Beneath a Scarlet Sky

“What do you want me to do now?” Pino said after he’d returned the files to the valise.

“Take the valise back to him,” Uncle Albert said. “Tonight. Tell him someone in the motor pool found it and found you.”

“Be safe,” Pino said, and went out through the now quiet factory and into the alley.

He’d almost reached the Fiat when he heard, “Halt.”



A flashlight played on Pino as he froze, holding Leyers’s valise.

An SS lieutenant walked up to him, followed by Colonel Walter Rauff, the head of the Gestapo in Milan.

“Papers,” the lieutenant said in Italian.

Pino set the valise down, struggling to remain calm as he dug out his papers, including the letter from General Leyers.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?” the lieutenant demanded.

“General Leyers gave me two days’ leave,” Pino said.

Up until then, Colonel Rauff, the man who’d ordered Tullio’s death, had said nothing. “And what is this?” he asked now, toeing the bag with his boot.

Pino thought sure he was about to die. “General Leyers’s valise, Colonel. The stitching was broken, and he asked me to bring it to the leather shop for repair. I’m taking it back to him now. Would you like to come? Ask him about it? I can tell you he was drunk and in a foul mood when I left him.”

Rauff studied Pino. “Why did you come here to get it fixed?”

“It’s the best leather shop in Milan. Everyone knows that.”

“Not to mention it’s your uncle’s shop,” Rauff said.

“Yes, that, too,” Pino said. “Having family always helps in a pinch. Have you herded any oxen lately, Colonel?”

Rauff stared at him so long Pino thought he’d gone too far and blown it.

“Not since the last time,” the Gestapo chief said at last, and laughed. “Give General Leyers my best.”

“I’ll do that,” Pino said, bobbing his head as Rauff and his men walked away.

Sweat exploded off Pino as he put the valise on the floor in the backseat, got up front, and gripped the wheel.

“Oh Jesus,” he whispered. “Oh sweet Jesus.”

As soon as he could stop shaking he started the Fiat and drove it back to Dolly’s. Anna answered the door, looking agitated.

“The general’s very drunk and angry,” she whispered. “He hit Dolly.”

“Hit her?”

“He’s calmed down, said he didn’t mean it.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just don’t think this is the best time to talk to him. He keeps going on and on about the idiots and traitors who’ve lost the war.”

“Put his valise there by the coatrack,” Pino said, handing it to her. “He’s given me two days off. Can you come to my place? My father’s gone to see my mother again.”

“Not tonight,” she said. “Dolly may need me. But tomorrow?”

He leaned forward, kissed her, and said, “I can’t wait.”

After leaving the Fiat at the motor pool, Pino returned to the family apartment. He thought about Mimo. Uncle Albert wouldn’t tell him much about what his little brother was doing, which was as it should be. If Pino were ever questioned about Mimo’s partisan activities, he could justly claim ignorance. But he longed to know what daring deeds his brother had undoubtedly performed, especially after Uncle Albert said that Mimo’s reputation in combat was “ferocious.”

Flashing back on cherished memories of the Alps, and how they’d climbed and worked together for a greater good, Pino felt even more miserable that Mimo thought him a coward and a traitor. Sitting there alone in the apartment, he desperately wished General Leyers’s words at the Swiss border were true, that the war really was over, and that life, his life, could become something good again.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the moment when the war would end and how he’d find out. Would people dance in the streets? Would there be Americans in Milan? Of course there would be. They’d been in Rome for six months now, hadn’t they? Wasn’t that grand? Wasn’t that elegant?

Those thoughts stirred up old dreams of going to America, of seeing the world beyond. Maybe that’s all it takes for the future to exist, Pino thought. You must imagine it first. You must dream it first.

Several hours later, the apartment telephone rang and kept jangling.

Pino didn’t want to leave his warm bed, but the phone kept ringing and ringing until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He slid from beneath the covers, stumbled down the cold hallway, and turned on the light.

Four o’clock in the morning? Who would be calling now?

“Lella residence,” he said.

“Pino?” Porzia cried in a crackly voice. “Is that you?”

“Yes, Mama. What’s wrong?”

“Everything,” she said, and started to weep.

Pino came wide-awake in a panic. “Is it Papa?”

“No,” she sniffed. “He’s sleeping in the other room.”

“Then what?”

“Lisa Rocha? You remember? My best friend from childhood?”

“She lives in Lecco. She had a daughter I used to play with at the lake.”

“Gabriella, she’s dead,” Porzia choked.

“What?” Pino said, remembering how he’d pushed the girl on a swing in her parents’ yard.

His mother sniffed. “She was safe and sound, working in Codigoro, but she was homesick and wanted to go see her parents for a visit. Her father, Lisa’s husband, Vito, has been very sick, and she was worried.”

Porzia said Gabriella Rocha and a friend had left Codigoro by bus the afternoon before. The driver evidently tried to make up time and took a route that ran through the town of Legnago.

“The partisans were fighting the Fascists in the area,” Porzia said. “West of Legnago, near a cemetery and an orchard, toward the village of Nogara, the bus was caught in the battle. Gabriella tried to flee, but she was caught in a cross fire and killed.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Pino said. “I’m very sorry to learn that, Mama.”

“Gabriella’s still there, Pino,” Porzia said with great difficulty. “Her friend managed to get her body into the cemetery before escaping and calling Lisa. I just got off the phone with Lisa. Her husband is ill and can’t go find their daughter. It feels like everything in this world has gone wrong and evil.”

His mother was sobbing.

Pino felt horrible. “You want me to go get her?”

She stopped crying, and sniffled, “Would you? And take her home to her mother? It would mean the world to me.”

Pino didn’t relish the thought of dealing with a dead girl’s body, but he knew it was the right thing to do. “She’s in the cemetery between Legnago and Nogara?”

“That’s where her friend left her, yes.”

“I’ll go right now, Mama.”



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