The Italian Wife

by Kate Furnivall

  He drew himself up to his full height, his presence expanding to fill the room. ‘It was Alberto Grassi.’

  ‘Chairman Grassi?’ It was the last name Isabella had expected.

  ‘Yes.’ Her father moved with heavy steps towards the door. ‘Now forget I ever told you.’

  His hand reached for the door handle but before he could grasp it Isabella made a strange hissing sound that escaped from her lips without warning. The room seemed suddenly too hot, her father’s eyes too narrow, the secrets too big.

  ‘That’s why, isn’t it?’ she said in a low voice. ‘That’s why I have my job.’

  His eyes flickered but he made no comment.

  ‘In payment to you. That’s why Dottore Martino employs me.’

  Who do you trust? How do you know?

  Isabella returned to the office. Tried to work. Failed. Her head would not stay still. Her eyes kept seeing again the priest’s fiery eyes and her ears kept hearing again her father’s sincere voice, I swear it on your dear mother’s grave.

  We all keep secrets. We hide our secrets from each other. From ourselves. But how do we know when the time has come to undo the locks on the secrets?

  It was a relief when at eleven o’clock the office was emptied and coaches arrived to trundle every employee out to the arena field where the rally was to be held at noon. It was good to be out in the open, in the sunshine under a lofty blue sky that looked as if it had been swept clean for Mussolini’s visit. Where shadows and secrets couldn’t crawl up on her unnoticed. Isabella breathed more easily and felt the tight band around her chest loosen.

  The field was a mass of colour and movement, a cauldron of noise and crowds and excitement. Isabella stood on tiptoe on the top step of the coach and surveyed the scene before her, section by section. Row after row of flags leapt back and forth impatiently in the breeze, the green, white and red flag of Italy alternating with the bold and dramatic flag of the Fascist Party. The Fascist flag looked to Isabella as if it wore jackboots. It bore a golden fasces, the ancient Roman symbol of authority, on a dominant black background. It made a harsh statement that no one could ignore. Luigi had told her that black was the official colour used by the Blackshirt militia as a reminder of the Italian Arditi soldiers for whom it represented death and an unswerving willingness to sacrifice self in combat for the cause.

  Yes, I hear you, Duce, you and your flags. Isabella removed her gaze from the banners. The individual becomes a trivial cog in the vast Fascist machine. Dispensable. Replaceable. But I am not a cog. I am an architect, a good one too. Is that not so, Dottore Martino?

  Isabella smiled as her eyes dissected the field as efficiently as they would a drawing on her board, roaming over every corner of it. Seeking. Scanning. Hunting down. Right now she was searching among the thousands of scarves and hats and caps for a mop of chaotic chestnut hair. A tall straight figure. A pair of shoulders that a Maremmana bull would envy. The smile stayed. Waiting for Roberto to come and claim it.

  24

  Roberto shinned up the wall. It was easier than climbing a mast and he’d done plenty of those. But not for a few years, he had to admit. His leg muscles felt rusty. Too many hours spent in his darkroom. The moment his feet hit hard ground he raced across the thirty metre stretch of open land and pulled up only when he was swallowed by a patch of dense shade at the base of the convent’s squat tower.

  The place felt deserted. The air was dry and dusty. No birdsong. Just a silent wood pigeon watching him from an elbow of stone that jutted out at the top of the building. A breeze was stirring up the surface of the bare black earth, raising the scents of the loamy marshland forests it had so recently cradled. He felt the brickwork warm against his back. The convent rose three storeys above him, a harsh angular design that wasn’t to his taste but he approved of the clever mix of brick and stone. It gave it a warmth, a friendliness that belied what went on behind the shuttered windows. His instinct was to get inside and throw open all the doors and windows, to let the stench of cruelty and hypocrisy pour out and to allow sunlight to flood the dark secretive corners. But that wasn’t why he was here.

  He had chosen his spot. It was up ahead, in the shadow of a stone porch that looked unused, judging by the pile of logs stacked within it. It was the place he would pick to break in if he had to. There were glass panes running down beside the door, tall as a man and easy to break unseen. A quick crack with a rock. Or the butt of a gun. Definitely the place to pick. If he had to.

  He was hoping he wouldn’t have to.

  Over his shoulder hung a battered old leather satchel with the Leica tucked inside. He had abandoned his tripod and equipment case with his Graflex into the safe keeping of one of the LUCE cine-camera crew who had turned up at the rally field to film the big event. He gritted his teeth at the thought. He hated to trust others. He’d learned that much since getting thrown in prison – you trust yourself. Only yourself. But today he’d had no choice.

  He ducked tight against the wall and raced towards the disused porch through a blaze of sunlight, cursing the nakedness of his position. But no one shouted. No black-robed nun stuck a hand out of a window to grab his shoulder. He hit the darkness and crouched down in the dank corner on the far side of the porch. A nest of red beetles clambered over his shoe; he brushed them off and scanned the high outer wall thirty metres distant. Nothing moved.

  He swore at the wall. Time was something he couldn’t afford to let trickle through his fingers and he wasn’t good at watching walls. With a grunt of annoyance he settled down to wait.

  The man was fast. A flutter of movement. A flash of blond hair caught in the sunlight. And then it was gone. No sound. He was over the wall and already out of Roberto’s line of sight.

  So he was good.

  Had he seen Roberto arrive earlier? Did he know exactly where he had merged into the darkness beyond the porch door?

  Was he that good?

  Roberto couldn’t see into the porch itself because he was hidden behind its stone sides and he heard no footsteps on the gravel path that skirted the convent. But the man was betrayed by his shadow which leapt out in front of Roberto. Had he taken three steps forward he could have stamped on it, pinned it to the ground.

  There was one sharp snap, like someone cracking their knuckles. For ten seconds nothing more and then the delicate chink of glass. Roberto knew the glass was being removed enough to push a hand through to unlock the door.

  He didn’t breathe. Just stared unblinking right at the point where the figure would emerge if the man chose to stick his head around the wall of the porch to check that he was not being observed.

  But he didn’t.

  The hinges of the door creaked faintly and then there was the sound of a latch as it swung shut again. The man was inside.

  How long?

  How long did he need? This man.

  How long before he found his daughter?

  Roberto gave him five minutes. He might need more, he might need less, but this was a man who was used to finding what he wanted. So five minutes. Enough. To search the premises and start a conversation. He would be preoccupied, his mind only half on the creak of a stair or the turn of a door handle, and he would not be expecting anyone hunting him down. Not here. Not today. The whole of Bellina would be on that rally field awaiting Mussolini and his strident speech. He was banking on that.

  So was Roberto. That’s why he was here, convinced that Rosa’s father would not be able to resist the lure of his daughter alone in a deserted convent. The problem was: is that what Grassi and Colonnello Sepe had worked out too? Had they put their two brains together and come to the same conclusion or could they not see beyond Mussolini and the circus around him?

  Roberto took his chance. He pushed open the porch door.

  It was like sailing through rocks. Jagged ridges that wanted to rip out the bottom of your boat. That’s what this felt like, the same kick of adrenalin in the gut each time he opened a new door. To be found here by Colo
nnello Sepe would mean serious consequences. To be found here by the man with blond hair and feet more silent than a leopard’s would mean a gun in his face or a knife at his throat. That’s how men like this stayed alive.

  Roberto searched the ground floor. He moved quickly and noiselessly. Refectory, kitchen, classrooms, corridors, offices, lavatories. All empty. Not even a novice nun to stand in his way.

  So. The man was upstairs. Or he was in the chapel.

  The Reverend Mother would never shut Rosa in the chapel. Surely. Roberto tasted a bitterness in his mouth. There was no knowing what that woman would or wouldn’t do, but he made his choice. The stairs. On his right lay a sweeping curved staircase of pale oak that struck Roberto as designed to dwarf the children, underlining their insignificance in this sinful world. He took the stairs carefully, alert for any sound, any creak of a floorboard, any murmur of voices from under a door.

  It was a risk. But one Roberto knew he needed to take because he had to get to this man before Isabella did. Now that she’d set herself on this hunt, she wouldn’t stop, he knew she wouldn’t, and when she eventually cornered the man in some dark alley she would sink her teeth into him like a wildcat and never let go. She would get hurt. So yes, this was a risk but a risk he had to take. She’d lived through one bullet. She was unlikely to live through another. And he couldn’t bear that.

  The corridor at the top of the stairs was long and brown-painted, with dismal grey linoleum on the floor. A wooden crucifix hung on the wall and under it someone had placed a posy of wild flowers in a tin can, the delicate splash of colour creating a bright little moment of hope as he padded past. He stopped at each door along the corridor, leaning his head close to listen for the slightest scrape of sound, slowing his heartbeat so that he could hear more than its pounding.

  It was as he crept towards the door at the very end that he heard something. A scratch. Like a cat at a door. Then a faint flutter. Fingertips brushing against wood. He placed his cheek against the door and felt the vibration, no more than the ripple of a butterfly’s wing. Slowly he released his breath.

  ‘Rosa?’ he whispered into the silence.

  No answer.

  ‘Rosa?’

  For half a minute he kept his ear pressed to the door, his eyes fixed on the stretch of corridor along which he’d come, on the flowers. On the top stair.

  ‘Yes.’

  The word was so slight it was barely a word, but Roberto’s ears caught it. His hand slid down, curling around the big brass doorknob, and it was only then that he noticed the iron key tucked into the lock under the knob. Without hesitation he turned it and opened the door, ready to spring aside if an attack came from within. But there was no attack.

  A silence greeted him. A silence that felt strange to Roberto, almost as though it were underwater. It was the greenness of the walls in the long thin room, the dimness of the light with the shutters half closed, and the two rows of metal beds covered in brown blankets. The air felt thick and unused, as the light from the corridor tumbled in ahead of him and he saw a pair of black eyes huge with fear in a small stark white face.

  ‘Rosa!’

  That was when he made his mistake. One split second’s error. All he saw was the child. All he heard was her quick intake of breath. All he felt was the need to free her from the wretched chain on her leg, and a surge of anger at the woman with the lips that closed on wormwood and who called herself a daughter of Christ. He missed the furtive footstep behind him and the catch in the child’s throat as she opened her mouth into a wide silent ‘O’ of shock.

  A knife grazed his throat from behind, the cold sting of it sharp as a snake bite. His heart twisted in his chest and his hands rose to snatch the blade from his attacker.

  ‘Damn you, if you move, I’ll slit your throat wide open.’

  The man’s voice in his ear was calm. It was Roberto’s own voice that bellowed with rage.

  ‘Don’t lie!’

  ‘I’m not lying.’ Roberto had himself back under control. ‘I’m not spying on you for anybody. I’m a photographer.’

  ‘It’s true, Papa. I saw him. He photographed the school.’

  ‘Then what the fuck are you doing hunting me down here?’

  The man who asked the question was dangerous. Very dangerous. It wasn’t that he looked panicked, far from it. His deep-set blue eyes were still and watchful, his breathing easy. He possessed the iron composure of a man who was untroubled by what he did, this casual use of a knife to slice his way to what he wanted. He smelled of violence, the way fireworks smell of gunpowder. His blond hair was swept back off his face, leaving the bones sharp and prominent, and he was standing with his back firmly to the wall for safety. The knife blade was thrust out in front of him and jabbing in Roberto’s direction. But at least it was no longer jammed against his jugular.

  ‘I came because I want to speak to Rosa,’ Roberto informed him. ‘She wouldn’t leave here until she had seen you and —’

  ‘You told him about me?’ The man’s words to his daughter were rough, but more disappointed than angry.

  ‘No, Papa! I told him nothing.’

  For the first time Rosa’s father took his eyes off Roberto for half a second and glanced at his daughter. He gave her a flicker of a smile. ‘It’s all right, piccolina, I believe you.’

  Roberto felt the tension in the room drop down a notch.

  ‘Your name?’ he asked the stranger in the brown suit.

  ‘You don’t need it. Any more than I need yours.’ He coughed suddenly with a deep rattle in his lungs.

  ‘Are you taking Rosa away?’

  Her father said nothing at first, then shook his head a time or two.

  ‘Papa, you must!’

  Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes and she fought to hold them back. As they trickled down her pale cheeks, she banged the flat of her hand against the brutally cropped hair and shook her shackled foot so fiercely that the metal tore a wide strip of skin off her ankle. It was a long chain that attached her to the bed nearest the door.

  ‘Look at me, Papa, look at me,’ she wailed. The look she gave him was feral, sharpened by hunger and need. ‘I am worse than a dog. Take me with you!’

  ‘No, my sweetheart, not yet.’

  ‘I’ll be good, Papa. I can be quiet as a dead person. No one will know I’m there. I’ll say nothing, do nothing, except what you tell me.’ Her thin voice was rising. ‘Please, Papa, please? Take me with you.’ She seized the chain in one hand and rattled it ferociously, so that it sounded to Roberto like the walking dead, and her sharp upper teeth sank into her lower lip to stop it trembling.

  ‘Whatever your name is,’ Roberto said in a flat voice, ‘don’t leave your child here. For God’s sake, get her out. She doesn’t deserve this. Now is your chance while the nuns are gone.’

  ‘No,’ the man said, ‘not today.’

  ‘She needs you.’

  ‘I move around too much.’

  ‘I can move too, Papa. I did with Mamma.’ Her wide expressive eyes clung to a scrap of hope.

  ‘No.’ Her father turned his face from her, his cheeks rigid. ‘Not today.’ The knife started to lower.

  ‘Mamma never wanted me. But…’ Rosa was shaking uncontrollably, ‘I thought you did.’

  It was like watching a cliff face crack open. The man fell to his knees in front of his daughter and wrapped his arms around her, moulding her small frame to his, ignoring Roberto’s presence completely.

  ‘Of course I want you, my Rosa. Of course I will come for you, mia bella, but not today.’ He crooned soft comfort in her ear and Roberto caught the words, ‘Today I have work to do.’

  Roberto left them together. He placed a package from his satchel on the foot of the child’s bed: a panini with caciotta cheese and melone, then he walked rapidly out of the melancholy dormitory before he could no longer resist the urge to seize hold of the knife and hack apart the lock on the chain.

  How does a man leave the daughter he loves
in a place like this? Answer: because he loves his ‘work’ more. It sickened Roberto. Yet he waited at the top of the stairs beside the wild flowers, waited to see how the crack in the man could be pinned together.

  He was clearly an insurgent. A revolutionary. A Socialist or a Communist. It didn’t matter which. They were all marked with the same death sentence hanging like the sword of Mussolini over their heads. Was it the child’s safety he was thinking about when he refused to take her? Or his own?

  He watched the man emerge from the room, turn the key in the lock and leave it in place. Roberto felt sorrow for the abandoned child and moved quickly away down the wide staircase to the outside world. Her father followed, but the force of the sunlight seemed to unsettle him and he stepped immediately into the dark shadow of the porch. He paused, aware that there were things that had to be said.