The Last Son’s Secret

by Rafel Nadal Farreras

  They ran to the harbourside and helped pull some of the injured from the sea: even those who had no visible wounds were trembling and in a state of shock. A new explosion sent up a wall of water that dragged more people off the quay. Donata managed to grab hold of an anchor lying abandoned on the dock, but she was soaked by the wave. After rescuing the second round of survivors from the thick, oily sea, they wrapped them in blankets to get them warm. Around eleven at night they heard the siren announcing the all-clear. It seemed like a joke in poor taste: the German airplanes were retreating, but the port was still a raging inferno that showed no signs of abating.

  Donata and Ricciardi could no longer see the fires. Nor did they hear the screams of those still struggling to keep afloat in that water covered in burning oil. They tried not to think about anything at all as they tended to the wounded. Donata was so exhausted that she hadn’t noticed that she was drenched in the foul-smelling liquid that floated on the surface of the water. All she could detect was an unbearable stench of garlic.

  ‘These Americans have got a screw loose. Who sends boats filled with garlic to a country like Italy?’ muttered someone near her.

  At dawn the port was still ablaze, the injured were still filing into the posto, and Donata and Ricciardi were still treating wounds. They hadn’t even had time to go back to their apartment and change.

  A Glow at the Window

  GIOVANNA HAD OPENED the shutters and was looking out to sea from the hostel on the Lungomare in Barletta where they had been billeted. The night was clear and filled with stars. Giovanna looked to the south, towards Bari, and thought about how anxious she was to finally get there.

  She and Salvatore had walked for two days straight, hoping to leave behind the Maiella mountains and cross the Sangro-river front before dawn on the third day. They had managed to smuggle two American instructors behind enemy lines and had left them in the hands of the partisans of the Brigata Maiella. On their way back to the Allied zone they had escorted a radio operator who needed to get orders from the base in Lucera. They had spent another whole day walking from the front to the outskirts of Foggia before finally finding a truck that would take them to Barletta. The next day they would receive their orders for the following weeks. On Saturday they would take the train to Bari to meet up with Vitantonio’s group. And perhaps there they would also see Donata.

  ‘You’ll have to find a new partner for your adventures. I’m going to have to take a little time off,’ Giovanna said to Salvatore, still at the window. She was exhausted. She touched her growing belly and smiled.

  She missed her zia: she was scared about the pregnancy and needed a mother’s support. Salvatore drew close and put his arm around her shoulder. For some time now he had stopped thinking of her as a girlfriend and treated her like a sister.

  ‘Tomorrow when we get to Bari airport we’ll let your brother’s group know and then we’ll head into the city to look for your aunt. It’ll be good for you to stay with her until the birth.’

  When she was once again alone at the window she thought that she was also starting to think of Salvatore as a sibling. She laughed, and from his bed he asked her, ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing, just silly stuff …’ she answered evasively. She didn’t want to get into a conversation about her feelings on how Salvatore and Vitantonio’s roles in her life were switching.

  Then the sea lit up. From the window Giovanna saw some sort of red glow in the distance, in the direction of Bari. Her laughter stopped cold. Gazing at the intense, deep gleam, she knew that her loved ones were in danger.

  A Fear-struck City

  THE SHOCKWAVE FROM the John Harvey ripped the whole door off the apartment balcony on the Piazza Garibaldi, and Vitantonio immediately knew that he would have to run to find a shelter; his revenge on Franco would have to wait. He took the steps four at a time but as he flung open the door to the street he saw that the explosions were even more horrifying than he’d thought. He ran like crazy across the square and all the way to the Via Alessandro, towards the train tracks, without stopping. His plan was to get to the other side of the city, far from the port, which seemed to be the prime target of the bombing.

  He got stuck around the Via Crisanzio, where buildings had collapsed and buried alive whole families who moments earlier had been sitting around the table eating, convinced that the alarm was just a drill. The rubble stretched on and on, making him think there could be more than a hundred dead on one street alone. Firemen, carabinieri, local police and soldiers were hurrying around with lanterns. Vitantonio joined those who were scrabbling at the remains of the houses with their hands, trying desperately to find survivors among the mountains of rubble.

  An hour later he gave up. They needed heavy machinery to lift the beams and joists, and bombs were still falling very close by. His suspicions that the train station was also a German target were soon confirmed: a goods wagon went flying and sent a heavy rain of olives and almonds over all the surrounding streets. Every once in a while he heard more violent explosions from the port, which must have been caused by the ammunition in the ships’ holds that had been waiting to be unloaded for days.

  He regretted having gone after Franco before searching for his mother. He looked around him: he knew that she must be nearby but he didn’t know where to start. He decided to turn and head towards the Borgo Antico; he seemed to remember Giovanna mentioning an apartment near the cathedral and he resolved to try his luck there.

  More collapsed buildings met him at the corner of the Via Piccinni and the Via Andrea da Bari and where the Via Abate Gimma met the Via Roberto da Bari. It was after midnight by the time he reached the cathedral and found that things were even worse there. For a while, he helped a family search for their son amid the rubble: they finally pulled him out, lifeless. In the Piazza Mercantile he joined a rescue operation to free passengers from a bus where they’d been trapped while trying to get to a shelter: they found all thirty-five of them dead too.

  The city had lost all sense of time. It must have been five in the morning when he reached the Via Venezia; he couldn’t have imagined a more devastating scene. It was as if the front line had been moved right into the heart of the city.

  Again, he joined in with those scrabbling through the rubble with their bare hands until they bled, in a desperate attempt to reach a survivor. This time, their persistence was rewarded: just when they had given up hope, they found that the girl was still breathing. They dug with renewed energy, but their hope gave way to bitter disappointment when they realized one of the girl’s arms was trapped under a beam that they couldn’t move without making the rest of the house collapse. They were desperate. If they didn’t get her out of there in a hurry, she faced certain death. A very young surgeon in the rescue crew decided to amputate her arm. Unable to watch, her parents both fainted in terror. Vitantonio was almost crying with rage, but something in the girl reminded him of Giovanna, pregnant, and as soon as she was freed he picked her up in his arms and started running towards the first-aid post he had seen on the outer dock.

  At the posto, Dr Ricciardi was having a harder time than anyone. The wounded that were coming to him needed experienced surgeons. He was fully aware of his own limitations. He had a good clinical eye, that much was true – with just one look he could come up with a diagnosis, and the young doctors in Bari were constantly consulting him: he was a walking encyclopaedia of even the most specialized medicine. But though he was much more than just a good country doctor, he felt helpless among these sorts of casualties. Donata, on the other hand, seemed born to comfort those poor patients.

  Ricciardi watched her proudly. In a strange way, he felt proud of himself as well; it had been his idea to encourage Donata to become a nurse. It had occurred to him shortly after Francesca’s death, when he needed help treating a seriously ill patient who couldn’t afford a professional nurse. He had watched Donata take doting care of her cousin for over a year and it was clear to him that she was the best
option. He had suggested it to her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and she had accepted as if she had been waiting for the opportunity all her life. That job led to others: tending to the sick, making house calls, giving vaccinations and, when there was an emergency at a birth, she also acted as midwife. Soon the doctor’s patients and the peasants who received her help started to refer to her as their ‘guardian angel’. It was the same nickname that, years later, the Spanish Republicans would give Giovanna when she did all she could to console those poor refugees who had lost everything except their dignity fleeing the Civil War.

  Dr Ricciardi looked up again at Donata and thanked a God he couldn’t bring himself to believe in, for bringing her to him. Now he only feared losing her. She saw him looking at her and she shifted her gaze, uneasy, just as a group of men and women came in shouting, carrying a wounded survivor. Donata was the first to react and she hurried over to them. When she got close she almost fainted: she had just recognized Vitantonio in the middle of the group, with a girl in his arms.

  For a second Donata felt she might burst with joy in the midst of such pain. Every night she fell asleep dreaming of their reunion; now she couldn’t believe that he was there in front of her. She shrieked with joy, ‘Vitantonio!’

  He was focused on the little girl and hadn’t seen Donata yet. But he recognized his mother’s voice just as he was looking up to see who would take care of the girl.

  ‘Mamma!’ he shouted, with the same joy.

  Donata drank him in with her eyes. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to ask him a thousand questions. She wanted to know all about those last few weeks on the front line. She needed to hear him explain how he had stood up to death and won. She needed to convince herself that her son was going to survive. She also wanted to ask about Giovanna. But she allowed herself only a second of gazing at her son. A few hours earlier she would have abandoned everything to be with him and talk. But tonight was different. Just seeing him alive was a gift.

  She swallowed hard and asked, ‘What happened to her?’ Noticing the makeshift bandage around the stump of the girl’s arm, she commented, ‘It looks like someone did a good job in very tricky circumstances.’

  While her mind was filling with more questions, Donata had already extended her arms to take the girl. Mother and son looked at each other for one more second and in that look said everything they had wanted to express since the last time they’d spoken, in Roosevelt’s hut on the road to Matera. Then she disappeared into the posto with the girl and Vitantonio dropped to the ground, exhausted, thanking God. He now felt that everything he’d been through in the Maiella mountains didn’t matter any more: not the cold, not the pain, not the fear. Not even the nightmares he’d had could compare to the hell he had seen that night on the bombed streets of Bari.

  Occasionally, his mother and Ricciardi would look up and take comfort in Vitantonio’s presence at the door to the posto. They went out to find him a couple of hours later, when it finally started to get light. At the other end of the harbour, the sun must have risen a while ago, but the smoke from the ships that were still burning obscured the sky in the old part of the city.

  ‘You want to go up to the apartment to have a sleep and wait for me to finish my work here?’ his mother asked him.

  ‘There could still be people buried under the rubble,’ answered Vitantonio. ‘I have to go back to the area around the cathedral.’

  When the day dawned fully, all three of them continued working despite the lack of resources in the posto. They had also helped set up improvised clinics in a few churches. Donata, Ricciardi and Vitantonio worked through the afternoon. Around six they took a break; they’d been working for almost twenty-four hours straight. At that point, Bari was still in the grip of panic. The train station was overrun by those fleeing the city: the ones who couldn’t get on to the express train travelling directly to Foggia were trying to find space on the trenino on the Bari to Barletta coastal line.

  Finally, they went up to Donata’s apartment, which miraculously stood intact amid the collapsed buildings on the Strada Santa Chiara. For the first time in almost five months, mother and son were alone together, but they didn’t talk about the partisans or the missions on the other side of the front. They sat at one corner of the table and Vitantonio explained, through tears, everything he had seen that night on the streets of Bari. Donata watched him as he spoke and silently rejoiced: for her, every day that Vitantonio survived was a priceless victory.

  The Secret of Bitonto

  AT TEN IN the evening, Donata went back to work at the posto. A little while later, close to midnight, Vitantonio reached the barracks that the Englishman had managed to commandeer near the airport some way from town, and everyone piled on him. They wanted to know first-hand what had happened in the centre of Bari over the last twenty-four hours. Vitantonio went straight to his corner and laid down on a blanket that served as his bed. He was dead tired and in no mood for conversation. He summed it up as best he could: ‘They pounded us. Bari is a hellhole.’

  He turned his back and went to sleep.

  When he woke up he saw that Roosevelt was watching him. The shepherd from Murgia was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall of the barracks. From the other room he could hear Captain Clark and Lieutenant Donovan shouting at each other in English. The American seemed nervous, the Englishman angry. Roosevelt put a finger to his lips and Vitantonio crept over to him.

  ‘What are they saying?’ he whispered, unable to follow the argument.

  ‘The American just came back from a secret meeting in Bitonto. All the top brass in the Allied forces in southern Italy were there. It seems the bombing blew up an American ship loaded with two thousand mustard gas bombs: the John Harvey. The water in the port is filled with it and the smoke has spread through the city. In the next few days hundreds more people will die.’

  ‘My mother’s there! I have to go back to Bari!’ he said, jumping up and starting to head into the other room.

  Roosevelt stopped him. ‘That’s not all. The Americans have decided not to say anything, not to the local authorities and not even to the Allied commanders in the area. They don’t want the Germans to find out that they’ve been stockpiling chemical weapons in Europe.’

  Vitantonio stormed next door, walked straight over to Clark and threatened him with his fist. He had never liked him and he’d never understood why Donovan’s group was helping a chemical weapons expert. Now he had the proof that it had all been a huge mistake.

  ‘How can you keep this a secret? Are you crazy?’

  Clark looked at Vitantonio in surprise and then, with growing horror in his expression, he turned to the Englishman, as if demanding an explanation. From day one he’d assumed that none of the Italians understood English: no one had told him Roosevelt’s background. Roosevelt didn’t like the American either and had never revealed his past. The day the American had joined them, he’d been excited, especially when he found out Clark had been born in Italian Harlem. But as he was going over to give him a hug he overheard that he had grown up on a block of Pleasant Avenue near 118th Street and he stopped cold. That had been the first street Roosevelt had lived on in New York and they had kicked him out before he’d found work, breaking with their sacred duty to protect new arrivals: nothing good could come from someone raised on Pleasant and 118th.

  Clark’s panicked eyes travelled between Donovan and Vitantonio, waiting for one of them to speak. He needed to hear them say that they understood the seriousness of the situation and the need for discretion. But neither of them said a word.

  ‘The Germans can’t know that we have chemical weapons in Europe. It’s a war secret. If you open your mouths, you’ll pay with your lives!’ he threatened, overcome by panic.

  ‘You bastard!’ shouted Vitantonio before punching him in the face and sending him reeling to the floor.

  ‘You don’t understand! The future of the war depends on the Germans not kn
owing our movements,’ shouted Clark, lying prone.

  ‘You are the one who doesn’t understand! Bari is filled with people, exactly like you and me. I just came from there and I saw hundreds of dead and wounded. If we don’t warn them soon thousands more will die. My mother is there—’

  ‘I won’t let you leave. I haven’t shot you yet because you saved my life once; but now we’re even. If you move, you’re a dead man.’

  Clark was looking up at him with hatred in his face. He had pulled out his revolver and was pointing it at him. He got to his feet and walked over to him. ‘You’re under arrest.’

  ‘Who’s arresting me? You? On what authority?’

  ‘In the name of the US army. Move a muscle and I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Your life doesn’t mean shit to me and I couldn’t care less about the people in Bari either. This is a war: sometimes you have to sacrifice lives to save many more.’

  Primo Carnera had entered the barracks and was watching the conflict, standing disconcerted beside the Englishman. He saw Roosevelt creeping cautiously behind Clark. Vitantonio had also seen him come in and was amazed by how stealthily he moved.

  When the American sensed that Roosevelt was behind him, he turned round. Vitantonio took advantage of the distraction, knocking the captain’s hand just as he pressed the trigger: the bullet lodged in the ceiling. As Clark took aim for a second time, Roosevelt pounced on him. A shot rang out and the revolver fell to the floor. Primo Carnera kicked it aside. When Roosevelt staggered back from the American, his legs buckled under him. From his left side, just under his shoulder, blood was pouring. Vitantonio caught him as he collapsed and lowered him gently to the floor. Roosevelt was losing a lot of blood and Vitantonio desperately tried to stem the flow by pressing a cloth over the wound.