Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Pino wanted to stay at Casa Alpina and help with the refugees, but Father Re had told Pino, “it sounds serious […] You need to obey your father and go home” (163). Before Pino departs on the train home, Ascari asks Pino to come visit him again to complete his driving lessons.

Michele and Uncle Albert meet Pino at Milan’s central station. Pino notices that the train station has taken several direct hits, but “stood much as Pino remembered it” (164). He also notices that the Italian soldiers are no longer guarding it and that “the Nazis were in total control now” (164). Michele and Uncle Albert lead Pino to Michele’s new apartment building where they are scrutinized by SS guards before taking a birdcage elevator to their floor. Out on the rooftop terrace, Michele shows him an antenna that is connected to a shortwave radio in the apartment downstairs that the Germans now use for visiting Nazi dignitaries.

Uncle Albert and Michele then tell Pino that he turns 18 in “fewer than twenty days […] which makes you eligible for the draft” (167). The Germans are sending all the new Italian soldiers to the Russian front. Instead of being drafted, Uncle Albert and Michele want Pino to enlist with the Germans so that they can “make sure [Pino is] put in a position out of harm’s way” (167).