Eva (47 page)

They passed what had apparently been a little park, now an open, crater-dotted expanse of rubble with a tangle of scorched, uprooted trees.

“Stop here,” he ordered.

Pietro brought the truck to a sputtering halt.

“Do you have a toolbox in the truck?” Woody asked him.

Puzzled, the Italian looked at him. What now? he thought. What did this
ragazzo pazzo
—this crazy fellow—want now? He nodded. “In the back,” he said.

“Out!” Woody snapped. “I want to take a look at it.”

The toolbox contained a jumble of rusty bolts and nails, wadded-up lengths of wire, and an assortment of black, greasy hand tools. Woody rummaged around in the mess and selected a pair of pliers. He put them in his pocket. He turned to Pietro. “Okay,” he said curtly, “get going. And if you want to save your dumb ass, do exactly as I told you.”

“
Si, Signore,”
Pietro affirmed, bobbing his head fervently. “I will do exactly as you said.” He hurried to the cab of the truck, and in no time he was barreling down the suburban street into town.

Woody looked at Ilse. “Come, Ilse,” he said. He started to walk into the empty lot.

Ilse followed. She looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her face. “But this is not the
Anlaufstelle,”
she said. “I thought
Signor
Bazzano told us it was at a Franciscan monastery.”

“It is,” he said. “But we are not going there. I’m changing the plans.”

“But—I . . . ”

“Please, Ilse. I’ll tell you about it in just a minute.”

They walked to the far side of the leveled park. Woody looked back. He had a clear view of the street, and close behind him stood a row of gutted houses. He sat down on a fallen tree trunk. Ilse sat next to him.

Gravely he looked into her eyes. “Ilse,” he said, “we have to separate.”

Shocked, she began to protest.

“Hear me out,” he said solemnly. “I have to get to Bari. As quickly as I can. It will be difficult. And dangerous. I just can’t take you along.”

“But what am I to do?” she exclaimed, alarm and fear darkening her eyes. “Why can I not go with you? I will not delay you.” She grabbed his arm with both her hands. “Please,” she beseeched him, “do not leave me here!”

He took her hands in his. “Ilse,” he said soberly, “I can’t tell you
why
it is impossible for me to take you along. Not now. Some day, I will, I promise you.” She started to protest. Gently he silenced her. “Listen to me, Ilse,” he said solemnly. “I once asked you to trust me. You did. And even though for a while you thought I had lied to you, you know now that I didn’t. And you know why I could not tell you everything right away. This is like that, Ilse. Once again I ask you to trust me.”

She looked at him, her eyes veiled. She said nothing.

“I am asking you to help me,” Woody continued quietly.

“Help you?”

“Yes. It is important. I want you to listen to me, Ilse. Very closely. Remember everything I say. Will you do that?”

“I will listen.”

For the next few minutes he spoke to her, earnestly, urgently, while she listened in wide-eyed, apprehensive silence. Finally he was done.

“Do you understand, Ilse?” he asked her solemnly. “You know what you must do?”

She nodded.

“Repeat it to me. Everything I told you.”

She did.

“Will you do it?” he asked.

For a long moment she sat in silence, staring down at her hands, clenched in her lap. Then slowly she nodded her head. “I will do it,” she whispered.

He took a deep breath. He put his hands on her shoulders. He gazed into her sober, pale face, desperately trying to read the thoughts hidden behind her brooding eyes. Did she agree because she believed him? Because she
wanted
to help him? Or because she could do nothing else? Because it was expedient? He ached with the need to know.

“One more thing,” he said. “I want you to do one more thing for me before we part.”

She looked up at him. “What is it?”

He pulled the pliers he’d taken from Pietro’s toolbox from his pocket. He had given it a lot of thought. He would make the sacrifice, but he’d be damned if he’d ruin his looks. Even for a short while. The first lower left bicuspid had been his choice.

“I want you to pull one of my teeth,” he said. “I can’t do it myself. I can’t get the right leverage.”

Startled she stared at him. “You—have a toothache?”

He laughed. “No,” he said, “I just want to improve my Italian.”

She shook her head. “I do not understand,” she said.

“I’ve got to pass for Italian,” he explained. “But my Italian isn’t good enough. If I have a swollen jaw and a fresh hole where my tooth used to be, it won’t seem funny if my speech is a little slurred and thick, and if my pronunciation of certain words is a little strange, or if I use as few of them as possible. You see?”

“I—I do not know if I can,” she remonstrated.

“Sure you can. It won’t hurt you a bit!”

She frowned at him. “How can you make a joke?” she chided him. “It is serious. I would give you much pain.”

“If you don’t, my chances wouldn’t be worth a plug nickel.”

She shook her head. “What is—plug nickel?”

He grinned. “Let’s just say, if
you
don’t pull the tooth I’ll have to do it myself. I’ll have to wriggle it loose. Wrench it out. And, believe me, that’s a hell of a lot more painful.”

She shuddered. “Show me how.”

He put the serrated jaws of the pliers around his lower bicuspid. He grabbed the handles. He squeezed them together as hard as he could.

“ ’ust ’eeze eh ’andles ’n ’ull,” he mumbled.

Puzzled she looked at him. “What?”

He took the pliers out of his mouth. “Put the jaws of the pliers around the tooth so you have a firm grip,” he instructed her. “Then squeeze the handles together as hard as you can. Use both hands. I’ll sit on the log, you stand in front of me. Put one foot on the log for leverage, and pull as hard as you can. The tooth will come out.”

She nodded, her face grim. “I will do it,” she said.

She positioned herself. She placed the pliers around the tooth. Involuntarily Woody tensed. The little tool suddenly felt like a bulldozer in his mouth. He grabbed hold of the tree trunk with both hands and held on.

“ ’ull!” he said.

Ilse pulled.

The pliers slipped off the tooth, and Woody nearly fell backwards off the log.

“Again,” he said, sitting back up. “And Ilse, you must not be afraid to hurt me. It will never work if you are. And, dammit, it
has
to!”

She nodded, her face pale. Little beads of moisture gleamed on her forehead. Again she placed the pliers around the tooth. With both her hands she pressed the handles together. She leaned back, placed one foot on the log—and pulled.

A sudden, sharp pain shot through him. He felt as if his entire jaw was about to be torn off. He clung to the log. The pain stabbed up through his face in a quick succession of agonizing waves which quickly became one searing lance of liquid fire. A hideous, grinding sound grated through his bones, reverberating in his skull, sending billows of nausea through him. The pain exploded in a blinding blast in his head, and with a thousand fiery fingers it clawed at the back of his eyes trying to escape.

Suddenly there was a sickening, moist, and tearing sound, and the tremendous pressure and pull on his jaw let up in a paroxysm of white-hot pain. The warm blood welled in his mouth. He swallowed it.

He looked at Ilse. In astonishment she stood staring at the bloody tooth held in the pliers, which she still gripped in both hands with white-knuckle tension.

Gingerly he felt the tender hole with the tip of his tongue. It seemed enormous. Big enough to hide a baseball. As big as a catcher’s mitt! Pain was still throbbing from it with every beat of his heart, but the excruciating sharpness of it had disappeared.

“Thank you,” he said thickly. He was gratified to note that he didn’t have to fake his slurred speech.

Ilse dropped the pliers, and the tooth. She looked at Woody, her face drawn. “Are you in much pain?” she asked.

“No, I’m fine.” He grinned. “And my Italian has been vastly improved. It will be as good as the next guy’s who’s just had a session with his dentist. Or a doorknob.” He grew sober. He looked at her. “It is time, now, Ilse,” he said. “You must be on your way, and so must I. Is everything clear?”

She nodded.

“Be off, then,” he said softly. “It won’t be long, and we’ll see each other again.”

She looked long and searchingly at him. Suddenly she went to him and put her arms around him. For a moment they clung to each other. Then, without a word, the girl turned and walked away.

He watched her, picking her way through the rubble, not looking back. Had her goodby been a goodby forever? Would he really see her again? This girl he had come to care about, perhaps more than he was willing to admit? A girl who had been born and brought up in Nazi Germany? A girl who was the daughter of a woman who was the embodiment of everything he abhorred, everything he had fought against? Very possibly he had placed his life in her hands.

What would she do with it?

His jaw ached. He spat a mouthful of saliva and blood on the ground. He turned away, and resolutely he walked off into the abandoned ruins.

The main railroad station at Bolzano was unexpectedly busy with travelers. Badly damaged during the air raids, the building itself and the track system had been repaired to some extent, and the station was able to function at better than half capacity.

Woody made his way to the ticket counter. From behind a small, open window a bald, sour-looking ticket agent peered at him over the rim of his glasses.

“
Vorrei un biglietto per Bari,”
Woody said, deliberately making his speech almost unintelligible.

The ticket agent glared at him. “
Cosa dice?”
he snapped. “
Non capisco.”

“
Scusi,”
Woody said. “
Mi fanno male le gengive
—my gums hurt.” He pulled down his lip exposing the fresh hole in his lower gum. “
Mal di denti,”
he mumbled.

The man gave him a churlish look. “
Che cosa vuole?
—What do you want?” he growled.

“I want a ticket to Bari,” Woody said, his speech still thick, but intelligible. “On the next available train.”

The ticket agent pulled a small cardboard ticket from a grimy wooden rack. Woody paid for it with the money he’d received at the Merano
Anlaufstelle. “Devo cambiar di treno?”
he asked.

“Yes. Change trains at Bologna. This one goes to Rome. The train to Bari leaves from Bologna.”

“
Grazie,”
Woody muttered. “
Da che binario parte il treno per Bologna?”

“
Binario numero sette
—track number seven,” the agent said.

“
A che ora parte il treno?”

“At three-fifteen.”

“Will it be on time?”

The surly ticket agent glared at him. “
Il
Duce
is dead,” he grumbled. “You still want the trains to run on time?”

Woody walked toward Track #7. He still had quite a bit of time before the train was supposed to leave, but he preferred to know exactly where he was going and what the layout of the place was, before sitting down somewhere to wait.

He was pleased with himself. His Italian had passed muster swimmingly.

In a short while he’d be on his way to Bari.

He might still make it.

Fighting the nausea had quickly become her sole concern. It had started less than an hour after they had left the harbor of Sottomarina, when the boat had begun to pitch and roll in the choppy sea. Eva had never been seasick before. The feeling was not anything like the nausea she had occasionally felt when she had eaten something that disagreed with her, or the morning sickness she had experienced in her early pregnancy. It was a feeling all its own, a feeling of utter misery.

At first she had loved the boat. Gaily painted in red, green, and blue it had a motor and one mast. It was broad in the beam and had looked very romantic to her. Like the boats in the picture postcards she had seen from Venice and Naples. And the prospect of going by boat instead of in a succession of smelly, jolting trucks had seemed exciting. But now she hated it. She could hardly wait for the voyage to be over, although she knew it had barely begun. She did not know how she would be able to stand the feeling of constant dizziness and being on the edge of vomiting for another twenty-four hours or longer. She worried if she would have to feel that way during the entire voyage to South America. She would just never live through it.

Mario, the Italian captain of the boat, had laughed at her. She would soon get her sea legs, he had said. And then she would never want to leave his beautiful boat, the most beautiful one on the whole Adriatic Sea. There were two other crew members on board. A small, wiry, swarthy man with a bushy, black mustache and a big, strapping fellow with muscles like cords. Both of them had seemed studiously to ignore her, but somehow her discomfort with them had been assuaged knowing they were among the people protecting her. If only she could feel better.

Wretchedly she looked around the cluttered cabin, the only one on the boat. Baskets, netting, coiled ropes, and oilcloth storm gear hung in disarray on hooks and nails. She was lying in one of the four wooden bunks. A couple of soiled, once brightly colored curtains were hooked up on a sturdy line stretched in front of the bunk. They were pushed to one end. In the middle of the cabin a table, painted red, was bolted to the deck. It had a raised edge so it looked like a tiny red field with a red fence around it, she thought. A lone, penned-in earthenware bowl was sliding back and forth on it.

The cabin smelled of fuel oil and old sweat, mingled with garlic and paint. She longed for the fresh air on deck, or in the open wheelhouse, but she had not the courage to leave the bunk.

Willi would be in the wheelhouse, she thought. With the captain. Mario. It was there he had discovered the gun carelessly hidden behind a panel which had been standing ajar. He had taken it out. He had admired it. It was a Beretta 1938A, he had told her, while he had caressed the weapon. Italian made. One of the best submachine guns of all times. He had showed her the wooden stock, the perforated barrel jacket, the bayonet mount, and the box magazine that would hold forty 9mm rounds. He had given it to her to hold. It had been cold to the touch. She had felt a chill run through her.