Freefall

by Robert Radcliffe

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘The Germans are?’

  ‘Too right. Our job is done, the city secure, so we’re rejoining the main defence force. Oh, and by the way, Ho-ratz-io’ – he enunciated the word distastefully – ‘you surrendered yourself needlessly! Everyone at the stadium was released this morning as a gesture of goodwill to the citizens of Naples.’

  And a bargaining chip to ensure the Germans safe passage, Theo guessed. Soon they joined a slow-moving military convoy snaking its way northward out of the city. The streets were eerily quiet and deserted, with barely a handful of flag-waving demonstrators leaning from windows to cheer the aggressor on his way. Incredibly, he realized, the uprising had succeeded, Schöll and the Germans driven from the city by the will of the Neapolitan people.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Well, I’m going to Cassino to kill Yanks, wherever that is. You’re going to Rome, you lucky fellow.’

  ‘Rome.’

  ‘Apparently we’ve agreed to let the Blackshirts have first go at you. Damned cheek, I say, but good news for you, no?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘But yes! It means you’ll still be alive when they finish with you. So our boys can have their turn.’

  The journey was long and tedious, the roads chaotic and frequently blocked. For a while he dozed, waking later to find the officer and one guard disembarking to another vehicle, leaving him with only the driver and second guard. At the next traffic jam he slid nearer the door and discreetly tried the handle, but it was disconnected from the inside. The guard winked, grinning at him knowingly, and tapped the Schmeisser resting on his knee. Another hour went by; the guard produced a bag containing black bread and stale sausage, which Theo forced down with water from a canteen – the first food he’d eaten since his arrest. Afterwards he was ejected at gunpoint, still handcuffed, and told to relieve himself at the roadside. In the afternoon rain began to fall and his view of the world shrank to blurred streaks on a grimy window, and black sky beyond the hypnotic rocking of the windscreen wipers. Finally they arrived at Rome’s southern outskirts, crawled their way to the centre and pulled up, to his astonishment, outside Regina Coeli prison.

  The entrance was as he remembered, but once inside he was led to a holding cell where he was stripped, his clothes taken, his body searched, and he was issued with pyjama-type prison garb and espadrille sandals. He was then escorted to the basement and a long corridor of steel-doored cells. Halfway along, one door was opened and he was thrust inside.

  His cell was small and windowless, about eight feet square with a low ceiling, a single overhead bulb, a palliasse and a bucket. The door was heavy steel, locked and bolted with only a small peephole and sliding hatch for food. Nobody came to him that evening except an elderly custode who shoved bread and watery pasta through the hatch. ‘Grazie, mi amico,’ he tried, but received only a grunt in reply. An hour or so later the overhead light went off, plunging him into smothering darkness.

  The next morning the custode was back with ersatz coffee and dried biscuit, but before Theo could consume it, boots were heard outside, the bolt drawn and two guards dragged him out. A vicious beating then occurred right there in the corridor, so sudden and forceful several seconds elapsed before he realized what was happening. Kicked to the floor, a hail of blows fell on his head and back from baton-like sticks, while their boots went for his ribs. Numb with shock and pain, he could only hunch forward, protect himself as best he could, and wait for it to end.

  Which it did as abruptly as it began. He was then hauled to his feet and frog-marched along the corridor to a smoke-filled office. There he was pushed into a chair before two officers of the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, the new name for the Blackshirt militia. Both men – middle-aged, overweight, cigarette-smoking – were dressed according to their unit, complete with new insignia. But shabbily so, as though they and their uniforms had seen better times.

  ‘The confessione is drawn up,’ one said, pushing a paper across the desk. ‘You just sign it, here and here, and we’re all done.’

  Theo rubbed his bruised neck. ‘Done?’

  ‘Yes, done! Do you want another beating?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then sign. And we can all be on our way.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I told you: it’s a confession. You sign, and our work’s finished. In due course you get sentenced to death and that’s that.’

  ‘The Germans won’t be happy. They want to question me.’

  ‘Fuck the Germans.’

  ‘But the GNR’s part of the new regime, isn’t it? In support of Germany.’

  ‘I know what it bloody is! Now will you sign the damn confession!’

  ‘What am I confessing to?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Stubbing out his cigarette, the second man opened a file. ‘Have you not already told the Germans you are the Campanian partisan leader known as Horatio?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you not also the same Horatio more properly known as Andreas Ladurner, who led an assassination attempt on Senator Ettore Tolomei in forty-one?’

  ‘Forty-one... That’s a while ago.’

  ‘Were you?’

  He looked them both in the eye. ‘Not necessarily.’

  The second beating was much worse. It took place there in the office, the two Blackshirts watching and smoking in bored silence as the guards set about with sticks and boots once more. This time there was less haste, and more thoroughness. While he tried to retain a foetal position to protect himself, one guard would prise him straight to kick his stomach and ribs while the other assaulted his head and back with the stick. Delay, defend, disconnect, his SOE instructor had lectured back in Cairo. Delay the attack by any means you can, argue with them, keep them talking, keep them guessing. Meanwhile get ready to defend yourself, prepare and compose your mind for what’s coming. Then when it starts, disconnect from it, think about something else, a special memory perhaps, or the view through the window, or simply a smudge on the wall. Seize on it and focus on nothing else until the business ends. Theo tried. From his curled position on the floor he could see the officers’ boots; he tried to focus on these, the worn tread, the hanging lace, the splitting sole, but the beating went on too long, his mind kept wondering at the unreality of it, and the harm being done to him, and all the while he could feel his resilience faltering, and his will to resist ebbing like a tide. Then suddenly a boot hit his temple and he reeled into unconsciousness.

  When he came to he was back in his cell, his face sticky with blood, ears ringing and heart pounding. Dizzy and gasping he crawled to the palliasse and collapsed on to his back, gazing up at the overhead bulb through a tear-filled blur.

  A pattern evolved. Twice a day, usually once in the morning and again late in the afternoon, the door-bolt banged and the two heavies fetched him from his cell, dragged him along the corridor to the smoky office and presented him before the Blackshirts to sign his confession. He delayed this by trying to engage them in discussion, asking them about the new regime, about the changing role of the Blackshirts, or about the war in general. Sometimes they obliged, cheerfully complaining about their working conditions or unfair treatment by superiors, and he soon learned they were uninterested in their work and disgruntled with their lot. They didn’t even want information from him, never once asking about the San Felices, or the Naples uprising, or even the Tolomei operation of 1941. They had an open dossier on their desk, all that mattered was closing it, and to do this they must get him to sign the confession.

  And beating him was their one tool for achieving this. So at some point during the session, perhaps after a few minutes, usually much less, the talking stopped and the heavies went to work. They liked to surprise him, dragging him suddenly from the chair and felling him with punches before commencing the main assault. Then, working together or taking turns, they set to, methodically beating, kicking and p
unching, sometimes concentrating on his lower body and legs, at others the head or back. Mostly they used the stave-like sticks but sometimes other weapons appeared. Once they brought lengths of insulated cable, another time chair legs, one day it was bamboo canes which raised bloody welts on his back and thighs. They broke his teeth, and his ribs; he sensed damage to his internal organs, and he frequently lost consciousness, spiralling into the welcome oblivion, only to be wrenched back to awareness by a bucket of water, drenched in his own sweat and blood.

  Gradually his strength faded. Between bouts he rested, drank water, ate what appeared through the hatch, and tended his injuries as best he could. But as his body weakened, so too did his resolve. He could feel it, slipping like sand through his fingers. One day soon, he knew he would sign the confession. And the beatings would stop. An option which became ever more logical. To counter the temptation he lay on the palliasse reliving adventures from his childhood, or imagining one of Eleni’s special meals in Kingston. Or recalling an evening with Clare in Algiers. Anything to take his mind off the misery, and fend off the dreaded sliding of the bolt. And he listened at the door, for hours, trying to catch sounds from the outside, to learn something of his surroundings, his neighbours, or of news from beyond the corridor. For which his one source was the elderly custode, whom he never saw but only heard.

  ‘Still here, then.’ A cackling laugh would come through the hatch.

  Theo shuffled over. ‘Yes, still here. Thanks for the soup.’

  ‘It’s slop but what do you expect?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Hardly anyone left here, that’s why.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Since the new bosses. Word is they might close the place.’

  ‘What about upstairs? The political prisoners. Like Lucetti?’

  ‘Lucetti long gone, son. All the politicos have.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Christ knows. Up north, I suppose. Some got released, I heard.’

  ‘Is that why it’s so quiet here?’

  But the custode had already gone.

  One evening a week later, he awoke to the harsh sliding of the bolt, and in an instant of clarity knew he was finished with the beatings. Tonight he would sign the confession. But when the door opened, it wasn’t the heavies waiting in the corridor as usual, but one of the Blackshirts.

  So much the better. ‘I’ve made a decision,’ he mumbled groggily.

  ‘Too late, shit-head. The Gestapo are here.’

  *

  He was taken upstairs to the holding area. Two men waited, wearing suits and raincoats.

  ‘Clean him up, for Christ’s sake!’ one of them scolded in German.

  The handcuffs were removed, he was shown to a washroom, doused under a cold shower, and given a face cloth, soap and a razor to shave. When he emerged his old clothes were waiting on a chair, and a packet of sandwiches, which he guessed was from the custode.

  They led him outside. Night had fallen. The sudden chill made him dizzy; overhead the stars shone brightly above the blacked-out city. A car waited.

  ‘In the back.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A long way.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘No talking.’

  They set off into the night, a driver, one passenger in front, the other in the back beside him. The shock of the cold, and the shower, and the suddenness of the departure disoriented him; for a long time he stared sightlessly into the night, hugging himself, his battered body rocking to the unaccustomed motion. On his knee lay the custode’s packet of food. He smelled cheese and garlic, and felt hunger, so took a sandwich from the bag, opened his split and bloody lips and took a cautious bite.

  Then he slept, lulled by the motion, the mesmeric rumble of the engine and the sweeping beam of the headlights. Checkpoints came and went. At one stage they refuelled at a floodlit depot, at another they pulled in for the driver to sleep for an hour. Nobody spoke to Theo; they conversed with each other, murmuring the unfamiliar German vowels in low tones. Grateful for the respite, he dozed, or stared through the window and said nothing. From the stars he knew they were travelling north. Early in the pre-dawn mist they traversed a mountain pass with snow-capped peaks to either side, which he sensed was Tuscan, before descending again to a broad plain of olive groves, woodland and corn stubble. Then the sun began to rise to their right, and something primal stirred within him.

  ‘Entschuldigen Sie?’ he asked. ‘Excuse me. But where are we?’

  The man in front turned and nodded to the second, who produced a folded cloth from a pocket. A moment later the orange ball of the sun was abruptly cut off as the hood was pulled over his head.

  ‘We said no talking. This is your last warning.’

  An hour later the car pulled up. From the sounds he guessed they were in a town or city – he heard traffic, talking voices and a dog barking – then he was led up steps and into a building. Echoing footsteps suggested a stone or marble hallway. He heard a telephone and typing, then was pushed through a door and down stairs to a cellar or basement. Here it was very quiet, their footsteps muffled by carpet. He was pulled to a halt, keys were inserted in a door, he was pushed two steps in, and the door banged shut behind.

  Gingerly he removed the hood. His new cell was bigger than the last, more resembling a washroom or storeroom than a prison, windowless as before, but harshly lit by a caged bulb, with bright yellow walls, a handbasin, cot-bed with blanket, table and one chair. A picture hung incongruously above the bed, of a camel train plodding across a desert. There was even a square of threadbare carpet on the floor.

  He spent all morning waiting. He wasn’t shackled, he was wearing his own clothes, he had a chair to sit on or a bed for lying. He tried the washbasin but the tap was disconnected. No one came and no sounds were heard, even when he pressed his ear to the door. It was as though nothing existed beyond the walls of the room. With no wristwatch and no outside cues, marking the passage of time was a matter of guesswork. Eventually, hours later, he lay down on the cot and closed his eyes.

  Whereupon a voice was heard.

  ‘Augenbinde auf.’

  He sat up. The voice sounded electrified, as though through a loudspeaker, but he couldn’t tell from where. A moment later it came again.

  ‘Augenbinde auf!’

  Blindfold on. Hastily he gathered the hood and pulled it over his head. Seconds later the door opened.

  ‘Keep it on,’ a voice instructed in German. ‘It is the one rule. If you break it, punishment will be severe. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Food will be brought in due course. Afterwards there will be questioning. You should stay alert and prepare yourself.’

  And with that the door clicked shut. He waited, heart pounding, then removed the hood. Everything was as before, as though the visit had been an illusion. He rose from the bed, massaging his bruised ribs. Delay, defend, disconnect. Somehow, he felt this would not be as straightforward as in Rome.

  The day dragged on; as it did he grew tenser and more restive. Food did come, potato soup with black bread, brought by hands unseen through the blindfold. But he was too keyed-up to eat. He tried lying down, but was nervous and restless, and the bulb in its wire cage shone too brightly, pulsating against the lurid yellow walls. So he took to pacing, measuring ten steps across the floor and ten steps back, counting them like the seconds of a ticking clock until he lost track. Finally, hours later, sitting in the chair with his head drooping, the voice came again.

  ‘Augenbinde auf.’

  Relieved to be active at last, he swiftly donned the hood and waited at the door. For a long time. Nothing happened, for perhaps an hour, then suddenly it squeaked open, an arm took his, leading him a short distance into another room, where he was lowered on to a chair.

  ‘Wait here, take the hood off,’ his escort said, closing the door.

  The room was office-like, windowless again but with metal desk and chairs
, a filing cabinet and large wooden cupboard. Paper and pens lay ready on the desk; a 1943 calendar hung on the wall. He tried to remember the date, then realized he had no idea. Late autumn, possibly early November, was the best he could imagine.

  Thirty minutes passed, an hour. The door opened a crack: ‘There is some delay, you are to wait here,’ then closed again. Delay, defend, disconnect: it seemed they were managing the ‘delay’ for him, which was almost amusing. But then not. Another hour dragged by, his body oscillating from nervous tension to drooping fatigue. And it seemed every time his eyes fluttered, the door would open behind and the voice tell him to stay alert as the questioning would begin soon. ‘Then do it!’ he wanted to shout. ‘Come and do it, I’m ready!’

  ‘Augenbinde auf.’

  ‘What? But—’

  ‘No talking! Put the hood on. There has been a delay. You are to return to your room. The questioning will begin in a short while.’

  *

  Only gradually did he realize what was happening. But by then it was already too late. There was no day and no night in his cell. Meals appeared randomly; their content gave no clue to time. The room was noise-proofed, and specially designed to unsettle him, with its harsh electric light, fluorescent walls and bizarre picture of camels. At some stage he wrenched it from the wall and threw it under the bed. Behind it was a steel grille housing the loudspeaker, but the grille was solid, and he couldn’t get at the speaker. Sometimes music blared from it, sometimes a high-pitched whistling, or a hissing noise like breaking surf. Sometimes it was silent for hours and he would stare at it from the bed, daring it to crackle to life. Often it voiced its two-word command, ‘Blindfold on’, and he would stand by the door, waiting to be taken for questioning that never happened.

  Then one day it did happen. By now almost incoherent with sleeplessness, and plagued by fantasies and hallucinations, the command came through the loudspeaker, he fumbled for the hood, and when he took it off he was seated before a slender man in jacket and tie, with spectacles, swept-back hair and a business-like demeanour. He didn’t look up, he said nothing, but jotted notes into a file.