‘So, Major Parr, what is it you want?’
No preamble. No pleasantries about the beauty of Sorrento. Jake sensed this was yet another official with no taste for Americans, not even ones with cigarettes in their pockets. Jake looked at the desk where piles of paperwork were arranged in military formation and took a buff envelope containing Amlire from his inside pocket. He laid it flat on the desk and then sat down in the chair in front of the desk without waiting to be asked.
Commissari Balzano moved with sudden energy to his own chair behind the desk, scooped up the envelope, glanced inside and tucked it away in his top drawer, which he proceeded to lock with a key. Only then did he take a seat.
‘What can I do for you, Major?’
Jake liked that about Italians. They made no secret of the buff envelopes. It was the way things got done here and it made his job easier. In Milwaukee the envelopes were slid surreptitiously under the counter or tucked inside a newspaper before being handed over, but in Italy they were passed from hand to hand as freely and openly as a handshake.
When people had sidled into his Naples office with requests for Intelligence Office assistance in exchange for rumours about illegal hoarding or stashes of weapons by partisans, at first he had rejected the envelopes they offered. But he had learned better. It was offensive. Like a woman rejecting a gift of flowers. Not the way to loosen tongues. So now his bottom drawer was stuffed full of unopened buff envelopes and locals knew where to bring information to barter for an official stamp or a word in the right ear.
Balzano flicked a hand towards the window with all the elegance of a maestro conducting an orchestra. ‘What is this nonsense about a death in Sorrento?’
‘I am here to enquire about the death of Antonio Lombardi.’
‘Ah! That was two years ago.’
‘So I’m told. I want to know exactly what happened.’
‘A stray bomb hit his workshop during an air-raid on Naples.’ His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘An American bomb. Why drop a bomb on Sorrento?’
Jake shrugged. ‘A crippled B-24, I presume, jettisoning its last bomb so that it could limp back to base.’ Jake was well aware that there had been over one hundred and eighty raids on Naples in 1943 alone, twenty-five thousand civilian casualties inflicted that year by the B-24’s of the US 15th Air Force and the British Mitchells. Of course there were mistakes. The horror of war made people panic. He had smelt it. That stench of terror. ‘But we are working together now, may I remind you?’
‘Si.’
A stiff word that scarcely squeezed between his teeth.
‘I understand there was a fire at the workshop after the bomb fell. Signor Lombardi was killed.’
Belzano nodded and crossed himself.
‘Did you find his body?’ Jake asked.
‘Badly burned, of course.’ He ran a hand over his eyes, uncomfortable with the memory. ‘We buried him in the cemetery and half the town was there. I wept at the funeral as if he were my own brother.’ He struck his chest with his fist. ‘My heart still weeps for him.’
It was one of the things Jake had grown used to in Italian men. They could say such things and not even blush. Back home in Milwaukee a guy would hammer nails through his tongue before he’d admit to weeping.
‘Did you know Lombardi well?’
The police chief spread his arms wide in an expansive gesture. ‘I know everyone in Sorrento well. It is my job.’
‘He was in the wood-inlay business, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. He was a great craftsman. There are many wood-inlay businesses in Sorrento; it is a speciality of this town. We even have a school for boys to learn the difficult techniques. The woodwork of Sorrento is famous throughout Italy for its beauty.’
‘So I’m told. It must have been hit hard during the war. No customers, no tourists, no work for them, the young men called up into the army. Business must have been bad.’
‘Merda! It was hard for everyone.’
Jake leaned forward and observed the police chief closely. ‘Did Lombardi have enemies in Sorrento?’
There was a flicker of his eyelid. Like a cat closing its eyes in the sun. ‘Why do you ask these questions, Major Parr?’
‘Because I am interested in Antonio Lombardi.’
He offered no further explanation. The money in the envelope did his talking.
Belzano positioned a pen neatly across the desk in front of him like a miniature fortress wall between them. ‘Lombardi was very successful before the war.’ He eyed Jake shrewdly. ‘So of course others were jealous.’
‘Jealous enough to spread incriminating rumours about him?’
‘It was not his work that caused the problems.’
‘What caused the problems then?’
The police chief gave a slow lascivious smile. ‘His wife.’
Caterina went quickly upstairs. On the first floor were her brother’s bedroom and her grandfather’s room. She searched Luca’s room first but with no expectation of finding anything. It contained a bed, a wardrobe, an old pirate’s chest her father had made, a wooden table and chair. Wardrobe first, then the chest.
Both smelled of the sea. There were thousands of shells in them, beautiful swathes of brittle pinks, greys, magentas and ginger-browns that swirled when she stirred them. There were twists of fishing rope and any number of model aircraft that Luca must have whittled from off-cuts of wood. She didn’t know he’d done that. She turned to his bed. She stripped the mattress off it, and stared, surprised. Covering the metal springs were sheets of newspaper. Why had he put those there? She frowned, pushed back her long hair and snatched up one of the newspaper sheets. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find under it. Comics maybe? What she saw were envelopes, small blue ones, each with Luca’s childish handwriting scrawled across the front.
Caterina didn’t touch them. She lifted another page of newspaper and then another. More envelopes in layers. Small rectangles of blue.
How many?
She counted them. Sixty-two. Carefully she picked one up, aware that she was trespassing where she had no right to trespass. She read the name on the outside of the envelope.
Signora Lucia Lombardi.
Her breath stopped as she stared down at the blue envelopes. Every one of them without exception had her mother’s name on it but no address.
With a quick flick of her finger she opened the unsealed flap.
Mamma.
Where are you?
I miss you.
I know I tell you this each time. I don’t remember you. I was too young when you went away. But I miss you. I have no pictures of you.
Come back.
Please come back.
Signora Ragone in the panettaria said Caterina looks like you, but her hair is dark and yours is blonde. So I stare and stare at my sister, making her into you.
I have made you a Christmas present, Mamma.
Please come home. I dream about you.
Your son.
Luca.
Caterina sat on the floor, dry-eyed, fighting back the sadness that swept through the room.
Oh Luca, Luca. You never speak about Mamma.
In this house Lucia Lombardi is dead. How could I not understand that a young boy needs to hear his mother’s name?
She opened two other letters, no more. They were the same words but with no mention of a Christmas gift. One said he had received a swimming award at school that day and the other that he had caught a garfish for her dinner and had given it to Caterina to cook for her. Caterina bludgeoned her brain to recall that occasion, but the truth was that her brother often brought fish home and she could not separate the garfish from the others.
How long ago did he write it? She remembered the swimming award – when was it? A year ago, maybe eighteen months. Luca at ten years old could swim like a dolphin. The handwriting on some envelopes looked recent, but the writing on others looked very childish, wobbling across the blue surface and tumbling in odd directions. Her heart
clenched but she didn’t touch any more of them. If he’d wanted her to read them, he would not have hidden them.
She stood silent in the room and remembered the soft sound of his crying at night. She’d thought it was hunger, but now she was doubting herself. She had worked such long hours in the army uniform factory and then shut herself away in the workshop at night to earn extra money. What about Luca? Why hadn’t she thought about her little brother at home in the care of an old blind man? What about the walking cane in Nonno’s hand and the red marks on Luca’s thin legs?
Quickly she replaced the letters on the sheet of newspaper, covered them up and pulled the mattress and bedding on top of them. Without a word she moved over to his pillow and ran her hand over it, as though expecting to find it wet with tears, but it was dry. She left the room and its shadows. She closed the door behind her, snapped it shut, but she could hear them still. The words. Seeping under the door in Luca’s high young voice.
Please come home. I dream about you.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jake entered Piazza Tasso, the sun beating down on the back of his neck, the morning traffic battling wheel to wheel for a pathway through the large square. On three sides rose an abundance of amber-tinted classical buildings, but on the fourth side the square ended abruptly in a thirty-metre drop to a steep gorge. An iron staircase clung to the cliff face and zigzagged down to the road below, where the marina lay. As Jake passed the parapet that divided the piazza from the drop, he could smell the tang of the sea but it was the prospect of a cold beer under one of the parasols on the far side of the square that drew Jake to Fauno’s Bar. Two old men in dark suits were seated at a pavement table with a British army officer who had a strip of sunburn running down the bridge of his nose.
‘Good morning to you, Captain,’ Jake greeted the officer.
It was Harry Fielding. Jake gave no sign that he had arranged this meeting in Piazza Tasso, but he could always rely on Harry to be where he was meant to be. They had come here today to discover more about the Lombardi family.
‘So you’re working in Sorrento today too.’ Harry shaded his eyes from the sun with his hand and smiled a welcome.
They shook hands and Jake sat down, nodding courteously to the elderly gentlemen at Harry’s table. One was thin with a shock of white hair and a military bearing, his eyes obscured by dark glasses; the other was soft and fleshy, and when he smiled, his false teeth gave a little jump of surprise.
‘Signore,’ Harry said with easy charm to the Italians, ‘let me introduce Major Parr. He’s American, so he can afford to buy the drinks.’ He laughed easily and the others joined in. ‘Signor Lombardi,’ he waved a hand towards the taller man, ‘and Signor Verucchi were just discussing the likelihood of an election next year for a new government for Italy. What do you think, Jake?’
‘Of course. After we’ve all gone,’ Jake pointed out, ‘an election will be essential. Once you’re rid of the Allied Military Government and the Allied Commission, it will be time for Ivanhoe Bonomi to step down as prime minister of the interim government.’
‘Si,’ Lombardi, the one in the dark glasses, agreed with a stern nod at Jake, as if he were personally responsible for the American bombs on Naples. ‘After you Allied soldiers sail back to your own country instead of occupying ours, we can start making our own decisions.’
‘It was Allied troops who came to Italy’s rescue and drove the Germans out of your country,’ Harry pointed out mildly.
Jake noticed the way the old man’s hand curled into a fist on the table, strong and muscular, the hand of a much younger man.
‘Where were Allied rifles and Allied money when the partisans needed them in their fight against the Germans?’ Lombardi demanded.
But Jake was not to be goaded into indiscretion and caught the eye of a cheerful waiter in a black shirt and white apron. ‘Grappa?’ he offered the two men.
The fleshy one nodded eagerly but the tall thin one shook his head. ‘Prosecco, per favore.’
‘Celebrating our retreat already?’ Jake laughed.
‘No, I am celebrating the fact that the partisans will win, come election time.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘Si. Italy owes them that much.’ He placed a hand on his heart. ‘They were the ones who risked their lives to hound and harass first the Fascists, and then the Germans. Blowing up military trains and sabotaging equipment so that . . .’
‘Ah, signor,’ Harry interrupted, ‘the trouble is that the partisans are hand in glove with the communists. The rumour is that Palmino Togliatti is confident that under his leadership the communist party will win a big majority in the new parliament.’
Jake shook his head. ‘No, this new party of De Gasperi’s is the one to watch, the Christian Democrats.’
But he didn’t want to get into a political wrangle – sure as hell, that was not what he’d come for – so he pulled out his cigarettes and offered them round. Verucchi took two, lighting one of them for his blind friend and relaxing contentedly as he inhaled. In front of them in the piazza a donkey was ambling slowly in front of a military truck, indifferent to the hoots of its horn.
Yet Signor Lombardi was not willing to let the subject of the partisans lie. Something had agitated the old man, an anger lying just under his aged olive skin, waiting to be stirred into life. He snapped at Harry, ‘The trouble is that you British have been bitten twice by partisan movements, first in Greece and then Yugoslavia. So you are running scared. Too frightened to back them here in Italy.’ He drew hard on his cigarette.
‘Our prime minister, Winston Churchill, does not want to see your King Victor Emmanuel removed,’ Harry responded with an unaccustomed edge to his voice. ‘That’s what the communists plan to do. So he refuses to support them or the partisans.’
‘Hah!’ Verucchi snorted. ‘Down here in the south we are royalist, so that will never happen, I promise you. We will never give up our monarchy, any more than you British will.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
Their drinks arrived, cool and inviting, dispersing the tension at the table.
Jake took the moment to ask, ‘What jobs exist in the town, now that there are no tourists? It must be hard for the people here to earn a living.’
‘They get by,’ Lombardi said. ‘They always have. We are strong people.’
‘I am fortunate.’ Verucchi patted his own ample stomach. ‘My family are bakers.’ He smiled kindly at Harry and Jake. ‘You soldiers all like to feast on our bread and our pastries. We are grateful to you.’ He gestured towards the other tables in the bar where groups of soldiers sat drinking coffee or beer, some with girls laughing at their sides. ‘Our town needs you right now.’
‘What about the wood craftsmen here?’
Verucchi laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Skilled families like Giuseppe Lombardi’s are the pride and joy of Sorrento. His granddaughter keeps telling us that once Italy is back on its feet, more tourists than ever will flock here.’
‘Is that so?’
The rumble of the traffic and the urgent sound of the horns seemed to grow louder. The old man reached for his drink, guiding the glass with the tips of his fingers.
‘My son,’ Giuseppe Lombardi announced, ‘was the finest craftsman in Sorrento, probably in all Italy. His skill was far superior to mine, long before I lost my eyes. But he died. One of your American bombs killed him in his workshop.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said.
A silence slid on to the table.
‘He suffered from TB as a child,’ Lombardi stated, ‘he had a bad lung. Other men’s sons were marched off to face the guns of the Great War, but not mine. Not my Antonio. Let others spill their blood for Italy, but not my boy, who could make wood sing under his fingers.’
He took a final drag on his cigarette, tossed it to the ground and held out his hand to Jake for a handshake. Jake grasped it and they remained clasped together there, above the wooden table. What was it the ol
d man was trying to say with his hand that he could no longer say with his useless eyes? Was he asking for friendship? Was he offering peace? Forgiveness to the American forces for having killed his son? Jake could only guess. But he could feel the heat of it, the pulse of blood through the hard muscle of his hand.
‘What is it?’ Jake asked in a low voice.
‘It is retribution,’ Lombardi said. ‘Divine punishment because I did not want my son to fight for his country. I relished too much his safety in Sorrento. It was a sin, so God has punished me by taking my only son from me.’
‘No, signor. You are mistaken. It was an accident, a random tragic occurrence of war. Nothing more.’
The old man snatched back his hand and rose to his feet, his mouth twisted in disgust. ‘You are American. You know nothing about such things. In Italy we know all about retribution; it is in our blood.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mean vengeance?’
‘Call it what you will.’
Signor Verucchi snapped his false teeth together and stood alongside his friend. ‘Come, Giuseppe, let us take our walk.’
But Lombardi was standing rigidly in front of the table, gripping the head of his cane. A breeze from the sea tugged at his white hair and blew ash from the ashtray on to his dark suit but he was unaware of it.
‘Signor Lombardi,’ Jake said, concerned for the old man, ‘don’t forget that we each choose which battles we fight and which ones we retreat from. The bomb that landed on your son’s workshop is not a battle worth fighting. For either of us.’
Lombardi’s cane lashed out, and had Jake been half a metre closer it would have caught him. But it swung through nothing but air.
‘Major, I fight what battles I choose. I need no advice from you. If you want to know about battles, go speak to the Cavaleri family. They will teach you what retribution means.’
He stalked off across Via Corsa, tapping his cane ahead of him and ignoring the irate blaring of horns, so that Verucchi had to scurry to keep up with him. Jake turned and saw Harry Fielding regarding him with a raised eyebrow.
The Liberation Page 7
