The Last Double Sunrise

by Peter Yeldham

  “He knows I’m painting,” Carlo said, wondering what she meant by the stress on ‘prematurely’. “But he hasn’t mentioned it, and never comes up here.”

  “He’s playing a game of his own. If we don’t talk about it, he hopes it might go away and be forgotten.”

  “It won’t be, Mamma.”

  “You and I know that. But what he said about the danger of being caught as a conscript is still unfortunately true. So we have to wait, Carlo.”

  “For what?”

  “For next year when I find us an excuse to visit Rome. To apply for something that will make you safe. But I’ll tell you more about it when I know it myself.”

  It was frustrating, but he had to be content with that.

  When both the portraits were framed and hidden he began a task unknown to anyone else, even the subject of his next venture. Particularly the subject, as he decided to secretly paint a portrait of his father. He made drawings, selected photos from family albums and spent weeks on this while working each day alongside him. He stayed up late trying for perfection on this exacting portrait, making changes until long after most midnights. He’d never taken as much care on anything before, and yet, he remained dissatisfied. Some essence eluded him and there was no life in what was on his easel. It felt as static as the photographs.

  Meanwhile the toil in the vineyard was increasing. With the next winter snows due, the haste to get everything done was unrelenting. Carlo was told they must start clearing out some of the older vines and dig up four acres to plant winter vegetables instead.

  “Vegetables?” For the first time he queried a decision. “Why, father?”

  “For self-preservation,” was his brief answer. As they ripped out vines and dug the earth, Salvatore explained the reason more fully. “A quota of vegetables will classify us as a farm.”

  “We’re a vineyard. Do we need to be a farm? ”

  “Listen, and learn. Agriculture’s a protected industry and its workers are safe from military patrols sequestering you for national service.”

  “Sequestering me?”

  “The gangs I warned you about are still active. But now friends in Rome tell me there’s to be a new source. Mobilisation of young men your age.”

  “Are your friends in Rome telling you there’ll be a war?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Then Mussolini wants it?”

  “You’ve been listening too often to your mother. She doesn’t like Il Duce.”

  “She only said you approve of him, Father.”

  “She says a lot of meaningless things.”

  “It was a remark she made. Not a criticism.”

  Salvatore ignored this comment and changed the subject. “Mussolini may not want war. But it’s inevitable, and has been since he signed the pact with Adolph Hitler. Now that’s a man who most definitely wants a war.”

  He tossed his pick aside, found a seat on some stacked timber and lit a cigarette. It indicated a rare break from work, so Carlo left his shovel to join him.

  “Not that I disapprove of what Our Leader does,” his father continued. “After all, he’s sorted out the anarchists and communists, and brought us years of stable rule. I used to think him an opportunist. But he’s done things we needed. He made an agreement with the church to create Vatican City as an independent state and even the trains now run on time.” He drew on his cigarette and exhaled with a smoker’s habitual pleasure. Carlo watched this.

  “Your mother and her friends might not agree but he’s right to argue with Britain. Our fleet is trapped in the Mediterranean by their islands like Malta. We need a path to the world for trade with Africa and the Americas. Not forgetting our wine,” he said with a smile. “We could use some new markets for you to manage when you’re a full partner here.”

  Carlo glanced sharply at him, but his father appeared not to notice this. He seemed occupied with his cigarette as he inhaled again: “Mussolini’s also right that we need an army, so there’ll be a mobilisation of young men.”

  “Full mobilisation?”

  “Absolutely. Wholesale conscription of your age and upwards. But I want you here in a safe job, not forced to fight in a futile war like I was. Having the shit beaten out of us in Austria-Hungary.”

  “You’ve never talked about that, Father.”

  “Never felt able to, Carlo. It was an awful time. A real disaster. We lost 300,000 men in Caporetto and were never given the territory promised us by the Treaty of London. That’s why we’re digging. If we plant enough potatoes, turnips and carrots then at least when war comes it won’t include you.”

  It was a strange moment. Their longest ever conversation. On the verge of his twentieth year Carlo felt a rare affinity with his father.

  When at last he was satisfied with the portrait he left the canvas on an easel in his storage sanctuary beneath the roof. The door was kept locked but at times Carlo went up there to sit and gaze at this particular painting. He’d carefully amended it since the day they’d talked, adding a half smoked cigarette held in his father’s hand, and catching the facial expression when he spoke of his defeated and unhappy war. Carlo felt now it was the best work he’d ever done.

  The painting showed Salvatore standing against ripened vines before harvest time, a strong and powerful figure amid the trellises. The face was kinder, making him look more like the gentle character he and Gina knew from childhood and, as Carlo had discovered, could still be on occasions. That recent day was like a landmark, but it was also troubling. There were the sly hints of a future on the vineyard, and a casual—or was it deliberate?—mention of a partnership, and a belief they could continue to work contentedly together.

  He began to have moments of contemplating if he could in fact blend his two lives. Would it be possible to come to some new and different arrangement with his father, such as working half a week in the vineyard and the other half making this attic a permanent loft where he’d pursue his art? That way he could perhaps solve the family situation, keeping his mother in his life as teacher and critic. It had been wonderfully peaceful of late, a haven from the former fights about his future. Those violent and abusive days had become rare, receding like a bad and distant memory.

  Beatrice knew exactly what her husband was doing. His tactics had changed in the past twelve months. The heavy-handed domineering had given way to a different strategy: it was now camaraderie and conversation as they worked together. New and subtle attempts to bond in friendship. He was good at it. Politics had taught him the way to change opinions and win support with strangers; how much easier it would be with an only son whom—she knew, and did not blame Carlo—wanted to reach out to him.

  She was aware of the recurring stoppages while they worked among the vines, rest periods when they sat together and Salvatore doubtless talked about his past wartime experiences, as he had once spoken of them to her. In those days he’d even hinted at his political ambitions, until realising her opinions did not equate with his conversion to the fascist cause. So that colloquy had ended long ago, when he started to conceal his own agenda.

  She could sense a growing change in Carlo, even by the discerning way he’d made alterations to the painting of his father. There were tiny touches that softened Salvatore, minor vicissitudes of face and attitude that no one but an artist or an art teacher might notice.

  So it came to a choice. This friendly phase was being used to convert Carlo into an amateur artist running the vineyard. She knew it was not a future he wanted. But it was one he might easily be tempted into, and then bitterly regret. So it was time for her to act now, and if she was to succeed in the way she hoped, her brittle marriage would almost certainly be over. The answer was in Rome, so she had to think of a way to get there that would not alert Salvatore. She felt no sense of betrayal; it was the rest of their son’s life they were fighting over—in silence now—but fighting over his future just the same.

  Salvatore knew he must be patient. He was aware Carlo still pai
nted, but felt things had subtlety changed, improved far better than expected. Ever since he’d left that damned school and its intrusive bloody headmaster, everything was improving. He still had moments of lying awake at night, wondering if that stuffed peacock had been able to get his hands between Beatrice’s legs. His hands or any-other-bloody-thing anywhere near Beatrice was the perception that disturbed his sleep.

  If it could ever be proved they’d done it, if he’d had her, Salvatore could lobby the regional council to make sure the bastard was sacked and never allowed to run a school again. It might even be a crime under the public education act. If she’d slept with Fabritzi, it could also be grounds to dissolve his marriage; an annulment by papal decree. He could faithfully testify it had been four years since they’d been in the same bed, although the abiding memory of those first intemperate years could still arouse him. Sometimes to such an extent that, with Beatrice determinedly inviolate, he had to drive to the brothel in Aosta where a girl called Bianca took care of his needs, not minding that he even called her Beatrice and made her pretend she was his wife.

  Being truthful he hated the thought of losing the real Bea. She was almost more attractive now at almost forty. Men rarely went past her without an aspiring glance. Making love to her again would be rapture, as though there’d never been this hostile struggle, this insane desire to turn their son into a painter, while preventing his own wish for a new future. All those years he’d shared his dreams with her; it was sometimes incredible she would no longer sympathise or understand. He’d slogged half his life on this pathetic vineyard, over twenty years since paying for it with money saved on army discharge, working every day of every week in each unrelenting year, just to make a token living. It had been a mistake. In his impatience to buy something he should’ve had an earth test, a proper scan to discover if the soil could support his elaborate vision of more vines, using every square foot of land.

  It would have been a great deal worse, had he not been elected three times as mayor, with the financial benefits that entailed. It allowed the belief of family and friends that the vineyard was a thriving venture, or a small goldmine, as Bruno had enviously said. Stupid bloody Bruno. Even Carlo knew him as the family fool. Salvatore had smiled when Bruno had expressed this envy, showing his brother his broken nails and rough hands to point out that even goldmines did not come without hard work and contusions.

  It was his third term as mayor of Santa Maria that had brought the attention from an unexpected source. Back in 1917 he and Lucano Pascoli had been army comrades, friends in peril defeated by the massive Austrian and German armies that had overwhelmed them. Luca and he, survivors among the many dead, were both wounded and fortunate to be alive. The agony of that slaughter had given birth to a long and true friendship, and Salvatore had learned that his comrade Luca was the boyhood companion of an ambitious private soldier named Benito Mussolini.

  A heap of laughs, Luca had called him back then, saying Benny was a fat soldier forever planning to form his own political party. Salvatore and Luca had returned home after the war, he to buy his patch of land and try to make a living, Luca to join his friend Benito, who became dictator of Italy.

  Beatrice knew some of this. She knew of his desire to be free of the winery when Carlo could take it over, but not that Luca had recommended him to those in power who staffed Il Duce’s office. His visits to Rome were passed off as reunions with war comrades, but included meetings with foreign Minister Count Ciano and once a dinner hosted by Luca and graced by Mussolini himself. He’d impressed Il Duce with his multiple terms as mayor. The Leader had said he needed men like this around him, and it was proposed that Salvatore be appointed a Prefect of his region—like Cesare Mori was in Palermo—this honour would be granted as soon as his son could run the vineyard and Salvatore could devote himself full time to the position. In the meantime he would work secretly when required. It was a perfect arrangement, but just a month later Carlo had made his 16th birthday speech, and Beatrice’s hand in it had seemed like betrayal. He now regretted that excessive hostility, realising in retrospect that he could have persuaded her more skilfully with the tactics he was now employing. It would delay his appointment, but Mussolini was prepared to wait; good men, the leader of his country had told him, were worth waiting for.

  He confided to Luca how he’d reinstated a firm relationship with Carlo. The boy had relegated his painting to a spare-time hobby after the day’s work. Salvatore had no argument with this, and was now confident he could depend on his son to take full control over the vineyard when needed. With a more peaceful family atmosphere, Salvatore felt there might even be a restoration of harmony with his wife, but that was not essential. If she still tried to insist Carlo waste his life as an artist, then to hell with her. He was not prepared to be hostage to her wild aspirations. The government post was far more important than sharing a bed with Beatrice.

  There were plenty of other women, Luca assured him, and it was fortunate Carlo was ready to accept his painting as a mere recreation. Salvatore would soon be needed, for the prospect of war was closer. In Nazi Germany Hitler had torn up the Treaty of Versailles, he’d annexed the Rhineland, divided Czechoslovakia and marched his army into Austria. Luca had inside knowledge that it was only a matter of time. He and Salvatore would be reunited working for Il Duce!

  During their days in the vineyard, Salvatore told Carlo they should prepare for whatever problems might be ahead.

  “We need to plant more,” he said, “to keep you safe here, when half of Europe goes to war.”

  “If that happens, where will you be, Father?” Carlo decided to risk asking this, and saw the sudden facial change to caution.

  “Here, of course. But there may be other civic duties. If I’m called to them, at least I can rely on you to run this place. That’s one thing I can depend on now, Carlo. You’re every bit as knowledgeable as I am.”

  Carlo avoided an answer, having learned a smile and a nod sufficed, and that working in silence helped to gather useful information. Lately his father talked of things he’d kept confidential until now. One important fact had become clear. He was far more attached to Benito Mussolini than he’d previously admitted. Relaxing as they worked together, Salvatore spoke admiringly of Il Duce’s rise from an army foot-soldier, an ordinary rifleman like himself and his friend Luca, to his position of supreme power.

  “It takes a very special kind of man to do that, Carlo. They were wary of him at first, the workers. They proposed strikes to get rid of him. Even I wondered. Now they call him a modern Caesar who’ll make our country a new Roman Empire. And I believe he will.”

  Carlo proceeded to nod with a smile of complete agreement. ‘Keep him in a good mood all day’, his mamma had said that morning. That night she cooked his favourite supper of Veal Parmigiana and casually mentioned her mother had sent her two tickets for the touring Bolshoi Ballet.

  “Ballet,” muttered Salvatore, without enthusiasm.

  “In Rome. Would you care to accompany me?” she asked him.

  “Me?” He looked startled at the invitation, and swiftly found an excuse. “Not me,” he said, “vines to spray. Pumpkin to plant. I’ve no time for ballet.”

  She concealed her relief. She’d relied on his disinterest in theatre and the arts. “I’d ask Gina, but now she’s with that newspaper in Milan she hardly has any spare time. I did think of asking Signore Fabritzi, the headmaster,” she said, and took care not to notice her husband’s frown, “or else Carlo.”

  “I’d like to go,” Carlo said, following instructions to sound casual.

  “You’re needed,” Salvatore told him.

  “A pity,” said Beatrice. “I’m sure you could manage to spare him for a day or two.”

  “I really would like to go,” Carlo repeated. “Does anyone in this family realise I’ve never been to Rome? I must be the only twenty year-old who’s never thrown a coin in the Trevi fountain.”

  “That’s a sheer waste of time, like wat
ching ballet,” Salvatore shrugged. “But you’ve worked hard. Make sure he’s back the day after tomorrow,” he said to Beatrice, as she gave him a second helping of veal and mozzarella.

  FIVE

  The Villa Medici, the home of antique sculptures and refuge for the precious paintings Napoleon had brought from Paris, sits like a crown on Pincian Hill. Above the Spanish Steps and adjoining the Borghese Gardens, the Villa is an architectural relic once owned by the Medici Princes, where the excavation of ancient sculptures drew vast crowds to what became a renowned open-air museum.

  The outdoor fountains and marbled lions were in full display when Beatrice Minnelli brought her son there. It was April of the year 1940 and in two months Carlo was to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. War raged in parts of Europe after Germany invaded Poland but as yet there had been no hint or declaration of war from Italy.

  They had left before dawn that morning, reaching the station in time to catch the fast train. It was early afternoon when they reached the terminus in Rome and hailed a taxi to the Spanish Steps. The city was busy, the day warm for April. Beatrice wore a white silk skirt and sapphire blue jacket, high heeled shoes, soft kid gloves and a smart cloche hat. She was pleased to have stayed so slim that her skirt still fitted, for these were clothes from festive occasions shared in long ago happier days with Salvatore. They were new to Carlo, she realised from his reaction.

  “You look really beautiful, Mamma,” he’d exclaimed, impulsively hugging her before they left the house, and she’d been thrilled by his comment. She was also aware of appreciative looks from men in the train, and swift glances from passers-by when they reached the Borghese Gardens. At forty years of age it was exciting to be admired, to be back in Rome after so many years, accompanied by her tall good-looking young son in his best clothes, his shoes shining and hair smartly brushed. He was eager but nervous about what lay ahead. Nerves were natural, she thought, remembering her own short career before abandoning it to teach. She was reassured by Carlo’s current maturity, far more than when he was last taken to a vital test, the one with the senior class at school. He was now close to six feet tall, his curly brown hair like Salvatore’s when they’d first met, and wide blue eyes like hers making a number of women, both young and old glance at him, she noticed with pride. He carried a suitcase for their overnight stay with her parents, while Beatrice had a small valise with samples of his paintings on canvas as well as drawings on paper.