Throughout the entire day we heard continued puffings of steam locomotives; we noticed an uninterrupted movement of trains carrying equipment to the station of Costa. There also passed a long train full of cannon, and wagons whose canvasses flapped in the breeze. The engine proceeded slowly and from the smokestack an acrid, nauseating odor escaped. I wondered what the Austrians were burning in their furnaces since I did not believe they could have much coal.

We passed the juncture of the Friga and the Meschio beyond the village of Capella and now only a short stretch of road separated us from the house we wished to reach. We followed the foamy course of the torrent and, arriving at an intersecting point we saw approaching us a truck full of hay, drawn by the arms of a young mountaineer. We saluted him in our dialect and he answered with a pronounced Tuscan accent. That boy certainly was not a native of our regions; he must have escaped from prison and through some good fortune succeeded in establishing himself with a peasant family. It was strange that the Austrian gendarmes, among whom there are many Dalmatians and Istrians, had not noticed his manner of speaking which was not at all like that of our mountaineers.

We resumed our journey, eager to reach the coveted goal. By following a country road we suddenly found ourselves in front of a group of houses. Near the small church a peasant, seated on the ground, was swinging his scythe and at the noise of our footsteps turned his emaciated face towards us, eying us suspiciously. We crossed a courtyard where the chickens, frightened at our footsteps, scurried quickly away and we found ourselves on a little bridge which crossed the Friga. The road continued towards the mill. We knew the village and further recognized it from the photographs made from our aeroplanes. Bottecchia started running and I ran after him. At last we arrived at a wide courtyard where there were gathered many men whom I did not know. They were seated on a narrow bench and from a large ornate bowl of majolica they helped themselves to hot, smoking soup and in their hands they held broad yellow slices of polenta (pudding made of Indian meal). The door of the house was ajar. Within the large kitchen a brilliant, playful fire was flickering. From the massive gridirons hung a large round caldron. A woman bending over it mixed and turned the yellow flour at intervals. The woman had her shoulders turned towards us and Bottecchia sought in vain among those present for someone he knew. We approached her, and lo, from a side door there appeared a little nervous woman with an emaciated face and bony hands seamed with heavy blue veins.

“Cietta, Cietta,” cried my soldier, “stare at my face and do not tremble. It is I, really I, your Giovannino!” The old woman stared at him with her eyes opened wide. Her hands fell heavily upon her apron; she leaned against the table as not to fall. Suddenly, as she wavered, Giovannino took her in his arms, and embraced and caressed her a long time. Finally she regained her self-possession and passed her lean hand over his forehead.

“Let me look at you, let me touch you, let me feel the life of my life. But how you have changed; how big you have become, how handsome!” She smiled through her tears. “Do you remember the happy days when we were all together and I used to take you on my knees and sing sweet lullabies to you, before nightfall? Then no one could harm you, but now, instead!... Tell me, are you in danger? Tell me is anyone following you, for I am afraid, terribly afraid.” She eyed him steadily as though to divine his secret; she threw her arms around him as though to protect him. “Tell me they will not come to take you away. Are you tired? Are you hungry? Ah, we have nothing to give you!”

The poor woman, terribly agitated, ran from one end of the kitchen to the other not knowing where to begin. She wanted to do everything at once, she wanted to feed us, she wanted to call her daughter, to confide in her sister, to tell the old men outside to watch out for us and warn us.

“And who is this man? Is he your comrade? When did you succeed in escaping? Do you come from afar?”

We tried to calm her, to tell her that no danger threatened us, and she poured some milk into two deep cups and cut for us two enormous slices of polenta, not too large however for our appetites.

“Cietta, Cietta,” Giovanni began, “rest assured, do not be afraid. Don’t you see how well we look, and how happy? This is an Italian officer,” and Bottecchia made a mysterious sign of silence by placing his finger before his mouth.

“What? An Italian officer?” Everyone gathered round me.

“It is safe to talk here, isn’t it? All those here are good Italians?”

“Yes, you may talk, but be very careful because now one is not safe even in his own house, and at any moment, when one least expects it, he is likely to be dispatched to the other world before he even has time to recommend his soul to the sacred Madonna.”

The sister of Cietta, who expressed in her thin face a suppressed grief, making it all the more pitiful, took me by the hands and said with sobs, “I too, had a son, big and strong like you and they have killed him. One day as he was walking here in front of the house a platoon of Germans arrived for the requisitions, and he, frightened, began to run down the slope. One of the gendarmes called after him to halt, but my poor dear one, believing himself far enough to be out of danger, continued running without obeying. The gendarme at once aimed his rifle and fired. He fell in a pool of blood with a leg and an arm shattered. We lifted him up. He was pale and did not utter a word. For a long time we nursed him here because I preferred to keep him under my care, because he wanted to die near his mother, but at length they took him away from me to the hospital, where his condition grew worse every day, every hour. The wounds would not heal and after two months of indescribable suffering he died on the night when the swallows returned. I always see him before me as he was, strong as you; but taller, yes, taller than you.” As she spoke she clutched my arms as though in pressing my flesh she pressed the flesh of the son she had lost. “Who will bring my boy back to me, who will bring him back? Oh, unjust war, oh, ruthless war, and you German assassins, may you be damned forever! May the stain of the blood of that innocent lad fall upon you and your children so that throughout all eternity you never shall have peace!”

Softly I pressed her hand and whispered, “Courage, courage, life is made up of terrible sorrows and we must face them bravely and with resignation, but God is just and your appeal to Him in malediction is worth maybe more than the fire of a thousand guns. The day shall come when they will have to pay, and pay in blood the measure of your sighs and all these your tears.”

I asked the mistress of the house who the people were about us and she answered that they were refugees from villages along the Piave, especially San Stefano and Valdobiadine, now under the fire of our guns. They had had to abandon everything. The enemy did not even allow them to take with them their mattresses and the most necessary things, so that they were now compelled to sleep on the ground. Among the refugees there was a man, about fifty years old, whose heavy skeleton expressed the strength of his days now past. He approached me, looked at me cautiously and asked, “Is it really true that you are an Italian officer? If you are an officer you ought to try to get to the other side, to cross the lines so as to tell them on the other side what the Austrians are preparing because for the past two months, both night and day, we have seen nothing but thousands of cannon and interminable lines of soldiers and wagons passing along the roads.”

“Yes, it is true, I am an Italian officer and I have been sent here to do exactly what you have said, to try to find out something. I am an aviator and I landed here with an aeroplane to try to learn and communicate to our forces the day of the offensive and everything else I can gather about the enemy’s plans. And you who are good Italians, if you really believe in our cause, if you really hope on some not distant day to see our troops return and if all of you do not wish to die here of hunger, everyone of you must, in all seriousness, help me, for all has been organized, all has been prepared. We Italians have the habit of being enthusiastic at the beginning but do not always have enough seriousness and constancy to carry a project through to the end. Now, I want you to act as soldiers for me, I want each one of you to choose a sector in which to act, but the method of obtaining information must be the one I suggest, must be so organized that the reports are safe, that I may communicate them without doubts to our headquarters.”

Giovanni was talking with his aunt who was telling him of all the many trials and tribulations she had had to endure since our retreat. She anxiously asked him of news of her sons on the other side.

“Tell me, then you are not jesting? You have really seen Pietro? And is Antonio still in the artillery? And Uncle Baldassarre who went with his family to Italy, has he anything to eat? Has he found work?”

“Cietta, Cietta, why didn’t you heed me, why didn’t you follow the advice of Antonio who wanted you at all costs to follow him to the other side? Had you listened to him you would not now be in so perilous a position for it seems to me that unless our soldiers hurry over we shall all soon run the risk of dying of hunger.”

“You have spoken the truth; the corn meal for that polenta which you ate came from a hiding place under the stairs; but we always fear lest the gendarmes will take it away, because they go from house to house and sound the walls to see if they are solid. If they are hollow, then they at once begin to dig for hidden treasure, and if they succeed in finding anything they not only take it away but they begin to maltreat the people in the house. Our neighbor, the woman at the mill, has been dangerously ill. A platoon of Croatians in trying to tear a necklace from her throat treated her so roughly that she fainted and she had to stay in the hospital for more than a month.”

“Cietta, we have some money, if that can help you.”

“But what can one do with money since gold is the only thing worth anything here. We have returned to the old custom of barter. Nothing can be had without merchandise and one is fortunate if he can find a bit of flour in exchange for linen, but no one will ever give merchandise for money. The only money which still has a little value is the Italian.”

With anxiety I bethought me of what we should do with the precious roll to which we had attached so much importance and which apparently was not to be of great assistance.

“Cietta, if we were to remain here for a while to fulfill our mission, could you house us?” asked Giovanni who at last felt the need of expressing himself and of making known our plan.

As an answer the old woman ran to the door and approaching her daughter asked her anxiously whether she had stationed the children around the house and if someone was watching from the windows to avoid any surprise. The refugee tried to reassure her by telling her that the hour in which the gendarmes usually made their rounds was still far distant, but the poor old woman would not listen to reason and with a worried expression turned to Bottecchia.

“No, no, it is not possible for you to remain here. Almost every night, when we least expect it, we see platoons of soldiers arriving who, with the pretext of seeing whether there are prisoners or deserters in the house, begin to search from cellar to attic in all our rooms always hoping to find something which they can take away. There is no spot so hidden that it escapes their notice and even were you to hide in the hay-loft, they often climb up even to that to see if there is someone hidden in the forage. If you want to stay nearby you can sleep in a little isolated stable hidden in the wood which descends towards the Friga. Ever since the Germans have been here, no one has ever gone in that direction, and I am certain they do not know that under the thick foliage of the trees there is that little stable.”

“Then we have no time to lose,” I said turning toward the refugee who had lighted his pipe.

“Do you see this tobacco?” he said as he puffed a mouthful of smoke into the air. “You would believe this tobacco was real, instead of which it is mostly crushed plantain leaves which the Austrians sell in small packages at three crowns apiece. I only wish we could still buy it. This I got from certain Russians who guard the live stock and I had to give them in exchange a goodly amount of flour.”

“Now mark my words well, and forget about the tobacco, the Russians and the live stock. You ought to go to your own village, near the regions of San Stefano where someone surely has succeeded in remaining on his own land; in the house of this someone there must be some Austrian soldiers. Well, you should do your utmost to get me some postcards or newspapers which the soldiers leave in the houses. These postcards can be far more useful than you suspect. Along the road try to enter as many houses as possible and in every one, without arousing suspicion, try to steal some mail. Newspapers alone will suffice, but be sure the address is not missing because I should not know what to do with unaddressed postcards and newspapers.”

The old man looked as if he had understood me; he seemed to have entered into the spirit of my reasoning and answered, “I have a cousin whose house near Miane the Austrians have taken as their headquarters, and I am sure he will be able to give me some interesting news. Then I know a refugee from Segusin who is a clerk at the headquarters of Tappa di Vittorio. He is always frequenting the Austrians and ought to be able to give you some important information.”

“Very well, very well. By the way, to-morrow you will have to pass through Vittorio to reach the valley. When you have arrived on the further side of the clock tower, in front of the wheat market you will see a large mansion. Enter and ask for a man called De Luca. He is one of my agents and I should like to see him as soon as possible.”

“I understand,” answered the old man in a thoughtful way, “but how shall I get to your agent, for I know that in the house you speak of the Germans have established their headquarters.”

“That does not matter, that does not matter,” I answered trying to conceal the emotions aroused by the news that there were in truth enemy officers in my house. “I am certain that in so large a house they have left a room vacant for my agent. In case the Germans are no longer there find out where they have gone. Then, above all, I beg you to tell this secretary to show himself as soon as possible because I absolutely must talk to him. He is a staunch Italian isn’t he?”

“Yes, I can vouch for this. I believe that now they are all loyal Italians. Would that my children had succeeded in escaping to the other side! Would they were not here with me! I’d rather have them in the trenches with our soldiers than here with me, subject to the violence of the gendarmes and the drunken soldiers. For every day it seems as if they will take them away and put them at work in the interior of Austria where they will certainly die of hunger.”

A young lean boy with large blue eyes expressive of calm and goodness entered the kitchen at this point. His emaciated, thin face showed his past sufferings and the hunger endured.

“Here is Rino, the oldest of my boys. He too, will try to help you to the best of his ability.”

Giovannino’s intentions were far from wrong; he was searching for a way in which to get something to eat.

“Listen, Cietta, if you can’t find a way in which to get flour, send for my sister at San Martino. You told me she was still grinding the flour for the Austrian command, and who knows but she may be able to take a little away. Anyway we must tell her I am here because I must see her, for she can be of great use to us in our undertaking.”

“We’ll do anything you want, but for mercy’s sake, for mercy’s sake, don’t let yourselves be caught. You do not know these savages yet, you do not know what they are capable of doing. After having taken you away they would come back here to our house and would set fire to it, the way they did at Mezza Villa in an isolated house where they found some prisoners. And now it is late and you are tired.”

Cietta had entrusted several blankets to Rino who was to guide us to the little hut where we were to spend the night. I still wished to ask many questions and to continue talking with them and express all my appreciation for what they were doing for us, but perhaps they would not have understood me, for I realized that my way of speaking was not always the best way in which to make my thoughts understood to peasants. I feared that they might perhaps consider as haughtiness that which was merely reserve, and I experienced a vague feeling of being an outsider, of not being one of them.

We stumbled on the little hut almost before seeing it, for it was so well hidden and covered by the thick vegetation. We entered the lower part which in the past must have been used as a stable; the upper part had evidently served as a hay-loft. The beams yet stood which formerly supported the hay and a bit of forage must have been left in the place because in one part the beams were still covered. Rino climbed up a little straight wooden ladder and where we thought there lay but hay there were instead several boards laid across the beams so as to form a little platform. We threw some hay on it and made ready to lie down. Rino, before leaving us, advised us to pull up the ladder and throw it across the beams, so that if someone were to enter beneath, he would never suspect we could have climbed to the little platform and therefore would not molest us. Our little lair was not far from a window and in case of alarm we could always escape by it and take to the open country. Soon fatigue overcame us and the bed, though in truth it was not very soft, seemed to us like a comfortable couch of feathers.