Paradiso: Utterly gripping and emotional historical fiction (The Paradiso Novels Book 1)

by Francesca Scanacapra

  I edged forwards, still holding onto my mother’s skirt, until my face was level with the table top. Ernesto’s head was twisted towards me. His eyes were open and I looked into them, but they did not look back at me. He was an odd colour. A bluish tinge had coloured his mouth. His yellow waistcoat was soaked red. It took me a while to understand that he was dead.

  My aunt stood trembling, gripping the edge of the table and staring at her son. She was as pale as he was. Each wailing breath left her body in a series of stuttering gulps.

  ‘Who did this?’ she sobbed. ‘Who did this, Luigi?’

  My father had collapsed on the floor. He could barely speak. ‘Those bastard sons of whores,’ he said at last.

  Five boys from the village had managed to procure two shotguns and had lain in wait in the upstairs room of a house which overlooked the piazza. The company of German soldiers whose vehicles we had seen pass had parked in the square. The boys had opened fire on them. The surprised Germans had returned fire immediately, and five boys armed with two shotguns were no match for twelve soldiers with machine guns.

  Pandemonium had erupted in the piazza. People had panicked and run for cover. Most had barricaded themselves into the church, but Ernesto had run in the direction of the cemetery, to join us, I thought. He was killed by a single German shot to his back and had lain in the road where he had fallen until my father found him.

  Gradually the kitchen quietened and a heavy silence took hold. My mother and my aunt lifted Ernesto’s body and carried it away. The only thing my mother said to me was, ‘Stay here and help your Papá.’

  My father’s face and clothing were encrusted with Ernesto’s blood. His hair was matted against his head. I helped him out of his jacket and saw that the blood had soaked through to his shirt.

  I tried to get him to his feet, but he could not stand. He yelped and sucked air through his clenched teeth.

  ‘Fetch me a chair,’ he gasped. ‘The sturdy one.’

  Bracing himself, clinging to the chair with what little strength he had, he heaved himself up and limped over to the sink, dragging the chair behind him. Then he lowered himself sideways onto the seat and stripped off his stained shirt.

  My father could not bathe without assistance. I had watched my mother help him to wash countless times, but I had never washed him myself. I tried to soap a washcloth, but the water was cold and the soap would not dissolve.

  ‘Shall I heat some water, Papá?’ I asked.

  ‘No. Just do what you can,’ he replied hoarsely. He gripped the edge of the sink and rested his head on his hands. His bony shoulders shuddered as the cold water touched his body, and I saw how his bent spine pushed up through his skin.

  *

  All news spreads quickly in a village, but news of death spreads with the greatest speed. My father was barely dressed when Rita’s mother appeared carrying a large basket covered with a cloth. My friend’s father, Luigi Pozzetti, was a carpenter and therefore the one called upon to make coffins. As a result he was also the undertaker, but he had left the village to go to war years before. During his absence the task of preparing the dead had been left to Rita’s mother, Ada Pozzetti.

  I was only allowed to go to my aunt’s part of the house once Ernesto had been washed, dressed in his Sunday clothes and laid out on his bed. His eyes and mouth had been closed and his hands folded across his chest. The meaty smell of the fresh bullet wound had gone, replaced by the spiced scent of carbolic soap and camphor.

  Candles were rationed and we only had a few stubs between us, so my aunt lit oiled rags in jars which filled the room with a brownish fug.

  A priest arrived sometime later. He delivered the rites and spoke about the dead going to heaven, just as Christ had done. I thought of the fresco in the church above the altar which depicted Jesus ascending to a turquoise heaven surrounded by angels and imagined Ernesto doing the same, fluttering his fingers and grinning.

  I kept my gaze fixed on Ernesto, waiting for the moment his body would rise towards heaven, but he remained dead still as the priest anointed him with oil and holy water. Tiny droplets fused together and slowly trickled down his cheeks.

  ‘Is he crying?’ I asked, but nobody answered my question.

  Zia Mina’s grief took the form of an eerie calm. As soon as the priest left, she said that she needed to be alone with her son.

  My mother prepared a supper of bread and broth, but none of us could eat. The table had been scrubbed clean of blood, leaving a dark shadow of dampened wood and the smell of vinegar where Ernesto had lain. The pot sat untouched in the centre of the stain until it was cold. I was put to bed early that night.

  ‘Luigi, what happened to those boys?’ I heard my mother say.

  ‘The bastard Germans stormed the house,’ he said. I could hear the rasp of tears in his voice again. ‘The boys were trapped upstairs. They didn’t stand a chance.’

  ‘Did they kill them?’

  ‘Not right there and then. They brought them down to the piazza, made everybody come out of the church, then lined the boys up and shot them in full view. They left the bodies on the church steps for everyone to see. They were such young boys, Teresa. No older than fourteen and every one of them had lost a father, or an uncle, or a brother.’

  There was a moment of silence, broken by my mother’s dismal wail.

  ‘But Ernesto? Why did they kill him too?’

  ‘He must have been running to find us,’ said my father quietly. ‘If only he’d gone into the church with the others.’

  ‘Oh God, it’s all my fault! Why did I let him come with us? Why did I leave him in the square? And I could have left Graziella there too. I almost did. It could have been her too!’

  ‘Teresa, you couldn’t have known. Nobody could have known. Do you think that if I had had even the slightest inkling of what was about to happen I would have let you and Graziella walk to the village with me? Nobody knew what those boys were planning. I don’t expect even their mothers knew. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.’

  I could hear my mother weeping as she cleared away our untouched supper. Her words rang through my head. What if she had left me in the queue? Would I have run for cover in the church, or would I have followed Ernesto?

  ‘What were they thinking?’ my father said heavily. ‘What did they expect? Five foolish young boys with revenge and misguided ideas of heroism in their heads.’

  ‘What will happen now?’

  ‘It’s going to bring trouble. The soldiers have already gone looking for their families. Word was sent as quickly as possible to give them time to hide, but the Germans are going from house to house looking for them and for other boys.’

  ‘Are there more?’

  ‘Who knows? How do you prove your boy isn’t a would-be Partisan?’

  ‘Do you think they’ll come searching here?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Mina shouldn’t be alone. She could come face to face with the very soldier who killed Ernesto.’ My mother’s words became choked with tears. ‘Oh Luigi, how could this happen to a good woman like Mina? She’s lost everybody. Everybody! How could this happen?’

  As the words left my mother’s lips, there was a pounding at the door and a shout from outside.

  ‘Oh God in heaven!’ I heard her cry out.

  ‘It’s all right,’ my father comforted her. ‘We have nothing to hide. Try to stay calm.’

  I heard him heave himself out of his chair and go to unbolt the door. A German voice spoke curtly in heavily accented Italian.

  ‘Boy?’ said the voice. ‘You have boy?’

  ‘No. Just a little girl,’ replied my father quietly.

  I gripped my covers and held my breath as brisk, heavy-booted footsteps crossed the kitchen and approached the bedroom. The door was pushed open, but the light from the kitchen was blocked by the figure of a gigantic man. His shoulders were as square as the doorframe and he had to duck his head to come in. He stepped inside and poked
at my parents’ bed with the barrel of his rifle. Once he had satisfied himself that it was empty, he looked underneath it, then one by one opened the three drawers of the clothes chest.

  Our small bedroom was shared, but I had a bed of my own. It was a wooden blanket box in which I had slept since I was a baby. My father had removed the lid for fear I would accidentally shut myself in and suffocate. It had a warm, comforting smell of starched linen and laundered sheets, but suddenly that night my bed seemed frightfully cold.

  The enormous German soldier peered down at me. I should have pretended to be asleep, but instead I stared at him, wide-eyed. Terror paralysed me. A glint of light from the kitchen bounced off the muzzle of his gun. He slipped his hand down the side of the box and felt underneath me, then nodded and said, ‘Geh schlafen!’

  I didn’t know what it meant, but I snapped my eyes shut and he left.

  My mother came into the room, stroked my hair and told me everything was all right, but I knew that was far from true.

  My father followed the soldiers through to my aunt’s part of the house. They shouted at him to stay back, but I heard him say, ‘What threat am I to you? I’m an unarmed cripple, for God’s sake!’

  They shouted again and I heard the clicking of guns being cocked.

  ‘Luigi!’ screamed my mother, pushing me down under my blankets. ‘Luigi, for the love of God don’t make them angry!’

  My aunt opened her door before the soldiers had time to knock. They asked the same question they had to my own parents.

  ‘Boy? You have boy?’

  My aunt nodded and quietly led them upstairs to where Ernesto lay.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘There’s my boy. And may you be damned for what you have done and burn in hell for eternity, you bastard sons of whores.’

  She spoke the words so calmly in her soft Cremonese dialect that the soldiers did not understand their meaning. Perhaps they did not realise their involvement in Ernesto’s death. There was nothing to suggest that Ernesto had died violently, or at their hands. He was just a dead boy.

  The soldiers removed their hats and nodded condolences at my aunt. She nodded her acceptance in return and gestured towards her kitchen table, where several bottles of her home-made liqueur sat ready for visitors, as was customary following a bereavement.

  The soldiers needed little encouragement and took a glass each, then called out to the other soldiers who were standing in the yard waiting for them to complete their searches. They filled my aunt’s kitchen, clinking their glasses, laughing and smacking their lips. My aunt’s liqueurs were famously delicious and the soldiers complimented her in broken Italian.

  ‘Buono! Buono!’ They cheered loudly as they banged their glasses on the table for more, seemingly having forgotten that there was a dead child in the room above them. By their fourth and fifth glass they were red-faced and thoroughly stewed.

  They didn’t thank my aunt. They flung their chairs back and left, taking with them all six bottles from the table. I watched as they crossed the yard, singing and passing the bottles between them. They didn’t bother to search the barn or any of the outbuildings. We could have been hiding an army of resistance fighters and they would never have known.

  At some point during the night the clattering of a machine gun reverberated in the distance, making my mother toss and mutter in her bed. I couldn’t sleep. My only thoughts were of Ernesto. I wanted to see him one last time before he went to heaven.

  I slipped out of bed, wrapped myself in my mother’s shawl and crept through to my aunt’s, where I tiptoed up the stairs and into Ernesto’s room. The oiled rags had burned out, leaving only a smell of seared fat and singed cloth. I peered through the dim shadows and looked to see if Ernesto was still there. He was. He was lying in my aunt’s arms.

  ‘Graziella?’

  ‘Yes, Zia Mina.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I wanted to see Ernesto.’

  My aunt reached out her hand towards me. ‘Come,’ she said.

  I sat beside her, cradled in one arm as she cradled Ernesto in the other and suddenly I was overcome with a terrible thought.

  ‘Zia Mina, is Ernesto going to heaven?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Even though he was naughty?’

  My aunt said, ‘God forgives children everything. He lets all His children into heaven.’

  ‘When is he going then?’

  ‘He’s already there.’

  ‘But he’s still here.’

  ‘His soul has gone to heaven. When we die we leave our bodies here on earth and our souls go to heaven. He’s with his Papá now.’

  ‘What’s it like in heaven?’

  ‘It’s a garden filled with angels and light.’

  ‘Are there lots of trees?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ernesto will like that.’

  ‘He will.’

  With my eyes closed I pictured Ernesto, not floating up to heaven like Jesus in church, but climbing an enormous chestnut tree, his sinewy arms and legs pulling him effortlessly skywards. He looked down at me, smiled, waved and disappeared into the canopy of leaves. It was not long before I was asleep.

  I must have slept very deeply as when I awoke I was in my own bed and had no recollection of how I had made my way back there. As I stirred, I was aware of voices in the kitchen, talking in urgent whispers. I sat up, trying to make out who was there.

  My parents, Rita’s mother and an old man were standing around the table. Their conversation stopped as soon as they saw me appear at the door, and the old man took his leave.

  ‘Come here, little one,’ said my father, beckoning me over. Everybody’s gaze followed me. My father took my hands in his and looked at me gravely.

  ‘We need you to promise us something,’ he began. ‘We need you to promise that you will not tell anyone that the German soldiers came to our house last night. You must not tell anyone they were here, or at Zia Mina’s. If anyone asks you, deny it. Even if it’s somebody you know, do not tell them. It’s very important. Nobody must know. Nobody.’

  My father squeezed my hands.

  ‘I would never tell you to lie, my little one, but this is very, very, very important. Do you understand?’

  I was forbidden from playing outside in view of the road that day. My parents told me to stay where they could see me and not to venture out of the vegetable garden, but there was little for me to do without Ernesto’s company. I sat on the swing, looking up into the branches of the chestnut tree. If I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again suddenly I thought I could see him for a fraction of a second.

  Once I had grown bored of the swing I moved to the kitchen step and sat quietly, trying to play with my dolls, but I was too distracted to invent a game. All I could do was turn them over and over in my hands.

  I was very fortunate to have dolls. My mother was highly skilled with a needle and thread and had made them from scraps of fabric too small to be useful for clothing. They had ruby red embroidered lips, huge green eyes and woollen hair. One had a damaged arm from where Ernesto had wedged her in a branch. My mother had repaired the tear, which looked like a long scar.

  People came and went from Zia Mina’s house throughout the day to offer their condolences. A coffin was brought over from Rita’s. The old man who had been in the kitchen that morning returned later in the day to speak to my parents. I was told to stay outside. As he was leaving he spotted me. I had been peering through the window.

  ‘Did you see German soldiers here last night?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I replied, swallowing hard to steady my voice. ‘They didn’t come to my house.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said, pinched my cheek and left.

  Later in the day my mother went to a meeting. When she returned, the first thing she said to my father was, ‘We have to send Graziella away.’

  My father was silent. I felt fear tighten my body.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he r
eplied after a long time.

  ‘Yes. It’s not safe here now.’

  ‘Where would they take her?’

  ‘To a convent up in the north. There will be less risk up there.’

  My father let out a long, low whistle.

  ‘They said there could be hundreds of Germans here within a couple of days, perhaps even sooner,’ continued my mother. ‘Eventually they will realise that some of their men are missing and questions will be asked.’

  ‘How many of them were killed in the end?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Twelve? Good God! Are they all buried now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They won’t say. The fewer people who know, the better.’

  ‘And Mina’s bottles?’

  ‘Smashed and buried elsewhere.’

  ‘How long do they reckon we’ve got?’

  ‘A day or two at best. That’s why we have to send Graziella away. It’s not just because of what happened yesterday. They said the Allied bombings are going to intensify. They’re going to hit the bridges and the railway lines. We’re too close for comfort, Luigi. We have to get our daughter away while we still can.’

  ‘What has this world come to?’ my father lamented. ‘All this devastation, all this death, all this hunger all over again.’

  ‘We have to do the best we can. At least we can be grateful that you’re not part of it.’

  I gave little thought at the time to the buried Germans, or the smashed bottles, or the fact that I had been told to keep a secret. Even Ernesto’s death seemed secondary. My head was filled with the fear of being sent away. I had never been out of the village before, and I had certainly never been away from my family.

  My mother busied herself preparing my belongings.

  ‘Is Rita going away too?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She has a bad chest.’

  ‘I wish I had a bad chest.’

  My mother looked up from her packing, but said nothing.

  ‘Can I take my dollies?’

  ‘You don’t have much room. Remember that you have to carry everything yourself.’