“I’m saying that it would suit some people if the Garibaldini have their numbers and strength reduced by the Germans. As far as they’re concerned, the war in Italy has already served its purpose—it’s tied up twenty-five German divisions that otherwise might have ended up in France. Now the war is almost won, they’re pulling Allied divisions out of Italy, leaving the communists to take care of the Germans—and vice versa. It’s what my CO used to call a two-birds, one-stone scenario.”
“Jumbo?” Dino said quietly. “Can this be true?”
Jumbo nodded. “It makes sense, I’m afraid. At the end of the day, the army commanders have to do what the politicians tell them.”
“You’d better call off your attack,” James said. “Whatever supplies are dropped, I’ll bet they won’t include the big guns you need.”
“We can’t call it off,” Dino said. “Knowing that our deaths will serve some politician’s purpose makes no difference. To our shame, we welcomed the fascists into this country. We can’t simply sit back now and watch the German army go by without striking a blow against them.” He looked at the other commanders. “Are we all agreed?”
One by one they nodded their heads.
James and Livia did their turn at patrols, just like everyone else. One night, there was a crackle of gunfire from the darkness ahead of them. Some partisans had run into the Germans. James and Livia dropped to the ground, lining up their guns to provide covering fire as the main body of the partisans retreated to a better defensive position. The firefight was brief and intense.
“You fight well,” Livia said grudgingly as they got to their feet.
“So do you,” James said. “Though somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”
“I must say, these partisans are turning into quite a nice little operation,” Jumbo said proudly, coming back along the road to join them. “When we started out here they couldn’t even load a weapon on their own. Now they’re quite capable of showing me a thing or two.”
The German traffic on the roads through the mountains was now mostly going north, away from the front. But these were supply lorries and logistics units. The partisans waited, biding their time for the fighting divisions to appear. There was a palpable air of tension in the camp, the familiar mixture of lethargy and terror that precedes any battle.
James took the opportunity to walk with Livia in the woods. It was the only way to get any privacy. They found a cherry tree, and gorged themselves on the firm, sweet fruit while they talked. Livia had still not responded to James’s statement about wanting to come back to Italy after the war, and he had decided not to press her. Instead, they discussed her newfound political beliefs.
“First Italy must be free. Then her people must be free,” Livia explained. “The factories and farms must be given to the proletariat, not the other way around.”
James ate another cherry. Livia’s tendency to talk in slogans since she had joined the Garibaldini was rather trying, though understandable in the circumstances. “What if the proletariat don’t want them?” he objected. “Or what if they take them and loot them?”
“The proletariat only steal because in an unjust system they have been given no choice,” she said sternly. Then she remembered how annoyed she was when people stole things from her. “Of course, there will have to be leaders,” she conceded. “The Party will need to provide direction to the people.”
“And will these Party leaders be elected?”
“Democracy has already been shown to be a flawed way of distributing power.”
“Yes, Hitler spotted that as well,” he murmured.
“Well, perhaps there will be elections then,” she said. “The communists will win anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”
“But then you’d have democratic communism.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s just that I thought you communists didn’t believe in all that.” He had to admit, though, democratic communism was a deliciously Italian idea, and in Italy it might just work. “And what about religion? Presumably you’d close down all the churches, like Stalin did?”
“Of course not,” she said, shocked.
“So you’d have a sort of Catholic democratic communism?”
“Why not?”
“And what if the proletariat don’t want their women to go on being emancipated?” he asked innocently. “Presumably you’d go along with their wishes?”
“If the proletariat don’t want that,” she said, “they can go hang themselves.” Then she saw what he was doing. “You’re teasing me.”
“Of course not,” he said. “I never rib Italian girls. They’re much too serious.” She punched him on the arm. “Ow.” She had, he noticed, rather a hard punch, her body wirier than he had known it previously. She punched him again. “That hurts,” he protested.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’ll just have to punch you back,” he said, punching her lightly in the same place.
“That’s not a punch,” she said. “This is a punch.” She hit him in the other arm, even harder. This time, though, he grabbed her arm and tried to twist it behind her back, and then they were wrestling. Her laughing eyes were very close to his, and her laughing lips were close enough to be kissed. He slid his hands under her vest, and suddenly there were her breasts, brown from the sun, the nipples red as the inside of a fig, ready to be kissed and gently rolled between his teeth.
“Stop,” she said, pulling away a little, “I want to talk about politics some more.”
“Oh,” he said, rearranging himself. “Well, all right then.”
“James?”
“Yes?”
“I’m teasing you.” She came back to him, her shoulders arched to offer him her breasts again, and then her cool fingers were slipping inside his own trousers.
A little later, when they were both naked, and she was doing something rather nice that he remembered from their afternoons in Naples, it was he who stopped her. “Actually, I had something else in mind,” he murmured.
She came up to kiss him again. “Like what?”
He picked his shirt off the branch of the cherry tree where it had ended up and undid the breast pocket. “It wasn’t only cheese I brought with me from Rome,” he said. “I brought some of these along as well.”
She looked at the packet of rubbers in his hand. An eyebrow shot upward. “Oh? So you simply assumed I’d sleep with you?”
“Not assumed. Hoped,” he said humbly. Then he saw her expression. “You’re teasing me again, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” she said, taking the packet from him and tearing it open with her teeth. “But I am genuinely cross with you as well.”
“Why’s that?” He gasped as she took the condom and put it on him.
“Because if you’d told me about these when you first arrived,” she said, slipping one leg over his, “we wouldn’t have wasted so much time talking about communism.”
Afterward they lay in each other’s arms, letting the sweat dry from their bodies in the shade of the tree. There was red on Livia’s stomach, but when James looked more closely he saw that it was only a smear of fallen fruit, crushed under her as they made love. He bent his head to lick it off, and felt Livia stir.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, and went on doing it.
“That doesn’t feel like nothing.”
“What does it feel like?”
“It feels—quite nice.”
“Then I shall go on doing it.” He licked until all the fragments of crushed fruit were quite gone, then looked around. There were more cherries all around them, and he gathered two large handfuls. “Now,” he said, “I wonder what we can do with these?”
A lone German fighter plane circled overhead in the endless blue sky. James opened his eyes drowsily and looked at it. He wasn’t concerned: They were too well hidden to be seen. After a few minutes the plane dipped its wing and drifted away.