by Angela Petch
She turned to look at him where he was sitting behind her at the table. ‘Do you remember those times, Massimino? When we used to play there?’
He took a sharp breath at the affectionate use of his name.
‘Of course I remember,’ he said. ‘Even though it seems a long time ago.’
‘Another life,’ she said.
He made no attempt to fill the silence, somehow understanding it was she who had to talk. He got up to prepare them both a hot, sweet cup of chicory coffee. She took it from him, folding her hands around his mother’s cup. ‘The pots we took up there are all broken now. I use an old tin for drinks. Mostly I drink infusions from mint I gather near the stream.’ She drained the cup. ‘But this is good.’ She held it out for more and he obliged.
‘I’m being lazy today, Massimino. Give me time and I’ll work hard for you, I promise. I can cook and clean. I’ll look after you.’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ he told her. ‘But there’s plenty of room for both of us. Until you’re ready to move back and I can patch up your old house.’
‘Never. I shall never live in that house again.’ She spat out her words. ‘I’d prefer to remain forever in my cave than return to those four walls.’
She grew agitated, pacing about the room, clenching and unclenching her hands until he told her gently, ‘Sit by the fire again, Lucia. I’ll prepare us a bite to eat for later. Do you like minestrone? I can throw in some pasta, too.’ It was like having to distract a child or an old person; the way he’d listened to his mother soothing his grandmother when she went funny in the head.
Eventually she stopped moving about and he went to the door and called to Lupino, letting him off his chain and encouraging him into the kitchen. The young wolf went straight over to Lucia by the fire and pushed up against her, nuzzling his head into her lap as she stroked the fur on his head and talked softly to the animal. Massimo had remembered how she had calmed down when she’d greeted Lupino by the river.
‘If he’s to stay indoors,’ Massimo said, ‘we need to treat him for fleas.’
‘Rue, fennel, wormwood and rosemary,’ she said immediately. ‘My mother’s remedy. I know where they all grow, and you have a rosemary bush by your door.’
As she stroked the cub, she started to sing the song he’d heard before.
‘What language is that?’ he asked after a while.
‘It’s German,’ she said. ‘Florian taught me the words.’
Without lifting her head, she said, ‘If we are going to be spending time together, then we need to tell each other our stories. Tell me about your time in Inghilterra. Was it hard, Massimino?’
While the mist swirled around the house and the day’s shadows lengthened, he opened up to his childhood friend, telling her about his time in Libya, not sparing any details to this girl. It was obvious to him that she understood about suffering. He described his journey to England, the camp in Suffolk and his time on the Spinks’ farm. When he came to tell her about Molly, he was open about how he’d slept with her. He talked about the English girl with fondness and finished off by telling Lucia that he had never been in love with her. ‘We were two lonely people who needed each other at that time. I do think of her occasionally, and wonder how she is getting on. I might write her another letter soon.’
He added fresh wood to the fire when he had finished, and fetched ingredients for minestrone soup for their supper. Side by side they chopped celery, carrots, tomatoes and onions and he added a jar of borlotti beans from his mother’s store of bottled produce.
‘Wait,’ Lucia said, and she popped outside with a knife, returning with a handful of parsley and basil from Massimo’s vegetable garden.
‘How did you know where to find those?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been watching your house for a while. I wasn’t sure it was you at first. You’ve changed. You’re a man now.’
‘The years of war have changed us all,’ he said.
While the soup simmered in a large pan over the fire, he fetched a bottle of wine and two glasses.
‘The wine you left me was the first I’d drunk in over two years,’ she told him. ‘It went straight to my head and helped me sleep.’
He poured her a half measure and she pushed her glass against the bottle for him to fill it. ‘If I’m going to tell you what happened to me,’ she said, ‘I’ll need more than half a glass.’
Twenty-Nine
Tuscany, 1944
Lucia dozed on and off in the meadow in the shade of the pines, while the sheep fed on the grass, their bells tinkling rhythmically. She’d not slept for the past two days because of worry for Florian. She’d seen the posters. He was a wanted man.
Claps of thunder woke her and Primo started to bark. The thunder rumbled on and on until she realised it was artillery fire, broken up with the rattling of bullets from machine guns. There had never been such a long, sustained attack before. An occasional shot from a sniper would ring out over the mountains, or a machine gun might be aimed rather pointlessly at a passing aeroplane, the bullets never reaching their target, but she had never heard such an extended exchange. It was too close for comfort. She called for Primo and ran for the shelter of the woods, curling herself up by the dog’s side, wondering how long the battle would last. The sounds were coming from the top of the valley, above the Sansepolcro road. As the shadows lengthened, the firing stopped. She slipped out of the woods and called Primo to gather the sheep and, keeping to the tracks, they hurried home.
Her mother was pacing the kitchen and when Lucia entered, she screamed and pulled her into her arms. ‘Dio mio, thank God you’re safe. I can’t find your father anywhere. He told me he was going to Badia to buy twine. I fear he’s been caught up in the fighting.’
‘Mamma, don’t worry. He’s probably in the osteria, keeping his head down with his friends while all this goes on. Don’t worry! Let’s make ourselves a cup of coffee and pour in some grappa. Calm down, Mamma. He’ll be back soon, you’ll see.’
But as the evening progressed, Lucia became increasingly concerned, and she ran out of things to say to placate her mother. ‘Help me prepare polenta for when he returns,’ she said, wondering if he ever would.
It was past eleven o’clock when the door was pushed open by Lucia’s father, carrying the limp body of her cousin Moreno. He laid the young man down near the fireside and called to the women to tend to the large wound in Moreno’s side.
‘He’s not the only one,’ he said, knocking back a large tumbler of wine. ‘Plenty dead on both sides.’ He turned to Lucia. ‘Leave your mother to tend to your cousin and come with me. There are some with worse injuries. Bring clean rags and medicine.’
Lucia scooped the cotton bag of worn sheets and towels they used for cleaning, as well as two jars of ointment and salves from the top kitchen shelf and hurried after her father, who pulled her up behind him onto his mule.
A full moon lit their way up to the little chapel of Rofelle, and Lucia clung to her father as he spurred the mule to a trot up the stony path.
‘Signor Florian’s information that he provided on his first meeting with us was correct,’ he told her, above the clip-clop of the mule’s hooves. ‘Extra Tedeschi reinforcements had indeed been called in and we ambushed them along the road near Colcellalto. But there were more of them than us. The raid on the munitions store must have riled the bastardi. We lost eight, and there are as many injured.’
There were other women in the chapel when they arrived. Among them were Robertino’s wife and his two daughters, Agata and Giacinta, busy cleaning wounds and applying bandages to a couple of young men lying on the stone floor. They glared at her and told her to tend to another lad who was slumped against the altar, blood pouring from his head. The wound was not as bad as it first looked, and she was pleased to be able to help, dabbing the gash and winding a strip of sheeting around his head. ‘You’ll live,’ she said. She recognised him as one of the baker’s sons. Once upon a time they’d attende
d the same primary school. He smiled shyly and she squeezed his hand. ‘I’ll let your mother know you’re safe,’ she muttered.
The lad next to him had lost an arm and would need more help than she could offer. They would have to get him to hospital quickly if he were to live through the night. She called her father over and asked for help in holding the boy down and applied a tourniquet with more of her sheeting, the ripping of the material as she tore it into strips doing nothing to drown out his agonised cries. She doubted he would live. She watched as her father pulled a bottle of grappa from his pocket and fed some to the boy, who coughed and spluttered as the fiery liquid hit the back of his throat. ‘Hopefully that will deaden the pain,’ he said, and then he told his daughter to go into the vestry where there was another wounded man to tend to.
She passed the body of a woman, half covered by an altar cloth. One arm was flung out, the fingers missing on her hand and blood dripping steadily onto the floor. Lucia bent down to mop it up and, horrified, she put her hand to her mouth when she saw the red scarf – the symbol that Rossa had once told her was her sign of protest against the fascisti. She fell to her knees, automatically making the sign of the cross over her friend’s body. Then she gently removed the bloodstained headscarf and tied it around her own hair, whispering, ‘Addio, Chiara.’ That’s her real name, Lucia thought. And all the disguises in the world cooked up for resistance should not have to extinguish a person’s real identity at the end. ‘You were so brave. Addio.’
Tears blinding her, she groped her way into the vestry, where Padre Agostino was praying over a man on the floor. He looked up as Lucia entered and shook his head. ‘This one has dreadful injuries,’ he muttered. ‘You’re better off looking after the others.’ The man wore a pale khaki jacket, like Florian’s. She didn’t think anything of it at first; she knew most partigiani wore a hodgepodge of garments, whatever they could lay their hands on. Maybe this partisan had been mistaken for a German in the crossfire. She turned to go, and then she heard her name whispered and she rushed to the man’s side. Florian opened his eyes and she pulled his hand to her mouth, covering it with kisses. Her eyes travelled down his torso and she steeled herself, not wanting her dismay to show.
‘You’re going to be fine, amore mio,’ she lied, knowing that nobody could possibly survive such injuries.
‘Meine Liebe,’ he whispered. She bent nearer, trying to catch his words, but he didn’t say anything more; his eyes stared up at her from somewhere she couldn’t reach.
The priest pulled her away. ‘He’s gone,’ he said, closing Florian’s eyes and covering his face with a cloth. ‘He must have thought you were somebody else. You gave him what comfort you could, now go and tend to our own.’
Lucia’s howls echoed round the vestry as she shook Florian and shouted, ‘Stay with me, stay with me.’ She pulled away the cloth and cradled his face in her hands, saying his name over and over, his lifeblood soaking into her clothes. Her father came to her and dragged her away as the other women crowded round the door to the little room, their faces filled with disgust.
‘It’s the shock,’ Doriano told them, trying to find an excuse for Lucia’s reaction, ‘it’s the injuries… she’s not used to such carnage,’ he stammered. ‘My fault… I wasn’t thinking when I asked her to help. I thought she could cope.’ He was sure he hadn’t convinced them.
‘Wait here for me,’ he whispered to Lucia, wrapping his jacket around his daughter, who was shaking with shock. ‘Don’t open your mouth again. If I’d realised it was him, I’d never have sent you to nurse him.’
* * *
Back at home, fit for nothing in her grief, Lucia remained in shock for the next few hours, trembling and shivering, never-ending tears coursing down her cheeks. Her mother took the sheep up to the meadow the next day for her, and her father disappeared, saying he needed to sort something out. Moreno had died in the night and his body lay on the stable floor, waiting for his family to collect him for burial.
Alone, Lucia sat on the stone bench outside the door, her back against the wall, warm from the mild autumn, although she was cold through and through. That was when the three women came for her.
They dragged her into the centre of the little square in Tramarecchia and ripped off her clothes. Despite her struggling, three were no match for one. Primo, tied up in his kennel, strained at his chain and barked and howled while Agata pulled the red headscarf from Lucia’s head and, with a pair of sheep shears, cut off her plait, laughing at her as she snipped at her scalp, telling her no man would ever look at her again once she had finished. Giacinta, encouraged by her mother, slopped a bucket of cow manure over Lucia’s naked body. ‘I expect your German gentleman gave you perfume and chocolates. Have some of this instead,’ she jeered. Their mother tied a rope around her waist and pulled her like a beast around the square, shouting at everybody to come and look at the German’s whore.
‘He was a good man,’ shouted Lucia. ‘He helped the partigiani. Ask my father.’
The women slapped and kicked her as she said this. ‘Because of you, they killed Moreno and many others. Because of you, there will be more reprisals. Shut up, you cow! We should rip out your tongue.’
They tied her to a chair in the middle of the square and left her naked, spitting at her as they walked past her on their way to fetch water from the fountain. She raised her head in defiance and spat back, but she wished she had died with Florian on the cold vestry floor.
* * *
As dusk fell, her father returned. Lucia hung her head and sobbed, helpless to cover her nakedness from him. She strained at the ropes tying back her arms, half-dead from cold and sorrow. With a roar, he strode over, pulling the knife from his belt, cutting the knots to release her, and once again he removed his jacket to cover her body. ‘Who did this?’ he shouted, but nobody came out to respond. He thumped on his neighbour’s door, one arm around his daughter. ‘Who did this to you?’ he repeated.
From behind closed shutters, her attackers watched, but nobody came out to face him.
‘Babbo, leave it,’ Lucia said. ‘Take me indoors.’
The tinkle of the ram’s bell leading his flock announced the return of her mother, and Doriano went to warn her about what had happened. Taking one look at her daughter, her mother hurried inside and added water to the pot on the fire and pulled down the zinc bath from its hook.
She washed Lucia, gently rubbing rosemary oil into her scalp. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll even up your hair. You’ll see – it will soon grow again, figlia mia. In the meantime, you can cover it with one of my scarves.’
To her husband she said, ‘Why did they do this to our child?’
‘Because of the German,’ he said. ‘They don’t understand. They will never understand. Lucia was right. He was a good man, and his information helped us.’
‘But there will be reprisals. You’ll see. This is just the start.’
‘Hush, woman. I will explain tomorrow to our neighbours. Tonight, we look after Lucia.’
Her mother rubbed some of her precious Marsiglia soap into Lucia’s sore skin and treated her like a baby that night, putting her to bed, singing to her as if she was a newborn, but Lucia was numb to it all.
Lucia waltzed in the arms of Florian. The ballroom was vast; mirrors reflected candlelight from the silver holders on polished tables, and she caught sight of her long floating dress of spun cream silk. It clung to her body as she danced with her handsome German husband. A single red rose was pinned in her hair. Florian had bowed and handed it to her before the wedding dance, and he wore a matching corsage in the lapel of his black smoking jacket. They were alone, save for a group of three violinists in the far corner who played a haunting version of the lullaby he had taught her, and as they moved together, he sang the words softly in her ear.
As she danced to the dreamy music, her mind switched to a different scene. It was the Christmas vigil, and she was seated by the hearth, watching flames lick the festive yule log. She started to
cough as smoke filled her lungs. She woke to hear her mother scream: ‘Lucia, Lucia, get out! There’s a fire. Get out!’
Instinct took over. Her father had run them through their escape plan so often in case the Tedeschi came on one of their raids. Her own route was through the bedroom window, and a leap from there onto the roof of the pigsty below. She shoved her feet into the stout boots waiting under the chair, pulled on her brother’s old coat from the hook behind the door and within a minute she was outside. Huge flames were eating already at the roof timbers and, through gaps in the swirling smoke, she made out half a dozen German soldiers, reflections from the fire glinting on their helmets. Her neighbours cowered behind the trees. She heard Robertino shout frantically for her parents to get out and saw the look of horror on his daughters’ faces before they turned to flee for the safety of their house. And then there was a loud cracking noise, followed by a volley of gunfire and Lucia bent low, running, running, running and zigzagging for her life through the trees along the path that led up the mountain.
It took half an hour to reach the cave: the place where they had gone as children to play, the place where she had made love for the first time with her beloved Florian, where she had lain in his arms and planned a future. Lucia dropped to the ground, heaving to catch her breath, sobbing in terror. She doubted her parents had escaped the burning house; she wished now that she had perished with them, cursed herself for following the instinct that had made her run. What was the point of anything now that she had lost all the people whom she loved best in the world? Her heart was broken.
She sobbed herself to sleep, waking at dawn to the distant sound of a cock crowing in the village she had abandoned. She was cold and her eyes stung. She was thirsty and hungry, but she remained on the dirt floor of the cave, wondering how long it would take to starve to death. Death could not come soon enough.