Bell for Adano, A - John Hersey [61]
At last Mayor Nasta found a man who would talk with him. This was a German who spoke Italian.
Mayor Nasta told him that he was still Mayor of Adano, that he had been treacherously arrested by the Americans, that he was trying to do all he could to help the Germans win and that, in short, he was a pretty important person who ought to be helped. The Italianspeaking German told his friends all about Mayor Nasta, and they decided they ought to help him escape.
For a couple of days Mayor Nasta moved over and lived with the Germans. They made plans for the escape. There was nothing elaborate about the plans. They just decided to lift the Mayor up over the wall. They asked him if he had the courage to sit on barbed wire for a few minutes. He said yes, anything to escape. They asked him if he had the courage to jump down twelve feet on the other side. He said yes.
So in the middle of a dark, clouded night, the Germans made a pyramid of their bodies and let Mayor Nasta climb up it to the top of the wall. He sat on the barbed wire on top of the wall, quiet as a cat, until he was sure that the sentry outside had marched to the other end of his beat. Then he turned facing the wall, let himself down as fax as he could, and let go. He hurt one knee a little; it hit the wall as he landed on the ground. But he was able to get up and run off silently.
The Top Sergeant at the p.w. cage called up Sergeant Borth at eight-thirty the next morning and told him that Nasta had escaped.
Sergeant Borth borrowed Corporal Chuck Schultz and a jeep from the M.P. s and went hunting. By this time Sergeant Borth had so many voluntary informers and informers-on-informers that the job of tracing Mayor Nasta was not too hard.
He soon found out that Mayor Nasta had been sheltered for a few hours in a house on Via Favemi. He had then left town by the Via Roma. He had stopped in at a farmer’s house near the Casa Zambano to change into peasant dress. This was one of the easiest things to check, because the peasant turned up wearing Mayor Nasta’s loud powder blue suit, which was dusty from several nights on the ground.
Mayor Nasta had then been seen at several points along the Vicinamare road. One farmer had given him a lift in his cart. Mayor Nasta had evidently had enough of the hills, and was trying now to get to Vicinamare, where friends would be able to hide him.
Sergeant Borth picked him up three miles short of Vicinamare, at about ten-thirty.
jeeps had been passing Mayor Nasta all morning, so that he was not particularly alarmed when Sergeant Borth’s jeep drove up alongside him, and even when it stopped, he waved crudely and shouted: “Good day, good day,” in what he thought was a thick peasant accent.
Sergeant Borth mimicked the accent: “Good day, good day, farmer.”
Mayor Nasta, who still did not recognize Borth, shouted again: “Good day.”
Borth shouted: “Good day. You are the first farmer I have ever seen with pince-nez glasses on.”
Then Mayor Nasta knew Borth. Mayor Nasta’s spirit, which had been strained by the arrest and by the days in the cage and by the escape, suddenly broke. He turned and ran out across the fields, squealing crazily, just like a soldier who had broken under shellfire.
Sergeant Borth got out of the jeep and went out onto the fields. He did not hurry, because Mayor Nasta was running in circles, wishing to run away from himself more than anything else. By the time Sergeant Borth caught him, he was exhausted and limp, and his eyes were milky with fear.
As Borth half walked, half carried him to the jeep, Mayor Nasta jabbered and mouthed his fear. “If you are going to shoot me, tell me first. Don’t shoot me in the back. Tell me if you are going to kill me. I want to know, I want to know... “
Sergeant Borth slapped him sharply in the face, and for a few seconds he was silent.
But when he was seated in the jeep, and the jeep began to move,