by David Hewson
He looked exhausted, terrible.
‘It’s OK, Grandpa. You’re tired. Have a sleep.’
‘Sometimes it takes a while. For someone to appreciate that gift. Sometimes it never happens at all. Maybe you’d be better off going to the beach, Nico. I mean that.’
‘I’m going to read your story. I’ll come here every day until it’s finished.’
He closed his eyes and made a snuffling noise that sounded like a snore. I got to my feet and took one step towards the window and the bedside cabinet.
‘The second envelope marked “The Visitors”,’ he said, making me jump. He hadn’t moved a muscle. ‘Nothing else. Or I’ll know.’
THE VISITORS
‘God I need a drink,’ the woman said when the sound of the German boat vanished and all they could hear was the rhythmic lapping of the waves beyond the window.
She took her knee off Paolo Uccello, stuffed the knife into her jacket pocket and went straight for the grappa that was still by the sink.
As Paolo clambered to his feet the man limped to the table, sat down and let his head fall into his hands. There was what might have been a tourniquet on his right leg, blood seeping through his muddy khaki trousers.
‘We need food,’ she said, no please or thank you.
Paolo got the last of his bigoli out of the cupboard, a can of anchovies and an onion and started to put a meal together.
When he told them his name she said nothing, just poured another grappa. Looking at them now he realized she was the older by a couple of years and probably the boss too. A sharp-eyed young woman with dark hair, short, roughly cut, swept back from a face that was olive and perhaps more than a little grubby. The brother shared much the same looks. He guessed they seemed Jewish, not that he was very good at labelling people unless he was told. If he didn’t know he might have thought they were from the south, Calabria or Sicily. They had plenty of people like that, his father used to say. Arab blood. Which was the same as Jewish anyway.
They sat at the table waiting for the food. She took out a pack of cigarettes and said, ‘Do you smoke, Paolo?’
‘No. My father hated it.’
‘But he’s gone, isn’t he? Just you here now. Take one.’ She insisted. ‘You’re going to need a cigarette from time to time. People round us usually do.’
‘That’s true,’ her brother said and grabbed one.
Paolo followed his lead and coughed as the brother lit it for him. But he kept smoking as he cooked, which felt grown up in a childish sort of way.
When he came back with three plates of food he said, ‘They told me to put you in the cellar. I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s too cold and damp. Take my parents’ room. There’s a double bed. Space. Some clothes in the cupboards too. I didn’t …’ He realized he’d done so little since they died. ‘I didn’t bother to take anything out. Have whatever you like.’
‘My name is Vanni Artom,’ the man said, holding out one hand across the table while he scooped at the pasta with his left. ‘This is my sister Mika. She doesn’t do small talk.’
‘Sorry, brother,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Not much chance of late.’ She put her elbows on the table, cradled her head in her hands and smiled at Paolo. ‘I’m sorry I stuck a knife in your neck. The Crucchi weren’t far behind. You heard. I thought it … wise.’
Paolo said he was sure it was, then pointed at Vanni’s leg.
‘You’re hurt.’
‘True. A German mosquito bit me.’ He smiled at his sister. ‘I’m on the mend. She’s a doctor. At least she would have been if they hadn’t kicked us out of university.’
‘And you?’
‘I would have been a …’ He thought about this. ‘A poet, I think.’
‘No money in poetry,’ his sister pointed out.
‘A journalist then. It’s all rather academic now, isn’t it?’
She’d nearly finished the food and was lighting another cigarette.
‘This is good. What do you call it?’
‘Bigoli in salsa. My mother used to make it. She said the anchovies should come from a jar not a tin. But it’s not easy getting jars at the moment.’
The woman laughed.
‘We heard you were all having a tough time of it in Venice.’
‘The Americans killed my parents,’ he said and wanted her to know there were limits. ‘That was tough enough.’
‘The Germans murdered our entire family,’ she shot back. ‘Lined them up against a wall. Made them kneel and put a bullet through their heads. Mum. Dad. Aunt and uncle. Our little sister too. She was seven.’
‘This isn’t a contest in misery, Mika,’ Vanni told her.
‘No. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. Sorry we’re here.’ She held out her hand. Paolo shook it. ‘Apology accepted?’
‘It is.’
‘Thanks. We’ve been running from them for a week. Barely eaten. Barely stayed alive. Forgive our rudeness.’
Vanni looked ready to point out it was on her part alone. But then he seemed to think twice of it and kept quiet.
She got up from the table and looked round the kitchen.
‘I need to change the dressing on his wound. Do you have an old sheet or something I can use?’
‘I told you. Take whatever you want in my parents’ room.’
‘Come, brother. After that I need a shower. I’m filthy.’
‘Wait.’
There were things Paolo had to say. They had to stay away from the windows. The German patrol boats ran in and out of the Arsenale docks all the time. Anyone on board could see things from the lagoon side of the house. The rest, the workshop, was protected by the wall around the Giardino degli Angeli. If they stayed inside until someone came for them they’d all be safe. He could fetch everything they needed.
‘Grazie,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Though I believe we can teach you more about hiding than you can teach us.’ She squinted at him and asked, ‘Are you still at school? They said you lived here alone.’
‘I do. I’m eighteen. I left school years ago. This is what I require if you’re going to stay here. If you can’t abide by my rules I’ll be forced to ask the priest to find you somewhere else.’
‘You seem quite grown up for eighteen,’ Vanni said.
‘I’m on my own. This is my home. This is my little company to run. I have no choice. If you can’t abide by what I say I will ask Garzone—’
‘There.’ She pointed a dirty finger at him. ‘First mistake. You never say a name. Not around strangers.’
‘We’re not strangers,’ he replied. ‘We’re people in a hole who don’t know one another. I hadn’t finished.’
‘Oh?’ She put her hand on her hips. ‘What else?’
‘In return I want your help.’
Vanni and Mika took themselves off into his parents’ old room. They didn’t emerge until midday on Wednesday, woken perhaps by the constant rattle and banging of the Jacquard looms at work.
Paolo and Chiara Vecchi had started them up at just after eight that morning, weaving the ornate velvet millimetre by millimetre. He hadn’t dared tell her he’d got the delivery date wrong.
Si-dah-si-dah-si-dah-sichi-si-piu.
Sometimes, when he’d spent hours at the Jacquard, he heard that short, fast refrain in his sleep, found himself waking to the sound of the beat being drummed by his fingers on the bed.
They broke off for a brief break around one, Chiara to eat a panino at the sewing table by the long window by the side while he went inside for a while. The Artoms were back in the bedroom. They didn’t appear and he wasn’t sorry. He never mentioned them to Chiara, naturally, and had no idea if she’d guessed there were others in the house. When he returned she said barely a word.
The looms were hard, physical work. She was a strong woman, more robust than him since his arms remained spindly in spite of the exercise. Thick-set, rosy-faced, always healthy, she’d learned lace-making on Burano as a child, then moved to the city
when she married to join her husband, a carpenter in the Arsenale. He had a small apartment near the church of San Francesco della Vigna, a grand Palladian building which Chiara boasted marked the spot where Saint Mark was shipwrecked during a storm, to be greeted by an angel who told him his coffin would one day rest in the lagoon. She was a religious woman, to the point of superstition at times, and seemed to regard Filippo Garzone with some suspicion since he came from another parish, the isolated island world of San Pietro.
Chiara had an anxious bustle about her. There were never idle moments. She was always active whether it was at the Jacquard, knitting a shawl or in her kitchen, making meals for the elderly she helped care for with some nuns from a nearby convent. Idle fingers, she said, were an insult to the Lord.
At the door she looked back at the looms, the few centimetres of fabric they’d produced that day, still on the frame, and offered to work another hour or two. He’d have none of it. They were both exhausted and tiredness only led to mistakes that would take longer to remedy than they did to commit.
‘You’re a godsend, Chiara. Go home and rest.’
‘Soprarizzo,’ she muttered putting on her coat. ‘I need to teach you, Paolo.’
‘You do. But not now.’
‘Thank goodness we’ve got a little time.’
His heart sank. He had to tell her.
‘I got the date wrong. They expect it by Saturday afternoon.’
She shrieked and uttered a rare curse.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look at how far we are now. Three looms to work and just the pair of us to manage them? And you not so sure with the scissors? Tell your customer. If they want quality we can’t be rushed.’
‘We can make up some time.’
‘How?’ She pointed to the garden, the trees, the stumps of masonry lying around on the thinning winter grass. Once the bowers must have been full of statues, graces, angels, saints. Now all that was recognizable was a fragment of face, of arm, of stony, shattered feathers. ‘Will this be magic time, Paolo? Will your fractured cherubs come and help us weave this work?’
He had no answer. Chiara looked angry, lost, not the usual confident woman he’d grown up with, more than an employee, a close and valued friend of the family.
She came close, took his arms, whispered in his ear.
‘There are no angels left in Venice. Only devils and those who’ve lost their wings. Don’t be so naïve. You’re not a child anymore.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ he said rather testily and realized it was the first time the two of them had exchanged severe words.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes!’
She held him more tightly.
‘Let me tell you something. Your family came from Dorsoduro. They once had money. Prestige. Comfort. Hereabouts we’ve none and we’ve never known anything different. This is a hard part of the city and people relish it that way. Your family—’
‘I know where we came from. I know what they think of me here.’
‘Did you know your father was a Fascist?’
He struggled for an answer.
‘No, he wasn’t. Don’t insult the dead.’
‘The truth is never insulting. It’s just the truth. Your father joined up back when everyone else did. When all the middle classes thought Il Duce would save them from the communists. He told me so himself and dammit I nearly walked straight out. Except he was a decent man. Just someone who got fooled along with the rest of them. He would never have wanted this nightmare but then … who did?’
As a family they’d always stayed away from politics. His father had ended the conversation, quite curtly, if talk over dinner strayed into that area. And this, it seems, was why. The Uccello were a once-affluent family who’d danced to Mussolini’s tune. Along with so many others. That was one more reason why they never mixed with the locals in the terraces and tenements of Castello. Cramped hovels where, for many of the poor, Stalin, Marx and Gramsci and all the other gods of the left held more sway than any prayer or blessing Filippo Garzone could utter from the pulpit of San Pietro.
‘I promised your mother, Paolo.’ There were tears in her eyes. He’d never seen them before. ‘I promised I’d take care of you if anything happened. I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose another to this stupid war as well.’ Her strong hands shook him and she nodded back at the rooms. ‘Get those two out of here now.’
Of course she knew. How could he have thought otherwise?
‘Who told you?’
‘You think I need to be told? Don’t risk your neck for strangers. Don’t—’
‘They’re going to help us finish this work,’ he broke in.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded at the looms and the half-finished fabric there.
‘You could kill us all for three pieces of velvet. You know that?’
‘They help us,’ he said. ‘And then they’re gone. The two of them are tired now. Tomorrow I need you to teach them.’
‘Three pieces of velvet …’ she whispered.
That night they ate mostly in silence. He got the impression the two of them had slept most of the day and spent the rest arguing. Neither would look at the other. Mika seemed restless, angry, unhappy to be cooped up in a backwater hidden away from the city. Vanni, crippled as he was by his wound, had little choice. All the same he appeared very different to his sister. Calm, thoughtful, funny at times. They cared for one another deeply, he guessed, though as an only child himself it was hard to untangle some of the obvious complexities between them. Perhaps Mika thought she was taking care of her brother, and he the same for her. And neither realized at all.
She went through the few books the Uccello had on their shelves and didn’t approve of any. Foreign adventure stories mainly, about the world beyond Italy and some of the science fiction Paolo had loved growing up. Around The World in Eighty Days. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The Time Machine.
‘Children’s stories,’ Mika said with a scowl. ‘Is this all you’ve got?’
‘I was a child,’ he explained. ‘If you want me to look for something else I can try. Just say what—’
‘We’ll live with what we’ve got,’ Vanni interrupted. ‘Don’t go attracting attention. These books will do. I’ll read them.’
‘You said you wanted our help,’ his sister added. ‘You haven’t asked for it.’
‘You looked like you needed some rest.’
‘We’re rested. What do you want?’
He took a deep breath and said, ‘I was hoping I could teach you to weave.’
Mika laughed out loud, then put a hand to her mouth.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. Us? Using those ancient contraptions you’ve got out there?’
‘I apologize for my sister,’ Vanni added with a sharp glance in her direction. ‘Sometimes her manners are lacking.’
‘I did say I was sorry!’
Vanni took her hand across the table.
‘Mika. We’re guests here. Paolo’s risking his life. For strangers.’
‘I know that, brother.’ She didn’t snatch her hand away. Instead she leaned over the table and kissed his cheek. Then, to Paolo’s embarrassment, his. ‘It’s just that those things are so old …’
‘They’re the only machines that do the work,’ Paolo pointed out. ‘What else?’
‘Let me try to explain.’ Vanni did his best. Their family, he said, worked for a company Paolo had heard of. Olivetti, in Turin. Both mother and father had been engineers developing typewriters for the owner, Adriano Olivetti.
‘We’re born to be part of the modern world,’ said Mika.
‘Not that the modern world appreciates it at the moment,’ her brother added with a shrug. ‘Olivetti’s fled to Switzerland. He’s a Jew. Converted to Catholicism to keep Mussolini happy and his factory working. But a Jew all the same. Not all of us who worked for him were so lucky. Our parents included. If we hadn’t been in Padua we’d have been with them.’
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br /> ‘Machines,’ Mika pointed to the workshop. ‘Modern machines. That’s what’s going to free us from the tyranny in the end.’
‘Or so Stalin promises,’ her brother muttered.
‘When they’re in the hands of the workers. Not slaves like we are now. Like that woman you’ve got out there.’
Her brother smiled.
‘I hardly think young Paolo makes much of a kulak. Or a likely candidate for collectivization.’
‘I don’t know what you two are talking about,’ he admitted. ‘I haven’t a clue.’
Vanni slapped his arm.
‘Communism, chum. The one true faith. Or so we’re told. We are its crusaders though …’ He moved too quickly on the chair and winced. The leg had to hurt. ‘At the moment we’re in a sorry and depleted state, between battles.’
‘Time’s all we need,’ Mika noted, and there was a hard tone back in her voice again. The anger was always there, Paolo thought. And the need to be active, to do something. ‘History’s on our side. It marches forward. We’re its drumbeat, getting louder all the time.’
Vanni laughed. He almost looked like a school kid when he did that. Something of his good humour rubbed off on Paolo Uccello too, not that he expected it.
The visitor hobbled to his feet.
‘A rather faint drumbeat at the moment. Show me your old machines, Paolo. I’ll happily do what I can. We’re in your debt and know it.’
‘I do not weave. I do not sew or knit.’ Mika picked up a book with a look of obvious disdain on her face. The Shape of Things To Come. ‘Goodnight.’
Early the following morning Paolo Uccello walked to Gallo’s in via Garibaldi, carrying his mother’s old canvas shopping bag. Gabriele, the grocer, was a slight man with a comical moustache and a comb-over of thinning grey hair. He stood behind the counter in his white overall stained with flour, tapping his fingers nervously on the counter just as he had the day before when Paolo made his first nervous venture into the store.
‘You want something for your friends from the mainland again?’
‘I do. Thank you.’
Food for three, cigarettes, wine. All for the price of one. Filippo Garzone’s organization – or perhaps Diamante’s, he wasn’t sure and didn’t want to know – seemed to be working. The chap said little. Paolo had made sure that he waited for the place to be empty before he walked in.