Part 15

Nothing could be done, there was no way for me to help him. A damning fact stood out against him. We had to try to save ourselves, to find a refuge before they returned and with Rino, who sat apart on the little wall and had looked on passively at the terrible scene, I began to run rapidly. Giovannino’s arrest troubled me but I had not lost all hope. My soldier could not have any incriminating documents on him and in the end, when they realized the validity of his papers, for they are valid because Brunora had reported them formerly in the register at the Headquarters at Tappa di Vittorio, they would let him free and the worst that could happen to him was a good beating such as the Austrians always give out on similar occasions.

Without much haste we followed the road back home and reached our familiar wood in the early hours of the morning. There I found several pigeons brought by the priests. I eagerly asked whether any aeroplane had sent forth the smoke signal for which we have been waiting and they answered that no Italian plane had flown over that territory since the day we had left. While I was eating a bite in the house of Maria de Luca, who had done her best to comfort me and assure me that Giovannino would soon return, a woman, disheveled and weeping, entered hurriedly. I recognized her, for she was the wife of our host at Tarzo. She gesticulated more than she spoke and at first was so excited that I could not understand a single word. Finally from the brief phrases which rose above her whimpers and sobs I understood the seriousness of the situation.

“They have arrested even my husband, they have taken Giovannino to headquarters. They searched him and have discovered that you are spies, and now they are beating both him and my husband because they say they are the accomplices and they want to find out who is the organizer, the principal, the man with the beard who has escaped and whom they are now seeking. On my way here I met a platoon of gendarmes going about to arrest the man with the beard because on him falls the greatest suspicion.”

I tried to comfort her. I could believe all she said to be exact. How could they know we were spies unless these two had confessed? I knew that the peasant women had a habit of exaggerating and therefore, it was probable that the situation was far less serious than she reported it to be. However, I deemed it well to shave off my beard and to keep only my mustache. If they should arrest me, not knowing me, they could not suspect I was the man with the beard. However, there was another difficulty; without a beard and with my hair cut short I should appear much younger than before and so with a soft piece of bread I erased the “3” on my paper and changed it into a “2.” By now my paper was so soiled and creased that they would never be able to discern this slight falsification. However, the outlook was not cheerful and to find out more exactly what was happening I begged my landlady to go to the pastor at Tarzo who would probably be able to give her some details. Maria, with her customary kindness, left the oldest of her boys and I hid in the woods anxiously awaiting her return. After several hours she came to my hiding place in the woods and brought me the following news: “It is true they have arrested the owner of the house and they are now beating him and Giovannino. They suspect both of them of being spies for they have found on Giovannino a compromising document.”

“How could they find a compromising document when he did not have any?”

“Yes, they have found one of those small slips of paper on which you used to write the pigeon messages. Nothing is written on the slip but there are printed directions on it about like this, ‘Hour of departure, hour of arrival, pigeon-house, register of the pigeon.’”

These details proved beyond a doubt that what Maria told me was exact.

“This proof confirmed their suspicions and they are now using violence on them to try to make them confess where the man with the beard is hidden. Giovannino has not said a single word and they are torturing him in many ways. They keep him handcuffed, they will not let him sleep and they try to trick him into confessing in a moment of weakness.”

The situation was really far more serious than I had suspected and as though this were not enough, towards evening they brought me news that Maria Bottecchia, the sister of Giovannino, had also been arrested in Minelle, by a platoon of gendarmes. At last I fully realized the danger which threatened me, and I decided it was absolutely necessary to move from this region that the gendarmes might lose track of me. I still had two pigeons with me. I filled several pages with reports, made an appointment with the “Voisin” for the twenty-sixth and considered the danger which menaced me. As Bottecchia had been arrested and the gendarmes were almost at my heels I decided to leave for Sarone, and try to find lodging in the little isolated house at the top of the hill near which we had rested on the first day after our arrival.

On a recent journey to the field where the aeroplane was supposed to come for us I recognized certain peasants who still had some food hidden and they were truly hospitable. They had fed me and would not accept any recompense. They were ignorant of my mission, that I was an Italian officer, and therefore, without offering them any explanation I would be able to return there and ask them for hospitality.

While a terrible thunder-storm raged through the mountains and the rain fell in torrents I traversed the long stretch of road which separated me from Sarone. That terrible weather was really favorable because no gendarme would venture forth in such weather. When I reached the house on the top of the hill the welcome was not what I had expected. Recently the Austrians had seized all the food the peasants had hidden and a requisitioning commission had taken away the wheat and left them with barely enough to appease their hunger. Under such conditions the peasants could not be as generous as in the past. Furthermore, a gendarme was killed recently in the surrounding woods and the police wandered about continuously seeking traces of the assassin. The mistress of the house made me understand that it would be difficult for them to house me a long time and, for the present, so as not to arouse suspicion she preferred that I live in the wood.

Every day the absence of Bottecchia became more painful and I tormented myself when I thought that I was indirectly the cause of his misfortune because I was the one who had invited him to essay this undertaking. I wished to share his lot with him, to comfort and sustain him in the sorrows and anguishes of prison life. This isolation oppressed me. The absolute lack of any news worried me. Our aeroplanes who undoubtedly came to photograph the signals, did not find any and from this, and my last message which announced I was in danger, they must infer that I had disappeared and who knows when I should be able to resume communications with them! I did not think it likely that the “Voisin” would come to Praterie Forcate on the twenty-sixth without first warning me with a smoke signal.

For almost three days I lived sleeping in the woods and eating the little which the owners of the house could spare. The hot rays of the sun fell obliquely over my head and in certain hours of the day it was impossible to find a patch of shade under the thorny, burnt trees. The heavy atmosphere was really unbearable. The flies buzzed and tormented me continuously and the ants and mosquitoes did not give me a moment’s rest. I felt as if I had been forsaken by everyone, and after so many hardships I began to feel that my strength was diminishing, whereas, I needed all my calm, all my cold, steady nerves to carry me through my present predicament. For the past twenty-four hours I had not been able to eat or drink because the gendarmes were always about in the woods and the women feared to bring me the little food they usually did, lest they arouse the suspicion of the guards. All day long I lay exhausted on the ground, and I believed that if the gendarmes were to come I should not have enough strength even to get up, much less to flee. I felt so changed, and I began to realize that courage is for the most part due to a full stomach. When I moved, my head whirled, and when I tried to walk a few steps to see if the gendarmes were still around, my legs would not support me; I tottered and fell heavily to the ground.

“Oh God, God, do not forsake me. If you have willed these sufferings should fall on me as expiation, may they be welcome, but do not take from me the strength to support them, do not take from me the strength to endure them to the very end with resignation.”

XIX

Towards evening, when a light breeze made breathing more easy, I heard the leaves rustle and found Rino in front of me with provisions and good news. I could eat very little for I was too weak, but the little I did eat, gave me new strength. Rino told me that Bottecchia was still alive, that they had ceased beating him and that they brought him to the headquarters at Vittorio where they confronted him with his sister. She answered very ably to a long, strenuous examination. She made a false confession that Giovannino had been taken prisoner in the last offensive in June; that she had procured the false papers which they had found on him by sending to the headquarters at Tappa di Vittorio a peasant classified unfit for military service who greatly resembled her brother, that this peasant had obtained a legitimization paper and had passed it on to Giovannino. The Austrian authorities with unusual clemency had believed her tale, had set her free, and had kept my soldier as a prisoner of war. No aeroplane had come to give a smoke signal. Furthermore, Rino told me that everything seemed more peaceful, but I could put little faith in this for I feared that under the calm a storm was brewing. I consented to follow him for it was absolutely impossible for me to continue living under present conditions, and because I had to be nearer friends, and had to be better informed of what was happening, to see what shape events were taking.

Therefore, after having decided that the “Voisin” would not keep its appointment, I returned to Fregona and again visited Maria de Luca, the good woman who had already helped me so much. She was not in the least impressed by all that had happened and she offered to give me lodgings in her house where the gendarmes had not entered for a long time. I willingly accepted, also because I thought that by being near Vittorio I might be able to help Giovannino escape. On the very day I arrived, when we least expected it, a platoon of gendarmes arrived and asked to search the house for hidden metals. I barely had time to go from the cellar to the stable and climb up to the hay-loft before they entered. I buried myself in the hay close to the wall where the hay was thickest. The gendarmes entered the house, examined every inch without leaving a thing unturned. Finally, as they did not find what they were searching for, they came to the barn, and as they climbed up the stairs to the hay-loft, I heard one of them mumble in German, “Still, he must be here, I am certain.” Without hesitating a second they began digging their bayonets in the hay to see if someone were hidden in it. I crouched as close to the wall as possible and heard the sharp points pass a few inches above my head. At last they went! I drew a long breath and the close call I had just had made me think of the future. I decided not to be over-confident. This visit probably was the first of a series of other careful searches, and therefore, I had better keep my eyes open and try every means of escaping from their vigilance. I shaved off my mustache, put on a worn, patched skirt, a torn waist and a black handkerchief on my head, as is the custom of our peasant women, and with a hoe on my shoulder I went towards the grain fields on the hill. I crouched between two furrows and pretended to work so that a passing gendarme would never suspect that the ugly old woman working with her shoulders towards him was the man with the beard whom they were hunting. But even this disguise had its disadvantages. I should not have liked to meet a gendarme in the woods at night while dressed as a woman. I looked like an old hag, but one never can tell. I appealed for another disguise to wear at night to a cousin of Maria de Luca who lived at Fregona and who mended all the uniforms of the transient soldiers who stopped there. I acquired one of the Italian uniforms left in a house by one of our soldiers at the time of the retreat and I sent it to this seamstress asking her to make the changes necessary for transforming it into an Austrian uniform. The son of my landlady had a rifle and some German cartridges stolen from the Germans during the first days of the invasion. To please me he dug up the weapon and the shoulder straps from the wheat-field where they had been buried. With this and the help of a yellow and black band on which the magic word “Gendarmerie” had been written I became a perfect Austrian gendarme in flesh and bones. Naturally I did not use this disguise in the day-time. As long as it was light I would stay hidden under a projecting rock concealed by shrubs which one could reach after a long, difficult and rough ascent. This little promontory was almost inaccessible, a veritable eagle’s nest. Nevertheless, during the dangerous hours the children would station themselves at points from which they could dominate the movement on the roads and as soon as they saw a platoon of gendarmes approaching they would make a certain noise and I would hide under the bushes where I was certain no one would find me. By night, however, I would take long walks about the country to exercise my legs and to visit the people I wanted to see. I then also exercised my gendarme’s privilege of searching for pigeons.

As I walked in the woods at night disguised as a gendarme, to avoid meeting anyone, I occasionally fired a shot in air. For deserters and prisoners, on hearing these shots, would flee in the direction opposite to the one from which the shot is fired, and the very gendarmes, who amused themselves by frightening the population in this way and then entering their houses to steal, avoided the area in which they have heard the shots supposing that some of their comrades are there already. In these nocturnal peregrinations I communicated with the community teacher and doctor at Fregona, and together with the pastor we plotted a means for attempting to escape. Although I had taken all these precautions not to be discovered, someone might be shadowing me and referring my every move to the Austrians. I learnt, for instance, that the enemy knew that my beard had been cut. Therefore, I should have to be even more careful and not let anyone see me.

In the middle of the night when all were asleep, very cautiously I approached the house of Maria de Luca. I climbed up and entered the hay-loft, thence I descended to the stable, from the stable to the cellar and finally entered the kitchen without making the least noise. By day now I did not feel safe even in my secluded hiding-place. I dared not stop for more than an hour anywhere and I wandered from hill to hill from wood to wood to hide my tracks. I tried to change my disguise as often as possible. Generally by day I went dressed as a woman and by night as a gendarme. I had become convinced that even the clemency used towards the sister of Giovannino was nothing but a feint done in the hope that the poor woman would try to get into communication again with her accomplices, through whom they hoped finally to reach the head of the band, the notorious man with the beard. Therefore, I broke all relations with Minelle and the house of the refugees. Occasionally, however, Rino came at night to meet me on the hill and these were the only moments in which I enjoyed a bit of calm, a bit of rest.

One day, after returning from a more strenuous walk than usual, I felt dizzy, chills came over me and soon a fever so strong seized me that I became delirious.... I remember only the sweet face of a woman bending over my pillow during the long hours filled with terrible nightmares; I remember a charitable hand to which I clung desperately while gasping for breath; then the awakening, the quick convalescence in a comfortable bed surrounded by the whispers of many anxious friends who hoped for my speedy recovery.... Later I learnt that I had had the influenza, that I had been near death, and that I owed my recovery to the intelligent care of the doctor of Fregona and the affectionate care of the good Maria who had tended me as carefully as though she had been my own mother. I later learned that while I was sick with very high fever the gendarmes came to search the house. The women carried me on a mattress to the cellar where they hid me under a huge cask. Fortunately, the gendarmes were contented with a less detailed search than formerly and with my usual good fortune I miraculously escaped the danger of being taken.

One evening while I was still convalescing and as we were seated about the fire, talking, we heard sharp knocks at the door. I ran to hide at once but Maria shortly after came and told me there was no danger, that our visitors were four Italian sergeants who had escaped from the concentration camp at Consiglio and had come to ask for something to eat and the road to Vidor where they wanted to try to cross the Piave. I returned and found myself face to face with the fugitives. Three of them had the worn, tired look of most prisoners, but one looked healthy and sturdy and as if he had not suffered much.

“I am a sergeant in the artillery taken prisoner during the last offensive. My name is Italo Maggi and I was born at Como, therefore, I can swim like a fish and can row well because I was a boatman on the lake. These three men, who are not at home in the water, have placed their trust in me because they hope I shall be able to get them over to the other side. We don’t care if a stray shot hits us, what we do want is to get out of the hands of these tyrants.”

Truly this man must have been sent to me by the divine Providence. In our last attempt we had not succeeded in passing because none of us could swim well enough to face so turbulent a stream. But, with the help of the sergeant I was certain to succeed. I could be useful to him as a guide for I knew a place where we could cross and then I would trust to the strength of his robust arms to carry us across. But the other men would be in the way, for experience had taught me that in ventures of such a nature the group must be small. I, therefore, called Italo aside and briefly explained to him that I was an Italian officer, that I knew the road to the Piave very well and that I could obtain some civilian clothes or an Austrian uniform for him, according to what disguise he would decide to wear. My physical condition then was such that I could not travel so I begged him not to abandon me but to wait a few days. We would then complete the details of our plan and let the others journey alone and try their luck. I hesitated for a long time before forsaking them but at times the necessities of war are cruel. I had no way of getting either the food or the clothing necessary for enabling them to attempt the venture. To journey with them in their actual condition would have meant certain seizure. On the other hand by placing my services at the disposal of Italo I was certain I could bring him and myself to safety. The sergeant accepted at once and placed himself at my disposal. We dressed him in civilian clothes and he wandered about with me for several days while we waited until the uniform of an Austrian soldier was prepared for him.

At the last moment we changed our plan; my sergeant was to be dressed as a civilian and was to follow behind me so that if we were to meet a gendarme he, who did not know German, would pretend he was a prisoner, and I, dressed as an Austrian soldier, would pretend I was the gendarme who had arrested him.

XX

August 10. We were about to start on our journey in accordance with our last plan, when unexpectedly the community teacher from Fregona and the doctor who had attended me during my sickness arrived. The teacher brought me a passport a “verkerschum” made out in accordance with all the rules, good for two persons for the journey from Vittorio to the village of Caorle which is near the sea. They told me it was an exceptional passport and that it had been confirmed by the command at Tappa di Vittorio, at Portogruro and at Torre di Mosto and that many persons had already made use of it without ever having had any trouble. I was to pretend I was a teacher and would have to dress in civilian clothes and wear a white band on my arm with the word “Lehrer.” Italo was to be a servant who traveled with me to help carry the sack of wheat, for my journey to Caorle was supposedly to be for the purpose of procuring some wheat which was more abundant along the coast than inland. Angelin, the son of Maria de Luca who had been over that territory many times and who knew the land inch by inch, offered to accompany us.

We left at midnight while a terrible storm was raging. Before leaving her son, Maria entrusted him to me and urged me to carry him across to the other side with us if it were possible. As I descended the hill I turned back to give it a parting look for somehow I had the presentiment that this time we would succeed in crossing. As I looked back I recalled all the privations, sufferings and joys we had experienced for almost three months and I thought of my poor soldier whom I should have liked to have had with me, to have had as a companion in this new attempt which I felt would bring us to safety. At one time the rain became so violent that we were compelled to seek shelter under a shed which we thought uninhabited. We had barely entered and had not had time to look about to see whether someone were hidden behind the cases of merchandise when a raucous bold voice arose not far from us and we saw the figure of an armed man coming towards us. We started to run madly and when we were far enough away to be safe we heard the echo of several shots.

As we did not want to pass through the village of Cordignano where we knew there was a command of gendarmes we made a long detour around the outskirts of the houses. As a precaution along the road, Angelin was delegated to walk about fifty paces in front of us and if he saw anything suspicious he was to stop and we should understand. In the open country we all walked together without being over-careful. Walking along in this way we reached a wheat-field and, without noticing it, we landed right in front of a sentinel who at once called, “Halt.” Again we took to flight and swiftly ran out of range of his shots. Reassured by the good luck which seemed to favor us in our encounters we continued our journey walking on the main highway and hiding for a moment whenever a noisy car would rumble past and light the road with the glare of its searchlights. We risked crossing the great Conegliano-Sacile road and did not meet anyone and thence we directed our steps towards the village of Corbolon where we knew there was a bridge.