To Find a Mountain Read online

  “They have hardly spoken a word to me. This Colonel Wolff told me to bake bread. Other than that, they have left me alone.”

  We quickly reached her house and went inside. She turned to me and held my hands tightly.

  “Listen to me, Benny, you must be careful. You must be strong. You must be brave. But above all, you must be careful.”

  “But Papa is here…”

  “For now. But he must leave soon. Like the other men,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you not noticed?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “The fields? They are empty.”

  Suddenly, I realized how silent the village had been this morning. In my mind, I had thought that perhaps the arrival of the Germans had forced people to stay in their homes, that maybe the people of my small village were hiding, but the opposite was true.

  “The men…” I began.

  Zizi Checcone sighed, a heavy, tired sigh.

  “The men have gone to the mountains.”

  The men. No one was going to work in the fields. There were no donkeys, no plows, no wagons with horses going to work the crops.

  “But how will we survive?” I said.

  My mind was whirling. If the men weren’t working in the fields, there would be no crops. With no crops, there would be no food. With no food, we would starve.

  “We will survive, Benedetta. But we must be crafty. Here.”

  She walked back to the stairway leading from the dining room to the upstairs. She pulled back a board and I saw a cubbyhole filled with a bag of flour, salted pork and jars of tomatoes.

  “You must find something like this in your house. If you are in charge of the Germans’ food, steal just enough to survive.”

  Suddenly I felt nauseated and could feel the tears running down my face. I didn’t want to be left alone without my father. I had already lost my mother. I needed help. I needed someone to take care of me.

  “Benny.” Zizi Checcone took me into her arms and patted my back. The cloth of her dress smelled clean.

  “Benny. I’m sorry if I scared you. But you need to be prepared. We need to be prepared.”

  She gathered up the bundle of extra food for me to take back home, back to the strange men living in my house.

  “I am here for you. Even if your father does go with the men to the mountain, do not feel that you are alone. In fact, I will see if I can come and live with you. If the Germanesí allow it.”

  I thanked her and walked slowly back to my house, my feet feeling like slabs of stone. The sun felt even warmer and there was a hint of dust in the air. Despite what Zizi Checcone said, I felt alone. Completely and wholly alone.

  Chapter Four

  I used to have a lot of friends. After my mother died I began to see less and less of them; most girls my age were just starting to take over some of the responsibilities their mothers traditionally bore. I, on the other hand, had taken over all of them.

  There was no point in complaining about it. What would Papa have said or been able to do about it? In my family, work is not something to be avoided.

  Of all my friends, Lauretta Fandella was the only one that had truly remained so. She was a tall, big-boned girl with a long face and thick features. Pretty, but in a rough hewn way. Her shoulders were broad and her feet were long and wide; it was the kind of body that generations of ancestors working in these fields and mountains developed, then passed down to their descendants. Lauretta Fandella was already a typical farm woman and she was only seventeen years old. If there had ever been a girl born to work the fields and raise five or six children, working day and night, drinking wine and living life without a care in the world other than pure survival, it was Lauretta.

  The door to the Fandella house was open and I knocked, heard a voice call out, then I went inside.

  Lauretta had three older brothers, all of them tall and lanky like Lauretta; they were rumored to be lazaroni only kept in check by their father who was bigger and tougher than all of his sons. At least for now. But when I went inside the house, only Lauretta’s Mama was there, sitting at the table sewing a sweater. She nodded her head upstairs and I climbed the rickety staircase, then went down the short hallway to Lauretta’s room. The door was closed and I knocked. She opened the door immediately, able to reach across the small room from her bed and grasp the doorknob without getting up.

  Her room, not much bigger than a closet, was taken up mostly by her bed and in the corner, a small table upon which sat her clothes. The only other objects were a crucifix over her bed and on the opposite wall, a huge poster of the Italian singer Enrico Caruso.

  Lauretta, being two years older than my sixteen years, was obsessed with boys. She talked about them, thought about them, even, according to her, dreamed about them.

  Lauretta was sitting at the edge of the bed, a mirror propped on the small table in front of her. She was doing her hair, braiding it back in a long ponytail. Lauretta had beautiful long black hair, it was probably her best feature.

  “Let me guess, you heard about the Germanesí?”

  She smiled and rolled her eyes at me, continuing to work on her hair. I noticed she had on a short dress that looked like it had been recently pressed.

  “What, are you getting ready for an inspection?” I said.

  “I just figured the Germans would want to see some of the sights, if you know what I mean.”

  “You’re terrible.”

  “It’s a duty — we need to represent our country properly,” she said, pushing her breasts up higher in her bra.

  “Lauretta, these aren’t the local boys. These are men who have seen much fighting and death. You should be careful how you act around them.”

  “What are they like? The officers who are staying at your house?” she said.

  “Two officers, a couple soldiers. The officers seem pleasant enough. One is a big man, very nice. The other is thin and wiry, he looks kind of mean. I wouldn’t want to be his enemy.”

  “Do you think they will treat you—”

  “As long as we do what they want, they will tolerate us,” I said. “Nothing less, nothing more.”

  “Be thankful, Benedetta,” she said. “They already took over the Ingrelli house and are turning it into a hospital. The family had to move in with the Carboni family. At least you are still in your own house.”

  “I don’t feel it is our house any longer.”

  I sat down on the bed next to her and helped her put the finishing touch on her braid.

  “My father has left,” she said. “He told us it was time for him to find a mountain.”

  “I heard that many of the men are doing that.”

  “It’s that or die holding a German gun.”

  “They think we are dogs,” I said.

  “Then my father is a dog who bites the hand that feeds him,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he hates the Germans,” Lauretta said. “His brother was killed by some of Mussolini’s fascisti, the black shirts? Ever since then, he has hated Mussolini and when Il Duce joined up with Hitler, well, now my father hates Germans.”

  “Don’t say that so loud,” I said. “They told my father that for every German soldier who dies, ten of us will be executed.”

  Lauretta looked at me as if I were ten years younger than her, not two.

  “Well, Benedetta, I don’t think Papa is foolish enough to kill any of these Germans.”

  “I’m not sure that matters.”

  “Just make sure you don’t repeat anything I’ve said — Papa would not be pleased with me, or with you,” she said.

  Lauretta stood up smoothed her dress, then turned and twisted several times in front of the mirror. She put her arm around me and pulled me over so that we were both reflected in the mirror. I looked small and worried compared to Lauretta.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Unfortunately, I think the Germans will be
more than happy to try to take in some of the local color.”

  Chapter Five

  I left Lauretta’s house and walked along the outer edge of Casalveri, the part of the village that hugged the side of the mountain. I walked past houses where people waved to me, wearing apprehensive expressions that told me they were carrying on because that’s all they knew how to do.

  I looked down to the valley below. Normally a peaceful, sleepy view, now clouds of dust wafted to and from, and I could hear the sound of machinery, tanks and jeeps as they went about their business, destroying everything in their path on the way to Mt. Cassino.

  Men had been fighting over this land for thousands of years. These rocks, this dirt, all of it would still be here long after the blood from these men had been covered in dust. Only their bones would survive, and those too would be buried for eternity in the dank tomb of the soil, while the trees and the rocks would feel the warmth of the sun thousands of years from now.

  A breeze blew around me, taking the edge from the sun’s hot rays off my shoulders.

  My foot kicked a small pebble and it rolled in front of me, going down a small hill before trickling off to the side of the path. I circled the village, saw my own house in the distance, then walked farther up the mountain, veering off the path to a small plateau, a shelf with a small grove of trees and flowers.

  An iron gate marked the entrance to the cemetery.

  Thick oak fencing, falling down in some places, encircled the rows of tombstones and crude markers. The first headstones to greet visitors were the oldest; they were uneven, some sat high, others were sunken as the ground continued to shift over the years. These stones marked the village’s ancestors, some going back hundreds of years.

  The farther you walked in, the more recent the dates on the headstones became.

  My mother’s grave was on the last row.

  Next to her was an empty space; probably for my father. On the other side of her were the two Vito children, twins, who had died last year of food poisoning. The entire village had turned out for their funeral, even the weak, old and crippled.

  Whenever I visited my mother, I wondered if she was taking care of the Vito twins in Heaven. Probably. If there were children who needed to be taken care of, I was sure she would be the one to step in and give them what they needed. One time, in an old book about animals, I saw an illustration of some kind of bird who was ripping chunks of flesh off her own body to feed her children. That was Mama.

  On the walk over, I had picked a flower for her and now I placed it next to her headstone. It was a modest marker, plain granite with simple block letters carved into the stone. Sofía Carlessimo. 1901-1941.

  Mama was born in a small town, about ten miles away called Agavita. Her family had been farmers and at a festival put on by all of the churches of the area, she had met my father. My mother was a year away from being of proper age, so they courted and then married on her birthday.

  She listened now, I’m sure, as I told her all about the arrival of the Germanesí. Sometimes I said the words out loud, more often than not I sent the thoughts to her from my mind as opposed to through the air. She heard about my fear for Papa, my anxiety over what they would do to us if they ever left Casalveri. Or if they stayed too long.

  I traced the grass over her grave with my hand, imagining our hands connecting through the many feet of dirt and rock. I wanted her strength to rise up and flow through me.

  Instead, a wave of anger, fear and confusion washed over me. Like the sea in a rising storm, it grew in intensity. A cold sweat broke out along my brow and the cemetery began to spin around me. I could feel my heart beating quickly, my breath was shallow. I clenched my fists, felt cold dampness on my palms, like wrung-out dishrags.

  From my mouth came a sound, not a scream but a twisted, guttural moan that rose and passed along the back of my throat.

  Slowly, I felt the tension pass, and then my body sagged, fatigued and spent. The experience was not new to me; I’d been having them on and off since Mama passed away, but I told no one.

  A twig snapped behind me and I twirled, expecting to see a German soldier coming at me. But nothing was there; just granite witnesses watching me impassively.

  A bush rustled to my left and I looked, but saw nothing. Then I heard, or thought I heard, the sound of boots on the dirt path receding farther away from me. The trees behind the last row of headstones swayed gently with a breeze and I looked at their leaves fluttering gently. In order to fit the next row of headstones, those trees would need to be cleared.

  I wondered if after all this was done, after the Germans were done with us, if there would be enough room even with all of the trees cleared to fit the many new headstones that would need to go here.

  Maybe even mine.

  Chapter Six

  When I got back home, the house was empty. Iole and Emidio were probably off with Papa, helping him talk to everyone in the village about what to do now that the Germans had taken over. I was sure Papa had his hands full dealing with the questions that were bound to be asked as the shock set in that the village was really no longer ours. On top of that, Papa had to deal with Emidio and Iole; Emidio had a knack for breaking things in other people’s homes.

  I went down into the cellar to get a jar of tomatoes to begin making lunch. One of the last things my mother had taught me was how to jar tomatoes. She did it a special way, separating the size of the tomato chunks. She would put the biggest ones in one jar, the medium sized in a different jar and the smallest ones, as well as the smashed pulp, into another jar. Then, depending on the importance of the occasion, she would retrieve the jar to match. The more special the occasion, the bigger the tomato chunks. I don’t know if everyone in my village did it that way, but my mother was adamant that we should.

  It was disappointing to see how low our food reserves were. We should have been stockpiling food in anticipation of the Germans’ arrival, but the summer had been a dry one, and the one before that, too. Besides, no one had known with any certainty that the Germans would come. Up until now it had been speculation. But the hard truth was looking us all in the face and now with the men leaving for the mountains, the shelves were only going to get emptier.

  I brought the tomatoes upstairs. I had chosen a jar that held the smallest chunks and pieces of pulp in honor of the Germanesí, knowing they wouldn’t realize the significance. I put the jar on the counter next to the eggplant that I had cleaned yesterday, poured olive oil into a cast iron skillet, then placed it over the small fire I had built in the oven. I chopped onion and garlic, then tossed them in. When they were browned, I poured the tomatoes and eggplant in also, stirring them until the flavors were well mixed. The sauce would be hearty and versatile, something I could use with pasta or as a base for stew.

  Suddenly, I felt someone’s presence in the room with me, and I turned, startled to see a man standing halfway between the big table and the kitchen. Somehow, he had made no sound entering the house.

  He was a German soldier. He had blonde hair and washed out blue eyes that were rimmed with red. His uniform looked a size too big for him, but I guessed that it may have fit him when he joined the army and hung loosely on him now that he had lost weight. Judging by his face, he looked like he had seen some of the worst war has to offer.

  His eyes were on my legs, and the look on his face scared me. It reminded me of the time when we used to have an old dog named Fleek. One day, Fleek had managed to catch a bird in the backyard. I was outside doing laundry when he ran up to me, the bird in his mouth struggled, flapping its wings and kicking its feet in the air. Fleek’s old, tired eyes made contact with mine and there was a hungry, wild gleam in them that I had never seen before.

  The soldier continued to look at me and I tugged on the bottom of my dress, trying to force it down farther over my thighs, but I knew it wasn’t helping. I had grown so much in the last year that my legs had shot out from under the dress, but we didn’t have the money to buy more m
aterial so I could make a new one. Stupid.

  My breasts had grown considerably, too. My dress had been made for me when my chest was flat, breasts just slight bumps in the flat pleat. But now they strained against the flimsy fabric, the very tops of each breast barely visible over the hem line.

  I should have changed immediately when the Germans arrived, or at least thrown one of Papa’s shirts over the top of my dress. Things were different now, I have to be more careful I told myself. In this outfit, I was an advertisement for something I didn’t want to be.

  “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in,” I said, after a struggle to come up with something that would break the silence.

  He didn’t answer, but seemed to mumble something under his breath.

  I moved to get the platter of bread that sat on the edge of the hearth to keep warm. The soldier followed me with his eyes, not responding. My heart started beating faster. Next to the bread was a knife, designed to cut bread, not men, but it made me feel better to be close to it.

  Instead of responding to me, the German looked over his shoulder behind him. My breath caught in my throat, at the slow, sureness of the movement. He was considering something that he didn’t want the rest of the men, probably the two officers especially, to know about.

  I picked up the bread knife and started cutting slices off the thick loaf. I put several on a plate and turned to him, the plate in one hand, the knife in the other, pointed directly at him.

  His eyes were like rough hands on my breasts, then they moved down to my legs and thighs. He was fondling and caressing my entire body without actually touching me.

  I could see his nostrils widening and narrowing as his breath came faster. There was sweat on his forehead. Suddenly, he looked down at a slight suggestion of movement and my eyes followed his to a bulge in his pants that seemed to be growing.

  For the first time since he’d entered the room, he looked at my face. He smiled, his lips revealing yellow, stained teeth, and when I saw the gleam in his eyes and I felt like that bird that had been in Fleek’s mouth, kicking and flapping but getting nowhere, no chance of escape.