The Figures of Beauty Read Free

troughs cooled the half-kilometre loop of wire.
    There was the ringing of hammers, the clang of iron tools, the turning of wooden wheels on the quarry floor. There was singsong shouting to men working high on the rigged lattice of scaffolding, to men bent over saw beds, to men coiling lengths of thick rope and checking cables and pulleys.
    There was the occasional scattered cascade of cliffside debris. And it was this last sound—the clatter of falling rock—that carried through the valleys and delivered to those who heard it the greatest alarm.
    Just before the accident, five workers had hoisted a quarter-ton block of marble onto a wooden sled with rope, straps, and pulley. Of the crew, three were from the same family—a father and his two sons. They lowered the stone, adjusted it, squared it. They secured it with heavy wooden wedges.
    A third son had started in the quarry only a few days earlier. He was too young to work with the crew. His job was to bring tools and carry rope and fetch water for the thirsty men.
    The stone could stay at the head of the trestle while the crew had their lunch. The tackle was locked, the leather belts were cinched. The block sat poised on the sled at the same angle as the slope up which young Lino Cavatore was climbing.
    The boy was carrying a bucket. The handle was cutting into his fingers. But he remained intent on keeping the shifting weight of the water level. He did not want to spill a drop. The wooden track was very steep.

CHAPTER TWO
Castello, August 1944
    T HERE’D BEEN REPORTS of Germans in the hills above Pietrabella. But the sergeant, who was about as level-headed as anyone could want a sergeant to be, wasn’t all that worked up about it. His men figured this was an example of his intuition about these things. But that was wishful thinking. It was just that his thoughts resembled uncomplicated equations. And quite a while ago he’d noticed that the ratio of Germans in the hills to Italian kids who wanted cigarettes was pretty much one to one.
    “What the hell,” he said when the order came down. “It’s a good day for a hike.”
    Had there been a photograph it would have shown the fourteen of them in a stretched-out, staggered line, walking up a stone-scrabbled path that was about the width of a hay wagon. There would be something about the light in the picture and something about the weary posture of the soldiers that would convey the afternoon heat. Their fatigues were about the samecolour as the dirt. They had their guns over their shoulders. Their helmets had netting.
    The recon troop was heading across a wide, unfolding valley toward one of the villages in the hills above them. They were out of the 371st U.S. Infantry and currently engaged in the comings and goings along the northwest sector of the Gothic Line. It was a nasty business. Everybody wished the Germans would just get the hell on with their retreating.
    The first sign of trouble was the silence. In groups of three and four they’d clanked across the open stretch of land between the cover of an olive grove and the village wall. Most of them had been in Italy since Sicily. And by now, huddled at the base of the old stone wall and just to the right of the only gate that led up into the few narrow streets and the one square of Castello, they all knew what an Italian village sounded like. And it wasn’t this.
    They were all listening for something, anything, from inside.
    That’s probably why they all heard it. Although it might have been a quirk of acoustics. Because a sound that was so hushed it almost wasn’t a sound at all echoed from ancient surface to ancient surface and found its way to them. And what they all heard was the sharp intake of the breath of a baby about to cry.
    They went carefully to the first few doors, staying close to the stone houses while spreading out down the cobbled street. But their search became less cautious the more it became apparent the place was abandoned.
    They kicked