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Von Thadden saves him. “Yes, thank you, Meisinger. Very thoughtful.”
Bladders emptied, trousers buttoned, officers and men climb back into the car. The gravel road rises, skirting a hilltop. Kunkel shifts in his seat and looks back the way they’ve come, catching glimpses of the valley through rare gaps in the everlasting goddamned chestnut trees. The view isn’t bad. East-facing slopes in shadow. Sun setting behind them, throwing pretty light on the other side. The river breaking into creeks, like a girl’s braid coming undone.
Kunkel would feel better if he could see some gun emplacements. Valdottavo’s a lot bigger than he expected. Which means Reinecke’s regiment is stretched thi
Meisinger downshifts, guns the engine. The emptied jerrican rattles in the back as the car jolts over ruts and rocks, grinding over a crest in an alpine meadow. It’s a giant fruit bowl of a place, tipped west, orchards catching the last bit of daylight. Pear trees, apples. Goats grazing on windfalls. Von Thadden looks up from the reports. “Excellent cheese up here. Not as tasty as German cheese, of course, but good for the type.” He lifts a chin toward the goats. “Fruit for fodder. Sweetens the milk.”
Knows everything, von Thadden does. “How much longer?” Kunkel asks Meisinger softly.
“An hour. Maybe more,” Meisinger whispers. “We should’ve left earlier.”
“— and the local prosciutto crudo is good as well,” von Thadden is telling Schmidt. “Rather like a Schinken, although a different breed of swine.”
A few hundred meters ahead, a peasant has finished pruning suckers off his apple trees; his big hooked knife leans against a pile of brush. When he spots the car, he pulls a cloth cap off his stubbly head and dodders arthritically into the center of the road, waving his hat at the camouflaged staff car and yelling.
“Gott,” Meisinger murmurs. “Partisans.”
“This could be trouble, sir,” Kunkel warns.
“Not necessarily,” von Thadden replies. “Schmidt, take care of the report. Just as a precaution.”
A few meters ahead, the peasant mimes with conspicuously empty hands: You can’t go any further. Meisinger hits the gas.
“Don’t hit him,” von Thadden calls from the backseat. “He’ll damage the radiator. Slow down, Meisinger, that’s an order.”
Kunkel glances over his shoulder. “Shall I shoot him, Gruppenführer?”
“In a moment, perhaps.”
Meisinger gears down to a crawl, swings off road slightly, coming to rest at the side of the road. His eyes are closed, and his lips are moving. Kunkel checks the backseat again. Crumpling the papers von Thadden has been reading, Schmidt stuffs them back into the attaché case. In his patient schoolmaster voice, von Thadden says, “Get out and speak to the man, Kunkel. Give Schmidt some time.”
Kunkel opens his door. When nothing happens, he stalls, twisting from side to side to stretch his back, and then strolls out to meet the peasant. Bald, bandy-legged, and barrel-chested, the farmer clumps closer, wearing wooden clogs, a filthy faded shirt, and stained corduroy trousers. The old man hesitates, pulls out an ancient handkerchief, sneezes into it. “Ponte nicht gut!” he says in pidgin German, wiping his nose. “You gotta turn back, signore! Bridge no good!”
“Scheisse! That’s a pain in the balls,” Kunkel says. “Between bandits and bombing, it’s getting to be more trouble than it’s worth, going on a picnic these days.”
The man sneezes into his rag again. “Non capisco, signor Herr.”
“Signor Herr! Aren’t you the cute one?” Kunkel looks over his shoulder at the Gruppenführer. “He says the bridge is out, sir.” Indistinct in the backseat, von Thadden shakes his head.
The peasant scratches his crotch and grins uncertainly. “Bridge no good,” he repeats, looking confused but earnest.
“Ja, klar, I heard you the first time,” Kunkel says affably. Where the hell would a peasant learn even that much German? Again he turns toward von Thadden. “I have reason to believe this gentleman is not being entirely candid with us, sir.”
Schmidt rolls down his window slightly. Smoke escapes. The peasant’s grin turns wolfish. “Zigaretten? Got cigarettes?” he asks hungrily, inching sideways toward the car. “Für Apfel? Gut, ja? Cigarettes for apples?”
Unexpectedly, Von Thadden gets out of the car and comes around it quickly, blocking the peasant’s view of Schmidt and the burning papers. Gratifyingly impressed by a general officer’s uniform, the peasant gapes.
In the next instant, he drops from sight, rolls under the car, shouts something.
Firing into the air, a pack of screaming partisans rise from the orchard brush piles, charge the car, disarm Kunkel and von Thadden, thrust gun barrels into the faces of the two men inside. It’s over in ten seconds.
Rolling from beneath the chassis, the peasant motions with a pistol for Meisinger and Schmidt to come out of the car. Meisinger gets out immediately, hands up, shaking and mumbling. When Schmidt fails to do the same, the peasant gives an order to a ski
“I don’t take orders from Jews,” Schmidt says.
Bad move, Kunkel thinks, and he’s right. The little kike fires into the backseat and takes a startled step backward. Glowering under a chimpanzee’s brow, a hairy thug pushes the Jew aside, reaches inside the car, and hauls Schmidt’s body onto the road.
Foamy red blood pulses from the neck. Legs scrabble at the gravelly road. Trousers darken. Feet twitch spasmodically, flop sideways. Wooden matches spill from a cardboard box in the curled and lifeless fingers. Meisinger moans.
With apelike agility, the hairy one hops into the car, cursing as he beats the flames out with his own hands. The contents of Schmidt’s bottle dribble onto the roadbed. The strong, sweet scent of petrol joins the stench of burnt gunpowder and urine.
The Ape climbs out of the staff car with a sheaf of charred and smoking papers that go to pieces in the evening breeze. Schmidt died doing his duty, Kunkel thinks. Whatever was in that report, it’s unreadable now.
The old man presses a pistol barrel into von Thadden’s temple, bringing the smell of cordite close while the general’s arms are bound behind his back. Von Thadden asks, “Do you intend to kill the rest of us as well?”
Meisinger starts to cry. The bandits snigger. The old man issues a string of orders to his ragged young subordinates. Rat Face listens, nods, and turns to the Germans. “You are our prisoners, Gruppenführer Schlappschwanz. Make trouble, and they’ll shoot your tiny dick off.”
Tullio Goletta waits until the Germans have disappeared beyond the orchard. “Bonehead!” he yells, cuffing Duno. “You were told: no killing!”
“He was trying to burn those things! So they had to be important, right? Anyway, he moved!” Duno squawks. “It was supposed to be a warning shot!”
“Gesù!” Tullio fumes. “The first time you ever manage to hit something! We needed hostages, not more bodies!”
“Va bene, Tullio,” his father says. “Gruppenführer Schlappschwanz will count extra.” Attilio Goletta laughs. “General Limp-Dick! That’s a good one!” he says. “Wait’ll I tell that one to Pierino!”
THE HUNCHBACK’S HOUSE
FRAZIONE DECIMO
When moonlight finds Santino Cicala, he is lying on the sacking mattress filled with dry and crackly leaves, gazing at his wife of thirty hours. The night chill has raised gooseflesh, and he curls around her, belly to back, to warm her, not to wake her.
Their first time, it was the stripping out: walls of awkwardness and modesty taken down. Thoughtful, deliberate, he stood behind her, kissing her neck, smelling her clean hair, reaching around her for the buttons. He pulled the blouse from her shoulders. Felt her bare back against his chest. Cupped her breasts, memorizing their weight and form. Most men go at it like bulls pawing the ground, but stones have taught Santino patience.