Free Wolf on the Mountain by Anthony Paul

But if any of that family knew that the English captain was here it would be the end for all of them.

gennaio
9
    It snowed the next day and the next. On the third Luigi brought the captain a present. ‘You keep talking about your Latin, so I’ve brought you this.’ It was a book of extracts from the Metamorphoses . ‘Ovid was from the Abruzzo. He was born in Sulmona. Have you been along the mountain ridge that overlooks it, the one with the monastery on its side? The one they took that hermit from in the middle ages and made him pope because he was the only Christian left in the church?’
    ‘They should do the same again’ said his father.
    ‘I don’t know. I may have.’
    ‘According to our schoolmaster, Ovid had a villa below that monastery and wrote his great works there. I don’t know if it’s true, or if he was just lying to get us to read the stuff. I thought you’d like to read some, seeing as you keep going on about how good Latin was. Something to pass the time while it’s snowing.’
    The next morning, as it snowed again, time was indeed as Ovid had said the devourer of all things. At least he was doing something he had done, however reluctantly then, at home. A proper book in his hands again, not the shoddy grammar of recent weeks. He could glide his fingertips over the thick paper, relishing the feel of it again, read words, albeit ones of which his memory was at first unsure, and the words when understood again painted pictures in his mind. For Ovid it seemed always summer, his landscapes green, his weather sunny and his streams and pools warm enough to bathe in; and never having seen the Abruzzo except in winter, the captain could only imagine the scenes as he had imagined them as a schoolboy in England, with rolling hills and puffy clouds and English trees and hedges. For hours he was lost in an England of endless sunshine, of lying in the grass listening to the sky, and every nymph surprised bathing naked in a pool had Jenny’s face.
    Jenny’s face. England. For a month he had been stalled in this house. If the Germans hadn’t raided the camp that day he and Mike could have been home by now. He could be in a pub with all his friends and Jenny, sharing English jokes, enjoying everything that made you English. It was that loss of English company, a shared humour, a common sense of nonsense, that was the hardest thing to take. Even in the prison camp that humour had infected their days, and on the long walk south he and Mike could cheer each other up. Here life was humourless. Even Ovid reminded him of the cheerful conspiracies of school. Here the conspiracies were deadly.
    –
    On the sixth morning of the snow, after a night of deep silence, so quiet that even the chimes of the church clocks were muffled, it was over a foot deep in the street outside. Loud oaths were heard as the early risers left their doors before dawn, then the grating scrapes of shovels on stone as people cleared paths from their doors. Everyone knew that before long the German garrison would come knocking on all their doors and order them to clear the streets for their vehicles. The linen chest was emptied to provide a hiding place for the captain if they came.
    They did.
    –
    It was late afternoon and there was another knock on the door and then a loud argument in the kitchen. The captain listened with growing alarm as the word inglese penetrated two doors again and again.
    At last the visitor went. Sounds of anger came from the kitchen, Nonna was wailing. A family council confronting a crisis. Was he going to have to leave?
    The father came into the room, his face etched with anger and fear. ‘The fascists know you’re here. We’re all in danger.
    ‘That was that bastard Giobellini from next door. Full of neighbourly gossip about that round-up today. And then, so casually, “I assume they didn’t find your guest?” “What guest?” I said. “Do you assume I haven’t heard the night-time knocks on your door?”