by JH Fletcher
6
For Helena, the emptiness was unbearable. She had told Lucia she would never forgive her, yet now found she had no choice, because without her daughter she had nobody. Even now she could not bring herself to speak of it openly. Instead she took to sitting with Lucia, on the evenings she was home, waiting wistfully for her daughter to say something, anything, to fill the silence.
While Lucia, unable to work out what her mother wanted from her or what to do for the best, felt increasingly guilty without knowing why, and angry for feeling so, and at the last said nothing.
7
Lucia later realised that Colonel Strasser’s remarks, however much they’d frightened her at the time, might have saved her life. Other villagers weren’t so lucky.
Once again the dreaded word ‘reprisals’ was heard in Montegallo. The Germans took five villagers, seemingly at random, and shot them against the wall of the church. The whole population was forced to watch; squads of troops scoured the village to make sure the order was obeyed.
Lucia stood with her mother and, although no-one spoke to them, she had no sense that they were hated for what was happening. Colonel Strasser’s remarks might have helped, or perhaps Guido had said something; whatever the reason, people seemed to have come belatedly to believe that the Viscontis, like everyone else, were victims of circumstances over which they had no control.
The situation was hard enough to bear without the burden of hatred. The five hostages, two women, three men, were marched out under guard. One of the women was in tears; the other glared defiantly at the line of soldiers and showed no fear at all.
The priest had tried to go to them but the soldiers had prevented him. Now he stood behind the firing squad, holding up a cross so that all could see it; this, the military permitted.
The corporal in charge of the execution barked an order. There was a rattle of bolts as the rifles were cocked. There should have been rain bleeding from a grey sky; instead the indifferent sunlight shone upon both victims and executioners.
Again the corporal shouted. The rifles took aim.
The defiant woman shouted: ‘Long live Italy! Death to Mussolini!’
The gunfire drowned her last syllables. The impact of the bullets flung the five hostages down. No-one was permitted to touch the bodies. One soldier remained to guard them; the rest marched away. The villagers dispersed.
The following day Eduardo’s funeral took place with full military honours. It was attended by a guard from the Repubblichini, pretty as damsels, who strutted in a click and clatter of boots and fired a volley over the grave. Colonel Strasser sent a junior officer to represent him. Of the villagers, Helena was the only mourner, with Lucia in attendance to support her. After the funeral they walked home together into a future bleak beyond reckoning.
For two days they remained together in the cottage. No-one bothered them. Lucia returned to her operatic scores, although her concentration was not as she would have wished. Helena stared at the wall or through it, at memories of the past or prospects of an undefined and menacing future. They did not eat or exchange a word.
On the third day, by mutual if unspoken agreement, they finished off the scraps of food that were all that remained in the house. They sat in the parlour room and looked at each other and slowly the truth took form between them.
For years they had been drifting apart; now, when they needed each other most, Eduardo’s death might have saved their lives but had also destroyed any prospect of renewed love.
Lucia the murderer.
Helena the traitor.
All they had wanted was to love each other but Lucia saw from the expression in her eyes that her mother would indeed never forgive her, not because she did not wish to do so but because the task was beyond her. From now on their only emotional contact would be through the progress of Lucia’s career.
8
There were times when the ache in Helena’s heart became well-nigh intolerable, when she wanted as much as life itself to go to her child and hold her, to rekindle the candleflame of togetherness that they needed to guide them through the darkness, but each time she reached the point of doing so, there came a succession of other images: her room door flung open, the purposeful men, the haste with which they dragged Eduardo from her side. He with the seal of death already upon his eyes; the oily blackness of the guns; herself drawn tight-knotted and cringing into the middle of the bed; the world a silent scream of shock, disbelief and terror that this could be happening, that this, that this …
She remembered it all so clearly. The images paralysed her and she could do nothing. Again and again the moment to speak to Lucia passed. With every failure estrangement grew. It became a gulf that even voices could not bridge.
Helena had seen the scorn in women’s eyes, had dug a hole within herself in which to hide. She clasped her justification like a lover. She persuaded herself that all she had done had been for Lucia’s sake, to promote her in her career. Knowing Eduardo for what he was, she had nevertheless taken him to her bed, not for herself but for Lucia, and the world that would be enriched by her art. The world that should have been grateful but was not. The daughter who should have been grateful and was not. Who had rewarded her by betraying the man who at the time of their greatest need had protected them. There were days when she could neither speak nor move. She lay still, while the world’s concerns touched her no more than the fall of feathers.
9
There was talk of the anticipated reappearance of the miraculous Virgin of Fatima, last seen seventeen years before. Others claimed that the sun had reversed its course across the sky. Despite all the portents, the war ground on. The Germans and their Italian accomplices became more brutal than ever in their treatment of the civilian population. Even the air seemed to have gone mad; along the forest-clad streams the leaves of the trees carried rumours. People were arrested; they were tortured or killed without charge or reason. Searches were carried out at any time of the day or night. Mostly it was part of a campaign of general harassment but sometimes the searchers came up with an escaped prisoner of war or a wanted man. Which meant more reprisals, more deaths. The partisans became increasingly active. It was not only the Germans who died. In the winter of 1944 Guido was shot dead when he and two other men tried to crash their truck loaded with guns and ammunition through a military roadblock.
Helena, who had shown some signs of recovering from Eduardo’s death, was once again thrown into shocked silence. Lucia tried to help, offering her a bed in her apartment in Parma. Helena said she would come but did not. Lucia braved the increasingly slow and tedious journey to Montegallo to see if everything was all right.
‘What happened to you?’
Helena’s eyes wandered vaguely. ‘It wasn’t convenient.’
‘Convenient for what?’
Helena smiled helplessly and did not answer.
‘I’ll get home as often as I can but you know the service isn’t all that reliable at the moment.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do your best.’
Once again Lucia had the feeling she was being forgiven for something she hadn’t done. The journey could take up to two hours these days, but she did what she could. When she managed to get home she spent what remained of her evenings holding her mother’s hand, trying with little success to make conversation and wondering whether there was any purpose in any of it.
Beyond the circle of their private grief, the war went on. Atrocities caused more atrocities. Despite the efforts of the occupying troops, the partisans now controlled the countryside. Even on the main roads, German convoys were regularly shot up; individual patrols were ambushed and soldiers killed. One of the most notorious of the Repubblichini thugs was kidnapped. The next day his tortured body was found propped against the church wall in the exact place where what were now called the Martyred Five had been shot.
The Germans, on the edge of retreat, threatened to destroy the cities of Parma, Bologna, Reggio Emilia and Piacenza if they
were attacked. The partisans refused to deal with them but the cities, mercifully, remained intact.
On 18 April 1945 the German garrisons fled from both Montegallo and Parma. Seven days later the American forces, gum-chewing and taciturn, arrived. Young women bombarded them with flowers but it had been a long campaign and the soldiers were tired. They showed little interest in the flowers or, more surprisingly, the young women. Heroes they might be but romance, at least for the moment, was off the menu and the disappointed flower throwers were compelled to seek consolation in the mundane arms of boys they had known all their lives.
Not that Lucia had time to worry about that. Three days after the Americans’ arrival she was summoned, with the rest of the Teatro Regio cast, to sing Verdi’s Requiem Mass in the Parma cathedral, to celebrate in both secular and religious terms their newfound freedom from opppression. For months Teresa Sciotto had been whispering to anyone who would listen that Lucia and her mother were collaborators. It was to be expected she would make trouble now over Lucia’s selection but fortunately it never came to that; as soon as the Germans had left, Teresa had gone to stay with her aunt in Verona and had not yet returned. Lucia sang the soprano part without a voice being raised against her. The Gazzetta di Parma praised her to the skies. She gloried in the praise but knew that her vendetta with Teresa Sciotto had only been deferred; down the track there was bound to be more trouble. There was one additional problem: Alfredo Dante, the bass baritone who had kissed her so passionately after the Tosca duet, had fallen in love with her. Since that episode he had said nothing of his feelings, but now, with the war over at last, he tried to woo her.
She would have no part of it. She told him: ‘Music is the only thing in my life at the moment. It’s like a force of nature to me; there’s no way I can control it. Besides, I’ve something I have to do first, and I have to do it alone.’
She spoke to her mother about it. Helena was outraged but it made no difference; Lucia had made up her mind.
Her early longing for Australia had become sublimated in her passion for music, yet only in part. Music had become her home but she had never forgotten the land she had lost. She had discovered a quotation from the South American poet Pablo Neruda: I carry our nation wherever I go. Now that the war was over, she was determined to go back but did not know how to reconcile doing so with her career. Once again she blamed her mother for her selfishness in bringing her to a land that would never be her own. Her dreams of childhood returned. Helena had told her nostalgia was useless but she had never believed her, not if it kept her in touch with the land to which she intended, one day, to return.
‘Why do you want to go there?’
‘Italy’s your place, not mine. Australia is my country. I carry memories of it, always. Can’t you see that by reclaiming your own roots you’ve denied me my own?’
‘Are you mad? That country is a desert. Your head’s stuffed with romantic nonsense about it, but let me tell you, I lived there for sixteen years and I know what I’m talking about!’
‘I remember it, too. I was thirteen when we left, don’t forget, not three.’
‘There’s nothing there for you. If you want to succeed as an artist, Europe is the only place. By bringing you here —’
‘Against my will!’
‘Perhaps. But I gave you a chance you would never have had if you’d stayed there. Let me tell you, one day you’ll thank me for it.’
‘That’s how the priests talk, isn’t it? One day … Well, I remember it always. I even dream about it. And I’ve made up my mind. Now I can do something about it, I’m going back.’
‘And do what? Teach singing in the mallee?’
‘If I have to, yes!’
Helena was hurt as well as angry. ‘Sometimes you make me feel I’ve never done anything right in my life.’
Lucia did not answer. Instead she went and told Marta Bianci, who for once in her life agreed with Helena.
‘It’s criminal!’
Perhaps, but Lucia — Lucy! — was no longer listening. In 1946, after finishing an eight-performance season of La Traviata, she travelled to Genoa, where she boarded a ship for Australia.
Part Three
THE DIVA
1946–1980
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
1
All the way to Australia, Lucy Fisher had plenty of time to think about what she’d done. She’d turned her back on the traumas of war-torn Italy to return to the land that had acquired almost mythic proportions in her mind. Her land, her father, her life renewed. Yet doubts remained. Australia might be the romantic land of her desires but was far from being the logical place to begin a career as an internationally famous opera singer.
As Marta Bianci, seeing her off at Genoa, said: ‘It’s madness. What’s there?’
Lucia, quivering on the edge of becoming Lucy again, would not argue about it.
‘You don’t understand.’
In truth, neither did she; her mother’s prediction that she would end up as a teacher in the mallee had a discomforting ring of truth about it, yet the distant land drew her back and she had to go. As to what would happen afterwards …
‘I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t waste too much time about it. You think Teresa Sciotto will wait for you? Let her get ahead of you in Milan or New York, you’ll never be rid of her.’
‘Why should I want to? There’s room for both of us.’
‘Not if you want to be recognised as the best.’
2
And so, at last, to Sydney, with little money and no-one to meet her. Her father apart, she didn’t know anyone in the whole continent. After ten years he might not even recognise her. Always assuming he had not moved, in which case she would not be able to find him at all.
She took the Adelaide train, sat up all night — no cash to spare for a sleeper — and hopped off at Pinnaroo. In a raw dawn the country greeted her like the skeleton of her forgotten past: the dust, the mallee, laconic men with shirts buttoned to their throats, faces shaded by the brims of battered hats.
She felt as much at home as a hen in a billabong, yet she hadn’t come all this way to give up now. She asked directions from a man at the railway station. Yairs, he knew Ted Fisher, right enough. And who might be asking?
‘His daughter.’
That opened his eyes. ‘I recall you as a nipper. What’s brought you back?’
‘To see him. What else?’
Which earned her a guarded look. ‘You might find things a tad different from when you was here before.’
She got a lift in a truck heading that way. The driver dropped her at the turning; she looked about her as he drove away in a boiling of dust. She recognised nothing. Where she remembered wilderness, houses had sprung like weeds. She could taste the presence of people in what had once been solitude. She took the track she was sure went to the house but somehow her memory had tricked her. Eventually some woman, eyes bulging with unasked questions, put her right.
‘Up to the end. Then left and left again. Oright?’
She walked on, case in hand, and there it was. At least the house hadn’t changed much; a bit more weathered, maybe, patched here and there like an old coat, but for the first time Lucy felt she was home. She walked up to the door and knocked. There was no reply. Not surprising; most likely he’d be out in the paddocks some place; afraid he might tell her to stay away, she hadn’t warned him she was coming. She was turning away, wondering what to do now, when a woman came from behind the chook shed.
‘Help you?’
Lucy’s feet felt as though they’d been nailed to the ground.
‘Mr Fisher?’
‘Gone into town. Who’s askin’?’
‘I’m his daughter.’
The woman gave her a look as guarded as the Royal Mint. ‘You’d best come in.’
Her name was Edma. She looked about thirty, short and dark-haired, with plump red cheeks. Big breasts, big backside under a faded check shirt and jeans. He
r brown eyes examined Lucy suspiciously.
‘We bin together seven years,’ she said.
Lucy hadn’t thought about her father shacking up with anyone. It made sense but Edma was as prickly as a bramble bush.
‘What’ve you come for?’
‘To see how he is.’
‘It’s taken you long enough.’
Lucy was indignant. ‘There’s been a war on. Or maybe you hadn’t heard.’
‘I heard, oright. My brother was killed, fighting you lot.’
‘I was seventeen when the war started. It didn’t have much to do with me, did it?’
‘I reckon all you people are sayin’ that, now we’ve licked you.’
A mongrel of a start, all in all. But things improved. Before long they were mending fences over a cup of tea.
‘I never wanted to go to Europe at all. But I made the best of it. You do, don’t you?’
‘You’re the one who’s the singer?’
‘How d’you know that?’
For the first time Lucy discovered that, ever since the end of the war, Helena had been writing to her husband.
‘Never told us you was comin’ over, though.’
‘She didn’t want me to but I wanted to see Dad. He never said much but I always felt he cared. I felt close to him. The country, too. I was born here, after all.’
Edma shook her head doubtfully. ‘Not much opera in the mallee.’
Ted said the same when he got back shortly before dark.
He was a shock.
What hair remained was grey; his hands were like lemon graters, his face a network of lines. He could have been the father of the man she remembered; she’d have walked past him in the street.
He didn’t know what to do with her.
‘Good to see you.’
But.