The Villa Triste (53 page)

I reached over and tried to pull it. That was a mistake. But there was a little motion, just a bit. After my head stopped reeling I remembered that I had been wearing a jacket, a man’s hunting jacket, and at some point, I’m not sure when, it occurred to me that if I could get out of it, I might get free. I might be able to slip my arm through the sleeve like a casing. So that’s what I did. It must have taken me an hour, but I managed.

After I was up, I knew I had to keep moving. So I walked. The dog came with me. We crossed the tracks, what was left of them, and headed straight for the mountains. But we didn’t get far. I collapsed in a barn.
And this is when the second of my nine lives – third, if you count the shooting at the Pergola – was saved.

The family was still there, at the farm the barn belonged to. They had lost their son in the Monte Sole debacle, so they took one look at me, and knew. For a month those kind people kept me and the dog. They splinted and bandaged my arm. They fed me by hand, like a baby with a spoon. They moved me once, the day after I arrived, when the remnants of the Jäeger division came staggering through. That was when they gave me the gun. The Sauer. Their son had given it to them. He had taken it from a dead German officer. In the end, it didn’t save his life, but it might have saved mine. They came into the barn once, sat and rested there for an hour or so. We could hear them speaking German right below us, the dog and I. I hung onto him, but he didn’t make a squeak. If they heard us, heard the straw move, they must have thought we were rats, or been too tired to care. We huddled in that loft two days and nights – listening to the sound of broken men and whining engines, the endless tramp of defeat.

By the time I was well enough and ready to start walking, it was June. When I left, the family insisted I take the gun. The dog and I walked at night. The Degli Dei is beautiful under the moon – if you have never walked even a piece of it, you really should. It was summer. We slept in the huts, or in the woods. Those kind people had given me a satchel and food. It took me six days to get to Fiesole. It was dawn when I stood there and looked down on Florence.

The rest, you more or less know. Or guessed. I didn’t plan it, incidentally. I didn’t plan to be dead or to become Donata Leone. I was going to go to San Verdiana and find my mother. Then I was going to take her to Naples, and join Caterina. It wasn’t until I got to the town hall – I needed papers: everything, you see, had been in the jacket – that I realized what had happened.

I had a string leash for the dog – I had given him a name by then, Piri – and we were standing in a line like everyone else, all refugees with nothing, and there were lists, posted on the walls, of the dead. I saw Mama’s name first. She had died in San Verdiana in the winter of 1944. Then I saw Caterina’s name, Caterina Cammaccio. And mine – Laura Bevanelli.

At first, I panicked. I thought something must have happened in Naples. Then I looked again, and it said that Cati had been in Bologna, and that’s when I understood. She wasn’t Caterina Cammaccio by then anyway – Caterina and Isabella Cammaccio had been vaporized, transported to Ravensbrück. (If you escaped, as I told you, they still put you down as ‘transported’. They weren’t about to admit that people got away.) So I knew at once what it was. The CLN had listed me as dead because someone had come looking for our group, and been to the farmhouse, and found the jacket. The red book had been found in the inner pocket where I kept it, and whoever found it had turned it in to the Red Cross in case my family came looking for it. But it was Cati’s name in the front. That’s why she was listed as dead, too.

I stood there in the line, and I thought about it.

I’d thought and thought, of course – in Verona, in Milan, in that barn – about what had happened on Via dei Renai. And I suppose if I am honest, you are right – part of me did go back to find out. But I had no idea who it was who had betrayed us, or what they might do. And as I thought about it, with Mama gone and Cati safe, suddenly it seemed better, safer, to be dead.

They say your life does not change in a split second. But mine did, then.

I was only a few people from the table where they were taking names. A few moments later, I stepped forward, and when I did, I said ‘Donata Leone’.

And that was it. Everything was over. And everything else began.

I know what you will ask. My son. I did love him, I assure you. More than anything. But I also wanted him to be safe. And free. And believe me, I knew Caterina was the best mother anyone could ever have. I understood that she had probably already heard that I was dead. Lodovico would have used all his contacts with the Allies and the Red Cross, and they would have found that I had been killed on 17 April. And I knew Cati and Lodo wanted to go to America. He had been told they could – that was the other reason he sent for her. So I understood that the chances were good by then, in late June, that they were already gone. (Cosimo found out later. They sailed for the United States on a hospital ship at the end of May.) Try to understand this: I wanted them all to have a life. The best life they could have. And I knew, always – but especially by the time I could have done it, after I married Cosimo – that if I went to find them, if I even contacted them, Caterina would insist that I take my baby back. She would give him up. After everything else she had lost, she would lose her child. And he would lose his mother. I would take the one thing I had given both of them.

I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t right. So I let them go. I know my son had a wonderful father, and an even more wonderful mother. One who never, even for a moment, gave him up.

I found a flat. A garret, really. And I got a job quite quickly, in the kitchen of a restaurant, such as it was. Florence, remember, had been liberated for almost a year. I peeled vegetables. I washed dishes. Mostly, I stayed out of sight. But you were right, I was worried about being recognized. And so I changed. I had kept my hair short. It was easier. I kept it dyed, dark. Again, I practised walking differently. I chose clothes I would have hated. I changed the way I spoke. I stayed away from the places I had known as a student and away from my parents’ house – that was the hardest thing, and I confess, a few times at night, the dog and I climbed up the hill and watched. And then we became thieves.

I remembered that Cati had written about Mama burying their jewellery in the garden. I knew the house was empty, because I had been watching it. So, finally, one night, I climbed in through the hedge. My friend, how you would have laughed. I didn‘t know exactly where the things had been buried, so I was like a demented mole, digging under every special bush I could remember while Piri, bless him, stood guard. It took me three nights, three journeys back to find it, but finally I unearthed the oilskin packet. Over the next year, I sold almost everything. Even Mama’s aquamarine. I kept Papa’s watch. I gave it to Cosimo. He was wearing it the day he died. And Caterina’s engagement ring. I used it as my own. You saw it a dozen times on my hand, and commented on it at least once, I remember.

In the end, I didn’t get much money for the pieces. I had to pawn them, and you can imagine, in those first years after the war, how that market was flooded! But what I got made things better for Piri and me. Mainly because we found a safer place to live. I spent some of it on having my hair properly done – I completely changed how I looked. And I bought some proper clothes.

I only ever met two people who recognized me. The first was Signor Cavicalli – although, I confess, I do not know which one! You were right, of course. He and his brother were the twins of the family Carlo and I took through the mountains on the last run we made in the winter of 1943. The one Caterina paid so dearly for. It was a hard slog, that trip. And dangerous because our parcels were so ill-equipped and cold and tired. Carlo carried the little girl much of the way on his back, and I was afraid for the young woman, who was not well. But they survived. All of them. And as you said, you don’t forget that. Signor Cavicalli certainly didn’t. He spotted me, in the marketplace, one afternoon. He was a young man by then. Probably starting at the University, and thin and stringy as a bean. But I recognized him at once, as he recognized me. Our eyes met. We said nothing. Just stood for a moment in the crowd, remembering, until his friends called to him, and he gave a little bow, and turned away.

The other person who recognized me was Emmelina’s niece. It was some years later, when my oldest daughter was a baby. I was carrying her, stepping out of a shop, and I looked across the street and saw a woman watching me. At first, I couldn’t place her. But she knew me. I understood that at once. Both of us had changed so much. Both of us had seen each other last as young women. Then I realized – it was Emmelina’s niece. We stared at each other for a moment, then we smiled, and went our separate ways. All I can say to you is that I knew, absolutely, that any secret I had would always be safe with both of them.

I listened, and I learned, and when I found out what Cosimo was doing, I applied for a job at the bank. I got one, eventually, as a secretary.
And then I heard that Cosimo was asking for volunteers, for employees to give their spare time to help with paperwork, and with tracing people for Remember The Fallen. So I volunteered. I didn’t throw myself at him. But I made myself useful, and I got into the papers. Reams and reams and boxes and boxes of them.

At first, I didn’t care all that much about the work – about rehousing, and buying books and clothes and tracing families. That came later. At that time, in the beginning, I had only one thing in mind. I was hunting. I didn’t know for what. I just knew that there was a smell. You were completely right about that. When I finally saw those pages from the Villa Triste, the entries that ‘proved’ everyone had been executed, I was disap-pointed. Not because of the other two – but because of Massimo. I knew, I had always known, that there was something wrong about him. He was a bastard. A pompous, vain, bullying bastard. I enjoyed killing him. I’m sorry, but I did. But that was yet to come.

Cosimo and I fell in love. Not like I had loved Carlo. There is no love like that first great love – and of course it never lasts long enough to be difficult. With Cosimo it was different. He was a wonderful man. And in case you are wondering, I told him the truth. About everything. Before we were married.

We were happy for almost fifty years. More than anyone deserves. Perhaps some part of me never stopped looking, never stopped checking papers, names that might have been connected to JULIET. But it wasn’t an obsession. It was just there, like the stiffness in my arm – something I lived with. I had two beautiful daughters. I had a beautiful life. Even Piri lived to be a very old dog. He is buried in our garden. When Cosimo died, I was very sad. But that was natural. He was ten years older than me. Our time comes. And we had been so blessed.

And then, one night, two years ago, I was watching television. I don’t usually. But this was the sixtieth celebrations, and we had been invited, because of Remember The Fallen. We would never have thought of going – you’ll understand why – but I was curious. So I poured myself a glass of wine, and was looking through a book my daughter had sent me, and I had the television on, when I heard that voice. I heard Massimo.

There’s a bray he has. A laugh. It’s hateful.

I looked up. I almost spilled the wine. And there they were. Right in front of me. Massimo, Beppe and Il Corvo. Three dead men with medals on their chests.

The strange thing was, I didn’t even have to think about it. It was as if it had been waiting inside me for all those years. I knew exactly what I had to do.

I suppose I had kept the Sauer for just something like this. Perhaps even for this. Funny, how your mind works when you’re not even aware of it.

*

I thought about it, through the autumn and winter – you were right about that too – not because I was wondering whether I was going to do it, but because I knew I had to get it right. There was something else as well, another reason. I couldn’t think of doing anything until Cosimo died. I couldn’t risk getting caught and being taken away. He was very ill by then. He couldn’t have managed without me. I owed him that – to be certain I was with him at the last.

In the meantime, though, I began to plan. I studied maps, paying special attention to back roads. I swam more, exercised my shoulder and my hand. I even went hunting once or twice with my son-in-law. He won’t have missed a box of ammunition.

I killed Trantemento first. I watched the building for a while. As you said, no one ever notices old women, and it gave me a chance to get used to wearing my old coat and carrying a dreadful huge old bag. Then, on 1 November – I was happy about the rain – rain is good cover, people do not look at other people when they are hurrying in the rain – I slipped into the house and went straight upstairs.

All I had to do was knock on his door. And do you know the strange thing? He recognized me. At once. I think he even knew why I’d come. I would simply have shot him if he made a noise. But he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. When I told him to get down on his knees he looked almost relieved.

As for Beppe, I had done my homework. I knew when he was likely to be home and alone. It was me who suggested the hotel in Apulia for our family holiday, and with so many people it was easy to get away for a few hours. I rang him from a bar earlier that day. I didn’t want any record on my own phone, of course, and I was careful not to give a name, just to say I thought my husband had known him in the partisans. That was enough. Plenty, actually. He didn’t just invite me in, the poor fool had set up a pretty table in the garden.