lifetime ago on the airfield in Sicily and that I knew so well from being guarded by Italians and had hoped never to hear again, at the same time waving me back into my room. Just like all the other carabinieri I had ever encountered, these two seemed incapable of performing the simplest task – in this case guarding an unarmed, partly incapacitated man – except in pairs; but it was and still is a rule of the service that each carabiniere must have a mate who goes everywhere with him.
‘Devo andare al gabinetto.’
‘È vietato!’
What a gormless pair they were! How could they forbid anyone to go to the lavatory in a hospital? They must have thought they were guarding someone in a cell in some filthy provincial gaol, which is what I was probably destined for.
‘Perchè? ’
‘È proibito.’
It seemed a waste of time to ask them who could possibly have issued such an ordinance.
‘Ho mal di stomaco,’ I said.
Immediately, their attitude changed completely. They roared with laughter.
‘Ho-Ho!’ they went, slapping their great thighs. Like certain coprophilous German soldiers to whom the mere mention of excreta and, or bottoms, was sufficient to lay them on their backs helpless with mirth, they thought this very funny; but they let me go.
When I emerged they told me, laying their hands on the places where those organs should have been, that it broke their hearts, but that the feldgendarmerie , who were more or less the equivalent of our own, to me, odious military police, had given orders that they were to guard me closely until arrangements could be made to send me to Germany; and that if I tried to escape they would, reluctantly and with tears in their eyes, be forced to shoot me, or themselves risk being shot by the feldgendarmerie.
I was at some pains to try to appear sympathetic to them in their dilemma; but I had no tears to waste on these men. I was as impressed by their lamentations as a condemned criminal by the executioner, who not only wants to carry out the execution but at the same time wants to be loved by his victim. Nothing would have pleased me more at this moment than to be certain that they would both be shot.
With my lunch, which was brought to me on a tray by one of the more forbidding-looking suore , who had been speciallyselected for this dangerous mission by the superiora in order to discourage the carabinieri from rooting amongst its contents, came a message, hidden under an almost redhot dish. It was unsigned but I recognised the style. ‘Get out!’ it read, in English. ‘Tonight, 22.00, if not Germany tomorrow, 06.00. Go east 500 metri across fields until you reach a very little street, then torn right and go on 500 metri until you reach a bigger street. Wait there! Don’t worry about clothes and shoes.’
These were less ambiguous orders than most of those which I had been accustomed to receive during the last few years and, what was best, they left the method of executing the escape to the discretion of the person who was going to carry them out. They had, in fact, been drafted by Wanda’s father who had not been an officer in the Austrian Army for nothing, and she had rendered them into English.
They were not difficult to carry out. At 21.57, after having eaten a formidable last dinner at 19.30, I opened the door of my room for the tenth time that afternoon and uttered the magic words. Ho mal di stomaco to the solitary carabiniere on duty. They no longer stirred him to mirth, or his companion either, when he was on duty. After a few hours spent in a dark corridor sitting on a pair of chairs of a hardness which only the Roman Catholic church could devise, outside a labour ward from which awful sounds came from time to time, they had decided to each do stints of two hours on guard, while the one off duty sat below in the entrance hall. Whichever one of them was on duty now ignored me completely.
As soon as I had hopped into the gabinetto I locked the door, and after a
‘Devo andare al gabinetto.’
‘È vietato!’
What a gormless pair they were! How could they forbid anyone to go to the lavatory in a hospital? They must have thought they were guarding someone in a cell in some filthy provincial gaol, which is what I was probably destined for.
‘Perchè? ’
‘È proibito.’
It seemed a waste of time to ask them who could possibly have issued such an ordinance.
‘Ho mal di stomaco,’ I said.
Immediately, their attitude changed completely. They roared with laughter.
‘Ho-Ho!’ they went, slapping their great thighs. Like certain coprophilous German soldiers to whom the mere mention of excreta and, or bottoms, was sufficient to lay them on their backs helpless with mirth, they thought this very funny; but they let me go.
When I emerged they told me, laying their hands on the places where those organs should have been, that it broke their hearts, but that the feldgendarmerie , who were more or less the equivalent of our own, to me, odious military police, had given orders that they were to guard me closely until arrangements could be made to send me to Germany; and that if I tried to escape they would, reluctantly and with tears in their eyes, be forced to shoot me, or themselves risk being shot by the feldgendarmerie.
I was at some pains to try to appear sympathetic to them in their dilemma; but I had no tears to waste on these men. I was as impressed by their lamentations as a condemned criminal by the executioner, who not only wants to carry out the execution but at the same time wants to be loved by his victim. Nothing would have pleased me more at this moment than to be certain that they would both be shot.
With my lunch, which was brought to me on a tray by one of the more forbidding-looking suore , who had been speciallyselected for this dangerous mission by the superiora in order to discourage the carabinieri from rooting amongst its contents, came a message, hidden under an almost redhot dish. It was unsigned but I recognised the style. ‘Get out!’ it read, in English. ‘Tonight, 22.00, if not Germany tomorrow, 06.00. Go east 500 metri across fields until you reach a very little street, then torn right and go on 500 metri until you reach a bigger street. Wait there! Don’t worry about clothes and shoes.’
These were less ambiguous orders than most of those which I had been accustomed to receive during the last few years and, what was best, they left the method of executing the escape to the discretion of the person who was going to carry them out. They had, in fact, been drafted by Wanda’s father who had not been an officer in the Austrian Army for nothing, and she had rendered them into English.
They were not difficult to carry out. At 21.57, after having eaten a formidable last dinner at 19.30, I opened the door of my room for the tenth time that afternoon and uttered the magic words. Ho mal di stomaco to the solitary carabiniere on duty. They no longer stirred him to mirth, or his companion either, when he was on duty. After a few hours spent in a dark corridor sitting on a pair of chairs of a hardness which only the Roman Catholic church could devise, outside a labour ward from which awful sounds came from time to time, they had decided to each do stints of two hours on guard, while the one off duty sat below in the entrance hall. Whichever one of them was on duty now ignored me completely.
As soon as I had hopped into the gabinetto I locked the door, and after a
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