“You want to learn to drive or not? The next two days are supposed to be clear, no rain, no snow, so I’m willing to teach you. You pay for petrol, though.”
Pino scrambled for his shoes. They ate a quick breakfast in the hotel dining room and then went out to Ascari’s Fiat. For the next four hours, they drove above Campodolcino on the road to the Splügen Pass and Switzerland.
On that winding route, Alberto taught Pino how to read the gauges and use them, and how to adapt to terrain, elevation, and direction changes. He showed Pino how to drift through some turns and to knife through others, and how to use the engine and the gears rather than the brakes to keep the car under control.
They drove north until they could see German checkpoints and the Swiss border beyond and turned around. On the way back to Campodolcino, two Nazi patrols stopped them, demanding to know what they were doing on the road.
“I’m teaching him to drive,” Ascari said after they’d turned over their papers.
The Germans didn’t seem happy about it, but waved them on.
When they returned to the hotel, Pino was as excited as he’d been in a long time. What a thrill it was to drive a car like that! What an amazing gift he’d been given to learn from Alberto Ascari, the future European champion!
Pino again ate dinner at the Ascaris’ and enjoyed listening to Alberto and his uncle talk about auto mechanics. They went to the shop after dinner and tinkered with Alberto’s Fiat until almost midnight.
The next morning, after early Mass, they set out again for the road between Campodolcino and the Swiss border. Ascari showed Pino how to use crests in the route to his advantage, and to look far ahead whenever he could so his brain was already plotting how best to run the car for optimum speed.
On his last run down the pass, Pino took them around a blind corner going too fast and almost crashed into a German jeep-style vehicle called a Kübelwagen. Both cars swerved and narrowly avoided collision. Ascari looked back.
“They’re turning around!” Alberto said. “Go!”
“Shouldn’t we stop?”
“You wanted a race, didn’t you?”
Pino floored it. Ascari’s car had a better engine and was far more nimble than the army vehicle, and the Nazis were out of sight before they left the town of Isola.
“God, that was great!” Pino said, his heart still slamming in his chest.
“Wasn’t it?” Ascari said, and laughed. “You didn’t do too bad.”
To Pino it was high praise, and he felt wonderful leaving for Casa Alpina, having promised to return the following Friday to continue the lessons. The hike back to Motta was far less painful than it had been coming down two days before.
“Good,” Father Re said when he showed him the calluses building on his feet.
The priest was also interested in his tales of learning to drive.
“How many patrols did you see on the Splügen Pass road?”
“Three,” Pino said.
“But you were only stopped by two?”
“The third tried to stop us, but couldn’t catch me in Alberto’s car.”
“Don’t provoke them, Pino. The Germans, I mean.”
“Father?”
“I want you to practice being unnoticed,” Father Re said. “Driving a car like that gets you noticed, brings you to the Germans’ attention. Understand?”
Pino didn’t understand, not completely, anyway, but he could see the concern in the priest’s eyes and promised not to do it again.
The following morning, Father Re shook Pino awake long before dawn. “Another clear day,” he said. “Good for a climb.”
Pino groaned, but he got dressed and found the priest and breakfast waiting in the dining hall. On the topographical map, Father Re pointed to a razorback ridge that started a few hundred vertical meters directly above Casa Alpina and made a long, steep, and serpentine climb all the way to the peak of the Groppera.
“Can you do it alone, or do you need someone to guide you?”
“I’ve been up it once,” Pino said. “The really hard parts are here, here, and then that chimney, and the thin spot up top.”
“If you get to the chimney and don’t think you’re up to it yet, don’t go farther,” Father Re said. “Just turn around and climb back down. And take a walking staff. There are several in the shed. Have faith in God, Pino, and stay alert.”
Chapter Seven
Pino set out at dawn, hiking straight up the Groppera. Glad for the staff, he used it crossing a narrow stream before he flanked to the southeast toward that razorback ridge. Busted sheets of rock sheared off the mountain over thousands of years made the bowl chaotic terrain, and the going was slow until he reached the tail of the mountain spine.
There would be no defined trail from here on up, just rock and the occasional grass tuft or tenacious bush. Given the cliffs that fell away on both sides of the spine, Pino knew he couldn’t afford a mistake. The one time he’d been on the ridge—two years ago—he’d been with four other boys and a guide friend of Father Re’s from Madesimo.
Pino tried to remember how they’d gone up a series of broken staircases and treacherous catwalks that climbed to the base of the spire high above him. He felt a few moments of doubt and fear at the idea he might take the wrong route, but then forced himself to calm down and trust his instincts, handle each section as it came, and then reevaluate his route as he ascended.
Getting up onto the actual spine was his first challenge. A wind-smoothed and rounded column of stone about two meters high defined the very base of the ridge and seemed unclimbable. But on the south side, the rocks were cracked and fragmented. Pino tossed up his staff, heard it clatter to a stop. He jammed his fingers and the toes of his boots into cracks and onto narrow bits of ledge and went up after the staff. A few moments later, he knelt on the razorback, his lungs heaving. He waited until they’d calmed, took the staff, and got to his feet.
Pino began to pick his way higher, finding a rhythm to each footfall, reading the jigsaw terrain before him, and looking for the path of least resistance. An hour later, he faced another major challenge. Slabs of stone had broken away eons before, leaving the way up blocked except for a jagged gouge in the rock face. It was less than a meter wide and again as deep, and it climbed like a crooked chimney from the base up nearly eight meters to a ledge.