The Italian Romance (30 page)

The German officer stood with one leg slightly forward, knee pointed to the side. The stance made the fanned curves of his jodhpurs, tucked into high black boots, more manly, less like bat's wings. He tugged at the hem of his black uniform jacket which was also held in tight check by a black leather belt and lanyard. He gazed down the platform from under his peaked cap, high crowned at the front as if in continuation of a high, intelligent forehead. He straightened up, clasping his soft, manicured hands behind his back. He was very pleased with himself.

The platform was packed with his clientele, their suitcases, their children. The freight car was sitting in the sunshine, further up the track.

He was disturbed from his reverie, brought back to earth, by a soldier who shouted into his ear, ‘Excuse me, Sturmbannfuhrer, there is trouble at the gate.' The noise around him was deafening. They screamed, these Italians; they didn't speak in measured tones. The women were hysterics, pop-eyed; the Jewish blood.

‘What is it?' he said to the older man, whose rough jaw had not been adequately shaved that morning. ‘Wolfe, you will shave when we return to barracks, and present yourself to me.'

Johann Wolfe was caught off-guard. He stared at his commanding officer. You plumped-up little dandy, he thought to himself. But something in the young man's pale eyes made him draw up to attention, snap his heels. ‘Yes, sir,' he said.

‘Good,' Nitschke said. ‘Now let us see the problem.'

Johann Wolfe used the butt of his rifle to clear a path. He didn't have to make contact with any one's head or shoulder. Eyes glanced around, saw the polished wooden butt high above them, and the pathway miraculously opened, then closed just as quickly behind the two Germans.

Over the heads of the crowd, the debonair hats of the men, women's best concoctions on their dark hair, Nitschke could see the crisscross of the metal grill. He himself had remained there until the last of his prisoners were hurried inside, and had ordered his men to slide it shut.

Someone touched his sleeve. ‘Sir, please,' the Jew said. He smelled of garlic. ‘When may we eat? My children are hungry.'

‘Yes, yes,' he said. ‘Soon, soon.' And the man's hand dropped away from Nitschke's arm.

Johann turned his head and said, ‘We've pushed her away, and she keeps coming back. She says there's an officer she knows out on the concourse.'

He saw her. And he remembered her. ‘Ah, yes,' he said, and sighed. ‘This one is trouble.'

Sonia heard the Germans behind her. Her fingers clawed around the metal bars. She shouted again through the grill, ‘Please, Signora, will you tap that officer on the shoulder for me.'

A woman in a fur coat, bare calves thin as sticks beneath it, pointed her finger at a small, blond Luftwaffe officer.

‘No, not that one. Behind him. Behind him. The attractive one,' Sonia shouted.

Sonia closed her eyes with relief for a moment as the woman walked up to him.

She felt a hand on her own shoulder. ‘Come away,' the officer said in Italian.

She flexed her fingers and gripped the bars tighter. She did not look around.

The man turned. He bent to the woman as she tried to explain to him. She jabbed her finger toward Sonia. Sonia sang out, ‘Major, a word, please.'

The Major nodded to the fur-coated woman, stared across the crowded concourse. He could not make her out. He walked slowly, stepping around groups of people. His eyes seemed to register her face as he came nearer.

‘Major, Sonia da Fogliano,' she said.

‘Of course,' he said. He walked quicker. The officer's hand left her shoulder as the army officer glanced at him. ‘Signora, how wonderful to see you again.' He stopped in shock as he saw her cheek, the wound still gaping, the skin under the eye blackened. ‘My God,' he said.

He put his hand up to the grill, touched her fingers. ‘What has happened?'

She shook her head. ‘I seem to have been arrested. But Major, I need your help.' She looked him in the eye.

He gave a nod. His brow creased.

‘My son, Gianni, was with me. We were walking in the hills. I haven't seen him since. I haven't been able to get any sense out of anyone.'

‘He was arrested, too?'

‘No, well I don't know. They took him further up the hill, with the men. And another woman and I were brought down to the road. I haven't seen him since then. I've asked and asked. They frighten me, the way they won't tell me.'

‘Signora, I am so sorry,' the Major said. He tapped his cheek. ‘Who did this?'

‘A guard. I heard some shots,' she said. Her eyes widened. They were liquid, a dark, deep sea. ‘I heard shots when I got down to the roadway.'

He looked at her. She thought his eyes were so sad. Hadn't he told her a story about the blue sea where he'd gone as a boy, or had she made that up? He and Kurt, two lost men, she'd thought after they were gone. Taken out by the tide. Like her. Like Jack. And now Gianni.

‘And he hit you?'

She nodded. ‘I called for my son.'

He shook his head, privately. He rubbed his thumb across her fingers. She said, softly, ‘Major, I am so sorry about Kurt.'

‘You knew about that?'

Suddenly, she was wary. Alphonso. She said, ‘Everyone knew. The woods around there have eyes. And ears.'

‘Yes. As at home,' he said. He gazed at her. He saw nothing but innocence in her. A woman scourged by her son's loss, and touched by the death of a man she had met only briefly. Kurt had said to him as he'd clambered in behind him in the staff car, that day outside her villa, ‘I met her, Franz.' He'd touched his fingers to his breast. ‘Do you know what I mean? Truly met her.'

The Major looked over her head, fired German at the SS officer. Sonia felt the pressure of both their bodies, their deep voices. She was small between them, insubstantial. They spoke for two minutes, the Major asking a clipped question, and another.

He exhaled a deep breath. Sonia watched his face. There were dark channels running from his eyes down into his cheeks. He gazed at his boots. Then he faced her. ‘Signora, they are taking you to the East. They say it is a labour camp.' He leaned in till his forehead was pressed against the grill and whispered, ‘He said, tell her it is a labour camp. I don't know. You're Jewish?'

‘Yes,' she mouthed.

She had to turn her ear to him. He said, ‘If you can get off the train anywhere, run, do you understand? I don't know what these
camps are, but I have heard rumours. You must try to get away.' He pulled back and watched her. She nodded.

‘My son?' she said.

He sighed again, and the catch in his breath scared her. He said, ‘You must be strong.'

She began to shake her head, slowly, from side to side. ‘No,' she whimpered.

‘I'm so sorry,' he said. He tugged at his belt.

He spoke again to the SS man, whose shoulder was turned from her now, as he checked over his list of names with the Korporal. The Major seemed to be arguing. The grill cut into her forehead.

Franz said softly to her, ‘There's nothing I can do, Signora. This little prick has his numbers counted. But please, do as I say. Perhaps he's wrong about your son.'

Johann Wolfe thrust his arm across her chest. ‘Come,' he said to her.

He pulled her away from the grill. Her fingers seemed to have no strength. The Major's face swam. She stumbled against the guard, who pushed her into the crowd. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek.

The freight train was sliding backwards into the platform, screaming, brakes grinding against iron wheels, bolting forward, hissing back. The officer, who had saluted the Major and left him, made his way through his prisoners, strode towards the edge of the platform. He clapped his hands, once, twice, as if to attract attention. Only a scattering of those nearest to him could hear. A woman leaned down and picked up a small suitcase, clutching it against her.

‘That's your father,' I said.

Jane is in my workroom. She's been playing with the computer for two hours or so. I heard all sorts of squawks and squeaks coming out of it.

‘All right,' she says. Her face develops a frown. She is going to play hard to get. And so she might. She flips open the cover of a blue folder. ‘Do you write romances?' she says.

‘No.' I wonder what has predicated that question. I walk in. The small room is in a heap. I got Guido to stick up wooden shelves for me, which took him the best part of a year, and much grunting. He'd appear at my apartment door with a hangdog expression, weighted down with wood and the woes of the world. One grows tolerant. And we all have our ways of coping with the absolute questions, and the rather distressing lack of answers.

‘Oh,' I say, as I see the cause of her confusion. ‘No, I write that on the outside of the file so I don't get it mixed up, with research and notes and things.'

‘But it says romanzo.' She concentrates her frowning brow and overtly suspicious glare on me.

‘Yes, that's romanzo in Italian. It means a novel, you see.'

‘It doesn't mean romance.' She nods privately to herself.

I almost laugh at that face. She is practising, no doubt, for an
adulthood of clear sight, of seeing through veneers, and if she achieves it she will be an interesting woman, I would think. I don't laugh at her, though the rose-petal softness of her skin, the perfect working order of the muscles under it, make her akin to a two-year-old as far as this old bat is concerned. I could ruffle her hair and kiss her forehead. I don't do that, either. I say, ‘No, not in the sense I use it there. But of course, it is the same word. In fact,' and I reach up to a bookshelf above our heads and finger out my English dictionary, ‘if you were interested, you could look up the word “romance” in here, and you'll see what I mean.' I hand it to her.

She takes it with great seriousness. She looks at the cover. ‘There's more in dictionaries than how to spell things,' she tells me.

‘That's absolutely true,' I say.

She's pleased with that.

I turn away and walk out, leaving her to explore her favourite subject.

The door bell rings. He is blowing out his cheeks; he exhales and the bubbles under his skin collapse like bellows. I gather he is trying to tell me something.

‘Bloody hell,' he says. ‘When are they going to invent a travel button. You know, you get in a box, an elevator sort of a thing, press the button and bingo, you're home.'

‘You'd better come in,' I say.

He launches past me, trailing from one arm a beige trench coat intended to defeat the vagaries of an Irish summer, and his suitcase gripped rather too hard in the other hand. I don't think he's feeling as hilarious as he makes out. He practically brakes at the inner door and peers around it before he continues his forward thrust.

He stops near the couch, glances out the open door to the terrace.

‘Sit down,' I say. ‘I'll make you a cup of tea. Or would you like just plain water?'

‘Could I have both?'

‘Certainly.'

It's as I'm approaching the kitchen bench that he finally asks, ‘Jane about?'

‘Yes,' I say casually. ‘She's in my study.'

‘I'm sorry about...'

‘Uh-huh,' I say. I turn the faucet on, and water drums on the base of the stainless steel sink. I ease the tap back till there's a controlled stream, fill his glass. I see her from the corner of my eye. She walks quietly up behind the couch, where he's settling himself.

‘Hello, Dad,' she says.

He struggles to his feet again. ‘Sweetheart,' he says. He's stymied by the suitcase standing upright between him and his daughter. He steps over it. The trench coat slides slowly to the floor.

I busy myself with the kettle, fill it, plug it in, empty the teapot.

‘Oh, baby,' I hear him say. ‘I'm really very sorry about this, going away on you like that.'

‘Yeah, well so you should be,' she says.

I nod my head in agreement, throw another spoonful of tea leaves in the pot.

‘I got you something,' he says, the idiot. As I go to the fridge, I see him landing the case on the couch, bending over it, big thumbs and fingers, which are probably slightly shaking if I'm any judge, arguing with and failing to open the two metal locks.

She clicks her tongue. I put my head in the fridge and try not to laugh. ‘Give me the key,' she says.

And very quickly, the locks snap open. ‘Now,' she says. She steps back, rather dramatically and he, sheepish, begins to pat around among his shirts and underpants. She folds her arms.

‘Here somewhere,' I hear him mutter. Poor man. ‘Ah, here it is.'

I can't resist this. I turn my head. He pulls free a dark, trademarked plastic bag. ‘I hope you like it,' he says.

She reaches out, relieves him of it. I can't see her face, but I imagine she's treating him to the frown and the suspicious narrowing of the eyes. A multicoloured pullover emerges. She tosses the plastic bag towards the coffee table and it floats to the floor.

‘Oh, Dad,' she says. She has no guile, this girl. She likes it. ‘Oh, wow. It's gorgeous.' She holds it up against herself, the shades of the sea, sandbar clear green, deep, angry blue. She leans over to look at it. ‘Lilian,' she says, ‘look!'

I walk towards them. His molars are showing, he's smiling so much. He scratches the crown of his head. ‘It's beautiful,' I say. ‘What extraordinary colours.'

‘Hand-knitted,' he says.

‘Wow,' she says. ‘Hand-knitted?'

I suppose that is a new one on her, a bit like milk that originally comes from cartons.

‘Oh, I love it, Dad. Thanks a million.' She drops it from one hand and it drags across the floor as she goes to him. She puts her arms around him so that one of his shoulders is draped in it. I think the poor man is going to cry.

‘Oh, Dad,' she says, as she flings herself off him and on to the couch. She draws one leg up under her, and balances herself on it till she's comfortable. ‘I had the best time. I met this really cool guy.'

He looks at me. I widen my eyes and shrug.

‘He's really nice, and he goes around helping the poor and everything. I do too.'

I say, ‘Isn't that nice?' to him.

‘Yeah, you like him, Lilian, don't you? Lilian lets him come here and we sit out on the roof terrace and it's really great, Dad.'

He stands there, scratching at his head again and says, ‘Well, Jane, honey, I mean...'

‘Sit down, Jim, and I'll pour the tea,' I say.

‘Take the weight off, Dad,' she says, patting the cushion beside her. ‘Sit down here and tell me all about your trip.'

He's as obedient as a lamb, and defeated.

I bring him his glass of clear water. The sun is rocking around in it. As I hand it to him and wipe my fingers automatically on my trouser leg, the telephone rings.

‘I'll get it,' she shouts and she bounds away.

‘Jane,' her father says impotently and he glances at me with apology in his eyes.

‘Pronto,' she says in a deep, theatrical voice. I presume this is how she plans to speak Italian, when she learns a few more words.

She listens. I watch her, ready. She holds the phone out to me, her arm stiff, her face straight ahead as if the damn thing is nothing but trouble.

‘They're speaking Italian,' she says.

‘How odd,' I say.

I take it from her. Her hand is sweaty, as is the phone. ‘Pronto,' I say. I listen to his voice. I raise my brows as she watches me. ‘Un attimo,' I say, and I straighten my arm, hold it out to her. ‘It's for you.'

She opens her mouth wide, sticks her finger sideways between her teeth and seems to bite on it. Then she takes the phone, raises her head, drops her hand from her mouth, blinks her eyes just once like a movie queen and says, coolly, ‘Yes? Who is this?'

I leave her to it. It seems she's adept at putting the males in her life in their place, sixteen or no sixteen. Necessity being the mother of invention.

He says quietly to me as I pass, ‘Is that him?'

‘Yes,' I say, equally quietly.

He gets up and follows me to the teapot. ‘How old is he?'

I turn the two mugs so that their handles point at exactly the same angle. ‘Twenty-two,' I say.

‘What?'

‘Now, listen,' I say. ‘You look at the beam in your own eye before you start on everyone else.'

He starts fiddling now, with the milk carton. His face is having a conversation with itself, and it's not a very happy one, from the looks of it. I pour the tea.

‘She's a dear, dear girl,' I say.

‘I know that!'

‘Well, do you know you'll only have her for another two minutes and that will be it. She'll be off and married and all the rest, so you'd better start being a father to her. No more running away.'

His jaw is hard. He slurps milk in to the mugs.

I say, ‘I know that's the pot calling the kettle black, you don't have to say it.'

He nods. His jaw begins to tic at its hinges.

‘And that's why I am saying it to you, Jim. I don't like to jump into other people's lives, as a rule. But on this occasion, think of me as the guy who walks in front of the slow train, waving the red flag. I'm just warning you. And she
needs
you, for God's sake.'

‘Any sugar?'

‘In the cupboard. A nice pullover is one thing, a father's warm arm is another.' I pick up my mug and walk to the armchair. I watch her back. She's stretched the cord out to the roof terrace, and her shoulders are moving, her head bobbing about, and the cradle of the phone, clasped tight by her fingers, is swooping around swallow-like as she chatters. Young Roberto can probably make out only half of what she's saying, and that hasn't occurred to her yet.

He comes over quietly and sits back down on the couch. ‘Speaking of pots, have you heard from Francesca?' he asks me.

‘She was here last night.' I bury my attention in my tea. I sip at it. It's very hot, strong.

‘Was she all right?'

‘What do you mean?' I say. ‘Did something happen?'

‘Oh,' he sighs. He plants his elbow on the armrest, and leans his forehead into his hand. His fingers rub at the skin. Then his
blue eyes peep up at me. ‘I rang her, from Ireland. Up at the farmhouse.'

And now the penny drops. No wonder she was so pale and drawn-looking last night. This blighter set her up. I feel I am reprieved from the guillotine. It wasn't me, after all. Some other poor sod has to climb up the wooden steps and clatter over to the block.

I peer at him, too, from behind the steam of my tea.

‘I just happened to mention that I'd found a new manager, a woman who'd worked for us when she was living in Sydney a couple of years ago. And Francesca asked me what hotel I was staying at in Dublin, so she could contact me, and I said I was staying in this woman's home in Wicklow.'

‘And?'

‘And she suddenly went cold on me. She said she might see me sometime, then again she might not because her thesis was very time-consuming. Time-consuming,' he says.

‘Did she think you were sleeping with this woman?'

He shrugs. ‘I don't know what she thought.' He shifts the mug around on the coffee table. ‘I don't know. Look, I knew this woman for five years in Sydney. We were ... I suppose you could say involved. But that's all over now.'

I say, ‘So you didn't sleep with her. In her home in Wicklow?'

‘Oh, well,' he says. His forehead develops a frown terribly familiar to me since I met his daughter. He gazes at his knees.

‘Oh, Jim, for goodness' sakes.'

‘Look, what could I do? I mean,' he lowers his voice as he leans forward, ‘we'd slept together for years, I just couldn't say goodnight, nice to see you again, and wander off to the guest bedroom, and she wanders off to hers.' He throws himself back against the cushions.

‘Heaven forbid.' I glance at Jane. Her blonde hair is alight in the sunshine out there. Now I lean forward. ‘I tell you this, if you hurt my daughter any more than she's already been hurt by selfish,
stupid people, I will personally throw you off my balcony. You bloody, bloody idiot.'

‘It was nothing,' he stage whispers. ‘It meant absolutely nothing to me. Or to Sinéad. I really like Francesca. You know what I mean, Lilian, I really like her. I find her fascinating, intriguing, intelligent...' He searches the air for some other adjective to throw at her like a hand-knitted pullover.

‘Can I ask you something? Did you mention Francesca's name to Sinéad?'

He doesn't say anything. He rubs at his knee.

That does it. He's gone. I am going to think about my novel now. As soon as these strangers leave my apartment, I'll have to get back to the railway station. Where should I start? The platform? The freight car?

‘Actually I did,' he says.

I stare at him. That's taken me by surprise.

‘I told Sinéad I'd met someone. Someone very special,' he says. He looks at me now. ‘Lilian, men are fools.'

I hadn't realised what I was carrying. I feel it lift from my heart, a sadness, a heaviness, a terrible and unwelcome conviction that rain might fall on the just, but the sun forgets to shine on them occasionally. I say, ‘No point telling me that, Jim. You'd better tell Francesca.'

A barrel rolls into the room. ‘Daddy!' she shouts. She's glittering. ‘I persuaded him to come around and meet you. Isn't that great?'

Jim raises his arm. ‘That's great, sweetheart. Come here and sit beside your dad. And tell me all about this guy.'

She's a beach ball, this girl. She bounces to him, curls up into him. ‘And all about helping everyone,' she says. ‘Dad, I don't want to be one of these people who doesn't care about anybody else. It's so great, Dad.'