The Path to the Spiders' Nests

  As he goes along Pin is dangling the end of the belt in the water and whistling so as not to hear the chorus of frogs which seems to be getting louder every moment.

  Now he is among the little gardens and the rubbish dumps outside the houses. As he reaches them he hears voices, not talking in Italian. Pin often goes round at night in spite of the curfew and the patrols don’t say anything to him because he’s only a child. But this time he is afraid, as it occurs to him that those Germans there may be looking for the person who fired a gun. They come towards him and he tries to run away; but they shout something and catch him up. Pin takes up a position of defence, holding the belt as if it were a whip. But that is what the Germans are looking at, it’s the belt they are after; and suddenly they take him by the scruff of the neck and drag him off. Pin talks ceaselessly; begs, complains, insults, but the Germans do not understand any of it; they are worse, much worse, than the municipal guards.

  The alley is crowded with armed German and Fascist patrols, and men they have arrested, including Michel the Frenchman. Pin has to pass through these on his way up the alley. It is very dark; the only light comes from the top of the steps, from a lamp that only lets out a glimmer because of the black-out.

  By the light of the glimmer, at the top of the alley, Pin sees the sailor, his fat face distorted with fury, pointing a finger at him.

  Chapter Three

  Yes, the Germans are worse than the municipal guards. With the guards Pin could at least, if nothing else, begin joking, and say: ‘If you let me go I’ll arrange for you to go to bed free with my sister.’

  But the Germans cannot even understand what he says, and the Fascists are men he has never seen before, men who do not even know who his sister is. Both are strange types; the Germans are as ruddy, fleshy, and hairless as the Fascists are black, bony, and bluish in the face, with rat-like moustaches.

  Next morning, at the German headquarters, Pin is the first to be interrogated. He is faced by a German officer with a baby-like face, and a Fascist interpreter with a little beard. In a corner is the sailor, and, sitting near him, Pin’s sister. They are all looking bored; the sailor seems to have made up a long story about the stolen pistol, so as not to get any blame for letting it be stolen, and must have told a lot of lies.

  On the officer’s table lies the belt, and the first question Pin is asked is: ‘How did you get hold of this?’ Pin is half asleep; he has spent the night on the floor in a passage with Michel the Frenchman near him and every time Pin was getting off to sleep Michel gave him a violent dig in the ribs with his elbow and whispered: ‘If you talk I’ll kill you.’

  Pin had replied each time: ‘Oh, piss off.’

  Michel said: ‘You mustn’t say a word about us, d’you understand? Not even if they beat you.’

  And Pin replied: ‘Oh, go and shoot yourself.’

  ‘We’ve all agreed that if the others don’t see me come home they’ll kill you.’

  And Pin replied: ‘I hope your soul rots in hell.’

  Michel is one of those people who used to work in hotels in France before the war; he’d had quite a good time there on the whole, though sometimes they would call him macaroní or cochon fasciste, then in ’40 he began being put into concentration camps and everything had gone wrong with him since: unemployment, repatriation, law-breaking.

  Suddenly the sentries had noticed that Pin and Michel were talking to each other and took Pin away as he was the principal accused and was not supposed to communicate with anyone. Pin could not get off to sleep; he was used to being beaten and that did not frighten him very much, but he was in an agony of doubt about the best line to take up at the interrogation. He would have loved to revenge himself on Michel and the others and tell the Germans straight away that he had given the pistol to the men in the tavern, and also that they had formed a Gap; but to turn into an informer would be another irreparable action, like stealing the pistol; it would mean he would never be stood another drink at the tavern, or be able to sing or listen to dirty stories there. And then he might also involve that man Committee, who was always so glum and miserable, and Pin would have been sorry about that as Committee was the only decent man among the lot. Pin would like Committee to arrive now, all wrapped up in his raincoat, enter the interrogation room and say, ‘I told him to take the pistol.’ That would be a fine gesture, worthy of Committee, and no harm would come to him for it either, for just as the S.S. were going to lead him off to prison, there would be a shout, like at the cinema, of: ‘Here come our lads!’ and Committee’s men would rush in and set them all free.

  When the German officer asks Pin about the belt he replies: ‘I found it.’ Then the officer takes up the belt and hits him over the cheek with all his strength. Pin reels and nearly falls; he feels as if bunches of needles had been stuck into all his freckles; the blood flows down his already swollen cheek.

  His sister screams. Pin cannot help thinking how often she herself had hit him just as hard, and that now she’s acting and just pretending to be sensitive. The Fascist interpreter leads his sister away, and the sailor begins some complicated speech in German, pointing at Pin, but the officer signs for him to be quiet. They ask Pin if he has decided to tell the truth; who sent him to steal the pistol?

  ‘I took it to shoot at a cat, intending to bring it back,’ says Pin, but he cannot manage to put an ingenuous expression on his face, which feels swollen all over. He is overwhelmed by a vague longing for affection.

  Another blow on the other cheek, not so hard this time, though. Then Pin, remembering his method with the municipal guards, lets out a piercing shriek even before the belt has touched him, and goes on screaming. A scene begins with Pin jumping round the room, shrieking and sobbing, and the Germans running after him trying to catch him and hit him again, while he shouts protests and insults and wilder and wilder replies to the questions they continue to ask him.

  ‘Where did you put that pistol?’

  Now Pin can tell the truth: ‘In the spiders’ nests.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  Pin, deep down, would prefer to be friends with these people. The municipal guards also used to hit him first, and then start joking with him about his sister. If he could make friends with these men too it would be fine to explain to them where the spiders make their nests and arouse their interest and they’d come with him and he’d show them all the places. Then they would all go off to the tavern together and buy wine and move on later to his sister’s room to drink, smoke, and watch her dance. But the Germans and Fascists, a beardless, blue-faced lot, don’t seem people with whom any understanding is possible. They go on hitting Pin, so he will never tell them where the spiders make their nests; he has never told his friends, so why should he tell them?

  Instead he begins giving great deep exaggerated sobs, like the sobs of a newborn baby, mingled with screams and curses and stamping of feet which can be heard all over the German headquarters. No, he won’t betray Michel, Giraffe, Gian and the others; they are his real friends. Pin is now full of admiration for them because they are against these swine here. Michel can be sure Pin won’t betray him, he must be hearing the screams and saying to himself: ‘He’s a lad of iron, Pin is, he’s holding out and refusing to talk.’

  In fact the noise Pin is making can be heard over the whole building; the officers in the other rooms begin complaining; there’s always a coming and going for permits and supply contracts at the German headquarters, and it’s not good that everyone should hear a child being beaten up too.

  The officer with the baby face gets an order to stop the interrogation; he can go on another day and in a different place. But it is difficult to silence Pin now. They try to explain that it’s all over, but their voices are drowned by his screams. Then a number of them cluster round him and try to calm him down, but he breaks away from them and screams louder than ever. Then they bring his sister in hoping she’ll console him, and he nearly jumps up at her and bites her. After a time there’s a who
le group of Germans and of Fascist militiamen following him around and trying to calm him down; one of them strokes his head, another tries to dry his tears.

  Finally, exhausted, panting, his voice too hoarse to speak, Pin goes quiet. A militiaman is now detailed to take him off to prison and bring him back next day for more interrogation.

  Pin comes out of the office with this armed militiaman following him; his face looks tiny under its thatch of hair, his eyes are squeezed dry and his freckles washed by tears.

  On the threshold he meets Michel on his way out, a free man.

  ‘Hallo, Pin,’ says he, ‘I’m going home. I’m joining up tomorrow.’

  Pin frowns at him, his eyes red, his mouth open.

  ‘Yes, I’ve asked to join the Black Brigade.1 They’ve told me what the perks are and the pay they get. Then, you know, during round-ups you can snoop around people’s houses and take what you want. Tomorrow they’ll give me my weapons and uniform. Keep your chin up, Pin.’

  The militiaman taking Pin to prison is wearing a black cap with a red Fascio embroidered on it. He’s young and very short, with a rifle taller than himself. He’s not one of the blue-shaven type of Fascists.

  They have been walking along for five minutes and neither of them has yet opened his mouth.

  Then, ‘If you want to, you can get into the Black Brigade too,’ the militiaman says to Pin.

  ‘If I want to, I can get into that cow of a grandmother of yours,’ Pin replies readily.

  The militiaman pretends to be offended.

  ‘Hey, who d’you think you’re talking to? Hey, who taught you that?’ and he stops.

  ‘Go on, take me to the blasted prison, hurry up about it,’ says Pin.

  ‘Why, d’you think you’ll be left quiet in prison? You’ll be taken off for interrogation all the time, and beaten till you’re bruised all over. D’you like being beaten?’

  ‘You, on the other hand, should go to hell.’

  ‘I’ll send you to hell.’

  ‘And I you, your father and your grandfather too,’ says Pin.

  The militiaman is a bit dim, and is outdone by Pin each time.

  ‘If you don’t want them to beat you, join the Black Brigade,’ he says.

  ‘And then?’ says Pin.

  ‘And then go out on round-ups.’

  ‘Do you go out on round-ups?’

  ‘No. I’m stuck at headquarters.’

  ‘Liar, I wonder how many rebels you’ve killed and don’t want to admit it.’

  ‘I swear. Never been out on a round-up.’

  ‘Except the ones you have been on.’

  ‘Except the one they captured me on.’

  ‘They captured you in a round-up too?’

  ‘Yes, a fine round-up it was, really fine. Wiped up everyone, myself included. I was hiding in a chicken-coop. A really fine round-up, it was.’

  Pin is annoyed with Michel, not because he thinks Michel has behaved badly and become a traitor. What annoys Pin is getting it wrong every time and never being able to foresee what grown-ups will do next. When one of them seems to be thinking in one way, Pin finds he’s thinking in another; he can never foresee what the changes will be.

  Pin, in his heart of hearts, feels he’d like to be in the Black Brigade too, and go around all hung with Fascist badges and tommy-guns, terrifying people and being treated by the grown-ups as one of them, linked together by the barrier of hatred separating them from other men. Perhaps, thinking it over, he will decide to go into the Black Brigade; at least he could get the pistol and perhaps be allowed to keep it and carry it about openly on his uniform; and then he could also get his own back on the German officer and the Fascist sergeant by making fools of them, and take his revenge in jeers for all the sobs and screams.

  There is a song of the Black Brigade which goes: And they call us the scamps of Mussolini … followed by various obscenities. The Black Brigade can sing obscene songs in the streets because they are ‘the scamps of Mussolini’; that’s wonderful, thinks Pin. But this militiaman is a fool and gets on Pin’s nerves, so he replies rudely to everything he says.

  The prison is in a big villa requisitioned from English owners, for the old fortress down on the port is being used by the Germans as an anti-aircraft post. It is a strange villa, in the middle of a wood of monkey-puzzle trees, and must have looked like a prison even before, with its turrets and terraces and chimney-pots turning in the wind, and all the railings that were there before as well as those added since.

  Now the rooms are used as cells, strange cells indeed with parquet and linoleum floors, great walled-up marble fireplaces, and basins and bidets stopped up with rags. There are armed sentries on the turrets, and on the terraces the prisoners queue up for their rations, then scatter for their daily airing.

  It is feeding time when Pin arrives, and suddenly he realizes that he’s very hungry. They give him a bowl too and put him in the queue.

  Many of the prisoners are in for evading the call-up, and also for various infringements of war-time restrictions, such as unlicensed slaughtering of animals or trafficking in petrol or pounds sterling. Nowadays there are very few ordinary criminals, for no one bothers about thieves; those there have past sentences to serve and are too old to ask to be called up and get them remitted. The political prisoners can be distinguished by the bruises on their faces and by their awkward movements on bones broken during interrogation.

  Pin is a ‘political’ too; it shows at once. He’s eating his soup, when up comes a big heavily built youth with a face even more livid and swollen than Pin’s, and shaven hair under a peaked cap.

  ‘They’ve fixed you nicely, comrade,’ he says.

  Pin looks at him, not knowing how to treat him yet.

  ‘And you too,’ he says.

  The youth with the shaven head says, ‘They interrogate me every day and beat me up with a whip made of gristle.’

  He says this very grandly, as if they were doing him a special honour.

  ‘If you want my soup, here you are,’ he says to Pin. ‘I can’t eat it, as my throat’s full of blood.’

  And he spits out a reddish froth on to the ground. Pin looks at him with interest; he has always had a strange admiration for anyone who manages to spit blood, and always liked to see someone with tuberculosis spitting.

  ‘Then you’ve got T.B.,’ he says to the shaven youth.

  ‘They may have given me T.B.,’ agrees the other importantly. Pin looks at him admiringly; perhaps they’ll become real friends. He has also given Pin his soup and that pleases Pin very much because he’s hungry.

  ‘If they go on like this,’ says the youth with the shaven head, ‘they’ll ruin me for life.’

  Pin says: ‘Then why don’t you join the Black Brigade?’

  The youth with the shaven head gets up then and stares at him from his swollen eyes: ‘Hey, d’you know who I am?’

  ‘No, who are you?’ exclaims Pin.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Red Wolf?’

  Red Wolf! Who hasn’t heard of Red Wolf? Every time there’s an attack against the Fascists, at every bomb that explodes in one of their headquarters, at every spy who vanishes without anyone knowing what has happened to him, people whisper the name of Red Wolf. Pin also knows that Red Wolf is sixteen years old and used to work at the ‘Todt’1 as a mechanic; others who’d worked at the ‘Todt’ to avoid the call-up had told Pin about him and how he wore a Russian-style cap and always talked about Lenin and how he’d been nicknamed KGB. He also had a passion for dynamite and time-bombs and had, it seemed, gone into the ‘Todt’ to learn how to make mines. Then one day the railway bridge blew up and KGB did not appear at the ‘Todt’ any more; he was in the mountains and came down into the town at night, carrying a big pistol and wearing a white, red, and green star on his Russian-style cap. He had let his hair grow long and now called himself Red Wolf.

  And now here was Red Wolf standing in front of him, with his Russian-style cap which no longer had a star o
n it, his big head shaved, his eyes swollen, and spitting blood.

  ‘Yes, are you him?’ asks Pin.

  ‘I am,’ says Red Wolf.

  ‘And when did they take you?’

  ‘Thursday on the Borgo bridge; armed and with the star on my cap.’

  ‘And what will they do to you?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he says with his air of importance, ‘perhaps they’ll shoot me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’

  ‘What’re you going to do?’

  Red Wolf spits blood on the ground. ‘Who are you?’ he asks Pin. Pin gives his name. He has always wanted to meet Red Wolf, to see him appear one night in the alleys of the Old Town, but Pin has always been a little afraid of him, because of that sister of his who goes with Germans.

  ‘Why are you here?’ asks Red Wolf, in a tone almost as peremptory as the Fascists during an interrogation.

  Now it is Pin’s turn to give himself airs.

  ‘I stole a pistol from a German.’

  Red Wolf gives him a look of approval, then asks in a serious voice:

  ‘Are you in the partisans?’ Pin says, ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not organized? Not in a Gap?’

  Pin is delighted to hear that word again. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, ‘Gap!’

  ‘Who’re you with?’

  Pin thinks a little, then says: ‘With Committee.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Committee. Don’t you know him?’ Pin tries to put on a superior air, but it doesn’t work. ‘A thin man, with a light-coloured raincoat.’

  ‘You’re lying. The committee is made up of lots of people, and no one knows who they are. They’re preparing the rising. You don’t know anything.’

  ‘If no one knows who they are, you don’t either.’

  Pin doesn’t like talking to boys of Red Wolf’s age because they always try to be superior and never take him into their confidence but treat him like a child.

  ‘I do know,’ says Red Wolf, ‘I’m one of the Sim.’1