The Villa Triste (27 page)

‘Yes.’ Pallioti leaned back in the armchair she had shown him to. ‘Giovanni Trantemento,’ he said. ‘In a word. Or rather, two.’

Signora Grandolo nodded. ‘I suspected as much.’

She pulled open a drawer, extracted a file, and placed it on her desk.

‘I took the liberty of asking Graziella to pull together anything we might have on him. I’m afraid it isn’t much. We really only concern ourselves with partisans’ family members who need our help – the children especially. Who have now turned into parents and grandparents themselves. As children have a habit of doing.’ She produced a pair of glasses, slipped them on, and opened the file. ‘It doesn’t appear that he had any.’

From where he was sitting, Pallioti could see that the folder contained only one typed page. ‘No. A sister and nephew in Rome are his only remaining family. The father was killed, in Russia. The mother died at the end of the war. In Switzerland.’

She looked up. ‘Switzerland?’

‘Yes. He got them out. The mother died there, in a sanatorium. The daughter married, and moved to Rome.’ Too late, he realized that, having now heard what Remember The Fallen did, there was little chance that they would have come across the Trantementos. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Now that I understand what you do, I doubt that Signor Trantemento was the kind of case that would have come to your attention.’

She nodded, flipped the file closed and slid it across the desk towards him.

‘Then,’ she said, ‘I’m not sure I understand how I can help you?’

‘Actually,’ Pallioti said, ‘there is someone else.’

Her blue eyes fastened on him.

‘Someone else?’

Pallioti leaned forward.

‘A Roberto Roblino. Possibly from the south. He also fought with the partisans, and was also decorated, like Trantemento, at the sixtieth anniversary celebrations. We’re having some trouble,’ he added, choosing his words carefully, ‘with his background.’

As he spoke, he thought of Eleanor Sachs’s small, intent face, so completely unlike that of the woman sitting opposite him. And of her suggestion that Giovanni Trantemento and Roberto Roblino had been friends. Possibly old friends. Yet, when he had spoken with Enzo this morning, he had been told again that they had found no connection between the two. Nor had they been able to locate Roberto Roblino’s birth certificate.

‘I understand,’ he added, ‘that records were – confused – after the war.’

She smiled at his choice of words.

‘Your diplomacy serves you well, Ispettore. Confused is a very polite way of putting it. Chaotic comes closer. In a lot of cases, destroyed.’

‘So a missing birth certificate, for instance, wouldn’t be unusual?’

‘Quite the opposite. Birth, death, marriage, baptism. In a lot of cases there was no evidence that anyone was anyone.’

‘But you were able to verify genuine families of partisan members?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Yes, at least in many cases. We used what records were available. And, yes, word of mouth, too. Letters sent home, reports of comrades and commanding officers – that sort of thing. That having been said,’ she added, ‘I wouldn’t die of shock if we paid for a few books, bought a few pairs of socks for children whose parents weren’t exactly what you and I would call heroic. But as far as this man is concerned, if he was from the south – well, of course that was behind Allied lines. If he was with the partisans, he was away from home. As I said, we deal almost exclusively with the families of combatants who came from this area. There are other similar organizations. One in Turin does excellent work – the Piedmont, of course, was very active. And there is another in Padua.’

She picked up a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, then put it down and clenched and unclenched her fist.

‘Arthritis,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Such a bore. I don’t suppose it’s anything you have to worry about yet.’

Before Pallioti could reply, she picked up the pen again, and reached for a pad of paper. As she began to write she said, ‘I know the directors of the organizations in Turin and Padua personally. I’m sure they would be most helpful.’

‘I’m not certain,’ Pallioti said, ‘where Roblino was active.’

Signora Grandolo stopped writing and looked up. ‘You mean you think he may have been in Florence?’

Pallioti nodded. ‘He may have stayed in touch with at least one partisan member who was here. So, yes, I think it’s possible.’

‘Well, in that case,’ she said, ‘let us check.’ She swivelled towards her computer. ‘I take it,’ she added, ‘by the fact that you are asking me and not the man himself, that Signor Roblino is no longer with us?’

Not surprisingly, she apparently did not keep up with the tabloid papers, who had run yet another story this morning. Pallioti shook his head.

‘Sadly, no.’

Signora Grandolo’s computer, unlike the mother ship on Graziella Lombardi’s desk, was slight and silver, and looked as if it could not possibly weigh more than a pound. She tapped quickly on her keyboard, then stared at the screen. From where he was sitting, Pallioti could not see what came up. Whatever it was made her frown.

‘Nooo,’ she said slowly, running her finger down what had to be a list of names. ‘Roberto. Robbicci. Robeno. But no Roblino. No, I’m sorry. We don’t seem to have any record of anyone with that name at all. Of course,’ she added, glancing at him over the top of her glasses, ‘I could look further for you, if you like. Contact you, if anything came up. If he’s not here, though’ — she gestured towards The computer – ‘I tend to doubt it. Graziella is quite good at keeping our data in order.’

Pallioti decided he wasn’t surprised. Trantemento and Roblino could have met in dozens of other ways. They could have met through some old partisans’ network – after all, the souvenirs Giovanni Trantemento had kept suggested he wasn’t entirely dedicated to forgetting his past – or they could have met for the first time in Rome, during the sixtieth celebrations. Or this could be one of the things Eleanor Sachs was lying through her teeth about. In fact, rather than being disappointed, Pallioti decided he felt rather smug.

‘Tell me,’ he asked, wondering if he was on a roll, ‘I don’t want to waste your time, Signora. But have you ever heard stories, anything, concerning a character called Il Spettro?’

As he spoke, her face broke into a smile.

‘Ah, Ispettore,’ she said. ‘Someone has been pulling your leg. Telling you tall tales all about the Scarlet Pimpernel of Florence.’

‘I’m afraid it’s possible,’ he agreed. ‘I take it you think there’s nothing in it?’

She smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Stories are lovely. Especially exciting ones, aren’t they? But no.’ She shook her head. ‘Perhaps it’s the cynicism of age. Or perhaps,’ she added, ‘I prefer to believe in real heroes. There were a lot of them, you know. And most of them, what they did was extraordinary. But to my mind, the most extraordinary thing of all was that they were shockingly ordinary men and women.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have known. The source was hardly reliable.’

‘Well, many of them aren’t. Especially when it comes to the war. That’s human nature. Everyone wants to remember themselves as a hero. I know they had quite a lot of trouble, for instance, verifying the stories behind the medals, at the sixtieth.’

‘Were you involved in that, at all?’

She shook her head.

‘No. As I said, we deal largely with surviving families. And with the memorials, here in the city. We were invited, of course, to the celebrations. Cosimo would have liked to have gone. But he was very ill by that time. In the end, like most of the country, we watched it on the television.’

Pallioti nodded. Signora Grandolo was far too polite to fidget or glance at her watch, but he was aware that he was taking up her time. He had infringed enough on her goodwill.

‘Signora,’ he said. ‘Thank you. For being so generous.’

She smiled as he got to his feet.

‘It has been a pleasure.’ She stood up and came around her desk. ‘I hope if there is anything else I can do, in the future, you won’t hesitate to ask. As I said, this is my favourite hobby. Please.’ She handed him the file she had had put together on Giovanni Trante-mento. ‘You’ll find my card inside,’ she added. ‘With my direct numbers. If there is anything at all that I can do.’

‘Thank you.’

Her hand, when Pallioti took it, was soft and firm; her grip unexpectedly strong.

‘I don’t like to give warnings to the police,’ she said, smiling, ‘but I am an old lady, and you are young enough to be my son. So, a word – when it comes to the war, there are a lot of suspiciously big fish swimming about. A lifetime of experience has taught me that tall stories are rife.’

He sighed. ‘I’m afraid you’re right. I heard another one last night.’

‘Along with Il Spettro?’

‘Yes. Something about the reward for betraying a member of the partisans. Someone told me it was five pounds of salt.’

She was still holding his hand. Her eyes fastened on his face.

‘That, I am afraid,’ she said, ‘is not such a big fish.’

‘You mean it’s true?’

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? In this city of Botticelli and Michelangelo. Obscene. But I am afraid that sixty years ago there were people who thought that that was what a human life was worth.’

Chapter Fifteen

13 March 1944

It is difficult to describe what the city feels like now. The best I can think of is some kind of magician’s box that is growing smaller and smaller – pressing us up against one another, making us cruel and frantic as trapped animals. We squabble over scraps and lumps of fuel, while for the Fascisti and the Nazis, the staff officers and the SS, a grotesque parody of life is staged. Restaurants are open. The cafes are bright with music and champagne. There is a ‘theatre season’. And the arrests go on.

Everyone has stories about the Missing. This is how it happens.

They don’t send you a note. No one lets you know. You are supposed to meet someone, or you are at home – making dinner, mending their sweater, or waiting to argue, or apologize, or tell them you love them. And you just wait and wait and wait. That is what it is. Nothing. Just an emptiness where your husband or your child, your wife, or lover, or friend is no longer.

We have all heard of people, women usually, who have put on their best clothes and gone to the Café Paskowski or the Excelsior bar and thrown themselves at officers and the black-suited Gestapo men. Sidled up to them and slipped pathetic rolled-up wads of money, jewellery, little pieces of paper with a name written on it, into their pockets. Some people go to the Questura. Others stand in the street outside the Villa Triste until they are chased away. The German consul, Herr Wolf, is said to be sympathetic. In the right circumstances.

In the meantime, we hear whispers of informers and occasional gunshots and ignore the air raid sirens, when they go off at all, and curse the Allies for the rubble that blossoms across the city, while at the same time we long for them to come, and fear what will happen before they do, and fear even more what will happen if they do not.

GAP goes on throwing grenades and hiding news-sheets in menus and bibles, but no one speaks any more of triumph, or freedom, or ideals. Instead, we simply bow our heads – narrow time down to a day, an hour – and fight on. Not because we are lit with inspiration and hope, but because we have no choice. Because the alternative is death.

And each of us would like to meet it thinking the best of ourselves. But these days that is unlikely. Still, we do our best. So, as I have said, this book, these words, are a type of penance. And given that, I think I’ll write about Valentine’s Day. Because that was the day Issa was shot.

Dawn that morning was as fragile as the inside of a shell. It had been bitter. The river was white with cold. A skin of ice, powdered with snow, covered the water. In places it cracked, allowing a swirl of black to show through. I had been working most of the night, and had gone out to breathe, just to feel air on my face that did not bear the cloying smell of illness. I had gone also to think of Lodovico. I find I can no longer do that at home or at the hospital. Instead, when I am desperate and can no longer bear not to summon him up, when I must reach for memories of him like an addict for a drug, I walk fast and alone through the city. Then, sometimes, I can outpace the person I have become and find him in my mind as what I used to be. The moments are fleeting, I admit. But on the whole, better than dreams. Even if I never see him again, or never know, I am determined to believe that he is still alive, as if my thinking of him eating, breathing, laughing could make it so. Although I know, of course, that this is nonsense. What I think does not matter. Any more than what I wish for matters. This great machine of a war grinds on, and does not care what we think or wish.

It was very cold on the bridge. I peered over the edge and thought of the fish, still there beneath the ice, their world untouched. And then I wondered, when they blow the bridges, when the Allies finally come and destruction is truly loosed upon us, when the Trinita and the Carraia and the Ponte Alle Grazie all come falling down, will the fish even notice? I hoped not. Walking back to the hospital, I hoped the fish, at least, would be untouched.

I thought about them all day. And I was still thinking of them in the evening – about their darkness and their open mouths – as I finally made my way back to my cupboard at the end of my shift. I was carrying a bundle of clothes, that day’s bounty. No sets of keys or useful papers, but several pairs of socks. The decent boots of a seventeen-year-old boy beaten by the Banda Carita who then dumped him here so his death could be on our books, not theirs. A scarf.

Things were unusually quiet, and after the night before when I had not slept at all, I thought I would get an hour or two. I was pulling my keys out, tugging at the ribbon around my neck, when I sensed that something was wrong. My door was closed, but I thought I heard something, or someone, inside, and I was certain, absolutely positive that this was it – that I had finally been found out, that I would come face to face with the Head Sister, tipping up boxes of supplies where just the day before I had hidden two ration cards and a set of papers. My hand was shaking, but I felt something almost like relief as I finally pushed the door open.

I suppose I must have been expecting what I saw for some time, but still it took my breath away. It’s not that I haven’t dealt with the wounded, God knows. It’s just that they have always been anonymous. They haven’t had faces I love.

Issa was huddled on my cot, wrapped in her coat – her best coat, the black one with the fur collar. Which made it look worse, because her skin was so pale against it.

‘Issa! For God’s sake!’

I dropped what I was carrying and darted forward, but she put her finger to her lips and pointed at the door. I shut it behind me, and stared at her.

‘What happened?’ I demanded. ‘What happened to you?’

As I came close, I could see that the sleeve and shoulder of the coat were ruined, ripped and dark, and that blood had seeped through the thick wool and matted the fur.

‘I was knocked down by a car.’

The minute she said it, I knew she was lying. And I knew again the moment I touched her. There was the sticky warmth, the spongy softness. Finally, she let me peel the coat back. I have been doing this for six months now. I know a bullet wound when I see one.

‘What happened?’

It took me a moment to realize that she was wearing some of her best clothes. Her black suede shoes, soaked and ruined. Her black skirt, a silk blouse, the coat.

‘What happened to you?’ I asked again.

But even as I did, I knew it was pointless. ‘I know nothing, I know nothing, I know nothing.’ We hold it to us like a prayer, but in that moment I realized that I no longer know what it is for – who it protects or doesn’t. All I know is that we live in our own little shells of silence and fear.

‘Come on,’ I said, finally. ‘You have to let me get this off.’

I was worried that she was badly hurt, that the arm was broken or the bullet lodged. But she was very lucky. The flesh wound was ugly, and she had lost some blood. But that is all it was, a wound. A few inches towards her back, and things might have been quite different.

‘This is GAP,’ I muttered. ‘Isn’t it?’ But I might as well have been talking to myself. Even when I prised the torn flesh open and cleaned it, she didn’t make a sound.

I gave her some morphine. I tucked a blanket around her, and sitting in the chair at my desk, I watched as she fell asleep on my cot, her fingers fluttering in dreams. I waited until midnight. Then I gathered up all her clothes and took them downstairs to the incinerator.

When Issa woke up the next day, I knew that she was in pain, but again she refused to say anything about what had happened. She had visited me before, and while I did not tell anyone what was the matter with her, I thought it was safer not to deny her presence, either. I went about my business, and planned that, if asked, I would say the flat where she was staying had been hit. But no one did ask. No one asks anything any more. We all avert our eyes and scurry about, hands busy, seeing nothing.

By the afternoon of the third day, there was a little more colour in her cheeks. She did not have a fever and she was hungry. I found her some clothes. She asked for men’s trousers and a jacket. I don’t know if the boy’s boots fit, but she put them on. When I came back that evening after my rounds, I found her sitting up, in my chair, at my desk.

‘Cati,’ she said. ‘You have to cut my hair.’

I don’t know why, but of all the things she had asked or done since last September, I found this – this stupid, trivial thing – The most shocking. She must have seen it in my face, because she laughed. It made her wince, made her eyes water with pain, but she laughed anyway.

‘It won’t change anything,’ she said. ‘It won’t change me.’

I nodded, and muttered that, of course, she was right. I told myself that we were so changed already that it could hardly matter.

She left the next afternoon. Carlo came for her. He was waiting in the bicycle shed. I don’t know how dangerous it must have been for him to be there, probably very. My heart went out to him. I do not trust Issa to take care of herself, and plainly, neither does he. He reached out and put his arms around her. If the sight of her startled him, with her cropped hair and in her men’s clothes, he didn’t let it show. He has changed, too, since I last saw him, what feels like so very long ago now, in the autumn. He is still as beautiful as an archangel, his hair is still gold, and his eyes are still the same tawny cat’s colour. He still smiles. But he is no longer a boy. Something has changed in his face. There is a hardness about him.

‘Thank God you’re all right.’ He clasped Issa to him and buried his lips in her hair. Then he reached out and put his arm around me. He drew me to them until the three of us were standing there as one.

‘Bless you,’ he said. ‘Bless you, for what you have done. And for taking care of her.’

I told him I had not done much, but I was moved again by his kindness, and ashamed that I had ever been jealous. Now I am just glad that Issa has an archangel to watch over her. Before they went, I warned her, and him, that if she did anything stupid the wound to her arm could easily become infected and kill her. Both of them promised she would come back and let me look at it.

But I did not know when that would be. So I didn’t dare leave The hospital in case she came and I was not there. Our telephone occasionally still worked, which was a mercy – not only so that Mama and Papa would not worry, but because, although it’s true that I have become a better liar, when it came to this, I was not sure I could look into their faces and not tell them what had happened. So it was better I stayed away.

I made a point of going out every evening, and sometimes just after dawn as well, to the shed where the bicycles were kept and where the old gardener stored his things. I carried my rucksack, fiddled with my tyres or the basket, giving Issa a chance to see me. For almost a week she didn’t appear. Then, one night, she was there.

She was alone, and at first, I barely recognized her. She had hennaed her hair and was wearing men’s clothes again. But it was not just that – the hair and the clothes. She had changed the way she moved, the way she walked, held her head. She had made herself into someone else. When I think about it now, I realize that I shouldn’t have been so surprised. For once, it was a talent we shared. All of us were good at charades, but especially Issa and I. Papa usually won at cards, and Rico could run faster than either of us, but we excelled at turning ourselves into things we were not.

She laid her hand over mine, and the moment I heard her voice – the one thing she had not changed – I knew something was wrong. At first, I thought it was her arm. I reached out to touch her cheek, to see if she had a fever, but her skin was cool under my fingers. Then I had a horrible lurch in my stomach. Mama? Papa? JULIET had been discovered? She saw my expression and shook her head.

‘Let’s go to your cupboard,’ she said, smiling at the name for my so-called office.

When we got there, I insisted on changing her dressing. Then she made me sit down beside her, and what she said made me feel ill.

Issa insisted that we had to discuss what would happen if either of us ‘went missing’.

I stared at her. I opened my mouth, trying to suck in enough air to make the ballooning inside me go away.

‘I will come for you,’ she said. ‘No matters what happens. I will come for you.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’ Fear made my voice sharp. ‘You can’t. No one “comes for” anyone in the Villa Triste.’

She nodded. ‘I know that. I know. But they don’t keep you there. They’ll question you, then they’ll send you to the women’s prison at San Verdiana. The Mother Superior is sympathetic.’

She told me that they had bought German uniforms from Austrian deserters, that already ‘German officers’ had gone to San Verdiana and other prisons to ‘remove prisoners’. If that failed, if there was not time, they knew where the trains went. They knew where they stopped on the route to the detention centres and the holding camp at Fossoli.

‘No matter what happens,’ she said. ‘I won’t forget you. I won’t abandon you. Remember that.’

GAP, she said, takes care of its own.

Then she told me that the rules are not equal. That if it is her – if she vanishes – I must do nothing.

I stared at her, but before I could object, she went on.

I must understand. If I go to the Questura, if I throw myself at black uniforms in the Excelsior, or cry, or scream, I could make it worse for her. GAP, she said, would care for her, one way or another. I didn’t like to think about what that meant. If she were dead, Issa said, someone would come and tell me.

‘I haven’t told Mama or Papa.’ She looked at me. ‘This is between us.’

I nodded as she spoke. Not because I agreed, but because a numb feeling had washed over me. The tiny space of the cup-lucretia Board smelled of cabbage and the warmth of our bodies. I stood up, half expecting that I would be shaky on my feet, and pulled out the desk chair.

‘What are you doing?’ Issa asked.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Wait. I have something.’

She watched me, half amused, as I climbed up onto the chair and reached into one of the high cupboards. I couldn’t see above my head, and I was afraid for a moment that I would drop it. Then my fingers found the cool smooth neck of the bottle and lifted down the brandy that I had been secreting away in my rathole.