Out of the Ashes

by Lori Dillon

  The familiar lyrics floated to him across the ancient stones, causing him to hold his breath so that he wouldn’t miss a single note.

  Oh, give me something to remember you by

  when you are far away from me, dear

  Some little something meaning love cannot die

  no matter where you chance to be

  The song seemed so out of place, and it flooded him with memories of home—America.

  Why on earth would Sera be singing an American Big Band tune? And in English, no less?

  The singing suddenly stopped. She glanced in his direction, the wide brim of her straw hat shadowing her features. She must have sensed him watching her, since he had yet to make a sound.

  A movement caught his eye and he noticed a strange man approaching. He wasn’t very tall, his apple-shaped body perched precariously on thin, bird-like legs. A wide-brimmed hat shaded the top half of the man’s face, but the sun practically bounced off white teeth barely contained in a wide smile.

  “Serafina,” the man called out as he came closer, “so this is where they’ve hidden you.”

  The timber of the voice was slightly higher than what David would normally consider manly. He watched Sera and the man kiss each other on the cheeks, amazed at how openly affectionate the Italians always were with each other.

  At least, most were.

  He stabbed his shovel in the ground and tossed the dirt into the wheelbarrow. Sera never greeted him with kisses on the cheek or anything more than a curt hello.

  Of course, he couldn’t say he blamed her. For the most part, he’d been a thorn in her side since they’d met, except when that brief moment of tenderness seemed to pass between them.

  He sighed as he stabbed his shovel in the dirt again, wondering if he had imagined the whole thing. It didn’t matter. It was probably for the best. No sense starting something he couldn’t finish.

  David glanced up in time to see the man point in his direction, and Sera brought him over.

  “Well, well. I wish I had an assistant who looked like him.” The guy placed his hands on his plump hips and actually winked at David.

  Oh, great. One of those. All he needed was some pervy bone-digger sniffing after him.

  “It figures you’d get tall, dark, and handsome, and I get stuck assisting that snake, Giovanni.” The man turned to glare at Sera. “Thank you very much for that.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” she defended herself. “Besides, Giovanni is tall, dark, and handsome.” She pointed her thumb at David. “You can have him if you want.”

  “Hey.” Why did he feel like a broken-down car no one wanted?

  “Right, and have you back working with Giovanni? I’m a better friend than that.” The man looked him up and down and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Even if it does mean I don’t get the pleasure of working alongside this one.”

  Now David really felt like a piece of meat, and as he stepped out of the shallow pit, he mentally apologized to any woman he’d ever demeaned with such talk in his past.

  Finally, Sera acknowledged his presence.

  “David, I’d like you to meet Olympia Becchetti. Olympia, this is David Corbelli.”

  Olympia? A woman? He was so stunned, he momentarily forgot to take the woman’s offered hand. He quickly closed his mouth and, to make up for the errant path his thoughts had taken, raised her hand and kissed her dirty knuckles.

  This drew a blinding smile from Olympia and a scowl from Sera.

  “Now, that is what I call a gentleman,” Olympia gushed. “Maybe I will take you up on that trade. He’s much better than most of the old fossils working around here.”

  “Fine, do what you like. I couldn’t care less.” Sera turned and stalked away.

  He stared after her. If he wasn’t so sure she didn’t like him, he would have thought her jealous.

  “Does she hate all men, or is it just me?”

  “No,” Olympia chuckled. “It’s pretty much men in general.”

  “Then is she…? She’s not a…” He couldn’t seem to shake the first impression he had of Olympia, and now the notion stuck in his head. If Sera truly hated men, could she possibly be…?

  The shocked look on Olympia’s face indicated that she knew what he was inferring, and she laughed at the suggestion.

  “Oh, no, no. Serafina definitely prefers the opposite sex. It’s just that…” She eyed him from under the brim of her hat. “Let’s just say that she hasn’t always had the best experiences with the men in her life.”

  That bit of insight piqued his interest.

  “So, she’s had her heart broken?”

  “In more ways than one. The two men she cared about most in her life hurt her deeply. Now she finds it hard to let her guard down. She doesn’t trust easily.” She elbowed him in the ribs. “But don’t take it personally. I like you.”

  Olympia walked over to where Sera was working at the screening table. The two women spoke to each other in rapid-fire Italian, one sometimes starting before the other was finished.

  Despite his first impression, he liked Olympia. She had a jolly, deep-bellied laugh and made him feel instantly at ease. By comparison, Sera was serious and reserved, at least around him.

  As he watched them chatting together, he could see they were close friends. Their love for archeology appeared to be a strong bond between two women who seemed so different from each other.

  David didn’t know why it surprised him to find out Sera had friends. Or at least one friend. Since he’d met her, she seemed only concerned with the excavations. He’d never heard her talk about life outside the walls of the ruins.

  Apparently she had one after all.

  *

  As evening settled over the ruins, David and Sera rode their bicycles along the narrow road toward town. Unaccustomed as he was to riding on the bumpy cobblestones, the pavers threatened to toss him off his bicycle at every turn. Still, he chanced a look up at the volcano in the distance, its peak shrouded by clouds. Or was that smoke seeping from the sleeping giant, awakening once more? He wasn’t sure and didn’t dare ask. A true Italian would know the difference.

  By the time they reached the town, the sky overhead had eased from a bright Mediterranean blue to the dusky purple of twilight. The blaring of an amplified voice caught his attention. The speaker sounded odd, as if he were talking into a tin can, relaying news of the war on the Axis home front.

  David glanced at Sera as she rode her bicycle beside him.

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Sì. They must be showing the latest newsreel in the piazza.”

  His heart began to pound. Days had passed since he had seen Frank and heard news of any kind about the war. The archeologists seemed to live in their own little world. The ruins and the artifacts were the only thing they cared about, as if they stepped back in time once they crossed through the stone gate into the ruins, and to them the war no longer existed.

  “Let’s go watch it.” He tried to keep his voice calm and not sound too eager. Any news, even that from the enemy’s perspective, was better than none.

  She eyed him, her expression put upon, as if he had just asked her to clean the latrines. Finally, she nodded.

  “All right. Come on.”

  She pedaled down the narrow street toward the center of town, leaving him to struggle to keep up with her.

  When they reached the piazza, he spied a film projector perched high up on a wooden stand. It cast a grainy black and white image against the cracked plaster wall of a building on the opposite side. The picture jerked occasionally on its makeshift screen, the tattered film riveted with holes and scratches from its constant showing in town to town.

  As he watched transfixed, a bird’s eye view showed German bombers dropping their lethal arsenal on British targets far below, clouds of destruction rising silently in the air. The next scene showed innocent citizens in the town of Livorno running for cover with black smoke in the background as oil refineries exploded and burned. T
hen the film cut to young Italian soldiers fighting in muddy trenches, while the newscaster’s voice played over it all. He spoke of the Allies’ total disregard for innocent citizens as the film showed American planes dropping bombs on the town of Foggia, destroying the Axis airfields located there, along with much of the town.

  David shook his head at the biased newscast. He knew some of the guys who had flown that mission. Hours before the air raid, the Allies had dropped leaflets over the populated targets, warning the citizens so they could evacuate the cities in time. The incident was just another example of how Mussolini twisted the truth to suit his needs.

  The image switched once more, showing the aftermath of destruction in Livorno. As the townspeople picked through the debris, the crumbling stones and rubble-filled streets reminded him of the ruins.

  He sensed Sera stiffening beside him.

  “What?”

  “How dare they bomb cities full of people? How can they do that, with the centuries of architecture and the museums with their priceless works of art? Don’t they realize how irreplaceable it all is?”

  He felt her pain, but he also understood the other side.

  “This is war, Sera, and unfortunately there is often a high price to pay, both in property and human lives.”

  “It’s not just property. It’s history. It’s our past. Once it’s destroyed, we can never get it back.”

  She looked ready to climb the scaffolding, tear the projector down, and rip the film from the reel with her bare hands.

  “Damn the Allies,” she growled under her breath. “Damn the Americans.”

  Her fierce hatred of the Allies—and apparently the Americans in particular—shocked him. Granted, Italy was fighting against the Allies. But at this point, it was mainly so Germany would not retaliate against the Italian people after Mussolini had pledged their support and gotten them into this mess. Most Italians were tired of the war and would rather not be in it at all. The average citizen was more or less ambivalent to the Allies.

  But not Sera. Her hatred was visible in every fiber of her being—in the way she held her shoulders back, the way her jaw clenched, and her fists balled at her sides with the knuckles turned white. She hated the Americans with a passion.

  “Perhaps we should go,” he said.

  “Yes, I’ve seen enough.”

  They left the piazza and rode down the street together, eventually parting ways. As he continued alone, he couldn’t get over how strong her emotions were after seeing the newsreel. Was she such a loyal Fascist that she hated anything that went against the movement, Germany, and Hitler? Somehow he found that hard to believe.

  There had to be something else, and David needed to find out what it was. His mission might depend upon it.

  *

  A door slammed somewhere in the house for the second time in less than fifteen minutes. Hershel jumped in his overstuffed chair, causing him to rip the week-old newspaper he was reading.

  Marsha stalked into their sitting room, shoved Hershel’s feet off the ottoman where they’d been resting comfortably, and flopped down on it.

  “We have a problem.”

  Obviously, Hershel thought. “What is it this time?”

  “Serafina just came in, and she’s madder than a monkey on a fire-ant hill.”

  Hershel lowered the paper to his lap, scrunching up the edges as he did so.

  “Oh, no. What has he done now?”

  “Who?” Marsha looked momentarily confused. “David? No, it wasn’t something he did. At least, I don’t think so. No, she just came from seeing the newsreel in the piazza, and it’s gotten her all fired up again.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, in case you’ve forgotten, our little Serafina has an intense dislike of Americans.”

  “So?” He lifted the paper up again and tried to find where he’d left off.

  Marsha swatted it back down into his lap, crumpling it beyond hope, and glared at him.

  “So, David is American.”

  “So?” The light bulb inside Hershel’s head finally flashed on. “Oh, no.”

  “Exactly. We need to make sure that she doesn’t find out about him until we’re… until she’s ready.”

  “And how are we supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know. So far, he’s been doing a good job of keeping her in the dark, but she’s a smart girl. I’m worried what she’ll do when she does find out.”

  The problem was starting to make Hershel’s head hurt. And just when everything was starting to fall into place.

  “So, what do you propose we do about it? I mean, as mortals, we can’t exactly perform miracles down here. It’s not like we can sprinkle angel dust on his head and turn him into a real Italian for her.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Marsha propped her elbow on the arm of Hershel’s chair and tapped her fingers against her chin. “We need to come up with a plan. Something to speed things up a bit and bring them closer, so that by the time she does find out, it won’t matter.”

  He shrugged. “Why don’t we just tell them they’re soul mates destined to be together, so they can just go ahead and get on with it?” He smiled at himself. Why, the idea was absolutely brilliant. He didn’t know why they hadn’t thought of it before. “That should certainly speed things up.”

  “Hershel.” Marsha frowned and shook her head at him. “Even if we could tell them—which we can’t, you know it’s against policy—do you think they’d actually believe us?”

  “No, I suppose not.” He slumped back into his seat. Drat, and here he’d thought he’d come up with the perfect answer. “So what more can we do? After all, they’re working side by side five days a week as it is.”

  She stared off into space, and then a wicked gleam brightened her eyes.

  “Evidently side by side isn’t close enough. I think our young lovers need to have something happen to bring them closer. A lot closer.”

  Hershel stared at his wife. He didn’t like the sound of her voice.

  “Marsha, what are you going to do?”

  “It’s not what I’m going to do.” She grinned impishly. “It’s what you’re going to do.”

  Chapter 11

  David worked in one of the holes they had started excavating in the center of the old road. A tent shaded the shallow pit, its thick canvas tarp bucking gently in the soft breeze that managed to slip over the high stone walls. He shook his head. It was the third tent they had erected on the site. He was grateful for the shade, but the damn place was starting to look like the county fair back in Bedford. As he dug, Sera begin singing a soft, melodious tune and he recognized the song immediately.

  “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

  It was another Big Band hit, and, just as before, memories of America flooded him. Only this time, the longing for home tangled with the Italian-accented lyrics, recalling a more recent memory of a beautiful archeologist weeping over a long-dead child.

  How was it that she could make him think of home when he was thousands of miles away in a foreign country surrounded by the enemy?

  He looked at her digging in the dirt under her own tent, so engrossed in her work that she seemed oblivious of the world around her, and reminded himself that he stood just a few feet away from one of the people his country was fighting against.

  He scraped up another layer of dirt and enjoyed listening to her sing, until an odd sound drew his attention. He could have sworn he heard something hit the top of Sera’s canvas. He glanced skyward for any sign of an impending thunderstorm, but as far as he could see, there was only clear blue sky.

  Shrugging off the sound, he bent once more to his task. Then he heard it again, the plunk of something hitting the tent, followed by a soft tumbling sound as the object rolled down the slant of the canvas to drop with a clunk on the ground.

  A bird? Hail? He glanced around to see where it might have come from, but he and Sera appeared to be completely alone in this area of the ruins.

&nbs
p; He shook his head and went back to work. All the non-stop digging had him hearing things now. Or so he thought, until he heard it again.

  Plunk… rattle, rattle, rattle… cherchunk.

  He looked toward Sera’s tent and noticed that she had heard it, too. She’d stopped singing and was softly humming the tune. Her movement was almost imperceptible. She didn’t even look up as she set down her trowel and scooped up a handful of small pebbles.

  David waited, curious to see what she was going to do.

  Plunk… rattle, rattle…

  The rock hadn’t hit the ground before she bounded out of the trench and started flinging pebbles at a low section of wall on the edge of the dig site. Jumping back into the pit, she flung herself on the ground as a barrage of small stones came flying back in her direction.

  In her prone position, Sera was safe from the onslaught, but David felt the sharp stings on his thighs and arms as he was pelted with tiny rocks.

  “Hey! What the—?”

  Giggles erupted from behind the crumbling wall. Three young boys jumped out from hiding and proceeded to run around the site, whooping like little wild Indians.

  Sera hopped out of the hole and grabbed the slowest boy by his dirty shirttail, wrapping her arms around him and imprisoning him in a big hug.

  “Got you now!”

  “No, Serafina. No kisses.” The boy struggled to get away, while the other two stopped to laugh at their comrade’s plight.

  She tried to kiss him on either cheek, then finally settled for placing one on the top of his ruffled hair and released him.

  “What took you so long to find me?”

  “We didn’t even know you had moved until we saw Olympia working with Giovanni instead of you. He wouldn’t tell us where you were, but Heberto did.”

  Her smile momentarily disappeared, her eyes narrowing as she glanced down the road in the direction of her old dig site. “That’s because, hopefully, Giovanni has no idea where I am.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t,” the second boy chimed in. “Heberto told us to keep it a secret.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah, Giovanni’s a coglione,” the third boy grumbled as he kicked at a rock with the toe of his worn shoe.