The Secret Messenger

by Mandy Robotham

  When our talk steers towards Dickens’s instalments of Pickwick Papers, I finally pluck up the courage to casually touch on the weekly contributions of our home-grown illicit scribe, my bravado fortified by the good Chianti we’re working our way through.

  ‘You’ve seen it, then?’ he says.

  ‘I think most Venetians have.’ I’m exaggerating the reach of the newspaper, but it never does any harm to bluff a little in the face of the enemy.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Do you think it’s good? Do you like it?’ he says. Again, the way he holds his mouth, lips slightly parted, makes me wonder if there aren’t several troopers outside, waiting on his word to arrest me. Or if he’s genuinely asking for my opinion. The light on his glasses masks any sincere look in his russet pupils.

  ‘I think it’s touched a nerve, possibly speaks for some Venetians.’ I’m eggshell-hopping with my words.

  ‘No, I mean, regardless of the message, do you like the writing? The style?’

  Again, I can’t tell if he’s attempting to trip me up. I decide to brazen it out.

  ‘I do,’ I say. ‘Perhaps a little flowery in places, but it makes me read on. Isn’t that half the battle for a writer?’ I’m being decidedly non-committal, but I reason that being too vague will only fuel his suspicions if he has any.

  ‘I agree,’ he says, sipping on his wine.

  ‘So do you like it?’ My curiosity, and perhaps my vanity, override any common sense now that I’m almost three glasses down the bottle.

  ‘I do,’ he replies. ‘I think it’s very good. I was immersed.’ He pulls up his head. ‘And that means I’m glad it’s gone. It wouldn’t be a popular opinion with Breugal or Klaus, and I’ve enough to do in keeping them satisfied.’

  I note it’s the first time he’s referred to them by their surnames only, or alluded to his own irritation – the wine chipping a little at his own hard shell perhaps. He seems softer, helped by the fact that he’s taken off his jacket and I can no longer see the glint of his fascist loyalty pin. His colours removed from the mast.

  Again, I seize the alcohol-fuelled moment, my abandon teasing out an intense curiosity. ‘What did you do, Cristian? Before all this?’

  He glances up, his brow knitted, perhaps unseated that I even want to know. ‘I was a part-time teacher at the university in Rome,’ he says. ‘While I was doing my doctorate.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘European Romantic Literature.’

  Suddenly, it all begins to fall into place for me: his intelligence, but also his love of history and literature, his need to talk and discuss, to cast backwards into many other, older lives – in short, his desperation to keep the words alive inside himself. This is why he seeks me out as a fellow book lover – to remind himself of the world he lived in before the war. Isn’t that exactly what I do with Gaia and Raffiano – keep my former life and love of writing alight within me? The leap for Cristian to Breugal’s office and what he represents now is harder to fathom, but I’ve almost given up on that for now. Instead, in the here and now, the wine and the pasta give me almost a sense of enjoyment. And that provokes another stab of guilt within me.

  My silent musings prompt another searching look.

  ‘You seem surprised?’ he says.

  Yes and no. I’ve never questioned his commitment to a career, but his efficiency and drive in the Reich office have always led me to assume he was in politics or working his way up in some government department. The love of books I’d put down simply to an escape.

  ‘Um, not surprised exactly,’ I lie. He raises an eyebrow. ‘All right, perhaps a little,’ I concede.

  ‘That I’m human?’ But he doesn’t wait for my answer, instead sweeping a hand across the table, perhaps alluding to all of this – outside the cosy restaurant, in Venice, Europe, the world. War. Killing. Domination. All of it.

  ‘Well, it’s all academic now,’ he says, scratching awkwardly at the table cloth. ‘This war has put paid to that.’

  ‘You won’t go back to it?’ I ask. There’s never any need to say if you survive – it’s the proviso that no one needs to clarify in these times. Every plan and every thought for the future depends on surviving the turmoil.

  ‘Hmm, maybe.’ There’s a faraway look in his eye and we’re saved any more introspection by the waiter bringing the bill.

  As we leave amid the darkness, he offers to walk me home. For a second, I think about declining with a valid excuse of needing to stop off and buy provisions, using the lone walk to help sober me up and collect my increasingly scrambled thoughts. But I don’t. For reasons even I don’t understand, I find myself saying ‘Yes, thank you’ to Cristian De Luca. In the warmth of the evening, he doesn’t put his jacket back on, but drapes it casually over his shoulder, hooking it with one finger. He doesn’t offer the other arm to me, and I’m relieved – with everything that’s passed since the military function it would feel too intimate.

  Ever the diplomat, he steers the conversation to a time way back, when we might have had something in common as young Italians growing up in the early days of Mussolini’s fascism, when we were too innocent to make distinctions; life surrounded by copious relatives and grandparents, family dinners and the food of childhood – mouth-watering sweet cannoli and tiramisu that we can still taste in our memories if we try hard enough (and hope to again in reality when war rations allow).

  ‘I was always considered a slightly odd child because even on the sunniest of days I was holed in the town library with my nose in a book,’ Cristian tells me, laughing at his own strangeness.

  ‘Me too!’ I say. ‘Poor Mama was forever trying to drag me out to play with hordes of girls – they just thought I was boring. Only my grandfather understood the wordsmith in me …’ and I’m cut short not only by the memory of Popsa but by the realisation that I am straying into my former life as a journalist. That part of me needs to stay hidden for sure.

  ‘Seems like we both have ended up in places that aren’t quite right,’ he muses into the night air. ‘What is it the English say? “A square peg in a round hole”?’

  Inside, I laugh at the self-same label I’d already applied to him in those early weeks in the Reich office. What else is it that the English say – ‘Great minds think alike’?

  And then it feels as if he’s the one cutting himself short, for fear of peeling back too much personal identity. I decide then that I hate this war, for all the death and destruction it brings, but also for changing us as people, for making us afraid to give to each other.

  In no time at all we reach the small campo of my apartment. I note my elderly neighbour’s curtain twitch, but I’m grateful that Signora Menzio is simply checking my safety. I’m even more glad that Cristian’s jacket is still slung across his shoulder and she can’t see his badge, firm anti-fascist that she is.

  Cristian walks me to the door, hovers for a second and seems unwilling to say goodbye, smiling that ‘well, here we are’ expression. It’s utterly stupid, but I honestly don’t know how it happens. We sort of drift towards one another. The space between us narrows, and in a moment that lasts forever our lips are touching. Willingly. His are soft and warm and I hope mine aren’t chalky and ungiving. It goes on for a second maybe, long enough that it’s not a friendly peck, or colleagues simply saying ‘Ciao’. I think I even close my eyes, but it’s hard to be sure.

  He pulls away, not roughly, but to stop it moving into anything else, I imagine.

  ‘Signorina, I’m so sorry,’ he blusters, eyes down to the ground. ‘I didn’t mean to … I didn’t think …’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine, honestly fine,’ I stutter back, because it’s all I can think of to say. I’m more embarrassed than horrified. We’re like teenagers on an awkward first date. I drop my door key and we almost bang heads as we both try to recover it. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ we both blather and I see he’s desperate for an escape.

  ‘Well, good evening.’ He smiles meekl
y and almost runs towards the nearest alleyway leading out of the campo. I push myself inside and up to the apartment, hovering motionless in my kitchen for an age. What did I just do? I kissed a known fascist. Or did he kiss me? Does it matter, since I didn’t object?

  I’m filled with a dense guilt, first that it happened and, secondly, that not every part of me regrets it. Oh, Stella, pull yourself together. Feelings like this could lead to your heart breaking and a noose around your neck. Yet efforts to order my mind fail miserably.

  I climb into bed with a canopy of confusion sitting above me, a thin, impermeable veil. What is Cristian De Luca about? And why can I not fully dislike him?

  The next day, I seek out Mimi, who – as only a best friend would – points out the grey bags under my eyes. She half guesses at my sleeplessness and I come clean about the kiss, thwarted though it was. I wonder, though, thwarted by what and by whom? Guilt, mostly, on my part at least.

  Mimi isn’t as shocked as I’d expected – she’s always been a true romantic and, for her, love overrides all. I see in her so many elements of the imaginary Gaia and resolve to try and disguise it better.

  ‘But there’s no getting away from the fact he is a fascist,’ I confess to her.

  ‘And what on earth makes you think that fascists don’t have feelings or desires?’ Mimi pitches. ‘We might not like their politics, but it doesn’t make them monsters in every sense. Well, not all of them, I’m sure.’ She carries so much sense in her tiny frame, and yet my shame rides up to nip at me when I least expect it.

  ‘But I have to work with him!’ I bemoan.

  ‘And very likely he will be feeling the same way, and so you will both be very embarrassed and that will be the end of it,’ she adds. ‘It’s not a hanging offence, Stella.’

  She leans in further, eyes wide and full of conspiracy. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’ She throws her head back and squeals with laughter and I can’t help but smile and feel my guilt has amplified the significance of one brief kiss. It was simply a mistake on his part. Mine too, in receiving it.

  I note Mimi’s complexion is looking quite the opposite of mine – she’s blooming – and I steer the questioning to her. ‘Speaking of secrets, how’s the romance in your life?’ Her perky demeanour usually means she has a new love interest.

  She colours more deeply than ever before and I can guess this is one she likes very much.

  ‘So, who is he?’ I probe. I assume it’s the operator at the telephone exchange where they both work.

  ‘All in good time, Stella,’ she replies, and I think she’s being unusually coy, but I let it go. She adds, ‘It’s not been very long, and I want to make sure before I say anything.’

  Mimi adores the drama of the chase and the reveal, and I love her for it – the fact that she can maintain such energy and enthusiasm amid the demands of war keeps me hoping.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘But I want to know soon.’ Good news might distract me from the mess of my own feelings.

  19

  A Detour

  Venice, late June 1944

  Seemingly, Cristian either wants to forget our doorstep assignation or he regrets it entirely, because it’s never spoken of. He doesn’t so much ignore me in the Reich office, rather he returns to treating me exactly as he does the other typists – with a certain, businesslike detachment. He makes pains never to lock eyes with me, or approach me with a question unless there are other workers around, and I find myself more hurt by that than anything – that he daren’t trust my discretion in something personal. I resolve to push it out of my head and get on with helping to bring down Breugal’s kingdom. In the back of my mind, though, I always question if I’m including Cristian De Luca in that equation.

  Elsewhere, though, the war is gaining pace and I have little time to dwell on the matter. The good weather prompts more intelligence from the outlying partisan brigades, meaning we have more to sift through for the weekly paper, and there’s renewed sense of activity in acts of sabotage perpetrated across Venice, some of which I suspect Vito is involved in; warnings from his older sister have clearly fallen on deaf ears. Almost all my time outside of work is spent on partisan tasks, and every evening seems to be taken up either bar-hopping with virtual strangers or on boat trips across the Lido, tolerating the stares of Nazi troops toing and froing on the Motonavi ferry. As I return their smiles like I’m supposed to, I can’t help laughing internally at the message tucked inside my beret or my shoe, and even sometimes in my underwear. It sends a shiver of satisfaction through me and, despite the enduring fear of capture, I realise I am suited to this task. As I cross the water, I can’t help thinking of Jack, not exactly a stone’s throw away on Pellestrina, but close enough to be accessible. And then I have to forcibly bring myself back to the task in hand.

  With the whirlwind of emotions inside me, I’m relieved to be busy, buoyed that beyond the Veneto both the Resistance and Allies are making headway; after Rome they have forged northwards to Assisi and then Perugia, slowly but surely towards us. In the wider world, the Russians have gained ground in Finland and are marching towards Berlin. Gradually, it feels as if one day we might be free of this turmoil, though no one supposes Hitler will give up gracefully. It will be ugly, fraught with danger, and there will be casualties. We just have to be prepared for it.

  Doubtless in response to the general tide of the conflict, a combination of Nazis and fascist squads have resumed their merciless raids on the Jewish ghetto. Several times I’m plucked from my bed to help with movements of families to safe houses across the city, but all too often the Resistance is taken by surprise and cannot react fast enough to skirmishes in side streets, or houses targeted because the fascist guard, fed by information from Gestapo spies, suspects they are hiding Jews. The night-time curfew from eleven p.m. is more strictly enforced than previously, which means we can’t operate the same surveillance. I hear on the highly charged grapevine that Vito has been almost caught several times by the patrol dogs, and a shudder runs through me at his refusal to admit the limitations of his running speed. I’m only glad that Mama and Papa remain blissfully ignorant, although Mama is looking increasingly tired and she’s lost much of her normal zeal.

  Despite my position, I am not party to advance warning of the increased raids via the Reich office – it seems the Gestapo and Breugal operate in different spheres, fuelling the general’s fury once again. The daily talk in cafés and shops breeds a fog of unease and fear spreading from the ghetto side across the city; morale is low in the Resistance and it seems that with every family taken, every prisoner hauled to Santa Maggiore jail, it sinks even lower. Sergio does his best to boost the mood with an anonymous rallying in the paper, but day after day I have to remind myself that what we are doing is better than nothing at all, that Popsa would be proud. Ironically, the weather is glorious, the water glittering under the fierce rays, but war has the effect of staining even the most stunning of Mediterranean sunsets. Mere beauty – even the Venetian type – cannot override all.

  Amid all this unrest, I’m charged with relaying a package to a contact on the Lido, the plan being that a boat will await me one evening after my newspaper shift, take me to the Lido and back to the mainland. It will be under cover of darkness, and I’m relieved to see my transport is a small flat-bottomed sandalo boat with a tiny outboard motor. As much as I don’t relish being out on the open lagoon in such a minute craft, potentially dwarfed by the patrol boats which sweep across the water and send wash and spray in their wake, I also know a good pilot can skim over the shallow sandbanks and dodge the sweep of their searchlights. The boatman is old and grizzled, born out of the lagoon, it half appears, with pimples that look like barnacles and a thick beard hanging limp like seaweed. He speaks little, which is a blessing, since I’m tired and in no mood for chit-chat. But I smile broadly as we meet – I need his favour to make a detour. That and the lira notes in my pocket should persuade him.

  The journey to the Lido is uneventful, wit
h only small waves plashing at the boat sides. The boatman motors past the Lido dock and around to a small inlet. There’s no one about, thankfully, and he leaves me in a small cove on the beach, weaving the boat neatly between the coils of barbed wire to land me on wet sand instead of letting my feet get sodden in the surf. The sight of the wire coils reminds me again of Gaia and Raffiano’s first encounter and their presence warms me in the relative chill of the evening, even though it’s only inside my head.

  My contact, a middle-aged man in casual clothes, emerges from the shadows as I walk onto the sand. As always, there’s a ‘stand-off’, which lasts a second or so as we look each other up and down, trying to assess whether we can trust each other with our lives. I’ve often mused after a drop that, despite the hardware of guns and machinery, this is an intensely human war – heavily reliant on faith in the good nature of people, whatever their origins. Kindness and softness, and not the cold metal edge of artillery, are what will win this war.

  Clearly, this man and I decide we share that crucial belief and exchange the code words. It’s the only time we speak – I hand over the package, he retreats to the shadows and I return to the boat. I’m always tempted to scurry the last few steps, but force myself to maintain a steady, calm gait; there could be a lookout with binoculars trained on the beach. I’m relieved as the boatman pushes off and the water deepens under us.

  ‘Can we make a stop in Pellestrina?’ I say, my sweetest smile on show. It’s more than a little detour, I know, but since we’re so far out in the lagoon I feel it’s worth pushing for. The boatman shakes his head at first, until he spies me pulling out the notes. His eyes are noticeably wider.