The Italian Romance (26 page)

‘What must I do?' Antonio's eyes filmed and brimmed. He was not like a child, overwhelmed, out of control. He was like himself in this new world where no one's will had consequence, where we all lifted and fell on a wave that may have been swelled at some specific time, or that perhaps had always been waiting for us.

She couldn't bear to look at his eyes. He leaned on her desk as if he no longer had strength. She sat, facing him, and lowered her head. Nothing in her seemed to be working, her legs, her mouth. She was too young to recognise her fear, that she would be smashed against the rocks no matter what she did, what she did not do. It was she who was overwhelmed. She put her hand over his. It was clenched on the desk. She could clearly see the lines ringing the join between his thumb and finger. He was a tree, sun-beaten. Her fingers settled lightly on him. How she loved his hands.

‘Lilian, please,' he said.

She did not look up. She said, ‘I don't know what to say.' Her lips were dry.

‘Lilian.' Antonio withdrew his hand. Her own closed in on
itself. ‘If you stay with him, you will never be alive. You will never write. It is not possible for you.'

She covered her face with her hands, and in there, privately, tears slid down her cheeks.

He said, ‘You want things to stay as they are. What, forever? I'm being transferred. I can't stop that. And soon I'll be on a ship, goodbye to Lilian, goodbye to our little romance. Is that what it was for you? Something to do while he was away?'

‘Oh, God, no. No.' She dropped her hands. Her nose was running. ‘Of course it wasn't, Nio, you know that. But look at him. How can I? How could I possibly...'

He stepped close to her. Her reddened, wet, distraught face had surprised him. He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her in to his waist. ‘Ssh,' he said.

She wrapped her arms around him. Her body began to shake as the weeping spasmed up from the pit of her stomach. He gripped her tighter.

And then he knelt down in front of her. He eased damp strands of hair from her cheeks, tucked them behind her ears. She wiped the back of her hand under her nose.

He said to her, ‘You're everything I want. Everything. Every fantasy I've ever had, that's you.' He watched her face. Her eyes narrowed into almonds and crinkled at their ends. He loved her eyes, he loved them particularly when they did that. He smiled at her.

The backs of her fingers brushed his hard cheek and jaw. ‘You must have terrible fantasies,' she said. She was laughing.

‘No! They're wonderful. Truly.' He leaned to her, and with the tenderness that he had never known before, he kissed the tip of her nose.

She put her hands on either side of his face. A deep quiet, only recently born, came up from her and out to him. She said, ‘I love you so much.'

He brought his forehead to hers. They rested into each other.
She could feel his breath. She could feel the damp of his skin. She had been so tired, and now she felt at peace.

They pulled apart. He put his hand on the edge of the desk and eased himself to his feet. She looked across to the window onto the street.

He brushed at the knees of his trousers. ‘So,' he said. ‘In one month. Vince should be able to get some men by then. And we'll be sent to the coast.'

‘You don't know where?'

He shook his head. ‘North, that's all. And after that, who knows? We wait.'

‘And then Italy,' she said.

‘Then Italia.' He looked her straight in the eye.

She nodded.

He blew out a breath. ‘Till then, we pass by each other, good morning, Signora, good morning, sir, how are you? Good, good, oh that's good.'

She snorted.

‘Very eloquent race,' he said.

‘Oh, don't start that,' she said.

He raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Ah, yes,' he said. ‘The eloquence of silence. Speaks louder than words.'

‘Sometimes it does.'

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. And as we speak of words...' He walked to the chair where he'd thrown his dark grey jacket. He pulled some lined paper from the inside pocket. ‘Here's your story. I like it, very much. No plot.'

‘I know. I can never think of one.' She reached out her hand. The sheets of paper assumed significance. Antonio saw it in her face. He tapped her on the head with them.

‘Your life blood,' he said, and gave them to her.

She looked down at the opening paragraph, absorbed.

‘I received a letter,' he said.

She looked up, her eyes wide. ‘From home?'

‘Si. Paulo, my friend from the university. He heard from someone that I'd been captured, from another that I was in Australia, and so on.'

‘Does he know anything?'

He looked away. A car glided by on the dusty road. ‘No. Nothing I didn't know. He said he'd heard about my father dying, but ... someone else had written to me about it four years ago. I wrote to Paolo this morning. I've just posted it. He will make enquiries for me.' He nodded to himself.

‘That's good.'

‘Yes.' He looked down at her. ‘So, my darling girl. I go. Rewrite the middle section. I marked it. It falls flat.' He quickly glanced at the window, and then leaned over her. She raised her face. He kissed her lips.

He threw the jacket over his forearm as he walked to the door. She said, ‘Antonio.'

He turned his head.

‘I love you with all my heart.'

He smiled. His eyes filled again. He looked down at the door handle, turned it. He blew her a kiss on his fingers as he went out.

Sonia tried to calm her breathing. It washed in waves up through her chest, her throat. A soldier held the barrel of his rifle across her stomach.

Gianni turned his head to her. They were walked away, he and Jack, further up the dirt track. He was a hundred yards from her now. His huge, dark eyes seemed to glisten. They were so clear, his eyes. Jack gripped the boy's shoulder; in his other hand, he still held Sonia's small bag. Gianni was as high as Jack's ear. Sonia saw Jack lean, whisper something. Gianni looked up at him.

She called, ‘Gianni.' One of the Germans poked the butt of his submachine gun at the boy's ribs. Sonia breathed in and stared at the guard beside her, as if to ask him to do something. He was not interested in her. He watched an officer who was speaking loudly into his wireless. Another soldier held the box up for him. The officer gripped the phone tight against his head, squinted, trying to hear. Sonia could hear the static, incomprehensible rumble of a voice from where she stood.

Another woman stood beside her. She was older, her whole thin body shaking. She was a Jew; Sonia knew it as soon as she saw her, and the woman in her turn had whitened when she recognised Sonia for what she was. Their eyes, huge and terrified, acknowledged the very unsubtle truth. The Germans knew what they were, too.

The woman's husband, who swung a brown cardboard suitcase from his left hand, almost trotted up the path with a German soldier, the last of a string of men, young, Italian, partisans. The Jewish couple must have been with them.

Sonia fell against the woman's shoulder when their guard turned his face to her and shouted, ‘Beeilung!'

‘Excuse me,' she said, apologising to the woman. The woman's eyes did not really see her. She stared up the track.

‘Sich beeilen,' the man said. Sonia seemed to have little to do with the mechanics of her neck. She found herself gazing into his face. He was balding, near enough to forty. His eyes were red-rimmed, almost ugly with tiredness. And they were unwashed. Droppings of sleep caked his lower lashes. His gaze caught hers, just for a moment, maybe a moment too long. He looked down and said again, ‘Sich beeilen,' but softer perhaps.

And then she found herself gripping the moist hand of the other woman; they held tight to each other like schoolgirls. The guard used his rifle, diagonal across the breadth of both their backs, to direct them. She felt his knuckles on her shoulder blade. He poked at them until their legs went of their own accord, down the track she had so very recently wandered up. She looked over her shoulder and said in Italian, ‘My son. He should be with me. He's young, do you understand?' The German knocked against her waist with the long, cold barrel of the rifle. She jerked forward. The other woman, without seeming to, held her tight. Sonia looked quickly at her, but she was staring straight ahead.

He hurried them down the hill. They almost ran. He thudded
behind them, his breath escaping like aspirations – ‘oh, oh' – as if he were completely alone, lost.

Sonia saw the truck careering along the road, its dark canvas loose at one corner, flapping up and down in the breeze. She heard the German attempt to get his breath, inhaling hard through his nose. His hand came down on her shoulder, and lurched her to a stop. The hand was heavy. She leaned her head away from it.

The truck veered off the roadway, still coming fast. The two women scuttled back, away from it. Their guard was waving his arm, to no purpose really. The wheels slid on the tiny stones and the engine stopped suddenly as if the wind had died and dropped.

For barely a second, there was silence. The guard walked to the driver's door, his boots crunching over the stones. The driver wound the window down, and leaned his arm on the ledge.

The two women did not look at each other. Sonia felt her companion flexing her long fingers. Their palms were warm together, sweaty. Sonia was embarrassed at the touch, but she could not let go.

The men spoke in low voices, and then their own German laughed loudly. Sonia jumped from the fright of it. She pulled the woman's hand up with her own. ‘Sorry,' she murmured, and lowered it, tense.

It was at that moment the shooting began. A submachine gun, ripping through the woods. A leaf spiralled down, sat on her shoulder. She dusted at it. Their grip broke. Sonia looked at the German, her eyes wide as a doe's, questioning. She opened her mouth. He turned his head and stared at her, as if he waited for a word.

She stepped back, one, two steps. And then the words came, quietly at first. ‘Where's my son?' she said to him. He stared.

Her head seemed to swim. She gazed up the hill, the winding of the dirt track. A bough had fallen across it. She had barely noticed it before. The grass was littered with old, rotting leaves.
Higher up, when she raised her eyes, skeletons of branches pointed to the sky. They were dirty with engorgements of bud.

‘Jack,' she yelled. She could almost hear her own echo. The wood was silent now. ‘Jack, can you hear me?'

The hand fell on her shoulder, shook her. She yelled again. Her throat ached from it. ‘Where's Gianni? Gianni.' He shook her till her breath rattled.

She saw the butt of the rifle coming for her, and she knew. She tried to sing out their names one more time. The rifle caught her cheekbone; one leg lifted from the ground and she fell slowly, her arms wide. The earth hit her hard.

I'm curled up on the couch. The two kids are still out on the terrace. With the light out. She stuck her head in half an hour ago to say, as she thumbed the switch, that the insects were grossing her out. Wouldn't want her to be grossed out, I suppose. I had better get up in a minute and make my presence felt. Lost track of them while I was working.

Oh, no, there's the bloody Barnardis, knocking at the door. Dear God, the kids can't be making that much noise. In point of fact, they're not making any noise at all, which is a bit worrying.

My hip's wonky from lying on my side. Limping across the room like an old man.

Can't they wait, knocking at the door again? ‘Va bene, va bene,' I call out. I turn the lock.

It's Francesca.

Her face is anxious. What has happened? I put my hand out to her arm, as if I am trying to hold her up. ‘May I come in?' she says. ‘The man downstairs told me to come on up. I hope it's not too late.'

‘No, of course not. I was just doing a bit of work, that's all, hoping you'd call around. And here you are. So that's nice, isn't it?' I say, always the welcoming host. I sound more and more like my mother.

She walks by me. My hand falls. I think I felt her shrug me off.

The lobby is dim; I didn't turn the light on. I touch the spine of one of Nio's books as I pass –
Don Quixote,
his hardback copy. He loved that novel. It intrigued me that he did, still does intrigue me. The title is slightly recessed, etched in green. It's good to be able to feel; it turns out to be a most important sense.

Francesca is in a museum. She stands in the middle of my living room, not at all at home, and she looks at the couch where the imprint of my head is hollowed into the cushion I bunched up on the armrest. I see her taking in my writing pad, thrown on the floor beside it with my usual gay abandon, the biro limp with potential poking its nose under the seat. The newspaper on the coffee table. I am a specimen to her. Some piece, she says to herself.

Normally, specimens don't watch themselves being weighed up.

I can feel her mood. Not good. Not happy.

‘Sit down, my dear,' I say.

She does as she's told, on the couch, but as far as possible away from any relic of me. On the physical level, I revolt her. I'm no picture postcard at this stage of my existence, particularly with the yellow map on the side of my face. It's not that, though. I do know. I'm the woman who birthed her. And she can't bear me. My touch, that she didn't get, my looks, which she did. The sound of my voice which, in spite of the accent, has an uncanny similarity to her own; on the telephone I feel as if I am talking to myself. Perhaps she can't stand that, either.

‘So,' I say as I fill the kettle with water. Since we throw each other into primitive states, why not make a cup of tea? What else does one do, in the circumstances?

‘I'm actually on my way back up to your place in Tuscany,' she says.

‘Are you?' I am surprised. I can't stop myself glancing at the kitchen clock that Dora gave us. ‘I mean, will you stay here
tonight, and catch the train up in the morning? Wouldn't that be the best thing?'

‘I've hired a car. I know my way, now. I was just a little bit ... you know ... I wasn't too sure about it before.'

That's the first show of what would you call it, nervousness, vulnerability? I'm just a little bit and not too sure about so many things in this teeming world. I feel my heart contract for her. Physically, as if the air has been punched out of it. My little girl. I say, ‘But you managed to hire one, now.'

‘Yes,' she says.

‘My goodness, I admire you, Francesca. Women of your generation are so brave. You brave the world, go back and get PhDs, travel on your own. I really do think it's extraordinary.'

‘I don't feel brave,' she says.

I know. I know, my dear. I want to kiss the top of her head. ‘You don't have to feel brave to be brave,' I say. I suddenly realise what I am saying. What did it take, what decades of reserves of courage, to turn up at the Embassy do? To track me down. To walk up to me and speak. I lean back against the sink and look at her with fresh eyes.

I've always been a grossly selfish woman. It has to be the case. How else could I have done what I have done?

And here's the consequence, sitting hunched up on my couch.

I thought she was pretending something. No. That's not true. She is exactly what she is, angry, bitter even. So terribly, terribly hurt.

Look what you've done, Lilian.

If I didn't love her viscerally and beyond expectation, I couldn't bear this. I think she might mean more to me than I do to myself.

Something has happened to her. She's not quite right. She leans against the cushion.

‘What is it?' I say.

She looks at me, surprised. Has she gone through life with no one to notice when something's not right?

‘Where's Jane?'

‘She's on the terrace. A young fellow she met came to visit.'

‘That was quick.'

‘Indeed. Well, I suppose these things can be quick.'

‘She's only sixteen,' she says to me.

‘Oh, I realise that. That's why they're on the terrace.'

She nods to her lap, as if I've passed my basic examination in the rearing of adolescents. Never having done it before.

She crosses her legs, and lays her head back. ‘I'm just tired,' she says.

‘Did you meet your artist?'

‘I sure did. We haven't stopped. I'd say he's been locked away in his studio for years, hasn't talked to a living soul. He sure had a lot to say.'

‘A lot stored up.'

‘Oh, yeah. And we went to a number of galleries. He's like a little goblin. And completely in love with his passions.' She has closed her eyes. I can watch her, now, the pull at her cheeks as she speaks, the cords of her neck. She's white with tiredness. I won't let her leave tonight. ‘One of his favourite places is the Vatican museum.' She rolls her head to face me, opens her eyes. ‘I was quite surprised at that.'

‘There are some extraordinary things in there.'

‘Oh, yes, I know. I've been myself a couple of times. I thought he'd concentrate on what's going on today. You know, where his work fits in to the zeitgeist. Who's doing what, what he's doing. He said something that really struck me. For instance, the reclining Zeus, huge, black marble, you know what I mean, by the doorway to the garden?'

I have folded my arms. I nod, peaceful. ‘Big, erotic fellow.'

‘That's the one. I ran my hand over his leg, the muscles. He's leaning up on one elbow.'

I smile. How clearly I know this woman. Two years after Nio died, I wandered around down there one day, ran my hand over his black muscled torso and very nearly climbed up on him.

‘Matt must have been taking it all in. I suppose artists are used to watching people's faces, how we move. He said, you can divide this museum up into two halves. Firstly, man is glorious. Matt said that was what Rome was all about. A city built to the glory of man, and out of his foundations. And it's true, you can still feel it here, I think. Do you mind if I smoke?' She sits up and unzips her shoulder bag. It's funny, I hadn't noticed her smoking before. She holds her two fingers taut, puts the cigarette in her mouth and swipes a match against the sides of the box two, three times. I wait. The match flares up. She pulls at the tobacco, drawing in her cheeks.

She is very edgy. She puts the dead match on the coffee table. She blows smoke out. ‘And then,' she says. ‘The other half, or part really, not half, is the twentieth century. They've created a different art. Suffering man. Crucified man. We've come down from our perch.'

‘Know ourselves too well,' I say. Behind me, the kettle steams. I turn around and ladle three spoons of black tea leaves into the pot. I splash my hand as I pour in the boiling water and wince. There is a particular spot just below the join of my thumb and finger, tender, webbed skin, that collects all my burns and scalds for me. I hold my hand spreadeagled under the cold stream from the tap.

‘Burn yourself?'

‘Mmm. I do it all the time. It's okay.' I shake the water off, and face her again, my hand, palm up, resting at my waist. ‘So you were struck by this,' I say.

‘Yes, I was. I know it's clichéd. But when you see it laid out in that way, almost chronologically, it really does hit you. Interesting.'

‘For your work? Or personally, do you mean?' I know I am treading on dangerous ground. A quietness has come upon us.

‘Oh. Both.'

She is awkward now. She is on the edge of telling me something. I can see it in her face. Or of not telling me.

I say, ‘You haven't mentioned if you're married or ... anything?' I want to hear the story. I want to know what has happened to her.

‘I was,' she says.

I watch her eyes, which are focused on the window overlooking our forgotten courtyard. At this time of night, she'd see absolutely nothing. Well, perhaps a few wet shirts limp on a line strung from someone's kitchen.

‘My husband left me, actually, when the kids were still quite small. He found someone better than me.'

And she turns her eyes on me.

I am defenceless before her. She is ablaze with righteous anger. My skin melts, and I am left exposed. She has got me down to my bones.

My hands, of their own accord, cover my face and I hear my voice cry, from a long way away, ‘Oh, Francesca.'

She says, conversationally, ‘I always wondered what kind of a woman would do that.'

My fingers press imprints into my forehead and my cheeks. What on earth can I do, or say? Well, I asked for it.

Somehow, I get across the room, sit on the edge of the armchair. If she's looking at me, I can't see her. My eyes are filmed with tears. I watch, through water, the clutch of my hands on my lap. I have been given a blow, very strong. Whether it is my shame or it is the terrible pain of her own betrayal I'm feeling in my heart, I can't decipher.

I manage to say, in a thick voice, ‘Did he just disappear, or what did he do?'

‘No, we argued a lot for a few months. I'd say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, and he'd storm out of the house. I was afraid to look sideways at him in the end, in case that was wrong, too. And then,' she sighed, and I ventured a glance at her; a tear released itself from my eye and plopped to the web of my hand, ‘one day, he just packed his bags and left. I thought he'd come
back. Amazingly, he actually went up to Sydney. He'd applied for a new job and hadn't told me. He'd even gone for an interview up there one weekend when I thought he'd gone fishing. I was so glad he was going ... I even carried his rod and his gear out to the car for him ... because he always used to fish, you know, and he hadn't done anything like that for a long time. I thought it might help. But, anyway, turns out he'd gone to an interview instead. Had his new job, got himself an apartment. That's when I started to get...'

I bite my lip. She doesn't want to say a word that will lay her bare in front of me. I know that. I say, ‘You started to get afraid.'

She nods, and drops her head. Oh, my baby. Her shoulders begin to shake. She pulls at the corner of a handkerchief I see poking from her pocket. She holds it under her nose as little, caught sobs escape from her.

I want to touch her. I want so much to do that, to hold her head against my breast and stroke her hair.

‘Anyway,' she sighs, in that terribly Australian way, all pain included and moved on from. Have a cup of tea.

‘When did you hear there was someone else?' I ask. I am tentative. Don't want to push it.

‘Oh, about six weeks later. I know her. A girl he'd met at the Club. She worked there, managed the restaurant. Off they went.'

The irony of my rage does not hide itself conveniently from me. I could slit the little bollock's neck.

‘Dad was the one who told me in the end. He'd known about it for a while. Evidently he'd spoken to Rob a couple of months before. In no uncertain terms, I gather.'

Bernie's face, the one I last saw, is alive in me now, the war-thin hollow of his cheeks, the searing, raging pain in his eyes. My fingers grip each other tight. And for some reason, I remember us coupling, him in his dumb, growing dread, and me, God how truly beyond forgiveness it all was, holding him, loving him and tears of grief weeping silently from my eyes. Nio, I was thinking,
oh Nio. I kidded myself, each time, that Bernie didn't notice the tears, didn't feel them on his cheek, his shoulder, didn't see them before I rolled into the pillow. I didn't know whose pain I was feeling, his, or mine, or Nio's, who thought he'd lost me. All of it, I suppose.

I am hollowed out. I can barely move, barely breathe. She is the same, sitting so near to me, alone.

I manage to say, owe it to him to say, ‘Thank God you had him.'

‘Yes.' She nods, lowers the wet handkerchief from her face. ‘Thank God. He got us through.' She looks at me and says, ‘He was a wonderful man.' Her eyes are red, her nose. The rest of her is white.

I say, ‘Yes, I know he was, love. I know.'

Her eyes are asking me; they narrow, her head shakes slowly. Why, she is saying? Then why?

It takes more courage than I have to meet those eyes. I force myself to do it. ‘There is no answer, Francesca,' I say. My voice is quiet, calm. ‘There wasn't then. There isn't now.'

I stand up. ‘I'll get the tea.'

My hands are shaking. I use the strainer to catch the sodden leaves. I take the milk carton out of the fridge, pour a little into my cup and hover it over hers. I now have to ask my own daughter if she takes milk.

‘Milk?' My voice is high, unconcerned.

‘A good dollop.'

‘Right.' The cups rattle in their saucers as I carry them over, and the saucers are splashed with tea when I place them on the coffee table between us. ‘Sorry,' I say.