9

March 1944
Near Val Masino
The Valtellina
North Italy

 

 

Sandro nodded to a man whose name he did not know as he left the camp in Luigi’s footsteps.

There were now some thirty-five men in the group of which Sandro was a member. They lived in these mountains over which they had total control, only visiting their families under cover of darkness or when they were absolutely certain of their safety.

In the early months of 1944, the politicians in Milan and Rome seemed finally to have come to some sort of agreement amongst themselves as to who the real enemy was and the Allies, from an earlier position of doubt, had gradually begun to understand the value these groups of fighters, no matter their political colour, could provide in blowing up bridges and sabotaging troop movements. At the same time, men had been flocking to join the nearest partisan group as the Germans began to send fit Italian men to do war work in Germany. Even if they escaped the dire consequences of transportation to the Fatherland, they still faced the possibility of being called up by Mussolini to support the Republic he had set up in Salò. Many of the partisans were also deserters from the Italian army and other groups contained American, British and Canadian soldiers, prisoners of war who had escaped from the Italian camps and whose fighting experience was proving invaluable in this guerrilla warfare.

The atmosphere in the camp was nervous. Operations in the valley had recently been very successful and had hurt the local German garrison very badly. They were having to throw more and more men into the fight against the partisans, distracting them from the even more serious threat of the Allied invasion from the south, which signalled the beginning of a push planned to take the Allies relentlessly to Berlin.

There were reports drifting back from the valley that the Germans were beginning to take steps against the local population. The slightest infringement of the stringent laws the occupying army had introduced resulted in harsh punishments for young and old. Thus, many of the men feared for their loved ones and guiltily prayed that it would be someone else’s family that would suffer.

Sandro was no different. He was a hardened fighting man now. He had taken part in many actions, had done his share whenever it was required. His face, too had taken on a toughened look, had become weather-beaten and sharp. He had the air of someone older than his years. Lack of sleep and long hours staring down the barrel of his gun had carved an experience into his countenance that would have otherwise taken years to achieve.

His hardness, the cold, expressionless way in which he went about the business of waging war on strangers, mostly as young as, or even younger than him, had not, however, eroded his thoughts and feelings for those he loved.

His father was dead. He had at last succumbed to his long illness before Christmas – and Sandro now had only his mother to worry about. She would be alright, however, and was unlikely to find herself in trouble, even from this occupying army who found trouble in a gaze in the street that lingered a few seconds too long.

He worried constantly, however, about Angela. He saw her infrequently, still in their clearing amongst the trees. She seemed almost happier these days, no longer having to listen for the language of Luigi’s footsteps every night, no longer having to anticipate his mood and whether it was going to cause her pain, for he, of course, like Sandro was living in the mountains, moving camp every few nights to evade capture, although the Germans now ventured rarely into the higher slopes of the mountains, so tightly did the partisans control them.

Therefore, the group acted almost as it pleased and struck at the Germans frequently and effectively. Money, too, was coming in to help their efforts and it was to ease the transport of money to another group that Luigi and Sandro were walking back along the side of the valley towards Chiavenna.

They were to meet up with members of a squad from the valleys to the west who had accompanied from the Swiss border an Englishman bearing a large sum of money, which would furnish a brigade further along the valley with a war chest. Luigi and Sandro had orders to guide the Englishman to the edge of the territory that they patrolled by tomorrow evening, when they would be met by the other group.

The smell of a wood-fire alerted them to the proximity of the other partisans and a great deal of back-slapping and hand-shaking took place following their arrival in the clearing where the others had been waiting.

‘Falcone!’ – this was the nom de guerre that Luigi had adopted, as all did to avoid any casual connection of their names with espionage activities – ‘good to see you. How goes it in the Valtellina? Come and have something to eat and tell us how many Germans you’ve killed.’ They all laughed.

In the valleys of North Italy, Luigi – ‘Il Falcone’ – had by now gained a brutal reputation for dispatching the enemy in a fairly unceremonious fashion. Since that day on which Dino had given up his life all those months ago, and on which Sandro had cried for the two terrified, young Germans that Luigi had executed in the trees, he had witnessed Luigi’s ability to turn his heart icy cold on many occasions. In fact, he had become immune to it, the more frequently he had experienced it. So, he listened to Luigi’s immodest recounting of recent actions and his lurid details of the deaths of tens of Germans without much interest.

Meanwhile, the Englishman sat apart from them, studying maps and scribbling in a small notebook. He was slight of build, with thinning hair. A pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose gave him the air of an academic. Sandro speculated that he had probably been a school-teacher or something similar before the war.

He walked over to the edge of the clearing where the Englishman was sitting.

‘We weren’t introduced,’ – Luigi had deemed Sandro too unimportant to introduce properly to the group – ‘I’m Lupo.’ Sandro, too, had another name by which the war knew him. It was as if they all wished to divest themselves of their true selves for the duration of this conflict, as if their actions during these times could be considered to have been carried out by people who were not actually them. They were like performers, actors on a stage, taking on the roles of these soldiers, these killers.

‘Ah, Lupo. A good name, indeed!’ The Englishman’s Italian was impressive, with a strong southern accent. ‘Sorry I don’t have as romantic a name as you. Captain George Bright of the SOE.’ He put down the notebook and the maps and shook Sandro’s hand. He then removed the spectacles from his nose and rubbed his eyes, at the same time yawning. ‘I think I’ve been living the good life in Berne a little too long. I’m completely exhausted after walking for a couple of days.’

They talked for quarter of an hour and Sandro learned something about George Bright’s life. He had not been too far wrong about his pre-war occupation. He had, in fact, been a lecturer at a small college in the south of England, married with one child, a girl of ten whom he had not seen for almost a year and whom he obviously missed more than words could express. It was easy to tell just how much he missed her from the look that entered his eyes when he showed Sandro a photograph of her – a blonde, curly-haired child with a smiling face: ‘Smile for Daddy a long way away,’ he could hear voices saying on the other side of the lens.

Eventually, Luigi stirred himself from his conversation. Throwing a piece of rabbit bone down on the fire and wiping his greasy lips with the sleeve of his coat, he announced that it was time they set off, so that they could get in a couple of hours’ walking before darkness fell on the mountains. They made their farewells and left.

They walked in silence, Luigi leading, the Englishman in the middle and Sandro bringing up the rear. After a couple of hours, they stopped for the night beneath a rocky outcrop, which sheltered them from the slight drizzle that had begun to fall. After eating some cold meat that they had brought with them, they lay down to sleep as best they could, surrounded by the mist that had begun to envelop the mountains.

Next morning, as Sandro rolled his blanket and tied it to his rucksack, Luigi came over to him, drinking from a pewter hip flask.

‘Ach!’ he shivered as the liquid hit the back of his throat. ‘Want some?’ He held the flask out to Sandro.

‘No thanks, Falcone.’ Sandro had grown to hate this habit of drinking grappa to kick-start the day. It only made his head fuzzier and it upset his stomach.

‘You know, I’ve been thinking, lad.’ Luigi wiped his mouth after taking another hefty slug from the flask. ‘In this weather the Germans aren’t going to be out in the hills.’ He looked out across the valley, or rather, he looked in that direction, but the mist and the relentless drizzle that accompanied it, meant that he could see little but a hanging greyness that clothed the entire valley. ‘I really don’t think there’s any need for you to come any further.’

Sandro was confused. ‘Why? What do you mean, Falcone?’

‘I mean, we’re not far from your village. Why don’t you go and visit your mother, see if she’s alright?’ He smiled. ‘I can manage the remainder of this journey on my own. We’re only about fifteen miles from the meeting place. We should be there in about four or five hours, if the Englishman can keep up.’ He sneered in the direction of Captain Bright, who sat on the edge of a rock, wiping his glasses with a grubby handkerchief. ‘And I do know where I’m going.’

‘But, no. It wouldn’t be safe, Falcone.’ Sandro was elated and reluctant to argue too vehemently in favour of staying with Luigi and the Englishman. The thought of seeing his mother and maybe even Angela, filled him with anticipation and no small amount of guilt that Luigi was giving him permission to once again wrap his arms around his wife.

‘Oh, of course, it would be safe. In fact, it might even be safer without you. One less pair of boots blundering through the undergrowth might make less noise. Go! Go and see your mamma. And enjoy some home cooking. That, Lupo, is an order from your comandante!’

A huge smile creased Luigi’s features and he laughed, slapping Sandro on the back and knocking the wind out of his lungs.

 

Indeed, it was wonderful to be back in his own house with his mother busying herself around the range on the fire-place, cooking for him as if that was the purpose for which she had been put on the earth. She had cried when she saw him and threw her arms around him.

Later, towards midnight, he stood outside, leaning against the wall of the house, blowing the smoke from the last cigarette of the day into the night. The mist had cleared as the day had progressed and the night was now clear, with a three-quarter moon illuminating the village below his mother’s house and making the shadows of the far side of the valley just discernible.

He was thinking of the detour he would make tomorrow to visit Angela on the way back to the camp – Luigi had told him he did not have to be there until nightfall. His heart thumped against the wall of his chest in anticipation of stroking her skin and of feeling her warm, moist breath drying on his face.

Suddenly, however, he was stirred from his dreaming by a sound emanating from the trees to the right of the house. His body stiffened. It could be a deer or a stray dog, but there was the unmistakable sound of twigs cracking underfoot. His rifle was inside the house, he was fully illuminated by moonlight and, consequently, there was little he could do as the sounds came closer.

A shape emerged from the trees and Sandro awaited others to join it, fully expecting this to be a German patrol, alerted to the fact that there was a partisan in the vicinity. Already playing in his mind were questions: how could they know? Who had told them? What would happen to Mamma?

‘Sandro!’ The voice was lenten and hoarse. ‘Sandro! It’s me … Luigi …’ The shape then crumpled to the ground amongst the leaves that had lain there since autumn. His father would normally have cleared them, but by the time autumn had arrived he had been dying and the leaves had remained there throughout the winter, a reminder of his absence.

Sandro threw his cigarette down and ran towards the dark, fallen shape of Luigi.

‘Luigi! What’s happened?’ Sandro cried, and looking around, he asked ‘Where’s the Englishman?’ Sandro helped him up and, putting Luigi’s arm around his shoulder, he half-carried and half-dragged him into the house.

‘Mamma! Mamma!’ She emerged from the next room, clad in a night-dress, a frightened look clouding her face. He said urgently, ‘Mamma! It’s my comandante. He’s been hurt … shot!’ He was looking at Luigi’s shoulder. The whole right side of his body was shiny with blood, as if he had dipped his arm in a vat of wine. But the hole in his coat showed where the bullet had entered, a similar hole on the other side showing that, fortunately, it had also exited. ‘Quick, Mamma, he’s lost a lot of blood.’ His mother put a pot of water on the fire as Sandro removed Luigi’s coat and tore his shirt at the shoulder to get at the wound. Luigi’s face was drained of all colour and he was shaking, as if chilled. ‘He’s in shock, Mamma. We need to keep him warm.’

His mother busied herself with cloths and boiling water as Luigi drifted in and out of consciousness.

‘We were almost at the meeting place.’ Luigi grimaced as a wave of pain shook his shoulder. ‘We were early. I will say one thing for that English capitano, Sandro, he was brave. I could tell he was finding it hard going, but he carried on without complaining.’

‘Here, try some of this.’ Sandro held a cup of broth to Luigi’s lips and he drank from it.

‘But we were almost there and, you know, I sensed something wasn’t right. I could almost smell it. We rounded the side of a small hill just above Cerese and they were waiting for us. The Englishman was felled by the first volley. I fell back at once, heading off the trail, but a stray one caught me.’ He winced, shifting position on the bed on which he lay. ‘I didn’t really notice it because I was so preoccupied with getting away from them. But when I stopped to get my breath back I knew all about it. It hurt like hell.’

‘The Englishman …?’

‘Oh, he was a goner. I could see as soon as he hit the ground. He took a lot of bullets, poor man. They were on the track in front of us. I thought the only thing was to try to get back here to your mother’s house. Christ, I thought I’d never make it.’

A little later, Sandro went back into the bedroom to see how Luigi was, all thoughts of going to see Angela having disappeared from his head.

‘Sandro, I am feeling better,’ he said hoarsely, ‘but there is one thing that is worrying me.’

‘Yes, what is it, Luigi?’

‘Well, you know I sent you back here because I figured you hadn’t seen your mamma in quite some time and I know your father, God rest his soul, is only recently deceased. I did it with the best possible intentions and I really didn’t think the Germans would be out and about in such weather. What we were doing was a piece of cake.’

‘Yes, and I feel guilty as hell for not being there.’ said Sandro, shaking his head.

‘Exactly, Sandro, my lad. And I’m worried now that there will be repercussions. The English capitano was carrying a substantial sum of money and that is now lost to the Germans. I could get into serious trouble with headquarters for being casual in my approach to this exercise.’

‘I’m sorry, Luigi, I should have insisted …’

‘Unless …’ said Luigi, looking steadily at Sandro.

‘Unless what?’ said Sandro, guilt lacerating his mind.

‘Unless we just forget to tell anyone that you were not there?’ He smiled now, smoothing down the blankets in front of him.

‘Forget?’

‘Yes, forget. After all, what difference would it have made if you had been there? The Germans would still have been waiting for us. The Englishman would still be dead. In fact, you might be dead also and, yes, it is terrible that the Englishman is dead, but it would be worse still if a good partisan were also out of action.’

Captain George Bright’s bespectacled face entered Sandro’s head at that moment and the smiling face of the daughter he had not seen for so long and who he would never see again crossed his mind.

‘Well, if it’ll help. I suppose it wouldn’t really have made that much of a difference if I had been there.’

‘Exactly, lad. Exactly. Now we will just forget that you weren’t there. Eh?’ He lay back on the pillow behind his head, closed his eyes and drifted into sleep once more.

 

Once again, Sandro leaned on the wall beside the front door, smoking a cigarette. There was something gnawing at the back of his mind like a dog with a bone, but he had no idea what it was. He feared that he no longer trusted the man who was sleeping in the room behind him, feared that he had never trusted him or his humanity, ever since Angela had told him about the beatings that she took from him, ever since he had disappeared into the trees with those two young Germans. And even now. He had no reason to doubt what Luigi had told him, but there was something inside him warning him that he should take everything this man said with a pinch of salt, that Luigi somehow saw himself standing outside of the rules by which other people lived.

There were moments, he realised, when he considered Luigi to be as much the embodiment of evil as the Nazis.

Waging war, taking lives, places blinkers over your eyes, he realised. You enter a tunnel that is walled by violence and death. At no point do you step back, step outside the cycle of death and violence to weigh up exactly what is going on, exactly who you are killing and what this killing is doing to those who are wielding the weapons. The valley, the Valtellina, still existed, its walls climbing up towards jagged peaks. The tracks that he had walked as a boy still led to the same places on either side of the valley. But so much, so much had changed and would never again be the same.

He went back into the house, put a flask of water in his pack, picked up his rifle and said to his mother, ‘I am going out for much of the day. I think he will sleep. If he wakes up tell him I will be back before nightfall.’ He could not bring himself to utter Luigi’s name.

She nodded and returned wordlessly to the pot that was boiling on the range.

 

As he climbed towards the track that Luigi and George Bright would have taken, he calculated the time that they had been en route. His years, as a boy, of tramping across these mountains gave him a unique and innate ability to work out how long it would take to get anywhere.

He considered Luigi’s wounded stumble towards his mother’s house and added it to the time at which they had separated, high on the valley side. Eventually, after walking with measured steps for five hours, he arrived in an area that felt right to him, that by his calculations should be where the ambush had taken place yesterday.

The trees were skeletal and regular, as if they had been placed in the ground as part of a plantation. The earth was russet with the leaves that had remained there since last autumn and above it all, the sky was cobalt-blue. It was cold in the early morning, but it was at least still, without any wind. Later, it would probably even become quite warm, he thought, bringing the first intimations of the heat of spring.

He started to make a sweep of the area around the track, in long strips, zig-zagging back and forth, his eyes darting from right to left, in search of anything that looked at all unusual. He indicated each strip with a wooden marker and reckoned he could carefully search about ten feet on either side as he walked.

He had stopped for something to eat at about eleven-thirty in the morning and sat on a stone, sweating, wondering what on earth he was doing, what he was hoping to find. Or was this all about hoping not to find anything?

Three hours later, however, he did find it. It was about twenty feet from the main track, on the south side of it. He saw it from a distance, hoping it was something else, but knowing that it was not. A pile of leaves, a beautiful golden-brown heap, bathed in spots of sunlight that sprinkled down between the branches of the trees.

He walked up to it and bent down to brush the top layer of leaves away, tears falling from his eyes onto them.

The dark English uniform had mud splatters on it from the hike through the mountains and the face was grubby from the leaves that had lain on it for a day.

George Bright wore a surprised look on his face, his eyes staring out in an almost quizzical manner and his mouth open as if in the process of saying ‘What …?’

As Sandro tried to lift the Englishman’s head he felt, with a sinking stomach, his finger disappearing into a space in the back. He bent down to have a look, turning the already stiff neck, and found a small, round hole in the back of the head, just above the neck.

He uncovered the rest of the body and examined it for other wounds, but, as he had feared, found none.

‘He took a lot of bullets, poor man. They were on the track in front of us.’ Luigi’s words reverberated in his head.

Captain George Bright had taken only one bullet and that was in the back of the head.

 

It had been dark for several hours by the time Sandro returned home. He had sat for a very long time in the forest, thinking about what he should do, but continually revisiting the guilt he felt about Angela. But he also had an overwhelming desire to see her again. He felt he could hardly do that if he were to have her husband killed, which was, in effect, what would happen if he were to tell the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale, the body who controlled all partisan activity, what had really happened to George Bright. Against this, of course, was weighed the photograph of the Englishman’s daughter, smiling out at a world filled with hope and promise and not the world filled with death and despair that Sandro felt he now occupied.

He walked into the house still undecided, but, within moments, heard himself saying to the figure that lay on the bed, ‘Luigi, my friend, how are you? Is it any easier?’

*

Sandro’s boots left a trail of dark prints on the snow that dusted the rocks across which he walked. There had even been a fall of snow down on the valley floor. That meant that it would be even heavier up amongst the higher peaks. which for the last few days had been shrouded in impenetrable cloud.

It was without too much fear of discovery, therefore, that Sandro descended the side of the valley with the intention of once more falling into Angela’s arms under the familiar rock overhang. It was cold, but these days the partisans were well-clothed. The Allies had provided coats, warm clothing and boots before Christmas and Sandro no longer had to rely on the unpleasant necessity of plundering the bodies of dead Germans. It didn’t stop some of his colleagues, however.

From high up its northern slope, the valley looked wonderful this particular morning. He rarely found time now to wander at will like this, as he used to, but a number of the group who had taken part in several operations recently had been stood down for two days and they were all making their way to visit loved ones. Sandro was hoping to meet up with Angela. She went to their clearing after lunch each and every day just in case he somehow was in the area. In the last few months they had met only twice and even then for a very short time, in which they held each other so tight that the breath had almost deserted their bodies.

His anticipation increased the closer he came to the clearing. He had found, during the last six months, that the very thought of Angela was his saving grace. She entered his head and cleared it of all the misery of the war, all the conflicting feelings that he endured. He thought of her as he lay down at night, attempting to sleep, wrapped in layers of blankets as protection against the mountain chill; fantasised about a different life with her and baby Antonio, in another place far from the Valtellina; imagined going home to her each night; felt, even in the cold mountain air, the heat of her embrace beneath blankets in a warm bed.

As he rounded a small hill close to her village, however, he experienced a familiar feeling. It was a feeling of dread, of danger. It was almost as if he had developed a sixth sense over the past months and could smell danger like the smell of a wood fire from a distance.

And, in fact, the first confirmation he had that something was actually wrong was the smell of burning wood. His nostrils twitched and then his eyes widened as he rounded the hill above the village in which Angela lived. A plume of dark smoke climbed out of it, drifting lazily into the sky.

He stopped dead in his tracks, trying to control his muscles. His hands shook and his knees trembled as if he had just climbed a steep slope. Then he started out again, increasing his pace, coming down the hill. His fear for Angela and Antonio was almost tangible. A foreboding within him told him that it was already too late, that this was the end of the best thing that would ever happen to him.

He heard someone moving towards him on the same track. He or she was moving at speed, crashing into branches and bushes. He stepped to one side, fearing that it might be a German.

Suddenly, around the corner ran an elderly woman, clutching a baby to her chest. Her eyes were wild, looking in every direction and her breath was being dragged out of the very corners of her lungs.

Sandro stepped out in front of her, his arms open wide to halt her headlong rush.

‘Madonna, cosa fai …?’ she gasped, knocking Sandro back a few paces.

‘Signora, what’s wrong? Calma … calma. Why are you running …?’

‘The Germans …’ she gulped in oxygen and slumped to the ground, clasping the child to her even more tightly. ‘They came about an hour ago … herded us all out of our houses like cattle … and started setting fire to them. Old Salvatore Pezzo protested and they shot him. They just shot him! He did nothing …’

‘Easy … Calma …’ He knelt beside her, holding her shoulder and shaking it. ‘Why did they come? Why did they do this?’

‘I don’t know. They’re starting to hurt us for what the partisans do. Two days ago, they took hostages in the next village to ours and shot a dozen of them.’

‘Did they take anyone from your village?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know why. They only took one. I don’t know what she had done …’

‘Who was it?’ he asked, knowing full well what the answer was going to be. ‘Who was she?’

‘She has done nothing. She has a baby …’

‘Who? What was her name?’ His voice rising. He knew already.

‘Ronconi. It was the Ronconi woman. The wife of Luigi who has the garage down on the Sondrio road. They took her and her baby. The baby was screaming and she was shouting at them. I ran with my daughter’s baby. I don’t know what they’re doing to the rest. I was at the back of the crowd of villagers and I sneaked away. Ohhh …’ She collapsed into torrents of tears, her fists bunched into her eyes as if to rub away the sight she had just witnessed. ‘This damned war! When will it end?’

‘Come with me. I’ll take you to my mother’s house.’

He half-carried the old woman and her granddaughter the few kilometres to his mother’s house and by the time they arrived there she was exhausted by both the walk and the events she had witnessed.

Sandro bade his farewells to his mother and returned to the burning village.

He slid like a shadow along the sides of the buildings on the outskirts, rifle at the ready – it was carried at all times now – heart pounding, concerned that there would still be Germans in the village. Smoke billowed into the sky from a few of the houses, but a ghostly silence reigned, as if the world had been emptied of birdsong and the everyday sounds that held the houses together like mortar between the bricks – the echoing sing-song voices and the sounds of cooking implements; the shrieks of children and the deep-voiced grunts of the men, home for lunch.

He looked out from behind one building and there was the village square. The church, a dilapidated dark grey building with an imposing front door stood on one side. Houses looked out from the other sides, smoke drifting lazily from the windows of one of them. In the centre of the square lay a body – the old man, Salvatore Pezzo, no doubt, of whom the old lady had spoken – but apart from that there was not a movement.

Reckoning that the Germans had departed, Sandro walked out towards the body, his gun still at the ready and shouted, ‘Ho! Is anybody there?’

Not a sound. Again, he shouted:

‘Ho! Anyone!’

There was a movement behind him and he turned swiftly, his finger tightening over the trigger of his rifle. But it was a young woman with a child. Then to his left, an elderly couple appeared and following them an entire family of men, women and children; all shuffling out of their homes silently, staring at him in terror.

*

Angela shifted position again. The old man to her left had fallen asleep and his head had come to rest on her shoulder. She shivered as she felt it roll uncomfortably against her collar bone. He smelled awful; his breath was rank and his body stank. But then, she probably did not smell very good either, she thought, letting her head fall back against the wooden slats of the carriage, staring up at the roof.

The train had not moved now for many hours. It had stopped in the last hours of the night and the hundred or so souls in the carriage had watched the first shafts of light begin to splinter the gaps between the planks of wood that made up the walls and roof of the carriage.

At first it had been good to stop moving. The endless bumping of the carriage across the tracks jarred bones and stretched already aching muscles. After the silence of the night, the light had instigated a fresh round of sounds from the huddled group, like a human dawn chorus. From one corner a woman had talked endlessly, a stream of words in a language that Angela could not understand, words that seemed to have no gaps between them. She imagined a long, thin stream of paper being pulled from the woman’s mouth, covered in the strange letters of an unknown alphabet. From other corners came the sound of weeping and the deep, gruff sounds of men’s voices trying to calm their sources.

Gradually as the morning had worn on and turned, she presumed, into early afternoon, an eerie silence had descended on the carriage. She looked at the faces around her. They were grey and dirty. Children stared back at her with sunken eyes. They stared at her but saw nothing, helplessness and hopelessness forming cataracts over their vision. They earthed themselves in their parents, clinging desperately to them as if in the grip of a huge wind that was going to tear them away, lifting their tiny bodies into the sky like paper kites.

Antonio slept in Angela’s aching arms. For the two days she had been in the carriage, she had held him to her breast as if she were trying to force him between her ribs to make him a part of her. He had cried with hunger yesterday, at first angrily and, gradually, more and more hopelessly, staring into her eyes, pleading for something to eat. Eventually, his tears had dried into dirty, salty streaks on his face and he had gone silent, resigned to this new feeling of constant hunger.

In the middle of the night, they had been given water, which had been passed around in silence, politely almost, as if they had been sitting round a kitchen table, eating dinner.

At last there were shouts outside: the harsh vowels and consonants of the German language and the train shuddered into movement once more, slowly at first and then faster.

Angela stared at a hole in the roof, through which she could see dark, rain-bearing clouds passing up above. These were alien clouds, however; not the clouds of her homeland, the clouds that hung as if on strings above the mountain peaks of the Valtellina. She knew she would never see them again. She would never see Luigi again. She would never again burst through the bushes into that clearing above the village and see Sandro rolling a cigarette between his slim fingers, a smile spreading across his handsome face like the sun across the valley floor in the morning.

She fell asleep once more, hearing the crackle of rain on the roof but dreaming that it was the sound of rain on the overhanging rock that sheltered two lovers entwined in each other’s arms on the side of a mountain.