Fanfic: Eeeep miii
Title: "Eeeep miii"
Author: J.J.
Warning: Unbetaed.
Notes: Inspired mostly by the movie ‘El Alamein - La linea del fuoco’. And yes, by other assorted books but the movie mostly is what influenced me. You HAVE to see it.
Characters: North Italy Veneziano (Feliciano Vargas), mentions of South Italy Romano (Lovino Vargas), Germany (Ludwig), England (Arthur Kirkland) and Spain (Antonio Fernandez Carriedo).
Time: Autumn 1942.
Disclaimer: "Axis Powers Hetalia" belongs to Himaruya Hidekaz.
Hey, do I own something here? Oh yes, I own the plot and a sensible heart which would surely break if you give me harsh reviews... so please be honest but nice ok?
Summary: El Alamein. The quiet in between the storms.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The voice whispering in the back of his mind is weak, strangled. The words don’t make sense to him and he has no idea why he keeps remembering them.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He holds the tin can in his hands closer and opens it with a knife. He has nothing better to use.
His thumb is cut as he sticks his hand into the can as quickly as he can. It bleeds. He doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. It’s just a blending thumb after all.
He pulls the slice of yellow fruit out and sticks it into his mouth.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He closes his eyes, rolls his tongue on the wet texture of… what’s that, ananas?
It’s bliss.
For a moment he sucks it, feels the syrup on the fruit dribble down from it, on his face.
He’s making a mess. He doesn’t care.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He doesn’t mind the flies that begin to fly around him, that land on the ananas, on his face. He’s used to them, used to them covering the little meat there’s in the few cans that manage to reach them, used to those early jokes in which he called them condiment, used to the ‘jokes’ that came after, when the cans of meat they were supposed to eat had began to become even more scarce, if they reached them at all, ‘jokes’ in which he defined them ‘additional meat’.
Okay, so he’d been hoping the flies wouldn’t be around that late in the night, that, after spending 2 years only dreaming them, his first taste of fruits, real fruits, wouldn’t be mixed with the taste of flies, but flies are probably starved too and so they come even if they should be asleep and he resigns himself to share the can of fruits with them. He knows trying to chase them away would only be a lost battle. He’s tired of facing battles he’s going to lose no matter how hard he’ll work.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
His stomach growls, it has awaken too evidently, and he stop sucking and bites hard into the fruits, chews, swallows, feels the bite sliding down his throat, disappearing into his body.
It’s like… a feeling of loss, the knowledge that, once eaten, that bit of fruit won’t be there anymore.
Anxiously, he takes more bites from the slice of ananas, fills his mouth, chew, chew, chew, tries to force out of it all the liquid it might contain, tries to impress on himself the feeling of having his mouth filled, the taste of fruits, of the water that’s contained in them.
He’s probably also eating flies in the process.
He doesn’t care.
He calms down a little and slows down in his chewing - continuing on stuffing his mouth like this would only cause the fruits to end faster - tries to savour what he’s eating, tries not to end chewing too soon, so soon but it’s too late, it’s time to swallow the mushy things in which the ananas in his mouth had turned. His throat hurts as he does and he thinks it’s like swallowing tears but maybe it’s just because his cheeks are wet.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The wind blows through his louse infested hair, on his face. It seems even colder now that part of his face’s wet, syrup dribbling from his chin. He tries to close the tin can, to stop the flies from banqueting with its content and also tries to stop the syrup from falling from his face and on the sand. He tries to collect it with his hand and then to lick it up.
He tries.
He’s trying a lot out of late though the results are rarely good.
He keeps on trying though.
He doesn’t know when he’ll be allowed to taste syrup again, something else again. He doesn’t want it to go waste. The syrup that he manages to collect on his hand is sweet and bitter at the same time. Maybe it’s because his hand is dirty. Sand can’t quite clean it like water but he has no water to waste for his personal hygiene.
Actually he has no water but he’s not going to think at that.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Ludwig would scold him for eating so messily. Lovino… Lovino would be plainly disgusted. He doesn’t care, though his heart aches as he thinks of his brother.
The stars above him are so many, so shiny… rather beautiful really. Is Lovino too watching them? It would be nice if he were, if they were watching at the same thing in the same moment, even if they’re so far away. He can’t stargaze for long though. Looking at the stars causes his eyes to grow misty so he has to close them. It’s better to keep them close after all, it’s better not to see.
For a brief moment he wonders if the stars are mocking him, showing him the beauty of heaven right over his head while he’s stuck in hell.
It doesn’t matter. He had to survive.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He opens the can again, fishes out another bit of fruit. There are flies on it. It doesn’t matter. He had eaten worse, he thinks, as he opens his mouth and takes a bite. He chews slowly, although without really wasting time now. If England were to attack now… if his 88 were to pay him a visit… he might be forced to drop the can, he might end up losing it and its precious content. He can’t allow himself this luxury.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
There’s mostly silence apart from the wind whistling. Sometimes a man leaves the trench quickly and comes back short after. Diarrhea. They all have it, even Ludwig, who jokes about the ‘spatengang’ they’re all forced to do. Or better who joked. Out of late not even Ludwig feels like joking. Maybe it’s because herr General too isn’t feeling so well.
Or maybe it’s because Ludwig _knows_ too.
Ludwig won’t say it out loud though, Feliciano is sure he’ll never say it out loud but _everyone_ knows by now.
Without reinforcements they can’t manage, they won’t manage. They’ll lose. It’s just a matter of when.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He wants home. He wants a bath, he wants clean clothes, he wants a bed, he wants real food, he wants water, real water that tastes like water and not like petrol. Wine he could do without. Pasta he could do without. Polenta he could do without. But water… His whole body misses it, his throat, always raw and dry, screams for it, and the sweet taste of the Ananas, its dribbling syrup… well they’re just a palliative.
He wants water. And he has none.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He must not think at this, he must not. How’s that song? He tries to replay it in his head, tries with it to replace the voice whispering in the back of his head.
“Colonnello, non voglio pane,/dammi piombo pel mio moschetto/c'è la terra del mio sacchetto/che per oggi mi basterà./Colonnello, non voglio l'acqua,/dammi il fuoco distruggitore/con il sangue di questo cuore/la mia sete si spegnerà./Colonnello, non voglio il cambio,/qui nessuno ritorna indietro/non si cede neppure un metro/se la morte non passerà!”
It’s not working though. His dark thoughts are still there. The voice whispering in the back of his head is still there.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He should write Lovino. He should tell him he’s still alive and that everything is all right. It’s not but Lovino doesn’t need to know. It’s better if he keeps on thinking… hoping, Feliciano will manage to parade with the Italian troops in Alessandria. Feliciano wants him to keep hoping at least for a little while longer. Hope will make easier to deal with the conditions they’re in, will give Lovino happy dreams at least. If one can dream at all at night in Italy.
Feliciano knows.
It’s night and England likes to bomb Italy by night.
Lovino had written him that maybe that is England’s twisted idea of romantic. Feliciano assumes Lovino was trying to make a joke, although a bitter one, but it’s Milan, Genoa and Turin that are being bombed the most and Feliciano doesn’t really feel like laughing over it. He doesn’t want his cities to end up like Coventry. Or Guernica. His cities don’t need to become the source of inspiration for that kind of neologisms and arts. His cities… His home…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
How’s the weather in Italy anyway? Is it rainy? Cloudy? It’s autumn after all, is the fog already trying to cover the Padan plain or summer’s still pretending not to know it’s time to go? Time to surrender? Is summer still clinging desperately to Italy, as they’re doing to that position they’re in? He should ask Lovino, ask him how the weather at home is. Mails come back and forth slowly, if they manage to come at all but still… it’s nice to communicate with his brother, and, even if Lovino’s letters are filled with amazingly creative insults and curses in his assorted dialects, his brother always seems to imply he expects Feliciano to come back home, as if he were waiting for him. It’s nice.
To be waited.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Was that English soldier being waited too? The one who had dared to wander in the Devil’s Gardens with some of his friends… and had gone close meeting the Devil himself.
Or God.
Do soldiers have a chance to go to heaven and meet God if they say they’re sorry? Or there’s too much blood on their hands for them to be forgiven?
Does God know sometimes they weren’t given much choices, it was either kill or be killed?
Does He _care_?
‘Eeeep… miii…’
It was that soldier that was saying the strange thing that keeps echoing in Feliciano’s head. That soldier’s companions… they were all dead. The Devil’s gardens… are nothing else but a giant mined wasteland. It’s a bad idea to wander thought it. Feliciano shouldn’t have gone there either but they had heard the explosions and it was days from the last time they had eaten something. And England’s soldiers often carried food along with them.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Before… before he and his people would have gone there to help just to help. If a mine explodes someone’s bound to be hurt and if someone’s hurt… he should be helped, shouldn’t he?
Or buried at least.
Now… now they don’t think at helping or burying anymore. Hunger and thirst caused them to lose most of their humanity.
Hunger and thirst and death.
So much death among them, around them.
It becomes natural, ordinary occurrence, you’re talking to someone and then there are pieces of that person all around you.
And you just roll away and search a hole in which to hide and maybe a weapon to grab so you can return the fire. And it goes on and on and on and maybe you turn mad but it’s not like you care or someone else care. You’re here by long enough to have the right to return home… but there’s no reinforcements coming and no one to replace you and so you know you’ll have to stay here, stay here, not return, never return, stay here, here, and so you shot, shot at England because there’s nothing else you can do, shot at him with a rifle even if he’s in a cannon because… because at least you’re doing something, at least you’re alive, you’re not dead yet, because if you stop…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
There’s a metallic taste in his mouth, his blending thumb should have stained a little too much the ananas he is eating. It doesn’t matter. He’s been eating ananas and flies.
He’s not going to stop eating because he had incidentally added blood to the recipe.
He’s not going to stop eating the ananas he stole from that injured soldier.
The soldier he had abandoned in the Devil’s Gardens surrendered by his dead companions.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
In the beginning… he thought that soldier was dead too.
It was easier for him when they were dead.
Some of his soldiers believed it was wrong to steal from the dead, but Feliciano had lived too much, had lived in times in which this was perfectly normal and, even if when this cursed war had started he wasn’t used to it anymore and had come to judge it as wrong, with time it got easier to slip into that medieval habit.
It’s just food he’s stealing and it’s not like the dead might need it.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
That soldier wasn’t dead thought, when Feliciano had gotten closer he had moved, he had tried to grab his hand as Feliciano was taking the can, actually he had grabbed it saying those strange words and Feliciano had frozen, had frozen and had stared at him. That man… he was still alive. He was still _alive_.
“Vargas, hurry, let’s go,” someone had told him but he hadn’t moved, he couldn’t.
“He’s alive,” he had whimpered. “He’s _alive_.”
“Eeeep… miii…” the English soldier had repeated. “Eeeep… miii…”
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Feliciano still didn’t know what whose words meant.
Was he cursing them? Saying he was hurt? Asking for their aid? Calling his mother? His God?
He has no idea.
English is so different from Italian…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The soldier stared at him. He stared at the soldier. It was odd but, although that soldier was English, he couldn’t see any trace of England in him. He wondered what that soldier was seeing in him, why he wasn’t looking at him as one would look at the living personification of his enemy. What was that soldier seeing as he was looking at him?
Everyone else had stopped what they were doing and was staring at them. Or maybe they had finished doing what they were doing and were staring at them. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. There was so much silence in that moment…
There was so much silence although a battle was taking place.
Humanity and survival instinct were fighting. It’s the last that win.
They can’t dwell there further and they can’t help that soldier.
They all knew, even Feliciano, so why was it so difficult to let him go? So why he couldn’t let him go?
Someone… someone tried to pull him away.
Gently because, even when things were going sour, his soldiers still have a special fondness for him, he tried to pull away gently, but he tried to pull him away all the same. They couldn’t stay there, it was suicide, he knew but…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
“Vargas, let’s go. We can’t stay here. His friends… they’ll come and take care of him,” he was told. It made sense but… but…
His eyes and the ones of the soldier were still locked together. That soldier was alive, _alive_ and he… he couldn’t turn away from him his gaze, as if hypnotized. He… he couldn’t move on his own, he couldn’t leave on his own. He wasn’t resisting to his soldier pulling him away thought. But, his mind kept on screaming they couldn’t abandon him there, they couldn’t, they…
“‘Ciano, per piaser, lassi stà, no xè miga ora ke te fa el mona, camina, vegni via. Ti no te spasemà, lù lo ciapan li so amissi…” the one pulling him insisted gently, but his voice was merely background noise.
Background noise.
Background noise.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The English soldier looked at him pleadingly as he was pulled away, tried to hold him there but his hold was too weak for that. Feliciano’s arm was slowly pulled free from his grasp. The English soldier’s arm sank in the sand.
The thud seemed to echo horribly around them.
Or maybe it was just Feliciano’s imagination.
He would never know.
“I’m sorry,” Feliciano said and it was true. He knew he had to leave. He just couldn’t bring himself to. “I’m sure… your friends will come soon to rescue you… I’m sorry… so sorry…”
He was sorry.
It didn’t change anything.
He still was abandoning that soldier there.
An arm was wrapped around his shoulders as he was turned, dragged away more firmly. Evidently, even if he was acting like a stupid sentimental (should Ludwig or Lovino know about it how they would scold him for that!) evidently his soldiers refuse to abandon him there. He let them pull him away. In his hands there was now the tin can that had been of that English soldier. He squeezed it tightly as he walked away. He couldn’t turn his eyes away from the English soldier though.
Feliciano knew what they were doing, he couldn’t forget it, no matter what was being told to him. He knew they were abandoning that soldier there. They were abandoning him there in the same way as their government had abandoned them.
To die.
Alone.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Afterward they had gone back to the camp, to the trench.
He had sat down and he had opened the tin can he had stolen and had begun eating its content. He knows eating fruits will likely worsen his diarrhea. He can’t care less.
He wishes he could forget the soldier he had abandoned back there. He _knows_ no one will come to save him. He _knows_ he left him there to die.
What he doesn’t know is why he keeps thinking at him.
His hands… there’s so much blood on his hands by now, that abandoning a soldier to die… which difference can it make? That soldier… he was seriously hurt, likely Feliciano wouldn’t have managed to save him anyway, had he carried him to the Italian camp. The doctors there did what they could, but there were no medicines, no disinfectant, no clean bandages and… and nothing.
That soldier wouldn’t have survived anyway, actually he had more chance of survival lying there, hoping for England to came rescue him. England has medicines.
It had been the right choice.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
So why, why he keeps thinking at him?
He was an English soldier and England is the enemy, the enemy that had made fun of him at the end of WW1, when he was merely asking for a tiny bit of land, the enemy that had been denying him a place in the sun, the enemy that keeps on bombing his home. Ludwig said he must hate the enemies, the Duce had said he must hate the enemies and he’s trying to do it, he’s trying hard, and England surely is not being nice to him, with all the bombing and dead and stuffs, but Feliciano knows he’s not without sins and… and as Giovanni said, he sucks at hating…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Still…
Why?
He and that English soldier have nothing in common. The look, the culture, the ancestors, the religion, the language, the beliefs, everything is different.
That soldier is an English soldier, England’s property not his. There are no ties between the two of them, nothing. And yet…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
… Yet as he had watched him he hadn’t been able to see England in that man. He had seen his people. He had seen himself.
Abandoned.
They had both been abandoned, abandoned to die. Their government can’t, will not come to rescue them, no one will. They’re alone. Scared. Abandoned. On their own.
Under this wonderful sky, on this hellish desert, no matter how desperately they still cling to life, they had been abandoned to die. And the English soldier’s plea after all, is the same as his own.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
“Aiutami… Aiutami Signore, aiutami…”
Historical notes, quotes, references and what else:
This is placed short before the English attack that would have forced the Italo-German forces to retreat after advancing till El Alamein. There were others previously, but the Axis forces managed to resist. That’s why in the summary I call it the calm in between the storms, because it’s the calm in between two attacks.
Technically flies should mostly sleep at night… but where Feliciano is there’s light and, more important, food, so they had woken up.
The charming menu for the Italian army in the last months at El Alamein usually included a tin can of meat and some water (1/4 of liter each day) that tasted like petrol because, to carry it, they used containers that had previously contained petrol. There should have been a little more but, it usually, didn’t manage to reach the Italian army (among other things they were really far from their reinforcement lines). To make up for it flies were rather interested in Italian food and chasing them all away was rather hard so… they were added to the recipe. Also, since there wasn’t additional water given to wash yourself up, people washed themselves using sand. Due to this people would kill to put their hands on English food (English positions were closer to their reinforcement lines and so better equipped).
Louses could be defined as ‘the first friend a soldier were to make’. It seems they keep company to the soldiers in Africa and in Russia too. And according to the tales they were big too.
Actually England didn’t have any 88. It was Germany who had the 88, or more specifically the 8.8 cm FlaK 18/36/37/41, which had a calibre of 88 mm (3.46 in). However, among Italians, the German 88 were so popular that they would also define 88 the English Ordnance QF 25 pounder because they had a similar calibre (3.45 in which are 87.6 mm).
Oh, yes there was diarrhea. Everyone had it so it was considered the standard condition for a soldier. To ‘deal with it’ people were forced to run out of the trench, dig a hole, relieve themselves, run back into the trench. The German troops called it ‘spatengang’ which should mean ‘race with the shovel’ (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong… my German is nonexistent).
In case you don’t know when Italian forces began attacking English forces in Egypt their commander suck, he wasn’t even worth mentioning. Then Germany send them some reinforcements, in form of the Afrika Korps which was lead by Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, later nicknamed the Desert Fox. The guy wasn’t fond of Italians and had a ‘peculiar character’ (not only he didn’t get along with the other Italian commanders but managed to keep on arguing with Albert Kesselring and other German high officers of his staff), but he never allowed the soldiers under him to commit war crimes and he _knew_ how to lead troops. He basically managed to turn table and chase the English back till El Alamein. However from here things went downhill for him and, to make matter worse, he also got sick. Some said he understood they wouldn’t manage and was searching an easy way out but, more likely, he got ill for real.
By this time it was obvious for all the soldiers they wouldn’t win, they would have to retreat sooner or later. Only neither Italians or Germans could say it out loud because this was considered merely defeatism and defeatism was punished so, officially, no one could be defeatist, which is why Ludwig would never tell to Feliciano they wouldn’t win. To make matter worse Germany and Italy had no real idea of the troubles their army was facing so, when Rommel will decide for a retreat, they will both complain. Adolf Hitler would have liked him to win or die there, Ugo Cavallero, at the time the Italian Supreme Commander, in the beginning complained as well then, decided to wash his hands clean of the problem, leaving all the responsibility of the decision on Rommel.
Polenta is a typical northern food that Hetalia completely forget to mention. To give you an idea of how typical of north Polenta is I’ll tell you southern sometimes calls northern ‘Polentoni’ (Big Polenta) or ‘Mangia Polenta’ (Polenta Eater). A northern way to say is ‘Polenta will make you happy’. Also, since Italians like variety, we’ve assorted types of Polenta, assorted ways to cook it and assorted ways to serve it.
‘Colonnello, non voglio pane,/…/se la morte non passerà!’ can be translated as ‘Colonel, I do not want bread,/give me lead for my musket/there is some sand in my bag/that will do for today. Colonel, I do not want water,/give me a destroying fire/with the blood of this heart/my thirst will be turned off. Colonel, I don't want to be replaced,/here no one will go back/no one will give up not even a meter/if death will not walk through!’ This is the refrain of the song ‘La saga di Giarabub’ (Giarabub’s Epic) written by Fascist propaganda to celebrate the resistance the Italian forces, lead by the Salvatore Castagna during the siege of what back then was Giarabub and now is Al-Jaghbub, (a tiny oasis in Libya) opposed against the English army. It seems that Giarabub, although tiny, had a strategic importance or so it was said so Castagna and his soldiers despite few supplies and ammunitions, almost no food and water, and Cyrenaica being already in English hands, refused to surrender managed to last for three months and a half before being forced to surrender. The Fascist propaganda tried to promote their heroism with the over mentioned song and with the movie ‘Giarabub’, trying to cover with it the fact they lost all the Cyrenaica. I doubt, however, the rest of the world cared/cares for this battle. Anyway the song, although very old, is nice and it was the sort of thing Italians would sing to encourage themselves.
Just before it became obvious the Italo-German forces would end up retreating most of Italy’s population nurtured the hope they would manage to reach Alessandria and parade in the city as its conquerors. They had no idea of the disastrous state the army was in.
During the first part of the war the main targets of the bombing in Italy was the commercial triangle, in short Milan, Turin and Genoa (the bombing started with Turin in the night between the 11th and the12th of July, basically one day after Italy declared war to France and England). Other cities got bombed as well but those three were the favourite targets. There’s to say they were luckier than German cities because, due to the cities structure and the fact that they had been built in humid places, the fires caused by the bombing didn’t manage to make as much damage as they did in Germany. Still, it wasn’t a nice time. The bombing become even heavier in 1943, when America and England were planning to have a nice walk through Italy. Among the targets that weren’t in the north Rome (after August the 14th, date in which the city was declared an ‘Open City’), Florence, Naples, Palermo, Catania, Messina, Foggia… It didn’t go any better after Italy surrendered. Allies continued to bomb it, in the hope to get the German forces that were still in Italy.
Anyway, according to ‘La Guerra Inutile’ by Eric Morris, the bombing of Italy managed to kill 64.000 Italian civilians and, according to ‘Junio Valerio Borghese e la X MAS’ by Mario Bordogna, more than 10.000 of them was living in Milan. Still, Italy had been lucky. According to the documents the Public Record Office (PRO) of the United Kingdom made available in 1973 the bombing should have been much worse. It was planned to drop on Italy in the period between September 1943 and February 1944 around 45.000 tonnes of explosive.
Coventry in Great Britain and Guernica in Spain were two cities heavily bombed by Germany.
Guernica was bombed during the Spanish civil war. It inspired Picasso’s homonym picture.
Coventry was bombed during the second World War. The bombing was so devastating it created the word ‘to coventrate’ (in German ‘Coventrieren’/‘Coventrisieren’, in Italian ‘Coventrizzare’) to mean ‘to destroy completely a city by aerial heavy bombing’. As of now Coventry is twinned with many cities, among them Dresten in Germany, a city that was ‘coventrate’ by America and England. The twinning was done as a gesture of peace and reconciliation.
Southern languages have some of the most picturesque and creative insults, at least that’s how they sound to northern ears. Really, the mere ‘bastard’ Lovino uses in Hetalia doesn’t make them justice.
The Devil’s Gardens were basically the wasteland that divided the English army from the Italo-German Army. Why the picturesque nickname? They had been mined by both sides as much as possible. It really wasn’t the best place for a walk but often people from both sides were sent in exploration so…
Back then were laid around 3 million mines, most of which are still there, becoming more unstable as the years pass and injuring local people who use the area.
Oh yes, technically many Italian soldiers had been in Africa long enough to have the right to go back home and be replaced with fresh troops… but there weren’t fresh troops with which to replace them so they had to remain in Africa despite having gained the right to go back home.
In Italy, during Medieval time, after a battle it was natural to steal from the dead everything they had of some value… or their weapons and armours.
Italian soldiers were used to call each other by surname. Feliciano however is special to them so, when one of the soldiers realizes how distressed he is and tries to take him away he calls him by name. Actually he calls him Ciano in attempt to use a diminutive of Feliciano, to express his fondness for him. Feliciano has no official diminutive as far as I know so the soldier made it up one. Why not to use Feli, Felì or Felicià? Sometimes in the north, instead that cutting the final part of the name, you cut the beginning (example: Antonio = Tonio, Alessandro= Sandro) so I used the same method to make up Feliciano’s diminutive. Mind you, Ciano is not an official diminutive of Feliciano. It doesn’t exist among Italian names (though, incidentally, it was the surname of Mussolini’s daughter’s husband).
In my personal head canon if a nation like Feliciano looks to a normal human he should see resemblance with him and the personification of his country. However when a human looks at Feliciano the thing gets more complex and they would see a resemblance with him and the vision/opinion/perception they have of Italy or Italians (they therefore might associate him with people but also with the geographical aspects of Italy or its art). Their only clear feeling would be ‘he has to be Italian’, though they might not know why they would feel it so strongly.
Considering that soldier was an English soldier, Feliciano expects him to see him as his most hated enemy.
Hum… some thinks ananas might worsen diarrhea some say the opposite. I guess it depends from which type of diarrhea you have. Anyway Feliciano thinks ananas will worsen things but, as said in the fic, he could care less. Also he’s not an expert. He might be wrong. Again, he’s not in the mood for caring.
Yes, the Italo-German Army was in poor conditions about medicines and such also. No reinforcements or supplies while people keep on dying means this too.
The not so awesome relations between Italy and Great Britain started when, at the end of WW1, Italy would have liked to get Dalmatia also but the request was turned down, it went on with Italy trying to conquer Ethiopia and being punished by the League of Nations for this and of course escalates with the two becoming enemies during WW2. Actually there had been up and down in the relations between the two countries but, in that moment, Feliciano is remembering only the bad moments.
Giovanni is Giovanni Messe, an Italian General, likely the best general Italy had. He and his forces will be the last to surrender in Africa. It seems that during his captivity he said in regards to the Italians that “Noi siamo generosi, noi poi in fondo non sappiamo odiare. La nostra anima è fatta così, perciò io ho sempre sostenuto che noi non siamo un popolo guerriero, un popolo guerriero odia.” (‘We are generous, we, after all, do not really know how to hate. Our soul is like that, so I have always maintained that we are not warlike people, warlike people hate.’). It’s unknown if he said so because he honestly believed or in order to improve the Italian position in the eyes of the Englishmen.
In case you failed to get it what the English soldier had been saying was ‘Help me’ which in Italian would be ‘Aiutami’. Since rules of pronunciations are different between Italian and English and the soldier was dying to Feliciano ‘help me’ sounded like ‘Eeeep miii’. Also, in case it’s not clear, the soldier hadn’t exchanged Feliciano for God. He simply thought Feliciano, the living embodiment of his enemy, was the only one at which he could ask for help. In the same way Feliciano can asks for help only to his God.
Dictionary:
Duce: (Italian) ‘Warlord’. Popular word during the Risorgimento. Probably due to this Benito Mussolini took it as his title. As of now it is basically not used anymore.
Aiutami… Aiutami, Signore, aiutami…: Help me… Help me, Lord, help me…
Translation of the quotes in Venetian:
(Also, mind you, Venetian isn’t Italian. It’s written and spoken differently and I’ve heard it also has different grammar rules.)
‘Ciano, per piaser, lassi stà, no xè miga ora ke te fa el mona, camina, vegni via. Ti no te spasemà, lù lo ciapan li so amissi… Feliciano, please, let it go, it’s not the time to be a stupid, walk, come away. Don’t worry, his friends will come get him.
Don’t grumble silently, please let me know what you’re thinking of this!
Send me your comments!
Author: J.J.
Warning: Unbetaed.
Notes: Inspired mostly by the movie ‘El Alamein - La linea del fuoco’. And yes, by other assorted books but the movie mostly is what influenced me. You HAVE to see it.
Characters: North Italy Veneziano (Feliciano Vargas), mentions of South Italy Romano (Lovino Vargas), Germany (Ludwig), England (Arthur Kirkland) and Spain (Antonio Fernandez Carriedo).
Time: Autumn 1942.
Disclaimer: "Axis Powers Hetalia" belongs to Himaruya Hidekaz.
Hey, do I own something here? Oh yes, I own the plot and a sensible heart which would surely break if you give me harsh reviews... so please be honest but nice ok?
Summary: El Alamein. The quiet in between the storms.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The voice whispering in the back of his mind is weak, strangled. The words don’t make sense to him and he has no idea why he keeps remembering them.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He holds the tin can in his hands closer and opens it with a knife. He has nothing better to use.
His thumb is cut as he sticks his hand into the can as quickly as he can. It bleeds. He doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. It’s just a blending thumb after all.
He pulls the slice of yellow fruit out and sticks it into his mouth.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He closes his eyes, rolls his tongue on the wet texture of… what’s that, ananas?
It’s bliss.
For a moment he sucks it, feels the syrup on the fruit dribble down from it, on his face.
He’s making a mess. He doesn’t care.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He doesn’t mind the flies that begin to fly around him, that land on the ananas, on his face. He’s used to them, used to them covering the little meat there’s in the few cans that manage to reach them, used to those early jokes in which he called them condiment, used to the ‘jokes’ that came after, when the cans of meat they were supposed to eat had began to become even more scarce, if they reached them at all, ‘jokes’ in which he defined them ‘additional meat’.
Okay, so he’d been hoping the flies wouldn’t be around that late in the night, that, after spending 2 years only dreaming them, his first taste of fruits, real fruits, wouldn’t be mixed with the taste of flies, but flies are probably starved too and so they come even if they should be asleep and he resigns himself to share the can of fruits with them. He knows trying to chase them away would only be a lost battle. He’s tired of facing battles he’s going to lose no matter how hard he’ll work.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
His stomach growls, it has awaken too evidently, and he stop sucking and bites hard into the fruits, chews, swallows, feels the bite sliding down his throat, disappearing into his body.
It’s like… a feeling of loss, the knowledge that, once eaten, that bit of fruit won’t be there anymore.
Anxiously, he takes more bites from the slice of ananas, fills his mouth, chew, chew, chew, tries to force out of it all the liquid it might contain, tries to impress on himself the feeling of having his mouth filled, the taste of fruits, of the water that’s contained in them.
He’s probably also eating flies in the process.
He doesn’t care.
He calms down a little and slows down in his chewing - continuing on stuffing his mouth like this would only cause the fruits to end faster - tries to savour what he’s eating, tries not to end chewing too soon, so soon but it’s too late, it’s time to swallow the mushy things in which the ananas in his mouth had turned. His throat hurts as he does and he thinks it’s like swallowing tears but maybe it’s just because his cheeks are wet.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The wind blows through his louse infested hair, on his face. It seems even colder now that part of his face’s wet, syrup dribbling from his chin. He tries to close the tin can, to stop the flies from banqueting with its content and also tries to stop the syrup from falling from his face and on the sand. He tries to collect it with his hand and then to lick it up.
He tries.
He’s trying a lot out of late though the results are rarely good.
He keeps on trying though.
He doesn’t know when he’ll be allowed to taste syrup again, something else again. He doesn’t want it to go waste. The syrup that he manages to collect on his hand is sweet and bitter at the same time. Maybe it’s because his hand is dirty. Sand can’t quite clean it like water but he has no water to waste for his personal hygiene.
Actually he has no water but he’s not going to think at that.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Ludwig would scold him for eating so messily. Lovino… Lovino would be plainly disgusted. He doesn’t care, though his heart aches as he thinks of his brother.
The stars above him are so many, so shiny… rather beautiful really. Is Lovino too watching them? It would be nice if he were, if they were watching at the same thing in the same moment, even if they’re so far away. He can’t stargaze for long though. Looking at the stars causes his eyes to grow misty so he has to close them. It’s better to keep them close after all, it’s better not to see.
For a brief moment he wonders if the stars are mocking him, showing him the beauty of heaven right over his head while he’s stuck in hell.
It doesn’t matter. He had to survive.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He opens the can again, fishes out another bit of fruit. There are flies on it. It doesn’t matter. He had eaten worse, he thinks, as he opens his mouth and takes a bite. He chews slowly, although without really wasting time now. If England were to attack now… if his 88 were to pay him a visit… he might be forced to drop the can, he might end up losing it and its precious content. He can’t allow himself this luxury.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
There’s mostly silence apart from the wind whistling. Sometimes a man leaves the trench quickly and comes back short after. Diarrhea. They all have it, even Ludwig, who jokes about the ‘spatengang’ they’re all forced to do. Or better who joked. Out of late not even Ludwig feels like joking. Maybe it’s because herr General too isn’t feeling so well.
Or maybe it’s because Ludwig _knows_ too.
Ludwig won’t say it out loud though, Feliciano is sure he’ll never say it out loud but _everyone_ knows by now.
Without reinforcements they can’t manage, they won’t manage. They’ll lose. It’s just a matter of when.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He wants home. He wants a bath, he wants clean clothes, he wants a bed, he wants real food, he wants water, real water that tastes like water and not like petrol. Wine he could do without. Pasta he could do without. Polenta he could do without. But water… His whole body misses it, his throat, always raw and dry, screams for it, and the sweet taste of the Ananas, its dribbling syrup… well they’re just a palliative.
He wants water. And he has none.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He must not think at this, he must not. How’s that song? He tries to replay it in his head, tries with it to replace the voice whispering in the back of his head.
“Colonnello, non voglio pane,/dammi piombo pel mio moschetto/c'è la terra del mio sacchetto/che per oggi mi basterà./Colonnello, non voglio l'acqua,/dammi il fuoco distruggitore/con il sangue di questo cuore/la mia sete si spegnerà./Colonnello, non voglio il cambio,/qui nessuno ritorna indietro/non si cede neppure un metro/se la morte non passerà!”
It’s not working though. His dark thoughts are still there. The voice whispering in the back of his head is still there.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
He should write Lovino. He should tell him he’s still alive and that everything is all right. It’s not but Lovino doesn’t need to know. It’s better if he keeps on thinking… hoping, Feliciano will manage to parade with the Italian troops in Alessandria. Feliciano wants him to keep hoping at least for a little while longer. Hope will make easier to deal with the conditions they’re in, will give Lovino happy dreams at least. If one can dream at all at night in Italy.
Feliciano knows.
It’s night and England likes to bomb Italy by night.
Lovino had written him that maybe that is England’s twisted idea of romantic. Feliciano assumes Lovino was trying to make a joke, although a bitter one, but it’s Milan, Genoa and Turin that are being bombed the most and Feliciano doesn’t really feel like laughing over it. He doesn’t want his cities to end up like Coventry. Or Guernica. His cities don’t need to become the source of inspiration for that kind of neologisms and arts. His cities… His home…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
How’s the weather in Italy anyway? Is it rainy? Cloudy? It’s autumn after all, is the fog already trying to cover the Padan plain or summer’s still pretending not to know it’s time to go? Time to surrender? Is summer still clinging desperately to Italy, as they’re doing to that position they’re in? He should ask Lovino, ask him how the weather at home is. Mails come back and forth slowly, if they manage to come at all but still… it’s nice to communicate with his brother, and, even if Lovino’s letters are filled with amazingly creative insults and curses in his assorted dialects, his brother always seems to imply he expects Feliciano to come back home, as if he were waiting for him. It’s nice.
To be waited.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Was that English soldier being waited too? The one who had dared to wander in the Devil’s Gardens with some of his friends… and had gone close meeting the Devil himself.
Or God.
Do soldiers have a chance to go to heaven and meet God if they say they’re sorry? Or there’s too much blood on their hands for them to be forgiven?
Does God know sometimes they weren’t given much choices, it was either kill or be killed?
Does He _care_?
‘Eeeep… miii…’
It was that soldier that was saying the strange thing that keeps echoing in Feliciano’s head. That soldier’s companions… they were all dead. The Devil’s gardens… are nothing else but a giant mined wasteland. It’s a bad idea to wander thought it. Feliciano shouldn’t have gone there either but they had heard the explosions and it was days from the last time they had eaten something. And England’s soldiers often carried food along with them.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Before… before he and his people would have gone there to help just to help. If a mine explodes someone’s bound to be hurt and if someone’s hurt… he should be helped, shouldn’t he?
Or buried at least.
Now… now they don’t think at helping or burying anymore. Hunger and thirst caused them to lose most of their humanity.
Hunger and thirst and death.
So much death among them, around them.
It becomes natural, ordinary occurrence, you’re talking to someone and then there are pieces of that person all around you.
And you just roll away and search a hole in which to hide and maybe a weapon to grab so you can return the fire. And it goes on and on and on and maybe you turn mad but it’s not like you care or someone else care. You’re here by long enough to have the right to return home… but there’s no reinforcements coming and no one to replace you and so you know you’ll have to stay here, stay here, not return, never return, stay here, here, and so you shot, shot at England because there’s nothing else you can do, shot at him with a rifle even if he’s in a cannon because… because at least you’re doing something, at least you’re alive, you’re not dead yet, because if you stop…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
There’s a metallic taste in his mouth, his blending thumb should have stained a little too much the ananas he is eating. It doesn’t matter. He’s been eating ananas and flies.
He’s not going to stop eating because he had incidentally added blood to the recipe.
He’s not going to stop eating the ananas he stole from that injured soldier.
The soldier he had abandoned in the Devil’s Gardens surrendered by his dead companions.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
In the beginning… he thought that soldier was dead too.
It was easier for him when they were dead.
Some of his soldiers believed it was wrong to steal from the dead, but Feliciano had lived too much, had lived in times in which this was perfectly normal and, even if when this cursed war had started he wasn’t used to it anymore and had come to judge it as wrong, with time it got easier to slip into that medieval habit.
It’s just food he’s stealing and it’s not like the dead might need it.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
That soldier wasn’t dead thought, when Feliciano had gotten closer he had moved, he had tried to grab his hand as Feliciano was taking the can, actually he had grabbed it saying those strange words and Feliciano had frozen, had frozen and had stared at him. That man… he was still alive. He was still _alive_.
“Vargas, hurry, let’s go,” someone had told him but he hadn’t moved, he couldn’t.
“He’s alive,” he had whimpered. “He’s _alive_.”
“Eeeep… miii…” the English soldier had repeated. “Eeeep… miii…”
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Feliciano still didn’t know what whose words meant.
Was he cursing them? Saying he was hurt? Asking for their aid? Calling his mother? His God?
He has no idea.
English is so different from Italian…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The soldier stared at him. He stared at the soldier. It was odd but, although that soldier was English, he couldn’t see any trace of England in him. He wondered what that soldier was seeing in him, why he wasn’t looking at him as one would look at the living personification of his enemy. What was that soldier seeing as he was looking at him?
Everyone else had stopped what they were doing and was staring at them. Or maybe they had finished doing what they were doing and were staring at them. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. There was so much silence in that moment…
There was so much silence although a battle was taking place.
Humanity and survival instinct were fighting. It’s the last that win.
They can’t dwell there further and they can’t help that soldier.
They all knew, even Feliciano, so why was it so difficult to let him go? So why he couldn’t let him go?
Someone… someone tried to pull him away.
Gently because, even when things were going sour, his soldiers still have a special fondness for him, he tried to pull away gently, but he tried to pull him away all the same. They couldn’t stay there, it was suicide, he knew but…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
“Vargas, let’s go. We can’t stay here. His friends… they’ll come and take care of him,” he was told. It made sense but… but…
His eyes and the ones of the soldier were still locked together. That soldier was alive, _alive_ and he… he couldn’t turn away from him his gaze, as if hypnotized. He… he couldn’t move on his own, he couldn’t leave on his own. He wasn’t resisting to his soldier pulling him away thought. But, his mind kept on screaming they couldn’t abandon him there, they couldn’t, they…
“‘Ciano, per piaser, lassi stà, no xè miga ora ke te fa el mona, camina, vegni via. Ti no te spasemà, lù lo ciapan li so amissi…” the one pulling him insisted gently, but his voice was merely background noise.
Background noise.
Background noise.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
The English soldier looked at him pleadingly as he was pulled away, tried to hold him there but his hold was too weak for that. Feliciano’s arm was slowly pulled free from his grasp. The English soldier’s arm sank in the sand.
The thud seemed to echo horribly around them.
Or maybe it was just Feliciano’s imagination.
He would never know.
“I’m sorry,” Feliciano said and it was true. He knew he had to leave. He just couldn’t bring himself to. “I’m sure… your friends will come soon to rescue you… I’m sorry… so sorry…”
He was sorry.
It didn’t change anything.
He still was abandoning that soldier there.
An arm was wrapped around his shoulders as he was turned, dragged away more firmly. Evidently, even if he was acting like a stupid sentimental (should Ludwig or Lovino know about it how they would scold him for that!) evidently his soldiers refuse to abandon him there. He let them pull him away. In his hands there was now the tin can that had been of that English soldier. He squeezed it tightly as he walked away. He couldn’t turn his eyes away from the English soldier though.
Feliciano knew what they were doing, he couldn’t forget it, no matter what was being told to him. He knew they were abandoning that soldier there. They were abandoning him there in the same way as their government had abandoned them.
To die.
Alone.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Afterward they had gone back to the camp, to the trench.
He had sat down and he had opened the tin can he had stolen and had begun eating its content. He knows eating fruits will likely worsen his diarrhea. He can’t care less.
He wishes he could forget the soldier he had abandoned back there. He _knows_ no one will come to save him. He _knows_ he left him there to die.
What he doesn’t know is why he keeps thinking at him.
His hands… there’s so much blood on his hands by now, that abandoning a soldier to die… which difference can it make? That soldier… he was seriously hurt, likely Feliciano wouldn’t have managed to save him anyway, had he carried him to the Italian camp. The doctors there did what they could, but there were no medicines, no disinfectant, no clean bandages and… and nothing.
That soldier wouldn’t have survived anyway, actually he had more chance of survival lying there, hoping for England to came rescue him. England has medicines.
It had been the right choice.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
So why, why he keeps thinking at him?
He was an English soldier and England is the enemy, the enemy that had made fun of him at the end of WW1, when he was merely asking for a tiny bit of land, the enemy that had been denying him a place in the sun, the enemy that keeps on bombing his home. Ludwig said he must hate the enemies, the Duce had said he must hate the enemies and he’s trying to do it, he’s trying hard, and England surely is not being nice to him, with all the bombing and dead and stuffs, but Feliciano knows he’s not without sins and… and as Giovanni said, he sucks at hating…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
Still…
Why?
He and that English soldier have nothing in common. The look, the culture, the ancestors, the religion, the language, the beliefs, everything is different.
That soldier is an English soldier, England’s property not his. There are no ties between the two of them, nothing. And yet…
‘Eeeep… miii…’
… Yet as he had watched him he hadn’t been able to see England in that man. He had seen his people. He had seen himself.
Abandoned.
They had both been abandoned, abandoned to die. Their government can’t, will not come to rescue them, no one will. They’re alone. Scared. Abandoned. On their own.
Under this wonderful sky, on this hellish desert, no matter how desperately they still cling to life, they had been abandoned to die. And the English soldier’s plea after all, is the same as his own.
‘Eeeep… miii…’
“Aiutami… Aiutami Signore, aiutami…”
Historical notes, quotes, references and what else:
Anyway, according to ‘La Guerra Inutile’ by Eric Morris, the bombing of Italy managed to kill 64.000 Italian civilians and, according to ‘Junio Valerio Borghese e la X MAS’ by Mario Bordogna, more than 10.000 of them was living in Milan. Still, Italy had been lucky. According to the documents the Public Record Office (PRO) of the United Kingdom made available in 1973 the bombing should have been much worse. It was planned to drop on Italy in the period between September 1943 and February 1944 around 45.000 tonnes of explosive.
Guernica was bombed during the Spanish civil war. It inspired Picasso’s homonym picture.
Coventry was bombed during the second World War. The bombing was so devastating it created the word ‘to coventrate’ (in German ‘Coventrieren’/‘Coventrisieren’, in Italian ‘Coventrizzare’) to mean ‘to destroy completely a city by aerial heavy bombing’. As of now Coventry is twinned with many cities, among them Dresten in Germany, a city that was ‘coventrate’ by America and England. The twinning was done as a gesture of peace and reconciliation.
Back then were laid around 3 million mines, most of which are still there, becoming more unstable as the years pass and injuring local people who use the area.
Considering that soldier was an English soldier, Feliciano expects him to see him as his most hated enemy.
Dictionary:
Duce: (Italian) ‘Warlord’. Popular word during the Risorgimento. Probably due to this Benito Mussolini took it as his title. As of now it is basically not used anymore.
Aiutami… Aiutami, Signore, aiutami…: Help me… Help me, Lord, help me…
Translation of the quotes in Venetian:
(Also, mind you, Venetian isn’t Italian. It’s written and spoken differently and I’ve heard it also has different grammar rules.)
‘Ciano, per piaser, lassi stà, no xè miga ora ke te fa el mona, camina, vegni via. Ti no te spasemà, lù lo ciapan li so amissi… Feliciano, please, let it go, it’s not the time to be a stupid, walk, come away. Don’t worry, his friends will come get him.
Don’t grumble silently, please let me know what you’re thinking of this!
Send me your comments!