The Sound of the Hours

by Karen Campbell

  Ah, but Kesselring was canny. Why wait for a partisan strike at all? If you have no villagers to shield the partisans, you have no village from which an ambush might be launched. Why had they not thought of this earlier? It seemed that retreat and the high mountain air were clarifying German minds.

  The Nazis arrived in Sant’Anna, and were brisk. In the climbing morning sun, they shot dead everyone they encountered. Rounding them up into barns: villagers, refugees, the old, the tiny. It didn’t matter. They killed in batches: machine-gunning groups once they’d herded them in. Grenades were tossed in cellars, homes set alight. Entire families butchered. More than a hundred souls gathered outside the church. Parishioners on their knees, praying. The sore mountain light poured on the priest, pleading with the soldiers to kill him and spare his flock. He was first to die. Point-blank, before the soldiers turned their machine guns on the rest.

  Babies died that morning. Eight pregnant women. The bodies were piled in a heap. More than five hundred bodies. Pews were ripped from the church to make a funeral pyre. And then the soldiers sat in the sun to have their lunch.

  Light bled on executed dogs, pigs, an old donkey. It bled on scattered brooches, on trinkets and wedding rings and toys and photographs. Mostly photographs, which people had held to their breasts when they knew they were to die. If the light could have shone on their words, it would have filled the skies with Remember me. Instead, the light burnished a gold-branched candlestick, lying in the dust. It gilded the Panzergrenadiers as they finished their eating and their burning, and rolled efficiently onwards and down.

  No birds sang at Sant’Anna. Puzzled light broke through palls of smoke that lay in every pleat of sky, in every crease of earth. Illuminating unhuman humps with half-hearted covers of rags, placed there when the men returned from their hiding places.

  Light touched the men as they wept and knelt and lifted their loved ones up and dug out their grief and the light blazed on, baking them, tempering liquid to silt, tempering grief to blocks of square and solid rage. They dragged the animal carcasses from the human. Strong light shone in their eyes as they cut down partisan bodies hanged from trees, friends of theirs – and strangers too, some foreign boys who had come to help. When the sun was as high as it could go, an old man brought blood-warm wine. They drank it in the shade, backs turned on the mass of earth. Some grimaced, although the wine was good. Light cast the shadow of each man as he slugged it back. Wiped his mouth. Picked up his spade. Began again, until all the bodes were underneath the soil. There was no priest to bless them, but he was in there with them, and maybe that was blessing enough.

  The blue Alps soared, endlessly catching the sun. The light had run to the highest mountain. Where else was there to go?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Overnight, the rains came. That dense, dark scud above the mountains which told you summer was done. Yes, it might be warm again, you could get lovely autumns in the Garfagnana, but the sun was no longer a given. From this point, every day would be changeable; the rains would lead to snow and sharp-toothed winds. The quality of light would lose its lustre, blue thickening to grey, with no flicker to it.

  Only afterwards was it that Vita noticed. How a piece of her died with her mother.

  When war began, it was the whisper of the untouched. Whenever you saw a family read the noticeboards, see their son’s name and dissolve. How can they bear it? Now, almost every Tuscan had been visited by death. It was true, what Dina had said. To keep going was just a reflex. The bearing, the coping, wasn’t brave. It was an alternative to dying.

  The Nazis refused to let them have the body. Vita was denied the right to bathe her mother, to dress her in her finest clothes. The Monsignor travelled to Castelnuovo, to plead that Elena Guidi might be allowed to come home. He was directed to a patch of new-dug earth in the backyard of the police station. Our apologies, Father. But you see, it really is not possible.

  Vita cried for Mamma until there were no tears left. Sick and thirsty, she’d fall asleep for a few hours, then wake, and the well would be full and she’d cry again. Hollow bones, hollow heart. Those first days were a blur; it was still a blur now, but in the blunt immediacy of the pain, Vita padded herself with doubt. If she hadn’t seen Mamma, then perhaps she was not dead. It was a wicked tale; it was someone else’s mamma. The Monsignor tried to send word to Lucca, but the route was now blocked; even to priests.

  ‘We have to tell Cesca.’

  ‘I know, child, I know.’

  He took Vita to the Canonica, ensconced her in the little room that had been Devora’s once, before Vita replaced her. Some days he brought Sister Cristina or Mother Virginia, who fussed and made her drink cloudy tisanes. Other days he stayed with her himself. Those were the days when she wept the hardest. He would sit, worrying the folds of his neck. ‘I did everything in my power, Vita. I begged Utimperghe, I met with the German commander—’

  They felt like stories he was telling to console himself.

  ‘Will they kill my father too?’ It was better to know these things than imagine them.

  ‘No. They’re to work as builders, I believe, or in agriculture. I’m sure your papà will be on a farm, with his experience. And when the war is finished, he’ll come home. Here.’ He offered Vita some kind of torta. He kept tempting her with sweetmeats. ‘This is good. They call it strudel.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘The Germans.’

  ‘You mean murderers.’ She handed the pastry back. ‘An eye for an eye, Monsignor. Do you believe that?’

  ‘I think of you the way I would a daughter, if that had been allowed to me.’ Succumbing to the strudel, taking dainty bites between sentences. ‘I hope you are not contemplating doing anything stupid.’

  ‘Yes, Father. I mean, no, Father.’

  He looked at her obliquely. ‘It will end soon, child. The Allies are almost here.’

  She believed him. The roar of artillery was constant, coming from the mountains of Pescaglia. The paths Vita had walked were impassable, which meant any chance of reaching Cesca was gone. People like Dina still lived and fought in those hills. Even if they dodged the bombs, they couldn’t escape the terrible noise.

  Three weeks after they murdered her mother, the Nazis opted for a show of grace. Without warning, a horse and cart arrived at the Canonica. Vita was scrubbing the doorstep; the repetitive movements soothed her. She straightened, watched the driver deposit one passenger – a bent old man, nothing but skin and bone – and a roll of carpet, which the driver shoved unceremoniously from the end of the cart. The old man screamed obscenities; the driver shrugged, then pushed him into the mud too.

  Vita went to help him. The man was Sergio. Confused, dirty. Unable to do much except press a tiny object into Vita’s hands. She looked down, saw the slight and endless circle of an iron wedding band. For you. She said for you. Then Vita noticed the sweet stench bloating the air. The carpet had unrolled slightly to reveal a hand. Oval-shaped fingernails hanging.

  She didn’t recall much more.

  They buried Mamma the next day. They had no choice. As usual, it was raining. They walked through mud and distant guns, down to the camposanto. Set low, slightly apart from the town, it was its own village of statues and tombs and crosses which grew like trees. Vita saw only blanks and hardnesses. The nuns had filled Mamma’s rough coffin with sweet rosemary and thyme. Vita walked behind in a borrowed black coat. Renata and Rosa, and women from the Massaie Rurali followed. Sergio was too weak; he’d gone to a cousin in Diecimo. But he’d told her how Mamma had followed the rastrellamento. How she’d kicked and bitten her way into the police station. Only old, weak men had seen her fight, though. Papa – indeed, all the strong ones – were already gone.

  There was no horse to draw the bier, so Signor Nutini and his grandson from the bakery pulled the load. Shelling from the mountains was heavy, and the Monsignor suggested they go straight to the cemetery. He would still do all the proper Latin prayers. But no bells. Bells drew at
tention to you.

  ‘Your mother wouldn’t want you to be hurt.’

  Vita’s veil hung over her eyes, limiting her vision. She could only see fragments. Deep shadows cast by gravestones. A rope of muscle on a hand, bulging as the coffin was swung. A long black hole and a pile of mud. The bright tip of Nicodemo’s patient spade. Rain that was kind and whispery on her cheeks. A crazed and wounded animal in her breast. You couldn’t see that one, not till you closed your eyes. The bend and crick of her knee, the damp cloy of the earth she flung. The black line rimmed there afterwards. The ever-present thud of war.

  You would drown if you kept weeping.

  The dullness in Vita was quiet. Static. Every day, she walked in the garden of the Conservatorio, the paths and lawns where schoolgirls once played, given over to vegetable beds and barrels to catch rain. The rain ran down her hair, her neck. It was the saturating type, that Joe would call smirr. She liked its gentleness on her face. Damp felt kind. She missed her family, missed the comfort of home. Who was comforting her sister, stranded with Nonna Lucca? Part of her prayed the Monsignor’s messages would not get through. She should be the one to tell Cesca. This, all of this, was her fault. If Joe had not defended her—

  Stupid, stupid Joe. She had told him not to.

  Oh, this fluid, guilty rage she felt. She beamed it like a lighthouse. Daily, the nuns invited her to pray. Daily, she declined. I am too angry, Mother, she would whisper. You could say that to Mother Virginia.

  The nuns set her little tasks: sorting clothes for the refugees, mending altar cloths. Dusting, again. Taking clean linens to a labouring mother – there was a panic, Sister Agatha was already there. Sulphuric smells, her bloodied hands seizing the basket of cloths, not allowing Vita through the door. Life and death, how quickly it blurred. Dissolving like water into land.

  Linen delivered, Vita continued walking, down to the crossroads in Barga. It felt good to be away from priests and nuns. As usual, L’Alpino was packed with tedeschi. Frequently, it was a raucous place to pass, especially if the commandant was playing the piano. No more genteel trumpet concerts, this was wild saloon music. Plenty oom-pa-pa, the barghigiani laughed. But it was a false, glazed laughter, and most women avoided going that way at night. Today, they were using the bar as some sort of command post. The tables had been dragged together, a series of maps laid on top, weighted with ashtrays. A string of lorries was parked on the verge, with cabling piled on the flatbeds. Every so often, teams of soldiers would march up and run a big skein of cable from one of the drums. Others carried off wooden crates. Three women stood under the big tree by the crossroads, surveying the action. One of them was Signora Nardini, her mother’s erstwhile friend. Arms folded, they were talking animatedly.

  ‘How can they do this? We’ve been so hospitable.’ It was an old lady from Piazza Angelio speaking, Vita forgot her name. The third woman was her spinster daughter, Angela, named imaginatively for the square in which she lived. Angela ran the Piccole Italiane when Vita was a little girl, drilling them daily with gusto. Always a bitterness about the woman; even her enthusiasms were grim.

  ‘Exactly. We’ve caused them no harm – and this is how they repay us.’ Angela spat on the ground. Then she saw Vita, and the three of them whipped their heads round. Paused in their gossip, the word traditrice un-spoken on their lips. Folk thought her mother was a traitor. Good fascist women did not get themselves shot by Nazis – no matter the provocation. The Guidi name had developed all the dark glamour of Dina’s missing fingers. Vita remembered then, why she stayed with priests and nuns.

  Defiantly, she joined them. ‘What? What is it they’re doing?’

  ‘Mining the bridges. That one’s a sapper.’ Signora Nardini elongated this new word.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To blow them up, of course. All of ’em.’

  ‘It’s a farewell gift. Bloody swine.’ Angela spat again.

  ‘That’s not fair. They have to do it,’ said Signora Nardini. ‘To stop the Allies following them.’

  ‘Are the tedeschi leaving?’

  ‘Officer!’ Signora Nardini ignored Vita, calling to a blackshirt, who was also observing the Germans. ‘Officer. Are they really going to blow them all?’

  ‘Afraid so. It’s getting worse every day.’ He gave a sad smile.

  ‘How “worse”?’ said Angela’s mother.

  Like children grasping sand, as their prizes slipped away, the Nazis were gripping harder. There were whispers in the Conservatorio even, when they thought Vita wasn’t listening, of other executions in lonely places – whole villages worth of people, the gossips said. Folk tightening their mouths. Praying the rumours weren’t true.

  The soldier shook his head and strolled off. How dare you? Vita wanted to yell. His pretend sorrow at the coming destruction – the Brigate Nere were facilitating it. They’d worked with the Germans to bring Barga to this state. Chaining her like an animal, and now they were going to hurt her more. Barga without bridges was impossible. The way the town was contoured to the rising land, the gaps and gullies she straddled. Destroying her bridges would not just seal her off from the outside world, it would divide her from herself. From Catagnana to the crossroads, from the Giardino to the Castello walls, and the Arringo beyond, Barga’s bridges were her veins.

  Vita left the three women, still muttering behind their hands, to walk back to the Conservatorio. Enough of the real world. The outer doors of the church of San Rocco stood open. Music floated out. Across from the church was the red-roofed casa where Sister Agatha was fighting for two lives. The walls of the house ended where the footbridge to the old town began. They surely wouldn’t mine Ponte Vecchio? No truck could get over it, you could scarce get a mule across, and the gully below was so deep. The destruction of this bridge would just be for spite.

  She could see tedeschi engineers working on the next bridge up. Behind that one were the arches of the ancient aqueduct. What about the new one, which pulled the water Barga relied on from the hills? If they wrecked that, the town would go thirsty as well as starve.

  She pressed her ear to the inner door. She could hear the Monsignor droning. Despite the heaviness on her, she smiled. He never stopped giving succour to his people. Patches of sky shone in a puddle. A waft of guttural song lifted from the church, out into the piazza. Male voices united in their cause. German voices. The Monsignor was within, giving the Nazis Holy Communion.

  The air spun like fraying linen, flickering over her eyelashes. Frequently, her tears came like that, spilling without effort. Folk no longer stopped if you cried. Their grief was finite, and reserved for themselves. She crossed the road, hammered on the door of the red-roofed house. A perspiring Sister Agatha answered. There was a high keening coming from somewhere beyond the hallway.

  ‘Tell the Monsignor. . . just tell him I’m away. I’m going back to Catagnana.’

  Vita turned on her heel. Walked down through the Giardino, in the direction of home. God might not take sides, but she did.

  As the houses of Ponte di Catagnana came into view, she saw tedeschi loitering on the bridge; more underneath, making a piercing noise with a drill. She tucked her shawl tighter and strode on, averting her eyes from the decay of Signor Tutto’s shop. The men seemed more concerned with leaning over the side of the bridge and pointing. There was no reason not to cross, no roadblock. It was her bridge. She was almost over before a soldier stopped her.

  ‘Where you are going?’

  ‘Home. Catagnana.’

  ‘Papers.’

  She handed him her identity card.

  Comune di Barga certifies that the person presented in the photograph below is Vittoria Guidi.

  Height, hair, eye colour, address, everything. The man was stripping her with his eyes. ‘Fine. Move. And stay on the path.’

  ‘Enjoy the trip,’ called another. ‘But you must decide if you will stay up or down.’

  The drilling ceased. A loud burst of laughter floated after her, as she made her way
to La Limonaia.

  She sat a while, in the quiet of her empty kitchen. The house was cold and damp, a smell of onions coming from the sink. Her heartbeat felt irregular; too rapid to stay inside her ribcage. She busied herself with chores, stoking the fornelli, cleaning the floor, anything to make the house seem alive.

  When dark fell, she went outside. Let her mind dissolve into the vast dome of sky. Thick, blanketing black. That was what she sought. Being up here, away from people, made you feel gone from the world. It was a good, empty feeling. One by one, above La Limonaia, the stars came out. Bursts of distant brilliance. Yesterday and tomorrow, glimmering alive, then dead, and in between, nobody really knowing you. Who you are. Folk seeing the colour of your eyes, your hair. Knowing how tall you were certainly, and if your nose was straight, but not seeing you. How could you ever know? It wasn’t possible.

  The starlight deepened, coming in swirls and milky cascades. She wondered, suddenly, if they shone on the americano; if he was even still alive, and felt a fresh, unexpected gout of fear. She tried to remember what he looked like. To recall that daft, soft pause where she’d thought she was falling, and being caught.

  How many had died for this war? All those thousands of dead restless souls – where did they go? Where was her mother? Was she the air Vita breathed? The stars, that stared impervious as the world consumed itself below?

  The night grew cold. Vita took herself inside.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In the morning, Renata came down with some cold polenta. ‘I saw smoke. You have to eat.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Come to ours tonight, eh? Some of the girls are getting together. Nothing special.’

  Vita shook her head.

  ‘I’m glad you’re home. That’s a good sign, Vita. Life has to go on.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Please come to Sommo. It’ll do you good.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Alright.’ Renata pushed the plate of food towards her. ‘But listen – don’t veer off the paths. They’ve been laying mines in the woods.’