The Italian Romance (24 page)

Antonio lay on his back. The earth was cold under him. He had folded his arms over his face. He said, ‘How are they surviving? Does he have enough to eat, can he get to school?'

Lilian sat on his jacket. From the rise of the hill, though it was slight, she could see far across the plains. The grass was greener at this cool time of year. In the late afternoon light, colours were sharp, red earth where the wind and weather bit, softer paddocks rolling down to the hidden river, and the tribes of grey trees clustering for thousands of years, maybe, above the damp channels that leaked out of it. The sun was heading for its day's end, throwing out streaks of light, casting trees into shadows. A bird that was probably not black dived and glided towards it. Lilian held her hand up to her eyes. The sun began to sit itself on the horizon, squash itself flat and bloated at its base so that a blood-red oozed from its middle. She lay her forehead on her knees. She said. ‘It's over now, Antonio. It's all over. Soon you'll see them again. When the Japanese are beaten, everyone can go home.'

The seconds passed slowly. And then she felt his hand on her back. It just rested there. It made her feel glad.

‘Lilian?'

‘Mmm?'

‘Did he enlist?'

‘Who?' She turned her head so she could see him. ‘Bernie?'

His left arm lay along his forehead, and he was looking at her from under its shade. ‘Si.'

‘Yes, he did. Why?'

‘I enlisted.'

‘Oh?' she said. She looked past him, to a burnt-out husk of a tree. It had only one arm, held out helpless at a forty-five-degree angle.

‘The other two men here, Montini and Belzoni, they were conscripted. Most of the men in my division were conscripts.'

‘Oh?' She felt her breath on her arm. She didn't look at him.

‘We barely had enough guns to go around,' he said. ‘It was no army. Il Duce's fantasia, that's all.'

‘Then why?' she heard herself asking. She felt the hand on her back fall away. She was cold.

He said, ‘For the worst of reasons. The very worst.' He was silent for a while.

She closed her eyes and waited.

He said, ‘I had gone down a particular road. Very soon after, very soon, I knew I had taken the wrong one. But it was too late. I couldn't turn back. Do you understand me, Lil?'

She nodded, though she didn't lift her head, didn't open her eyes.

‘And then there was the chance of escape. No one would say to me, but you can't, you mustn't. My father kissed me.' He was silent again. Then he said, ‘Bravely I marched off from my home, my wife. And from my son.'

She turned herself to face him. His black eyes stared up at her. ‘I'm a brave man, Lilian.'

She leaned down to him. Her elbow pressed on a small, flat stone, but she didn't move it. Her hand stroked his dark hair. He lowered the arm that had protected him. She bent and kissed his forehead. And she kissed the line of his black eyebrow.

Gianni's snores were peaceful and rhythmic; they spoke of a quiet night. The moon was full. Light spilled in through a window. When Sonia leaned over her son, she saw a glistening patch of dribble on his hand, where his open mouth rested. Something in him felt her nearness. His lips smacked, and dropped open again.

Jack had settled his jacket over the boy. The blanket he'd carried was thin against the chill. Downstairs, the old man who'd given up his bed was lying on a wooden bench with his own blanket underneath him, and their second one over him.

Sonia lifted her hand gently from the boy's shoulder and rested against the bedhead. Jack murmured, ‘He's all right.'

‘Exhausted,' she said.

‘He's a big, strong boy.' As he stretched his arm behind her along the wooden bed rail, she leaned forward a little to facilitate it. It was, perhaps, an acquiesence. He touched her lightly with his fingers and she relaxed into him. He barely dared breathe.

She was very tired. And in the morning they must set out once
more, hiding from the roadways as best they could, pushing against time to reach the next destination before dark. The thought of that sickened her stomach. She leaned her cheek into his chest.

He raised his hand from her shoulder, held it motionless for a few moments and, as if he were his younger self approaching a wide-eyed deer in the wood by his home, he took just a few strands of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, felt them, and sensing calm, laid his open hand on her head. He didn't see her eyes close over.

She breathed slowly, aware. Her own fingers found a button of his shirt, and she played with it.

He said, ‘Are you sad now?'

‘I'm scared.'

He cradled his hand on her. She moved her cheek just a little. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘I know. But are you sad? Like you were the first time I saw you?'

‘The first time? When I didn't know you were there?'

‘Mmm. You were standing in the doorway of the drawing room, looking out over the garden.'

‘How did you know I was sad?'

‘I felt it.'

‘Maybe you were sad,' she said.

‘Oh, yes, I was. I'd been sad for a long time. But so were you, that day.'

‘You never speak of yourself, Jack, do you know that?'

His head fell back against the wall. He did not like to speak of Hugo Jack Kemp. Hugo Kemp didn't matter to him. In a way that he could barely figure, he had lost favour with himself. Sonia was silent; he felt her fingers against his shirt. He said, ‘There's not much to say. Two years in a prison camp. Bored. Every day the same nothing.'

‘And before?'

‘Before? North Africa.'

‘What is it like there? Is it beautiful?'

He gave a laugh. ‘Well, beautiful? I don't know. I suppose it was at times. I remember when we first landed, I thought it was. Palm trees, you know. The sea. Wonderful smell of the sea, if you could get away from the stink of petrol. It was strange for me to walk down the gangway. I'd read about it: the Pharaohs, the desert tribes, emptiness. And it did feel like that. Something in the air.'

‘What something in the air?'

‘Oh, hard to describe. If you can imagine a port, same men, same cargo, same as anywhere else. Except some of the men were dark and wore robes. But there was something else. You could sniff it. Like a promise of something, more than the thing itself.' He looked down at the gloss of her dark hair. Her fingernails were clear, almost a hint of pink underneath them. He pulled her in closer. ‘A promise of what might happen in the desert. As if there was some kind of eternity in there.' He bent and kissed the top of her head. He hadn't realised it had been done until it happened. There rose up over him some unknown thing, as if he'd lain down in a clear, sandy-bedded river. It was completion.

She said, ‘Sheikhs and tents and coloured carpets.'

‘And romance, and camels and maidens.'

He heard her laugh. ‘I saw a film like that once.'

‘I think I saw the same film,' he said.

‘But I don't suppose it was like that.'

‘No. Wrong desert, maybe. Wrong time. It was a scrubby sort of a place, a lot of it.'

‘And it wasn't empty.'

‘No, it wasn't empty. Rutted with tyre tracks. Tin cans. The fat'd leak out of your bully-beef. You'd get it all over your clothes.'

‘In the heat?'

‘You can't imagine how hot it was. Even you would find it hot.'

‘Hard for the English,' she said.

‘Oh, yes. And very little water. The only thing I was right about was the eternity. It felt like eternity.'

She was silent. He put his cheek on the heat of her hair. He said, ‘If you could get a moment when your head was clear – a morning when you woke before the others, see the sun rise – then it was beautiful.'

He breathed into her hair, and breathed the animal smell of it back into himself. ‘And you, Sonia?' he said. His mouth barely moved on her head.

She held his shirt button tight. And she said, ‘I'm not loved, Jack.'

His eyes opened wide. He drew away from her, lifted her chin with his hand. She kept her eyes tight shut.

He said, ‘You can't imagine how wrong you are.'

He winced as he saw a tear slide down her cheek. He whispered, almost to himself, ‘What has he done to you?'

‘Let me talk, all right?' she said.

He folded both arms around her. She rested against his chest as if she had expended every energy, and had surrendered.

‘I was eighteen. One night, my friends and I were walking. We'd gone down to Pisa. One girl had an engagement party. We'd dressed up, you know, to walk, to attract the boys. There was music. The loudspeakers were rigged up in the square, along the streets. People danced. They did that then, before the war. And this boy, I saw him across the square. He turned his head and caught me looking at him. And I pretended to be looking at something else.'

Jack hugged her tighter for a moment.

‘And, after a while, he came over. He had black hair. It fell over his forehead. Beautiful, clear skin. He said, “Signorina, if you don't dance with me, I will walk up that hill to the monastery and beg them to let me in the gate”.' She was quiet. Jack glanced at the side of her face. Her eyes were open now as if she saw the square, the lights, the boy. ‘And so I gave him my hand and we walked
over to the fountain, and he put his arms around me. And, that's the end of my story. Because I loved him from that time. I begged my parents to let me marry him, though he was a Christian. And they said yes, after a few months. Then they loved him, too. But he never loved me. I don't know why.'

Jack said, ‘What a fool.'

She shook her head, as if she expected such a response. ‘He thought he did, I suppose, at first. I ... I just couldn't let him know how much I...'

‘You blame yourself, for his lack?'

‘Oh, Jack, you don't know me, either.'

The muscles in Jack's face tensed, as if she'd struck him with her open palm. His head went back. He could feel the cold of the wall.

She said, talking not to him, ‘I think I'm a cold person. He began to turn away from me. Nothing I could do would stop it. I didn't know the words, I didn't know how to touch him.'

Jack put his hand on her face again, and turned her, almost roughly, to look up at him. ‘The first moment I saw you, I knew you. It was not my sadness I saw on your face. None of that psychology. You are like a crystal-clear stream to me. I know you. I see your heart.'

Her voice was locked in her. She whispered, ‘How can you?'

‘I don't know how. I just do, that's all. And I love what I see.'

She fought her face free from his grip, and hid herself against him. She said, ‘Do you know how much your words hurt me?'

‘How can I hurt you?'

‘Don't you know?' Sonia forced words, pulled them out of herself. ‘Only God loves like that. That's what we want, always, no matter what else we do, how else we fill up our time, we wait for that. And only God can say it.'

He folded his arm about her head and held her. ‘No,' he said. ‘I wanted you. Not God, or anybody else.' He kissed her hair. ‘Just you.'

‘What a time you pick,' Sonia said. She looked up at him and laughed.

‘A confluence of events,' he said. He smiled into her large, dark eyes. ‘I'm as happy at this moment as any man who ever lived.'

She raised her hand, and with the caution of someone learning to walk again, brought it to his jaw. She felt the unshaven skin. The bristles prickled under her fingers. She said, ‘I've never felt this before,' as if she amazed herself.

‘No?' he said. His breath slowed and deepened. It fell in with the rhythm of the boy's snoring, with the movement of air in the trees outside the little window.

‘I was a leaf,' she said, ‘an autumn leaf, curled up on one end where it's dry and brown. Now I'm smoothed out. Green again, like I was in the beginning.'

I'm sure I can hear a man's voice in the apartment. What the hell time is it? I feel for my bedside clock. I have to hold it at an exact arm's length to see the damn thing. After nine. My God, I haven't slept late for I don't know how long. Of course, I haven't slept at all since my little friend arrived.

There he is again. Who on earth has she got out there? It's not her father, is it? I didn't think he was arriving today.

I should at least brush my hair, put it into some kind of shape. I look like I'm a hundred and three. I pin it up at the back and shrug my old kimono on.

They must be out on the terrace. The apartment rooms have a lovely feeling of emptiness about them. Funny how emptiness only seems lovely when the sun is shining. Then they're not empty at all, but filled up with light.

She's closed over the door. A mark of consideration for me, perhaps. If so, she goes up in my estimation.

‘Good morning,' I say. I see her pale hair, alive with light. The first wooden strut of the sun-shelter, crawled over with vine, is blocking my view of the table.

She turns. Her face does not show an easy conscience. And then, out from the shade of the shelter, leans another face. Who the hell is this?

Not Jim. Not the serious young punk I found her with in the square. This guy's thirty if he's a day.

‘Oh, hi,' she says.

‘Yeah, hi,' I say. I step over the lintel and out on to the concrete floor of my roof garden. The morning light is blinding. Some fool is bleating his horn eight storeys below.

I walk up to our poor old metal table, which is greatly in need of a paint job. The complete stranger is tempted by a thin tendril of vine hanging down through the lattice, and it seems to be necessary that he hit at it every few seconds as I stare at him. It swings like a child in a park whom some maniac uncle is gleefully pushing higher and higher into the air.

I gather he's traced my line of vision, for his swinging hand slowly swans down to the table. Since clearly he was speaking English to my delinquent friend, I say, ‘I don't believe we've met.'

The metal feet of the chair scrape my nerves as he tries to stand up. ‘Do you want me to go?' he says in an Irish accent. He looks at me, looks at her, and me again. He hasn't shaved. Hasn't washed either, if I'm a judge.

‘You can tell me who you are first,' I say.

‘Oh, this is my friend,' Jane says to me, and with an almost endearing innocence she says to him, ‘What's your name?'

He's standing. His face comes close to a contortion as she throws him this line. He smiles at me, defeated. ‘Paddy,' he says.

Somehow I doubt it. ‘Is that so?' I say.

As he stifles a laugh, he looks away, across to the climb of squared, solid buildings up the Janiculum. This man does not meet eyes. ‘John,' he says.

Jane says, ‘I thought it was some kind of funny name. Fergie or something.'

He shakes his head just once. He's not looking at either of us. ‘No, that's my brother's name. Fergus. I'm John.'

I sense truth. I'm hardly worth impressing. So I say, ‘How about some coffee? Nice morning.'

‘Yeah, that'd be great,' the child says.

I ease myself into a chair. ‘I was hoping you'd make it, Jane,' I say.

‘Oh.' She grips the seat on both sides. Her feet are apparently about to lift off the ground. She looks puzzled. ‘You mean in that silver thing?'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘It's not very big,' she says.

‘No, but the cups are aren't very big, either.'

‘Oh, yeah. You just fill it up with coffee from the fridge, right, and screw it back on again?'

‘Yes, and you put some water in it, too,' I suggest.

‘Oh, yeah. Well, I'll sing out if I get stuck,' she says. She stands up. Her striped pyjama legs come to mid-calf. Her little short-sleeve top barely covers her midriff. Paddy Power's eyes drift across to her.

I say, ‘Just sing out.'

She closes the glass door as she goes into the apartment. It's quiet again, except for a dove who just now began to bill under the eaves. It makes him jump. I watch him. He won't look at me.

‘So, you're a friend of Jane's,' I say.

‘That's right.'

‘And what, you were just passing, were you?'

He finally glances towards me. I now look away, over the tops of houses.

‘Not exactly,' he says. He leans on the table. ‘Lot of action out there last night.'

‘In what sense?'

‘Police. You know, sometimes they leave you alone. Sometimes there's something going on, or else nothing's going on and they get bored, maybe.'

And now the electric bulb lights up over my head. ‘So you slept up here.'

‘Yes. Sorry.'

‘In the storage room across the hall.'

‘It's comfortable, you know. There's a sofa in there.'

‘Yes, I know. I used to own it. Probably still do, I suppose. So tell me, John ... it is John?'

He nods.

‘Do you often sleep in that room?' I am getting to the heart of the mystery. Who'd have thought it was so banal?

‘No, I don't,' he says and, in answer to my raised brows, ‘Really. I only used it a couple of times. Last time it was pissing rain.'

‘Oh.' I am almost disappointed. Either he's lying, or he's not our invisible man after all.

‘It used to be some other guy's skip. He lived here for years.'

‘He lived here for years?' I say. So there is a parallel universe.

‘Rodolfo. Didn't you know him?'

‘No,' I say. ‘I knew someone used to sleep in there if it was cold, or if it was raining hard.' And, according to the laws of this new universe, I am a little ashamed. ‘I never saw him. You knew him, did you?'

‘Well, in a way. Didn't say much. Quiet type of a fella. There were a lot of stories about him.'

‘Like what?' I don't know what it is about this young man. I feel as if we're old friends, enjoying a civilised coffee together in an uncompromising, not to say neutral, coffee house.

‘Like he was orphaned during the war. They even say he killed a Nazi.'

‘Here in Rome?' My heart has gone heavy, and I am very still. The sun is catching my eyes side on. He is in shadow. The trail of tender vine twists in a breeze. It tickles his forehead, and he swipes at it in the same manner we used to wave at flies all my young days.

‘I think so,' he says. ‘He always lived in Rome as long as anyone knew him.'

‘And his name was Rodolfo?'

‘No, I don't think so. It's an opera or something. Some kind of a mad artist. He loved this girl, and she died, or he died or something.'

‘In real life, or in the opera?' I say.

‘No, in the opera. He died, too – Rodolfo – a couple of months ago.'

‘Where did he die?' I ask. I suppose my face shows my concern, though he, naturally enough, misinterprets it.

He laughs. ‘Not here. You don't have a dead body lying on your sofa. He was knifed one night. I believe he was taken to hospital. He died there.'

‘Which hospital was that?'

‘Oh, Jesus, I don't know, love. I only heard about it, you know. You interested?'

‘Oh, well,' I say. ‘Since he lived here. I might as well be interested.'

‘You could ask some of this crowd Jane knows.'

‘The homeless crowd?' I say.

‘Sure. They might know.'

‘All right,' I say. ‘I'll do that.'

‘Do you want to put some flowers on his grave?'

I look at him. The Irish are a cynical race. ‘Instead of knowing him when he was alive,' I say.

He shrugs.

‘Are people like you around so people like me can become saints?' I say. ‘Or not, as the case may be.'

‘Everyone has a purpose in life, so they say.' He laughs. The chair's feet grate as he leans back again. ‘I think I like you.'

‘I don't know if the feeling's mutual,' I say. ‘That girl in there is sixteen, by the way.'

‘No problemo,' he says. He actually does look at me now. ‘You won't see me for dust after this. Don't worry your head about me. I'd watch that Roberto guy, though.'

‘Roberto? That's the one I met her with the other night?'

‘Student type. Busy saving the universe at the minute. But not too busy to do her, if you'll excuse the expression.'

‘Right,' I say. ‘So you actually do know Jane?' I am more than a bit suspicious again. ‘Then it's quite a coincidence, isn't it? You just happen to pop up here.'

‘Don't you believe in coincidence?' he says.

I open my palms, look him in the eye.

‘Well, it's true. I couldn't believe it myself. I met her twice on the streets. She came around with a few of them. The soup run, they call it at home.'

‘I see.' It just might be the truth. I study this young man. He's not bad-looking, not overly battered, either. Reeks a bit. I say, ‘Why aren't you at home?'

‘Who, me?'

I turn my face towards the window. ‘Anybody else here?'

‘Ah, well. Not very good at staying put.'

‘In a bit of trouble?'

‘Not too much. Nothing I can't handle.' He actually jerks out his chin, the child.

‘Any family?'

‘Yes.' He leans back even further. ‘I have a son. He's eight. Nine. Yeah, nine.'

‘Miss him?'

He tries to laugh. ‘His mother doesn't want me to see him.'

‘Ah,' I say.

He looks at me now from under his lashes, which are long, black. ‘Ach, I'm no good to him anyway. Drink too much.'

‘Would she take you back if you stopped?'

‘Don't know. I did try. Just can't seem to ... stay put.' He's been balancing on the two back legs of the chair. He thumps down flat. ‘So,' he says. ‘Do you have any words of advice for me?'

‘Ha!' I say.

‘What's that mean?'

‘I tell you what, Paddy John, if I think of any, I'll let you know.'

He's smiling. We both hear the dull knock. Jane is kicking her foot against the glass door, a tray in her hands. It looks suspiciously
too heavy for her. John's chair scrapes again, and he's over to the door. He opens it, and out she bounces.

‘Gees,' she says. ‘That's a weird coffee thing. I thought I'd blown it up by mistake.'

John eases the tray from her, the pot, the carton of splashed milk, three white coffee cups eggshelled into one another, and an unopened packet of biscuits. He says, ‘Sit down, girl.'

‘Yes,' I say, patting the vacant chair beside me. ‘Sit down here and let us enjoy the morning.'

They've made me happy, these two lost things, one innocent, one guilty, and here we all are, just one big, happy family.