The Villa Triste (35 page)

Her eyes searched Pallioti’s face.

‘Do you see?’ she asked. ‘Does that make any sense to you? And now that he’s gone, that my Dad’s gone, I want to know. More than that. If my Grandpa’s still alive, I want to find him.’

‘Even if he’d killed Giovanni Trantemento and Roberto Roblino?’

Eleanor nodded.

‘Even if he’s killed them.’ He noticed she used the present tense, refused to hear what he had told her. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me,’ she said. ‘If he’s alive, I want to know.’

‘And tell me again, why did you think Il Spettro killed them?’

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Because I was asking about him, I guess. I just had this feeling. Like I was getting close. That sounds crazy to you, doesn’t it?’

Pallioti sipped his grappa and said nothing. Feelings often sounded crazy to him. He had them all the time. He was saved from commenting on the fact by the sound of Eleanor Sachs laughing.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘it wasn’t really until the sixtieth, until all the celebrations and the medals, until I saw all those old men, that it really occurred to me that he might still be alive, and that if he was, I’d better find him before he died. Before that it was just a research project. You know, kind of fun, in my spare time, when I got sick of the Middle Ages – like, hey, isn’t this interesting? There are archived interviews,’ she added, ‘that you can find on the web. It was kind of a game. Like I was looking for clues, in a half-assed way.’

Pallioti glanced up at her. ‘And did you find any?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I kept nosing around, in my spare time. I started to pick up threads, about Il Spettro. All sorts of stories. Mythologies, really. Obviously some of them are pretty wild. Derring-do with the Nazis. And then,’ she shrugged, ‘honestly? My husband’s right. It became kind of an obsession. My Dad got sick. I’d taped the medal ceremony, from TV. I started watching it over and over to see if any of them, those old guys, looked like me. Or my Dad.’ She toyed with her glass. ‘I guess I wanted to give him that,’ she said. ‘I guess I thought it would be so great, you know, if I could find his father for him, before he died.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t. But afterwards, I couldn’t just stop.’

She finished her grappa and dropped her hands on the table

‘It’s about ruined my marriage. My husband says it’s ridiculous. For a grown woman.’

For the first time, Pallioti noticed the white band on her left hand, a marking on the skin where a ring would have been.

‘I guess you Europeans don’t do that,’ she said. ‘It’s kind of an American obsession, isn’t it? Genealogy.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess it’s a legacy of the melting pot. Wanting to know who you are. As if it makes any difference. Anyway,’ she smiled. ‘Now I’ve made an ass out of myself. I am writing a book,’ she added. ‘Really. And it is about the partisans.’

Pallioti nodded. Eleanor Sachs laughed again.

‘Do you believe me?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said. It was true. Despite a strong hand of, admittedly circumstantial, evidence to the contrary, despite the giant shoulder bag she lugged around that was more than big enough to keep several pounds of salt and a sub-machine gun in, despite the fact that she had all but stalked him and lied through her teeth to him, he did believe her. Now. He drained his glass and signalled for the bill. The lunchtime crowd was coming in.

‘You should know,’ Pallioti added, as they waited, ‘that the investigation is running in a very different direction. It doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the partisans.’

‘No ghosts, huh?’ Eleanor Sachs sounded sanguine, but Pallioti doubted she believed him. Obsessions, in his experience, did not roll over and die quite so easily.

‘I have a proposition,’ he said.

She glanced up and raised her eyebrows.

‘Of the most innocent kind, Signora. I will do a deal with you.’

‘A deal?’

‘Yes. If you agree to stop following me – which I promise you will lead you nowhere in any case – I, in turn, will promise that if I find out anything that might lead to Il Spettro, or the idea that he even existed, I will let you know.’ He looked at her, and held out his hand. ‘Do we have a deal?’

Eleanor Sachs seemed to consider it for a moment. Then she reached across the table.

‘Deal,’ she said.

Chapter Twenty-Three

10 October 1944

I began to walk. Slowly. My legs were shaking. I could feel Issa’s hand, her fingers entwined in mine as we jostled in the crowd. There was shouting in the street. Even if I could have seen over the shoulders and heads, I don’t know if I would have dared to look. I didn’t dare do anything except stare straight ahead. I could hear the tramp of footsteps. The miserable parade we had, until a moment ago, been part of, had been restored to order and had begun to march again.

‘This way.’

I had not quite been aware of it, but we were being led, guided by a tall blonde girl in a fashionable suit. She smiled as she shouldered past a group of men, then turned and caught my eye.

‘In here.’

I saw that she was pushing open the door of a restaurant. The gold-painted letters shimmered on the glass. We stepped through and the world closed behind us. Ahead was dark wooden panelling and white tablecloths. My foot faltered. This time it was Issa who pushed me, gently, her palm in the small of my back. The smell of food very nearly made me ill. My head was swimming. Surely, I thought, the other diners would look at us and see. Our filthy hair was hidden under the hats and our dirty clothes under the coats, but surely they would see in our faces, in our eyes, where we had come from. I don’t know if they did or not, because none of them looked up. They looked at each other, or intently at their plates. Cigarette smoke hung in the room. There was the clink of glasses, and of silver on china. Suddenly I was afraid that I was going to cry.

The girl led us to a round table in the back corner. She chose the chair facing the door, indicating that we should take the seats with our backs to the room, but no sooner had she sat down, than her face changed. The bland smile that she had been wearing vanished.

‘Don’t.’ Issa grabbed my hand under the table as I started to look over my shoulder. She squeezed hard. ‘Pretend you’re talking to us,’ she said. And then I heard, the flat, hard sound of German-accented Italian. The mispronunciations, the slight guffaw at the end of words, as if not only we, but our language too, were a joke.

Three soldiers had come in. I saw them out of the corner of my eye. They swam into sight, brushing rain off the sleeves of their jackets, laughing, taking out cigarettes and passing them around.

The girl leaned towards us, her smile full of false animation, as if we were nothing more than old friends sharing gossip.

‘There’s a powder room,’ she said. ‘By the side of the bar and to the left. Talk for a minute, then get up, slowly, and go there. Lock the door. I’ll come for you.’

I glanced at Issa. I could see the tiredness in her face, a sort of fragile exhaustion, as if suddenly all of this had become too much for her and at any moment she might shatter. I reached out slowly, took two of the bread rolls from the silver basket on the table and slipped them into my pocket. Then I stood up.

‘Come,’ I said, forcing myself to smile and holding my hand out to her. ‘Come and keep me company.’

I could feel one of the soldiers watching us, feel his eyes as surely as a hand on the back of my neck. I knew that if I turned around his eyes would meet mine. I took her arm, bending my head low to hers as if we were whispering girlish secrets. We skirted the bar and pushed through the door into the back hallway.

After we had locked the door, we washed our faces and ran our fingers through our hair. There was soap. And a towel. We scrubbed our hands. Then we put the hats back on, and sat on the side of the sink and ate the bread rolls, waiting for the sound of footsteps in the corridor. When they came, they were not the girl’s, but a cook’s, an older woman from the kitchen. She beckoned to us without speaking and mouthed for us to hurry. I wondered whether we should follow her, whether it was a trap, but Issa pushed me, so I went. The cook led us down the corridor and through the kitchen. No one looked up as we passed. At the back door, a priest was waiting.

He led us through the back streets, and into a church. There was a blanket for us to share. Despite the fact that it was summer, the vestry was chilly. He left us, locking the door. There was one window, high up. We sat against the damp wall, and watched the light vanish, and listened to the bells as they marked the offices of the night – Vespers, Compline, Matins – then finally, at the first glimpse of dawn, Lauds. It was just after Prime when they came for us.

The local GAP in Verona wanted to talk to Issa. It was then, watching her, and seeing the look on the faces of the men as she was speaking, that I realized. She is famous. People in GAP units may not know her real name, but they know who she is. They know what she has done. Some of them probably owe her their lives.

Watching her as she told them the story of what had happened in the house off the Via dei Renai, and later at the Villa Triste, and then in the wooded clearing; listening as they offered their condolences for Carlo, for all of Radio JULIET, I realized I was watching someone I knew and did not know. In those moments, I saw Issa for the first time through their eyes. She was not my younger sister, but a woman these men sought out and listened to. Whose skill and daring were both known and respected. Who had become a small legend of her own.

When she was finished, they fed us. Then they told us that we were going to Milan. Before they put us on the train, they gave us papers. We are sisters still, but now our name is Bevanelli. I am Chiara and Issa is Laura. We are from Livorno, evacuees fleeing Allied bombs.

This apartment is cramped. It is only two rooms and a bathroom. But we were handed the keys, and told that it is ours. I didn’t want to think as we walked in, as we saw the worn furniture and even the clothes in the wardrobe, what had happened to the people who were here before. Papa would be horrified, but one of the lessons this war has taught me is that it is sometimes better not to have an ‘enquiring mind’. There has been bombing. Perhaps that answers the question. Or perhaps there are nurses like me in all our cities, in all our hospitals – crows plucking bright things from the dead.

There is no question of us trying to go back to Florence. That was what Issa wanted – but they won’t hear of it. After what happened with JULIET, it is far too dangerous. We are known there, and are needed here. The local network means for us to earn our keep. I am to be put to work in a doctor’s office. Issa has already been told she will be asked to serve as a staffetta – a courier. Pregnant women are especially valuable – such is the reverence for motherhood among both the Nazis and the Fascists that they can move about almost unquestioned. Issa pleaded, but they were very firm with us. ‘Considerable resources were expended’ on our behalf. When I heard that, it came as a shock to me. Then I realized again that it isn’t ‘us’ – it’s Issa. GAP has kept its word and stood by its own. I am alive, I am free – more or less, I may yet not die in some godforsaken German camp, because I was with her.

I did not write in this book again until October – 10 October, Lodovico’s name day. The truth was that I was going to put it away, as I had tried to put away thoughts of Lodo himself – and of the woman I might have been if I had married him. But in the end, I couldn’t. The past kept creeping back.

It happened first when we got the news that Florence was liberated. The fighting was very bad, apparently, and there was much damage along the lungarnos. But most of all, Issa was right. GAP and the Garibaldi Brigades and the CLN – all the partisans – they went into the fight, the real one, before the Allies came, with one hand tied behind their back. They did not have enough ammunition or weapons to do everything. In the end, they could not stop the Germans from blowing up the bridges. The Ponte alle Grazie, the Carraia, and my favourite, the beautiful Trinità – all of them are gone. Only the Ponte Vecchio survived. For four days and nights while the fighting raged in the Oltrarno, the partisans used the Medici’s secret corridor to scurry back and forth, supplying what ammunition and explosives they had, and finally liaising with the Allied command, who, when they arrived, were apparently distressed to find the CLN government already in place. If they thought we had fought through all this to replace one occupier with another, no matter who they were, they were much mistaken.

The Germans withdrew, in the end, up into the mountains, as we had known they would, to their Gothic Line. The Fascists were not so orderly. Some, like good lapdogs, went with their German masters. But others stayed in the city – tried to blend in or pretend they were no longer what they had been. Yet others were more honest. They took up as snipers, and had to be rooted out, tracked street by street and shot. Most disturbing, perhaps, was the news that Mario Carita escaped. He decamped, apparently, last July, and has taken up his ‘work’ in Padua. News of Mama, which both Issa and I had been hoping for, was thin at best. Issa discovered that she was taken to San Verdiana, but we were unable to find out anything else about her. The person I did find out about, however, was Lodovico. He sent me, of all extraordinary things, a letter.

Of course it was not sent to Chiara Bevanelli. It was sent to the girl I used to be. When Issa put it in my hand, I simply stood and stared at it. I think if she had not been there, I might have lit the gas and burnt it.

The envelope, thumbed and grubby by that time, lay on the table. It was a warm, lingering autumn day. The nights had become brisk, but the sun was still syrupy on the windowsill and on the scuffed boards of the floor. Outside, a tram rattled by. Issa was leaning against the kitchen door, watching me. Quite pregnant by then, she seemed to feel little effect from it. No complaining of swollen ankles or a sore back for Nemesis. She was working as a courier, and more besides, I think, although I do not know – and she would not have told me if I asked her. Sometimes she was gone for days at a time. That morning, she had returned from Bologna, bearing not only my letter, but the news of what had happened at Monte Sole.

The
Fallschirmjäger
and Waffen SS had conducted another of their infamous rastrellamentos, this time against the Stella Rossa who had fought so bravely and with such success in the spring – a victory they would not be forgiven. The offensive had been launched in the last days of September. The partisans, Surrounded, had held out in the hope that the Allies, who were not more than a day to the south, would relieve them. But no help came. They were wiped out. The local villages were destroyed. Two hundred civilians who had sought shelter in a church were herded into a cemetery and machine-gunned. I guessed that last year Issa must have passed through the area often, delivering her ‘parcels’, and that morning, for the first time, she told me that she had visited and sometimes stayed with Emmelina, at her brother’s farm outside a village called Caprara. When she heard what had happened, she had left Bologna, made her way to Marz-abotto, and gone to see for herself. Bodies were still being buried when she arrived. Dead animals lay in farmyards. Houses and barns were destroyed, their gutted rafters open to the sky. Emmelina and her husband, her brother and his family were among the dead. Their bodies had been found at the farm, piled in a half-burnt barn. There was no sign of Emmelina’s niece, the stolid quiet girl whom Mama used to accuse of being ‘light-fingered’, stealing cigarettes, and once, supposedly, a teaspoon. Some people thought she might have tried to get back to Florence.

As far as anyone could tell, almost eight hundred people had been killed. Most were civilians. Two hundred were members of the Stella Rossa, many of whom Issa had known. A few, including their leader, Lupo, had escaped and were hiding in Bologna. It was one of these survivors who had passed her Lodovico’s letter. It had come up a chain, through the Allied lines which were now high in the mountains which I had watched so often from the terrace or from my bedroom window – from what I thought of now as another life.

Issa was watching me. The shadow of what she had seen in Monte Sole was in her face, a reflection of death in her eyes at the same time that life beat in her belly. I realized that I had not heard her laugh since that morning in Via dei Renai, when I had looked out of the window and seen her walking arm in arm with Carlo.

I picked up the envelope. My name, Caterina Cammaccio, was written across the front in Lodovico’s handwriting. Seeing it was almost as startling as hearing his voice.

‘I can’t.’

I dropped it on the table. Issa said nothing.

‘I can’t,’ I said again. ‘It’s not for me. Not any more.’

She stepped forward. She was still wearing her coat. Her hair had grown out. It was blonde again, the colour of dusty gold.

‘Yes, you can.’ She picked the envelope up and held it out to me.

‘No, I can’t.’ I shook my head. ‘It’s not for me. It’s for someone else.’ I could hear panic rising in my voice. ‘It’s for the person Lodo thought— She doesn’t exist any more, Issa,’ I said. ‘She’s gone. She’s dead. It’s better if it stays that way.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

She kept holding out the envelope, stubborn, as if she could force me to take it, to open it like Pandora’s box, and face all the past, all the dreams that I had wanted, and had believed were mine.

‘You don’t understand.’

I closed my eyes and heard the crunch of snow under boots. The scrape of the trunk as I pulled it across the attic floor. I saw the back of the ambulance, the red cross on the rear doors growing smaller and smaller, drifting away from me into the snow. I felt the skin on the back of Dieter’s hands, the tips of his fingers, his calloused palm. And the sleek, cool satin of my wedding dress. I heard the rustle of tissue paper, and the patter of satin buttons falling on it like rain.

‘You don’t understand, Issa,’ I said again. ‘You don’t understand at all.’

‘Yes, I do.’

She reached out and grabbed my chin. Twisted my head, so my eyes looked into hers.

‘I do understand,’ she said. ‘I know what you did. I understand.’

We stared at each other.

‘Six people lived, Cati. And you, and me, and Carlo, and Il Corvo.’ She looked down, then took my hand and placed it on her belly where recently the baby had begun to kick. ‘We wouldn’t be here,’ she said. ‘None of us, if that door had been opened.’