‘Thank you. Oh, thank you.’ All the brittle glass burst out of her, a thousand cleansing splinters of relief. Not realising how sore they’d been until they were gone.
‘Yeah. Ran into a bit of trouble over at Gallicano. But we whipped their motherfucking asses. Scusi.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ Light flashed on distant Monte Forato; the crimson bleed of sunset, and a little burst shot through her heart. If you stood, and concentrated hard, the world was still beautiful. ‘You keep whooping their. . . whatever-you-said asses. Did Frank say anything else?’
‘Nope. Just that.’
Vita went to bed that night to dream of love. But she dreamed instead that she was inside the sunset. Its amber glow was part of her, and she was reaching, stretching into rays, letting sky rise past her as the earth kissed, granular and warm. The air was pounding, like the coming of a stampede.
A dull heave woke her. White-whining hurricane of paper, frosting eyelids. Salty, crashing waves. Vita, slow.
Stupid.
One second of muffled calm; of faintly ringing air that billowed with the soft give you get when snow falls, then she leaped from her bed.
Flying roof tiles and sheets of glass were crashing past the windows.
Far away, Cesca was screaming.
‘Where are you?’ Couldn’t understand her own words, tongue twisted, ears packed with. . . feathers? Soap?
The walls of the house were bowing out. The skewered ceiling, the high void of it senseless – she could see the Monsignor’s dressing gown flapping at the sky. Grit pattered her face, the powdery, falling ash dusting everything white.
‘Cesca! Cesca!’ Words falling, echoing.
‘I’m here,’ shouted her sister. ‘I’m stuck. Help me.’
She pulled Cesca from under the upturned washstand. Broken mirror glistened on her skin, bright blood dripping.
‘Can you move? Wiggle your fingers.’
‘It’s just cuts.’ Cesca was flicking off the glass. The ceiling, all cloudy, muffled gapes. Blood trickled into Vita’s eye. She hauled herself over the debris, yelling up at the gap in the roof. ‘Monsignor! Are you alright?’
‘Vittoria?’ Quavery, old, like he hadn’t yet put on his persona.
‘Hold on. I’m coming.’
She tried to open the bedroom door, but it was stuck. Icy air whipped her face. Hammering on the stubborn wood, seeing her fists rattle, hearing only dull thumps. ‘Nico! Nico!’ She could smell burning; her ears suddenly rushed and piercing, Vita wincing at the whimpers above, the cries coming from the families crammed below.
‘Get out of the basement,’ she shouted, stamping on the floor. No windows there, only wooden stairs leading up, to what? Kitchen, to the storeroom, to the kitchen where she could smell burning. Gesù. If the kitchen went on fire, they’d all be trapped.
Then women’s voices came, ringing. The sisters, calm and patient. Mother Virginia calling: We will get you out.
Ragged air, curtains blowing like spectres. The wind eddied leaves of white paper, chinkling glass and crisping flames. Bangs and confusion below. A nun recited the rosary through the open ceiling.
‘Is the Monsignor safe?’ Vita shouted.
‘Sì.’
The Canonica yawned and the ceiling groaned, bits tumbling further through the hole. Other, deeper voices arrived, pounding boots and smashing doors. Americani orders: On the count of three.
Feet and fists.
Stand back, stand back.
Two of the white Buffalo officers were reaching inside. Hands, arms, finding theirs. Lifting her, carefully, out to the starless sky.
They were lucky. A few bashes and gashes. Nico was cut by jagged wood, but there were folk injured far worse. Vita saw Lenin and Tiziano, running past with a makeshift stretcher. Soldiers doused the flames in the kitchen, using a rain barrel and blankets, the Monsignor walking himself out, albeit with a sister at either elbow. The soldiers moved them all away from the unstable wall, round to the Conservatorio. The poor sisters, their building had been struck too, but it was a glancing blow. Sister Agatha knelt on wet cobbles, nursing a casualty: the wooden Nativity she carted to the Duomo each Christmas. Beside her, Buffaloes laden with rifles and packs were tending to a little boy, blood pumping from his head wound. Cesca ran to help.
‘He’ll need to go to hospital. Sarge, can we get this kid to Pisa? Like now?’
Vita knew that voice. Hard to see faces, in the smoke and bitter dark.
‘Francesco!’
His tin cup clattered as he spun round. ‘Vita! Baby. Are you OK?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
He had grown a beard. It sculpted his beautiful mouth, his cheekbones. Made him strange, alluring. She ran her hand over his features. Smoothed his brow. His straight, fine nose. She could feel a wound on the side of his cheek, a patch of torn and part-healed flesh. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Think that’s bad?’ he whispered. ‘You should see my butt. Hey! Your head. You’re bleeding.’
‘Is nothing.’
‘We should get you to hospital too.’
He held a square of handkerchief against her temple. Around them, small fires raged and timbers fell. The sky seemed to droop and bevel. This must be how an earthquake felt. The sucking in and spitting out. The crack appearing. The little boy was carried past, arms limp. She imagined Barga receding as she sped in a truck towards clean linen and a quiet bed, watching her valley collapse.
Vita laid her head against Frank’s chest. Smoke coiled into house-shaped spaces, a hard and amplified tingling in her skull, her tongue tasting dust. Only this clear, bright bubble. Through the push of his heartbeat and the hissing containment of her ears, she thought she heard a man’s voice. Low, resonant with fury.
È disgustoso.
Then the bubble ruptured and the crackling, whooshing, rustling dark, and the shouts and the moans, broke through. Her head pecked side-to-side, trying to see who’d spoken.
‘Baby. Hold still.’
Blood pumped again, hot into her eyes. Frank went to wipe it, and a fist came crashing down, striking his hand away.
‘You! Are you goddam deaf or goddam disobedient?’
Immediately, Frank released her, sending Vita stumbling against the man who’d hit him.
‘Get your whore off of me, nigger.’ The man shoved her against a wall; a white soldier, the Buffalo patch prominent on his arm. ‘Know why they call ’em booby traps? ’Cause they all got the pox. Gonna send you one of two ways – a bayonet course or the goddam grave.’
His words ebbed and flowed around her. Vita, dazed, waiting for Frank to react. But he just stood there, clenching his fists.
‘Listen up. Y’all hear me, men? I repeat. You Buffaloes are no longer to fraternise with – nor fuck – the locals. Do I make myself clear? Spies, fascists and thieves, the lot of them.’ The officer yanked at Vita’s arm again. She thought it was the fat-necked one who’d driven her to Pescaglia. ‘Go make out with one of your own, puttana.’ She didn’t understand. A thin, chill moment where she thought Frank must speak. Then, through the smoke and debris, Mother Virginia appeared, like a tiny, furious crow.
‘Filthy.’ She pushed the officer. ‘You, away. Avanti.’
‘Hey, sister! You stay outta—’
‘Leave her alone, ya big bawbag.’
Cesca stood in front of Vita. Barghigiani were assembling in the shadows and the smoke. You could feel folk watching. Mother Virginia draped a blanket over Vita’s back. She drew it tight, wanting to hide herself entirely. Only then did Frank step towards the officer, but another soldier, the feather-capped one she’d seen before, blocked his path.
‘Yes, sir, Captain Dedeaux. Roger that loud and clear. C’mon, Chap. Move it!’
Without protest, without looking at her once, Frank let himself be led away.
Chapter Twenty-six
Frank, Claude, Ivan and Comanche, walking four abreast through the tail end of Barga. Luiz and Bear up ahead. Frank, tight and hard as i
ron, his lover’s blood on his hands. The fury filling him. Fuelling him. Next chance he got, he would kill Dedeaux. Easy enough: just slip your trench knife behind the windpipe and jerk. Comanche’s nails dug into his elbow.
‘Fuck, man. You can let me go.’
‘Your lady friend all right?’
‘Yeah, Claude. Thanks.’
‘She the dame you been beating yo’ meat for, Chap?’
Always best to ignore Ivan.
‘Wild one with the hair you was butt-pumpin’ back there? You and Dedeaux share her?’
‘Fuck-up, asshole.’
‘Can’t say I recognise her from your crappy drawings.’
‘She’s fine,’ said Claude. ‘What she called?’
‘She’s called Vita, Claude.’
‘Ooh, Vee-ta,’ Ivan sang. ‘I’m gonna eat her.’
Frank had blown it. ’Course he fucking had. What would Vita understand about orders? About white men, standing on your neck? Jesus. Those beautiful long angles of her, lit by flames. Seeing the planes of her cheekbones melt like they were wax. Watching the whole of her face cave. He’d never get to trace the pulse of blood that ran through her neck again. The vulnerable uplift where he’d pushed at her hair, wanting to bite down, to own her, there, in the burning street. His battle-hardened body screaming just fuck her, man. While she was hurting. Bleeding. Real hard, Francis. You let a peckerwood humiliate her, without saying one single word.
The violence tightened. It was under his breast, his tongue; it smarted his eyes.
Surrounding him were boys full of bluster, thumping, gouging, mutilating their way into being men. Doing it with bristle-sharp pride. In a hamlet above Gallicano, an old Italian had led them to a farm. Nodding and pointing that, sì, this was it. No tedeschi there now, of course. But the family inside had been feeding German officers. Traditori. Making dinner for them night, after night. Worth questioning, sì? On the approach, Frank shaking their guide’s hand, grazie, grazie, the Italian being reluctant to shake his in return, pulling away, that familiar crawl of disgust at americani uniforms coating Negro skin, man, fuck ’im, the upstairs window already open though it was cold, his brain ticking from curious to—
Drang and drang and drang and drang : the machine gun had ripped from inside, a fucking set-up, the guys in front mown down, metal shaving his face, Frank just quick enough to fly out a tackle, bring the Italian to his knees. He had used the man as cover, letting his skinny body take the flak. Afterwards, when the position was secure, the dead and wounded Buffs dealt with, the Italian was still breathing. Frank had taken his knife and gutted him.
He bit down on his lip. He had wanted Vita to make him clean.
‘Sarge,’ said Luiz. They’d stopped outside Barga’s whorehouse, an unobtrusive casa that was part of an old mill. ‘We got five minutes, yeah?’
‘Not for in there you ain’t, boy. You not hear il capitano?’
‘I gotta go say my goodbyes. There’s a little chiquita—’
‘I’m sure those ladies will survive without you.’
‘Serious, sarge. I left my wallet in there. Kinda had a tab going. . .’
‘Jeez-Luiz. Five minutes.’
They leaned on the wall of the bordello, each man pretending there were not soft skin and willing mouths beyond the scarlet curtain. All Frank wanted was Vita. In the warm crease of neck he wished to bite, he would find himself. Frank Chapel. Berkeley Campus, University of California. A regular guy.
Bullshit. Frank was a liar. Every soldier with a pulse lies. They lie when they pretend to be two people, to split the Jekyll from the Hyde. They lie when they spit at fear, or fake nonchalance at the screams, or feign disinterest at the point they no longer hear them. Man, that is when you should be screaming loudest of all, when you are going, going.
Gone.
A troop of partigiani came down the street. When they saw the Buffs, they nudged one another, began to march. As if they were signalling: We are the soldiers. Not you. Frank closed his eyes. Asleep, awake, this metamorphosis of skin to scales would eat you up. Was this his life now? Was this it? Muddy snow, snowy rain, shitting and shooting, being caught on barbed wire. Giving hills numbers and running up, getting shot at, slithering down. Snow-dampened booms, hot earth hitting skin and your trigger finger bleeding, blood gone ice with cold. Huddled round fireless campfires, your back against your buddy’s back, so that when you spoke to one another in low voices, you spoke into air. Speaking to the mountains. Different answers came different days – mostly crashing shells, or polar indifference.
‘Chapelley, a word.’
‘Please, sarge.’ Frank looked at Bear. ‘Not now.’ A leadenness had come over him, glossy black like crow feathers, and he’d the sensation that if he tumbled into it he would never stop falling.
‘You got to leave her be, you hear?’
‘OK, bros. I is done.’ Luiz emerged. Hand raised. ‘Gimme skin, Ivo.’
‘Ooh, Vita. I gonna eat-huh. Ooh, Vita—’
Bear cuffed the back of Ivan’s head. ‘OK, children. Let’s move.’
For the rest of tonight, they were detailed to hole up in Ponte, keep an eye on the bridge. Krauts had been making forays down the mountain in their absence; man, the Buffs were stretched so thin right now, one sneeze and the line would bust. They were almost out of ammo. Difficult getting anything through the lines. Mule skinners were working day and night to transport weapons and rations to the troops; they were literally scaling mountains for them. Fattening them up for the kill.
Bear kicked the door open while Claude circled his rifle wide, taking obs on the hills. Luiz rolled inside, flamboyant and dumb. Clear. Clear. They were using an abandoned shop, the one with the yellow stars. Two upstairs windows, facing front.
‘Oh, Vita.’ Ivan was dry-humping the door frame. ‘You taste soo sweet.’
‘Can I get a minute, sarge?’
‘Ain’t gonna bail on me, Chapelley?’
Frank fished out a pack of Lucky Strikes. ‘I just need a smoke. And a break from that piece of shit.’
‘One minute. Else I gotta come kill you, baby bear.’
Frank hunkered at the side of the building, where it jutted and joined onto the next one up. Boom. Schwwsh. White flashes on the mountains. His whole body hurt, the sound was inside him too, trying to explode itself out from under his thick black hide. He wished he could hear silence again. Schoom-whish. Trying to make the dark hush. Trying to recall his momma’s scent. He drew the smoke deep inside his lungs, holding it till his mind went blank and dizzy.
From nowhere, a crunch slammed the side of his head, booted feet knocking him sideways, flash of red cloth as a forehead butted him, hand clamping over his mouth. Punching on his throat; he was choking, could feel the sharp tip of his cigarette burning through his neck. ‘Non toccarla, Moor,’ a voice hissed. ‘Capisci?’
The pain bloomed through his cheekbone, cluster-blasting behind his eye.
‘Vittoria Guidi.’ From the corner of his swelling lid, Frank saw a dirty red beret. ‘Leave her alone. Capisci?’
Another punch, hard into his balls. Pain cleaving from his groin to his belly, and a deeper toothache pain beneath. He welcomed it.
Kick me more. Fucking do it. Finish me, man.
The guy released him. Frank curled, speechless, on his side. Focus on the stars. Breathe. He waited, cheek freezing on the hard earth, until his assailant had disappeared back into the dark. Then he hauled himself up, limped inside.
‘What the fuck happen to you?’ Ivan grabbed his rifle. ‘Who did that?’
‘I fell.’ Frank eyeballed Bear. ‘Guess I gotta be more careful, sarge.’
Bear eyeballed him back. ‘Guess you do, baby bear.’
Next day. Late afternoon. Frost gilding the ground. No Krauts had snuck down to Catagnana, but no Buffs had come to relieve the nightshift neither.
‘Can’t feel my feet, man.’ Luiz jigged up and down, the wooden floorboards creaking.
‘I can
’t feel my balls,’ said Ivan.
‘We got to stay here another night, sarge?’ Claude was pissing, elegantly, out a window. ‘You think the captain forgot about us? We ain’t got no food or water left.’
‘No radio neither.’
‘No, but we got this.’
Comanche had discovered a locked door under the attic eaves. Containing one accordion, a trumpet-thing, assorted other instruments and a stash of clear, sharp-smelling alcohol. Bear wouldn’t let them drink it.
‘Know what, children?’ The sergeant struck a match. He had kept this one stub of cigar unlit in his mouth all night. ‘I’m gonna make me an executive decision. If we are still on our lonesome by the time I’m finished this smoke, we hit the road.’
They returned to Barga through the beginnings of a snowfall, Ivan sharing surreptitious glugs from one of the bottles he’d liberated, to discover the 366th Infantry Regiment had arrived. A bunch of unloved bastards whose own colonel just quit. First time in action, they’d been mostly guarding airfields since June. Not their fault they were green. But it seemed the newbies were getting acquainted with L’Alpino rather than relieving them.
‘You boys go get a drink. Get warm,’ said Bear. ‘I’ll find il capitano. S’all gone to shit since the lieutenant left.’
L’Alpino was rammed. Full of 366ers. These new men made Frank awkward with their excitable voices, their undimmed eyes. Their casual ownership of this town. Vita’s town.
‘Frankie, man! Baby! You’re looking swell.’
‘Charlie?’ One of the new guys was his college mate from Berkeley. Oozing backslaps and high-hands of familiarity. Frank didn’t know why it made him angry, but it did. He slammed down a shot of brandy.
‘Love your cute l’il beard, Frankie. Hey – you know we called this one the Urgent Virgin in college?’
Frank necked Charlie’s beer.
‘Hey, man! Get your own.’
‘Thought you were pleased to see me, Chaz?’ His words slipped into one another. He was so tired. Should really get some food.
‘Urgent Virgin,’ whooped Ivan. ‘Man, I love it.’
Comanche shook his head, slung Frank another shot.
The Sound of the Hours Page 31