Two Women in Rome

by Elizabeth Buchan

  Her mood darkened and a shadow cast itself over the scene, and she was reminded of the darker places in any city – its sewers and marshlands. Its tenements. The places, even affluent ones, where screams were not unknown. And the places and times when bombs exploded and extremism thrived.

  The Via Giulia had been named after a pope, which Lottie was sorry about. It would have been so much more interesting for it to have been a testament to a Roman matron who had had a wild sex life and a vicious grip on power behind the scenes.

  Its surface was cobbled, and substantial pink-, ochre- and yellow-painted buildings rose on either side. She stopped to look at the Mascherone fountain, which was reputed to run with wine at civic celebrations, and at the former jail, now an anti-Mafia headquarters, and spent a moment outside the church of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte, whose funds had been collected in order to bury unclaimed corpses, including those found in the Tiber.

  A couple of buildings down from Santa Maria, the burnt-umber Archivio Espatriati rose four storeys high. Like many Roman buildings, it was constructed around a courtyard accessed through an archway, and she stopped to ready herself before she passed under it.

  A Paul Cursor, from the Medieval department, had been deputed to give her a tour and to show her to her makeshift office.

  Afterwards, they bought coffee and took it up to her office. He seemed embarrassed by Lottie’s predicament. ‘Things can take time here,’ he said.

  He told her about the retired American general who had set up the Espatriati. Rattling with medals, the general had turned up in Rome in the early seventies, a trip he declared had been ‘to chase up the memories’. Apparently, these stretched right back to 1948, when he had been in Rome with a mission to hunt down ex-Nazis lying low in the city, waiting for travel permits to be forged in the backstreets to countries willing to offer them sanctuary.

  Of middle height and middle-aged, with soft, thinning hair and a terrible haircut, Paul had come across, at first, as nice but a little colourless. But he came to life narrating the story, which Lottie enjoyed relaying to Tom while they ate dinner. ‘The Ratline,’ she told him. ‘It was very efficient. There are rumours that both the Church and the CIA recruited these ex-Nazis and washed their records clean if they agreed to fight Communism.’

  Tom helped himself to a glass of wine. ‘I like the sound of Paul. He has a vivid imagination.’

  What was not in dispute was that, during the Nazi occupation of Rome, documents, of all denominations and provenances, had been thrown into crates, nailed down and stowed in a cave to the south of the city. Over the years, additional records had been piled in with them, including those of foreign nationals. There they remained, disordered and decaying, until the general rode to the rescue.

  An orderly man, as he informed all who would listen, he had been appalled by the predicament of such ‘a trove of intelligence’, and needed – goddammit – to do something about it. His first move was to raise the funds for the establishment and running of a professional archive to house all the papers of British and American ex-pats and to make provision for past, present and future records. Other nationals would have to look after themselves. The funds had been raised – ‘it was surprising how many people could spare a dime’ – and the Archivio Espatriati, a strictly private operation with a mixed staff of Italians, Americans and British, had come to be well regarded and well used.

  The building chosen on the Via Giulia had been abandoned since the war. It was easily divided into departments and had the incomparable advantage of a vaulted cellar running the length of the building, which was converted into storage for the archive. Systems had been installed to maintain a cool, stable temperature and to keep the humidity to a minimum.

  ‘Why would a starred American general concern himself with an archive?’ Lottie asked Tom. ‘And why would anyone give money?’

  ‘That’s easy. Read the inscription to him over the entrance. And you can bet your life it wasn’t people who coughed up the dimes, it was institutions.’

  ‘I don’t blame him for craving a touch of immortality.’

  Tom placed a hand on her shoulder. It was one of those moments when she was unsure what he intended by the gesture – a manifestation of the areas of uncertainty in an infant marriage. Things unsaid, inflections misinterpreted, intentions unfathomed.

  Reaching up, she entwined her fingers in his. ‘That much money …? It’s—’

  Tom interrupted her. ‘Could we move to the bedroom?’

  He spoke lightly and with anticipation. Lottie was not going to say no but afterwards, half dressed and brushing her hair in the mirror, she wondered if it had been a deliberate ploy? She raised a bare arm and observed (thank goodness) how the flesh under her arm tightened. ‘Were you trying to not answer my question?’

  Tom was still prone on the bed. ‘Probably,’ he murmured. ‘You could be a painting by Bonnard. All lush and tremulous.’

  The settled light in the room, Tom’s rumpled hair and naked legs, the subdued blue gleam of the coverlet also suggested an artist’s composition.

  Lottie smiled at him through the mirror. ‘Back at you.’

  The makeshift office at the Espatriati turned out to have a large window, a good-sized desk and a well-used office chair.

  The building’s past was obvious in the plaster work and substantial fireplace. Good for the general, she thought, and his craving for a little bit of immortality, although she was still intrigued as to why he would choose an archive as his vehicle. Maybe it had been Mrs General who had been on the case. Maybe it had been she (who had been left behind countless times in the boondocks while Herb or Norm strutted the battlefield) who said, ‘There’s an opportunity here to get your name in lights.’

  She unpacked archival polyester pockets and sleeves, plus silver-safe paper for photographs. She held one up between her finger and thumb. Archival records were judged not only as a collection of individual documents but also on their relationship to other records. Which order did they arrive in? Who donated them? Why? These factors were crucial in deciding their significance.

  Having stowed the materials, she drank some of the fancy mineral water that had been left on a tray and turned her attention to the documents.

  A trestle table ran almost the length of the back wall, positioned away from the direct light, trapping a familiar nosegay of foxed paper, damp cardboard and must. On it was arranged the latest papers to be exhumed from the warehouse.

  A temporary label read: British Nationals, 1880–1980: Mortalities: Homicides, Suspected Homicides, Suicides.

  The documents had rotted over the years, and their stench grew more marked as the room warmed up. The paradox of decay, Lottie reflected, was that it indicated that life had once been present and it should not be vilified. Decay was a process that worked in the shadowlands before the memory of someone, or something, was extinguished.

  Homicides, Suspected Homicides, Suicides …

  What must Rome have been like post-war? Smashed and sour with violence and enmity like much of Europe? And later, during the sixties and seventies, when political tensions savaged the country, did it shed its stylishness and atmosphere? They were the decades, Tom had told her, in a tone suggesting deep significance, that had been nicknamed ‘The Years of Lead’.

  ‘An odd term,’ she’d commented.

  ‘It refers to the huge number of shootings. At times, it was bad. Really bad.’

  ‘Fascinating, isn’t it, how far belief can push you?’

  ‘Well,’ Tom had said, ‘all of us are guilty one way or another of small fanaticisms.’

  Curious, Lottie had done some research. In 1978, the political divisions and social tensions had culminated in the kidnapping and murder of the former Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, a dominant politician in what was in practice a one-party state. Some called him the ‘master-weaver’ of Italian politics. The year after his death – 1979 – had been even worse, with over six hundred attacks.

&nb
sp; Italians had enjoyed many freedoms, including press freedom, but when they voted it was known that it could only have one result: victory for the Christian Democrats; legitimate opposition, such as the Communist Party, was denied any power.

  She had discussed it with Tom. ‘But if the Socialists and Communists had made real headway in an election …?’

  His answer had been guarded. ‘It’s likely that Washington would never have allowed it. During the Cold War, no western European country could display even a residual loyalty to Moscow.’

  ‘So,’ Lottie had said, ‘the realities of power.’

  Tom was always pragmatic. ‘In its way, it worked in Italy. The Communists ran some of the regions and did so efficiently. Everyone got along until Moro tried to make an agreement with the Communists by which they would support the government in a national crisis. No one liked that.’

  Moro wrote to his wife from his captivity and castigated the politicians and power brokers who had failed to come to his aid – including the Holy See, which refused to negotiate with terrorists. In a final paragraph of his last letter, he wrote of ‘the inexpressible joy you gave me during my life, of the child I took such pleasure in watching and whom I shall watch to the last …’

  Lottie had found it difficult to read. ‘It doesn’t matter who you are, does it? It’s your family you think about at the end and …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Very often your debts.’

  Tom had laughed.

  Dust spilled from the papers on the table’s surface. Unless unavoidable, materials must never be directly handled. Lottie unpacked her hand-held vacuum cleaner and siphoned it up.

  The first task – she glanced at the sun shining outside the window – was to create the Item List as defined by international standards, which involved Reference Codes and precise descriptions.

  Allocating the papers a code, she wrote Mortalities: British Nationals, 1880–1980 on a label, dated it and began.

  At the start, she had not understood what had drawn her to becoming an archivist. Older and wiser, she realised that unconscious wishes operated cunningly with the conscious will: she had chosen the profession because she needed its order and rules and it was a way of engaging with humanity without meeting it.

  How ironic, then, that this paper engagement turned out to be far from arid and distanced but a daily confrontation with every shade of emotion and behaviour. The documents were a portal into lives and thoughts. In them, Lottie encountered the cruel, the innovative, the violent, passionate, duplicitous, bigoted, corrupt, the altruistic and the loving.

  She had learned to interrogate those voices. Who are you? Are you a woman observing from the sidelines? Or are you the man fired up by his religion to the exclusion of sense? Did you live well or badly? Perhaps you are a corrupt leader or a worker who died from careless employer practices?

  What people wrote could be quite different from what they thought. What they said could be far from the truth. What they believed on paper could be the reverse of the slippery ambitions in their souls.

  Mortalities. She bent over the papers to take a closer look. A puff of dust sifted on to the bench and she wiped it away.

  A cursory examination revealed that a percentage of material was too damaged by water and fire for redemption. Isolated words loomed up from the fragments … ‘amore’, ‘blood’, ‘political’.

  They would be collected up and a decision would be taken later as to their disposal.

  Back at her desk, she checked the summary of the file’s contents. They included records of homicide cases – sometimes the originals, sometimes copies of what was in the police files. Documentation of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence was also included.

  She began.

  Shimmering below the statistics and stark reports, a picture emerged of an accomplished and fascinating seductress, aka Rome, whose riches and pleasures could be overwhelming and occasionally fatal.

  British Nationals died from natural causes over the decades but, decoding the figures for the early twentieth century, there was a case to be made of ‘come to Rome and die’. Some were claimed by ‘Pontine Fever’ (almost certainly malaria), others had swum ill-advisedly in the Tiber and contracted virulent bacterial infections. There was substantial turn-of-the-century mortality from TB, measles and polio. Later on, the death rate levelled, only to go haywire during the Second World War, midway through which the records went blank.

  During the late forties and fifties, the murder rate for British and American nationals picked up. A toxic brew of revenge, vendetta and privation in a feral, post-war vacuum? She checked online to see if there were papers on the subject, and ordered up a promising-sounding one by a professor of epidemiology.

  In 1952, the British husband of an American film star working at Cinecittà had been found suffocated by his own socks in a hotel bathroom and his male lover had been strangled with a dressing-gown cord. His widow had immediately flown home, leaving a multimillion-dollar film in limbo. Later sightings of her reported – in the immortal words of Noël Coward – that her dark hair ‘had turned gold with grief’.

  In 1960, Carol Enderby was driven into a tree by her jealous Italian lover. Both died.

  Lottie wrote: Carol Enderby. 1 Folder. Papers and loose photographs.

  Then there was the fashion designer who had been found suffocated in the therapeutic mud in the beauty parlour that she frequented … and a couple of so-called American businessmen who had each been taken out by a single shot to the head in the early seventies. Four Folders. Damaged papers. Possible disposal.

  By the end of the day, she had done an initial survey and categorisation of the material to be allocated to the respective departments.

  Two large boxes remained outstanding. A temporary label had been attached to both: Nina Maria Lawrence, 1940–78. No known contacts. No known issue. No claimants.

  The information checked Lottie. It was bald and unforgiving. To have no one to attend to matters after your death suggested that you had had no one during your life. Therein lay tragedy? Abandonment? Neglect? A hatred of other humans? Terrible poverty and exile? It was a sad dereliction and she was sorry for it.

  She thought of her new life, and of Tom, with relief.

  Paul Cursor came down from his office on the third floor with a package. ‘I’m interrupting …’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I hope you don’t object.’ Paul was a little hesitant, which, after a second or two, she put down to good manners rather than nervousness.

  Lottie dusted her fingers. ‘I’m sure I won’t.’

  ‘We did a quick check on some of the material before you arrived.’ He pointed to the first Nina Lawrence box. ‘That one contained what might be a valuable painting from a manuscript.’

  ‘The woman who appears to have had no one?’ Lottie was both surprised and intrigued.

  ‘Seems so. It’s been put into a frame for protection. I took the liberty of booking an appointment with Gabriele Ricci for you to check it out with him.’ He handed over an additional folder. ‘This is from a colleague. Take a look if you wish. It’s about Bonnie Prince Charlie’s daughter. Rather poignant. She stuck by him to the end, despite the drink and his cruelty to her. Ricci’s been briefed on it.’ Again the good-mannered hesitation. ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow,’ he said.

  She opened the folder. The letter requiring conservation was safely encased in acid-free paper. There was also a second document. ‘And this one?’

  Paul was almost at the door and turned back, features taut with concern. ‘Apologies, I forgot. It had got attached to the painting and is to go back into the Lawrence box.’

  Dated 12 January 1976, it was a typed receipt written on crested writing paper.

  Palacrino Garden

  Commission to landscape and plant a garden of approx. 2 acres. Detailed drawings to be submitted.

  Overall concept: to create ‘garden rooms’

  1) English garden to include
hollyhocks and roses

  2) Walled medieval one to include regularly spaced fruit trees (apricots and pomegranates), box hedging and lavender

  3) A cypress avenue

  4) Lemon trees in terracotta pots

  5) Travertine paving

  Paid to Nina Lawrence the sum of 10 thousand lire for consultation.

  The signature was indecipherable, but underneath it was an embossed ducal coronet and a Latin motto of the Palacrino duchy.

  Lottie turned it over. The writing in pencil on the reverse was dated later and appeared to be a series of jottings. Random thoughts. Notes. Analysis of the self. It was as if the writer was experimenting with the idea of creating a journal but had not, as yet, decided on its shape or form.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Rome

  19 September 1977

  AM I FRIGHTENED?

  I am, and I should be, but never enough to step back.

  Am I lonely?

  There is a difference between loneliness and aloneness (language is important here).

  I am … I was used to being alone.

  My work involves the piecemeal and the stealthy, but it is also an imaginative act, which I believe – must believe – is for the greater good.

  Because I carry secrets, I have a power. Yet, this power is problematic because it takes hold on the psyche and addiction to the process develops.

  Italy is in a mess, victim of big social and technological changes. Peasants and labourers are frustrated, the factory workers exploited. Women want divorces and fewer babies and the Church does not like it. There is anxiety about jobs. Students have turned to Communism while the state and its bureaucrats are right wing. Often fanatically.

  There have been bombings, terrible ones. Unrest. Violence.

  Once upon a time, I would have been on fire with the challenges of watching, reporting, and with the minute analysis of every conclusion, but things have changed.

  Now, all I see is Leo smiling at me.