The Italian Wife (46 page)

‘Now,’ Roberto whispered.

He raised the rifle in his right hand and tucked it tight against his shoulder. Isabella stood in front of him with the barrel resting on her shoulder, taking the weight of it, and with her left hand she steadied it as Roberto sighted along it. When he was satisfied, he said again, ‘Now.’

He pulled the trigger. She felt the kick. The recoil.The crack of the rifle was so loud it made her ears ring, just like on that day in the Milan market, but Roberto kept an arm around her from behind, holding them both together.

The dark figure fell. Across the valley it looked small and insignificant, with other spiky figures fussing around it. Neither Roberto nor Isabella spoke, neither of them said the words,
We have killed a man between us
. Not out loud. Not for others to hear. But she could feel the shivers that gripped him at the thought of having taken a human life, and she knew neither of them would forget this day. She held him. Her cheek on his rough jacket, aware of the Communist’s blood that had soaked into its fabric. In the same way that the Communist’s hatred had soaked into her.

She stared in silence out across the valley, shocked by the calmness of her thoughts, by the certainty that she could kill again if she had to.

Is that what Luigi found? That the first time was hard but the second time came easier? And easier still the time after that. Isabella stood on the side of a windswept mountain and felt she understood her husband just a little more than before.

‘They’ll go now,’ Roberto told her. ‘Without their leader, the carabinieri will have no stomach for the fight. They’ll be frightened they will have to answer to someone for that bullet.’

But even as they watched, a column of Blackshirts came marching up the valley.

44

They hid in a cave. The mountainside was pockmarked with them, each one known to Olivera and Peppe, each one prepared with undergrowth spread over the entrance, water, straw and kindling hidden away inside. A man could hold out here for weeks.

The air in the cave was cool, the walls rough and glistening with moisture. Moss grew near the entrance like a green carpet but deeper inside the limestone rock there was a coppery taste in the air. As if the mountain breathed its ancient memories into the hollows within itself.

‘Take this.’

Isabella was bathing Roberto’s wound with iodine. Her fingers opened his mouth and placed one of her father’s pills on his tongue. She could feel the heat building in him, the fire under his skin, and the jagged edges of the wound were looking raw and angry. She dropped a kiss on his dusty tangle of chestnut hair and rubbed her cheek across it. The bullet needed to come out but it was too dangerous for her father to attempt it here. She had to get him home.

She crossed over deeper into the cave to where her father was seated on the ground next to Carlo Olivera who was lying on a bed of straw. Rosa lay tight alongside him, her hair touching his jaw, the chain of her mother’s crucifix wrapped around her wrist. Isabella crouched down beside them and could see plainly that Olivera didn’t look good. His skin had changed from chalky white to a greyish-blue colour that didn’t belong on skin, and deep lines of pain were gouging themselves down his cheeks. His eyes were closed and her father’s brown coat lay over him.

‘How is he?’ she asked in a low murmur, resting a hand on her father’s shoulder.

The cave altered sound. It buffed the edges off words, making them softer, absorbing them into its rock walls.

‘He’s not too bad,’ her father said in his professionally cheerful tone, designed to give patients hope. ‘He’s had bad wounds before and come through them. I’ve patched him up more times than either of us can remember. He’s tough. Isn’t that so, Carlo?’

The Communist’s mouth curved in a smile and his eyes dragged themselves open. ‘You can’t kill weeds.’

Rosa lifted her head to watch her father’s face.

‘We’ll get you out of here tonight when it gets dark,’ Dr Cantini assured him. ‘Peppe is out there checking on the patrols. We’ll fix you up, so you can make Mussolini curse your name for years to come.’ He patted his friend’s limp arm.

‘You always were a rotten liar, Cantini.’

‘Don’t give up, my friend. Not yet.’

The muddy blue eyes of the Communist settled on Isabella’s face and she could feel the force of them even now, the strength of will that had made him such a thorn in Mussolini’s side.

‘It is strange, Cantini, is it not’ – his words came in short bursts between each laboured breath – ‘that despite our friendship, our families have brought nothing but grief to each other.’

Isabella’s father turned to look at her, his large head seeming unsteady, as though suddenly too heavy. ‘My daughter has the courage of a lioness.’

Isabella blinked. Missed a breath. She had no idea. No idea that he thought such a thing.

‘Papa, thank you.’

She kissed his cheek but he became gruff and businesslike.

‘How is your Roberto doing?’

She would not be sidetracked. ‘Tell me what happened. If I have courage, I can bear the truth. Why did Allegra Bianchi shoot Luigi and me? And why did she leap from my tower?’

Her father shook his head. ‘Leave the past where it is, Isabella. Think of your future.’ His eyes drifted to where Roberto was standing in the cave mouth, watching for movement among the trees beyond the barrier of branches. He was giving them privacy.

‘No, Papa. I need to know…’

Before her father could refuse her again, Carlo Olivera raised a weak hand to silence him.

‘She has a right to know,’ he said softly.

‘No, Carlo, she has no right to —’

‘He was her husband.’

Her father’s anger hardened his voice. ‘That’s why she does not need to be told.’

‘Signor Olivera, I have helped you today. I am asking you to help me now. Tell me why your wife shot us.’

‘I’m sorry, old friend,’ the Communist brushed his hand on her father’s arm, ‘but…’ A sudden cough ripped through his wounded chest and blood coloured his teeth.

‘Don’t talk.’

But her father’s glare did not silence him.

‘Rosa, go and see if Luca Peppe is in sight yet. He will know what the Blackshirts are doing.’

‘No, Papa, let me stay.’ The child’s thin arms tightened around him.

‘Go, Rosa.’

She gathered up her limbs and jumped to her feet. He waited until she was out of earshot before he continued.

‘My wife shot your husband because of what he did.’

‘You mean burning the building with people in the attic.’ Isabella shuddered again at the image. ‘That was —’

‘No. Not that.’

‘What then?’

‘He came with his Blackshirt friend, Giorgio Andretti, to the house where my wife was living. They had found out where she was.’ His lungs were starting to rattle as he spoke. ‘They knew I was in Rome. Working with union men and organising strikes for better conditions. I was there for two months.’

‘Did he interrogate her?’

Isabella pictured the truncheon in Luigi’s strong fist. Heard in her head the crack of it on fragile bones.

‘No. He raped her.’

Isabella made a small choking noise and her heart stopped dead.

‘No, no. Not even Luigi would do such a —’

‘He did it. With brute force. We never found out whether it was the only time he did that to the wife of a known rebel or…’ he fought for breath, ‘or whether it was a method of intimidation used by his Blackshirt unit. No other women came forward. We will never know.’

A nerve jumped in his grey cheek and he looked away abruptly, as though Isabella’s face was a reminder of her husband and what he had inflicted on Allegra.

‘I’m sorry,’ Isabella told him. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Her hands were shaking, and she clasped them together to hide their weakness.

How could she not have known? How could she not have seen it in Luigi? She had been too young and too blinded by his Blackshirt glamour. Sorrow for Allegra swept through her, but rage directed at herself drove her to bow her head in shame.

‘Enough, Carlo. Rest your lungs.’

‘Tell her.’ The Communist would not be denied. ‘Tell her the rest.’

45

Roberto wanted to go to her. To fold Isabella’s trembling body in his arms and take her away from this cave. He had heard the Communist’s words and they raised a black hatred in his heart for the man who could rise from Isabella’s bed and tear another woman’s life apart. Isabella’s head hung down, hiding her face and her shame behind her hair. Her curls were as tangled and snarled as he knew her emotions must be.

She’d heard enough.

When the Communist said, ‘Tell her the rest,’ Roberto had moved closer to her, ready to snatch her away from the words that carried what they called the truth.
Truth
? Truth was never absolute. It was never finite. The truth was that this Communist was a killer, and now Roberto and Isabella had become killers. They all had their reasons for doing what they did, so who was to say that Allegra Bianchi was in the wrong when she pulled the trigger?

‘Tell me, Papa. Tell me the rest.’ Isabella didn’t lift her head.

Her father said nothing for a long moment and then exhaled a harsh breath of resignation. ‘Very well. Allegra took revenge by shooting Luigi. She tried to kill you too because she believed at that time that he must have told you what he’d done.’ He shook his head in sorrow, and his gaze lingered on his daughter.

‘Go on, Papa. I’m listening.’

‘She had a bullet wound in her leg. A policeman had fired on her when she was fleeing the building that she’d used to ambush you and Luigi. She came to me. I patched her up.’

‘You helped her? While I was almost dying in the hospital?’

‘Yes.’

Roberto saw her flinch. But she said no more.

‘She came to me again a month later,’ Dr Cantini continued. ‘She was pregnant. She asked me to terminate it.’ The words seemed to stick on his tongue. ‘It was Luigi’s.’

Isabella’s head shot up. Her eyes were huge and seemed to have sunk deep into her head.

‘Did you do as she asked?’

‘No.’

A silence, thick as fog, filled the cave.

‘Rosa is that child?’ Isabella whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘Rosa is Luigi’s child.’

‘Yes.’

Carlo Olivera raised his head from the straw. ‘That’s why she brought her to you.’ His voice was raw with emotion. ‘I love Rosa like my own child, but Allegra never forgave her for being his.’

Isabella did not move. Did not seem to breathe.

‘The carabinieri were right on her heels,’ Olivera explained, ‘the day she came to Bellina. I can only guess that she’d had enough. Too many years on the run. Never having a home. Or knowing when the knock on the door would come to say I was dead.’ He let his head fall back on the straw, the tendons in his neck taut. ‘I did that to my wife.’

It was finished. Roberto would not let these two men rip the heart out of Isabella any more. He strode over, wrapped an arm around her and lifted her to her feet. She stood stiff and upright, but her shoulder pressed hard against his.

‘You tried to make me stay away from Rosa, Papa.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Her father pushed himself to his feet and studied her intently. ‘I didn’t want you involved in any of this, because —’

‘You were wrong,’ Roberto interrupted. ‘Isabella needed to know what had happened. You’re a doctor, couldn’t you see what it was doing to her? It was your duty as her father to tell her.’

Roberto took hold of Isabella’s arm and walked her towards the veil of greenery that obscured the cave entrance. ‘Let’s find Rosa,’ he said.

She turned her beautiful face to him. ‘Yes, it’s time to find Rosa.’

46

Carlo Olivera breathed his last just before sunset.

This time Isabella did not have to tell Rosa that her parent had died. The child was there, holding her father’s hand. She buried her young face in his neck and wouldn’t leave him. Her grief was silent and without tears, but she kept vigil at his side all through the long hours of the night. When Isabella took her hand well before dawn and led her away from him into the damp morning air, she whimpered once but no more.

In the darkness they silently retraced their steps across the mountains, listening carefully for any sounds, but there was no sign of any guards posted. They retrieved their cars from their hiding places and drove back down the winding roads, leaving the mountains and their secrets behind. The wide expanse of the
Agro Pontino
plain opened up ahead of them and Isabella was caught by surprise by the strength of her desire to return to it.

They had discussed the dangers of returning. Her father had argued against it, convinced that Roberto and Isabella would be arrested because of the fight in the mountains, but Roberto had pointed out that they were too far away across the valley to be seen during the exchange of shots and had been hidden too well among the shaded trees for anyone to identify them. They could have been any of Olivera’s fighting force. The sooner they showed their faces in town, and continued with their work as normal, the better.

As they drove down on to the plain the sun rose behind them above the hunched back of the mountains and bathed the barren fields in a shimmering golden light. Suddenly Isabella could see what the plain would look like next summer when golden fields of wheat would cover the land, and she felt a fierce need to be there to see it happen.

She looked down at the shorn dark head tucked against her shoulder and she tightened her arm around Rosa’s small shoulders. Allegra Bianchi had stolen so much from Isabella and it would take time for her to understand what drove Luigi and Allegra to do what they had done, to believe that they had the right to so much savagery. Yet Allegra had brought her a child.

This child.

She rested her cheek on the warm head and watched the tower of Bellina come closer.

‘Surviving?’

‘Yes. I’m good at that.’ Roberto smiled up at Isabella as she bandaged his shoulder.