Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 11

Their arrival in Rome took place in a thick haze of fatigue and after so many hours of crossing fields in the dark without food that they were—Laffranchi croaked—ready to eat each other. To make things worse, they found, at dawn, an immense market crowd waiting to cross the Tiber at the Milvio Bridge and had to wait their turn. Sandor nudged Goffredo and nodded in the direction of the closed-mouthed youths on carts piled with wooden chests that had been ominously nailed tight. "Guns," he said.

When it was finally their moment on the bridge, Laffranchi called out to three nearby fishermen standing up to their knees in river mud. He asked them where the volunteers were gathering for the defense of the city, but none of them paid him any mind. The little company of volunteers followed the farmers and wagon drivers. "Look," Goffredo murmured to Sandor at a span of ancient aqueduct lit up gold in the morning sunlight. And then there was the Flaminia Gate itself—white and colossal. His head craned, Goffredo passed under the largest of its three marble arches; the grandeur excited him, but the huge Papal crest adorning it stirred up his blood. As for Sandor, he could not believe how easy it was to enter the Eternal City. Nothing like in Budapest or Vienna. Where were the gate guards? And above all, why was that stray soldier wearing a torn uniform of the Army of Piedmont arguing with a bread seller?

"TAKE IT. This IS money, I tell you!" A banknote fluttered to the ground.

"Worthless," said the old bread seller.

"Give me the bread," the soldier commanded, grabbing at the loaf under the vendor's arm and breaking off a piece to shove in his mouth.

"Don't steal his bread," Laffranchi intervened.

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"It's a disastrous situation. None of them will take our money."

"Who do you mean by 'our'?" Laffranchi asked.

"I hear your accent, as you do mine," the soldier said cautiously. "You're from the North."

"From Pavia."

The soldier nodded. "Cuneo, myself. And how much the Romans expect of us already."

"They expect you to win."

"They're loyal to us and helpful and all but...well, look at this river of theirs. Call it a river. Good God, with those untamed, muddy banks and all that overgrown marsh. If the water rises even a few inches, entire neighbourhoods go under. This river is an enemy to Rome. Why don't they do something about it?"

Hearing this, Goffredo felt more on the side of the Romans than of the soldier from Cuneo. Rivers aren't enemies, what a thing to say. And as they entered the first dirt lanes on the edges of town he began to think that the Romans knew how to appreciate water in general. He wondered, for example, at a monumental fountain standing outside a peasant's shabby house and stable. He'd never seen a fountain so beautiful. Of course it was a fountain, and as such served a clear purpose, but who had put such a fine one there and why? All the while he was wondering this, the buildings in sight became higher and all crowded together, and still other fountains appeared that made the first seem ordinary. Then too, there were everywhere more domed churches than Goffredo could count, which Sandor called 'baroque.'

As it got on towards midday, Goffredo began to feel very hungry. But he told himself it was best to hold off. After having seen the bread seller at the bridge refuse the soldier's money, the wisest thing was to keep going until he felt faint, at which time he would spend one of his few soldi for food for Sandor and himself. Following the many other new arrivals, their little company now poured into a labyrinth of narrow cobblestone streets, emerging onto a stretch of ancient paved road.

"The Imperial Forum of ancient Rome," Laffranchi the student announced.

"What is?" Goffredo asked.

"All of it."

Dotting the grass on either side, there were detached columns looking like teeth in a broken comb. Sandor and Laffranchi said they were the ruins of buildings that had belonged to famous emperors. Goffredo finally found something he himself recognized at the end of the old road: the Coliseum. A drawing of it had been in the book his school master had used with him in Bassignana.

In the grassy open space round the Coliseum as they approached, a man in green livery was attempting to repair a broken wheel on an elegant black carriage. Motionless next to the carriage with its glittering bowed windows stood two women. Laffranchi took in the graceful long neck and black hair of the one who was uncommonly tall.

"I'd know her anywhere. All Pavia would. Princess Cristina di Belgioioso," he murmured, turning to look at Sandor, as one who could appreciate this happy circumstance "The most famous and richest princess loyal to the cause of Italian unity. I have always wanted to meet her. A journalist and benefactor. Exiled in the past for her ideas," Laffranchi gushed. "They say her old husband gave her syphilis. See how pale she is? You can imagine how delicate her health must be. If she's here, it can only be true that Mazzini's asked her to set-up a hospital."

Goffredo had never before heard a man say so much about a woman in a minute. He'd never seen nobility in person before either; he'd only seen a painting of the king. He eyed the Princess thoughtfully.

"That's bound to be her daughter's tutor, Miss Parker." Laffranchi's eyes gleamed with pedantic satisfaction as he nodded at the second woman, who was stout and wearing glasses similar to his own. The two ladies were deep in conversation.

Walking past the carriage on the side of the vexed coachman, Goffredo glanced in the open window and saw there was a little curly-haired girl on the red cushions, asleep.

"Damn the dirty dog to hell!" swore the coachman, sprawling backwards to the ground and taking the broken wheel with him.

Goffredo turned. "That's not the way to change a wheel."

"Go to the devil."

"Go on, give me that tool."

While the haughty coachman watched, Goffredo, Sandor, and Laffranchi managed to mend with his tools where the metal rim had come loose and right the wheel. Still involved in intense conversation with Miss Parker, Cristina Belgioioso gave a series of glances to the carriage containing her sleeping daughter and to the group of strangers on their knees, hammering and grunting for her sake. Afterwards she thanked them gravely: "We are obliged."

Goffredo liked that.

Now all they had to do was find Garibaldi. They asked people they came across where the volunteer army of garibaldini was camped. Most laughed or shook their head. "In piazza," they were told. And each time they entered the square indicated, they found someone else who directed them to yet another. This went on until at last they entered a square crowded with common folk and also men like themselves, in homemade uniforms and with picturesque weapons. They were listening restlessly to an officer delivering a speech from the top step by the water basin of a raised fountain. The General wasn't there. At the top of the square tower flanking the porticoed church, however, there was a boy who ever so often yelled, "Viva Garibaldi!" Directly behind the fountain was a massive yellow-brick palazzo in very bad repair with a Papal seal over its entrance and its great door wide open; the tricolored green-red-and-white flag had been draped over its central balcony.

"The French are marching on Rome, and I've been given the task of making soldiers out of you," the grey-haired officer was saying, "but looking you in the eyes I see that this task of mine is already done. I see determination. I see courage."

Goffredo glanced over at Sandor: he was the only one standing at attention. There was, however, a lot of cheering. And more cheering still when the officer announced that the U.S. consul had been on hand for the Proclamation of the Roman Republic. "The Americans are the only ones giving us any support!"

In answer, applause and a drum.

"Tell about the trouncing we gave the Pope!" prompted a woman from the crowd, waving her hands over her head.

"She means no more property in the hands of the Church!" called another.

When the cheering had died down, the officer explained that the Republic had also ended Church censure and instituted a registry of civil weddings. "And my friends, it has proclaimed the right to religious freedom."

"We're not scared of any Pope," cried a man.

"But where is he? Nowhere to be seen!" The same woman from before stomped her feet. "Nowhere!"

"Now tell them the best part!" shouted another woman to the officer.

"Women now have the right to inherit family property."

Clapping their hands, the women performed the start of a folkdance, watching each other's feet with broad smiles and flushed faces.

"My friends, my friends!" The officer called them to order. "Remember please that the new French president, Charles Louis Bonaparte, has heeded the Pope's appeal for help and sent fifteen thousand troops---the ones marching towards us now—under Oudinot."

A loud boo went round the square.

"We—what uniform do we put on?" a man called out.

Sandor, Goffredo, and the students from Pavia crowded closer to the fountain to hear the answer.

"No uniforms," said the officer. "For those who want them, we have a few red shirts."

Next to the officer stood a corporal with a gunny sack.

"Red?" exclaimed the Pole in alarm.

For the first time the officer laughed. "You're right. No denying it. Makes it easier to shoot us down. Garibaldi bought them for nothing when a textile factory closed. They were intended for the men who work in slaughterhouses. They were red so as to hide the bloodstains."

The corporal compliantly pulled the shirts out of the gunny sack and distributed what he had.

Sandor crossed his arms in protest, his face dark. "This not instruction. I have years of instruction," he said to the officer. "You must to teach to shoot on command, fight with sword. These—"he indicated his companions, Goffredo included, "are not prepared."

The other shrugged. "We meet at daybreak at the Cestio Bridge. You want food and fire for the night? Come out to the camp some of us have set up and split the wood for it. We officers are using our lassos to hunt up the food."

Sandor did not deign to reply as the officer descended from the fountain and disappeared in the crowd.

"Sandor, we've made it, we're here," Goffredo said with feeling, over his friend's ongoing complaints about no training, as they left the square a few minutes later.

Sandor saw that Goffredo had not given real importance to their lack of drilling, and he was worried. He would personally have to make sure his friend was prepared for battle. Goffredo felt far too much awe for Rome.

American journalist Margaret Fuller stood with Cristina Belgioioso in the middle of the Sala Assunta, the presently empty, surprisingly modern hospital ward abandoned by the monks on Tiber Island in the heart of Rome when the Pope had fled into exile.

"Well, this is the section where you are to take charge," Cristina said, a bit perfunctorily as she was quite tired. "There are forty beds here for now and there's also a second floor of cots—up that staircase to the right of the altar in the alcove at the end of the room." She led the way down the vaulted white hall.

For Margaret it was a joy to have made Cristina's acquaintance. She had such esprit! And it was truly wondrous how she had developed what Transcendentalists like Margaret called a person's 'latent powers'. Being in the living presence of this spirit made all the hardship of living precariously abroad—as Margaret did—worth it. Just a minute ago, Cristina had said the most inspiring thing. Stopping to run her hand over the back of a chair, she'd murmured, "The man who finds this chair next to his cot will soon not just a changed dressing, but also soothing words and a bit of company from us. On a mass scale this has never been done before."

Margaret would write this in her next article.

It was getting late, and the two women inspected the second floor of beds quickly. "We just need to send out a call to as many women as we can," Cristina said. "I know it's not easy to find ones that are free enough to come, but we must."

Margaret nodded ruefully. This was indeed a problem. "I myself don't have many in mind."

"We must get them from the street then, from the whorehouses…though don't go round telling people I've said that."

Their eyes met.

"You're right, Cristina. Best to let sleeping dogs lie."

"What dogs?" Cristina raised her eyebrows.

"I mean we are both ostracized in certain circles for having had a child, well—."

"Mysteriously?" A smile crept over Cristina's face, and the conversation finally took on a more relaxed tone. "My daughter's named Maria. I understand your son's named Angelo. Not even a year old, is he?"

"No," Margaret smiled back. "Only seven months."

"It's rather hard when they're at that age. Even with a wet nurse."

Margaret couldn't afford a wet nurse. She did have an assistant, Eleonora, who gave her precious help with her correspondence in Italian. In return, Margaret paid her a small sum and taught her English. Eleonora was a nice girl and very enthusiastic about the Republican cause.

"I'm sorry but I must leave you now, Cristina. I've left the one volunteer I've found so far—Eleonora, actually—in the courtyard around the corner, with the carpenter who's making the stretchers for our wounded."

"That reminds me. I need to talk to that carpenter too, but not this evening, tomorrow will do. Let me get my shawl and I'll come out with you, Margaret." She sighed as she slipped the shawl over her shoulders. "To think it might have gone otherwise. Just two years ago I was at Charles Louis Bonaparte's house in Paris, Margaret. I remember that during the party he promised me that if he became president he would certainly do what he could for the Italian national cause. What a pity that at present he seems to be looking to become Emperor Napoleon III. He needs the Pope's support for that. Now he's the one we are to fight."

Outside the hospital, they ran directly into two rather dusty- looking young men, one blond and trim and the other brown and round-faced.

"Princess!" stammered the second, halting in his tracks.

"Do I know you?"

Goffredo felt his heart drop. What had possessed him to address her in such a familiar way?

"Oh yes," said Cristina briskly after a second. "You're the man who helped us out with the carriage this morning."

He was relieved that she had consented to the conversation. "I'm a cheesemonger from Piedmont, Princess." Now, what else can I say? "I –I have heard that your field workers all have warm places to sleep in the winter."

"Ah," replied Cristina wonderingly.

"But is it true, Princess, that you're the richest woman in all of Italy?"

He felt Sandor poke him for his brazenness.

He didn't care. He would carry this frank conversation forward. It wasn't going badly, actually. And then there was the fact that the second woman, who was not as handsome as the princess, didn't—or couldn't—take her eyes off him.

"That was before the Austrians seized my assets," Cristina retorted. "Right now, I don't think I have a lira. I was told that the Austrians have even ransacked my house in Milan." Then abruptly, her tone softened. "I must say it gives me pleasure to hear someone using the word 'Italy' to indicate more than the peninsula—more than the 'geographical coincidence, as intellectuals say. You see a nation."

The compliment left Goffredo pleasantly flustered.

At this point Sandor bowed and introduced himself in French. He too was here for Italia, he said.

The two women asked him the usual polite questions. Neither gave much importance to his declaration that he was Hungarian. Rather, Margaret found him to be the incarnation of the Garibaldi hero as she described him in an article two weeks before: an athletic figure, handsome face and determined expression, no sign of fatigue from his adventures and hardships. Cristina found him right for the project at hand.

"We expect many wounded. I need two strong men to help set up camp beds," she said. "The young woman who is supervising the job now is the courtyard to left of San Bartolomeo. I believe she hasn't finished yet for the day," here Cristina glanced at Margaret, who nodded, "and also that she needs help."

Sandor poked Goffredo in the back.

"Right, Princess," said Goffredo.

"Mesdames." Sandor's hand rolled from his forehead to his waist in a fancy salutation.

"Her name is El-e-o-nor-a!" Margaret called after them.

It is after sunset and the moon has risen. Eleonora Serlupi, Sandor Kemenj and Goffredo Morelli have moved every unloaded cot into the second ward. Tomorrow Eleonora will cover the beds with the sheets that the women from the nearby Ghetto have delivered in two chests. The morning will be a hectic one, for her at least. But her life has been bursting at the seams with things to do for the last year, ever since she left her hiding place with the Anglicans up in the hills. In the fall, she attended James Freeman and Augusta's wedding in Florence and returned to Rome with them, living adventurously for months but glad to be back. Until last week she slept at the houses of Luigi's closest friends—the married ones—and by day she helped Freeman's friend Margaret Fuller manage her correspondence in Italian. Now the pending war has changed all that. At this hospital Margaret and Cristina Belgioioso have set up, she knows she will see awful things. But leaving things the way they are would be worse.

She sits amicably with her two strangely-had but welcome helpers on the stone wall, dangling her legs too over the water and brambles twenty feet below, and knowing enough not to enquire too much about their tomorrow. They are volunteer soldiers after all, and soon they will be risking their lives.

The east bridge is visible and several of the closest domes shine in the moonlight. There had been a night like this five years ago, she had been with Luigi…. But she doesn't want to allow that memory to envelope her and she stops it by closing her eyes a brief moment and acknowledging the normal black void. The three of them talk about the crowds in the squares for Garibaldi, and she likes their enthusiasm. In general, she is getting a very favourable impression of these two young men. First, because they are young like her. Second, because there are two of them; sitting here with just one would be embarrassing and unnatural on such a night. Third, because they complement each other. The one so clearly a man of the earth and unsure about how to act with women; the other—Hungarian he says he is, so handsome a smiler and upright in his close-fitting red shirt.

"It's still early," she says. "I know where there's a jug of wine. I've happened on the monks' wine cellar."

With their wondering approval, she goes off for it. When she returns, Sandor and Goffredo are tossing pebbles into the river below, and Goffredo is asking all sorts of questions. They throw her a friendly glance but don't interrupt their conversation. She listens, not fathoming what they are talking about precisely.

"What did it look like the next day?" asks Goffredo.

And then: "Did that happen first of second?"

And then an equally practical question like: "But how did he do it exactly?"

"You really want to know?" rebuts Sandor.

"Yes."

"Really? Really?"

"Yes!" Goffredo insists.

His eyes brimming with good-humour, Sandor gives a series of comic demonstrations of possible answers to the unknown preposition. They are silly and even bawdy gestures, senseless really, only then suddenly Eleonora understands! Sandor is pantomiming someone burning himself and treating the burn, and he does that by putting a hand between his legs and hopped around as if on now on fire himself, then pulling free his 'extinguished' hand.

"Good. That's very good," she laughs. "And now the wine." She retrieves the jug from the wall ledge.

After they have all had their swig, she gets the urge to perform something herself.

"Do you know much about the night that the Pope had fled Rome?"

"Not really," says Sandor. "Do you?"

"Why yes," she replies with breathless pleasure. "Now I will show you."

Gesturing at them to stay by the wall, she occupies a bit of moonlit courtyard like a stage.

"It was evening," she begins in a hushed voice, of the sort she's heard actors and actresses use. "In front of the Quirinale where the Pope lived, there were bonfires." Eleonora points here and there in the twilight around her. "I was with an American painter named Freeman. Some women with baskets were selling fruit, some people were sleeping on the ground, there were groups having agitated debates, and a musician was strolling around with his mandolin.

"At a certain point some boys started throwing stones at the windows. And under one of the windows of Palazzo Quirinale a man started yelling from a piece of paper." Eleonora assumes the man's pose and scowls, pushing her honey-red hair from her eyes. "The man spoke in the name of the people of Rome. He dictated our demands for peace are these: the election of a democratic cabinet of ministers, a constituent assembly, a declaration of war against Austria, and the court-marital of the Swiss Guards who last week fired on and wounded the citizenry!"

"At his words, a prelate appeared on a second floor balcony. He said in Latin, Non possumus—'we cannot.' The crowd began heckling and pushing, and I could see that Freeman, my friend, was in a state of extreme agitation. And then suddenly I almost got run over by a carriage full of priests flying out of the side entrance at top speed. I managed a look inside as it turned and the curtains swayed. 'It's the Pope!' I began yelling." Eleonora stomps her feet. "'It's Pius IX. He's fleeing!'

"It was him as plain as day. That big head and that nose and those jowls. But nobody believed me. They laughed! They insisted that the Pope wouldn't dress like a common priest, the Pope wouldn't escape like that. Except for Freeman, they called me stupid and crazy, but in the end they had to admit it was him. And he was lucky to have a carriage. If he'd had to flee on foot, it would have been like this." She hitches her skirt and waddles a few steps in double time.

"Like…a goose!" laughs Sandor.

"Like a pppp-pig!" explodes Goffredo.

When Eleonora's imitation of the portly pope ends, the three of them are left gasping for breath. That returns them to the present. To the oncoming darkness. To the imminent fighting.

"Sorry, my friends, I didn't find any food in the monks' cellar."

"I can do something about that," Goffredo replies.

With his flint stone Sandor lights the candle end he always carries in his pocket, and holds it up as Goffredo opens the knotted corner of his handkerchief. It is the last—the true last—hard bit of his cheese from home. It glistens like a lobe-shaped pearl in his open palm as he offers it to her.

Eleonora smiles at Goffredo but shakes her head. Her eyes go to Sandor's. They have exchanged glances—a moment here and a moment there—all afternoon. Now, however, their gazes lock. When it isn't a threat, a held gaze is always a promise. She can't quite understand his promise, but it has only been an afternoon. She intuits that it is far-reaching, the way she intuits that he is a man with courage—perhaps a man with …over-reaching courage.

With his candle Sandor goes into the shadows by the church wall and comes back with a wild flower for her—a wand of fragrant yellow bells.

Eleonora smiles at length, wrapping her fingers round the stem.

Goffredo takes measure of this smile, his stomach tightening. This is strange, he thinks, considering that she asked for food and not a flower. Perhaps she doesn't like cheese. But no, the truth is that Sandor has something that he doesn't have….and how to elaborate this truth?

This something isn't cheese.