To Find a Mountain

Chapter Thirty-three

The darkness remained, for how long I’m not sure, but Casalveri never seemed to be such a dark, evil place as the days after the public execution of Lauretta Fandella. The body was removed, but the stench that hung over our small town would remain forever, the image of my best friend hanging in tribute to the authority of the Germans would never leave my mind; I knew it from the minute I made my way through the crowd that what I would see would change my life forever.

Life at the house returned to the routine; baking what little bread we could muster from the scant supplies. Laundry, cleaning, caring for Iole and Emidio went on. It always would, no matter what happened.

Fatigue grew rapidly on Zizi Checcone; it had been a long time since she’d cared for small children, and the daily hassles that Iole, Emidio, and even sometimes myself created were draining her of energy. I tried to take over more responsibility from her for the cooking and especially the cleaning, but she was a tough old woman and wanted no help from any of us.

It was a mid-afternoon on a cold day when Colonel Wolff returned from the front. It had been almost a week since the murder of Lauretta. The trucks pulled up to the front of the house, and the men entered wearily, some of them were injured and wore makeshift bandages. Their uniforms were filthy and most of them were covered in mud and smelled like rotten meat.

They assembled at the big table where Zizi Checcone and I served them minestrone and bread which they ate with abandon, raising the bowls up and drinking any remaining soup. There was a small hunk of cheese that we placed on a cutting board at the center of the table. A small flask of wine managed to produce enough for each of the men to have a small glass.

Wolff came in the door walking slowly, his boots shuffled across the floor. His uniform was covered in dust and dirt, his face was ashen and dark bags hung underneath his eyes. His shoulders were even more stooped than when I’d last seen him.

“Benedetta.”

I stood in front of him and said nothing.

“Would you help me get my boots off?” he said.

He put his foot up on the chair next to him and I tugged them off, then set them on the floor next to him.

“How are you?” he asked.

“If you don’t need me for something else, I’ll get more soup for your men,” I said, ice in my voice.

“Do that, then come back here and talk to me.”

Zizi Checcone put out two more bowls of soup and I took them to the table. Wolff gestured for me to sit. As the men began finishing their meals, they went to their room to sleep.

“What is wrong with you? What are those marks on your face?” he asked.

“Your men take great joy in beating up children. Even killing them.”

He looked at me tiredly.

“I’m not as used to death as you.” I continued. “That is the problem.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your men hung my best friend. One even stabbed her in the stomach after she was dead.”

He slurped the soup loudly.

“I heard of this happening,” he said. “I am sorry.”

“I can tell.”

Wolff looked like he was going to respond, but then said nothing. One by one, the last two men finished their soup and finally got up from the table.

“Believe me. If I had been here, it would not have happened. But understand, the girl’s father was caught killing Germans,” Wolff said. “You remember what I told your father when I first came here?”

I nodded, but he continued anyway.

“For every German that dies, ten of you die. Luckily, many of the ribellí with her father’s band were killed. But Becher felt that an example needed to be set. Truly, I am sorry.”

There was nothing left for me to say. These Germanesí, even the ones who maybe once had feelings, who maybe once knew the value of a life, had lost it by now. There was no hope; no chance that sympathy and compassion could be learned. If you had it, you had it. If you lost it, it was gone. It was that simple. I would remember this lesson. It was the kind of lesson you instantly know you will use for the rest of your life; no matter what the situation or the predicament. It gives you the kind of knowledge and perspective that will always be a part of your thinking.

“She was so innocent,” I started to stay, but stopped. It wasn’t something I wanted to talk about, but there it was.

“No one is innocent when their country is at war,” Wolff said, mopping up the rest of his soup with a hunk of bread. “Once the leaders of a country say it’s time to fight, everyone he governs is a participant.”

I thought of Lauretta hanging from her neck. She was innocent. She would always be innocent as long as my memory and I survived. I would remember the Lauretta I knew all along. The one who dreamed of a man who would love her. The Lauretta created by the Germans had been hung to death, gone forever.

I cleared the table and heard Wolff rise from the table and make his way to his room; his boots moved slowly and loudly. I tried to picture him as a young boy in a German army, the first time he fired a rifle, the first time he watched someone die. His big blue eyes wide, watching blood pour onto the ground. He would have cried, I suspected, he was that kind of person.

There was a little bit of weak coffee left in the pot and I poured myself a cup, then sat at the big table. I ran my hand over the countless knicks and gouges in the wood; the wood my mother used to oil from time to time. She and my father must have had thousands of conversations right over this table.

I just wanted it all to be over. I wanted the Germans to pack up and leave, scared off by the Americans and British. I wanted Papa to come back, the men to go back to the fields, Lauretta to be alive again. I wanted my mother to come back to me, the baby to be all right, and for all of us to be one big happy family again.

The image of my father’s face the way he looked in the mountains came back to me. There was no way to slow down his aging. One day, he would pass, too, and like now, there would be nothing I could do about it. If only I could raise my hand, shout “Stop!” and have the world put on hold while I went about making adjustments, a little push here, a little help there, and things would be different, things would be right.

I emptied the rest of the coffee into the sink. It didn’t taste good; there was a sour taste in my mouth.