In the houses high on the Schlern it was whispered that the Allies couldn’t approach the Brenner until autumn now. Perhaps not even then. This spring would come too quickly to be of any use to people who waited four hundred miles north of the Allied lines. But hope was like the earth: it was frozen, but it was not dead. The old men, the gaunt-cheeked women, the remaining young men (who had escaped from the recruiting interest of any German ski-patrol by vanishing into the thick pine forests which fringed the mountains’ base), didn’t talk very much. But they had their own thoughts. They listened in to the forbidden Allied broadcasts, and they were making their decisions. Here was a third group of foreigners who would come to invade the Dolomites. Would they be like the Italians or the Germans, who, once they came to a country, claimed possession? Or were these foreigners, who called themselves “The Allies,” different? Were they really fighting for other people’s freedom as well as their own? After twenty-five years of Italian domination the people on the Schlern, like all the Tyrolese on the other Dolomite slopes, were waiting for the autumn of 1944. If it couldn’t be this spring which would end this waiting then let it be the autumn. It was more than a hope; in many hearts it had become a prayer.
The people went about their daily tasks as if there were no war. But they measured their food carefully, they listened eagerly to the radio, they hid their men from the German patrols, they pretended ignorance in reply to all the regulations and proclamations of the newly named “Alpenvorland.” They never forgot that in the village of Kastelruth at the edge of the Schlern, where the road from the valley below came to rest on a gentle green slope, there was a token German garrison. They never forgot that these armed foreigners were there, not to give them a feeling of “protection,” as the Germans said in the best gangster fashion, but to police the Schlern plateau and keep it under informal observation.
The Germans didn’t expect trouble. The people of the South Tyrol were Austrians, after all. And Austria was now a part of Greater Germany. So the garrison was small, and its periodic patrols were less thorough as the winter severity increased. And if the Tyrolese up on this plateau had shown no response to the February proclamation, that all men between eighteen and fifty-five years of age must report to the German Military Headquarters in Bozen, then the Germans at Kastelruth blamed that on the slow and stubborn nature of the highlander. They would deal with him, once the more accessible districts of the South Tyrol had been brought into line. The Germans were quite content to play a waiting game.
But the peace of the mountains is a deceiving thing: the impassive face of the highlander is equally baffling. Neither the mountains nor the people who live among them are so simple as they look.
8
Peter Lennox watched the pools of green grass appear through the melting slush. With the same impatience, he had watched the first blanket of snow on the Schlern. But now there was a bitter feeling of failure added to the impatience, turning its edge to knife-sharp disappointment. The inactivity of the long winter months frayed his nerves. The people who had sheltered him had been decent and kind. He would admit that. But their very quietness, their acceptance of the fact that no message had come from any Allied Command, only added to his sense of failure. He had helped no one. He had been of no use to anyone. And the colonel and Jock and Ferry and all the others—whose names were even beginning to fade from his memory (he could only remember those of his fellow prisoners whom he had either liked or disliked very much)—had been either captured or killed. For that must be the explanation of this silence. There could be no other reason: that damned colonel couldn’t have meant him to sit up here all winter, watching the snow clouds bank against a string of rocky teeth. Or could he have? When they had parted eight months ago down on the roadway outside of Bozen the colonel had talked of action, of urgent necessity. Action...urgent necessity—sugar-coating on a bitter pill, so that his inflated pride would let him swallow his disappointment about being left up here among a lot of women and boys and old men.
And now it was May. The last blot of snow had soaked into the sodden fields. Lennox had made up his mind. As he dressed in the small room which had become so familiar—with its narrow window tucked under the broad overhanging roof, with its carved wooden bed and thick soft mattress, with its one small table and chair, and white scrubbed floor—he was rehearsing the speech he would make.
“Frau Schichtl!” he would say. “What’s the use of staying here any longer? The plan, which your highly esteemed brother in Bozen made, has definitely not come off. The only sensible thing now—begging your esteemed brother’s pardon, for he seems a most determined man—is for me to leave your house and end the worry you’ve had ever since Johann brought me here. I had a plan for escape, and I haven’t forgotten it. I’ll reach the Allied lines. And I’ll tell the Whosits all about you here on the Schlern. I’ll tell them about the man from Bozen whom I have never met, and about the hatchet-faced old boys, who come on a Saturday evening to drink your homemade wine around the kitchen table and talk and talk and talk. And the Whosits will send the right men up here. Men who will talk and talk and talk, and feel perfectly happy because they know what they are doing. They won’t have guilt every time they look at the mattress on a most comfortable bed; and they’ll have so many plans inside their specially trained brains that they won’t mind sitting in a room all day and every day. They enjoy hiding. That’s part of their job. And they’ll be really helpful. They’ll parachute all over this place.” He paused while he crossed over to shut out the cold morning air.
“You are getting soft,” he told himself angrily. “Now, where were you?” He stared at himself truculently in the small square of mirror. He saw a white-faced young man with even features, and strong eyebrows now drawn together in a bad-tempered frown. His hair was too long, his chin needed a shave. The grey eyes were clear and direct, but their look was hard enough to jolt him away from the mirror. He didn’t like his looks. He picked up the loose jacket of grey tweed, and pulled it over his white shirt and black waistcoat as he started to descend the bare staircase. His heavy shoes, low-cut, ugly, and strong, struck angrily on the white-scrubbed wood. He slowed up, and set his feet down more quietly. In the kitchen below was a bright wood fire in a neat stove, the smell of newly baked bread, the early sun streaming through the small windows, and Frau Schichtl.
She had poured out a cup of new milk as she heard him leave the room upstairs, and she was now measuring the careful spoonfuls of homemade jam on to his plate. The newly baked bread was wrapped in its white cloth on the dresser: on the table was a staler loaf. (New bread was too uneconomical: it sliced extravagantly and was eaten too quickly.) The rough linen cloth on the table was clean; the large white coarse cups were clean; the room was clean. Everything was neat and clean, from the well-scrubbed face and well-brushed hair of Frau Schichtl to the stiff little curtains of white lace above the precise row of ivy pots on the sill.
Lennox said a mild good-morning, and fingered his chin nervously as he slid into his chair at the table. He ought to have shaved after all, he thought, as he glanced up at Frau Schichtl’s quiet face. She had the same wide-spaced blue eyes as her son, Johann. Now these eyes were watching him curiously. He wished she would sit down. She was almost his height, and that was tall for a woman. Now, as she stood there so impassively, her strong arms and capable hands flowing from her broad shoulders, her well-shaped head erect on the long, firm neck, he felt as young as Johann. He resented it. And that gave him courage.
“Frau Schichtl!” he began. “Frau Schichtl, what’s the use of—”
But she had turned her back towards the door and was listening to something else. He watched the decided curve of jaw and the line of high cheek-bone in profile.
“Anything wrong?” he asked.
“No. I only thought I heard Johann. He came home at dawn today. He’s asleep now. He had a long journey this time.” She moved suddenly to the entrance-hall, which formed the sitting-room of the house, and sto
od listening at the foot of the staircase. He could see her, the tall, strong figure in its severe black dress, intent on listening. The beams of light from the kitchen and sitting-room windows made a good angle against the soft background of darkened pine walls. The still darker furniture formed solid shapes, bright surfaced with polishing, so that they held the glancing light. Interior, he thought, interior in the Dutch manner. And then he glanced down at his right hand. Frau Schichtl, coming back into the kitchen with her slow, even step, saw the bitter smile on his lips. She forgot about Johann.
“What is it, Peter?” she asked quickly.
Lennox’s right hand slid under the table. He lifted the heavy cup of milk with his left hand. He didn’t want to test the right hand now, not with Frau Schichtl’s sharp blue eyes watching him.
“What news does Johann bring?” he countered.
“A lot. About many things.” She stopped watching him and moved suddenly over to the oven. She unwrapped the white cloth which lay on its side-ledge. She picked up a loaf and cut a thick slice with its floury golden crust still warm.
“Try this,” she said, and offered him the new breads.
Lennox stared at her in surprise. He took the bribe with almost a smile. But Frau Schichtl was now too preoccupied with her own thoughts even to notice it.
“Why don’t you like us?” she asked suddenly, staring at the floor in front of his feet.
Lennox moved restlessly. “I do like you,” he said very evenly. “You have been very kind.”
“Yet you are not happy. If you really liked us then you would be happy.”
“That doesn’t follow.”
She raised her eyes and studied his face with a puzzled look. “You want to leave,” she said at last. “You think this is a prison.” It was a statement, rather than a challenge, and she said it so sadly that Lennox found himself answering. He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice, but his words were tight and hard.
“That,” he said, “is a fact about me, and not about you or about the people of those mountains out there.” He nodded towards the window. “You’ve all been kind. You’ve given me as much food as you’ve had for yourself. Sometimes more. You’ve given me shelter. You’ve hidden me well. I understand why I can’t leave this house through the day, why I’ve got to stay upstairs most of the time. I understand why the neighbouring houses aren’t even supposed to know I am here. I understand why no one sees me except you, and Johann, and the local Committee who come up to visit you once a week. Your brother who lives in Bozen has provided excellent identification papers proving I am your nephew from the North Tyrol. The story is plausible, I know: I came here this winter, after being discharged from the German army, and the wounds I got in North Africa keep me close to this house. You’ve done your best for me. I know all that. But I also know your risk is greater than mine. I’ll lose one life if I am caught. But you’ll lose everything—Johann’s life, your friends’ lives, this house, everything. So, Frau Schichtl, I know this isn’t a prison. But I still feel a prisoner. That’s a fact about me.”
Frau Schichtl said slowly, “I don’t understand.” She passed a flat hand over the side of her brow, smoothing the soft curls at the temple into the heavy sleekness of her hair.
“I am not a prisoner of your friends,” Lennox said gently, “I’m a prisoner of events.”
“But so are we.”
He shook his head impatiently. “My job for six months has amounted to sitting here and doing nothing. That’s a fine way, I must say, to fight a war.”
“But that wasn’t your fault. Or ours. We’ve been waiting, like you, for instructions. We could act, all of us, but we might do the wrong things. We might bring the Germans down on us like an avalanche, and then we never could do anything. Then, when we were needed, we would be unable to help. Don’t you see, Peter, we’ve got to wait until we get the right orders? But we may never get them. Something’s gone wrong. The Allies don’t even know we are waiting for one small sign from them.”
“Surely—” Frau Schichtl began, and then stopped. The lines at the side of her mouth deepened. Her eyelids drooped as if to hide the hurt look in her eyes. Suddenly she came to life again. She shrugged her shoulders, and there was a difficult smile on her lips.
“I know,” she said, in a low voice. “I’ve thought of all of that too.” And as Lennox stared at her in amazement, she began to straighten the tablecloth, smoothing off the crumbs of bread into her cupped hand. Then she laid two plates neatly opposite each other, and two cups for milk. For a moment he wondered if she had waited to eat breakfast with Johann. And then he saw that she was lifting the kerchief and green cape which hung on one of the wooden pegs near the door. She was leaving, as she did each morning, for the small school down in the village of Hinterwald. Last autumn Frau Schichtl had volunteered to become a teacher again. The Italian teachers had gone, and Frau Schichtl had taken over the job of keeping the school open. That, as she had explained with one of her infrequent smiles, at least prevented a stranger from coming into the Hinterwald to teach—a stranger sent by the Germans. Now she was gathering together the text-books she had studied last night and the notebook in which she had so carefully prepared today’s lessons. Her pupils would have been amused at the homework which their new teacher had to do.
“Who has come here with Johann?” Lennox asked, looking pointedly at the two cups on the table.
Frau Schichtl’s thoughts came back into the small room. She said quickly, “I meant to tell you. It’s my brother. He has some special news for you, and for the others.”
“The man from Bozen,” Lennox said softly. “So he’s here.” He smiled, and then he began to laugh.
Frau Schichtl looked at him almost sadly. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,” she said, “and I don’t know why you are laughing.”
“I was thinking what a fine soldier I’ve become. I didn’t even hear your brother or Johann arrive. I’d have done just as well if they had been a couple of Germans.”
“In that case,” Frau Schichtl said, “I would have found a way of wakening you.” She didn’t say, as she might well have done, “Please don’t think that everything is perfectly normal and safe just because I try to give the appearance of being normal and unworried. Don’t think that, young man.”
Peter Lennox rose and went towards the door of the kitchen. “I’ll get back to my room,” he said. Rules of the House. When Frau Schichtl went out he had to stay upstairs with the bedroom door locked. Then he added, “I’m sorry. I’ve worried you. I never thought you did worry, because you always look so calm. If I had known your brother was here I would have kept my remarks for him.” He touched her awkwardly on the shoulder. She smiled suddenly, and the lines of her mouth were no longer tired or unhappy.
She moved slowly towards the entrance-door. “Perhaps I should have told you more this winter,” she said, “and then you wouldn’t have worried because you thought there was nothing to worry about.”
Lennox had no answer to that. He began to climb the stairs. He was glad, unexpectedly, that he hadn’t made the speech he had prepared. He ought to have remembered that women, no matter where they came from or what language they spoke, always had the last word. Never argue with a woman, he thought: it’s a waste of good breath. When he reached the small square landing he heard the entrance-door open and then shut. The heavy sounds seemed to tell him that the conversation in the kitchen—as far as Frau Schichtl was concerned—was equally closed. Even the way a woman shut a door could be her last word. He smiled in spite of himself.
9
He loitered in the darkness of the upper hall for some moments, wondering in which room Johann and his uncle were sleeping. This wooden house was solidly built: he could hear nothing. The silence oppressed him. He moved quickly into his own room, and, out of habit, twisted the clumsy key in its iron lock. From the window, shielded by the white starched curtain from outside eyes, he could see Frau Schichtl making her way carefully roun
d the pools of heavy mud. The road to Hinterwald was scarcely more than a cart-track. It served as a link between Hinterwald and these outlying houses, and as a short-cut over the wooded hillside to the next village. A better but longer road twisted through the meadows farther to the west. It was the “foreigners’ road,” Frau Schichtl had said. But whether that meant it was built by foreigners or used by foreigners, Lennox didn’t know. At least, the Germans didn’t use this cart-track. The Schichtl house, and the Kasal farmhouse some fifty yards away, might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. Lennox could have counted on one hand the number of strangers whom he had watched passing in the last eight months.
The Kasals’ eldest daughter was waiting at the doorway of the farmhouse as usual. Her yellow hair gleamed in the early morning sunlight as she ran to join Frau Schichtl. The girl was laughing. Her bare feet and legs ploughed carelessly through the spring mud. Her shoes were held safely together in one hand, her school books were in the other. He envied her the freedom with which she could walk and laugh. He opened the window carefully, slowly. The fresh air brought the smell of grass and rain, of pine-trees and free mountain winds into his small room. He had an impulse to lean out of the window and feel the touch of the early morning sun on his face. But he stayed dutifully behind the white screens, under the broad, overhanging eaves, and looked at the green alp sloping gently down towards the village.