Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Pino got into the Fiat and started it, but did not put the car in gear. Seeing the decapitations had shaken him to his core. Killing a man in a war was one thing. Desecrating his body was another. What kind of barbarians were they? Who would do such a thing?

He thought back on many of the terrible events he’d witnessed since the war came to northern Italy. Little Nicco holding the grenade. Tullio facing the firing squad. The slaves in the tunnel. The little fingers sticking out of the red boxcar on Platform 21. And now bodiless heads on snowy fence posts.

Why me? Why must I see these things?

Pino felt as if he and Italy had been condemned to suffer cruelties that seemed endless. What new brutality was coming his way? Who would be the next to die? And how horribly?

His head spun with these dark thoughts and others. He grew anxious, frightened, and then panicked. He was sitting still, but he was breathing far too fast, sweating and feverish, and his heart felt like he was sprinting uphill. He realized he couldn’t go back to Milan like this. He needed somewhere quiet and remote, somewhere he could scream and no one would care. More than that, he needed someone to help him, to talk to . . .

Pino looked north and realized where he was going and whom he wanted to see.

He got into the Fiat and drove north along the east shore of Lake Como, ignoring its beauty, fixated with getting to Chiavenna and the Splügen Pass road as fast as possible.

The way was barely passable after Campodolcino. Pino had to put chains on the Fiat to make the long climb to Madesimo. He parked the car near the trail to Motta and started uphill with twenty-five centimeters of fresh snow on the boot-packed path.

The sun finally broke through. A strong breeze was blowing out the last of the clouds when Pino reached the plateau, gasping in the bitter air, focused not on the grandeur of the place but on Casa Alpina. He felt so desperate at the sight of the refuge that he ran the length of the plateau and rang the bell on the porch as if it were a fire alarm.

In his peripheral vision, Pino picked up four armed men coming around the side of the building. They wore red neckerchiefs and pointed rifles at him.

Pino threw up his hands and said, “I’m a friend of Father Re.”

“Search him,” one said.

Pino went into a panic over the documents he still carried in his pockets, one from General Leyers, and the other from Mussolini. The partisans would shoot him just for that.

But before the men could reach him the door opened, and Father Re was looking at him. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you?”

Pino pulled off his cap. “It’s me, Father Re. Pino Lella.”

The priest’s eyes went wide, first with disbelief, and then with joy and wonder. He threw his arms around Pino and cried, “We thought you were dead!”

“Dead?” Pino said, fighting back tears. “What made you think that?”

The priest stepped back, stared at him, beaming, and then said, “It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you are alive!”

“Yes, Father,” he said. “Can I come in? Talk to you?”

Father Re noticed the partisans watching. He said, “I vouch for him, my friends. I have known him for years, and there is not a better man in the mountains.”

If that impressed them, Pino didn’t notice. He followed Father Re down the familiar hallway, smelling Brother Bormio’s bread baking, and then hearing men moaning and talking in low voices.

More than half of the dining hall at Casa Alpina had been converted into a field hospital. A man Pino recognized as a doctor from Campodolcino was with a nurse working on one of the nine wounded men lying in cots arranged by the fireplace.

“Members of the Ninetieth Garibaldi,” Father Re said.

“Not Tito’s boys?”

“The Ninetieth drove those hoodlums out of the valley months ago. The last we heard, Tito and his crew were scavenging and robbing on the road to the Brenner Pass. The cowards. The men you see here are all brave souls.”

“Is there somewhere we can talk, Father? I’ve come a long way to see you.”

“Oh? Of course,” Father Re said, and took him to his own room.

The priest gestured to the small bench. Pino sat, wringing his hands.

“I wish to confess, Father,” he said.

Father Re looked concerned. “To what?”

“My life since I left you,” Pino said, and he told Father Re the worst of it.



He broke down four times describing General Leyers and the slaves and Carletto Beltramini cursing him while his father lay dying, the decimation ceremony at San Vittore Prison, the machine-gunning of Tullio Galimberti, Mimo’s ridicule of him, and leaving the graveyard that morning under the dead eyes of the severed heads.

“I don’t know why these things are happening to me.” Pino wept. “It’s just too much, Father. Too much to see.”

Father Re put his hand on Pino’s shoulder. “It sounds like too much to me, too, Pino, but I’m afraid it’s not too much for God to ask of you.”

Bewildered, Pino said, “What’s he asking me to do?”

“To bear witness to what you’ve seen and heard,” the priest said. “Tullio’s death should not go in vain. The murderers in Piazzale Loreto should be brought to justice. Those Fascists this morning, too.”

“Seeing them butcher the dead . . . I don’t know, Father . . . It makes me question my faith in mankind, in people being good deep down, not savages, not like that.”

“Seeing those things would make any man question his faith in mankind,” the priest said. “But most people are essentially good. You have to believe that.”

“Even the Nazis?”

Father Re hesitated, and then said, “I can’t explain the Nazis. I don’t think the Nazis can explain the Nazis.”

Pino blew his nose. “I guess I want to be one of those men out there in the dining room, Father. Fighting openly. Doing something that matters.”

“God wants you to fight in a different way, and for a greater good, or he would not have put you where you are.”

“Spying on General Leyers,” Pino said with a shrug. “Father, other than meeting Anna, the last time I felt really good about myself was here at Casa Alpina, helping people get over to Val di Lei, saving lives.”

“Well,” Father Re said, “I’m no expert, but I have to believe you’ve saved the lives of many Allies with the information you’ve risked your life to provide.”

Pino hadn’t thought of it that way before. Wiping away tears, he said, “General Leyers—from what I’ve told you, do you think he’s evil, Father?”

“Working a man to death is the same as shooting a man to death,” the priest said. “Just a different choice of weapons.”

“That’s what I think, too,” Pino said. “Sometimes Leyers can seem like anyone else, and the next he’s like a monster.”

“From what you’ve seen and told me, I’d say you’re going to cage the monster someday, make him pay for his sins on earth before he atones for them before God.”

That made Pino feel better. “I’d love for that to happen.”

“Then you will. Have you really been inside the chancellery in Milan?”

“Once,” Pino said.

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