A Winter's Night

  Everything was gray, perhaps because the smoke had spread out all over and killed all the other colors. The noise of the motorcycle was the only sound in the middle of all that desolation and Floti was afraid that it would call attention to them, that there was a sniper lying in wait, taking aim, and then boom, he and Pelloni would be killed and be added to the list of casualties. Pelloni was proceeding at a snail’s pace because the road had practically disappeared and they had to be extremely careful not to slash their tires on the scraps of metal and splinters of glass underfoot. Then he stopped.

  “Get off,” he said, “we have to walk it. I’ll hold the handlebars and you push from behind.”

  Floti obeyed. The two of them weighed too heavily on the tires and they would go flat in no time.

  “How much farther, do you think?” asked Pelloni after a hundred meters or so.

  Floti looked at the map and tried to estimate, although neither of them had a watch and there were no shadows on the ground. Daylight was fading and it would be dark soon.

  “I think we’re close. Less than half an hour. If we can get back on, half an hour, maybe less. Look . . . ”

  “What?”

  “There, on that stone. It’s a blackbird. A baby one. It must have lost its parents.”

  Pelloni shrugged. “Who gives a shit about a blackbird. Let’s go, it’s getting dark.”

  “No. Wait,” said Floti again.

  “I told you I couldn’t care less about some damn blackbird.”

  “Down, we have to get down. The motorcycle too.”

  Pelloni finally understood, lowered the Frera to the ground without making a sound and stretched out beside it. On a hill they could make out a couple of shapes moving slowly.

  “Austrians,” mouthed Floti, putting a hand on the carbine slung over his neck.

  “Don’t. They’re proletarians like we are.”

  “You’d let a proletarian stick it up your backside,” hissed Floti. “If they come this way, I’m shooting. You can do what you like.”

  Pelloni pushed deeper into the furrows in the ground. “How can you tell they’re Austrian?”

  “Because they have a helmet that looks like a piss-pot,” replied Floti.

  He counted them: there were four.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” warned Floti, “they’re coming this way. Ten more steps and they’ll see us. I’ll shoot first. Then you shoot while I’m reloading. I fire, you reload and then fire again. In one minute’s time, we’ll have taken out all four of them. Got it?”

  “Got it,” mumbled Pelloni, and checked that his rifle was ready.

  The patrol halted, as if the soldiers had heard the Italians talking. The sergeant leading them muttered something; they were so close his voice could be heard clearly. Then they turned and cautiously made their way back to the river. A splashing noise: they were fording the Isonzo to get back to the other side. Floti let out a sigh and whispered, “Thank God.”

  “Why, you would have shot them?” asked Pelloni. “You would have killed another human being?”

  “I sure would have,” replied Floti.

  “Not me.”

  “Listen, so much the better. No one can say what he’d do if put to the test. Maybe you who didn’t want to would have shot at them and I who thought I could wouldn’t have pulled the trigger. Let’s get moving.”

  Pelloni straightened up the Frera and gave the pedal a kick to start the engine. They proceeded very slowly for a couple of kilometers, Pelloni in the saddle and Floti on foot, until the roadbed became smoother and they could both get on the motorcycle and increase their speed. It was soon dark and they were forced to switch on the headlight to avoid holes and debris. It was blinded so it lit up the ground just a couple of meters in front of the wheel, but it turned them into a target nonetheless.

  “In the distance I can see a yellow light moving back and forth,” said Pelloni.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw it,” he replied.

  “So did you shoot at it?”

  “No, thank God.”

  “Why, you believe in God?”

  “No,” replied Pelloni.

  A flash and then an explosion. Then a voice: “Halt! Stop or I’ll shoot. Who goes there?”

  “Courier.”

  “Come forward.”

  Pelloni stopped the Frera and Floti held up the folder with the message inside. The sentry, a Sardinian no taller than the king, tried to grab it, but Floti stopped him. “I have orders to deliver it personally to Colonel Da Pollenzo.”

  Pelloni remained with the motorcycle, while Floti was taken to the base headquarters. They passed in front of the field hospital and he saw a medic standing outside the tent smoking a cigarette and wearing an apron so bloody it looked like a butcher’s. His face was gray and expressionless. Like a stone.

  Floti continued to the command tent. Da Pollenzo was a man who inspired awe: nearly six feet tall, with a neatly groomed beard, perfectly pressed jacket and mirror-finish boots. He was standing behind an improvised desk, with a topographical map draped over it like a tablecloth, lit by an oil lamp. The stiff visor on his cap shaded dark eyes topped with bushy brows. To Floti it seemed impossible that a man on the front lines could maintain such an impeccable appearance, and he would have liked to ask him how he did it. He hastily patted down his own uniform, saluted, and handed him the sealed folder.

  “Sit down, you must be tired,” said the colonel as he opened the folder with the tip of his bayonet.

  Floti was surprised at such thoughtful attention, but stayed on his feet: “Thank you sir, I’m not tired.”

  “Do you know what it says here? It says that in one hour’s time there will be a massive attack by the Eighth Hungarian Division camped directly opposite us on the other side of the Isonzo,” he said, extracting his pocket watch from inside his jacket and glancing at it. “And in half an hour they’ll start firing their heavy artillery.”

  “Just now, at about ten kilometers from here, we saw a group of Austrians or Hungarians on this side of the river, sir.”

  Da Pollenzo drew closer and looked straight into his eyes. “What were they doing?”

  “I couldn’t say, we saw them at the last minute and we took cover, ready to shoot at them if they came closer. They came within a few steps, but then turned around and crossed the river. We jumped back on the motorcycle so we could get here as fast as possible.”

  “You did well. If you’d gotten here any later, thousands of your fellow soldiers would have died in the bombing. You’ve accomplished your mission and you could turn back, but I fear that’s too dangerous now. The artillery could start up at any moment.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” replied Floti, “we’d like to go straight back. We have to get back to our unit and report to the commander that we did as we had been ordered. He’ll be worried about us.”

  “Go then. But be careful. You’re running a considerable risk.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  Da Pollenzo left him and immediately summoned his officers, ordering them to pull their men back as far as possible beyond the range of the Austro-Hungarian artillery. “Sound the alarm and muster the men. Every minute gained will save the lives of thousands of men, including our own. Move.”

  Floti caught up with Pelloni who was filling the tank with a jerry can. “Hell is about to break loose here. We have to get out now.”

  “Right. Get on.”

  The Frera started up at the third kick and Pelloni deftly wove between potholes and debris, skirting the wreckage of bombed-out vehicles. The blinded headlight showed them the road one meter at a time, suddenly illuminating the unexpected objects in their way.

  “Do you think we’re being watched?” Floti asked loudly to make himself heard over the sound of the engine.

  ??
?Maybe,” replied Pelloni, turning around.

  “Maybe one of those four guys we saw before is taking aim right now.”

  “No, stop worrying. All they can see is a reflected light going on and off. They can’t see us, and even if they could, by the time they drew a bead on us we’d be past them.”

  That made sense to Floti and he did stop worrying for a while but then he thought that a rifle barrel would only have to move a few centimeters to follow their movement from a kilometer away and that got him worrying again, but he didn’t say anything so as not to be a nuisance.

  Time passed and the sputtering of the slow-running engine began to seem like a friendly voice. Then a thunderclap ripped through the silence of the night. Pelloni stopped and looked back. Floti got off.

  “There,” said Pelloni, “it’s started. Who knows if they had enough time to retreat out of range. How much time has gone by, would you say?”

  “Half an hour.”

  “Will you look at that!” said Pelloni. “It looks like the end of the world.” The echoes of hundreds of explosions filled the air. The noise was quite loud, even at this distance.

  “Let’s hope they got away,” said Floti, and Pelloni could see the flashes of cannon fire reflected on his face and in his eyes.

  “You can move quite a ways in half an hour,” he replied. “And even if we managed to save just a couple of hundred lives, it was worth coming out here. For the big brass, the life of a soldier is nothing. They have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of men to send in as cannon fodder. But for me and you, for us, even one single life is precious. Let’s get out of here, Floti, there’s nothing more we can do.”

  They had covered another hundred meters or so when a shot rang out and then another. Pelloni fell over on the saddle. The motorcycle rolled forward for a few more meters and then fell over, and Floti rolled onto the stones at the side of the road.

  “Pelloni!” he screamed as soon as he had struggled to his feet. “Where are you?”

  There was no answer and he started to feel around for his friend in the dark, listening for his gasping breath. When he found him, he saw that Pelloni couldn’t move and when he tried to pull him up, he realized that his hands were wet with blood. The life of his friend was flowing through his hands and soaking into the dry earth.

  “Damn it, Pelloni, don’t die now, we’re almost there!” he shouted between sobs. “My god, what do I do, what do I do now . . . we were almost out of this.” But his friend wasn’t listening anymore. His body was dead weight, and Floti lowered him carefully on to the ground. He snuffed up hard and dried his tears on the back of his sleeve, then took Pelloni’s dog tags and his wallet and tried to lift the Frera which was still running, the rear wheel still spinning and spinning . . .

  Once he’d gotten it back up, he grabbed the handlebars and took off running, then jumped onto the saddle as if it were a horse. He didn’t know how to use the clutch or the gears, and he went forward all night without ever shifting the gear that Pelloni had been using. It felt somehow that his friend was bringing him home.

  He didn’t know where he was and he couldn’t see, he didn’t recognize anything around him in the dense darkness, his back hurt, all his muscles were tight as knots, the damp night air stuck to his hands and face and he waited for dawn with mounting anxiety. He had begun shaking uncontrollably. He was afraid he would fall off, afraid he would be shot, afraid he would crash into something.

  The first glimmer of light reached him on a country road. Soon after he saw a Fiat 18 BL loaded with supplies heading south. He thought it might be carrying ammunition and replacement parts to headquarters, and he pulled over behind it thinking he could follow the truck in. He couldn’t stop to check the map because he didn’t think he could start up the motorcycle again, and this seemed to be a good strategy.

  The truck proceeded slowly because the road was unpaved and full of holes and he managed to stay behind it.

  The sun rose, finally, and its clear light stung his tired eyes, red with strain and tears. He rode past a couple of small towns, then saw a railway crossing and heard the bell announcing the lowering of the bar. He’d learned how to open the throttle to accelerate and he pulled as close behind the truck as he could; it was racing forward to beat the bar.

  He managed to get through as well, by the skin of his teeth.

  He kept going, pushing on, pushing through the cramps that were seizing at his muscles. He was hungry and thirsty and tired. And above all, he felt an overwhelming need to urinate. His bladder hurt so much he felt like he was sitting on a stone. But he didn’t want to give up. He wanted to take the Frera back to headquarters and tell them that the mission had been accomplished. Finally, overcoming his natural restraint and the sense of dignity that had been instilled in him since his boyhood, he urinated in his pants. The hot, strong-smelling liquid that ran down his leg and filled his boots disgusted him, but he felt better and knew that he could continue his journey. It wouldn’t be much longer, and he’d be able to wash up.

  He was right. In half an hour’s time, he was back at the camp he had departed from. He recognized the guard post and prepared a strategy that would allow him to touch ground. He closed the throttle all the way. The engine gave a couple of hard knocks and then, starved of fuel, died with a bang so loud it sounded like a gunshot.

  “Is that any way to treat an engine, you goat!” yelled a corporal who happened to be passing by at that moment. “Do you know that thing costs more than you do?”

  “I don’t know how to drive it,” replied Floti. “I did what I could. I have to talk to Captain Cavallotti right away.”

  “He’s in his tent, down that way,” said the other churlishly. “You smell like piss, you goat.”

  Floti felt a strong urge to punch him, but decided to drop it. He put the motorcycle on its kickstand and walked to the captain’s tent.

  Cavallotti recognized him: “It’s you, Bruni. How did it go?”

  “Your message was delivered just in time. Half an hour before the cannon fire began. Colonel Da Pollenzo meant to have his troops retreat beyond the range of the Austrian artillery. I don’t know if he managed to do so. We left immediately to report back to you, sir.”

  “You did all you could do. I’m proud of you both. Call your friend and have them give you a bowl of soup and some boiled meat in the kitchen, with a flask of wine. You deserve it.”

  “Private Pelloni died, sir, in carrying out his duty,” replied Floti. “These are his personal belongings.” He placed his friend’s identification tag and wallet on the table. He raised his hand to his forehead in a salute and added, “Request permission to be dismissed, sir,” and walked out.

  The officer’s eyes followed him out, perplexed at this boy who talked like a printed book and stank of piss.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Floti was completely unnerved by Pelloni’s death and, in a certain way, he was surprised at himself. What was the death of one man in the midst of all that slaughter? Hadn’t he personally certified the deaths of thousands of young men? The answer was not difficult to find: people care about who they know, not who they don’t know. If someone were to get all upset every time he heard about anyone dying, life would be nothing but grieving. It was only right, he thought; each person should cry for the people he was close to. Somewhere else, other people were crying over someone they had cared about. A bit like when you went to the cemetery for All Saints and All Souls. At first everyone follows the priest in the procession, then once you’re beyond the gate, everyone goes their own way and has their own grave to attend to. Widows say the rosary over the graves of their husbands, children gather around the tombs of their parents, a younger sister might have the task of tending to an older brother who’d already passed on.

  Although usually, thought Floti, it’s the young who bury the old, whereas in time of war it’s the opposite. B
oys that leave home healthy and full of life come back in a casket and the mothers and fathers who brought them into this world have the job of burying them.

  Things continued more or less the same for several months, and Floti kept searching for his brothers. He found Dante thanks to a quartermaster stationed at Colloredo in Friuli. He was part of a regiment of Bersaglieri, the ones with the red cap and tassel. The discovery put him in a good mood and for a while he stopped suffering over Pelloni. So it was him, Gaetano, Checco and Dante, four out of six accounted for, not bad. He still had to find Fredo and Armando, he had no idea where they were. Savino luckily was still at home, the only one of them still too young to be called up.

  Towards the end of the summer he received a letter from the parish priest with news of his father: he’d had to hire a farmhand, because he and Savino couldn’t handle everything on their own. A good lad named Secondo who came from a very poor family up in the Apennines. Those mountain families didn’t have much imagination as far as names went. When a child was born, those who went to church, those who could read, that is, would look at the calendar and give him the name of that day’s saint. Those who weren’t so faithful went by the numbers: Primo, Secondo, Terzo and so on, although at some point they usually stopped. Calling a son Dodicesimo—Twelfth—or Quattordicesimo—Fourteenth—was a little much. Floti had met a boy whose name was Ultimo. His mother and father must have had enough of children and were hoping that by giving him that name he’d be the last.

  The most important bit of news came at the end of the letter: Rosina had married! A revenue officer from the south of Italy. They had gone to live in Florence. On one hand, he thought, this was a good thing, because she had a husband with a fixed salary, who made good money every month, even when it rained or snowed, and that was a great privilege. On the other hand he was sorry because Florence was so far away, and he didn’t know when he would see her again. As he mulled it over, he thought that a fixed salary was really no great thing, after all, and that there wasn’t enough money in the world to buy a beauty like Rosina.