The Secret Messenger

by Mandy Robotham

  Finally, I untie my apron and head on up the stairs. Soon, several other members of the brigade will join Arlo and Tommaso in the tiny cellar, moving to crank up the small press shrouded in a nearby outbuilding, working through the night to produce and assemble the paper. Before she turns in, Matteo’s wife will haul down a large pot of soup she has managed to conjure up, from whatever ingredients she can find, to help them push through into the small hours. It’s a team effort, always. We know our only hope of surviving this war is with a combination of loyalty and friendship.

  For now, though, my work is done. I pull the cover over my typewriter until its services are needed in a few days’ time. I climb the stairs wearily, hang up my apron and pull on my coat, saying goodbye to Matteo, who is washing glasses in a bar where a lone figure lingers over his beer.

  The icy wind whipping through the open-sided vaporetto is the only thing keeping me awake, and I have to consciously propel my legs through the almost empty streets, making a mental search of what I have in my cupboard to cook up a soup or a bowl of pasta. It’s too late to divert to Mama’s for a hug and a welcome hearth – she and Papa know little of what I do outside of work, and I don’t need to worry them.

  I see only a few bodies moving under the ghostly blue streetlights in the larger campos – after last night, and away from the Jewish ghetto, everything seems to have calmed for now. The narrow alleyway leading to my door is pitch black, rendering me almost blind as I approach my apartment, but I know every cobble and paving stone, the way my footsteps echo, and I can tell instantly if there’s another body in my midst. My tiny second-floor apartment is freezing, and I don’t need to check the scuttle to know I have scant coal for the burner. The food cupboard, too, is almost bare – one solitary onion stares back at me, alongside a handful of polenta in a paper bag. I weigh up what I need the most – to dive under the blankets piled on my bed and shiver myself into a vague warmth, or to satisfy my hunger. I decide I’m almost past hunger now, so I boil the kettle and take a hot cup of tea to bed, having wrapped my nightdress around the kettle for a few minutes before swiftly undressing and pulling it over my head, relishing the patches where it has made direct contact with the hot metal. The thick woollen socks Mama knitted for me last Christmas are already under the covers, giving my feet the impression of warmth.

  In the few minutes before I fall asleep, I reflect on the past twenty hours – as different as day and night for me. For eight hours I could be accused of helping the German Third Reich to consolidate control of our beautiful city and country – yes, our country – and for the last four or five of aiming to knock holes in their plans to ride roughshod over Italian heritage and pride. I feel like a female Jekyll and Hyde. Yet what helps me sink into a satisfying sleep is the knowledge of what we – me, Arlo and everyone else in our secret cellar – are doing. It may only be eight pages of print, and yet I firmly believe in Popsa’s principle: that they represent immense power. In my mind’s eye, communication is like the fine lines of a spider’s web; one tenuous strand makes little difference, but put them together – weave them well – and you have something of inordinate strength. A web that can withstand the mightiest of tanks.

  3

  Bedding In

  Venice, December 1943

  ‘Jilani! Here!’

  Over the next few weeks I get used to General Breugal’s gruff call, largely when he can’t raise his increasing girth from his chair and travel the short distance from his own desk to mine to hand me a report. Which is most of the time. Venetian living clearly suits him well. I note that in the outer office, his manners are charming towards all the female workers: German and very proper. Behind his own, closed door, however, he tries to engage me in conversation on the pretext of practising his appalling Italian. It’s a shame that he feels the need to attempt his impression of Casanova too, the leer on his broad face becoming frankly laughable. More than once I’ve had to skip out from the reach of his grasping, pudgy paw, affecting a tinkling laugh that I know is a necessary part of the facade, but that still makes me feel grubby from head to toe.

  The work is challenging, mostly due to the technical nature of the translations. But it’s their complexity, I’m told, which is helping the Resistance understand German movements, and, more importantly, their thinking too. My reports and the scraps from my shoes are passed promptly via a chain of Staffettas – a whole army of largely female Resistance workers, like me, used to move vital messages across Italian cities and towns. They are passed to the underground offices of the Resistance, vital information that helps to thwart Nazi efficiency in occupying our city. In office hours, I am responsible for gleaning that critical information directly from Breugal’s reports and passing it on to my fellow Staffettas, organised in a network between each of the partisan battalions in Venice. Once I step out of the office, though, I become one of that army – those who slip nonchalantly into bars with girlfriends, chatting in groups, who might slide a message under the table or pass notes via a waiter in the know. A whole other band of mothers and older women are employed in the same task, secreting written missives in baby carriages, nappies and shopping bags, innocently sailing through the checkpoints set up around the city. It’s merely a piece of paper, but the consequences of discovery by Nazi or fascist patrols are grave – at times, deadly. It’s war work and we are all soldiers in some way.

  Some evenings, I will stop for a coffee in Paolo’s café, other times at a string of bars in the Castello or San Polo districts, sharing a drink and deep conversation with women I barely know as though we are best friends, looking as if there isn’t a war on. As we embrace goodbye, each of us slips the other a piece of paperweight contraband, and we say ‘Ciao’ with smiles and waves. I move on to my delivery destination, and she to hers, while the Nazi officers who are sometimes in our midst carry on, none the wiser. It makes my stomach flip with fear as I move away, then do somersaults of triumph when I round the corner with no patrol on my tail. I realise sometimes I actually enjoy the excitement, and it makes me think of Popsa and his defiant streak.

  The pretence, however, is exhausting. I seesaw between the persona of a flighty office girl, with the daily demands on my memory for such detail, and the physical role of a Staffetta – the time and energy spent zigzagging across Venice on foot to pass messages and parcels along. What with visits to the partisan newspaper cellar at least twice a week, it means I barely see my own friends. Trips home to Mama and Papa’s house, the home where I grew up in the streets around the Via Garibaldi, are once a week at best. It’s not enough, but it’s all I can manage with my double – no, triple – life.

  ‘You’re getting thin,’ is Mama’s familiar refrain as I arrive unexpectedly at her door one evening. She would be within her rights to make a flippant remark about my gracing them with my presence, but her mother’s love stops her. I don’t tell her I’ve made a message drop just two streets away, and that familiar guilt gnaws at my stomach. It’s only manageable when I think of the greater good – bringing back the Venice that belongs to hard workers, honest people like my parents.

  ‘How’s work?’ she asks, as she serves polenta on my plate, along with the lion’s share of a thin mixed-fish stew, which needs to be stretched after my arrival.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I lie. ‘Lots of activity in keeping the water supplies coming in from the mainland.’ I haven’t told them of my move to Nazi headquarters, and I don’t plan to yet – Mama worries enough. While both are confirmed partisans, sharing anti-fascist beliefs and willing to help the cause, they are not active in the way I am. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I note a twitch to Papa’s normally calm face. He swipes his eyes away as I flick mine towards him.

  ‘Stella, you should move back home again,’ Mama goes on, in her unending plea. ‘We could manage the household much better, and we would know you are safe. I worry about you so much. It seems as though Vito is never here either. You shouldn’t be on your own.’

  As with every vis
it, I say, ‘But Mama …’ trying to justify my need for independence. She doesn’t need to know how much she would worry at my trips across Venice, sometimes on a boat to the Lido or the mainland under cover of darkness, wherever the message takes me. Her ignorance is bliss, although she doesn’t know it.

  Papa walks out into the yard as I’m taking out the rubbish. I know enough of undercover work now to sense the cigarette he is lighting is simply a ploy, but I don’t stop what I’m doing. He draws hard and the scent catches in my nostrils, his plume of smoke a sheet of white in the cold December air. Finally he speaks.

  ‘So how is it working in the wolf’s lair?’ He looks directly at me as I spin round. I say nothing, but my own stare doesn’t deny it.

  ‘What did you expect, Stella? I work in the docks – there are ears and eyes everywhere. I hear things. And people know you, care about you, enough to tell me.’

  Even so, I’m shocked that the news has travelled, like a baton in a relay race, to my father. But then this war is all about information and gossip. And isn’t that what I trade in, every day? ‘Just don’t tell Mama – please,’ I entreat. ‘She’ll only worry. You know she’s already suspicious about Vito.’

  I, and perhaps Papa, know about my younger brother’s place in the Resistance brigade. Coupled with his sometimes reckless pursuit for adventure, it would send Mama into a spin if she knew for sure that both her children were courting danger. On the grapevine, I hear of Vito’s hunger for ‘doing his duty’ as a partisan and it makes me nervous; I’ve heard his name mentioned more than once in plans to derail troop-carrying trains into Venice, or scupper German supply boats – plans that involved explosives. Sometimes I wish my hearing wasn’t so acute.

  ‘Do you know anything about Vito?’ Papa asks anxiously. Seeing my strained look, he adds: ‘Please, Stella – look, I know he’s in the brigade. I can’t stop him doing it, but I just want to know he’s safe. He disappears for days at a time.’

  ‘Papa, I’m in a different battalion,’ I sigh, and he knows what I’m saying. Either I won’t or I can’t talk about it. It’s a mixture of both. He slumps back against the brick wall, draws on his cigarette again. The pause is leaden.

  ‘So, how did you get the job in the Reich office?’ Papa asks at last, if only to break the impasse. ‘Was it Sergio who managed to place you?’ His natural protectiveness towards his only daughter brings an edge to his voice, an unspoken suspicion that my own commander would willingly put me in harm’s way.

  ‘No,’ I say truthfully. ‘It wasn’t really a choice. I was simply seconded by the Reich department, because I speak decent German.’

  ‘Ah, the benefits of a good high school education.’ He half laughs, but without humour.

  ‘It’s just a job, Papa,’ I say, looking at the night sky so I don’t have to meet his accusing eye.

  ‘And I’m an Italian who hates pasta,’ he says, a smirk beginning to curl his lip. Now he stubs out his cigarette and faces me, grasping my arms with both hands. ‘Just be careful, my love. I know you’re far smarter than you probably let them believe, but I also know you have too much of my father in you. And that’s the bit that worries me. These are dangerous people.’

  ‘The Nazis or the fascists?’

  ‘Both,’ he says resolutely.

  I shrug, trying to make light of it, to protect him as much as Mama. ‘I will be careful, Papa, I promise. Listen, I want to be around to see the Venice of old return. I want to preserve us as much as anyone else. That’s why I need to work there.’ I kiss his cheek, and make to go back inside. ‘Didn’t you know, I’m a good Italian girl, who adores our beloved Benito?’

  ‘Like I say, I’m an Italian who loathes pasta,’ he quips back, and follows me inside.

  Christmas comes and goes – our first under the awning of occupation – and a cloak of snow covers the city, marking out the waterways and canals of the city as the lifelines that they are. Venice exists under a muffler of white powder, cut by a distinctive chipping of the icy water as the boatmen free their craft each morning. In black and white, the city somehow seems starker, better defined. And yet still so beautiful. As I lie every night under my heap of blankets, a new pair of Mama’s knitted socks over the old, I think of the young partisan men and women up in the mountains near Turin, fighting the elements as much as the Nazi patrols, and my heart goes out to them.

  The snow, however, helps the Resistance cause in our city. To an outsider, Venice is a labyrinth at the best of times, with one campo looking much like another, tiny streets and alleyways virtually indistinguishable to those with an untrained eye. Under a carpet of white, it becomes a complex maze – except to those who know its cobbles and pavements off by heart. The Nazi patrols are less visible in the cold; they remain holed up in their barracks or keep warm in several bars that have become their hangouts. For a few weeks at least, I and my fellow Staffettas feel a sense of freedom as we weave our way almost unchallenged.

  I have to be careful not to feel a sense of overconfidence at work. Breugal becomes less of a prowler in the office – word has it that his wife has come to soak up the Venetian sights, as if we are still some cosmopolitan centre for the rich and bored. No doubt she will fill her time drinking real and expensive coffee in Florian’s on Piazza San Marco, and later have cocktails in Harry’s Bar, perhaps beside the sign that clearly states: ‘No Jews here’. She might parade alongside the Venetian women of a certain age who try to maintain the city’s grandiose reputation, even though these days the collars of their coats are more likely to be fashioned from rabbit or cat fur than anything exotic.

  In the office, then, the atmosphere feels slightly less frenetic, although Signor De Luca continues to ensure that it runs with industrial efficiency. I note he never indulges in idle gossip or lunchtime chatter, and disappears each day at 12.30 precisely, returning exactly thirty-five minutes later. I tend to take my own lunch as he arrives back, since those precious minutes when he’s absent give me time to type frenetically while not under his watchful gaze. My position to the right of him means I can see his face as he leans over whatever document he is reading or correcting. It’s always intense, eyes tracking back and forth, nostrils twitching occasionally – which strangely reminds me of Popsa reading his daily paper. Sometimes, Cristian takes off his glasses, pinches his nose with his long fingers and draws the paper nearer to his face. If he’s suddenly distracted, he peers upwards without replacing his glasses and squints into the distance, adding to the look of a bibliophile. He’s something of an enigma to the other office girls, who find it hard to ally his appearance with the strict work rate he demands, occasionally raising his voice to quell any chatter if it threatens to slow the steady production of reports.

  ‘Bloody fascist,’ Marta, one of the other typists, mutters if Cristian takes her to task, although it’s under her breath and masked by the thunder of typewriter keys. Breugal appears to rely on him entirely – not least because his own Italian is so poor and Cristian’s German crisp and fluent – and calls him into the inner office a dozen times a day with a smart ‘De Luca!’ though I note it’s rarely with an irritated bark. For all their innate cruelty, their bulldozing of nations and countries, we in the Resistance realise the secret of Nazi success is that they know how to use people – via a combination of flattery, stealth or the simple and stark threat of death. With Cristian, Breugal is definitely on the charm offensive.

  I have perhaps more to do with Cristian than some of the other typists, because of my role as a translator. He sometimes walks over to query a word or a phrase, and if it’s especially puzzling we both stand over the huge dictionary and work out the phrasing. He always smells nice, of soap and what I seem to recall is Italian cologne. Who can afford, or even access, cologne in wartime? Those that have good Nazi connections, I suppose. But still, he perplexes me. He doesn’t fit – a square peg in a round hole – and yet he appears snug within the Nazi hierarchy. I resolve to be wary; Cristian De Luca is meticulous and obse
rvant. He could easily be equally as dangerous as the general controlling our occupied city.

  4

  Discovery

  Bristol, July 2017

  Back home in Bristol, Luisa flicks through more scraps of aged paper, the fibrous edges disintegrating a little more each time she unfolds the fragile notes. Some of the ink has begun to fade and she needs to hold the paper up to the lamp to make out the scrawl. Some are just letters, numbers or nonsensical phrases – and they are largely in Italian, with the occasional message in phonetical English. ‘My beard is blond,’ one says, with what is presumably the Italian equivalent below. The sometimes bizarre nature of the messages only makes her delve deeper and wonder more. She buys a cheap Italian-English dictionary and pores over the words to try to make some kind of sense of them. In the month since Luisa discovered the attic box, its content has become like the richest compost for her imagination. She finds herself racing through real, paid work, forcing herself to concentrate on its suddenly inane message, when all she wants to do is get back to her large box of intrigue.

  ‘Lu? Lu, it’s supper …’ Jamie calls from downstairs, in a tone of early despair. He already knows he’ll need to remind her several times to descend from her office in the smaller bedroom. In what seems like every spare moment, Luisa is engrossed in that box attempting to unravel the mysteries amid the dust within. Daisy sits alongside, humming with an impatient flickering of the screen, waiting for Luisa to continue the article she should be working on. Jamie sees that the collection of old paper and photographs has more than captured her imagination – it’s become a purpose, perhaps morphing into an obsession of late. She’s become withdrawn but not in a morbid sense, and that can only be a good thing, he thinks, given she’s just lost her mum. Except he seems to have lost Luisa too. Hopefully, it’s temporary. He has to be patient and wait for her to re-emerge, take her nose out of those dusty scraps and be the Luisa he knows and loves. Right now, it appears that might take some time.