The Italian Romance, page 24
‘It’s an adventure for him. Why not?’
She nodded, but she looked down at the luggage again.
Jack didn’t know what to do; perhaps he could carry an extra bag, strap it to his back. She said, not looking at him, ‘Will we come home again?’
He reached quickly for her hand. ‘Well, of course. They know they’re finished. We’ll just keep out of their way for a little while longer.’
She took a gasp of air. Jack almost couldn’t bear it.
‘I’ll hurry the boy,’ he said, and she let her fingers trail along his wrist and his hand until he’d gone from her.
She crouched, opened the straps of the knapsack. She took out a brown school shoe she’d pushed down the side; there was a pair of woollen socks curled in it. She heard, behind her, Alphonso’s limping approach.
‘Ready?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She tugged at a shirt. ‘What if he gets wet?’
He stood over her as she created a little pile of Gianni’s things. He knew all of it, even the underwear that Berta had pegged on the washing line week in, week out.
Her chin rested on her knees as she poked the straps back into their buckles. ‘Alphonso!’ she suddenly cried.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now.’ He stroked her hair.
She closed her eyes. ‘Please be careful,’ she said. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know,’ he said.
His hand dropped from her and he walked to the front door, still closed against the grey day. He stood with his back to her, motionless. Sonia stared up at him, mesmerised by the line of the old jacket he’d worn every winter of her life, the tug of the brown worsted across his broad shoulders.
It was Gianni who got them out in the end. He ran up the hallway struggling his arms into his coat, and he swung the knapsack up by its leather straps and fought his way into that, too. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. His face was flushed.
Berta and Jack came slowly up from the kitchen. Without a word, Jack heaved his own knapsack awkwardly onto his shoulders. It was top-heavy with the weight of two rolled blankets. Alphonso limped back down to him, put his hands on the sack to balance it. Jack said absently, ‘Thanks.’
‘Ha la carta?’ Alphonso said.
Jack slid his hand inside his jacket and produced the pencil-drawn map. ‘Yes,’ he said.
The boy opened the door and a cold breeze blew in. Jack and Alphonso, stilled, looked towards it. Berta put her hands over her mouth. Sonia leaned down and picked up her small suitcase.
The day was clouded, trees stiff with frost from the bad night. Gianni stepped out into it. His knees were bare; woollen socks came up to the tops of his calves. He sang out, ‘Come on,’ and he humped down the wide stone steps, bouncing onto each one. Alphonso’s cheeks paled against the bone. He went slowly to Sonia, put his hand on her back and they walked through the doorway together.
Jack turned to Berta. She held her sleeve to her face. She shook her head when he took hold of her arm. She waved him away. He understood. It would not do for the boy to see distress.
Berta was dry-eyed when she joined the group on the grass. She said to Gianni, ‘Help your mother. And make sure you eat.’
He was hopping from foot to foot. He said, ‘When Fredo comes, tell him where I am.’
‘Gianni,’ Sonia said. ‘No one is to know where we’re going, not our neighbours, not anyone.’
‘But that doesn’t mean Fredo! He won’t tell anyone. Remember the secret we kept about the German?’
‘Say goodbye to Berta,’ she said.
‘Will you give a few scraps to my dog? Otherwise he won’t come back.’ He wrinkled his brow as he’d always done when he wanted to get around the old woman – it was a game they played.
Berta said, ‘If I have scraps, I’ll feed him. He’s not our dog, anyway.’
‘But he’s half my dog! Mama says he loves me!’
‘All right, all right,’ Berta said. ‘I’ll feed him for you.’
‘Thanks, Berta,’ the boy said. He flung himself at the old woman, who staggered back under his weight. She patted the knapsack and before she could hold him for another few moments, he pulled away. Her arms were still held out to him as he hugged her husband. He clapped Alphonso on the back and was suddenly gone from him, too.
Berta’s eyes welled again and her hand searched in her apron pocket. As she pulled out a rag and blew into it, Sonia came to her. They looked at each other. Berta’s hands slid slowly and hard down Sonia’s arms.
Alphonso’s bad leg seemed to give out; it shook under him. Sonia walked to him across the winter grass. He grabbed her shoulders, kissed her cheeks. She felt the roughness of his jaw, smelled the garlic on his breath. She could not speak. She touched his chest as he kissed the top of her head.
Jack picked up her bag. He did not go near them. Some private thing in him told him to walk away.
He heard her footfall on the dirt pathway and he slowed down. Her hand crept into his, pulled her small suitcase from his grip. Gianni had already crossed the road and walked into the forest. As he trod on the dark brown earth, littered with dead leaves and sweet-smelling needles of pine, he tucked his thumbs under the straps at his shoulders.
‘I just thought I’d check to see how you’re both getting on,’ she says to me.
I had picked up the phone with dread. I didn’t want to speak to my agent in London, and I intend to avoid Dora for another day or two till the bruises fade. Least of all did I desire a repeat performance of yesterday’s strained conversation with the bushman, still holed up in Dublin, my rather chilly response to his sheepish enquiries. But it was Francesca. My eyebrows rose in surprise. I know they did because I caught sight of myself in the bevel-edged mirror Jane had moved from the dark inner hallway to here. Jane didn’t say anything; just did it, right in front of my eyes.
I say, ‘Oh, how lovely to hear your voice.’ I wonder if she realises how unlike me such effusion is. How could she? Of course, it’s not effusion, is it? It’s called honesty, Lilian. ‘Well, we’re surviving. Jane has made some friends. She’s out at the moment.’
‘That was quick.’ Francesca, I suspect, is trying. That is a step forward.
‘Oh, yes. I’ll tell you the rest of the story when I see you,’ I say. Did she hear that? ‘They’re a group of young do-gooders, you know, they go around helping people.’
Francesca snorts a laugh. ‘Lilian! What a way to describe them.’
‘Oh, well, you know what I mean.’
‘I was like that when I was her age,’ she says.
My heart stops and waits. ‘Were you?’ I say. My tongue dances against my teeth. I don’t know how to ask the questions. I want to see her when she was young, that’s the problem. Can’t, of course.
‘Out to save the world,’ she says.
‘I suppose we all were,’ I say.
She is silent. What is she thinking?
And then we both talk at once. ‘Jim rang from Dublin last night,’ I say. She is saying, ‘I’m coming down to Rome for the weekend.’
‘To Rome? Oh, good. You must ... you must meet Jane.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’ll call around, perhaps.’
‘Yes, call around. I mean, if you like we could put Jane on the couch. The spare room is here.’
‘No, I’ve booked into the same hotel. I’m meeting someone there on Saturday morning.’
‘Oh? For your study?’ I say. I am fishing, and I don’t care what I catch. Anything will do.
‘Yes, he’s a painter I admire very much. He was the one, really, who started me on this. He put the question into my head.’
I pick up the cradle of the telephone, walk backwards, sit on the arm of the couch. Jane has rearranged that, too. ‘So he’s very important to you,’ I say. I am tiptoeing. I’m on eggshells.
‘Just an extraordinary coincidence that he’s in Rome. He doesn’t see many people. He lives in a wild sort of place in Spain. I’d e-mailed him, you see, and lo and behold.’
‘What an extraordinary coincidence,’ I parrot.
‘Yes. So I’d love to discuss my ideas with him. Not that he’ll say much along those lines, from what I gather. But that’s my job, to try and sense it out myself.’
She is excited, my Francesca. This is her work, her passion. I am almost holding it.
‘How extraordinary life is,’ I say.
‘Yes. Well, I just wanted to see how you were both getting along. I’ll drop by on the weekend, shall I?’
‘Oh, yes, please. That would be just great.’ Have I made her welcome enough? Is there perhaps another word or two I could say?
‘See you then.’ And she’s gone.
I look at the telephone, the two, round, pock-marked ends of it, the smooth waist that my hand grips. No point in holding it all night. She’s not going to suddenly burst into speech again.
New South Wales, 1945
Antonio lay on his back. The earth was cold under him. He had folded his arms over his face. He said, ‘How are they surviving? Does he have enough to eat, can he get to school?’
Lilian sat on his jacket. From the rise of the hill, though it was slight, she could see far across the plains. The grass was greener at this cool time of year. In the late afternoon light, colours were sharp, red earth where the wind and weather bit, softer paddocks rolling down to the hidden river, and the tribes of grey trees clustering for thousands of years, maybe, above the damp channels that leaked out of it. The sun was heading for its day’s end, throwing out streaks of light, casting trees into shadows. A bird that was probably not black dived and glided towards it. Lilian held her hand up to her eyes. The sun began to sit itself on the horizon, squash itself flat and bloated at its base so that a blood-red oozed from its middle. She lay her forehead on her knees. She said. ‘It’s over now, Antonio. It’s all over. Soon you’ll see them again. When the Japanese are beaten, everyone can go home.’
The seconds passed slowly. And then she felt his hand on her back. It just rested there. It made her feel glad.
‘Lilian?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Did he enlist?’
‘Who?’ She turned her head so she could see him. ‘Bernie?’
His left arm lay along his forehead, and he was looking at her from under its shade. ‘Si.’
‘Yes, he did. Why?’
‘I enlisted.’
‘Oh?’ she said. She looked past him, to a burnt-out husk of a tree. It had only one arm, held out helpless at a forty-five-degree angle.
‘The other two men here, Montini and Belzoni, they were conscripted. Most of the men in my division were conscripts.’
‘Oh?’ She felt her breath on her arm. She didn’t look at him.
‘We barely had enough guns to go around,’ he said. ‘It was no army. Il Duce’s fantasia, that’s all.’
‘Then why?’ she heard herself asking. She felt the hand on her back fall away. She was cold.
He said, ‘For the worst of reasons. The very worst.’ He was silent for a while.
She closed her eyes and waited.
He said, ‘I had gone down a particular road. Very soon after, very soon, I knew I had taken the wrong one. But it was too late. I couldn’t turn back. Do you understand me, Lil?’
She nodded, though she didn’t lift her head, didn’t open her eyes.
‘And then there was the chance of escape. No one would say to me, but you can’t, you mustn’t. My father kissed me.’ He was silent again. Then he said, ‘Bravely I marched off from my home, my wife. And from my son.’
She turned herself to face him. His black eyes stared up at her. ‘I’m a brave man, Lilian.’
She leaned down to him. Her elbow pressed on a small, flat stone, but she didn’t move it. Her hand stroked his dark hair. He lowered the arm that had protected him. She bent and kissed his forehead. And she kissed the line of his black eyebrow.
Romanzo
Gianni’s snores were peaceful and rhythmic; they spoke of a quiet night. The moon was full. Light spilled in through a window. When Sonia leaned over her son, she saw a glistening patch of dribble on his hand, where his open mouth rested. Something in him felt her nearness. His lips smacked, and dropped open again.
Jack had settled his jacket over the boy. The blanket he’d carried was thin against the chill. Downstairs, the old man who’d given up his bed was lying on a wooden bench with his own blanket underneath him, and their second one over him.
Sonia lifted her hand gently from the boy’s shoulder and rested against the bedhead. Jack murmured, ‘He’s all right.’
‘Exhausted,’ she said.
‘He’s a big, strong boy.’ As he stretched his arm behind her along the wooden bed rail, she leaned forward a little to facilitate it. It was, perhaps, an acquiesence. He touched her lightly with his fingers and she relaxed into him. He barely dared breathe.
She was very tired. And in the morning they must set out once more, hiding from the roadways as best they could, pushing against time to reach the next destination before dark. The thought of that sickened her stomach. She leaned her cheek into his chest.
He raised his hand from her shoulder, held it motionless for a few moments and, as if he were his younger self approaching a wide-eyed deer in the wood by his home, he took just a few strands of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, felt them, and sensing calm, laid his open hand on her head. He didn’t see her eyes close over.
She breathed slowly, aware. Her own fingers found a button of his shirt, and she played with it.
He said, ‘Are you sad now?’
‘I’m scared.’
He cradled his hand on her. She moved her cheek just a little. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. But are you sad? Like you were the first time I saw you?’
‘The first time? When I didn’t know you were there?’
‘Mmm. You were standing in the doorway of the drawing room, looking out over the garden.’
‘How did you know I was sad?’
‘I felt it.’
‘Maybe you were sad,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, I was. I’d been sad for a long time. But so were you, that day.’
‘You never speak of yourself, Jack, do you know that?’
His head fell back against the wall. He did not like to speak of Hugo Jack Kemp. Hugo Kemp didn’t matter to him. In a way that he could barely figure, he had lost favour with himself. Sonia was silent; he felt her fingers against his shirt. He said, ‘There’s not much to say. Two years in a prison camp. Bored. Every day the same nothing.’
‘And before?’
‘Before? North Africa.’
‘What is it like there? Is it beautiful?’
He gave a laugh. ‘Well, beautiful? I don’t know. I suppose it was at times. I remember when we first landed, I thought it was. Palm trees, you know. The sea. Wonderful smell of the sea, if you could get away from the stink of petrol. It was strange for me to walk down the gangway. I’d read about it: the Pharaohs, the desert tribes, emptiness. And it did feel like that. Something in the air.’
‘What something in the air?’
‘Oh, hard to describe. If you can imagine a port, same men, same cargo, same as anywhere else. Except some of the men were dark and wore robes. But there was something else. You could sniff it. Like a promise of something, more than the thing itself.’ He looked down at the gloss of her dark hair. Her fingernails were clear, almost a hint of pink underneath them. He pulled her in closer. ‘A promise of what might happen in the desert. As if there was some kind of eternity in there.’ He bent and kissed the top of her head. He hadn’t realised it had been done until it happened. There rose up over him some unknown thing, as if he’d lain down in a clear, sandy-bedded river. It was completion.
She said, ‘Sheikhs and tents and coloured carpets.’
‘And romance, and camels and maidens.’
He heard her laugh. ‘I saw a film like that once.’
‘I think I saw the same film,’ he said.
‘But I don’t suppose it was like that.’
‘No. Wrong desert, maybe. Wrong time. It was a scrubby sort of a place, a lot of it.’
‘And it wasn’t empty.’
‘No, it wasn’t empty. Rutted with tyre tracks. Tin cans. The fat’d leak out of your bully-beef. You’d get it all over your clothes.’
‘In the heat?’
‘You can’t imagine how hot it was. Even you would find it hot.’
‘Hard for the English,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes. And very little water. The only thing I was right about was the eternity. It felt like eternity.’
She was silent. He put his cheek on the heat of her hair. He said, ‘If you could get a moment when your head was clear – a morning when you woke before the others, see the sun rise – then it was beautiful.’
He breathed into her hair, and breathed the animal smell of it back into himself. ‘And you, Sonia?’ he said. His mouth barely moved on her head.
She held his shirt button tight. And she said, ‘I’m not loved, Jack.’
His eyes opened wide. He drew away from her, lifted her chin with his hand. She kept her eyes tight shut.
He said, ‘You can’t imagine how wrong you are.’
He winced as he saw a tear slide down her cheek. He whispered, almost to himself, ‘What has he done to you?’
‘Let me talk, all right?’ she said.
He folded both arms around her. She rested against his chest as if she had expended every energy, and had surrendered.
‘I was eighteen. One night, my friends and I were walking. We’d gone down to Pisa. One girl had an engagement party. We’d dressed up, you know, to walk, to attract the boys. There was music. The loudspeakers were rigged up in the square, along the streets. People danced. They did that then, before the war. And this boy, I saw him across the square. He turned his head and caught me looking at him. And I pretended to be looking at something else.’
Jack hugged her tighter for a moment.
‘And, after a while, he came over. He had black hair. It fell over his forehead. Beautiful, clear skin. He said, “Signorina, if you don’t dance with me, I will walk up that hill to the monastery and beg them to let me in the gate”.’ She was quiet. Jack glanced at the side of her face. Her eyes were open now as if she saw the square, the lights, the boy. ‘And so I gave him my hand and we walked over to the fountain, and he put his arms around me. And, that’s the end of my story. Because I loved him from that time. I begged my parents to let me marry him, though he was a Christian. And they said yes, after a few months. Then they loved him, too. But he never loved me. I don’t know why.’
