Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 17

It is just another late afternoon of war when a French cannoneer rams his bayonet through the groin of a garibaldino, who manages to lurch his way back to the roof-less villa called headquarters and collapse literally at the feet of his commander, General Giacomo Medici.

"Get this man taken care of," Medici orders a Roman woman at the long ex-banquet table, busy with three others at putting ammunition powder into bullets.

"And who can stop for him?" scoffs the woman, without raising her eyes from the metal shell she was filling with the same rapidity she would ravioli.

Medici bends down and gently rolls the soldier on his side. The wounded man breathes that he wants some water. Medici turns towards Sandor and Kemenj.

"Take this man to the hospital."

Goffredo crouches down. Only now does he recognize the blackened face. "Swissman, it's Goffredo." He leans his ear to his travel companion's mouth and listens to a faint plea, as Sandor tries to tourniquet what he can with an abandoned jacket.

"Carry him straight to Isola Tiberina," says the woman rolling bullets, raising her apron to wipe her damp forehead. "This quarter's too exposed to shelling."

They run with Swissman and his stretcher through an insidious, erratic rain of rifle fire, crossing fields and abandoned Republican trenches until it is possible to descend the hill towards the river and make their way south into the Trastevere just as another French cannonade begins. They see a young Roman boy dash with wet rags towards an unexploded shell in an alley and throw himself on top of it to keep it from going off. He is one of the lucky ones; his bomb doesn't explode. They continue through the cobblestoned streets, with Swissman bouncing and swaying in his stretcher, biting his lower lip, his hands in fists, his eyes squeezed shut.

As they cross the bridge to the island they can hear, in the intervals between the heavy artillery booms, an intermittent drone.

Swissman thrashes his head at the sound.

"Hey, you breathing?" Goffredo asks.

"No. Just alive."

They pass beneath the windows of the hospital combat wards. The drone is the insect-like sound made by so many dying and wounded. A stout nurse points at the doorway to a room of stretchers and screaming men, into which they carry Swissman. "Out with you," she orders. "The doctor needs to operate." Swissman's head continues to beat back and forth, saying no to all the pain in his body, and they limit their farewell to a touch of his naked shoulder, not sure they will ever see him again. In the hall, the orderly who they stop to ask where Eleonora might be recognizes Goffredo as the one who fixed their supply wagon, and offers to go and look for her himself. As the two friends wait outside in a numb state of weariness, Margaret Fuller, Cristina Belgioioso, and a tall man with grey hair and a long grey beard exit from the hospital, all three gesticulating and flushed.

"Ladies, I will say it once again!" says the man irately, waving a piece of paper in one hand. "I am Minister of War for the Roman Republic, and I am telling you once again that I do not intend to stay here listening to a Milanese aristocrat who chooses this moment—THIS moment!!—to ask me for all these things, and who has the courage to write--," his eyes fly to the paper and he reads, "One: there is no petty cash. Two: there is a need for surgical equipment. Three: there is a need for more ether gas to attenuate the patients' pain. Four: too many patients die convulsing in pain. Five: There are not enough beds with traction for fractures. Six: the surgeons are butchers and criminals."

"And you should be giving even the wounded men their soldiers' pay, Avezzana!" Cristina adds hotly, storming back inside, while the Minister with a wave of a hand stalks off in the direction of the bridge.

Margaret, left standing in front of the hospital door, acknowledges Sandor and Goffredo with a nod.

"Mrs. Margaret," Goffredo says, "is Eleonora in there with the Princess? Is she all right?"

"Eleonora? Eleonora needs help, gentlemen." Margaret Fuller takes in their startled faces, satisfied that at least these words of hers, of the many she utters or writes each day, are having an effect. "Eleonora eats next to nothing, and she's starting to look weak. All she does is work. She runs from one sick bed to the next, day and night. She needs to leave the hospital and get something to eat. Can I count on you for that? I know there's a food shortage, but I am confident you'll be able to scrounge up a meal. I don't want her fading away on me. Her help is too valuable. So, gentlemen..." She gestures that they should proceed through the door ahead of her, and of course they do, they are good chaps and both in love with Eleonora, she thinks. She is glad to see life imitate a romantic novel for once—it restores a sense to things.

Eleonora's heart skips a beat at the sight of them entering the ward, for she hasn't seen them for some days. Their faces have taken on an unnatural shade between soil and sand, and the unkempt fuzz patches on their cheeks have become straggly beards.

"My friends!"

Their eyes are animated with the unmistakable joy of having found her in one piece. She is so happy to see them in turn that she lets Margaret untie her pinafore from behind and whisper into her ear that she is to go with them. "Those stomach pains of yours are not a punishment from God or proof of a shamefully weak body," Margaret is telling her; every day she says this, and it hardly registers on Eleonora anymore. But what does it matter when Goffredo and Sandor are here?

"Don't bring her back tonight. Make sure she gets rest," Margaret repeats.

They lead her into the dark, narrow streets of the Ghetto on the opposite bank. Goffredo is convinced they will find an open osteria, a tavern, a dry-goods shop, something… but almost all the shutters at street level are pulled shut against the roaming French patrols and the imminent curfew. Pointing to a single lit window just an arm's length over their heads, Sandor wants to shout to the people inside for food for a nurse, for a heroine of the Republic, but Eleonora hushes him, "No, no!"

In the deepening twilight, her hunger mounts, and silently she doubles over, her arms cradling her abdomen. She can't see or even hear properly but knows Sandor and Goffredo are there because they are pulling her along. With a similar blind sense she knows where she is: she is nearing the square she knew best in Rome. She has sworn she'd never step foot in there again but there in a certain cellar bin, in the depths that only she can know about, there are the potatoes, there are the apples.

She yanks free of her companions and kicks open the front door of a regal palazzo, one of the many with gaping holes in its roof. Though nothing but an inside brick was holding the door in place (its bolts having long been hacked off), Sandor protests, "We're not thieves, Elly," and pulls her from the threshold.

Goffredo is emotional, ashamed of himself for not having thought of her needs before. "Eleonora, please." He raises his lantern as a sign that they should go. "I will get you food. On my honor."

"Please, what? This is my house!"

Or it was her family house before the French—her parents' 'saviours'—destroyed it.

The three walk in silence through rooms with high ceilings, past sofas and armchairs covered in sheets or splintered into pieces, past fireplaces over which pictures once hung, leaving only their rectangular dust-lines on the dark red wallpaper. "They're gone," she murmurs, leaving one sitting room for the next. "And the candelabras. The silver clock as well." She touches a few curios on a side server; that they belong to her past is clear on her face, but she doesn't elaborate.

"Food," she says instead, pushing on a swinging door, perhaps to the kitchen.

As if in answer, the door adjacent shudders on its hinges.

Sandor raises his rifle. Goffredo draws Eleonora to the side, gives her the lantern and opens that door.

A tiny old woman with the startled eyes of a child blinks at them, her arms crossed over her chest.

"Caterina!" Eleonora cries. She hugs the old woman and repeatedly kisses the top of her head, covered in a dingy kerchief. "Caterina is my nurse," she tells them.

"Is she alone?" asks Sandor, as Goffredo prudently opens the other doors—all to built-in armoires.

"Of course she's alone."

"Your parents followed the Pope into exile," Caterina says. "But was it the Pope who ordered the cannonades?"

"I suppose you can say that. Caterina, we're hungry."

"Dear me."

"Potatoes and apples in the cellar?"

"Still there. And rice and eggs they gave me for a brass plate, too."

She takes a small bowl from a hiding place behind some blue porcelain dishes displayed on a wall rack. "Eat these," she tells Eleonora, then disappears through the swinging door.

Munching and swallowing the pistachios as fast as their mouths will work, Eleonora, Sandor and Goffredo uncover the sofa and armchairs. Eleonora explains that Caterina was the daughter of a Jewish merchant who lost his shop and any way of maintaining his family when the old Pope prohibited Jews from doing business outside the Ghetto.

"When she was very young she was kidnapped and forcibly converted to Christianity. Eventually she was freed, but after that she wasn't accepted either by the Catholics or the Jews. We took her in. It's the one thing about the Serlupi family that I'm proud of. She was my first and most loyal friend, besides my nurse. That's why you can trust Caterina."

With the edge off her hunger, Eleonora gestures at them to sit down. They haven't had comfortable chairs for months and make sounds of appreciation.

"You seem a bit better," comments Goffredo, softly, from his chair.

"Goffredo. We forget!" Sandor bounds to his feet. "We have something to show you," he tells Eleonora, eagerly undoing the top button of his red shirt.

"This! We found this." He pulls off the leather pouch hanging round his neck and tells her about their night in San Pietro in Montorio, about the two dead Frenchmen and the one who escaped, about the wounded priest's dying words about there being an important mystery to keep regarding this…yes, this pouch, and inside it, the vial, the strange V-shaped instrument…and this medallion.

Sandor and Goffredo place their treasures gladly on her lap. The gold medallion, the size of a watch face, lay on top.

"What do you think, Elly? To me, it looks like the medal a general or a king wears," Goffredo says, sitting down and taking one of Eleonora's hands, as Sandor, collapsing on the opposite side of her, takes the other.

"But there are no precious gems, nothing particularly valuable that meets the eye here," Eleonora marvels. "So why does Louis Napoleon want it? Is it Masonic? Is it some other ruler's?"

Sandor jokes: "It's for General Oudinot. He'll get it when he brings Pius IX back."

Eleonora pretends to be angry and undoes their handhold to swat the back of his head.

Caterina comes back, carrying a steaming bowl of rice and apples and potatoes. There is even wine. The three eat slowly. The house seems to protect them, Goffredo thinks. It is peaceful and safe-feeling, this being with Eleonora around a real table.

When they have had enough and returned to the comfortable sofa and armchairs, Eleonora says, "Sandor, show me that wound at your shoulder that I can tell you have."

"It's nothing, Elly."

"Show it to me anyway."

Sandor undoes the buttons on his shirt and slides it off his arms. Although Eleonora has seen countless wounded soldiers the last few weeks, the sight of his chest is unsettling. She leans silently towards him, towards the red-splotched shoulder dressing. She had no idea that under his clothes, Sandor's torso was…was so beautiful. His liberated arms, the downy hair like a gold plate of armour, the muscles that smooth into a trim, supple waist. It is jarring.

Caterina briskly picks up his red shirt from the floor and starts in the direction of the kitchen with it.

"Please don't wash it," Sandor calls, running a hand through his hair, which has fallen over his forehead. Under his raised arm, there is a patch of softer, whiter skin and a tuft of matching golden hair.

"Please, wash only the blood on it," he begs Caterina. Sheepishly, he explains that he has none other to wear. Then with that polite candour of his, which is somehow connected (Eleonora thinks) to his physical courage, he asks Eleonora's nurse, using gestures, if she can embroider a word for him on the inside of the collar.

"A word?" Wrinkles of amusement deepen about Caterina's old eyes.

"One that reminds me of my country, of Hungary. The word is szabadsàg. S-z-a-b-a-d-s-à-g. I am very grateful."

"And what does it mean?" Eleonora asks.

"Freedom."

"Freedom," she repeats.

"Yes, there's an important Hungarian poem called 'Freedom and Love.' But that is too long to ask Caterina to sew." His eyes remain in hers.

Caterina returns with an empty wash bucket to take to the river.

"I'll be right back, ma'am."

Eleonora unwraps Sandor's shoulder, as Goffredo watches. She is the competent nurse now, expertly surmising that though the slash is fairly deep, there is more inflammation than infection. As she leans close to Sandor's chest, the salty scent of him—a good smell, despite everything—envelopes her. She can feel his nose in her hair, there on the gathered part from her ears to her crown. His nose has never touched her before...her heart quickens. His nose is right by his mouth.

There are suddenly voices calling out in the square. Beyond the window grates and through the shutter slits, shadows and torches pass. The commotion brings Caterina back to them.

"There's something," she says with the laboured breath of an old woman who has tried to hurry. "Garibaldi has declared that he is unable to defend the city."

"Unable?" Sandor's voice is hot with alarm, but he doesn't pull away from Eleonora's fingers or from Eleonora's breath.

"Unable?" Goffredo echoes, springing to his feet. "I'll go and find out more, Sandor"

"Yes!"

"Yes!" cries Eleonora.

"If it's true, come right back!" Sandor calls as Goffredo shuts the front door.

Eleonora has in the meantime placed her ear against his chest and these wonderful vibrating words of his make her shut her eyes. With difficulty she lifts her head a moment later and tries to keep her voice normal. "We need to redo the wound dressing. Caterina, can you get the soap and some cloth, please?"

Her palms are sweating, and he takes hold of her wrist. "First, my medal of courage," he laughs, their breaths finally mingling. With his free hand, he retrieves the gold medallion next to him on the couch and slips it over his head. Eleonora fingers it a moment—the strange lion-creature, the rising sun.

"There are underground places in Rome with figures like this," she says softly. "Strange places that no one knows about. I visited one as a child."

She is telling him something she's never talked about with anyone before. She presses the wet cloth that Caterina brings to his breastbone. "They are places, temples, from ancient times," she elaborates as she washes him. "When my parents wanted to punish me, they threatened to take me to one and leave me there."

"Leave you there? How could they possibly do that?"

"That's what they said. Oh dear, did I hurt you?"

"Impossible."

Each shiny circle she makes over the landscape of his body floods her own with warmth. Neither speak nor realizes that Caterina has discretely left the room, but when Eleonora has re-bandaged his wound and is putting down the sewing scissors, Sandor gropes with an agile hand for her free one, and when he finds it, he kisses it. Her knees fold under her. He springs up, alarmed. But fainting is far from her mind; rather, her aim is to press her cheek against his lap and with her hands touch what she knows must be the marble-smooth strength in his hips, in his flanks …thighs which have done their marching and walking from Hungary. He won't let her sink towards the floor; his hands lift her under the arms, and then lay her down on the sofa. Whenever he pulls away from her lips for a gasp of air, he murmurs her name as if it were a plea. His hand roams over her belly, inside her legs; then suddenly, throwing her back into the curve of his arm and looking at her, he asks as her equal in a cause in which everything must be fought for and intensely desired, if she wants him. On her next smile she says, "Oh yes."