SEPPE PULSED HIS HANDS, shaking out the aches of the axe into the warm afternoon air. He’d conquered it. Today he had felt the rhythm that Connie was always insisting was there to obey. The raw soreness of his hands was forgotten and the oak had fallen cleanly and in half the time. Connie had beamed and for once hadn’t said anything. Now that Frank couldn’t banish them from timberwork for incompetence, they were safe; it was too monumental even for Connie’s words.
He paused at the fork in the path that took him back up to Campo 61 and the parade ground. Nobody would miss him for a few more hours, not on a Sunday. Seppe looked around – but of course there were no sentries, no workers, just the high grasses amidst the trees rustling with the busyness of summer. You’d never know there was a war still raging on in countries miles from here. It unsettled Seppe. The guards were proud of their forest, seemed more than happy to let the POWs wander as long as they were back by curfew, with the exception of the small band of ‘sympathisers’ still deemed likely to try and spread fascist propaganda. Seppe had quietly welcomed this uncharacteristic strictness, especially when it led to all the sympathisers being moved to one ‘higher security’ barrack. He’d reclaimed his bunk from Fredo and was now back beside Gianni and far from the night soil.
He passed a stand of spruce, ringed with white chalk where the Pole Cats had marked it for a telegraph pole. Connie had explained these Pole Cats to him the first time he’d spotted the chalk. Apparently they were specially trained to select the straightest, tallest trunks to be used as the poles that gave them their nickname. Pole Cats went out ahead of the felling teams, roaming forests all over the country, and daubed the coppices with different colours to show the axemen what to cut down for each quota. Every time Seppe saw a chalk ring he marvelled at the skill of these unseen women, the confidence they must possess to look at a tree and decide its fate: this one a telegraph pole, that one a ship’s mast, those over there to be pit props.
And now he was a tiny part of this same system, had the beginnings of an understanding of forest husbandry and could be of use. Something in Seppe lifted and he followed the second path, the ubiquitous beech and oaks thinning as it steepened. The path hitched over a hump and gave way to a platform of flat, white stones which dropped sharply into the river-ribboned valley far below. The trees below were all but indiscernible from each other from this distance, the forest on either side of the brown waters a viridescent blanket hugging the contours of the hills.
Seppe settled himself on the biggest of the rocks. It was smooth and warm against his skin and he closed his eyes, his breath slow and calm. Peregrine falcons, their beaks sharp flashes of yellow in the vastness of the vista, soared on the currents, dipping out of sight behind the cliff edge before reappearing, effortless.
There was a tickle at his neck. He turned and pinched off the offending grass poking from a crevice in the rock. He pursed his lips and brought the grass to it. He blew and the grass vibrated between his lips, high and sharp like the calls of the birds of prey. The corners of his mouth crinkled. The tune eked out, flew over the cliff with the birds. Seppe closed his eyes again, gave in to the music and the warmth and the peace. He finished the melody, began another, his toes tapping now on the rock. Falcons swooped through the sky as the sun moved round and the warmth leached from the stone, but he played on. Nobody was pursuing him. Nobody was making demands of him. He had secured his job. All was well.