Voice of Destiny

by JH Fletcher

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  1

  Colonel Strasser stared at her. ‘Let me be sure I understand you. You are telling me that a member of this garrison has been making advances to you? Unwelcome advances?’

  The office was shuttered from the light, austere, almost monastic, a room suited to confession. There was the desk, three straight-backed chairs, a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler on the wall behind the desk, a large-scale map of the district on another wall, otherwise the room was empty. There was no space for vanity here: no ornamentation, nothing personal of any kind. No softness. There was only duty, the steely echo of an inflexible will.

  It was hard not to be intimidated by the room and the pale eyes that watched her so intently across the desk. She fought them with flamboyance.

  ‘Why should I lie to you? You saw me last night, singing a German opera at your command! What is the opera about? I shall tell you: it’s about chivalry. German chivalry! That is why I asked to see you. That is why I’m appealing to you now. I implore you to show me the chivalry of Fidelio, of Beethoven!’

  Strasser’s eyes did not waver; it seemed he was impervious to histrionics. ‘It is a serious accusation.’

  ‘Which I don’t make lightly.’

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened.’

  She explained how the soldier, accompanied by another man, had come to her mother’s house to requisition food.

  ‘Was that your first meeting?’

  ‘No. He’d stopped me once before at a roadblock, when I’d been for a bicycle ride in the country. On that occasion he’d wanted to know if I’d been buying food from any of the local farms.’

  ‘And had you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he search you?’

  ‘He looked in the pannier of my bicycle.’

  ‘But you, personally?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘After he’d looked in the pannier he let you go?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His conduct was correct?’

  ‘Perfectly correct. I’d forgotten all about him until I saw him at my mother’s house.’

  ‘Did anything happen on that occasion?’

  ‘No. But later he sent me a note, asking me to meet him at a cafe near the cathedral.’

  ‘And you went?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She hesitated. ‘I thought he might be lonely, so far from home.’

  ‘You were sorry for him?’

  ‘Loneliness is hard to bear.’

  ‘You didn’t wonder why he should send you a note rather than come to see you himself?’

  ‘I thought perhaps his orders prohibited it.’

  ‘But you went anyway?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. We talked. He said he’d like to go for a bicycle ride with me.’

  ‘And you went? Alone?’

  Lucia felt her cheeks grow hot. ‘It isn’t easy to refuse a request from a German soldier. Besides, I thought of him as a friend, someone I could trust.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘We rode out into the country. Then we left the bicycles and went for a walk under the trees.’ She paused, shaking her head in mounting distress, her eyes seeking the corners of the monk-like and silent room. ‘This is very difficult for me!’

  Colonel Strasser showed neither sympathy nor impatience but sat, expressionless, while he waited for her to continue.

  ‘Then he tried to … put his hands on me.’

  ‘You attempted to stop him?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘But he persisted?’

  ‘He took hold of me. He ran his hands over my body. He tried to kiss me.’

  ‘Did you welcome these advances?’

  A look of outrage. ‘I certainly did not!’

  ‘Was there any reason why he should have thought you had encouraged him?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I tried to fight him off. I cried out. I appealed to him.’

  Tears pricked her eyes; so overwhelmed was she by the picture she had created of herself as the maiden in distress that for a moment she forgot that none of it had happened.

  ‘And did he stop?’

  ‘Not at once. He tried to tear open my dress.’

  ‘But you continued to resist him?’

  ‘I fought him. I screamed, I hit him with my fists —’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then he stopped.’

  ‘He didn’t rape you or hit you back? He showed you no violence?’

  ‘He put his hands on me! He tried to kiss me. What’s that, if it isn’t violence?’

  ‘But no more than that?’

  ‘Isn’t that enough?’ Now her rage was genuine. Had the events she’d described taken place, this man’s icy indifference to her humiliation would have been the same. She forgot who he was, or the power he had. She forgot the menace of the silent room. She was a woman, speaking for all the women of the world who at one time or another had been violated, not by a man’s superior strength but by his indifference. ‘And this is German honour?’

  That came close enough for him to try to justify himself and the soldier whom, without even realising it, he was defending not because he was a German and comrade in arms but because he was a man.

  ‘You agreed to go with him, alone. You walked into the forest with him. You thought he was lonely, which was why you agreed to meet him in the first place —’

  ‘I didn’t agree to let him attack me!’

  ‘There was no violation —’

  ‘He put his hands on me. Isn’t that violation enough?’

  ‘Signorina Visconti, in our society, Italian as well as German, it is the man and not the woman who is expected to make the first advances. How is he to know a woman’s feelings if he doesn’t make the first approach?’

  ‘I told him to stop! I begged him!’

  ‘Signorina, we both know that a woman does not always mean what she says in such circumstances.’

  Lucia stood. With all the scorn she could muster she said: ‘I came looking for chivalry and understanding. I see I shall find neither here.’

  ‘But what are you asking me to do about it?’

  ‘I hoped you would transfer him to another unit.’

  ‘For that I would need to carry out a full investigation. Almost certainly the man would deny that he assaulted you. He might even suggest — forgive me! — that you encouraged him. There is no proof, you see. As one of your most fervent admirers, I naturally believe everything you have told me, but as a German officer I have to tell you that without evidence I can do nothing.’

  Lucia was furious. ‘In other words, if I’d let him rape me, you could act?’

  Strasser’s eyes grew icier than ever. ‘It is a serious accusation, as I said. And I have to point out that, had you permitted his advances, there could have been no question of rape.’

  He summoned a trooper to escort her from the building. He made no move to accompany her but she felt his eyes on her back as she went out of his office. Now she had time to be terrified by what she’d done. By attempting to pre-empt any accusations that Reinhardt Hoffmann might make against her, she had put herself in danger. It didn’t matter whether Colonel Strasser believed her or not; by making the complaint, she had drawn herself to his attention, not as a singer but in his official capacity. From now on, the eyes of the SS would be on her.

  2

  Day by day the war tightened its fist about them.

  Passengers from Brescia were arrested at the Parma railway station for being involved in the black market. Farmers were compelled to declare details of their produce to the authorities, which made it next to impossible to buy food from them. Reinhardt had told her that the farmer’s wife she’d dealt with had been arrested; if she’d escaped the firing squad she would still have been sent to a camp. Either way, it was a death sentence. Lucia liv
ed in terror of arrest but nothing happened. Then one day she saw the woman in Montegallo. Relief as bright as sunlight, she ran to greet her. ‘They let you go!’

  The woman stared at her suspiciously. ‘Let me go?’

  ‘Weren’t you arrested?’

  ‘Your friend came back and helped himself to some of my homemade sausage, said he’d make trouble for me otherwise, but I was never arrested. No thanks to you, though.’

  Lucia wept. ‘Please! I knew nothing about any of it. Please believe me!’

  She tried to clutch the woman, to force her to believe in her innocence, but she, more affronted than ever, shook herself free from this mad woman who might also be a traitor. Through a blur of tears Lucia watched the black-clothed back moving away from her along the street.

  So Reinhardt had lied to her about that, too. Why?

  Instinct gave the answer. Because he had hoped to frighten her, to give him greater power over her. To force her to give him information that he could use, as he had used her.

  Damn him to hell for the liar he was.

  3

  By the spring of 1944, food supplies had almost run out. Until the previous autumn, farmers had occasionally been able to sell meat from stalls in the market. Without refrigeration it all had to be eaten at once but at least it had been there. Now it was not. Hunger, even more than before, had become a daily reality. It affected everyone but the old suffered most. Those who had survived the harsh winter now faced starvation; many died.

  Yet still the war, and the world, went on.

  The authorities decided to change the name of the theatre from the Teatro Regio to the Teatro Nazionale Verdi: in order, so Eduardo said, to distance both it and the city from the king who, by his support for Marshal Badoglio, had disgraced himself.

  More and more, Eduardo reminded Lucia of a rat in a cage: all teeth and savagery, while the slowly advancing Allies drew the noose ever tighter around his neck.

  The Germans carried out raids in the city and the surrounding countryside. Whole families were arrested and dragged off for interrogation. Few came back and those who did were reluctant to talk about their ordeal.

  Meaningless things happened, seemingly at random; a grenade was thrown at the church: by whom, or for what reason, no-one knew. It cracked a tombstone but did no other damage. In Parma, a German stooge was gunned down in broad daylight. The assassin escaped, but the SS arrested ten people in retaliation. The youngest was a girl of fifteen, the oldest a man of ninety-four so senile that his neighbours said he didn’t even know there was a war on. Rumour said they’d been shot; certainly none of them came home again.

  The British and Americans were reported to be bogged down south of Rome but in some ways they had already arrived. Milan was bombed; a month later Montegallo followed suit. Another month and Parma itself was raided and the Ducal Palace extensively damaged. It was occupied by the National Guard so no-one minded much, but a little later the Piazza Garibaldi, Farnese Palace and Teatro Regio (as people continued to call it) were badly damaged and the medieval Teatro Farnese, one of the wonders of Europe and no more a military target than the man in the moon, was destroyed by American planes.

  The American pilots seemed to prefer civilian targets to military ones; there were several reports of town squares crowded with civilians being machine-gunned by American aircraft. In April it was Lucia’s turn.

  4

  With the theatre out of action, Lucia went back to Montegallo for a few days. She took with her the scores of several operas — Aïda, Turandot, Walküre, Tristan und Isolde — and spent her time studying them. It was a useful way of enduring the idleness forced upon her by the bombing. It also helped her shut her ears to rumour, and the countryside was alive with rumour. The Allies were coming, or were not; the SS were planning to pack the whole population into cattle trucks and send them to labour camps in Germany; the partisans, increasingly active in the countryside, would attack the garrison, bringing retribution on the whole district.

  One day, feeling in need of a break, Lucia had ridden into the village on her bicycle. She was halfway home when an aircraft with American markings dived on her, spraying the road with machine gun fire. She threw herself into the ditch while the bullets ripped the earth not five metres from where she lay. The plane came back again and again, the pilot seemingly determined to kill her. Eventually he gave up and flew away, no doubt to attack an old age home or similar military target. He left Lucia weeping and trembling and wondering whether, on this showing, the Americans, when they arrived, would prove any better than the Germans.

  The next evening, under cover of darkness, Guido came home, appearing alone and unannounced, heralded by no more than a soft rap on the door. Helena was astounded to see him; apprehensive, too, perhaps.

  ‘What brings you here?’

  Guido looked a lot older than when Lucia had seen him last, his hair streaked with grey, his face more lined. There was another and more profound change; he, whom Lucia remembered as a gentle man, had grown hard and dangerous.

  ‘Why aren’t you in Bologna?’ Helena again nervously touching the wings of hair on either side of her face as she questioned him.

  ‘The school was bombed. At night, fortunately, so there were no casualties, but the building was a write-off.’

  Helena wrung anguished hands. ‘What is going to happen to us all?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to talk to you about. Where’s Eduardo?’

  Helena had grown used to avoiding questions about Eduardo and said nothing. Lucia answered for him.

  ‘In Parma, with the Repubblichini. He still visits here, but not as often as he did.’

  Helena had told her she hadn’t seen her lover for weeks, but she was still willing to defend him. ‘He gets back whenever he can. His duties —’

  ‘Let me know the next time you see him,’ Guido interrupted.

  Lucia stared. ‘Won’t you be staying here?’

  ‘No. But I’ll be in the district.’

  Helena’s fingers clutched her throat. ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘Don’t you know what the Repubblichini have been doing? The people they’ve killed, tortured, handed over to the Germans? Some day soon there’ll be a reckoning. Eduardo, along with the rest. Now’s the time for people to make up their mind whose side they’re on.’

  Helena stared, wild-eyed, at a future in ruins. ‘What will they do to him?’

  ‘What they have to do. If you try to protect him, you’ll be in trouble, too. You must tell me, if you know where he is. For your own sake.’

  To Helena, attack had always been the surest defence. ‘We don’t set eyes on you for a year, then you come here and start threatening us? I know Eduardo better than anybody! These things people say he’s done … He’s not like that. He’s done nothing.’

  The electricity had been off for days and the lamp was turned low in order to conserve fuel. In its flickering light Lucia saw the two cousins as though in a tableau, a dimly lit image of conspiracy, accusation and fear. It was a vision that encapsulated all the anguish and futility of war: the shadowed faces staring at each other with a mixture of ferocity and alarm, eyes gleaming, shoulders hunched against the terrors of a world waiting beyond the circle of the light.

  Guido said: ‘He’s done them, all right. The only question is what you’re going to do about it.’

  Lucia intervened to break the spell that for a moment had bound the cousins together. ‘If you can tell us how to get hold of you …’

  He did not answer her directly. ‘Walk outside with me.’

  Lucia went with him into the darkness. Overhead the stars sparkled; there was a warmth in the air, the first hint of spring. Lucia said: ‘What will they do to him?’

  ‘Kill him. It’s too late to stop it now.’

  ‘And my mother?’

  ‘They’ll kill her, too, if she sticks by him.’

  ‘It would be a brave thing for her to do.’

  ‘It would b
e a very stupid thing for her to do. She can’t save him, whatever she does. Why get herself killed for nothing?’

  ‘I’ll speak to her.’

  ‘Try to make her see sense, if you can. I was fond of her once but I tell you frankly I don’t recognise her now. Her years in Australia changed her.’

  Lucia was willing to defend both her country and mother from this cousin who had also changed beyond recognition. To say nothing of her father, cut off by the war, who by his absence represented all that had been good in her past life and that she couldn’t wait to renew.

  ‘It wasn’t Australia, it was the life she was forced to lead there. The hardship, the lack of love. She needs love, like most women. My father did love her, I think, but he wasn’t much good at saying so. He hardly spoke at all; times were hard for him, too. Eduardo is always telling her how much he loves and admires her, especially when he wants something. That’s why she’s fallen for him.’

  ‘Eduardo’s a liar.’

  ‘I know that. But she doesn’t. Or won’t admit it.’

  Guido stared at her. ‘You’re in danger as well. People have been talking about you, too.’

  ‘I’m an opera singer. I’m not interested in politics.’

  ‘You’re up to your ears in politics. You sang for the SS, didn’t you? People see you being friendly with Colonel Strasser, accepting flowers from him. They hear you saying Heil Hitler. What are they supposed to think?’

  ‘I had no choice about any of that!’

  ‘And the German soldier you’ve been cycling with? I suppose you had no choice with him, either? There are even some who claim you’ve been giving the Germans information.’