Love and War in the Apennines (33 page)

Twelve years later I returned to the Apennines with Wanda and our two children. We had finally married in the spring of 1946,
^*
after surmounting every kind of obstacle to do so. The two of us had gone back several times, first soon after the war ended when we were working for an organisation whose job it was to assist people who had helped escaping prisoners of war. As is usual when official attempts are made to repay something with cash which was given freely at the time out of kindness of heart, a great deal of ill-will was created in this case by the Treasury, or whoever held the purse-strings, who decreed that any money that was disbursed to these people in 1946 should be at the old, pre-Armistice rate of exchange which was seventy-two liras to the pound, which by now was absolutely nothing. Most Italians, too, took exception to the official certificate which was given to them as a testimony to what they had done, and which had at the foot of it what was obviously some sort of artificial reproduction of the signature of Field-Marshal Alexander who would, undoubtedly, have been shocked if he had known what the effect would be on the recipients. It would have been better to have given
nothing at all. The only thing we could do was to try and give people presents in kind instead of money, and this we sometimes contrived to do so that, eventually, someone would receive a brand new set of tyres which, in 1946, were worth a small fortune, but were still an inadequate recompense.

What would have been worth more than all this would have been if more of the prisoners who escaped in Italy had, at least, written to thank their hosts after the war was finished. Some did; many who should have known better didn’t.

Now, in 1956, you could drive a jeep all the way up to Signor Zanoni’s house; but the house was gone. Turning the angle of the cowshed in which I had first found him milking Bella all those years ago, we came on the ruins of it. One broken wall and a heap of stones and slates and baulks of timber protruding from the rubble; the fireplace still standing, with the pot-hooks still hanging in it and part of the stairs which once led to the upper landing were all that was left of the house Wanda and I remembered. It had been a small house, but surely not as small as these pathetic remains suggested.

The new house rose stark and white on the ridge above. It was a three-storeyed building, and had an elegant iron balcony painted in a contemporary shade of orange. Next to it there was a huge building with ventilated windows used for the
stagionatura
of ham.

We were disappointed at the passing of the old house but the feeling soon vanished. As we always had been, we were given a royal welcome and once in the kitchen things seemed much as they always had. The signora was a bit broader in the beam, Signor Zanoni more wrinkled and a bit balder, and the children were grown-up. One was a bricklayer; another was married. Only the old aunt had died, quite blind behind her spectacles.

‘The house fell down at the beginning of last year,’ Signor Zanoni said. ‘Fortunately, we were in the fields.’

I asked him what had happened to make him so prosperous. Had he struck oil?

‘No, Enrico,’ he said modestly, ‘I just worked hard and we have made a good thing of the
stagionatura.’

That night the signora cooked a great dinner and we had
gnocchi.
And we were invited to eat to the bottom of the pot and find the
sterlina d’oro
but, again, no one succeeded.

The next day Signor Zanoni took us up over the Colle del Santo to the village. We went by the track; the path that he had cut through the woods had grown in long ago and the hut where I had met Wanda was no more. Even the clearing had gone. On the way we went to the Pian del Sotto, but there was no one there we knew. Luigi and Agata had moved away to another farm in another province. With none of them there it was a sad place inhabited by ghosts; but Signor Pellegri, the host at the dance, and his wife were still at the farm where it had taken place.

At the village the survivors of the two great families were waiting for us, all older and much more bent. Large men whom I remembered as small boys came forward and pumped my hand, enveloping it in their great fists. One of the biggest was Pierino, the little boy who had taken me down to be interviewed by the Chairman of the Board. Only the Chairman, Scamperdale himself, the great planner, was not there. He was dead and his family were in Milan. Toasts were drunk in the wine which was as nasty as it had always been. I insisted that we should all eat at the inn in order that there should be no ill-feeling about whom we lunched with, but we would have eaten better in any of the houses. Nevertheless it was a success. Old men, without teeth, shrilled in my ear, ‘Well, what do you think of it now, Enrico? We’ve got a road, and a school. There’s even a road on your mountain, and a man from Parma has dug a lake and it’s full of trout. Now we have tourists. Soon, there’ll be skyscrapers. You won’t know us at
all. Better than a cave, eh? Drink some more vino, Enrico?’ and they went on to say that it was
proprio brutto vino
, which it was.

After lunch we set off to find the cave. Francesco led the way. Although he was nearer eighty than seventy-five he still had the same lean look and the very easy hillman’s stride I remembered. We went up on to the ridge as quietly as we had ever done, although there was no need for quietness. In the woods there was no one cutting wood and the tunnels had all grown in. From the fields below came the growl of tractors. There were no ploughboys, like Armando, calling to their beasts any more.

On the way up I asked Francesco about the
carbonari.

‘Finished,’ he said. ‘Everyone uses methane gas for cooking now. The last
carbonari
are over the other side of the
crinale
, in the Maremma.’

Francesco went on up like a hound on a strong scent and then paused on the edge of the labyrinth for a moment before suddenly going off down into one of the ditches. I could no longer remember in which part of it the cave had been. It was something I thought I would never forget. There was not much left of it when he did find it. A part of the wall which Bartolomeo, who was long dead, had built; and beneath the earth where the fireplace had been, I unearthed some charred pieces of wood, just as I once had in the clearings of the
carbonari.

And we all sat round in the early afternoon sunshine and, from time to time someone said
‘Ma!’
And I thought of all the men and women and children who had come up with food for us in all sorts of weather, bringing anything they could spare, and if they couldn’t spare it they brought it just the same. They all took their courage in their hands and made the long journey up the mountain.

‘We’ve seen some things here, my friends,’ Francesco said. ‘We and our children. Let’s hope that it will never be like that again.’

I knew what he meant. The partisans really began that year we were captured, 1944. There had been big fighting on what I always thought of as my mountain. We had been a sort of curtain-raiser, a little light relief before the big, epic tragedy began. Il Corvo and his friends may not have done so well at the rehearsals but it had been all right for them on the night, and all the succeeding ones of what became a very long run.

It was time to go. We had a long journey on foot in front of us. Up to the Castello del Prato, where we would not find Abramo; he had gone, the road on the mountain had been too much for him. He had retreated with his sheep to the
crinale.
Then down into the gorge where Alfredo had lit the fire that bitter night, and across the river and up the other side to the village where Amadeo, who was now completely blind and whose wife was dead, waited for us, and the man who had mended my boot and his wife, and the signora who had scrubbed our backs and her husband who had scrubbed our backs and built our beds, and many others.

Just as we were leaving Francesco took me on one side.

‘There’s one thing I never told you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should have done when you first came back, but I couldn’t bring myself to. It was a matter of honour.

‘You know that we are really only two families here. You remember the night you had to leave the hut in a hurry because the
milizia
were coming? Well, it was one of us who gave you away. He had helped you as much as anyone; but before the armistice he had always supported the Fascists. He thought and thought about it and then he decided that he had been wrong to abandon them because they were losing. And that’s what happened. He denounced you to the
segretario.
He didn’t want the reward though and he made sure that he didn’t get it. Do you know how? Because he said what he had done just in time for the rest to get you out.

‘It’s a bit different where you’re going,’ he went on, ‘but not all that much. The one who denounced you there was a woman. She did it for the same reason and she made a bargain with the militia not to burn the village or touch anyone inside it. She had to, things had become warmer then. She earned the reward; but she didn’t take it either. They’re always reminding her of what she did. Her life has been a misery. She was lucky not to be shot by the partisans. They kept it quiet in the village. Here, only a few know about our affair. You can meet both of them if you like; you had dinner with one of them today. He was very, very close.’

‘No thank you,’ I said, ‘we’ve all had enough of this sort of thing to last us for the rest of our lives.’ And I really meant it. And together with Wanda and our children and the boy who had come over the valley to guide us, we went up towards the Castello del Prato.

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How we succeeded in doing so and our subsequent life together is described in
Something Wholesale.

From the reviews of
Love and War in the Apennines
:

‘Superbly funny … civilizing, generous and affecting. The men, women and children, weather and woodsmoke are as fresh as yesterday’

Observer

‘A vivid description of Italian village life, full of notable characters … and the reactions of one sensitive man to being out of the war in the middle of one’

Daily Telegraph

‘It is necessary to state with emphasis that this is a very good book indeed’

TLS

‘An exciting story, superbly told. And wisdom, courage and generosity illuminate it’

Punch