Fire in the Hills (11 page)

They left the woman's two brothers behind, only twelve and fourteen years old. They would take care of the farm chores in her absence. They'd even return the milk cart Lupo had brought. Nobody fretted over leaving everything in the hands of mere boys; it was clear this had happened before.

All day long German jeeps and cars passed in greater numbers the farther north they went. The cars slowed down, but when the Germans saw that big pregnant belly, they tipped their military hats and went on.

The woman had told Lupo that pregnancy put a woman beyond suspicion, but he hadn't really believed it—not till now. He knew enough of war to suspect anyone and everyone. Why didn't those German soldiers know the same?

The wagon made slow progress, though they didn't stop except once, to eat. The roads wound through hills, past small towns. Trees bloomed white and pink and purple everywhere. Grasslands waved red with poppies. Lupo's arms and legs flexed. So much pent-up energy. He wanted to be back on Rina's farm, hoeing, planting, working himself into physical exhaustion. Riding in this pokey wagon made him feel half-mad.

That night Volpe Rossa and Lupo slept in another barn, fed by more good people, as Volpe Rossa called them. The pregnant woman slept in this new farmhouse, with the family. At dawn, she got on a bicycle to ride back. It wasn't one from the wagon—no, those had to stay put, as props for their act if Germans stopped them. This bicycle was extra, for general use. It was a good system; someone rode a bike in one direction, and then left it; someone else soon came along and rode it back in the other direction.

The pregnant woman said she'd get home by afternoon. Lupo watched till she rounded a curve, out of sight.

The new farm woman turned to Lupo with a circumspect smile. “You haven't developed a stomach for this yet, eh? Don't worry. She's far enough along that if she needs help, anyone will give it. And she's not so far along that an upset will cause a premature delivery. We're careful that way. We've learned the limits.”

They'd learned. Oh, Lord, the price of lessons.

The next day started as a repeat of the last, only this woman wasn't pregnant. She was remarkably pretty, though. And she unbraided Volpe Rossa's hair and brushed it shiny and fluffy and dressed her in clean clothes.

They hadn't been on the road an hour when a pair of Nazi officers stopped them. The Germans spoke good Italian, and the Italian girls flirted outrageously. They could both have careers in cinema after the war, Lupo was sure.

One of the Germans asked Volpe Rossa, “What do you want most, a girl like you?”

Volpe Rossa put prayer hands together at her chin, as though in thought. “A piece of cake. And, oh, yes”—she curled a shoulder forward coquettishly, like Lupo had watched her do before—“with whipped cream.”

The officers laughed and talked in German about how foolish Italians were. They gave the girls German sausages and stale pastries, then left with a lustful backward leer.

When they were out of hearing distance, the farm woman laughed. “
Che schifo
—what disgusting stuff,” she said as she scooped the soldiers' food together.

“We could get hungry later,” said Lupo.

“Don't worry. I don't throw anything away.”

“You never know what could be useful,” added Volpe Rossa.

Later her words proved true. A German soldier, alone on a scooter, pulled them over and interrogated them without showing the least susceptibility to the girls' charms. He was large and maybe forty years old. Stern and businesslike. He spoke only German, so Lupo had to be the one to deal with him.

“We're delivering this wagon to a farmer,” said Lupo, in broken German. After all, how would a farm boy have learned good German?

The soldier came around the back of the wagon. “Empty?” He jiggled a side hard. “Nothing hidden under here?” He brushed straw away and exposed a swath of the bottom—the false bottom.

Volpe Rossa unwrapped the German food from that morning. “Here, here, brother,” she said to Lupo in Italian, twisting and passing him the food. “Please offer this fine man the food our friends prepared for us.”

Lupo held the food out to the soldier. “Would you like something to eat?”

The soldier looked dubious. “German officers' food? How did you get it?”

“Friends of my sisters—they gave it to us. You're welcome to as much as you want.”

The soldier stuck a whole pastry in his mouth. He wiped the sugar from his lips with the back of his hand. “Everything looks in order here.” He got on his scooter and drove away.

And so it went, day after day, always with a new woman on the bench beside Volpe Rossa—a woman who spoke the local dialect and returned home the next morning. It took five full days to deliver the rifles to Florence. But they did it. With the help of good people.

18

V
OLPE ROSSA AND LUPO STOOD near the front of the noisy crowd outside Fascist headquarters, which was directly across the piazza from the hotel the Nazis had taken over for their headquarters. An empty net shopping bag hung from Volpe Rossa's wrist. A larger sack was slung over Lupo's shoulder.

They were with the middle-aged, matronly woman who had taken them in the night before, when they'd finally arrived in Florence. She introduced herself as Giovanni's mother—that's all. Lupo was accustomed to that by now. Many of the resistance women he'd met identified themselves as someone's mother, wife, sister. Giovanni's mother. Probably something awful had happened to Giovanni.

Giovanni's mother made a tsking noise and pointed with her chin. Lupo and Volpe Rossa looked. A woman of maybe twenty-five crossed the piazza in a fancy dress. Her legs were shiny. She hurried into the Nazi headquarters.

“Silk stockings,” said Volpe Rossa. Her lip curled in disgust.

“What's so bad about stockings?” asked Lupo.

“She's not hungry, that's what. Where do you think she gets them? What do you think she's going to do in that Nazi hotel?”

“She's the enemy,” mumbled Giovanni's mother. Then she let out a tired sigh. “This system makes no sense. We wait hours to get coupons from the Fascists, only so we can change lines and wait hours to buy milk, fuel, supplies.”

“If we're lucky,” said the young woman in front of them. She was pregnant. Two small children clung to her skirts. “The last two times I came, when I got up to the front, the official announced there were no more coupons. They'd run out. Can you imagine?” She held up her shopping basket. “I went home with this basket empty. That's why I came early today. I was here before the sun.”

“The whole system stinks,” said Giovanni's mother.

Lupo and Volpe Rossa exchanged glances. That was dangerous talk. You never knew who might overhear. Volpe Rossa put her hand on Giovanni's mother's arm.

Giovanni's mother brushed it off in quick annoyance. “Don't you have anyone you can leave the children with, so at least they don't have to spend all this time waiting?”

The pregnant woman shook her head. “My husband's at home—out of work, like everyone else. But he's sick in bed. My brother is off somewhere in Germany, slaving for those Nazis. My other brother's in prison in Russia—if he's still alive. And . . . well, why should I tell you? You know how it is. We all know. Everyone's miserable.” She reached into her basket and came out with a handful of boiled chestnuts. The children immediately set to peeling and eating them.

The crowd suddenly hushed. A Nazi officer had come up. He worked his way through the people, asking to see documents. Everyone fumbled with purses and dug around in bags.

Lupo's mouth twitched involuntarily. He had phony documents. So did Volpe Rossa. So far he'd avoided having to show them. Were they up to snuff? He'd seen people dragged away because their documents weren't in order.

Volpe Rossa touched the back of Giovanni's mother's hand. Their eyes met.

When the officer got to the front of the crowd, Giovanni's mother took the documents from Volpe Rossa and Lupo and added them under hers. She handed all three to the officer at once and put a hand on her forehead, as though she had a splitting headache. “When is this door going to open, officer?” Her voice was a shrill whine.

“Yes, when?” chimed in Volpe Rossa. “We've been waiting hours. Can't you teach these Italian Fascists some of your German efficiency?”

The officer shrugged and gave a little laugh. He checked the top document and handed all three back to Giovanni's mother without opening the other two. He glanced at the documents of the pregnant woman and left.

The crowd went back to talking among themselves, but quietly now.

Finally the door of the Fascist headquarters opened. But not wide enough for everyone to rush in and press together in front of the coupon table. Instead, an officer stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He stood straight in his black shirt and beret with a skull on the front, and bellowed, “Go home, everyone. The coupons aren't ready yet.”

Angry mutterings came from all sides.

“Go home,” said the officer. He waved them away. “Get out of here. Come back later.”

“No!” The pregnant woman pulled a rolling pin out of her shopping basket and held it over her head.

Lupo's face went slack. She was pregnant with two children to protect. Had she lost her mind?

The woman shook the rolling pin. “I will not go away empty-handed again. I came prepared.”

A rolling pin? The Fascist officer had a gun in the holster at his waist and a rifle slung across his back. Who did she think could help her? The crowd watched, alert, tense—but they were unarmed.

But the pregnant woman didn't seem to be looking for help. She swung that rolling pin high, wielding it like a bat, as though she thought she was a real threat. “Mussolini is supposed to protect the family. He told women to stay home and have children. That's what the Fascists have been saying for two decades. Well, look at me. Look at my children.” Her voice rose to a shout. “I'm not leaving without coupons.”

The Italian officer put his hand on the hilt of his gun. Lupo felt Volpe Rossa stiffen beside him. He took her arm to still her, but he already knew it was useless.

“She's right,” said Volpe Rossa loudly.

That was it. Volpe Rossa would get arrested now, too. Well, he'd failed her before. He'd never do it again. “We need coupons,” said Lupo in a croak. For a moment he couldn't hear anything but a buzz inside his head.

Then, “We all have families,” came the call from the back of the crowd. “Look at us.”

“Coupons,” said another voice.

“Coupons,” joined more voices, louder. “Coupons, coupons.”

The crowd chanted now. “Coupons, coupons, coupons.”

The pregnant woman still brandished that rolling pin.

The officer looked stunned. “All right,” he said at last. “I'll open the door, and those who are here right now have to rush in so I can close the door fast. We have enough coupons for you, but not for anyone else.” He opened the door, and the crowd pushed through.

Later, as they were leaving, Volpe Rossa came up on one side of the pregnant woman and Giovanni's mother came up on the other. Lupo followed. They walked her and the children to the milk store.

“You've got courage,” said Volpe Rossa.

“And the right reaction to desperation,” said Giovanni's mother. “Join us.”

The woman stopped. She looked at her children. Then she shook her head. “It's true, I can't stand this anymore.” She laughed. “And what else have I got to do?”

And so the resistance grew. One ordinary, desperate person at a time.

19

L
UPO AND VOLPE ROSSA changed homes often, to protect their hosts. Florence offered lots of hosts.

 

 

They spent weeks secretly dispersing those rifles around town. Lupo delivered some in shopping bags with lettuce on top. Volpe Rossa delivered some wrapped in blankets in baby carriages.

Not batting an eye, they walked past German soldiers and tanks. Lupo didn't know how Volpe Rossa got up the nerve to do it. He always had to fight the urge to run, to run and run, all the way to Venice. What kept him here was the power of song; he recited
partigiano
songs in his head. But it wasn't the words that mattered now—it was simply their very existence. Songs filled his head and pushed aside everything else.

Lupo hadn't seen those rifles in action, but he heard the news of what they did. A German jeep outside town had been shot at from who knew where. A truck had had its tires blown out. A group of drunken Nazi soldiers had been ambushed in the night.
Partigiano
rifles were nothing in an open showdown against German submachine guns. But these weren't open showdowns. These were snipings—the only kind of warfare possible when the scales were so unbalanced.

Lupo lay in bed late one morning, thinking about that imbalance. He knew it was a mistake to dwell on it; it would only disable him, keep him pinned to that bed.

He got up, and his gaze happened to go out the window. Nazi soldiers marched Italian men down the street. Lupo didn't recognize anyone, of course, but he knew what was going on. The Italian men were surely known anti-Fascists. The Nazis were marching them to the train station, to put them on cattle cars that would carry them to prisons in Mantova and Belluno. These processions happened often. This was the second one down this street since he'd been at this host's home—and he'd been here only five days.

One of the men was wounded and stumbled along. As they passed under Lupo's window, he fell. Clearly, he couldn't walk another step. A Nazi shot him.