The Sound of the Hours

by Karen Campbell

  Chapter Thirty

  ‘Vita! Vita!’

  Picture the scene. Evening in rural Tuscany, and much excitement down below. Flurried dust and movement on the mule path told her two special visitors were almost here. From her chair, Vita had an excellent view of the Valle del Serchio. The jagged points of Barga’s citadel broke the rhythm of the land. On the horizon, folds of plum-coloured cloud were making a curtain for Monte Forato. As if the shepherd’s coming silhouette was the main show.

  Joe must have some of her papà’s talents, because he’d made her an excellent place in which to sit. The wooden seat was planed and sturdy, the ropes pleated so thick they were as strong as the chestnut bough from which they swung. Except Vita wasn’t allowed to swing. Gentle nudging of her toes on the earth. That wasn’t swinging. And if a late-summer breeze happened to catch you, draw you a little higher every time? So what, if you were careful?

  She laid her hands across the crinkling in her pocket. She was so tired.

  ‘Vita! They’re here!’

  Finally. Her little cousins, Dario and Marino, had arrived. She should go down and greet them; she would, shortly. In a minute. But even getting up here had fatigued her; it was a torpor she couldn’t shake. She moved slowly now, often in a dwam. Often, a dwam was the nicest place to be; cosied inside her own head, where she was loved, not pitied. Ach, Vita wasn’t even a good martyr. Not like the saints, who suffered so beautifully and never complained.

  We’ve all lost someone we love, Vita.

  Sisters. God love them. From her eyrie, she saw Cesca sweep up the boys, smother them in kisses. Joe too, the four of them in a single embrace. It was beautiful. That should be her down there. Vita was the matriarch now. But she preferred to gaze over Barga, remembering what was lost, from a distance. Not observing the actual desert there, the buildings buried in tall piles of themselves, sealed in the stone and tile and wood they once were. The Canonica. The Conservatorio, L’Alpino, Signor Nardini’s warehouse and on and on and on. Shelled beyond recognition. The worst of it happened in the days after Sommocolonia, when Vita was still in Pisa.

  They were very nice, in the military hospital. Stitched her up as best they could, and filled her with her second cousin’s blood. Who’d have thought Joe was the perfect match, closer even than her own sister? After some time – she wasn’t sure how long – she was able to be propped on her pillows, although they wouldn’t allow her visitors. Nor would they let her search the Negro wards, laughing at the very idea, as if she might catch something. First night she was able, she climbed over the edges of her cot, but the tube thing they’d stuck in her got caught and there’d been a terrible mess of blood. When they’d seen her so hysterical, a kind Florentine nurse relented, and promised to check their lists.

  ‘Where is she?’

  Marino was scowling up the hill, hand shielding his eyes in a man’s pose. He’d got so tall. If you scliffed your toes and shimmied your backside as far as possible, then the swing-chair was entirely hidden from below, by the tree trunk. You could see folk, but they couldn’t see you. Joe knew exactly why Vita cooried in her tree; he’d played enough games with her when they were children. She liked to think he’d strung the swing on this side, in this precise position, on purpose. Cousins. God love them too. Vita loved Joe very much. He said he loved her. Even got down on one knee to offer her his hand. Then I can take you home. If we’re married, I can take you home. Away from this.

  This. The expression on his face when he proposed, was part of the this. It was a queer, bleak look Vita engendered: a porridge of pity and scorn and brave smiles, of disgust, lust, sorrow, anger and relief. Oh, the quantities varied depending on who was doing the looking, but the ingredients remained the same.

  Relief was the worst. The twist at Joe’s mouth when she’d said no. Daft that, to think the boy she’d grown up with could be her husband. Vita had felt love as a column of fire and light, felt it and felt it still. She wished that for her cousin too. How could you settle for a life that was douce? Doused. She would rather have this lonely burn. Marriage to Joe would be a life sentence, for them both. Besides. She stole another glimpse through her nest of leaves. Joe had his hand on Cesca’s waist, at the sweet spot where her hips were beginning to flare properly, and she was laughing as he spoke into her ear.

  With most folk, the relief they showed was for the fact it wasn’t them. In Vita’s position. She arched her back further, until the ropes were taut. The wound beneath her scar pinged. Bare knuckles whitening. After the war, you had to start afresh; if not, if not to make your world anew, then what had been the point? It hadn’t been to preserve the old, for that had gone. Nor to give hope to the young, because they had been sliced away. She let her head drop, staring up at the canopy of her riven tree. Shrapnel had shaved a couple of branches and partially split the trunk. Already, shoots were growing round the cut. A pair of leaves quivered as a bird shook itself.

  She and Cesca had visited Mamma this morning, in the camposanto. Elena Guidi was going to get her husband home at least – and you took comfort in that, because you needed to. Papà had never replied to any of Vita’s letters. The nice Red Cross lady said not to give up hope, that she would keep searching all the records of all the camps. And she had. Papà and Orlando Biondi were to be repatriated soon. Papà had been ill with pneumonia, but he was alive.

  Never give up hope.

  All that grace, for all the broken families. All those good and earnest souls who were trying to piece back shattered things. Who to blame, what to say, to which neighbours, who remembers, what to forget? Men who’d served their whole time fighting for Il Duce. Men like her cousin Gianni. That’s who I joined for. Defiant shrug, and you talked no more about it. You didn’t ask if he had known about Sant’Anna, about the Jews in Poland, those terrible camps? Signor Tutto’s son Ronaldo came home, briefly. Vita and Ces tidied his papà’s shop in preparation, as best they could. When Vita opened the attic, Signor Tutto’s instruments were still there. Ronaldo took the violin. The sides of the accordion had been eaten by mice. He didn’t stay. Far better to bury the fragments deep away. Smooth over, start again. The whole of Italy had been wounded; all folk could manage was this tentative, sore shuffling forwards. It was how Vita had been, when she first got out of hospital.

  Mostly, folk let her be.

  The children were only a terrace and a row of olive trees away. She heard Cesca say, ‘I think she must be sleeping.’ Then Marino’s, ‘Vita’s bo-ring. Ces, can we do it now? Joe promised we could do it now. Please. She can’t wait a-nother minute.’ There was a strange braying snuffle, some crunching.

  ‘Should we warn him first? Boys! Stop pulling her.’ Cesca sounded so grown-up. Well, she was, really. Sixteen in a few months, and lovely with it. Cesca was definitely the best of the Guidis.

  ‘No.’ In the slight pause that followed, it sounded as if Joe had moved nearer to her sister. ‘I’ve been waiting for this for so long. Let’s just see it happen.’

  ‘You don’t think it’ll be too much for him?’

  ‘No. And we’ll be there.’

  Ces lowered her voice. ‘Joe, that’s another reason not to go. We can’t leave him on his own.’

  This circuitous conversation, which they dipped in and out of most days. Sometimes it included Vita, sometimes not. In Scotland, Joe had a boarded-up café waiting, and the flat above. Zio Roberto was canny, the deeds for it were his: a slice of Paisley sandstone, bought and paid for by Tuscan graft. For what was left for them here? Vita’s belly rippled. She dabbed at her side, at the pinkish fluid there. Ces had told her not to come to Barga this morning.

  It’s Mamma’s anniversary, Ces. Of course I’m coming.

  I know. But maybe you shouldn’t? In case it starts weeping again.

  It never stops.

  ‘Don-kee. Don-kee.’ Dario and Marino had begun a chant. ‘Wonky don-kee wants to go HOME!’

  ‘All right! We’ll talk about this later. How’s she been?’ Joe
was almost whispering, but Vita’s senses were finely charged. They were talking about her. The inflected ‘she’; acknowledging that Vita was a shared problem. Speaking close-up and together, lighter somehow, for all their troubles, in a way they never were when Vita sat between them. Folk were not permitted to be happy in her presence; that was the rule.

  ‘Same.’

  She heard Joe sigh.

  ‘She got a letter today, when we were down in the town. But I don’t think she’s read it.’

  ‘From. . .?’

  ‘Well, it was in with the Red Cross stuff. But it had a US Army stamp.’

  ‘Shouldn’t someone sit with her, then? She’ll be—’

  ‘Joe. I think she wants to be alone.’

  Sisters. God love them.

  ‘Can we have our dinner there?’ said Marino. ‘Can we take that chicken?’

  ‘You brought chicken?’

  ‘We did,’ said Joe. ‘Proper coffee too. The riches of Viareggio know no bounds. Och, why not? We can bring Vita up some dinner later. Right then, gents. Come with me and we’ll get this old lady home where she belongs.’

  ‘I love you, Dromera.’

  ‘An-dromeda. Why are you so stupid?’

  ‘Marino hit me.’

  ‘Enough! Marino, you start behaving like a grown-up or I won’t take you to the frantoio with me.’

  Of course. Home in time for the grape harvest. The boys would love that, squidging their feet in all the pulp and mess. And Vita could teach them how to sweep the forest floor. She craned her neck, moving her jaw from side to side. Her teeth hurt again. No, she couldn’t. Landmines.

  A network of leaves and branches splayed above her. Cool green shadows, making dinted chunks of light fall on her outstretched arms and legs. This position probably wasn’t good for her, but it felt so comfortable, held in stasis. Neither forward nor back, not earth or sky. The gashes of light overhead reminded her of being inside the Duomo, that first day she’d come home to Barga.

  Pain-wracked, needing the Duomo’s quietness. She was supposed to be sleeping in the Conservatorio, so the nuns could keep an eye on her. Sleep? With no intact windows and an ice rink of broken glass? Outside, the war had still been raging: bombs, shrapnel, the hiss and burst of bullets, shrieks of the planes diving in and out. Two days, Cesca told her. That was all it had taken after Sommocolonia, for the Germans to be ousted and the Allies to regain control. So much blood, for nothing. But it wasn’t the Buffaloes who came marching back to save Barga; it was tall brown men in turbans with vicious, glinting blades.

  Vita returned to Barga at the end of January. Their home had been struck by a shell; one neat hit and La Limonaia was almost lost. The Monsignor offered the Guidis his study, which still had a door at least. But Mother Virginia claimed Vita for the nuns. Did she know, even then?

  The wind had raged down spacious hallways, tinkling glass teeth from putty gums. You lay, being cut by shards which blew in the gales spinning stairwells, ripping off tiles. Nuns stumbling and slipping on glass as they tended their injured charges.

  ‘You must rest,’ said Mother Virginia.

  How? Metal crashing outside, the fragile Conservatorio pitching like a ship on the sea. Joe, brave Joe, who’d borne her through a war zone, sitting by her bedside. Cesca, somewhere nearby on duty. Vita’s little nurse, whom she had to share.

  ‘Where is he, Joe? Where’s Francesco?’

  ‘Ssh now. Just sleep.’

  Vita was dizzy from the medicines they’d fed her. Not dizzy enough.

  ‘Where is he? I thought he’d be here.’

  ‘He’s missing. Remember?’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Vita, I think you know.’

  She refused to know, refused to understand him. Lay rigid with the covers at her chin. Eventually, Joe had fallen asleep. By then, the bombing had stopped. In that quiet aftermath, Vita could not breathe. She’d found boots and a shawl, and ventured outside. Wild wind catching her hair, Barga sprawled in filthy slush, her walls and windows torn, rain coming in torrents to wash away the snow. Clutching her side, which was leaking a wee bit, Vita had climbed the rampa to the Duomo.

  Make it stop, she whispered.

  Appalled by the wretchedness inside. The Duomo’s roof was smashed, marble columns broken. The beautiful windows in the Chapel of the Madonna were riddled with bullet holes, everywhere soaked and strewn with debris.

  Make it stop.

  No chairs, so she’d lain on the rainswept floor and sobbed until her kidneys chilled. The torn roof was an empty mouth, breathing onto her as the wind worked its way through blackened rafters, pulling light into the darkest corners of the cathedral. Grief pulled everything into a different shape.

  She had lain, that dawn, on the floor of the Duomo, watching eldritch light that should not be there and stroking her ruined belly. Being in ruined things comforted her. Was she sorry? Not for one single second. Francesco had loved her and she him. Only she and whatever created this miracle knew it existed then, as she searched through the rafters of the Duomo. Wanting to melt into the ice water she was lying in, to evaporate when the sun came, or be swept into the wind.

  The Monsignor had lied. He said the Moors had run away. Joe said they’d fought like heroes, that they fought on their knees for Sommocolonia. Nonsense. No moral fibre. Not like these Indian chaps. You know where you are with them. The Monsignor didn’t want to listen to Joe. As time went on, he didn’t listen to Vita either.

  Puttana.

  First time that was spat at her in the street, she jumped. Second time, she wiped the slevvers away. Third time, she set her face on the horizon and never broke her stride. Probably then, that the teeth-clenching had started.

  Vita was pregnant. That’s what saved her, so many times, from not stepping off the mountain, not dropping beneath the ledge where La Befana lived, being sucked into the Caves of Wind, going down further until she just kept falling. Vita carried a gift, so she only thought these things. She believed her baby would heal. Once it was born, he or she would be so beautiful that Nonna Lucca would write again, would recant her insistence that she could neither receive nor aid Vittoria, until she gave the child away. And Vita would write to Frank’s mamma, tell her how he lived yet, she would find somebody to take a photograph and put it in the letter, she would seal it with a kiss.

  When she was soundest in her dwams, Vita believed this baby would pull Frank home to her too. There were stories of men returning from the dead, from prison camps, distant places. Few boasted of such good fortune, not when so many suffered. They held their luck and their loved ones close, lit joyful candles. But it happened. And who had seen Frank actually fall? She would write to his battalion, to his president in America if need be. Vita, said Joe, trust me. I was there. He could not have survived.

  The Florentine nurse was so kind. She checked the names of all the Mori who’d passed through the military hospital. She had a friend, she said, an administrator with Fifth Army Command. Based in Viareggio. The colour rose in her cheeks when she spoke. Vita patted her hand. ‘Don’t feel guilty that he’s safe.’

  As her baby grew, more of Barga collapsed. A message from the nurse found her, tracked her all the way to the Conservatorio, to the space where the Guidis were living, next to where San Cristoforo was seeing out the war. Cesca and Joe went for meals in the refectory, brought Vita’s food back with them. Her choice. Being tired suited her.

  The telegram was brief.

  PFC Francis Morgan Chapel. Missing in Action. Sommocolonia 26 December 1944.

  That could still mean he was a prisoner, or back in America, lying confused in some hospital. It was only March then. Vita refused to hear the lies about americani prisoners shot by tedeschi. She would write to the Red Cross, to the American Consulate in Rome. She would and she would. . . yet every time she sat to write, it was as if the ink froze in the nib.

  I am a friend.


  I was his wife.

  I would have been his wife. We were lovers.

  Nuns padding overhead. Invalids calling from their packing-crate beds. People cooking on stoves under the stairs, where a single line of graffito had been scrawled. Noi vivi. We still live. Sorrowful saints. The tick of a new-repaired clock, smashed cabinets full of owls. Finally, she had sought refuge in La Limonaia.

  Oh, the pleasure of that climb, feeling her long limbs swing and the mess of Barga fall away behind. Violets were starting to peek through the soil, but she couldn’t reach them. A new fence and a crude painted sign announced: Pericolo! Mine Antiuomo! Scars and debris, new weals on old land, but there were also rabbits again, and birdsong. Vita felt almost healthy. Her stitches seemed to be healed, though the ache in her side remained.

  What had she thought she’d find in Catagnana?

  The back wall of their house was gone, the top kitchen fallen into the summer one. Wild ducks roosted in the burned-out salotto, bird muck covering fragments of Mamma’s curtains. Her boots crunched vitrified chunks. It was the glass from Papà’s picture frames.

  Joe had found her at the foot of her tree, wrapped in shawls and bent over a notepad. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘I was waiting till you were stronger. But. . . this.’ He waved his hand at the visible swell of her belly. ‘And now there are officials asking about him. Because of you.’

  ‘Me?’ She had rubbed a sheet of paper against her eyes, trying to mop her face, but only succeeding in streaking herself with ink. ‘Then good. I just want to know where he is.’

  ‘Where he is, where he is? What about me and Ces, Vittoria? Christ, we’re here. We’re living and we’re trying to make you live too.’ Joe grabbed her hand, pulled her from the ground. ‘Right. Bloody come with me.’

  Upside down in her chestnut tree, Vittoria Guidi dangled from her swing. The chain she were around her neck clattered into her ear. Her smock was becoming damp. The shooting stopped in April. Peace came in May. Mussolini and his mistress were strung by their feet from a Milanese lamp post, and the King transferred his powers to Prince Umberto. Mutterings came of republics, referendums. Italy, upside down, but free. Vita’s arms tingled with the stretching, her shoulders popping. Her belly gurgled and bulged, the perfect angle of an elbow pushing up.