by Grant, D C
Now it is getting dark, and I can feel the ground beneath me shaking from the artillery fire. Again the sky is lit with flashes of red and spotlights strafe the air. Bologna is close but there is nothing I can do until Aroldo rouses. In the dark I cannot see how badly he is hurt but there is a lot of blood. I’m scared.
What is to become of us, will we die here?
17 December
I turned the page and the handwriting and language changed. Lina’s writing was small and in Italian, but now the handwriting was larger, bolder and in English, and I know that this is Grandpa Harry and reading his words is like a blow to the stomach, like he is reaching back over the years and pulling me into his story. I daren’t flip over the page to see if Lina’s handwriting begins again, I mean it must be because Mum says that she came from Italy with Grandpa Harry – but what if it’s a different person, someone else that he met and brought back, calling her Lina so that it matched the name on the marriage certificate? No, it can’t be.
22 April
I know that Lina wrote in this book, but I don’t know what as I can’t read Italian. Speak it, yes, in a fashion, but not read it. I think this was her diary and, if so, she wouldn’t want her story to end at her last entry, so I will continue it here.
We were in a bad way after the fight with the Fascists. Lina was almost hysterical and my wound was bleeding badly. Luckily the bullet had gone straight though the fleshy part of the upper arm, but it still hurt like hell. Lina found a river where she could clean the wound, she said it was the River Reno, and she tore a strip from her dress and bound the wound up. We could hear the artillery to the south and west and knew that the fighting was coming closer. I took little comfort in that, as we would have to head towards the retreating Germans to reach Bologna, but we had run out of time. I don’t know if it was the battle or the long walk, or maybe it was just her time, but Lina went into labour in that valley. We had turned away from the River Po shortly before we were attacked, and if we were going to get her to the hospital in time we would have to follow the River Reno until we reached the main road into Bologna. I didn’t want to tell her that following a road could be the death of us.
Her pains were far apart at first, but as we neared the road into Bologna they became more frequent. The road was littered with empty trucks, bombed out shells of vehicles, and the bodies of dead Germans, blown apart by bombs dropped from the sky. It was a gruesome sight. Amongst the wreckage I was astonished to find an intact wooden handbarrow, and carefully lay Lina in it. It was dark now, but the sky was lit by flashes of light as the fighting continued over to the west. I didn’t care about the fighting any more, I just wanted to get Lina to a hospital. That journey seemed to last forever, but about midnight I saw some buildings up ahead, and in the distance I could see the jagged skyline of the city. A German soldier stood in the centre of the road and held up a rifle, challenging us in German – I presume the equivalent of “Halt, who goes there.” I stopped. He appeared to be alone, a mere boy; he couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“Please,” I said in Italian. “I have to get my wife to the hospital.” I repeated it in English, but he didn’t appear to understand either language. Instead he put his rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel. I thought I was dead. Lina moaned as a pain took her and the boy looked at her. Immediately I stood in front of her, between her and the rifle and said, “Shoot me but spare my wife.” I don’t know if he understood, but he just stared at me along the length of his rifle, then he lowered it and sagged against the wall of the house. I didn’t say anything more; I just lifted the handles of the barrow and jogged past, fearing that he would put a bullet in my back as I entered the city.
I didn’t know where the hospital was. Amazingly at the time of night, and with the fighting all around us, there were people on the street – or maybe not so amazing after all, for who could sleep with all the noise? I picked up a feeling of excitement and anticipation as I wheeled the barrow through the streets – the citizens knew their city would soon be liberated.
“Go here, go here,” the people kept saying when I asked for the hospital, until finally I arrived at a brick building in the centre of the city. The lights were all on inside and there was a stream of people going through the open doors. I couldn’t get the barrow up the stairs so I lifted Lina into my arms and carried her in, shouting for help as I did so. Inside it was chaos, men and women lying on the floor, bleeding, crying, shouting; I was one voice amongst many.
I felt a hand on my arm. “She is in labour?” a voice asked.
It was a nun, her habit smothered in blood and her face lined and wrinkled. “Come this way.”
She was like an angel in that hall of Hades.
I followed her down the hall while Lina cried out in my arms. There was no gurney to lay her on; there were lines and lines of them in the hallway, a person lying on every single one.
“In here,” the nurse said. The bed had only just been stripped, a bloodstain obvious on the mattress, but she took a sheet from a shelf on the wall and efficiently covered the stain. I lay Lina down gently. There was blood all over my clothes, but whether it was hers or mine, I didn’t know. I held her hand and stroked her forehead; she seemed to be in a stupor.
“We’re in the hospital, Lina, in Bologna. We’re safe. Don’t worry, my love, you’ll be okay.” I told her this, but I didn’t like the feverish look in her eyes or the heat of her skin.
The nun returned with a doctor. The examination was perfunctory; he was a busy man.
The instructions he gave to the nun were delivered in Italian so fast that I couldn’t catch them but “presto” – quickly – was amongst them. He pointed at me and then the door, but I shook my head. I wasn’t going to leave her side.
The nun took my arm and pulled me away.
“The doctor needs to do his job. You’re best out of the way.”
So I returned to the chaotic and jammed hallway. The sights and sounds and smells overwhelmed me and I staggered down the hall and into the cool air. I took in a deep breath and sat down on the steps alongside other patients waiting for news of their loved ones, and looked up into the sky. The dawn was approaching; the sky was turning from a deep purple to light blue, the red of sunrise touching the clouds above our heads. I realized that I could no longer hear the thuds of falling mortars, only the occasional pop of rifle. The people around me stirred as if they recognized something different. It was fully light when we heard the cheers. People began to come out of the hospital and, as the first soldiers came around the corner, there was a burst of applause. I watched as the soldiers streamed past, waving to the crowds – the liberators of the city. They were Poles.
I went back inside again, but the door to Lina’s room was still closed. I paced back and forth for a while, until I heard the rumble, then went outside again. American tanks were lumbering down the street, and this time the crowd threw flowers onto the thick steel sides and waved.
Again I went back inside. The sound of a baby crying made me run down the hallway and I almost collided with the nun as she came out of the room. She was holding a baby, wrapped in a towel, who cried with angry displeasure, the face puckered and the mouth opening wide, hiccupping as it took breaths between the shrill bleating.
“A girl,” the nun said as she placed her in my arms. She had gone back into the room before I could say anything more. I tried the door, but it was either stuck or locked or barred. I stood there with the screaming bundle, not knowing what to do. In an effort to still the noise, I placed my knuckle in the baby’s mouth and her lips latched onto it, thankfully stilling the awful noise.
I looked into her eyes that looked back into mine, unfocused and bewildered, and she took little shuddering breaths as she calmed down. Her eyes were blue and her hair so fine and pale that it looked like she had no hair at all. It reminded me of the soldier that Lina’s brother had shot, a reminder that this was not a child of mine.
And yet she was. I had
lived with her for nine months, as I had lived with her mother, experienced all that they had experienced and all that had made me the father of this child, as surely as if I had made Lina pregnant myself.
“What shall we call you?” I said to the little face. It was funny that we hadn’t spoken of names the whole time Lina had been pregnant. I guess both of us knew that either of us could be killed at any time, and choosing names for a child that might die anyway was just not important. But the child was alive and crying and needed a name. I looked at the hell around me and thought of the nun who had seen our need as soon as we came in through the door. And I thought of Lina, who had been raped and left to die yet had lived and produced the life I held in my arms. The city had been liberated, we had survived, our salvation and the child’s birth had been a miracle. My mother would have said that angels protected us.
“Angelina,” I said. “Welcome to this totally mucked up world.”
So that is the story of how Angelina was born on 21 April 1945, the day that Bologna was liberated. Now I sit beside Lina’s bed waiting for her to wake up. There was a complication, they said, after the birth. She lost a lot of blood, and there was no blood to give her so I had to give some of my own, even though I had lost some myself from the bullet wound. They think she will live but they’re not sure. She was weak from months in the mountains, from the lack of food and from carrying the baby that drew the strength from her. Only she can make the decision on whether she wants come back. The nun tells me to pray.
She also told me that Lina will never have another child.
Weep for Italy
19 December
This confirms it then: my grandmother, my Nonna, was conceived during rape and the man we knew as Grandpa Harry was not her father, instead it was a German officer shot during the war. The news chills me. Do I tell Mum? Do I talk to Nonna about it? But how can I when she is not well? Does she even know? Has she read the diary?
The baby kicks in my tummy, reminding me that he or she is there. I’ve only got another few weeks to go and I must get back to my midwife and the birthing centre and Bevan, who I know has been missing me a lot. The midwife has arranged for me to attend a one-day intensive antenatal class when I get back. I’m just hoping we can persuade Bevan’s parole officer to let him leave the house for the day. We can only hope.
Bevan’s dad is here – he’s been looking around the unit while I’ve been reading. He will take me to see Nonna before driving me back to Auckland. She seems so much better since she moved into the rest home, almost back to her old self, and now I don’t feel so bad about her moving in there, which is a relief.
I’m going to take the diary back to Auckland with me so that I can finish it there. I’ll let Bevan look at it too, although he won’t be able to read much of it, just Grandpa Harry’s bit. Maybe I should try to translate it. It’ll give me something to do while I wait for the baby to arrive.
23 April
I woke this morning as if from a deep long sleep. I turned my head and the first thing I saw was Aroldo beside me, his hand in mine and his head tilted back in the chair he was sitting in, his eyes closed, asleep, a bandage around his wounded arm. I looked down at myself and knew that I was in a hospital bed. The sheets felt clean, as did I, the first time in a very long time. The door was ajar and I could hear the murmur of voices in the corridor, but in this room it was quiet. I was about to close my eyes again when my hands went to my stomach and I panicked when I couldn’t feel the solidness of the baby there. I cried out and Aroldo immediately woke, almost jumping out of the chair. For a moment he looked confused, and then he looked at me and a great big smile broke out across his face.
“You’ve come back to me!” he cried and kissed me on the forehead.
“The baby?” I croaked. My mouth was dry.
He indicated a cot close by. “A girl,” he said proudly. “She’s healthy although underweight. She’s beautiful.”
“Can I see her?”
He went to the cot and leant over, lifting the baby up and over the metal side. Carefully he laid her beside me and her head turned almost instinctively towards me as he did so, her little mouth puckering as though for a kiss.
“You need to feed her,” he said. “The nuns have been giving her water but she needs milk. See how she turns to your breast – she’s hungry.”
Her eyes were open now as she hunted for food, nuzzling into me like the calves did on the farm as they looked for milk from their mother. My breasts were aching as though they would burst, and I pulled at my clothes. “Help me,” I said. Aroldo untied the hospital gown and exposed a breast. I couldn’t sit up, I had no strength, so I turned slightly so that the nipple met her mouth and, as if it was a lifeline, her lips closed around it as she latched on. At first there was a burst of pain as she sucked, and then relief as the pressure in my breast eased. Her hand curled around one of my fingers as she drank. So this is what had been growing in my stomach all that time, kicking and punching and hiccupping, a constant presence over the last few months as we battled through winter and ever-present conflict. She had survived, as had I, and Aroldo, and I felt protective towards her as sucked at my breast. I knew that I should hate her, but there was no more room for hate, there had already been too much of that around me and I was sick of it. I would love this child and forget the man who fathered her.
“What are we going to call her?” I asked Aroldo.
“I gave her the name Angelina,” he said, looking worried. “We can change it if you like. She’s not yet been baptized.”
“Angelina,” I said slowly. “An angel to counter the devil that made her, I like it.”
Aroldo gently laid his hand on my forehead. “Angelina Smith it is, then,” he said. “This war is almost over and the madness will come to an end. We three shall make a perfect little family, and I shall protect you both for the rest of my life.”
I know Aroldo is happy but I want to go back to our farm. Now that the war is over, Nico will come down off the mountains and we can return, rebury our family in the churchyard and rebuild our lives again. We will forget this war and again be farmers as our family has been for generations. I’m not sure what Aroldo will do. I know he loves me, but he will have to return to his country as I must return to mine. Except I go back with someone else, someone who didn’t exist before the war, but I can tell the church that the father died, which is the truth.
I will send word out to find Nico and tell him where I am so that he can come and fetch me. I won’t say anything to Aroldo until Nico comes.
30 April
Mussolini is dead. I am neither sad nor happy. Once we loved him and he could do no wrong, and then the war came and everything was taken from us. In the end, Hitler was his master and he was as tortured by the war as we were, but that is no cause to delight in his death. I await news of Nico, but there is so much confusion. In some places the war is still carrying on as the partisans search out and kill those suspected of being Fascists and of working with the Germans. I suspect more have been killed this way than during the whole war. We’ve heard nothing about Patricio and Amelia or the rest of our band of partisans, and I have a feeling that we never will.
I just want Nico back and for us to return to our farm so that we can carry on with our lives, like it was before the war.
2 May
Nico is dead! A man called Mario who fought with Nico came to us and told me the news. I weep for him as I weep again for my shattered family. So much destruction, so much death, so much misery. I have no family left now.
I asked Mario about our farm, whether he had been there. He said it had been totally destroyed by the shelling and mortars that had been aimed at it as the Germans made their retreat. The land around was full of craters and unused ordnance, to go back would be to invite death.
I weep for Italy, my Italy, that has been raped and pillaged as much as I have. It will never be the same again. And neither will I.
3 May
It is conf
irmed that Hitler is dead. Now we can say that this furious war is finally over. I’m not sure what I shall do. Everything I had before the war has gone and instead I now have a husband and a child. Aroldo wants me to go back to New Zealand with him, but it is not my country. But there is nothing left for me here. Aroldo is going to get our marriage legally recognized so that I can accompany him as his wife. I’m not sure how he will manage that, as everything is a shambles here and he doesn’t even know where his old unit is, but he is confident that it will all work out in the end.
Maybe I should do as he says. It is for the best, I think. I will have to forget my beloved country and make a new life in another.
10 August
I write this in our cabin on the ship as we approach the land that is Aroldo’s home, New Zealand. I am a little scared. I know nothing of this land. I have been learning English but I fear it will not be good enough to understand these people. I speak Italian to Angelina, and I promise that she will know the language of her birthplace as well as she knows the language of her new country.
I have not written in this book for some time. Just picking it up reminds me of the hard times, and for a while I hid it away, not daring to even look at it. But I will make one last entry before I start my new life.
It has not been easy to get here. The road through the public offices and army officials was as difficult as the walk we made to Bologna when I was in labour. In fact, getting the right papers that recognized our marriage and for me to leave Italy and enter New Zealand was as bad, if not worse, than labour. Although we had the tattered piece of paper from the priest who married us, no one would believe that we were really married. But my dear Aroldo took the blame, saying that he had taken advantage of me while he was at my family’s farm, and he told them that he had married me with my father’s permission as soon as he realized that he had made me pregnant Unfortunately the father was now dead, killed by Germans. It was very brave of him because he got into a lot of trouble, but in the end we were able to get the papers we required to leave the country and gain passage to New Zealand, all three of us.
