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containing cheese and some olives and two bottles of wine and a fiasco of grappa, the strong raw brandy the peasants distill here.
    â€œI can’t carry all of this,” Fabio said.
    â€œAngela will meet you in the Corso with a knapsack,” Signora Bombolini said. Angela passed them then, still crying, and because she was running she was forced to lift up her skirts, and despite the fact that it was a matter of life and death, all that Fabio could seem to keep his mind on was the quality and condition of her legs, that they were so strong and well-shaped and so brown and clean-looking.
    â€œWhy are you so red?” Rosa Bombolini asked him. “Are you sure you are all right?”
    I am very much all right, Fabio thought. I am about to save the father of the woman I love, and she will be grateful to me for the rest of my life. He broke into a trot, although he knew he should save his energy. He met Angela Bombolini at the curve in the Corso Mussolini down below Babbaluche’s house.
    â€œLet him fall off,” the cobbler told him. “It would be a public service to the city.”
    Angela handed him a black knapsack made of imitation leather that had once been the property of the Young Fascist Scouts, and the outer flap of which read: “This sack belongs to Bruno. Don’t touch or death. ” On the other side, burned into the leather, was: “Believe     Obey     Fight—Your Duce.”
    It caused both of them to laugh.
    â€œI’ll pray for you, Fabio,” she said. It was the first time he had ever heard her use his name.
    The ladder shocked Fabio. He had not looked at it in many years, and he was frightened to see how narrow and inadequate it was. It was not a ladder at all, but long lengths of pipe, five or six inches around, which were joined together and into which small round iron spikes had been fixed, at intervals of six or eight inches, to serve as foot and hand holds.
    â€œDon’t look up, Fabio. Just go up,” someone said to him.
    â€œDon’t go up. You can’t help him.”
    He tightened his belt so his shirt would stay in and slung the ropes around his shoulders and tied the bottoms of his pants around his ankles with rough twine so they wouldn’t flap.
    â€œYou’re a fool to go, Fabio. Why should you get killed for him?”
    Fabio pulled himself up onto the pipe and for one moment he was forced to look up, and he was astonished to see how far up the fat wine seller had managed to pull himself. The metal was hot to the touch but not hot enough to burn and he took a deep breath then and began to climb. It was not hard for him at first, but he was surprised how narrow the little spikes were; they felt even smaller than they looked. Something wet touched his hair and he realized it was paint from the buckets Bombolini had yoked about his neck. He tried to look neither up nor down, but out across the mountain slope, the green terraces down below, across the valley; he fixed his eye on Montefalcone. All at once there was a tremendous shout from the people in the piazza below. He pulled himself in against the pipe and waited for the body of Bombolini to rush by him.
    When nothing happened he looked up and he could see Angela’s father hanging out away from the pipe like a door that the wind has blown open. Bombolini had missed his footing; but somehow, instead of falling, he had managed to hang on with one foot and one hand and now he hung there, swaying back and forth, trying to pull himself back to the pipe. Fabio could feel the pipe trembling from the effort and it frightened him, and then he heard a second cheer from the piazza and he looked up and Bombolini was climbing upward again.
    *   *   *
    Across the piazza from the wineshop, in the cellar of the Leaders’ Mansion where The Band had barricaded themselves, they heard the shout.
    â€œIt won’t be much longer now,”