Voice of Destiny

by JH Fletcher

  Late in the afternoon they boarded the bus to go home. Lucia looked out of the window as they negotiated gradients that wound steeply past fields the size of postage stamps, with farmhouses that were little more than sheds. Lucia sensed her mother’s disappointment; Helena had been eager to revisit the town of her childhood but, whatever she had been seeking, she had not found it. Tolmino, like the rest of Italy, had moved on. Now even the shadows of the past were gone. They reached the flat ground of the valley. Through the window, she continued to watch the countryside, now with its first rows of vines. Dusk was falling and across the sun-bleached plain the sky turned by degrees from blue to bronze and finally to the grey mistiness of twilight. The driver switched on the lights so that they travelled through the gathering darkness in a capsule of golden brightness. Outside, the last light faded. Fading, too, were the day’s impressions: the terraced buildings on the mountainside, the sense of a living past that had been the purpose of their journey. What remained was not the image of her mother’s childhood but the realisation that, for both of them, the present was all they had. In their differing ways, they were both living in a land of strangers.

  9

  One month after their visit to Tolmino they were once again visited by a fascist official, this time a cocky-faced young man in boots and a black uniform, who said he had something of the greatest importance to tell them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1

  It was Anno XV in the Era Fascisti when Lucia Visconti, dressed in her pleated skirt, white blouse and black beret, came to the military cemetery at Redipuglia.

  The coach dropped her, with her mother and a flock of party officials, half a kilometre from the cemetery and the memorial, which climbed in stone steps up the slope of the mountain.

  On either side of the path, vendors of chestnuts, figs and marzipan fruits shouted their wares. Alongside the massive rock marking the Duke of Aosta’s grave, a high wooden platform had been erected, bright with flags and bunting. Around the platform carabinieri stood as stiff as ramrods, the bright-red plumes of their helmets streaming in the wind. Here and there men with watchful eyes circulated through the large crowd, hands poised upon pistol butts.

  Lucia walked proudly with the official who had come to their house a month before to inform her that she, out of all the young women of northern Italy, had been selected to sing at the ceremony commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the march on Rome.

  28 October 1937. Fifteen years since the Fascists had come to power. One year since Il Duce had stood before the world to proclaim the creation of the Italian Empire. Now Mussolini himself was coming to Redipuglia to honour the war dead who had been exhumed from their graves throughout the region to be interred about the Duke whose last wish had been to lie surrounded by his men. On the slope of this mountain they would bring a reminder of past glories to a regime that grew fat upon glory and its dreams of future grandeur.

  The Duce would speak; afterwards Lucia Visconti would sing before the Italian leader and his adoring people. Helena’s face quivered with joy and terror. Lucia was as frightened as her mother but was determined to hide it. Face expressionless, she moved with straight back and raised chin towards her destiny.

  The spaces between the cypress trees overflowed with watchers; to one side of the platform was the band, instruments shining in the autumnal sunlight, white uniforms trimmed with gold buttons and ribbons of red and green.

  Lucia reached the foot of the platform. Here, obedient to the hissed instructions of the man beside her, she stopped.

  All waited.

  From this high place, she could see the country stretching away in a mixture of brown, red and golden light towards a horizon blue with haze.

  The official, Eduardo Grandini, whispered to her how furious the local party officials had been when they discovered that Lucia had been relocated to Parma only days before the decision had been made to select her to sing on this auspicious occasion. The local secretary, whose head would roll if anything went wrong, had been particularly vexed.

  ‘You told me she was the best! How can she have been sent away when we need her here?’

  ‘Il Duce’s instructions …’

  ‘Have nothing to do with it! How can they? He’s never heard of the girl! No-one had, until that damn radio competition. She could have been moved just as easily after the ceremony.’

  However, to an official as resourceful as Eduardo Grandini, all things were possible. On the journey from Montegallo he had explained to her, without any pretence of modesty, how it had happened.

  First, he had located Lucia at her new home outside Parma. Then he had visited her to give her the good news.

  ‘And of course to check that you were suitable to sing before the Duce.’ Eyebrow lifted, he had smiled quirkily at her, as though they were the closest of friends who shared a secret awareness of the pretentiousness of all this nonsense. ‘Then we brought you here. Nothing simpler, really.’

  He smiled at her again, a conjurer cheerfully parading his sleight of hand.

  ‘I thought that fat Mazetta would burst her stays when she heard the party had picked you, out of all the girls in the region,’ he continued. Mazetta, it seemed, was the woman who had taken them to task when she’d found that Lucia was not enrolled in the young Fascists. ‘She’d set her heart on her cousin being chosen, but she sings like a cow.’ Eduardo leaned towards Lucia, his whisper so soft that it barely grazed her ear. ‘Looks like one, too.’

  Lucia choked, stiff-mouthed, fighting down laughter.

  The party secretary appeared from nowhere: moist eyes in a ferret face. ‘Where is your music?’

  ‘I don’t need any. I know what I’m going to sing.’

  Which was ‘O patria mia’, from Aïda, as well as — inevitably — the fascist anthem.

  The secretary scowled, making it plain he didn’t believe her, but it was too late to do anything about it now. He decided a threat was in order: that type of man always did. ‘If you let me down …’

  Party secretary or not, Lucia turned her head away from him and looked stiffly across the gold-hued valley.

  ‘You’ll unsettle her. She’ll be fine.’

  She heard Eduardo’s murmur and her heart overflowed with gratitude to him for defending her. She glanced at him. No, he was not old at all. In certain lights he might even be thought handsome.

  There was a commotion at the foot of the steps. A huge car, complete with banner and motorcycle outriders, had arrived. An ants’ nest of black-uniformed officials seethed. In their midst, moving purposefully towards the flight of steps, was a short man in riding breeches and black shirt, with squared shoulders and a pugnacious stride. The band broke into a squawk of martial music, and Benito Mussolini came swiftly up the steps. The crowd cheered. The bunting blew in the patriotic wind. He climbed to the top of the platform and looked down on his subjects, black boots gleaming, hands clenched on his hips.

  Lucia saw no signal but band and crowd were suddenly still. Silence, but for the voice of a distant crow carried on the wind. Silence, but for the wind.

  ‘We are come here today to honour the dead.’

  His voice was not at all as Lucia had expected. He spoke in measured tones, his chin out-thrust, his personality so magnetic that she, who had secretly thought him no more than a buffoon, found herself cheering with the rest of the crowd when he finally stopped speaking.

  ‘Your turn, girl.’

  No-one else could have heard Eduardo’s encouraging whisper.

  Her stomach lurched, she took a deep breath and stepped forward. The plan had been for her to stand beside the band but all at once there was a murmur from the crowd and, looking up, she saw that Mussolini was leaning over the railing of the platform, smiling and beckoning to her.

  ‘Up here, young woman.’

  Mussolini, talking to her?

  She hesitated.

  ‘Come. Up here.’

  Obediently, still nervous, she climbed
the steps. She stood beside him. He was still smiling at her. For a moment he was very close, close enough for her to catch a whiff of the cologne he was wearing, then he stepped back, applauding her, milking cheers from the crowd whose faces looked up at them both.

  An expectant hush. A coolness entered her mind. The churning in her stomach ceased. Neither Mussolini nor the crowd was there any more. She looked down at the band leader and nodded to show him she was ready. The band struck up. The chords of Aïda’s aria flowed golden in the sun.

  After Aïda the words of the fascist anthem could only be banal, yet, lifted high on her awareness of incipient triumph, Lucia found them less ludicrous than in the past.

  Youth, youth,

  Springtime of beauty …

  What was ludicrous about that?

  She finished. Still wrapped in the isolation of singing, Lucia was at first aware of nothing at all. Then the crowd’s applause beat upon her solitude, cracking it. Their approval warmed her and she smiled at them. She was radiant. The man standing beside her was also applauding most enthusiastically. She turned to Mussolini as he embraced her, while below them the crowd cheered.

  He spoke to her, no longer a god but as a normal man would speak.

  ‘You have a wonderful voice. Where are you studying?’

  She felt opportunity open its arms to her.

  ‘Nowhere. I live outside Parma and there is, of course, the conservatorium there, but my mother can’t afford the fees.’

  She waited, breath held.

  He frowned and drew a deep breath. He looked at her measuringly, a man who in his time had been asked many favours. He nodded slowly, then more emphatically.

  ‘We shall arrange it for you.’

  He left her standing there and went swiftly down the steps. Watching, she hoped to see him speak to someone about what he had just promised, but he did not. A flunky opened the door of his limousine and he disappeared inside. The car drew away. He was gone.

  Lucia had seen the opening and was determined not to let it close again. She ran down the steps and went straight to Eduardo, believing he could help her, if he would.

  He looked down at her, smiling with the same cocked eyebrow as before.

  ‘Hugged by Il Duce. That’s something to tell your grandchildren.’

  ‘He did more than that. He promised me I’d go to the Parma Conservatorium.’

  Eduardo’s face drew still, his expression guarded. ‘And did he say who was going to arrange it?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘He told me to speak to you about it.’

  The watchful eyes hardened. ‘He’s never heard of me.’

  ‘He said, speak to the man who brought you here. Check with him yourself, if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘You think it’s so easy to get hold of him?’

  ‘Then speak to his office. Are you saying you won’t do what he asked?’

  Eduardo’s eyes were still cold. He looked at her for several seconds in silence. ‘Very well. I’ll do what I can. But you must understand, if you’re lying to me

  ‘He said it. I promise you. He said it!’

  2

  Lucia held tight to her belief that it would happen. Helena fluctuated between euphoria and despair. If Mussolini had said it would happen, then it would. Everyone knew he was a man of his word, a forthright man who could arrange anything he wanted. On the other hand, how could he, a man with the burden of the nation and the world on his shoulders, be expected to help a young girl of no importance, whose name he almost certainly did not know? He would. He would not.

  While Lucia steeled herself to have faith.

  Eduardo came to the house. Her heart bounded but he had no news. He had come not to see her but her mother.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  1

  Helena felt naked in a world that she no longer understood. In some ways this new Italy affected her more profoundly than Australia had done. There, she had known that everything would be new; there had been no sense of betrayal in the fact of its newness. But this bellicose Italy of banners and uniforms … She had told herself she would grow used to it; now she began to doubt. She had crossed the world, looking for the past. Instead she had arrived in a country she did not recognise. Revisiting Tolmino had only made things worse.

  She knew she could do nothing about it. They were here now and would have to make the best of it. It wouldn’t be easy. They were nobodies; the black-shirted woman who had bullied them had made that plain. How Helena had hated that woman, and the impotence that had forced her, the daughter of a respected landowner, to humble herself. But Lucia, at least, had talent. Lucia the world-renowned opera singer would restore them to their rightful position in life.

  She would have to; in this land where all was strange, Helena recognised that she herself had grown timid. Yet she could expect nothing from Lucia immediately; the child was still far too young for that. No, she would have to find a secure place for them both, unaided, and the prospect frightened her. She needed a friend, someone with access to the men of power, someone who would protect her and guide her in the direction she must go.

  Lucia’s invitation to sing at Redipuglia had been a godsend not only because of what it meant for Lucia’s future but because it had brought them to the notice of men who could help them, if they would.

  Helena would do whatever it took to obtain that help. She had watched Eduardo Grandini, the man who had brought them the news that Lucia was to sing at the dedication. He was a little young, perhaps, but undeniably personable and his eye had lingered appraisingly on her, as she had intended. She had already discovered that he was single, a medium-level official in the Fascist Party who in time might be expected to rise higher. She thought he would do very well. Guido wouldn’t like it, no doubt, but that couldn’t be helped.

  It seemed that Eduardo also thought he would do very well. Two weeks after the dedication he visited the cottage on the pretext of seeing how they were settling in. Helena welcomed him, offering him refreshment, which he was happy to accept. Three days later he called again.

  2

  Lucia made a friend at school and brought her home.

  ‘This is Angelina.’

  She was a peasant girl, fat and plain, altogether unremarkable. Helena did not encourage the relationship. ‘You can’t afford to waste your time. You must work. Your career is the most important thing in your life.’

  Lucia was resentful. ‘For my life or yours?’

  ‘For both our lives.’

  Guido overheard. Normally he kept his opinions to himself but, as soon as Lucia had left the room, he gave Helena a warning. ‘She’s had more than her share of upheavals. She needs stability, a friend.’

  ‘She’s got me.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’re not her friend. You can’t be. You’re her mother. It’s not the same thing. Besides, you drive her.’

  ‘For her own good! I want her to realise her talent, become the best. You think that’s easy? To be the best she must work.’

  ‘Of course. But she needs more. She needs love.’

  Helena’s expression showed what she thought of that idea. ‘There’s no time for love.’

  Guido sighed, studying her thoughtfully. ‘You mustn’t sacrifice her to your own sense of guilt.’

  Helena was indignant. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You came here looking for something. I warned you things had changed but you took no notice. You’re still looking now, in spite of everything.’

  Helena would have none of it. ‘You know nothing about me, nothing.’

  ‘I’ve cared for you all my life. Sometimes I think I know you better than you know yourself. You’re scared because things in this country aren’t as you expected and you don’t know what to do about them. You would never have made friends with a creature like Eduardo Grandini if it hadn’t been for that.’

  Helena
laughed scornfully. ‘So that’s what all this is about! You’re jealous of Eduardo!’

  ‘It’ll be a bad day when I’m jealous of someone like him. No; you’re hoping to use him. It’s becoming a bad habit of yours. But you don’t use men like Grandini. They’re the ones who do the using.’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s becoming a habit?’

  ‘Because you’re using Lucia, too, or hoping to. You want her to get you out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself.’

  ‘Lucia has a great talent —’

  ‘So you keep saying. But she needs to know she’s loved. Every child does. She more than most.’

  ‘Mollycoddled, you mean. My parents were killed by the Germans; I saw my home burning with them still inside it. I had to run and hide for weeks, expecting to be killed at any moment. Somehow I managed to survive. Lucia has never had to put up with anything like that. Why should she need more care than I had?’

  ‘Because you made her come to a foreign country —’

  ‘Foreign?’

  ‘To her! A place where she knows nobody, where the language and customs are different. You’re her only support. Yet when she finds a friend, you try to drive her away. If she ever gets the idea you’re sacrificing her for your benefit and not hers, you’ll lose her. Is that what you want?’

  ‘What I want is for you to mind your own business.’

  ‘Very well. I’ve said what I had to say. I won’t be here much longer, in any case.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They’re moving me again. To Bologna.’

  Helena had been willing to fight him tooth and claw; now she was horrified. ‘What will happen to us?’

  ‘You’ll stay here in the cottage, I suppose. I’ll arrange to have the lease transferred into your name.’

  ‘What do we live on? I’ve no job —’