The Italian Wife (40 page)

That’s what she was here to find out. She raced towards the small huddle of women gathered on the pavement across the road from the house where Roberto lived. The woman in the red dress was there, though not in red today, and her dark eyes were bright and excited. She watched Isabella approach and without a word she extended her arm and pointed a long painted finger at the green door opposite. It was hanging off its hinges.

‘What happened?’

‘They came.’ The woman shrugged.

‘The Blackshirts?’

‘Yes. They didn’t even wait for old Signora Russomanno, who lives downstairs, to open the door. They just knocked it down and barged straight in.’ She cocked her head on one side and gave Isabella a speculative stare. ‘What has he done?’

‘Nothing. It’s a mistake.’

A harsh laugh broke from the woman, revealing a chipped front tooth. ‘That’s what they all say.’

‘In this case it’s true.’

The woman smiled thinly. ‘You want a glass of wine?’ She shrugged again. ‘You don’t look good.’

‘
Grazie
. But no. I have to find something.’

‘In there?’ She nodded up at Roberto’s rooms.

‘Yes.’

‘Pah! You’re too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Go take a look.’

It would be here. Something would be here.

Isabella stood in the middle of Roberto’s room. It had been torn apart. They had relished their work, those Blackshirts, and done it thoroughly. The photographs were stripped from the walls and shredded like grey confetti on the floor, catching the sunlight and throwing dancing patterns of it on the ceiling. Every cupboard and every drawer had been ransacked and emptied, their contents tossed in a pile and hammered to pieces by their truncheons. Even the furniture. Broken wooden legs and splintered side panels jabbed up in the air at odd angles.

But the darkroom was the worst. The filing cabinets of thousands and thousands of photographs had been spilled out all over the floor and his developing chemicals had been poured over them. Images had blackened, faces had melted. The stink was as rotten as the men who did the deed. The Graflex camera was smashed and it broke something inside Isabella. She couldn’t bear to see all Roberto’s work destroyed. Such brutal devastation, it hurt to look at it.

Her anger threatened to choke her as she crouched, frozen with rage, surrounded by the wreckage. She stirred the sodden heap, searching for anything, any clue, any sign, any glimmer of hope in the blackened mass that would tell her she was right. She had to be right, there had to be something here.

Where is it, Roberto? Your safety net. Your fallback. For when times get tough. Your insurance against Grassi.

Because she was certain he had one. Why Grassi would suddenly turn on Roberto like this when he had previously left him free to seek out information and feed it to him, she didn’t know, but Roberto would be prepared. He would have known this day would come.

Where?

She picked her way around the apartment, hearing his laughter, seeing his hands holding up the camera to show her, its knobs and levers like extensions of his fingers, his handsome face lit up with a kind of deep commitment. Like a man showing off his lover.

Where, Roberto, where?

She stood immobile in the room for five full minutes, her eyes searching. Her mind fighting its way through the chaos. Only then did she fling open the door and charge down the stairs with hair flying behind her.

How could she have been so stupid
?

His car, his little black Fiat Balilla. It sat patiently under a tarpaulin in the blacksmith’s yard. Roberto had told her that he’d tucked it away there yesterday before travelling to Rome because he didn’t trust Grassi not to have him followed if the car was at the station. Roberto had once helped the blacksmith’s brother when he fell foul of the law against foreign contraband – bringing foreign wine into the country instead of using Italian ones. So the blacksmith was happy to oblige with a corner of his yard occasionally.

Isabella pulled the tarpaulin off the car, seized the chrome handle and swung open the driver’s door. No one in Bellina locked their cars, it was considered antisocial. She breathed in deeply, seeking his scent, but what greeted her was a faint ripple of the smell of his photographic chemicals – what was it he’d told her? Sodium thiosulfate, that was it. He must have carried it inside the car.

It made her smile. When she thought her mouth had forgotten how to do such a thing, it curved into the beginnings of a smile and she could feel Roberto watching her. The sensation was so strong that she turned and studied the yard around her with its iron tongs and chisels hung on hooks on the wall and the roar of the forge where the blacksmith was hammering inside his stone shed. Roberto wasn’t here. Of course he wasn’t. Her mind was jittery.

She began her search. Quick. Thorough. Unobtrusive. No sign of panic to anyone who glanced her way. Under the seat frames, in the pockets, behind the rug folded on the back shelf. She rummaged through everything and peered under the curve of the broad wheel arches.

Nothing.

Just a petrol can, a toolkit, a tyre lever and a tripod on the back seat. She moved faster, going through every part of the car. Her hands even explored the engine compartment, searching its oily corners and crannies.

Nothing.

Where, Roberto? Where? I know you. You won’t leave your back uncovered.

She sat herself in the driving seat and sank her forehead on the steering wheel with a moan. What was she missing? What else was there to search?

With a sudden thought she sat up and looked above at the headlining, a beige cloth that was stretched taunt. She clambered on to her knees and her fingers skimmed it as attentively as she’d seen her father’s fingers explore a patient’s abdomen. But it was smooth and unruffled, nothing hiding behind it. Nevertheless, in desperation she removed a screwdriver from the toolkit and tore it open.

Only then did it occur to her to look under her feet. The floor was covered with a thick rubberised black matting that was firmly stuck down, but using the screwdriver she prised up the edges and ripped it back in the driver’s footwell and then in the passenger’s.

Again, nothing.

She climbed into the rear, sank the tip of the tool under the matting once more and wrenched it free. And there it was. Gazing up at her as if to say ‘What took you so long?’ It was a brown envelope. She snatched it up, tore open the sealed flap and slid out exactly what she expected: a photograph.

She flipped it over to take a look at the front of the picture and her eyes widened with surprise. She felt a buzzing on her tongue as if she had bitten a live wire and it snapped something into life in her head that had been frozen since the moment she’d heard the words
You
are under arrest, Signor Falco.

She clutched the photograph to her chest, as though someone might snatch it away, and covered it possessively with her hands. Abruptly she started to laugh. A strange whooping sound that was wrenched up from deep inside her and set her limbs shaking. She sat in the back of Roberto’s car and laughed till tears came rolling down her cheeks. Only when they finally ceased did she dare look at the photograph again.

It was a shot of Benito Mussolini himself. In all his finery. A pristine white uniform with a blaze of medals across his chest and his knee-high black boots gleaming like glass. He was in a large courtyard that Isabella didn’t recognise, but the building behind was without question the Party headquarters in Bellina and the Fascist flag fluttered boastfully from above a doorway from which Mussolini had just emerged.

But Il Duce had missed his footing. Whether through drink or lack of attention, he had skidded off the step into the courtyard and the photograph showed him in mid-air, halfway to the cobbles. His hands were outstretched to break his fall and he looked like a fat white rabbit leaping through the air. Italy’s leader looked absurd. His face was distorted with alarm, his mouth open wide in a shout.

But the clever part. The wondrous part. The miraculous part of this photograph lay somewhere else, because behind him, still in the shadow of the doorway, stood Chairman Grassi, clearly taken by surprise by his leader’s stumble.

He was laughing.

The Blackshirts again. They blocked Isabella’s path across the high-ceilinged marble reception hall of the Party headquarters, but this time she brandished her envelope under their noses.

‘Chairman Grassi needs to see this,’ she told them firmly. ‘I promise you he will have you shot if you don’t let me through to show him what’s in here.’

They hesitated. One held out a hand. ‘Let me have it. I will make sure he sees it.’

‘No. The chairman will want to speak to me.’

‘That is not possible. You have no appointment.’

‘That’s true, but I have an important message for him. It is from Mussolini himself and Il Duce will not be pleased if you get in his way.’

The Blackshirt laughed. He was young and handsome and did not take kindly to being threatened by a woman. He sneered at Isabella openly. ‘Why would Mussolini bother with a cripple like you?’ He started to walk away.

‘Because I am Signora Berotti, an important architect in this town.’

He turned and looked at her uncertainly.

‘I dined with Il Duce,’ she informed him. ‘I sat at his table and I have his private ear. That is why. You would be wise to listen to me. You will suffer, I promise you, if you do not take me to see Chairman Grassi immediately.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

But the one with the bullet-shaped head and the patronising manner looked uneasy. He decided to cover his back. ‘I will speak to Deputy Marchini. Wait here.’ His eyes flicked over her figure appreciatively, lingering on her breasts. ‘The chairman might like some amusement in his morning.’

She restrained from slapping him. ‘Be quick,’ she said. ‘
Pronto
.’

He marched away, deliberately slowing his step, but returned exactly four minutes later at speed with Grassi’s deputy, Signor Marchini, at his side.

Marchini offered no greeting. He looked agitated. ‘I am told you have a message from Il Duce for Chairman Grassi.’

‘That is true.’

He looked at the envelope in her hand. ‘I will convey it to him.’

‘No, Deputy Marchini. Il Duce was adamant. I must deliver it myself.’ She treated him to the faintest of smiles. ‘I’m sure you recall that I enjoyed the pleasure of our great leader’s company during the celebration at the Constantine Hotel.’

Marchini’s neat well-groomed features looked increasingly unhappy. He took a grip on her upper arm and walked her down the corridor with a curt ‘The chairman will see you for two minutes. Keep it brief. He is in the middle of a meeting which he has adjourned. This is a bad time, I warn you. What with the aeroplane crashing on the rally and now this new attack by the Communist insurgents yesterday, the chairman is —’

‘What attack?’ She pulled her arm free.

The deputy scowled at her. ‘Just watch what the hell you say in there.’

They’d reached the office and he knocked on the door, opened it, ushered her in and withdrew. Grassi was seated behind his desk signing papers. He didn’t even bother to look up.

‘Be quick, signora. I am busy.’

She placed herself in front of his desk and stood there in silence.

‘Well?’ he barked.

‘When I have your full attention, I have something to show you, chairman. I think you will find it interesting.’

His pen paused. His fleshy lips tightened. Reluctantly his eyes rose to hers. ‘I am told you have a message from Il Duce but I assume this is really about Signor Falco’s arrest. That is not my business. Go and talk to the police. You’re wasting my time.’ His eyes were travelling back to his documents when he caught sight of the envelope in her hand.

Isabella didn’t exactly hear his intake of breath – he was too good for that – but she saw his chest lift and there was a faint hitch in the rhythm of his breathing.

‘What now?’ he snapped.

She placed the brown envelope on her side of the desk and kept her good hand on it.

‘What was the Communist attack yesterday?’

He ran his fingers over his carefully waxed caesar-style hair, as if to hold his thoughts together by physical force. His round eyes half-closed while he worked out whether to tell her or not. She inched the envelope a fraction in his direction.

‘Your friend Carlo Olivera chose yesterday evening to come for his daughter. There was gunfire. Colonnello Sepe and his men were ready for him and cornered him in the shunting yard.’

‘He’s not my friend.’

He rolled his eyes as though she’d made a joke. ‘He was shot.’

Oh, Rosa. Bellina has brought you nothing but sorrow and shame. I am so sorry.
 

‘Now get out of my office,’ he ordered.

‘First, look at this.’ She placed the envelope under his nose on the desk. ‘Then, Chairman Grassi, we shall talk. About you and Il Duce.’

An hour Isabella waited and still Roberto didn’t come. She had no idea how many times she looked out of the windows of his apartment above the green door, scanning the street below, but it was too many. It wasn’t until the afternoon that it suddenly dawned on her that he would not be released until after dark, when the curfew kept people off the streets. When there was nothing but the wind and the town’s proud new buildings to watch him.

She did what she could with the mess in his rooms. She borrowed hessian sacks from Signora Russomanno, the elderly woman downstairs, and crammed as much of the destruction as she could inside them. As she scrubbed the darkroom from floor to ceiling to remove the chemicals that had been flung around it with venom, she cursed Grassi and swore to carve his heart out if he didn’t keep to his word. He had taken one look at the photograph and his lips turned a chalky white that he sought to disguise by lighting himself a cigar. But she saw the flame as he held it to the tip, the way it shook, and she knew that he knew that he had nowhere to run.