In Love and War

by Alex Preston

  ‘You stay here,’ he says. ‘I’m going to wander along and see if I can see anything.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  He walks in the darkness thrown by the buildings, his hand in his pocket, his fingers wrapped around the cold metal of the gun. He stops for a while at the midpoint of the Lungarno, where he can see both sets of guards. The two on the Ponte della Vittoria are sitting down on the stone wall playing whist, holding their cards inside their jackets to shield them from the rain. He stands there, watching, for another ten minutes. He wonders how long Bruno will wait before giving up. He decides to make his way along to the piazza in front of San Frediano. He keeps himself hidden against the dark bulk of the buildings, stepping out into the street to avoid the cone of light beneath a streetlamp. As he’s there, in the middle of the road, he hears a door slam shut ahead of him.

  He scurries further along, pressing against the damp stone of the next building. He sees a man walking towards him, hands in the pockets of an overcoat, stopping for a moment to light a cigarette and then walking on. The bells of Santo Spirito begin to strike eight. Suddenly, appearing through the mist behind the man, a figure, running, a gun glinting in the streetlight. The assailant lets out a high cry, audible over the bells, holds the pistol out straight-armed, and then nothing. Esmond watches with horror as the man turns around to face his pursuer. Elio looks down at his gun, pulls at it and slaps it against his knee in frustration as the man turns again and begins to run lumberingly down the Lungarno away from Elio, towards Esmond.

  In the seconds it takes for San Frediano to ring out – a single peal and then eight deep notes – Esmond has drawn the revolver from his pocket and stepped from the shadows. The sprinting Colonel Gobbi doesn’t see him until it’s too late. He stumbles into Esmond’s arms, the cigarette falling from his mouth. Esmond holds him up with his left arm and relief passes across the man’s face.

  ‘Aiuto,’ he says, ‘c’è un pazzo qui—’

  There have been five strikes of San Frediano’s bell above them. On the sixth, Esmond pushes the revolver up into Gobbi’s ribs and flicks off the safety catch. The Colonel’s eyes open very wide. On the seventh strike Esmond pulls the trigger, again on the eighth. Gobbi slumps forward, giving a tight spasm. Esmond lays him down carefully in the shadowy lee of the building, looking towards first one bridge, then the other. The guards have heard nothing over the sound of the bells. Elio is still standing in the road, watching. He walks slowly towards Esmond. Together they look down at the slumped figure. Then Elio shakes his head, as if awakening from a dream.

  ‘You need to go,’ he says. ‘Run to the piazza, Alessandro will look after you.’

  ‘No,’ says Esmond. ‘I’m not leaving Ada again.’ He starts back along the Lungarno towards the Ponte alla Carraia. Elio runs to keep up with him. ‘You need to get rid of the gun,’ he hisses.

  Esmond shakes his head. ‘I’m fucked if I’m caught either way. I’ll keep the gun.’ They have almost reached the passageway when, ahead of them, the light of a German Kübelwagen appears, sweeping from side to side along the Lungarno.

  ‘Quick,’ Elio says, trying to drag Esmond back the way they have come.

  ‘No,’ he says again.

  Ada is standing in the shadows of the passageway, her skin dimly glowing. ‘Quick,’ Esmond says. The three of them move down the passageway in single file, coming out on the Borgo San Frediano. Esmond tries to lead them back towards Santo Spirito, but Elio hesitates.

  ‘Wait,’ he says. Esmond feels an urge to wipe Elio’s glasses, misted with rain. ‘They’ll find the body any minute. There’ll be Germans crawling all over the place. We’ll never make it all the way up to the villa.’

  ‘What about Antonio’s place?’ Ada says.

  They walk swiftly along the road, again in the shadows. The rain is starting to drum the street, casting a misty scrim before them. Just as they turn up towards the Ponte della Vittoria, there is the sound of a police siren. Soon, a second joins it. ‘They’ve found the body,’ Elio says. They begin to run. When they reach the river, they look along to see half a dozen searchlights illuminating the Lungarno. Soldiers are spewing across the bridge from the north, their feet rhythmic on the cobblestones.

  Outside Antonio’s apartment, they pull the bell and wait. Nothing. One of the German Kübelwagens is moving up the Lungarno towards them. ‘Fuck,’ Elio says. Esmond looks along the river and sees two figures moving quickly, keeping just out of reach of the searchlight that is oscillating first one way, then the other, on top of the car. The figures run across the traffic circle at the bottom of the Ponte della Vittoria and come stumbling up to the front door of the building. Antonio fumbles with his key-ring, gets the key in the latch and the five of them spill inside. Esmond slams the door shut with his foot. They hear the slow rumble of the car pass by, and then they are all laughing, breathless, staggering up the stairs.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Elio says.

  ‘What a blast. Wowee!’ Tosca spreads happily back on the wall on the first landing.

  Esmond takes Ada’s hand and they come up last of all. She kisses him at the doorway and they go inside.

  ‘It was horrifying, but distant,’ he’s saying, much later, as they sit by the window, a bottle of limoncello on the table in front of them. ‘As if it wasn’t me pulling the trigger, but me in a novel, a film. Do you see what I’m getting at?’ Tosca is curled asleep in an armchair in the corner. Antonio is cooking at the small stove in his kitchen. Elio is staring out into the night, watching the lights move along the Lungarno.

  ‘We did it, that’s what matters,’ Elio says. ‘The bastards will take us seriously from now on.’

  An hour later, they are all drunk and dead tired. Elio is slumped across the table, sleeping. Antonio insists that Esmond and Ada take his bed and stretches out on the floor by Tosca’s feet. Their faces together on the pillow, Esmond tries to recite ‘God’s Grandeur’ to Ada, but falls asleep somewhere in the first line. They are woken every so often by police sirens. In the night, winds blow away the clouds and they wake to a dawn that is bright and still.

  23

  Bruno arrives at the apartment just after seven. Elio, rubbing his eyes, answers the door. Antonio is curled in the chair with Tosca in his lap. Esmond and Ada get up slowly and take turns washing in the sink. Bruno is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. His face bears none of the triumph that Esmond had expected.

  ‘Well done last night,’ he says grimly. ‘We did what we had to do.’

  ‘But––’ Esmond sits down opposite his friend.

  ‘But Alberti and Mangianello convened a special court in the night, after they found out about Gobbi, I mean. It was decided they should send a strong message to the Resistance. Five prisoners are being executed over in the Cascine this morning.’

  ‘Not Pretini––’ Ada says. Esmond’s eyes dart to the window and the park.

  ‘No, not yet. It would seem they think they can get more from him. But Oreste Ristori is one of them.’

  At ten o’clock sharp, the soldiers begin to arrive in the park across the river. The shooting range is swept of fallen leaves and then a Black Maria pulls up. Five men are dragged out, their hands cuffed. There is no crowd, just a group of Blackshirts and a single man in a dark suit who begins to scream and swear at the prisoners. Antonio comes back with a pair of binoculars. ‘That’s Gobbi’s brother,’ he says, touching the focus ring. ‘I’ve seen him around.’ The five men are tied to posts in front of the shooting range. ‘Alberti is there,’ Antonio continues, ‘and Mangianello.’ Now an ambulance with a lightning flash on the side pulls up.

  ‘That’s––’ Ada begins.

  ‘Carità. Yes.’ Antonio says.

  Gobbi’s brother continues to shout at the five prisoners, the harsh notes of his voice coming across the still waters of the river. ‘Can you make out any of the others?’ Bruno asks. ‘Let me look for a moment.’ He takes the binoculars. ‘There’s Luigi Pugi, Gino Mane
tti. I don’t know the other two. They’re not even partisans apart from Oreste. Just anarchists rounded up because the Germans don’t want troublemakers on the street. This is appalling, it’s criminal.’

  As the men are tied to their posts, Carità steps from the ambulance and embraces Alberti and Mangianello. Bruno points out Piero Koch, once as infamous in Rome as Carità in Florence. He is hunched and long-limbed, like a spider. Esmond watches the Blackshirts struggle to tie their ropes around Ristori’s enormous belly. Gobbi’s brother’s voice rises higher as Carità, Koch and three other Blackshirts take their positions facing the men. Over the harsh cries, though, another sound drifts out. Ristori is singing. As the Banda Carità raise their rifles to their shoulders, Ristori leads the five prisoners in the Internationale, although only Ristori’s voice can be heard over Gobbi’s brother’s screams. Esmond reaches his hand out in the air towards the man, towards the voice. ‘C’est la lutte finale / Groupons-nous et demain / L’Internationale / Sera le genre humain.’ Five shots. Five bodies slump forward, Ristori’s heavily enough that his ropes break and he tumbles into the sand. Esmond thinks of Mercedes Gomez, mud-streaked in a jungle clearing, the pictures on Ristori’s mantel, the things for which we live.

  Tosca is crying and Ada sits with her. Bruno shakes his head, lowering the binoculars. Elio’s face is set hard. Esmond, still looking down over the five bodies, their five murderers, sees Shelley sitting in the same park a hundred and twenty years ago, writing ‘Ode to the West Wind’. Very quietly, to himself, he mouths: ‘O Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

  24

  They spend Christmas at L’Ombrellino. The Professor comes up in the Bianchi with Bruno, the back loaded down with bottles of wine and food. Maria Luigia’s cousins have given them three chickens, there are carrots and potatoes from the garden. Alessandro has been brewing grappa in the caves at Monte Morello. He and Elio arrive on the Moto Guzzi with a rucksack full of alcohol. Maria Luigia turns up on a bicycle, her plump cheeks flushed from the cold, an enormous salami hanging around her neck, the chickens dangling from the handlebars. Gino Bartali and his wife also cycle up, while Antonio and Tosca, in evening dress, come late, as the chickens are being carved. Antonio’s hair has been carefully cut. He is cleanly shaven and smells of rose water.

  ‘I wouldn’t let him up here until he looked half-decent,’ Tosca says. She is wearing a long red dress and a red carnation in her hair.

  Esmond sits next to Alessandro at lunch, immaculate in his oyster-white suit. After they have eaten, they sip orzo coffee, leaning back in their chairs, and Esmond drapes a fraternal arm around his friend’s shoulder. ‘That was smashing,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve eaten too much.’ Alessandro opens the button at his waist. ‘I wish Pretini were here. It’s the only thing that spoils it, you know?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about him, too. What’s the chance he gives us away? Tells Carità the location of the camp, I mean.’

  ‘Pretini? Never. He may look like a playboy, but he’s a tough fucker.’

  ‘It’s pretty strange, this foppish hairdresser now a rebel leader. Only in Italy, I guess.’

  Alessandro offers Esmond a cigarette. He takes it and bends his head to the flame of his friend’s lighter. Alessandro lets out a stream of smoke with a sigh. ‘Guys like Pretini, they’re exceptional. It’s obvious why I’m fighting.’ He holds his hand up to his face, smiling. ‘If they don’t go after me because I’m half-Jewish, they’ll go after me because I’m half-black. I’m like a Christmas present to those fuckers, tick all the boxes.’ He laughs. ‘But Pretini, it’s all about idealism, honour. He says the Fascists, the Nazis, they offend his sense of decency. And he’s willing to die for that. I think that’s remarkable.’

  After lunch, they sit in front of the fire in the drawing room. The Professor raises a glass to Pretini. They have heard from Morandi, the doctor, who has been brought in to treat him at the Villa Triste, the apartment block in the via Bolognese whose upper floors are now the administrative headquarters of the SD. The Germans have been complaining about the screams coming from the basement rooms, so rumour has it. Pretini has refused to give Carità any information. His bright teeth have been ripped out, he has been thrown down a flight of stone stairs, fourteen bones broken in all, but still he will not speak. The Professor has taken Pretini’s wife and daughter – whose existence was kept from all but a handful of friends, bad for business with the assorted Marchesas and Contessas – up to the Marchese Serlupi’s villa.

  ‘This may be the last time we are all together,’ the Professor says, peering around the room through thick spectacles. ‘The Allies are on the move again. Things will only get closer to the edge from now on. Elio and Alessandro have what you might call a functioning bomb factory in Monte Morello. In January, we will begin a full-scale campaign of terrorism. The Germans will wish they had never set foot in Florence.’

  There is a moan of approval, the clinking of glasses. Antonio, who has taken off his tie and untucked his shirt, kisses Tosca.

  ‘Maria Luigia is taking charge of CoRa, our radio network. Ferruccio Parri has sent us a high-powered portable transmitter from Milan which we will use to co-ordinate the various cells gathering in the hills. The set here at L’Ombrellino isn’t strong enough to reach the mountain passes. Its presence also poses a threat to Esmond and Ada. With the new machinery we will be able to transmit detailed information to the British SOE. They’ve already sent ammunition and supplies. You will all––’ – his voice catches a little here – ‘be remembered in years to come for your bravery, for your dedication to the people of Florence, the cause of freedom.’

  The partisans stand, applauding, and their applause grows louder until it hurts the ears. The noise grows and grows until it gives over to the sound of screaming, the sound of gunfire, the sound of the bombs that explode throughout January. It is the sound of the briefcase bomb left by Alessandro in the lobby of the Fascist Federation on the via dei Servi and the childlike shrieks of the Blackshirt guard whose legs are ripped off by the blast. It is the sound of the bomb that Bruno places in the brothel on the via delle Terme, patting the madam on the bottom and whispering a warning as he leaves. Two SS Sturmbannführers are killed in their underwear, waiting for their girls to arrive. It is the sound of bullets tearing through the greatcoats and shirts and underclothes of the two guards on the Ponte della Vittoria, bullets which come from guns fired out of Antonio’s window. He can never go back to the flat, and he and Tosca join the partisans in the caves at Monte Morello. It is the sound of bombs destroying railway lines, Esmond and Ada’s particular speciality: charges placed at strategic positions on the Florence to Rome line, on the tracks at Campo di Marte, just outside Santa Maria Novella station.

  One wintry afternoon, they are strapping sticks of dynamite to the Florence–Bologna line, a line which Mussolini calls the masterpiece of his railway network (although even here, contrary to boasts, the trains don’t always run on time). Ada snaps at Esmond as he fumbles with a fuse. She takes the IMCO lighter from his fingers and lights it. They retreat to the cover of rail-side brush and wait. A rush and a suck of air as the bomb detonates, sending a train carrying six hundred Mauser semi-automatic rifles, sixteen hundred rounds of ammunition, eighty Model 24 Stielhandgranate, twenty-four barrels of Bavarian beer, two refrigerated containers of wurst and schnitzel, a dozen rats and a terrified driver careening into the Arno.

  They don’t know it until later, but at the very moment that the train sank beneath the river’s roiled waters, Carità was pressing the cold muzzle of his revolver into the warm nape of Alessandro’s neck. Alessandro, a priest who was watching from the steps of the church tells the Professor that evening, dropped to his knees with a dreamy look on his dark face, his oyster-white suit immaculate and angel-like as he keeled over into the dust.

  25

  The next day, around eight, Esmond wakes. Tatters is standing up at the end of their bed, ears pricked. Esmond remem
bers Alessandro, the news of whose death had been given to them by Maria Luigia over the radio the night before, and he feels grief settle over him. Tatters begins to growl and Esmond kicks out at the dog, then regrets it. Tatters steps off the bed, sulking, and patters downstairs. Esmond hears the sound of the front door opening. He reaches over and nudges Ada just as Tatters begins to bark.

  ‘There’s someone downstairs,’ he says. Ada’s eyes open and she sits up as Esmond leans out over the bannisters. The sound of boots on the wooden floor, voices. Tatters barking.

  ‘Stai zitto!’ someone yells. The front door is opened, a whimper and then a single gunshot. No more barking. Esmond runs back into the room to pick up his pistol, ready to go down and confront the men, but Ada places her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Not now.’ The boots clump up the stairs to the first floor. Ada quickly pulls the covers up over the bed. She then unplugs the W/T and puts it in the cupboard. Esmond takes his gun and the book of poetry from his bedside. They jam themselves in beside the Italian soldier’s uniform, relic of their first mission, still hanging there with Esmond’s suits, Ada’s dresses. They make themselves as comfortable as they can and wait. They can hear men moving through the rooms of the floor below them, looking in the bedroom where first Alessandro, then Signora Rossi slept. There is a tightening of the air as someone enters the room and then, through a crack between the cupboard doors, Esmond sees a squat figure in shorts, a flash of white hair.

  ‘They haven’t been gone long,’ Carità says.

  ‘We’ll have the place thoroughly cleaned before the Reichsmarschall gets here,’ another voice says. Esmond sees Alberti, whom he recognises from the shootings in the Cascine. ‘He’s very particular. Ah, what do we have here?’ Esmond can see Alberti standing in front of the triptych. ‘These are rather good. Our rebel friends have taste.’