To Find a Mountain

Chapter Thirty-eight

“Ssshhh.”

I felt a hand turn me around and then from out of the darkness I saw the faint glow of Dominic Giancarlo’s beautiful blue eyes.

“You made enough noise,” he said, laughing softly. “Good thing you aren’t a spy, we would all be doomed.”

“Very funny. Nice place to pick. So romantic.”

He still hadn’t taken his hands off of me.

“What, do you want me to meet you in the town square?” he said. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on.”

“Why don’t you—”

He kissed me then, hard. His lips didn’t move on mine, but he pressed hard. I threw my arms around his broad shoulders, and his arms circled my waist like big snakes. We broke apart, smiled at each other, then kissed again.

“The letters…” he started to say, but I pressed a finger to his lips. “I know,” I said. Then I kissed him again.

He put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back.

“No, I have to tell you something.”

I rolled my eyes, then folded my arms across my chest.

“This better be good.”

“I used parts of the letters from Luigi Iacobelli’s book.”

“I know.”

“But only because the letters said what I was feeling, and said it better than I could have.”

“What, are you going to have this book with you for the rest of your life? When you are feeling an emotion, look up the right chapter and then tell me about it?” I said.

His face reddened.

“No, I’m telling you that’s why I did it,” he said. “And I know it was the easy thing to do. From now on, they will be my own words.”

“You are honest, Dominic, that’s one of the reasons I love you. Your honesty is more beautiful than any words you could copy out of a book. You know that?”

He hugged me tightly.

“And you are more beautiful than anything in the world,” he said.

We kissed again and he lifted me, carried me across the barn to a stack of hay bales. He set me down and lay next to me, one arm under me, the other caressing my body.

His hair felt soft beneath my hands, his lips gentle and firm. I felt a warmth in my loins I had never felt before, and my body surged with emotions. His breath became ragged and he broke away from me to catch his breath.

Thoughts of my father came into my head, thoughts of Zizi Checcone, and the German soldiers close by. But I pushed them from my mind. Just awhile longer, I thought. Just awhile longer and then I will go back to that existence soon enough.

“I have dreamed of this moment since you left,” he said, turning to smile at me. I was looking up into the darkness of the barn’s rafters.

“I’ve thought about it, too. I just thought it wouldn’t happen until after the Germans left. I guess I didn’t realize how foolish you are.”

“Love does that,” he said.

I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the warmth, the heat of my body; I could still feel his hands on me, his eagerness and desire consumed me, made me feel alive. Until then, I had always felt like a girl, but now, with the smell of hay beneath me, and the scent of Dominic on my cheeks, I felt, for the first time in my life, like a woman.

I leaned over to whisper that into his ear and it was then that I felt the chill of cold steel against my throat.

My eyes opened and I saw Schlemmer above me. A knife was in his hand, pressed against my neck and in his other hand was a pistol, pointed squarely at Dominic, who still had his eyes closed.

Schlemmer spoke in broken Italian.

“Ah, you play the saint with me, whore with him.”

Dominic’s eyes snapped open and he started to lunge, but Schlemmer’s pistol forced him back down.

Suddenly, I felt dead inside and I knew that I was going to die in this barn. I had allowed myself a dream, a brief one, and now it was going to be cut apart by an evil German. I thought of my father, first losing his wife, and now his eldest daughter. It was too much.

“Turn over, hands behind your head,” Schlemmer said to Dominic, gesturing with the pistol. Dominic complied, and I saw his thick hands with hay stuck to them.

Schlemmer’s voice became disgusted, filled with loathing. “Coward,” he said. “Hide in the mountain from the fighting, but come down to be with your whore, hiding in a barn. There is no such thing as an Italian man. There are Italian women and Italian cowards.

His breath reeked, a sour smell that renewed its strength with each breath he took.

“You disgust me,” Schlemmer said. “We should kill all of you, forget about the Americans. At least they fight.”

Dominic was on his stomach now, but I could see his neck redden, the veins bulging.

Schlemmer turned to me and with his pistol still on Dominic, slowly trailed his knife down my neck to my breasts. His knife went between my breasts and I inhaled sharply. Dominic turned his head slightly and Schlemmer increased the pressure of his pistol against the base of Dominic’s skull.

The point of his knife hooked on my dress and he lifted quickly, slicing the material. He reinserted his knife and slowly pulled down, tearing my dress open and exposing my breasts. I instinctively brought my hands up to cover them, but he jerked the knife quickly, saying “ah-ah-ah,” and I stopped my hands in mid-air, then dropped them back to my side.

As his eyes devoured my body, he started to talk.

“So there I am, sitting on a chair outside the hospital, unable to sleep from the medicines the doctors are giving me from my shrapnel wounds, when what do I see but a beautiful young Italian girl sneaking toward a barn.”

The knife moved down over my stomach, the material being cut in half.

“I decide to follow. I can’t sleep, anyway, right? So I see her go into this barn. I wait. I look for a door where I can slip in quietly and watch the action and oh, what action I see!” He laughed in the darkness and I could smell his foul breath, visualized his stained teeth.

“I see you two rolling around and I think to myself, if anyone’s going to f*ck this girl, it’s going to be me,” Schlemmer said.

His knife point reached my pubic hair and he stopped, then pulled slightly so my dress would reveal more. His breathing was increasing and his hand was starting to shake. The knife went down farther and I felt the tip touch my vagina. My body shook and I started to cry.

He raised the knife back up to my chest and pulled my dress wider, so that my breasts were completely exposed.

“Ah, so beautiful, so beautiful.”

He bent down and placed his mouth around my nipple and as he did so, Dominic lashed out with his hand and threw himself to the right. The gun exploded, and a puff of hay erupted from the bale next to Dominic’s head.

Schlemmer’s arm swung up from the force of Dominic’s blow and before he could swing it around to aim, Dominic was on his feet and moving toward Schlemmer. Dominic swung from the hip, a sweeping blow packed with power that connected flush on Schlemmer’s jaw with the sound of a two-by-four cracking a pig’s skull. Just as the punch landed, Schlemmer jabbed with his knife and it sunk into Dominic’s side. Schlemmer went down from the blow and Dominic jumped back, his left hand went to his right side and came away bloody.

Schlemmer, stunned, regained his footing but Dominic stepped in and grabbed each of his hands, and lunged forward, head-butting the German who staggered backward. Dominic shook the pistol from Schlemmer’s hand and it arched across the barn, landing in a pile of hay.

Dominic held onto Schlemmer’s wrist and tried to break his grip on the knife. They twisted, each trying to get ahold of the knife. They crashed to the ground and the knife flew over both of their heads. They broke, rolled in opposite directions and then crashed at each other, but Dominic was faster and landed a sharp uppercut that snapped Schlemmer’s head back.

Suddenly, the fog cleared in my head and I made a beeline for the gun, scrambling across the floor like a crab.

I was about five feet from the gun when Dominic punched Schlemmer in the stomach and he fell back, landing between me and the gun.

The German jumped to his feet and rushed Dominic, ramming him in the stomach and they crashed again to the ground with Schlemmer on top. He brought his fists back and crashed them into Dominic’s face, landing with ferocious power on his face. I started crawling toward the gun again, but this time Schlemmer saw me. He jumped off Dominic and lunged toward me, getting a hold of my ankle. He pulled me toward him as he rose to his knees.

He was laughing, a look of insanity on his face.

I looked at him and he let go, diving for the gun. Suddenly, a shadow passed over me and Dominic landed on top of the German. A flash of steel blazed in the darkness, and then Dominic sunk the knife deep into Schlemmer’s throat.

The German had his hand around the gun, but Dominic clamped down on it with his own hand, and pulled the knife in one long cutting motion across Schlemmer’s neck. Dominic repositioned himself and pinned Schlemmer’s head to the ground. A fountain of blood gurgled from the German’s neck as he bled to death. Soon, the flow of blood went down to a trickle, then it seemed to stop altogether.

All movement stopped, and the barn was silent.

After several minutes, Dominic rolled off Schlemmer, stood, and rolled the German over. I stood, shaking, and stepped forward.

Schlemmer’s lifeless eyes stared at the barn’s ceiling, a long gash making a second obscene smile along his neck. His head was nearly cut off, hanging on by a thin strip of tissue.

Dominic turned and retched, wincing as he did so, then clutched his side.

He was still bleeding.

I made him sit down, then took off his shirt. The wound was nasty, but not deep. Apparently it had gone in, then caromed off, cutting much flesh, but not reaching deeply enough to hit any vital organs.

I forced Dominic’s hand open and took the knife from him, then cut one of his sleeves off. I tied it around him, pressing the widest part of the material into his wound.

“You have to go back up the mountain. You have no choice.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes averted.

I looked down and saw my exposed breasts. I took the loose ends of my dress and tried to hook them together, then tied them in a small knot. It would have to do. It was still dark outside and I could get home unnoticed. I would have to destroy the dress so Zizi Checcone couldn’t see it.

Both of our eyes fell on Schlemmer.

“We have to hide him,” Dominic said.

I looked around the barn, it was empty save for the rotten hay bales and some old planks of wood. A broken plow, too heavy to move, was in a corner.

“The hay bales. We have to hide him underneath them,” I said.

We moved them with great effort, then dragged Schlemmer; I had his boot heels, Dominic grasped him underneath the arms. We did not take his gun as discovery by the Germans would mean instant execution.

We pushed the bale off the top of the stack and it landed on Schlemmer. Then we arranged the other bales around him and quickly covered over the blood spots with loose hay.

“They will miss him,” Dominic said.

“Maybe they’ll think he ran away. The colonel said he was a disturbed boy.”

“I think he was right.”

“We just have to pray that no one finds him,” I said. “The Americans are advancing, maybe…”

“Maybe, maybe maybe…” Dominic spat out angrily. “You will be in danger.”

“If I get home unnoticed, no one will think I killed him. A little girl killing a big, tough German soldier? Never!”

We both looked outside. The first rays of dawn were just beginning to light up the far edge of the horizon.

“We both must go. Now.” I said.

Dominic looked at me, his eyes filling with tears.

We kissed and left the barn together, our hands clasped.

“Don’t worry, Dom. We will see each other again. God will watch over us.”

We hugged and kissed one final time, then Dominic disappeared unsteadily into the woods. I prayed that he would make it up the mountain, a two-hour walk hard enough without a knife wound oozing blood.

As the first rays of light began to peek over the top of the mountain, I made my way home. I walked past the houses where people were getting their last, precious moments of sleep and I broke into a run, my feet flying, my legs pumping so that I felt like I was soaring over the ground, suspended in the air by an invisible mixture of fear and strangely enough, love.