The Inmost Cave
PERHAPS YOU may remember how I said at the beginning that I was unsure where to start this memoir of my journey, because I was uncertain where there journey had really begun? But then I settled on starting it that day at Monte Cassino Abbey, the day of the remembrance service for mom and dad, the day Germany invaded France and the Low Countries? Now hopefully you’ll understand why I did.
***
As the German officer checked my wallet my little transparent file of plastic photos unfolded out. He went to refold it, but then stopped, and started looking more carefully at one of the photos. I wasn’t sure then which it was, but I had an awful feeling it had to be the one of my godfather at Monte Cassino. They were bound to recognize him, bound to assume I was somehow related to him, and bound to understand they had a real prize on their hands. He looked back at me, shook his head as if wondering what idiocy the Allies could be up to now, then walked back to the Panther. He talked for a few moments to someone on the field telephone he pulled out from a flap on its back, waited, talked again, looked again at the same photo in my wallet, scratched his head, checked Karl’s wallet, eyed him up and down again, then said something else into the phone. I looked at Karl, “What’s he up to?”
“Best I could tell, he seemed to be giving someone a description.”
“Of me?”
But Karl could only shrug as the officer came back over and said, “Gib mir deine Uhren, bitte.”
“They want our watches,” Karl translated, and we took them off and gave them to him, and he motioned over a German NCO.
“Blindfold sie,” he said to him. But as we were about to have our eyes covered, I caught the German Officer looking into the back of our jeep, pulling out my bag of camera equipment, and looking suspiciously in it. Maybe they thought we were some sort of spies, I wondered for a moment. Then he nodded to two of his fellows, motioned, and now blindfolded we were put in the back. Then I heard the German officer get in up front with an armed guard, and we were driven off.
With a spirit of bravado so false even Karl probably didn’t fall for it, I whispered in his ear, “You handled things real well back there. Whatever it was you said to them, I’ve a feeling it got us sent straight to the firing squad.”
“Just for once could you possibly shut up,” Karl responded angrily, as up in front I could hear the German officer laugh. But was it a good laugh or an evil one? I didn’t know. But to tell you the truth up until then I didn’t know German officers were capable of laughing in any kind of way.
But laughing or not, they proved very smart those Germans who brought us in, even I had to concede them that. But then wasn’t that what Freddie said, that you can think anything you want about them, but never for one moment think they’re stupid? They drove us about for a while turning left and right and back again, till we had completely lost whatever bearings we had at the beginning, and I for one hadn’t a clue what direction we’d been travelling in. We had to be going north of course, but with no sense of how much time had elapsed, we couldn’t be sure how far it was till we got to wherever we were being taken. And smarter still, knowing now that Karl could speak German, they were also completely silent. That made me at least hopeful that if they were taking so much trouble to hide where we were, then there was some kind of a chance that they weren’t just going to rub us out when we got there. Okay, it was only a little life-ring to cling on to, in what wasn’t looking like a very promising situation, but that’s what you do isn’t it, cling on to any available life-ring, even if it’s only an imaginary one. My guess is we were in the jeep for over an hour. But then maybe it just seemed that long and it was less than thirty minutes. Or then again maybe it was an hour and a half, or even two.
I remember the smells most vividly of all. Gasoline was the easiest to recognize, but at one point I was sure I could smell water too, as if maybe we were being taken over a river, maybe back over the Rapido. But then there was a far more disagreeable stench, and I wondered if it was dead bodies. But that was just a guess too, because I’d only smelled dead bodies once before at Salerno, and I’d done the best I could to put that memory out my mind. But then everything I smelled or heard or sensed reminded me of death, Sanford’s death, Jack’s death, Marie’s death, likely Freddie’s death, everyone’s death. Oh sweet Jesus I thought, is there anything in this world worth having so much, that they all had to die for it?
But every so often I could hear something else too, engines and even the occasional horse. But nothing I smelled or heard could really have been relied on, because I was scared stiff, and I confess at one point I even did the unspeakable, and took Karl’s hand and squeezed it just to confirm he was still there. He must have been, because I felt him squeeze mine back, so maybe he was scared stiff too.
They didn’t remove our blindfolds till we were inside the open living area of a small Italian villa with a dining table set for five and a baby grand piano off to the side. A uniformed German aide entered carrying of all things a bible, and in pretty good English said, “I am Feuerstak. The General will join you in a moment.” General, what general, I remember wondering? I looked at Karl for some sort of explanation, but yet again he just shrugged back.
I’d never been in Germany and certainly never met a German general, but I still was pretty sure what he’d look like – cold, calculating, dispassionate, aloof, all clad in black, and with utterly no observable sense of humor. Okay, whoever it was who had driven us in had had a minor sense of humor. He had seemed to find me pretty amusing anyway. But then doesn’t the exception prove the rule? Other than that, they were completely different from us, Germans were, had no homes or families, had sprung into existence with uniforms already on, and lived only for war. They didn’t believe in God, okay maybe a few of them like this Feuerstak did, but that proved nothing either. Anyway, he was most probably only studying the bible to uncover the weaknesses of Christian countries like us. No, they were all fanatical Nazis and worshipped Adolf Hitler like I worshipped Jesus Christ, and all their generals wore eye-monocles. I looked round the room for proof expecting to see a framed photo of Adolf Hitler prominently displayed somewhere. But there wasn’t one. Okay so they hadn’t had time to unpack it yet. And anyway it wasn’t important. They just simply weren’t like us, whoever ‘us’ were. We hated war and only did it reluctantly on the few occasions we had to. God knows, I was beginning to understand now why. Okay so maybe in our U.S. Civil War we were a little less reluctant. But somehow that was different, wasn’t it? No, basically we preferred peace to any kind of violence whereas they liked things the other way around. Their ambition was to rule the world, every one of them, not one of them ever countenanced defeat, and they all looked like Strasser, you remember him, he was Rick’s nemesis in Casablanca. Okay, Strasser may only have been a major then, but he was a general in waiting. And if this German general was the shadow I had been brought here to help vanquish, even though I was a non-combatant and a girl to boot, I was still ready. That’s what Jack would have expected of me, so to honor his memory they could torture me as much as they wanted, violate me even, because there were stories doing the rounds that said that’s what Germans did. Even still, they’d get nothing out of me, and no ordeal their devious minds could concoct would make me talk, nichts, rien, niente, none. If Jack could die for our cause, then damn well so could I. And if Karl showed the slightest hint of weakening, I’d take one of the dinner knives from the table, and slit his throat before he could tell them anything. That is assuming he knew anything worth them knowing. Then I’d make some grand useless gesture and shout out something defiantly American, like ‘long live Sarah Lawrence College,’ and then slit my own throat right there slap-bang in front of them. Just like Floria Tosca throwing herself off the battlements of the Castel San Angelo into the River Tiber before Vitellio Scarpia could have his filthy ways with her. Of course for the record I know that particular stunt is actually impossible, as Rome’s River Tiber is almost a hundred yards from the walls of the Castel San Angelo. Who cares, it was the statement of defiance that counts, not its logic. Well, all that was the kind of thing that went through my mind anyway, at least it did till I started wondering why there even were any potentially dangerous dinner knives so near at hand. Surely if Freddie was right, then the Germans were far too smart for that kind of slip-up too.
But then the real German general appeared and he wasn’t at all like Major Strasser, and didn’t have a monocle either. In fact he was far more like some country schoolmaster with drooping eyes, a thin-faced aquiline look, dark hair and a sharp hooked nose just like Savonarola in that painting by Fra Bartolemeo in the National Museum in Florence. He also wasn’t wearing a black uniform but a simple well-tailored greenish-grey one. He walked in and stood behind a chair at the dining table, pointed to another one, held it as I sat down, bid Karl join us too, and only then did he sit as well and place our wallets and watches on the table in front of him. “I am Lieutenant General Fridolin Senger und Etterlin, commander of the German forces in the Monte Cassino sector,” he said. At least there seemed to be one thing about them that was similar to us, his army liked to use the word ‘sector’ too.
“You are?” I replied, not at all sure what one should say in such circumstances. But who cared, as odds were this conversational foreplay was just prologue to a much more intense grilling, probably down in the cellars where they kept their awful instruments of torture. Better also to decline any food or drink it suddenly struck me, for as like as not they’d been laced with some sort of truth drug too.
“Welcome to Castelmassimo,” the General smiled as he laid his napkin over his lap. “It was once the headquarters of Joachim Murat you know, Napoleon’s most daring field marshal.”
“Is that right,” Karl responded without observable interest.
“Do you know he was so well regarded by even his enemies, that after his defeat he was accorded the rare honor of commanding his own execution squad,” Senger continued whether Karl was interested or not. “Soldats, he is recorded to have shouted, Faites votre devoir. Droit au cœur mais épargnez le visage. Feu!”
I couldn’t but note that his French was near perfect too, just like his English. “That means “Soldiers, do your duty. Shoot for the heart, but spare my face.” I explained to Karl.
But I don’t think Karl could have cared less about that either, and looked me straight in the eye and said, “I got the point, thanks.” I hadn’t known Karl all that long, but it wasn’t difficult to see that if any knives were going to be wielded at this dinner party, he was fast looking like the one most likely to wield them.
“I’m sorry, this is very interesting General, but all I’m obliged to give you is my rank and serial number,” I said.
He looked at my odd dress. “I wouldn’t even have known you were a soldier, had I not had your wallet,” he laughed. “So why not go ahead and get the formalities over, and give me it.”
I stood up and saluted, that seemed like the correct thing to do, as after all he did outrank me, and said. “Second Lieutenant Patricia Hampton, U.S. Army, serial number… two four, no two five, four...dammit”
“Dammit?” he asked.
“I’ve forgotten it.”
“Don’t worry.” He smiled and pulled out my warrant card from my wallet. “If I did want it, it’s in here. And in case you ever need it again, for the record it’s actually two, three five four… dammit etc. etc.”
Just then two other less senior German officers came in. “I hope you do not mind but I have invited two of my colleagues to join us,” said the General. “May I present my chief of staff Colonel von Altenstadt and my GSO.I, Major Oster.” Again there was no heel-clicking or Teutonic embellishments, just simple nods of the head, almost a smile, and they both sat down. So I sort of saluted them too but from a sitting position.
I looked over at Karl in confusion and General Senger und Etterlin must have seen me. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.
“You’re just not what I expected,” I said. “None of you are.”
“You expected us to all look like Conrad Veidt?”
“Who’s Conrad Veidt?” I asked.
“He played Major Strasser, in the film Casablanca.” said Oster.
I mumbled something like, “Of course I didn’t think that.” But my blushing cheeks for sure must have given the game away.
“You know Veidt was actually a fervent anti-Nazi,” said von Altenstadt.
“No I didn’t,” I said preferring if they somehow got off this point completely, but fat chance of that apparently.
“If I recall, he emigrated from Germany in the early thirties after marrying a Jewish woman named Prager,” von Altenstadt continued. “Then settled in Britain and became a citizen there.”
“But you’re quite right, for all the world he did look like the archetypal Nazi, didn’t he,” laughed Oster. “What is it you Americans say, ‘straight from central casting’? I didn’t of course care for that remark, as national stereotyping is something no refined person should stoop to, me included I guess.
“He did play the King of Baghdad’s evil vizier though in The Thief of Baghdad. And that wasn’t very archetypically Nazi,” laughed the General. “Silly picture though, Casablanca, I always thought.”
“Why?” I asked, as personally I thought it was far from silly and in many respects deeply moving.
“German Gestapo officers such as Strasser supposedly was, do not wear what was obviously a Luftwaffe uniform.”
“I guess that was the only uniform Warners’ wardrobe department had at the time,” I replied weakly.
“And of course there never have been any German soldiers stationed in Casablanca either,” the General added.
“Why not?”
“It’s part of Vichy France, that’s why not,” interrupted Karl.
I stared at him as if he’d gone over to the enemy. “I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Bu then you wouldn’t, would you,” he said rather dismissively.
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“Let’s face it. One of the few decent reasons God invented war was so Americans could at least learn something about geography.”
I was about to take offence at that remark as there was nothing wrong with my knowledge of geography. But I didn’t, because it was then I realized who he was, the General I mean. Perhaps I remembered the accent or maybe it was the face, because neither had changed very much. In fact nothing had, except what he was now all of a sudden wearing. “You’re Brother Frido,” I said in shock.
“And how nice of you to keep my photograph in your wallet,” the general said as he smiled that same gentle smile he had that day at Monte Cassino. “But I was still wondering if you would recognize me. It has been what, more than three years?”
“Brother Frido?” gagged Karl.
I sighed, looked back at the General and he shook his head amiably. I nodded, turned back in Karl’s direction, and settled for, “Fill you in later, Karl, promise.”
“Frido is what my friends called me at Oxford University,” the General smiled at Karl. I suppose I should be honest enough to admit that when he said ‘Oxford’ I immediately thought ‘Mississippi.’ But thank God there wasn’t time to say so, as I was saved any embarrassment by Karl himself, unwittingly I’m sure, when he responded, “You studied in England?”
“I was a Rhodes scholar there, just before the outbreak of the First World War.” But then Brother Frido sighed, looked over at the window as if looking back at his own past. “I served on the Western Front, as did the whole of my class. They were all with the British Army of course, while I was in the German artillery.” He looked back at us. “Practically all of them died there. Who knows, I may have even have helped kill some myself? Such dreadful fears are not easy things to live with.”
“They wouldn’t be for us,” Karl said meaningfully, too meaningfully for his own good if you ask me. But then again he hadn’t asked me.
Best perhaps to change the subject I realized. “So this is what you did, the rest of the time? No wonder Abbot Diamare didn’t think it was his place to tell me.”
But Karl wasn’t to be put off easily. “So why are we here?” he asked.
“My colleagues and I have always wanted to meet one of the Allied war correspondents who report on this front, especially one with such an interesting background as you, Mr. Lucas. We don’t have any war correspondents of our own, you see.”
“Then who tells your folk back home what’s happening?” I asked.
“The Propoganda Unit of the German Army,” he answered.
“The Propaganda Unit?”
“They handle all our reporting, filming and photographing. They used to wear a cuff-title on the left arm that said Propagandakompanie. But it was changed a few years ago to Kriegsberichter des Heeres. I believe you would translate it as Army War Reporter. I presume they thought that less blatant. But most of them are still considered far more propagandists than correspondents. Yet they are brave men still. As I’m sure are yours.”
I thought of Marie and shivered. “So this propaganda unit doesn’t tell your people back home the truth?” I asked as off-handedly as I could, lest anyone notice how upset I suddenly felt.
Brother Frido sighed, thought for a moment, seemed to frame his answer carefully, then said “Let us just say my view of the German military situation is rarely as optimistic as the one my wife P sees every week in the German newsreel.
“P?” I asked.
“Her name is Hilda Margaretha. But I call here P.”
“Then tell P not to worry. Allied war correspondents aren’t encouraged to dwell excessively on our problems either. Are they Karl?”
But Karl was in no mood for banter, it seemed. “So what’s it like, working for Adolf Hitler?” he asked.
“Difficult in the extreme,” was Frido’s diplomatic answer.
“But then that’s exactly what you’d say isn’t it?” responded Karl, rather less diplomatically.
“Let us say he finds it far easier than do I to wage war on innocents.
“And you would say that too, wouldn’t you?”
I could feel Karl’s Polishness rising again, so to defuse the situation like a twirp I asked, “You’ve actually met him, Adolf Hitler?’
“At the Berghof, when he sent me in to help evacuate Sicily.”
“The Berghof?” I asked.
“Adolf Hitler’s vacation home at the Obersalzburg in the Bavarian Alps,” Brother Frido responded.
“So it was you who got the German Army out of Sicily?” Try as he might to hide it, it was clear Karl was impressed.
“It wasn’t so difficult. Neither America nor Britain finds it easy to produce military commanders who are not also egomaniacs. They can usually be relied on to spend more time competing with each other, than trapping us.” I was about to say something to the effect that Freddie thought the same thing was happening here in Italy, but Karl must have read my mind and shook his head before I could. “Keep that up and the Russians will beat both of them to Berlin,” Brother Frido laughed.
“You expect to lose the war?” I asked.
“It was inevitable from that day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and we did your President a favor by declaring war on you too.”
“If that was so stupid then why did Hitler even do it?”
“He is a complex man, and not to be judged by the behavior of those such as us.”
“Then what standards should he be judged by?”
“Were you aware he was a devout Catholic and chorister in his younger days, and dreamt only of being an artist.”
“Pity he didn’t stick to his dream,” Karl said.
“Blame the Viennese Art Institute for that.”
“Why?” I asked.
“When they rejected his application to study there.”
“So he became a mass murderer instead?” said Karl.
“That I fear resulted from a far different cause.”
“What cause?” I asked.
“For a while he was content to be a uniquely successful politician, and by the time of the Munich Conference in 1938 had created a German-speaking Empire even Bismarck could not aspire to. One could say in fact that he had completed a mercurial ascent to being the most remarkable leader in all German history.”
“But?”
“But when he woke the following day, he began a descent towards becoming its worst. And all Germany will pay for it as we lose this war.”
“Why did he do it, change overnight?” I asked.
“Because he looked at the idolizing crowds hanging on his every word and realized he need no longer live by their rules of morality. He had succumbed to the fork in the road where so many potential heroes stumble, where instead of moving on to becoming a great good man, they instead became a far greater bad one.”
“Because they fail to keep watchful guard on their sinister side?”
“You remember our conversation?”
“How could I forget it?” Suddenly I felt very, very sorry for him, “Then how can you keep on fighting? If you believe your cause is lost?”
“Because although we are without hope, we must also be without fear,” he answered as he looked at his colleagues, “And we all keep on in the prayer that someday Hitler may no longer be our leader.”
“And a new one will take a more practical view of our limited realities,” added Oster.
“And surrender?”
“It is the greatest good that can now be done for the German people,” said the General.
“And in the meanwhile?” asked Karl.
“In the meanwhile I can at least ensure our withdrawal here in Italy is completed without the atrocities that have plagued so many of our other retreats.”
“Wasn’t mining Naples an atrocity?” asked Karl.
“I did not serve in Naples. And if I had, I would have tried my best to be a light in its darkness also.”
“And if your best hadn’t been good enough to produce any light?” asked Karl.
“We cannot save the whole world from the Nazis, Mr. Lucas,” added Oster angrily. “God knows we would if we could.”
“And if we dissented too often about what they do, our own end would be prompt, and the few we can otherwise protect would die anyway,” added von Altenstadt. “No. Better perhaps to live and be of what good one can in these awful times.”
“But every day you continue to fight, more and more people are killed, on both sides?”
“Tell me Patricia. In your army are your soldiers permitted to stop fighting if they no longer care for the war their government has taken them into?”
“But you did occupy the Abbey,” I asked, “And sent in artillery spotters there. Isn’t that an atrocity?”
“It would be against all logic to place artillery observers in such a visible spot. And anyway the other places we have positioned them seem to work well enough.”
“You’re saying you haven’t occupied it at all?”
“I am saying precisely that. Indeed it has been declared out of bounds to all my soldiers, both by my own and my superior’s express orders.”
“Your superior’s?”
“General Kesselring demands a report every month on our protection of cultural and religious sites.”
I looked at Karl. “So German soldiers have never gone inside?” he asked.
“Only to move out its treasures.”
“To send to Berlin?” asked Karl.
“To the Vatican.”
“And who did that?” I asked.
“Two very well meaning officers of the Hermann Göring Panzer Division.”
“The S.S.?” Karl asked incredulously.
“It surprised me too when I heard it, but it happened before I even arrived here. They persuaded their own commanders to use German trucks and fuel. It was quite an undertaking, but over a hundred truckloads were brought out and many of the younger monks with them.”
“And that’s the only time Germans have ever been inside?” I asked.
“Except for mass, which I attend when I can. Christmas was my last, and even then I do not abuse the privilege by going anywhere near the Abbey windows.”
“So not all the monks have left the Abbey?”
“God knows I have tried to persuade the Abbot to leave. But for some reason he will not. And if he will not, neither it seems will most of the older ones.”
“In my country Germans are not seen as quite so compassionate as that,” said Karl.
“Your papers say you were born in Poland, were you not, Mr. Lucas.”
“Yes.”
Brother Frido picked up Karl’s wallet and looked back at him and said, “May I?” Karl nodded and the General brought out a photograph, of a mother, father, three daughters, and a boy.” That is you, is it not, the young boy?”
“Yes.”
“And the rest of your family, where are they?”
“Every man, woman and child in their village was shut up in the local church by the S.S. In reprisal for partisan attacks, they said.”
“And?”
“They shelled it, and shelled it, and kept on shelling it until…” and Karl’s voice petered out to nothingness.
“It is difficult,” the General said as he put the photo back. “But even in war we must judge individual men by what they individually do, not by the clothes they wear.”
“Even your S.S?”
“I am a Wehrmacht officer, as are my colleagues here. We are not members of the Nazi Party, we do not make war on civilians, we make war on the soldiers of the enemies of the German state.”
“And you want us to believe that makes you different from the S.S.?”
“Besides being a soldier I am also a Benedictine lay priest. Perhaps that is where my differences come from, that and a sad winter attempting to relieve Stalingrad.”
“Fifth Army says they have photographs of your observers in the Abbey,” I said.
“That is not possible. I told you, it is not our practice to put observers in a place that could be so easily bombed.”
“But then why would Fifth Army want anyone to believe they are in the Abbey if they aren’t?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But then there are many things your Fifth Army does that I have difficulty understanding. Like their attempt to cross the Rapido River in the last few days.”
“Patricia lost her brother in that attempt. And we both lost a very beloved…”
“Colleague.” I finished his sentence for him laying my hand for a moment on his.
“Your brother that was killed, was he the young man I saw with you at the Abbey that day? His name was Jack, I remember.”
“Yes.”
“My deepest condolences, Patricia. I too know what it is like to lose a brother in war,” he sighed. “But unfortunately the attack over the Rapido was doomed from the start.”
“Doomed?”
“To the point of madness.”
“Why?”
“Insufficient men, insufficient armor and insufficient surprise. And they must have known we had mined the whole area and pre-registered our artillery all across it.”
The general was silent for a moment then said to von Altenstadt, “Keep Mr. Lucas company while he finishes his meal, would you.” I looked anxiously at Karl but the general put his arm beneath mine and said, “Don’t worry, he will be fine. Come with me please.”
I followed him outside to a balcony and Feuerstak stood behind us as off in the distance we could see the Liri Valley running south down to Monte Cassino Abbey. “You are quite sure your General has it in his mind that that we have occupied the Abbey?”
“That’s what they have told me.”
“If I let you go will you set yourself to persuading your General that he is wrong, that the Abbey is simply a house of God and poses him no threat?”
“How do I do that, I’m just a nameless lieutenant?”
“The Good Samaritan had no name. Nor any rank either.”
“Even if I try, why would they listen to me?”
“You must make them listen to you.”
“But how?”
“The chance to do something really good comes rarely in life, and we must never ignore it. It may not earn us fame or fortune because often no-one else may even know we have done it. But we must do it anyway, for character may be the strength we demonstrate when no-one is watching. And if we do not, then we too have failed to give birth to the greater person we can each aspire to be, but have settled instead for being a far, far lesser one.”
“Have you ever been given that chance, to be a light in the darkness?”
“Once.”
“Did you take it?”
“It is not important.”
“It is to me.”
“When he was in Sicily the General was instructed by our High Command to round up every Italian Officer on the island and execute them,” Feuerstak said.
“Please Feuerstak, it is not necessary,” Brother Frido said quietly.
“So what did you do?” I asked him.
“The general ignored the order and sent them back to their families instead,” Feuerstak answered for him.
“I still don’t know how I would even start?”
“Do you believe in destiny, Patricia?” the General asked.
“That there are a bunch of old women somewhere up in heaven threading the tapestry of each of our futures, a future none of us can avoid? No.”
“The Germanic nations call them Norns. But they do not thread our future, they thread our potential, and it is up to us whether we fulfill it.”
“I had a professor at college who spoke just like that. Perhaps you should one day become a teacher too.”
“Who knows what we may become given the chance.”
“Okay. I’ll convince them, somehow,” I heard myself whisper, without having the slightest idea how I would. “And Karl? You’ll let him go too?”
“After I make a simple request of him as well.”
“I’m not sure he’s in quite the mood to comply with any request.”
“Then I will release him anyway, as I would have with you.”
And Brother Frido took me back inside and walked over to the piano and opened its lid. “I was not made to participate in the invasion of Poland, thank God,” he said to Karl. “I was at a concert the evening before it happened in Berlin. We were there to listen to a young pianist whom many thought the heir to Paderewski himself. If my memory serves me correctly he was even taught by that master at the Warsaw Musical Institute.”
“Who’s Paderewski?” I asked.
“Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist, composer and patriot who had once been your prime Minister, was he not?” Brother Frido said to Karl. “He is I believe credited with re-uniting your country after the First World War.” I looked at Karl but his face showed no expression whatsoever. “They made a film of him, Moonlight Sonata it was called. But there was a strong rumor that owing to his advanced age Paderewski was unable to play the very difficult music that movie required. I had even heard stories that Karel Lucasewicz, that same young Polish pianist, dubbed them for him.”
“He died you know,” Karl said very quietly.
“I am sorry,” Brother Frido responded with obvious sincerity.
“He was homeless too you see, like so many of us Poles now are. He was in America so they buried him in Arlington Cemetery.”
“Lucasewicz was to play Franz Liszt’s transcription of the Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in the second half of the concert. Of course that second half never happened.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“The whole concert was just a diversion the German Army High Command carefully planned to occupy the minds of the many Wehrmacht officers in Berlin who had no wish to begin a war. But during it word leaked out that we were going to attack Poland just a few hours later. Of course most of the officers left and Lucasewicz was quite alone looking up at the emptying hall. God knows what the poor man felt. I remember I sat there watching him, wondering what he knew and what he might be thinking.”
“I was thinking about my family,” said Karl very quietly.
“As I was thinking of mine,” said Brother Frido.“Would you play it, please now, for us, Mr. Lucasewicz, the Liszt transcription.”
“I swore that evening I would never again ever play for German soldiers.”
“I’m sure your oath only applied to live ones,” Oster said. “And like as not the ones you’ll play it to now, will all be dead quite soon.”
“Please Karl for me if not for them. Please.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s right. We must all judge each other by what we do, not by what we wear.”
“It’s been too long. I would need the score.”
“Here,” Brother Frido said offering Karl the music.
“I’d still need someone to turn the pages for me.”
“I’ll do it,” I said taking the music from Brother Frido.
“You?”
“I won’t mess up, I promise.” And Karl looked at me, looked at the piano, walked over and I sat beside him.
And as I turned the pages of his music, who knows, Karl may even have been thinking of Marie as he played the Liszt transcription of the Liebestod, the love-death aria. And as we all sat in silence he played it with a passion and feeling I for one was unaware any piano could produce.
***
Later outside I saw another German officer standing by our jeep. He was dressed very strangely I remember. He wore a kilt over his field dress, a khaki one, and had a bone-handled dagger hanging round his neck suspended where Freddie might wear a sporran. “This is General Baade,” Brother Frido said. “He will guide you back to the Allied lines.”
“Tell me just one thing please,” I said to Brother Frido. “You know who he was, don’t you? That older man I was with at Monte Cassino?”
“Who he was? Yes. What he would become. No.” answered Brother Frido.
“But then you can’t ever know what someone’s going to become, can you,” I responded. “not till you see them become it.”
“You can know what you will become, if you have set your mind to becoming it.”
“And the Norns allow it?”
He laughed and handed me a book, “This may help you in your resolve.” The book was in German and entitled Nachfolge, and was written by someone I’d never heard of named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “I met Bonhoeffer just before the War at the home of the von Kleist family. He is that rarity in life, a unique theological mind and yet a brave man of action. I feel sure one day he will either make up hi mind to help kill Adolf Hitler or let Adolf Hitler kill him.”
“I don’t think my German is good enough to understand an author as complex as that.”
“I’m sure Mr. Lucaseweicz here will help translate him for you.”
But as Feuerstak moved to put a blindfold over my eyes I said, “May I take a photograph of you, General?”
“Why not?” And I pulled my camera from out the jeep and did. And as I did he looked again to his left.
“Perhaps we shall meet again one day,” I said.
“This time I do not think so,” he replied and walked back inside.
***
Later that evening, back blindfolded and run around a few more times to disorient us, Feuerstak drove us back down a rear track west of Cassino and parked. Baade spoke in to the field telephone in English, “Baade here. No firing gentlemen. We are returning some non-belligerents of yours who appear to have gotten lost.” Then I could hear him putting back the phone. “Good luck,” he said.
“Where are you leaving us?” asked Karl.
“No man’s land,” Baade answered. “Neither army can hold this part of the valley so we both leave it unoccupied.”
“And our blindfolds?” I asked.
“You may take them off when you can no longer hear the sound of our engine.”
I felt Feuerstak’s hand touch my arm, “And you can trust him you know,” he said to me. “The General, I mean.”
“Trust him about what?” Karl asked.
“That the Abbey isn’t occupied by our soldiers,” Feuerstak said.
“Is that what he told you?” Karl asked me.
“Yes.”
“And why should any of us trust any German general about anything?”
“You remember he spoke of losing his brother in a war too?” Feuerstak whispered.
“So?”
“He was speaking of the tank battle at Cambrai in France in 1917, when young Johan Gustav was shot down by British fighters and killed. General Senger drove to the front, of course he was not a general then just a junior officer, younger even than you are now Miss Hampton, and found the mass grave where Johan lay. He dug for hours. Our counter attack passed by him but he kept on digging. British artillery fire forced him many times to take cover amongst the dead. But he eventually found Johan’s body at the lowest of three levels of corpses, dragged him into his car, and drove him off him sitting in the passenger seat for a proper funeral. Even a Pole can trust any man who does that.”
Feuerstak put both our wallets and watches back in our laps “And I’m so very, very sorry what some of my countrymen did to so many of yours, Mr. Lucas. And if by the simple act of yielding up my own life I could bring them all back, I would.” And as Feuerstak walked off I could tell by his breathing that even Karl was a little shocked.
They put us back in the jeep and we could hear them u-turn the staff car. “Drive on down when we are gone,” Baade whispered. “Our artillery will not shoot at you at night. It gives away their position too easily.”
“And ours?” I asked.
“Hopefully they have learned that too.”
Then we could hear the staff car drive off, and when we no longer could hear anything we both took off our blindfolds.
Karl looked around at the ancient walls surrounding us like a huge circle. “So where the hell is this?”
“It’s the Roman amphitheater a few miles north of Cassino town.”
“Is it indeed.”
“Mark Anthony had it built for his amusement. He used to keep a villa here.”
“Well I’ll say one thing for your Brother Frido,” Karl said, looking around at its high walls.
“What’s that?”
“He’s got a rare sense of decency about him.”
“Why?”
“By rights he could have had you strung up from the nearest telephone pole for operating behind enemy lines out of uniform.”
“And if he had, strung me up from the nearest telephone pole, would you have the manly thing and taken the big drop with me?”
“I was right,” he said, “You are mad,” and he drove us off.
***
We drove the jeep up through mud-strewn shell holes, heard the sounds of movement above and soon were surrounded by a group of helmeted dark-skinned soldiers with woolen striped kaftans running from head to toe, and all with their rifles pointed towards us. “They’re Goumiers, Juin’s French Moroccan irregulars.” Karl said.
“Vous êtes soldats de l’armee libre Francais?” I asked them.
“Westminster,” one of the Goumiers said.
“Westminster? What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked.
“He wants tonight’s password response,” Karl said. “You did bring them with you didn’t you?”
I fished in my pocket and found the list I’d copied out in my godfather’s caravan. “Cathedral” I said, “Westminster Cathedral.”
“Don’t you mean Abbey?” Karl asked.
“We pick passwords that can be remembered, but they’re also usually not quite the most obvious one. Westminster Cathedral,” I repeated with authority, and thankfully that satisfied the Goumiers, up to a point anyway.
“Et pourquoi avez-vous ête en baisse par rapport a la conduit du côte Allemande?” their leader asked pointing back up to the German lines.
“What’d he say,” asked Karl.
“He was enquiring exactly what it was we were doing behind the German lines in the first place.”
“Tell him it’s a long story,” Karl said.
“C’est une longue histoire,” I dutifully responded.
“Ensuite, le plus rapide de commencer á nous dire, le plus rapide nous pouvons fente de votre ami a la gorge, si nous le crois pas.”
“What’s he saying now?” asked Karl
“That the quicker you start recounting this long story, the quicker they can slit your throat if they don’t believe it.”
“My throat, why mine, why not yours?”
Then the lead Goumiers came a little nearer and ran his finger over my cheek, “Et puis amusez-nous avec vous, cherie.”
“What’s he saying now?”
“He was wondering if after your impending decease he might have permission to date your widow,” said General Juin, as he appeared from the darkness with his invariable smile on his face, dismissing the Goumiers who ran off like first form schoolgirls rebuked by their headmistress. “It was a fair question though. What indeed were you doing out there?”
“We got lost,” I responded meekly.
“And did you get lost too, Mr. Lucas.”
“We went out for a moonlit drive and took a wrong turn.”
“I’d be careful, both of you. Your next wrong turn could land you up in Gestapo headquarters in Rome.”
“It won’t happen again,” Karl answered.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” General Juin responded with a smile.
“Can I ask you a question, General.
“Why don’t I answer that after you’ve told me what the question is.”
“Have any of your men actually spotted German artillery observers up there in the Abbey? I mean really seen them for themselves?”
“We’ve never gotten anywhere near enough.”
“I thought you had gotten nearer than any of us?”
“But not near enough for that.”
“But you have seen the photos we’ve got of them?”
“No-one’s ever mentioned to me anything about us having photos.”
“You’re quite sure?” I asked.
“Quite sure.” he answered.
***
We arrived back outside Bomb Cottage, but as Karl was about to get out the jeep I placed the book Brother Frido had given me in his lap. “What does it mean, the title, Nachfolge?”
“I suppose you’d translate it as… discipleship.”
“Discipleship, eh? And what’s this Bonhoeffer gentleman have to say about it?”
Karl read the blurb on the inside dust cover. “He says true Christians must rid themselves of any notion of getting into heaven on the cheap.”
“What’s on the cheap mean?”
Karl read a little further then said, “It means earning grace without experiencing suffering.”
“Then what kind of grace is he proposing we receive?”
“Only the costly kind.”
“What kind’s that?”
“The kind where you must risk all for the right to sit by the side of God.”
“Risk all what?”
“All everything,”
“And if you don’t risk it?”
“You don’t get in.”
“Not at all?”
“Not if Herr Bonhoeffer has his way.”
“Mm.” I said as I took the book back from him and we headed inside.