Fire in the Hills Read online

  The Nazis ransacked the great museum.

  They burned factories.

  They burned homes.

  That was the first week. Roberto’s head hurt all the time. He couldn’t sleep. He barely ate. But he stumbled on. This would end. The Americans were coming. The Germans had to get out of Naples soon. This would end.

  The second week they blew up one of the few aqueducts that was still standing. Water—no more water.

  The wells of Naples couldn’t supply enough for everyone, anyone could see that. When Roberto was in Sicily, he’d gone only a couple of days at a stretch without water. But that was enough to know. Thousands would die with the aqueduct water cut off—and their deaths would be excruciating.

  Kurt tapped the paper in his hand. “See my list? Every last aqueduct.”

  And Roberto ran. He just took off.

  He ducked this way and that, swerving behind rubble, hoping to dodge the bullets he expected. Instead, a German soldier tackled him from behind and sat on him and pounded him with both fists, till Kurt called the man off.

  After that, Kurt tied a rope around Roberto’s chest and tied the other end to his own belt. Roberto was on a leash.

  They exploded electrical plants and put mines outside the buildings so that fire trucks couldn’t come up to put out the flames.

  They bombed all the remaining aqueducts.

  They shot anyone who protested—man or woman. Shot them. Dead.

  Roberto was dragged through it all.

  Then Kurt finally found a use for Roberto. He had him spread the news: every Italian man between eighteen and thirty-three years old was to report for work by September 25. They’d be forced labor for the Germans. Roberto knew all about forced labor—that’s how he’d become part of this whole damnable war in the first place. He shouted the announcement over and over till he was hoarse.

  But the twenty-fifth came and only 150 men had reported for work, out of the tens of thousands who had to be eligible. Scholl was apoplectic. Something unspeakable was bound to happen. Roberto felt the danger like an electrical current racing through his limbs. At any given moment he was holding in a scream.

  Kurt and his soldiers stamped through the streets and forced doors. When doors wouldn’t open, they shot out the locks. If there were no men in the house, the women were questioned, and if the Germans didn’t believe them, they shot them. If there were men and if they had guns, they shot them. They shot parents while children looked on. And Roberto stood there, arms tied behind his back, tethered to Kurt, and saw it all. His mouth was the conduit for every evil word. He wanted to bite his own tongue off.

  Some men came out with their hands up. A few had ID cards, showing they were members of the Italian Fascist party; they were on the Germans’ side. They should be let free.

  But the ID cards made no difference. All the men were gathered and marched out of town. One asked where they were going. He was shot. A boy tried to run away. He was shot. They marched for hours, all afternoon, all night. Women who offered them water along the road were beaten.

  Kurt and Roberto marched behind them. Hour after hour. Ten hours. Eleven hours. Finally they stopped and built a fire against the late September chill.

  Roberto was exhausted, and it felt good. He was beyond tension, beyond the fear that had squeezed him for so long. His body was nothing but a limp sack of organs.

  The Germans huddled together, muttering. The trucks that were supposed to meet them weren’t coming after all. Messages hadn’t gotten through, because wires were down. So at dawn, they marched all the men back to Naples.

  Roberto spent the next days tied to the leg of the piano in the hotel headquarters lobby while Scholl tried to figure out what to do next.

  The Germans talked of street urchins—those boys in shorts—those boys like Roberto. The boys were stealing gasoline and arms, even automatic rifles. Ordinary men were picking up shovels and pitchforks and hammers and bricks. They fought off soldiers who came to their houses.

  Scholl and his men made fun of them: “Orphans and bumpkins.” But look what the orphans and bumpkins were doing! Roberto cheered for them inside his head. He cheered when they destroyed German tanks. He cheered when they stopped Nazis from blowing up a bridge.

  Kurt spluttered, “Stupid Neapolitans. Disorganized—no plan of attack—just a bunch of separate little ambushes. They can’t really do us damage.”

  But Scholl shook his head. He said they needed a show of force to put down the rebellions long enough for the Germans to get out of town and away.

  So the Germans took hostages. Men, women, and eleven children. They announced they’d kill them—all of them—if the Italians didn’t let them leave town unhindered.

  The leader of the Neapolitan rebels came to German headquarters to negotiate. He met with Colonel Scholl by candlelight, because the Germans had destroyed the utility plant.

  The rebel leader looked like nothing more than an overgrown street urchin himself. But he spoke with power. He said the Germans had to let the hostages go or the rebels would fight till every last German was dead. He said it like a crazy man; his voice shook. And Roberto translated with all the maniacal fury he could muster. In that moment, Roberto shared the power.

  Colonel Scholl let the hostages go.

  The Germans drove out of town in their trucks.

  With Roberto, the point of a gun pressed against the small of his back.

  9

  THE NIGHT AIR MADE ROBERTO SHIVER. He still wore only shorts. He wished he could at least rub his arms, but his wrists remained tied behind him.

  Dark had come early, and maneuvering around the mess of crumpled walls in the streets of Naples had taken a long time. But now, on the open road, the trucks went fast and the breeze they created chilled. There was one good thing about that, though: it carried away the smoke from Kurt’s cigar, so Roberto didn’t have to fight off a gag.

  And the rope around his chest was gone. Another thing to be grateful for.

  After a few hours, the truck convoy stopped by the side of the road. Roberto walked into the bushes with the soldiers to relieve himself. He waited for Kurt to untie his wrists.

  Shots came.

  The soldier beside Roberto fell face forward.

  Roberto had no idea where the bullets came from, so he didn’t know which way to run. He dropped to his knees and let himself fall on his side, to get out of the gun’s line of sight.

  Something gushed from the mouth of the shot soldier. He gurgled. His eyes opened and closed, opened and closed.

  More shots. Now from lots of directions.

  Kurt stumbled past, screaming, his hands clutching the back of his neck. He disappeared in the bushes.

  More shots. Germans shouting and running. The engine noises from the trucks. Then nothing.

  The dying soldier beside Roberto coughed and choked and went silent.

  Again. Roberto had found himself in the middle of death again. Again and again and again. Death stained every place he went. Every place for the past year and a half. Death and death. How could it keep happening, over and over and over? It should be done. Over and done.

  He should be dead.

  The thought was iron-heavy with its truth. What made him so special that he kept getting away? Nothing. Roberto wasn’t special at all. He was an ordinary person. A kid. He was supposed to be dead by now.

  From here to Venice, Italy was occupied with Germans. He’d never make it home.

  And right now he couldn’t even remember home.

  A vast sense of failure pinned him to the ground.

  Soon whispers came. In some southern Italian dialect. Roberto didn’t try to make out what the people were saying to each other. He didn’t care.

  Quiet footsteps came close. Something tapped him on the shoulder. Then a face stared into his. A boy’s face. A teen. “You’re alive.” He put a pistol to Roberto’s forehead. “Beg. Beg like you Nazis made my father beg before you shot him. Beg, so I can shoot you.�
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  “I don’t want to beg,” said Roberto. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Italian, huh?” The boy moved the pistol down to Roberto’s throat. “So you’re a Fascist, not a Nazi. That’s worse. You’re the lowest of the low.”

  “I’m not a Fascist.”

  “Oh no? Who are you?”

  Roberto closed his eyes. “No one.”

  There was the sound of running from behind Roberto. “I can’t find anyone else alive,” said a second voice, breathy and excited. It was just a kid’s, too. “We took out four of them, at least. Who’s this?”

  “No One.”

  “Why are his hands tied?”

  “His hands are tied? Oh yeah? Open your eyes, boy.”

  The pistol was still touching Roberto’s throat. He opened his eyes.

  “What were you doing with the Germans?”

  “Translating.”

  “You speak German? How’d you learn it?”

  “I was with Samuele—”

  “A Jew? You were with a Jew?”

  “He was my best friend. We were in a work camp.” That was so long ago. Over a year ago. It felt like forever. And that wasn’t where Roberto had learned the language, anyway. Roberto was too exhausted to say it all. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “We know about work camps. The Nazis took lots of men from around here and forced them to go to Germany to work camps. But they didn’t take boys.”

  “They took me,” said Roberto. “I keep getting taken by the Germans. It’s happened three times now.”

  The first boy shook the gun in front of Roberto’s eyes. “Stand up.”

  Roberto got to his feet. Now he took a look at the second boy; that boy carried a shovel in each hand. These two boys had ambushed a German truck convoy. Alone. What gall. Like the orphan rebels against the Germans in Naples. No, even more exaggerated than that. Like David against Goliath.

  “Turn around.”

  Why? But who cared why? Roberto turned around.

  The boy cut the rope from his wrists.

  “So, No One, do you know, is there anyone else alive here?”

  Was Kurt still alive? He’d gone off somewhere in the bushes ahead. But Roberto owed him, for shooting the boy back in the piazza in Naples. Shooting him so he didn’t have to burn up in the fire. He crossed his arms over his cold chest and rubbed his shoulders and upper arms. “No.”

  “You cold?” asked the second boy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Want that German’s shirt?” He kicked the boot of the dead man beside Roberto.

  “No.”

  “All right, then.”

  The boys gathered the guns and ammunition from the dead. Then each took a shovel and dug a shallow grave. They rolled the dead soldier into it and covered him up. Then they did the same to the three other dead soldiers.

  They walked along the paved road a way and then turned up a dirt path. No one talked. They came to a wide pine and brushed away needles at the foot of it to expose a metal trunk. They stashed the guns and ammunition there. All but the older boy’s pistol. Then they continued up the road. They came to a peasant house in the middle of farmland.

  The main room of the home had a stone-flagged floor. A carbide lamp hissed gently over a table. Salami and garlic and onions hung from roof rafters in the corner.

  A woman came through one of the doorways. She saw Roberto and clapped her hands together and shook them at the boys in exasperation. “What have you brought me?”

  “He was a prisoner of the Germans.”

  “You went near the Germans again? Are you crazy? Will you never get any sense into your thick skulls?” She rushed over and smacked the older boy on the back of the head. Then she smacked the younger one. “You think you know what you’re dealing with. But you don’t.”

  She put her hands to her mouth now and tilted her head toward Roberto, and her eyes looked so sad. “Where do you belong, boy?” Her words were kind, as though this was a normal world where adults worried about the sense in their sons’ skulls and people cared about the fate of a lost boy. She spoke like anyone’s mother anywhere.

  It was too normal to bear.

  Roberto stood there and cried.

  10

  ROBERTO LAY IN THE GRASS. The ground beside him moved. A mole burrowed up, saw him, and disappeared under again. A jay screamed and screamed in the nearest willow tree. Roberto got up and looked. A snake dropped from the yellowing leaves.

  Evening was coming fast. And night here was dark.

  That was a good thing about this place. The darkness of the night. At night in Venice the moon reflects off the water. And everywhere he’d been since, the night had somehow glowed. Off the snow, off the water. But here the moon and stars were absorbed by the fields. Night was black. The newness of that offered relief from any chance of memory.

  He would have liked to sleep outside in that blackness. But Rina, the mother of this family, wouldn’t hear of it. She made him sleep on a mattress stuffed with corncobs—the same kind everyone else in the family slept on. Roberto’s was old and pressed thin with wear. It had been discarded but not yet burned, lucky for him. Rina placed it in the barn, with the oxen.

  Roberto walked between a willow and a poplar, part of a line of trees connected by vines, which formed a natural fence between the fields. The other workers had gone back to the farmhouse a while ago to clean up before dinner. But Roberto had formed the habit of lagging behind. No one seemed to mind, so long as he showed up for the meal.

  Maybe he’d lagged a bit too long today, though. He hurried now, straight to the well. Two copper pitchers were waiting on the ground beside it. He filled them, like usual, then carried one in each hand. He hardly felt the dig of the thin metal handles anymore, his hands had already grown hard from cutting maize stalks all day.

  He wore old trousers, a shirt without a collar, and a jacket without sleeves. Rina had pulled them from a trunk for him. They fit okay.

  Planes went by overhead. Roberto could tell from the sound that there were several of them. He didn’t look up.

  When he got to the house, the thick smell of minestra greeted him, cabbage rich. He’d come to love Rina’s minestra. He put the pitchers on the sideboard and washed his hands and face in the basin with the water the boys had already used for the same purpose. Then he helped set the table. The boys didn’t help in that kind of work. But Roberto liked doing it. Their teasing didn’t bother him. And he knew it made Rina feel better about having him around—about having one more mouth to feed.

  Rina put two hot loaves of bread on the table, and the boys appeared as if by magic. Four of them. The two who had found Roberto that night in the bushes: Ivano, the one with the gun, and Angelo. Plus Manfreddo, who was older, and Emilio, who was a lot younger. They were brothers—Rina’s children.

  Roberto picked up a long loaf and held it upright to his chest. Its warmth felt wonderful through his jacket. He cut it into wedges, drawing the knife toward his chest. He’d learned that way of cutting bread from the oldest brother. It felt honest to hug the bread like that—respectful acknowledgment of how essential it was. He wished he could give a loaf like this to every fourteen-year-old girl in Naples. His eyes burned for an instant.

  The boys dropped pieces of bread into their bowls of minestra and ate greedily, talking about the grape harvest that would start in the morning. Roberto listened only enough to get an idea of what his next job would be. They had harvested about half the grapes before he got there, using some for eating and the rest for wine. But the other half were still on the vine. The blush of maturity had passed. The grapes were partly dry. It didn’t make any sense to Roberto. But, then, not much made sense to him. He was a city boy. Venice didn’t have fields to work. Or not on the main islands, anyway. His only experience with field labor before now was that afternoon he’d spent cutting and rolling wheat with the two little boys in Sicily. He ate the cheese and nuts and grapes that followed the soup without hearing anythin
g really.

  After dinner everyone went outside to relieve themselves in the outhouse. Though the farmhouse had electricity, it had no running water and no bathroom. Then the boys went inside to gather around the radio, while Rina washed the dishes in the water Roberto had brought from the well. Roberto went to the barn. He couldn’t bear listening to war news on the radio. He didn’t care about battles anywhere.

  Venice was occupied by the Nazis. His Venice. His parents. So long as that was true, he couldn’t go home. Rina said it was too dangerous.

  After all that Roberto had been through, it was almost laughable how he obeyed the warnings of this mild woman. But he did. It felt good to be treated like a child by her.

  And obeying her gave him the excuse he needed. He didn’t want to leave this farm. He wished he was home with his family, oh, Lord, how he wished that. But he couldn’t travel there; he couldn’t bear the thought of meeting up with German soldiers again. Soon enough the Allies would take back the north of Italy from Hitler, and then he’d leave. Only then. He’d go to Venice. But for now, he was where he had to be. He was staying put.

  Tonight shouts came from the house. Roberto was leaning over the half-door of the oxen stable, surprised at how he could pick out the white one from the brindled gray and brown one in the dark. He heard the shouts but didn’t turn around. He reached out and ran his hand down the length of one long horn and up the length of the next. He was careful to keep his arm away from the mucus that dripped almost continually from the ox’s muzzle.

  “We did it.” Ivano’s voice came strong and happy behind Roberto. “We declared war on Germany. Finally. October 13 is the best day of my life.”

  “We’ve been at war with Germany, maybe all along,” said Roberto, turning around.

  “Not officially. Yesterday the Americans secured Naples. They’ll take Rome next week. No doubt about it. And I’m going to be part of it.”

  Roberto’s cheeks felt heavy. “What do you mean?”