16

July 1944
Sondrio
North Italy

 

 

Obersturmführer Erich Weber was a creature of habit. Each night, he would leave the old school building and walk towards the eastern end of town, where the houses and buildings became slightly shabbier and the streets narrower and darker. He visited a woman, a girl, really.

Sandro had followed her, too, during the day when Weber was busy. A young prostitute, living with her family, but seeing her clients in the empty house next door to the one in which her parents lived. She was neither beautiful nor plain. He had noted the exhaustion in her face as he sat a few tables away from her one day in a cafe, where she had stopped to meet a friend.

One night, he lingered in the street outside her house long after Weber had emerged and lit his customary cigarette before disappearing back towards the centre of town.

He walked up to her door and after once raising his hand to knock and taking it away, finally banged loudly. The sound echoed and there was a pause before he heard footsteps coming from above.

She peered out around the door, her body hidden.

‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was soft and sounded young. He had not realised quite how young she was. For a moment he stood there, unable to say anything.

‘Can I help you?’ she repeated, slightly irritated by the seemingly dumb figure before her.

In truth, he had almost forgotten how to speak. He had been in Sondrio for more than three weeks now and, during that time, had spoken little more than to ask for a coffee in a bar or to buy some food. His voice, therefore, came huskily from his throat and surprised him with its sound.

‘I … I was looking for some company.’

‘Some company, is it you were looking for, lonely boy?’ she said, emerging now from behind the door, the shape of her body, wrapped in a sleek, silk dressing gown, taking him by surprise. Provocatively, she placed her right hand on her hip, leaning with her other hand on the door. She smiled.

‘Well, I’ll tell you, I can’t afford to be charitable and my company doesn’t come cheap. I hope you’ve got the wherewithal, lonely boy.’

Sandro reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of bills, the money his mother had saved all those years.

‘Well, I never.’ There was sarcasm in her voice now, but it was not in any way vindictive. She was older than her years, however; so much older and it saddened Sandro. He thought again of Angela, never far from his mind. This girl would not be much older than her, but Angela’s eyes had been alive with optimism and anticipation. This girl’s eyes were dead with the exhaustion of living in these times.

‘Who would have thought a boy from the hills would have so much money? I hope you came by it legally, lonely boy.’ His accent, strained by years of speaking dialect, had betrayed his origins. ‘Oh, all right, then. Come on in and let’s see if we can cheer you up, eh?’

He entered a hallway lit only by the light of the full moon, which tumbled in through a window at the top of the stairs they climbed.

Her room was as luxurious as the straitened times would allow. A gas lamp flickered eerily, shedding light on a sofa which sat up against the wall on one side, a threadbare blue sheet thrown over it. In front of the sofa was a chipped oak table and on it were a couple of wine glasses and a bottle of wine with about a third of its contents remaining. The bed that stood against the other wall was unmade, its sheets trailing onto the floor and the pillows still showing the indentation of a head, probably Weber’s.

‘Make yourself comfortable. Have a glass of wine.’ She poured what remained of the wine into the two glasses without washing them. He then raised his glass to his lips, knowing that Weber’s lips had possibly touched its cool surface just an hour or so ago.

She sat down beside him, stretching her hand up to his neck and tugging at the hair at the back of his head.

‘Don’t have much to say, do you, lonely boy?’ She smiled, throwing back the wine in one swallow. Her words were slurred and he realised now that she was, in fact, quite drunk. She sat forward, with a look of mock horror on her face. ‘Wait a minute! Don’t tell me you’re a virgin! Well, don’t worry, lonely boy. Virgins are my speciality – la specialità della casa!’ She raised her glass, as if making a toast. ‘All these German boys, they’re like you lot up in the hills. Pure as the driven snow. Until they come to see Domenica, that is.’ She stood up, unsteadily and went over to a cupboard by the bed, taking out another bottle of wine and attempting with some difficulty to remove the stopper.

‘Come on, then, be a gentleman and help a girl, can’t you?’ He stood up and limped across to her, trying to take the bottle, but realising that with his bad left arm, it was going to be equally difficult for him to remove the stopper. She looked at him curiously and then held the bottle while he tried to pull the stopper out. Finally, amidst her giggles as she tried to hold the bottle, it edged free and she fell back.

She picked up the glasses and brought them over to where he was standing, pouring some wine into each on top of the cupboard. She then seemed to become sober as she picked up her glass.

‘Where did you get that, lonely boy?’ She reached her hand up to his damaged cheek, feeling the indentation where Weber had hit him with his pistol butt. ‘And your leg and your arm. You’ve been through it, haven’t you?’ She moved close, staring up into his eyes. He looked down at her, noticing how liquid her eyes seemed, and wanted to drown himself in them.

She reached behind his neck and gently pulled his head down towards hers and brushed her lips tenderly against his. She pulled away and looked deep into his eyes and then kissed him.

She pulled him down onto the bed and he pulled apart her robe, its silky coolness unfamiliar beneath the calloused skin of his fingers. Her skin was smooth and warm and her lips were generous, her tongue exploring his mouth, the scent of wine on her breath. Her dark hair fell back from her forehead as he kissed her and all at once she was a young girl again. The exhaustion dropped away from her and innocence and the hunger of youth filled her eyes.

Above him, he thought he heard once more the song of the birds exploring the sky and thought that he felt rain fall down onto his naked back. Beneath him, it felt as if the grass of the clearing was shifting once more under the weight of the raindrops.

 

The next night he waited outside Domenica’s house again. This time, however, it was different, for he knew now where Weber was, what his surroundings were. He knew the sofa where they would start out, a glass of wine in their hands as they kissed. He knew the scrap of carpet by the bed that he would stand on to remove his boots. And he knew the bed that they would fall on and on which they would make love, its slightly soiled off-white sheets, its four pillows.

The moon had slipped behind dark clouds by the time the door opened and Weber stepped out into the night. As ever, he engaged in his ritual of taking a cigarette from his silver case, tapping it on the lid and lighting it. He then turned and set out once more back in the direction of the old school that housed the German headquarters. He was in the habit of returning there every night and, as he never emerged again, Sandro presumed he must be billeted there.

Sandro fell in behind him, invisibly as ever. It was more difficult in a town to become one with the shadows, he found. Had he been following Weber in the hills that he knew so well, he would have found it easy. He would have been as invisible as a breath of wind, but down here amongst these buildings and geometric shadows that varied in intensity, it was more difficult.

A few streets further on, Sandro deviated from his usual route, striking out quickly down an alley at the bottom of which there was a wall which he climbed, sliding down the other side quietly and crouching for a moment at the bottom to catch his breath and let the pain in his injured leg subside. He then stood up and slid along a wall at the end of which he stopped, his ears listening out for the familiar footsteps that would signal the arrival of Weber, for his short-cut had brought him to this point ahead of Weber by a few minutes.

He heard the harsh sound of the German officer’s boots on cobble stones approach and pulled from his waistband the pistol that he had put there before setting out this evening. The cold steel made his fingers numb at first, but soon the natural warmth of his hand entered the steel and it felt like an extension of him.

His breathing became faster and his heart pounded like a piston as the footsteps came closer. Then, as they drew level, he slid out from his hiding place, making almost no sound, placed the barrel of the pistol roughly against the German’s temple, knocking him slightly sideways and hissed hoarsely:

‘Keep your hands away from your pistol and stand absolutely still or you’re a dead man!’

The German froze, his head pointing straight ahead, but his eyes swivelling as far round in their sockets as they would go, trying to see who his assailant was.

Sandro looked round to ensure that no one had seen his attack, but the buildings in this street were all empty, their owners having fled the war. He then hissed once more:

‘Take out your pistol – hold it by the barrel!’ His useless arm made it impossible for him to hold a gun to the German’s head and take the pistol out of his holster at the same time. ‘Now put it in my pocket!’ The German did as he was told. ‘To your left is a building. Turn and walk towards it, open the door when you get inside, climb the stairs and, remember, I will have this gun pointed at your head every step of the way. One wrong move and your brains will be decorating the pavement. Now go!’

The German turned stiffly, his eyes darting to first one side and then the other. He reached the door, turned the handle and they entered the building. A gas lamp, lit earlier by Sandro, cast light onto the stairs. The German hesitated, but Sandro hissed once again, ‘Go on!’ and they began to climb.

They climbed three flights of wooden stairs, all the way to the top of the house and at the top Sandro instructed Weber to climb a ladder that led from the topmost landing up to an open hatch door. He followed, the gun still trained carefully on the German.

‘Don’t turn around!’ he told the German once they had both climbed into this attic. He quickly turned the pistol round so that he held the barrel in his hand, raised it above his head and brought it down sharply on the German’s head. His body folded immediately and he fell heavily to the floorboards.

Sandro breathed deeply, raising a hand to a nearby beam for support. He had known it would not be easy to kidnap a fully fit man when he had only one useful arm to work with, but he had succeeded and now he had some work to do before Weber awoke.

 

He was out for longer than Sandro had anticipated. Perhaps he had hit him too hard; there had certainly been a great deal of blood flowing from the wound, but, of course, there was little that could be scientific about a blow to the back of the head with a pistol butt.

Weber’s eyes eventually opened. His first feeling was one of severe pain, at the back of his head where it lay on the wooden floorboards of this room he was in. His second was one of confusion. Where was he? All he could see above him were the planks of a wooden roof with sunlight seeping between them where it was in need of repair. There was no sound from outside, even though it was evidently daytime. His third feeling was cold. He was very cold. He was wearing no clothes. And he was unable to move his arms or his legs. They were restrained in some way.

He turned his head painfully to the right and saw that his wrist had been tied with a thick rope that was secured to a beam. His left hand and his ankles were similarly tied. Sandro had prepared these ropes earlier with some difficulty, given his disabled arm.

There was a sound from the hatch and Sandro’s head appeared at the top of the ladder. He had been checking on the German every fifteen minutes or so.

‘Teufel!’ spat Weber, followed by a stream of German, his anger almost making him choke. Then, in Italian, ‘Why don’t you just kill me? Why go to this trouble?’ There was a break in his tirade as he strained to lift his head to get a good look at Sandro. ‘Who are you anyway?’

‘Ah, you don’t recognise me, Obersturmführer Weber?’ Sandro climbed up through the hatch and leaned on a roof beam, picking at his nails with a knife.

‘No, I don’t believe …’ He stared hard at Sandro’s face.

‘Perhaps you will remember if I ask you to recall a morning about ten or so weeks back, up in the mountains, not far from Monte Santo. There were seven of us.’

A look of sudden understanding and a small smile crossed Weber’s face.

‘Ah, I see it’s coming back to you now. You must remember me, Weber. I do look slightly different, I suppose, to the way I looked before you had some fun with your pistol butt on my face.’

Weber laughed before his head fell back to the floorboards, a look of sheer exhaustion filling his eyes.

‘Oh, just kill me, why don’t you? Get it over with.’

‘No, no, no. That wouldn’t do at all. At least, not until you tell me something, or confirm what I think I already know.’

‘Oh, anything. You know, I don’t care anymore, about the war, about Hitler, about Germany. I hardly exist as it is, so what do I care about any of it. I have done things I never thought I would be capable of. We all have … even you.

‘There are times, you know, when I find it all overwhelming. It’s often just before the sun comes up over the mountains after another sleepless night. It suddenly strikes me, what I have become in such a short time. Do you ever feel that, my friend? Are you as ashamed as I am?’ He looked Sandro straight in the eye, abject desolation clouding his eyes for a moment.

Sandro looked away from the German’s gaze. ‘I don’t have as much to be ashamed of as you do, my friend.’ He spat the word out with hatred. ‘Enough of your regret. I want one simple answer to one simple question. Who betrayed us? Who told you where we were going to be that night?’

‘Oh, is that all you need to know? That’s easy! I was a bit surprised at first though, but not when I found out why he did it. You are all so damned emotional, you Italians. You are swayed too much by your feelings. The trouble with Germans and with Nazis, in particular – no, for your information, I am not a Nazi, never have been. I pretend so that I can get through this damned war. The trouble with them is they are not at all swayed by feelings. As you know, I am sure, they see them as something of a weakness. Anyway, your betrayer was a very angry man; he was made unstable by his anger, I would say.’

‘But who …’

‘Well, I won’t waste your time. It was Il Falcone. The one the children sing songs about in the streets of Sondrio – if they only knew! In the beginning he was trying to trade information in exchange for the return of his wife and child who had been sent to a camp in Germany.’

Sandro’s heart skipped a beat.

‘But there was nothing we could do. They were long gone and probably already dead by the time he came to us. No one survives in those camps very long.’ His eyes were dead as he uttered the words, as if he had shut himself off from all of the suffering they held. ‘So, he asked who betrayed them. We told him it was one of you, but we did not know exactly who. He then swore that he would take his revenge and told us about your monthly meeting to replenish your stocks of ammunition. Hey presto, we made your acquaintance and here we are you and I, having such a fine time together.’

‘And Luigi … Il Falcone, what became of him?’

‘We gave him safe passage into Switzerland. I have no idea what he is doing now or even if he is still there.’ A silence settled between the two men. ‘But, hey, if that’s all you wanted to know, then put me out of my misery. Or let me go …’ He smiled. ‘No I suppose that’s not really on the cards, is it? After all, I did treat you all rather badly, didn’t I?’ He laughed, his body shaking in the flickering flame of the gas lamp. ‘The look on your comrades’ faces as they realised what I was going to do, as I pulled the pin out of the grenade. I’m fascinated by that moment, you know. The sudden realisation that it is all going to end. That the world will go on, but without you. That is the ultimate moment, don’t you think? The power to do that, to be instrumental in that … Magnificent in a way, eh?’

‘You’re insane, Weber.’ Sandro stood up straight. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like to be someone like you. People like you shouldn’t be walking the earth. The worst thing is you make your victims as evil as you. War is difficult enough, but it’s almost not enough for your kind. You have to invent new abominations, new cruelties all the time. And I do, too, in order to satisfy this overwhelming urge that I have to not just kill you, but to make you suffer as much as or even more than my comrades suffered. Perhaps I can enjoy that, as you call it, ultimate moment.’

‘Hmm, I am interested to know what you are going to do. Do tell me.’

‘No, I think I’ll let you use your imagination for a little while, Weber.’

With that, he stepped down into the hatchway and disappeared from view. The flickering light of the gas lamp animated the shadows of the beams and highlighted the limpid gleam of the German’s eyes as they stared blankly at the wooden ceiling.

 

The smell of the rancid meat that swilled in the bucket almost made Sandro gag as he pushed it ahead of him up the ladder with his one good arm. He had scoured the bins behind the only butcher’s shop in Sondrio that remained open.

‘Gott im Himmel, what is that?’ The acrid smell reached the German’s nostrils. ‘That smell alone is almost enough to kill a man!’

‘Sandro smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry, there is much more than just that.’ He clambered up into the attic, picked up the bucket and approached the German. He raised the bucket about a foot above him and carefully upended its contents onto the naked body, making sure he covered most of his top half with the contents – fat and offal and a bloody liquid.

‘Bearrgh!’ the German gasped in disgust as a fresh and stronger wave of the nauseous stink invaded his senses and Sandro stepped quickly back to prevent any of the filthy substance coming into contact with his boots.

‘Oh, that is disgusting. Where did you get it? From your mother’s pantry? Is that the kind of filth you Italians are eating these days?’ He smiled, but his eyes were screwed up as the smell filled the room.

Sandro also smiled. But it was a smile of anticipation. He stepped back towards the hatch and lowered himself carefully down onto the ladder, briefly disappearing from view.

Again, with difficulty, he pushed a container up the ladder ahead of him. It was a wooden box, much more awkward and heavy than the bucket and its weight kept shifting as its contents seemed to move around inside.

‘Oh, I’d rather die than put up with this stink. Hurry up, get on …’ The German had become very animated, but then, all at once, was silenced as Sandro removed the top of the box and the scraping and scratching of clawed feet could be heard from within.

‘Oh, no, not that. Not that!’

Sandro put the box down and picked up a strip of elasticated cloth from the floor. He went over to Weber and wrapped it with difficulty around his head, gagging him. The Germans’ eyes pleaded with him all the while and he struggled violently, trying to loosen the ropes that bound his wrists and ankles.

Sandro returned to the box, Weber’s muffled cries behind him and set it on its side, allowing the twenty or so rats that were inside to spill out onto the floorboards. They emerged cautiously at first, their snouts twitching as they tried to acclimatise themselves to this new environment. The smell struck their senses immediately with the impact of a glass of whisky on a drunk, however, and they began hungrily to seek its source, skittering across the floor in every direction, climbing over each other in their filthy hysteria.

‘Oh, by the way, Weber,’ said Sandro, ‘They haven’t eaten anything for a couple of days. You should keep them going for a while though.’ He watched for a moment as the rats suddenly, as one, realised where the smell was emanating from. They turned and descended in a wave upon Weber’s body. The last thing Sandro looked at in the attic were Weber’s eyes, which were prised open in horror.

‘The ultimate moment, my friend, the ultimate moment.’ he said, before dropping down onto the ladder, pulling down the hatch door and fastening it above him. At the foot of the ladder he stopped for a moment. Above him he could hear the manic scratching of claws on the wood of the floorboards and the thumping of Weber’s terror-struck body as it flailed about as much as its restraints would allow.

Stepping out into the street, Sandro gulped lungfuls of fresh air and held onto the wall to steady himself. It was late afternoon by now and the clouds that had been obscuring the peaks of the mountains all day were beginning to break up. The heat of summer hung in the air now, seeping into the walls of the empty buildings around him.

He slept that night in a tiny woodcutter’s shelter in the hills just above Sondrio. He needed the smells of the hills in his nostrils, the scent of the earth and the trees to clear out the awful stink of the afternoon. He was almost delirious, however, and he could not clear out the memories. Luigi and Angela troubled his sleep all that short night. He would wake at regular intervals, lie there thinking of them and then drift into another brief period of restless slumber in which they would once more visit him in the many insane forms that his mind seemed capable of devising.

At the end of it, in the early morning, with the mist rolling down the sides of the hills towards the empty streets of Sondrio, he resolved to tell no one. Luigi had suffered enough and, anyway, he was gone and unlikely to be seen in this area again. Sleeping dogs should and would be allowed to lie. This war had already brought enough horror and death.

He stood up, rubbing his dead left arm, which throbbed gently, as it always did in the morning. He picked up his bag and without stopping to look back on the lands of his youth, limped off down the track that led to the south.

He took the first steps that began a journey that would take him far away from the Valtellina for a long time.