Hand Me Down World (6 page)

seven

The alpine hunter and guide

The best way to prepare a partridge—you can take this down if you wish. First, a partridge. Preferably shot early morning under low cloud. That way the bird cannot see the approaching shadows. As far as the partridge is concerned the birdshot has arrived out of the hillsides. There has been no time for it to know fear. I have eaten many partridges. I know by their taste which partridge has experienced a moment's fear and which hasn't. Adrenalin is the flavour of fear and leaves a distinct taste. Next, you need young chestnuts and garlic. To prepare the partridge—pluck the feathers, salt and rub olive oil into its skin, remove its insides and replace with half-roasted chestnuts and garlic. Peel the garlic, of course. Then stitch up the belly. Or you may use a metal clip. I myself don't, my shooting colleagues are less fussy, especially at night around a low fire. This next piece of information is important. Slowly turn the partridge over a low flame. We bring with us a special contraption for slow-turning the partridge over the embers. When everyone has finished boasting, and exhausted their memories of past women, the partridge is ready to be eaten with rough bread, cous cous and a bottle of chianti.

Now to the day in question. We had driven up the day before. Me, Paolo, Leo and Tom, an American food writer who had moved a month ago to our village with his wife, Hester. Hester? No. Sorry, Cynthia. Cynthia. Paolo, Tom, Leo, myself. Tom has come along with our shooting party to experience for himself the beginning and the end of the partridge recipe.

We camp where we usually do, in an abandoned shepherd's hut. Goats used to have the run of the hills. There aren't so many any more. A few wild ones. From the hut we fan out with the dogs and walk through the brush to the foothills and back again. You know what a colander is? We are a human colander through which the country passes. If there is a partridge it will not escape our attention. Leo is grumbling about the light. There is too much of it. Leo owns a restaurant. I've known him and Paolo since school days. Paolo is the footballer. He played second tier in the Italian football league. At the end of his career he came home. He didn't know what to do with himself. At the time Leo was the head chef at another restaurant. Paolo told Leo he would buy him a restaurant and make him a famous chef, more famous a chef than he was a footballer. And that actually happened. Which is how the food writer came to our village in the first place.

The forecast is for overcast skies. Perfect. But they have not arrived. Dark shadows pass over the hillsides. Leo is right. The light is too crisp. But Paolo is impatient. He wants to stretch his legs. He doesn't care so much about the pure taste of partridge. In that respect he is no perfectionist. And that may be why his football career didn't reach the heights that his natural talent promised. But I digress. So, we give in to Paolo's impatience and we comb the hillside. It is nice to be out in the countryside. A gentle breeze blows the worries from your mind. The dogs run with their short excited steps, stick their noses into the underbrush, wagging their tails. The dogs are happy. I am happy.

After an hour we've had no luck. The dogs have barked once or twice. Leo is annoyed. We should have waited like he said. The food writer, Tom, is sweating heavily. He has to keep removing his glasses to wipe the sweat from his eyes. When he bends forward sweat drops from his face. I have never seen that on a man before. A cyclist, yes—but not on a man out on a pleasant hillside walk. Paolo is gazing up at the rocky terrain. The goats are up there. But we have not come prepared. We have only birdshot. On other occasions we have climbed up to the ridge to wait for the cloud cover to arrive. From up there you can look into Switzerland and Austria. It is always a surprise to see how close we are. A slip of the pen and we would be in Switzerland or Austria. And with that slip of the pen we would be eating different foods and reciting different poets. I was pleased when the Azzurri won the World Cup. I drove around with a little Italian flag. I tooted my horn along with all the others. After we beat France I danced with the plainest and fattest woman that night. I believe in good fortune being spread around. After the cup victory I packed away the flag. On the whole, nationalism disgusts me.

While we are thinking what to do the forecasted cloud rolls in. There is no more talk of goats or rabbit. We have to wait another twenty minutes. We sip from Leo's brandy flask. We always do that. It is made of pewter, belonged to his great-grandfather; actually, it was taken off one of Napoleon's soldiers. That's the story Leo tells. It's one of those stories that no one would dare question and that we all want desperately to believe.

We send the dogs ahead and fan out. Very soon there is a commotion. The dogs have banded together. So it is not a partridge. Perhaps it is a rabbit. Leo has a wonderful recipe for rabbit but it requires that someone, Paolo, climb up to the ridge and gather wild herbs. Or else it is a phantom. Dogs are the nerviest of creatures. We are threading our way through the brush when we hear a woman's voice. Paolo runs ahead. We can hear a woman shouting at the dogs. The dogs are barking. Paolo is being quite rough with them, cursing them, kicking them away.

As we come through the brush there is the black woman. She is wearing a blue coat. That's the first thing that strikes me. How odd to be wearing a coat like that up in the hills. No. That is the second surprise. The first surprise is undoubtedly the woman. An African woman. Once, many years ago, we thought we had stumbled on bear shit. We stood around it, photographed it. Another time we saw two parakeets. Probably domestic—escaped. We have seen the odd soul—hikers—on the tracks through the hills leading down into the first valley of Switzerland. But never a black woman. Never an African. She has her arms up in surrender. A plastic bag hangs from her hand.

I have to shout at Paolo before he lowers his shotgun. He wasn't even aware. Later that evening, seated around the camp fire drinking while the partridge we eventually shot that afternoon turns above the coals, he apologises when reminded of how he had trained his gun on the poor woman. In fact he kept apologising to her. To the point where Leo had to tell him, that's enough. The woman looked at Paolo as she might at one of the dogs licking her feet. A glimmer of a smile. She did not speak Italian. We'd found that out much earlier. She spoke English. All of us speak some English—and Tom, the food writer, of course. But it was Leo who asked most of the questions. Leo and myself. She answered as best she could. Tom could have asked some questions but he just sat there listening. Now and then a flame lit his face. Beneath the dried sweat, beneath that was another layer of endeavour (he made me go over the partridge recipe three times, then made me check that what he had written was correct), and beneath that layer I thought I caught a glimpse of another that was pure coldness. That's the moment I decided I might not give him the rabbit recipe or the wild trout with almonds which he had already indicated a strong interest in obtaining.

We asked the obvious questions. Where she was from, and she told us. I forget the country. Somewhere in Africa. We asked her where she was going and she told us. Berlin, Germany. It took a moment for that to sink in. Paolo had spent a season there traded to FC Union Berlin when his career was on the way down. He didn't enjoy it. He said the fans were a bunch of tattooed beer-swilling white supremacists. Leo had also been to Berlin, to visit his daughter Maria, the younger, wilder one. He found her living with twenty-six other young people—Italians, Serbs, Australians, English, Poles, from all over, even a fellow from Vietnam, in an abandoned factory. Leo said the windows were broken. At night they cooked around an open fire. I expected him to say it was appalling and that he was ashamed to find his daughter living in this way. But he didn't. He was accepting, reluctant to criticise. In fact, following that trip, there was a brief period when his marriage went wobbly. Then his daughter returned and things improved at home.

We asked the woman why she wanted to go to Berlin. She stared into the fire. I did not think she was going to tell us. There had been some questions that she pretended not to understand. She could have lied and we would not have known. Instead she pretends not to understand, which is better in my view, more polite. So when we asked her—why Berlin?—this was one of those times I did not expect her to answer. She used the Italian—
bambino. Bambino. Bambino
. Very quickly she became emotional. Leo got up and went and crouched beside her. He rubbed her shoulder. She lay her head against him and cried. Leo managed to settle her down. He gave her some chianti. Tom spoke up then about the partridge. He was right to. Another few minutes would have been a few minutes too long.

She ate with real appetite. But not with any appreciation. She ate to fill herself up. She tore at the partridge, which I admit spoiled the occasion. She did not savour the tastes. Everything went down the same way. She hardly touched the chianti. After a while we forgot her and the conversation turned to the partridge. Tom got out his notebook. He asked many questions. Then he took a photograph. But only of me, Paolo and Leo. Leo had brought some grappa. We poured five glasses—the African woman included. Leo made a toast. We tilted back our glasses and swallowed the fire. The African spat hers out. Her hand went to her throat. Someone handed her the flask of water.

We were back to focusing on her. After the grappa she seemed less familiar, more like how the dogs had found her. I asked her about the baby. Why it was in Berlin. Why she was here. How they had become separated. She pretended not to understand. She sank further inside her coat, stared at the embers. Then Tom said back home she would be considered an illegal, an alien, I think he said—would he have called another human being ‘an alien', it doesn't sound likely, even from him, but it is what I remember— ‘an alien' whom we should report to the authorities. We ignored him. That is, no one said anything. But it did make me wonder— what now? What should we do with her? We asked her more questions. She said a man in a van filled with trays of eggs had dropped her on the mountain road and pointed her in the direction of Switzerland. Then she opened her plastic bag. She brought out a book of maps. She turned to the page showing Italy, Austria, Switzerland and southern Germany.

Paolo has the best eyes. He confirmed for her that we were on the border. She asked him to show her where exactly. But on that map it was hopeless. Too imprecise. Then, Paolo, me and Leo began to discuss among ourselves the best way to get to Berlin from here. That is a conversation I'd never had before. Nor had Paolo or Leo. But we all had opinions. The American sat silently. Switzerland was near. Very close. Two hours if she was a fast walker. It was just a guess. None of us had crossed that border. On the Austrian side we had probably strayed a number of times without ever being aware of having passed from one place into another. Switzerland was nearer, but Leo, backed up by Paolo and me, was of the opinion that Austria would be better. We spoke in Italian and quickly agreed. Paolo volunteered to escort her to the first town. He would put her on a bus or train, whatever he found. Get her to Vienna. From there she could catch a train to Berlin.

We make these plans for her as if we are making them for ourselves. This is the way we would go. For one thing she will avoid running into trouble with the Swiss authorities. They are a bit more lax on the German side, especially on trains. Then the obvious question. This plan comes at a cost. We haven't stopped to ask if she has money. It would be impertinent to ask. So Leo gets us started. He stands up from the fire, reaches into his pocket and pulls out every note on him. Thirty-seven euros. Paolo does the same. He manages to come up with seventy-eight euros. I am surprised to find that I have as much as I do. Three fifties and a twenty. Leo works his way around the fire until he comes to the food writer. The American is staring into the embers. His hands in his pockets. Shoulders up around his ears. Of course he must be aware of Leo standing there. He has seen each one of us dig into our pockets. Finally he speaks up. He says he doesn't think we should ‘aid and abet an illegal'. We are breaking the law. Worse. We are willingly breaking the law. We digest that. No one says anything. Then Paolo speaks up. Very calmly he asks Tom if he has any money on him. He doesn't answer. The American. This fucking American. He has swallowed his tongue. Paolo is about to repeat himself when the food writer says he might have. Leo hasn't left his side. The American has sunk even deeper inside of himself. He says he doesn't want to break the law. He doesn't want to get into trouble with the authorities. To give money to an illegal activity might lead to him regretting his foolishness.

Leo looks at me. So does Paolo. As for the woman—we've forgotten her. But she is somewhere in Paolo's shadow, to his right. I know what I must do. I stand up to make my speech. I tell the food writer that he may think he is in partridge country. But during the war this was partisan country. Partisans broke the law by their very existence. So, his fear of breaking the law is not a persuasive argument. His eyes lower. He picks up a twig and tosses it into the fire. He is like a man pretending that the rain isn't falling on him, only on others. So then I tell him. I have to tell him—and I am sorry it has come to this. I tell him unless he empties his pockets there will be no rabbit or almond trout recipe. The photographs will be erased from his camera, and all the others he's taken of Leo's famous kitchen and of Leo beaming under his white chef's hat, and I will personally throw his notebook with the partridge recipe into the flames. Now it is raining—in the figurative sense. At last he can feel it. Now he wants to get out of it. His face screws up. I see him then just for a fleeting second how he might have looked in the school playground. All the pain is on his inside. Slowly he gets up. His eyes remain half closed. It's as if he does not want to be witness to his own actions. He is like a child. I spit at the ground by his feet. I am disgusted by him.