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They’ve made fifty meters when the noise and the immediate danger begin to recede. Mouths open, they pause to reassess their line of retreat. The ground suddenly leaps to life beneath Tonio’s feet. A machine gu
Sprinting now like startled goats, the surviving partisans dash toward the trees on their right, struggling through the treacly surface. A third machine gun opens fire directly in front of them. Three men go down, shot or maybe only slipping in the mud. Simon scrambles into a shallow gully with Maurizio. Maurizio yells to the others. A few shout back. Simon tries to count the voices. Seven left? Eight? Scattered over a fifty-yard field of overlapping fire. In the numberless western serials Simon watched as a child, this was when the 7th Cavalry would gallop over a ridge, bugles blaring, sabers flashing.
The shooting becomes sporadic. Partisans periodically pop up to keep the Germans at bay. The Jerries return fire halfheartedly, knowing they need only remind their quarry they’re still pi
It’s going to be a beautiful spring day, Simon thinks as the sun rises. He can see a small copse of chestnut trees in a rubble of boulders, about two hundred yards uphill.
He nudges Maurizio and jerks his head toward the trees, hoping that eyes and expression can convey his thoughts: Stay here, and we’re fish in a barrel. Run, and we’ll be cut to pieces. Understanding, Maurizio shrugs, pulling the corners of his mouth downward as if to say, Six of one, half a dozen of the other. “Andiamo,” he says.
They take another count of the survivors and relay the plan to make a run for it. Tensing, Simon has gathered himself for the dash when the noise suddenly triples, and military clichés explode around him. Withering fire. A hail of bullets. All hell breaking loose. A vaguely familiar voice shouts in English from somewhere uphill. “Ei! Simon! Get ready! We give you cover!”
Laughing crazily, Maurizio directs Simon’s wild-eyed gaze toward a man waving behind a tree stump. It’s the one who visited England. What was his name? Something Shakespearean…
Before Simon can remember more, Renzo Leoni strolls out from behind a boulder. (Cool as a cucumber. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.) With the Germans preoccupied by this astounding display of joie de morte, Simon jumps up to spray the woods with his Marlin, thinking, Run like a rabbit. Run for your life.
Vaulting a fallen tree behind a low rock outcrop, he flops onto his belly and watches for muzzle flashes. This time he aims and picks off a man feeding ammo into one of the machine guns. Rewarded with a scream, he feels for the first time the sheer unholy joy of survival at another’s cost, and looks for someone else to kill.
A partisan scuttles over and hides behind the rocks with him. “Ei! Simon! Remember me?” he asks cheerily. “I am Otello. I visit England for one year!”
Living proof that God protects drunks and lunatics, Renzo Leoni joins them, groaning like an old man when he kneels. He speaks in a low, quick voice, his appraising eyes on Simon. “The boss is happy you still have the radio,” Otello translates. “He says: you did well. He says: a corporal in the paratroops is worth a colonel in any army!”
Surprised and gratified, Simon can think of no way to reply, and in any case, Renzo seems to forget him in the next moment. “He will count to three,” Otello says, watching the silent orders the boss is conveying with an Italian’s manual eloquence. “The others will cover us, and you will run with me, over the hill— that way. Run very fast, understand?”
On “Tre!” they take off amid a thunderstorm of gunfire. Knees pumping, crouched like a crone under the weight of the wireless, Simon expects a bullet in the arse, but minutes (hours, centuries) later, he and Otello clear the crest safely and slide down behind it.
Maurizio is next, flinging himself and the generator over the hilltop and into the declivity beyond. Three more partisans follow, leaping like Olympic long jumpers. One of them has retrieved the batteries from Tonio’s body. Another grins and offers a bottle of red wine. Simon stares, astounded by the idea of carrying wine into battle, but he takes a slug and passes it on.
Otello and the others confer quickly. Two partisans nod and leave. Silently, the others wait, watching their Englishman’s chest heave. “Are you better now?” Otello asks solicitously. “Can you walk?”
Insulted, Simon puts his primitive Italian to use, maligning the mating habits of Otello’s entire family. Laughing, they get on their way, teaching him several additional terms for such behavior as they follow the scouts.
The gunfire grows fainter as they cross hills, cut through fields, and skirt hedgerows, moving at a steady pace that seems to indicate a long journey ahead of them. The day turns warm. Birds sing. Suddenly, the scouts come ru
Everyone dives for cover, and Otello pulls Simon into the freezing waist-high water of a high-banked stream. A German half-track trundles over the horizon. Shivering, sweating, they wait in absolute silence while the vehicle rumbles past, close enough for them to smell its exhaust.
When it finally disappears around a hill, they scramble out of the stream. Simon shrugs out of the radio rig, determines that it hasn’t gotten wet, and tries to empty his boots without taking them off. Otello holds a whispered conference with the scouts, who take positions about fifty yards ahead. “We go where the Germans came,” Otello says. “Do you understand? The Germans make a radio signal to headquarters that says, ‘All clear. No partisans here.’ So, no more Germans will come that way.”
For the balance of the day, they meander through the countryside, their only objective to avoid contact with the enemy. Three times they see German patrols in the distance, and once they duck behind a hedgerow. A platoon of Decima Mas Republicans passes: ex—motor torpedo boatmen from the defunct Italian navy, limping morosely in bad boots.
By dusk Simon is thoroughly lost, and therefore utterly unprepared when they arrive at the very spot where the ambush began. He stares at Maria’s body, forgotten until this moment. Sitting beside her, the same small girl who warned them this morning, a lifetime ago.
The child is sent away with a few quick orders. The partisans draw straws. Maurizio loses. While the others draw off to a safe distance, Maurizio checks their comrades’ corpses for booby traps. When nothing blows up, Otello says, “This is safe for us tonight. The Germans think no one will come back.”
Alerted by the little girl, two short, thick women arrive bearing shovels on their shoulders, baskets of food on their heads. Shaped like potatoes, with faces of genial toughness, they cluck their tongues over the fallen while handing chestnut bread and skins of harsh red wine to the living. Famished, the partisans eat, talking quietly, then take turns digging in rocky mud. The women shake their heads. “Poveretti,” they say. “Poveretti.”
Simon slumps empty-headed beside Maria’s body, listening to the shovels’ crunch and slop. For the first and only time, he reaches out to touch her face; startled by her cold flesh, he draws back. When the time comes, he helps lay her and the other corpses into their shallow graves. Otello cuts branches from some sort of conifer, placing fragrant sprays of green over the slack and empty faces. Maurizio starts to fill in Maria’s grave but stops when Simon asks him to. Removing the little compass hidden in one of his buttons, Simon shows it to the others. They nod with approval when he closes Maria’s fingers around it.