‘I don’t believe you.’
But the one with the bullet-shaped head and the patronising manner looked uneasy. He decided to cover his back. ‘I will speak to Deputy Marchini. Wait here.’ His eyes flicked over her figure appreciatively, lingering on her breasts. ‘The chairman might like some amusement in his morning.’
She restrained from slapping him. ‘Be quick,’ she said. ‘Pronto.’
He marched away, deliberately slowing his step, but returned exactly four minutes later at speed with Grassi’s deputy, Signor Marchini, at his side.
Marchini offered no greeting. He looked agitated. ‘I am told you have a message from Il Duce for Chairman Grassi.’
‘That is true.’
He looked at the envelope in her hand. ‘I will convey it to him.’
‘No, Deputy Marchini. Il Duce was adamant. I must deliver it myself.’ She treated him to the faintest of smiles. ‘I’m sure you recall that I enjoyed the pleasure of our great leader’s company during the celebration at the Constantine Hotel.’
Marchini’s neat well-groomed features looked increasingly unhappy. He took a grip on her upper arm and walked her down the corridor with a curt ‘The chairman will see you for two minutes. Keep it brief. He is in the middle of a meeting which he has adjourned. This is a bad time, I warn you. What with the aeroplane crashing on the rally and now this new attack by the Communist insurgents yesterday, the chairman is —’
‘What attack?’ She pulled her arm free.
The deputy scowled at her. ‘Just watch what the hell you say in there.’
They’d reached the office and he knocked on the door, opened it, ushered her in and withdrew. Grassi was seated behind his desk signing papers. He didn’t even bother to look up.
‘Be quick, signora. I am busy.’
She placed herself in front of his desk and stood there in silence.
‘Well?’ he barked.
‘When I have your full attention, I have something to show you, chairman. I think you will find it interesting.’
His pen paused. His fleshy lips tightened. Reluctantly his eyes rose to hers. ‘I am told you have a message from Il Duce but I assume this is really about Signor Falco’s arrest. That is not my business. Go and talk to the police. You’re wasting my time.’ His eyes were travelling back to his documents when he caught sight of the envelope in her hand.
Isabella didn’t exactly hear his intake of breath – he was too good for that – but she saw his chest lift and there was a faint hitch in the rhythm of his breathing.
‘What now?’ he snapped.
She placed the brown envelope on her side of the desk and kept her good hand on it.
‘What was the Communist attack yesterday?’
He ran his fingers over his carefully waxed caesar-style hair, as if to hold his thoughts together by physical force. His round eyes half-closed while he worked out whether to tell her or not. She inched the envelope a fraction in his direction.
‘Your friend Carlo Olivera chose yesterday evening to come for his daughter. There was gunfire. Colonnello Sepe and his men were ready for him and cornered him in the shunting yard.’
‘He’s not my friend.’
He rolled his eyes as though she’d made a joke. ‘He was shot.’
Oh, Rosa. Bellina has brought you nothing but sorrow and shame. I am so sorry.
‘Now get out of my office,’ he ordered.
‘First, look at this.’ She placed the envelope under his nose on the desk. ‘Then, Chairman Grassi, we shall talk. About you and Il Duce.’
An hour Isabella waited and still Roberto didn’t come. She had no idea how many times she looked out of the windows of his apartment above the green door, scanning the street below, but it was too many. It wasn’t until the afternoon that it suddenly dawned on her that he would not be released until after dark, when the curfew kept people off the streets. When there was nothing but the wind and the town’s proud new buildings to watch him.
She did what she could with the mess in his rooms. She borrowed hessian sacks from Signora Russomanno, the elderly woman downstairs, and crammed as much of the destruction as she could inside them. As she scrubbed the darkroom from floor to ceiling to remove the chemicals that had been flung around it with venom, she cursed Grassi and swore to carve his heart out if he didn’t keep to his word. He had taken one look at the photograph and his lips turned a chalky white that he sought to disguise by lighting himself a cigar. But she saw the flame as he held it to the tip, the way it shook, and she knew that he knew that he had nowhere to run.
‘Get out,’ he said, and they were both surprised by the gruffness of his voice. As if it hadn’t been used for a long while. ‘Get out and don’t come back.’ He tore the photograph into a hundred pieces, returned the pieces to the envelope and slid it into his inside jacket pocket. ‘Leave.’
‘Chairman, you don’t imagine that that was the only print of it, do you?’
‘His studio was destroyed.’
She nodded. ‘Of course that was why. You ordered it to get rid of anything he may have on you. But Roberto Falco is not so foolish.’ She gave him a cold smile to hide the lie that was coming. ‘Trust me. That photograph is with someone in Rome who will be delivering it to Il Duce in person if he doesn’t hear from Roberto before tomorrow.’
She turned and walked back to the door. As she gripped the handle, she glanced back over her shoulder at the heavy figure hunched inside his grey cloud of tobacco smoke. His face was that of a man who was sharpening his knife.
‘Chairman, one more thing. Please arrange for me to take Rosa Bianchi out of the convent for a few hours today, maybe even overnight.’ She unleashed the smile once more and pinned it on her face. ‘You may not believe me, Chairman Grassi. You may decide that I am lying. But can you take that risk?’
Isabella found Davide Francolini crawling out from under a stone. An archway at the sports stadium had tumbled down on him, catching his shoulder, and though the damage to him was slight – some bruising and a gash to the side of his head – the damage to his pride was considerable. Isabella walked into the stadium just as he was brushing aside the offers of assistance from his workmen. It struck her as divine retribution. An eye for an eye. As you sow, so shall you reap. Use mortar that is mixed with too much sand and you will pay the price.
‘Signor Francolini,’ she said with no preamble, ‘a word in private, if you please.’
He was in an ill temper after the accident, rubbing blood off his cheek, and did not pay the attention he should have to the tone of her voice.
‘What is it, Signora Berotti? Can’t we deal with it later? I’m busy here.’
‘No.’
Realisation stirred in him then, some vague awareness that something wasn’t right. He ordered two workmen to set about clearing away the broken stonework and walked Isabella to a small office within the stadium. It had unplastered walls and electric wires protruding from them with naked tips. There was a metal table in the centre of the room and a telephone, but little else. By the time they entered, his manners had improved.
‘It’s good to see you again, Isabella,’ he smiled. ‘But I’m surprised to find you so far out of town. I thought your work was in the centre.’
‘I came to find you.’
‘I’d like to think that is a good sign,’ he laughed lightly, ‘but looking at your face I think I’d be mistaken. What’s wrong?’
‘This is wrong.’
Isabella threw the envelope containing Orrico’s money on the table.
Francolini didn’t pick it up. He regarded it through narrowed eyes, then turned them on Isabella. ‘What is that?’
‘A present from Signor Gaetan Orrico. I believe you know him.’
‘Yes. I work with him sometimes.’ Still he didn’t move.
‘As manager of one of the main quarries supplying us with stone, he must work with you constantly.’
‘Isabella, what is this about?’
�
��It’s about you taking bribes and cutting costs so tightly that buildings are cracking and drainpipes are falling off and arches are tumbling down. That’s what this is about.’
For the first time he approached the table. ‘He’s lying.’
‘There’s the envelope and that’s your name on it.’
He leaned over and picked it up. Instantly a frown darkened his face and Isabella knew he had expected the envelope to be heavier.
‘Orrico kept most of the payment in his drawer. He said he doesn’t like dealing with messengers. He mistook me for your messenger.’
‘Bloody fool.’
‘So you admit he’s passing you bribes.’
‘No. I admit nothing. The man is probably annoyed because I gave the latest contract to a different quarry in an attempt to improve quality. So he’s trying to make trouble for me.’
She could prove nothing. She knew that.
‘Signor Francolini, I have come to tell you this.’ She moved closer, her eyes fixed on his. ‘I will be checking and double-checking everything you do from now on. I will be keeping notes on everything that goes wrong, every little slip, every crack and crumble. I will send in the surveyors to examine the depth of foundations and to poke around in the corners that are unseen.’
‘Isabella, for God’s sake, this is —’
‘I will not let you destroy this town for the sake of your own greed.’
‘Greed?’ He was stung by the word. ‘This has nothing to do with greed.’
‘What is it then?’ Her anger slipped out and she had to reel it back in. ‘What are you trying to do to this beautiful town?’
‘Beautiful?’ The word exploded from him. ‘Beautiful? This is an abomination of a place. Can’t you see it, Isabella? It is based on lies and pretence with its fake Roman architecture and its fake farms. Pretending to be an ideal community when it is constructed on stinking lies. It is built on foul marshland and will one day sink back into it.’
‘Don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘Don’t destroy what you do not understand.’
He turned away from her, a tremor twisting his mouth. ‘I understand only too well the evil that is this town. This is not Italy.’ He threw an arm out towards the small square window. ‘Italy is up there in the mountains. Built on solid foundations, on ancient rock. Not on lies.’
‘Signor Francolini, what you say is treachery and would get you shot if I report it.’
His caramel eyes studied her as he slowly regained control. ‘No one would believe you, Isabella.’
‘You’re wrong. Many are questioning the accidents.’ Isabella could not bear to breathe the same air as this man any longer and headed towards the door. ‘I have warned you.’
‘Who are you to warn me?’
‘I am an architect. And I will see this town built.’ She opened the door and left.
38
‘No.’
‘You have to stop.’
‘No,’ Rosa said adamantly.
‘You have to.’
‘No, Carmela.’
‘You will go to hell.’
‘There’s no such place as hell.’
Carmela crossed herself fervently. ‘Holy Mother of God forgive you, Rosa Bianchi.’
‘I’m not Rosa Bianchi any more.’
The cropped ginger head bent down to Rosa’s level. ‘Who are you then?’
‘I am Rosa Olivera.’
‘That’s your father’s name.’
‘Well, now it’s mine.’
Carmela dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘But he is a Communist traitor, Rosa. You don’t want people to know that —’
‘I want the whole world to know that I am Carlo Olivera’s daughter. That way they’ll be afraid of me. They won’t dare treat me bad.’
Carmela rubbed her pale sandy eyelashes and thought long and hard about that. ‘Rosa,’ she said gently, ‘Mother Domenica told you he’s dead. That they shot him last night when —’
Rosa clamped a hand over her tall friend’s mouth. ‘Don’t say it,’ she hissed. ‘Mother Domenica is an evil liar who sups with the devil.’
Carmela crossed herself again and murmured a Hail Mary, but didn’t contradict Rosa’s statement. ‘But Rosa, you have to stop.’
‘No.’
They were hiding in the chapel under a row of spare habits at the back that smelled of women and of God. Rosa had broken into the box that contained the sacramental wafers and she was gorging on them as if they were sweets instead of unleavened bread.
‘I have to eat,’ she informed Carmela, ‘to make myself strong.’
‘Why?’
‘I need to go up into the mountains.’
They had to eat in silence. Not real silence, because Sister Agatha was reading aloud from the Bible about Samson while the rows of girls in grey bowed their heads and consumed their bowls of thin broth at the long refectory tables. Rosa had noticed before that Sister Agatha had a liking for Samson and often chose to read out verses from his adventurous life. Rosa liked the way he went around smiting lions and Philistines but she wasn’t so sure of the way he set fire to three hundred foxes, turning their tails into torches.
They had just reached the exciting part where Samson walks away with the massive gates of the city of Gaza, when Mother Domenica strutted into the room and Sister Agatha stopped mid-sentence. All the girls rose to their feet. Rosa stared down at her bowl. It was still half full. She was tempted to snatch it up and drink it quickly because she had an awful dread that whatever the Mother Superior was here for, it wasn’t good. Not for Rosa.
She heard the rapid tap-tap of footsteps approaching and heard the rustle of heavy black material. She didn’t look up.
A hand landed on her shoulder, fingers digging in with spite. ‘Come with me, Rosa Bianchi.’
Beside her Carmela drew a startled breath and turned worried eyes on her friend. The empty box of communion wafers rose to haunt them.
The men in purple robes were staring down at her again. She followed the Mother Superior into the room, dragging her feet, afraid of drowning in the cupboard with the pool of darkness, but the nun stepped aside to reveal another person in the room.
‘Hello, Rosa.’
Rosa wanted to say hello. She wanted to run forward, to fling her arms around the slender figure standing in the middle of the room, her back turned to the purple men. But something had gone wrong. It was the architect. The same one as before, of course it was. The same wild and lawless hair, the same elegant way of standing, but her face was different. It wasn’t the face that had walked with her through the streets of Bellina before. It had changed.
Rosa could see right inside it. The shutters had gone. And what she saw made her heart beat faster because what she saw was a way out of here. Rosa’s tongue had so much to say that it stuck to the roof of her mouth and all she could do was nod.
‘How are you?’ The gentle smile was still the same, but she carried her arm in a sling.
‘Answer Signora Berotti, girl.’
‘I’m well.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Rosa clamped her lips tight together to stop all the things she wanted to say spilling into the room and filling it right up to its high ceiling, so only a little clutch of words escaped her.
‘Are you here to take me away?’
‘Indeed I am, Rosa. I have permission to take you out just until tomorrow. Are you pleased?’
Rosa nodded.
‘Thank the signora,’ Mother Domenica commanded.
‘Thank you.’
But before the nun could say more, the architect seized hold of Rosa’s hand and marched her out of the room. Down the corridor without a glance to her right or left, and out into the courtyard where a vast blue sky seemed to be stretched so tight that it looked ready to split.
‘Wait!’
Isabella Berotti came to a halt. ‘What is it?’
‘Is my father hurt? I heard guns last night.’ She gripped the hand in hers hard.
‘Is he?’
‘That, my dear Rosa, is what you and I are going to find out.’
The architect’s house was empty. She seemed surprised. She walked around the rooms calling ‘Papa!’ but no one answered. The tall man with the glasses and the noisy laugh wasn’t there and Rosa could see that this was a problem, though she didn’t know why. Rosa stood quietly by the gramophone without actually touching it, though she wanted to, and waited for the architect to stop whisking through the house as if she were moving on hot coals. Something was wrong.
The Italian Wife Page 35
