All Our Yesterdays (35 page)

Cenzo Rena waited until it was dark and then went and fetched the waiter and laid him down in the hole they had dug in the wood. But it was a small hole, too small for the waiter's big body. And Cenzo Rena felt a weakness in his hands and had no wish to start digging again, and the pine wood seemed to him to be full of the rustling of footsteps. So he took up the waiter in his arms again and it seemed to him that he was carrying a horse in his arms, a very large, sleeping horse. He went as far as the stream and laid the waiter down in the water, he laid him out at full length in the water and reflected that the water was strong and might drag him away. The water of the stream went into the river and once he was in the river no one would ever find him. But he did not stay to see whether the stream dragged the waiter away, he was very tired and wanted to get right away from the waiter and right away from the stream, he was very, very tired and he reflected that he and the
contadino
Giuseppe would never go and scatter nails on the road, goodness knows if the
contadino
Giuseppe would manage to make his escape. All of a sudden he saw Franz looking at him, silently Franz had followed him, and now there he was, leaning against the trunk of a tree and looking at him. Go back home, Cenzo Rena said to him, go back home, you bloody fool. Franz said that the police-sergeant had run off too, he was trembling with fear and he had run off taking some bread and a flask of wine. In the kitchen there was no one but La Maschiona, who was sobbing. It was a miracle that she had not gone to her mother, said Cenzo Rena, woe betide them if La Maschiona went to her mother, she would tell her mother everything and in an hour the whole village would know about it. They went back home and Cenzo Rena dissolved some bromide in a tumbler for La Maschiona, he pulled her head up and told her to drink it, La Maschiona's head was weak and inert, shaken only by that stupid sobbing. Cenzo Rena made La Maschiona lie down on the bed and he poured a bucket of water over the floor of the cellar, there was no blood there but nevertheless he washed the floor very carefully, wiping it over with a rag, and then he poured out a big glass of brandy from a bottle which he kept in reserve in the cellar and he and Franz drank some. And then Cenzo Rena stayed sitting beside La Maschiona's bed because he did not want La Maschiona to run away too. Franz sat down on the floor close by and from time to time he fell asleep.

And then it occurred to Cenzo Rena that if the Germans found the waiter they would take hostages at random all over the village, as they had publicly declared they would do if they found a German dead, for one dead German ten Italians. And he thought he would go to the commandant and tell him it had been he who had killed the waiter. He started to think of the words he ought to say in German. He poured himself some more brandy and continually changed the sentence that he would say in German, and he felt very well with all that brandy in him, with warm, fresh breaths going all through his body. But down at the bottom of his back he was conscious of that same spot where he had felt he was going to die when he had typhus, a small patch of skin that was all pinched and trembling, a small icy patch in a body on fire with brandy and all quiet and strong. It was only there, down at the bottom of his back, that he had any fear and he touched the spot with his hand, and then he drank some more brandy so that the warm blood in his body might flow to that same spot. And he looked at La Maschiona's black head on the pillow and said good-bye to her, La Maschiona was still half sobbing in her sleep and was pressing a much snivelled-upon handkerchief to her lips. And he looked at Franz's head bowed down between his knees as he slept and he said good-bye to Franz too. And he said good-bye to Anna and to the little girl as he had seen them that day at Scoturno di Sopra, the little girl toiling after the sheep, with her big, bitter mouth and her straw-like hair. And he wanted to find Anna's face again but now he could not find it, sorely he wanted to find it and yet he did not find it. Instead, he had before his eyes the face of La Maschiona's grandmother and it enraged him, an old, wrinkled, grim face under a black handkerchief. Franz woke up and drank some more brandy, and he laughed a little as he remembered how the police-sergeant had run away, whereas he himself was not running away because he had no fear, it no longer mattered to him in the least whether he died or lived, it was very, very strange how it did not matter to him. Recently he had been thinking that he had lived pretty stupidly, what a lot of stupid, useless things he had done in his life, his life was a regular story and he would have liked to tell it to someone. But Cenzo Rena said to him for goodness' sake not to tell him anything because at the present moment he had something else in his head. And Franz grieved that Cenzo Rena would never take him seriously and always treated him so badly. And he bowed his head down on to his knees and went to sleep again.

The morning passed and all of a sudden the church bells started ringing very loudly, La Maschiona pulled herself up dazed from the bed and scratched her head and tried to remember. Cenzo Rena was half asleep on La Maschiona's bed and he was awakened by the farrier's mother shaking him hard and weeping. Cries could be heard in the lanes and the voices of Germans, and the bells ringing, and the farrier's mother was saying that the Germans had seized her son, they had found a German dead down at the river and were seizing people in the houses. They would shoot them if they did not find out who had killed the German. They had seized her son and the man with the corkscrew leg and a brother of La Maschiona's and a number of others, ten men they had seized, and they had put them into the mayor's stable. The farrier's mother told Cenzo Rena that he must go at once to German headquarters and beg them to let them go, he was the only one who knew how to speak German and he was the only one who could save them.

When she heard they had seized her brother La Maschiona started screaming, It was Giuseppe who had killed the German, Cenzo Rena must go to the Germans and say that it was Giuseppe. She wept and screamed and beat her head against the wall and called for her brother and her mother, and she wanted to go to her mother but Cenzo Rena told the farrier's mother to keep her there.

Cenzo Rena poured himself out some more brandy and slipped on his waterproof and went out into the bright morning, with the bells ringing loudly and little shining aeroplanes high up in the sky. He did not know why he had put on his waterproof, he wondered if he was not a little drunk, the waterproof was long and white and it seemed to him that he was wearing a nightshirt. He went jumping down over the rocks, he did not go through the lanes of the village but by a slope of tall grass, his bare feet in their heelless slippers rustled in the harsh, tall grass, all at once he began to run. One slipper slipped off his foot and he stooped to pick it up and saw Franz running after him, go back home, said Cenzo Rena, go back home, you bloody fool. Franz stopped in the grass and Cenzo Rena went on, but again the slipper slipped off and he stooped down to put it on again, and Franz was still behind him with his face all bathed in tears, a face that was happy and despairing and a little mad, with jaws trembling and hair falling all over the forehead. Go back home, Cenzo Rena said to him, go back home, you bloody fool. He put on his slipper and now they were running together. And all at once they were both of them very happy as they ran and slid in the tall grass, and the bells were ringing and the road lay white and dusty at the bottom of the slope, the road on which they would never scatter nails because there was no time now.

There were sentries at the door of the municipal office and Cenzo Rena asked to speak to the commandant. He undid his waterproof to show that he was not armed, and the sentries asked him who Franz was, and Cenzo Rena said he was a cousin of his from Salerno who had gone a little mad, poor chap, owing to the war. One of the sentries and Cenzo Rena went upstairs, the commandant was sitting where previously the mayor had sat. And Cenzo Rena told the commandant that he had killed the German with a tommy-gun that he had, and would they release the hostages from the mayor's stable.

Some Fascists came into the room and they were holding Franz by the arms and one of them was shouting that he had found him at the door of the municipal office talking German to the sentries and wanting to come upstairs, and he shouted that he had recognized him and he was a German Jew internee, he shouted out Franz's name and surname. And Cenzo Rena again said that he was a cousin of his from Salerno and that he had followed behind him because he followed him everywhere, because he was mad owing to the war. The commandant tapped his pen slowly on the top of the desk and stared fixedly at Cenzo Rena, at the same time rubbing his chin and pursing up his mouth as if he wanted to whistle.

Cenzo Rena and Franz remained for some hours in the entrance hall, where once upon a time the
contadini
used to sit waiting. All round them were Fascists with pistols and German sentries, and through the half-open door they saw lorries and tanks in the dust of the village square, and boots and more boots of Germans, and Cenzo Rena asked if the hostages had been released and nobody answered him. Cenzo Rena kept touching the spot in his back where he was afraid he was going to die. A patch of skin that was all cold and feeble. The patch had now gradually increased in size, almost the whole of his back was now cold and feeble. But all of a sudden, through the gap left by the half-closed entrance door, he saw the leg of the man with the corkscrew leg running away. And he said goodbye to that happy leg which was running away. And he thought that if there was a God he thanked Him for that happy leg, he did not know if there was one but in any case he thanked Him. He wondered why he so much wanted the man with the corkscrew leg to remain alive, he did not understand why it was. Franz was sitting on the stairs leaning his head against the banisters and he had his eyes shut, and his lip was all bleeding and swollen because the Fascist who had recognized him had struck him on the lip with his pistol. And then Cenzo Rena felt infinitely tired and sad, with the brandy very far away by now and his back all feeble and cold, and his knees trembling and jerking and a cold sweat upon him.

And later they were taken out into the village square and Franz Was seized and flung back against the wall and the order was given to fire and Cenzo Rena covered his face with his hands. And he too was flung against the wall and he felt his head bang against the wall and heard bells and voices. And so they died, Cenzo Rena and Franz.

15

When Anna came back to San Costanzo the Germans were no longer there but instead there were the English, and the American and English and Italian flags were fluttering from the balcony of the municipal office. The walls of the village hall and the walls of the police station and of a few other houses along the road were full of round holes from the English shells that had been fired.

The Germans had freed the hostages they had taken that day but then during the night they had come back and taken some more, two sons of the dressmaker's and a sister of La Maschiona's seducer and a shepherd boy of fourteen years old, and they had taken them into the mayor's stable and had poured tins of petrol over the stable and set fire to it. They had searched for the farrier and for La Maschiona's brother too, but they had escaped into the fields.

The mayor's stable was now a heap of ashes, and you still seemed to hear the lowing of the cows and the shrieks of the shepherd boy calling to his mother. No one could understand why the Germans should have burnt down the stable with the cows and the people inside, but perhaps it was only because they had some petrol to throw away. In any case tales were coming in from all directions of the things the Germans had done before they went away, at Masuri they had driven fifteen people into a farmhouse, children and women, and had fired into the windows. The Germans were far away now, beyond Borgoreale, but there were times when the
contadini
were frightened that they would come back. The
contadini
stood looking at the English as they sat smoking on the low garden walls, they stood spell-bound looking at these soldiers dressed like the Germans in yellowish cloth with short trousers and blond, hairy knees. And they asked if the Germans would come back and the English shook their heads to say no. And the
contadini
were very pleased indeed with these new soldiers who did not kill them, and they were very pleased to eat the insipid bread made of rice flour which they threw away.

The police-sergeant had come to Scoturno di Sopra to give Anna the news of Cenzo Rena and Franz. The police-sergeant, on the night he had escaped with the flask of wine, had later found the
contadino
Giuseppe and together they had gone to Borgoreale and had hidden there. The police-sergeant was again dressed as a police-sergeant now, with his cloak and his sabre, and he came to Scoturno di Sopra with a solemn, funereal air. He wished to break the news delicately to Anna and started off on a long, vague speech, saying that for instance he too had lost his wife from a tumour of the breast. And the Germans had wrecked his house and had carried off the bed in which his wife had died. Now he lived on for the sake of his little children. At times he had a great longing to throw himself over a precipice but he was a Christian and did not throw himself down, he went on living for the sake of his little children. And in the same way Anna had her little girl. And Anna looked and looked at the police-sergeant's big, flattened nose and all of a sudden she understood that Cenzo Rena was dead.

For a long time she remained lying on La Maschiona's grandmother's bed, the hours went by and the flies buzzed against the white walls. She did not want to see the little girl, all at once she had a horror of the little girl, when the little girl came in she immediately called to La Maschiona's grandmother to take her away. She did not want to look out of the window and she had a horror of the meadow below the house and of the path and of the ridges of the hills.