Before her father can volunteer his opinion, Mira says, “Thank you, Aldo, we will bear your warning in mind and we will tell anyone who might consider sheltering deserters to be careful.”
“Good.” He smiles, warmly. “By the way, I hope those medical supplies proved of good use to whoever it was that you needed them for.”
His reference stuns all of them to silence.
“Now, if you will excuse me, and I suppose that counts as an apology, I have to return to the battery. Good evening.” He bows, takes Francesca’s hand and pretends to kiss it.
When he pretends the same to Mira, she whispers, “Can you wait for a minute, I’d like to talk.”
“Of course.”
Enzo stands and offers his hand; it may be only the second time he has met the lieutenant and yet it is the second time the man has won him over. “Thank you, Tenente. Thank you for taking the time to caution us.”
And as if to lend gravity to his warning, the shrill blast of a whistle breaches the air.
They turn to look at the road.
The blast heralds the arrival of a motorised column. A stern–faced, steel–helmeted motorcyclist waves people to the side of the road, as shortly behind him follows a procession of tanks, halftracks and lorries loaded with troops. The column is long, perhaps forty vehicles or more; the expressions on the faces of the soldiers, humourless; the fog of vehicle exhaust, unpleasant.
When they have gone, only the slowly sinking clouds of dust attest to their brief presence.
Mira and de la Grascia walk down the steps before the church and stroll away towards his battered Fiat staff car. Once out of her father’s sight, she takes his arm.
“Yes, Mira?”
“Aldo, I wanted to thank you for standing up to that German yesterday.”
“You have no need to, my angel. If I had not pointed out to him the error of his ways, I would only be half the man he ought to be.” He pauses and studies her eyes. “There is something else you want to say, isn’t there?”
“Yes, Aldo, there is: and it is that when you were speaking to the German officer, Comune Simone had the strangest look to him. It was almost as though you were reprimanding him as well as the German officer. He looked like a man who had just witnessed his mother being insulted and he didn’t know how to react; like he was amazed that you should do such a thing. His look frightened me.”
De la Grascia pats her arm and smiles. “Oh, don’t worry about him. I do believe he is a little jealous of our association. I will take care of him when the time comes.”
Mira tenses. “When the time comes; what do you mean by that?”
“What I mean is, when the British and Americans arrive, I will ensure he cannot put any of us in danger, that is all. What did you think I meant?”
“Oh, I see. Well, nothing. I just wanted you to know that I don’t trust him and that I want you to be careful.”
“Don’t worry, my angel, I will be careful. And it warms my heart to know that you are concerned for my safety, thank you.” He takes her hand and kisses it, this time allowing his lips to make contact. “Oh, I almost forgot. Mira, I cannot guarantee any more supplies. I will try, but I cannot guarantee them. And you should know that the Germans are going to set up an artillery battery near the Chiesa Madonna della Lettera in Torre Faro, possibly even in the square outside your café. So, perhaps it is you who needs to be more careful from now on.”
Chapter 12
“I am sorry to have to leave you for so long.” She sits down beside him. “Here, Nicholas, drink.”
He sucks on the tube and swallows, clumsily.
As she dabs, gently, at the dribble of solution from around his crusted lips, Mira asks, “Tell me, how do you feel?”
“Oh, not too bad. A little warm. A little frustrated at not being able to appreciate my surroundings, if I’m honest. How was mass?”
“Mass,” she repeats, turning the word over as though he has spoken about an event that lacks any relevance. “I don’t believe I really know how it was; it is in times like these that we question our faith.” Mira stares at him, taking in his bandaged eyes and the wounds around his face that seem to be so slow in healing. “We mourned the death of a young boy, an innocent, the last of Signora Ganci’s four sons. On such occasions it is difficult to believe that the Madonna is watching over us and that her son gave his life that others might live. Only they are not living, are they? At least, not poor young Gennaro.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes, Nicholas, we all knew Gennaro. He was special to us, like all young boys and girls are special to us. Like you are special to your family. Do you have family?”
“A sister,” he replies, and at her mention his throat tightens and he raises his hand to his mouth as he tries to cough.
Mira pushes his hands away and offers the tube up to his lips.
“Thank you.” He sucks and swallows. “Yes, a sister.”
“What is she like?”
“Like?” Now, Nicholas quiets, summoning an image of her in his mind. “Like you, I think.”
“Like me?” Mira asks, surprised. “How do you know what I look like? You have never seen me.”
“I don’t need to see you to know what you are like, Mira. I can hear my sister in your voice, in the way your father speaks to you and in the way Dottore Roselli addresses you. He knows you are strong. The tone he adopts with you, the way he asks you to do certain things: to clean my burns, change my bandages and give me an injection. He understands your confidence; he knows you are capable of looking after me; he doesn’t doubt you. That’s just how a doctor would talk to my sister.”
“Is your sister a nurse?”
“Yes, in a hospital in London.”
“Is she married?”
“No, not yet.” He thinks for a moment. “Actually, she might be by now. I haven’t had a letter from her in a while. Don’t suppose I will for a bit, either. She does have a friend; a pilot. They’re very sweet on each other.”
“And you, Nicholas, do you have a friend, as you put it? Someone to go back to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Surely, you must know. How can you not know when you are in love? Love occupies you; it consumes you. Either you are completely consumed or you are not. If you are not, then you are not in love; there is no in between.”
“I mean, I don’t know if she’ll want to have anything more to do with me the way I look now. Or perhaps I should say, the way I am not looking now. Mira, I may not be able to see myself, but my pain, the way Dottore Roselli talks without saying, the way you won’t let me feel my face and the sympathy and compassion in the way you ask me how I’m feeling…”
She rests her hand on the upper part of his arm, a part of him the tongues of flame did not lick. “You should not think this way, Nicholas. Dottore Roselli is old and uncertain, and he would rather do no harm than make your condition worse. When your own doctors examine you, then you will know more.”
“And how long will that be?” he groans. “A month? Two?”
“Two, at the most. Perhaps sooner.”
“You seem to know more than the generals, Mira.” What she has just said arouses his curiosity. “How is it that you seem so sure? How do you know? In fact, I have been lying here trying to work out where you got the morphine from; I can’t imagine the stuff is readily available. I recall you said you got it from a friend. Is he the kind of friend you meant when you asked me if I had a friend? Is he a soldier?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Do you love him?”
Mira lets go of his arm and clasping her hands together, she leans forward and rests her head.
Her silence bothers him. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mira. I don’t mean to pry, I just–”
“I don’t know, Nicholas. I wish I did.”
&n
bsp; “But didn’t you just tell me that we know when we are in love?”
She chuckles, a small, self–deprecating laugh, one filled both with an inevitable irony and an appreciation that he has so casually turned the tables on her. “Mm, I did, didn’t I? I suppose that must mean I am not, otherwise I would be sure of it. Or,” she hesitates, “perhaps it is that I would like to be, or that I am afraid of being in love when war seems so certain of stealing love from us before we have the chance to recognise it.”
To distract herself from his cross–examination of her emotions, Mira busies herself with investigating the state of the bandages at his legs. “These dressings have stuck and Dottore Roselli warned me that I should be careful not to let them dry.” From the collection of thick, fleshy grey–green leaves on the table beside the bed, she picks one and, holding it with the broken end close to his leg, she squeezes the translucent gel out onto the dried areas of bandage.
He shivers as it cools his hot skin. “I’m sorry, Mira. I didn’t mean to remind of you of something that makes you sad. It must be the morphine talking.”
She sighs. “It is no matter. You have no need to apologise, Nicholas. You ask questions that no one else has ever asked me; there is nothing wrong in that. If you must know, I was once married. And very happily so.” Deftly and with great care and tenderness, Mira works the gel out over his bandage.
“However, like all the other widows, I lost my husband to a war none of us understood in a country none of us cared for. Carlo thought he was embarking on a grand adventure, a great enterprise, and yet all the time I knew he was being seduced by a charisma I could not compete with.”
“Mussolini?”
“Yes, the great peddler of dreams. You know, I saw him once.”
“You saw Mussolini?”
“Yes, when he came to Messina. It was six years ago, not long after my husband died. I wanted, no, that is not the right word… I needed to see this man in the same way that a wife needs to see what her husband’s mistress looks like. I needed to see Il Duce to understand why I lost the battle to keep my husband; to understand why he found this man so irresistible; to understand what charms I did not possess.”
Mira quiets, remembering. “It was a Tuesday in August, one of those days on which the sun appeared a deeper gold, the sea a deeper green and the sky a deeper blue. Mussolini arrived in the Strait escorted by a fleet of glorious warships. He was suntanned and dressed all in white, and standing on the prow of the torpedo boat Aurora. I remember watching him leap ashore and swagger around, like a god come home to his creations. And I was only one of many hundreds of thousands there to greet him, all waving flags and cheering as though we were for some reason made delirious by his presence. Well,” she shrugs, “that’s what they reported in La Domenica del Corriere and they were not far wrong; it was madness.
“Do you know, Nicholas, an old man told me Mussolini had come to Sicily to observe a war game, a rehearsal to repel invaders should they appear on the western shore; something our glorious leader had told us was impossible.”
She scoffs, “Impossible? Then why play war games, eh? He even had the arrogance to tell us that Fascism had deleted the word impossible from the dictionary. Imagine that!
“He was driven through the city in an open car surrounded by Black Shirts with their uniform haircuts, their black shirts and their pretty white pants, all running around as if their great Duce was at every moment in danger of being assassinated.”
“Mira?”
“Yes, Nicholas.” She looks up, worried that she is hurting him.
“That’s probably because people kept trying to assassinate him. If I recall correctly, an Irish woman shot him. Seventeen years ago. In the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome. Pity she missed, really. Imagine the trouble she would have saved. Anyway, sorry to interrupt, please do go on.”
“Don’t worry, Nicholas, you can interrupt me all you like. For me the problem is that this memory is like a dream, a bad dream that I cannot get rid of. It is like a foul smell that follows me wherever I go.”
Not knowing what else to say, he says, “Yes, of course. Now, try to remember for me.”
“All right. I remember at the Municipio, they had built a stage: an enormous prow of a boat, which stuck out of the front as though the building had been halted in the course of giving birth to a great ship.
“Mussolini again assumed his proud stance on the prow and told us he had come to see what, after the earthquake of 1908, we had done to rebuild our city; what we were doing now; and, above all, what still remained to be done. He stated that all the residues of old Messina must disappear and he declared that He would build a great harbour and a grand station. Mussolini even bent his back to remove a few bricks from the roof of the old station. I remember he visited the Margherita Hospital and the poor district of Camaro, where the Americans had built many wooden houses for the survivors of the great earthquake and most of which had been destroyed by the fire of thirteen years ago. Mussolini promised Messina everything a city could ask for.” Mira frowns and shakes her head. ““Is there anyone,” he demanded, “who can doubt the unshakeable will of the regime? Anyone who can doubt that my promises will be strictly maintained?” The strange thing was that he said all these things would happen as though they had already happened, as though the new harbour and the station had already been built. And everyone believed him. We all believed him. We were like waves rippling in his wake. We were thrilled and enraptured and in love, and we forgot who we were, because we were his and he was ours.” Mira shakes her head and sighs, as if by her exhalation she will expel Il Duce’s foul odour. “And we were his. We were all his many mistresses, like Petacci and the Jewess Sarfatti.
“It wasn’t until I began to walk home that I remembered who I was; that I remembered my husband and why I had gone to see this ridiculous saviour. And worse than the fact that I had allowed myself to be seduced, was that in all the excitement I had forgotten the future Mussolini had stolen from us and the future he was yet to steal from young boys like Gennaro Ganci.”
Mira squeezes the last of the aloe gel from the leaf and, with her finger, spreads it softly and evenly over the dried bandage.
“Messina is once again reduced to rubble,” she whispers, “and I fear there is worse to come.”
Regaining her voice, she adds, “The Germans are setting up one of their artillery batteries in the piazza outside my café. I can no longer keep it open; it will be too dangerous and besides, I will be sure to run out of coffee. Even now, on a Sunday, they are patrolling the shore in front of this house. I tell you, Nicholas, if we are to survive, it can only be because the Madonna thinks us worthy of her protection.”
Chapter 13
“If we run out of everything else, mama, at least we will always have this to be thankful for.”
The two women sit, feasting their eyes in the pastel green slopes beyond the cool blue waters of the Strait. On another morning, their hands would be kept busy cleaning the catch; now though, as Enzo has decided that fishing, like many other necessary occupations, is too fraught with danger, they have little else to occupy their time with other than the view.
“Yes, Mira. Even if we have nothing, we will have this.” Francesca pauses, a pause heavily pregnant with misgiving. Then she decides, “Mira?”
“Yes, mama.”
“The Englishman.”
“Yes, mama.”
“I have seen the way you look at him and I have heard the way you talk to him.”
“Yes, mama. In a house as modest as ours, how can one expect one’s behaviour to go unnoticed?” Her behaviour brought to question, her ire provoked, Mira too decides, “So, now that you have both seen and heard, what do you think is wrong with the way I look at him and talk to him? And I suppose papà has put you up to this, which means he, too, does not like what he sees and hears.”
Francesca g
roans and hangs her head in her hands. “Mira, why must you react so angrily whenever one of us tries to save you from hurting yourself? You are like a wilful child who blames her frustrations on her parents simply because she has no one else to blame.”
Mira reaches out and strokes her mother’s arm in much the same way she had stroked Nicholas’s arm during the night, when the demons of war had returned to haunt him.
“I’m sorry, mama. I really am truly sorry. I know it is not easy for you and papà to have me here, especially when I should have left home so many years ago. And it’s true, I could live in the back room of the café: but think of it, I would be the favoured topic of every wagging tongue in the village and that’s why I prefer to live with you and papà, here at home. No one would dare tell lies about me when I live within my father’s sight: they know they would have him to answer to. Maybe I hide behind him, who knows.
“If things had been different… If Carlo had not died, then we would have had our own place by now and I would have been out of your hair.” Mira removes her hand and raises it to ward off her mother’s pity. “No, mama, there is nothing wrong in speaking about Carlo in this manner. Is it six or seven years since he died? To me, now, it does not matter which because he has been gone so long it might as well be a thousand years. You must believe me, mama, when I tell you that however long it is, Carlo still lives in my heart and he will always live there; that is how it should be. Please, don’t feel sorry for me, mama, just be patient.”
German soldiers, their rifles slung casually over their shoulders, stroll towards them along the water’s edge, kicking stones, chatting, laughing, and jostling each other like blithe adolescents.
“Is it that he is blinded?” Francesca asks. “Is it that he cannot see you that you find it so easy to discuss the way you feel? I know from years of living with your father that some conversations are best left to the dark. Is that what makes it easier for you to be so familiar with him?”
Mira smiles, though not in any lascivious fashion. Or perhaps, if she is honest with herself, when sitting alone with Nicholas irregular thoughts have come to her. “Until you had mentioned it, I had not thought so. But now that you do, mama, I think you may well be right. He is a nice man: polite and modest, and he seems to appreciate whatever it is I want to say. He makes me feel as though he wants to hear what I have to say.”
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