Читать книгу The Sweet Hills of Florence - Jan Wallace Dickinson - Страница 11

CHAPTER 4

Florence 1943

Into thin air

Most people listened to Radio Londra. The real news, however, came with Enrico every evening. Pavolini had escaped ahead of a mob intent on hanging him. Senator Morgagni had shot himself, leaving a note saying: ‘The Duce has resigned. My life is finished. Long live Mussolini.’ Few were the men who took that recourse. Many were those who might never have been fascists. Where was Mussolini? The answer was different every day: he was at home in Rocca delle Caminate; no, he was on the island of Ponza; no, he was on La Maddalena. After more than two weeks, Enrico learned from a spy in the Carabinieri that Il Duce was a prisoner at Gran Sasso, high on a peak in the Apennines. A prisoner of the Italians.

‘We think they will use him to bargain with the Allies. There are negotiations going on to end the war,’ he said.

But where was Claretta, Annabelle wondered. There was no news of her whereabouts, only scurrilous newspaper stories of her excesses and voracious appetites. The day after Mussolini’s arrest, crowds converged on the Petacci villa, scrawling obscenities across the walls, but there had been graffiti every day for years now and apart from an increase in the insults, they had come to no harm. The family too had disappeared. Though she harped on it to Enrico, he had no interest in the fate of Claretta or her family.

Then one evening he arrived with news. ‘It looks like Badoglio has had them arrested. The whole family.’ He was not sympathetic. ‘Serves them right. She is nothing but a puttana and the family has profited from that.’

‘How can you!’ They were all used to Enrico’s swearing and brutal language, but how could he call Claretta a whore when he himself would sleep with any girl he could? Men! Could he not see that it was all for love? There was no use protesting though – he treated her as a silly child. She could not flounce from the room, for fear of missing something.

‘There are more important things to consider than the fate of that troia,’ he said. ‘We are being bombed off the face of the earth. And no-one is in charge here.’

It was true. Not a day passed without news of bombs pelting down upon the cities. Naples obliterated. Genoa in ruins. One of the constant bombing raids on Milan nearly destroyed Leonardo’s Last Supper. Il Cenacolo barely survived and three of the surrounding walls were destroyed. Fascist rhetoric was at a crescendo. The Allies are destroying our cities! LUCE newsreels shouted about the effects of the barbarous English aggressors. Ezra Pound’s radio broadcasts spewed hysterical anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda. ‘Radio Londra knew of the bombing,’ Pound raged, ‘was involved in it, make no mistake, the English want to wipe you from the face of the earth.’

Lies, lies and more lies from the British radio and the Anglo-Americans. The newspapers screamed it in gigantic headlines, lamenting the philistine approach of the Anglosphere to the art treasures of Italy. Look what they have done to La Scala, seat of more than a century of glorious music. But art was not then at the top of the Allies’ concerns. It was industry and communication that had to be demolished. Turin and Milan and their factories were being bombed out of existence as refugees fled the north in terror. Not far from Florence in the Val d’Orcia, her mother’s friend, the Marchesa Origo, had taken in hordes of children whose parents sent them away, to save them. Food was scarce because the south was devastated and crops were destroyed. In Palermo people were starving. Thousands were dead and there was no sign of a let-up in the Allied ferocity. Everywhere was bombed except, it seemed so far, Florence. Because Hitler loved Florence, said Florentines. Hitler loves our art, they said.

To Annabelle it was all news from afar. She had shifted a small table nearer to the French doors to the garden, in a vain attempt to get more of the syrupy air. Although the sun was long since set, the sultry August night brought no relief. Thunder rolled about the hills but no storm came to save them. The heavy rugs and tapestries of her father’s study oppressed her in the summer, mouldering in the humid Florence basin. The thought of all those children sent far away from their homes, to complete strangers, gave Annabelle a squirmy feeling in her stomach. It was better than being bombed, but then, how did being bombed feel anyhow? She had lived her whole life between Impruneta and the palazzo in Borgo Pinti – summer trips to the seaside at Riccione did not count. There had been trips to London, and once to Paris, but that was another world and so long ago, she was too small to remember it – a world when people travelled for pleasure.

Annabelle had no interest in her geometry homework. The problem with not going to school was that there were no school holiday and no school friends. The geometry of her world was as remote to her as the flat Mollweide Projection in its giant frame, on the wall to the left of the doors. Her world and her sky grew smaller and flatter by the day.

She sat back in her chair and stuck both feet straight out in front of her, flapping them back and forth. Childish, they looked in the brown buckled sandals. The exposed summer skin between the straps was bronzed, her tidily clipped toenails perfectly suited the sensible sandals. Her mother’s toenails used to be painted scarlet. She would bet Claretta’s were too. Poor Claretta. Annabelle no longer envied her, but she was still anxious to know what had become of her – was she even alive? She blew damp wisps of hair from her forehead. Her parents were out for the evening and the house lay stunned in the heat. The only sounds were the drifting voices and footfalls from the narrow medieval streets where heels struck flint from the stone and voices racketed from wall to wall, but the outside world was muted by heavy doors and metre-thick walls.

Annabelle followed the thought of scarlet nail polish upstairs to her parents’ bedroom, where the door was ajar. She rarely entered their room; her heartbeat accelerated a little and her breath fluttered as she pushed the door a sliver further and edged in. The expanse of pale blue silk – coverlet and cushions, upholstery and rugs – was more her mother’s domain than her father’s. He often slept in the dressing-room, to the side. Annabelle had never seen her parents in bed together. Did they do that, she wondered? Do that. Do what? Her hazy ideas of what that might be were formed from books and from Enrico’s offhand tales of his conquests.

On a high shelf of her father’s library was a leather-bound volume of the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Sir Richard Burton. Rainy afternoons during their parents’ rest-times, it used to provide the perfect pastime for two adolescents. But many of the illustrations, while fascinating to Enrico, were terrifying to Annabelle. Surely real people could not do that? Beside it stood a very old book called Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue by the Marquis de Sade, but, said Enrico, it was better if she did not see that. There was another, a Latin text by Marcantonio Raimondi, with sixteen sonnets by Aretino. Enrico did not know she had climbed the rickety library ladder alone one recent afternoon and nearly fallen off in shock at the explicit engravings, which looked like battle scenes more than anything. It was not possible to imagine her coolly elegant parents engaged in any form of sexual activity and certainly nothing of the sort contained in those books.

In the silence of the bedroom with its high ornate bed, Annabelle’s face scalded and her heart skittered, as much at her intrusion as at the very idea of her parents in bed. Making love, she called it, preferring the romantic poets and their veiled, allusive love. She took a deep, deep breath and exhaled very slowly. Much calmer, she drifted to the triple-mirrored dressing table in the window bay and sat on an embroidered piano stool her mother used for her toilette, turning in circles until it wobbled and almost collapsed. She screwed it back in the other direction and examined the glass-topped dressing table.

Two cut-glass perfume bottles with tasselled spray-pumps; a stemmed majolica dish spilling jewellery – pearls, an emerald locket from South America, a gold chain with a watch attached to it, and dangly amethyst earrings Annabelle had never seen her mother wearing; crystal pots of creams with etched silver lids; an enamelled powder compact and several lipstick cases. A pair of tweezers rested on top of one of the compacts and Annabelle imagined herself with her eyebrows plucked to the thin arcs favoured by the women of the Trio Lescano, whose voices dominated the airwaves. She rolled her fringe tightly in imitation of their hairstyle then let it spring back and tidied it into her headband again.

Leaning forward, she plucked a hair from between her brows – it stung. She would not do that again! She brushed the single hair from the tweezers and placed them back. Everything had a fine film of face power from a large lambswool puff thrown down carelessly. With her finger, she traced the outline of the intricate design of the inlaid timber and mother-of-pearl beneath the glass. This craftsmanship came from Sorrento. Would she ever go to Sorrento? Or Capri? Or anywhere? From the mirrors, three Annabelles observed her sulkily.

Her parents rarely went out – tonight had been an exception, because an old friend was conducting at La Pergola. How odd it was that their world was being smashed to pieces, her own world was so confined, yet out there, a caricature of normal life continued. Many men were not at war: some too young or too old, some with medical conditions or in protected industries. Then there were those of an age where they should be in the war and yet strangely, were not in uniform, sinister reminders that all was not normal at all.

There were bodies in the streets; horses and carts were the mode of transport again and the smell of horse dung and fear was everywhere, seeping and creeping through cracks. Yet people flocked to concerts, the theatre and the galleries. At her age her parents had attended coming-out parties. Even now, people held birthday parties, weddings, engagements, eating and drinking as if bombs were not belting down all over the country. As if rationing did not exist.

Some people. Not in her family. The Black Market was the only way to indulge those extravagances and the Black Market was not tolerated there. Their table was a spartan affair, laid with only the food available under rationing and what came from the farm. No wonder Anna Maria and Sesto were happy to be sent out to the farm – at least there they could eat a little better than in town. Hunger was a constant topic everywhere.

According to Anna Maria, Sesto’s Neapolitan brother-in-law told them that in Naples people were eating each other and girls as young as twelve prostituted themselves to the Allied soldiers for as little as a warm blanket. In the streets, prostitutes were sprayed with delousing solution as if they were cattle. Cannibalism and prostitution. Well, they are Napolitani, after all, Anna Maria said, with callous disdain for the south and its sins. She crossed herself.

‘It’s probably true,’ Enrico had told Annabelle. ‘They are starving. Many of them are living in caves with no food and no water and certainly no sanitation. Naples has always been a special case and now it is in ruins.’

She shivered and turned away from the mirrors. She did not want red toenails anyway. Enrico hated painted nails. She picked up the powder puff and let it fall from a great height, watching the starburst of powder settle more thickly. Then she left, closing the door at exactly the angle she had found it. She ignored her geometry and instead went to bed with Leopardi’s poetry. Leopardi seemed appropriate; they were both prisoners of their own life.

Novara 1943

Follow the leader

Clara too was a prisoner, but she had no mind to read Leopardi. Her father telephoned the police immediately on the night of Ben’s disappearance and their guard was restored at once. The night was calm and, apart from more vile things scrawled on the walls of the villa, nothing had changed by morning. They left Rome that day, and with their bodyguards travelled to the villa of Myriam and her husband at Meina. Surely there on Lake Maggiore they would be safe. Less than three weeks had passed – three weeks of a nightmare for Clara who could get no word of Ben and was terrified he was dead. It was odd how few of her old sources wished to speak to her. Quinto was unavailable. First, she was told Ben had gone back to Rocca delle Caminate for his own protection. How ridiculous. Was Rachele there? Next, she heard he was under arrest somewhere else, but she did not believe any of it. They could have killed him. She might be next. Anything was possible. Badoglio was in charge and he was their enemy. No-one was safe.

The days were endless and the nights much longer. Eating made her nauseous and her mother’s sullen fretting and threatened heart attacks cast a pall over all of them. Her father barely spoke and no-one from the Vatican had been in contact with offers of help. So much for your Pope, said Giuseppina. It would soon be Ferragosto.

Then one clear sunny morning, when more athletic citizens were already swimming in the lake, Claretta and her mother and father and sister had barely awoken when a Carabinieri officer arrived with his men and courteously informed them they were under arrest, on the orders of Marshall Badoglio. It was almost a relief. They were bundled off to Castello Visconti in Novara.

‘Well, it could be worse,’ sniffed Giuseppina. ‘At least Novara is a decent town.’

She was right though, it could be worse and it was. It turned out they had been arrested because Marcello had been up to his old tricks again. Giuseppina would hear no ill of her son but Francesco put it more bluntly. ‘That imbecile of a brother of yours has caused this,’ he told Clara.

Marc too was under arrest, it seemed. Ben was no longer there to rescue them. There was still no word of his whereabouts. It was as if he had never existed. His name was never mentioned. Though the director of the prison ensured they were well cared for by the nuns, the circumstances were not easy: rough straw beds crawling with vermin, insolent guards, dreadful food. The other prisoners never missed an opportunity to deride and persecute them and the city suffered air raid after air raid, the disaster being attributed to their presence, though everyone knew the Allies were bombing the country to pieces and had better things to do than search for them.

After one of the raids, the water was cut off and in the suppurating heat of high summer, prisoners and keepers suffered alike. Francesco paced and muttered and tried to avoid his wife. Giuseppina fanned herself, sighed and passed her time carping to the nuns about the inefficiencies all around her and the lack of regard for her station. The nuns saw little point in advising la signora to offer up her tribulations to the Saviour. Mimi – or Myriam as she now insisted on being called – sniffled and snuffled and clung to her mother. Clara clung only to her hope that Ben was alive and that he would survive, his health was so poor. Her own health had deteriorated and she was weak and lethargic. She retreated into her diaries, scribbling obsessively all day, closing off the world. If he was alive, he would come for her. If he was dead, she had no further desire to live.

The Inspector-General of Police was mystified by his prisoner’s compliance. Could this be the feared figure of Il Duce, so long known for his belligerence? He had never been this close to his leader, whose voice he knew well from balconies and parade-grounds and whose portrait adorned his office. This frail little man was a great disappointment. Still, he thought, he himself was only forty-two and Il Duce was old now – we all get old. His duty was a delicate one and he did his best.

After two days in the police barracks, Mussolini had shown little interest in his fate. He asked what the reaction had been to his arrest and when told of the rejoicing in the streets and that his own militia did nothing, he nodded silently and did not mention it again. He quietly allowed himself to be bustled from place to place and eventually to the Gran Sasso. No-one seemed to know what to do with him and he offered no opinion on it.

On one of the stops, at the island of Ponza, Mussolini became overwrought on disembarking the ship, mortified at facing people. He disliked the sea and was clearly loath to leave the reclusion and safety of the vessel. It took his captors ages to persuade him, wheedling as with a child, to go ashore. Eventually he sulked his way down the gangplank with collar turned up and hat pulled down.

Once ashore, he retreated into reading and complaining about minor daily irritations, boring his captors with monologues on anything that came to mind. He did not enquire about the fate of his family or his friends or Clara. In answer to his idle questions about the constant changes of detention, he was told there was concern about him being captured by the Allies or even the Germans. He was in vehement agreement that he would not want the humiliation of being returned to power ‘at the point of Hitler’s bayonets’. In fact, he did not want to be returned to power at all. He was resigned to being in retirement, playing cards with his sheepish guards and haranguing them with his thoughts on Nietzsche. He lived in another world, said the Carabinieri with a shake of their heads. In the real world – the one where the war continued – bombs fell and people died, and for those who did not, life somehow went on.

The Führer’s face was puce. Rage made him incoherent. Livid and incoherent was a constant state for him lately, his adjutant later said. Because Hitler would not permit spying on his great friend Il Duce, the Germans had no idea at first where Mussolini was held. Hitler knew the Italians would not remain loyal to the Axis agreement without their leader. He feared for his friend. He shouted, screamed, raged, banged his fist on tables, issued orders.

He wanted the King found and killed. The Vatican too had certainly been involved in Mussolini’s demise and he wanted the Pope killed – he had always hated the Vatican. He would send crack troops to invade Rome, have the Pope killed, secure the art treasures of the Eternal City for removal to Munich, and occupy the whole country immediately. Or have the Pope kidnapped and taken to Munich.

The British Legate in Rome, hearing these whispers, burned all documents in preparation for the invasion. Goebbels, however, dissuaded Hitler from the assassination plan for the Pope and advised that they should instead find and rescue Mussolini and have him reinstated. Mussolini was essential to the Axis. It was Mussolini, after all, he reminded the Führer, who coined the term ‘The Rome-Berlin Axis’, proudly defining both countries as ‘anti-Democratic, anti-Bolshevik and anti-Semitic’. The world had turned on its axis and now all allegiances were realigned.

Hitler loved Mussolini. His one true friend. They had so much in common – both were vegetarian, both plagued by ill-health, both abhorred alcohol and eschewed coffee, both obsessed with fitness, with fad diets. Both were given to fits of uncontrollable rage and obsessive behaviour. Both despised religion, yet fostered the Vatican while it suited them. In fact this Pope, Pacelli, had been Mussolini’s man inside the Vatican throughout his whole tenure. One of their few differences was Hitler’s deep devotion to art and Mussolini’s complete indifference to it. The other more important difference was Hitler’s implacable philosophical commitment to his programs. When Mussolini styled himself Il Duce, Hitler thought it a stroke of genius and adopted it himself: Führer. The Leader. From the very beginning of his rise in 1933, Hitler had modelled himself on Mussolini. He wanted his friend back.