The Secret of Santa Vittoria (29 page)

“Yes.”

Out of all the grays and the dull reds and oranges, out of the sun-bruised brick and stone and plaster, the coloring of stone and smoke and old age that is Santa Vittoria, one piece of color stands out above all the colors of the city, the red-and-blue sign of the Cinzano company on the roof of the Cooperative Wine Cellar.

“That?” von Prum said. “Do you think you could hit it?”

The sergeant nodded.

The first shot went over the top of the sign and landed someplace up on the mountain behind the city. He told us later that he fired this way so that no one would be hurt. By that shot he was able to adjust his fire, and the second shot struck the sign and exploded against it. When it didn't go down right away, he fired a third shot and the sign started down then, falling off the roof like a goose or a wild swan that has been hit with shot but is unwilling to die at once because of it.

“I think we've made our first impression,” Captain von Prum said.

They moved slowly after that, to keep down the dust and because the road was not fit for a speed much faster than that of an ox. One of the children who was to blow his reed whistle had come out along the track and was blowing it so that his face had turned red. They stopped and watched him.

“What's the matter with him do you think?” The child continued blowing so that at one time it appeared that his eyes would come out of his head.

“I think he's crazy,” the sergeant said. “They have these little boys tend the goats all alone and sometimes they go crazy.”

In another ten minutes they had reached the bottom of the mountain where they saw Fungo, who in truth looks crazy when he smiles, sweeping the sand in front of the entrance to the Roman cellers.

“Another one,” Sergeant Traub shouted. They had turned and started up through the terraces, the first motor vehicle ever to attempt to come up the mountain, when the captain looked back once more at Fungo and the cellar entrance.

“A place to examine,” he said, and Traub nodded. “It might make a good place for an air-raid shelter.”

When they were halfway up the mountain they stopped to allow the engines of their vehicles to cool. Among the vines and beneath the leaves they could see people hiding in the shadows or people sleeping.

“Now prepare yourself for the Italian pageantry,” Captain von Prum told the sergeant. There would be the mayor of the city in his one black suit stained with wine and manure, and several old men holding flags and with their medals from the other war dangling from their worn shirts, and there would be the members of the Fascist party swearing undying allegiance to those who had come to conquer them, the captain told him. It was ten minutes before five o'clock.

Just before they started up again Captain von Prum sampled some of the grapes that grew alongside the cart track and they were bitter. Paolo Lapolla had the bad fortune to be near them.

“What's the matter with your grapes?” von Prum asked Paolo.

At first Paolo found it impossible to find his tongue. “They aren't ripe yet,” he finally said. “You came too soon.”

It caused the Germans to laugh. “When would you have wished us to come, next year?”

“Later, later,” Paolo said. “Much later.”

“Your grapes are bitter. How is your wine?”

“Ah, the wine,” Paolo said. “The wine is something else. You must try some of it sometime.”

“Ah, we will,” von Prum said, “we will.”

Paolo was frightened by the loudness of their laughter.

“You speak very good Italian,” Paolo said.

“So do you,” von Prum said.

“Yes, I was born right here, Your Excellency,” Paolo said.

At the Fat Gate and wherever they could see down into the terraces they were fearful about Paolo and what he might say, but Bombolini, when they told him, had no fear. As the Master said, it is sometimes the highest form of wisdom to simulate folly, and at this Paolo was a master, for it is something every Santa Vittorian learns by the time he leaves the breast.

*   *   *

All up the Corso Cavour and up into the Piazza of the People the people were in the doorways and along the edges of the street and around the fringes of the piazza, because it was foolish now, after the destruction of the cart and the blowing down of the sign, to pretend they knew nothing of the Germans' arrival. They were silent and they were composed, on the advice of Bombolini, who said that they should treat the arrival as they would treat the passing of a hearse; no one would go into the street and run after the hearse, and no one would turn away from it, either. There was even a quiet kind of elation among them, because the tunnel had been seen and the tunnel had been passed.

Only Fabio seemed to be upset. “Eight of them and an officer, against one thousand of us,” he said. “What has happened to my country?” When the sound of the engines could be heard coming up the Corso Cavour, Fabio left the piazza and went up to High Town and over the wall and into the mountains.

The Corso is bad for traffic, because it is, as Tufa said, a pipe, but it is good for sound. The noise of the engines thundered up the pipe and roared in the piazza and even the people at the far corners found themselves becoming stiff.

There were, in the center of the piazza then, only two people: Italo Bombolini, the mayor, and Emilio Vittorini in the dress uniform of his old regiment. And behind them was the Fountain of the Pissing Turtle.

The motorcycle was the first to come into the piazza. Because of the steepness of the Corso the people could not see it until it had come up onto the lip of the street where for a moment it seemed to waver and hang suspended, half in the piazza and half in the Corso. Then it seemed to catch hold of the cobblestones of the piazza and to explode out into it.

They must have seen the two men but they didn't go directly toward them but turned to the right and circled the piazza, roaring along the rim of people, who were pressed back against the walls of the houses, and going all the way around the piazza and back to where the Corso begins. Bombolini and Vittorini kept turning with them so that they would always be facing them, much as the matador does when a bull is on the loose in the arena. Once was not enough for them and they went around the piazza a second time, until the truck and the little cannon had ground up into the piazza and could follow them. They went faster this time, with a great noise of engines and the crying of rubber on the stones. It was impressive. It was terribly impressive. There had been a great many who had denied that any motor vehicle could ever come up the Corso and get into the piazza. At a sign from the officer, the truck pulled to one side of the square and the soldiers leaped from the truck and unhitched the gun and pointed it out across at the people. And when this was done, the motorcycle very sharply turned and only then headed directly toward the two men.

Vittorini's wife shouted for him to jump, but everyone knew Vittorini would never move. It seemed to us then that Bombolini would be forced to break and run if the machine was not to hit him, but he too stood in the piazza as if this was the ordained thing to do. Some in the piazza at that moment turned away, but the motorcycle, with a terrible screeching of brakes, came to a stop less than a foot away from the two of them and actually at the edge of Bombolini's shoe.

“Welcome to the Free City of Santa Vittoria,” Bombolini shouted above the sound of the engine. “We of this city know that in times of war…”

It was the last they heard, as Traub raced the engine and the mayor's voice was lost beneath it.

“Pay attention,” Traub shouted. He shut off the engine. Captain von Prum rose in the sidecar.

“Have sixteen mattresses delivered into this piazza within the next twenty minutes,” von Prum ordered.

Vittorini now had come to full attention and was beginning the execution of a formal military salute.

“We know that in time of war—” Bombolini began.

“Quiet,” Sergeant Traub shouted.

“Sixteen,” von Prum said to Bombolini. “Did you understand that?”

Bombolini nodded his head.

“I want you to know, sir, that we are willing and anxious to cooperate with you as guests of the city, exactly as we would do if we were running an inn.”

“With no bedbugs,” Traub shouted. “With no lice. With no ticks. With no bugs of any kind.”

Bombolini continued to talk, but they didn't hear him. The sergeant had gotten down from the seat of the motorcycle and had gone around and opened the door of the sidecar for the captain.

“Words flow out of his mouth like piss from that turtle,” Captain von Prum said. They began to walk toward the fountain.

“Go ahead,” von Prum called to Bombolini. “Keep talking.”

They walked around the fountain and examined it carefully and came back past Vittorini, and the captain touched the old soldier's epaulets.

“Do you know that a museum would give you good money for these?” he said. Vittorini was still at parade salute. Von Prum stopped in front of the mayor.

“Why did you stop talking?” he asked.

“I had nothing further to say,” Bombolini said.

“Do you expect us to believe that?” von Prum said. “Would you like to hear what the sergeant said about you?”

Bombolini nodded his head. “He said you were like the piazza; very large and very empty.”

He had said the words very loudly, and someone in the piazza laughed. It was Babbaluche.

“And what is he doing?” von Prum said.

“He is waiting for you to return his salute, sir.” Vittorini's arm and even his body were now trembling from the effort of holding the salute.

“But why should I do that?” von Prum said.

“Because he is an old soldier, sir.”

“Oh, is that what he is?”

Von Prum took several steps away from Bombolini and came to a stop in front of him and came to attention. He lifted his arm and shouted “Heil Hitler.”

“Long live Italy,” Vittorini said.

“It is my hope that we can find a way of living here that will be profitable for both of us,” Bombolini said.

“I will
insist
on it,” the German said.

He was back in the sidecar then, and Traub started up the motorcycle. It made a great noise, but it did not start at once. It seemed to strain to release itself, much like a young horse held to a stake, and then it broke loose. As it did the foot pedal on the left side of the cycle struck Bombolini's leg and it sent him moving backward. Had he fallen at once there would have been nothing funny in it, and it might have even alarmed the people. But he didn't go down at once. He began to fall and to run backward at the same time, going a little faster at each step, trying to keep his balance but losing it a little more at each step, going backward and down, clutching the air to hold him up. There must have been twenty desperate steps in this way before he was moving at such a speed and was bent over backward so far that in the end nothing could support him and he went down, flatly down, fully down, on his back, so that his legs flew up in the air and hovered there as if he were about to do a backward somersault.

He was stunned by the fall but not hurt by it, and then he could hear them beginning.

Please God, Bombolini said to himself, don't let them do it. Not in front of them.

But they did do it. It began as a titter and it ran around the piazza but it didn't remain a titter long. It became a laugh, and because of the way sounds carry in the Piazza of the People, it became a gigantic laugh, a thunderous, booming laugh, that fed on its own noise, laughter creating new laughter until it went beyond anything that had to do with Bombolini lying on his back in the center of the piazza, but must have been a cry at everything they had done and knew they were going to have to do.

The Germans heard it, although they were already down in the Corso Cavour making their first reconnaissance of the city.

“I don't understand these people at times, sir,” Traub said.

“It's because in many ways they are like children,” Captain von Prum said, “and so they react like children.”

“I don't understand them.”

Get up, Vittorini was saying. You can't lie there. The mayor was on his knees looking at the stones he had fallen on.

“Right here,” he said, aloud. “In this place. On this rock.”

He got to his feet and he marked one cobblestone with the sole of his shoe. He looked at the people and nodded his head at them, over and over.

All right, he was saying to himself, you can laugh. Laugh now. One day, right here, on this stone, you will erect a monument to me.

5 THE SHAME OF SANTA VITTORIA

 

T
HOSE FIRST DAYS
of the occupation were good ones for the people of the city. They had set themselves for something bad to happen, and nothing bad had taken place. The weather for the grapes had turned good again, and when this happens things are always good in Santa Vittoria, no matter what else may be happening. But beyond that was the fact that we all were after the same thing. The Germans wanted us to cooperate with them, and we couldn't find enough ways to do it.

At the start it had been Captain von Prum's policy to show a strong, hard hand and then, when the people were properly conditioned, to show them that the rock in his breast was actually a heart and that he was human. He wrote about it. “My plan is to be a benevolent despot up here,” he put in his personal log, “but to be benevolent one must first be the despot.”

On that first night, for example, a curfew was set for eight o'clock at night. It was too late to warn the bricklayers, and when they came up the mountain at ten o'clock, after finishing the second wine-dark wall, they were jailed for breaking the curfew and they were whipped.

“I am sorry to have to do this, but these men have broken the rules and must be punished for it,” the captain said.