Deviation Read online

  “Where can we be together,” he said loudly, “in my shelter in front of the men, or hers in front of the women?” And so saying he suddenly landed a punch on the forester’s mouth, knocking him to the ground, rigid. He then grabbed the girl’s hand and dragged her away into the dense woods.

  The forester was bleeding, but I was of no mind to help him. I slowly dismounted from my log and went back to the trattoria.

  Afterward, for several nights, I dreamed about the forester on the ground, a thin trickle of blood dribbling from his mouth, and a lot of gnomes resembling him crowding around me in the kitchen at Thomasbräu with depraved grins. They told me that there’s an Italian roaming around in those woods who, when he sees women come by, opens his pants to attract them, and one day a Czechoslovakian girl from the trattoria could not resist.

  Walking through the forest at 1:00 a.m., on my way back to the camp from work, fills me with such terror that afterward I’m left wide-awake on my pallet, numb and delirious, for the rest of the night. I could take the path around the woods, but it’s three times as long and leaves me constantly exposed, with the dark wall of trees on one side and open countryside on the other; I feel like I’m walking on the edge of a precipice and am always about to fall.

  To cut through the forest instead, all I have to do is strike out firmly, without hesitation. Then I’m not aware of anything. I walk on as if in a nightmare, obsessed by the creaking of branches underfoot, not even daring to breathe, transfixed by the pounding of my heart, proceeding in a straight line, and if I move a fraction of an inch to one side it’s as if I were sinking into the void. Until, revived by a breath of fresh air, I make out the silhouettes of the last trees, placid and still, in front of me.

  Then I return to my senses. I wake up and heave a long breath. The open air soothes me, like a mother’s arms, and I walk along enjoying every step, the thud of my clogs on the ground covered by rotting leaves.

  But today, perhaps because I was just fired, and it’s the last time, my fear is greater and I just can’t face the woods. I’d rather go back to camp by taking the long way around.

  I think I hear footsteps beside me, in sync with mine, as if someone were walking side by side with me along the edge of the forest. I don’t dare turn my head, I become frantic, I slow my pace, I quicken it, the steps are still synchronized. The gnomes are multiplying.

  I look over. Louis’s silhouette glides along the trees at my side.

  I’m about to call him and run to him but I stop: if it were him, he would speak to me, he would wave to me. Who can it be? My terror grows; I start to run. I glance back briefly and the figure has disappeared.

  Back home, at the camp, where everything is quiet, it seems to me that my fear was a hallucination. I’d like to talk about it, tell someone about it, unburden myself, but I sense that as long as I can remain silent and keep others from seeing me hurt or frightened, my secret will be safe.

  The next morning, however, I can’t resist and, joining a group that’s talking about illnesses, I bring up the subject of epilepsy.

  They immediately name Louis.

  “He can’t be cured,” says one woman, a prostitute by trade. “He lives the life of a condemned man. He never sleeps—sleeps even less than me!” She laughs, throwing back her head. “He’s everywhere, at all times.” The way she speaks makes Louis’s sudden appearances seem like magic, and it paralyzes me.

  “He leads a grueling life,” she continues. “You’re interested in him, right? I wonder where he is?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t seen him since the day of the outing.”

  “I haven’t seen him since then myself.”

  “The Sicilian hasn’t come back either,” I say.

  “Things aren’t looking too good for you, huh?” The woman winks at me.

  I lie down on the pallet, where I spend the entire day. A squad of Germans shows up, but I don’t move from the bed. They look the place over, measure the walls, discuss cleaning everything up. The Labor Bureau’s camp will be cleared out and closed and the convoys will go elsewhere. Stores will be housed here, as auxiliary backup during the bombings. I listen as if it didn’t concern me. After bustling about at length, they leave. I remain apathetic, not thinking about anything, watching the evening shadows grow heavy in the room.

  “Lucie.”

  I leap up; it’s the Sicilian.

  “Pietro.”

  His face is spent.

  “Come with me.”

  I follow him out to the yard. It’s raining, it’s night, but he doesn’t see or hear a thing and he’s in no hurry. He sits on the ground under the eaves and I sit beside him. Slowly he begins to speak as if remembering: Louis was (past tense).

  “Louis was without equal as a burglar, he never backed away even when it came to killing. He hated the Nazis fanatically. He specialized in jewelry shops and warehouses. He was a born criminal. But in recent times he had gone too far. He didn’t seem to care anymore. Until they put an enormous price on his head. I went to see for myself. All the local police headquarters had his photo hanging outside. I warned him. Days ago he gave me this package for you. He opened it again last night to add something. He told me to give it to you when they did him in. He knew very well that they would put an end to him. And still, it didn’t stop him. Tonight they caught him, he fired but they hit him, then he killed two of them and they finished him off. ‘Give her this money,’ he said, ‘it’s not much, just to tide her over till the war ends.’ Do you know he was in awe of you? One night when we were playing cards at Thomasbräu and you came in … it was in the early days, how long ago? Two months ago, around two months, the baby should have been born now, now I have money, I too stole, I went with Louis, if she had waited, I just had to fence the jewelry, pay, but I wasn’t able to sell the jewels, Louis couldn’t either, they found him loaded with diamonds, and what could I do with them? We couldn’t sell them, so the money isn’t much. He wanted to give you cash, not to cause you any trouble with the jewels. Instead she died, it was her heart, she had a bad heart, I didn’t know it, she told me at the end. But she could have been saved if she had waited a little longer to give birth.” The Sicilian covers his face with his hands. The tears flow through his fingers. He recovers, gulping, trying to speak calmly: “Where was I? Oh yes, you came in and you didn’t see us, and he pointed you out to me: ‘That silly fool needs protection too.’ He seemed as tightfisted as a Genovese. Drinking, eating, and smoking, always alone. Before you came. Then we became friends. If she were giving birth now, I too have money in my pocket, and diamonds like Louis, and pearls, a pearl necklace to celebrate the birth.” The Sicilian covers his face with his hands again. He looks up. “He was a friend. I misjudged him earlier,” he says with a smile, “because he never paid women. He risked everything as though possessed. But he didn’t steal just for the money. It was an obsession with him to break into an apartment or a shop at night, to come up with a plan, consider all angles, to win. I worked with him a couple of times, he was superb. Plus, he was fair: he divided everything equally. And he didn’t steal randomly: he was selective about what he was going to take. But he preferred to work alone. For him, everyone else had no guts.”

  The Sicilian falls silent. He lights a cigarette, protecting the flame under his jacket. Crying, I tell him about the apparition in the woods.

  “If you had called him, maybe he wouldn’t have died,” he says.

  “It wasn’t him.” I clutch his sleeve. “Please, it wasn’t him.”

  Rome, 1953

  ASYLUM AT DACHAU

  The transit camp in Dachau is separated from the concentration camp by a long strip of barren wasteland.

  The two camps are very similar in their outer appearance, except for one thing: the barbed wire fence enclosing the second camp is charged with high-voltage current.

  The surrounding plain is deserted, the weather dismal, the sky itself like a curtain about to roll down and swallow the horizon, so that you fee
l as if you’re in some remote, inaccessible expanse. It’s hard to remember that a few kilometers away is a big city.

  Until I went to the concentration camp, I wasn’t even aware that there was another camp not far away. I only found out about it now.

  By escaping, I’d hoped to be able to leave the area, to distance myself from my memories, and instead I find myself back in a place of systematized death, in this transit camp, right in Dachau, a few meters from the K-Lager from which I’d fled with such hope.

  The barracks are like ours were, made of wood, low and long.

  I crawl under the fence and enter the camp.

  Groups of foreigners, mainly French and Italian I think, wander around the barracks chatting among themselves. I stop next to the fence, as if I were thinking and looking for something. Then I walk unhurriedly toward the foreigners, mingling with them and listening idly as though I were one of them.

  I have the feeling I’m being watched, spied on, though looking around all I see are distracted, casual glances directed at me. Others approach from nearby groups. They’re all wearing civilian outfits, and most are neat and clean, their clothes in fairly good condition. You can instantly tell that they’ve just arrived in Germany. But they’re not the ones who make me uneasy; rather, it’s the indifference flaunted by the shabbiest-looking ones with the hardened, worn-out faces. Evidently they’ve been in Germany for some time and naturally know about the concentration camp. Maybe they can sense that I’m a runaway and, fearing retribution by the Germans, are about to report me. Whatever gave me the idea that I could slip in here of all places. No one has ever done it, I’m sure, and if no one’s done it, there must be a reason.

  Trying to be as nonchalant as possible, I enter the barrack in front of me, in which some children are sitting on the floor. Typical Russian children. No one looks at me. Even inside, the barracks are like ours, furnished with two-tier double bunks—at our place they were three-tier—with straw mattresses and rough blankets, and a stove in the center.

  Women and children are lying five or six to a pallet, while the men are sprawled out or squatting on the floor in silence. Here too most of the people have shaved heads. I try to walk with a straight back and heavy, shuffling steps, like a Slavic girl.

  I sit on the floor behind the stove.

  I put my kerchief on my head, crossed under the chin and tied behind my head, the Russian way.

  “Come on, stop it, you’re about as Soviet as I am Chinese,” says an Italian who claps me on the shoulder as he slides down to sit beside me behind the stove, in front of the smeared gray window. He’s a young man with a shaved head topped by a beret, a scraggly beard on hollow cheeks, black, chipped teeth, and tiny wrinkles around eyes that have an intelligent, frank expression.

  “I do not understand,” I say in Russian, “nieponimaio.”

  “Stop it, I’m telling you! Are you afraid of me?” He leans over to whisper in my ear. His breath stinks of alcohol and tobacco both. “I’m a runaway too,” he adds.

  “Nieponimaio,” I repeat.

  He looks at me, annoyed.

  “If that’s how you feel, get by on your own.” Seeing my worried expression, he shakes his head: “You’re really a novice. Are you afraid of the Russians? Go on! We always feel quite at ease in their barracks.”

  I’m certainly not about to tell him that if I was pretending to be one of them, it’s precisely because I trust the Soviets more than any other people. It’s his interest that worries me. But intent on not giving myself away, I have to be careful not to show any sign that I understand Italian. He goes on:

  “They don’t care about us, can’t you see? Besides, no one here knows or even imagines that there’s a concentration camp nearby. Even those who heard of them before coming to Germany think that this is one of them. They’re convinced there can’t be anyplace worse than this, so they don’t suspect that there can be escapees among them. They’re simply counting the days while waiting to be transferred and settled somewhere. And the rest of us fugitives, even if we wanted to, how could we report or harm one another? We have no choice but to help each other! For example, you shouldn’t stay in this barrack because it’s too close to the kitchens and it’s inspected more often—you made a bad choice. I noticed you right away, that one is Italian, you’ll see, I said to myself. What do you expect, we recognize each other at first sight, you’ll get used to doing it too. But remember, outside the barracks we don’t know each other.”

  He’s restless and fidgets as he talks. Finally, he stands up. He’s tall and well-built.

  “So then, I’ll expect you at the toilets tonight, after roll call. Knock twice on the partition. I’ll be on the other side, in the men’s toilet, and I’ll remove a board that we nailed up for urgent talks. I’ll explain some things to you, otherwise they’ll nab you at the first haul, kid.”

  He tugs down his beret, which had slipped back, and walks away with his hands in his pockets, strutting. I stay where I am, waiting for the Russians to react to my being there, but as expected no one takes any notice of me. As I sit there waiting for evening, someone outside loudly starts singing the frolicking tune of the Band of Affori:

  Arriva la banda, arriva la banda,

  arriva la banda dei mascalzon

  dei mascalzon dei mascalzon

  col Duce in testa che faceva da caporion,

  eccoli qua, son tutti qua

  camicie nere e federal … (the melody swells)

  I approach the window on my hands and knees and look outside. The Italian from before is leaning against the doorway of the barracks across the way, staring in my direction. As soon as he sees my frightened eyes, he starts laughing. I back away and rush out of the barrack to hide somewhere else.

  “Ruskaia, ruskaia,” I hear a girl’s voice shout as she runs after me. When she catches up with me she says in French, “I’m talking to you, you know.” I stop. She’s very young, chubby and childlike, with small, dark, shiny eyes, plump cheeks, jet-black hair, and fair skin.

  “I’m Jeanine. Polò told me about you. Polò is my friend. I was just coming to see you.”

  She walks along the barracks with me and, chatting animatedly, not caring whether I understand her or not, she blurts out at once that she became a woman during the trip thanks to some kind, gentle Germans who gave her everything she could want, then she took up with an Italian friend, a certain Paolo, but a different one, not this one, a pudgy blond. “Would you believe, he kept telling me: thank you, my love.” She repeats the words in Italian as if to show me she’s not lying. Then she ran off to Munich to follow him but instead he kicked her out, the little bastard. So she came back here and for three months she’s been with her new friend who is also named Paolo, but is much better than the other one. First of all he’s a sailor, not one of the crew; he was a commander and he knows how to speak. Plus he wears a beret on his head just like a Frenchman. Actually a real Frenchman is after her, one of us—she winks at me—but she is faithful to her Polò, except that she goes to an actor on nights when Polò gets drunk, a man who gives her a lot of money and is so distinguished that leather gloves stick out of the pocket of his new coat. He’s a bit slow, though, not as funny and clever as Polò is. But she doesn’t mind in the least. The man even wants to marry her, but she doesn’t think she should accept, especially since he has a wife in France. With the money she earns, she buys alcohol for Polò when she goes to the nearby farm to pick vegetables for the camp; she goes there with an Italian from the kitchen who is also her friend, but she doesn’t let him put his hands on her, so she can go on taking advantage of him longer.

  “Look, there he is.”

  A smiling, thin little man comes toward us, a farmer who seems to be walking through bushes, avoiding spiky branches. He greets us with great civility, an astonished, extravagant expression, invites us to visit him behind the kitchen and walks away.

  “He’s a real character—loaded with dough,” Jeanine explains.

  I
observe the comings and goings of the foreigners, trying to distinguish the escapees. A young man with a round beret pushed back on his head passes by and greets us with a sly, polite look. I nudge Jeanine.

  “Yeah,” she says, “he’s a student from Gascony, boring as a book. Wait.” She tugs at my arm. “Now look to your left in front of the toilet, that’s François, imagine, a student!” She laughs scornfully. “If he sees me he won’t leave me alone, let’s go back.”

  I just have time to catch a glimpse, in the metallic light of dusk, of a young man, still a boy, elegant, pallid, with a docile look. I glance over at the toilets as well.

  “Are you all French?” I ask.

  “And Italian. We’re the resourceful ones. But speaking of that”—she stops abruptly, hands on hips—“how come you speak French?” she says, laughing.

  “I was born there.”

  “Where? Never mind, it doesn’t matter, never give any details about yourself.” She starts walking again. “I want to show you everybody, we’re like a family. We don’t readily take in newcomers, but for you we’ll make an exception. We took a liking to you, Polò and I, and we already proposed you to the group. On the whole they agreed; Polò noticed right away that you were afraid, he felt sorry for you, see, and he told the others. Right now we’re taking a walk to introduce you, because they haven’t seen you yet and they want to get a look at you before they finally accept you. Tonight we’ll have their approval, you can be sure, and then you can live happily with us, instead of staying there to rot with the Russians’ bedbugs. See that fashion plate? He’s an Italian.” Eyeing me is a dark young man, tall, slender, well-dressed, slicked-back hair. “That guy stays with us because we found him, but for us he’s an outsider. Imagine his scorn for Polò with his tattered clothes and his head shaven like a bowling ball. If it weren’t for his decayed teeth, Polò would be a hundred times more gorgeous than that pretty boy, and even the way he is, I wouldn’t trade him for that guy—not even for a repatriation order. I don’t know his name and I don’t want to know it. Now I’m going to show you a French slut, they call her La Scopina, ‘the mop,’ because of her hair, although she really does a lot of ‘mopping’ here in the camp, she’ll go with a man just for a cigarette. Yet she has a boyfriend who’s a coal worker. Just imagine. ‘All I ask is one thing, don’t betray me,’ he told her, ‘I won’t ever let you lack for anything, not clothes or food or cigarettes. I’ll work overtime, I’ll give you everything you want. I won’t ask you for anything, not even to wash my underwear.’” And here Jeanine doubles over, laughing. “‘Just don’t betray me.’ She swore to him on the two children she’d left in France, wiping away tears, never to deceive him. I’m not lying, you know, I was right on the bed next to them when they made that pact, I saw and heard everything. Instead, with the excuse that she spends half the day mopping up around the men’s straw mattresses, she makes love with all of them, ‘to keep in practice,’ she says, ‘in case the cuckold has second thoughts.’ As for him, he’s a sheep.”