Devotion

by Louisa Young

  One evening early in October Tom was reading when Nenna came and grabbed him, saying, ‘There’s a big speech at Palazzo Venezia, come on.’ He let her drag him. Vittorio and Stefano, smelling excitement, followed in tow.

  It wasn’t far, just through Piazza and up via dei Delfini. The crowds were out en masse, pushing and scurrying in expectation of good news. All Rome, it seemed, was filling the streets, up the steps of the Vittoriale/Vittoriano/Typewriter/Wedding Cake/Vittorio Emmanuele monument – the vast white building with the parades of columns, and flying chariots on the roof, Tom never knew what to call it – and beyond. Everyone was moving in the same direction, moths to the same flame: soldiers and contadini, sailors and matrons, children and old men, girls and youths, Fascist badges, ribbons and medals, soup-stained ties and worn-out shoes, black shirts and breeches, skirts and nylons, soft hats and suits, three-legged dogs and squalling babies. Tom grabbed the boys by the hand so as not to lose them as they craned and wriggled to see. Above by the famous balcony on the first floor of the red palazzo, the loudspeakers swung with echo and delay as the Duce appeared, trim and strutting, and raised his voice above the chants of DU-CE! DU-CE! DU-CE! Nenna glanced across at Tom, her eyes aglow, eyebrows raised in complicity, then turned her bright face towards the palazzo and the man.

  ‘Dux, mea Lux!’ wailed a woman beside them, holding out her arms in something between the Fascist salute and a yearning reach for a lover. Leader, my light. ‘DUX, MEA LUX!’

  ‘Steady on, old girl,’ Tom murmured. But everybody was lit up. A kind of pride and clarity illuminated them, all looking the same way, bound together in certainty, all calling the same phrases, the bass line of DU-CE! DU-CE! DU-CE!, the ecstatic free-flying cries above of DUX MEA LUX!

  They all fell quiet as he started to speak.

  ‘Blackshirts of the revolution!’ the Duce cried out. His manner was as usual brusque, friendly and strong – relaxed, like a school teacher who knows he is loved. ‘Men and women of all Italy! Listen’ – and listen they did, as if their dad had called them together to tell them something important. ‘Listen. A solemn hour is about to strike in the history of the fatherland. Twenty million Italians are at this moment occupying piazzas in every corner of Italy – twenty million people, one single heart.’ Cheers erupted. ‘One will.’ Cheers. ‘One decision. It is not just an army which is moving towards its objectives, but an entire people of forty-four million souls.’ Cheers! ‘A people against whom attempts have been made to commit the blackest injustice: that of depriving us of a little place in the sun – we have been patient for thirteen years, during which the noose of selfishness that has stifled our natural energy has been drawn ever tighter! With Ethiopia we have been patient for forty years! – Enough!’

  The ripples ran over and through the crowd; the deliciousness of being one heart, one will, under one leader. Tom glanced around at the faces. They weren’t hysterical. They just loved him. It must be rather nice, he thought. You wouldn’t get the English all out in the streets like this for the King …

  ‘It’s all your fault, you know!’ Stefano cried naughtily, when the speech was done. ‘Britain is so selfish! So rich and greedy, and won’t let Italy have what it needs in Abyssinia.’

  ‘You know why?’ said Vittorio. ‘Because England is afraid! Because England is old and weak, and Italy is so young and strong! The Duce is Julius Caesar and we conquered you before!’

  ‘Shut up, you little beasts,’ cried Tom, putting on his evil face and tickling them exactly as they liked him to do. They were still just small enough for him to keep both of them in place, if Nenna helped.

  ‘We’re going to show you!’ the boys yelled. ‘We’re going to show everybody!’ as Tom swung Stefano on to his back in a fireman’s lift, and galumphed him down the street, scattering and annoying the dispersing crowds, leaving Vittorio and Nenna laughing like fools.

  *

  The young boys went on home, cutting across to the island, like feral creatures with their own pathways through the city, their own adventures to have. Nenna didn’t want to return immediately.

  She said, ‘Come on.’ She wanted to walk along the river. ‘You’re leaving so soon,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you properly for ages. All this work – I’ve been thinking perhaps you were avoiding me.’ Her eyes were sparkly and the evening was drawing in, a little damp and misty, a sense of chill off the water, and the scent of dying leaves.

  She looked, to Tom, as if she knew everything, understood everything, and forgave everything.

  A terrible thought came over him: I’m going to kiss her.

  I’m going to kiss her. This is terrible, I’m going to kiss her.

  Resisting that became his only responsibility. He could move his feet, in this ostensibly innocent stroll, and he could resist this thought.

  He didn’t kiss her. After only a few yards of strolling, she, overcome by how much she was going to miss him, flung her arms girlishly around his neck and kissed him, on the cheek, and rested her head against him, hugging him tight as she would Marinella, or a beloved dog, and saying, ‘Give me a proper hug, you’ve been so offish with me.’ And he, poor Tom, overwhelmed by the innocence of her gesture, indeed the innocence of her entire person, was simultaneously overwhelmed with the most unavoidable, the most inconvenient, the purest, hardest flood of male desire. His body could not but thrill to it, while his mind said, You sneaky shit; his body revelling, coiling in response, and his mind shouting, You are required to ignore this! He tried desperately both to glory in and not to notice the soft, irresistible impression of her breasts against his chest; her thighs, God help him, against his, her breath on his neck. Meanwhile his hands spread wide and stark as starfish inches from her flesh, trying not to land on her back or her – oh God – and his voice strangled, trying not to gasp her name.

  It was not possible—

  This was the situation when Aldo walked up, tapped Tom on the shoulder, turned him round, and punched him in the face.

  Tom reeled. It was a good punch.

  Nenna shrieked: ‘Papà! Papà what are you doing!’

  Aldo, without looking at her, advancing again on Tom, bovine, his arms swinging, said, ‘No, what are you doing, puttana? Go home and tell your mother.’

  Nenna yelled. Her outrage was magnificent. From the still centre of his spinning head, Tom heard and admired. But something was said that he missed, and when he was able to look up and see, she was not there. Clutching a handful of blood, from his nose? His mouth? – Tom coughed and tried to say, that’s not it, Aldo, it’s not what you think – but something in him knew that Aldo had recognised what Nenna had not, and that Aldo was right, and Tom stank of lust and was guilty, and therefore could not hit him back.

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ Tom said, to which Aldo replied, ‘Of course it’s not, you goat, you tramp,’ before hitting him again.

  Tom found himself on the road, suddenly, a horse going by clip clop clip clop very loud, the bones of his arse jarred, his eye shut, his head ringing. Looking up he saw Aldo swaying about – two Aldos, and some other people – men? They dissolved back into individuals under the streetlight. Aldo, and two men, one of whom was swinging a cudgel.

  ‘Don’t want to go messing with Fascist girls,’ said the cudgel man, in a wheedly voice, and fear bit into Tom deeply – but Aldo, his eyes on Tom, had his hand out towards the man, low, in a gesture of ‘we won’t be needing that’. He put his other hand out to Tom: an offer of assistance.

  Tom eyed it, and got up on his own, his fingers delicate on the cobblestones. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and Riley came into his mind: dignity, pride, he thought. He put the handkerchief to his nose, breathed gently – through his mouth – and said, carefully: ‘This was not what you think, Uncle. However. I won’t mention it to my mother. And Nenna has done nothing wrong. I’ll go for my bag now, if you don’t mind.’ Then one of his teeth fell out.

  They all looked at it. Tom carefully folded himself
down to pick it up: a gob of bloody pearl on the slate-black cobble.

  ‘Hm,’ he said, and put it in his pocket, and unfolded himself upwards, carefully.

  He pushed past Aldo, tempted to bash him with a disrespectful shoulder as he passed, but resisting. His head hurt to buggery.

  Just go back to the house. No more damage here. Hardmen with a cudgel! Jesus.

  *

  Back at the house, Susanna insisted on cleaning up Tom’s face, and he let her. He was still so surprised! Aldo coming at him – but we’re family!

  While washing out his mouth with salty water at Susanna’s instruction, he had a slow and important thought: he retrieved the tooth from his pocket, rinsed it in the glass of water, and carefully put it back into the gap it had left. Somebody – Nadine? – once said this was the thing to do. It was an upper tooth; gravity was not on its side. He clenched his jaws to hold it, grinned and said to Susanna, unclearly but very politely, ‘Thank you for everything, I must leave now.’ He collected his things, and said, through his teeth, to anyone who came near him, ‘Nenna is not at fault. Aldo has misunderstood. Nenna is not at fault. Nothing improper has occurred.’

  Nenna was standing like a ghost at the door when he stood. He said to her: ‘I believe I may be in love with you. I’m awfully sorry. And really it is a terribly bad idea for Italy to invade Abyssinia. They only have thirteen planes, you know, and four pilots. And one of them is Hubert Fauntleroy Julian.’

  *

  There was a night train going north; he just got on it, and off it rattled, and his head, his teeth, his thoughts, his feelings. I’m being churned, he thought. A lovely mozzarella of clarity will emerge from this milky mush. Fetid thought will drain away leaving islands of good solid intelligence …

  He had thought it was good strong nationalism, with a touch of the buffoon. But it was not.

  What would she be thinking now?

  Thirteen planes! Not even a rugby team. And four pilots.

  ‘Don’t want to go messing with Fascist girls.’

  Dux Mea Lux.

  A folksy, charismatic, dangerous brute.

  Building Italy – into a stinking mess of corruption, violence and wrongness. Power is dirty – but that dirty? It wasn’t as if he had never heard of the squadristi and their violent ways with people who didn’t play their game.

  Matteotti, Matteotti, Matteotti …

  He did know that Mussolini loathed democracy (two foxes and a chicken discussing what was for dinner, Riley calls it – and himself a complete democrat, a Fabian even). It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen the faces of Blackshirts before.

  Aldo! So unnecessary—

  Yes it’s all very manly, national strength is good, patriotism is a natural urge. Those little blue houses are very clean, those fields very big—

  Look at it. Actually look at it.

  There were swamps in his mind from which he could salvage nothing. Uncomfortable, he fell asleep, head jolting against the seatback, images of Riley, Nenna, Aldo, and the Duce bobbing through his dreams.

  He woke with a start, God knows where, to the mighty shunts and jerks of train and carriages coupling or uncoupling. He was thirsty.

  Jesus! I told Nenna I love her!

  Also—

  The compartment had filled with young men; their strong legs, their canvas bags, their five-o’clock shadows, their stertorous sleepy breathing building up a fug. Some pools of light from outside illuminated their faces. They’re my age, he thought. Born into it. It’s normal for them; they know nothing else. It’s different for me. I should know better …

  Being young is no excuse. This has been self-deception.

  In London, it had seemed obvious to him that the English didn’t understand the Italians. In Rome, he usually only saw Fascist newspapers, anyway, because there was nothing else.

  There has been a thick layer of scales over your eyes—

  When are you meant to realise?

  —and each person’s scales are stuck on with different glue, and each glue is soluble in a different moment of truth. And time passes and things add up and sooner or later you look up, you grow up, and you realise. You see how tidelines have shifted and boundaries flexed; the lighting has changed, the angles tilted. What was is no longer. A turning was made which you didn’t notice, and in the trick of the eye strength became tyranny, determination became bullying, patriotism became xenophobia, self-respect became arrogance. Aldo swore obedience to a noble-looking little plant. He could not know the man-eating jungle it would grow into.

  Would Aldo swear himself to Mussolini now? If he saw him now for the first time?

  But so what. Here we are: Uncle Aldo, Nenna, and the whole lovely family—

  Fascist to their teeth, proper Fascist—

  And you know, Tom, what Fascism is.

  *

  Do I love her?

  He was so ashamed to have been concealing the obvious from himself. In the low, debilitating way we know things we cannot bear to know, he had always known. Strange the veils which hide the obvious, when you grow up in the middle of them. And how very cold it felt, suddenly, without those veils.

  He pulled his jacket round him. He could hear voices shouting outside, but he couldn’t remember where the train was going. The spot on his head where he had landed on the cobbles was seething with pain. It felt very late.

  The train started to move again, very slow, halting.

  Was it the cudgel? Was it just that this man was all ready to dole out a punishment with a weapon like that, for no reason, that the violence and the instant judgement was so close under the surface they could be called up, just like that—

  No, it’s Hubert Fauntleroy Julian.

  It’s the combination. It’s everything.

  He did not blame himself for not having recognised earlier what was going on, just as he did not blame Kitty, who was a kid, or Nadine, who was a woman. Or Nenna, who was born into it. Or—

  You couldn’t expect them to know – could you? But then, what do you do about it?

  He couldn’t think how to point it out to them.

  Or indeed how not to. Should he?

  What, when it might very well break their hearts?

  But the hypocrisy burned under his skin. Truth once unveiled cannot be dismissed. Even if he wanted to dismiss it. Which he didn’t.

  I want … to have the courage to do something about it, and some inspiration as to what that something might possibly be. And I have neither.

  He feared – a terrible fear – that Nadine had understood all along, and didn’t care.

  Well. There was a further paralysis in that thought.

  There’s only one question, really, he told himself, though the moment he phrased it that one question sprouted another three and each of those sprouted further ones of their own. He couldn’t get comfortable. The side of his cheek was against the cold glass of the window. In the darkness beyond, half his own face looked back at him. He whispered his questions to himself:

  Question: Do I speak to Aldo about the fact that Fascism has gone horribly wrong and Mussolini is a fucking villain?

  Sub questions:

  Do I tell Nenna?

  Will they care in the slightest what I think?

  Why would I say it?

  Do I want to convert them from this love of the Duce?

  What good would that do them?

  Is it my business?

  Will Aldo shout at me?

  Will Nenna hate me?

  Will Nenna hate me?

  Will Nenna hate me?

  I’m nineteen years old, I’m at university, I should be able to say what I think.

  They won’t care. They’re so … soaked in it. It’s been Nenna’s whole life, her normality. It’s their blood and bones. They have nothing else.

  This was not how he had wanted to leave Rome. It seemed so far away already. He wondered if he would ever go back.

  *

  When the young men got off at Milan,
a magazine was left behind on the seat. Tom stared at it for quite a while. He recognised it: La Difesa della Razza, Mussolini’s Hitler-pleasing racist rag. He had never read it.

  He sighed, leant over, flinched at the pain in his mouth, picked it up. A drivel of anti-Semitism greeted him. His stomach churned.

  But they’re Jewish.

  How can they—?

  He didn’t understand.

  *

  He woke up again: the land outside hilly, early morning sun.

  It was simple, really. At the beginning Mussolini had looked like Italy’s saviour angel, and he had turned out to be something else. Mussolini didn’t used to be anti-Semitic, and now, ganging up with Hitler, he was.

  The mistake, he thought, is not to realise that things change. From which it was only a tiny leap of thought to I have changed. Or perhaps even, I am changing.

  The worst enemies don’t come dressed up as monsters, yelling their threats. They come as friends, helping you, and when you are in their debt of course you forgive them. You’ve given up your sense of proportion.

  I’ve been bamboozled.

  Chapter Eleven

  London, Autumn 1935

  ‘I got in a fight,’ Tom said, before Nadine or Riley could say anything. ‘Just a stupid thing.’

  They accepted it, not that happily, and for that he was grateful.

  It was Nadine who said, quite quietly, while helping him pack for university, ‘Aldo mentioned you left in quite a hurry.’

  Tom paused for a moment, stared at the small pile of poetry books in his hand, Tennyson and T. S. Eliot, and said nothing.

  ‘That you didn’t say goodbye properly before you left. Nenna was upset,’ he said.

  Tom cast his eyes up to the ceiling for a second, then broached the matter.

  ‘Did you say goodbye?’ he asked. ‘Before you left?’

  She looked at him steadily, and thank God, he thought, did not say, ‘What do you mean?’ She knew what he meant.

  ‘I didn’t know what to say,’ she replied, after a pause. ‘I pretended I couldn’t see it, or that it wasn’t real, or that it wasn’t important.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ he asked.