The Longest Winter (36 page)

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ he said and wondered if fortune was calculating the favours it had granted him.

‘Our pleasure,’ said Captain Freidriks. As Carl
put a hand to his face Freidriks added, ‘You’ve a small cut, Herr Major, that’s all.’

The fiends of hell seemed to be sundering the mountains as the red flashes of fire peppered the endless white.

‘Have we cognac to spare?’ asked Carl.

They knew it was an admission of necessity. They shared a frank consciousness of fear. Bravado was acceptable only in young recruits, who soon grew out of it. Flasks were produced, thrust at Carl. He extracted his own and passed it round. They each took a mouthful. He took two. The cold knot retreated from his stomach. The Italian guns hammered away. The Austrians had their heads down again. Some who had been caught by the second barrage were already stiffening, awaiting their white shrouds, which would not be long in forming today. The grey clouds massed, the dull light making the fire flashes redder. The snow came, the flakes huge, and the wind began to blow bitter. The guns stopped and the war around the pass stopped for the thousandth time, suffocated by the blanket of new snow. It whirled as it fell, hiding the dead from the living and the living from each other.

What use had it been, thought Carl, what purpose had it served, that assault by the guns? The profligacy of expending thousands of shells to hammer mountains and kill a score of men could only be put down to the curious self-delusion of generals, who saw grandeur in it and always thought one more attack would do it, although they knew it never did.

He stamped about. The shelf was full of white-misted figures doing the same. One could fight in the snow, one could lie in wait in the snow, but one did not let a snowstorm bury one. He felt he had spent years fighting a thousand engagements of this kind, with the weather as hostile as the enemy, and he did not know, any more than his men did, why the instinct for survival was so strong when all other feelings seemed dead.

The wind died. The storm of snow thinned and perished. Minutes later the sky was a clear, fresh-washed pale blue and in the sunshine the purity of the new mantle of white was beyond reproach. Carl took his company back into position again. Around the heights the figures of moving men were minute to the eye as other Austrian units manned their defences again. The sun cleaved the silence with brilliant light.

They waited. And then the Austrian guns opened up, battering at the mountain and valley positions of the Italians in a prolonged and revengeful bombardment. Angry at not being allowed to settle, the new snow slipped softly and wetly downwards, gathering weight and impetus that took it in plunging, white-foaming billows to the carpeted floors of chasms and gorges. Its booming descent muffled the noise of the guns.

Now the nerve-shattered Italians waited, but when the Austrian barrage lifted there was no attack. And no Italian assault materialized. The Italian commander had changed his mind. The snowstorm had reduced the will. Sensibly he let the battle rest. But the Austrians stayed on the
alert all day, and when night fell they bivouacked in bleak and pitiless conditions. It snowed again a little after midnight. When morning came Carl and his company were withdrawn and allowed to return to Oberstein. The sun was out again as they marched in. Carl saw his men into the barracks and then made his way to the Amaraldi house. He had been away thirty hours.

Maria opened the door to him. She bobbed plumply. He nodded brusquely. Pia appeared in her white blouse and black skirt.

‘Major Korvacs?’

‘You must excuse my boots, signorina.’

She was not used to men like him. Most Austrian officers did not give a fig for her Italianism. All attractive women were fair game, especially in wartime. She avoided them as much as she could, although some could be useful in these days of severe shortages. It gave her perverse satisfaction to make use of them. They were so gauche in their assumption that they only had to flirt with her, to flatter her, for her to find them irresistible. If other women, Italian and Austrian, found them charming because they were still gallant, despite alarming setbacks, she resolutely refused to be impressed. They were Austrian and she was her father’s patriotic daughter. Major Korvacs had come into the house that first day like the most arrogant of overlords. He was neither gauche nor charming, he was icy and formidable. But at least, unlike many other officers, he did not spend his time trying to put his arm around her waist.

What was he worrying about his boots for? She met his eyes. Their blueness was grey and there were lines around them. He looked tired, drawn, unshaven, and there was a cut on his cheek. An unexpected little tug of compassion weakened her.

‘We are pleased you are safely back, Herr Major,’ she said.

‘Are you?’

Her mother came into the hall. It made him smile a little. They were always there in one way or another whenever he entered the house. Did they imagine he was going to make off with their silver?

‘I am glad you are back, Major Korvacs,’ said Signora Amaraldi, ‘and if you would be so kind, when you are rested, Mariella would like to see you. She has been asking where you were.’

‘She’s better?’ asked Carl from the foot of the stairs.

‘Yes, she is, thank you.’

‘We are grateful, please believe us,’ said Pia.

‘It was nothing,’ said Carl and went up to his room. He wanted only a warm bed and a few hours of dreamless sleep. Corporal Jaafe, who had arrived in advance of Carl, came up from the kitchen with a hot drink. He suggested he might take Carl’s boots.

‘Yes,’ said Carl. ‘No, wait a moment,’ He went to Mariella’s room and knocked. Her soft voice answered and he entered. She was lying peacefully in her bed, her head resting on heaped pillows. She gave him her shy smile. He sat down. ‘So
there you are,’ he said. Her temperature was normal, her youthful resilience triumphant. She looked warm and cosy.

‘I am better,’ she said.

‘So you are.’

‘I am having soups,’ she said informatively.

‘Soups are good for tender tonsils, Mariella.’

‘Oh, yes, better than medicine,’ she said. She looked earnestly at him. ‘I heard the guns firing.’ Everyone in Oberstein was used to the sound of guns.

‘Noisy things,’ said Carl.

‘You were there,’ she said.

‘Oh, looking on.’

Wisdom was in her brown eyes. The cut on his cheek was a little raw. Pia, drawn by the sound of voices, arrived in the doorway. She listened as her sister and Major Korvacs chatted. He looked round and saw her. He got up.

‘Mariella is doing well, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘It’s the soup, I think, not the medicine.’

‘Would you like some?’ asked Pia.

‘Thank you, I would,’ he said, ‘though I don’t think it will make me as pretty as Mariella.’

Mariella giggled. He patted her hand and went back to his room. Pia called to him as he reached the door.

‘You would really like some soup now?’

‘If it’s to spare. Then I shall go to bed.’

She knew what it was like in ordinary times out there on those precipitous slopes, that it must be far worse as a theatre of war. She was an Austrian subject, but her sympathies were all with
the Italian troops. But it was suddenly difficult to look into the face of this man who had been fighting the mountains and the Italians for years. It was all in his eyes. Again she felt the weakness of compassion. His empire was battling for its life and he was asking only for some hot soup.

‘I will bring it myself,’ she said.

She hurried downstairs and hustled Maria into filling a bowl from the saucepan simmering on the stove. It must be just right, she said. She would taste it and did, making Maria grumble that no one had ever had to taste her soups before. Pia patted her arm and said it was delicious. It must be put on its plate on a tray, with a fresh napkin—

‘I know, I know,’ said Maria, ‘but whether she’ll want it, however much we fuss, I don’t know. She had some only half an hour ago.’

‘It’s for Major Korvacs, not Mariella,’ said Pia and astonished Maria by taking it up herself, for everyone knew the last person Pia Amaraldi would run about for was an Austrian officer.

Carl was already in bed, sitting up but leaning back, his hands behind his head, his eyes on the ceiling.

‘Thank you,’ he said as she put the tray down on the bedside table.

‘It’s very hot,’ she said and wondered why she felt she would like to stay and talk to him.

‘Thank you,’ he said again. He was so detached she felt absurdly offended. She swept stiffly out.

He slept well, up to the dinner hour and past
it. Pia suggested to her mother that they put the meal time back. Her mother pointed out it was already back and that Maria wanted to go home.

‘Should we wake him?’ asked Pia.

‘Let him sleep.’

‘But he should have something to eat.’

‘You’re concerned for him?’ Signora Amaraldi raised a dark eyebrow.

‘Mama, I’m not as unsympathetic as you imagine. It’s not against my principles to have Major Korvacs eat a little food.’

‘Good,’ said Signora Amaraldi.

Corporal Jaafe arrived from the barracks, refreshed after several hours’ sleep. Pia asked him to go up and see whether Major Korvacs was awake and whether he wished to dine. Jaafe went up and came down again. Major Korvacs, he said, presented his compliments and apologies, the ladies were to proceed with their meal and he would go down to the officers’ club later. He would have a light meal there.

Mariella having had her meal off a tray upstairs, Pia and her mother dined alone. Pia was simmering with resentment.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked her mother.

‘What’s wrong with our food, that’s more to the point,’ said Pia.

‘I’ve known better,’ said her mother, ‘but so has everyone else.’

‘It isn’t that,’ said Pia, ‘it’s because we’re proud to be Italian. So he would rather not eat our food.’

‘He was grateful for the soup, wasn’t he?’ Signora Amaraldi looked sensibly at the matter. ‘And he has sat down with us at other times.’

Pia shrugged very expressively. She had said all she wanted to say.

Her mother looked at her with a smile when Carl appeared for breakfast the next morning. He was spruce, polite. Signora Amaraldi exchanged some pleasant words with him, but Pia was more polite than he was, refraining from bothering him at all. She did, however, ask him aloofly in the end if he enjoyed his meal at the officers’ club last night.

‘I ate it,’ said Carl, observing a portrait that hung on the wall behind her. It was of a rosy face and black beard. Another relative, no doubt. ‘It wasn’t the worst meal I’ve had, but very near it. The best meals I’ve had in a year have been here.’

‘Oh!’ Pia’s little exclamation of self-reproach was almost anguished.

Her mother said calmly, ‘But, Major Korvacs, our food is so modest.’

‘So it is everywhere,’ said Carl, ‘but here you manage to make it enjoyable.’ He looked at Pia, whose mouth was trembling. ‘Have I said anything to offend you, signorina?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I am upset through my own fault. I thought you chose not to dine with us last night because you had found us too Italian.’

Carl’s darkly tanned face expressed mild astonishment.

‘Our argument?’ he said, stirring his coffee
substitute. ‘There are all kinds of arguments these days. None of them means very much to me. Not compared with the argument of war. That takes up all my interest. When it’s over I wish only to go home and mind my own business for the rest of my life. If other people still have arguments to settle, I ask only that they leave me out of them. I did not dine with you last night because it would have meant keeping you waiting. You have your times for your meals and I don’t wish you to alter them to suit me.’

‘But you had been out there on those mountains,’ said Pia. ‘We did not mind waiting. Mama will tell you so.’

Signora Amaraldi would have liked to advise her daughter not to press the matter. It was so obviously not important to Major Korvacs.

‘Signorina,’ he said, ‘I appreciate your kindness, but it’s quite wrong to think I did not want to dine with you.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Pia quietly.

He remembered something.

‘The soup was excellent,’ he said.

‘Oh, the soup, yes,’ she said.

He asked how Mariella was and if he could see her before he went out.

‘She is almost herself again,’ said Signora Amaraldi, ‘and she will like to have you look in on her.’ After he had gone upstairs she said to Pia, ‘Why are you so upset?’

‘Who is upset?’ Pia was quickly on the defensive.

‘First you’re silly and unfriendly, now you don’t
know what to be. You’re used to men flattering you. Major Korvacs is too frank for you one day, too casual the next.’

‘Mama, I simply wish he would go. I’m all nerves while he’s here.’

‘But he spends little time in the house and you’ve not been troubled by your nerves before. Well, he’ll be gone soon enough, I expect. Those guns sounded so angry yesterday that I shouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had blown him up. That would have settled your nerves, girl.’

‘Oh, that’s a wicked thing to say,’ said Pia in distress.

‘But isn’t that what you like, hearing about Austrians being blown up?’

‘Stop it!’ cried Pia.

‘Major Korvacs isn’t going to live for ever. None of them do. He’s already a man on borrowed time.’

‘Stop it!’

‘I tell you, girl,’ said Signora Amaraldi warningly, ‘no one is going to get much out of this war. Your father thinks we will enter paradise if the Italians win. Paradise, ha! It’s likely that the soldiers who have died will be better off than some of those who survive. There’s a look about Major Korvacs. Perhaps that is what he is thinking.’

‘Mama, what are you doing?’ cried Pia. ‘You’re hurting me. I won’t listen, I won’t.’ And she flung her napkin down and rushed from the room. It left her mother wondering if Pia was at last finding there was more to life than Italian patriotism. Major Korvacs was a disturbing man.
Some women would want to break down that hard shell of his.