Alex Preston - In Love and War

*

One night he sits in the dirt at the mouth of the cave with Creighton. They no longer light fires. Only the glow of his cigarillo, Creighton’s pipe which breathes tender red threads in its bowl. There are regular patrols — German and Fascist — whose searchlights sweep across the hillsides. The sound of dogs, shouts in the still air, engines toiling up rocky inclines. Esmond can tell that they’re getting closer.

‘Destroy yourself,’ Creighton says, tapping his pipe and relighting it, ‘that’s how you become a better soldier. It’s unnatural, I’m sure. Young chap like you, you feel like you’re the centre of the bloody world. But the story of your life isn’t about you any more — it’s about us. The Resistance, the GAP, the Allies. In war, individuals disappear — it’s a group experience. It’s why the Russians are so bloody good at it. Submit yourself to the collective will. Learn to think of yourself as a pawn, you see?’

Esmond lets a smoky breath out into the night. Somewhere, high above, a wolf. ‘I see it differently,’ he says, directing a cool glance at the Englishman. ‘We’re all individuals now. Now more than ever. My story — me and Ada, everything that happened — it’s simple enough, really. The war is a million such stories stacked on top of each other, entwining, competing. You find the right story, you find the truth, the war’s secret centre.’

The drone of aircraft. Creighton looks up. ‘Brits,’ he says. ‘We bomb at night.’

They smoke in silence until the planes have gone. With a nod, Creighton stands, taps out his pipe and disappears into the cave. Esmond sits for a while longer, listening to the wolves and, further off, gunfire, explosions. Finally he goes into the dark interior, lies down next to Mary Magdalene and sleeps.

Time gathers to a bright point. Everything is in flux. Esmond, Bruno and Elio now barely pause for breath; they come back to the hills only to pick up supplies, reload their guns. Esmond feels a kind of joy each time they head down into the city, calm in the knowledge that each journey may be the last, and bring him closer to her.

Elio is the next to be caught. He sets out to plant a bomb in the Piazza San Marco and doesn’t return. A day later, they hear that Carità has him in the Villa Triste. There is a meeting in the clearing at which the Professor lays out various plans of attack. But even as he speaks, it is clear that only one course is now possible. Everyone looks at Esmond and Bruno. Carità thinks of himself as a vengeful angel, invulnerable. It is up to them to prove him mortal.

The two young men arm themselves with MAB 38s, Berettas, grenades, and drive down into the city. Esmond fastens his Old Wykehamist tie around his head to keep his hair from his eyes. The rebels come out to watch them as they go. Tosca gives a small wave, Creighton salutes. It is evening, the 15th of June. They drive in silence and pull up a block away from the Villa Triste. They step out into the warm air, both of them breathing hard. At the entrance to the high, grey apartment block, they stop and embrace.

‘For Ada,’ Esmond whispers, gripping Bruno.

‘For all of them,’ Bruno says. ‘ In bocca al lupo .’

‘ Crepi il lupo .’

They move swift and silently into the courtyard. The lower levels of the building are dark, but there is a light up on the third floor, the sound of someone playing the piano. Two guards stand beside Carità’s ambulance, smoking. They close in until they are breathing the Blackshirts’ smoke and then two bright flashes from two guns, the explosions ricocheting up the steep walls of the building, and the guards slump forward. The piano stops. They are inside and climbing up a darkened stairwell.

Esmond moves easily, his legs taking the steps two, three at a time, his heart pumping fiercely in his chest, his revolver out in front. They reach the second landing and pause, panting. The sound of many feet coming down from above, guns being loaded, shouts that become whispers as the Blackshirts approach. The damp, nostalgic air of the old building. Bruno takes out a grenade, pulls the pin, waits for a moment and then, leaning out into the empty space in the stairwell, hurls it upwards. They press themselves against the wall and listen to the falling plaster, a man screaming, and then Carità’s voice.

‘It’s over now. I’ve got men outside. Alberti is on his way with stormtroopers. You’re trapped rats. If you throw down your guns, come up here with your hands raised, I’ll make sure it’s quick. You’ll get to keep your bollocks, unlike your friend Elio.’

Bruno looks across at Esmond and gives a little nod. Esmond shrugs and smiles, pushes the tie further up his forehead. They run up the stairs, firing all the time, but now there are doors opening on the landings, smoke grenades being dropped, the flash of guns from all sides. Two Blackshirts fling themselves out of the fumes. Bruno steps around them, but Esmond is caught in the face by a fist and stumbles. He pulls the trigger of his revolver, but it jams, or he’s out of bullets, and then it all seems to slow down as he reaches round to pull the MAB-38 from his shoulder. A volley of gunfire which he has time to stand back and watch as it comes towards him. He’s hit in the collarbone and the thigh and falls, groaning. He realises that he hasn’t even seen his enemy yet, and a sudden surge of energy lifts him to his feet. He makes it up another flight of steps before there, above him, grinning, is Carità, Bruno lying crumpled at his feet. Esmond sees the pudgy knees, the quiff of white hair, before a rifle butt thuds down onto his skull, bringing blackness.

Esmond wakes to the sound of music. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. He’s in a long hall, balconied French windows open to the courtyard several floors below. A man in a monk’s habit, dark hair swept over a balding crown, is playing a grand piano. The bass notes throb in time with the pain in Esmond’s shoulders. He realises his arms have been tied behind his back. He is standing on a high stool beneath a wooden frame. Carità sits at a table beside the frame, eating slices of beef which he spears and presses between fleshy lips. There is a bottle of wine on the table and he pours himself a glass, stands, and kicks the stool from under Esmond’s feet. Esmond’s arms, tied at the wrists, swing up behind him as he drops. His muscles spasm, fight for a moment, then a splintering sound as his shoulder-balls leave their sockets. The dreadful parting of bone and with it a pain that brings darkness.

*

He is in a small, windowless room, blue-lit. He is naked, tied to a chair that is raised on a platform, almost a stage. Carità stands beside a car battery, holding two wires in gloved hands. The ends of these wires are taped to the end of Esmond’s cock, to his lips, to his earlobes. They are pressed into the weeping bullet wounds in his thigh and his collarbone. He is astonished at the noises that come from him, not language, not human. He is losing his words, forgetting books, people, names, giving himself entirely to the endless moment of pain. He feels as if he is drowning in black milk. He lives strung up between the brief respites, a kind of torture in themselves, when Carità goes out for a piss, or when he lights a cigarette and blows the smoke in Esmond’s face, mouthing again, ‘Tell us where your friends are hiding. Don’t be an idiot. This can stop, just tell us where they are.’ He feels the secret inside him, wrapped like a gift, and sees how natural is Carità’s belief that he can burn, hack, bleed it out of him.

An early morning, when Carità has gone out for breakfast, and he is there, alone on the blue-lit stage, he remembers how in The Magic Mountain Settembrini has to give up his attempt to record the literature of suffering because all literature is suffering. Esmond understands, there in the eye of his pain, how wrong Mann was. Heartache, loss, loneliness: these are literature; but suffering like this, of the body, it is beyond the reach of language. Every so often, he hears, very close, a mechanical wail that gradually opens out into the screaming of a human voice.