by Angela Petch
Massimo let Freddie off the leash as soon as they arrived at the red house, and Alba watched as the dog seemed to take on a new lease of life as he scurried around the green piazza, nosing the grass, stopping at a tree for a while to scent whatever creature had already passed that way, cocking his leg to claim the territory once again. Massimo had removed his vast coat, and when she asked him if that was wise, he’d said, ‘Why do you think I agreed to wear it in the first place? The pockets, Alba, the pockets.’ He pulled a small package wrapped in a paper serviette from an inside pocket and called Freddie over before placing a small steak on the ground. ‘I sneaked it from my plate at lunch.’
* * *
Later on, Massimo and Alba sat down by the river fishing from the weir. With the aid of a stout walking stick he retrieved from the house, which, he told her, he’d made from elm wood years ago, his other hand clasped tightly in hers, they’d managed the steep path that led down from the village. Freddie trailed behind them, dawdling frequently to mark his territory. On the way to the river, Massimo had taken her into a copse of pines and led her to a spot where a couple of porcini mushrooms were growing at the base of one of the trees. ‘This will be our starter for our supper feast tonight,’ he said. ‘Che spettacolo! I always used to find them here and luck is with us today, too.’ His joy was infectious, and they did a high five.
Later, his smile again lit up his features as he organised himself at the river, placing a wicker basket in the shallows and then casting out his line into the pool.
‘Eee, what more could we ask for? I am in heaven today,’ he said, as he waited for the first nibble.
‘Well, I’m hoping you actually catch some trout. That salad we made won’t fill us up.’
‘Be patient, Alba, “All good things come to those who wait”. Abbi un po’ di pazienza!’
One of the first things they’d done together after Alba had opened the shutters was to harvest wild plants and flowers for a salad that Massimo longed to eat again. As well as young tips of dandelions, there were leaves of bladderwort, or silene, as he called them, and to Alba’s surprise, he plucked one of the roses growing near the house to add to the salad. ‘I planted this for Lucia. She loved her flowers,’ he said, mixing in the petals with marigold and wild mallow flowers, before sprinkling the floral mix onto the green leaves.
‘How you must miss her,’ she said. ‘I only knew James for five years, but it was hard when he died.’
He stopped mixing the salad and gazed through the window. ‘Si, cara mia. We were together for many years. Almost fifty.’
Alba hugged him and then packed the colourful salad into a plastic container for their al fresco lunch, adding oil, vinegar and salt from his store cupboard to season it later.
She made up their beds with sheets and blankets that Anna had packed into the car. ‘Take these, Alba,’ Ma had said, ‘his bed linen will need airing. And if you need anything at all, whatever time of night, phone us. We’re only down the river. He’s a very old man.’
Everybody seemed more concerned than she was. He was frail, but being back in his hamlet seemed to rejuvenate him. All that mattered to her was that Massimo enjoyed spending time in his old home.
Alba sketched him as he fished and decided to use it as a draft for a watercolour she would complete at home. She hadn’t brought her paints along, and to achieve the effect of water, she needed her masking liquid. She also took photos on her phone to record other details: how the colours of the water changed, the way it turned frothy-white as it cascaded over the weir. Three dragonflies flitted from a fallen branch, skimming across the surface, and she hoped to recreate their iridescent sparkle.
‘More pictures of me?’ he asked.
‘I want to paint you, Massimo, and I need to remember the details for later. Do you mind?’
He repeated what he’d said on another occasion, about making him look more handsome in her pictures.
‘What about if I recorded you talking, too? For Egidio’s exhibition? What do you think of that?’
‘So that other people could listen?’ he asked, looking away from his float. ‘I wouldn’t like that, Alba. Not at all. I don’t mind talking to you, but the details of my life are not for the whole world to know.’
‘I understand, Massimo.’
And she did. She was honoured that he felt able to share his story with her. In truth, she wouldn’t want her own details recorded for others to listen to and critique. It wasn’t as if she’d done anything out of the ordinary: she hadn’t climbed the highest mountain or invented a life-saving drug. She was just a young woman stumbling along in life. And most likely Massimo felt the same about himself, although many people wouldn’t think that way about his story at all. The war had churned the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Massimo’s cry of delight as he plucked his rod from the water. Freddie barked, his tail wagging vigorously as a fish wriggled and silvered in the sunlight. Alba watched as her old friend gently and expertly removed the hook from its mouth and stowed it in the basket that rested in the shallows.
‘Two more of these fellows and we’ll have our meal,’ he pronounced, lighting up a cigarette and blowing smoke into the air.
‘Bravo, Massimo!’ she said, snapping another photo of him, recording the happiness on his face.
‘We should really have a permit to do this,’ he said, ‘so don’t show that photo to everybody. I used to have success when I tickled trout, but the water is too cold for me to stay in the river now. When I think how many hours I have spent, bent over the water, waiting for the right time to put my hands around a trout hiding under a rock, soothing it by gently stroking its belly until it relaxed into my grasp.’
He caught one more and they decided two were enough. Together they collected dry twigs and larger pieces of driftwood to make a fire on the riverbank to cook the fish. She looked away as he dispatched them by banging their heads against a stone and he laughed at her. ‘You wouldn’t be so squeamish if you’d been hungry. Needs must,’ he said. ‘Lucia wasn’t squeamish like you. Not at all.’
With his pocketknife, he cut two finger-width lengths of willow, stripped off their leaves with one movement and used them to spear the fish. ‘To make it easier to turn in the flames,’ he explained.
Hunks of toscano bread, charred fish, Massimo’s special salad, all washed down with a couple of beers that had been cooling in the river, made one of the best picnics Alba had ever eaten.
‘Even better than my mother’s, and that’s saying something,’ she said to Massimo as he sat on a flat rock, his faithful Freddie next to him, and she lay back on the grass, soaking up the midday sun.
‘And better and cheaper than a restaurant,’ he remarked. ‘We never had the money, me and Lucia, to eat in those places. And she wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. She didn’t much like mixing with people. She was happiest when she was in the wild.’
He yawned and she suggested they make their way back to the house. Tanya had told her he would need a short nap after lunch. They passed two wild fruit trees as they slowly climbed the path, and he stopped to point out tiny pears and apples. ‘They’ll be ready in October. They’re excellent for storing away for winter. I remember my mother used to dry them. They were our sweets as children, and she’d put them at the bottom of our Christmas stockings. Children nowadays wouldn’t be satisfied with such simple gifts, but for us, they were a treat.’
When he’d got his breath back, they continued. He grumbled about being an old man, telling her how he used to sprint up and down this path.
‘You don’t do too badly, Massimo,’ she said, squeezing his hand that she held to support him up the slope.
Back at the house, she fetched an old lounger from the storeroom and grabbed a blanket to cover him up. He felt the cold, Tanya had warned.
The sun was at its warmest at this time of day, so she arranged the improvised bed for him in the shade of the walnut tree, tucking him up lik
e a child.
‘If I was forty years younger, I’d marry you,’ he murmured, before falling asleep almost immediately.
In the house she found a broom and a rag and set to removing as much dust as she could from the furniture and walls. She worked out how to light the old Ariston boiler for hot water and washed up the cups she’d left last time they were here. Every now and again she popped out to check on her charge. He slept for two hours.
‘Such dreams I had, cara,’ he said, when she later took him out a cup of sweet lemon tea. Ma had baked a cake for them to enjoy – a fruit cake this time.
‘I remember Mrs Spink used to make this,’ he said. ‘And scones, and jam made from rosehips which she gathered from the hedgerows. I used to enjoy her cakes very much. And rice pudding. Tell your mother grazie, but cut me only a thin slice. I remember it’s very rich.’
She sat down on a chair next to him and he said, ‘Tonight, we shall light a fire in the hearth and tell stories, like we used to do with friends at veglie after work was done. I’ve been racking my brains about some of the things Lucia told me, and that name you mentioned the other day… it sparked a memory in my old head.’
Alba’s ears pricked up.
‘That boy you talked about. Basilio Gelina… We used to call him Zoppo, “the lame one”, when we were at school,’ Massimo said. ‘We called him that because he suffered from polio. It was cruel of us really, but children are. His mother died giving birth to him. Nobody knew who his father was, and his grandmother brought him up. She was a tough woman, and she taught him to be tough. None of us liked him much.’
‘What happened to him? Did he have a family?’
‘He died in the war, apparently. And there was nobody else in the family. The line stopped with him.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s anybody around now that would know more about him?’
Massimo shrugged. ‘Lucia told me some things about what went on. But it’s such a long time ago, Alba. I need to think.’
She touched his arm. ‘I don’t want to upset you.’
It was hard to fathom the look on his face and she kept quiet, feeling she was intruding too much, but curious at the same time.
Breaking his silence, Massimo turned to her, his eyes glistening. ‘Such a lot happened back then. Lucia confided in me eventually. I haven’t talked or thought about it for years and years. But maybe now the time is right. My poor Lucia,’ he said, his voice full of emotion. ‘Poverina.’
Eighteen
Tuscany, 1944
Lucia waited anxiously on the following Sunday, hoping that Florian might come along. He’d told her he might have time off on that day, and she wanted to warn him that they must be careful not to be seen together. Her father had beaten her when she’d announced that she had met and talked with a German soldier and shown her parents the scarf he’d given her. He’d stood up from the supper table and removed his belt there and then, walloping her until she had cried for him to stop.
‘Go to your room and stay there,’ he’d shouted. ‘How could a daughter of mine do such a foolish thing? Our friends are being killed every day by these butchers. The whole town of Civitella was slaughtered only a couple of months ago. And round here, old people, young people, babies in arms, women working in the fields, children stepping on mines… they die each day because of these monsters. A group was killed in reprisal only the other day up in Badia Tedalda: Letizia Mastacchi, Erminia, Gino Pandolfi… you know them all. And a daughter of mine wants to fraternise with a German soldier. It beggars belief.’
Her mother did nothing to stop the beating, shaking her head at Lucia and wailing as she wrung her hands. ‘What will people think? What will become of us if they find out?’ she kept saying.
‘But he’s different,’ Lucia said, fending off her father’s blows. ‘He’s a kind man. He gave me his scarf because I was cold.’
‘Stupid girl, scema,’ her father shouted. ‘He gave you his scarf because he wanted your body. Get out of my sight, you tart. Puttana Eva…’
She’d sobbed herself to sleep that night, and kept out of her father’s way for the next few days. Her mother came up to her room in the morning and applied calendula ointment to the weals on her back and shoulders. ‘You’ve always been high-spirited, Lucia, but this is plain madness.’
‘But Mamma, he was kind to me. And a gentleman.’
‘You’re so young and innocent, my child. He is the enemy.’
Lucia started to cry again. ‘I hate this war. I hate having to live like a frightened rabbit all the time.’
‘You have to think of others, not only yourself. And one day Massimo will return. This German soldier will go back to his own country. Forget about him.’
‘Massimo has been gone for five years, Mamma. I shall be an old woman by the time he returns, which he probably won’t. Why would he want to after he’s been in Inghilterra for so long? I want to live now, Mamma.’
‘Don’t let your father hear you talk like this. Or anybody else. People have big ears, and they will report you if they think you’re with a German.’
‘I’m not with a German. I was talking to him. That’s all.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘You have to forget you ever met him. Come down now and help me clean out the hens.’
But Lucia couldn’t forget about Florian. She’d enjoyed the hours they’d spent together. For a little while, this kind stranger, so tall and blond and handsome, had lit up her boring life. He was like an ancient warrior she had seen in her schoolbook, his helmet shining like a Greek soldier’s. The thought of him filled her days.
She waited for Florian for two hours at the side of the road, but he never came.
* * *
The next time she saw him was when she was queuing for milk rations. Their remaining cow had been requisitioned by the Tedeschi. A long line of people with containers stretched around the piazza, waiting for what they could get from the latteria. Lucia was near the back, hoping the milk wouldn’t run out before her turn came. Florian passed her on his way to drink coffee at the bar. He stopped, clicked his heels, took the jug from her hands and went to fill it in the shop. Lucia turned as red as a prawn as all eyes fixed on her. Her neighbours whispered to each other behind their hands when Florian handed her the brimming jug, the eyes of Giacinta spiteful enough to curdle the milk. Not even acknowledging him with a smile, Lucia took it and left without saying anything, spilling some of the precious liquid as she hurried away.
Later that afternoon, while she was sitting outside her house in Tramarecchia, helping her mother repair a willow basket, Giacinta and her sister Agata wandered over.
‘So, what makes your daughter so special to the Tedeschi, Maria Grazia?’ Giacinta asked. ‘The milk was finished by the time it came to us. Have you any left to share?’
‘It was sour already,’ Lucia replied. ‘Mamma is using it to make a small round of cheese.’
‘Next time ask your boyfriend to fill up our jugs too.’ Agata smirked. ‘Or do we have to do something special to earn it?’ She gave an exaggerated wiggle of her hips as she walked on.
‘What are they talking about?’ Lucia’s mother asked. ‘What did they mean?’
‘They are cats,’ Lucia said, ‘but I was very embarrassed. That German soldier I told you about… he took my container to the front of the milk queue.’
Maria Grazia put down the basket and shook her head. ‘Gesù Cristo… You need to be careful, foolish girl. Can’t you see what it looks like?’
‘It wasn’t my fault he decided to help. I didn’t ask him.’
‘And why did you lie about the milk going sour?’
‘Mamma, why should we give any to those cats? What have they ever done for us? I’ve seen them steal figs off our tree so many times. And tomatoes and salad from Babbo’s orto.’
‘Nevertheless, you need to think more about how you behave.’
‘Behave? I do nothing wrong. Sometimes I wish I did, then life would not be so t
edious.’
This comment earned her a slap on the face, and Lucia walked off in a huff down to the river. A light rain began to fall as, knees hunched to her chest, she watched fish dart about in the shallows. She wished she were free like them to swim in and out of the current, without a care in the world. Drops on the willows clung like jewels to the slender branches in the evening sunshine, and she looked for a rainbow to appear. But there was none.
* * *
Three mornings later, she found him sitting in the meadow puffing on his pipe when she arrived with the sheep.
‘Don’t do that to me again,’ she said. ‘What you did caused trouble. And in front of the whole village.’
‘What did I do?’ he asked, pulling the pipe from his mouth, looking genuinely puzzled.
‘The milk… people wondered why you were doing me a favour.’
‘Ach! Entschuldigung… I’m so sorry! I never thought.’
She smacked the sheep away and stood near him. ‘I am so fed up with everything to do with this war. Everybody is suffering. People die, go missing, there is not enough food. We have to make do and mend with these rags.’ She pulled at her patched shirt. ‘Nothing is straightforward any more. Everybody is divided, friends and family pitted against each other. We thought the war was over last year when Mussolini went. But everything is worse. It is all hateful.’ She picked up a stone from the ground and threw it far away across the grass. ‘I feel as if my life is on hold.’ She sat down and looked at him. ‘Tell me something to cheer me up.’
He took out a salame and a slab of dark chocolate from his knapsack. ‘Will this make your family happy at least?’
‘No. There will be a thousand questions about where I got it, why I got it, who gave it to me. What did I do to get it?’ She threw another stone.
He continued to hold out the goods and she eventually took them, wrapping them carefully in the cloth which contained her hunk of dry bread and rind of cheese. ‘Thank you, anyway,’ she said. ‘I will invent a story about finding them along the path. If they believe me, it will be a small miracle. How do you say thank you in your language?’