by David Hewson
His shaking fingers found the bullets, then the magazine. Part of the thing was so hot he yelled and it fell from his fingers, then rattled on the floor. The shells followed, tinkling like notes from a child’s music box as they met the tiles.
Paolo gave up, put the pistol on the sheets and said, ‘Give me a chance.’
‘You don’t get a chance. You learn or you die. We all have talents, love. Fighting’s not one of yours.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s not one of mine either but I can fake it. Not you. My sister on the other hand …’
‘When will she be back?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Did she tell the truth? When she said she was just a lookout? She made it sound like nothing.’
Vanni shuffled up in bed and came to sit beside him.
‘I hope so. I really do. We’ll leave the moment we can. I don’t want to put you in danger any more. It’s not right. You don’t deserve it. You’re too … decent to be spoiled by the likes of us.’
‘I don’t want to be decent.’
‘I don’t want to be a lousy Jew partisan with a limp. Sometimes we don’t get choices. Be yourself, Paolo. Not who you think anyone else wants you to be.’
He reached out and touched his hair again, slow fingers moving against his scalp. It reminded Paolo of his mother, doing much the same when he was a child, tearful over being bullied and teased at school. Getting called names he didn’t understand. Or perhaps he simply pretended not to because the accusation behind them – that he’d been born abnormal somehow, wrong, damaged, unworthy of life – was something he didn’t wish to contemplate.
‘You shouldn’t touch me like that.’
‘Why? Don’t you like it?’
‘No.’
His eyes were dark and gentle, with a depth to them that made Paolo think perhaps he saw things that others missed.
‘You don’t sound so sure. What about this?’
He didn’t move away. He didn’t want to.
‘We’re just skin and blood and flesh,’ Vanni whispered close to his ear. ‘Here for a little while, then gone. Why waste such precious minutes?’
A boat engine sounded outside and not long after the angry squawk of a gull. There was a momentary flash of a searchlight but it was distant and soon vanished. A gusty winter wind rattled the shutters on the kitchen windows. The sharp salt air, cold as ice, seeped through the rotting window frames of the secluded house on the edge of the lagoon.
Bullets shifted and rattled between his toes on the cold tile floor, their metallic ringing silenced soon by the shedding of his clothes.
When they fell together on the old sheets his mind lost itself in places he’d always wanted to go but never found the courage. Then came a sigh, a gasp of pain, the sound of creaking bed springs, a rhythmic noise he’d listened to from time to time in his room across the hall.
Skin and blood and flesh. And heat.
Paolo gave in and when he did he thought of nothing but the two of them, locked together in a place where there was no war at all.
Rocco Trevisan’s father had rowed the traghetto ferry across the Grand Canal between Santa Maria del Giglio and Salute until he decided the hard labour merited more than the few lire he got for taking locals across for a fraction of the price of a gondola. After that he borrowed enough money to buy a small delivery boat, moving everything from fresh food to furniture, picking up work by word of mouth, building a reputation, winning round all the mothers because his toddler son joined him on the water as soon as he could walk, wearing a little jerkin embroidered with the slogan Trevisan Padre e Trevisan Figlio.
Father and son. His mother died when he was seven. After that the two of them were inseparable, out on the water constantly, for work, for leisure, for activity, both legal and not. The young Trevisan had competed in regattas with his father rowing fancy historic boats like the mascareta and the puparìn. He’d accompanied his old man on hunting expeditions in the remote wild stretches of the northern lagoon in a borrowed s’ciopon, taking pot shots at winter wildfowl with the gigantic spingarda shotgun mounted in the bows. When he grew older and stronger he’d helped lug boxes of artichokes and greens in Sant’Erasmo and the two of them had ferried them to the Rialto market. At night, too, they might be found in the backwaters of the city, delivering contraband tobacco and alcohol down dark alleys to men whose name he never knew.
The life of a Venetian boatman was harsh. In his fifties his father, never a man to complain, began to struggle with the oars. It took a while for the teenage Trevisan to realize he was getting old and weary, weak and affected by years of strenuous labour. One June night in his late teens he’d said he had to visit an old friend at college in Padua. His father never asked how a working-class kid from the mean terraces of Castello knew anyone at university. Maybe he guessed what was coming.
Rocco Trevisan headed inland on a train from Santa Lucia station but not for friendship. In six days spent sleeping in parks, avoiding the cops and pretty much everyone else, he managed to rob three rich students who were stinking drunk after a graduation celebration, two with the laurel wreaths still round their necks. Then a couple of traders he’d worked out were walking down the street with their takings for the bank. If he’d been caught he’d have gone down for five years or more, robbery and assault. His father would have been heartbroken.
But that never came to pass. He returned home with enough money to buy a new boat with an outboard, one that his father could manage from the tiller while Rocco did the lifting and heaving. When his old man asked where he’d got the money he simply said he’d borrowed it from a friend. Rocco Trevisan had discovered a talent for lying, for staying out of sight, hiding in the back streets that ran off from via Garibaldi out towards the Biennale gardens where the Fascists were now making their terrible movies. When war arrived all the lines became blurred. What was legal. What was acceptable. What was worth paying dues to Il Duce for and what contraband might be sold on without the cops finding out.
His father was an early member of the communist cell in Castello that caught fire after the Russian Revolution. His son grew up listening to his old man read Marx and Engels, hearing the same message over and over again.
Nothing changes without pain. The warriors of today are the heroes of tomorrow. Their deaths, their blood will bring about a better Italy one day, a country allied to its true friend in Russia, distant Stalin, who from time to time fed money into the coffers of those who followed his creed.
Adolfo Trevisan died in the bleak winter of 1941, broken by decades of grinding, physical labour. After that his son’s communist faith evolved from simple hatred into a desperate craving for action, a blind vengeance against the uncaring world around him. He’d smuggled arms, robbed stores, though only ones that favoured the Fascists. From time to time he’d ferried men and women he didn’t know in and out of the city. Jews too, though only for a price with them. They were Jews. They could afford it.
All the while he’d been careful to maintain the outward appearance of an ordinary, industrious boatman, ready to transport a table or a consignment of winter vegetables around the city for a price most deemed fair. It probably didn’t fool the cops. Certainly not a sly local like Luca Alberti. But Trevisan was smart enough and quick enough to stay out of their grasp and make some money on the side. Maybe it was for the cash that, five months before, a newcomer called Sara Vitale walked into Greta’s and chose him, the quiet, surly one. She’d been a servant in one of the palaces of the Grand Canal, kicked out of her job when the Black Brigades came and seized the property for their own. Within a few weeks she’d come to share his bed, but only when she felt like it.
He couldn’t stop thinking of the past, his father, all the times they’d spent on the dark waters of the city and the open silver stretches of the lagoon. Maybe it was that thing they talked about: how your life flashed in front of you before the end. Or perhaps he was simply having second thoughts. Sara Vitale had brought something into his life
he’d never expected, maybe never deserved. A kind of hope that gave him strength. He didn’t want to lose that. He didn’t want to lose her. The way he’d arranged this attack she, at least, ought to survive.
The sturdy motorboat he’d bought for his father edged along one of the narrow channels that wound through San Marco like the veins and arteries of a living creature. Trevisan had taken the tiller. No one knew this narrow, serpentine waterway better. A couple of minutes away from the hotel they turned a sharp left into the final rio, ducking as they went beneath a narrow stone bridge between two private houses. The water was high that night. Maybe there’d be flooding in San Marco. As a child he’d watched fascinated as the lagoon bubbled up through the drains in via Garibaldi, rising until it lapped at the doors of the shops and bars, forcing everyone to pull out their boots and sandbag their homes.
The Crucchi didn’t know Venice the way he did. If his team could get in and out of the Nazis’ hotel, job done, find their way back to the boat, they’d make it to Campalto. Maybe not all five of them but there were only two who really mattered.
‘Rocco,’ she whispered as she came back to join him in the stern.
‘What?’
‘It’s my turn. Remember? The tiller.’
She folded her arms, took off her wool hat and let her hair flow down around her shoulders. Her face shone in the wan light of a near-full moon. Wispy mist kept drifting in and out of the city like smoke from a giant’s cigarette. It was a perfect night to escape. Campalto would be easy. They’d make it.
He rolled down the throttle, got up and handed her the tiller, waited till her fingers closed on the grip. The canal here was no more than five metres wide. Hitting the wall either side would be so easy and a giveaway for any watching German guards.
‘When we pass that window cut the engine,’ Trevisan told her.
‘Sure.’
The three men ahead reached down and found their weapons. Trevisan’s was already waiting in the well of the boat, along with the stick grenades they had, a present from a cell on terraferma in return for the ferrying of some men.
‘Take us into the landing by the hotel garden.’
‘I know that too, Rocco. We went through all this, didn’t we?’ She was whispering now so only he could hear. ‘You sound nervous. Don’t. It’s bad for the troops.’
‘Thank you.’
As if he needed that. He touched her hair. She recoiled, smiled.
‘Later.’
‘Campalto.’ He smiled back. ‘We’ll open a bottle.’
They were almost there. She killed the throttle. Silent but for the gentle slap of water against the hull, the boat drifted in towards the weed-covered steps by the side of the Gioconda’s walled garden. The ledge was wide enough for two men and led all the way to the floor beneath the ballroom. Then there was the door the woman inside would open for them.
He could see it all in his head, had played it out time and time again.
The jetty was a minute away. Mika Artom would see them any moment, head for the piano, set the timer on the bomb. They’d lurk by the bottom door. When they heard the explosion … then they’d attack.
‘Wait no more than fifteen minutes,’ he said, watching the stone stairs loom up at them in the darkness. The lights of the ballroom were brighter than usual. They glittered on the black water making them more visible than he’d expected. Music and voices drifted down from above. The Crucchi sounded happy.
‘I said—’
‘I heard you, Rocco,’ she replied, then stroked his cheek just for a moment as the boat drifted steadily towards the steps.
It was bitterly cold on the Gioconda terrace. She shivered, then he said her name again, placed his empty glass on her tray, folded his arms and looked outside at the black canal.
She couldn’t find the words.
‘You know that name?’
It was the Venetian she’d seen the night before. When she broke the glass and he picked up the pieces.
Luca Alberti. Pleased to meet you. Room Four One Three.
He didn’t seem so drunk any more.
‘I didn’t hear what you said,’ she told him. ‘I thought you were asking for a drink.’
‘Mika Artom. Jew from Turin.’
‘No, mister. I don’t mix with Jews. I told you.’
‘Giulia. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’ She couldn’t stop glancing towards the canal. They had to be approaching soon. ‘I don’t know—’
‘The terrorists I told you about. A woman about your age. A brother Giovanni. He’s wounded. But then again she was training to be a doctor so maybe he’s alright.’
He came close and felt the sleeve of her silk dress. Frost was forming on the balustrade like icing sugar scattered across a cake. She didn’t want to stay there long. Just see Trevisan’s boat and …
‘I don’t know any—’
‘You sound like you’re from somewhere near there now I think about it. Being a … a patriot, like you said. I thought I’d ask.’ He stared straight at her. ‘Mika Artom. Twenty-three. Jew.’ He laughed. ‘But you know … an Italian Jew. Don’t think she’s got a hook nose and the makings of a beard. The only photo we have …’
He pulled it out of his pocket. The picture the police took when they rounded her up in Padua. Long, dark hair, no make-up. Face surly and full of anger.
‘Don’t know her,’ she said, glancing at it, heart in mouth.
‘Oh well.’ He put the picture back in his pocket. ‘Doesn’t matter. She’ll be dead soon. See …’ He put a finger to his mouth and came close, spoke in a whisper, both of them out of sight from the crowd in the ballroom, blocked by the pillar. ‘I can tell you this because I know you’re one of us. The people she got mixed up with here … the cell. Seems the Germans got intelligence inside. They know what these scum are up to. Right now.’ Alberti glanced over the balcony. ‘Any minute. Bad time to be a partisan. There was this old Jew, Aldo Diamante. You probably never heard of him but he was mixed up with them.’
‘How?’
He frowned.
‘Who knows? Irrelevant now. The old guy killed himself last night before we could take him. It’s all falling apart for those bastards. Just gets worse from here.’
She felt cold. She felt lost.
‘What do you mean?’
He blinked.
‘You want the details?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Fine.’ He took a glass from her tray and raised the flute of Franciacorta in a toast. ‘I understand. These bastards … I guess they knew we had our champion Jew hunter and lots of big guys in town from Salò.’ He pointed through the glass, into the room. The piano covered by a sheet. ‘They were planning to put a bomb in that thing. Then, when it went off, this Artom woman was going to let in some guys with guns.’ Another look at the canal glinting in the lights from the hotel. ‘She’s got guts. I’ll say that for her. Wanted Jew walking straight into the Nazi lion’s jaws.’
He shrugged.
‘And?’ she asked.
‘Woman’s as good as dead. They got forewarned. The Crucchi picked up the idiot trying to plant the thing. Someone’s probably pulling out his fingernails back in Ca’ Loretti. Come tomorrow they … we … we’ll have the whole gang rounded up in front of a firing squad. Or hanging from trees in the park by Harry’s Bar. Depends how big a piece of theatre they want.’
He downed the wine in one and winced.
‘I know this shit they drink costs a fortune. But me? I’d rather have a Prosecco. It’s real. It’s local. It’s ours.’ He ran a finger down her bare arm. ‘I like what’s ours. I’d like to keep it.’
The last time she was in Greta’s she’d stolen a short, sharp-pointed kitchen knife while the old woman wasn’t looking. It was tucked into a satin sash beneath the waistband of the dress, right alongside the key they’d given her for the side door down to the canal. An awkward place, the two hard lumps of metal sat against her middle. She couldn’t
sit down. Couldn’t move too easily. To get to either she’d need to hitch up her skirt, unseen, somehow.
‘Don’t touch me,’ she said and wondered, if she stabbed him now, if she got him to the balcony edge and pushed him over, would that solve a thing? Trevisan and his team would be warned off. She’d be dead or worse, taken prisoner, in minutes.
There was the distant ring of a man’s voice somewhere below. She couldn’t make out the words. It wasn’t from the hotel patio by the water. Had to be someone on the canal. Then she saw the bows of Trevisan’s boat as it edged in silence along the narrow rio, engine off, gliding through the wispy evening mist towards the Gioconda. At the front, erect and stiff and still, stood four men like sentries, something in their arms, all ready to move.
‘I wouldn’t go near that piano,’ Alberti said. ‘Anyone who does well … you know the Germans. They do leap to conclusions and never mind if they have to sweep up the blood and bits afterwards.’
Did he know who she was and was trying to warn her?
Or was he just a dumb local cop, half-drunk and talking too much?
The photo was her but a different Mika Artom. Not just in looks; the hair, the make-up, the student clothes so different to the blowsy evening dress Sara Vitale had provided, along with a change of hair style and colour.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
‘I’m wondering why you’re telling me all this.’
‘Because you’re a patriot, Giulia.’ The way he spoke her name had an edge to it. ‘I like patriots. I’d hate to see them hurt unnecessarily.’ He stroked her arm again and smiled and she was sure then: he knew. ‘We need more of their kind. Not less.’
She edged forward and glanced back into the room. Six or seven German soldiers in grey uniforms were milling at the back close to the piano. There were more than she remembered when she came out on to the balcony.
‘Maybe they don’t have a clue what she looks like now. She could have … I don’t know.’ He squinted at her. ‘Changed her hair or something. But if she’s dumb enough to go and lift the sheets on that thing …’ He pointed into the ballroom. ‘See for yourself.’
