“Eleonora, Eleonora! This is Carlo. I was wounded, I—”
“Pronto,” he heard. “Pronto?” Hello?
“Eleonora, it’s Carlo. I’m alive. In Napoli. Can you hear me?”
“Pronto?”
It sounded like a swarm of bees was filling the air between them. He heard Eleonora say the word once more, but it was very faint now, broken into separate syllables. Pron-to. Another few seconds and the line went dead.
He set the phone gently back into its black cradle and stood there, wondering at his foolishness. What had he been intending to do, ask Eleonora to call Vittoria to the phone? Did he really think Umberto would want one of his serfs calling the manor house to report on his status? To greet and send love to his daughter?
He returned to the living room but didn’t sit down. All of a sudden, the apartment was oppressive to him, smelling of death and misery, of mourning, of the waste of so many young lives, the dirty trick of so-called patriotism. Suddenly, the war, with its starvation and ruination, its destruction of beautiful places, its crushing of the spirit of a mother and father, was too heavy and bitter a weight to bear. The injustice of it, of life, was too heavy. Pierluigi’s death, his own deformity. He wanted only to be walking again, hungry and alone on the Italian countryside. Even if it meant—as he knew it would—drawing close to the line of combat and having to somehow find a way to cross it, he had to move on or else the sorrow in Pierluigi’s apartment would eat out his heart. “They don’t care about us. Our lives mean nothing to them,” Pierluigi’s father said in an echo of his son’s words.
Carlo didn’t have to ask whom he meant by “they.”
Twenty-Four
Once Vittoria had guided the loaded wagon onto the wooded path and disappeared from view, Paolo stood for a long while at the open barn door, watching the rain splash and puddle in the courtyard. There could be no harvesting of the wheat in such weather, and that, he thought, was the second blessing. Not only had the rain made it easier to hide the deserters in the wagon, it also gave him and the other workers a chance to try to settle themselves after the events of the previous night, to be still and quiet for a few hours, tending to small chores instead of having to labor in the fields. Even now, the air of the barn seemed to echo with the broken Italian of the German officer, with the sound of his pistol being fired, the heavy thud and crack of Antonina’s body against the stable boards, the shrieks and sobs of the children. That hideous quarter of an hour, coming not long after the explosion of the American car and the killing of the Signore’s friend, had dragged all of them—even the Signore, he guessed—out of their quiet country refuge and into the fiery pit of the war. Blood and death, killing and terror. He shook his head hard, as if to shake the sounds and sights from his mind.
After a time, he fetched a rag, reached it out into the rain until it was soaking wet, then used it to try to clean Antonina’s blood from the wooden stable wall. Enrico had gone off alone—Paolo could guess where—and it wouldn’t do to have the boy come back to the sight. When he’d done the best he could with that task, Paolo gathered up the straw that had been stained red and carried it around to the back of the barn. He’d burn it on a dry day, he’d scrape the remaining stain from the boards another time, or perhaps paint over it.
He finished the cleaning job, busied himself for an hour sharpening his knives and the scythe and adjusting a wheelbarrow wheel, made a desultory inspection of the kegs, and then realized that the weight bearing down on him was the weight of sin. The man he’d killed. The involvement of Vittoria and the risk to her life on this day and from this day forward. The way his actions had brought the rest of the workers he lived with, and the two house servants—people he was supposed to look out for—into the circle of danger with him. Guilt was eased by the sacrament of confession: he’d known that for a long time. But it wasn’t Saturday, and it was still too early in the day for confession, and he was worried about Enrico, so he pulled a waterproof over his shoulders and, hatless, went out into the rain, searching for him.
He discovered Enrico in the first place he looked: at the section of the ravine where they’d left Antonina’s body. The boy had found the sack with the Nazi uniforms in them—he’d most likely climbed down into the ravine to be with his horse and seen the burlap sack hanging there—and had removed one of the gray-green shirts and stretched it out in the mud. For a few seconds, Paolo stood still, watching. Enrico was gripping a stone the shape of a small melon in his left hand, kneeling in the mud and smashing the stone down again and again and again against the Nazi shirt, grunting, weeping, trying to kill what could not be killed. Paolo stepped closer and gently took hold of his arm. Enrico looked up, his face streaked with rain and tears. “I need someone to come with me to church,” Paolo said. “You saved my life last night. I need you to come and protect me, now. Come on, stand up.”