The Moon Tunnel

A dog barked in the guardhouse beyond the wire and Siegfried Mann stood in the moonlit ruins of Vintry House and thought of the girl in the blue dress. Whatever he thought about, he thought of her; she ran across his past, a fleeting presence, her arms held out for her grandfather. He pressed his fingers to his eyes as he heard again the multiple shots of the firing squad. Beyond the wire the guard in the nearest tower swung his searchlight across the serried rows of the PoW huts. It was 10.30pm, two hours after lights out, and the only sound was the dog, whimpering now, by the trip wire. The moon left a cloud and he stepped back into the shadows of the old house. He’d seen it many times from the stoop of the hut where he sat and read the books the Red Cross sent: the roof was just rafters, the walls obscured by ivy, the garden wildly overgrown.

He felt no fear. They never turned the lights outwards, into the fen, something they’d all noticed right from the start, but something they’d only appreciated after they discovered the tunnel.

Hut 8. His own. They’d been bound to find it eventually, but it was only the second day when they were examining the base of the old stove that they saw the gap, felt the current of air rising in the summer heat. But in the end they’d decided it was too late for them to escape. Summer 1944. They knew the war was over, even if the fanatics didn’t. In the other huts the members of the Party planned their escapes, dreamed of returning to a victorious army. And if the end did come they planned murder, their captors first, their enemies within second, themselves last. Which is why they kept the tunnel secret. They might need it when the end came.

So when he found Serafino’s picture he’d thought about this meeting from the start. What had happened at Agios Gallini? Clearly the villagers had not murdered their guard. Did they attack him, perhaps? Force him into the hills? But he suspected the truth, and he wanted Serafino to tell him. So, using the Italian dictionary they’d found amongst their predecessors’ belongings, he had written the note.

‘Meet me at Vintry House – the ruin beyond the wire. We have found the tunnel but need your help. We can pay. 10.30: August 10th’. Then he’d given it to one of the Italians who helped distribute the food, sealing the envelope with wax and paying the man well with the promise that other letters would follow.

August 10th. He had some Italian, learned at school and on holidays in the Alps, but this gave him a month to learn enough from the dictionary to ask his questions. He wanted to hear this man’s confession in his own tongue: from the heart, if he had one.

He heard across the fen the cathedral bell toll the half hour. Instantly he saw him, stepping round the crumbling wall of one of the old outhouses. By moonlight the familiar face seemed younger. How long had he known Serafino? Six months, perhaps. Long enough to think he trusted him. And Serafino knew him, which is why he stayed back, one hand gripping the masonry of the old wall.

‘Oberstleutnant Mann?’ he said, the Italian accent redolent, even for the German, of the Veneto.

‘How are you, Serafino?’ he said, his Italian poor but passable. ‘I am happy you are alive. I am surprised also.’

Serafino moved his hands down his tunic, as if cleaning blood from his hands. Mann knew two things: that he was tempted to run, and that he didn’t have a gun.

Silence.

‘Why did you desert your post, Serafino?’

Mann thought he might run then, now that he knew why he had been called. ‘Why, Serafino? Tell me, please.’

‘Don’t tell them. Please, don’t tell them. Here, my own people will kill me.’

Mann thought he understood. ‘So tell me.’

The Italian laughed then, and for the first time Mann slipped his hand into his tunic and felt the knife he’d made from the stanchion prised from his bunk bed.

‘Those stupid villagers. They said the English were coming soon. That they’d landed – at Kithira, in the south. That they would take me to England, to camps – camps just like the Germans had. At night the partisans came, creeping through the village. They said they’d cut my throat. So at night I did not sleep. And in the day – I decide to go.’

‘You knew the consequences?’ This was the single sentence Mann had practised most. ‘You knew the consequences. What I would have to do?’

Serafino heard the anger then, and stepped back, cornering himself in the ruins.

‘You wanted my help with the tunnel?’

He understood the one word – tunnel. ‘No. No – not the tunnel, Serafino. I shall inform the authorities here tomorrow that you are Serafino Ricci. A deserter. And shall I tell the messenger too?’

Serafino held up his hand to say no, but – fatally – decided to say more. ‘I saw you shoot the girl,’ he said. ‘The girl in the blue dress. Deliberately. Do they know that too? When the war is over, will they know that?’

Mann was only six feet away now. ‘It was an accident, Serafino. You saw the accident.’ A statement, seeking confirmation. It was Serafino’s last chance. The Italian searched in his pockets, quickly, producing a knife – a thin blade, very dark in the moonlight.

‘You tied her up with the man and shot them both. I saw.’

Mann remembered the rockfall above them that day, the skittering pebbles falling down the hillside.

‘I’ll tell them,’ he said, the threat clear.

Mann was very close now and he saw in Serafino’s eyes that he was a coward. That was why he had run. The Italian dropped the knife. ‘Please don’t tell them.’

Mann stepped in so close he could smell the Italian’s breath, and the sweat from his body. He placed one hand on his shoulder and smiled, but in the shadow between them he took out the knife and pressed it skilfully through the rough tunic, where it nicked a bottom rib before he felt it sliding through the stomach wall. Swiftly he drew it across the abdomen, and Serafino’s last breath whistled. There was shock in his eyes, but it swiftly turned to the blank stare of the dying.

Then he knelt down, both hands cradling his stomach, holding his guts in.

He died like that, sitting, holding himself. Mann found a shovel in the outhouse and buried him beside a sapling which grew in the old garden. He took a handful of the blossom and imprinted the gorse-like scent on his memory. Then he went down into the old cellar, to the moon tunnel.