Pia did not put on two new hats or even one when she visited Carl the next day. She wore her blue coat and hat, which he had seen before. But she had taken care with herself and looked like an Alpine picture postcard with the extra dimension and the quality of animation. Carl’s eyes acknowledged the picture but he made no comment. He did not seem to be any better physically than the day before, and she thought he should have been. He coughed a bit from time to time. They talked and then played chess. He was friendly, naturally so, and it warmed her. It pleased her immensely that the game ended in a draw. Only at the last moment, when she was on her way out, did he say something that upset her.
‘The news is good, Pia?’
‘Good?’ What did he mean when for him all the news was awful? ‘Good?’
‘For Italy.’
The Austrians were in disorganized retreat from the Piave.
Pia trembled.
‘Mariella doesn’t think so,’ she said bitterly and left with her eyes wet.
She arrived on the following day in her dark red coat and black fur hat. It was her favourite outdoor wear and made her look as if she had just emerged from a Christmas box. The coat was damp with snow all the same. She took it off and shook it. Her deep green dress had a rich velvety sheen.
‘Yes,’ said Carl.
‘Yes?’
‘Didn’t I mention it before? You’re young and beautiful.’ Propped against the raised pillows he smiled at her. ‘Is there someone in the Italian army thinking about you?’
‘No! There isn’t!’ There was a flash of her old spirit. ‘There’s no one. But if there were, why should you think he has to be in the Italian army? Why not the Austrian? This is the Austrian Tyrol, we pay our taxes to Austria, we learn and speak German, so how do you know I’m not as good an Austrian as I am Italian?’
‘I made a very ordinary comment,’ said Carl, ‘you don’t need to fly as high as that to put a flea in my ear. Sit down and let us be friends. Friends are better than donkeys.’
‘Well, you should not assume people can only communicate with their brothers and sisters,’ said Pia. She thought him paler beneath his tan, but his drawn lines made him so finely good-looking that she badly wanted to touch him, kiss him. ‘Mariella sent you this,’ she said. She had been doubtful about it but Mariella had said she must take it. It was a watercolour painting of the imperial Austrian flag. Underneath it Mariella had carefully lettered in German, ‘Long Live Austria.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Carl, touched.
‘It’s to let you know she’s loyal to her best friends.’
‘Kiss her for me,’ said Carl.
Pia, striving for the lightest of rejoinders, said, ‘Actually, she asked me to kiss you for her. May I do that?’
He looked up at her. Under her fur hat her face was warm with colour.
‘It’ll be a brave deed, I’m not the most kissable object.’
She stooped to kiss his cheek, but her lips would not obey the rules of modesty and found his mouth instead. For a second she communed in warm bliss with him, then straightened up, her colour warmer, her heart thumping painfully.
‘That was quite courageous,’ smiled Carl. ‘Thank Mariella for me. Can you read German well?’
‘I think so,’ she said.
‘There’s a Vienna newspaper over there. It’s a week old, but would you care to read it to me?’
‘You wish that?’
‘You’ve a very good voice,’ said Carl, ‘all Italians have.’
She sat down and read the paper to him. Her heart did not take long to sink. The news items sounded like a catalogue of gloom, doom and disaster, and it appalled her to realize what it must be doing to Carl. But he made no comment. She wanted to stop. He began to cough. She looked up. Horrified, she saw what he had hidden from her before. He was coughing blood into his handkerchief. She stared in heartbreak and panic. He wiped his mouth carefully.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘No, I can’t. Major Korvacs—’
‘It’s nothing, it’s not going to kill me,’ he said. ‘Go on.’
How could she? He was ill, bleeding inside, and if he died her father would be a murderer and she would never sleep again. She put the paper aside and stood up.
‘I’m going to see the doctor,’ she said, white with emotion.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Carl, ‘sit down and finish reading.’
‘No!’ She was fierce. ‘You’re supposed to be getting better, but you’re not. Oh, don’t you see, my mother and I will never be happy again unless you recover, never be able to look people in the face. I’m going to find someone. I am, I must!’
She rushed out. But seeing someone, finding someone, was easier said than done. She had only ever been concerned with Carl, with going straight to his room. She had not noticed very much else, except that the hospital seemed a busy one. Now she realized just how busy. The bustle of the place alarmed her. It gave her a strange feeling that Carl was no longer considered important. They had extracted the bullets, patched him up, given him a bed and his own room because he was a company commander, and provided a nurse who looked in on him now and then. And that was as much as they could do for him. There were newly wounded casualties from the mountains. There always were. And with the worsening of hospital supplies and the hurried transfer of some doctors to help with the casualties of the Piave battles, Carl was not likely to be operated on again unless he reached the door of death. They were taking a chance on him now, hoping he would cure himself. Pia’s certainty about all that made her frantic.
She could find no nurse, no doctor and no orderly who would listen to her. She had no standing. They knew she was Italian, and how many Italians had Austrian sympathies? She was only in the way, and the wards were full of men far closer to the grave than Major Korvacs. Stop worrying. He is all right. Please go away.
She managed in the end, however, to find the only person she really knew there, Carl’s nurse. The nurse spared her a moment.
‘Please, something must be done,’ begged Pia, ‘Major Korvacs is coughing blood.’
‘So would you if you had a lung wound.’
‘He’ll die. He’s dying now. And no one is doing anything about it.’
‘Calm yourself, fräulein.’ The nurse was composed, though shades of sorrow made her want to weep. She had seen men die in the hospital, had felt regret for them all. But now Austria itself was dying. Who could not weep about that? ‘Major Korvacs is not in crisis.’
‘I know what that means,’ said Pia, her face pale but her eyes looking ready to catch fire, ‘it means he isn’t going to die until next week.’
‘Nonsense,’ said the nurse. ‘In any case, after tomorrow there will probably be no more operations here. Major Korvacs will be going with other patients to the hospital in Bozen in the morning. We are evacuating all casualties except those it’s impossible to move.’
Bozen? Bozen? That was fifty miles away, which might as well have been a thousand. Pia stared at the nurse in entreaty.
‘Then Major Korvacs is one of those,’ she said, ‘he can’t be moved, not when he’s coughing blood.’
‘More can be done for him at Bozen than we can now do for him here, fräulein.’
‘Are you sending all the wounded to Bozen because the Italians and British are coming? But they won’t harm wounded men and may bring their own doctors.’
‘We are retreating,’ said the nurse, wanting to be on her way, ‘and no one is going to leave wounded men behind unless it’s unavoidable. With exceptions everyone in this hospital is going to Bozen. You will excuse me, please?’
Pia returned to Carl. She felt drowned by despair.
‘Major Korvacs, they’ve told me the hospital is being evacuated.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said as if it had little significance. ‘Events have caught up with us. We must go. Tomorrow there won’t be time for even a brief game of chess. But look, Pia, I’ve written a note to your mother to reassure her. And another one to Mariella. They’re in here.’ He handed her a sealed envelope. ‘Remember me to them both. And thank you, Pia, for what you did for me that night, and for trying in the first place to stop your father using that gun. And for coming to visit me. You’re an excellent chess player. You’re also very sweet.’
Pia felt he was freezing her out of life itself. He was saying goodbye and he thought, perhaps, that he was saying it kindly. She supposed that judges sometimes passed death sentences as kindly as possible. It was not much help to the condemned.
‘They can’t send you to Bozen,’ she whispered, ‘they can’t. You’re too ill.’
‘I must go,’ he said and she knew he had accepted coming defeat. His empire was in its death throes. Imperial Austria, so long the arbiter of Europe’s history, was bankrupt and beaten. Centuries ago, in its infancy, it had checked and hurled back the swarming Turks and saved Europe from the barbarism of the sultans and their janissaries. Europe had forgotten that, forgotten the great Metternich and the humanity of Maria Theresa. Pia knew she herself had not wanted to remember. Carl had never apologized for imperial Austria, he had fought for it and commanded the finest and hardiest of mountain soldiers. She did not think her father, in any reckoning, would be counted the better man. But her father and the other patriots would inherit the Trentino. After four years of war what did Carl have? An injured lung and a broken empire. The hospital staff were making plans to evacuate. It was probably what the doctors and nurses wanted to do for Carl and the others, to save them the final bitterness of falling into Italian hands.
All the same, she did not know what she would do if he went.
‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t go, you’re not well enough. Please stay.’
‘I prefer to go,’ he said, ‘can you understand that?’
She could and did. But what he could not understand himself was that because she and Mariella and her mother would never see him again, they would never have the chance to give him love in place of her father’s hate.
‘The weather, it will kill you,’ she said desperately.
‘The weather and I are old friends,’ he said. ‘Old enemies even. My dear Pia, don’t be so worried. I’ll survive. We had an abrasive first meeting, I know, but we are friends now, aren’t we? I wish you a good future under your Italian flag, but make sure you tell Mariella I’m very proud of the flag she’s given me. The Austrians have had days when they’ve danced in the streets. It’ll be your turn any moment. Do you remember the music from the bandstand? That was a brave Austrian finale, wasn’t it? Goodbye now.’
She could not speak. Silently she put on her coat. She was being sent away, with a note for her mother and another for Mariella. Nothing for her, nothing. Shaking, she went to the door and opened it. She turned.
‘I am not going to dance in the streets,’ she said, ‘never, never, never!’
She ran from the hospital into the cold, wintry darkness of the afternoon, but it was no darker than her bitterness. She could not remember how she walked through the streets, how she reached home. She gave her mother the envelope from Carl. When she said the hospital was to be evacuated and that Carl was going to Bozen her mother said, ‘I’m glad. A man like that should not end up as a prisoner of war.’ And when she told Mariella, her sister said very clearly, ‘Good. I don’t want the Italians to get him.’
‘I know. Oh, Mariella, things are never what we want them to be, are they?’
‘When I’m older I shall go to Vienna,’ said Mariella, ‘no one will make me go to Italy, no one. I’m Austrian.’
The news next day was climactic. The Austrians had been negotiating a ceasefire with Italy, and an armistice was agreed. On Italy’s terms. Which meant, among other things, that Italy would take over the Trentino region of the Tyrol. The Italians in Oberstein did not take long to pour into the streets and dance in the snow. Intoxicated by Italy’s victory, boldly defiant of the Austrian garrison and ignoring the bitterness of Austrian residents, they celebrated in anticipation of changing the Austrian administration for the government of Rome.
Excited friends called for Mariella. No one was going to school, everyone was to dance and sing.
‘Come, Mariella, come, come,’ they cried, and Mariella had too much instinctive sense to declare herself unwilling.
‘Wait till I get my coat,’ she said and they waited in the hall while she went up to her room. When she was putting on her coat she said to Pia, ‘I must go out with them or they’ll throw stones at our windows.’
‘Mariella, you’re wiser than I am,’ said Pia affectionately. ‘You make your decisions but you think first. I feel I’ve made all my decisions without thinking at all. But it’s right for your friends to celebrate, so don’t feel they’re insensitive. It’s difficult for us, it’s natural for them. We’re no longer good Italians, and we ought to be, we should be.’
‘I know what it is,’ said Mariella, ‘you think it’s wrong for a good Italian to love an Austrian. That’s silly. He sent me a very nice note.’
They went down the stairs, Mariella’s friends claimed her with shouts and laughter and they all ran out into the street. Pia stood at the drawing-room window and watched them. They were caught up with other children, with people, all singing as they made their way to the square. This was the day her father had sworn would come. This was the day she herself had awaited. She did not feel rapturous, only bitter that events had robbed her of anticipated joy. The day was an impossible one for her. Carl’s world had fallen and smashed. And instead of being in his hospital bed, as he should, he would be up, waiting for the ambulances to assemble and collect patients. Oh, it was suicidal to go on such a journey on a day so cold.
Her mother entered the room.
‘We should go out too, Pia, it’s what we all wanted, the end of the war and an Italian victory. But it’s too wintry for me, and I’m not in the right spirit.’
It was that night on the attic landing which had spoiled it all for them. And it was wintry, though the sun was shining and the mountains glittering. The night’s snow, a white cloak over the little town, was, thought Pia, a brilliance to the Italians. It must seem like a shroud to the Austrians. They would not be out in the streets, they would be weeping in their homes.
‘Mama,’ said Pia, ‘those wounded men from the hospital, they’ll freeze to death before they get to Bozen.’
‘No, no, they aren’t going to climb up and down mountains to get there,’ said her mother, ‘they’ll go by road, to Tai today and for the night, then on to Arraba and then to Bozen. There’s a very good hospital at Bozen. They’ll sew up any holes Major Korvacs has been left with.’
‘If he doesn’t die on the way,’ said Pia.
‘Pia, your father had his say with Major Korvacs. Now perhaps God will have His turn. If your father couldn’t kill him, and there’s no more fiery sword than his, God won’t let the weather do so.’
‘Mama, what am I going to do?’ Pia’s eyes were on people, dark shapes against shining white, but her mind was on the ambulances and the preparations for the retreat to Bozen.
‘You must do what all of us should now, Pia. Think of Italy and the Pope and the King instead of Vienna and the emperor. We shall become Italian citizens now. It’s what Major Korvacs said in his note to me.’
Signora Amaraldi.
We are going, you will remain. You will have new loyalties to observe, I must keep my old ones. Any moment you will be free to give allegiance to Italy, while I cannot desert Austria. I need to see Vienna. Briefly I have known your family. I am honoured. There is nothing I hold against it, nothing. I hope, in turn, I’ve given you no cause to think badly of the country I represented while I was in your house. Forgive me that I can’t keep my promise to come and see you. I send, if I may, my love to Mariella.
My felicitations to you.
Carl v. Korvacs.
‘Mama, it isn’t as simple as that, you know it isn’t,’ said Pia.
‘No, not for you. For you it’s going to be very difficult, for you realize, don’t you, that this armistice will bring your father home?’
Pia closed her eyes. She could not hate her father. She had been his pride and joy, his most faithful follower. But that was all gone, that relationship, shattered by the cold, deliberate nature of his act.
‘Mama, his friends will have heard how he shot Carl. They’ll think him a hero. He’ll walk around as one. I know now I don’t speak the same language as he does.’ Pia saw a glinting rooftop from which the snow had slid. She saw how sharply blue the sky was, how icy it looked. She thought of the road to Tai, the Austrian columns, the despair of defeat and retreat, and the ambulances jolting over the frozen road. Some Austrian families were moving out, wanting to get to Innsbruck or other places before the Italian troops arrived. Pia turned from the window. No one could say she had not thought about the decision in her mind now. ‘Mama, I am going with him, I am going with the hospital staff and the ambulances.’
Her mother did not throw up her hands or beat her forehead. Quite calmly she said, ‘He has his soldiers, Pia, perhaps they’ll go with him.’
‘According to the armistice, the soldiers are supposed to stay where they are. Let me go, please. When he’s in hospital in Bozen he’ll have no one to visit him.’
‘He won’t be alone, Pia.’
‘I’m going,’ said Pia intensely, ‘I must.’
‘Yes, I know you must,’ said Signora Amaraldi. ‘Go and stay with your Benino cousins in Bozen. It will be a long journey, Pia, and a cold one. Take your warmest clothes and what money there is. When you see Major Korvacs tell him we understand about our new allegiances but we are first his friends. If I were sensible I’d stop you, because I think you may break your heart. But you must go, I see that. Nothing else is going to be of any help to you.’
The road was narrow, winding and icy. In the distance it had a hard glitter to it, which seemed a promise to be kinder underfoot. It never was. One unit of troops escorted the hospital wagons and ambulances, and that was Carl’s company. His officers and men marched doggedly and silently, rifles slung. Orderlies drove the ambulances and supply carts. Doctors and nurses either rode aboard vehicles or marched with the soldiers. The ambulances with their Red Cross markings ground and creaked along, carrying wounded who could not walk. The senior medical officer wondered why he had ordered the evacuation. No one at Headquarters had said it was advisable or necessary, but nor had anyone commanded him to cancel the order. He had carried it out with his staff, he supposed, because he felt that was what everyone wanted. Some staff had been left behind to look after the more serious cases. He liked the way several nurses marched with the soldiers. He was grateful for the soldiers. Their presence gave comfort, even pride. They were grim and bitter but not demoralized.
Austrian refugees, mainly women and children, trudged in batches within the column of soldiers. Breath escaped like steam from every mouth, but the blood stayed warm. It circulated and invigorated.
Pia, carrying a heavy case, wore her dark red coat and black fur hat. The coat was warm, the hat cosy and a vanity. She walked steadily in stout boots, moving past groups of civilians, the collar of her coat turned up. She hoped no one would know her. The Austrian women might not take kindly to the presence of an Italian on a day like this one. She kept her eyes on the ambulances in the van of the march. Soldiers looked curiously at her, for she seemed very much alone for one so attractive. Some eyed her admiringly, some sympathetically, not realizing she was Italian, not dreaming she could be. But eventually there was one man who looked at her and knew her. She felt his eyes on her. She turned her head and saw Corporal Jaafe. He was not quite like the Jaafe who had kissed Maria and seen to the requirements of his company commander. He looked grim and silent, his rifle slung, his pack high on his back.
She did not know whether to expect animosity or resentment from him. He altered his line of march until he was walking beside her.
‘This is a bad day, fräulein.’
He did not sound hostile. Perhaps he related her presence to a need she had to escape, even though she was Italian.
‘Yes, very bad, Corporal Jaafe.’
‘They say we’re better off here than in Vienna, that it’s not good at all in Vienna. Can you believe that?’ He nodded at the snow, the frozen wastes and icy road. ‘Can you believe there’s more to be had here than in Vienna? If there is, then all I can say is that thunder and lightning must have razed Vienna to the ground.’
‘You know that can’t be true.’ Pia, the weight of her case dragging at her arm, worried and wondered about which ambulance Carl was in. ‘Oh, things are bad at the moment, but life must have something good to offer you and your comrades after so many years of war. Defeat can’t be the only consequence for brave men. Vienna isn’t razed to the ground, and even if it had been it would rise again.’
‘But who’d have thought things would turn out like this?’ Corporal Jaafe shook his head. ‘They must be bad for you too if you’re having to leave.’
‘I’m going to relatives in Bozen,’ she said, ‘it’s more Austrian than Oberstein.’ The implication that she preferred an Austrian environment was a natural reaction to Jaafe’s sympathy.
‘But how long will Bozen be safe, that’s what I’d like to know,’ he said. ‘You’re by yourself, fräulein, without your family?’
‘Yes, for a while,’ said Pia. She was fiercely glad she had come, she would have gone crazy had she stayed home. It was not going to be easy. If the weather turned, conditions would become pitiless, and what Carl would say when she turned up to visit him in the Bozen hospital she didn’t know. She could not hold back the question hungry on her tongue. ‘Corporal Jaafe, where is Major Korvacs?’
‘He’s here, of course,’ said Jaafe, his boots crunching. ‘That’s why we’re here. They said no Austrian units were to move, but when we heard Major Korvacs was getting out of bed to march to Tai today, we all said we would go too, never mind what the Italian High Command said. We will lay down our arms only when the Herr Major commands us, not the Italians, not even the emperor. Major Korvacs is the one who’s looked after us. We were the best fighters of them all, fräulein, and don’t you forget it. We still are. No one is going to stop us going where Major Korvacs goes.’
‘But where is he, in which ambulance?’ asked Pia, her eyes on the lumbering vehicles ahead, all of them horse-drawn. The slanting sun cut across them, picked them out.
‘Ambulance? He’s not in any ambulance. He’s up there, leading the company, with the other officers. He’s taking us all home, all of us. He’s going to march us into Vienna, take my word.’
‘Oh, no!’ Pia was tragically alarmed. ‘Corporal Jaafe, he’ll kill himself.’
Corporal Jaafe turned his old soldier’s grin on her.
‘He’s better on his feet than his back, fräulein, I tell you that for nothing.’
Pia, in wild agitation, said, ‘You mean he says he is. Oh, don’t you see, he knows he’s going to die and he wants to do it heroically, on his feet. Oh, it’s wicked, it’s stupid. You must stop him—’
‘Not Major Korvacs,’ said Jaafe, ‘he’ll outdo the devil himself. Don’t you worry, fräulein. Here, give me that.’ He took her case. ‘I’ll stow it in one of the carts, you don’t need to carry it.’ He stopped to wait for a baggage cart to grind up. ‘You go on, fräulein, keep walking, don’t get cold. I’ll catch you up again.’
Pia went on, well aware how the coldness could creep into boots, woollen stockings, into feet and legs, if one did not keep moving. She was grateful for Corporal Jaafe’s paternalism but frantically worried about Carl. Her eyes searched the winding column, but she could not distinguish individual figures at the head of it. She walked more quickly, working her way past soldiers and coming up with a group of trudging women.
Carl marched with the sun on his face. The light was brilliant, reflected and accentuated by the inescapable walls of icy white. He did not look back. Had he done so he would have seen the slopes that swept down to the pass, the pass that had meant everything and now meant nothing. The air was so clear, so sharp, so tingling. He drew it fearlessly into his lungs. It pierced them but he did not cough. And the pain that had nagged seemed only a lurking tightness.
On either side of him and behind him marched his officers. He knew they were watching him, waiting for weakness to show. But what was his life, any single life, against the canvas of Austria’s defeat? A million better lives had already been lost for the empire, a million widows or mothers wept for them, and not one of those lost lives had changed the course of the war for the better. Relentlessly, remorselessly, the Allies had hacked away at the empire, destroying the intangible qualities that had held together a dozen different nations, scores of different peoples. What was an empire but the indefinable host wherein unity fostered amid disunity, keeping its members from each other’s throats?
His officers were silent. The extended columns were silent. It was all silence except for the sound of marching feet and creaking wheels. They had spoken all their words during the years of war. There were no more. Defeat marked their end. Defeat was silence. Even in France the German armies were approaching the end of the road.
The silence did not last for ever. It was suddenly broken by women’s voices raised in anger, and the anger turned into a chorus of jeers. A sharp, solitary cry of pain pierced the jeers.
Carl stopped and turned.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked. A soldier came leisurely along the side of the halted column. Ahead the ambulances creaked on. ‘What’s happening?’ asked Carl again.
‘They’ve found an Italian woman, Herr Major,’ said the man.
‘Well?’ said Carl sharply.
‘Herr Major, I wouldn’t put it past them to skin her alive.’ The soldier seemed regretful but otherwise indifferent. Perhaps everything else loomed far bigger. Even the troops nearest the noisy melee were looking on without doing anything. Carl strode down the line. He reached the women, a dozen or more of them. They were hysterically angry, surrounding a woman down on her knees in the icy road. Carl caught just a glimpse of her, her back to him and snow on her red coat. The women were pushing, slapping and tongue-lashing her. Her hat was off, hands at her hair. She seemed to disappear as her tormentors closed tighter around her.
‘What are you doing?’ Carl’s voice was biting, harsh. The women turned. They were fairly young, their husbands in the Austrian army, and they had preferred to leave their homes rather than come face to face with Italian troops. They wore their masks of anger glitteringly, tears not faraway. They looked at Carl, at his bleak eyes, his hard, drawn face. His expression was unforgiving for the angry, the unbridled, the revengeful. He understood their feelings but not their brutality. They became silent, uneasy. ‘Has defeat made savages of us?’ he asked.
The woman on the ground, hidden from him, shivered as she heard his voice. Corporal Jaafe arrived. He stared at the scene, at Pia on her knees, trembling, her face in her hands. He approached Carl, whose eyes were on the Austrian women.
‘Herr Major—’
‘See to her, whoever she is,’ said Carl.
‘But Herr Major, she’s—’
‘See to her,’ repeated Carl, and marched back to the van of the column, where his officers awaited him. He moved on with them and the dour cavalcade of retreat resumed its trudge. Something nudged its way into his mind. A colour. A glimpse of dark warm red. And words.
They’ve found an Italian woman.
He stopped again. He swung round. He saw her clearly then, not so far away, a black fur hat back on her head and Corporal Jaafe brushing snow from her coat. Warmth rushed into Carl’s body. He knew then the real reason why he had kept silent about Pietro Amaraldi, why he had protected Signora Amaraldi and her daughters. Because of all of them and one in particular.
‘Pia!’ He called to her. ‘Pia!’
She looked up. She saw him. He was outlined by the sun and the mountains. She saw him stretch out his hand and heard him call again.
‘Pia, come!’
She gasped. She ran, her eyes hot, the floodgates threatening. She ran past the soldiers, over the ice and snow. She ran into his arms. Carl held her and his compassionate comrades turned away.
‘Pia,’ he said, ‘my sweet foolish Pia.’
‘Carl?’ Her tears spilled. ‘Oh, let me come with you, please let me – I’ll ask for nothing, only to come to the hospital and visit you—’
‘There’ll be no hospital,’ said Carl, ‘and ask me for love.’
‘Love?’ Her swimming eyes were in disbelief.
‘Whatever I’ve lost,’ he said, ‘I’ve plenty of that to give. That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?’
‘Carl, you are saying you will give me love?’ she said.
She was a warmth against him, a woman.
‘You have it,’ he said, ‘is it what you want, Pia?’
‘From you? Oh, yes, yes,’ breathed Pia, oblivious of armies, victories, defeats and even the unfurling banners of patriots, ‘from you that is everything I want.’