The Tuscan Contessa

by Dinah Jefferies

  She came back inside, slipped into bed and curled up beside Marco. He murmured in his sleep and then reached for her.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’

  She remembered her mother’s words: When you love someone, you love them, no matter what.

  He rolled over to face her and gently stroked the hair away from her face.

  ‘When the war is over –’ she said, but he put a finger to his lips to shush her.

  Not to be deterred, she began again. ‘When the war –’

  This time he checked her by covering her mouth with his. The kiss, there on the mattress on the floor in the foul-smelling room he’d found for them, was long and complicated. Its meaning, the unspoken words and its intensity, a result of the impossibility of looking ahead. She wanted him in her life forever, but there was no forever. Not any more.

  They made love urgently, taking comfort from each other in the only way they could. The charm of him, the daring, the passion, the fortitude, she loved every part of him, every thrust of his body, and in every gasp the sensations forced from her. Prised open by him, her carefully constructed barriers had fallen away. She did love him. It was true, and never more than now when they were as close as it was possible to be. This, the Nazis could not destroy. This God-given miracle was far stronger than all the fear and hate. This was hope and life itself and she exalted in it. And when it was over, her eyes burnt with unshed tears. His lips moved silently but she understood what he was saying. Ti amo anch’io. With every particle of her being she knew he was saying he loved her too.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said after a while.

  He raised himself up on one elbow, then kissed her forehead. ‘We are all tired, tesoro. Tired and afraid.’

  ‘And yet we do what we do.’

  His sigh was sorrowful. ‘What else is there?’

  ‘Find somewhere far away to hide.’

  ‘Until it is all over?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You don’t mean it?’

  ‘No, obviously not.’ But in the far reaches of herself she did mean it. She wanted to wrap him up and keep him safe. ‘But don’t you ever want to run?’

  ‘What difference does it make? We’re all already running from something.’

  ‘What are you running from, Marco?’

  He sniffed rather derisively. ‘The fear of a mundane life, maybe.’

  ‘But isn’t it what we all want now? For our lives to be normal again.’

  He laughed. ‘If normal was what you wanted you would never have come to Italy. Are you saying you regret it?’

  She shook her head. She did not regret coming; she just wanted it to be over.

  ‘Just one thing,’ he said. ‘In case you ever need it, I want you to know my surname.’

  ‘Why would I ever need it?’

  ‘To practise how it sounds. What do you think of Maxine Vallone?’

  ‘Are you asking me …?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  48.

  23 March 1944

  With a great deal of vigilance, Marco and Maxine warily made their way to the place where he’d previously met with the partisans of the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica. Precautions were taken to maintain the group members’ anonymity as the pair of them were escorted blindfold to meet with a British officer who was in hiding in one of the city’s cellars. When Maxine quizzed the man about Lorenzo, the officer said he was certain that Lorenzo had been arrested. They’d had a meeting arranged but Lorenzo had never turned up.

  ‘So, when was this?’

  ‘About a month ago.’

  ‘And had you met him before?’

  ‘Twice.’

  Marco asked the officer to describe the man and was given a very clear indication he may well be right: grey eyes, greying hair, tall.

  ‘He was cultured, educated,’ the officer added. ‘Clearly from a privileged background. Spoke very good English. I called him the Conte, and he did say he came from Tuscany.’

  ‘So why do you think the Germans arrested him?’

  The British officer gave him a look. ‘They must have cottoned on to the fact he was helping us.’

  ‘He wasn’t at the ministry any longer?’

  ‘No. Definitely not. He had gone way beyond that.’

  After thanking the man, they arranged to meet up later, but in the meantime Marco would check out their new lodgings while Maxine waited in the water queue.

  Three hours later, Maxine was scanning the street. With a feeling of intense relief, she eventually caught sight of Marco; she hadn’t expected him to take so long and had been feeling anxious. It wasn’t good news that he now found himself tangled up in a column of German SS Police who had been marching and singing their way through the Piazza di Spagna towards the narrow Via Rasella where Maxine was a little ahead of them. Everyone hated these shows of German might, aimed at daunting the citizens and undermining the resistance. Ordinary people did their best to ignore them while silently smouldering with resentment or drowning in apathy. None of the marching men were looking at Marco. He was brilliant at becoming invisible, just another limping, hopeless man hugging the walls. The Nazis were not interested in the weak, only the strong; to them, he did not even exist.

  After a few moments she could see that Marco had managed to sidle past the Germans and had spotted her standing on Via Rasella about a hundred metres away. She held up her can of water to show she’d seen him.

  As Marco started to walk towards her, Maxine noticed a street cleaner pushing a rubbish cart. She would remember this moment afterwards: the street cleaner suddenly, and inexplicably, running away and Marco heading towards her. And then the enormous flash of an explosion and the sound of it ripping through the air. Clouds of smoke billowed up, and in the intense heat, Maxine dropped the water and clutched her chest. She tried to see but could not. Where was Marco? Where was he? Around her people had dived to the ground in panic. Or they had run. The acrid smell sickened her, and she tasted the sourness in her mouth. When the smoke began to clear she saw bodies lying randomly and inert. Dozens of SS bodies: dismembered bodies, headless bodies, and the blood from them pooling everywhere. Those still standing were shaking and supporting each other as they desperately tried to get away. Maxine saw a man whose chest had been blown open, and another with no legs. Another was struggling to his feet, blood pouring from his head. Glass had flown everywhere. Debris too. An officer hobbled off, one of the lucky ones, and the people who’d happened to be in the street were hurrying, screaming at each other to run. She kept looking for Marco and then she saw him stumbling towards her. Relief flooded her body. Thank God. She was so sure he’d been caught in the blast, but there he was. Then the gunfire began, and she glanced around her – was it the SS firing in response? She turned back to Marco and watched in horror as he clutched his chest. In slow motion his eyes met hers, his face registered surprise, his knees buckled and then he crumpled to the ground. It had been a matter of moments but to Maxine the world had stopped spinning. Frozen in disbelief, she hesitated. No, no, no, she whispered. Not Marco. Her paralysis lasted for only a second or two. Then she ran, staggering and tripping over glass and debris, praying out loud, screaming for him to wait for her, her breath ragged, but when she reached him, Marco was already dead. She dropped to his side, placed her palm on the injury to his chest as if to stem the blood, then cradled him to her and wrapped herself around his lifeless body.

  ‘My love,’ she whispered. ‘My love.’

  But the German police were now shooting in earnest. She had to get out of there but how could she leave Marco? She clung to his body, her clothes soaking up his blood, and resisted the order to leave, but in the end she was pushed out of the way by a soldier thrusting at her with the butt of his rifle. She begged him to shoot her too and for a moment she hoped he might but then he sniggered and found someone else to harass.

  How she reached the priest she’d met before in Trastevere she didn’t remember, bu
t she hadn’t known where else to go. He placed her in the care of some nuns. The priest, whose name was Father Filippo, visited her daily, and over the next few days he found out the whole story behind the bombing and the terrible reprisals that followed. Maxine listened blankly as he shook his head and told how the Germans had decided that for every one of the thirty-five soldiers killed, ten would be executed in return. It was awful, Maxine recognized, it was truly awful, but for now all she could think of was Marco.

  It transpired, the priest said a couple of days later, that a nun had bicycled after the trucks taking the victims to the rural area beyond the city centre where, inside the tunnels of the disused quarries of pozzolana, near the Via Ardeatina, the massacre had taken place. The nun had hidden behind some rocks and reported that the soldiers chosen to do the killing were given long draughts of cognac before the shooting. Then they were instructed to lead the prisoners into the caves with their hands tied behind their backs. She hadn’t been able to see inside the caves, but she had counted each man going in – 335 of them. She would never forget the brutality and horror until the day she died.

  The priest went on to say that the Germans wanted to keep the location of the massacre secret, so for her own safety it would be best to not share what she now knew. Maxine came back to herself when she understood the men they murdered had come from the prisons. Over three hundred random men. Oh God! Lorenzo. Had he been one of them? As for the bombing, it was now known to have been carried out by at least sixteen partisans of the Communist-led resistance organization Gruppi di Azione Patriottica, the very people Marco had met with. The improvised bomb had consisted of the chemical compound TNT packed in a steel case inside a bag and placed in the rubbish bin pushed into position by one of the partisans disguised as a street cleaner. Apparently, the fuse had been lit when the SS were forty seconds from the bomb. Thirty-five had been killed in total, though not all outright. Some had died later from their injuries. All the partisans involved, some of whom also fired on the German column – and may even have been the ones who had killed Marco – disappeared into the crowd and reached safety. The irony was not lost on Maxine.

  In her stronger moments she made plans to leave, for she still had Elsa and Roberto to take care of, but sometimes she felt she would never be truly strong again. She had not been able to cry for the only man she had ever loved but spent hours sitting and thinking of him. Why had she not been able to cry? The moment he had died went around and around in her head, as if she might somehow be able to change the ending with willpower alone. Of course, she never could. Marco could never escape that bullet. And, in the end, she had to reluctantly accept he was gone. At last, it came to her. She would never be Maxine Vallone, not now, but she had to honour Marco’s memory by standing up for what he believed in and continuing the fight. Despite everything, of one thing she was certain: Marco would live inside her forever and would always be the one true love of her life. He had been a brave and wonderful man, and she would need to be brave too. She couldn’t let him down with her weakness and so she dug deep inside herself and found the strength to organize. She would take Elsa and Roberto to Sofia’s Castello in Tuscany instead of to one of the closer hill villages.

  49.

  Two days later Maxine had collected Roberto and Elsa along with their new papers and they were now settling into the waiting train. A loud whistle sounded followed by a hiss of steam as the train clanged and clattered into life. It moved slowly, shuddering and stuttering and almost coming to a stop but eventually gathered momentum and picked up speed. Elsa held tight to a basket where a loaf of bread was wrapped in a blue-and-white chequered cloth. Roberto, sitting, leant against Maxine, who stood next to him by the wooden bench, guarding the older couple’s suitcase. There was an unhealthy sheen to Roberto’s pale face now and Maxine worried he might not reach the Castello alive. She was aware of Elsa’s troubled eyes and sensed the shame the older woman must be feeling. No one wants to steal away from their beloved city like a thief in the night, and her despair over Roberto’s worsening health was visible. Roberto himself remained brave. Nothing would get the better of him if he could help it.

  The train – full of nuns, soldiers and people fleeing the city – smelt of stale tobacco and urine. Maxine and Elsa both wore drab skirts, blouses and peasant-style shawls. A young mother with a crying baby crouched on the floor, ignored by two German soldiers who might have offered her a seat. Monsters. But then a much younger soldier, not much more than a boy, rose to his feet and gave up his seat for the woman. Maxine smiled at him as he caught her eye and he blushed. So, so young, she thought, his humanity not yet hardened by war. Nearby a couple of little boys, their grimy faces streaked with the signs of recent tears, their arms and legs dotted with open sores, clung to their grandmother’s skirts.

  ‘Their house was bombed,’ the old lady said to no one in particular. ‘I have to take them. There is nobody else.’

  Elsa murmured a response, but the old lady simply repeated what she’d already said.

  Once they’d left the city, the trees, bushes, agricultural lands and lone farms flew past the window. Conversation remained muted, the people too exhausted and beaten to have anything new to say. Maxine rested her eyes, the rhythmic clattering and clanking noise of the train fading into the background as her mind drifted. Everyone was on the move, one way or another, and nothing stood still, but she longed for calm and the chance of an uninterrupted sleep. Perhaps at the Castello. And now she focused on Sofia. So far all they’d found out was that a man who answered Lorenzo’s description had most likely been arrested. How could she tell Sofia that, on top of the news of Roberto’s failing health? She had spoken to Elsa about it, who agreed that Lorenzo’s arrest sounded feasible.

  She was almost falling asleep an hour or so later when the squeal of brakes and the train’s sudden screeching halt sent them tumbling over each other and clutching for something to grab on to. She glanced at Elsa, who raised her brows. Then came the menacing shouts, ‘Aufstehen, Aufstehen!’ Get up, get up, over and over.

  After waiting a few moments while she worked out what to do, Maxine said, ‘I’ll go.’ She struggled to reach the door but was able to push her way through. Outside, she saw a stream of armed SS officers dragging pleading women and crying children from the train and brutally shoving them to the ground. Remembering Marco, the hatred burnt in her heart and she could hardly bear to look at them. She managed to exchange a few words with an older woman who was already preparing to slip away.

  ‘They are taking the men into the woods,’ the woman said. ‘And you know what that means. They’ll be shot in retribution.’

  Maxine listened a little longer, heard what else was going on and then hurried back to the carriage.

  ‘The tracks are badly damaged. The engine has been derailed,’ she said to the carriage in general, and then added for Elsa only, ‘We have to get off. The German SS are on the train already, tearing it apart, checking papers and forcing us all to get out at gunpoint. They’re sending everyone back to Rome on the next train.’

  ‘I don’t know if Roberto can get off,’ Elsa whispered.

  There was a sudden burst of gunfire followed by screaming. Maxine glanced across at the old man. ‘We don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Was it an Allied bomb?’

  ‘Could have been partisans. They’re well ahead in these parts now. Forming a national liberation committee, I was told.’

  From the next carriage came the sound of weeping. Elsa reached for Roberto’s hand and Maxine helped pull him up and together they managed to get him, stumbling and coughing, off the train.

  ‘We’ll take the road to begin with and then veer off on to the hill tracks,’ Maxine said.

  Elsa’s eyes were huge with anxiety. ‘Will he even make it up the hills?’

  ‘He will. I think they’re only low hills.’

  A German truck, covered in canvas tied down by ropes to a bar on each side, hooted as it passed them heading tow
ards the city, followed by a motorcycle with a steel-helmeted soldier sitting in the sidecar. A horse and cart filled with sacks came next and then another, both heading for Rome. Then, apart from a couple of burnt-out cars, the road emptied of traffic. They wound up and around the gentle slope, but their progress was slow, hampered by the pain Roberto was in.

  ‘Maybe we could find a mule?’ Elsa suggested. ‘To carry him.’

  Maxine puffed out her cheeks and sighed. ‘It’s possible. We’ll go off-road now, where he can rest out of sight. We may be able to get another train further up the line.’

  They took a muddy track to the left and soon arrived in an area of undulating gullies, woodland and streams. There they lay Roberto on a mossy bank in the shade beneath a tree, Maxine and Elsa sitting beside him. Maxine drew out a flask of water from her bag and passed it to Elsa, who held it to her husband’s lips. But from the expression on her face, Maxine could see resignation had set in.

  ‘We need to find a barn or a church, somewhere to spend the night,’ she said. ‘It’ll be cold when the sun goes down.’

  Elsa’s eyes were clouded with misery, but she agreed.

  Maxine squeezed Elsa’s hand. ‘I’ll scout on ahead for a bit. See what I can find.’

  Elsa looked anxious. ‘A woman alone out here is at risk.’

  ‘I’m not scared.’

  Elsa shook her head. ‘Well, you should be.’

  Maxine rose to her feet. ‘I have to go, see if there’s somewhere. Don’t worry.’

  A few minutes after Maxine set off the hairs on her neck rose at the sound of voices. German voices in the woods – real or imagined? She held her breath, told herself there were always German voices in her head. More sounds followed, but it turned out to be a couple of refugee women searching for wild herbs to eat. They passed by without a word and after that it remained silent save for planes flying overhead.