Tuscan Rose (44 page)

The driver roughly changed gear and Rosa opened her eyes. Her heart gave a jolt when she saw that the car was descending down a narrow road bordered by stone walls. It was an overcast day and everything was shrouded in mist but those walls were familiar. Rosa’s grief gave way to cold, silent terror when she saw the wrought-iron gates and the stone mastiffs appear in the distance and she realised where she was. The gate was guarded by SS soldiers who saw the car coming and opened it. Rosa’s throat turned dry and she struggled to breathe when the ancient stone walls of the Villa Scarfiotti loomed up ahead.

R
osa saw that the feeling of foreboding she had experienced the first time she had entered the villa gates had been a premonition of her demise. There was something lurking in the woods. She felt it. It was watching her. It crawled like a spider up her arm. The driver brought the car to a stop near the verdigrised fountain and Rosa gazed up at the windows of the villa for what she assumed would be the last time. She had been born here and now she was going to die here. But the villa had never been her home. Her home was the apartment she shared with Antonio and the children. Now she would never see any of them again.

‘
Raus
!’ the officer shouted at Rosa and Fiamma. ‘Get out!’

Rosa wondered why he kept pointing his gun at their heads. How could they run when all the strength had been drained from them? Where would they go? The grounds were swarming with SS guards. A red flag with a swastika draped over the balcony signalled where the household’s loyalties lay.

Rosa stumbled out of the car followed by Fiamma.

‘This way!’ the officer shouted, marching the women around the side of the villa.

Rosa was surprised to see Dono in his cage in the kitchen garden. An SS soldier was taking a picture of another soldier
standing next to the bear. Dono was scrawny and his coat was dusty. From the mess on his cage floor it looked as though he was being fed nothing but scraps. When the officer pushed Rosa and Fiamma past the cage, Dono lifted his muzzle and looked Rosa in the eye. Did he recognise her after all these years?

The officer forced the women towards the cellar door. He knocked on it and it was opened by a guard.

‘The nurses are here,’ the officer said.

They were about to enter when Rosa saw two people coming from the path from the woods towards the house. One of them was an SS colonel, grey at the temples and with a toothbrush moustache. On his arm was a woman in a wasp-waisted dress with a sable-trimmed cape and matching hat and gloves. Rosa saw the little creature the fur had come from, sniffing the air and twitching its whiskers, sensing danger. The couple came closer and the woman’s red hair against her pale skin made Rosa think for a moment she was looking at Signora Corvetto. But it was Clementina. The two women caught each other’s eye. Clementina did not have the look of one coerced into the company of a Nazi. She had been gazing at the colonel with admiration.
Clementina, how could you?
Rosa remembered the bright-eyed girl with the pouch-like cheeks who had cleverly lampooned her classes at the Piccole Italiane. That girl was gone. She had caved in to the influence of the Marchesa. Rosa averted her gaze. She did not want to die with that shameful impression of Clementina on her mind.

The nurses were bustled down the stairs and past the room where Rosa had slept her first night at the villa. She remembered Signora Guerrini telling her it was haunted. There was a desk in there now, with what looked like a carpenter’s toolbox on it. Rosa glimpsed blood on the handsaw. She and Fiamma were pushed through the cellar to one of the storerooms. The soldier guarding it opened the door. Rosa squinted, trying to adjust her eyes to the dim light. There was a thud and she turned to see that Fiamma had fainted. Indeed the smell in the room was foul. Rosa reached towards Fiamma, afraid of what the soldiers might do to her if she
left her alone. But one of the soldiers dragged Fiamma back into the cellar.

‘I thought nurses were supposed to have strong stomachs,’ he laughed.

The SS officer grabbed Rosa’s arm and urged her forward. He seized her face and held it up. Rosa’s blood turned cold. Despite all the horrors she had seen as a nurse, she could not believe that the body that dangled before her was human. The naked man had not been hanged in the usual way, with a rope around his neck. No, his execution had been truly sadistic. A metal hook pierced his chin and jutted through his mouth. The man’s body was covered in burn marks, his ears and nose were missing, and his genitals had been sliced off and now lay on the floor under his feet. The horror of the sight became worse when the man’s body twitched and Rosa realised he was still alive.

‘Partisans,’ the SS officer told her. ‘This particular unit is clever. They stole ammunition and supplies from a storehouse in broad daylight. Of course, we are keen to know where they are hiding out so we can retrieve our property.’

It was all Rosa could do to remain upright. She had tried her best to be a good, religious woman all her life. How could it be then that she was now in hell?

The officer indicated the mutilated man as if he were examining a painting in a museum. ‘This one, while willing to talk towards the end, didn’t know much that could help us. While his companion,’ he turned to the corner of the room, ‘knows a lot but has said nothing. You can imagine how much we would like him to talk as he is one of the band’s leaders.’

Rosa turned to where the officer was pointing. She could see a dim figure chained to a support post. The officer dragged her closer. The man’s head was slumped forward and his breathing was a laboured gurgle. The officer grabbed the man by the head and swung it upward. All Rosa’s training—to be able to assess mangled tissue and see what organs could be saved—had not prepared her for the shock of the man’s face. His eye socket had
been smashed, by the butt of a rifle, Rosa assumed. His eyeball hung halfway down his cheek, held only by a loose thread of tissue. The man’s teeth were gone and so were his fingers and toes. Rosa trembled, not because she hadn’t seen worse in bomb victims, but because this man’s injuries had not been inflicted by an impersonal weapon dropped from the sky but by the living, breathing man who now held her arm. How could any being made in the image of God possibly do such a thing?

‘But we might get some information out of him when he watches us skin his friend,’ said the officer. ‘And if that doesn’t work, then we will do the same to him.’

Rosa turned to the officer in horror.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, relishing her reaction. ‘We’ve called in a butcher—apparently one of your city’s best. He doesn’t mind if the meat isn’t quite dead. He’s skinned a live pig or two before. It means the flesh is fresh.’

Rosa could not speak. She had no words. Not for this officer, not for the Italian butcher. Not for any of them. All she could do was pray to God that this ordeal would be over soon.

‘He’s lost consciousness,’ said the officer, kicking the partisan’s feet. ‘That’s why we’ve brought you and your faint-hearted little friend. I want you to revive him.’

Revive him? Rosa could not believe what she was hearing. Was the SS officer mad or stupid? How could she revive him? The man was dying. He wouldn’t be able to say anything. All that torturing him would do would be to make his inevitable end more painful.

The soldier at the door called to the officer and told him that he was wanted on the telephone.

‘Is it urgent?’ the officer asked, looking annoyed.

‘It’s Oberführer Bertling,’ the soldier replied.

The officer pursed his lips before reaching up and pulling a cord. A light came on. ‘Revive him,’ he said to Rosa before storming out the door.

Rosa knelt down next to the partisan. The soldier guarding the door was speaking to another soldier and sharing a cigarette. Rosa
tried to think clearly. She prayed, tears filling her eyes; still she did not know what to do. She reached for the morphine. It wouldn’t revive the man, it would numb him, but she couldn’t see anything else she could do. It was the only mercy she had to offer him. She remembered Alessandro Trevi saying that the German people had once been the most educated, tolerant, humane and reasonable in Europe. How had such monsters surfaced amongst them?

Rosa tapped the vial and filled the syringe before turning back to the partisan. She gave a gasp. The man was conscious again and looking at her with his remaining eye.
His sweet, blue, angelic eye.

Carlo! Rosa wasn’t sure if she had cried out aloud or not. She glanced at the soldiers who gave no indication of having heard her. Her tears fell fast now that she realised this tortured man was Luciano’s dear brother. If not for that beautiful eye and the remnants of his blond curls she would not have recognised him. He had always been kind to Rosa and like an uncle to Sibilla. She took Carlo’s bloodied hand and held it to her cheek. She could see through his agony that he recognised her too. She had to administer the morphine before the officer came back.

‘Carlo,’ she wept, strapping his arm and injecting the morphine. In a few moments his breathing eased. He looked at Rosa and closed his eye then opened it. He was a wounded animal begging for mercy.

The man on the metal hook twitched again. Rosa knew that Carlo was doomed, that there was only more suffering for him. Even if the interrogators stopped the torture now, his injuries were too severe for him to survive. The rattle in his throat, the twisted position of his body, the bulge of his intestines all told Rosa that he had extensive internal injuries.

Oh God, have mercy on our souls
, she prayed. She had six more vials of morphine in her bag. How many could she give Carlo before the officer came back? And after Carlo, could she do the same for the man on the hook? Maybe God had sent her for this task. Rosa thought nothing of her own safety or what the officer would do when he realised that she had mercy-killed the
partisans. She glanced at the soldiers, who were still talking and smoking. She took out another vial of morphine and filled the syringe. Carlo seemed to understand what she was doing. He blinked again as if in gratitude.

‘God and the angels are waiting for you in heaven, sweet Carlo,’ Rosa whispered, her hands trembling.

She injected him and waited to see the reaction before taking out another vial. She heard the officer coming back down the stairs. If she injected this one she would be caught. She glanced at Carlo who had lost consciousnessness. His breathing was slowing down. Maybe he was numb enough to pass away now? But no, she had to take the chance. She injected the third syringe and just had time to throw it in her bag before the officer burst into the room. When he approached her, she was feeling Carlo’s pulse in his neck. He was fading quickly and was only minutes now from death.

The officer grabbed Rosa’s arm and yanked her up.

‘He’s dying,’ Rosa said, suddenly finding the courage to speak to the fiend. ‘There is nothing I could do to
revive
him.’

The officer’s eyes narrowed. He spat in Rosa’s face. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out through the cellar and up into the kitchen garden where he threw her down on her knees on the cobblestones. The sharp stones dug into her flesh. Dono let out a growl. The soldiers near the cage stopped taking photographs and turned to see what was happening. There was the click of a gun. Rosa closed her eyes, waiting for the bullet that would end her life. She was surprised to find that she was calm. After all she had witnessed in the last few hours she wasn’t sure that she wanted to live any more. She said a quick prayer for the souls of Carlo and the other partisan, who she was sorry she had not been able to help, then one for herself.

‘Obersturmführer Schmidt!’ an Austrian accent called out.

The officer stood to attention but did not move his gun away from Rosa. She looked up to see that the speaker was the SS colonel, the one who had been holding Clementina’s arm.

‘Signorina Scarfiotti is in need of a nurse, and that other one you brought says that this one here is one of the highest-ranking nurses in Florence. Apparently it is a rather…
delicate
matter.’

‘She’s a partisan sympathiser,’ the officer said. ‘She’s too dangerous to have in the house.’

Rosa realised that the officer was a man who itched for blood. Having been deprived of the captured partisans, he had switched his bloodlust to her. He wanted to kill someone.

‘Perhaps if you wish partisans to speak you shouldn’t choke them so badly their vocal cords are crushed,’ Rosa said.

It wasn’t true—Carlo wasn’t able to speak because his lungs were filling with fluid, not because his throat had been damaged—but Rosa’s words had the effect she hadn’t realised she had been aiming for.

The colonel gave a sarcastic smile and coughed. ‘Is that so?’ he said to Rosa, before turning back to the officer. ‘Perhaps, Obersturmführer Schmidt, you should take the nurse’s advice rather than killing her. It might make for more useful information gathering. I assume this means that we are no closer than we were last night to knowing where our weapons are and that we now have a well-armed partisan band in the immediate area?’

The officer gave Rosa such an evil look that she knew that Fiamma’s lie about her skills had only bought her a few more hours to live. But she had struck a blow against him and for some reason that gave her satisfaction. A new, strange feeling was seething in Rosa: hatred. It was like a fire in her veins. She despised these SS soldiers so much that it had restored her will to live, even if only to do as much damage as she could before they cut her down.

The officer ordered her to stand up and pushed her towards the SS soldier accompanying the colonel. Rosa was then led into the house via the main entrance.

The décor of the Villa Scarfiotti had changed little since Rosa had last seen it, only now, to her trained eye, accustomed to discovering the beauty in fine lines, the white marble staircase and
purple walls seemed gaudy. She caught her reflection in one of the mirrors. There was blood smeared on her face and on her apron. She thought it fitting that she was being taken to see Clementina in this unhygienic state.
Delicate matter?
What could be ailing that spoilt brat? Rosa could not believe that for all these years she had thought so fondly of Clementina. Signora Corvetto had said that Clementina had been distraught at Rosa’s arrest and wanted to help. That may have been true of the young girl, but it was not true of the woman she had seen with a Nazi.

Rosa was led up the main staircase to what had once been the Marchese’s quarters. She looked around to see if there were any familiar faces amongst the staff hurrying about on the landing, but she recognised no-one, except the woman poised at the door to the quarters. Rosa found herself once again staring at the scowling face of Signora Guerrini, although the housekeeper showed no indication that she recognised Rosa. Perhaps, with her nurse’s veil and the blood on her face, Rosa was too different.