What Love Is (8 page)

My Brother The Executioner

5 February

Another British officer has arrived. He parachuted in with two others and his orders are to amalgamate the three partisan bands in the area and get them ready to take part in the last battle for Italy. Aroldo wants to fight, but he has been weakened by the illness last December. He is pale and thin and I fear for his life sometimes, as he fears for mine. The baby sucks the nourishment from me, making me weak and tired. Aroldo says we should try and make our way to Bologna. There is a hospital there. He fears I will have the baby early. But the Germans are there too and he will be caught, I am sure. I am no use to Patricio any more and I know he would rather be rid of me. Aroldo, too, has lost his usefulness now that the officer has arrived.

21 February

Nico came to fetch me today. He found us in the valley and talked to Patricio, who was only too happy to let me go. When I insisted that Aroldo came with me, he tried to argue, but then I told him that we were truly man and wife now and that I wouldn’t go anywhere without my husband, as was right and proper. He glared at Aroldo but let him come. I’m glad he did.

We walked for three hours, through a mountain pass, hiding when we heard planes overhead and gunshots from across the valley. Nico wouldn’t say why he wanted us to come with him or where we were going, I only knew that what he had told Patricio had made our leader insist that we go with him.

As the light was fading, we came to a cave in the mountain. It looked a bit like our winter hideout. To one side was a wooden pen made of thick tree boughs, inside which were German prisoners, packed tightly with no place to sit or lie down. They looked scared and dispirited, not the rowdy invaders I had known. As the three of us came closer, the guards met us and escorted us to the pen.

“We captured these men close to our village,” Nico said. “One of them calls himself Oberleutant Fischer. I want you to identify him.”

I was shocked. I didn’t think that he would ever be found; I assumed he would have gone back to Germany by now, or been killed.

Nico nodded to the men guarding the pen, who opened it up while the Germans crowded to the back, as if they could go through the bars of the makeshift prison – but they couldn’t, they were trapped in there.

Nico stepped in and grabbed one of them by his jacket, pulling him out. “Is this the one?” he asked, as if he needed to, for I gasped as the officer was dragged towards us. His face with its blond hair and blue eyes are etched into my memory forever.

Nico forced him forward so that he could see me clearly. There was a look of shock on the officer’s face as he looked down at my stomach and the realization of what it meant. He looked up into my face as Nico took out a pistol. He tried to return to the pen, but one of the men holding him struck him over the head with the butt of his pistol, and the officer crumpled to his knees.

Nico held the pistol out to me. “Take it, Lina, and have your revenge for what he has done to you.”

As if in a stupor I took the pistol from Nico and held it in my shaking hands, pointing it down at the quivering man before me. In all the time I’d been with Patricio, I’d never had to fire a weapon, never had to kill anyone. Now, having a gun, and the chance to fire it, I hesitated. I’d known that what I did for Patricio as a courier had probably resulted in someone dying, but I’d never been directly responsible for a person’s death, never pulled the trigger. And I knew that I couldn’t do it now, not even against the man that had raped me and killed my father and sister. I hated him, but I couldn’t kill him like this.

Aroldo must have sensed my dilemma for he stepped forward and eased the pistol from my fingers.

“Come away, Lina,” he said. He held the pistol out to Nico. “He’s a prisoner of war, Nico, you can’t just kill him. It’s against the Geneva Convention.”

Nico sneered as he took the pistol from Aroldo. “The Convention means nothing to these pigs. Remember how they have killed our women and children.”

The officer looked up at me then, his eyes pleading with me, but I spat into his face before turning away, guided by Aroldo. We hadn’t gone more than a few steps before we heard the gunshot behind us, and the thud of a body hitting the ground. Aroldo held me fast, preventing me from turning around. “No, Lina, it’s best not to look.”

He held me tight as he led me towards the entrance to the cave where the rest of the partisans waited, silently parting so we could make our way to the back of the cave where I sank onto a bed of straw. Aroldo held me fast as I cried.

“It’s done,” Nico said close by. I hadn’t seen him come in. “Revenge for the death of our family, for our disgrace, for our loss.”

“It won’t bring Papa and Anna back!” I spat. “It won’t take out the child that is within me. It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes me,” Nico said. “I have restored our honour. I have exacted revenge for the sin that was committed against us. If I die now, I die knowing I have done what was right.”

I looked away from him. He was right about one thing – he had changed.

22 February

Nico and the other men have killed the rest of the Germans. I heard the gunshots in the night, and the next morning when I woke, the pen was empty.

“We could not keep them alive,” Nico said when I asked him why. “We don’t have enough food for ourselves, never mind them, and we could not set them free because they would give us away. Neither could we walk them to the American lines. You should not feel sad for them Lina, for they have killed so many of us.”

I knew what he said was true but even so I still felt uneasy. Aroldo says we will leave here today and return to Patricio. I feel uncomfortable staying with my brother the executioner.

15 December

Mum says she’s going to sell the unit. Nonna doesn’t qualify for a subsidy and we’re going to have to use the money from the sale to pay for her care. She’ll put it on the market in January when the market picks up again.

The news saddens me. This was my childhood home and now it’s going to a stranger. There isn’t much I can do about that.

Bevan phoned too. He said his dad is coming down to Hamilton on 19 December and will bring me back to Auckland for Christmas.

For once I’m glad to get away. The walls of the unit are beginning to close in on me, the visits to Nonna are getting too difficult, life in Hamilton is becoming lonely and boring. It was nice for a while but it’s time to get back, to face up to whatever my future holds in Auckland – to make a decision about my life ahead.

But I want to finish reading Lina’s diary before I go back. I started this journey with her, and I have a sense that her story is almost at an end. I can see that I have just a few pages to go and I have to know what happens. I feel sorry for Lina, for what she went through with her brother and his involvement in the death of the man who raped her. I wonder what I would have done in Lina’s situation. Would I have killed the officer? Like Lina I have never killed anything in my life, and I can’t imagine what she was thinking or feeling as she held that gun in her hand. I think, like Lina, I wouldn’t have been able to pull the trigger.

I guess at this point she must have lost her brother. She says that he’s changed, that’s he’s not the brother she knew. I’ve never had a brother or a sister, so I don’t know what that must have been like for her. I know Bevan’s not particularly close to either his brother or sister, but at least he has them. For the first time, I’m actually thinking about having another child after this one, just so it can experience what it’s like to have a sibling. That’s crazy! There was a time I didn’t even want this one and now I’m thinking about another!

2 March

We finally made it back to Patricio’s headquarters, although it took us longer coming back than it did going, as we had no one to guide us and the bad weather held us up. The British officer is here, talking with both Aroldo and Patricio, telling them of the Allies’ plans for the final push. I will not reveal any of this in this book for fear it will fall into German hands. The officer came with a few men from the other partisan bands; they brought guns and ammunition and now Aroldo carries weapons in the camp when he has not done so before – a rifle and a pistol.

The partisans are to take part in the fighting, and the officer is arranging for us to join up with two other bands in the area to form one united band that will attack the German strongholds and weaken them for the Allies’ advance.

I feel that the end of the war is coming, but I also know that the end of my pregnancy is coming too. Amelia says that the baby is due about the middle of May, but that it could come sooner because I am so weakened by lack of food and the constant tension, which is not good for me or the baby. But Aroldo is taking part in the attacks planned over the next few weeks and I will not leave without him. I cannot bear to wait in a village somewhere, waiting for news every day, afraid that the news brought to me will be that of Aroldo’s death. I refuse to think like that. He cannot die!

5 April

Aroldo is back safely from the attack on the Fascist-German force at the Arda River. The men are elated, having defeated the Germans there and driven them back, preventing them from blowing up the bridge. It is a small victory, but it gives the men hope of what will happen in the future with Anglo-American assistance. Aroldo held me close.

“Your time is almost here and I must get you away. You cannot give birth in these conditions. I will ask to be relieved of my duty so that I can take you to Bologna. It seems that the city will soon be freed and there will be help for us both.” He looked around at the men who stood around the campfire, excited and talking about the battle. “There are enough men now to fight now and they will not miss me.”

11 April

We have left Patricio’s partisan band. Patricio says that the Anglo-Americans have launched an attack on the German lines now that the worst of the winter weather has passed. I don’t know if he has received intelligence on this or whether it is just his desire, but there do seem to be more planes in the air. He says he and his men will now be on the move and a pregnant woman would only slow them down. It was agreed that Aroldo will go with me for protection but there is a still a risk. We will try to get to Bologna but we will have to go through German lines to get there.

Aroldo also pulled together most of his old New Zealand uniform, now just rags and hanging in folds on his thin body, but it will enable him to claim prisoner-of-war status if we are captured by Germans, and I will have some protection as his Italian wife instead of being suspected as a partisan, for which the penalty is instant execution.

Patricio let Aroldo keep the rifle and pistol and a limited amount of ammunition, but that is all. I don’t begrudge them – they are fighting for Italy, we are only fighting for ourselves.

Amelia had tears in her eyes as she bade me farewell and hugged me to her breast. “May God go with you, little one,” she said.

As we reached the far edge of the clearing I looked back and wondered if I would ever see any of them again. The fighting is about to get harder and the Germans will not give ground without a battle. There is a lot for the partisans, including Patricio’s band, to do to wrest back control of Italy. I know the job will get done.

We’re not really sure where the Germans are, where they have dug in and made a stand. Patricio says that they are mainly to the south of Bologna, which means we should be able to approach from the north, following the Po River until we can take the road from Ferrara into the city.

Patricio told us to walk in the centre of the road as much as possible, as the Germans have laid mines at the edges, but that exposes us to the aircraft that fly overhead. It’s not possible to see whether they are German or British, but we can’t risk being seen by either, so we will have to take cover every time they are overhead.

While we walk we can hear shells falling, sometimes near and sometimes far away; today one landed so close that it showered us with dirt and parts of trees. Aroldo pushed me into a ditch as the shells continued to fall, then suddenly they stopped for no reason.

Shortly afterwards a dozen planes flew overhead, in formation, drowning out the forest sounds with their drone.

“They’re ours!” Aroldo said with a grin.

Now it is night and we have taken refuge at the edge of a cornfield. There are searchlights lighting the sky and red flashes followed by rumbling like rolls of thunder. The light is bright enough that I can write by it.

I told Aroldo to destroy this book if we are captured because I cannot let it get into the hands of the Germans, there is too much information in it.

I Killed a Man Today

16 December

It seems that the diary was in as much danger as Lina. I just can’t imagine what it was like for her, so young, pregnant and with war all around, trying to get to a city so that she could have her baby. I don’t even know where she is walking from, and how long it will take them, and even if they’ll be able to get into the city when they get there. I looked in the books that Mark gave me and realize that the war in Italy came to an end in April, so it is almost over. I must read on.

19 April

I killed a man today. I had no choice. If I hadn’t killed him, then he would have killed me and then Aroldo. The attack came without warning. We thought we were alone in the forest and that the fighting was to the south of us. All I heard was a buzz like a bumble bee, then a thunk as Aroldo spun away from me, followed by the crack of the rifle shot. It all happened within a second. Aroldo dropped to the ground with a groan and I fell beside him confused, not realising what had happened. Then I saw that he was clutching his arm and blood was seeping through his fingers. In spite of his pain, he told me that we needed to take cover quickly and pushed me towards a hollow between the roots of a nearby tree.

On hands and knees I scrambled towards the tree and tucked myself into the hollow. Fearfully I looked for Aroldo, but he was behind me, crawling forward on his elbows and knees, the rifle held high in his hands. He reached me, turned and put the rifle to his shoulder, a grimace of pain flashing across his face.

I was alarmed to see that he’d been shot. Instead of worrying about his wound, he asked if I had seen where the shots had come from. His voice was rather harsh, but then I could see the pain that he was in. I told him I had no idea, I’d been too startled.

Aroldo leaned out and let off two shots; I couldn’t see what he was shooting at. A barrage of shots came back, but they didn’t come near us. He told me then that there were three of them, two to our left and one almost straight in front of us. He assured me that we were safe where we were, but also said that we would not be able to move away as they would get us as we left our cover. I didn’t know what we were going to do.

He told me to take his rifle, lifting the strap up over his head with jerky painful movements and handing the weapon to me. I took it gingerly. Patricio had let me handle a rifle so that I knew how it worked, but I’d never fired one; ammunition had been too precious to waste on practice shots. Aroldo took out his pistol, checked the magazine and racked it back so that it chambered a round. He told me to stay where I was, but if they came towards me then I should just pull the trigger and let the rifle do the rest. I didn’t want him to leave me but he said he wasn’t going to let the bastards stop us from reaching Bologna.

He smiled at me and his hard face softened, and he told me that he would come back and that I wasn’t to worry. Then he was gone and I withdrew further into the hollow as much as I could and pointed the rifle out into the undergrowth. I could see nothing but trees and bushes and leaves. I swung the rifle back and forth, my whole body trembling. The wind whispered through the leaves and I turned towards a sound – nothing.

There was a clatter of rifle fire and then a single shot, echoing through the trees. My heart leapt into my throat – was Aroldo dead?

The man came from nowhere, suddenly appearing to my right, running towards me, his rifle at his hip. I had no time to think of the right or wrong of it; I squeezed the trigger and held the rifle steady as it juddered in my hands. Bullets thudded into the wood above my head as the soldier fired, then he danced before me, the rounds from my rifle smacking into his body. He folded like a puppet that had had its strings cut, and lay still. The rifle clicked into silence, the rounds from the magazine expended, but my finger remained on the trigger. I stared at the still body, not believing that I had killed him. I knew that it had been either him or me.

I swung the rifle around as someone came out from the trees, my finger still on the trigger, but the rifle was useless without bullets – thank goodness, because it was Aroldo that came towards me, his face white and his shirt sleeve wet with blood. He pried the rifle from my stiff hands and said that I had done well. I felt numb. He told me that all the attackers were dead. It was a relief, but as I looked at the body in front of us I felt only sadness – this man had been my countryman and I had killed him.

Aroldo said that we would spend the night here and try to reach Bologna in the morning. Then he said that he didn’t feel so good and passed out.

Now it is getting dark, and I can feel the ground beneath me shaking from the artillery fire. Again the sky is lit with flashes of red and spotlights strafe the air. Bologna is close but there is nothing I can do until Aroldo rouses. In the dark I cannot see how badly he is hurt but there is a lot of blood. I’m scared.

What is to become of us, will we die here?

17 December

I turned the page and the handwriting and language changed. Lina’s writing was small and in Italian, but now the handwriting was larger, bolder and in English, and I know that this is Grandpa Harry and reading his words is like a blow to the stomach, like he is reaching back over the years and pulling me into his story. I daren’t flip over the page to see if Lina’s handwriting begins again, I mean it must be because Mum says that she came from Italy with Grandpa Harry – but what if it’s a different person, someone else that he met and brought back, calling her Lina so that it matched the name on the marriage certificate? No, it can’t be.

22 April

I know that Lina wrote in this book, but I don’t know what as I can’t read Italian. Speak it, yes, in a fashion, but not read it. I think this was her diary and, if so, she wouldn’t want her story to end at her last entry, so I will continue it here.

We were in a bad way after the fight with the Fascists. Lina was almost hysterical and my wound was bleeding badly. Luckily the bullet had gone straight though the fleshy part of the upper arm, but it still hurt like hell. Lina found a river where she could clean the wound, she said it was the River Reno, and she tore a strip from her dress and bound the wound up. We could hear the artillery to the south and west and knew that the fighting was coming closer. I took little comfort in that, as we would have to head towards the retreating Germans to reach Bologna, but we had run out of time. I don’t know if it was the battle or the long walk, or maybe it was just her time, but Lina went into labour in that valley. We had turned away from the River Po shortly before we were attacked, and if we were going to get her to the hospital in time we would have to follow the River Reno until we reached the main road into Bologna. I didn’t want to tell her that following a road could be the death of us.

Her pains were far apart at first, but as we neared the road into Bologna they became more frequent. The road was littered with empty trucks, bombed out shells of vehicles, and the bodies of dead Germans, blown apart by bombs dropped from the sky. It was a gruesome sight. Amongst the wreckage I was astonished to find an intact wooden handbarrow, and carefully lay Lina in it. It was dark now, but the sky was lit by flashes of light as the fighting continued over to the west. I didn’t care about the fighting any more, I just wanted to get Lina to a hospital. That journey seemed to last forever, but about midnight I saw some buildings up ahead, and in the distance I could see the jagged skyline of the city. A German soldier stood in the centre of the road and held up a rifle, challenging us in German – I presume the equivalent of “Halt, who goes there.” I stopped. He appeared to be alone, a mere boy; he couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

“Please,” I said in Italian. “I have to get my wife to the hospital.” I repeated it in English, but he didn’t appear to understand either language. Instead he put his rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. I thought I was dead. Lina moaned as a pain took her and the boy looked at her. Immediately I stood in front of her, between her and the rifle and said, “Shoot me but spare my wife.” I don’t know if he understood, but he just stared at me along the length of his rifle, then he lowered it and sagged against the wall of the house. I didn’t say anything more; I just lifted the handles of the barrow and jogged past, fearing that he would put a bullet in my back as I entered the city.

I didn’t know where the hospital was. Amazingly at the time of night, and with the fighting all around us, there were people on the street – or maybe not so amazing after all, for who could sleep with all the noise? I picked up a feeling of excitement and anticipation as I wheeled the barrow through the streets – the citizens knew their city would soon be liberated.

“Go here, go here,” the people kept saying when I asked for the hospital, until finally I arrived at a brick building in the centre of the city. The lights were all on inside and there was a stream of people going through the open doors. I couldn’t get the barrow up the stairs so I lifted Lina into my arms and carried her in, shouting for help as I did so. Inside it was chaos, men and women lying on the floor, bleeding, crying, shouting; I was one voice amongst many.

I felt a hand on my arm. “She is in labour?” a voice asked.

It was a nun, her habit smothered in blood and her face lined and wrinkled. “Come this way.”

She was like an angel in that hall of Hades.

I followed her down the hall while Lina cried out in my arms. There was no gurney to lay her on; there were lines and lines of them in the hallway, a person lying on every single one.

“In here,” the nurse said. The bed had only just been stripped, a bloodstain obvious on the mattress, but she took a sheet from a shelf on the wall and efficiently covered the stain. I lay Lina down gently. There was blood all over my clothes, but whether it was hers or mine, I didn’t know. I held her hand and stroked her forehead; she seemed to be in a stupor.

“We’re in the hospital, Lina, in Bologna. We’re safe. Don’t worry, my love, you’ll be okay.” I told her this, but I didn’t like the feverish look in her eyes or the heat of her skin.

The nun returned with a doctor. The examination was perfunctory; he was a busy man.

The instructions he gave to the nun were delivered in Italian so fast that I couldn’t catch them but “
presto
” – quickly – was amongst them. He pointed at me and then the door, but I shook my head. I wasn’t going to leave her side.

The nun took my arm and pulled me away.

“The doctor needs to do his job. You’re best out of the way.”

So I returned to the chaotic and jammed hallway. The sights and sounds and smells overwhelmed me and I staggered down the hall and into the cool air. I took in a deep breath and sat down on the steps alongside other patients waiting for news of their loved ones, and looked up into the sky. The dawn was approaching; the sky was turning from a deep purple to light blue, the red of sunrise touching the clouds above our heads. I realized that I could no longer hear the thuds of falling mortars, only the occasional pop of rifle. The people around me stirred as if they recognized something different. It was fully light when we heard the cheers. People began to come out of the hospital and, as the first soldiers came around the corner, there was a burst of applause. I watched as the soldiers streamed past, waving to the crowds – the liberators of the city. They were Poles.

I went back inside again, but the door to Lina’s room was still closed. I paced back and forth for a while, until I heard the rumble, then went outside again. American tanks were lumbering down the street, and this time the crowd threw flowers onto the thick steel sides and waved.

Again I went back inside. The sound of a baby crying made me run down the hallway and I almost collided with the nun as she came out of the room. She was holding a baby, wrapped in a towel, who cried with angry displeasure, the face puckered and the mouth opening wide, hiccupping as it took breaths between the shrill bleating.

“A girl,” the nun said as she placed her in my arms. She had gone back into the room before I could say anything more. I tried the door, but it was either stuck or locked or barred. I stood there with the screaming bundle, not knowing what to do. In an effort to still the noise, I placed my knuckle in the baby’s mouth and her lips latched onto it, thankfully stilling the awful noise.

I looked into her eyes that looked back into mine, unfocused and bewildered, and she took little shuddering breaths as she calmed down. Her eyes were blue and her hair so fine and pale that it looked like she had no hair at all. It reminded me of the soldier that Lina’s brother had shot, a reminder that this was not a child of mine.

And yet she was. I had lived with her for nine months, as I had lived with her mother, experienced all that they had experienced and all that had made me the father of this child, as surely as if I had made Lina pregnant myself.

“What shall we call you?” I said to the little face. It was funny that we hadn’t spoken of names the whole time Lina had been pregnant. I guess both of us knew that either of us could be killed at any time, and choosing names for a child that might die anyway was just not important. But the child was alive and crying and needed a name. I looked at the hell around me and thought of the nun who had seen our need as soon as we came in through the door. And I thought of Lina, who had been raped and left to die yet had lived and produced the life I held in my arms. The city had been liberated, we had survived, our salvation and the child’s birth had been a miracle. My mother would have said that angels protected us.

“Angelina,” I said. “Welcome to this totally mucked up world.”

So that is the story of how Angelina was born on 21 April 1945, the day that Bologna was liberated. Now I sit beside Lina’s bed waiting for her to wake up. There was a complication, they said, after the birth. She lost a lot of blood, and there was no blood to give her so I had to give some of my own, even though I had lost some myself from the bullet wound. They think she will live but they’re not sure. She was weak from months in the mountains, from the lack of food and from carrying the baby that drew the strength from her. Only she can make the decision on whether she wants come back. The nun tells me to pray.

She also told me that Lina will never have another child.