‘The Anfiteatro. It was an amphitheatre in Roman times. That’s why the funny shape.’
‘Can I walk you home? I’m Frank.’
‘So you are. Wee bit cheeky, anyhow. I hardly know you.’ She astonished him, this girl. ‘Sorry. See, when I’m nervous, I just gabble. . . And it’s no so easy in English, know?’ She had coloured then, and it was beautiful.
He let his pinkie finger brush hers as they walked. ‘You’re nervous? Why?’
Because of this? This tense pulse between them, a kind of glittery, pressing pushing. Frank was hearing it, hearing the crisp movement of her skirts and the rustle of her sleeve, hearing the coarse fabric of the stained green cloth scratch her skin and feeling the soft fingernail gap between his hand and hers. To almost-touch was better than anything in the world.
‘I don’t know.’ She laughed again. ‘Should I be? My nonna warned me about i Mori.’
‘Nonna – that’s your memaw, yeah?’
‘Your gran, aye.’
‘Say again? Eye?’
‘Aye? Yes.’
‘OK. I got you.’ She led him down a twisting alley. He might never find his way back. He wouldn’t care. ‘How come you speak so funny?’
‘I speak funny? Mee-maw? What kind of word is that?’
‘Hey! Be nice. I rescued you from those guys.’
‘You rescued me? Don’t talk teugh.’
He loved the lilt of her, how she rubbed the edges of her strange accent with that Tuscan rhythm, the rhythm he’d felt when folks here were talking, but had never understood. He got it now, the inflection that had spoken of musicality, the shortened vowels and trilling ‘r’s. Absolutely it was music, it was a glorious song, her mobile hands cutting and conducting air, the fricatives and taps and clicks of her tongue, high and forward in her mouth. Man, that tongue was fluid and it was making him. . . he was unable to concentrate on what her words were saying.
‘. . . and my papà is Scottish. E quindi, my English is very, very good. Not far now.’
Not far scared him. Once she got to the door, some mad papà would come hustle her inside. What could Frank offer her, quick? This was insane. What did he even want? He could shove her in that doorway now, steal a kiss, a feel, take whatever with him. This was war, for Chrissakes, where you eat, kill, shit and fuck.
‘You live with your folks?’
‘I did. Not now.’
‘Your dad back in Scotland?’
‘Nope.’ That tongue, on her lips. Dabbing. Her hands fell silent. ‘Tedeschi took him. And I think my mamma’s went to find him and now she’s on her own, and nobody will help me get back to find out. I’m stuck here with my bloody mee-maw.’ Fists on hips, pretending she was tough. Where her knuckles pulled her dress tight, you could see the dip of her belly. Outline of her hips. She could be made of fine crystal. ‘Don’t suppose yous are heading to Barga?’
‘Lady, I have no idea where we’re headed. Think they tell dumb grunts like me?’
She moved her basket to her other arm. ‘Dumb grunt? Ha. That’s good. Me too.’
‘Yeah? You didn’t sound so dumb to me. Back there with those meatheads.’
She didn’t laugh. Tick-tock-tick-tock. Slowing thought and pace. Elongating time. Tomorrow, Frank would be gone. Lucca would be off the map and it would be the next town, then the next. Grains of dust slipping through his hands, nothing more than grains of dust and dots on maps, yet for every single one of them, for the Buffs and the Japs, the Krauts, the Indians, the whole shambling mass of foreign bodies that occupied this land, the next town, the next footstep, might be their final resting place. For keeps. You, becoming those grains of dust, this land you never wanted, which would now be made of you, and your land, your place, would be filled by someone else. That Frank might never see his mom again was terrifying.
‘This is me,’ she said.
‘Huh?’
‘Here. I live here.’ She gestured across the road to a beat-up yellow house with blue shutters. In thirty seconds, in one minute, she would go behind that peeling blue door and Frank would walk to the city walls and he’d go hitch a ride back to camp. Chowtime, maybe a nap. Probably moving off before dawn. Tomorrow, or yesterday, the house with the blue shutters might just as likely be bombed, as the front line pushed and provoked. Next Tuesday Frank would most likely be dead. And if the girl had been at market when her grandma’s house got hit, maybe she’d remember him, briefly, before the next passing GI groped her for a laugh.
The air was pulling him into her, yet there was not a breath to be had in this dust-thick road. He wanted to see her face not be hungry. ‘You wanna be an interpreter? Work for us?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘We pay good money.’ Did they? He had no clue. But she was brilliant, of course they would pay her. ‘And plenty food. You could bring home food for all your family.’
Although they were forging forward, always fucking ‘forward’ except when it was sideways or back – the Buffs would retain a presence here in Lucca. Bound to. It was a major strategic city. It might keep her safe a little longer. She should not be carrying an empty basket.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why would you do this for me?’
‘Hey. No, it’s for me. Prove what a great guy I am. Truth. My sarge was just saying how we need good interpreters. I mean, is there some kind of weird Lucca dialect? I dunno, but we can’t make out half what these parmesani guys are saying. You’d be great.’
She brightened. ‘I would, wouldn’t I? And it’s partigiani. Parmesan is cheese.’
‘I know.’
Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t think my nonna would let me. See, to her – yous are the enemy.’
‘Ah.’ That. The thing he’d thought was not so important here. Frank rubbed ostentatiously at his own skin. ‘Well, ain’t nothin’ I can do ’bout that, see.’
‘No.’ She put her two hands round his, stopping him from scratching. ‘Don’t be daft. My nonna – all my Lucca family. They are fascisti. This, you being here, is not a good thing for them, know?’
‘OK. I see.’ He felt stupid. Stupid and liberated, that light, giggling euphoria again, which drives you to be more stupid, so stupid and light that it doesn’t matter. So he took up her right hand, and he kissed it. She tasted the way she looked. Delicious.
‘I better go now.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you. For rescuing me.’ Heavy emphasis on the rescuing.
‘That is so ungrateful. We did rescue you. We rescued Lucca.’
‘Think you will find the partigiani let you in, americano.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Goodbye, Francesco.’
She kind of dipped her head, then crossed the road to her house. Green dress swinging, one final glimpse of neck as she bent to unlatch the door. After she had gone inside, he waited. Watching the windows, imagining her in the hallway, or the kitchen maybe. Vita’s glass-light shimmer as she stooped and kissed her nonna’s hair, the frailty of the old woman as she checked the basket, then sighed. The sense of lack there would be in the house. But cruelly, he hoped she, Vita, would feel it too, for him. Feel a cold bite of gone-ness.
He continued to stand outside until there was no point. Must be well into the afternoon. Bear should have said when he wanted Frank back; it wasn’t fair to give you rules, then cut you free. That just fucked with your head. Still, Frank was in no hurry. He thought he might run to camp. Straight up the steep hillside, feel the long lope in his legs until he was pleasantly numb. For now, though, he would walk. Real slow.
He was two streets away, before she came yelling after him.
‘Hey! Francesco! Wait! Wait.’ Her face was tear-stained, wild. ‘Please, wait.’
Frank’s heart bucked. Behind Vita, a younger girl was also running, and behind them both, an older woman. Not the soft, downy gran he’d imagined, but a striking dame who was waving a walking cane and also yelling.
&nbs
p; ‘You’ve got to help me.’
‘Vittoria! No!’ Her grandmother’s chest was heaving. She leaned jointly on her stick and the younger girl, who shrugged her off. All three of them were shouting, at one another, at him, in fast, angry Italian.
‘Please,’ said Vita. ‘Help me. My mother has been arrested.’
‘By us? Where?’
‘No. By tedeschi. Please. You got to help me get to Barga.’
‘No!’ Tip of the old lady’s stick, slapping on the ground. ‘È troppo pericoloso.’
‘Dangerous?’ Frank nodded at the old woman. ‘Your grandma’s right. Fighting’s moving every day. Getting worse. The Krauts are digging in, all the way up the valley. It’s not safe for civilians.’
‘Exactly! Why I need to go. I need to help my mamma. You said I could interpret. You must need them when you travel too, huh? Take me to your camp, please. Let me ask at least.’
‘Vita. This is stupid. There must be other people who can help your mom.’
‘Who? Tell me who? My cousin is gone. My father is gone. Nobody will know where she is. But my neighbour saw her. They went to Castelnuovo. They went after the rastrellamento. She saw them take Mamma away.’
‘What’s ‘‘rastamento’’? And what could you do, anyway? You can’t help by running back to Barga.’
The younger girl was examining him. Vita’s sister? He smiled at her, to show he was a good guy. The kid scowled. Head-toss like a pony.
‘I can try. My friend is there. He is the Monsignor. If I speak to him, he will speak to the tedeschi, I know he will.’
‘Does he have a telephone, this Monsignor?’
Maybe there was a wire they could send, some kind of cable. The camp was only up the hill. Yeah, sure, Frank. Let’s call up Bosch-occupied Barga. But there was communication across the lines every day, he’d seen it. Couriers coming in, shady-looking locals going out. Somebody, surely, could get a message to her friend.
‘A telephone? Oh, aye. Very pretty black one. Sits on his desk in the Canonica. Doesn’t bloody work, but. Not since the tedeschi came.’
‘How can you no help? How come you’re so great and we’re all waving stupit starry-stripe flags?’ It was the sister speaking; same strangulated English as Vita. ‘If yous canny even help?’
The grandmother cuffed the side of the girl’s head. ‘Silenzio.’ Yet she too glowered at Frank, as if she might devour him.
‘Jesus, man.’ What was he meant to do?
Another tirade from the grandmother.
‘She says: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”’
‘Scusi. Scusi, Signora. Mi dispiace? I’m sorry, yeah?’ Walk away, Francis. Go for the next truck out and walk away. In fact, here’s one now. He hollered it down. That asshole Ivan was driving.
‘You boys going back to camp?’
‘Sure are.’
Vita and her grandma started fighting again. Both gesticulating at him. Ivan grinned, clacked his big fat tongue. ‘Got some dame in trouble aready, Chap?’
So, yeah. In a way, he took Vita back to camp with him, although, in truth, she took herself. His trophy of quicksilver. She looked tiny, on the back on the flatbed, tucked beside a herd of Buffs. They’d offered her the seat inside, beside Ivan, but she wanted to sit by Frank. The other guys were laughing and roughhousing. Amidst them, she seemed to have no substance. It was as if he’d netted air. Pressed and folded air, which bumped and jostled her hip against his, all the way uphill. It was the most beautiful kind of torture.
He took her straight to Bear. Bear was Bear. He smoked. He listened. Fixed her a drink to calm down. Vita told him about her mamma. Bear nodded. Said if they could help, they would. Was it really that simple? Vita beamed at Frank. She seemed to think so. Frank had a vague sense of his heart shifting further out of place. Bear asked if they could chat some more, just to see how good Vita’s English was. Oh, man, Frank could drink on her voice for the rest of his life. The sergeant asked a bunch of questions; where she lived, how she’d got here? What it was like in Barga? Her journey here – was it difficult? She described crawling commando-style, and men melting from a cleft rock, and it was like she had stepped from a beautiful fairytale. She and Bear talked for maybe a quarter hour, Vita loosening up a little. Smiling. Still urgent, but more calm. They talked about the Germans, and had she ever seen Kesselring? No – but she knew a woman who did his laundry. Bear laughed. They talked more about her mother. No surprise to hear the mom was wild as her daughter – she had tried to help Vita’s poppa escape. That’s why the Germans had taken her. A neighbour saw it, was right here in Lucca, now, in her nonna’s house when Vita got home. Bear offered her another soda. About her dad – did she know what he’d done to get arrested? She was a little coy then. There’d been a shooting. A Nazi general. Some of her family might have been involved.
‘I thought you were fascists?’ It was the one time Frank interrupted.
‘No me. Not my papà either.’
‘And I guess not your momma now too?’ Bear wasn’t being mean; he said it with a big, shaggy smile. Then he took her on into the villa. Frank was not permitted entry. He loitered outside. She would have to leave by the same door she went in; all the others were nailed shut for security. The walls of the villa were thick; you couldn’t hear anything, or see through the blacked-out windows.
There were always staff cars parked outside, and bikers who came and went with attaché cases and self-important gait. For now, Villa Orsini was Battalion HQ. A big, solid sprawl of a place, with outhouses, barns, all the remnants of a farm. From here, the battalion’s activities and actions were recorded daily in the ops journal, the sad parade of dead and MIAs passed to regimental HQ. Here was mapping, paperwork, supplies, discipline. Here was where they decided how many patrols went out and to where, whether they were reconnaissance or ambush (though you learned quick to adapt). Battalion intelligence also lurked inside, guys poring over the contents of said attaché cases, and the intel the scouts brought in. There was a message centre too, with runners from each company, and phone lines that connected to Company HQ.
In his journal, Frank had drawn the villa as a massive spider web, forged from heavy cable. Spools of phone wire went everywhere the Buffaloes went; the guys in the comms platoon never stopped, continually laying new lines, fixing the ones bust by boots and bombs. Communication was what they fussed about – and fucked up – most. Every night, the Buffs got a new password, and every night, Axis Sally got hold of it too. She was able to tell you all about your casualties, in between bouts of jazz.
Yesterday, Frank had done a stint in the villa. ‘You got a firm voice, Chap,’ the lieutenant told him, ‘and battalion clerk’s got the shits.’ He spent the whole time bartering with regimental supply for more ammo. The 370th had been missed off that month’s allocation. He’d managed to scrounge a few hundred rounds off the 1st Armoured. Good guys – for peckerwoods. You said it to their faces; it was a joke.
Bunch of peckerwoods in there now. Villa Orsini stank. The house was kept perpetually dark, so it wouldn’t be a target. No electricity, just guttering candlelight, and the smell of sweat and melting tallow. Come on. Don’t let me down, Bear. How long did it take to write a message out?
‘You, soldier.’
‘Yessir.’
A white officer stood there, complete with regulation clipboard – plus one unregulation civvy, with a camera round his neck.
‘My friend here’s doing a piece for – who was it again?’
‘Washington Post.’
‘That’s right. Washington Post. We want a picture of some Negro soldiers with the VIPs when they come.’
‘The who, sir?’
‘We got a Congressman and some British politician coming in for a photo opportunity,’ said the photographer. ‘Lucca makes a good backdrop.’
‘You needn’t explain yourself, Harry.’ The captain was scrutinising Frank’s nose. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Chapel, sir
.’
‘Well, Chapel. You look like a smart boy.’ An airy motion of his clipboard towards the photographer. ‘This type, yeah? OK, soldier. I want you to round up half a dozen of your cleanest, neatest colleagues and have them assembled by the front gate in twenty minutes. Here.’ He handed Frank a card:
Captain Dean Pringle. Office of War Information. Press Liaison
‘Any problems, you get your sergeant to come find me, right? Now, chop-chop. And, Chapel.’
‘Yessir?’
‘Go for the lighter-skinned ones, yeah?’
The reporter tried to speak, but the officer hustled him on. Frank made to salute, then brought his hand down in a slo-mo punch against the wall. Fuckwit. Saw Comanche, coming over with his puma-walk. There was a new feather in his helmet, a black one that shimmered like oil.
‘Hey, Chap.’
‘Hey, Com. Nice plumage. Wanna be in a picture?’
‘Say what?’
‘Only joking.’
Comanche nodded towards the villa. ‘Spooks still in there?’
‘Spooks?’
‘The Oh-So-Secret squad. Driver said he could get me a box of Toscanos for Bear.’
‘Don’t know. Bear’s in there anyhow.’
OSS were a shady crew, with a direct line to the President. No one was sure what they did or how they did it, but they’d been drafted in to deal with the various Lucca factions.
‘Signing up more natives, is he? I reckon Bear’s on a retainer.’
‘’Scuse me, men.’ Another officer in an unsoiled tunic and polished boots eased by them. He carried a bundle of Italian newspapers. ‘You boys know where I might find a spare duffel-bag? Unmarked.’ It was their very own Captain Dedeaux. Rare to see him out in the open.
‘Hello, sir.’ Frank followed him into the villa. No challenge from the sentry. ‘I think I saw some yesterday, sir. Give me two minutes.’
‘Sure. I’ll be in here, soldier.’ The guy didn’t even know his name. When Dedeaux opened the door to what was once the parlour, Frank heard Vita’s voice, high and animated.
‘I don’t care. If you take me now, I do it.’
The Sound of the Hours Page 18
