And at the very moment he points the SS Bremen out to Enzo, the ocean–going liner blows two long mournful blasts of her horn, a plume of white water bursts up from her bow and the water boils furiously at her stern.
Enzo slumps back down onto the board, his eyes dull, his face as much a picture of desolation as the scenes along the waterfront. “Not now,” he whispers. “Please God, not now.”
Mr Gordon is watching him. “I say, young man, you’ve gone awfully pale. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Pipo leans against the side of the handcart, looks down and sighs. “No,” he says, a philosophical lethargy to his tone, “he is not all right. For the moment, he is broken. But, sir, please don’t underestimate this young man; he is stronger than even he knows. He will survive, we will survive and for as long as the Madonna chooses to watch over us, so too will Messina.”
Book 2
Mira
1943
Chapter 1
When first the soldiers had come, the day after her twenty–fifth birthday in the June of three years before, they had grinned and laughed and treated her like an older sister. They had promised to take her to lands they said she could only dream of and they had tried to infect her with their enthusiasm for a war they said they could not lose. After all, they had proclaimed: God, Mussolini and Right were on their side.
Mira, on the other hand, had understood the one simple and undeniable truth they had all too readily ignored, which was that hard on the heels of war comes death. Mira knew it and knew it well, for war had already made her a widow.
Of late, and since the First Army has been defeated in North Africa, Mira has noticed a certain sourness lurking behind their boyish charms: their grins have faded to pouts of wistful longing and they no longer look upon her as a sister; for when they look at her now, their eyes resemble those of a dog that knows it must not pass on scraps of food lest it is never offered them again.
The walk from Ganzirri up to Torre Faro takes her the better part of an hour and Mira walks because, these days, no one stops to give her a lift. No one stops because owing to the rationing and the conscription, there is no longer anyone to stop.
Still, the walk does her no harm, the hours after first light are cool and the view across the sparkling blue waters of the Strait to the green hills of Calabria a balm to her soul. This morning is one such morning and Mira knows she should be feeling light and carefree; but she isn’t, for because of the rationing and the ridiculous price of black–market coffee and flour and sugar, she will soon have no alternative other than to close her café in the Piazza Chiesa.
The rasping noise of what sounds like several motorbike engines distracts her from her maudlin. Mira looks back down the road. Nothing, no motorcycles, no traffic. She turns and looks south along the coast towards Messina.
The breeze blows her long dark hair about her face and she sweeps it back with her hand.
There! Coming up the Strait. An aeroplane. A single engine; long, slender, curved wings. Fast, very fast. And low, very low.
No one is shooting at the plane, so she not unnaturally assumes it must be either Italian or German; and Mira is about to look away when she notices its strange grey–blue colour, like that of bream in sunlight.
The pilot spots her and dips his wing. He waves a single, cheerful salute, and he is so close that Mira can see the whiteness of his teeth and the cavalier twinkle in his eyes.
She lifts her hand from her face. She laughs. She waves. And with a deep booming roar, the vibrations of which stir the pit of her stomach, the war machine levels and streaks, almost skimming the waves, through the neck of the Strait and out into the open waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Mira is transfixed by the machine’s grace and elegance. “Oh, if only war could be so… so beautiful.”
The grey–blue colour she has not seen on other planes, yet the blue roundel with a red centre painted just behind the bubble of the cockpit she has.
“Not Italian. Not German,” she says to herself. “Ah, British!”
The silence the aeroplane leaves behind is deafening, and in a rare moment of self–consciousness, her cheeks blushing the shade of sun–ripened tomatoes, Mira turns from the Strait to check that no one has been watching her.
“Waving to the enemy, Mira,” she whispers, grinning. “Whatever next?”
She kicks the dust from her feet and walks on.
“Aeroplanes, ships, tanks, guns, bullets and bombs: is there nothing more to men than metal?”
Since the second–to–last day of January, the burden of that metal has weighed heavily on her shoulders. After all, why wouldn’t it? One lives surrounded by metal; one plans the day according to metal; and one’s loved ones die because of it.
She remembers the day at the end of January, one that had started cold and remained quiet until half–past midday when nine of the American four–engined bombers had appeared over Messina. Like lots of thin matchsticks, their bombs had tumbled and burst in the streets and the harbour, and in a matter of seconds, once grand palazzos had been disfigured, buildings had been disembowelled and citizens had fled in terror. Worse, though, was to come; for the next day, the Sunday, the men had been going across the city to the Campo di Gazzi to watch Messina play Catania, without doubt the most important derby of the football calendar, but… the game had been cancelled. Okay, so a little inconvenience was to be expected, but cancelling that particular game of football?
Through the end of May and June the air raids had become heavier and more persistent, the papers reporting that the bombing had become so violent it was impossible to count the dead among the mounds of ash. And now, in the heat of a Sicilian July, people were beginning to wonder if the destruction would ever cease.
“Oh Messina,” Mira shouts to the Strait, “have you not suffered enough?”
Chapter 2
Mira’s father sits on the wooden stool, weaving his long, hooked needle and thread in and out of the net spread across his knees. He is muttering to himself about his poor hearing and his failing eyesight, excuses he all too often employs to ignore his wife and daughter. He sighs, shakes his head and sets his net aside, stretching out his thread and getting to his feet in a series of awkward mechanical movements, as though his bones are iron and his limbs drawn together by a series of inefficient pulleys. “What are you doing back at this time of day, Mira?” he asks. “Is the café closed?”
She sighs, petulantly. “What other possible reason could there be for my being home at ten o’clock in the morning, papà.”
Her mother appears at the door. “Please, Mira. Please take that tone out of your voice when you speak to your father. You may think you are a grown woman, but that does not give you the right to be rude.” Francesca winks playfully at her husband, knowing full well Mira is watching her. “So,” she says, turning to address her daughter directly, “why are you here? Run out of soldiers to serve?”
“No, mama, we have run out of coffee. In fact, we have run out of nearly everything, including sugar, which means I can make neither granita nor brioche.” She sits herself rather clumsily on the stool beside her father and runs her fingers through the curls of her long black hair. “So, yes, papà, I have closed the café.”
“And after Monday’s bombing, now we have no newspapers,” Enzo adds, rubbing at his moustache and stepping inside to sit down at the kitchen table. His face carries a resigned, weathered aspect; an aspect that only increases in its resignation when he notices his wife and daughter follow him.
Inside the small front room which serves as kitchen, living room and scullery, her mother busies herself preserving the day’s catch. Tomatoes boil noisily in a pot and above the stove hangs a small, framed photograph of the adamantine, the handsome, the vainglorious Benito Mussolini.
“The papers, who needs papers?” Francesca scoffs, glancing at the photo. “I cannot believ
e the news is all so bad. Why don’t they give us a little good news from time to time?”
“Mira,” her father asks, “apart from the printing house, what other news of the bombing?”
“Yesterday, Tenente de la Grascia told me that there were sixty aeroplanes in the raid. He says three German planes were shot down and that the destruction of the central railway terminal and the yards is almost total. Also, he said that many of the warehouses by the harbour were destroyed, some of which are still burning,” Mira sighs again, this time in sadness, “and he said some bombs fell on the quay, damaging the statue of our Madonna.”
“And what was your tenente’s verdict, eh?” he chuckles. “Tell us, please. We wait with bated breath to hear what more your tenente has to say. Did he not declare at church on Sunday that there would be no more air raids on the city? Did your tenente not say that from now on the Americans and the British would bomb only the airfields to the south, so that the might of the Luftwaffe and the Regia Aeronautica would be denied the airfields from which they will disrupt the landings he says will soon take place?”
Francesca winces as Mira fixes her father with a fractious stare; fires far more incendiary than any bombing could deliver blazing fiercely in the darkness of her eyes.
“Papà, you have no cause to sneer at Tenente de la Grascia. May I remind you how generous he has been.”
When her father doesn’t react to her dig regarding the Tenete’s gifts of soap, Mira fumes and when the volume of her fumes exceeds the pressured confines of the front room, her temper flares: “Oh, yes, papà, we all know how very generous you are with your labours that you donate much of your catch to him. Oh, how very grand it is that you put yourself to so much trouble for your neighbour!”
In an effort to pour sand on her incandescence, Enzo says, in a low, serious tone: “May I remind you, Mira, that not two weeks ago a lampara in Mortelle was shot by a nervous sentry; a lampara they suspected of sending signals to the enemy, while all the time he was using his light solely to attract the squid he needed to feed his family? And shot by an Italian sentry at that.”
“No,” she replies, startling him, “you may not remind us because you have no need to. If you think mama and I sleep soundly wondering whether or not you are going to return from your early morning fishing trips, then you are very sadly mistaken. Why, even on the morning after the last air raid you could not keep yourself from going out in your boat.” Mira’s tone becomes angrier and yet at the same time more imploring. “And what happens? After the night raid, early the very next morning comes the day raid on Villa San Giovanni: ships left on fire, a ferry sunk and two explosions so large they nearly obliterated the town. And all this while you sit out there on the water, casting your net and watching like a wide–eyed child. Is that the kind of behaviour one expects of a responsible husband and father?”
He rubs his moustache in thought. “Mm, you want to eat: I need to fish. The world does not stop turning simply because some general has a grudge against Villa San Giovanni. Nothing much good comes from there, anyway.”
Francesca shakes her head and raises her eyes to the ceiling in prayer.
That Mira cannot rile her father annoys her even more and she throws up her hands in dismay. “And please, papà, and you mama, please try to desist from calling him your tenente. He is as much your lieutenant as he is mine. Besides, do you really think he likes to be here? Do you really think he wants to be here?”
Enzo snorts, dismissively. “You are right in what you say, Mira. I should be more sympathetic towards him. However, he is not my neighbour; he comes from Bologna.” He pouts. “Answer me this, young lady, why do I bother to feed a man from Bologna when all he does is fire his cannon and scare the fish?”
“Why?” Her tone rises. “Why? Have you forgotten that the evening before the first air raid you told me that the man who has to suffer war deserves our pity? And did you not say the same of my husband when he died?”
“Enzo Ruggeri!” her mother chips in. “It is beneath you to mock men who serve their country so faithfully. May I remind you how few of our soldiers returned from Russia.”
“They say this lieutenant returned under a cloud,” he mutters. “They say he was demoted for some breach of discipline.”
Mira groans in exasperation. “They, papà? And just who is they?”
“Perhaps,” Enzo continues, thinking aloud, “that is why he still wears the uniform: to legitimize his ill–discipline.”
“No, papà, you don’t know him like I do. Aldo does not hate anyone. The worst his preferences permit is for him to dislike people from Modena which, he tells me, is no further than a few hour’s walk from his home. And even then, he laughs when he tells me this. No, papà, if you took the time to get to know him, you would understand that first, he is a gentleman and second, he is intelligent and has no more love for war than you. You know, Aldo was a student at the Università di Bologna before he volunteered for service.”
“Aldo? Oh, Aldo is it now?” Enzo replies, his tone openly dismissive. “Well, perhaps when he leaves, he will take you back to that city of his and set you up in a fine house; that is, if there will be any houses left standing by the time this war is finished. Tell me, Mira, should I expect a visit from him soon? It had better be soon if this invasion he insists on talking about happens.”
They sit and stare each other down across the wooden table until the second, inevitable conflagration of Mira’s ever–combustible frustration occurs. She kicks her chair back as she stands up from the table, balls her hands into fists and…
There is a knock at the door.
Francesca crosses herself and glances at the ceiling; her prayers are answered.
Father and daughter continue to stare at each other, each one waiting for the other to move towards the door.
Neither of them does so.
There comes a second rat–tat–tat–tat, followed by a polite, manly cough, suggesting the caller may have been standing outside, waiting for their argument to run its course.
Whoever it is that has come calling can wait, as for the moment neither father nor daughter are for moving and, as is always the case following one of their petty squabbles, it is Francesca who takes it upon herself to defuse the situation. She steps over to the door and pulls it back.
With the stark sunlight behind him, the shadow of the caller is cast onto the stone floor of the room, suggesting he is a man of ordinary height and build, and yet, judging by Francesca’s studied almost reverential silence, no ordinary man. He wears the uniform of a soldier and, not merely a soldier, an officer, as his cap is peaked, rather than the bustina side cap worn by his men, and his calzoni curved breeches perfectly pressed.
“Signora Ruggeri,” he says, bowing, “my name is Tenente Radaldo de la Grascia. Please be so kind as to forgive my intrusion,” his voice is warm and lilting, a tenor’s tone, smooth and confident, “but would it be possible to…”
“Yes, of course, Tenente. You would like to speak to Mira. Please, please come in.”
De la Grascia steps in and turns to survey the small, rather untidy, front room, by which time both Mira and her father have hurriedly laid aside their differences and stood to receive the visitor.
“Ah,” de la Grascia begins, “you must be Mira’s father, Signor Ruggeri. My compliments, sir, Mira has told me much about you and, if I may say, it is an honour to meet you.” He takes a stride towards Enzo and offers his hand.
Mira’s father, spellbound by such a formal introduction, immediately spills whatever wind he may have been filling his sails with in order to appear intimidating in the face of a man about whom he has so recently been less than complimentary, and wipes his hands on his shirt, taking de la Grascia’s hand and pumping it enthusiastically.
The lieutenant waits patiently for Enzo’s enthusiasm to wear itself out. “May I say, Signor Ruggeri, how grateful I a
m, or perhaps I should say how grateful I and my fellow officers are, for the continued gifts of your catch?”
“Yes. Yes, of course, Tenente,” Enzo blusters. “Although it is I who should be thanking you for your continued gifts of… err, well, gifts. Please, sit down.” He glares at Mira as if she should have warned him of the lieutenant’s impending visit.
In return, she shrugs her shoulders and glares back.
Mira offers de la Grascia the chair on which she had been sitting, wiping it with the hem of her skirt as she does so. “The soap,” she says. “He means the soap, for which we are all very grateful and no doubt the better for. Please.”
The lieutenant sits and smiles. “It is nothing. A gesture.”
Francesca shuffles her hands, nervously. “Would you like a cup of…”
“Mama,” Mira interrupts, “how would it be possible for us to offer a cup of coffee when I have had to close the café because I have run out?”
“A drink, perhaps?” Enzo grasps a dusty bottle of Amaro from the sideboard. “Mira, a glass for the Tenente.”
De la Grascia removes his peaked cap, sets it carefully on the table and holds up both hands in surrender. “Thank you, but you are too kind and time will not permit me.”
“Oh, yes,” Enzo agrees, frowning at his own incompetence, “it is too early for Amaro.”
“No, Signor Ruggeri, please permit me to disagree: it is never too early for good Amaro; however, sadly I cannot stay to enjoy your hospitality. No, I have come to call on you for a number of reasons. The first is that I notice the café is closed and as much as I mourn the loss of your welcome –”
Enzo raises an eyebrow and shoots his daughter a consternated look.
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