Per Chi Suona La Campana.pdf -

“Elena–”

In the darkness, he heard her breathing. Then she whispered: “Then we do it together. Or I ring the bell while you run.”

“No one else knows the code. The old bell pattern for avviso – three strikes, pause, three strikes. My grandfather taught me.”

“They’ve put a machine gun in the church tower,” whispered Elena, crawling beside him. Her dark hair was tangled with twigs. She was the schoolmaster’s daughter, and she’d become a courier for the partisans because, as she’d said, “Words are useless if there’s no one left to read them.” Per Chi Suona La Campana.pdf

“So you were going to set the charge and then ring the bell yourself. A warning.”

“Yes.”

Marco lowered the binoculars. “The pass is clear for now. If we blow the bridge at midnight, their supply trucks can’t reach the valley by morning.” “Elena–” In the darkness, he heard her breathing

Marco leaned his forehead against hers. Outside, a truck engine rumbled in the piazza.

That night, Marco moved alone through the olive groves. The moon was a thin sliver, useless. He felt his way by memory, past the well where he’d first kissed a girl, past the blacksmith’s cold forge. The church door was ajar. Inside, the air smelled of incense and diesel.

He didn’t answer. The plan was simple: explosives on the stone arch bridge a mile below the village. But the detonator was in the church sacristy, and the Germans had turned the piazza into a staging ground. Someone would have to go down there. The old bell pattern for avviso – three

He found the detonator box in a wooden crate behind the altar. As his fingers closed around it, a floorboard creaked behind him.

“Don’t turn around.” Elena’s voice, low and fierce. “I followed you. You weren’t coming back, were you?”

When the villagers crept out of their cellars, they found the tower steps wet with blood. The bell rope hung empty, swaying in the cold wind.

A remote mountain village in northern Italy, autumn 1944. The war between Fascist/ German forces and the Partisans has reached the high valleys. The old mule track wound up through the chestnut woods like a scar. Marco knew every stone, every turn, because he’d been born in the stone farmhouse that clung to the ridge above. Now, at twenty-two, he lay belly-down in the wet ferns, binoculars pressed to his eyes, watching the grey column of smoke rise from his own chimney.

“That’s suicide.”