The Partisan Heart

by Gordon Kerr

  As for Il Falcone, he lasted no more than two weeks after the story broke. The stroke anticipated by his doctors had killed him as he sat in his wheelchair staring at the mountains of his youth, thinking who knows what thoughts. The story had come out, by that time, of course, slowly, and almost reluctantly at first, but within a short while it was everywhere. Meanwhile, Pedrini and his partner in crime, Gianni, had been apprehended on a yacht, heading for Albania. He was, apparently, singing like a veritable canary, and his boss Massimo Di Livio had been arrested a few days later.

  ‘On the mend, boyo? On the mend?’ Harry’s eyes gleamed, staring deep into Michael’s as he reached for an ashtray to stub out the cigarette he had been smoking, at the same time, putting down his wine glass and reaching into his pocket to extract another and light it.

  ‘Yes, Harry. I get a bit tired now and then, but I suppose it’s only to be expected.’

  ‘Aye, but look at this, Michael.’ Harry’s eyes swept round the walls of the gallery. ‘It’s bloody marvellous. Rosa would have been so proud.’

  ‘That she would, Harry. That she would.’ He stared around the walls, walls adorned with the beautiful black and white, people-free landscapes that had been the last that Rosa had captured in her lens. They had a richness and a mystery, even in monotone, that Michael recognised as being the very essence of the Valtellina. He could smell the smells of the valley as his eyes moved from one image to the other.

  Why he had persevered with this when he had been so betrayed by Rosa, he would never understand. It had happened and he had to leave it behind. Perhaps the glamour of Antonio Ronconi had been attractive to her. Perhaps he had let her drift away from him. It was just something he would never know.

  ‘I’ve just been speaking to that young lady of yours, Michael – Helen. She’s a fiery one.’ Michael looked over to the far corner of the room where Helen was in earnest conversation with a couple of art critics. She looked up and caught his eye, nodding and smiling in his direction almost imperceptibly. They had been through so much and had now arrived at that point where they could share looks, glances and expressions without anyone else seeing them.

  ‘Look, Harry, would you excuse me. I’m feeling a bit weary. I just need to go out onto the terrace to get some air. I’ll be back in five minutes and you can tell me the latest gossip from the Post.’

  ‘Of course, lad. I need to get myself a re-fill, anyway,’ Harry said, raising the empty wine glass he held in his hand.

  Michael excused his way through the groups of people that stood around talking and admiring the photographs and made his way to a set of French windows that led out onto a terrace on which stood some gleaming white metal chairs and tables. The early spring night was fresh with a gentle, cool breeze and he was relieved to see that the terrace was empty. It was still quite light and there was a view out across the rooftops of London’s West End, ending in the ornate, massive, stone bulk of Harrods. He sat down at a table with a loud sigh and let his head fall back, at the same time running his hand through his hair.

  Then he remembered the letter. He had found it on the doormat this evening when he had returned home to change, after spending the day helping to put the finishing touches to this show. The show was intended as a precursor to the publication of the book, a book now enveloped by the story that surrounded the kidnapping of Teresa Ronconi, a kidnapping itself enveloped in tragedy. He had had no time to do more than stuff the letter in his inside pocket as he left for the gallery with Helen, but his curiosity had been pricked by the fact that it had a Swiss stamp.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled the letter out, tearing one corner and sticking a finger in, opening it carefully. He withdrew a few sheets of light blue, lined paper, opened them out, smoothing them where they had been folded, and began to read the confident, tidy handwriting.

  Dear Mr Keats, it began.

  ‘You do not know me, but you certainly know my name – Erich Weber. I am the German officer involved in the story of Luigi Ronconi. I must admit, I followed the story with great interest while it was running in the papers. Yes, here in Switzerland, as everywhere else in the world, it was front-page news. I congratulate you on your work although I understand you were injured and hope that you are now recovered from those injuries.’

  ‘Michael!’ Michael was interrupted by the voice of Helen from over at the door to the terrace. ‘Are you alright?’

  He turned.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, Helen. Just having a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you in a minute.’ She smiled and closed the doors again.

  Michael returned to the letter.

  ‘As I say, I have followed the story and, as you know have been instrumental in parts of it, for which I have suffered both physically and mentally ever since. There is one thing, however, in the story that is fundamentally wrong and I feel an overwhelming need to put it right. So, here is a part of the story that no other living person knows, apart from me.’

  ‘When I was based in the Valtellina – as you know I was an Obersturmführer in 16 SS Reichsführer Division – I always tried to remain fit. Therefore, I used to run in the hills around Morbegno. I was one of the fittest men in the division, and proud of it. I would run thirty kilometres a day, and more if I had time. On one of those days I ran in the direction of the village of Dulcino. I was close to the village when I ran into a clearing, just at the time that a young woman entered the clearing from the opposite direction. We both got a shock, but then found it very funny and laughed. She was beautiful and, somehow, for the first – and I am sad to say – only time in my life, I fell in love immediately I saw her with the force of a kick in the stomach. Any man would have fallen in love with this girl, I assure you. She was very beautiful. As you have probably guessed, it was Angela Ronconi, Luigi’s – Il Falcone’s – wife. She was engaged in her daily ritual of waiting for her lover, the partisan Sandro Bellini. He had not turned up for several months now and she, as I was to find out, was heartbroken about this. We talked – she was an innocent young thing – I think she believed there was inherent good in everyone and the fact that I was one of the enemy and a hated one, at that – the SS, after all – did not stop her, I think, liking me immediately. Naturally – I was more used to the cold hearts of the whores of Morbegno and Sondrio, remember, than a beautiful young girl – I returned regularly to the clearing and began to take the place of Sandro as her lover. She was very young and alone, apart from her child. She told me that her husband had been killed in the fighting in North Africa, but, of course, I did not believe her. That was what was said about any man missing from his home at that time in that part of the world. I presumed that, like the rest, he was probably somewhere in the mountains, fighting with the partisans. This went on for several months. Sandro still did not appear and, I think – I know – she fell in love with me. It was impossible, of course, and I knew it. She, however, had fantasies of what we would do after the war, where we would live and so on. As time went on, I spoke of her husband and she told me the truth, that indeed he was a partisan, and how she hated him. He had beaten her all through their marriage. One day she arrived in the clearing with bruises on her body. He had visited her, got drunk and had beaten her as usual. But, more importantly, something seemed to have changed in her. It was as if a light behind her eyes had gone out. As he had done on many occasions, she told me, he had raped her. It was how he got his pleasure, it seemed, through others’ pain. Through control. She wanted him dead, she said, and she was inconsolable at the thought of him returning home and picking up his life where it had left off, when the war finally ended. And so, she told me of a conversation she had overheard in her house. Another partisan who was also visiting his family, came to the house and Luigi and he drank. As she worked in the kitchen, she listened to what they were saying. She overheard them discussing an attack on the small San Giorgio garrison – she gave me dates, the number of m
en involved, everything. I was amazed. The beating had made her irrational, yes, but her hatred for him was such that she would carry out such a betrayal of the people around her, of the wives and families of the partisans who would surely be killed. But for her, the only thing that mattered was that Luigi be killed. As you know, Michael, the attack on San Giorgio was a disaster for the partisans because we were waiting for them en route. Unfortunately for Angela, however, Ronconi was one of the few partisans who survived. She was undeterred. She told me about the regular rendezvous to pick up ammunition – she knew about it because she had a cousin who was a member of the other group of partisans and Luigi carried family news between them when they met. By the time of this incident, however, Angela had been arrested and Luigi had disappeared. He was, consequently, not part of the group that we encountered in the hills that night. I was very angry that he was not amongst them, but she had warned me that Sandro Bellini would probably be there, and had described him to me, pleading that he be spared. I decided to let Bellini live that morning, which was possibly the worst decision of my life. But I did it for Angela, even though she was by this time, of course, lost to me. But his very survival was his undoing. They blamed him, just for living through it, because these were times when everyone was irrational, everyone was suspicious of everyone else.

  Angela had been taken from her village and sent to Germany, which was entirely my fault. I told a colleague about her one night after too many drinks, and about her husband and the information she had provided us with. With the twisted logic of those days, he thought he could get Il Falcone to give himself up in exchange for the life of his wife and child. Angela and her son got lost in our bureaucracy and were mistakenly put on board a train heading for the camps.

  So, Sandro Bellini, drowning in guilt for his betrayal of Luigi, his comrade-in-arms, took fifty years to tell people about him. And that was when I was brought back to the Valtellina, for the first time in half a century, to confirm that story in the village of Dulcino. As you have read, however, it was not true and I have thought much about it since. I want the truth known to someone at least, the truth being that the real traitor of those partisans was not Luigi, but Angela Ronconi. Luigi is, of course, not totally innocent. He was responsible for the death of the English captain and the theft of the money he was carrying, after all, as well as other crimes from which he benefited financially. Above all, though, he was responsible for the destruction of Angela’s innocence. But then, during those times, we were all guilty of acts that we would later – those of us who survived – abhor. I, lost my humanity. I was nothing but a machine that had been switched on in 1941, when I joined the SS, and which did not switch itself off until the war ended. When that happened, I was amazed, horrified by what I had done. It was like waking from a terrible, terrible dream. And yet, even though I escaped and have buried my true identity and tried to live a decent life for the last fifty years – yes, in spite of the horrors I had perpetrated, I believed I could redeem myself, somehow – I have discovered it is not possible. And never will be. For me perhaps it is more difficult. Every time I look in the mirror or see my reflection in the window of a shop, I am reminded of the war – my face, you may know, is very badly scarred, thanks to Sandro Bellini.

  The writing and posting of this letter to you will be my very last act on this earth. I will fold it, put it in an envelope, take it to the post-office at the end of the street on which I live and on my return I will drink half a bottle of brandy and swallow a bottle of the pills I have to take to deal with the pain I have suffered for five decades – yes, even now, I feel it. I will have been dead for several days by the time you read this, although I have really been dead since 1944. I would ask you to do with this information as you see fit.

  And I would finally ask one more thing of you, Mister Keats – I would ask you not to think too harshly of us; Luigi and Angela Ronconi, Sandro Bellini and me. We were not evil people. We were perhaps selfish, each of us, pursuing his or her own self-interest, whether that self-interest was coloured by love or tainted by money or hatred. Each of us has inherited his or her piece of hell as a result of our actions; Angela dying in the camp; Sandro in his gnawing guilt; Luigi in the destructiveness of his life; me in my futile search for peace and some kind of redemption. We were nothing in the greater scheme. It was really a very small drama that we played out against the vast backdrop of the war. Perhaps it would be better forgotten. That is your choice.

  I wish you well in your recovery. Farewell.

  Erich Weber.

  Michael lifted his eyes from the letter and raised them towards heaven. He remained thus for several minutes before picking up the pages, standing up and walking over to the metal railings at the edge of the terrace.

  He looked down three floors to the empty street below him and then lifted his head, staring out across the rooftops to the tower of Big Ben, outlined against the darkening sky. The constant roar of city traffic filled the air from the streets below and the breeze was strengthening slightly.

  He looked down again at the five pages in his hands and then, very carefully tore them in half and then into quarters. He held them up above his head and loosened his grip on them. They drifted out of his hand, down towards the street and then were caught by a gust of wind, which dragged them away across the rooftops towards the dark space of Hyde Park.

  Michael watched them for a moment before turning and walking slowly back towards the French windows and the buzz of excited conversation that came from Rosa’s exhibition.

  Acknowledgements

  One day last summer, I was idly scrolling through my emails when I noticed one from Sarah and Kate Beal of Muswell Press to whom I had sent the manuscript of a novel several weeks previously. My heart skipped a beat as I read that they liked the book and wanted to talk about publishing it. While on holiday for the following few weeks I was a very happy man indeed, and the excitement of that time has not left me. Grateful thanks, therefore, to Sarah and Kate for believing in The Partisan Heart and for lavishing so much care and attention on it in the months since. Thanks to them also for furnishing me with a wonderful editor, Laura MacFarlane, who brought her assiduous eye and keen intelligence to bear on my more purple passages and plot holes, for which I am eternally grateful.

  A special thank you is due to my sister-in-law, Valerie Barona, and her husband, Michele, who have welcomed me and my family at their lovely home in the Valtellina for almost forty years. I hope the book does justice to that beautiful place in the mountains.

  My brother, Bill, is probably the reason I have written all my life and I thank him for his love and encouragement over the years. My oldest friend, Jack Mcgrane, spent an afternoon with me in Nice trying to come up with a list of titles for the book. None of them made the cut, but the wine was lovely!

  Last, but, of course, by no means least, a huge thank you to my family, my wife Diane and children, Lindsey and Sean, for their love and unstinting support, and for putting up with this writing addiction from which I have suffered all these years.

  Copyright

  First published by Muswell Press in 2019

  Typeset in Bembo by M Rules

  Copyright © Gordon Kerr 2019

  Gordon Kerr asserts the moral right

  to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and,

  except in the case of historical fact, any resemblence

  to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781999313517

  Muswell Press

  London

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