To Find a Mountain

Chapter Thirteen

The bread oven looked more like a small shed. It had about as much room as a tiny closet. The fire pit was underneath, and above it, several racks for the bread. It was made of stone and sealed with clay. I once tried to estimate how many loaves of bread had been made in this oven, but found the task impossible. For starters, I didn’t know how old the oven was; it had been here before either my mother or father had been born.

I opened the oven door and pulled out the wooden rack upon which four loaves of bread sat, their golden crusts still glowing over the red embers below. The scent of fresh baked bread washed over me; it was the best smell in the world and made bearable the sometimes mundane task of making bread, baking it, retrieving it from the oven and starting the whole process the very next day.

The advertisement was deceptive. I knew this batch, made of a mixture of Zizi Checcone’s acorn surprise with more traditional ingredients smelled like good bread, but tasted more like burlap. I would have to use the opposite of the expression used by so many mothers to get children to eat food that tasted good, but looked bad: Iole! Emidio! Eat it! It’s not how it tastes, it’s how it looks!” I had joked that if we didn’t eat the bread, we could use it to scrub the pots after dinner.

I was almost glad to eat this kind of bread, because it meant most of the Germans were eating it, too. And I felt there was some justice there, not much, but a little bit. They too would understand the challenge of the moment: to stretch the ingredients as far as they could go while preserving the food’s ability to sustain. The first thing to suffer? Taste. Who cared what it tasted like as long as it filled the belly?

Becher had told me earlier in the day that a convoy from the front would be returning, carrying the dead, the wounded and what remained of the living. When I saw the trucks pull up, the living and the wounded looked dead, their eyes staring off, oblivious to the fact that the truck had stopped. Sometimes the driver would have to tell them, gently at first, to get out, but some of them needed to be shouted at. And then they would jump, startled, as if their brains were still back on the bloody slope of Mt. Cassino.

It had been several weeks since my father left for the front and now I desperately hoped he would return, despite his hope to escape to a mountain. I wanted to see him, to hold him, to know that he was alive and well, it had been too long to go without him; Iole and Emidio were asking more and more questions about what he was doing. It was tiresome to have to lie to them day in and day out during a time like this, when we needed each other the most.

Back in the house, I poured the last of the espresso from the small copper-lined pot next to the hearth. It was weak and watery; I had used just enough of the beans to get a hint of the flavor and not much more. Sitting at the table, thoughts of the war went through my mind. Images of the barren fields, homes empty except for the women and children, Italian men dying on the front in a war they wanted nothing to do with. It was too much to comprehend. The life of the village before the war had been hard. And not just for me because of the loss of my mother. Many families hated it in the mountains; dreamed of going to Naples, Rome or north to the wealthier cities. It was a life from which to escape, not to enjoy. But now, everyone longed for that previous life, it was like a youth that had ended abruptly, even for the oldest men and women of Casalveri.

And for what was all this suffering and death? The Germans would not win the war, I had watched Wolff and Becher listen to their precious radio late at night, and hang their heads afterward. They did not look like triumphant generals of a conquering army. They looked like parents hovering around the deathbed of their child.

No, the Germans would not win. They would simply return to their country and all they would succeed in doing here was to destroy families, villages and temporarily, a way of life. But like weeds, everything would grow back eventually. The Germans would no more be remembered than a bad storm that knocked down some trees.

At least, I hoped that would be the case.

The sound of a rumbling engine drew closer and I set down my cup, then moved to the window next to the front door. Slowly, a truck came into view and somehow I knew my father was not on it. It stopped in front of the house and Wolff swung down clumsily from the front passenger seat, his bulk not permitting him to move gracefully. He did not look back at his men in the truck, but came directly to the house.

A few men jumped out from the back of the truck bed. They walked silently away in different directions, averting their gazes. I recognized most of them, had served them bread, but for some reason they did not wish to look me in the eye.

“Benedetta, come sit with me,” Wolff said.

Wolff put his arm around my shoulders and led me back into the house. He sat me down at the table and I knew what was coming.

“There’s only one way to say these things.”

I started crying, the first tears pooling at the edge of my eyes and then dropping slowly down my cheek.

“Your father is dead.”

The words struck like hammers on hollow wood inside my head. They were words I had heard before, told by my father. Except that time, it was about my mother.

I burst into tears and sobbed unashamedly.

“No!”

“Benedetta, he and another man were in a jeep, going back to the front to get more wounded. There was an explosion…” he held his hands out as if to say there was nothing he could do. “There is no doubt.”

It answered all of the questions but one, and I knew then that it was a question I had to ask.

“Did you find his…did you see him?” I asked.

He pulled a bundle from a bag at his feet and I recoiled, imaging body parts inside. Seeing my father’s hand or foot would be too much, I started to scream.

“No! No! Benedetta, calm down,” he said, and quickly pulled an article of clothing from the bag.

“Is this your father’s?” he said.

It was Papa’s shirt, covered in blood and nearly torn to shreds, but still recognizable.

“We found it along with other…parts. There was no way he could have survived, Benny. They both died quickly and painlessly. I’m sorry.”

I ripped the shirt from Wolff’s grip and hugged it to my chest. Anger ignited inside my chest at the sound of the apology.

“Sorry? Sorry? You are not sorry!” I yelled and jumped to my feet. The chair flew backwards and toppled over, followed by a loud crash.

“We are not people to you! You think of us as mules!” I said. My face was hot with fury. “When one of us dies, all it means to you is that another precious German will live to fight another day!”

Wolff looked at me coolly, almost appraisingly.

I raced up the stairs and flung myself on my bed, still hugging my father’s shirt. I don’t know how long it was that I cried, but when I finally stopped, it was dark and the house was silent once again.

How long would I have to wait before I found out for certain that my father was dead?

The wind picked up outside, small pebbles bounced off the side of the house. If Papa had orchestrated the accident, the explosion, would he really have left his shirt? Or was that part of the plan? Did the men who escaped to the mountains ever try to fake their deaths? I’d never heard of such a thing. Papa was a slow, steady man, not given to great dreams or revolutionary ideas. He was a good man, but a conventional one. I did not see him planning something so elaborate and dangerous.

Hours later, almost with no conscious decision made, I walked back downstairs into the kitchen. My feet were heavy, and I felt like I was floating above myself, seeing the top my head, my slow shuffle.

I opened a far cabinet and reached in the back behind many plates and glasses. My hands closed around an object and I walked back into the middle of the room.

The hand grenade felt heavy in my hands.

When Emidio had come in the back door we were all in shock, but I had decided to keep it, why I don’t know. We didn’t have any guns in the house, and a kitchen knife was only so useful. It seemed like the right thing to do; after all, hand grenades were for wars.

But right now, I wasn’t thinking about self-preservation, I was thinking about revenge. An eye for an eye. A father for a father. A handful of filthy Germanesí for one good man. It would be so simple. After the soldiers were fast asleep, I could just walk to their door, open it a crack, and roll the grenade in.

I hefted the instrument of death in my hand. Amazing that such force could all be contained in such a small object. Just like a bullet. I looked at my hand, so thin and so weak compared to this…this thing. Muscle, tendon, and bone. They were nothing compared to explosives, gunpowder and bullets.

Suddenly, I felt my soul, my consciousness, float back down and come back into my body. When it happened, reasons came with it.

Now, I didn’t want to kill anyone.

Germans dying in the Carlessimo house would mean many people in Casalveri dying also. A grenade like this could set off many other explosions and reactions that would probably kill many more people than this initial blast. Plus, like so many of the Italian men and women in the rugged farming countryside, hope that somewhere my father was still alive refused to die.

I put the grenade back in the cupboard. Iole, Emidio and Zizi Checcone would be returning soon.

There was food to be made and laundry to be washed.

I got to work.