The American went over to the Englishman and begged, ‘I know you’re with the partisans, but you’re a British officer and you know that it is vital this information doesn’t spread to Bari. You have to help me arrest him.’
‘Vitantonio is right: you are a bastard!’ the Englishman answered. And he punched him in the stomach so hard Clark’s knees gave out. ‘You’re the one who’s going to be locked in the barracks,’ he added, ‘at least until we patch up Roosevelt and Vitantonio has set off for Bari. Then we’ll see what we do with you. Anyway, you’re the one who’s committed treason by revealing secrets from the Bitonto meeting. If you’d like, we can discuss it with your superior officers …’
Roosevelt’s bleeding from the shoulder still hadn’t slowed. Vitantonio wailed, ‘Why did you get involved? This was my fight!’
‘When he invoked the authority of the US army I had to step in. We had to fight it out between Americans.’ Roosevelt turned towards Clark and spat. ‘Fuck you!’ he shouted, in his best New York accent.
Half an hour later they had bundled Roosevelt and Vitantonio into a military ambulance headed for the Policlinico in Bari. Just as the ambulance was about to leave, Giovanna and Salvatore arrived from Barletta. When they saw all the blood on the floor, the Englishman reassured them, ‘Roosevelt’s lost a lot of blood, but he’s not in danger: the doctor said that the bullet has shattered his shoulder.’
Without saying a word, Giovanna jumped in the ambulance.
The Stench of Garlic
ONLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after the bombing, on the night of 3 December, some of the survivors Donata and Ricciardi had rescued from the water started returning to the first-aid post. They were coming in with burns all over their bodies, with surprisingly low blood pressure and eyes so swollen they thought they were going blind. The queues forming at the door to the posto particularly disconcerted the doctors. At midnight the British army doctor who ran the centre called Ricciardi over to ask for his opinion.
‘I don’t know what to say. Some patients started having problems this morning: itchy, watering eyes, aversion to light … It didn’t seem serious and at first I thought it was from the oil that had got into their eyes,’ Ricciardi tried to update him quickly. ‘This afternoon things have got more complicated: they’re having trouble breathing, their lungs are burning, their blood pressure has dropped even further but their hearts are racing.’
‘That doesn’t make sense …’
‘And that’s not all: they’re listless and most of them have burns all over their bodies; but none complain of chest pain, or perforated eardrums, or any other symptoms that would be normal if they had blast injuries. I’ve tried injecting them with stimulants, but they haven’t had any effect. Not even morphine! If we had blood I’d try giving them transfusions. I don’t know what else to do – none of this is described in the medical literature I’m familiar with.’
While Ricciardi confessed his perplexity to the head doctor, Donata lay down on one of the camp beds that had been set up for the medical personnel. Doctor’s orders. So wrapped up had she been in tending to all the patients, she hadn’t realized that she had burns on her arms and face as well. She’d only noticed that her eyes were stinging, that she kept coughing and she felt a bit tired. Attributing it to the over-exertion of the last two days, she dropped down on to the bed and fell asleep.
In the posto, that night, with every passing hour the situation became increasingly alarming: those arriving with burns all over their body swore they hadn’t been in contact with the flames. And those with breathing problems hadn’t even fallen into the water: they had just breathed in the smoke of the fires from the port, which had lingered for hours over the city, especially in the Borgo Antico. Many of the people queuing for the posto hadn’t been affected by the bombing at all and yet suddenly they’d started to feel ill. Ricciardi didn’t know that at the military hospitals they were just as puzzled, and that they’d already tried blood transfusions. To no avail.
By mid-morning on Saturday 4 December, when Vitantonio and Giovanna showed up at the Policlinico to tell the staff that they were dealing with mustard gas, they saw that the doctors had already begun to suspect there was a chemical agent behind their patients’ inexplicable symptoms. They told them everything they knew about the John Harvey’s secret cargo, but the military doctors didn’t like hearing that the source of the mustard gas was not the German Junkers bombers but an American ship, and they refused to listen. Their commanders had assured them that ‘the Allied forces in Europe don’t have chemical weapons’, and the army doctors were unwilling to contradict the High Command’s official version.
Giovanna and Vitantonio next tried to convince the local Italian authorities, but they wouldn’t listen either: according to the official version the toxic effects were attributable to the fuel that the oil pipeline and the bombed ships had leaked into the sea. The pair were worried, but they didn’t give up. By midday they were insisting that they wanted to speak with the highest officials of the Secondo Distretto Sanitario, who coordinated all the general hospitals under Allied command; but they refused to see them and threatened to report them for unjustified alarmism.
Meanwhile, in the posto, Ricciardi was taking Donata’s pulse and saw that her symptoms were developing much like the other patients’. Her eyes were still swollen and there was no explanation for the anomalous behaviour of her pulse and blood pressure: something was eluding him and he was beginning to panic.
Vitantonio and Giovanna went back to the Policlinico. At the entrance, they passed a captain who was on his way out. He was one of the doctors who had listened more attentively to their message. His name was Denfeld.
‘It seems clear that we’re facing toxic gas poisoning,’ he accepted. ‘I’m going down to the port. If you’re right and this is mustard gas, there must be some kind of evidence there.’
But once Vitantonio and Giovanna got inside the hospital, they were asked to leave. They went away angry and disheartened: they had information that could save hundreds of lives, but for the military commanders, obedience to authority was more important than truth. Roosevelt had almost lost his life for nothing!
By mid-afternoon they gave up and headed to the posto di pronto soccorso. When they entered it they looked around for Donata but couldn’t spot her. Instead, they went over to Ricciardi who was listening to a patient’s chest. When the doctor recognized them, he hugged Giovanna, whom he hadn’t seen in weeks, and explained to Vitantonio where his mother was.
‘I made Donata lie down. She’s been working too hard and she needs some rest. She’s over there,’ he told them, pointing to a partition at the back of the room.
Then he took Vitantonio by the arm and pulled him aside. ‘Since you left earlier, she’s been exhibiting very strange vital signs and her body is covered in burns. I’m really concerned: it’s the same symptoms that many of the people who were rescued from the water are showing. We can’t find any rational explanation.’
‘It’s the gas!’ shouted Vitantonio.
‘Gas? What gas? What are you talking about?’
‘Mustard gas. In the port there was an American ship loaded with eighty tons of mustard gas bombs: the John Harvey.’
‘No one’s told us anything about any gas—’
‘And they aren’t going to. They want to keep it secret. I’ve spoken with the Allied doctors and the local authorities, but they swear there are no chemical weapons in Italy and that any strange reactions were just caused by people breathing in the fumes from the oil spilled into the sea by the bombed pipeline. We went to the Policlinico and they threw us out, but some of the doctors there have got wind of this and are looking into it, thank God—’
‘We’re talking about hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people! They can’t be so immoral! If there really was something toxic in the water, all the blankets and heat that we’re applying to the survivors are only furthering their inhalation of the gas. We need to know for sure and alter our t
reatments—’
‘There’s no doubt that there was mustard gas in the water at the port and that the smoke has spread through the city. Yesterday, there was a confidential meeting of the Allied High Command at Bitonto, and they agreed to keep it under wraps. General Eisenhower himself has been informed of the situation. I got this straight from the mouth of an American captain who was at the meeting.’
‘But this is inhuman … You can’t hide something like that!’
‘For them it’s the lesser of two evils: second-class victims are to be sacrificed in order to keep the Germans in the dark. These bastards don’t have to answer to anyone, they just make the excuse that the most important thing is the final victory.’
When Vitantonio approached Donata’s bed, she had just woken up and flung her arms around Giovanna’s neck. They hadn’t seen each other since late September. Then she took both of their hands in hers.
‘Take me home,’ she asked. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,’ she added to Ricciardi, who made to protest. ‘I’ll be much better tomorrow. Right now I want to be at home with my children.’
Ricciardi gave in: in any case that night they had to dismantle the posto di pronto soccorso and move the patients to the hospitals. More to the point, he still hadn’t worked out how to treat Donata’s symptoms and he figured he could keep monitoring her just as well in her bed at home as in a less comfortable one at the Policlinico.
They took her up to the apartment. Giovanna gently washed her and changed her clothes, which still smelled of gas.
‘You smell like garlic,’ said Giovanna with a sad smile.
They laid her down on the bed and the doctor bathed her eyes with a mild salt solution. Then he covered them with gauze to protect them from the light. Now that he knew about the gas, Ricciardi was feeling increasingly worried and he decided to consult at once with his colleagues at the Policlinico. By the time he said goodbye, Donata had gone back to sleep.
‘Make sure she doesn’t move. I’ll be back at dawn.’
At midnight Donata woke up. Despite her burns, she got out of bed all on her own and began gingerly searching through the wardrobe for something. When she limped into the dining room she was carrying two biscuit tins and she put them down on the table.
‘These are my keepsakes, and Francesca’s. And also the things both your fathers had on them when they died in the Great War; in Vito Oronzo’s box there are also some things that belonged to his brothers, little Ignazio and poor Domenico, who was such a good sort. Their captain had Skinny bring it all from the front and we saved it for when you grew up. I’ve been afraid until now to revisit the past … but maybe the time has come.’
She sank into a chair. She was exhausted and was having trouble speaking. She took the box for Giovanna and opened it. She had removed the gauze, but her eyes were almost swollen shut and she could no longer see clearly: everything in the tin fell to the floor. Vitantonio and Giovanna looked at each other with alarm. Donata made a desperate face, crouched down on the floor to try to pick everything up and started feeling around for the various items. On top of the letters and photos of Antonio Convertini there was a copy of Little Red Riding Hood.
‘Where did that come from?’ asked Giovanna, surprised to see the book that she had read a million times as a girl. ‘I haven’t seen it for ages.’
‘I found it one day when I was cleaning the house, not long after you left for Spain. I thought you might like to see it again, so I saved it along with your mother’s things.’
Giovanna turned to the pages in the middle and opened the pop-up centrefold of the cabin, the forest and all the characters; in the foreground with their backs facing the reader, as if they were the audience, there was a row of rabbits with very long ears, looking at the cabin. Then she turned to the first page and started reading: ‘“Among the thick trees of a very green forest stood hidden a woodcutter’s cabin. He loved his wife, his daughter and his work above all other things. Every day a red angel came out of the cabin, leaping and singing like the birds of the forest who went with her to deliver a basket of food to her sick grandmother, who lived on the other side of the forest: it was Little Red Riding Hood …”’
‘When I was little I often dreamt that I was Little Red Riding Hood and that you were both the mother and the father,’ she said to her zia, looking at her tenderly. ‘Nonna was the sick grandmother … and stupid Franco was the ridiculous wolf who always bungled everything.’
‘And wasn’t I in the story …?’ Vitantonio laughed.
‘You were the hunter who saved us!’
Suddenly, Donata began to shake violently and they tried to take her back to bed.
She refused. ‘I want to spend the night here, with you two.’
More burns and blisters had come out on her legs and neck. She was breathing more and more rapidly, but it was increasingly shallow. Blood began to drip from her nose. Her eyes were now completely shut and hurt more and more. She stretched out on the floor, leaning against the wall, and took Giovanna’s hand. Vitantonio placed a pillow at her back. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep.
They looked at each other, deathly afraid.
‘She’s suffering so much!’ said Giovanna through her tears.
All night long, they kept watch over Donata, attentive to any slight movement that might help them assess her condition. In the end, Giovanna fell asleep too. She dreamt that she was Little Red Riding Hood, but now the forest was filled with big, bad wolves and they weren’t as clumsy as little Franco: now, the wolves wore brown- and blackshirts and carried red flags with swastikas on them. Vitantonio watched her, his heart bursting.
As his mother woke up, he placed a hand on her shoulder. She was racked with pain. Shaking and sweating, she was overcome with a terrible thirst. Vitantonio got her some water but after she drank it she looked even paler. He took her pulse: irregular. Her breathing was now so urgent, as if she was desperate to take in even the smallest breath.
Vitantonio studied carefully the sleeping Giovanna’s belly, which was beginning to look clearly pregnant. Then his gaze travelled to the increasingly livid burns covering his mother’s body. He had a bad feeling: one life was about to start, but, unexpectedly, another life was slipping away from them.
The Heart of a Palmisano
‘LET ME TOUCH you,’ his mother said hoarsely. And she ran the fingers of her right hand over Vitantonio’s profile.
Her hand was trembling. She knew that her strength was leaving her, but she was still able to make out his eyes and his lips. She stroked them. Then she ran her fingertips over his cheeks and down to his left collarbone: she was looking for his birthmark. When she felt the Palmisano heart beneath her fingers she traced it with a smile on her lips.
It was the last smile her son would ever see from her.
‘The day he declared his love for me, he took my hand and ran it gently over the outline of the red mark and said, very seriously, “Now my heart is yours.” And I knew that Vito Oronzo Palmisano was my man.’
Donata made a last effort to bring her lips to the birthmark and kiss it. Then she managed to find a thin whisp of voice, almost inaudible amid her desperate, rasping attempts at breathing. Vitantonio brought his ear to her lips.
‘Take care of Ggiuànnin: as a woman or as a sister! But don’t let anything happen to her! I promised her mother.’
Her eyes gleamed as she remembered Francesca. ‘If we have a boy and a girl, we can marry them,’ she’d said when she found out they were both pregnant.
Donata slowly moved her head back to look at Vitantonio one last time. Her eyes were so swollen that she couldn’t open them at all now. She placed her hands on his face again.
‘We haven’t had an easy time of it, my son,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘But we are beating fate. Even if I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing.’
Those were her final words. Her head fell on to the heart-shaped birthmark and Vitantonio knew that he had lost her.
&nbs
p; The Biscuit Tin
GIOVANNA AND VITANTONIO had always known they were different from other children: their father had died in the war before they were born and they were only five years old when they’d had to bury Francesca, the first of the two women they shared as mothers. Maybe that was why, since they were little, they’d always had a natural instinct that made them stronger than others: they didn’t know where that strength came from, but it had allowed them to overcome their misfortunes with grace. But the death of their zia was different. They weren’t prepared for it: they had thought they were the ones taking risks in this war, especially when they were smuggled behind enemy lines on sabotage missions. Donata was working in a hospital as a nurse; she should have been out of danger. For the second time, they were living through a mother’s death. It was more than they could bear.
When he felt his mother lying motionless on his chest, Vitantonio let out an angry cry, just like the one she’d given at Roosevelt’s hut on the day he’d announced he was going to war. The cry woke Giovanna up with a start, and she woke to learn that Donata was gone. She and Vitantonio embraced each other and Zia, in their own personal wake.
They hadn’t said a word for some time. Giovanna just sobbed and, every once in a while, moaned, ‘Zia!’
Vitantonio was curled up like a helpless child.
Earlier that night they might have wished her a speedy death to spare her such suffering; now they would have given anything to revive her for a moment and give her one last kiss. For the next two hours, time stopped. Or maybe it was longer, because, so overwhelmed with tolling for the dead, the Bari church bells had stopped ringing the hours, making it hard to measure the passage of time. The candle that lit up the room had burned down and they were left in the dark. They remained motionless, keeping watch over Donata’s lifeless body. When the morning came, Vitantonio rested his mother’s head on Giovanna’s lap and lit another candle.
The Last Son’s Secret Page 23