by Greg McGee
For much of his life as Gianni Lamonza, he’d tried to forget the young soldier Joe Lamont and what the war had done to him, but as he got older, memories had come back to him from even earlier. One in particular, of himself as a boy looking out from the old Ardgowan school towards the sun in the west making rippling shadows of the soft folds in the Waiareka Valley, where the river glided and riffled deep blue and green in the gorge close by the mine and the mill at Ngapara, before the land rose up in tiered whitestone to the snow of the Kakanuis. After El Mreir that memory had become part of his nightmare, but gradually that pristine vista had returned to him here among the hemmed stone and water of Venice. It might be too late for Cinzia, but he wanted to pass that on to Renzo and his descendants: the solace of that majestic space.
A rap on the door wrenched him back. Before he could lever himself out of the chair, Cinzia had let herself in. Her white dress. He could no longer see her properly but there was still the pleasure of her touch and her smell of sandalwood and incense as she hugged him and helped him out of his chair and onto his feet.
‘I saw them coming, Papà,’ she said. ‘They’re almost here. Sei pronto per questo?’ Are you ready for this?
Now the moment was upon him, he wasn’t sure. So much death, so much pain. Where to begin?
There was another knock on the door, his grandson’s gentle tap, he knew. With Harry’s granddaughter. If he saw too much of Harry in her, would fear freeze his tongue and take away his voice?
As Cinzia moved to open the door, he caught Donatella’s eyes searching his and knew where he must begin.
Love. Surviving. Enduring. That had to be the beginning of it and, he hoped, the end.
E allora . . .
Acknowledgements
The Antipodeans is a mix of historical and fictional characters and events. For those readers who wish to know which is which, there is all sorts of material in the public domain, but I can recommend some of my inspirations and sources.
In respect of the World War II strand, I am indebted mainly to the late Arch Scott’s Dark of the Moon, Susan Jacobs’ books, Fighting With the Enemy and In Love and War, and also to Signor Kiwi, the story of Frank Gardner’s exploits.
Other important resources were: In Peace and War by Haddon Donald (thank you Bruce Stainton); I Silenzi Della Guerra and San Stino — Tra Storia Memoria by Lucia Antonel; To the Gateways of Florence, edited by Stefano Fusi; and The Waiareka Warriors by Lindsay Malcolm, as well as numerous BBC Horizon programmes and the film, Particle Fever.
Many people also helped with research. My thanks to Adrienne Simpson, Senior Archivist at the Gisborne Public Library, Helen McIlwraith, Charge Nurse at the Haematology Ward of Auckland Hospital, Tim Collins Smith, Dr Joel Cayford PhD (Atomic Physics), and Milanese journalist Simone Battaglia, who provided me with research on Franco Lorusso, a member of Lotta Continua (and a rugby player for Pisaro) who was shot dead on the streets of Bologna on 11 March 1977. Venetian writer Elvis Lucchese helped me with Venetian dialect, which is not often written.
Both Elvis and Simone were recommended to me by my friend Vittorio Munari, who also assisted me with research, read a draft of the novel for me, and provided a base for my research trips to the Veneto and Friuli. Paolo and Anna Gasparello showed me the Treviso they love.
Susan Jacobs and Elvis Lucchese also read early drafts of this novel and helped me move forward with it. The biggest advances happened under the guidance of my editor, Anna Rogers, and, quite late in the piece, Edoardo Brugnatelli. My thanks to Kevin Chapman and the team from Upstart Press, Warren Adler and Jane Hingston particularly, for their enduring patience and support during that process.
San Pietro di Livenza is a fictional town, a conflation of Arch Scott’s beloved San Stino di Livenza and my own village, Casale Sul Sile. For the 1976 strand, I drew heavily on my own experience there and also on that of my Caimani friends from that time. I thank all of them.
The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship enabled Mary and me to spend the necessary time in Europe. Our forays to the Veneto and Friuli during my tenure of the 2013 Menton Fellowship were invaluable and inspirational.
Thanks also to my wife Mary, first reader, confidante, navigator, and shoe enthusiast, and to the late Michael Gifkins, my agent, for his diligence, wisdom and enthusiasm. Months after his death, as this novel moved towards publication and that process precipitated the kinds of questions that inevitably arise, I found myself reflexively reaching for the phone, looking forward to Michael’s happy chat and scurrilous gossip as much as his informed steer on matters literary.
