The Sojourn - Andrew Krivak [56]
“Bene,” he said, and, not long after, Banquo, who had saved me, fell ill with fever and never woke.
WE WERE RELEASED IN EARLY DECEMBER, THE JAILERS ONLY saying to us as they unlocked each of our cells and brought us out into the air of a frigid but brilliant dawn, “You should go now,” as though it was our idea to have come there in the first place.
But there are times, even now in my life, when I wonder if I might have stayed on that island, if those Sardinian guards had given me any chance whatsoever to fall out of line on the way to that same coal steamer that had brought us across the sea, slip away, and hide forever in the house of whatever man or woman would have me. For, though I say that I longed for home, I couldn’t say where that home was now. I had shed what rags were left of my uniform for a coarse shirt, trousers, and a woolen coat lined with sheepskin. I grew my first beard, thin and patchy as it was, because there were no razors to be found, and the food and work that marked my days brought some color and fullness back to my face. I left that island looking like not an Austrian prisoner of war but the Sardinians who had cared for me and fed me, and with familiarity came a tinge of fear at the distance and uncertainty in the world beyond that waited, so that when the steamer reached the mainland, I thought to stow away belowdecks and return for good to Sardinia, but we were under the charge of the police, and so we quickly boarded the trains that would take us to the borders of the new Italy, and an Austria bereft of its monarchy.
In Padua, we changed trains and moved northeast to Treviso, then across the Piave and Tagliamento again, rivers steely and quiet in the winter cold, but with scars of the war carved everywhere along their banks. From there, we pushed farther north to the upper valley until we came to the town of Pontebba. On the morning of the third day of our journey north, they uncoupled the car we had been riding in and shunted it off to a siding. A cold wind blew down from the Alps and I could tell that it was going to get colder, but after the close and filthy quarters of the train, the cloudless sky and sharp air were a welcome relief.
The scent of bread wafted from a bakery near the train station. Men who had thrown away or never worn a uniform walked through the streets on their way to work or a café, and women who might once have tended the wounded and who now tended goats opened shutters of shops and homes to let the winter light in. I moved slowly, more out of cautious hesitation than fatigue. I wasn’t strong, but I was healthy enough. The Italian police said that the new border was just a few miles from there and that the town of Villach was directly northeast.
“Illegal immigrants will be shot,” they warned. “Now go.” And that was it. We set off walking, first as a mob, then as large groups, then clusters still clinging to some sense of security in numbers. In Austria, on the banks of the Drava, I broke away from ten other men who said they were going to cross into Bohemia at Gmünd, where the legionnaires had headquarters. I turned and followed that river east until I came to the outskirts of Klagenfurt and the tiny village of Abtei, then turned south into the Karawanken Range so as to avoid all gatherings of men. For, even with the beard, there was no mistaking me for a twenty-year-old—soldier or no—and because these new armies of legionnaires were made up mostly of deserters, there was a feeling in Austria and Hungary that the war had been lost because of the Slavs. Moreover, with no money, the countryside was the only place I stood any chance to get food, whether by begging, stealing, or killing it, though I had no weapon with which to do so, and yet I found myself at peace in the mountains, feeling again that there I