The Tuscan Contessa

by Dinah Jefferies

  Maxine smiled at Lara. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it? Let’s hope they liberate Rome soon, eh?’

  Although not a partisan, Davide fully supported those taking a more active role than he. A lawyer by profession, he might have been expected to support the Fascists. Instead, quietly and very much behind the scenes, he worked at assisting people who’d been wrongly arrested and arranged safe houses for those under threat. It had taken time for Maxine to find this out but, in the end, he’d trusted her enough to reveal what he’d been doing.

  He came back into the small drawing room holding aloft a bottle of his best red wine.

  Chuckling, pleased with himself, he uncorked it and poured three glassfuls. ‘I’ve kept this hidden. Saving it for an occasion like this.’

  A few days later, Maxine met up with Marco at the Caffè Poliziano on the Via Voltaia Nel Corso, the place where they had met before. It was early and still quiet, so they chose a table overlooking the stupendous view. As they both gazed out of the window, she glanced sideways at Marco’s profile. He turned his head to face her and she was suddenly rocked by the intensity of his eyes. For one dizzying moment her heart somersaulted and, confused by these blossoming emotions, she didn’t catch what he’d said.

  ‘Aren’t you listening?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She didn’t want to tell him why, so muttered something about the view. Why did being with Marco always make her feel like a fraud? Something about him penetrated the walls she’d so painstakingly built up over the years and if, as she suspected, he could see who she really was, it unnerved her.

  He gave her a withering look, his face grim. ‘Santo Cielo, never mind the view. Don’t you realize a state of emergency has been declared in Rome?’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  ‘There’s no food, the roads out are blocked and the water system has packed up.’

  ‘How are they meant to survive?’

  ‘Everyone is banking on the Allies arriving quickly.’

  Maxine heaved a sigh. ‘What if they don’t?’ She gazed at him, but he didn’t speak. After all, what could he say? It was truly awful.

  He shook his head. ‘The Germans won’t give up without a fight,’ he said. ‘Long columns are already winding their way to Rome from Siena.’

  ‘You’ve seen them?’

  ‘Yes. Not a pretty sight. The men have been counting them. Lying in ditches and under cover of bushes. The Allies will need that information.’

  They both turned to look out of the window. How incongruous to be staring out at a landscape shining so prettily in the winter sun, with a sky so blue it didn’t seem real, when such devastation was happening not so very far from them.

  ‘So …?’ he said with a quizzical look and drew closer to her.

  She glanced behind her to check who was in the room. ‘I’m afraid we’re no nearer to knowing where the German arsenal in Florence is. I’ve tracked down Bruckner though. He is definitely here and he drinks in the Piazza Grande.’

  ‘No shortage of excellent wine in the palazzo there,’ Marco said.

  Maxine knew Montepulciano was renowned for its Vino Nobile so, naturally, the Germans had raided the wine cellars of the fourteenth-century palazzo they’d commandeered just off the Piazza Grande at the top of town.

  ‘You’ll need to be quick,’ Marco added. ‘I don’t think he’ll be here much longer.’

  ‘I’m planning to do it tonight. You have the name of the bartender who’ll get me in?’

  ‘Yes, Ricardo, he’s the one who lets the girls in. I’ll introduce you.’

  She pulled a wry face. ‘I’m going to say I’m here because my mother sent me away from Rome before the roads became blocked. I can tell him I’ve been staying with a friend in the countryside but that I’m at my cousin’s now and looking for work. They swallow anything that comes from a pretty face.’

  ‘Unless they think you’re a prostitute.’

  Maxine gave Marco a so what look then gazed at him. ‘What about you? Do you have anything for me?’

  ‘Yes. When you reach Florence, you need to contact the partisan leader, Ballerini. He’ll be able to give you the lowdown on what’s happening in and around Florence, and you can pass it on to the Allies via Radio Cora.’

  ‘What does Radio Cora stand for?’

  ‘The Radio Commission. A clandestine radio they use for contact between the Allies and the resistance. The password to make the connection to Radio London is “The Arno flows in Florence”. It’s a pretty rudimentary radio system that needs to be frequently moved, much like the one James operates.’

  ‘Okay. So, once I’m in Florence, I’ll get moving with this Ballerini. See what we can do together.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be needed here and at Monte Amiata so he’s your best bet. And go to 12 Piazza d’Azeglio to meet up with the clerk who works in the German Consul’s office.

  ‘Gerhard Wolf’s office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She nodded and then, with her head tilted to one side, gave him a teasing smile. ‘Let’s go. Where’s your hat?’

  He shrugged. ‘I lost it.’

  ‘I know what you said before about keeping our distance, but …’

  He knitted his brows together in mock outrage. ‘I cannot imagine what you might be suggesting.’

  ‘My cousin is at work and his wife is out today so …’

  ‘You’d like to invite me round for coffee?’

  She grinned with pleasure. ‘Exactly.’

  Maxine loved the town’s elegant Renaissance palaces, its age-old churches and all the little squares and secret corners. The views lifted her spirits when she tired of the war and she’d stand gazing out across either the wonderful Val d’Orcia or the Val di Chiana valleys surrounding it. And it was with lifted spirits that she walked ahead of Marco to Davide’s house. She hadn’t expected him to agree to come but now that he had she was determined to make the most of their time together.

  After making love in her little bedroom on the third floor they lay in bed and talked. He told her of his hopes for the future, and how much he wanted a family of his own one day, that somehow it would make up for the loss of his brother. He told her he had a sister and a nephew, and he wanted to make things better for them.

  She was surprised and said so.

  He smiled. ‘I don’t often allow myself the luxury of imagining good things.’

  ‘Maybe thinking about better times makes all this more bearable.’

  He shook his head. ‘I know what you mean, but I think it makes it more painful. I’ve found that it’s only by toughening up that I can do what I do.’

  She sat up, plumped the pillow behind her, then gazed down at his closed eyes, reaching out to gently stroke the contours of his brow.

  ‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ she said.

  His eyes flew open and their eyes locked. ‘What?’

  ‘Love. Or, rather, living without love.’

  He sniffed. ‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe you have to.’

  They were silent for a few moments.

  ‘Don’t you think love can balance out the horror of war, just a little?’ she asked.

  ‘You tell me. Can it?’

  ‘I want to believe so.’

  He looked away from her. ‘Is it truly possible to love when the world has grown so dark?’

  She sighed. ‘What’s left without it?’

  ‘War. There is only war.’

  Something about the gravity of his voice silenced her.

  ‘Feelings weaken you, affect your decisions, put you in danger, others too. That’s why we have to completely cut ourselves off from our families and assume a different identity.’

  ‘So, you’re not really Marco?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But, “not” Marco, you do have feelings.’

  Their eyes met again, and he narrowed his gaze.

  ‘Yes. You do,’ she said resolutely, not wanting to give up on this.
‘You feel guilty because your brother was taken, and you weren’t. That’s why you’re doing what you do, isn’t it?’

  He stiffened.

  ‘You feel fear too and anger. I know you do.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m not saying I don’t. I feel panic, uncertainty, doubt, all sorts of things. But you can’t feel all those things and not feel love.’

  ‘That’s crazy. Why not?’

  ‘Because if you close off love, you close off everything else as well.’

  ‘And you know this how?’

  ‘My father. Something happened. In the past. I don’t know what. They’ve never talked about it in front of me, but I’ve overheard my mother whispering with her friends. Whatever it was, my father closed off, shut down his feelings, his heart. Sometimes I think the only emotion left to him is rage.’

  ‘And you think we can’t survive on anger alone? That’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘We can survive but it isn’t really living, is it?’

  He stared at her. ‘You think anger is the worst thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. What is?’

  ‘Since the war, or ever?’

  ‘Either.’

  He seemed to consider it. ‘Apathy. That’s the worst.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I think you’re right. Especially now.’

  ‘Well, nobody could ever accuse you of being apathetic.’ He paused for a moment before he spoke again, and she saw him swallow a lump in his throat.

  ‘I still see him everywhere,’ he said.

  ‘Your brother?’

  He nodded. ‘I see him walking down the street, sitting in a café, bringing in the harvest. I see him with my parents, my sister. I see the father he would have one day become, the children he might have had.’

  ‘You’ve already said you’re doing this for him. Isn’t that love?’

  ‘Or revenge. Have you thought of that?’

  She gazed at him. ‘It’s not revenge I see in your eyes, Marco.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  She raised her brows, took hold of his hand and drew it to her lips. He had the grace to smile. Oh, this man, this man, she thought, how I do love you.

  That night Maxine lounged on a velvet chaise longue in the palazzo commandeered by the Nazis, occasionally tipping the wine she was supposedly drinking into a potted plant behind her. Although she enjoyed nothing more than an excellent vino rosso, she needed to keep her wits about her. While they already had their contact in the office of the German Consul in Florence, Maxine still needed to meet Bruckner, the man she believed would be making a decision about the site for the storage of the new arsenal.

  She was listening to an extremely tedious Captain Vogler, Baltasar Vogler, who was claiming that his Christian name meant he was protected by God – ‘As all we Germans are.’ He laughed and then went on to complain about the evil workforce strikes in the north of Italy.

  ‘But do not worry,’ he was saying, ‘we have sorted them, all right.’

  Maxine smiled with what she hoped was an admiring look but secretly wished she could snip off the lock of light-brown hair that fell into his piggy-looking eyes. Unusually small and stocky – most of the officers were at least tall – he smelt unattractively meaty. As if he’d gone a little bit ‘off’. She smiled again at the image of him slowly rotting from the inside out, and sure enough he took the smile to mean she was hanging on his every word.

  ‘You wish to know how?’ he asked, and then carried on without waiting for her to answer, boasting that they’d simply shot one tenth of the workforce. ‘They get back to work pretty damn quickly, I can inform you.’ He laughed as if he’d told a hilariously funny joke.

  Maxine, feeling sickened, managed to maintain her smile, while keeping one eye on the door and remaining aware of the other two men in the room, who appeared to be engrossed in conversation. Vogler loved the sound of his own voice and Maxine had little to do but appear to be listening. When he placed a sweaty palm on her knee, she could feel the sticky heat of it through her silk dress. Peacock blue and one of Sofia’s dead sister-in-law’s, it was admittedly out of date, but the colour enhanced the red in her hair and set off her red lipstick too.

  The door suddenly swung open. A man walked in, still not especially tall but muscular, with cropped, very blond hair, dressed in the uniform of an SS officer with four silver pips centred on a collar patch. Was this Bruckner? She held her breath as a spike of fear travelled up her spine, then she gave him a tentative smile. The SS had originally been an elite squad formed to defend Hitler but were now the dominant organization in charge of security, surveillance and terror both in Germany and German-occupied Europe. She would need to tread very carefully.

  ‘Ah, Major Bruckner, what can I get you?’ Vogler said, jumping to his feet.

  ‘We have beer?’

  ‘No. Only the red wine.’ The stocky officer laughed but Bruckner just shrugged.

  As Vogler went off to open another bottle, Bruckner gazed down at Maxine. She lowered her lashes before looking up again and gazing into the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. What a pity he was a Nazi. She contemplated what it might mean to sleep with such a man, whether the end could ever justify the means, whatever the cost. If she could forget who he was for a moment, this might not be so bad. If she could forget. She thought of what Marco had said about feelings weakening you, putting you in danger, and she longed to be back with him rather than doing this.

  ‘I’m Massima,’ she said, forcing herself to focus.

  His eyes danced. ‘Pretty dress.’

  After Vogler had brought in two uncorked bottles of red, Bruckner waved him away and the other man left the room, followed by the two who’d been hovering by the fireplace.

  Bruckner studied Maxine’s face. ‘So, you are from here?’

  Maxine held up under his scrutiny as she shook her head. Then told him how surprised she was at hearing such excellent Italian.

  ‘Ah, we used to come here when I was a child. My mother loved Italy, especially the lakes. Lugano was her favourite, but she loved Tuscany too. We all did.’

  ‘Loved?’

  He gazed down at her. ‘Sadly, she is no longer with us. Our apartment building was bombed. Only my father and I survived because we were not at home. My brother and younger sister also died.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, and realized she meant it. There was a terrible loss of innocent souls on both sides, after all.

  ‘You have an unusual accent, I think.’

  Wrong-footed, she had to think quickly. Her mother’s voice warned her to be careful, and the very British voice of Ronald, her liaison officer, joined in. ‘Stick to the truth, or as near to the truth as you can.’ That had been his mantra.

  ‘I spent some years in New York with relatives when I was younger,’ she said. ‘But I’m from Rome. I’m staying with my cousin here in Montepulciano.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Won’t you sit, Herr Bruckner?’

  ‘Call me Gustav. I’m off duty tonight.’

  He sat close to her and she breathed in his lemony scent. ‘You smell nice.’

  ‘You too. What is it?’

  Maxine had considered very carefully before coming to Italy and the scent she had chosen was possibly the sexiest one ever created, bursting with the earthiness of patchouli and blended with carnation and vanilla.

  ‘Dana’s Tabu,’ she told him.

  ‘Sensual,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘Animal … I think you must be a dangerous woman.’

  The look she directed at him told him she was.

  They spent an hour talking and she found she rather liked him. There was something different about him and she sensed he was a bit of a fish out of water, although he must also be ruthless to have risen to the level of Sturmbannführer, or Major, so young. He told her he’d been training to be a doctor until war broke out, when he had signed up for duty in the Wehrmacht instead. He’d wanted
to fight for the Fatherland and defend the country he loved, and had been an assault unit leader. His uncle was a Vice Commander-in-chief of the armed forces, who had given him a leg-up.

  ‘It was an outrage when Italy changed sides,’ he said, and she noted the scathing tone of his voice.

  ‘Not all of us changed,’ she said. ‘You should have seen Mussolini on his white horse proclaiming his goal to unify Italy.’

  ‘A proud man. Like our Führer. But he never was strong enough. You cannot be weak, or tolerate weakness, if you want to change the world.’

  With secret pleasure she remembered the ways in which the equally determined partisans were aiming to change the world by crippling the Nazi war machine.

  There was a lull in their conversation and he got up to stoke the fire. Maxine decided it was time to steer the evening in the direction she wanted it to go. When he came back, this time sitting even closer to her, she placed a hand on his wrist.

  ‘Are you here for long?’ she asked, her voice deliberately husky.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m here for a couple of days then back to Florence.’

  She smiled and stroked his wrist. ‘More wine?’

  He nodded.

  He had been steadily drinking and his eyes were beginning to get the hazy look of a man who wants only one thing. In order to keep him keen, Maxine rose to her feet.

  ‘Will you be here tomorrow night?’ she asked.

  He leant back, his arm resting along one side of the sofa, legs spread wide. ‘Will you?’

  She smiled provocatively. ‘Of course. Where else would I want to be?’

  ‘Then I will be here too.’

  ‘Then you’ll be off to Florence.’

  He gave her an unfathomable look. ‘Plenty of time before that.’

  ‘I’d like to go to Florence. It’s so dull here.’

  ‘What would you do there?’

  ‘Maybe find a job. I have a friend who lives near the river. So, perhaps I’ll go by train and stay with her.’

  ‘You have all your documents?’

  She raised her brows. ‘Of course.’ Her fake documents, provided by the nuns she had been taken to south of Rome, had served her well so far.