“I’ll be blamed,” the young soldier repeated. “I was responsible for him.”
I was ready to be convinced by the boy’s story but couldn’t understand why he had come to us. It worried me.
“What business do you have here?” I asked.
Head drooping, he answered in a low voice, “We were on our way here. I just kept going.”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“I just kept going,” he repeated. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t turn back. I left him behind by the ditch and fled. He hadn’t changed out of his uniform yet.”
“What do you mean by here?” Pritchett asked. “Here in the valley?”
“No, here,” he said. “San Martino. I was never told what we were supposed to be collecting but the officer knew. Apparently he had brought it here in the first place.”
My blood ran cold. He continued. “May I stay?” Adding with a touch of formality, he said, “I wish to become a deserter.”
“I’m afraid you can’t stay here,” I said. “But we’ll give you something to eat.”
Pritchett took him to the kitchen, then came and found me in the garden. A porcupine had got into the flower beds in the night and eaten some of the bulbs and rhizomes. Bending down, I picked up some petals and stalks that the animal had left behind and piled them in a little heap by the path.
“It was a mistake,” I heard Pritchett say behind me.
I straightened up.
“It was bound to backfire on us,” he went on. “What are we to do now? How much does that young man know? How much do other people know about that bloody painting? We must get rid of it as soon as possible.”
I had never been able to tell him why I had agreed to Robert Marshall’s request. I couldn’t now either. Perhaps I never will be able to.
“It’s too late,” I said.
“But you’re such a sensible person,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He sighed heavily.
“You have to try to get hold of him,” he said. “Not even he can expect you to jeopardize everything for a painting.”
I didn’t reply, although I knew I would not be able to get hold of Robert Marshall. I’d been trying in vain to get messages to him since the Allies took Rome. Nor did I remind Pritchett of what the SS officer had said when he brought the picture: that Marshall’s part in it was now over.
Pritchett had the truck moved and parked under a tree where it would not be visible from the air. I went inside and watched the young man wolf down his breakfast before sending him off with a loaf of bread and ham. He didn’t say anything and, hearing that the children were awake, I hurried to help get them dressed.
THE GERMANS HAD BROUGHT THE PAINTING AT THE beginning of April.
It had been snowing on and off for weeks and the snow continued to fall after Easter. The boughs of the trees in the garden sagged under the weight and every landmark in the valley was obliterated. The roads to Montepulciano and Chianciano were impassable and the postman had not been seen for days. To make matters worse, there was a power cut, so we had to make do with candlelight and the glow from the fires that burnt all day long in every hearth, for it was bitterly cold and windy. It did not blow incessantly; there would be a lull for a few days, then the wind would suddenly sweep down the valley from Monte Amiata, whirling up the snow and trapping us indoors. The fattore and Signorina Harris were caught in a blizzard on their way back from one of the outlying farms where a woman had been taken ill, and nearly got lost. It was also very difficult to transport food and other necessities down the hill to the children and their minders, but we managed, and some days we were even able to bring the children up to the main villa. They longed to play outside in the snow; they were fed up with being stuck indoors, despite the efforts of Schwester Marie and the teacher to entertain them. We built igloos and snowmen with them and one day the children saw a rabbit hop out of the hedge and across the garden near the buildings. Racing in pursuit, they caught it and took it into the kitchen. Naturally the poor creature was petrified, but we gave it something to eat and decided to keep it as a pet since it gave the children so much pleasure.
On Easter Day, there was a break in the weather. The congregation began to pour into the church early in the morning and the sense of unity in the little building warmed one’s heart. The church, a few hundred yards down the road, belongs to chianciano but is close to us. The peasants, many of whom had been sheltering deserters and wounded partisans for months, risking their lives for strangers, brought them along to sit beside them in the pews, among the children, ruddy-cheeked with excitement, and our staff. I took my seat but no one sat beside me in your accustomed place, even though I sensed that everyone knew you were not coming. The church was packed, which made it all the more absurd to leave an empty seat, and no doubt I would have felt uncomfortable if one of the orphans, a little girl from Turin, had not finally clambered up onto the pew and taken your seat. She did not look at me—her eyes were fixed on the candles on the altar and the crucifix above—but slipped her little hand into mine as the priest entered.
After mass, we went home with the children and danced in the drawing room. Pritchett adopted your role as John the Baptist, pasting on a beard and dressing in your fur coat and the Cossack hat that you always dusted off on this day. Caught unprepared, I gave a little cry when I came face-to-face with him in the passage. For a moment I believed it was you. I stood as if turned to stone before him, speechless.
Pritchett grasped the situation at once.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I should have warned you.”
I watched the children singing and dancing and tried to join in the festivities, but my mind was distracted. This trivial incident had brought it home to me that when the moment came, I would have nothing to say that could make up for what happened. This realization was a blow, because I had been preparing my speech for months, had written it down, rewritten it, adjusted the wording and punctuation, memorized it and mentally rehearsed it over and over again. What naïveté, I told myself now. What self-deception—thinking I could change anything with words and fine-sounding phrases, however good they looked on paper. Faced with you, the phrases would disintegrate and the words come to nothing. As I had just discovered.
And then the snow began to fall in earnest. It muffled everything, even my anguish. The wind blew away the empty words, and I was never happier than when it was howling around the trees and house, rattling sleet against the windows, presenting immediate problems to solve. It never stopped snowing for long, the clouds always returned and the wind rose, whipping up the drifts and hiding us and the surrounding district from the outside world.
It was during one of these respites that Melchiorre spotted the Germans on his way back from one of the farms on the hill, which had a view right to the mouth of the valley. We didn’t believe him at first; he has a fertile imagination that can sometimes lead him astray. But he was right, and for a while we watched their slow progress through the valley, tank first, armored car close behind.
“In this weather,” Pritchett said. “Something’s up.”
As no one dreamed that they were on their way here, we soon tired of watching them and returned to our chores. I remember that someone was chopping firewood outside; the echo carried into the library where I sat with Signor Grandinetti, going over the children’s work. The rabbit the children had found was lying under the sofa, peeping out at us from time to time. We had given it a carrot and it seemed perfectly content with its lot. The fattore joked that it was a princess under a spell and tried to persuade Melchiorre to kiss it.
As we pored over the children’s exercises, the wind began to howl again. The earth merged with the sky, the windowpanes rattled in their frames, and once again the outside world disappeared.
They had probably been banging on the front door for some considerable time before we heard them. The teacher followed me; I opened the doo
r and found myself looking straight into the black muzzle of a gun. The tank and the armored car were covered with snow, but the gun was pointing straight at the house, a black dot in the blinding whiteness.
An SS officer was walking away from the door, flanked by two soldiers, having abandoned the wait in favor of going around the back of the villa. Now he turned and strode up the steps to where I stood hanging onto the door with both hands so that it would not crash open. Ordering the soldiers to wait outside, he took the door handle himself and closed it. Snow had drifted inside while the door was open and he beat more from his ankle-length leather coat and brushed it from the peak of his cap.
“Who’s that?” he said, pointing at the teacher who was standing behind me. “It’s not your husband. I know he’s not here.”
I tried not to show how my heart jolted. Who had been telling this man about my private affairs? I could only think of Robert Marshall.
The SS officer looked around, went to the little room off the hall where I used to arrange the flowers, inspected it, then turned.
“He can leave,” he said, jerking his head at Signor Grandinetti. “We will go in here.”
Perhaps he had lost his temper while waiting outside, banging on the door, or perhaps he was tired from his journey, I don’t know. His manner was sharp throughout our conversation—or rather, while he talked and I listened. I studied him—the harsh face, low brow, pinched nose, and thin lips.
“I believe Mr. Marshall has made it clear what’s expected of you.”
“He never mentioned German involvement,” I said.
The officer ignored this.
“He claims that you have agreed to look after the goods. Has there been some misunderstanding?”
“No,” I said.
“Did he tell you what it was?”
“A painting.”
“Did he tell you any more than that?”
“No.”
“Not the identity of the owner?”
“No.”
“Nothing about the painting itself?”
He paused for a moment before using that word. It was the only time. Otherwise he spoke only of “the goods.”
“No.”
He stopped speaking and scrutinized me as if trying to decide whether I was telling the truth.
“He says you are fully aware of the consequences if anything happens to it.”
I waited.
“We know that you harbor our enemies. We have chosen to do nothing about it.”
“We’ve been searched,” I said, “and nothing was found. We’re peaceable people.”
He stared at me in silence before answering.
“You are English. Your husband has left. Marshall is doing you no less a favor than you are doing him.”
The officer had closed the door behind him, but now the handle suddenly turned. He spun around but relaxed when Pritchett stuck his head inside.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Wait outside.”
We finished our conversation. He asked where I intended to keep the goods. I had not considered this, being quite unprepared. All Marshall had said was that he might need me to store an important painting for him because he was afraid for its safety if Rome fell. The conversation had taken place early in March, and he had been uncharacteristically nervous on the phone. When I answered that I had enough on my plate and described the conditions here for him (“We won’t escape the hostilities if Rome falls,” I remember saying), there was a brief pause at the other end of the line, but then he said quietly, “I think you owe it to me.”
He said it smoothly and his tone reminded me of water flowing quietly over stone. I knew what lurked under the smooth surface and my silence was a form of agreement. We ended the conversation, and I remained standing by the phone, trying to get my bearings and recalling the conversation we had had more than three years before by the Trevi Fountain when he put me on notice in such a refined manner that I would have to pay for his discretion.
“Where will you keep it?” the officer barked when he saw that my mind had drifted away.
I had hidden my jewelry in an old underground vault by the mill, where wine had been stored long ago—my jewelry and various personal effects of sentimental value, family photographs and letters, as well as important documents and title deeds. Apart from my husband and me, no one but Pritchett knew of its existence. The trapdoor is hidden under a layer of soil, among bushes and undergrowth. It was only by chance that we found it years ago.
Pritchett was waiting in the hall when we emerged from the flower room, and I told him what was happening.
“Now?” he asked. “In this blizzard? What have you gotten us into?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted, trying to conceal my growing fear, “but there is nothing I can do.”
He shook his head. We put on our coats and went outside with the officer. If anything, the wind had grown stronger. The soldiers were still standing in the same spot by the steps, snow-white and chilled, but of course did not utter a word of complaint. The officer ordered them to fetch the goods and then we walked up the hill toward the mill, Pritchett and I in the lead, the others following a few steps behind.
It was heavy going, as we could hardly open our eyes against the snow, and night was falling. The track up the slope was invisible, the drifts lay deep on the hillside, the wind was pitiless, and the temperature had dropped below freezing, bringing showers of ice pellets. They stung our cheeks and brows, and I had to hold up a hand to shield my eyes. Pritchett kept shooting me glances but I looked away. I had never seen him so bewildered and concerned. I sensed that I was making a terrible mistake.
The opening to the vault was not large, hardly more than a square meter, and after we had dug away the snow from the trapdoor and broken off the ice, it took them a while to ease the painting inside. A packing case had been made for it and the soldiers positioned it foursquare, then one stepped on it and forced it down while the other stood on the stone steps below to receive it. Pritchett and I and the officer were already inside, watching their progress, Pritchett holding a lantern, as there was no light in the vault. When it was finally down, the officer took Pritchett’s lantern and peered around before choosing a place for the crate, as far as possible from the entrance. He had already checked the walls for damp and made sure that there was nothing dripping from the ceiling, yet even so he took a tarpaulin that we had draped over some of our belongings and ordered the soldiers to wrap it around the packing case.
They went ahead of us down the slope, the officer in the lead, and did not stop until they were in front of the villa. Two additional soldiers stood there waiting. The officer ordered them to start up the car and the tank.
The officer glanced around. It was as if he enjoyed standing there in the blizzard. He turned to face the wind, letting the icy pellets lash his face. I was careful not to show how cold I was, but Pritchett rubbed his hands together and shifted constantly from foot to foot.
“There is no real winter here,” the officer said finally. “A few days, that’s all. The people here are soft. They have no backbone. Where I come from, the winters are tough.”
The engines of the car and the tank roared and we smelled the fumes from the exhaust. The officer turned to us.
“You will hand over the goods to no one but us. No one. Whatever happens. Whatever anyone says. Not even Mr. Marshall. His part is over.”
I listened in silence. Pritchett looked at me with painful disappointment. The officer regarded us for a moment, then gave a sharp nod and climbed into the car.
We watched them rattle away down the road and vanish into the blizzard.
“Robert Marshall,” Pritchett demanded. “Why in the world . . .”
“I had no choice,” I interjected. “Please don’t ask me why.”
The drone of the engines grew fainter and soon there was nothing to be heard but the howling of the wind.
KRISTÍN HAD BEEN WORKING FOR ROBERT MARSHALL for a month wh
en she met his wife for the first time. It was early in the evening and dusk was falling over the city, muting the daytime racket. She was passing through the quarter where they lived and had somehow found herself in their street—to her own surprise, for she did not consider herself curious by nature.
It was not far from the Piazza delle Coppelle; the building was three stories high with a large apartment on each floor; it extended right up to the pavement and towered over the narrow street. There was a café on the next corner with tables on the pavement outside and flickering candles on the tables despite the autumn chill in the air.
Marshall and his wife emerged suddenly just as she was passing the house. They were alone; the children were probably inside. She knew they had two children, a boy of twelve and a girl of seven. Apparently the boy was the spitting image of his father.
“Kristín,” he said.
It was only later that she realized he hadn’t seemed surprised to see her there. She wasn’t sure that a half-smile hadn’t played over his lips as he regarded her.
He introduced her to his wife. Her name was Flora and she was younger than he, maybe thirty-five, petite, with a dark complexion. Strikingly beautiful.
“Kristín is helping out at the studio,” he told her.
Flora smiled and shook hands with Kristín, saying that she must visit them sometime.
“I’m on my way to meet a friend,” Kristín said, realizing immediately that the explanation was superfluous.
Marshall, still smiling his half-smile, looked at his watch.
“We really should be getting a move on,” he said. “You go carefully now, Kristín.”
“Robert,” Flora said merrily, “don’t be silly. She’s not a child.”
They said good-bye. The couple walked away up the street while Kristín hurried in the opposite direction, taking care not to look over her shoulder. She was not surprised that he hadn’t told his wife she was working for him.
She went straight home and was agitated for the rest of the evening. Nothing had happened yet, but she knew it was going to happen and she was sure that he knew too. Yet neither of them had said a word, either direct or implicit. She tried to talk some sense into herself, remonstrated with herself, came close more than once to putting an end to the thing that had not yet begun. But she couldn’t do it. She waited, and with every day the waiting became more unbearable.
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