The Villa Triste (19 page)

But when I woke up in the morning, the Banducci were gone.

It was about a week after that, that I noticed the holes in the side of the road along the Lungarno. They’re mines. The Germans have mined the bridges. My friend, the nurse who lives near the Campo di Marte, sidled up to me later and whispered that she has heard that the gas and electricity plants and the telephone exchange have also been mined. If the Allies ever get this far, the Germans do not intend to let them have Florence. They mean to destroy the city. To retreat sowing salt in their wake.

In the meantime, a new law has been passed, declaring that all Jews are now enemy aliens. Their possessions may be confiscated and they are being deported. Trains with sealed carriages leave our stations at night, rattling north. My friend says bits of paper can be found by the tracks, with names written on them. They are pushed through the slats, so someone will know.

We have several Jewish patients. Yesterday, the Head Sister called all of the ward managers together and told us what we must do – we are to go through their belongings, take any identity papers we find, any photographs or letters, anything at all that could identify them, and bring them to her. She, personally, will take them down to the incinerator and burn them. There are reports that the Germans are searching convents. No one thinks hospitals will be spared. If they come here we are to say we know nothing and send them straight to her. She is not a large woman, but the look in her eyes as she said this was enough to make me step backwards.

To add to our woes, a few days ago Pontassieve was bombed. Another misguided effort to hit a train station, which, as usual, remains unscathed. Not so a large number of houses in the town. We are all getting sick of making jokes about the Allies’ need for glasses. Some of the survivors were brought here. One, a man who was badly wounded in the chest and stomach, took quite a long time to die. I sat with him into the evening, holding his hand, feeling it grow clammy and then warmer and then clammy again as the light dropped out of the sky. He died just before supper without saying a word. I took his clothes out of his locker – a worn jacket, a pair of shoes, woollen trousers that had been patched. It is my job now to go through pockets and to enter into my ledgers not only the details of blankets and linens, but the names of the dead. Then I must parcel the belongings up, tag them as if they were objects in a cheap sale, and be sure they are returned to the right people when the families come looking for them.

This is the part of it I hate the most, this picking over other people’s lives. And yet, I know that if it was Lodovico – if he is dead somewhere – then I hope someone has wrapped his clothes, and written his name on them, and saved them for me.

I was thinking about this as I walked back to my cupboard, digging in my pocket for my key. But when I got there, I realized I didn’t need it. The knob gave under my hand. The door was open. Even before I pushed it open, I felt myself stiffen in anger. Someone had broken in. Someone had stolen supplies. I heard a noise and, certain I would trap the thief, I shoved the door inward. Isabella was sitting on my cot.

We stared at each other for a moment, and then I was so happy to see her that I actually started to laugh.

‘I thought it was someone stealing supplies,’ I said. ‘I thought you were a thief.’

She smiled up at me.

‘I am.’

There was barely room for the two of us in the tiny space. Issa had already lit my lamp. Tall shadows shot up the walls, snagging on the boxes of bandages and syringes, wiggling into the folds of the sheets.

‘How did you get in?’ I asked.

She shrugged, still smiling, pleased with herself. I suppose I should know that my flimsy lock would be no challenge to her. She nodded towards the bundle of clothes.

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’ I shrugged. ‘Clothes. Some poor man who was caught at Pontassieve.’

At that, Issa hopped off the cot and, before I could stop her, began going through them, shoving her hands into the pockets.

‘What are you doing?’

I started to snatch the jacket away from her, but she stopped me. One shoulder was ripped and the front and a sleeve covered with dried blood, but his papers, somewhat miraculously, had survived. Issa slipped them out of a battered leather wallet and studied them under the lamp.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course. Give me those.’

‘We can use them.’

‘Issa, no!’ I snatched the document from her. ‘He has a family!’ I said. ‘What would you think? If they were Carlo’s?’

She looked at me.

‘That they were of more use to the living than the dead.’

My hands were trembling as I slipped the papers back into the wallet.

‘Well, that’s your decision,’ I said. ‘And Carlo’s. But I can’t help you. I have a job. And,’ I added rather prissily, ‘a duty.’

I thought she would argue with me, ask me if my duty was to the living or the dead, which would have put me in something of a quandary, but instead, she sat back down on the cot. Curling her legs underneath her like a cat, she watched as I dropped the wallet into my desk drawer, turned the key and then threaded it onto the ribbon that I wear around my neck. As I tucked it away, Issa patted the cot. I sank down beside her. I could smell the familiar warmth of her sweater and a faintly lavenderish scent of soap. For an hour, the war fell away as we sat there in my tiny cupboard office, talking of Rico, and our parents, and for a few moments of Carlo. And then, for some reason, of our old dog who died last year and is buried under my yellow rose bush.

Eventually our words dried up. The hospital was quiet at that time of night. Footsteps passed occasionally, a door creaked. Curled on the cot we were, I thought, like birds in a nest, huddled in our safe place. I felt my eyes begin to close. I think I was almost asleep when Issa said, ‘Cati, there’s something we have to do.’

Her voice wasn’t very loud, not much more than a whisper, and in Issa’s world there was always something we had to do. But this time something was different. Somehow, I knew that she was not talking about two more downed Allied airmen. My eyes opened reluctantly. When I turned to her, her face was serious.

‘A family,’ she said.

‘A family?’

She nodded.

‘How many?’ I asked, because I did not want to ask the other question.

‘Four.’

There was a pause, and then finally, I said it. ‘Jews?’

Issa nodded. I felt a queasy shift in my stomach. Even since the Banducci had fled, things had changed. Convents were being searched. Hospitals were being searched. Perfectly ordinary people were hiding like rats and being hunted down like rats, simply because of the blood that ran in their veins. I knew it, of course. We all knew it. But now it was here, in our city, and Issa was going to ask me to reach out – to shove my hand, up to the elbow, into the cold filthy sewage the Germans, with their idiotic obsessions with ‘purity’, were determined to drown us all in.

‘They’ve already come from Rome,’ she said. ‘They walked, Cati. We’ve been hiding them. But now, we have to get them out.’ She looked at me for a moment. ‘Do you know where those trains are going?’ she asked.

I shook my head. I knew, and didn’t know. I didn’t know if I could know. But I understood that Issa wasn’t going to give me any choice.

‘To camps,’ she said.

‘Camps.’ The word sounded so harmless on my tongue. Like something healthy children did in the summer.

‘Not labour camps, Cati,’ Issa said. ‘Not like our soldiers. The Jews go to death camps. In Germany. They’re killing them. As many as they can. As fast as they can. Old men, women, children. They don’t care.’

I shut my eyes and saw the red lipstick – the clown’s smile on that child’s face. When I opened them again, I felt as if the walls were constricting, pressing Issa and me closer and closer together.

‘Are you going to take them over the mountains?’

She nodded.

‘Will they survive?’

The POWs she had guided before had been soldiers, all of them young men. The mountains, in November, with the snow – I looked at her and saw the answer on her face. That they would have less chance of surviving if they stayed here.

‘When?’ I asked.

I could feel Issa’s eyes on me like a touch.

‘Tomorrow,’ she said finally. ‘Tomorrow night.’

Chapter Eight

‘A Doctor Eleanor Sachs.’ Guillermo slapped the message slips into Pallioti’s outstretched hand as if they were tickets from a bet. ‘Three times in the last hour and a half.’

It was past four o’clock on Sunday afternoon. The day had been warmer than usual. Outside, the city was meandering towards sunset, making its leisurely way towards a drink, an early supper. Pallioti’s office had no such luxury. A lengthy and not entirely satisfactory meeting with the team prosecuting the fraud case had just wound down. He looked at the small pieces of paper his secretary had handed him and wondered what new set of problems they represented.

‘Who is she?’

Guillermo shrugged and fussed with his computer.

‘She refused to elaborate. She has the direct number,’ he added. ‘So I assumed you would know.’

Pallioti sighed. He started to point out that if he had known, he wouldn’t have asked. Then he thought better of it. Working through the weekend put most people in a bad mood, and in addition, Dottoressa Sachs, whoever she was, had clearly rubbed Guillermo up the wrong way. Or, Pallioti thought, perhaps it was just the end of that kind of week.

Very few people had his direct office number. One of them, of course, was Saffy. He searched his memory to see if she had mentioned someone, some friend or business contact, she had given his number to. And came up blank. Doctor Eleanor Sachs meant nothing to him.

‘Do you know where she was from, which organization?’ he asked. ‘Hospital?’

Even as he said it, a cold hand landed on him. He told himself it was stupid. If anything was wrong with Saffy or Tommaso, Leonardo would have called himself. On Pallioti’s mobile. Besides, he’d seen Saffy less than forty-eight hours ago and she’d been in rude good health. Not that that meant anything. One phone call in Genoa had cured him of that idea forever.

‘She would not say.’

Guillermo glanced up, his look suggesting this was somehow Pallioti’s fault.

‘Well, did she say anything at all?’

‘Nothing. Not a word.’ Guillermo shrugged. ‘She insisted that she could only talk to you. I am minced beef.’

‘She had my name?’

‘Dottore.’ Guillermo looked up at him. ‘You are on television. And when you are not on television, the newspapers are complaining about you. Usually beside a picture, with a caption. The entire universe has your name.’

True enough. Pallioti nodded.

He looked again at the slips of paper. The number given was a mobile. The message said,
Call any time, 24 hours
. In his experience, people who asked you to call any time and refused to talk to secretaries or give any hint as to why they were calling were invariably journalists.

‘Her accent was American,’ Guillermo said, following his train of thought. ‘Her Italian was fluent,’ he added. ‘But I’m sure of it. My cousin married an American.’

Pallioti grimaced. He had made the mistake, just once, shortly after he had arrived in Florence and solved a rather high-profile case, of giving an interview to the American press. To a lady from the
New York Times
. She had had a braying voice, asked long and complicated questions, and worn very expensive shoes. The result had been horrifying. A picture of him had appeared in the Sunday magazine, under the caption,
In Europe’s Most Beautiful City Is This Italy’s Sexiest Cop?

Just thinking about it made him shudder. He had not been able to go to the cafeteria for a month. The Mayor had whistled at him. He dropped the slips of paper into Guillermo’s waste-paper basket and turned towards the outer door.

‘Are you leaving for the day?’

Pallioti looked at his watch. It was nearly dark. He could sneak out the back service door into the alley.

‘Yes,’ he said, and turned up the collar of his coat. ‘Go home, Guillermo. Have a drink and put your feet up.’

Guillermo raised his eyebrows and turned his computer off with a flourish that suggested he had something else entirely in mind.

30 November 1943

I should have known. I should have suspected, somehow, that something was wrong. Mainly, I suppose I should have understood that Issa had not changed. That she might be in love with Carlo, but that made her no less ruthless. She would do anything, including lie to me, in order to achieve what she had to.

But I didn’t. I didn’t understand any of that. In fact, the thought never occurred to me. So, when I made my by now almost habitual dawn journey to the records office the next morning, I did what I thought was necessary. I stole four sets of papers and filled them out. One for a man in his fifties, two for twelve-year-old boys – twins, apparently – and one for their mother, a woman of thirty-five. I decided that they too were burns victims, the by-product of more Allied bombing. Pontassieve. No, I would tell Dieter, we did not normally send civilians to Fiesole, but there was nothing more we could do for them at the hospital. I would say this with a sad and meaningful look, implying that the wounds of at least two of them, possibly the children, assured that they were unlikely to survive. This, I hoped, would invoke his pity, and cause him to close the ambulance doors quickly. I rehearsed the scene again and again in my head as I pushed my bike through the scrim of snow that was falling over the city. It was just after dark. Flakes dropped lazily, drifting like petals. In another lifetime, I might have tried to catch them on my tongue.

Issa had directed me to a convent in San Frediano. Il Corvo would meet me there with the ambulance. The order was closed. We would not see the sisters. Our ‘parcels’ would be waiting for us in an outbuilding. Since our first trip, I had used and reused the bandages I had stolen. I’d added a few more supplies, but thankfully had had to steal nothing more in the last couple of weeks. The contents of my rucksack could easily make invalids of four grown men, so I would have no problem disguising a family with two children.

It was just after five when I passed through the San Frediano Gate. The bells were ringing. The huge main gates of the convent looked as impregnable as any prison, but when I pushed them, I found they were open, as Issa had promised they would be.

I slipped through, leaned my bicycle against the wall, and pulled the gigantic wood panels closed behind me. Then I turned and saw the familiar shape of the ambulance and the tall, haunted figure of Il Corvo standing beside it. I raised my hand in greeting, but this time no smile, no matter how unfamiliar, cracked his face. Instead, as I came closer, his black eyes refused to meet mine. His hands were dug deep in his pockets. He seemed unaware of the dusting of snow that was settling on his shoulders, or the flakes that were dropping and melting, running down the high dome of his forehead.

‘Il Corvo?’ I spoke his name, wondering if he was ill.

Finally, he glanced at me. Then he nodded towards a door that opened onto the back courtyard we were standing in. From the bins stacked outside, I guessed it was some sort of storeroom. I looked at him, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, I pushed the door open.

The bells had stopped, their echo hanging in the silence. Inside the room was so shadowed, lit only by one small lamp, that at first I could barely see at all. Then I picked them out. An older man, perhaps fifty or sixty, stood beside a woman who was clutching his hand. Two children, the boys, sat on the cold floor, their backs to the wall. Beside them, next to a stack of sacks they had obviously been sleeping on, was a young woman, probably younger than me. In her arms she held a little girl of no more than three or four years old.

I stared. Then I backed out, pulling the door closed. When I turned around, Il Corvo was behind me.

‘There are six of them,’ I hissed. ‘Six! Three adults! Three children!’

He nodded.

‘But there’s only room for four.’ I shook my head as if doing so could make two of these people vanish. ‘We only have four stretchers!’

I was trying to keep my voice at a whisper – I didn’t want to upset the poor family who I knew would be listening, who must have seen the look on my face.

‘We can’t take them,’ I said. ‘We can’t—’

I looked at him. I could feel the air going out of me, tears welling up in my eyes.

‘We must,’ Il Corvo said, his eyes dark and fastened on mine. ‘We must.’

We put the old man and his wife and the two boys in stretchers. The younger woman sat on the floor between them, holding the baby. She said she did not dare let her go, that it was the best way to stop her from making a noise. I bandaged her head, and the little girl’s arm. I wrapped a blanket around them. I told them they would be safe. I knew that, looking into my eyes, the woman did not, for one moment, believe me. But she smiled anyway. She thanked me. The man tried to press money into my palm. I put it in the pocket of his jacket, and told him he would need it in Switzerland. Then I closed the ambulance doors.

There was no wind. The snow fell straight down, spiralling into the headlamps. Il Corvo did not look at me, but kept his eyes on the road, driving even more slowly than usual. I think he was trying to delay reaching the checkpoint, trying somehow to avoid what we both knew lay ahead of us. No matter that he had remembered my name, no matter that he had given me cigarettes and smiled at me – there had not been one trip we had made when Dieter, or the other soldier who was sometimes on duty, had not opened the ambulance doors and shone his torch inside. I could feel my heart beating. I could feel my hands growing colder and colder as they lay like dead things on the wallet and the four sets of papers in my lap.

The checkpoint was lit. The barrier was a black line in a circle of white. Beyond, the snow was a gauze curtain. As we slowed, I saw no one at all. An almost giddy sense came over me. They had forgotten about it. The checkpoint was not manned. The barrier would lift magically and we would simply drive under it without even stopping. Then I saw the tall figure step out of the dark, torch in his hand, swinging from side to side. Il Corvo looked at me. We had never spoken of it, but I knew that somewhere he still had the gun, and that if he had to, he would use it.

My hand shook as I opened the door. The cold hit me in the face like a slap. Snowflakes drifted and swirled. It was not until I began to walk towards the figure in his greatcoat and boots that I looked under the brim of the cap and saw that it was Dieter. I did not know whether to feel relieved, or even more frightened. Dieter knew me a little. Surely he would see something wrong in my face.

‘Signorina Caterina.’

His face lit with genuine pleasure as he stepped towards me. He took my bare hand in his gloved one and made a little bow over it.

‘I was thinking you would not come again,’ he said. ‘I have not seen you in the last few weeks.’

‘You weren’t on duty.’

‘That is true.’ He smiled. ‘But now I am, and we meet again. Ah! I have something for you.’ He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Nicer ones,’ he said, ‘than before. I chose them for you, specially.’

I had been weaving a story in my head, grasping for something that might sound reasonable, or that he could at least pretend to believe – that this family had been bombed out and we did not have enough ambulances so were making people sit on the floor. That the little girl was not at the children’s hospital because we did not want to separate her from her mother. That I had lost their papers because I was an idiot.

I looked at the wallet in my hand, and then at the cigarette packet. Dieter would not believe any of that. No one would. Il Corvo’s gun flashed into my head as if I could see it. If the back doors of the ambulance were opened, he would have to use it. After that, we might survive. And we might not. All or any of us. I thought of Issa and Carlo, waiting. And of the young woman, probably no older than I was, who was sitting merely feet from me, holding her baby in her arms. Then I looked up, and smiled, and handed Dieter the wallet.

As he opened it, I dropped the cigarettes into the pocket of my uniform. I leaned towards him, shivering. He was in the process of slipping the papers out, getting ready to look at them, when I said, ‘Thank you for the cigarettes. It’s so kind of you to think of me.’

Dieter smiled. He looked at me for a moment, then he said, ‘It’s not difficult for me to think of you, Signorina Caterina.’

His tongue lingered over my name. His eyes were blue. There was a faint flush in his cheeks. The collar of his greatcoat came up to his chin. Insignia I did not recognize shone silver on the heavy dark wool. I reached up, watching my own hand as if it was not mine, and touched them.

‘I think of you, too,’ I murmured. Then I moved my fingertips slowly to the warm, slightly bristled skin of his jaw.

For a moment, he froze. I could feel the thudding of my heart, and his breath on my face. Then he slipped the wallet into his pocket, and his gloved hand came up and covered mine.

‘Schön,’
he whispered. Beautiful. His lips were warm and hard. As his hand moved down to my waist, I glanced over my shoulder at the ambulance.