square. There was a big fire there. People were burning. A little baby was burning in the fire with his arms out like this—he demonstrated—and had a long stick stuck through him. Some Germans were eating lunch and listening to accordion music as the fire burned. A soldier—that one, he said, pointing to the dead German who lay in Ludovico’s bedroom—he took my mother and several others to the side of the church. He told us to turn around. He fired his gun in the air and said, “Run! Run as fast as you can.” My mother ran, but I was afraid to run because of the fire. My mother came back to get me. A second German came around the side of the church and saw the people running. The second German shot the running people. He shot my mother. The other German, that one—he pointed to the dead German again—he shot the German who shot my mother. Then he picked me up and ran into the mountains. Then he was gone and there was the old man. That is all I remember.

  “Then how do you know the Italian partisan with the big ears was there?” Hector had asked.

  Because he was the one in front of the house when the Germans knocked at the door and told us to come out, the boy said. He told my
mother not to be afraid, that he would try to protect us, that the Germans just needed to speak to us in the square. The one with the big ears, he started it all, the boy cried bitterly. I wish he had never come.

  The room listened to the boy’s words with rapt attention. Even the old man, Ludovico, wiped tears from his face. Then Ettora the witch explained the rest of the story to the others in the room, weeping bitterly as she spoke. She had talked to Peppi. She knew several people in St. Anna. She had not known the full story of what had transpired there, but now she knew after having talked to Peppi. Rodolfo, his righthand man, was a traitor. Rodolfo had posted the sign at St. Anna telling the residents that the partisans would protect them. He did that to cover himself, so that any one of the bands of bandits who roamed the woods posing as partisans would be blamed when the Germans marched into the village. In actuality, he had led the Germans to St. Anna to catch Peppi, whom he had lured there. But Peppi had been saved by an old farmer from Bornacchi, Salvo Romiti, who’d warned him that a German squad was waiting for him on the trail to St. Anna. Ettora had heard this from Salvo himself.

  Peppi detoured, and the SS came to St. Anna anyway, and look what they did, the devils! Rodolfo lured Peppi there and when the SS couldn’t find him, they had a killing party. Would that I meet them at the gates of hell, she cried. I would string them up by their thumbnails myself! And Rodolfo! I have a special potion for him! If his father were alive he would kill him! Poison him! She followed this with a string of expletives, the likes of which Ludovico, in more than sixty years of knowing her, had never heard her utter. He had never seen her so angry before, and after years of watching Ettora’s calm, deliberate, silent leadership, to see her lose control that way was like lifting the lid off the tin can of reason that held them all together. Ludovico realized, as tears streaked down Ettora’s face and she yelled and cursed, that she was what he’d always known her to be: his ideal woman, his ideal human being. Strong, vulnerable, beautiful, her colorful beads and bracelets disheveled, her red dress tattered and worn, she wiped her lovely, cutting eyes with a rag as she sobbed and yelled, standing next to the tall Negro Americans, who, after only eleven days of being with them, patted her on the back and placed their long arms around her shoulders to comfort her, though had they understood the vile oaths she was muttering they might have sprinted from the room. He admired them then, and was grateful for their presence, because it was all he could do to keep from rushing across the room and wrapping himself around Ettora to tell her that it was okay, that he loved her and always had, that she needn’t cry, that they were just poor people, poor people caught in a trap, and God would open the door soon.

  And now he must take her and Renata to hide someplace because the Germans were coming again, and if they didn’t want to end up like the poor wretches of St. Anna, then they must do as the Negroes said. But where does a person run when the world is destroyed? To a refugee camp in Viareggio, to shit in trenches behind wire grate fences and die of disease next to German POWs, the same German soldiers who tried to kill your family, while the British and American soldiers feed you scraps and laugh at you? The whole notion made Ludovico cry again, and he had to cover his face.

  Ettora’s rant died down slowly, like a hurricane, and a cone of silence covered the room. Fat Margherita spoke out. “I don’t care about St. Anna,” she said. “They’re gone now, in heaven’s embrace.” She crossed herself. “What about us? What about now? The Germans are coming again.”

  “Who cares?” said Franco Bochelli, the old man who had knocked out his teeth to get out of serving in the war. “I need a drink. It’s almost Christmas. Come to my house and finish the rest of my wine before the Germans get it.” With that he rose and left the house, followed by the two cockeyed teens, Ultima and Ultimissima, and nearly half the village, for what else was there to do? Christmas, after all, was coming, and Franco had some of the best wine in the valley, and they would drink it all, God willing, and perhaps there might be some left over for the night of Befana, twelve days later, and if they weren’t all worm food by then, they would drink what was left.

  Stamps watched these exchanges with puzzlement. He looked at Hector for translation, but Hector simply shrugged. “They’re gonna get drunk,” he said, motioning with his hands as if he agreed. What the hell else was there to do? He wanted to join them, but Stamps pulled him and Train aside. He told Train, “Get the boy from this room and as far from that German’s body as possible. Hector, post outside the back door in the alley. Train, you sleep for three hours, then you relieve Hector. I’m going outdoors a minute.” He needed to reconnoiter. Hector and Train watched him leave.

  Stamps stood outside Ludovico’s front door, watching Ettora staggering away with Ludovico following. He knew he had a situation on his hands, but he had no clue as to what to do about it. His orders had been to hold. And he had held tight. He had the German, too, until Hector fucked it up. The hell with it. Nokes would handle it when he got here. If ever there was a crime, he thought, this was it. OSS handled this kind of stuff. All he’d wanted was the turkey and mashed potato dinner they’d been promised for Christmas. Instead he had what they called back at headquarters a “snafu”: situation normal, all fucked up.

  Stamps reentered the house, which was now quiet. He lay down on the floor and slept fitfully for an hour, dreaming of burning pews and a bayoneted baby and accordion music. He’d learned from the other Italians that the crazy man, Eugenio, whom they’d run into at the church their first day, was a decorated lieutenant in the Italian army. He’d moved his family to Bornacchi because his home, outside Lucca, had been shelled to bits. There was no food in Lucca, no economy to speak of, no bread, not even fresh water. There was a river near Bornacchi for fishing and washing clothing, there were chestnuts to pick there, and clean well water to drink, and his children could see the sunrise. They could even muster up a few lire working in the nearby Aracia mines. Eugenio was happily on his way home from the service when he learned that his wife and eight children had been visiting a cousin in St. Anna when the Germans came to town. They all were dead and being buried in a mass grave outside the church when he arrived. He’d tried to fling himself into their graves, wanting to follow them. No wonder he’d lost his mind. Stamps felt nausea working up in his throat and his hemorrhoids burning. He rose after an hour, his mind in a fog, barely able to think.

  That wasn’t the only problem. The shelling had resumed again and was getting closer. The villagers refused to leave. Train was still in love with the kid. Bishop was off someplace as usual. The electric power had disappeared from Ludovico’s house, and the radio was useless without it because the dead batteries would not hold a charge. They had to wait for Nokes. He’d better hurry the fuck up or we’re gonna take our chances and walk home, Stamps thought. He hoped Nokes was bringing a lot of men. He’d have to. The whooshing noises he heard overhead—the woo, woo, woo with the big smash at the end—meant there was a lot of eighty-eight traffic out there. He could see smoke on the horizon and smell phosphorus in the air, which meant the Germans were using flamethrowers to clear forests, homes, and even people. They weren’t bullshitting. This was not defensive fighting, which the Germans had been doing in his fifteen months there. This was offensive. They were coming, from all sides.

  He could not determine exactly where the heaviest shelling was coming from, because as it grew louder, it echoed along both sides of the mountain, though it appeared to be from the east. He decided the Germans were heading west toward the coast. Well, we’re going that way too, he thought bitterly. Regimental headquarters in Viareggio was southwest, and he figured if he and his men had to make a break, it would be in that direction—southwest, though there seemed to be a lot of traffic that way, too.

  Hector, his ear wrapped in gauze and pieces of old sheets that the villagers had ripped up, was standing by the window watching the ridges. Stamps walked over to him.

  “Hector, how long you think it takes to get from regimental headqua
rters in Viareggio to here?”

  “Colored man’ll make that run over those mountains in two hours. White man it’ll take a day. Puerto Rican do it in five minutes.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Cool down. Nokes will bring a squad, then adiós, we’re gone. The Germans are not close enough yet.”

  “Well, who they dropping artillery on?”

  “Who cares? It ain’t us. Maybe it’s the Brazilians. Or the Gurkhas. They’re around here, too.”

  “Great. That’s just skippy.” Stamps couldn’t stand the Brazilians. He’d visited their camp once. It was filthy. No latrines. They didn’t even bother to bury their shit. The Gurkhas were even worse. They were psychotic, with their long robes and swords and screaming death cries. He heard they died by the dozens from tuberculosis because their bodies weren’t used to the cold. If the Germans wanted to shell them, more power to them.

  “Where’s Bishop?” Stamps asked.

  “He disappeared with one of those signorinas last night. I ’spect he’s finishin’ up.”

  “Go get him.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not walk ’round here no more.”

  “Shit, would you like me to call a cab?”

  “Man, I was stabbed today! I don’t know every nook of this place. I’ll keep watch here.”

  Stamps exited the house and marched through the piazza. A few villagers had gathered their meager belongings and were heading west down the road toward the coast, maybe to stay with relatives and friends or in American refugee camps. He noticed, however, that most villagers were going about their business as if nothing were happening. These people are crazy, he thought grimly. He supposed if he had to make a choice between his home and a crowded, dirty refugee camp, he’d stay home, too.

  Home. What the fuck is that?