56 The Good Nazi (2)

56 The Good Nazi (2)

`O my father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.'

How many times had he heard his own father recite these words in the little church at home? Every Easter since his childhood days, excluding the years of the war.

Leutnant Gunter Weber stood rigidly to attention before the major, and, his face set with determination, said, `Hen Major, I must request that this mission be assigned to someone else. I cannot in all conscience carry it out.'

The major raised an incredulous eyebrow, but somehow failed to feel any anger. The truth was that in this position he would like to think that he would have done the same.

`Why ever not?' he asked. It was an unnecessary question, but one which formality required.

`Hen Major, it is against the Geneva Convention to murder prisoners of war. It is also wrong. I must request to be excused.'

He remembered another sentence from the story, and added, `Their blood will be upon our heads, and on our children.'

`They are not prisoners of war, they are traitors. They have turned against their own legitimate government, and they have turned against us, their allies by legally constituted treaty. To execute traitors is not against the Geneva Convention, as you well know. It never has been.'

`With respect,' persisted Weber, `the Italian government may be established or repealed by the King. The King has established Badoglio in government, and Badoglio has declared war. Therefore the Acqui Division are prisoners of war, and therefore we cannot execute them.'

`For God's sake,' said the major, `don't you think they are traitors?'

`Yes, Herr Major, but what I think and the legal position are not the same thing. I believe it is against the military code for a senior officer to command a junior one to perform an illegal act. I am not a criminal, Herr Major, and I do not wish to become one.'

The major sighed, `War is a dirty business, Gunter, you ought to know that. We all have to do terrible things. For example, I like you, and I admire your integrity. Never more than at this moment. But I must remind you that the penalty for refusing to obey an order is execution by firing squad. I don't state this as a threat, but as a fact of life. You know this as well as I do.'

The major walked to the window and then turned on his heel, `You see, these Italian traitors are all going to be shot anyway, whether you do it or not. Why add your own death to theirs? It would be a waste of a fine officer. All for nothing.'

Gunter Weber swallowed hard, and his lips trembled. He found it hard to speak. At last he said, `I request that my protest be recorded and put in my file, Herr Major.'

`Your request is granted, Gunter, but you must do as you are ordered. Heil Hitler.'

Weber returned the salute and left the major's office. He leaned against the wall outside and lit a cigarette, but his hands shook so much that he immediately dropped it. Inside the office the major reasoned with himself that since the order came originally from the top, it was Colonel Barge's responsibility, or perhaps that of someone in Berlin. Ultimately, of course, it was down to the Ritter. That's war,' he said aloud, and decided not to enter Leutnant Weber's protest in his record. There was no point in messing up his career for the sake of some laudable scruples.

`Let's sing, boys,' said Antonio Corelli as the truck they were in lurched from one rut to another. From the passionless faces of the German guards, he looked up and down the truck at his men. One of them was already gibbering and tearful, others were praying, their heads bowed down to their knees, and only Carlo was sitting bolt upright, his massive chest thrust forward as though no bullet in the world could break it. Corelli felt strangely euphoric, as though drunk on fatigue and the infallible excitement of certainty. Why not smile in the face of death? `Let's sing, boys,' he repeated. 'Carlo, sing.'

Carlo fixed him with eyes full of infinite sorrow, and began very softly to sing an Ave Maria. It was neither Schubert's version nor Gounod's, but was something that came trickling out of his own soul, and it was beautiful because it was docile and lyrical. The men stopped praying, and listened. Some of them recognised notes from a lullaby, remembered from infancy, and others heard snatches from a love song. Carlo twice repeated, 'Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,' and then stopped and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. One of the tenors of La Scala began the 'Humming Chorus' from Madama Butterfly, and soon others joined in or dropped out, as the catch in their throats permitted. There was something soothing and appropriate in that lulling melody; it suited the exhausted men, all of them filthy and ragged, all of them at the door of death, all of them too oppressed with misery even to look upon the beloved faces of comrades they were shortly due to lose. It was easy to hum whilst thinking of their mothers, their villages, their boyhood in the vines and fields, the embrace of

their fathers, the first kiss of an adored fiancé, the wedding of a sister. It was easy to sway almost indiscernibly to that tune and contemplate this island, the scene of so many drunken nights, rowdy games, and beautiful girls. It was easier to hum than to dwell on death; it gave the heart something to do.

When the truck arrived at the pink walls of the brothel, Gunter Weber's knees began to buckle. Almost before it had arrived, it seemed that he had known that fate had called him to the killing of his friends.

He had not expected them to arrive singing, humming the very tune that he and La Scala had sung together late at night at the doctor's house, when they were too far gone to remember or pronounce the words of anything else. He had not expected them to jump so lightly from the truck, he had thought they would be pushed and toppled from it by means of bayonets and rifle-butts. He had not expected Antonio Corelli to recognise him and wave. Perhaps he had thought that a man's face changes when he becomes an executioner. He designated a sergeant to herd his friends against the wall, lit another cigarette, and faced away. He watched his own soldiers milling about in silence, and decided to wait in case there was news of a reprieve. He knew it would never come, but nonetheless he waited.

Finally he turned on his heel, knowing that some tiny shred of decency must be salvaged, and he approached the Italians. More than half of them were praying, kneeling in the soil, and others wept like children at a death. Antonio Corelli and Carlo Guercio were embracing. Weber reached for his packet of cigarettes, and approached them. 'Cigarette?' he asked them, and Corelli took one, Carlo refusing. 'The doctor said it was bad for my health,' he said.

Corelli looked at his former protege and said, 'Your hands are trembling, and your legs.'

He took a deep lungful of smoke and added, 'You lot always did get the best tobacco. It annoyed the doctor.'

Weber's face trembled with suppressed tears and desperation, and at last he said suddenly, 'Forgive me.'

Carlo sneered, 'You will never be forgiven.'

But Corelli put his hand up to silence his friend, and said quietly, 'Gunter, I forgive you. If I do not, who will?'

Carlo made a sound of disgust in his throat, and Weber held out his hand. 'Goodbye, Gunter,' said Corelli, taking it. He let his hand linger in the palm of his former friend, shook it briefly one final time, and released it. He linked an arm through Carlo's, and smiled up at him. 'Come,' he said, 'we two have been companions in life. Let us go together to paradise.'

It was a beautiful day to die. A few soft inverted clouds idled on the summit of Mt Aenos. Nearby a goatbell clanged and a flock bleated. He realised that his own legs were shaking and that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He thought about Pelagia, with her dark eyes, her vehement nature, her black hair. He thought of her framed in the doorway of Casa Nostra, laughing as he took her photograph. A succession of images: Pelagia combing Psipsina and talking to her in a squeaky voice apposite to animals; Pelagia chopping onions, wiping tears from her eyes and smiling; Pelagia striking him when her goat was stolen (he realised that he had never replaced it as he had promised - perhaps he should ask for a delay of execution?); Pelagia being delighted that first time he had played Pelagia's March; Pelagia kissing Gunter Weber on the cheek at the offer of the gramophone; Pelagia crocheting a blanket that actually grew smaller every day; Pelagia embarrassed by the asymmetry of embroidery on the waistcoat; Pelagia screaming in his ear when the brakes failed on the motorcycle and sent them hurtling down a mountain; Pelagia arm in arm with her father, returning from the sea. Pelagia, who had been so pert and rounded, now so pale and thin.

The sergeant approached the Leutnant. He was a Croatian, one of those thuggish fanatics more national socialist than Goebbels himself, and considerably less endowed with charm. Weber had never understood how such a man could have found his way into the Grenadiers. He said, 'Herr Leutnant, more will be arriving. We can't delay.'

`Very well,' said Weber, and he closed his eyes and prayed. It was a prayer that had no words, addressed to an apathetic God.

The carnage had none of the ritual formality of such occasions that film and paintings might suggest. The victims were not lined up against the wall. They were not blindfolded, faced away, or faced forward. Many of them were left on their knees, praying, weeping or pleading. Some lay on the grass as though they had already fallen, tearing at it with their hands, burrowing in desperation. Some fought their way to the back of the pack. Some stood smoking, as casually as at a party, and Carlo stood to attention next to Corelli, glad to die at last, and resolved with all his heart to die a soldier's death. Corelli put one hand in the pocket of his breeches to steady the shaking of his leg, unbuttoned his jacket, and deeply breathed the Cephallonian air that held Pelagia's breath. He smelled eucalyptus, goat-dung, and the sea. It occurred to him suddenly that to die outside a brothel was a little picaresque.

The German boys heard the command to fire, and fired in disbelief. Those of them whose eyes were open aimed wide or high, or aimed such as not to cause a death. Their guns leapt and clattered in their hands, and their arms numbed and cramped from panic and vibration. The Croatian sergeant aimed to kill, firing in short and careful bursts, as intent as any carpenter, or a butcher carving joints.

Weber's head reeled. His former friends, wheeling and dancing in the horizontal rain, were crying out. They fell to their knees, their hands flailing, their nostrils haunted by the stench of cordite, searing cloth and oil, their mouths filling with the dry and dusty tang of blood. Some stood up again, holding out their arms like Christ, baring their chests in the hope of a quicker death, a shorter route through pain, a consummation to their loss. What no one had seen, not even Weber, was that at the order to fire Carlo had stepped smartly sideways like a soldier forming ranks. Antonio Corelli, in a haze of nostalgia and forgetfulness, had found in front of him the titanic bulk of Carlo Guercio, had found his wrists gripped painfully in those mighty fists, had found himself unable to move. He

stared wonderingly into the middle of Carlo's back as ragged and appalling holes burst through from inside his body, releasing shreds of tattered flesh and crimson gouts of blood.

Carlo stood unbroken as one bullet after another burrowed like white-hot parasitic knives into the muscle of his chest. He felt blows like those of an axe splintering his bones and hacking at his veins. He stood perfectly still, and when his lungs filled up with blood he held his breath and counted. 'Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove . . . ' He decided in the arbitrariness of his valour to stand and count to thirty. At every even number he thought of Francesco dying in Albania, and at every odd number he tightened his grip on Corelli. He reached thirty just as he thought that he might be failing, and then he looked up at the sky, felt a bullet cave the jawbone of his face, and flung himself over backwards. Corelli lay beneath him, paralysed by his weight, drenched utterly in his blood, stupefied by an as of love so incomprehensible and ineffable, so filled with divine madness, that he did not hear the sergeant's voice.

`Italians, it's all over. If any of you are living, stand up now, and your lives will be spared.'

He did not see the two or three stand up, their hands clutched over their wounds, one of them with his groin ripped out. He did not see them stagger, but he heard the renewed clatter of the automatic as the sergeant cut them down. Then he heard the single shots as the trembling hand of Weber, who, intoxicated with horror, was wandering amongst the dead, ensured their despatch with a spurious coup de grace. Next to his head he saw Weber's jackboot, and he saw Weber bend down and look directly into his eyes where he lay entrapped beneath that weight and bulk. He saw the wavering barrel of the Luger approach his face, he saw the unfathomable sorrow in Weber's brown eyes, and then he save the gun withdrawn, unfired. He tried to breathe more freely, and realised that he was having difficulty not merely because of Carlo's weight, but because the bullets that had passed with such destruction through his friend had also struck himself.