Hearing their comrade’s voices, the two prisoners began trying to jerk away, and when not actually falling they were pretending to fall, trying to roll off to the side, unafraid of injuring themselves. They had realized that we could not shoot them, because of the noise, and that wherever they ended up the dogs would find them. They no longer had anything to lose, and like anyone with nothing to lose, they had become dangerous.
Suddenly we heard machine-gun fire. Not being able to come down, the Germans had decided to fire. But for one thing, they had almost a hundred and eighty degrees of the Gorge before them and no idea which way we had gone, so they were firing all over the place. For another, they had not realized how steep the Gorge was, and they were firing almost horizontally. When they fired in our direction, we could hear the bullets whistling over our heads.
«Let’s move, let’s move,» Gragnola said, «they still won’t get us.»
But the first Germans must have begun climbing down, getting an idea of the slope of the terrain, and the dogs must have begun heading in a more precise direction. Now they were shooting down, and more or less at us. We heard some bullets murmur through nearby bushes.
«No fear,» said the Cossack, «I know the Reichweite of their Maschinen.»
«The range of those machine guns,» Gragnola offered.
«Yes, that. If they do not come more far down and we go fast, then the bullets will not reach to us anymore. So quick.»
«Gragnola,» I said with huge tears in my eyes, longing for Mamma, «I can go quicker but the rest of you can’t. You can’t drag these two with us, there’s no point in me running down like a goat if they keep holding us up. Let’s leave them here, or I swear I’m taking my life in my own hands.»
«If we leave them here they’ll get loose in a flash and call down the others,» Gragnola said.
«I kill them with the butt of machine gun, that makes no noise,» hissed the Cossack.
The idea of killing those two poor men froze me, but I snapped out of it when Gragnola growled: «It’s no good, god-damnit, even if we leave them here dead, the dogs will find them, and the others will know which way we’ve gone,» and in the excitement he was no longer speaking in infinitives. «There’s only one thing to do, make them fall in some direction that isn’t ours, so the dogs will go that way and we might gain ten minutes or even more. Yambo, to the right here, isn’t there that false path that leads to the ravine? Good, we’ll push them down there, you said that anyone going that way won’t notice the ledge and will fall easily, then the dogs will lead the Germans to the bottom. Before they can recover from that blow we’re in the valley. A fall from there will kill them, right?»
«No, I didn’t say that a fall there would definitely kill them. You’ll break bones, if you’re unlucky you might hit your head…»
«Goddamn you, how come you said one thing and now you’re saying another? So maybe their ropes will come loose as they’re falling, and when they come to a stop they’ll still have enough breath to yell and warn the others to be careful!»
«Then they must fall when they are already dead,» commented the Cossack, who knew how things worked in this dirty world.
I was right next to Gragnola and could see his face. He had always been pale, but he was paler now. He stood there gazing upward, as if seeking inspiration from the heavens. In that moment, we heard a frr frrr of bullets passing near us at the level of a man’s head. One of the Germans shoved his guard and both fell to the ground, and the Cossack started complaining because the first one was headbutting him in the teeth, gambling everything and trying to make noise. That was when Gragnola made his decision and said, «It’s them or us. Yambo, if I go right, how many steps before the ledge?»
«Ten steps, ten of mine, maybe eight for you, but if you push your foot out in front of you you’ll feel it start to slope away, and from that point to the ledge it’s four steps. To be safe take three.»
«Okay,» Gragnola said, turning to the Cossack, «I’ll go forward, two of you push these two toadies, hold them tight by the shoulders. Everybody else stays here.»
«What are you going to do?» I asked, my teeth chattering.
«You shut up. This is war. Wait here with them. That’s an order.»
They disappeared to the right of the boulder, swallowed by the fumifugium. We waited several minutes, heard the skittering of stones and several thuds, then Gragnola and the two Cossacks reappeared, without the Germans. «Let’s move,» Gragnola said, «now we can go faster.»
He put a hand on my arm and I could feel him trembling. Now that he was closer I could see him again: he was wearing a sweater that was snug around his neck, and now the lancet case was hanging over his chest, as if he had taken it out. «What did you do with them?» I asked, crying.
«Don’t think about it, it was the right thing. The dogs will smell the blood and that’s where they’ll lead the others. We’re safe, let’s go.»
And when he saw that my eyes were bulging out: «It was them or us.
Two instead of ten. It’s war. Let’s go.»
After nearly half an hour, during which we kept hearing angry shouts and barking from above, but not coming toward us, indeed getting farther away, we reached the bottom of the Gorge, and the road. Gigio’s truck was waiting nearby, in the cluster of trees. Gragnola loaded the Cossacks on it. «I’m going with them, to make sure they reach the Badogliani,» he said. He was trying not to look at me, was in a hurry to see me leave. «You go on from here, get back home. You’ve been brave. You deserve a medal. And don’t think about the rest. You did your duty. If anyone is guilty of anything, it’s me only.»
I returned home sweating, despite the cold, and exhausted. I took refuge in my little room and would have been happy to spend a sleepless night, but it was worse than that, I kept dozing off from exhaustion for a few minutes at a time, kept seeing Uncle Gaetanos dancing with their throats cut. Maybe I was running a fever. I have to confess, I have to confess, I kept telling myself.
The next morning was worse. I had to get up more or less at the usual hour, to see Papà off, and Mamma could not understand why I was so addle-brained. Several hours later Gigio showed up and quickly conferred with my grandfather and Masulu. As he was leaving I signaled him to meet me in the vineyard, and he could not hide anything from me.
Gragnola had escorted the Cossacks to the Badogliani, then returned, with Gigio and the truck, to Solara. The Badogliani had told them they should not go around at night unarmed: they had learned that a detachment of Black Brigades had reached Solara to assist to their comrades. They gave Gragnola a musket.
The trip to and from the Vignoletta crossroads took a total of three hours. They returned the truck to Bercelli’s farm, then set out walking on the road to Solara. They thought it was all over, heard no noises, and were walking calmly. From what they could tell in that fog, it was nearly dawn. After all that tension, they were trying to cheer each other up, slapping each other on the back, making noise. And so they failed to notice that the Black Brigades were crouching in a ditch, and they were caught not more than two kilometers from town. They had weapons on them when they were taken and could not explain them away. They were thrown into the back of a van. There were only five of the Fascists, two up front, two in back facing them, and one standing on the front running board, to help see better in the fog.
They had not even bound them, though the two who were guarding them were sitting with submachine guns across their laps, while Gigio and Gragnola had been thrown down like sacks.
At a certain point Gigio heard a strange noise, like fabric tearing, and felt a viscous liquid spray him in the face. One of the Fascists heard a gasp, turned on a flashlight, and there was Gragnola with his throat cut, lancet in hand. The two Fascists started cursing, stopped the van, and with Gigio’s help dragged Gragnola to the side of the road. He was already dead, or nearly, spilling blood everywhere. The other three had come over too, and they were all blaming each other, saying he could not croak like that because command needed to make him talk, and they would all be arrested for having been so stupid, failing to tie up the prisoners.
While they were yelling over Gragnola’s body, they forgot Gigio for a moment and he, in the confusion, thought Now or never. He took off to one side, crossing the ditch, knowing there was a steep slope beyond it. They fired off a few shots, but he had already rolled to the bottom like an avalanche, and then hidden among some trees. In that fog, he would have been a
