Putting Down Strays
The priest's discovery |
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It was July 20th 1944, early evening. Don
Vincenzo was briskly walking from his home towards a
house just outside the village, where one of his
parishioners lay ill. He was bringing the last sacrament, the "estrema
unzione", as Antonio Fini was not
expected to last to the next day. He kept to the middle of the road, so that he
could be seen, wearing his black robe,
as the village was in "no man's land" and anyone could have been easily
mistaken for a partisan or a "rebel",
depending from which side you looked at it. He held in his hands, tightly
against his chest, the sacred chalice , the ampoules, wrapped in the mauve stole which he would wear at Antonio's
bedside. The Germans were on retreat,
but still their presence was felt very much around the countryside,
while the Allied troops had not quite got there. The roar of war was
present with the heavy artillery
firing at intervals, with aeroplanes discharging their bombs
incessantly, while the ground trembled as for a continuous
earthquake. Don
Vincenzo was in a hurry, as he knew
he should get back before sunset,
when the curfew came into force, so
he decided to take a short cut through
a grove of mulberry trees, to get
to the isolated farmhouse. The Germans
had been very active in their "rastrellamenti" the raking of the countryside,
taking with them in their retreat as many civilians as possible,
mainly men young and not so young. Most of the male population had
escaped to the mountains, while women,
children and the very old stayed indoors, afraid even to look out,
hoping that staying out of sight would improve their chances of escaping
the raids of the SS. Don
Vincenzo did not
meet anybody in his errand of mercy ,
but somehow, he was feeling
uncomfortable, as if someone was following him or looking at him all the time.
"It must be
my imagination" he said to himself,
taking courage by reciting an "Ave Maria".
He always looked down when praying , it made him feel nearer to God. He was
approaching a grove of beautiful mulberry trees, their glorious heads of shiny,
bright green leaves, laden
with bunches of fruit which would ripen in about a month's time.
He always loved to admire the beautiful
trees, so he lifted his eyes when a pungent, unmistakable odour reached his nostrils.
Startled,
he stopped. He saw, hanging from two of the trees, what looked like two
human bodies. He went nearer and
realised that they were the corpses of two young men,
their faces unrecognisable by the violent death they had suffered. They
were dangling from two thick branches. There was not a rope around their necks, but a butcher's meat hook pierced through their throats. Numbed by
the horror of what his eyes were seeing,
Don Vincenzo quickly made the sign of the cross,
murmuring a prayer.
Who were they? How long had they been there? There was nothing he could
do, not even arrange to bury them. He knew that from somewhere spying eyes would
soon denounce him. He knew that if he touched those bodies,
left there as warning to others of the power of the S.S. his own corpse could be
the next one hanging from some tree.......... ...... CHAPTER
3 1895. A small
village at the foot of the Central Appenines. Augusto and
Virginia Perotti had been married for seven years and although they were longing
to have some children, luck had not been on their side. They had dreamed of a
large family, of some strong boys to help to carry on the work in the fields and
to take over the large farm when
their old age came. Friends now
commiserated with them. "She cannot have any children" they said. It was always
supposed to be the wife who could not produce an heir, never the man. It was
unheard of anybody doubting the husband's virility and his reproduction power,
so all the condemning eyes were on Virginia,
making her feel miserable and guilty of some obscure crime of which she was not
aware,
least of all how to make amends. She
listened to all the village "comari", the gossips, the know alls,
for enlightment and advice.
"If
children have not come by now,
only the work of the "fattucchiera", the witch of the village, could possibly
help", she was told. Virginia
had tried all the remedies family and friends had advised her to look for,
all the tricks they knew,
that could help to make her pregnant,
she had been given so many potions to drink that made her feel quite sick, to no
avail. "You must
have been cursed by an evil eye" an old woman told her one day. "Maybe a jealous
admirer of Augusto" she added,
"he was a good catch, with that big farm of his parents that one day will
be all his" Augusto being an only
child. "There was
a lot of bad feeling amongst the young girls when he preferred to choose his
bride from another village." Quite a few
had hoped to become Augusto's wife.
"Listen to
me,
my girl, why don't' you go
to see Santina, she is the only one who can undo the evil eye and if she cannot
help, there is nothing anybody else can do. You must try her."
Virginia
was not so sure about going to see Santina. All night she lay awake pondering
whether she should or should not go. She did not want to incur Augusto's anger,
as she knew he had a pronounced dislike of women like Santina, for their
way of poking their noses in other people intimate affairs and into their
innermost feelings, which in turn would become common knowledge in the village as
Santina could not keep a secret no matter how hard she tried.
He could see through her tricks, the way she played with people's emotions to get the most gain for herself. She was a master in terrifying someone of an impending catastrophe, only to be the only one to know how to avoid it, and so inspiring the people's gratitude when in the first place there was no disaster at all.
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