Part 9
“Oh, you are the driver who used to bring me the casks before the war. Now we don’t talk any more of casks or of wine; they have drunk it all up and in December when they wanted to build bridges across the Piave they took away even the vessels in which we used to keep it. This year, even if we had any grapes, we should not know where to put them, but the good Lord has taken care of this and so have the Germans who hitch their horses by the vines. As you see they are nearly all ruined, and then without any sulphur what kind of a crop can you expect? Were I to tell you of all the subterfuges we had to resort to, to keep this bit of sulphur I am spreading about the vines, it would take me till to-morrow morning. Would that sulphur were the only thing we did not have!” A painful expression spread over his face. “We don’t even have any bread. So these poor blameless people are dying of hunger!”
This sad news so impressed my soldier that he asked anxiously after his family. “Do you think my people are still alive?”
“Yes, I should believe they were, but one never knows for certain these times,” he answered carelessly and indifferently.
“Do you think it would be possible for me to get as far as home?”
“I would not advise you to try. Even I stay at home as little as possible, and furthermore, at Minelle there are always many gendarmes about. If you want to stop at some place it would be better for you to look up someone on the side of the mountain: for instance, your relatives who live near Fregona. That region is less frequented and you might find a way to settle down there and be able to see some of your people occasionally.”
The house mentioned by the mountaineer was the very place towards which we had been directed. We took leave of him; I caressed for a moment his child who stared at me with his large, frightened eyes. We continued our journey. The scenery which extended beneath us was truly beautiful. Frequent villages were scattered about it. We followed a small path among the high trunks of a wood of chestnut trees; this road seemed safe to us because it was improbable that anyone who did not know the ground inch by inch would venture here. We needed to be especially cautious when compelled to cross the road. Then we had to take a thousand precautions, we had to resort to a multitude of wiles lest we be surprised by some gendarme. For instance we had to go along the road for a short distance if we wished to reach a certain other wood on the opposite hill. It was with great precaution we left the shrubbery for that purpose. The road appeared deserted and we began to cross, but just as we had reached the center, we saw two men in uniform, with rifles slung over their shoulders turn the nearby corner. Only a second passed, but in that second I clearly perceived upon their sleeves the black and yellow band. Not a moment to be lost. Those two figures were two gendarmes and we needed to take to our heels at once in the hope that they had not seen us. Fortunately, immediately on the other side of the road the wood began again and we ran madly, changing our direction often to hide our tracks. We reached the thickest wood, and were compelled to stop, being out of breath. From above a cluster of rocks, thorny bushes curved their branches; we crouched under them and for a seemingly interminable length of time waited in the expectation of seeing one of those figures on our trail. But it appeared no one had followed us. Again we thanked heaven and our clothes which enabled us to get off so easily! After such an episode we had to make up for time lost. It was noon and if we wished to arrive at the house of my soldier’s aunts before nightfall we had to hasten.
The weather was still fair, in fact, it was almost too warm for us, who had to do so much walking. Heavy clouds veiled at times the disk of the sun and threw huge shadows on the mountain sides. To our left rose the hills of San Martino and upon them the village of Minelle where the relatives of Bottecchia lived. My soldier stopped for a moment to recognize his dwelling. Suddenly, having climbed over the ridge of a hill which obstructed the view, there appeared before us the chain of mountains surrounding Vittorio Veneto and pricked up between the sides of two hills there rose the lofty spire of the belfry of Fregona. The steeple seemed very near to us, though distances among the mountains are very deceiving. At last the road became familiar to us. Bottecchia knew it in every detail. We passed near a little wooden house with a sloping roof all covered with reeds closely bound together. An old woman and a girl were standing before the door. The girl was eating. This did not make us linger, but these two followed us with so goodly a smile and gave us so pleasant a “Good day,” that for a moment we forgot all danger and stopped to speak with them. They wanted to know whence we came. Hearing we had traveled afar they inquired whether we were hungry and offered us a cup of milk. We drank it with avidity especially as it was offered with such homely grace and by the gentle hands of the pretty brunette who looked at us with interest.
“It is so seldom,” she said, “that one meets able-bodied men now. The few remaining were recently taken away by the gendarmes who have now increased their guard, and no one whose papers are not exactly in accord with all the regulations can risk staying in any house or traveling on the roads. And you too, if you are not strictly within the orders and if you have not, in addition to your legitimization papers, your classification papers, also refrain from showing yourselves or they will take you to headquarters. We have the good fortune to be living in an isolated spot and are so poor that they do not bother us. Our great fortune is a little cow which we succeeded in hiding from the very beginning, and which we keep always in the deep woods so that no one can lay hands on her. When do you think the Italians will come to liberate us? And to think there were some who, at the retreat, said we were all comrades and that the Germans would treat us as the Italians had. In the first place they are Germans, and if I had no other reason for hating them I should always remember that I have two brothers fighting on the other side. One is a corporal in a regiment of Alpini, and let us hope he was not taken prisoner, for I’d rather know he was dead than see him subjected to the privations and indescribable sufferings endured by those unfortunates who have fallen into their hands. Tell me, do you think our soldiers will be able to resist the tremendous offensive they are preparing? We are terribly afraid for we have seen such huge preparations. The other day I was passing near Vittorio and I saw them unloading a quantity of cases with red bands. A soldier from Trieste told me those cases were filled with projectiles containing a new asphyxiating gas from which the Austrians expect extraordinary results. Damn them!... If I could find one of them alone and I had your strong fists I swear I should not be afraid to kill him as one does a mad dog.”
Such deep faith moved me and I knew not how to hide from her the force of my thoughts and sentiments.
“Rest assured; wait yet awhile; wait until the grain is ripe and the grapes on the vines begin to redden; for I tell you truly that the time of your liberation cannot be far distant.”
She looked at me, and reaching forth for my hand asked, “But who are you who know the secrets of the future?”
“I cannot disclose my name, but I come from afar, and you must ask no more. All you have suffered recently will be repaid to you; for all the tears you have shed you will live again in the great joyous days of triumph, for you have believed, and your faith cannot be deceived. I see you are poor and I want to leave you a slight token; some day, not far distant, you may learn my name and rank.” I took a bill from the roll of crowns I held in my hand, and we hastened away before the young woman had time to thank us or question us further.
X
Throughout the entire day we heard continued puffings of steam locomotives; we noticed an uninterrupted movement of trains carrying equipment to the station of Costa. There also passed a long train full of cannon, and wagons whose canvasses flapped in the breeze. The engine proceeded slowly and from the smokestack an acrid, nauseating odor escaped. I wondered what the Austrians were burning in their furnaces since I did not believe they could have much coal.
We passed the juncture of the Friga and the Meschio beyond the village of Capella and now only a short stretch of road separated us from the house we wished to reach. We followed the foamy course of the torrent and, arriving at an intersecting point we saw approaching us a truck full of hay, drawn by the arms of a young mountaineer. We saluted him in our dialect and he answered with a pronounced Tuscan accent. That boy certainly was not a native of our regions; he must have escaped from prison and through some good fortune succeeded in establishing himself with a peasant family. It was strange that the Austrian gendarmes, among whom there are many Dalmatians and Istrians, had not noticed his manner of speaking which was not at all like that of our mountaineers.
We resumed our journey, eager to reach the coveted goal. By following a country road we suddenly found ourselves in front of a group of houses. Near the small church a peasant, seated on the ground, was swinging his scythe and at the noise of our footsteps turned his emaciated face towards us, eying us suspiciously. We crossed a courtyard where the chickens, frightened at our footsteps, scurried quickly away and we found ourselves on a little bridge which crossed the Friga. The road continued towards the mill. We knew the village and further recognized it from the photographs made from our aeroplanes. Bottecchia started running and I ran after him. At last we arrived at a wide courtyard where there were gathered many men whom I did not know. They were seated on a narrow bench and from a large ornate bowl of majolica they helped themselves to hot, smoking soup and in their hands they held broad yellow slices of _polenta_ (pudding made of Indian meal). The door of the house was ajar. Within the large kitchen a brilliant, playful fire was flickering. From the massive gridirons hung a large round caldron. A woman bending over it mixed and turned the yellow flour at intervals. The woman had her shoulders turned towards us and Bottecchia sought in vain among those present for someone he knew. We approached her, and lo, from a side door there appeared a little nervous woman with an emaciated face and bony hands seamed with heavy blue veins.
“Cietta, Cietta,” cried my soldier, “stare at my face and do not tremble. It is I, really I, your Giovannino!” The old woman stared at him with her eyes opened wide. Her hands fell heavily upon her apron; she leaned against the table as not to fall. Suddenly, as she wavered, Giovannino took her in his arms, and embraced and caressed her a long time. Finally she regained her self-possession and passed her lean hand over his forehead.
“Let me look at you, let me touch you, let me feel the life of my life. But how you have changed; how big you have become, how handsome!” She smiled through her tears. “Do you remember the happy days when we were all together and I used to take you on my knees and sing sweet lullabies to you, before nightfall? Then no one could harm you, but now, instead!... Tell me, are you in danger? Tell me is anyone following you, for I am afraid, terribly afraid.” She eyed him steadily as though to divine his secret; she threw her arms around him as though to protect him. “Tell me they will not come to take you away. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Ah, we have nothing to give you!”
The poor woman, terribly agitated, ran from one end of the kitchen to the other not knowing where to begin. She wanted to do everything at once, she wanted to feed us, she wanted to call her daughter, to confide in her sister, to tell the old men outside to watch out for us and warn us.
“And who is this man? Is he your comrade? When did you succeed in escaping? Do you come from afar?”
We tried to calm her, to tell her that no danger threatened us, and she poured some milk into two deep cups and cut for us two enormous slices of _polenta_, not too large however for our appetites.
“Cietta, Cietta,” Giovanni began, “rest assured, do not be afraid. Don’t you see how well we look, and how happy? This is an Italian officer,” and Bottecchia made a mysterious sign of silence by placing his finger before his mouth.
“What? An Italian officer?” Everyone gathered round me.
“It is safe to talk here, isn’t it? All those here are good Italians?”
“Yes, you may talk, but be very careful because now one is not safe even in his own house, and at any moment, when one least expects it, he is likely to be dispatched to the other world before he even has time to recommend his soul to the sacred Madonna.”
The sister of Cietta, who expressed in her thin face a suppressed grief, making it all the more pitiful, took me by the hands and said with sobs, “I too, had a son, big and strong like you and they have killed him. One day as he was walking here in front of the house a platoon of Germans arrived for the requisitions, and he, frightened, began to run down the slope. One of the gendarmes called after him to halt, but my poor dear one, believing himself far enough to be out of danger, continued running without obeying. The gendarme at once aimed his rifle and fired. He fell in a pool of blood with a leg and an arm shattered. We lifted him up. He was pale and did not utter a word. For a long time we nursed him here because I preferred to keep him under my care, because he wanted to die near his mother, but at length they took him away from me to the hospital, where his condition grew worse every day, every hour. The wounds would not heal and after two months of indescribable suffering he died on the night when the swallows returned. I always see him before me as he was, strong as you; but taller, yes, taller than you.” As she spoke she clutched my arms as though in pressing my flesh she pressed the flesh of the son she had lost. “Who will bring my boy back to me, who will bring him back? Oh, unjust war, oh, ruthless war, and you German assassins, may you be damned forever! May the stain of the blood of that innocent lad fall upon you and your children so that throughout all eternity you never shall have peace!”
Softly I pressed her hand and whispered, “Courage, courage, life is made up of terrible sorrows and we must face them bravely and with resignation, but God is just and your appeal to Him in malediction is worth maybe more than the fire of a thousand guns. The day shall come when they will have to pay, and pay in blood the measure of your sighs and all these your tears.”
I asked the mistress of the house who the people were about us and she answered that they were refugees from villages along the Piave, especially San Stefano and Valdobiadine, now under the fire of our guns. They had had to abandon everything. The enemy did not even allow them to take with them their mattresses and the most necessary things, so that they were now compelled to sleep on the ground. Among the refugees there was a man, about fifty years old, whose heavy skeleton expressed the strength of his days now past. He approached me, looked at me cautiously and asked, “Is it really true that you are an Italian officer? If you are an officer you ought to try to get to the other side, to cross the lines so as to tell them on the other side what the Austrians are preparing because for the past two months, both night and day, we have seen nothing but thousands of cannon and interminable lines of soldiers and wagons passing along the roads.”
“Yes, it is true, I am an Italian officer and I have been sent here to do exactly what you have said, to try to find out something. I am an aviator and I landed here with an aeroplane to try to learn and communicate to our forces the day of the offensive and everything else I can gather about the enemy’s plans. And you who are good Italians, if you really believe in our cause, if you really hope on some not distant day to see our troops return and if all of you do not wish to die here of hunger, everyone of you must, in all seriousness, help me, for all has been organized, all has been prepared. We Italians have the habit of being enthusiastic at the beginning but do not always have enough seriousness and constancy to carry a project through to the end. Now, I want you to act as soldiers for me, I want each one of you to choose a sector in which to act, but the method of obtaining information must be the one I suggest, must be so organized that the reports are safe, that I may communicate them without doubts to our headquarters.”
Giovanni was talking with his aunt who was telling him of all the many trials and tribulations she had had to endure since our retreat. She anxiously asked him of news of her sons on the other side.
“Tell me, then you are not jesting? You have really seen Pietro? And is Antonio still in the artillery? And Uncle Baldassarre who went with his family to Italy, has he anything to eat? Has he found work?”
“Cietta, Cietta, why didn’t you heed me, why didn’t you follow the advice of Antonio who wanted you at all costs to follow him to the other side? Had you listened to him you would not now be in so perilous a position for it seems to me that unless our soldiers hurry over we shall all soon run the risk of dying of hunger.”
“You have spoken the truth; the corn meal for that _polenta_ which you ate came from a hiding place under the stairs; but we always fear lest the gendarmes will take it away, because they go from house to house and sound the walls to see if they are solid. If they are hollow, then they at once begin to dig for hidden treasure, and if they succeed in finding anything they not only take it away but they begin to maltreat the people in the house. Our neighbor, the woman at the mill, has been dangerously ill. A platoon of Croatians in trying to tear a necklace from her throat treated her so roughly that she fainted and she had to stay in the hospital for more than a month.”
“Cietta, we have some money, if that can help you.”
“But what can one do with money since gold is the only thing worth anything here. We have returned to the old custom of barter. Nothing can be had without merchandise and one is fortunate if he can find a bit of flour in exchange for linen, but no one will ever give merchandise for money. The only money which still has a little value is the Italian.”
With anxiety I bethought me of what we should do with the precious roll to which we had attached so much importance and which apparently was not to be of great assistance.
“Cietta, if we were to remain here for a while to fulfill our mission, could you house us?” asked Giovanni who at last felt the need of expressing himself and of making known our plan.
As an answer the old woman ran to the door and approaching her daughter asked her anxiously whether she had stationed the children around the house and if someone was watching from the windows to avoid any surprise. The refugee tried to reassure her by telling her that the hour in which the gendarmes usually made their rounds was still far distant, but the poor old woman would not listen to reason and with a worried expression turned to Bottecchia.
“No, no, it is not possible for you to remain here. Almost every night, when we least expect it, we see platoons of soldiers arriving who, with the pretext of seeing whether there are prisoners or deserters in the house, begin to search from cellar to attic in all our rooms always hoping to find something which they can take away. There is no spot so hidden that it escapes their notice and even were you to hide in the hay-loft, they often climb up even to that to see if there is someone hidden in the forage. If you want to stay nearby you can sleep in a little isolated stable hidden in the wood which descends towards the Friga. Ever since the Germans have been here, no one has ever gone in that direction, and I am certain they do not know that under the thick foliage of the trees there is that little stable.”
“Then we have no time to lose,” I said turning toward the refugee who had lighted his pipe.
“Do you see this tobacco?” he said as he puffed a mouthful of smoke into the air. “You would believe this tobacco was real, instead of which it is mostly crushed plantain leaves which the Austrians sell in small packages at three crowns apiece. I only wish we could still buy it. This I got from certain Russians who guard the live stock and I had to give them in exchange a goodly amount of flour.”
“Now mark my words well, and forget about the tobacco, the Russians and the live stock. You ought to go to your own village, near the regions of San Stefano where someone surely has succeeded in remaining on his own land; in the house of this someone there must be some Austrian soldiers. Well, you should do your utmost to get me some postcards or newspapers which the soldiers leave in the houses. These postcards can be far more useful than you suspect. Along the road try to enter as many houses as possible and in every one, without arousing suspicion, try to steal some mail. Newspapers alone will suffice, but be sure the address is not missing because I should not know what to do with unaddressed postcards and newspapers.”
The old man looked as if he had understood me; he seemed to have entered into the spirit of my reasoning and answered, “I have a cousin whose house near Miane the Austrians have taken as their headquarters, and I am sure he will be able to give me some interesting news. Then I know a refugee from Segusin who is a clerk at the headquarters of Tappa di Vittorio. He is always frequenting the Austrians and ought to be able to give you some important information.”
“Very well, very well. By the way, to-morrow you will have to pass through Vittorio to reach the valley. When you have arrived on the further side of the clock tower, in front of the wheat market you will see a large mansion. Enter and ask for a man called De Luca. He is one of my agents and I should like to see him as soon as possible.”
“I understand,” answered the old man in a thoughtful way, “but how shall I get to your agent, for I know that in the house you speak of the Germans have established their headquarters.”
“That does not matter, that does not matter,” I answered trying to conceal the emotions aroused by the news that there were in truth enemy officers in my house. “I am certain that in so large a house they have left a room vacant for my agent. In case the Germans are no longer there find out where they have gone. Then, above all, I beg you to tell this secretary to show himself as soon as possible because I absolutely must talk to him. He is a staunch Italian isn’t he?”
“Yes, I can vouch for this. I believe that now they are all loyal Italians. Would that my children had succeeded in escaping to the other side! Would they were not here with me! I’d rather have them in the trenches with our soldiers than here with me, subject to the violence of the gendarmes and the drunken soldiers. For every day it seems as if they will take them away and put them at work in the interior of Austria where they will certainly die of hunger.”
A young lean boy with large blue eyes expressive of calm and goodness entered the kitchen at this point. His emaciated, thin face showed his past sufferings and the hunger endured.
“Here is Rino, the oldest of my boys. He too, will try to help you to the best of his ability.”