Free Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino Page B

German named Gund who is deep down in all of us, and who opens his enormous hands above us all, yet never succeeds in catching us.
    To drive away Gund he must think of Regina, scoop a niche for Regina in the snow; but the snow is hard and frozen —Regina can't sit on it in her thin dress; nor can she sit under the pines—there are endless layers of pine needles; the earth beneath is all ant hills, and Gund is already above, lowering his hands to their heads and throats, lowering still.
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    ... He gave a shriek. No, he must think of Regina, the girl who is in all of us and for whom we all want to scoop a niche deep in the woods—the girl with big hips, dressed only in hair that falls down over her shoulders.
    But the pursuit between Binda and Gund is nearing its end; Vendetta's camp is now only fifteen, twenty minutes away. Though Binda's thoughts run ahead, his feet go on placing themselves regularly one in front of the other so he won't lose breath. When he reaches his comrades his fear will have vanished, canceled even from the bottom of his memory as something impossible. He must think of waking up Vendetta and Sciabola, the commissar, to explain Fegato's order to them; then he'll set off again for Serpe's camp.
    But would he ever reach the hut? Wasn't he tied by a wire that dragged him farther away the nearer he got? And as he arrived wouldn't he hear ausch ausch from Germans sitting around the fire eating up the remaining chestnuts? Binda imagined himself arriving at the hut to find it half burned out and deserted. He would go inside : empty. But in a corner, huge, sitting on his haunches, with his helmet touching the ceiling, would be Gund, with his eyes round and glistening like the squirrels' and his white toothy smile between damp lips. Gund would make a sign to him: "Sit down." And Binda would sit down.
    There, a hundred yards off, a light! It was them! Which of them? He longed to turn back, to flee, as if all the danger were up there in the hut. But he walked on quickly, his face hard and closed like a fist. Now the fire suddenly seemed to be getting too near—was it moving to meet him?—now to be getting farther off—was it running away? But it was motionless, a campfire that had not yet gone out, as Binda knew.
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    "Who goes there?"
    He did not quiver an eyelash. "Binda," he said.
    Sentry: "I'm Civetta. Any news, Binda?"
    "Is Vendetta asleep?"
    Now he was inside the hut, with sleeping comrades breathing all around him. Comrades, of course; who could ever have thought they'd be anything else?
    "Germans down at Briga, Fascists up at Molini. Evacuate. By dawn you're all to be up on the crest of Mount Pellegrino with the heavies."
    Vendetta, scarcely awake, was fluttering his eyelids. "God," he said. Then he got up, clapped his hands. "Wake up, everyone, we've got to go out and fight."
    Binda was now sucking at a can of boiled chestnuts, spitting out the bits of skin sticking to them. The men divided up into shifts for carrying the ammunition and the tripod of the heavy. He set off. "I'm going on to Serpe's," he said. "Be quick, Binda!" exclaimed his comrades.
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    HUNGER AT BÉVERA
    The front had stopped there, as it had in '40, except that this time the war did not end and there seemed no chance that things would move. People did not want to do as they had in '40, load a few rags and chickens on to a cart and set off with a mule in front and a goat behind. When they got back in '40 they had found all their drawers overturned on the floor and human excrement in the cooking pots; for Italians, when soldiers, don't bother whether the damage they do is to friends or enemies. So people stayed on, with the French shells hitting their houses day and night and the German shells whistling over their heads.
    "One day or another, when they really decide to advance," people said, and had to go on repeating this to each other from September 1944 to April 1945, "they'll put their backs into it, those blessed Allies