‘Vita? You alright?’ Bear was there too. ‘Sarge, you done here?’ Frank spoke direct to him. ‘Only I’d like to take this young lady back to her family now.’
The boldness of him. Three of them sniffing at her: Bear, Dedeaux and another peckerwood in civvies. Had to be OSS; they got a kick out of dressing like peasants. On the table lay a radio transmitter, in a small black valise with wires and a dial. Neat set of headphones too. There was a map and some white paper beside, on which was sketched a curve of hill, a thin track, a line of bricks.
Vita stood. ‘I’m ready.’ Sharp around the edges. Luminous with purpose while the rest of the room was dull. Wasted. Anywhere else was wasted space. That was the truth. Maybe she could write him, and he could send her dumb doggerel on V-mail. He knew where she lived. And, when war was over, he could come find her. A bug fluttered round the candle on the desk. Bear coughed. Dark rings on the underarms of his shirt.
Francis Chapel was not yet nineteen years of age. He had not yet graduated, did not have a girl. Frank’s life should be on the cusp, should be busting with new things, new people, and it was. It’s just – they were the wrong things. They did not reach into the future the way he’d supposed. Where he thought there’d be a path was holes, blockages, folks falling through the holes, Frank not catching them. The world was not going to be his for the taking, no matter how wide the smile that met it. Home is where you are missed, Francis. He guessed his mother was describing love, how it had to hurt for you to feel it, properly. He couldn’t hardly love this girl, had known her half a day, but it was bolts of proper pain he felt, thinking how she was here, now, a handreach from him, and how, in time he’d forget her face.
‘Can he take me, please?’ Vita said, pointing at Frank, and he glowed with her. She shut the suitcase.
‘PFC.’ Dedeaux put the tip of his foot to the door, pressing just enough that Frank could feel the door against his breastbone. ‘You was told to go fetch me a duffel bag.’
‘Excuse me, sarge? What’s going on?’ Tight spurt of fury in Frank’s throat; him swallowing it down. Those transmitters were what they parachuted behind enemy lines. He noticed, too, the masthead on the pile of newspapers. L’Italia libera. Fuck you, Bear. He had wanted to help Vita, not put her at risk.
The OSS guy took his toothpick from his mouth. ‘Anyone ask you to speak, nigger? Go get the bag.’
‘Why are you giving her the transmitter? Sir?’
‘That word you call him?’ said Vita. ‘I am no stupid. Apologise, else I won’t help you.’
The OSS man removed the suitcase from her hands. ‘Arrivederci then, signorina. Because this is the US Army. And we do not apologise to niggers.’
‘Sir.’ Bear spoke, his craven smile making Frank sick to the guts. ‘Sir, I’m sure the young lady didn’t mean it. We just josh like that, ma’am. Don’t mean nothin’, so it don’t. Now, you want to get to Barga and we want to get this little bundle there too. Way I see it, that’s a win-win. But Chapel here won’t be going. Captain Dedeaux will take you as far north as he can get.’
What the fuck did that mean? Frank’s teeth were hurting. Jaw muscles dancing. Ten-shun, nigger. Another private came in, carrying a duffel bag. It was Luiz. ‘Sir. Believe you were looking for this?’
Dedeaux dumped the newspapers inside the bag, handed it to Vita. He thought she shook a little, but it could have been the candles. If the Krauts found her, did she know she would be shot? She looked straight at Frank.
‘Please tell my nonna where I am gone?’
Frank nodded.
‘And if you could take them a wee bite to eat?’
Dedeaux took Vita’s arm, led her past where Frank stood. She brushed her hand against his, once and only briefly, before she slung the duffel across her shoulder and took the suitcase from the OSS operative. The three of them left the villa.
‘Sarge. What the fuck you doing? She’s just a kid.’
Bear gripped Frank by his lapels. ‘You want put on a charge, boy? Don’t never cuss at me. She wanted to go, OK? It was her idea.’
‘Bullshit.’
This time, Bear did strike him. Frank felt his cheekbone explode, his head crack on the wall behind. ‘This is a fucking war, Chapel – not some kinda tea party. Every step we take forward is ’cause a folks like her. Who you think tells us where the mines are? Where the Krauts is massing; their weak spots? Old guy walked in this morning with plans for the entire west half of the Gothic Line. In his goddam fucking shoes.’ He pulled Frank off of the wall. ‘So, you stop thinking with you fucking dick. Start being a fucking soldier.’
Shoving him out the door of the villa. Drench of sunlight, everything brilliant lemon-white. The heat was flooding under his shirt. Head thumping. A mix of rapid movement and time slowing down, so that when he looked in vain for the captain’s jeep, the hard yellow light tricked him into thinking it was still parked up. But it wasn’t. Frank watched the cloud of dust moving on the road out of camp. Taking her away. He kept on watching, staring at the sun until his eyes burned. Then went to find some light-skinned black boys.
Chapter Fifteen
The americano said he’d drop Vita near Mozzano. Beyond were German lines, German snipers. The jeep sped through a blasted landscape, lines of sunlight washing over ruins; no longer meadow or mountain, but carcass. The trucks and trails of mules moving on it were like ants. Forward and back, forward and back. She was a piece of driftwood, buffeted by the steady, far thuds of bombs.
The americano wore thick sunglasses, stared resolutely forwards. Vita had already agreed to take their little black box home. He had no need to charm her any more, and she had no desire to talk.
She had seen what Nazis did to her father. What did they do to women?
She should never have left Barga. Vita had lived through four years of war. It felt like a hundred. It was forever men who thought they held all the cards. Men who marched and shot and starved people, while women waited to be saved. That’s what they thought, behind their sunglasses and their swastikas. Well, maybe she wanted to take their radio. Maybe she wanted to do more than wait for others to decide her fate. Or her mother’s.
Had that boy been part of their charm offensive? Francesco, who was the saint who loved animals. He was beautiful, smooth like a film star. He was the only soldier she’d met who smelled of soap instead of sweat. Chestnut-hard when she brushed against him.
She let her eyes shut. When she stood on the highest branch of her tree at La Limonaia and dropped her body forward to catch the next branch, there was a single, glorious point in air where neither feet nor hands were on any solid thing. You were entirely held by sky; it caused your skin to fizz away from itself, your blood to crackle as your belly rose, voluptuous.
Francesco. She had wanted him to drive her to Barga, and he had wanted to, Vita was sure. He had looked at her in a way she did not think possible.
They reached a small river, a row of floats strung across the current. On top was a series of planks bobbing from one bank to the other. The stumps of a previous bridge stood alongside; ghost-limbs. The contraption swayed as they drove across.
‘OK, ma’am.’ The americano’s voice was loud. ‘I can take you no further, capeesh?’
The reek of smoke hung everywhere. The view was unfamiliar. High, wooded hills ahead, with stone houses clustered on the sides, but it wasn’t anywhere she recognised.
‘Where is this? I thought I was going to Borgo a Mozzano?’
‘No can do. Full of Bosch. No way we can cross the Serchio.’
‘How no? Ponte della Maddalena is still standing.’
The soldier looked blank. ‘What’s ‘‘stawnin’’?’
‘Standing. When I came past.’
‘It’s not safe. You’ll get yourself killed if you go back that way. See over there?’ He pointed further up the hillside to a church tower, surrounded by roofless ochre houses, serrated against the bright blue sky. ‘That’s Pescaglia. Our guys took it earlier today. T
his is as far north as I can go. Keep going east into the hills, and you’ll be OK. You can find a way to cross the river further on.’
Vita’s eyes smarted. She needed to be home. Mamma was half-demented; she could say or do any number of things, would stand up to a battalion of Nazis if she thought they’d wronged her. What if Vita got lost? She only knew the way from Mozzano.
The soldier tapped the black suitcase. ‘Remember. Find a man called Tiziano and give this to him. Or, better still, Captain Bob. You got that?’
‘Sì. Tiziano or Bob.’
‘Better take this too.’ He passed Vita a piece of paper, stamped with a red cross.
‘I’m a driver?’
‘Sure. Just write your name on the line. Means if you break curfew you got an excuse.’
‘Do I no need a motor for it to work?’
‘Jeez, I don’t know, lady. I’m trying to help you. Find one of those – what you call ’em? Misery cords?’
‘Misericordia.’
‘Yeah. Ride in one of them, they’ll let you go anyplace. Even Krauts don’t blow up the Red Cross.’
The paper hung in Vita’s hand.
‘You don’t wanna help?’ He raised his sunglasses onto the top of his head. ‘Man, you people. It’s your goddam country.’
Her teeth caught the inside of her lip. Tugging the skin, but not breaking it.
‘You gotta distribute these too.’ He handed her the knapsack from the backseat.
‘Where?’
‘Anyplace you can. Trains, cafés. Just don’t get caught, OK?’
‘Sì.’
‘Good girl.’ He patted her bottom as she got out of the jeep. Vita froze, her knuckles stuck to the door. She fought the urge to slam it on his fingers.
‘The other one. How come your pal called him that name?’
‘What name?’
‘Nigger. Is not a good word. Why do you call him that if he’s one of you?’
‘’Cause that’s what he is. Don’t you go getting any ideas about our niggers. Just ’cause we dress ’em up in uniform, don’t make them one of us.’ The soldier unrolled a stick of cingomma, popped it in his mouth. ‘Gum?’
‘No.’
‘OK. Well, I gotta go. Good luck.’
Vita watched the nape of the man’s neck beneath his crew cut, how the bands of flesh jiggled as the jeep drove away. Her chest felt packed with jangly fragments. If she didn’t walk carefully, they would pierce her.
The climb to Pescaglia was gradual. As she reached the foot, the track split. Long columns of smoke drifted from the blackened town. Clouds were forming over the forest-clad slopes. Harvest time was always changeable: a tang of rust in the air, then a squall could rush from nowhere. Vita moistened her lips, trying to get the taste of smoke from her mouth. She avoided entering Pescaglia, kept the sun behind her. If it was going west, then she was going east.
Insistent birds called across the valley. Walking on the open track, the sharpness in her chest increased. She felt as if she were travelling naked. She hoped Frank would tell Nonna where she was going. He would, though. He would. A quiet and foolish thrill ran through her. Imagine walking out with someone as beautiful as that. At passeggiata, hearing swishes as folk spun on their heels, their hard-clipped comments delivered sotto voce. Imagine not giving un fico secco for what they said. Perhaps if a man gazed on you like that, like you were made of gold, then you wouldn’t care. Perhaps.
The rush of being drawn down a long alley – had she imagined the pull? Bracken tore her stockings. She had trusted that beautiful boy, trusted the sparkling feeling he’d given her, and he had led her to rude, pink-necked soldiers.
The hillside was a web of faint tracks. She kept to the widest path, swinging round one tree trunk, then another. Came to another junction, where a concrete bunker stood like a little mountain chapel. There was an unglazed slit at the front, just wide enough to look through. Deserted. It stank of urine. One upturned chair and a metal tripod within. She’d seen tedeschi rest their machine guns on tripods like that. A rubber hose was coiled on the ground. If you could make zoccoli out of old tyres, you could do something useful with that.
‘Hoi!’
A man’s voice, yelling in her ear. Flurry of movement; a hard arm coming up and across her neck. No feet, no ground, Vita’s legs flailing, trying to kick out behind, but she couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t get a breath to scream or shout, he was crushing her throat, pulling her arms up higher than they could go, the slit of bunker disappearing, ground looming as she bent forwards, away from the pulling, slamming.
Slamming her head back, into his chin. It was the last thing she remembered doing.
Vita woke with a splitting headache. Eyes down, on weirdly clasped hands. Her wrists were bound in front of her, but it was a limp, half-hearted effort. A square of moonlight shone on the earthen floor. A man said, ‘She’s awake.’
She turned her head towards the noise. Bright shaft of pain. Feet shuffling.
‘Who did this?’ It was a woman’s voice. She pulled the rope loose, started yelling. Lots of yelling, the man joining in. At least they weren’t Germans. Vita felt more floaty than scared.
‘Can I get a drink?’
‘That depends. Zippo here thinks you’re a spy. Are you a spy?’
Vita craned up at the woman. About Renata’s age. Hair scrunched under a headscarf; thick, black brows. Fists also scrunched. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
‘Why? Are you?’ There were three of them: the woman, a man with crusted blood around his mouth and an older man. Both males sported beards. ‘Why did you tie me up?’
‘Just, you broke my brother’s nose.’
‘He grabbed me!’
‘Well, what are you doing here?’
Vita looked around her. ‘Where’s my stuff?’
‘You mean the radio transmitter? Ah, well, see, we had to requisition that.’
‘Give it back!’ Vita got to her feet. Nobody stopped her. ‘It’s not for you. I’ve to pass it on. Who even are you?’
‘Pass to who?’
Fumbling for the name. ‘Tiziano?’
The three of them sniggered. ‘That useless prick? Nah. It’ll definitely be safer here.’
‘We need it in Barga.’
‘Says who?’
‘The americani.’
‘You working for them?’
‘I’m not working for anyone. My mamma’s been arrested by tedeschi. I need to get to her.’ There was her knapsack, bundled in a corner. No suitcase.
‘What for?’ The woman poured water into a wooden cup.
‘Helping my papà escape.’
‘And did he? Escape?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where have they taken her?’
‘Castelnuovo. I think. I don’t know. Look, I was in Lucca, now I need to get back to Barga. An americano gave me a lift. In exchange, he asked me to take the radio to some man called Tiziano, and that’s what I’m doing, right? He says they need it to “communicate across the lines”.’
‘We already do,’ said the woman. ‘Without americani help. We do it every day.’
‘Good for you. You won’t need my transmitter then, will you?’
‘Sit down and shut up.’ The woman shoved her. Vita shot her hand out, landed heavily. A judder went up her forearm, reigniting the pain in her skull.
‘Maybe we’ll keep you. Use you for a prisoner exchange.’
She tucked her hands into her armpits. ‘A prisoner exchange? Me? Yeah, swap me for what?’
‘I’m not joking. This is not a game. I have lost a brother, a husband.’ The woman squatted. ‘And these.’ She splayed her left hand on the floor. Gaps where her index and middle fingers should be. ‘So if you’re stupid enough to wander in here with gear we need, you really think we’re going to ask permission to take it?’
‘What if we need it more?’ Vita was shocked; she couldn’t look away from the absence of those fingers. ‘I thought
Pescaglia had been liberated. Are we not on the same side?’
‘How do I know which side you’re on? What’s your credentials?’
‘Credentials? My name’s Vittoria Guidi. I’m eighteen years old. I just want to get home. Find my mother and hand over the transmitter like I was asked.’
‘But who asked you?’
‘I don’t know. Some American soldier. At the army camp in Lucca.’
‘Why were you in Lucca?’ said the younger man.
‘To see my nonna.’
‘Did you take anything with you?’
‘Apart from my sister and a bike, no.’
‘And you left your sister there?’ said the woman.
‘Well. . . yes. Surely it’s safer there than in Barga?’
‘You tell me. How involved are you with the resistence there?’
‘I’m not. God, I’m just a girl. What can I do?’
The older man laughed, a nervy, clipped-off noise that jangled against the concrete walls. He and the other one shuffled out as the woman stood up. Vita braced herself to be struck again.
‘You’re right. You have tits. What could you do, except make babies and pasta?’ She waved her arm. ‘Except, how about sabotage? Recruitment? Hiding weapons, running a safe house? Sending messages, taking observations, creating false papers, moving prisoners of war?’ As she spoke, the woman held up her disfigured hand. ‘One tip. Don’t salvage detonators from German hand grenades. They tend to go off while being dismantled.’
She topped up the water from the jug. Offered it to Vita. She smelled earthy, as if the fresh air was inside her skin.
‘I’m Dina, by the way.’
‘Thank you. Look, Dina, I have to go. I’m terrified what they might do to my mamma.’
‘It’s not my name, you know. It’s short for La Dinamitarda.’
‘Dynamiter. Nice.’
She sat beside Vita. ‘If you’re going to be a partisan, you need a nickname. For security. If you make notes, use the radio, whatever. Give your real name and you’re dead. Your family too.’
‘Why do it then? If it’s so dangerous?’ Again, Vita was drawn to that terrible, glamorous gap in the woman’s hand.
The Sound of the Hours Page 19