Last Train from Liguria

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  When Elida tells them the story of Signora Codoni, Edward puts an extra bolt on the back gate and ringlets of barbed wire along the back wall. Then he nails up the door of the mews and the garage.

  'There now,' he says. 'Fort bloody Knox. A wasp wouldn't find its way in there.'

  But Bella can't stop thinking about desperate men with starving eyes, living like wolves in the bottom of the garden.

  She sleeps in snatches now; usually when there's someone nearby. Afternoon naps in the garden while Alec swings in the hammock or swishes his legs in the pond. Or at night when Alec has gone up to bed and she slips into the warmth he's left on the sofa, pretending to read, while Edward sits at the piano and pretends not to notice she's fallen asleep.

  One morning she wakes early, with a cover thrown over her and Edward asleep on an armchair across the way. It occurs to her then that they've been sleeping together, in the same room – if not the same bed. His arm hanging over the side of the chair, his hand barely touching a newspaper that has slipped onto the floor. He looks different. Almost dead. That completed sort of peace. In stillness his face seems more definite; skin paler, hair darker. He has a softer, fuller mouth. Her eyes keep returning to the mouth. Her mind, half asleep, starts to drift and for a moment she sees herself getting up and going to the mouth, touching it first, then kissing it. She sees herself sitting up on his lap, putting one arm around his neck, one hand on his chest, lifting it sometimes to touch his beard, face, hair. Then just as she is about to conjure up his part in the scenario, Edward – the real Edward – shifts in the chair, turning his head from side to side, stretching one leg. Bella is up and out of the room before he has time to finish the movement or, worse still, open his eyes.

  After that she makes sure to wake while the notes from the piano are still floating in the background. Chopin sometimes, more often Satie, some mildly mournful piece anyhow that drives her up the wall and at the same time puts her to sleep. She always, no matter how tired she feels, makes sure she hears herself say, 'Well, I'm off up now, goodnight.'

  'Yes. Goodnight now. Sleep well.'

  They speak to each other like strangers.

  *

  One day Cesare stops coming. Edward comes into the kitchen to tell them – he doesn't say how he knows. Later she will put it in her notebook: 'Friday, 23 September 1938. Cesare not coming again.'

  The day will be marked by larger events. Hitler reneging on his agreement with Chamberlain. German troops moving near the Czechoslovakian border. French troops heading towards Alsace. Edward will spend most of that day rushing to and from the radio to report on the latest broadcast, the latest step towards disaster, until she shouts at him, 'I don't bloody care, Edward. Just leave me alone. Just leave me!'

  None of these events will go into her notebook. It is enough for one day that Cesare has left them.

  Sometime that evening she finds Elida on the front step, weeping. Bella sits with her and thinks about Cesare in the garden. Always there, as if he were part of it, familiar and sturdy as one of those trees. Never without a work tool in his hand. She tries to imagine him, as Edward had described, the day the race laws were published, standing with his arms hanging, his back turned to the garden. Idle for once. His bandy legs like the maw of a bridge over a hump of scorched grass, or a flowerbed squeezed with flawless petals, each one coaxed and cared for, by him.

  Elida can't stop weeping for Cesare. Bella, overwhelmed by a sense of abandonment, puts her arm around her and envies Elida her tears. Siamo fottuti, she thinks.

  *

  Two nights after Cesare leaves them, Edward calls her back as she is about to go to bed.

  'You know, we can't just stay here like this for ever,' he says. 'We can't just wait for them to come knocking on the door.'

  'You must do as you wish,' she answers, 'but I'll be staying with Alec. Don't let us interfere with your plans.'

  He looks startled, as if she has just hit him, which is what she wants to do and how she wants him to feel. 'You think I would—?' he begins but she can't listen.

  'Why do you never get any letters?' she asks him.

  'What?'

  'You heard me. Why does the postman never have anything for you?'

  'What's that got to do with anything?'

  'Nothing. I just want you to know, I've noticed.'

  'Well, bully for you!'

  'You didn't put your name on the census forms – did you? Anyway, don't bother to answer, I don't care to be honest. Really. Leave Bordighera. Go, if you're going,' she says.

  'You're not going to rile me, Bella.' he says.

  'No. You never do get riled, Edward – do you? I mean never. What sort of a man never gets angry or even annoyed?'

  'One that never gets letters?' he suggests.

  'Only a dog lives his life so resignedly.' She pushes past him out of the room.

  *

  She wakes before full light and looks down at Alec lying beside her, finally quiet, after hours of jigging around the bed like a fish on dry land. He had come to her room about midnight complaining that the air in his own room was filling up with mostri.

  'There aren't any monsters in Liguria, Alec.'

  'There are! Little tiny ones, so small and ugly you can only see them in the dark. They travel on cake stands made out of bones.'

  'Cake stands – goodness!'

  'Yes, and they come through the dark at you so slow, and they turn like this and this and I can see them on all the plates, hundreds of them trying to reach me and eat me all up. With blood and goo on their mouths, and their fingers so long and—'

  'All right, all right,' she had said, pulling back the blanket and secretly glad to have the company of his wiry little body even if it did mean being kicked for most of the night.

  Wide awake now, and still not quite light, she is fed up worrying about Alec, the Signora, Edward. Edward, Edward. All this wondering and waiting. She decides to get up and make tea.

  Bella stands at the sink and folds back one shutter. It could be the end or the start of a day. A low grey mist strokes through the garden like cigarette smoke in a nightclub and she thinks of Amelia again, and wonders what happened and why they have heard no more from her.

  There's a wheelbarrow stuffed with compost leaning on the orchard wall. She sees a pile of ornamental rocks, empty flowerpot stacks, seed trays, a watering can. Other things too that she can't quite make out – remnants of Cesare's unfinished business. Maybe she could follow them like clues until she has worked out what his intentions had been. Maybe that could be today's distraction.

  She thinks about making tea again, goes through the necessary steps in her mind's eye. The kettle, still regarded with suspicion by Elida, will be stuffed out of sight in the back of a cupboard, the tea caddy and milk out in the pantry as well as the matches to light the gas, the sugar in the press behind her. She will have to switch on the electric light to gather everything, and just for now prefers the kitchen in this drab, early morning dusk.

  Even while she is thinking about the tea, an impression is forming in her head. There is somebody in the kitchen with her. There, over her right shoulder. A presence. It could be her imagination or it could be someone gone mad with hunger and ready to kill her. The longer she stares out the window, the more she can feel it behind her. Eventually, she takes a step to her left, prepares to make a screaming dart for the door.

  'Don't.' A voice softly behind her. 'Hushush now.'

  Somehow Bella manages to hold the scream.

  The voice belongs to a woman. After a few seconds it speaks again. 'Everything is perfectly fine. When you turn you will know me. Turn.' The words come out tentatively, as if the speaker is feeding them to her bit by bit. 'Yes, that's all right, now. You may. Yes, yes. Very good.'

  Something about it reminds her of Signora Tassi, but she knows it's not the Signora's voice. Bella turns. And the woman stands; thin, tall, one hand raised, which she gently presses on the air as if to bat away any possibility o
f a scream. The face with its peculiar forehead seems to have floated upwards and Bella is reminded of a marionette show; white face standing alone against a black background. There is a rustle of her dress, something rattles. Bella's eye follows the sound – crystals. A rosary entwined around the little finger and falling from the wrist.

  'You know me?' the nun says, sitting back down. 'Please.' She gestures for Bella to sit, as if it's her kitchen, her table.

  Bella shakes her head and finds the word. 'No.'

  The nun says, 'Think.'

  'I'm afraid not. No.'

  'Miss Stuart, you are not thinking.' There is a glint to her voice, as if it's a game. 'By the way, I am so glad you have come down. I would have not liked to go up the stairs and search the rooms in case I disturb all the household.'

  'You are not Italian?' Bella says.

  'No. I am German. You still don't recognize me?' A short laugh hops out, and she raps her hands gently on the table.

  Bella shakes her head.

  'All right then, I shall hint you. Sicily – there is my hint.'

  'Oh yes, of course.'

  'I am Sorella Ursula.'

  'The house in Sicily, I should have known.' Bella puts her hand over her chest, feels the words exhale as if she is pressing them out. 'I am so sorry but you frightened the life out of me. How did you get in?'

  'A key, of course.'

  'Oh? Is the Signora—?'

  'No. She cannot just now, I am afraid.'

  'Sister, I must tell you, we are in a terrible state here and so worried about the Signora. We don't know what to do or where to go. Not only that but I'm to attend the federal secretary's office next week and—'

  The nun lifts her hand again. 'Please,' she says. 'I cannot hear all this now. But soon perhaps there will be no need to worry about these matters. I want you to come with me, Miss Stuart. You and also Edward. Now. If you can wake him perhaps?'

  'To see the Signora?'

  'If you would only wake Edward and we will go then.'

  'What about Alec?'

  'Leave him with Elida.'

  'I'll have to tell her.'

  'Of course. You may write her a message. There is no need for her concern; you will be back by evening. On plenty of time for dinner. Tell her that now. But no more.'

  'I can't take the car, sister, they've stopped car insurance for foreigners – mine has just run out.'

  'There is a car already waiting. Come, we must hurry. Wear dark clothes, a black coat, if you have it. Tell this to Edward also.'

  *

  They come out of Villa Lami, to find a large black car waiting a little way up the road, engine running. As they approach, the doors open from the inside; passenger door first, then the two at the rear. Bella tries to catch Edward's eye as Sorella Ursula ushers him into the front, but he will not return her look.

  She sits in the back behind the driver, a priest. The nun beside her. Before they have even settled in, the car begins to move off. There are no introductions and the priest says nothing.

  The car moves along via Romano, deserted but for a lone cacciatore, trudging along in his hunter's clothes, rifle on shoulder, dog at heel. Then a little further on, at the first flank of trees in the winter garden, she sees her old friend the milk-boy-now-man lift his head to watch them drive by.

  They turn onto the coast road into full sudden light twitching all over the sea between Capo Verde and Capo Nero, and flinching across the backs of greenhouses and glass chests on the surrounding hillsides. She notes the priest wince and then lift his hand to snap down the overhead sun visor.

  Just before San Remo they run into a traffic jam: flower carts, lorries, a truckful of big-buttocked pumpkins. Passengers who have alighted from their vehicles strut up and down, craning their necks towards the cause of the delay and gesturing complaints at each other. The priest hits the heels of his hands off the rim of the steering wheel and then thumps the horn. Sorella Ursula looks up from her rosary.

  On the cart in front a man stands to his full height, ankle-deep in carnations. He turns, sees this impatience belongs to a priest and respectfully removes his cap. The priest lifts his shoulders and hands in query, rolls down the window and sticks out his head, first shouting at, then listening to, the man. The car fills up with the smell of flowers, damp earth and the sea.

  The priest begins rolling the window back, then at the last minute pauses to stick his hand out to deliver a cursory blessing to the man on the cart. The man lowers his head in gratitude. The priest pinches and then pulls on his nose. 'Un blocco stradale,' he mumbles, then sneezes, releasing a silvery snot-spray onto his hand, the dashboard and part of Edward's shoulder.

  'A road block,' Sorella Ursula explains, and Bella says, 'Yes, I know.'

  Moments later, from behind the row of flower carts, two black uniforms appear. They see the priest and walk over to the car. The window is down again, this time the priest is all personality; laughing, joking, telling them there's no need to apologize, everyone has his duty all the more in these troubled days, but unfortunately this morning his happens to be a concelebrated mass in Imperia. He gestures helplessly but good-humouredly to heaven.

  'Scusi, Padre.' One soldier bows. 'Un momento prego.'

  The other one walks around the car and looks in the window. Sorella Ursula smiles and gives him a little wave.

  'Lei ha documenti, Padre?' the man at the window asks.

  'Documenti? Ma certo.'

  'Li hanno tutti?' he asks then, his finger moving in a circle to include all the occupants of the car.

  'Certamente,' the priest assures him, adding that they are all attached to the same convent. He reaches to his inside pocket and asks if the soldier would care to see them.

  The man is almost insulted. 'No, no, Padre, va bene così. Prego.' He begins waving them out of the queue while the other soldier clears the path of people.

  The priest positions the car partly over the grass verge so he can get it past the queue of traffic.

  'Dica una piccola pregheira per me, Padre?' the soldier asks as the car moves away.

  The priest replies that he will say a prayer, for him, his comrades and his family. They salute, then he drives the car away at a slant.

  Edward, who has been looking straight ahead, now turns towards the sea. Bella notices the colour has drained from his face.

  They leave the main road and begin to climb. Miles of nowhere. There are moments when she longs to break the silence, but is reluctant to start, or worse have the responsibility of keeping up, a conversation. She looks out the window where mountains made out of forest have stamped out the sky.

  The car twists on. They pass a cone-shaped shepherd's refuge and, further along, a stubby votive chapel. Green light wraps around the car as it passes in and out of a pine grove. Finally a long straight dirt road leads through the gateway of a monastery.

  The sky reappears. Farmland all around. The slow white hides of cattle on the lower fields. Further away, a row of monks, bent to the land like brown moths edging up a wall. She sees an olive mill, a two-bay barn. On a stool surrounded by baskets, an old monk sits in the shade, testing peaches between the twist of his hands.

  A young Indian monk rushes out to greet them, hardly more than a boy. He dances about the car, waiting to take it over, barely able to keep the grin off his face. The priest drops the keys into his open hand then walks off without a word, the hem of his cassock slapping his ankles, his feet whipping dust out of the ground. The monk ushers the remaining passengers out, nodding and chuckling silently to himself, then hops in and the car moves off, bouncing and clucking around to the side of the house. Bella feels the slightly chilled air of a higher altitude settle over her face.

  Sorella Ursula leads them up several flights of stairs to a large corner room. A row of arched windows cut into two right-angled walls. On the back wall of the room, a large brown crucifix. There is a table, two chairs, a broken lectern pushed to one side. Sorella Ursula says she will send
breakfast up.

  Somewhere the chanting of monks. Bella goes to a window and looks down. The crescent of a sleeping dog in the centre of a courtyard. Across two rows of chairs, long strands of spaghetti are draped over broom handles, left in the sunshine to dry. A monk appears out of the shadows. The dog stands, stretches and skulks off. The monk begins to test the spaghetti, section by section, lifting it like a long silk fringe onto the back of his hand, settling it back into place, lifting again.

  'What do you say to all this, Edward?' she asks him.

  When he doesn't answer she turns to look at him. He is sitting on one of the chairs, legs stretched out and feet crossed at the ankles. Hands in pockets, collar up, coat tucked around his legs. He is obviously cold and still a little pale. Whatever he might be feeling, Bella knows she won't find it written on his face.

  She crosses to a window on the other wall. A cemetery below. The graves, stacked over each other, are slotted into a wall, like a great big filing cabinet for the dead, she thinks. On the front panel of each one, a photograph of the occupant, also a votive and a small vase of flowers. A monk, leisurely, plump, pushes a work trolley, which holds a box, a basket of flowers, a large jug. For a while Bella watches him move from grave to grave, and is soothed by his practical method of work. She recalls the first time she saw one of these cemeteries. The night train from Nice, and her first time crossing into Italy. She had no idea what she was looking at but had believed it to be some sort of a message shaped by lit candles on the side of a hill. Half letters of half words that were on the verge of turning into a phrase – she had presumed the wind had blown out the rest of the candles. Desperately, she had wanted to make sense of it, childishly treating it like some sort of an omen, moving from window to window along the corridor, until the train had passed by.

  'Edward, I'm sorry,' she says to the window. 'I'm really sorry I've been so awful lately, and to you in particular. I don't know why I have been, but I am really sorry. I don't want to make excuses but I'm so afraid of everything; of being sent back, of what's going to happen, to Alec, the Signora. You, I suppose.'