The Italian Romance (22 page)

Lilian walked out of the house. The sun was going down. From the verandah, facing east, the sky was greying. A ghost moon waited above the distant ridges.

It was Easter, Easter Sunday night. The sun had danced at dawn. And some hours later, the telegram had arrived. The postmistress had sent Toby Andrews out on his bicycle. No job for a boy. Toby had learned his trade quick. Nowadays, he tucked his peaked hat under his arm and almost stood to attention as he made his deliveries. He was a good boy, as numbers of people had remarked after their tragic events.

She sat down on the tiles, her knees up, her feet together on the first step. The whole house shuddered from Mae's grief. Lilian had felt her own chest caving in from the physical pressure of it. There were ten or twelve people in there, helpless. Mae had been put on a kitchen chair. They offered tea, a sandwich, a word of awkward sympathy. Mae was somewhere beyond the bearing of it.

Lilian had never seen that before.

She looked over at the hay shed, where bales used to be piled high. There were two bales now, that's all. The Ford was parked in the shade of the roof; it wasn't taken out very much any more.
Frankie used to ride around on the running board, his arm around the strut between front and back windows. He used to lean right out to catch the wind. And he would be a Chicago gangster occasionally, a machine gun coughing in the crook of his free arm. Bernie gave him a few rides around the yard when their father wasn't at home. They pretended they were bank robbers. Mae used to roar out at them to stop, be careful, you'll fall off, you silly duffer.

A brief awareness flashed up in her, like sunlight on the dark glisten of a leaping porpoise, and disappeared under. She turned her mind instantly away from it. She did not want to feel the boy's absolute going.

She stood and walked down the steps. Her shoes made muffled thuds on the summer-wearied earth. She put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She was heading for the men's barracks.

He was sitting at a table, which he'd pushed against the wall opposite his bed, using the stub of a pencil to write. Lilian stood six feet from the open doorway, unnoticed. He seemed to write with his hand folded over, as a left-hander does; it made his body turn slightly towards the left and in this way, she could see the back of his head, the brown neck, the feathery arrow of hair. He ripped a page over – it was a child's exercise book – and began at the top again.

And then he stopped. He stared at the wall in front of him, and slowly faced her. He stood up as she walked into the quiet room.

She said, in a voice she had not realised was covered in tears, ‘My husband's brother got killed.'

‘I know,' he said. The back of his fingers brushed at her arm as he passed her to close the door. She walked after him, a child. He put his hands on her elbows. A smell came off him, a smell she didn't know. It filled her and ran through her veins.

The pressure from his hands was cautious, but it need not have been. She moved fraction by fraction into him. He bent over her and kissed the side of her head. And something happened to her
body, that later she felt too embarrassed to tell even him. It was to do with her nipples. For all the years that followed, she realised that everything in her had known it was him she wanted, everything but her. Everything leaped to him.

And when he put his lips on her mouth and she drew back with fear, he held her, with gentleness but held her nevertheless, until her mouth realised too what she'd thirsted for, and she drank wine and honey from him. Her own hand, she discovered some moments later, was holding his head. Her fingers were in his hair.

When they released each other, she stepped back.

‘My God, no,' she said.

‘Lilian.'

‘I can't. Antonio, this is not possible. It can't be happening.'

‘But it is. It's been happening for some time, hasn't it?'

‘But it isn't possible. There must be some kind of mistake.'

‘There must be a mistake? What do you mean?' He was almost laughing.

She stepped back further and her leg bumped the edge of his desk. ‘I have been thinking about it,' she said.

He nodded. ‘Me too.'

‘Yes, but things that are impossible to happen can't be happening.'

‘Is that why you don't come out here anymore?'

‘Yes,' she said.

‘You're here now.'

‘I had to.' She gestured with her hand towards the house.

‘You didn't have to come down here, Lilian. You did that.'

‘I won't do it again,' she cried. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be a child,' he said.

She knew she was. But he'd also misjudged her. ‘I'm not,' she said. ‘I'm trying to behave properly.'

‘You'll be a child for as long as you stay here. For as long as you stay married to that boy.'

‘You're just saying that to make me...' Her eyes fell on the neat, single bed.

He looked down, too. ‘Maybe,' he said. ‘Forgive me if I hurt you. But it is true, Lilian. You must come to me. You must.'

‘No. Don't talk like that to me.'

She saw his face drop. He lowered his eyes. She wanted to touch him again, to restore the light in him. He turned from her, and sat on the end of the bed. He looked at the floor. He said, ‘Is this something very important, or is it ridiculous?'

She whispered, ‘Both, maybe.'

He joined his hands between his knees. ‘You'd better go now,' he said. ‘Please, Lilian.'

‘You want me to go?' she said, her voice barely audible.

He raised his head and looked at her. ‘Do you want to stay?'

‘Can't we just talk?'

He said nothing for a moment. ‘We'll talk some other time,' he said. She saw his fingers pressing hard into the backs of his joined hands.

‘All right,' she said. She went to the door. ‘Goodbye,' she said.

He nodded, looked away. As she turned the handle Antonio stood up and walked to the table, picked up a rolled cigarette that he'd stubbed a while ago. His back turned, he struck a match and bent his head to the flame. Lilian walked out. He stared after her, but she didn't know that.

Lilian's legs were heavy as she crossed the yard. A deep fissure began to open in her that day. She felt only the faintest, hair's breadth of it, but it had begun.

She approached the sprawling house, the wide, cool verandah, the silent wail of the pain inside. She trod up the steps, looked down the length of the verandah. Last year, she and Frank had sat on the old couch. Frank had carried out the green-baize card table and they'd played euchre all evening till they couldn't see the cards anymore.

Sonia's legs were tired. Gianni cycled ahead, stopping occasionally to wait for her, his feet on either side of his bike. His face was reddened by the winter wind. She'd say to him as she pedalled slowly, her skirt up at her knees, ‘Don't disappear, Gianni. I won't be able to see you.' He was impatient with her, but knew better than to argue. He wobbled away from her. Sonia pushed at the pedals.

He had veered off the road and into their avenue before she'd rounded the bend. She walked the bike the last two hundred yards, her cane shopping basket strapped on the back, just behind the saddle. The sky rolled with cannon-grey tirades of cloud. A storm was brewing, an electric white light skirted the lower borders of clouds in the west. It was really quite beautiful. And even when the wind suddenly lashed up, beating the boughs of trees, and leaves tumbled over themselves on the lawn, and she knew she would have to run or she'd be caught by the rain that she could see in filmy sheets just behind the house and the trees, she was excited by it, alive in it. The whole place darkened in a
few moments. She wheeled up the broad path and down it came, in big, isolated drops at first. She wanted to feel the cold damp on her face.

Jack was running from the side of the house. ‘Come on,' he shouted, seizing the handlebars. It was then that a fork of lightning tore the sky and thunder roared one second after, too close. She felt it in her bones. She began to run beside him.

He propped the bicycle against the back wall. As she opened the kitchen door he was struggling with the leather strap and she stood on the threshold until he'd released the basket. He dangled it beside him, pulled his shoulders up and ran to her, his shoes splashing up tiny pools of water. She closed the door behind him. The kitchen fire was low, logs that had been burning for a long while were red, alive with a tiny flame. Berta was rubbing the boy's hands one by one, briskly, with her own. Hers were fat, sandpapery, and he kept pulling away from them. ‘Stop,' she said to him, and then to anyone who'd listen, ‘The child's freezing.'

Sonia rubbed her fingers at her wet hair and Berta looked down at her feet. ‘Take those shoes off,' she said. ‘We don't want you getting sick on top of everything else.'

‘I'll be down in a minute,' Sonia said.

‘Don't spend all day up there,' Berta said.

Sonia had already reached the hallway, but she stopped, turned back and looked at the old woman. Berta glanced at her and then lifted the boy's cold hand to blow her own warm breath on it. As Sonia walked towards the staircase, she felt a prickle down her spine. She heard the kitchen door close. It surprised her that Jack was following her; she waited for him at the foot of the stairs.

He said, ‘Gianni was saying something about Germans.'

Rivers of rain trickled from his hair down on to his forehead. ‘They didn't stop,' she said.

‘Many?'

‘Oh, yes. I don't know. Trucks and trucks. They were going south.'

‘And where were you? Were you on the road?'

‘No. We'd parked our bikes. We were in the village. We went into a shop, and stayed there till they'd gone.'

‘Good,' he said. He was standing so close to her that his arm, resting on the banister as hers was, touched her. She gazed at his arm, at the woollen sweater she'd given him from her husband's wardrobe, and she moved her hand. Her fingers plucked at the wool. She said, ‘I was scared, Jack. I've never been so frightened in my life.'

‘Oh, Sonia,' he said, stricken. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘How can you say sorry to me, Jack? Of all people in the world?'

She watched his face. His worry for her lined his forehead and deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. She was constantly surprised by him.

‘You should not have this,' he said. He took her hand, gently, as if it were a bird. He raised it, and kissed the palm. ‘This ugly world. War. It's not right for you. It's all wrong.'

She felt the brush of his unshaven cheek and chin. ‘Is it right for you?'

‘I don't matter. I went into it, eyes open. I thought it would be better than ... where I was before.'

‘Jack! How can you say you don't matter?'

‘Because I don't.' He smiled at her and shrugged. ‘If I ever did, it was a long time ago.'

‘You're younger than me.'

‘My age isn't the point. I want one thing now – for you to be safe. I'll do anything for that, you know.'

She eased her hand away. ‘You don't know me at all, Jack. You know nothing about me. I'm not what you think.'

‘I want to know you, Sonia.'

‘Ssh,' she said. She looked up the staircase. ‘I'll go and dry myself.'

‘Come down quickly,' he said. ‘I think ... I think something has happened.'

She froze. ‘What?'

He shook his head. ‘I may have gotten it wrong. Alphonso will tell you.'

She moved as if to walk past him. He said, ‘No, go up and change. There's time enough.' He touched the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘You're wringing wet.'

‘I won't be a minute.' She pulled free of him and ran up the stairs.

He looked away from her, towards the front door. The brief respite was over.

When she came into the kitchen, Gianni and Berta were gone. She could hear their voices in the cellar. Alphonso closed the cellar door. ‘A telephone call came while you were out.'

‘Who?' Her heart beat quicker.

‘It was Maria, the little ragazza at your parents' house.' Alphonso limped to the table. He sat down hard. ‘I said, calm down, child, calm down. What has happened? Why are you ringing?'

Jack leaned against the back door. He crossed his arms. He could understand only a few words. But he knew.

Sonia said quietly, ‘What is it? Father?'

Alphonso opened his large hand and looked into it. ‘No. Not that.' He spoke in a low voice. ‘The Germans came. They took away your mother. And Jacob's wife and children.'

Sonia's head drained of blood. She got to the table and Jack sat her down on a chair, held his hand wide against her back.

‘Where?' she said. She could barely speak.

‘Maria didn't know. They weren't the only ones. There were three trucks outside, she said.'

‘Jews, you mean,' she said.

He looked into her eyes. And after a moment, he nodded.

She said, ‘Why are they doing this?'

He made a fist of his hand and beat it three times against his chest. ‘Hate,' he said.

I've lost the damn kid. Nine-thirty at night, and where the hell is she? I could wring that bloody Jim's neck. Why doesn't he look after his own daughter; expecting me to do it. Probably been dodging his responsibilities all his life. No wonder Francesca doesn't see a future for them. Got more sense than her mother has. I didn't spot that in him. Bloody well spot it now.

I'll have to go out after her. That's all I can do. Guido can let her in if she turns up. Little rat.

She slept for twelve hours when she arrived. Parked herself in my spare room, zipped open her bag, tossed the lot out over the floor, and crawled into bed. She ought to have her adenoids out. I'll say that to Jim. Snored like an elephant all bloody day, while I was trying to write. I had to sit outside on the roof terrace. The damn breeze changed the page every time I leaned back to think or got up to have a glass of water.

And then she's up all night, curled in an armchair watching satellite TV and that rotten music thing they have. The bloody Barnardis rushed up, of course, banging on the door to complain. Or he did, emissary of la Signora. I had to get out of bed – no wonder I'm so bloody tired. He peered over my shoulder and saw her. The girl was too wrapped in the video clip to pay the slightest attention. And I just knew from him that I'd made his day, or
month. They'll be like gadflies, loud doorknocking, discussions with the other neighbours, downstairs with Guido haemorrhaging his ulcer for him.

I'd better put the mobile phone in my shoulder bag, though who I'm going to ring I don't know. Why on earth did I let her go out on her own in the first place?

Guido is now standing sentry outside the apartment building, while I am on the island waiting for the tram. He volunteered his cousin, the vice-squad lieutenant. I told him we'd just wait and see before we disturbed him. And I'm almost a hundred per cent certain that I've left the terrace doors open. The invisible man can make himself at home, I couldn't care less, as long as he leaves before I put the key in the lock.

Here is the tram, turning the corner down at the railway station. I've got a booklet of biglietti in my bag here somewhere. In the zipper compartment, maybe.

I nod to the woman driver, who stares at me. I'd nearly forgotten about the bruises. There are only a handful of people on board. I sit near the front, my hand a shield up on the glass so I can see out. Pointless, really.

The little minx asked me where the shops were. I told her she was to stay this side of the river, and she promised she would. And she did call me from a public booth at about five. She's not a bad kid. I asked her to describe where she was, and I recognised it. She said she'd met a couple of other kids and they were going to have coffee, was that all right and did Dad call?

If she's not in the square, I really don't know what I'll do. I suppose I'll have to go to the police. The driver brakes at the stop near the supermarket. She's watching me in the mirror above her head.

I'm always a little wary at this time of night. Well, Sunday afternoons, too. It's not wariness, really. There's an air of desertion about. Sometimes I feel that I'm the only living soul knocking
around here; the footpaths on either side of the Viale are almost abandoned. I feel like a rubber ball in a squash court, and whoever it was that started the ball bouncing promptly forgot about it, turned off the lights, locked the doors and went home.

Nio said to me once, you turn a corner in Rome and your breath is taken away; an ivy-covered wall, perhaps, a small fountain hidden behind a tree.

I turn here. How many, many times we walked this way, arm in arm. Where medieval saints walked in sandaled feet. He said Francis of Assisi coaxed a lamb, rope around his woolly neck, up along this stretch, knocked on his lady friend's door and said, ‘Look what I brought you!' Maybe she loved him enough to love the lamb, too, as it trotted past her, down her marble hallway, dropping a trail of hard, black, sugar-stenched pellets.

The people are here. I never feel as lonely in this rabbit warren, all roadlets leading to the square. There's the yellow phone she rang me from. I can hear Lorenzo's voice, up the side road, singing to the tourists eating out. I hope he gets a few bob tonight. He's the tiniest bit off-key; must have been on a bender for a few days. The tourists probably don't notice.

Oh, no, not Lorenzo. Alfredo. Alfredo Cabrini. That's a dose of senility for you. Lorenzo was never off-key. He was not always at his best, and that was because of the benders he'd go on. He'd disappear for a few days, then come back ashamed; you could hear it. His tourists probably didn't notice, either, too entranced by the moon above their table, the warmth of the evening air, the candlelight; they'd live their lives recounting the night they were serenaded in Rome. Nio said to me once that Lorenzo was an angel, only he didn't know it. He told me the story that night, how Lorenzo had dreamed dreams, tried for the big opera houses. Didn't make it. So he gave it all to the streets. I cried. We were walking along just here, twenty-five, thirty years ago. I was embarrassed by myself, and I turned my face away from him. He couldn't believe it. What's happened, love, he asked me? I didn't
know how to say what it was, the poor desperation of it, the transfiguration of it. Or was it Nio himself, his eye, his soul? It was one of those nights, I suppose, when I was raw, skin peeled back. Or maybe I was menopausal, I can't remember.

I'd pictured her slinking around the fountain, but she ain't here. A pack of Germans, all right, taking photos of one another looking laidback and devil-may-care.

A Filipino woman, or is she Vietnamese, makes a beeline for me. Her tray of goods is attached to her by a leather strap roped around her neck. She thinks I'm a tourist. ‘Lady,' she says, ‘please buy.' She has the oddest assortment of things. Plastic brushes, battery-run drum-beating monkeys, packs of cigarettes, oriental fans. What is she doing here? She's no more than twenty-five. Very pretty little thing, embarrassed as hell. If the embarrassment is a ploy, it's one that works. I've got a five-thousand-lire note in my pocket – the brush is four thousand nine hundred. If I'd had to open my bag, I wouldn't have bothered. ‘I'll take the brush,' I say. And, damn me, she's pulling a hundred-lire note out of her money box. ‘Don't worry,' I say and I walk off, putting the useless-looking brush in its plastic bag in my pocket. But she won't have it. ‘No,' she says. ‘Please take. Change.' She's at my elbow. She has a tiny silver cross at her throat. The note is in her hand, held out to me.

I put my finger and thumb on each side of it. My God, her eyes are sad. ‘Thanks,' I say. That has satisfied her. And like a little black rabbit she scurries away, her tray bouncing, leaving me with the note hanging from my fingers. I wonder if she has any children waiting for her at home. Now, that's enough of that. Can't bear her burdens.

The outdoor restaurants in the square are packed. I'll have to give her time to spot me, too. I saunter past. They never seem to change, these people. Behind their barricades, their stripy plastic frontiers, the same luminous conceit of particular young males, the certainty of their present and future conquest of the world and their voluble persuasion towards this certainty of the others at
their table, the girls fresh enough to be convinced, less extraordinary fellows trying desperately to bask in the radiance. Near them, isolated couples casting themselves in roles of humiliation, glumly silenced because they can't attain the same exuberance and, I fear, giving birth between them to the worm of their own, quite possibly avoidable, decay. And then, too, the lovers, who don't know there's much going on at all apart from their own heartbeats. Year after year, decades.

If she's up one of the roads off here, I'm sunk. I'll just circle, and then decide what to do. The church side of the square is in relative darkness, high-walled. There are figures over there. I suppose I might as well see.

I think that might be her. Hard to tell. They're sitting on the ground as far away from light as you can get in this electric place. Two of them. The girl's chattering away, waving her hands. Oh, yes. That's our Jane.

She is open-mouthed. She tries to get to her feet, scrambling against the stone wall at her back. ‘Am I late?' she says.

‘Yes. Very,' I say.

I am overcome, suddenly. This little thing, full of her own drama, is nothing but a pale shadow to me. The softest corn-silk hair, the body so terribly slim, and the waist – naked to the world, jeans down around her hips – is so small I can't imagine how everything fits inside her. But she could be a reflection of the fountain's water, glistening and forever disappearing across the ochre wall behind her. I don't think I can do this. My heart is broken. How did that happen?