ON DECEMBER THE EIGHTH THERE WAS UPROAR. THE Germans of the Silesian division had been called home and let off their entire reserves of ammunition. After that the month passed uneventfully until Christmas. Action on the Piave was slackening off. The salvos from the Montello, from Vidòr, from Segusino were rare enough to be remarked on. Only in the foothills and valleys around Monte Grappa, as far as Monte Tomba and the narrow valley at Quero, was the battle still raging.
Grandpa was the most optimistic of the lot of us. ‘If they haven’t broken through yet, they never will. There’s two metres of snow up there on top. With snow that deep it’s not easy to survive, let alone fight.’
On December the fourth a few British and French contingents had joined our front line; or at least so they said in the bottiglieria Grandpa haunted, in the conviction that ‘barmen know more than generals’.
At that time no one knew that the Emperor Karl had as early as the second issued a ‘secret’ order to halt the Austrian offensive. If they were still firing up in the mountains it was only to improve their positions while awaiting the thaw.
Giulia and I met every day, and every day I was granted the taste of her kisses, but she didn’t let me touch her very much, and this began to get on my nerves. Meanwhile, Don Lorenzo had caught me in his net: I was recruited for the fourth. I gave history lessons to all the boys left in the village, about thirty of them, although never more than ten or a dozen turned up. The troops were billeted in the abandoned houses round the piazza, and the few officers quartered in the Villa were all but invisible. ‘They are very well-mannered,’ said Aunt Maria, with a touch of admiration. Grandpa had once said that if she had seen a hangman proffer the noose politely she would have lauded his exquisite manners.
Donna Maria was attempting to break the ice with Major von Feilitzsch. She had been urged to do so by both Grandma and Renato, but she made her own special contribution: the baron too was fond of horses, and in the stables there were now five of them, one for each officer, in addition to the carthorses.
Since the beginning of December the Villa had become a staging post, and two Imperial Army grooms were permanently lodged in the barchessa. The mules of contingents passing through were tethered under the portico, or in the courtyard of the inn, the only source of provisions in the whole place.
The invaders were thirsty for grappa and ravenous for polenta. Things that the innkeeper’s wife – he himself was stuck behind his bar counter all day long – obtained from the peasants’ wives in exchange for bags of salt and white flour, pretending not to know that thereafter, amongst the mules in the courtyard, every good wife got two sips of grappa and a slice of polenta if she offered the customer a little entertainment.
Everyone said the paper money printed by the Austrians was ‘bum bumf’. So it was that in that December of 1917 – after twenty centuries of ready cash – exchange and barter was rediscovered, even if there was little left to barter with: a few sacks of vegetables, oats, eggs, chickens and eros. ‘A chick with an empty purse is an easy lay,’ said Grandpa. ‘Even if a full purse is no chastity belt.’ And exchanges of eros and polenta – not restricted to the inn yard – had become a matter of ‘see no evil, hear no evil’. Don Lorenzo had good reason to shout and yell in church. Hunger had triumphed over honour.
The British fighter plane roared over at rooftop level. All eyes were glued to the skies, including those of the officers smoking by the window. Near the red, white and blue rings on the fuselage I noticed a blue bird set in a red oval. The SPAD flew over again twenty minutes later, but this time it was going in the opposite direction, towards the Pieve. Aunt Maria had barely had time to position the shutters, and there was nothing on the washing line. To hang out laundry just to have it freeze would have aroused suspicion.
Once past us the aircraft waggled its wings once or twice. The SPADs often did this on their way back to behind our lines. We’ll chuck the bastards out, was the message.
Grandpa and I, who were stretching our legs back and forth over the hundred metres between the chapel and the stables, both waved madly to return the greeting. The steward was coming towards us, a shovel and a rake over his shoulder. As he passed he gave me a wink and murmured, ‘The blue kingfisher…Our friend made it to safety.’
While Renato was on his way towards the latrine, the officer of the day caught up with us and, slowing to our pace though keeping eyes front, said quietly but distinctly: ‘N’oubliez pas Karfreit.’
‘Don’t worry, we remember Caporetto all right,’ rebutted Grandpa loudly, ‘but it’s not over yet. Not by a long chalk.’
The morning of Christmas Eve surprised us with its unseasonal mildness. Grandpa and I went to the bottiglieria in Solighetto, while Aunt Maria went out riding with the major. On the way we came across a group of prisoners busying themselves around the mangled bonnet of a lorry. They begged us for cigarettes. Grandpa, who smoked only Toscano cigars, and used cigarettes in lieu of tips, pulled out a packet which was torn to shreds in a brace of shakes. One fag even went to the lackadaisical Hungarian overseer, who grinned at us happily with his few remaining teeth.
The bottiglieria consisted of a huge dark room, ten metres by five, panelled in wood from floor to ceiling. It had only one window, with iron bars as thick as two fingers. On the oaken shelves behind the counter was a row of half-empty bottles with handwritten labels, and were one to believe the writing there was even whisky and cognac. But it was grappa that claimed the lion’s share, with at least twenty or thirty bottles. There were also two demijohns which gave off an acrid tang that turned my stomach. The beaten earth floor was saturated with alcohol at five pfennigs a flask, the ferocious stench of which contested the field with that of the few customers.
The hostess was short and robust. A lock of snow-white hair sprang from under the kerchief knotted beneath her chin, while in her oval face dark eyes expressed the melancholy born of much mourning. She asked what we wanted in the educated voice of a person who reads. Her husband approached her, seventy kilos of muscle for a metre and a half in height: ‘Give ’em some wine, woman!’
‘Cognac,’ said Grandpa. ‘For two, one of them with water.’
‘With what?’ barked the host in dialect. ‘Water will do for washing in, if you have any.’ And off he went with a sneer. ‘And to rot the piles, as they say in Venice.’
I hadn’t the least desire to drink. I gave Grandpa a glance.
‘We’re not here for the fun of it.’
So I had no choice.
‘Malingerers are the first to spot trouble,’ he said. ‘And to get wind of troop movements.’
We spent the morning in that stench of sour wine and sweaty humanity. I was nearly sick, my head was spinning. Luckily, at about midday Grandpa thought he had laid his hands on something to communicate to the three-mullioned window. Three Hungarian army battalions were expected at Sernaglia at the beginning of January. It wasn’t the kind of news to change the outcome of a battle, but at least it was something to transmit to the kingfisher.
For the festive occasion the baron had arranged a concert last thing before midnight mass. All of us were invited, but only Aunt Maria and I attended. We arrived a little late so there was no time for introductions. The dining room was lit by two carbide lamps. The oak table had been shifted to the side opposite the fire, which sparkled away behind the quartet.
The cellist was a lady of thirty at the outside, with hair as black as her silk dress and a décolleté gleaming with a double string of pearls which reflected the tenuous wavering of the flames. The fire gave the silhouettes of the musicians an almost sinister appearance somewhat at odds with the music of Mozart.
Seated with us in a semicircle were seven Austrian and three Hungarian officers, summoned from the neighbouring commands. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cellist; her face enthralled me. At the end of the concert we discovered that the mystery woman was von Feilitzsch’s wife, who had been permitted to join her husband for Christmas. This had not pleased the major, who would rather have had leave to join her in Vienna, so he had said not a word about it to anyone, maybe because he knew she would be off again the next day. Madame von Feilitzsch had assembled her musician friends – amateurs, but esteemed in many drawing rooms in the capital – and obtained a pass thanks to her friendship with a colonel in the emperor’s graces.
We drank ‘à la fin de la guerre’ in sharp-tasting red Tyrolese wine. For the sake of politeness the officers forced themselves to talk French, but it was obvious that they couldn’t wait to get rid of us and chat amongst themselves. What’s more, Madame von Feilitzsch knew little Italian but was determined to speak it, making things hard for my aunt and me, scarcely able to understand what she was gabbling about. In the end, after the ritual formalities we took our leave with a sigh of relief.
‘Well, that’s something done,’ said Aunt Maria. ‘Now let’s go to church.’
I went with her as far as the church forecourt and said goodbye.
‘But it’s Christmas!’ she cried, her eyes shooting sparks at me. But I had a tryst with Giulia, and the threat of hell in another life little availed against the promise of a heaven, however brief, just round the corner.
On the evening of the thirty-first – a freezing Monday which I had spent reading in front of the fire – we went into a huddle in Aunt Maria’s room to review the situation. A frugal repast. Grandpa did his level best to raise our spirits, but whatever story he told, whatever joke he pulled out of his hat, he couldn’t make us forget we were guests in our own house, reduced to dependence on the goodwill of enemy officers. Loretta served at table. She was more self-confident now, and seemed pleased with herself, as if happy to see us downhearted. We were eating leftovers, as she had often had to do, and our sheets were a little less white than usual – for even lye was hard to get – and now we too were not our own masters.
Teresa, on the other hand, was unhappy for her own sake and for ours, and one could see it in her face. Our feeling of loss, of humiliation, was hers also.