The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
Читать онлайн книгу.
means we surrender."
"Something like that."
Someone inadvertently touched the back of his right elbow and Goffredo realized that other men were standing behind him listening.
"There are not just the Austrians to worry about. Listen!" The official, whose name was Valsesia, spoke loudly now, for the benefit of all. "Many of our retreating soldiers have sacked and plundered nearby towns--including Novara, the site of the battle. Those caught are being put up in front of a firing squad—immediate executions in the street."
There was murmuring at this, but before it could grow, the official added, "What matters is that you do as you're told. Nobody is to feed or offer a bed to a runaway soldier."
"The Austrians are worse," broke in the school headmaster. "And it stands to reason that a regiment or two will come through here."
The man who'd touched Goffredo's elbow said into his ear from behind, "And you, cheesemonger? Think the Austrians are going to sack Bassignana?"
Goffredo turned and looked into the other's eyes, big and round and brown—peasant eyes in a round face, like his. He recognized him as kin to the barrel-maker.
"We have everything to lose if they do," he said. "But the King mustn't sign an armistice with Austria. We have to keep fighting, not give up because Novara's lost. Otherwise we'll never gain freedom."
With that, he walked away. Back to the salting…
That night in the room above his shop, Goffredo made himself the sort of supper that took a long time to eat; he purposely wanted to sit in silence at his table and think. He dipped pieces of Jerusalem artichoke and celery into the bagna cauda, the pasty warm sauce of anchovies, garlic, and olive oil, and each piece (so it seemed to him) brought on a new thought. To accompany these reflections, and to buttress their importance, he opened a bottle of Barolo, the red wine that Count Cavour had recently started making, which he'd received as payment for his cheese. Its rich smell told him it was a big wine. Bravo, Cavour. It slipped down his throat, although he knew it was to be drunk slowly.
This excellent wine did its work excellently…
A Piedmontese proverb that his father had liked when he was alive came to mind. Al prim colp l'erbo a casca nen. The first blow doesn't fell the tree.
It'd been his father's way of ending many a political discussion.
How he missed those heated talks. The echo of a sarcastic but nobly intended line or two made Goffredo smile to himself. He might be the illegitimate son of a Turinese noblewoman who'd died in childbirth, but his father, a cheese maker and advocate of republican ideals, had managed to see that he, unlike most of his fellow villagers, had learned to read and write. This was accomplished in spite of constant money problems and his father's participation in numerous hopeless insurrections and consequent months in prison. A desperate life it had been, and soon finished—seven years ago already—from natural causes and not, cruel twist of fate, with the heroic death in battle that he'd so desired.
Goffredo still had a treatise or two on political revolution that had proudly belonged to Antonio Morelli—concealed so well under a shelf of cheese that no military search party had ever found them. The one he loved best was Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right.
He raised his glass in tribute to Papà. "I know," he murmured—would his father hear him—"the first blow doesn't fell the tree….but at last we've made that first blow."
What a time to be alive. He poured himself some more ruby-red wine. There were so many events, hopes and disillusionments! After the death of Napoleon, the emperors, kings, and dukes of the great powers of Europe had sat round a banquet table—they with their wine, too—in Vienna during the winter of 1815 and set back the hands of history to 1789, setting up all the old hierarchies again, as if democracy or national unity or citizens' rights had never existed. Every so often there'd been a revolt of the kind his father'd been brave enough to support, and secret societies had been founded too, but for the most part the ideals of the French Revolution left behind by Napoleon's army lay dormant for more than thirty years. Only last year—last year!—had full-scale revolution come to a head. People in the major cities of Europe had risen up against the authoritarian regimes imposed on them. The year 1848, a great vintage as popular revolts go. And it was gone now.
"To the French Revolution." Goffredo raised his glass.
They had all hoped briefly in the King of Piedmont and Sardinia this year, with his vision of a united Italy under the Savoy flag. Italy for Italians! But when rich and mighty Milan over in nearby Lombardy had managed to overthrow Austrian rule after a five-day revolt by its citizens and Carl Albert of Savoy had launched an assault on the retreating Austrian army, he had suddenly lost his nerve and let them go.
Dear God, why hadn't it lasted?
When did one know if something was hopeless—what decided it? He felt the knife of his love for his father. Had he—and the men he'd bragged of with ardour and affection—made those sacrifices for nothing?
From the street came the sound of one and then another massive entrance door being pulled shut and bolted. Also, the swinging sound of the shutters on the next house. The people of Bassignana were bracing for the arrival of the Austrians. And what was going on in his own house? From the stairway connecting to the shop below, he heard footsteps taking the creaking floor plank just inside the rear door to the courtyard. Then a cheese form slid on a shelf, wood scraping over wood.
The Austrians? But the footsteps indicated one sole intruder.
One of our deserters, he decided.
He seized the hay fork from its hook at the top of the stairwell. He'd make the traitor pay both for stealing his cheese and losing the battle. Charging down the steps, he found himself barrelling into a crouching figure. A young man's frightened face stared up at him. His cheeks were bulging with cheese. He was wearing the dirty white uniform of an Austrian Army officer.
Goffredo thrust the hay fork under the other's chin, against his chest. The Austrian chewed faster. Goffredo pushed on the fork again. The Austrian chewed and swallowed even more avidly.
The huddled-over stranger-thief had narrow blue eyes with a doggedly friendly look to them, and he was beardless like himself. With his bird's-eye view of the man's crown, Goffredo could tell that if his blond hair were combed back into place, instead of hanging wildly in his face as it did now, it would reveal a high handsome forehead. With a yank of his head, Goffredo indicated that he should stand. It was dawning on him that if the man were really an Austrian deserter he wasn't exactly an enemy.
The prongs of the hay fork accompanied the man's chest—partially bare where the gold buttons had come off—as he rose to his full height. Taller than me, damn it, thought Goffredo. The officer was armed, too—the silver-plated pistol shown in its under-arm holster and there was naturally his sword to contend with.
Was the hay fork going to be enough?
As if he could read his thoughts, the other man unbuckled his holster and sheath and placed them on the floor. Then he spoke.
Goffredo couldn't believe his ears.
"Cheese good," he had said in Italian.
Sandor Kemenj was from a wealthy Hungarian family and spoke four languages well. Italian, however, was not one of these four. He thought it best to introduce himself and tell of his intentions in French or English (certainly not German, the language of Austria), but before he could utter another word, the noise of clomping horses made both men glance towards the shuttered windows.
"You me hide," Kemenj coaxed in more of his broken Italian. "Austria no good." That was an Austrian light-cavalry patrol out in the street. "Tomorrow, go," he added pointing at his own chest.
The reaction of the cheese-maker, whose expression Sandor still couldn't interpret, was impressively swift and nothing less than miraculous: he opened a low trap door under the stairs and threw Sandor's pistol and sword inside.
"Get