‘Glad it was worth the trip. So, how come you escaped? You allowed out on your own?’
‘I got a very kind corporal. Said it was an errand of mercy. The rest of the guys were heading to Albiano, so I hitched a ride. I wanted to tell you. . .’
Her stomach clenched. Monte Forato stared back at her; a glittering mirror-peak of ice.
‘We’ve been told to evacuate everyone from higher up the mountain. Not here, not yet. But I thought you should know.’
His pinkie finger curled into the fur, so close to her own hand. Were they touching? If they were, she couldn’t feel it; her hand didn’t feel like her own, all of her felt set apart from itself. Maybe Vita was in the mountain with the sleeping shepherd, watching, and it was her mirror-self here, with Frank.
‘Is that so you can bomb here?’
‘Yeah.’ He stared at his fingers.
‘I canny bear this,’ she said. ‘I have lost my mamma, my cousins – I’ve no seen my sister for months.’ She smoothed her hand through the fur. ‘How many people have you lost?’
‘Don’t know. I’ve stopped counting.’
Looking away from him, she could feel the snow-bleached light run down her face. And then, from nowhere, he spoke. He spoke, suddenly, to her of home. Of tall palm trees springing from arid desert sand, of coyotes that howled on the breeze. He talked about raccoons and cougars, the Sierra Nevada rising in an orange glow. He spoke of his little brother, of grey stone buildings and high white towers, of the pillared porticos of Berkeley, where she tried to picture him in a buttoned-down shirt and knitted tank top (he described it as a vest; she wanted to envisage every last drop of him, but ‘vest’ made her think of Papà’s semmit). With perfect stillness, Frank stared beyond Vita’s mountains and talked to her of sequoia and giant redwoods that would dwarf her chestnut forest; of the multitude of pines which spiked the Californian sky. How he loved that sharp resin smell you got up here, how it reminded him of family vacations in tents. You stay in tents? said Vita. In America? And he mumbled how plenty of the boarding houses would not take Negroes, and had she ever eaten a potato baked in its skin? How he missed eating cream cheese off of Ritz crackers, which his momma thought was the height of sophistication. How his momma and Willis would love this view.
‘My mamma loved it too.’
He took her hand, and her heart slipped sideways. Then it was Vita’s turn. She told him how the Etruscans had come here seven hundred years before Christ, scaling the Apennines, building roads, growing crops of olives, mining the land for ores. How they filled the wide spaces between the Arno and the Tiber, creating art of gold swastikas and easy beauty before Greece and Carthage and Gaul and Rome came pouring in, and, after them, the Goths, Byzantines, the Lombards, the land all chopped up and fought for and cut and pieced together again until Tuscany was part of Italy. She told him about Paisley and the Scotland she’d never seen. She paused then. Thinking of Joe, and a life in a rainbow-glassed café. Frank’s hand was still in hers. But no guilt came.
She felt an unexpected release.
‘One day, I’m gonny be a teacher.’
‘Yeah?’
‘All those things there are to know. As many as the stars – what is the word? Inspiring? Is that, you know, when you are filling someone’s brains with thoughts – but so they think them for themselves?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled, but he wasn’t laughing at her. ‘That’s the right word. Inspiring.’
‘Is thrilling. I think you can do anything maybe, if you can think for yourself. My papà taught me that. He said that is what is wrong with the world. When people don’t.’
‘Your pop’s a smart guy. So, was that you set up the little schoolroom?’
‘Aye. Just weans from here and Sommo. They canny get over the bridge to school, so me and Renata take it in turns.’ She sighed. ‘I love knowing stuff.’
‘Me too.’
‘Did you know, we have singing wind caves beneath the mountains? La Befana lives there.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Och, she’s like your Santa Claus. An old lady, who missed the birth of Christ. So she brings gifts to good children.’
‘Not real then?’
She shrugged. ‘What is real, Frank?’
‘I like it when you call me Francesco.’
His voice was low. It felt like needles shuttling through her, flying in and out, tightening all the fibres.
‘How?’
‘I dunno. Makes me more exotic, I guess.’
‘You don’t think you are exotic enough?’
His thumb was stroking the base of her thumb. His pulse in time with hers.
‘And see up there?’ she said. ‘Monte Forato? That’s really a sleeping shepherd. He is waiting for his true love.’
‘Your hands are very soft. For a partigiano.’
‘Partigiana. Is soft fae the olive oil. I’ve to mix it with balsam to make holy chrism for the nuns.’
‘Vita.’ He pressed her hand, let it go. ‘Tiziano says you’re friends with them. The nuns.’
‘You been talking about me, Buffalo?’
‘Maybe you could go stay there? In the Conservatoire.’
‘Conserva-torio.’
‘Mi scusi.’
‘I have a room in the Canonica anyway. If I need. But I don’t need.’
A flock of aeroplanes droned towards the coast. For every action there is a reaction.
‘You do, though. You need to leave here.’
‘This is my home.’
‘But you don’t have to stay right here. In the line of fire.’
Monte Lama glowered behind them, the final bulwark of the Gothic Line. Pummelled daily by americano fire, as men destroyed what they could not have. And now he was telling her they would bomb its foothills too. So desperate to take Lama, they would eradicate whole mountains.
‘Where? Where do I go? To not be in the line of fire? You want to tell me to go way up to Sant’Anna? Well, my cousins tried that – and they got slaughtered. You want to tell me to go back to Lucca and starve to death?’
‘Don’t, Vita. Please.’
‘Did you take food to my sister, Buffalo?’
‘I did.’
‘And? What did she say? I havny heard a word from her. Or Nonna.’ Vita pulled her knees towards her chest. ‘I miss her.’
‘I worry about you.’
‘Me too.’
He worried about her. Jewel words falling from his glittery breath. She could see them in the snow. Worry would be ruby red, and it would be smouldering, definitely. Frank took out a little notebook and a stub of pencil. Write it on the page, she thought. Write: I worry about you. There. She could trace over it with pen later on.
‘I thought you were gonny stay up here anyroad? How come is alright for you?’
‘Nope. They decided against it. So you’re even out-toughing the Buffs.’
Whatever Frank was writing was taking an age. He kept glancing over the valley, as if it was out there in the snow, the thing he wanted to say. The notebook rested on his lap. She realised he was sketching, not writing. Chin, nose. Eye. Her hair blowing. The twin peaks of Monte Forato, gliding easily over the paper.
‘You know, when I’m back in California, that sky up there you see? That’ll be the same one I see. Same sun in the day, same stars at night.’
‘My nonna says stars are dead folk. The brightest ones are folk you’ve loved.’
‘Yeah? That’s beautiful. So, maybe when I’m looking up, I’ll kinda be here. Or wish I was back here, at least.’
‘Why would you wish that?’
He glanced at her face, sketched another line on the page.
She and Frank continued to watch the horizon, and the skein of army trucks that moved on the road below. Her legs chilled, then her backside. Soft dusts of snow began to fall. The silence between them grew; the space they’d opened making them awkward. Vita smiled at him; she couldn’t help it. He dropped his pencil. Daft, that. To smile a
nd have him flutter like a foolish boy. But it made her feel fine and calm until she realised he was collecting up his notebook and she noticed how long his hands were; sleek and dark with the little notebook slid inside, and she was undone. Her lips parted. Tongue catching a snowflake.
‘You got one there too.’ His finger brushed her eyelash. She held her mouth open for more snowflakes. Unmoving, staring at white sky, leaden clouds, him, tracing fire down her cheekbone, across her collarbone, almost at the top of her heart, her heart which rose to meet his hand, and the heat of her breast. Surely he would sense it? This singing inside her?
‘Think it’s time to go meet my ride.’
She could barely hear him. Frank’s head was down, he was doing those fumbling-checking actions that signified departure.
‘Would you. . .?’ Her throat felt harsh, as if fine-glinting sand had been poured there. ‘Come back here? Afterwards?’
‘Sure I would. It’s stunning.’ He got to his feet. ‘Even when I’m getting my ass shot off, I feel free here. We get thanked. People share their food with us. At home, there’s places I can’t go into, folks who won’t let me speak, that think I’m a dumb—’
‘You think is any different for me? I canny walk in my own hills, my own forest. I’m no allowed out at night—’
‘But that’s not the same thing. This is temporary. Mine is forever.’
‘So’s mine. Even if I make it all the way to Scotland, I’m still a lassie. And everyone hates the Italians.’
‘That’s not true. You guys make great ice cream. Everyone loves your ice cream. Anyhow,’ he said, ‘everyone hates the coloureds way more.’
Vita was emboldened. He made her brave, and he was leaving anyway. She stood, held her arm to his. ‘No that much difference, you know.’ She licked her finger, rubbed it on her skin. ‘See? Even under the stour.’
‘Stour?’
‘Dirt. Am still brown underneath.’
‘Yeah, but you’re the right side of brown.’ He pressed the tender underside of her wrist. ‘You’re tan.’
‘So are you.’
‘No. This kind of brown is black.’
‘Who gets to decide?’
‘Ah, Vita.’
She thought then, that he was going to kiss her. But he simply breathed against the top of her head. ‘Think about what I said, yeah? It’s gonna get much worse here up in the next few weeks.’
A shadow moved behind them. They split apart, fast as grass cleaves when you run your nail up its shaft.
‘Lenin!’
‘Buonasera.’
Lenin looked hellish. He wore a grey raincoat, with the collar torn. Filthy red beret, long beard, his eyes pink with tiredness. She hadn’t seen him in a week; there had been too much tedeschi activity for the partisans to come down. Poor soul. How he must wish to be clean and warm in his house, or walking freely in the park. To not have frostbite on his cheeks.
‘Mi scusi.’ He was staring at Frank. ‘Possiamo. . .?’ He indicated they should move inside.
‘Is fine. We speak English? Remember Francesco?’
‘Sì.’ Lenin nodded, passed her an oilskin-wrapped package. Inside was a small black box, marked Siemens. ‘Ecco. Apparecchio Acustico.’
‘Hearing aid?’
Lenin rolled his eyes.
‘Ah! Grazie.’ She unfastened the back. The workings had been scooped out, the cavity filled with an AC/DC power-pack.
‘Vita! Non qui!’ Lenin laid his hand across hers. The transmitter she’d brought from Lucca was dumped in her soffitta, awaiting repairs. Perhaps this would do the trick.
‘This should make everything clear.’ She smiled, but Lenin did not. ‘Is it not a bit risky? Coming down in the afternoon?’
‘Hear you got medicines?’ Pointedly, in English.
Frank adjusted his helmet. ‘Man. I didn’t realise we were being spied on.’
‘We need morphine. Disperatamente. Tiziano ask many times already for your soldiers to help.’
‘It’s fine, Francesco, don’t worry. The partigiani often keep an eye on La Limonaia.’
‘Certo.’ Lenin faced the Buffalo. The Italian was a fraction taller, but Francesco could have blown on him, and he would waft away. ‘Good asset here, americano. And we like to keep it. No attention drawn to La Limonaia, sì?’
Vita’s skin bristled.
‘No Mori on your terrazza perhaps, Vittoria?’
‘I’m sorry. I should go.’
‘No, you should not. This is my house.’
‘Please. I have no wish to fight,’ said Lenin. ‘Dolcezza, another flock of sheep to be delivered. Tonight possibly. And more Alpini move in. There is news of it on the wires.’
‘See?’ Vita turned to tell Frank that ‘sheep’ was code for a parachute drop – yes, it was a stupid code, because they had no sheep here, goats would have been better, but it was Captain Bob who wrote the code, which was uselessly non-specific, because it could mean men or supplies or both. And that Vita would be needed to co-ordinate the response: finding hideouts or food for those who needed it, arranging transport onto higher ground. If Alpini troops were being brought in, that meant the Germans were mustering reinforcements – did he hear that? How she knew those words? ‘Mustering’. ‘Reinforcements’. See, she was a soldier too. She turned to say, This is why I need to stay here. Under these bare trees, taking strength from hard blue mountains. It’s like I drink it, Francesco, and it makes me strong. In my own house, where I’m the last of the Guidis. Up here, she could breathe freely. Keep the faith. Not Church-faith; it was a covenant, between Vita and her family and the pulse of roots and rocks and time and all the folk who’d ever lived, or would live, here. It’s why you fight too, isn’t it? For something more than yourself?
She turned to say all of these things to Frank, that he would understand. But the americano had gone. Tucked under the fur of her mother’s coat was the torn-out sketch from his notebook.
Chapter Twenty-three
‘No! No, I tell you. I tell them all. You must take them away!’
‘But, sir, they’re here for your protection.’ Frank tried to remonstrate with the priest. Such were the duties of an assistant squad leader which, as of yesterday, was what he’d unofficially become. A domino spill that had seen Lieutenant Garfield make captain. Again. Man, how it stuck in the throat of Dedeaux. ‘Don’t think this is on your ability,’ was his farewell, to a guy who’d saved his ass daily. ‘It’s only a field promotion.’
Frank was pleased for Garfield, but sore they were losing him. Garfield got the final word, climbing into his jeep. ‘Yeah, Dwight? So how come no one’s promoting you?’
‘Caporale!’ said the priest. ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Sì, sì. But I cannot move these guns.’ Frank looked in vain for assistance from the gunners, whose corporal had just sliced his shin open and was being helped off to the medics. Several large-calibre guns had been positioned in Piazza Verzani, near the cathedral. It was an excellent position; gave them a clear high view over the valley and up towards Lama.
‘They will draw fire to my Duomo. Always I tell you people and always I am ignored. Don’t you understand?’ The priest waved his wide-brimmed hat. Spectacles frosted with condensation.
‘I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing I can do. Mi dispiace.’
‘But we are coming into Advent. Where is your compassion? All of you! How many hundreds of hits already on this town? Look! Look around you.’
Where once were streets was tumbled rubble; great chunks of wall and roof paved the roads and alleys. A channel had been cleared down the centre, so folks could pass. It had the effect of making the street into a dry, stony riverbed. Battered buildings clung to one another, or gazed down on their collapsed, ashen neighbours whose shredded brick pitched into gapes where upper floors should be. The drape of snow softened it, but only in the way sculptors softened funeral monuments with marble cloth. The gable end of a restaurant stood boldly on its own; further
down, the portico of an old palazzo led to a crater. A family shuffled past, wrapped in overcoats and scarves. The eldest boy was trying to drag a pram full of possessions over a fallen rafter.
‘Sir. This is war.’ Frank stamped his feet, vainly, to get warm. ‘And most of the fire is coming from the German side.’ Republican troops too, he wanted to say. Italians. Your guys. But did not. The priest was not shouting at him, Francis Chapel. He was yelling at a black boy; an upstart soldier who was engineering the final destruction of Barga, and who, in the natural order of things, should never have been telling this venerable old preacher what to do. Frank got that.
‘Here. Mi permetta.’ He took hold of the pram handle, to give the kid a hand. The priest followed him.
‘Yet your men are also mining Porta Macchiaia. Even our German friends did not stoop so low. It is insupportable. Is there no honour amongst you Moors? I demand to speak to an officer.’
‘I’m the most senior personnel here, sir.’
The boy with the pram blinked. His family swept around him, gathering child and pram into their midst, then trundling on. Was Frank shouting?
‘You are a coloured caporale.’
And I ain’t strictly no caporale. But to go into the vagaries of field appointments in times of war would not endear Frank to this enraged man.
‘I am the Monsignor of the Duomo.’
‘Monsignor! Ah.’ Frank smiled his smile, trying to shift momentum. ‘You a friend of Vita’s, then? Vittoria Guidi?’
The priest’s expression darkened further. Frank was glad he wasn’t Catholic – to give your confession to those furious brows. Man, His eyes bored into the meat of you. Sucked out your marrow and decreed it wanting. It would be safer just to sin.
‘Me too, sir. I too am a friend.’
‘If you were a friend of my housekeeper, you would not be doing this.’ The Monsignor returned his flapping hat to his head. ‘Your guns are pointing directly towards her home.’
Frank knew that fine. He bent to tighten one of the ropes round the gun carriage. Which was why he was going back up to Catagnana, just as soon as he got this emplacement battened down. Fuck being a PFC assistant squad leader. He was going to be Santa Claus.
The Sound of the Hours Page 27