What Love Is (9 page)

Weep for Italy

19 December

This confirms it then: my grandmother, my Nonna, was conceived during rape and the man we knew as Grandpa Harry was not her father, instead it was a German officer shot during the war. The news chills me. Do I tell Mum? Do I talk to Nonna about it? But how can I when she is not well? Does she even know? Has she read the diary?

The baby kicks in my tummy, reminding me that he or she is there. I’ve only got another few weeks to go and I must get back to my midwife and the birthing centre and Bevan, who I know has been missing me a lot. The midwife has arranged for me to attend a one-day intensive antenatal class when I get back. I’m just hoping we can persuade Bevan’s parole officer to let him leave the house for the day. We can only hope.

Bevan’s dad is here – he’s been looking around the unit while I’ve been reading. He will take me to see Nonna before driving me back to Auckland. She seems so much better since she moved into the rest home, almost back to her old self, and now I don’t feel so bad about her moving in there, which is a relief.

I’m going to take the diary back to Auckland with me so that I can finish it there. I’ll let Bevan look at it too, although he won’t be able to read much of it, just Grandpa Harry’s bit. Maybe I should try to translate it. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for the baby to arrive.

23 April

I woke this morning as if from a deep long sleep. I turned my head and the first thing I saw was Aroldo beside me, his hand in mine and his head tilted back in the chair he was sitting in, his eyes closed, asleep, a bandage around his wounded arm. I looked down at myself and knew that I was in a hospital bed. The sheets felt clean, as did I, the first time in a very long time. The door was ajar and I could hear the murmur of voices in the corridor, but in this room it was quiet. I was about to close my eyes again when my hands went to my stomach and I panicked when I couldn’t feel the solidness of the baby there. I cried out and Aroldo immediately woke, almost jumping out of the chair. For a moment he looked confused, and then he looked at me and a great big smile broke out across his face.

“You’ve come back to me!” he cried and kissed me on the forehead.

“The baby?” I croaked. My mouth was dry.

He indicated a cot close by. “A girl,” he said proudly. “She’s healthy although underweight. She’s beautiful.”

“Can I see her?”

He went to the cot and leant over, lifting the baby up and over the metal side. Carefully he laid her beside me and her head turned almost instinctively towards me as he did so, her little mouth puckering as though for a kiss.

“You need to feed her,” he said. “The nuns have been giving her water but she needs milk. See how she turns to your breast – she’s hungry.”

Her eyes were open now as she hunted for food, nuzzling into me like the calves did on the farm as they looked for milk from their mother. My breasts were aching as though they would burst, and I pulled at my clothes. “Help me,” I said. Aroldo untied the hospital gown and exposed a breast. I couldn’t sit up, I had no strength, so I turned slightly so that the nipple met her mouth and, as if it was a lifeline, her lips closed around it as she latched on. At first there was a burst of pain as she sucked, and then relief as the pressure in my breast eased. Her hand curled around one of my fingers as she drank. So this is what had been growing in my stomach all that time, kicking and punching and hiccupping, a constant presence over the last few months as we battled through winter and ever-present conflict. She had survived, as had I, and Aroldo, and I felt protective towards her as sucked at my breast. I knew that I should hate her, but there was no more room for hate, there had already been too much of that around me and I was sick of it. I would love this child and forget the man who fathered her.

“What are we going to call her?” I asked Aroldo.

“I gave her the name Angelina,” he said, looking worried. “We can change it if you like. She’s not yet been baptized.”

“Angelina,” I said slowly. “An angel to counter the devil that made her, I like it.”

Aroldo gently laid his hand on my forehead. “Angelina Smith it is, then,” he said. “This war is almost over and the madness will come to an end. We three shall make a perfect little family, and I shall protect you both for the rest of my life.”

I know Aroldo is happy but I want to go back to our farm. Now that the war is over, Nico will come down off the mountains and we can return, rebury our family in the churchyard and rebuild our lives again. We will forget this war and again be farmers as our family has been for generations. I’m not sure what Aroldo will do. I know he loves me, but he will have to return to his country as I must return to mine. Except I go back with someone else, someone who didn’t exist before the war, but I can tell the church that the father died, which is the truth.

I will send word out to find Nico and tell him where I am so that he can come and fetch me. I won’t say anything to Aroldo until Nico comes.

30 April

Mussolini is dead. I am neither sad nor happy. Once we loved him and he could do no wrong, and then the war came and everything was taken from us. In the end, Hitler was his master and he was as tortured by the war as we were, but that is no cause to delight in his death. I await news of Nico, but there is so much confusion. In some places the war is still carrying on as the partisans search out and kill those suspected of being Fascists and of working with the Germans. I suspect more have been killed this way than during the whole war. We’ve heard nothing about Patricio and Amelia or the rest of our band of partisans, and I have a feeling that we never will.

I just want Nico back and for us to return to our farm so that we can carry on with our lives, like it was before the war.

2 May

Nico is dead! A man called Mario who fought with Nico came to us and told me the news. I weep for him as I weep again for my shattered family. So much destruction, so much death, so much misery. I have no family left now.

I asked Mario about our farm, whether he had been there. He said it had been totally destroyed by the shelling and mortars that had been aimed at it as the Germans made their retreat. The land around was full of craters and unused ordnance, to go back would be to invite death.

I weep for Italy, my Italy, that has been raped and pillaged as much as I have. It will never be the same again. And neither will I.

3 May

It is confirmed that Hitler is dead. Now we can say that this furious war is finally over. I’m not sure what I shall do. Everything I had before the war has gone and instead I now have a husband and a child. Aroldo wants me to go back to New Zealand with him, but it is not my country. But there is nothing left for me here. Aroldo is going to get our marriage legally recognized so that I can accompany him as his wife. I’m not sure how he will manage that, as everything is a shambles here and he doesn’t even know where his old unit is, but he is confident that it will all work out in the end.

Maybe I should do as he says. It is for the best, I think. I will have to forget my beloved country and make a new life in another.

10 August

I write this in our cabin on the ship as we approach the land that is Aroldo’s home, New Zealand. I am a little scared. I know nothing of this land. I have been learning English but I fear it will not be good enough to understand these people. I speak Italian to Angelina, and I promise that she will know the language of her birthplace as well as she knows the language of her new country.

I have not written in this book for some time. Just picking it up reminds me of the hard times, and for a while I hid it away, not daring to even look at it. But I will make one last entry before I start my new life.

It has not been easy to get here. The road through the public offices and army officials was as difficult as the walk we made to Bologna when I was in labour. In fact, getting the right papers that recognized our marriage and for me to leave Italy and enter New Zealand was as bad, if not worse, than labour. Although we had the tattered piece of paper from the priest who married us, no one would believe that we were really married. But my dear Aroldo took the blame, saying that he had taken advantage of me while he was at my family’s farm, and he told them that he had married me with my father’s permission as soon as he realized that he had made me pregnant Unfortunately the father was now dead, killed by Germans. It was very brave of him because he got into a lot of trouble, but in the end we were able to get the papers we required to leave the country and gain passage to New Zealand, all three of us.

Aroldo, Aroldo, I have to call him Harry now. It is strange on my tongue. I call him Aroldo in our intimate moments though. I think he likes it.

Oh, he has just come to the door, he wants me to go on deck, for we are within sight of land. He is carrying Angelina in his arms and his face glows with excitement.

“Come,” he says, “Come and look at your new home.” I cannot refuse him. He has filled out now, no longer thin and haggard, and our baby thrives in spite of her stark beginnings. I must make the best of this, I survived the war when many didn’t, my own family included. I will rejoice in what God has given me even though He took so much away.

Yes, Aroldo, I am coming. Sorry, I mean Harry. Wait for me!

Part of our History

19 December

Nonna was asleep in her armchair in her room when I arrived at the rest home, so I sat on the bed and continued reading the diary. When I finished, I closed it softly and wiped at the tears in my eyes. Poor Lina! Forced to leave the country of her birth and travel to a strange country. At least she was with a man who loved her, I could see that from the diary and from his entry – he was a hero, not in the sense that he performed a great deed of bravery in battle, but that he fell in love with and married a girl he hardly knew, and accepted the baby as his own, ensuring that both she and her mother had a chance of peace and security.

Then I looked up and saw that Nonna was awake and watching me. I tried to hide the diary in the folds of the bedclothes, but she had seen it and knew that I had read it.

“So you found Mamma’s diary and read it all?”

I nodded, my throat so choked up that I couldn’t speak.

“Then there is no need for me to retell the story. That is good, because I am old and tired and I don’t think I could tell it as well as she. The diary is yours now, Gina. Keep it safe and share it with your child.”

“I don’t think I could, Nonna.”

“What? Keep it safe or share it with your child?”

“I’ll keep it safe, but I don’t think I can tell anyone what happened in the past.”

“Why not? It’s part of our history. It happened. It’s who we are. To ignore it is to deny that either Mamma or I existed.”

“But Nonna, your mamma, Lina, was … was … raped!”

Nonna was quiet for a few moments. “Yes, she was, and her family killed. Only she survived and because she did, I was born, and thus your mamma, then you and now the little one. Yes, there was a moment of violence, but that one moment doesn’t define who she was and who she became. Neither does it define who I am.”

“But Grandpa Harry wasn’t even your father!” I said.

“No one could have been more loved by her father than I was, Gina. He called me his little angel. It was only after he died that Mamma told me the truth. It didn’t make me love him any less, in fact, it made me love him more.”

Her eyes closed, she was tiring. I had no idea what to say, if anything.

“When will you marry the father of your child?” Nonna said, her voice a bit stronger. I looked up to find her blue eyes staring back at me – the blue eyes of her violating father.

“I … I … I’m scared.”

“Of what, child?”

I tried to put into words what was in my head. “What if we end up like Mum and Dad? I mean, Bevan and I have had our fights in the past and it’s even more difficult now with the baby on the way. He seems to have his stuff sorted out while I … I just don’t know, Nonna, sometimes I think I want to run away like Mum did when I was small. Why does love have to be so difficult?”

“Love is not difficult, Gina, just flawed. We search for the perfect love but it doesn’t exist. Look at my mother – she took love where she could find it to care for herself and her baby – me. She didn’t question whether the love was perfect or not.”

“But Bevan’s changed, he’s not the same man I fell in love with.”

“You prefer the criminal to the man he is now? Yes, Gina, your mother told me about him. She doesn’t approve of him, I’m sure you’re aware of that. He made a mistake and he’s paying for that, but he’s still the father of your child and he needs to take some responsibility for that. You say you don’t love him for doing what is right?”

I had to look away from her; I couldn’t meet my grandmother’s eyes. The bad boy was gone, but I did I love the new Bevan? I had to admit that in the beginning I had found bad boy Bevan attractive, but was that the kind of man I wanted my baby to know as its father? Lina had faced the world with a baby and a man who loved her, who was not the father of her baby – I had Bevan. I knew he loved me, in his own weird way; it was a love that was different, but it was love all the same. And, I had to admit myself, I was jealous that my love had to be shared with his God. But it could be worse. I could be stuck on a mountain, cold and hungry with a baby coming and a war being fought around me. Lina had survived. I could too.

“Give him a chance,” Nonna said softly.

“I will,” I said, but when I looked up, her eyes were closed.

1 January

A new day and a new year, and in about a six weeks’ time my baby will be born. It can’t come soon enough because I’m big and fat and ugly and I waddle like a duck. My back aches and my feet keep swelling up so that I have to sit down with my feet up. I’m tired all the time. Bevan is driving me crazy! He’s around me all day, do I want this, do I want that, am I too hot, am I feeling okay? Do we need to ring the doctor? Oh, Bevan, just leave me alone in the swimming pool so that I can cool off!!

15 February

Well, I never want to go through that again! How the hell did Lina manage, in a war-torn country in a bombed-out city with no pain relief and not even a proper midwife? If I’d known childbirth would be that painful, I’d never have gotten into bed with Bevan in the first place.

But to see Bevan with our baby is makes it so worthwhile. I swear he loves her more than he loves me. He wants to call her Ataahua, Maori for beautiful, but I want her to be called Lina.

I don’t want to fight, I’m so tired and sore and relieved that it’s all over.

19 February

Ata’s hair is dark like Bevan’s, but she has the most beautiful blue eyes. When she latches onto my breast and stares up into my eyes, there’s a connection that I can’t put into words – it’s like we’ve always known each other. Was that how it was with Lina? Was that what made her accept the baby that had been conceived in violence?

And Bevan is as doting as Harry – taking her from me so that I can get some sleep, changing her nappy in the middle of the night, waiting on me hand and foot like a slave. I could get used to this!

I’m glad that we could have a home birth so that Bevan could be there. The midwife is coming every day to check up on us because it was a home birth, and giving me advice, which is great, because sometimes I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. It’s all a little scary. But Bevan’s family are fantastic and Katie is a great auntie.

Yes, I have to give in to Bevan’s wish and call her by that Maori name, but he’s agreed that her second name will be Lina. It’s like his ancestry and my ancestry have come together in our daughter.

I have to make the most of this – my family has a history of producing only one child, a girl. Although the midwife said that there is no reason why I can’t have another, I don’t think I’ll be doing that in hurry.

Oops, got to go, the midwife is here. Something tells me my life is going to be a whole lot busier from now on.

22 February

Talk about busy! The midwife says I have to get Ata into a routine, but she seems to have her own ideas about that. Look at this – it’s one in the morning and Ata is still awake. She’s not crying or anything, just looking at me with those blue eyes of hers. She’s fed and changed and not too warm, or cold, at least I don’t think so. If only she could speak. I could take her downstairs to Bevan so that he can look after her while I get some sleep, I know he wouldn’t mind, but I can’t bear to let her out of my sight. At least we haven’t got any visitors tomorrow so I have a chance to catch a nap if I can. Man, it’s been like a zoo here lately with Ata the main attraction. I get how everyone wants to see her but it’s been a bit hectic. And Bevan’s so proud and wants to show her off to everyone. You’d think he’d made her all on his own! I just need to get Ata into this routine the midwife tells me about.

Bevan’s parents have been really good too, helping out when they are around, and its obvious that they love Ata as much as Bevan does. Can’t say the same for my mum – she only came around once and then didn’t even stay that long. She just looked at Ata in her bassinet, stayed for a cup of tea and left. She didn’t even touch Ata. Said she’s not that keen on babies. Makes me wonder how she managed with me – no, wait – she didn’t, she dumped me on Nonna and left the country. Looking at Ata now and feeling the tug on my heart, I don’t know how Mum could do such a thing.

My phone just went, a text from Bevan:
Bring Ata down
.
I guess he can hear me moving around up here. It seems weird being up here with Ata and him down there in his room. I wish we could share a bed with Ata in the bassinet beside us, but its still hands off until we’re married.

Ah well, I’ll take her down to Bevan and then I can get some sleep. She’ll soon let me know when she wants another feed.

10 March

Mum phoned me today and said that the rest home has contacted her to say that Nonna is not doing so well. They’ve decided to move her to the hospital wing, because she needs extra care. They’re moving her tomorrow and need our help. Mum’s asking if I want to go.

I’ll have to take Ata with me, which will break Bevan’s heart, but he can’t breastfeed her, only me. It’s not going to be easy, taking my baby down there and trying to cope without Bevan’s help, but I haven’t been down since Ata was born and I want Nonna to see her.

We can stay in the unit, which hasn’t sold yet. The market that had seemed to be humming along has suddenly fallen flat and no one wants a 70’s unit in need of a renovation. Mum told me that there is a residential loan in place, so as soon as it sells, the money will go towards repaying the loan.

There’s so much to organize. We’ve got to get Ata’s car seat in Mum’s car, which may be difficult as hers is so old and Bevan doesn’t think it will have the anchor points, and then there’s all Ata’s stuff. Usually I have to take a big bag with me if I go out just for a few hours; I guess I will have to take so much more for a few days.

Bevan says we should take his car, but I reminded him that he needs it for appointments. If I had my driving licence, I would take it, but I don’t even have my learner’s.

My aching breasts tell me that Ata is due another feed, Bevan is waiting for me downstairs and there is pile of stuff I still have to pack.