With little expectation, Giulio poses the next obvious question: ‘And Mimi?’
If, by some miracle, she is alive, Mimi will be very elderly. But there’s a chance.
‘Poor Mimi,’ Rina says with a shake of her head. ‘She had a bad war. She died in a convent, oh as far back as 1965. She never recovered.’
Her cheeks puff out at the sorrow. Recovery from what is not revealed, and Giulio clearly feels he cannot pry. Instead, he asks if there are other families who might know of Stella, in any of the streets of the Via Garibaldi?
‘So many families have moved out since then,’ Rina says, fussing at the cat snaking around her legs as she thinks. Luisa wills another thread to worm its way from Rina’s memory.
‘I remember Mama saying there was a café they both used to go to,’ she says. ‘I’ve no idea if it’s still there, but it was run by a big Venetian family. Over by the Fondamenta Nuove. I couldn’t tell you exactly where, but I think they would visit a friend called Paolo.’
Both faces opposite Rina must reflect disappointment. How many Paolos in Venice, past and present? This Paolo would be in his nineties and more likely resident in San Michele island cemetery. How on earth would they track down his relatives?
‘Oh,’ Rina says. ‘He wasn’t a visitor to the bar. It was his family’s café. If it’s still there, there’s a good chance the owners would remember him.’
Luisa and Giulio leave, with Rina promising she will venture into her own box of photographs and contact them with any news. As a parting shot Giulio asks if she recognises the name Giovanni Benetto as familiar. A suitor, or fellow partisan?
No, she says, shaking her head. There was no Giovanni in Mimi’s few letters.
Giulio is upbeat as they walk back towards the glitter of the lagoon, a glorious sunset tiptoeing on the water. Clearly he’s pleased with their progress.
‘It’s a start,’ he says with a smile, although Luisa is thinking only of the end of her trip and how fast it’s approaching. Her flight home is the next afternoon. Perhaps her mother’s inheritance will lend itself to another fact-finding mission, but what will Jamie say about that? She thinks about spending her last half-day pounding the streets of Venice to look for this mystery bar but then what? The thought of rehearsing her questions in Italian to seek out Paolo is less appealing. And what if they do understand her and answer in a volley of speedy dialect? She can imagine the headache it would create. It feels as if she has squeezed herself into one of Venice’s tightest alleyways and come to a dead end.
Giulio guides Luisa to sit on a bench near the water’s edge, and they both take in the dimming sun replaced by new lights drifting across the water.
‘I can take tomorrow to help you,’ Giulio says at last. ‘It is research, after all. We’ll just go into every bar around the Fondamenta and be – what is it the English say? – very nosy.’
Luisa turns her head, and her face brightens in the gloom. A smile of relief and gratitude spreads across her features. ‘Do you understand why I need to find her? Or is it just a silly obsession?’ she says into the air.
Giulio looks at her, clearly perplexed. ‘Of course you have to find her,’ he says, as if it’s the most natural quest in the world. ‘Whether or not they are dead and gone, history defines us. It makes us what we are. Right now.’
At that moment, in his academic’s jacket and tortoiseshell glasses, he doesn’t look much like it, but Luisa could kiss Giulio Volpe as her knight in shining armour.
32
A Parting
Venice, October 1944
The newspaper office on Giudecca is empty when I arrive, and I pull off the cloth covering my typewriter. I have no excuse not to set it in its casing, take it outside and toss it with all my might into the canal water, as Sergio has directed. Although it’s not a heavy machine, the combined weight will send it to the bottom in seconds. There will be no typewriter to find, and I regain my anonymity.
But I can’t. My heart pushes and pulls; I make the mistake of fingering the cool, metal keys, a habit I have when I’m feeling lost or lonely. Then I think of Popsa, his image flooding my mind. I’m standing there alone in the office, tears streaming, and feeling alternately foolish and bloody-minded. How dare this war, these Nazis, take away what is most precious to me? The hope he gave to me, here in this piece of metal.
I’ll hide it, I decide. I can stow it safely, perhaps at Santa Eufemia’s? And then I think of a fascist search party, and the vengeance on the nuns. I can’t do it to them. Besides, Sergio’s replacement typewriter is nowhere to be seen, and there’s no other to use. I fool myself I have to use it, for the good of the Resistance. Arlo arrives, this time without Tommaso, unusual since they are such a pairing these days.
‘Is he sick?’ I query. It’s a less painful conclusion than a young boy being detained by a patrol. Tommaso’s father is a lieutenant in one of the sub-units and his son’s cheery character hides the fact that his family lives under constant threat.
‘I don’t know,’ Arlo says. ‘He wasn’t at our usual meeting point, but I’ve had no message either.’
We set to work, but the hours drag by, until the time when I can leave for Pellestrina. Even my instalment of Gaia and Raffiano plods at a slow pace, their projected emotion tangled with Mimi’s and my own. I’m conscious of dragging the lines from within me, word by word, aware it’s not my best work.
Finally, Matteo raps on the basement door to signal my boat is waiting in the small canal beside the café. It’s almost dark, and the distance to the island is deceptive in the dying light; the journey feels long, almost until we’re drawing up at the wharf.
The envelope weighs heavily in my bag as I walk towards Jack’s little apartment. I find him outside, sitting on a bale of nets, still working in the glow from an open workshop door. His face lights up as he squints to place me in the gloom.
‘Stella!’ It’s just what I need – a welcome, sunny face. I wonder how in the world I will do without it.
We go into his room, and the envelope confirms what I both want and fear at the same time – that his departure is planned. His face registers a mixture of relief and sadness. I want more than anything for him to reach safety, perhaps even as far as his family in England, but, selfishly, I don’t want him to go. I almost wish he needed a native Italian to guide him over the mountains and skirt around the Nazi patrols in the hills. I would willingly leave this war behind, but Venice? I can’t, not with Mama still sick and Vito imprisoned.
We spend the night side by side – I guessed we would. And it’s by mutual consent that we don’t lace our bodies around one another and take our intimacy one step further – that crucial step. Something stops us, a sense that maybe it would spoil what we have: a brief but intense friendship that might just survive war and a continent between us. As long as we don’t complicate it. It’s left unsaid, but our friendship is worth more than romance, even in war. Even if we never see each other again, it’s better to part as friends.
‘Is there anyone special at home?’ I ask him, as the moonlight slices across the thin blanket over us.
‘Yes and no,’ he says. ‘I mean, there’s someone I like – we met just before I left – but I don’t think she knows how I feel.’ He pauses, looks embarrassed. ‘Look Stella, it’s not that I don’t find you attract—’
‘I know, I know,’ I stop him. ‘And it’s the same for me. But it’s better we’re friends, Jack. Good friends.’ He looks relieved at our understanding, and I return his smile, adding: ‘But it doesn’t take away the fact that you’re a darn good kisser!’
We talk for a long time, an easy flow given the awkwardness of sex has been banished. Finally, in the early hours, we give in to sleep and the light wakes us several hours later, inching towards our goodbye.
He holds me on the quayside, squeezing both my hands, and I notice his eyes are wet. I peel my fingers away and feel into my bag and this time it’s me who provides something to mop the tears, having p
repared myself for many of my own.
‘We’ll see each other again, I know we will,’ he says. ‘You know where to find me – I’ll probably end up behind my mother’s deli counter, slicing sausages!’
Again, I believe his optimism – that we will both survive this war, that his hazardous journey over the mountains into France will be paved with good fortune enough to dodge capture, bullets or both, and that I will live long enough in Venice to see liberation and travel one day to London.
It’s all we can do – because if we can’t see it, taste the reality, it may never happen. There is no other way.
I don’t look back as the boat moves away from the dock, and I’m willing it to go faster, for the wind to pick up and push the flimsy sails so that I can’t feel his eyes boring into my back. I land on the Lido and it’s a rush again to run to the Motonavi so I’m not late for work. This time, some of the girls note my relative dishevelment and make excuses while I patch up in the washroom. Even Cristian, who hasn’t noticed me for weeks, stares at me sideways from his desk, as if I have some type of large blemish on my face. Perhaps I’m wearing my sorrow more acutely than I realise.
I push through the day to meet Mimi after work. She looks grey and drawn, and it’s not the Mimi I know. There is no fresh news of Vito, and she is a boiling pot of indecision as to its meaning.
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she says, twirling nervously at her hair. ‘It means there’s no body to claim at least. We know when they are finished with them at Ca’ Littoria and taken to jail, we at least have guards in Santa Maggiore who will tell us. If there’s nothing yet, there’s hope.’
All I can do is nod in agreement, while wincing inside at her reference to a ‘body’. She’s with me for reassurance, even if it means concurring with her false optimism. If Vito is still in Ca’ Littoria, he is on no holiday, and the thought burns into me. But Mimi’s thinking – putting a barrier around the truth – may at least dampen her anxiety. It may be her saving.
‘You have to look after yourself, Mimi,’ I say. ‘For the future.’ Neither of us have said the word ‘baby’ yet – it’s too much for her to contemplate gaining one love while potentially losing another. And it’s my blood too, my brother’s child, and a grandchild for Mama and Papa. We’ll tackle the lack of a wedding ring later, when he’s safe.
33
In Hiding
Venice, October 1944
In the next weeks I’m inspired again to push forward with Gaia and Raffiano, sadly spurred on by another atrocity; a larger passenger ferry, the Giudecca, is attacked by Allied planes out in the lagoon. It’s later rumoured they may have spied German uniforms on deck and mistaken it for a troop ship, but the result remains the same – the ferry is sunk, with the loss of untold numbers; more than sixty bodies are pulled from the water, but with so many stateless refugees in Venice, the numbers could be much more. The lagoon and the wider sea doubtless claims its share.
The newspaper office feels noticeably emptier, with Arlo and me each working alone at our desks.
‘Tommaso’s father has been arrested again,’ Arlo tells me in a grave voice. ‘And this time he’s been taken to Ca’ Littoria.’ It’s the third time Tommaso’s father has been arrested but previously he’s always been released from jail and avoided the fascist police headquarters. ‘Tommaso sent word that he’s at home supporting his mother.’
In the relative quiet, the banter that we three once enjoyed in the office feels far into the past.
‘Poor boy,’ I mutter, with deep sympathy for his family’s angst. It flashes up an image of Vito’s face and this time I can’t help but envisage him in a cell, with pulped and bloodied flesh. I harness the emotions it stirs in me, adding to my latest chapter of Gaia and Raffiano with renewed pain.
I don’t quite appreciate the fervour of my language until several days after publication. Then, the cold wind whips off the Fondamenta Nuove as I leave my apartment for work. I’m grappling with my scarf when I look up and see that my words are no longer restricted to the paper on café tables. On a concrete wall, daubed awkwardly in black paint, are the words: ‘Gaia and Raffiano: love forever’. Worse still, there is a Nazi patrolman standing directly in front, staring at the sight. I slow up to watch his reaction. He looks perplexed at first, cocking his head as the meaning dawns, then he turns and strides away, in the direction I am bound. Towards Nazi headquarters.
The graffiti artist has been busy; it’s not the only message en route to San Marco, and there are variations on the theme – ‘Free Venice for lovers’ – in red paint too. I sink lower into the collar of my coat, my face burning, imagining I have some type of target pinned to my back. I’m sharply reminded of Jews across Europe, and the way they are forced to wear a stark yellow star on their arms, each and every day. Mine at least is a figment in my head, while theirs is all too real.
News of the graffiti arrives before me. Cristian is nowhere to be seen but it’s clear where he is, given the cacophony coming from behind Breugal’s door. I scan the office, but everyone’s heads are down, perhaps reasoning the fury will pass over them if they lie low and look busy.
We hear variations on Breugal’s opinion: ‘String them up!’, ‘Bring the bastard to me so I can see them burn’, his voice consumed with rage. Heads sink even lower over the machines. I have to draw in deep, silent breaths before I can begin typing, but I note my fingers are trembling, slipping on the keys.
Cristian blows out of the office eventually, sits heavily at his desk, barks away a query from one of the typists and begins scrawling on some paper. In minutes, he brings the sheet to me.
‘Type this please, Fräulein Jilani. As quickly as you can.’ His tone is strained, clipped, and he avoids any eye contact.
It’s what I feared, and again I am relying only on my body’s natural mechanism over my twenty-seven years on this earth to keep my heart beating, despite the knife tearing into its muscle.
‘REWARD FOR THE CAPTURE OF AUTHOR’. I’m forced also to type a substantial sum as the prize – well over a month’s wages for your average Venetian. As an extra carrot to any takers, there’s the promise of ‘protected liberty’ to any giver of information and their family. There’s intense loyalty within Venice, but with Santa Maggiore jail bursting at the seams and those in Ca’ Littoria too, there will be takers.
It’s the first time the Nazis have offered such a substantial incentive for my arrest and I know I’m white and shaking, but I type on. If I were to flee now I feel sure at least Cristian will guess at my complicity – he is clever enough to join the dots, and he knows where I live, Mama and Papa too. I sit firm, sweat pooling in the small of my back, my brain in a whirlpool while my fingers extend onto the keys. I finish the task and take it to Cristian’s desk.
‘There you are, Herr De Luca,’ I say, and it’s all I can do not to slam it down in front of him, as tiny bubbles of rage begin to push through my cloak of fear.
He looks up, features dark and his mouth set in a line. His brow is furrowed behind his glasses.
‘Thank you,’ he says, and goes back to reading his report.
Within the hour, I see the sheet bound up and collected by one of the messengers. The posters will be printed and they’ll be plastered all over the city by tomorrow. I rue my own stupidity in not casting my typewriter to the lagoon bed, and yet – at the same time – I’m not sure I can do it even now. Its very presence is incriminating to more than just me, though: I need to move it, and soon.
I make it to lunchtime before approaching Cristian, taking in a breath to afford a more friendly air.
‘Herr De Luca, please, may …’ He looks at me as if affronted at the way I address him, but I’m merely aligning to his own etiquette.
‘Yes?’
‘You know my mother has been ill, but I’m afraid she’s taken a turn for the worse, and I need to go to her. I promise I’ll make up the time …’
His face softens; there’s no movement towards a smile but I c
an see it in his eyes. The hardness around his eyes of late smooths into something of a truce between us. In the short time I’ve known him, he’s still hard to read, his mood unpredictable.
‘Of course, Fräulein Jilani,’ he says. ‘Take what time you need.’
I hate lying about Mama, but I’m safe in the knowledge she is at home with Papa, having finally been discharged from the hospital with a weary but intact heart, and seems to be recovering for now. Still, we haven’t had the courage to explain properly about Vito and where he is; to her, he is still in hiding. Papa is the one bearing the anxiety of his son’s true whereabouts.
I walk with purpose, finding it hard not to adopt a skip or a half-run that is likely to attract attention from the patrols. But I’m not heading home. The safe house I know Sergio most often frequents is occupied, but he’s not there, and I can only leave a message about the posters to be plastered across the city. From there, I make my way to the Zattere to pick up a boat – the vaporetto is suspended again and just after lunch there are few boats about. The one owner I can find is reluctant to move until he has at least one other customer for Giudecca and although I’m tempted to offer him double price, that in itself might arouse suspicion. So I sit on the waterfront prickling with unease, the sun lingering behind a curtain of grey cloud, waiting its turn, much like me.
Forced to linger, I try to rationalise the fresh urgency in me; the typewriter has been in Matteo’s basement for months – almost a year in fact – and until now I’ve never felt its presence as a threat to me or those in my sphere. But then I’ve never had a substantial reward for capture posted on my head either. Perhaps there is a reason to feel jittery, after all.
The Secret Messenger Page 23