The Italian Wife (13 page)

‘So,’ he said, gazing out towards the far horizon where two of the gigantic Tosi diggers were excavating a section of the Mussolini canal, ‘no one to listen to us here.’

That’s why he’d brought her. Away from eavesdroppers. Away from young women in red dresses. Yet Isabella sensed that he was more interested in the digging machines right then than in what she had to say and for the first time she began to doubt him.

‘I need your help,’ she stated honestly.

He swung round to her with a smile on his face that for a split second robbed her of thought, it was so full of energy, yet softened by an odd kind of relief.

‘What is it you need?’

‘Just some photographs taken,’ she answered.

His expression changed. Disappointment flickered in his grey eyes but was quickly hidden behind politeness. Isabella didn’t care for the politeness. She needed more from him than that.

‘You are a photographer,’ she pointed out, and then it occurred to her why he may be uneasy about it. ‘I can pay you, of course.’

The moment she uttered the words she knew they were the wrong ones. He took a small step away from her and she wanted to snatch the words back out of the morning air. He returned his attention to the Tosi diggers in the distance and cocked his head, as though listening for their rumble and their clanking in preference to her words.

‘I’ll be happy to oblige,’ he said with impeccable courtesy. ‘What is it that you would like me to photograph?’

‘Some schoolchildren. At the Suore di Santa Teresa convent.’

The faintest of sighs escaped him. ‘I’m better at animals than children.’

‘It’s important, Roberto.’

Instantly he forgot the diggers. His eyes fixed on hers. ‘When you came with the fish, I expected a request for something more than a few photographs.’

‘The fish were a thank you.’

He smiled, a patient smile. He was waiting for more but a donkey and cart were approaching down the road and they did not speak again until it had passed.

‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘What is this about?’

Isabella’s heart was racing. She was taking a risk of appearing subversive. She didn’t want to sound like someone who needed to be watched or like someone whose touch would mark you out for one of Colonnello Sepe’s prison cells. But Roberto had done something rare in these days of informers and suspicion, he had offered her a slender thread of trust and she held on to it tight.

‘I’m looking for a girl. Her name is Rosa. She’s nine years old and has been put into the convent school by Chairman Grassi because…’ she paused and her gaze was drawn back to the town, ‘because he wants to keep her away from people like me. From people asking awkward questions.’

The photographer listened. He didn’t interrupt but his full lips had set in a hard line and his broad frame stood unnaturally still. Isabella felt her mouth dry because she couldn’t make out what it signified, with the sun flaring behind him and throwing his eyes in shadow. The milky sky seemed to press down relentlessly on the long straight road, pinning the pair of them to this spot beside the ditch that ran parallel to the highway.

‘So what is it you want from me?’

She spoke lightly, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

‘Roberto, please will you, as the official photographer of Bellina, go to the convent of Suore di Santa Teresa and take photographs of the school, including one of each class of pupils, so that I can see if Rosa is still there? That’s all.’ She shrugged. ‘Not much really.’ She found a smile and felt it curve the stiff corners of her lips. ‘Worth two red snappers, surely?’

But she wasn’t breathing. It had sounded far more reasonable in the confines of her own head than it did here out in the open on the Agro Pontino with the harsh croak of a frog mocking her.

Roberto leaned back against the car and she knew then that he would say no.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘Thank you.’ Isabella held out her hand.

He shook it firmly. A business deal. But it was more than a business deal, they both knew that. It was a collusion. A breaking of the rules. So an awareness of what they were doing passed between them as his skin touched hers and they smiled at each other. She felt the wind lift the weight of her hair off her neck at the same moment as a weight lifted off her mind, and her smile spread into a murmur of relief.

‘Thank you,’ she said again.

She wanted to place her fingers tightly around his arm and say confidently,
There’s no danger. Not for you
. But she couldn’t. She might be lying.

‘So,’ he said, raising one dark eyebrow at her, ‘it sounds simple enough. I will arrange with the Mother Superior for a day when I can come into the school. Under the pretext of recording the town’s every feature, as set out in Chairman Grassi’s orders, I will take pictures of each class.’ The strong angular lines of his face softened and his voice took on an edge of concern. ‘Don’t look so worried, Isabella. She isn’t going to refuse me entry.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘No one does.’

‘That must come in useful.’

The look he gave her said otherwise. Suddenly it dawned on her that he must be regarded by the populace of Bellina as the spy in the camp and she felt a low buzzing at the base of her chest as a flicker of fear took flight.

‘That’s settled then,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

‘Now tell me who this Rosa is and why you are going to such lengths to find her.’

She could have said
That’s my private business
. But she didn’t.

‘Rosa is the daughter of Allegra Bianchi, the woman who —’

‘I know who Allegra Bianchi is. Everyone in town knows. What is she to you?’

‘Before she went up the tower she left her daughter with me in the Piazza del Popolo. She abandoned her at my table, and I want to make certain she’s all right. I need to talk with Rosa urgently but I am not allowed to.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know.’

She said it brightly but for a moment she was stricken by the thought that he might change his mind, that he might think she was lying. He took a deep breath, inhaling the earthy scent of the fields, and she watched each muscle of his face slowly relax. A farm truck trundled past, piled high with logs from the forested mountains, and Roberto called out a cheery ‘
Buongiorno
’ to the driver. The man in flat cap and shirt sleeves waved back and trailed his gaze over Isabella with a delighted grin.

The small incident broke the mood and Roberto’s manner became polite and professional.

‘I’ll let you know which day I will be at the convent school and when the photographs will be ready, I promise you.’

‘
Grazie
.’

There was nothing more to say. In the wide open space of the plain Isabella experienced a strange feeling – as though the emptiness of it was draining the words from them both, sucking them into the wet squelching soil, squeezing the life out of them. She felt uneasy. She wasn’t sure what had gone wrong, but something had. She wanted to reconnect with him so she rested back against the warm body of the car, feeling its heat on her shoulder blades, and let the wind snatch at her long black curls without brushing them aside.

‘Take my picture,’ she said with a laugh.

‘Isabella Berotti,’ he said with a grand flourish of his hand, ‘it will be my pleasure.’

He disappeared into the back of his car, knees bent double to fold his long limbs into the small space, but he emerged with his big boxy camera on a strap around his neck and started to fiddle with the back of it, turning knobs and inserting rectangular plates that he told her were film holders. There was something graceful in the way his hands moved and a quiet satisfaction in the set of his mouth as he worked that gave her pleasure to watch.

‘Ready, Isabella?’ he called softly, and when she parted her lips to ask how he wanted her to stand, she heard the whirr of the shutter curtain and a click.

She laughed. ‘I wasn’t ready.’

He studied her as intently as if she were a painting, a slight crease drawn across his forehead as he walked around her, eyes focused downward on his viewfinder. She felt foolish.

‘You look lovely.’

‘Are you talking to me or to this trim little car of yours?’

He laughed, and as he handled the camera he started murmuring whispered words, whether to himself, to her or to the camera, she had no idea. And then he stepped forward and touched her hair, her neck, arranging her – he cupped her chin in his hand and tilted it sideways, his fingers firm in what they wanted. He bent down and lightly clasped her ankle, placing one foot in front of the other, his eyes seeing not her but the photographic image he wanted to create. She wondered what was going on in his head. Do people exist only inside your camera, while all the time you stand on the outside? she wanted to ask him.

But then the moment was over, the bulky camera was back in its box in the Fiat and the sun was caught up in his chestnut hair.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

‘Out here?’

He laughed and opened the car door for her. ‘The farmer where I’m heading doesn’t know one end of a cow from another, but his coffee…?’ He touched a kiss to the tips of his fingers and tossed it into the air for the crows. ‘
Perfetto
!’

As they drove along the long straight roads – each one numbered by how many Roman miles it was from Rome – the wind swept in through the open window, wrapping them in the heavy scent of the wet earth. The landscape stretched in all directions, flat and naked, full of hope.

‘What made you become a photographer?’ she asked.

‘I suppose I grew sick of stinking manure and fish.’

She smiled.

But before she could push him further, he asked, ‘Tell me, Isabella, is there a Signor Berotti at home?’

‘No. I live with my father. He’s a doctor. My husband died ten years ago. He was a Blackshirt.’

Roberto’s head turned to look at her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Very sorry, Isabella.’

She said nothing. If she started to talk about that day, she might not stop. She waited, expecting him to ask her more, but he didn’t.

They drove in silence for a while until they crossed a narrow stone bridge over a sluggish canal and Roberto said quietly, ‘Now, tell me about Rosa.’

As the car pulled into the farmyard, a shout from a barn a short distance from the house startled Isabella.

‘Hold her!’

‘Watch out, she’ll have you!’

A shriek tore out of the open barn door.

‘Grab the rope, for the love of God, and get her to…’

Another cry of pain rang out, deeper this time, and was followed by a string of hefty curses. Isabella leapt out of the car, her foot skidding in a patch of slime, but Roberto ran straight past her into the barn, his long legs covering the distance before she could blink. From outside she heard his voice raised in anger against whoever was inside and the sound of it disturbed her in a way she didn’t quite understand.

The yard they were in belonged to the farmstead ONC 480. The
Opera Nazionale Combattenti
was the organisation set up by Francesco Nitti and Alberto Beneduce after the Great War to help war veterans to find their place again in Italian society. The veterans were a hotbed of unrest and unemployment in the towns, causing dissent and trouble in city wine shops with their grumbles, so the prominent politician and agronomist Valentino Ursu Cencelli stepped in. He was appointed head of the ONC and suggested granting the veterans land of their own to grow crops and boost agriculture production.

It was an audacious plan. But Mussolini gave Cencelli sweeping powers and he went at it like a tank. The
bonifica
– the reclamation of the Pontine marshland – alone would cost seven million lire. The Fascist regime moved into action with typical ruthlessness. It promptly expropriated land from wealthy landowners like the Caetani family and empowered the ONC with the task of overseeing the massive operation.

So the ONC stamped its initials on every single farmstead and proceeded to employ agents to check everything. Isabella had seen them all hours of the day and night prowling the area in their cheap suits and black ties. These men poked their noses into every home and farm, clipboard in hand, taking down notes and names. They weighed out every kilo of seed sown and counted each bucketful of milk drawn. And when the first harvest came next year they would be first in the threshing yard to requisition the lion’s share of the grain for Il Duce.

This farmstead was a mess. Bits of harness, iron chains and tools lay abandoned in the yard, as well as three buckets of stale water beside the well, which even Isabella knew was the worst mistake in these parts. Uncovered stagnant water attracted mosquitoes to lay eggs. Then you were in real trouble.

A pair of small girls with identical faces and identical filthy smocks came hurtling on bare feet out of the house. They ran squealing towards the barn but Isabella reached it first. The heavy sweaty smell of animal hide hit her and for a second her eyes fought to adjust to the dim interior, but she could make out two hulking Maremmana cows stamping their feet, heads lowered and wielding massive horns like sabres. They were bellowing with rage and snorting a sour-smelling mist into the air.

Isabella seized the two young twins by their wrists but felt out of her depth here. This was a world with different rules, with animal sounds that were rising out of control and a short stocky man who was brandishing an iron bar to ward off the cattle. Blood spurted down his trouser leg from a long gash in his thigh, and he lashed out at the great grey bovine shoulder with the bar and a torrent of curses.

‘Gabriele! Stop that at once!’ Roberto launched himself at the man and seized his arm. ‘You’re making them worse. Quieten down, man.’

‘That vicious beast went for me.’

‘You must have been too rough with her. I told you before,’ his voice was full of anger, ‘treat these cows like your children.’

Roberto pushed the man to the floor on a heap of soiled straw and seized the rope tether that was dangling to the floor from the larger cow’s neck. Isabella had no idea how he did it but she watched him reel in the panicked creature, just as he had done with the horse at the station, guiding its horns quietly away from him and sweeping a calming hand over the cow’s thick quivering neck. She saw him flinch when he touched the trickle of scarlet from a gash that had opened up on the grey shoulder where its hide was stained with dark patches of sweat.