The Last Son’s Secret

by Rafel Nadal Farreras

Outside, the north wind began to blow again and Vitantonio was grateful for the freezing December air on his face. Primo Carnera left the Piazza San Nicola and took the narrower streets, all the while carrying Vitantonio. Father Cataldo walked a few paces ahead to warn him of any checkpoints. Nearly all of the commotion was still at the port and on the Lungomare, and they were able to reach the door of the seminary without incident. Primo laid him down in the back seat of a British army jeep and started the engine, gesturing his thanks to the priest, who was already slipping discreetly back into the courtyard of the seminary. The car left the Borgo Antigo along the Via Corridoni, found the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele and got lost among the city’s traffic.

  Lying in the back, Vitantonio saw the tops of the buildings stream past him in the near dark. He remembered that the day of the air raid, when the Germans had already dropped half of their bombs, the city looked like a lantern lit expressly to attract the firemen’s attention. The pain in his stomach was getting sharper and sharper. He almost screamed when he saw giant flames devouring an apartment building somewhere he couldn’t quite identify.

  Primo had also seen it. ‘Hide under the blanket!’ he ordered. He saw a boy come running from the direction of the fire and he called out to him, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Number seventeen in the Piazza Garibaldi just went up like a tinderbox!’

  Primo Carnera recognized the address. It was Franco’s apartment that was on fire.

  ‘It must have been set alight by some of your cousin’s accomplices, who wanted to destroy any evidence, keep the police off the scent,’ shouted Primo Carnera towards the back of the jeep. ‘Or maybe the American went back and decided he didn’t want to be linked to that nest of vipers! It’s a stroke of luck for us – they won’t turn you in to the police,’ he added, trying to reassure him as he sped up and drove towards the station.

  Vitantonio didn’t hear him. He had lost consciousness again.

  The Englishman was waiting for them at the station. The jeep Primo was driving was his, and his British lieutenant’s stripes helped get them past all the controls. They put Vitantonio in the last carriage; he was still unconscious.

  ‘I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye to him,’ said Lieutenant Donovan. ‘I’ll see you in three days, in Foggia,’ he shouted to Primo Carnera when the train started off.

  There were people hanging off a freight car and they had even taken over the engine footplate, which was making the driver’s manoeuvres difficult. Three days after the bombing, rumours of chemical weapons at the port had spread throughout Bari and people were still fleeing the city.

  When they had passed Putignano, Vitantonio woke up shouting, ‘Salvatore’s body was in the burning apartment in the Piazza Garibaldi!’

  ‘While you were in the crypt I took him out on to the street and left him among the ruins of a house on the Via Abate Gimma. When they find him they’ll think he died the day of the raid,’ Primo reassured him.

  Vitantonio relaxed and again lost consciousness.

  When they got off at Bellorotondo station the cold had lessened, as if it were about to snow but, to Vitantonio, it still seemed to be the bitterest night of the year.

  ‘Take me home, to the Piazza Sant’Anna. I’m freezing.’

  ‘You can’t go home. That’s the first place they’ll look for you.’

  Primo Carnera saw Vitantonio’s face and was alarmed. He couldn’t take him anywhere in that state. He took a risk and knocked on the first door he found. It was the Raguseos’ house: the woman recognized Lady Angela’s grandson and ushered them in. They lay Vitantonio in Pasquale’s bed; their son had just been shot by the Germans in Cephalonia. While Primo Carnera went out to look for Giovanna, the women of the house took care of Vitantonio as if he were their own Pasquale.

  The Cherry Tree

  THEY REACHED THE palazzo after midnight and entered under cover of night, but as soon as they opened up the office they could see that the house had been ransacked. Nonna’s files were scattered everywhere, and the desk drawers lay on the floor. The paintings of red and white flowers had disappeared from the sitting room and the little inlaid boxes and terracotta pieces were gone from the library.

  When they went into the playroom they found that the window was broken, because a gust of wind put out the candle they were using to see the way. They assumed that was how the intruders had got into the house. Giovanna lit the candle again, this time protecting the flame with one hand. The light projected shadows on the walls and around the room, revealing books and toys strewn all over the floor. The electric train itself had disappeared, but there were pieces of the track and the mountains everywhere. Vitantonio pushed a few aside with his foot; they were the little houses with snow-dusted roofs.

  In the sitting room the looters had opened up the china cabinet and emptied all the shelves.

  ‘Will you manage to get upstairs?’ Giovanna asked him.

  ‘I’ll be fine here.’

  Vitantonio gripped an armchair and slowly lowered himself on to the carpet. Giovanna looked for a cushion and placed it under his head.

  ‘Wait, I’ll bring down a mattress for you.’

  ‘No!’ He held her back. ‘I wouldn’t know how to sleep on one any more. I’m better on the floor.’

  He was burning up with fever. Sweat drenched his face and dripped down his neck. Giovanna went to the kitchen and came back with a damp cloth to clean his face. She was exhausted and when he fell asleep in her arms she closed her eyes too.

  She was woken up by thin streams of light entering through the sliding doors to the conservatory. He was gazing at her and gave her a smile.

  ‘Open the curtains. I’d like to see the garden.’

  Giovanna stood up and pulled back the velvet drapes. Then she undid the shutters and noticed that the servants’ entrance had been left open and they could see through to the town square, which was deserted at that time of day. She went over to the sliding doors, which had come out of their track. She pushed them with all her weight, until they moved.

  ‘Help me over to the conservatory,’ Vitantonio requested.

  Sunlight flooded the room and she was alarmed to see that his wound was bleeding again and his face was paler than ever. She helped him get up and led him over to the conservatory. Vitantonio leaned against the leaded glass, his gaze fixed on some indeterminate point in the garden. It had been some time since anyone had worked on it. There was an abandoned bucket and basin on the tiles of Nonna’s arcaded terrace. Half-rotten leaves carpeted the flowerbeds and paths. The leafless trees looked like corpses left on a battlefield, like the partisans fallen in the mountains of the Maiella. Like the sailors gassed in the Bari port. But the trees would have green shoots again, come spring.

  His wound had reopened from the walking. Giovanna didn’t have anything to stop the haemorrhaging and she was starting to panic. If Skinny or Concetta didn’t send help soon, this was the end. She looked at his face, which grew whiter by the moment. He was having trouble breathing.

  Vitantonio closed his eyes and in a thin, barely audible voice said, ‘It’s not fair.’ Then he was silent.

  She thought she had lost him and she burst into tears. Then he surprised her by speaking again, this time in a stronger voice. ‘Soon the whole garden will start budding, but I won’t be here to see the cherry tree bloom. Isn’t it strange?’

  ‘Can you see it?’ she said, encouraging him to keep fighting for his life. She pointed to a flowering geranium she’d just spotted amid all the plants withered by the cold. Nonna’s azaleas looked half-dead, but their giant pots must have protected that geranium from the wind, as if it were in a greenhouse. Its flowers were of a vivid blood red and hung like a cardinal’s cape.

  He made a last effort and managed to open his eyes. He saw the crimson geranium that Giovanna was pointing to. Then he looked at her belly and asked, ‘What will you name him?’

  ‘Vitantonio … Vitantonio Palmisano. He will bear your name openly, so
everyone in town can see.’

  He replied with a sad smile and said, ‘Destiny is not set in stone. The curse is killing me, but the little boy you are carrying is proof that we have once again won the battle … All my life I’ve made my own choices. There is only one thing I was unable to choose freely: who I was born. I was born a Palmisano. I couldn’t pick a different side. That’s why I’ve loved the Convertinis like mad and I’m proud to be a part of the family, but I’ve always stayed true to my own: I will die like a Palmisano. Just like in the war, where I tried to switch sides and I devoted myself to the Allied cause, but they never really considered me one of them. In the end, it’s an American bullet that’s killing me …’

  ‘Don’t speak. Rest.’ Giovanna wiped the sweat from his face and put a clean cloth on his wound. Without realizing it, he had begun singing something in French.

  ‘What are you singing?’ she asked him.

  ‘“The Time Of The Cherries”. The French Resistance fighters sing it:

  “Mais il est bien court, le temps des cerises

  Où l’on s’en va deux, cueillir en rêvant

  Des pendants d’oreilles …

  Cerises d’amour aux roses pareilles,

  Tombant sous la feuille en gouttes de sang …”’

  Seeing that he was barely breathing now, she began to despair again. She was about to lose him. How many men will have died altogether when, in just a few months’ time, those trees begin to bloom? Vitantonio was right: the cherry tree will flower and bear sweet, juicy fruit. The time of the cherries would return, oblivious to the drama the blighted people of Puglia were living through. They tried to remain loyal to the cause of freedom, but they had to fight against both the loathsome betrayal of their own leaders and the contemptible distrust of the Allies. They deserved better.

  Vitantonio must have read her thoughts because he smiled one last time. He imagined the garden in bloom and the cherry tree loaded down with red, ripe fruit. In his mind’s eye, Giovanna led a boy by the hand and they both laughed and smiled. Then, from some very distant place, he found the strength to make one last plea.

  ‘When our boy starts to walk, make him some cherry earrings, for me.’

  Just then, a jeep with a big red cross painted on the canvas roof parked in front of the side door that opened on to the square. Standing in the window, Giovanna saw Dr Ricciardi step from it.

  Epilogue

  24 August 2012. Late evening.

  The sun had already disappeared behind the hills of Alberobello. In Bellorotondo’s town square the day was slowly fading. It was one of those summer evenings that linger languidly: the light was waning but resisted giving way to night. A swirl of breeze came off the sea, from the direction of Ostuni. The temperature was rapidly dropping, and after an unbearably hot day, it was starting to feel pleasant again.

  The first lights came on in windows and the streets filled with groups of young people strolling and laughing. Many people had brought chairs out on to the street to savour the breeze. From the modern avenues in the commercial district came the sounds of cars and motorcycles, people out and about just to see and be seen. Suddenly, Bellorotondo looked like a different town.

  The cicadas in the carob trees sang louder, to overcome the competition they were facing from all sides. There were couples relaxing on balconies and in the centre of the square mothers chatted while keeping one eye on the children playing hide-and-seek behind the monuments to the victims of the two world wars.

  A woman shouted from a nearby window, ‘Nonno!’

  The old man slowly got up from the bench with the peeling paint and began to walk back to the southern side of the square, but he stopped at the monument to the victims of the Second World War. He drew close to the memorial, hunched over the list of the dead and traced it with his hand, letting his fingertips glide very gently over the names etched into stone. He straightened up just as a young woman arrived to urge him to return home.

  ‘Papa says that if you don’t come right now you can eat in town, because at home the kitchen closes at nine …’ said the woman, laughing.

  ‘You see? When you’re ninety-three years old they start scolding you like a child again,’ he replied.

  The young woman was still catching her breath. She must have been in her early thirties and was very beautiful. She wore jeans and a spaghetti-strap top. She was dark, with green eyes and very long black hair that was pulled back in an elegant ponytail that had come somewhat loose from her running to tumble over her left shoulder.

  Taking his granddaughter’s arm, the old man turned to leave. As they set off, she swung her hair back with a toss of her head and exposed her collarbone briefly. The motion revealed a fleeting shadow, like a birthmark: just for a second the outline of a red heart seemed to appear there before she turned away again. They walked haltingly towards the other end of the square, where they reached the palazzo’s garden wall that marked the southern side of the large terrace. The old man paused, lifted a hand as if in a last goodbye and disappeared through the side entrance.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction, so all the events and characters described here come from the author’s imagination. However, the historical setting and events of the wars are strictly true: that is the case with the pacifist mobilization in Locorotondo and the chaos on the Italian fronts during the Great War; and also the Matera uprising, the bombing of Bari and the explosion of the John Harvey in the Second World War. In that sense, the novel is a homage to all those southern Italians, so often forgotten by history, who rose up against the Nazi–fascist alliance without adequate resources or clear leadership.

  The scenes set during the bombing of the Bari port on 2 December 1943, and the explosion of the mustard gas cargo on the American ship, owe a debt to the Italian edition of the book Disaster at Bari, written in 1971 by Glenn B. Infield, a former pilot in the American air force, who interviewed eyewitnesses. I used the most recent edition published by Mario Adda Editore, with a preface by Professor Vito Antonio Leuzzi, also the author of Inferno su Bari. As for the events of 21 September 1943 in Matera – the other big episode of the Second World War in southern Italy that has not been sufficiently considered by history – there are still some contemporary reports by Allied officers on the ground that have yet to be declassified, but recently Matera Atrocities are Murders, by Vittorio Sebastiani (Edizioni Giannatelli), was published, the most complete contribution to date on the British investigation into it. Voce di Sassi, by Antonio d’Ercole, is an account of daily life in Matera and its language, and also contains direct testimony of that day.

  Bellorotondo is a product of the author’s imagination, but you will find many traces of it in Cisternino, Martina Franca, Altamura and especially Locorotondo, a wonderful town in the Itria valley, which I enthusiastically recommend. In fact, if you are still unacquainted with that part of southern Italy, don’t miss the land of the trulli, as well as the rest of Puglia and Basilicata, home to an unparalleled treasure: the Sassi caves in Matera.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not exist without all the people of Puglia and Basilicata who I’ve met over these last few years: farmers, booksellers, teachers, doctors, professors, gardeners, chefs and timber importers, who always treated me with kindness and a trust that went far beyond my expectations. I don’t know if I was able adequately to convey my thanks in person and so I would like to now acknowledge here my most sincere gratitude.

  I want particularly to thank Professor Fernando Mirizzi, of the University of Basilicata, for his patience over our stimulating correspondence that began after our first meeting in Matera and a wonderful second conversation one June afternoon, in the square of the Altamura cathedral. And the historian Angelantonio Spagnoletti, who opened up his home to me and revealed Molfetta’s secrets. And the historian Vito Antonio Leuzzi, for receiving me in his office at the Istituto Pugliese per la Storia dell’Antifascismo e dell’Italia Contemporanea ‘Tommaso Fiore’.
And Alberto Pelegrini and Paola Locascio as well, both professors of history in Barcelona, who taught me about the specifics of Italian historiography.

  I would also like to thank Anna Maria Aprile for welcoming me warmly into her farmstead in Locorotondo and for trusting me with her albums of keepsakes on the region’s twentieth-century history. And Franco Basile and Graziella D’Onofrio, who generously gave of their time and shared their memories of school in Puglia in the first half of the twentieth century.

  Nicola Furio and his mother, Maria Campanella, revealed the secrets of fishing and the traditions on the Savelletri coast. Signora Maria was kind enough to receive me in her home, presided over by a large portrait of Padre Pio, the most popular saint in Italy. ‘In the winter, when my son goes north to work, I live alone. Alone with Padre Pio,’ she told me on that day in July.

  Maria Lucia Colucci, with her exceptionally lucid memory, explained ‘the rain of stars’ that she imagined, when she was sixteen, watching the German artillery’s tracer bullets from the shelter of a cave near the Matera cathedral, the night the city was liberated. Nicola Frangione was invaluable in my research on the scenes of the popular uprising and for putting me in touch with some eyewitnesses.

  I received much help on the food and produce of Puglia from Margherita at the U Curdunn restaurant and Giovanni Loparco at the Trattoria Centro Storico, both from Locorotondo, but the recipe for orecchiette di lepre comes from brothers Franco and Giuliano Lombardo, chefs from the Cinque Terre, who prepare it with pappardelle at their restaurant, Tramonti 1980, in Barcelona.

  Dr Josep Arimany, a specialist in medical jurisprudence, introduced me to the secrets of forensic medicine and Dr Antoni Mirada and Dr August Andrés answered my questions about medical specialisms in the period between the wars. The notary Juanjo López Burniol helped me understand the Italian figure of the custody judge.