War in My Town Read online

  Cesar, Mery, and I ran up the walk from our house and into the village, followed by Aurelia and Pina who held Mamma between them. We ran instinctively into the piazza. Everyone else had the same idea. All our neighbors had also run to the center of the village.

  “That sounded like it hit the vineyards right under your house,” Alfezio said, as he hobbled over, out of breath. “I was at Evelina’s, way up above. But the blast shook everything there just the same.”

  I saw the Germans leaving the houses and running toward the meadow.

  “Follow them,” cried Vincenzo. “Run where the soldiers are running. They’re taking cover.”

  “Do you think there are more blasts coming?” Cesar asked, out of breath.

  “Do you want to wait around to find out?” answered Dante as he grabbed Aurelia’s hand and ran with her. People were beginning to move from the center of the village to the Bora valley behind it.

  As people rushed toward the valley, we heard another boom. In the time it took me to realize that another bomb was on its way, it was already upon us. The sound was a shrill hum commanding quiet awe as it flew overhead. I saw the mortar shell make contact right near us. The ground shook again, sending waves of tremors underfoot.

  The impact produced a deafening blast, hurling debris and chunks of brick wall everywhere. Centuries-old stone houses, lovingly constructed by our ancestors, became mounds of rubble. Pieces of glass and rocks became projectiles, raining onto the deserted piazza, followed by a billowing white cloud of choking dust. The structures that had sheltered us now pierced our skin and bones.

  The cries and screams of children eclipsed the clunking sounds of rubble falling from the sky and onto the cobblestones. People threw themselves in doorways, under awnings and porticos to protect themselves from the mortar chunks.

  As more blasts came, Cesar flung himself on top of me to keep me from being hit by flying debris. My ears rang from the explosions. I could barely hear the people around me coughing and sobbing. Cesar stirred and coughed. A cloud of dust had engulfed us.

  “Cesar!” I gasped. “Cesar, are you hurt?”

  “No,” he sputtered and coughed again. “You?” He sat up slowly and checked my arms and legs for injuries.

  “I think I’m all right.” I shook my head to try to clear the ringing in my ears. “But what about Mamma? Where is she?”

  “I’m here,” Mamma called. She was sitting against the side of a house with Mery and Pina. All were covered in dust. Alfezio was beside them, awkwardly positioned due to his missing leg. He was wiping his face with a handkerchief that looked as though it once might have been white.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Mamma looked to those around her. There were a few scratches and cuts, but nothing serious. “Cesar,” she croaked. “You must check on Nonna and Nonno.”

  “All right,” he agreed. “Bruna, you stay with Mamma.” He got up and turned around, but stood rooted to the spot as he faced the center of town. The devastation was horrific.

  As the dust cleared the effects of the shelling was evident. Unfortunately, Alfezio saw it too. The impact had blown away the entire front of his beloved library, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. His cherished books were strewn about, charred and burning from the heat of the explosion. There was practically nothing left.

  The grimace on Alfezio’s face said everything. In a second, all that he had worked so hard to preserve was gone. “No,” Alfezio cried. “Not my library.” He had his handkerchief to his mouth, his hand in a fist. Awkwardly, he turned onto one hip to position himself so that he could get up from the ground. He had lost his cane in the mayhem.

  “Alfezio,” Mamma said, still on the ground. “Never mind that. You are unhurt. That’s what matters.”

  “My books. They’re gone.” Anguished beyond consolation, he began hobbling over to the void that was once his home.

  “Alfezio, let’s go to the Bora. It’ll be safer there,” said Cesar starting after him.

  “I’ll go with you, Alfezio,” I cried. I started to walk to him as he headed to the center of the piazza.

  “My library,” Alfezio despaired as he looked into the cavernous hole, a thin cloud of dust still hovering inside it. His hands were on his head, as he stood on the edge of the hole.

  “No, Bruna!” Cesar grabbed my arm. “It’s too open over there. You go with Mamma, I’ll help him…” But Cesar didn’t even have time to finish his sentence.

  Silence hung in the air for a moment, and then there was another roar, once again from the eastern horizon. The people in the street had barely risen to their feet from the previous hit when they began screaming and running for cover once more.

  “Get down! Get down!” yelled Cesar.

  I threw myself down and crawled over to my mother as Cesar clambered over to a wall facing away from the hillside. I put my hands over my ears and counted to ten. And then, another blast. The ground shook and the air moved over us like a tidal wave. More rubble and pieces of sharp wooden shrapnel rained down on us, some piercing our skin.

  I screamed and buried my head in my mother’s lap. She covered my face with her arms. Pina was on the other side of Mery, covering her body with as much of her own as she could.

  I remained burrowed in mother’s lap, too frightened to lift my head to look. Around me were the sounds of muffled screams and cries. I wanted to stay here where I was, next to my mother forever. I felt hands on my shoulders, lifting me up by my dress fabric. Panic filled their eyes as Pina and Mery yelled at me.

  “Move!” cried Pina. “We have to move now!”

  Mery pulled my hands from my ears. “We have to get to Vincenzo’s, now!” She forced me up as Pina helped mother to her feet.

  “Cesar! Don’t go over there! Come back,” Mamma cried out. I looked over to see where he was.

  “No, Bruna. Don’t look there,” said Mery through tears, turning me away.

  “Why?” I asked. I felt an uneasy jolt in my stomach. “What is it?”

  Chapter 21

  The bomb poured hundreds of projectiles of wood and ancient building stones onto the few villagers remaining in the piazza. Through the dust, I could make out my brother’s familiar figure huddled over a body. I saw that there was someone lying on the ground near what used to be Alfezio’s library.

  Cesar was only there for a moment, and then he came running back to us. As he approached, he wiped his eyes. “Down to Vincenzo’s house, all of you,” he said, an uncharacteristic mix of despair and anger in his voice. Cesar grasped mother and Mery’s arms and Pina had me. The anguish on my brother’s face was clear.

  “Wait Cesar. Was that Alfezio?” I was incredulous. My eyes stung and filled with tears. “He’s hurt. We can’t just leave him there.”

  “Alfezio is dead,” Cesar gulped. He grasped my shoulders and held me at arm’s length. “A piece of shrapnel pierced his skull. There’s nothing more we can do for him.”

  “No!” I screamed.

  “Bruna, just keep running.”

  We passed the familiar archway leading to our refuge. As we ran, we saw no one else, no villagers, no soldiers. Everyone was gone. An eerie quiet hung over the little town, like a stifling blanket. I heard a child crying in the meadow on the other side of Vincenzo’s house. Then another boom from Barga. This time the bomb cut the air to the south. It hurtled by, making a high-pitched sound as it found its mark, finally making contact with one of the houses facing Barga in the upper village.

  I ran ahead of Pina in a blind flight, and lost my footing on the steps descending to Vincenzo’s house. I fell, sliding down the stairs on my back. I reached the safe house first, with Pina close behind. Cesar said nothing else. He kept low to the ground and pulled both my mother and sister until they reached shelter. He closed and secured the door. “Vincenzo! It’s Cesar.”

  No one answered.

  “Come,”
he said. “Get inside. They’re in the back. Let’s go.” Cesar led us to the very back of the house to the isolated cold storage room dug into the hillside. He pulled on the latch but it was locked from the inside.

  “It’s us,” Cesar said. “Open the door!”

  “How many are you?” came a hesitant voice from inside.

  Cesar didn’t say a word. Instead, he pounded on the door so hard that the hinges creaked.

  “Stop, Cesar,” cried Mamma.

  “It’s Cesar! Let him in!” We heard Ersilia’s voice from inside.

  The door swung open to reveal a disheveled, terrified group of people — an assortment of villagers from different families, all hiding in the storage space that had become a bunker. They had come together in a moment of sheer panic and desperation. Ersilia and her sisters, Vincenzo and his family, and us. We silently huddled there in the cramped, musty sanctuary for the entire first night of the bombings. The distant sound of the artillery fire in Barga gave rise to the imminent high-pitched sound of the mortar shells soaring westerly overhead, one after the other. The Nazis now returned fire overhead with their gunners, relentlessly splitting the air. The sound of smashing buildings and roads was all around us.

  “Why are they firing on us!” I shouted to my mother. “Aren’t the Allies supposed to be helping us?”

  “They’re firing on the Nazis!” Cesar yelled above the shelling. “We are just in the way.”

  As the destruction raged above us, I could only think that every distant blast would be the last sound I would hear. If I didn’t hear the screeching, then the bomb would already be upon us, and after that I would hear nothing else.

  I looked around the makeshift shelter at the people around me and prayed that my grandparents were safe in their house. Surely someone was able to get to them. I looked at my siblings and my mother, and hoped that we would all remain safe. I thought of Eleonora in Florence and of Alcide and I prayed that they were safe as well. Mercifully, the blasts finally stopped during the long night.

  I had too much time to think that night. For the first time, I thought about my father and why he wasn’t here to protect us. Even though we received occasional letters from him, I wondered why he had never come back to us, why he had stayed in Brazil. He should be the one helping Mamma instead of Cesar. He should be with us, fighting the enemy like my brothers, not safe in South America somewhere, so far away from danger. I was never allowed to talk of this to my mother, and when I asked my siblings they would tell me to be quiet. Sometimes I wondered why he never cared to meet me. That night, I hated him.

  Chapter 22

  In my dream I saw the outline of a man walking away from a bright light in the outlying background. He looked like my brother Alcide. He was tall and had the same gait. As he came closer, I felt joy. I wanted to go to him, but someone was pulling at my arm. Mamma was shaking me awake. The others were already on their feet, brushing off dust and soil from their clothing in a pointless effort to appear presentable.

  “Is it over?” I murmured, still half asleep.

  “It appears so, for now,” said Mamma. “We need to get up and see what is left of the village.”

  We left the storage room and shuffled into the main house. Vincenzo’s house had been spared, save for the dust and loose plaster on the floor. The group huddled around the door.

  “Are you ready for this?” asked Vincenzo, his hand on the latch.

  “What will we do if we’re not?” replied Cesar. “Stay here forever?” He reached over Vincenzo’s hand and unlatched the door, opening it slowly. It was barely dawn and all was quiet. A thin strip of pink appeared over top of the mountains on the horizon. I could hear distant coughing and crying. More muffled were the sounds of German voices because they were in the Bora behind the village, farthest away from the line of fire.

  “Let’s go,” said Ersilia.

  “No,” said Cesar firmly. “You women stay here, out of sight. Vincenzo, you come with me.”

  I kept silent, and watched the men move out into the breaking dawn. The birds chirped their early morning songs, oblivious to the happenings of the night before. I wondered numbly if everyone but us had been killed last night. What if we were all that was left in our village? No, that could not be. We had all fought too hard to survive this far. It couldn’t be over in one night!

  “Bruna?”

  I jumped, startled out of my daydream. “Mery! Oh, you scared me,” I said clutching my chest.

  “Come on. Wipe your face and eat something. There’s some old polenta here.” Mery handed me a napkin with the cornmeal. I couldn’t even look at it.

  “Eat, Bruna,” Mamma insisted.

  “How can you think of food now, Mamma? I feel sick to my stomach.”

  “I do, too. But if we don’t keep up our strength, we are no good to anyone.”

  By the time we managed to put some food together, the men returned bearing relatively good news. “It appears as though Alfezio was the only one killed last night,” reported Cesar. “We need to bury him. Father had him moved to the church rectory.”

  “Save for a few cuts and bruises, everyone is accounted for,” Dante added. “But a lot of the houses were destroyed.”

  “Never mind the houses. Poor Alfezio,” I sighed. “He was such a good man. Why him?”

  “If I had the answer to that question…never mind. But, we do need to attend to Nonna’s house,” said Cesar. “Demetrio took them in.”

  “What should we do, Cesar, go back home or wait here?” asked Pina.

  “We might as well go home. There is no telling when or if they’ll start again. In the meantime, those villains in the Bora will order us back to work.”

  With that, we bid each other good-bye and made our way back to our respective houses, or what was left of them.

  The devastation that I saw on my way home was more than I could bear. Dozens of houses had been damaged, especially those closest to the road facing Barga. Miraculously, Poggetti was untouched. The adjacent house, however, was not so lucky. Paolo and Alice’s house had a gaping hole in the top floor from a mortar shell and Paolo was frantic. “Look at what those bastards did to my house!” Scores of townspeople were now without homes, in addition to those who were already displaced because of the occupying Germans.

  Thankfully, the Nazis didn’t round us up that morning to work. I guessed that they were probably regrouping. The villagers used this precious time to help the families devastated by the first round of shelling to gather whatever possessions they could salvage. I thought of Alfezio — a man who survived the Great War, only to die in desperation knowing that his one passion in life was to be no more.

  Chapter 23

  In the weeks that followed, the Allied bombings continued and became more vigorous and unrelenting. We often wondered whether the Allies knew the difference between Italian civilians and Nazi soldiers. The Nazis returned fire from the ground with their gunners and machine gun nests. We had to tread carefully during daylight as the shelling increased when the bombers saw activity on the ground. When we heard the shrill sound of bombs overhead, everyone would run for cover, but no one knew where to run — the bombs could fall anywhere.

  As the mortar shells continued from the sky, the Germans held fast to their position in our village. On the ground, the soldiers kept us in line with their guns and bayonets. We tried to avoid them by keeping separate as much as possible. We did what they told us to do. Cesar was forced to work daily for the Nazi captors, digging and building. My sisters and I continued to work in the old osteria, preparing food and washing dirty clothes for the Nazis.

  In the meantime, our elderly and sick got sicker without the benefit of medicine or doctors. Nonno wasn’t able to eat anything now, save for a few drops of broth and he was wasting away before our eyes. Edo’s father, Enrico, was in his last days and in great pain. The Nazis had closed the
dirt road to Castelnuovo. It was the only accessible road in and out of Eglio.

  Even within our village, it was hard to care for our sick because of the constant threat of shelling and the imposed curfew. We tried to visit Nonna and Nonno as often as we could, but it was always a risk. Those living on the outskirts of town were hard to get to and we had to be back inside our home by curfew.

  Occasionally, Pina would fill some clay pots with leftover food from the osteria that the soldiers hadn’t eaten and take it to our grandparents. This was very courageous. If she were caught or wasn’t back by dusk, she could be severely punished.

  One day after we were dismissed from our labor, Pina ran ahead with her clay pots to our grandparents’ house. She was determined to get there as soon as possible. Mery, Mamma, and I followed. We took the ancient little walkway behind the church that nobody used. We clung to the vines and brambles as we walked, so that we wouldn’t fall into the Bora. Finally, we reached the big house. Nonna and Nonno loved it when people called it “the big house,” because it gave them a sense of pride to own one of the biggest houses in the village.

  We let ourselves in through the side door, which opened directly into the sitting room. In the center was a generously sized dining table and beside it stood Nonna’s beloved hutch in its place of honor. It was a pity that it was empty, its contents buried under the soil in the barn. The window coverings were drawn and the room was fairly dim. Nonna sat silently in her chair, her arms resting on the handmade doilies.

  “Hello, Nonna,” said Mamma. “How is Nonno?”

  “I don’t know how he is because he’s not speaking to me.” She sniffed haughtily and looked away into the shadows. Her tone was curt. My sister and I looked at each other. A sense of something not right pressed heavily on my chest.

  “Nonna, where is Pina?” asked Mery.

  “Upstairs,” she replied flatly. Nonno stayed upstairs in bed.

  The three of us stepped quietly through the sizeable kitchen. It was scrubbed clean and smelled of lye. On the plank table were two vessels of broth, untouched. Mamma drew aside the curtain that hid the staircase up to the bedrooms. The creaky steps announced our arrival.