To Find a Mountain

Part One





Chapter One

Casalveri, Italy, 1943

The Germans arrived one fall morning and took control of Casalveri without a single shot fired.

I woke up that morning and heard voices coming from downstairs. I was close enough to understand parts of the conversation, but some of the Italian words were spoken with a thick, foreign accent that I had never heard before. It was not a strange thing for me then; my father was the unofficial leader of the village, a village too small really to have any kind of government, and he frequently had visitors coming to him, some at all hours of the morning or night.

There were two rooms upstairs; one was for my father, the other for myself, my sister Iole and my brother Emidio. Looking over at their bed, I could see they were still asleep, huddled together for warmth.

I kicked off the sheets and put on a heavy sweater, then my shoes. Halfway down the stairs, I was able to get a glimpse of the big table in the kitchen where our family ate all of our meals. It was a thick, sturdy table, with dents and scrapes that lightened the dark, rich wood and marked the many years of use it had seen. My father had been born on that very table, and we had literally grown up around it.

My first glimpse of the visitors was the shoulder of a gray uniform and a matching gray hat with a black visor. Not knowing much about armies and uniforms, I nonetheless knew enough to recognize the clothes as belonging to a soldier. And then I heard another type of language, thick and guttural with occasional sharp sounding words.

And, just as suddenly, I knew.

There had been much talk recently of the Germans establishing a line of defense across the middle of Italy. Casalveri was several miles north of Mt. Cassino, the highest point in Central Italy and home to the Mignano Gap, the only way through the mountains that cut the country in half. Whoever owned Mt. Cassino owned the Mignano Gap. And whoever owned the Mignano Gap, owned the right of passage from southern Italy to the wealthy cities of the North. This is what the men talking with my father had said. I hadn’t totally understood it, but felt like I knew the basics.

The talk had centered around the threat of an Allied capture of Sicily and other islands in the Mediterranean, and how they would work their way up to us.

If it was true, the Germans would be taking over small towns like Casalveri along an East and West line across Italy.

Judging from the presence of German officers in our kitchen, I assumed the talk was true.

As I reached the bottom of the stairs, my father’s voice boomed out.

“Benny! Come, come meet our guests!”

I walked into the kitchen and eating area, one long room that functioned as our primary living area. At one end of the rectangular room sat the table, at the other end was the fireplace, over which we cooked all of our meals. On an iron rack next to the fireplace hung the pots, pans and cooking utensils.

My father was seated at the kitchen table with two men. One was a big man with a full belly, silver hair and a ruddy complexion. He was tall, well over six feet, and I could see small veins in his cheeks, usually the sign of too much drinking. The other man was thin and pale with fair hair that matched the colorless gray of his eyes. He was tall, but not as tall as the first. Next to them, my father looked even shorter and rounder than he normally did.

“This is my daughter, Benedetta,” my father said. “Benedetta, this is Colonel Wolff.” I shook hands with the large, ruddy man. “And this is Lieutenant Becher,” my father said, and I shook hands with the thin German soldier.

“A beautiful daughter,” Wolff said. “How many children do you have Mr. Carlessimo?” His voice was gravelly, and he sounded tired, but there was a pleasant smile on his face.

“Three,” Papa said.

“And your wife…?”

“She died with the fourth.”

I retrieved the coffee pot from the small wire hook that held it over the fire. The metal was chipped and dented, scratched here and there, but it still worked. Like my father, it had survived, and showed its years, but kept its history to itself. He rarely spoke of Mama, and I knew that he wished not to speak of her now.

“Here’s your coffee, Papa.”

I refilled his cup and offered to do the same for the Germans, but they waved me away. I turned my back on them and felt their eyes follow me.

“It will be nice to have such a gracious hostess serving us coffee in the morning, Signor Carlessimo,” the thin one, Becher, said.

I turned and watched my father’s face struggle to be impassive. I felt a chill run down my spine and my head swam.

The Germans would be living with us.

In our house.

I felt my stomach churn, as the logic of it ran through my head. Our house was on the highest hill overlooking the valley of Cassino below. From here, the Germans could watch anyone coming or going. Plus, there were more rooms on the other side of the house that were spacious but drafty; we had basically sealed them off and turned them into storage areas. Those could be emptied out and turned into living quarters. Although it was something my father had talked about, it was too big of a job for us. The Germans certainly had enough hands to get the job done.

I already feared for my father’s immediate safety. The Germans were known to force the Italian civilians into the hardest, most dangerous labor jobs on the front. Carrying ammunition, gasoline, retrieving the wounded. They saw the Italians as a good way to conserve their own forces. Better an Italian man died on the front than a German.

Trying to sound casual, but certainly not succeeding, I managed to utter one short sentence.

“And you will be staying until…” There was an awkward silence as I gestured, but no other sound came from my mouth.

Wolff looked at me curiously, smiling slightly, but it was Becher who answered, with ice in his voice.

“Until we have won the war, of course.”