Street of the Five Moons (20 page)

“You just pulled me down onto the barbed wire,” said John. It had to be John, because he was the only one up there, but I would never have recognized his voice, he was gritting his teeth so hard. “Damn it, use your feet! Haven’t you ever done any climbing? I can’t possibly drag your not inconsiderable weight—”

I got my elbows over the edge of the wall, where his jacket had padded the spikes on the wire, and hauled myself up. The pursuers were on the terrace, baying like a pack of wolves or a bunch of middle-aged male congressmen debating ERA.

“All right,” John said, as I balanced precariously on the edge of the wall. His voice was almost calm now.

“Take it slowly. The wire doesn’t quite cover the entire surface; there is a good two inches free on either side. Step over. No, not there, a little to your left. Good. It’s about eight feet down. The ground is higher on the other side. Lower yourself by your hands and drop.”

His hand on my elbow steadied me as I stepped high over the barrier of wire. I was concentrating so hard on avoiding the barbs that I was only dimly aware of the brouhaha going on in the background, not ten yards away. The searchers had gathered in a gesticulating group on the terrace. Several of them had flashlights, but at that moment they had succumbed to one of the weaknesses to which the engaging Latin temperament is susceptible. They were arguing about what to do next. Some of them wanted to go right, some left; one cool-headed character suggested they split up, but he was shouted down by the others, who were enjoying the argument too much to settle it sensibly. They were waving their flashlights around as they talked — no real Italian can converse without using his hands — and the beams reminded me of old World War II movies, with the antiaircraft beacons crisscrossing the dark sky.

Sooner or later one of those beams was bound to find us. It was pure bad luck that it happened about sixty seconds too soon.

I was hanging by my hands, but my toes were dug into a crack in the outer surface of the wall. I couldn’t quite bring myself to let go. John said it was eight feet down, but what did he know? There might be a bottomless abyss under my feet. It was dark down there.

John was bending over me. My right hand still clutched his wrist. He must have been squatting on the barbed wire, because his admonitions to me were interspersed with profane comments. All of a sudden his ruffled hair lit up like a pop-art halo, and light focused on his face. His eyes widened and his lips parted, but I didn’t hear what he said. It was drowned out by the sound of the shot.

I let go of the wall, but I did not let go of John. I dragged him with me as I fell, and if he yelled when the barbed wire raked across his body I didn’t hear it; the crowd on the terrace was shooting up a storm. If I hadn’t known better, I could have sworn they had an automatic rifle or a machine gun.

It was about nine feet down, as a matter of fact — three feet below the soles of my shoes. I landed with scarcely a jar, then John fell on top of me. We went down in a confused tangle and continued to roll. The slope must have been almost 45 degrees, and every rock on it left a bruise on my aching body. There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. Naturally, we rolled into it. If there was a natural obstacle on that hillside that we missed, I would be surprised.

I had been holding on to John, probably out of some vicious urge to use him as a buffer, so we ended up in the same place. In the stream. I don’t mean to disparage the stream. It was a nice stream. Shallow, with a soft, muddy bed, and quite warm. I lay there with the water rippling gently across my bruised body till I got my breath back. Off in the distance there were lights, and people yelling. Somebody’s head was pressing down on my diaphragm.

“John?” I said.

No answer.

“I hope it’s you down there,” I said. “Because if it isn’t, who is it?”

The head moved feebly. Then a disembodied voice said, “Water. More water. It must have some deeper meaning. In Freudian terms—”

“Freud be damned. It’s a stream. We’re in it. John, we made it; we escaped from the estate.”

“That’s nice.” The weight on my diaphragm increased.

“We got out, but we’re still in danger. I think we had better move on.”

We had come a long way down. The moving lights at the top of the hill looked far away, the voices sounded like insects buzzing. But I was not deceived.

“John,” I said. “Some of those men have guns.”

“Too true.” John sat up. “You weren’t joking, were you? We really are in a stream. I have never seen such a damp country. The English climate is considered wet, but this—”

“It was the dog,” I said. “We could have avoided some of the water if it hadn’t been for the dog. John, I am worried about Caesar. That Bruno is no fit keeper. Once we get out of this—”

“Thanks for reminding me.” John got slowly to his feet. “So long as we’re in the stream we may as well stick to it, in case they fetch Caesar.”

“We couldn’t be much wetter,” I said.

John made no reply to this cheerful speech except for a grunt.

We went downhill, walking in the stream. Gradually the banks rose on either side until we were splashing through a miniature ravine, with trees leaning down from above and roots reaching out of the muddy sides like gnarled arms. To judge from the cries of inquiry and alarm behind us, the search had not been abandoned, but I began to relax. The dog couldn’t track us through the water, and the human pursuers couldn’t see us unless they shone lights straight down on us. In some places the banks were severely concave; the stream must run high and fast at certain seasons in order to have cut out so much dirt. The only difficulty was that it was hard to see where we were going. The steepness of the sides and the branches overhead cut out most of the moonlight. I reached out and caught John’s sleeve. It was very wet — soggy, in fact. He stopped when I touched him, and his breath came out in a sharp gasp.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat,” I hissed. “I can’t see. I just wanted to—”

The truth began to dawn on me then; not all at once, but a little bit at a time. The first thing to strike me was the strange feel of the fabric I was touching. It was wet, all right — wet and sticky. Before my feeble brain could go on to the next step, John collapsed into the water with a splash that sent water sloshing up my shins.

The water was only three or four inches deep, but that’s deep enough if you are face down in it, which he was. I don’t suppose it took me more than a few seconds to turn him over, but it seemed a lot longer. He didn’t help any. For the second time in a few hours he was out cold, and I must admit that I didn’t draw a deep breath until his breath came out with a watery gurgle, and I knew he was alive.

The water was trickling up around his face, so I dragged him out onto the bank, which was deeply undercut at that point. He was so wet I had a hard time figuring out where he was hurt. I couldn’t see anything except the faintest glimmer of fair hair, since even his shirt was muddied and dark. But I finally decided that the major damage was a bullet hole in his arm. He must have lost quite a bit of blood; it was still flowing freely.

It never rains but it pours. I was plucking frantically at my scanty attire, trying to figure out what I could spare for a tourniquet and bandage, and wondering how I was going to do the job in absolute darkness, when something above my head snapped and dirt dribbled down into the water. One of the searchers must have heard the splash and decided to investigate. He had been walking in darkness; now he switched on his light and shone it down into the ravine.

Luckily for us he was on the same side of the stream. I had pulled John completely out of the water, so I could check him over, and we were pressed up against the undercut side of the bank. The flashlight beam illumined the opposite bank, and a good part of the stream itself.

If the searcher had been as smart as he thought he was, he would have noticed that a miniature tide had gone in and out over that far bank in the last few minutes, and he might have drawn some interesting conclusions. It was so obvious to me that I held my breath, expecting a shout that would summon the others.

We were saved by an animal. I don’t know what kind of animal, because I never got a good look at it; it was only a sleek, shining blur as it slid through the shallow water and popped into a hole in the opposite bank. A water rat, maybe. Anyhow, the man up above must have assumed that it was responsible for the splash he had heard. He muttered something and threw a stone at the animal — which shows you what kind of person he was. It missed by a mile. The searcher turned back; I heard him crunching through the weeds, no longer trying to move quietly.

His light had served one useful purpose. In its reflected glow I had gotten a good look at John’s arm. With an inaudible sigh I started squirming out of my blouse. It was as clean as any other garment we owned — not very clean, in other words. But it would have to serve temporarily. I was going to feel a little peculiar, trying to hitch a ride without a blouse, but the moments of illumination had told me something else — if I looked as disreputable as my companion, a blouse more or less wouldn’t matter.

Ten

I AM BY NATURE AN OPTIMISTIC PERSON. BUT during those minutes in the mud and the dark, alone with a man who was quietly bleeding to death on my lap, with a mob of murderous brutes scouring the fields to find us… I was depressed. I got so discouraged I even considered giving ourselves up, in order to get medical attention for John. However, I dismissed the thought as soon as it surfaced. Slight as our chances of escape were, they were better than no chance at all, and that was what we would have if we surrendered. No chance.

My father, who knows more corny old aphorisms, mottoes, and adages than any man alive, would have found encouragement in his collection of truisms. “Never say die.” “Don’t give up the ship.” “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” And he would have been right.

Four hours after I had been almost ready to give up the ship, we were sitting in the back of a pickup truck that was speeding through the suburbs of Rome.

The sky to the east was brightening and the stars were fading. The truck was an antique, held together by wire and prayer, and I was not really awfully comfortable, because I was squeezed into a space not quite adequate for a lady of my size. The bed of the truck was filled with vegetables. The corner of a crate of tomatoes dug into my back, and I was holding a sack of carrots on my lap. John was half lying, half sitting on a bag of potatoes. They must have been as lumpy and as hard as rocks, but he didn’t complain.

The way in which we had attained these positions is a saga in itself.

John came to while I was fumbling around trying to bandage his arm, and made several heated comments on my clumsiness before I shut him up. When I asked him if he could walk, he replied that he would be willing to consider any reasonable alternative, if I could think of one. There weren’t many, and none of them were reasonable. I couldn’t carry him. We couldn’t wait till morning gilded the skies and made us visible to anyone who might be looking for us.

So we walked. The clothes were partly luck, but I must claim some of the credit. I looked for them. We had to go into the outskirts of Tivoli before we found a housewife who had been too slovenly to take her wash in at nightfall. John complained bitterly about those clothes. True, his pants were six inches too short and considerably too big in every other direction, but the coarse blue shirt was nice and large. He needed a lot of material to cover bandages and battle scars.

I had a choice: a rusty black shapeless garment that belonged to the mother of the house, or the cheap rayon skirt and blouse that were her daughter’s. John accused me of vanity when I took the latter. They were a little short and a lot too tight, but it was not vanity that prompted my selection, as I proved when the first truck I nailed on the highway came to a screeching stop as soon as the headlights caught me.

The drivers weren’t as enthusiastic about John, who had kept out of sight while I waved my thumb, but they accepted the pair of us with a grin and a shrug. (One grinned, the other shrugged.) There were two of them, and they were brothers, on their way to a market in Rome.

So we ended up among the vegetables. I don’t know what our newfound friends thought of us. I don’t suppose they cared. We could have been penniless students, many of whom wander the roads of Europe during the summer, sleeping in haystacks and less-reputable places, scrounging for food and transportation.

John dropped off to sleep shortly after we climbed aboard. I should have been tired too; it had been an active night. But I was too keyed up to sleep. I sat clutching the carrots and watched the sun come up over Rome.

The mists that hung over the city turned the exquisite pearly pink of a shell as the light struck them. Then they burned away as the sky deepened from rose to blue. High above the angled roofs, Michelangelo’s great cupola dominated the skyline. As we neared the city, other landmarks, high on the seven hills, took shape out of the haze; the pointed bell tower of Santa Maria Maggiore, on the Esquiline; the dome of the Gesù; the twisted Baroque towers of Trinita dei Monti, atop the Spanish Steps.

We came into the city by way of the Porta Pia, between the old walls of the Empire, and went roaring along the Via Venti Settembre at a speed that seemed excessive even for that early hour. There was not a great deal of traffic, and the one policeman we passed simply waved. I guess the boys were a familiar sight, covering the same route six mornings a week.

When we crossed the Piazza Venezia, I began to wonder where we were going. We were in the heart of the city now; Mussolini had addressed the Romans from the balcony on the Palazzo Venezia, and the square was dominated by the huge white marble structure of the Victor Emmanuel Monument. I would have exchanged all this guidebook knowledge for a quick trip to the prefecture of police. I didn’t dare ask the boys from Tivoli to take us there; people are leery about picking up strangers who demand the cops.