The Villa Triste (29 page)
10 June 1944
Spring came suddenly. But not before we endured a darkness that, in my worst moments, I thought would never end. I survived, I think, oddly enough, because of JULIET.
Her transmissions became an obsession. Or less the transmissions themselves, than the collecting for them. The counting. It became – as it is – an illness, a fever of the brain, akin to only turning left, or having to say good morning to magpies. Thirteen jeeps heading south. Fifteen tanks moving west. Twenty cans of fuel under the tarpaulin behind the church. Once the mania began, I could not stop.
Wheeling my bicycle along the Lungarno, I saw between the silver spin of spokes the rough patches in the road which meant that there were mines. I studied sandbags. I climbed to high places as the weather warmed, and, pretending to admire the view, picked out the snouts of guns. With my new eyes, I saw a city primed for death. Machine guns nested in the towers. Munitions were stacked in the thickets of the Boboli Gardens. I saw and counted them all. At night when I lay down, I mapped them in my head. I repeated the quantities – twenty-five of these, seven of those – until I was letter perfect. Until I could feed them to JULIET piece by piece.
As the nights shortened, the air raid sirens howled more frequently. Rifredi was hit again and again. Campo di Marte, Porta al Prato, and the theatre – our beautiful theatre. And then, one morning, the Allies changed. Instead of factories and stations and railway lines, they decided to have a day of bombing villas. I assume they intended to hit only those that had been sequestered by the Germans. Unfortunately, however, they lost their glasses again and made a mistake.
The villa that had been taken over as an evacuation centre for the children’s hospital they bombed last autumn suffered a direct hit. I saw the Head Sister in the ward that night. The Red Cross had been informed, she said. The German consul swears that the Allies had been informed, as they are informed of the sites of all hospitals. To think of it now still makes me so angry I can barely write. I have to stop and twist my hands to keep my fists from clenching.
There were tiny bodies. Rubble, and fire. In the middle of it all, an old man grabbed my arm. He told me he was looking for his granddaughter. Then he burst into tears and told me his cat had run away and that all he wanted was to die.
Then, at the end of March, GAP attacked a column of German soldiers in Rome. Thirty-two were killed, and more wounded. The next night an announcement was made by the German high command. From now on, for every German killed, ten civilians will be executed.
My life, Issa’s life, Mama’s and Papa’s lives, any man or woman you see in the street – it is official now. We are each worth one-tenth of a German.
It was about a month after this that we resumed the ambulance runs and I saw Issa again for the first time since February. Our ‘parcels’ were once more Allied POWs. I understood that we had to do what we were doing, that a choice is not possible, but looking into their faces as I bandaged them, turned them into victims of their own bombs, I felt laughter rising in my chest. Not happy laughter, but the laughter of insanity. Of madness – that we should rescue these men, so they may return and bomb us, in the name of freedom.
Il Corvo must have seen my face. He must have read something in my eyes. I had not seen him since the horrible night in December, since he watched me step into Dieter’s arms. He was as quiet as ever, even more withdrawn, as if the winter had driven him back inside himself. When I looked into his face, behind his glasses I could not see his eyes at all. But when he placed his hand on my shoulder, it was oddly comforting, and caused the laughter to die in my throat.
He touched me again as we came to the checkpoint for the first time; a slight, steadying pressure on my elbow. I was prepared. I thought Dieter would be there. I thought I would have to look into his face. I thought I would have to smile and say his name. But in the end, I didn’t. The soldier manning the checkpoint was a stranger, and he didn’t seem to care much. He barely listened to my explanation about the monastery at Fiesole, about casualties and beds, glanced at the papers, and waved us through. Just before we drove under the raised barrier, he leaned down to the window. For a moment, my heart skipped. But all he wanted to do was warn us to douse our lights because of Allied bombs.
The shed was the same. Everything was the same, except it was spring and instead of bare branches and fallen leaves, the woods above the monastery were furred with green. It was twilight, and there was no need for a lamp, even inside. Issa and Carlo were waiting for us, as usual, and the moment I got out, took her shoulders, kissed her and came face to face with her, I knew. She saw it in my eyes, and nodded. Then she pulled me close and whispered, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Does Carlo know?’
She smiled. ‘Of course. But that’s enough for now.’
I knew why she wanted it that way – she thought that if they knew she was pregnant they might try to stop her going over the mountains, try to prevent her from doing the thing she loved best.
We ran several more trips in May, and I saw Issa frequently. But with the men’s clothes she had taken to wearing all the time by then it was impossible to guess, if you did not know, that Carlo’s baby was growing inside her. They were rarely without one another. I almost never saw her alone. Every time we met, she seemed to me more radiant, more glossy and whole, and I felt again that we were like an hourglass. As my life diminished, as I felt myself wither and grow mean with fear and emptiness, Issa blossomed. She turned, like a beautiful flower, towards the sun.
Oddly, it was Il Corvo who seemed to sense what I felt. I don’t know what he knew, or what he didn’t, but there was something similar in us – a natural fugitive. As if we both had at our core a secret and undrainable little pond of fear that all the time we struggled not to slip into.
It was this sense that we could see inside one another, and recognize familiar territory, that made me ask him, one May night, about his sister. He had never mentioned them again, his sister and his mother, but I wondered if perhaps she also was younger, more beautiful, more blessed – if that was something else we had in common. And so I asked him. I asked first if they were safe, and he nodded. Then, emboldened, I asked if she was precious. I meant, like a treasure, or a jewel, that must be safeguarded. It was a stupid question, probably, and for a moment he didn’t speak, and I didn’t think he was going to. Then he said something very strange and probably true.
He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, because they are my family.’
He turned and looked at me, sitting in the front seat of the ambulance, and his face, his long strange face with his little round glasses, was different. What I saw in it was not fear, or love, but sadness. Which I suppose may be the same thing.
‘They are my family,’ he said again, as if that answered everything.
Later, I thought I would have liked to have asked him if that was what he meant – that in times like this the bond of blood reaches beyond love, beyond notions of sacrifice, or choice. But I never got the chance, because those were the last words Il Corvo and I ever spoke.
In late May, Issa came back into the city with the news that heavy fighting had broken out on the northern slopes of the mountains. The partisan group she and Carlo handed their ‘parcels’ on to, who call themselves the Stella Rossa, had heard that there was going to be a rastrellamento – that German and Fascist troops were preparing to sweep down on them and wipe them out. This time, however, instead of fading away, they chose to turn and attack. The Nazi-Fascists lost 240 men before they retreated. The Stella Rossa lost one.
The news was electrifying – and more so the next day when we heard that after four months, almost overnight the Allies had broken out of Anzio and were pushing the Germans north towards Rome. Even I was excited. Suddenly it seemed everything was splintering around us, like a great ice block breaking up. For the first time it seemed a real possibility that the Allies might be in Florence in a matter of weeks. No one thought any more about ambulance runs or smuggling POWs in coffins – which I knew Issa had been doing – or even using German uniforms to demand the ‘transfer’ of prisoners. Now, all anyone thought about was JULIET. Any piece of information, any titbit about a gun emplacement or the movement of a column, could be crucial.
In the days that followed, the German troops began to buzz like hornets. The Banda Carita seemed to be everywhere, and the bombing got worse. Finding places to transmit from, which was already difficult, became close to impossible. Then, on 5 June, Rome was liberated. The first European capital to fall to the Allies. The next morning, on Swiss radio, we heard of the invasion of France. That night, ROMEO asked us for anything and everything we could send.
Mama, Papa, Issa, Carlo, Enrico and I met at home. The men and Issa came one by one, after dark, slipping onto the terrace like shadows. The night was warm, but we did not dare to open the windows or the shutters. We sat in the kitchen, with the pantry and the cellar doors open, in case anyone came and they needed to hide, burrow themselves away like animals in their own home.
No one wanted to stay together for longer than necessary, and there was not much time for niceties. I did not even have a chance to whisper to Issa, to ask her how she is – although I saw Mama’s eyes roving over her, deft as fingers, and I am sure she guessed. When Mama looked at me, I saw the question in her eyes, and had to look away. I was spared being Issa’s Judas by Papa’s hushed voice.
He pointed out that, despite my best efforts, it is getting harder and harder to find anywhere safe for JULIET. Using the same place twice is not possible, but every time we move, we take a risk. Papa paused and looked around the table. Then he suggested that we gather everything we can – on the city, on the fortifications, on the railways and the mines and the power stations, and send it all at once. Make one final transmission before the Allies arrive. One final love letter from JULIET to ROMEO.
When he had finished speaking, there was a silence. Mama and Papa were at either end of the table. I was sitting next to Enrico. Carlo and Issa were across from us. We had not lit a lamp, and none of us were much more than familiar shapes, outlines in the half-dark of the summer night that crept through the slats in the shutters. I was looking at my own hands, folded on the familiar wooden slab where I had sat every day after school with Emmelina, and more recently, on nights when I came home, with Mama. Where I had given the poor Banducci child sweet tea and a biscuit. Where we had sat with those first POWs barely six months earlier and described to them a plan to save their lives with some gauze and an ambulance.
‘We should vote,’ Papa said.
I knew Issa was watching me. I could feel her eyes in the dark. Papa raised his hand. Then Enrico raised his. Then Carlo, and Mama, and finally me.
We sat there in the dark like good children in a school class. No one spoke. We waited, and waited. But Issa did not raise her hand.
Finally, Papa stood up and said, ‘Well then, we have a majority. That’s decided.’
And so it is. The date is set. Two days from now, on Monday, 12 June, ROMEO will be waiting. It was left to me to find the place, and I have.
The old lady who owned the house died a week ago. I have been watching it for the last four days. There is no question, it is empty. I’ve even been there myself – it’s just off the Via dei Renai – in the morning, the evening, the afternoon. I let myself in. I walked through the rooms, looked in her closets and climbed her stairs.
It is an old house, with the servants’ quarters downstairs and the family living rooms above: dining room, sitting room, and parlours. On the next floor there are bedrooms, and above that, an attic. I was prepared, if anyone challenged me, to tell all sorts of lies. ‘She told me to find letters she had left for her family.’ ‘She gave me the china cat on the mantelpiece.’ But the place is deserted. I have seen almost no one in the street. People are packing and fleeing. Going north, trying to get out of the line of the Allied advance.
I have not told anyone, even Mama and Papa, where we are meeting. I will give the address to Issa the night before. She will, in turn, tell those who need to know. It is because of the baby, I think, that she is wary as a fox. To me she mutters that meetings are dangerous. That all of us being together in one place is too risky. I know she is remembering last February. But I have pointed out to her that even she said there were too many groups, too many people who did not owe each other enough, involved in that. This is different. I have tried to reassure her. There will be nine people, yes – but five of them are us, Carlo is the sixth, and the others are GAP members she has worked with through all of this. They have a bond of trust. And they are risking as much as we are.
I tell Issa this, and still she is not happy, but finally she has agreed that we have no choice. It is too dangerous to attempt several transmissions. Impossible, even. This will be our last. Afterwards, Enrico wants Mama and Papa to leave the city. I am trying to convince Issa that she must go with them. I will stay at the hospital, but she has more to think of now than herself.
I have been going home. Suddenly I want to sleep in my own bed. I walk through the rooms of our house at night. I memorize the shadows and the shapes of the trees in the garden. Yesterday, I arrived just at sunset and found Mama and Papa in the garden, digging beneath the cherry trees. When I asked what they were doing, they replied that they are getting the house ready, in case the Allied soldiers move into it. The glass and silver have been packed away in the attic. Papa has taken his favourite books and hidden them in the cellar. But Mama did not want to risk her jewellery that way, in case the house is bombed, so they decided to wrap it in oilskin and bury it. When I looked down, I saw that their hands were naked. No wedding rings. No aquamarine. Mama said it took a precious tablespoon of oil and almost an hour to prise it off her finger. A white band ran around Papa’s wrist. The watch his father gave him when he turned twenty-one was gone. Mama looked up at me.
