CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUGO
December 1944
Hugo had a cold and uncomfortable night. His leg throbbed and sent pain shooting through him every time he tried to move, and the blanket did little to shield him from the damp cold that rose up from the stone floor. He took a small sip of the grappa, and it spread like fire through his veins for a while. He felt in his breast pocket and retrieved his cigarettes and lighter, then lay back smoking one, conscious that the tiny circle of glowing tobacco did nothing to dispel the darkness around him. But at least the inhaled smoke calmed his nerves. He was glad to see the first streaks of daylight and to hear that distant rooster welcoming the dawn. He nibbled a little of the polenta and cheese, leaving the onion for later, then forced himself to go outside and find a place to heed the call of nature. It was a clear, crisp day with occasional white clouds racing across the sky from the west. He managed to hobble out to the rain barrel, wincing with every step, where he drank some water and washed his face and hands. He carried more water back in the tin mug. He also retrieved more stuffing from the pillow and found a spoon lying amid the rubble. That small victory cheered him up. When he felt a bit stronger, he would do more searching. Maybe there was a mattress under some of those fallen roof tiles.
He managed to get the mug of water back to the chapel without spilling too much, then he took down his trousers and tore off some of Sofia’s sheet to clean the wound again. It still looked pretty repulsive, with oozing dark blood, but he dripped iodine on to his homemade rag and tried to wipe away as much of the blood as possible. It stung horribly and he cursed under his breath, conscious of the Virgin and a few damaged saints looking down at him. Then he bound up the wound and used Sofia’s piece of wood to make a splint. He wasn’t sure it was helping. It certainly didn’t support him enough for him to put weight on that leg. There was no way he could make his escape southward. I’ll just have to be patient, he told himself, and was ashamed to find that he felt a small bubble of happiness that he would be seeing Sofia again for at least a few more days.
She came again that afternoon.
“I am in luck,” she said, throwing off the shawl from her head as she stepped into the chapel. “Signora Gucci has told everyone that I brought her funghi di bosco yesterday and have promised to find more mushrooms for her. What a sweet and kind young lady I am. So now when they see me going up the hill to the woods, they say, ‘Ah, Sofia. She goes to hunt the mushrooms. What a good woman.’”
“I hope you find some, or she will become suspicious.”
“I hope so, too. But it has been wet recently. Good weather for mushrooms. And I think I saw more chestnuts. That is good, too. We use chestnut flour for baking in this region, especially when there is no more real flour.” She had her big basket on her arm today. “But see what I have brought you: it is fagioli al fiasco sotto la cenere.” She handed him a bowl of what looked like white paste.
He didn’t understand the Italian words in her dialect, except that “fagioli” was beans, and this did not look like beans—more like oatmeal. He didn’t think he’d ever seen an oat when he was in Florence, and certainly nobody ate oatmeal for breakfast.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It is made of white beans cooked in water and then cooked again with olive oil, rosemary, sage, and garlic in the coals of the fire all night. We put it in a Chianti bottle and cook it slowly in the embers. Then we mash it. It is very good and nourishing. We eat it all the time these days when there is no meat or eggs to be had.” She reached into the basket again. “And some bread this time. Signora Gucci already baked us a loaf.”
He took the crusty knob that she handed him and used it to scoop up the bean puree. The fagioli was good—so smooth he thought that milk or cream must have been added to it. She watched him eating, her face like that of a mother who knows she has provided the best nutrition for her child. When he was done she nodded in satisfaction. “That will keep you going for a while. And I brought you other things. Here—this is one of Guido’s shirts that he used to wear to work in the fields in winter. It is made of wool and will keep you warm.”
“I couldn’t take Guido’s shirt,” he said, not wanting to accept it from her outstretched hand.
“Take it, please. He is not here to wear it and, who knows, maybe the moths will get at it and then it will be useless. And if he returns to me, I will be happy to make him a new shirt from the best cloth at the market.”
“Thank you.” He took it with reverence.
“And also I think it must be hard to be here in darkness at night. So I’ve brought you a candle. Please try to make it last. I do not have many and we often lose electricity these days. Do you need matches?”
“I have my cigarette lighter.” He patted his pocket.
“You have cigarettes?”
“Yes. Would you like one?” He fished for the packet.
She shook her head. “I do not smoke, thank you. But it is a pity I cannot let anyone know about you. Cigarettes are the best things to barter with. The men around here would find me a pheasant or a rabbit for a pack of cigarettes.” She paused, then shook her head. “But alas, English cigarettes would not be a wise thing to show anybody.”
“You should go and look for your mushrooms,” he said.
She stood up. “You are right. I cannot stay away too long. My son was in tears this morning because he wanted to come with me to help find mushrooms. But I had to tell him it was too far for him to walk. He is afraid every time I leave, poor little one. He has seen men taken from our village. And he thinks about the father he has never seen.”
“Please be careful, Sofia,” he said. He didn’t realise immediately that he had called her by her first name.
Their eyes met. “Don’t worry about me. I am always careful.”
“Are there Germans in your village now?”
She shook her head. There was a long pause and then she said, “A German staff car came early this morning because someone had reported seeing an aeroplane crash. We told them we heard the noise of a crash but it was the middle of the night and we saw nothing. Then they went away again.”
Hugo let out a sigh of relief. “Are they often in your village?”
She shook her head. “They do not come much these days because they have taken most of what we have. And we are too far from a good road. But we never know. I pray every night to la Madonna that the Americans will come and make them flee north. Arrivederci, Ugo. May God be with you.”
In the doorway she paused, adjusted the shawl around her head and shoulders, looked back at him, and smiled. He sat still as a statue, watching her go. She is still a child, he thought. If she had married at eighteen, then she was still in her early twenties, and yet she bore this worry and deprivation with such grace and fortitude. No blaming God or weeping about her lost husband. Just getting on with it, the way that Hugo had been brought up to do.
“Just a child,” he reminded himself. Far too young to touch the heart of a man of thirty-five.
The pigeons startled him, fluttering to land on one of the fallen beams. A snare, he thought. I should try to build a snare. And he thought back to his childhood. In those days there had been poachers in the Langley woods. The gamekeeper played a never-ending game of cat and mouse with them. A waste of time, really, Hugo had thought, because mostly they were only after rabbits. But the squire’s pheasants had to be protected for the shoot. Hugo remembered going around the property with Ellison, the sour old gamekeeper, while the old man grumbled ceaselessly about the louts and layabouts and what he’d like to do to them, only stopping to destroy any traps he found. Some of them were vicious steel-toothed devices, strong enough to dig deep into an animal’s foot. Others, probably made by local lads, were simple snares—wire hoops that would pull tight when an animal triggered them. Hugo tried to remember what they looked like and how they worked. No point, really, as he had no wire, but it was something to occupy his mind. He thought how pleased Sofia would be if he presented her with a brace of pigeons.
He got to his feet, which was harder to do now with the splint in place, retrieved his makeshift crutch, and hobbled to the door. The light clouds of morning had been replaced by heavy grey ones, and a thick bank of them was moving in from the west. The wind had picked up, too, buffeting him as he tried to walk. It would rain before long; that was certain. He drank again from the rain barrel and tried to do more foraging among the rubble, but he was unable to climb over the loose stones and bricks and couldn’t bend to lift any of the debris and see what lay beneath. He didn’t find any wire or string, but he did manage to extricate an old kitchen drawer. That might just work, he thought, and began to carry it back, just as the first raindrops pattered on to the rock.
He was only halfway to his shelter when the storm broke with force. It was as if the heavens had opened. Raindrops bounced off his leather jacket. He tried to move more quickly and felt himself slipping. He grasped at one of the beams and stopped himself from falling, sweat mixing with the rain on his face. By the time he had lowered himself into his shelter and pulled the parachute over him, he was soaked through. He lay there shivering as the wind blew raindrops through the gaps between his planks. The parachute silk wasn’t as waterproof as he had hoped. It clung to him, sodden. Then came a great flash of lightning, followed almost instantly by a clap of thunder. His first thought was of Sofia. Had she reached the safety of the village? He lay there huddled under his parachute, worrying about her getting struck by lightning or at the very least catching a cold from a drenching. And he cursed his own impotence. He was the man. He should be saving her, taking her and her son to a safe place far from this conflict.
“Damn and blast this leg,” he said out loud.
The storm raged on for most of the day. By evening there were periods of calm between bouts of heavy rain. Hugo didn’t want to waste his candle. In the last of the daylight, he spread out his parachute to dry, draping it over the outside of his shelter. As he did so he remembered the parachute lines. “Idiot,” he told himself. “You have all the string that you want to make a snare.” Tomorrow he would rig up a perfect trap and catch a pigeon.
He ate the last of his bread with the onion, which tasted surprisingly good, then settled himself for the long night ahead. The blanket was not too damp and he wrapped himself in it. Tomorrow I will get to work, he told himself.
He had no idea how dramatically things would have changed by morning.