“You’re right. I’ve got a blanket in the car.” He stood there for a moment, looking quite sheepish, until he saw the commissario giving him a curious look. He stirred himself into action. “You’re right. It does disgust me.”
Soneri waited a moment or two, then whistled for Dolly and moved off.
Along the valley, in the shadow of the mountains, the light was fading rapidly, while on higher ground the sunlight was still falling on the copper-coloured leaves of the beech trees. A freezing wind blew onto the piazza from the narrow streets where it met no obstacle. Delrio, Maini and Volpi turned up their collars to give themselves some protection.
Volpi had his binoculars trained on the near slope of Montelupo, now only half in sunlight. “They’re still climbing up from both sides.”
“Have they got him surrounded?” Delrio said.
“They’ll have a hard time of it surrounding the Woodsman.”
At that moment, a shot rang out along the valley.
“That’s him,” Volpi said.
Almost simultaneously the rifles, with their sharper report, returned fire. Rivara stepped out of the bar, slipping his coat over his apron. People in the houses opened their shutters and stood behind the windows listening. From the outset, the Montelupo war was one that could only be listened to. It had been so from the first shot fired days previously in the mist, followed by the other mysterious shots in the twilight or in the depths of the woods.
“They’ve definitely intercepted him, but they’ll never take him,” Volpi said.
There was no let-up in the heavy fire from the rifles, but the Woodsman’s hunting rifle boomed out again, three shots discharged one after the other, then a pause, then another three shots, all clearly heard above the police weapons.
“They’d nearly trapped him in a pincer movement, but he slipped away before the circle closed,” Volpi said, peering through his binoculars without turning round.
“Not one of them has one hundredth of the Woodsman’s guts. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets another one,” Delrio said.
“Now they’re firing upwards, and that means he’s escaped from the trap. When he’s in danger, Gualerzi always makes for the high ground, like a hare.”
A volley of shots rang out, the sound carried across the valley by the freezing east wind, the shots coming so closely one after the other as to seem like machine-gun fire. The Woodsman replied with three single shots, fired at regular intervals, followed by another two.
Something caused Volpi to grimace in seeming disappointment. “He’d got off the hook but now they’re back on top of him,” he mumbled, as though there was some flaw in the narrative. The Woodsman must have done something unexpected.
“Gualerzi’s an old man. He’s been on the run for days with no rest,” Rivara said.
As though in reply, the Woodsman’s rifle thundered out, the bullets skimming across the tops of the trees like a scythe. The sun was almost set and only the peak of Montelupo, bathed in a dark grey, aluminium colour, was still in light. The darkness was rising gradually up the mountainside, like water in a tub. In the semi-darkness, the battle continued, but the combatants were now firing at random, more out of fear than with any specific aim. The wind carried some stray yells down the valley, but there was no telling where they originated from.
“They’re running up the slope. They look as though they’d been bitten by a tarantula,” Volpi said, with some apprehension in his voice.
“They haven’t wounded him, have they?” Maini asked.
Delrio shrugged as if to say that was not possible. “If anything, it’ll be the other way about.”
A new salvo was discharged, and it seemed to contain all the rage of the men who were pulling the triggers. The Woodsman, holed up in some inaccessible cave, seemed almost to be willing them to do their worst. He returned fire only when their shots were less frequent, but his rifle no longer had the same resonance.
“He’s made a change. He’s down to small bore fire,” Volpi said.
“He won’t scare them with that,” Maini said.
“That means he’s running out of ammunition,” Delrio said.
Silence fell over the Montelupo woods.
“Yes,” Volpi said. “Gualerzi must be low on bullets, but they’ll not get him this evening, because it’s already too dark to pursue him. He knows every last bush and tree.”
The lights went on in the piazza, revealing the men’s breath hanging in the air. Volpi replaced the binoculars, which he could no longer use, in their case. Shortly afterwards, they saw the first headlights shine out around the reservoir. The engines started up even before some squads were out the woods.
To get out of the cold, the group took refuge in the bar. The puddles were already covered by a layer of ice, and the wind blew the smoke from the chimneys this way and that. The commissario waited for the carabinieri to return. He followed the headlights as they bumped about in the darkness, slowly probing the compact mass of the trees. The procession reached a side road and stopped there. Two vehicles continued towards the main road, while the remainder turned in the direction of the village, arriving in the piazza a few minutes later. The carabinieri appeared exhausted. Some of their uniforms were filthy, and some were torn. They looked like an army in retreat.
Other trucks came slowly down the road towards Boldara. Soneri, who intended to leave Dolly at the Scoiattolo and then eat at Rivara’s, moved off. The village had once more sunk into its shell of distrust and rancour. Shafts of light filtered from kitchens, while the sound of children crying or old men complaining could be heard through half-open shutters. Before Soneri got to the pensione, Dolly stopped in front of him and stood staring, barking into the darkness ahead of her. The commissario saw a man emerge from the shadows, walking under the light of the lamps.
When they were only a few metres apart, Soneri recognised him as the shepherd he had met pasturing his flock up at Badignana. He had the usual roll-up cigarette between his fingers, one end wet with saliva and the lighted end with scarcely any ash. He smoked on the tip of his tongue, as though he were tasting the cigarette. Soneri stopped but said nothing. The other man stopped too, but seemed embarrassed, as though wishing to give the impression that he just happened to be there, or else was not at his ease away from the woods.
“Have you been here long?” the commissario said, to open the conversation.
The other man shrugged, but made no answer. Discussion must have seemed a superfluous luxury to someone accustomed to days of solitude following his flock from one field to another, or simply sitting on a rock waiting for evening.
“It’s hell up there now,” Soneri said.
Once again the man shrugged. “I came down a couple of days ago.”
His voice and his attitude conveyed both a resignation which had been centuries in the making, and an acceptance of the reality, whatever that reality might be, to which it was necessary to adapt in order to survive in the mountains.
“You haven’t set eyes on Gualerzi again, have you?”
The man made a clucking noise as if to say no, but after a few seconds he raised his eyes. “If you go up to the mountain bar very early, you might meet up with him.”
“Did he tell you to tell me that?”
The man shook his head. “I met his daughter.”
“He’s being hunted down, and can’t hold out much longer,” the commissario said.
The man sniggered. “If it was just the carabinieri…” he replied with a gesture of indifference. “He’s got other things hunting him down.”
Soneri assumed he was referring to the cancer.
“Is he starting to feel pain?”
“He’s been in pain since San Martino.”
“He would be better coming down and getting himself treated.”
“He’s not the sort of man who’s prepared to go to a hospital to die. He couldn’t stand being in closed spaces, hospitals, police stations, prisons, whatever. He sleeps with the windows open even in winter.”
As he listened to the shepherd, the commissario became aware of how a sense of the arcane and primitive was gathering around the figure of the Woodsman, and of how his legend was growing day by day.
