To Find a Mountain

Chapter Seventeen

Finally, when I thought my kidneys were going to come flying out of my mouth, we branched off from the main path and my guide set me on the ground then took off walking ahead of me. I followed him along a fainter trail that seemed with every step to be on the verge of disappearing altogether.

Weaving his way through the forest with an obvious ease of familiarity, my guide seemed less preoccupied with remaining silent. He walked with a lightness in his step and from time to time, I thought I heard him whistling. The pauses to listen were also becoming less frequent.

After another ten minutes of walking, we went through deeper woods that spilled us out into a small clearing. The man paused at the forest’s edge and whistled softly. Instantly, a soft whistle answered him from the other side of the clearing.

Now there was no thought to hiding as my guide walked quickly, brazenly across the small mountain meadow to a low cabin. It looked no bigger than a shed, the kind of structure used by farmers during slaughter season, or a building used for nothing more than shelter during a storm.

It was a squat structure made of thick stone and featured a heavy wooden door at the front. A crude roof that looked like it was falling apart hung down in places over the edges of the walls. No smoke curled from the chimney and the windows were black.

He rapped on the door, a series of quick raps followed by a long pause and then one more knock.

The door swung open and a face appeared from the darkness.

“Papa!”

His image blurred as the tears came and I felt myself being picked up off the ground, the thick wool of his sweater on my skin, the stubble from his newly grown beard scraped against my cheek. Bright flashes of color exploded inside my closed eyes as the world swirled around me. I sagged in his arms; relief and exhaustion both swept over me in a torrent. It was over. The not knowing, the wondering if I had lost another parent. I wept for myself, for him, and for my mother, with whom I would never have this kind of reunion. He was alive. He was in my arms and I in his. Life was suddenly alive again within me.

Every time I thought the tears were about to stop, they started again. I was dimly aware of others watching, but there was no way I could stop. It had all been too much.

The tears were still coming in ragged sobs and I began to hyperventilate.

“Sshh, Benny. Sshhh.” I felt his strong hands on my back, patting me.

“Everything’s okay.” I felt him carry me across the small room and we sat down together. Just when I thought I was calm, a breath would reach out and snatch itself away and I would shudder.

As my eyes became adjusted to the dark interior of the cabin, I could make out the primitive cot upon which my father and I were sitting. There were other cots in the room with men either sitting on them or sleeping in them. There were also men in blankets on the floor. Most of them did not look at us, affording us what little privacy was possible in this confined setting.

Gradually, the time between sobs grew longer and the last one left me with one long, rattling sigh. My father sat me upright next to him, his arm around my shoulders.

He was smiling.

“Tell me…how,” I managed.

He talked then, because he was able to and I wasn’t, and explained how he had been told that it was his turn to go to the site of the last shelling and scavenge the corpses of the Americans. Ordered to scavenge, he said bitterly. “Like hyenas. That’s what we are to them.”

By then, he told me, the fighting was so intense, he knew there was no way he was going to make it back to Casalveri alive. “All I could think about was being brought back into the village dead in the back of that filthy, bloody truck.”

After he had been ordered to scavenge the bodies, he came up with a very simple plan. After making it to the battlefield, strewn with dead bodies, he and the man sent with him found fresh corpses that had not yet begun to rigor mortis.

“The whole time, I was convinced a sniper was going to put a bullet in my head. I kept ducking down at the slightest sound and I probably took twice as long because of it.”

They switched clothing and scrounged up hand grenades to put with the German land mine they had stolen before leaving.

“All we had to do then,” Papa explained, “was sit back and watch the German jeep blow up.”

During the telling of the story, several candles were lit, throwing light on the dark interior, making my father’s face look dark and haggard.

“It was gruesome, but effective. The body parts were everywhere, and the explosion was enough to convince the Germans, who weren’t willing to come and see what happened to two Italians. So then we were able to escape into the woods and circle back.”

He took a drink from a small cup of wine.

“We had been able to keep in touch with the other men from the village,” he continued. “That’s how we knew about this place and how to get here, but it was still awful, finding our way back, waiting to run into the Germans, who would have been more than happy to execute us on the spot.”

He stood and paced in front of me, the nervous energy coming back to him from the experience.

“The biggest fear we had, though, was that we would stumble across American soldiers, very much alive American soldiers, and they would see us in their fallen comrades’ uniforms. They would not have treated us kindly.”

I shuddered at the thought.

“As soon as I could, I tried to send word to you that I was all right, but communication with the village can be a risky thing, Benedetta. There are dangers. The Germans know men are in the mountains but for now they leave us alone; they have bigger fish to fry. We must be careful not to draw their attention.”

“How did you send word to Zizi Checcone, Papa? And why did you send for me?”

Papa smiled.

“We got word to Signora Checcone several days ago…”

“Several days!” I was shocked. “She didn’t say a word to me!”

“She’s a smart woman, Benedetta. She was worried your emotions might give you away so she waited, wanting to give you the chance to see me, to find out I was alive.”

I couldn’t help but laugh; she had been right to do it. I filed away the feeling I had that Papa’s voice had warmed dramatically at the mention of Zizi Checcone.

“And Dominic brought you here, all right?”

“Dominic?” I asked.

But Papa was looking toward the door, through which walked a young man. He looked thin and gawky, his face pale. Surely, there was a mistake, I thought. This could not be the man who brought me up the mountain.

“Dominic Giancarlo,” my father said, gesturing toward the young man. “From Roselli.” Roselli was a village even smaller than Casalveri, about fifteen or twenty miles to the north.

“It is nice to meet you properly, Benedetta,” he said, shaking my hand and I looked into those eyes, those eyes that were forever burned into my memory and I knew that yes, this was the man, the boy, who had brought me up the mountain.

His dark pants were virtually in tatters, and his shirt was much too small for him, his hands and wrists jutted out from his sleeves. His face was classically lean, his forehead full and I thought back to the poster on Lauretta Fandella’s wall. Yes, with a change in the hair, and maybe a few more pounds, he could pass for Henry Caruso.

Right then, I made a vow never to introduce him to Lauretta.

He took my hand.

“I did not hurt you, did I?” he asked, his voice deep and rough, completely at odds with the gentleness of his manner. The movement of speaking transformed his lean, angular face, softened it somehow and revealed the white teeth behind narrow, sensuous lips. And those eyes.

I looked at Papa, caught the curious expression on his face as he noted that Dominic had still not released my hand.

“Hurt?” Papa asked.

“I’m fine,” I answered.

“We ran into a German on the path. I knocked him out and we ran. But in the process, it got a little rough getting Benedetta out of there.”

It seemed then that Papa saw the scratches on my face, but the sleeves of my sweater hid the bruises.

“Dear Jesus,” he said, crossing himself.

“Papa, I’m fine. Dominic took good care of me.”

“Thank you, Dominic. Thank you,” Papa said. He got off the cot and embraced Dominic. “I knew I was right to send you. You are the best of us in the mountain. I knew you could handle anything.”

Dominic nodded his head. “It was my pleasure, Alfredo.” He smiled at me and there was a twinkle in his eye. “It’s not every day that a beautiful girl throws up on me.”

I burst out laughing and my father looked from me to Dominic and then back to me. He didn’t know what we were talking about but joined in the laughter anyway.

My eyes went back to Dominic. I wondered if at that moment he could tell that high on a mountain in an ancient stone cabin surrounded by war and death, I had just reached one of the most important milestones in my life.

I was in love.