Between Enemies (6 page)

‘You ought to have shot them. Refrontolo would have been grateful.’

‘You do not shoot a soldier for…and I do not require the gratitude of this village.’

‘Do not forget, Captain, that I am a woman. There are some things a woman does not forgive.’

‘But they have
been
punished!’

I thought I heard a snort from Teresa.

I felt like having a go at our Buddhist’s cache of cognac – I only had to reach out a hand. But I didn’t, for fear that even the rustle of a sleeve might be heard; the wooden partition was so very thin. I even tried to breathe quietly.

The captain raised his fork to his mouth, seeing that even my aunt couldn’t resist the risotto.

I saw her make a sign. Teresa and her daughter left the room, Loretta dragging her feet.

‘Monte Grappa has a curse on it. There’s a little while left before the snow puts a halt to the manoeuvres. In action an officer gives life-and-death orders every day, and every day
he demands immediate, absolute obedience. When there is no action, when the men are…resting…I have to be lenient with them, because the next day I might have to order those same lads to swim across a river, even if it’s in flood, even under a full moon. And what I tell them to do, they do, even if it means death.’

I didn’t manage to see my aunt’s expression, but her tone of voice softened as she said, ‘Men like you, who are on close terms with death, have an appeal all your own…doctors, soldiers…murderers…every woman feels it.’ I heard her sigh. ‘It has something to do with waiting. A soldier waiting for the battle or a woman waiting for her man’s return. The terror is in the waiting, while action leaves no room for fear. I have seen terror. It was there in the eyes of the wounded men our troops abandoned by the roadside. I have seen it in the eyes of horses, when they are dying. And I have felt it within myself, Captain.’

The captain laid down his fork and adjusted his monocle. I suspected that he used that gadget as a shield. Perhaps he was afraid of his eyes betraying him, of being caught with his guard down.

‘Do you think, Captain, that a woman does not know what it feels like to crouch in a hole while grenades are out to get you? Do you think I cannot imagine what it is to hear those blasts, those explosions, get nearer and nearer? Or to find yourself with the head or the arm of a friend in your lap, a bodiless head or arm? I am a woman, it is true, but I have seen what happens to soldiers. It is not their words that speak to you, but their eyes. Eyes which ask you, “Why now, why here, why me?” But one dies simply because one dies. A grenade carried off your hands, your legs…So it is up to us to speak out, to us mothers, and sisters, and fiancées and…even prostitutes. It is us, we women, all women, who give the answers. We do not give them with
words, Captain, but with womb and with voice, with our lips and the very hair of our heads, we are your yearning and your consolation.’ Aunt was speaking quietly, but passionately. The candlelight flashed in the German’s monocle as he sat still and silent. ‘What is the fuel of war?’ Aunt went on. ‘Cynics say it is alcohol. Because you go drunk into the attack, don’t you? But I think it is something else.’

The officer removed his monocle. ‘When you are there in the mud,’ he said, ‘and preparing to go over the top, what you think of is staying alive, and you fight with and for the man on your left, with and for the man on your right. Because they and they only can help you to stay alive. Then and there you have no fatherland, no emperor, but only a rifle on your left and another on your right, and your own rifle, and bayonet, and hand grenades.’

‘But that is not all there is to it. You fight also to discover how far you can hold out, to understand who you are. But maybe I am talking nonsense, maybe you fight only because you cannot help it…’

‘We shoot cowards.’

‘Yes, that’s another thing. You cannot bear being thought cowards…However, no soldier has ever got himself killed just for his pay, has he, Captain?’

There followed a long moment of silence. I watched the glasses coming and going to their lips. I imagined that they were avoiding each other’s eyes.

‘I lived for a while in Tuscany, and I got to know the Italians: staunch people, much attached to their homes, their fields, their children, as well as to money, but you are different…You are eager and curious…You have in you an impulse towards abstraction which is rare in a woman, very rare.’

‘It is that I…I know horses. There are times when I seem to feel their sadness, their fear.’

A thunderous blast shook the windowpanes.

‘Excuse me, Madame.’

The captain stood up and went to the window. ‘Artillery!’ He turned, and added, ‘It has begun to snow heavily again. If it snows in the mountains…’

Aunt Maria rang the brass bell standing near her glass. ‘Can the snow stop the big guns?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed the snow can. Only the snow. But it will not happen. What has been begun must be brought to a conclusion.’ The captain resumed his seat.

Teresa entered, followed by her daughter. She was carrying a tray, and on the tray was a chicken, or perhaps a turkey. At that moment I remembered that during the afternoon I had seen the steward leaving the Villa with an empty sack over his shoulder.

Another rumble, further away. ‘If winter brings the war to a halt in the mountains…’

‘But have you not already won it?’

A shadow fell across the captain’s face. It was that of Teresa, in the act of serving him.

‘Do you like guinea-fowl?’

‘I have not eaten so well for months, Madame. For years, I should say. Ever since…’

‘Since…?’

‘Forgive me, I was about to…to bore you with personal matters.’ The captain’s voice broke slightly.

‘You are not boring me. You have said you have stayed in Tuscany. Is that where you learnt our language? You express yourself with extraordinary correctness, and I do not say it to flatter you, believe me.’

‘You are too kind.’ I saw him screw in his monocle. ‘Yes, as a boy I spent many of my summer holidays at Piombino, where a friend of mine called…Anselm, Anselm von Feuerbach, had a villa. His mother came from Grozeto.’

‘Grosseto.’

‘Ah, Groseto indeed! You had just paid me a compliment, so I made a mistake.’

‘I assure you, Captain, that I would be very happy to speak your language as well as you speak mine.’

Loretta refilled the wine glasses. I felt a sneeze coming, and stuffed a hanky into my mouth. All I heard was the clatter of knives and forks, and then once more the captain’s voice, slower now, with a note of sadness.

‘Von Feuerbach, a great friend. It is to him that I owe my Italian. We were always together, every summer, on the Tyrrhenian. There was sweetness in my life in those days. In those days I used to read Horace.’

‘Horace?’

‘Yes, I used to read the Latin poets. There was still room in my head for books. I remember the rocks, the undertow. We would dive in at night, Anselm and I…swimming naked, just the two of us…I remember how huge the moon was.’

‘Hearing you talk like this…the war is far from your thoughts…just now.’

Something made me turn my head; I seemed to have heard a sound of scuttling. It was a sparrow! Inside Grandpa’s cubby-hole! If I don’t let it out it’ll die of hunger, I thought. It was hopping about on an old dust-laden newspaper folded over the top of a lamp, and with hefty pecks with its beak was digging a tiny crater in that relic of the freedom of the press.

‘Do you know what is good about war? That it makes things
simple. It puts the good men on this side, the bad men on that. You know you have to kill that man: your uniform tells you so. You know you have to give orders to this man and you owe obedience to that one. You only have to glance at his insignia. A soldier even has time for reflection. Civilian life is dull because it is too full of – supposed – liberties.’

‘In peacetime people don’t die, though.’

‘People die anyway, always, all of them.’

‘You have no children, have you, Captain?’

‘I have my men.’

I seemed to see my aunt smile. The captain lifted his glass to his lips. ‘A little more, please,’ he said, turning his eyes to Teresa. I heard not a sound, but I’m fairly sure that the cook, through clamped lips, uttered a
diambarne de l’ostia
.

Loretta replaced some of the candles. The light became colder, stiller.

‘We need some coffee. We have a little coffee today…real coffee. Let us seat ourselves more comfortably.’

The captain slipped his monocle into his pocket as he rose. ‘I am fond of coffee.’

My aunt went over and sat in front of the fire. The captain did likewise, and cleared his throat.

‘You know, Madame Spada, you remind me of a French lady I knew in Agadir, in Morocco. It was in 1910…’

‘Morocco?’

‘Yes, there was one of our destroyers in the harbour…On military business…I would have liked to marry her, but she hated the army, she hated people who give orders…She had just such a brow as you have, and the same grave look in the eyes.’

‘You wish to flatter me, Captain. But…do you find me so sad?’

A long moment of silence.

‘She is dead.’

I could have heard a pin drop.

Then came two thumps on the door. A few words in German. The captain shot to his feet. There was a brief exchange.

‘Madame, I have to go. This dinner has been…Well, thank you.’

I heard the click of his heels, and pictured him stiff at attention.

‘Teresa, Loretta, get a move on…clear the table.’

Seven

T
HERE WAS MUCH TALK ABOUT THE VANISHED GIRLS
. Whispered talk, which made its way to Teresa’s kitchen. But when Loretta mentioned what had happened in the church her mother shut her gob with a swipe of the dishcloth. At the bar they were talking about the monastery in the mountains and the way the rapists had been reprieved: in the streets the hatred was as thick as the stucco on the walls. Sour looks and silence dogged the footsteps of the troops. The church was still closed. Children were running round and round it, happy because no one was hearing their confession. And it is very likely that the fetid blast that issued from the priest’s mouth – his bad breath was legendary – was not missed even by the most pious old biddies.

I spent as much time as I could with Renato. I was captivated by his physical strength, his brief, clipped mode of expression, always to the point, and by his Tuscan accent. I noticed that as soon as Loretta came into the kitchen her eyes sought him out, while her fingers never missed a chance to brush up against his jacket. He, however, always moved away.

I also spent some time in my aunt’s company. After that evening I felt rather guilty towards her for having eavesdropped. One day, as we were walking together to the old mill, I asked her about the German captain.

‘You’re curious about that fellow Korpium, aren’t you?’

Without realizing it, Aunt Maria quickened her pace. She knew that love is a fool’s game. She knew it because beneath the surface she was a burning fire. The formality that restricted her manners was frail armour. One that made her feel a kinship with the dispositions of men bound by a discipline of death. Grandma said Aunt Maria had in her something of a retired colonel. I think she was wrong, and if anything she was like a colonel out to win medals. She had a high forehead, prominent brows and cheekbones, thin lips and a melancholy smile. And in her look, though sharp at times, there was always a trace of sadness. She preferred dried-up plants to those in flower: ‘To make them bloom again is my business,’ she would say, almost as if it were a mission. She was devoted to simple pleasures, to books, a plate of risotto, risqué conversation and the algebraic strictness of the liturgy. And she was fond of cats: ‘A cat is always elegant, even when it licks its backside.’

‘Did you really think you’d persuade the captain to shoot them?’

‘No. Not for a moment. I wanted to force him to show his hand. At present we have no choice but to live with these men, these Germans. The future may be rather arduous; we must know them well so we might better fight them.’

‘But the army…Will it manage to check them?’

‘Don’t you hear the big guns? They are firing from the Montello, from Monte Tomba. They are fighting around the Quero Pass. As long as we can hear the guns it means they have not broken through.’

A magpie flew off from the fence at the edge of the wood. I followed it with my eyes. It perched on the rooftop of a ruined house masked from view by an array of hornbeams.

‘Who lives there?’

She turned to me with a slight smile. ‘It belonged to an English family, but it’s been empty for quite some time. Abandoned. Can’t you see the state it’s in?’

‘People you knew?’

‘Yes. I knew one young man. Some years ago. He said he was descended from a famous poet, and quite gave himself airs about it. He was nice, though. We got on well. He was short and tubby and not good-looking, but he had shrewd eyes and was fond of horses.’

‘How is it you love horses so much?’

‘They are beautiful, and full of courage.’ She cleared her throat. ‘They haul great cannons, and ammunition, foodstuffs and grappa and the carts carrying the wounded, and to see them suffer and die like this…It goes to my heart, that’s why.’

‘You pity them more than you do the soldiers.’

‘Yes,’ she said. And she didn’t smile.

When we got home the garden looked like the main square of a capital city. Much coming and going of carts and soldiers. All the men without their helmets or greatcoats, with shovels in hand. And there were some sweeping the portico, some polishing door handles, others trundling barrows laden with munitions. The sentries saluted Donna Maria with a click of the heels, while the captain came to meet us. Slowly, so as to keep us waiting. My aunt took advantage by pretending not to notice him.

‘Madame Spada.’ With a single movement the captain saluted and whipped off his cap, holding it by the peak.

I went on into the kitchen where Renato was plucking a chicken, leaning against the door jamb, with his greatcoat
buttoned up to the neck and his pipe smoking like a chimney. In the remaining light hung the odours of soldiers, diesel oil, animals and wet wood. Looking back, I saw my aunt standing very close to the captain. Their coats were almost touching, though perhaps that was a trick of perspective, or else my secret hope of finding chinks in Donna Maria’s armour.