The Painted Altar

Chapter Twenty-Five

Plot reminder: Vincenzo is poised to help his friend Ettore escape from camp 106a

~~~~~

"Are you sure Ettore?" Though the faintest of whispers, my words seemed a thunderous boom against the silence of the night. "It's still not too late to change your mind. "

The pair of us were pressed against the end wall of the final hut - significantly perhaps, I realised, the other side of the altar wall, my work now two-thirds complete. Ahead lay twenty metres of open ground before the treacherous coil of wire.

"I've never been surer of anything," Ettore breathed back. The night a black, cloud-covered one, it was difficult to discern the expression on his soil-caked face. The tone of his voice was however clear: determined, unhesitant. "If I'm going to die," he continued, "I'd rather die a free man than a slave."

"Enough talk of dying Ettore!" I chided, voice raised as loudly as I dared. "This is about life, remember, not about death."

A hand squeezed at my shoulder, my words paraphrased as if in mantra. "Life, not death." Then: "For the love of Christ, let's just get on with this Vincenzo before I burst out crying."

Before both of us did, I thought. But he was right, this was not the moment for prolonged goodbyes. In times of war, we had both learnt, farewells were almost always sudden and fleeting affairs. An unvoiced wish for a peaceful afterlife.

"Count to thirty," I instructed. "If you don't hear the owl hoot, come and join me, quick as you can."

Similarly to previous occasions, as I hunched down before the wire, the night remained silent, unmoved. Thankfully, there was no need to cup my hands together in mimicking signal. Moments later, Ettore was crouched down beside me.

"Unshoulder your knapsack," I told him. This I then hurled over the wire, the thud as it landed discernable enough to provoke a wince, a careful scan of the camp for any sign of movement, switched on lights. Blessedly once more, nothing.

I then pinched thumbs and forefingers to the wire, pulled two strands as far apart as my straining muscles were able.

"Keep your head down Ettore, OK. It's vital you don't look up."

Tentatively, he began to squirm himself through. Soon let out a hiss as the barb snagged into his flesh.

"Keep going Ettore," I encouraged. "You're almost there."

Indeed, only his boots, struggling like a pair of just-landed seabass, now remained camp-side.

"Give me a push Vincenzo. Think I'm stuck."

I swallowed, took a deep breath. I knew better than anyone the sharp sear of pain which would follow.

"Brace yourself... Now!"

The cry of pain was bravely muffled, the bark of a muzzled dog.

"Through?" I asked.

"Through," came the gasped reply.

"Good luck Ettore and God bless." My tears were by now a rising swell requiring the deepest of breaths to keep down. Ettore was the dearest friend I'd ever had. A comforting ever presence during those blackest years of my life.

"Thanks for everything," responded the night. "Finish that altar as beautifully as you can. See you in Lecce when it's all over."

"Pasticciotti and primitivo di Manduria," I promised. Local cakes and wine. But he was gone now, a rapid succession of softly thudding boots fading into the blackness.