The Marshal and the Murderer Page 14

  'When I reached old Masi's cottage it was too late. The sergeant was there with four of his men. And someone else was there, too: young Ernesto Robiglio.

  It wouldn't have taken much, of course, to discover who'd cut that wire. Masi's cottage was the only house in the area where they'd found the gap in the wire, and there were the bundles of kindling stacked outside his door in the evening sunshine for all to see. The old man himself was standing in the doorway with four machine-guns pointing at him. I think at that point he still had no idea what he'd done. The sergeant, purple with rage, was screaming at him in German and naturally he didn't understand a word. I stayed at a distance under a peach tree, watching. It seemed inevitable that they would shoot him. I couldn't follow the sergeant's tirade any more than old Masi could, but then young Ernesto spoke up, moving forward and pointing to the wire-bound bundles. I couldn't hear exactly what was said but I saw Masi push back his crumpled hat and scratch his head. He tried to explain himself, opening his big hands to express his ignorance and gazing at the offending bundles in dismay. Then the sergeant began shouting orders and the four soldiers shifted their positions slightly. I thought to myself, "This is it," and half closed my eyes so as not to see him go down, waiting for the burst of fire. There was silence and then another burst of shouting from the sergeant. I opened my eyes properly and saw the sergeant stumping away, still roaring, and his men following. Masi was still in his doorway staring after them, as perplexed as ever. There was no sign of Ernesto. The telephone wire was repaired and nothing further was heard of the incident. Nevertheless, Ernesto's part in it became known and after that people were afraid of him. He was generally to be seen hanging around the Fascio during the day but then I began to see him slinking about after dark, too. I had a pass to be out after curfew because of my work and once or twice I'd seen him racing off in a great hurry on a motorbike. Obviously the Germans up at the villa had disappointed him. Ernesto found the congenial company he was looking for among the SS, as we soon found out.

  "The summer wore on, the harvest was got in and promptly requisitioned, the Allies still didn't arrive. Maria was up at the villa more often than she was at home, but since her husband was fighting with the partisans most people held their tongues, at least in front of old Signora Moretti who, poor thing, was saddled with two tiny grandchildren and in danger of losing her only son. If she held her tongue, too, it was because they'd have had little enough to eat if it hadn't been for Maria who never left the villa without a big bagful of food.

  'Then one hot night in July, Maria's husband, Pietro Moro, came home.'

  'I've often wondered since what would have happened to him if things hadn't gone as they did, and found no answer. Looking back, it seems that things couldn't have gone otherwise, as if all his short life he had been moving step by step towards the inevitable end and that nothing could have prevented it, though God knows I tried that night to save him from himself and what was awaiting him. In this very room.

  I'd seen Maria that day, in fact, as I was toiling up the hill to the villa, pushing my bicycle. She was coming down in a thin flowered frock and broken sandals, carrying an old shopping-bag heavy with food. She smiled and said hello to me, little knowing that not many hours afterwards she was to go up that hill again and that it would be years before she would come down. Long, silent years.

  'That night, it was after midnight, I think, though I didn't know the exact hour, I was awakened by what I thought had been a faint scratching at the shutters of my bedroom window. At first I lay still, thinking I'd been mistaken. All I could hear was the sawing of the cicale out there in the hot darkness. Then the faint scratching came again and someone whispered my name. Without lighting the oil lamp on my bedside table, I got up and unlatched the shutters. The window was already open because of the heat. Pietro climbed in and stood there swaying, his face a pale blur in the darkness. I took his arm and led him in here where the blackout was more efficient and I could light a lamp. Even then I had to guide him to a chair and sit him down. I saw some terrible sights during the war but I can't begin to describe to you how the sight of that boy horrified me. He was badly wounded and his torn clothes were soaked in blood, but it wasn't that. It was his eyes. They seemed to be staring back at me from beyond the grave . . . and the truth of it was that they were. Once I'd seen his wounds I took him through there to the surgery where I undressed him. He was carrying a pistol but he refused to give it up. He held it in his hand as I worked, his knuckles showing white through the dirt as he gripped it in pain. I cleaned his wounds as best I could. He'd been hit in four places by machine-gun bullets. One of them was lodged in his groin and I couldn't risk trying to get at it under those conditions. Once he was bandaged up I dressed him in some clothes of mine which once would have been far too tight for him but which hung loosely on him now. He'd had little enough to eat of late by the look of him. I heated up a bowl of ersatz coffee and gave him a piece of the darkish bread which Karl had produced from our grain harvest.

  'I began to explain to him that I would willingly have put him in my bed but that the risk of his being found was too great. It occasionally happened that the Germans came to fetch me during the night. He would have to pass the night in the well with straw and a blanket as others had done before him. I would give him something to ease his pain and help him sleep and then wake him at dawn. I promised him that he would be safe there, that the well had saved a good many lives already, and that by dawn I would work out some means of getting him to where he had to go. Up to then he hadn't said a word. Now he spoke.

  "'I m going home."

  "'Home? You're mad! Apart from the fact that you'd be caught, think what would happen to your family."

  "I'm going home." His eyes still had that strange, staring look and I think I knew then that I couldn't reach him, that no reasoning could reach him, though I kept on trying.

  '"In a matter of weeks the war will be over. If you get caught now"

  '"I'm going home to sleep in my bed with a live warm person next to me. After that I don't care what happens. I just want to sleep in my bed with a live warm body ..."

  'Then he doubled up in his chair and vomited the bread and coffee. I was hoping he'd pass out so that I could keep him here by force, but the staring eyes never closed, barely even blinked. I gave him a little water and tried to get him to take a sleeping pill, but he had all his wits about him and refused it. I doubt now whether it would have put him out, given the strange state of tension he was in. I didn't dare ask him what had happened but it suddenly occurred to me that there might be others of his brigade wandering about in the area, so I risked asking:

  '"Did you come here alone?"

  '"Alone . . . yes."

  '"And the rest of your brigade?"

  '"They're dead. Everybody ... the whole village. All dead. I should be dead, too. We blew up the pontoon bridge. We did it at dawn when it was camouflaged under the river bank because at night they set it up over the river. We did it at dawn. Only one German was killed, just one. I'm thirsty ..."

  'I gave him the cup of water but he stared down into it without drinking as though he'd already forgotten why I'd given it to him.

  "'We couldn't get back to camp in the daylight so we were hidden in a safe house in the village. I don't know who betrayed us . . . maybe they were only guessing, but we'd cut off their retreat and they were half crazy with fear and anger. They came into the village and began shooting everyone on sight, starting with the children who came running out of the houses to see their tanks arriving. They set houses on fire and we could hear women and old people running out screaming with their clothes burning and then the machine-guns. The Germans were shouting 'Partisan! Partisan!'

  '"We gave ourselves up, thinking that would stop them, but it made no difference. At the edge of the village there was a stone wall with a steep drop beyond it to a ditch. We were lined up along the wall with our hands on our heads and I could see the ditch was already full of bodies. Behind
us the whole village was burning and the people screamed and screamed ... I didn't feel afraid, I couldn't feel anything except that it wasn't real. Pietro Biondo was on the wall next to me and I could hear him moaning as though he were already hit. Then I felt something burst into me from behind and we were falling. When I came to there were no more people screaming but I could still hear German voices shouting and the roar of flames. I could hear but I couldn't see anything. I was buried under dozens more bodies. Then I heard Pietro Biondo moaning again exactly in the same way as before they'd shot us. He wasn't next to me any more . . . maybe he'd tried to crawl away, but he hadn't got far, I could still hear him ... I wanted to tell him to shut up because if they'd heard him - but I didn't move or speak. I didn't know how much time had passed, how long I'd been lying there, but the bodies around me were cool and I was hot. Then there was silence for hours but I knew the Germans must still be there because I hadn't heard the tanks leave. I felt the bodies above me shifting ... it was as if somebody was walking over us but there were no voices. No voices . . . Then I heard the lapping noise. It was dogs. Starving dogs drinking up the blood. Much later there was more movement and more orders shouted. Then I heard jeeps passing along the road that ran by the wall above. Doors slammed and an Italian voice shouted, 'The ambulances are here! Is anybody alive?'

  "'Pietro Biondo began moaning again and I sensed a shifting among the bodies as though he had raised himself. There was a burst of gunfire and Pietro Biondo stopped moaning. It was a long time before I heard the tanks leave. I dragged myself out from under the stiffened bodies. I had to find Pietro Biondo . . . they'd disarmed us but they'd done it in a hurry and I knew he had his extra pistol strapped to his leg. It was going dark and it took me a long time . . .

  '"I followed the ditch until I was away from the village and then I kept walking. I can feel the wounds more now . . . than I did then ..."

  "'They're stiffening now you've stopped moving." I told him that there was still a bullet inside him, that I needed to operate, that infection would probably set in.

  "It doesn't matter. I'm tired."

  'His eyes . . . they seemed to look right through me. He was lucid enough, to hear him talk, but thinking back on it now I feel that to all intents and purposes he died in that ditch with his comrades. I couldn't stop him leaving.

  'I had no hope of getting back to sleep so I sat in here with a book for the rest of the night. It wasn't the Germans up at the villa I was afraid of, it was Ernesto. Less than half an hour after he'd left I heard shots in the distance and I knew it was all over for Pietro.

  'It was from his parents that I heard what happened. I don't know where or when Ernesto got on his tracks but it must have been before he reached here because almost the minute he arrived home they burst in on him as though they'd been lurking somewhere around the factory, Ernesto and six men of the SS. When it happened they were all in the kitchen, the parents and Maria in their nightclothes. Pietro had just sat down at the kitchen table and the others were standing around him when the door crashed open. Pietro still had his pistol but before he could fire it they'd shot him. He fell forward with his head on the table and then slid to the floor. The lower part of his face had been shot away but he wasn't dead and his eyes were still open watching them. One of them, Pietro's mother thought he may have been an officer because he was older than the others, came and stood over the boy and said something. Perhaps he was angry at their having had to shoot him like that since it meant they could get nothing out of him. He spotted one of the bandaged wounds and bent to tear open Pietro's clothes. Then he stood back and shot accurately into each wound. That seemed to relieve his feelings. Ignoring the boy's dead body, he demanded wine of the old people and they began to celebrate their catch. Once they'd drunk enough they started on Maria. The parents stood there, pressed back against the kitchen wall. When all six of them had finished with Maria they offered her to young Ernesto. He refused. He had drunk with them and now he vomited all he had drunk on to the kitchen floor. He was clearly terrified by the results of his work and would have liked to run away but didn't dare. They laughed at him and began forcing wine from a flask down his throat.

  'Pietro was still lying on the floor in a pool of blood which had sprayed the white wall behind him. When they were ready to leave they picked up the body and loaded it on to the back of their jeep. Maria was lying dazed on the kitchen table where they had left her among broken glasses and spilled wine, too terrified even to cover herself. They came back for her, dragging her to her feet, and took her away with them. The two children, thank God, had slept through it all in the next room.

  'All this I heard later from the old people. The first direct news I had was the following morning when one of the sergeant's men from the villa came hammering at my door. I was still in here, fully dressed, though I must have fallen asleep towards dawn and his knocking woke me.

  '"Come!" He had left the engine of his motorbike running.

  'Although it was early the sun was already hot. We had to pass through the square and I saw little groups of people huddled around the edge of it in the shadows staring in silence at what looked like a heap of rags lying in the centre with a cardboard notice placed on it. The notice said "Partisan" in big red letters. The heap of rags was what was left of Pietro Moro.

  'Seeing that he was dead and knowing nothing, I didn't connect my being called to the villa with the happenings of the night before. Nevertheless, when I saw the sergeant I tried to tell him that Pietro's body should be removed and given to his parents for burial. The sergeant shook his head and raised three fingers. He couldn't speak much Italian but he understood me if I spoke slowly. For my part I understood only too well what the three fingers meant. The same thing had happened often enough elsewhere. Pietro's body was to be exposed with that label on it for three days as a warning.

  '"SS," the sergeant said. "Go away. Maybe come back - kaputt! Everybody!"

  '"You mean if we bury him . . . ?"

  '"Kaputt! Kaputt!"

  'For once he was not in a temper. He looked as if he'd been up all night. Certainly he hadn't shaved and his uniform was sweated and crumpled. I'd never seen him like that before.

  'He beat his chest with a thick fist: "Nothing can do. SS!"

  '"I understand." I began to think he'd sent for me to warn me against burying Pietro. He often used me as interpreter for the town since I was the person he saw most often. But then he said, "Come."

  'They showed me Maria. She was on a small truckle-bed which they'd set up in a linen room. Seeing the bloodstained sheet I thought at first she was dead, though her face was uncovered, but when I approached her she opened her doe-like eyes. She didn't recognize me. She never recognized anyone again. I did what I could for her but I didn't think she'd live. I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say that they must have tortured her for most of the night. In the end they cut off part of her tongue. The child couldn't have told them anything. She knew nothing of her husband's partisan activities.

  'For a while I attended her every day. Although she never.spoke or recognized me there was some slight improvement in her physical condition. I was worried about her feet. There were some broken bones which needed much more specialized attention than I could offer and little- hope, in that period of turmoil, of getting it. The poor child never cried or protested when I was dressing her wounds, just watched me with her big soft eyes. It was as if she had exhausted her capacity for reacting to pain. Sometimes, when I had finished, I would turn to find Karl standing in the doorway of the tiny room with a bowl of soup in his hands, his eyebrows meeting in the middle with distress.

  'Then the Allies arrived. First their aeroplanes stopped dropping bombs and began dropping leaflets telling us to remove obstructions from the streets and indicate the position of mines to the advance patrols, and to hide our food stocks from the retreating enemy - as if we still had any! The villa was abandoned by the Wehrmacht and the hospital beds there filled up with wounded Ameri
cans. I no longer went there, being fully occupied with an outbreak of typhoid near here. Before too long I had typhoid myself and was put into hospital quite a way away from here. At the time I thought it a great misfortune indeed to have survived a war only to succumb to an illness caught from my patients. But it's an ill wind ... I recovered and married one of my nurses from that hospital, the best day's work I ever did in my life, God rest her soul.

  "This house had been damaged when the Allies passed through and for the time being we lived with her parents until I could afford to rebuild. Doctors were in short supply everywhere and I had no difficulty in finding work to do. In the end it was five years hefore I rebuilt and went back into practice here. That would have been the spring of 1950.

  'By that time the villa was in an odd transitional stage. There were a few mental patients up there and a number of old people who had nothing particularly wrong with them but who had nowhere to go or no one to care for them. There was a doctor in residence, so I had no reason to go up there until that summer when he telephoned me and introduced himself asking me to come to the villa as he would like my opinion on one of the inmates. Oddly enough, it was when I was on my way up there for the first time that I met old Signora Moretti. She was shopping in the piazza in the early evening and there was a little girl with her, about eight years old or so and the image of Maria. I stopped the car to speak to them and having patted the little Tina on the head I naturally asked after her mother. Signora Moretti gave the child a push.

  "'Go and get in the queue at the greengrocer's."

  'Once the child had gone she looked at me tightlipped.