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When the crisis passes, he sucks in snot and wipes his eyes with grimy hands. Papa’s right about one thing, he thinks bitterly. We’re Vogelfrei, just like Steffi’s stupid canary when it got loose. And how do you catch a cage bird, Papa? You close the door to keep it in one room. You draw the curtains over all but one window. Cage birds aren’t strong. You chase them from one place to another until they’re tired. They move toward the only light in the room, and sit on that windowsill. Then you just scoop them up. Somewhere there’s a happy Nazi shit eater thinking, Stupid Jews. Chase them till they can’t run anymore, then offer them a school! They’ll trample one another trying to turn themselves in!
He can see Colle Aurelio across the main valley. The pass seems impossibly high, nestled between two great mountains. Shadowed gullies and crevasses look small from here, but Duno knows their immensity with the muscles of his legs and the air of his lungs. How, without wings, had anyone crossed such monstrous terrain?
Put one foot in front of the other, he tells himself fiercely. That’s how!
The mountains turn gold, then pink, then blue. Bone-rattling cold sweeps downward, sinking off the snowfields. Sweat chills on his skin, raising chicken flesh. “I’ll never go back,” he says aloud, to harden his resolve. The life he knew is over. He will never take over his father’s business or have a bourgeois apartment or buy season tickets at the ballet or have money in the bank. He won’t give parties for people who eat his food and mock him behind his back, then spit in his face and laugh when he’s kicked into the gutter.
He won’t miss his family either. He is done with them. Forever. But he wishes he’d brought some food.
CASA DI GOLETTA
VALDOTTAVO, PIEMONTE
Battista Goletta sets another chunk of beechwood on the stump. “They left a few days ago. I said I’d bring ’em across the valley to my cousin Attilio. He’d’ve taken ’em. They didn’t understand what I was saying, I guess.” Battista brings the ax down. “Their boy, Duno, ran off to join the Communists. More balls than brains.”
The soldier shifts despondently from foot to foot. “Have you heard anything about an old gentleman with a girl about sixteen, signore? I left them in a carbonaro shack up here somewhere. I’ve been trying to find them, but all the ravines look the same.”
Battista leans over to toss a few more splits onto the pile of firewood. “There’s ebrei over with the Cesanos. No girls, though.”
“Mado
“A lot did,” Battista says. The valley was filled with families living in barns, under bridges, in the open. Worn-out women, trying to hold families together. Men, pauperized and impotent. Kids sick, scared of bugs and snakes. Those were the ones who gave up.
“I found a priest,” the soldier says. “He said he’ll help if I can find them.”
“Don Leto?” The boy nods. Battista grunts, unsurprised. “The padre’s a Red, just like my idiot cousin Attilio. Landlords. Communists. Priests.” He brings the ax onto another piece of wood. “None of ’em work, and they all want something for nothing! Me? I work for everything I got, and I don’t owe nobody nothing. Damned Communists… They came through here a couple of days ago. Stole two wheels of cheese. Left me a receipt! Thieves.” His tone changes. “She pretty?” The soldier frowns. “La ebrea! Your sweetheart! Is she pretty?”
“She’s not my sweetheart,” the boy mumbles, “but she’s pretty.”
Sweating even in the chill of autumn, Battista swabs his ta
“She knows a lot of languages. She could be a teacher.”
Battista snorts. “Most of what’s wrong in the world is because of educated goddamned fools.” Far below, a train whistle wails. They can see the window of its locomotive flash as it pulls domed wooden cattle cars along the riverbank. Battista sends his ax thunking into the stump. “What’s your name, kid?”
“Cicala, signore. Santino.”
“You hungry, Cicala? You could work it off.”
Santino walks over to the toolshed, stretching and bending to study its construction. Battista kneads his aching back, and sees the farm with a stranger’s eyes: house, barn, outbuildings, fences, all built with flat stacked stone. Walls buckle where the ground has settled away from them. The door to the toolshed hangs on one hinge. The barn roof has been patched and patched and patched.
“Whoever built this skipped the hearting,” Santino calls. “It’s cheaper not to, but you have to pack the wall’s core, or it’s got no strength. That’s why you’re getting water damage.”
In the thirties, this place produced ten times what the Golettas could eat, and Battista’s name was listed among the Cavalieri del Lavoro: the Knights of Labor. Mussolini himself honored the virtue of men whose patriotism was measured in productivity and sweat. Now Battista does all he can to keep the place up, but it’s a losing battle. “Me and Rosa, we’re alone,” he explains. “Boys’re in the army. Girls’re married, troubles of their own. I’m getting old.” He claws thoughtfully under a whiskered chin. “I could use some help. Can’t pay you anything, but you’d have food and a roof against the snow.”
The ugly young face contorts uncertainly. “I told Claudia I’d come back.”
“Keep wandering around the countryside looking for her, Germans’ll pick you up… Course, if you were here working, I could ask around.”
Battista’s hair is gray, what’s left of it. His skin is rutted as a road, but those shoulders are heavy with fifty-odd years of ax-muscle. Santino shakes his head. “They’d grab you, too, signore.”
Slyly, Battista stoops and twists, manufacturing a hump worthy of Rigoletto. “A crippled old shit like me, Your Grace?” he whines. “No good to anyone, Your Honor. Just a poor old cafone trying to sell a few vegetables.” With a pirate’s grin, Battista straightens, claps Santino on the shoulder, and jerks his head toward the house. “Rosa!” he yells. “You’ve got men to feed! C’mon, kid. Let’s go eat.”
October 1943
PENSIONE USODIMARE
PORTO SANT’ANDREA
Even before his father left, Werner Schramm had a plan to escape his mother and her moods. “Black moods in the Black Forest!” his father called them, after four or five beers. “What’ve you got to moon about, woman?” He never waited for an answer. “Millions dead in the war! Millions dead of influenza. Who gives a shit about one worthless girl? And fix yourself up, for Chris’sake! Startin’ to look like that nun-sister of yours! Ugly old hag.”
Everything was fine before Irmgard was born. Well, Papa drank and Mama had her moods, but Irmgard made everything worse. Putting her away didn’t help. One morning, Papa boarded the train to Freiburg and never came home. Everyone said, “Werner, you’re the man of the family now,” but he wasn’t. He was the son who was left behind, and in his opinion, the blame lay squarely on Irmgard’s huge and freakish head. “Water on the brain,” a city doctor said. It would kill her someday, but not soon enough to save her family.
Werner was damned if he’d end up a debt-ridden farmer with a loony mother in the back bedroom and a freak sister in an institution. He had bigger plans than that. He was good at drawing— he’d won a prize at school. His aunt the nun encouraged him to study art. For months, he daydreamed of a Parisian garret where he would paint, unburdened by secondhand sadness. Gradually, Florence replaced Paris in the geography of his imagination. He got top marks in Latin; Italian would be easier than French.