Death in Sardinia by Marco Vichi

Author:Marco Vichi [Vichi, Marco]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4804-4794-3
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2014-01-24T19:53:00+00:00

By mid-morning the sky was completely overcast with grey clouds. A fine, granular snow started to fall. Even the pigeons looked chilled, huddling together in groups along the buildings’ highest cornices, sheltered by the eaves.

Bordelli stuck the customary unlit cigarette between his lips. It was too hot in his office, and he’d already taken off his jacket some time before. When he felt a drop of sweat roll down his cheek, he went and opened the window and started gazing outside. The snowflakes were tiny and icy, but the snow didn’t stick. Little by little, his memory started whirring … A similar snow was falling at Christmas in ’43, at Torricella Peligna. And a shitty Christmas it was, with Nazis encamped on the hillside opposite them, barely six miles away. Bordelli felt nervous that day, smoking one cigarette after another while awaiting orders from the rear lines. Because it was Christmas, nobody was shooting, like the good Christians they all were …

Late that morning two of his men returned from patrol with Christmas dinner on a leash, a nice fat pig with a rope round its neck. They said they’d found it wandering about the countryside, and they were as happy as children. Everyone in the camp gathered round the beast, already tasting its roast flesh on their tongues. Battle-knives were drawn and the pig started to get nervous. Like everyone else, Bordelli too wanted a good hot meal; he was sick and tired of Italian biscuit spread with American tinned meat. But the whole thing seemed fishy to him. He told the men to hold their knives and asked for a more precise explanation of how they’d come by the pig. In the end it turned out they’d taken it away from a peasant.

‘But the bloke had another pig, Captain!’ the two men said, trying to minimise the offence. Bordelli could practically smell the roast pork already, but he was the commander and could not tolerate pillage, and so with an effort of will he told them they had to take the animal back to its rightful owner. And he felt that a little speech was in order.

‘This is robbery. Bloody hell, we’re not Germans, after all!’ he’d said.

The pig was taken home, with heartfelt apologies and a few bars of dark chocolate. At camp that evening, they spread more American meat on Italian biscuits, but it tasted worse than ever. They had no way of knowing at the time, but they would have to wait more than six months before they had a decent meal, six long months during which several of Bordelli’s comrades would die. And they died not only from the increasingly sophisticated safety catches the Germans kept inventing to prevent removal of their mines. One morning Bordelli had to go out to recover the bodies of four of his men, killed in a basement when a defective hand grenade had gone off while they were playing cards. The small room was flooded with still-fresh, sticky blood.

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