Authors: Alex Preston
He hears them several minutes before he sees them. He is having lunch at the Giubbe Rosse. The bar has taken delivery of a crate of tomatoes from a group of friendly
contadini
who, in payment, are getting riotously drunk in a room at the back. Because of the noise inside, he is sitting at a round, glass-topped table in the piazza and eating the tomatoes on bread made with chestnut flour. It is not good, but with a glass of Chianti it is edible. It has turned cold and he is wearing George Keppel’s double-breasted ulster buttoned to his throat.
He is reading Lermontov’s
A Hero of Our Time,
which, barely a third of the way through, is having a powerful effect upon him. He realises the superfluous man is a Slavic counterpart to the Italian notion of
sprezzatura
, a kind of studied carelessness affected by all the young men who surround the Professor. Philip had it, and Mosley; Bruno, Elio and Alessandro have it in spades. Ada, too, he thinks with a wistful smile. He decides he needs to affect a little more
sprezzatura
himself. Played right it is almost indistinguishable from heroism.
He looks up from his book with bother. His knife is rattling on the glass surface of the table. He picks it up, puts it on his plate and continues to read. Now the plate begins to move on
the table, taking little hops and jumps until it smashes on the ground. A low rumbling that grows gradually louder until he feels the cobbles tremble beneath his feet.
‘Gianni, quickly,’ he shouts. The waiter comes to stand beside Esmond, who has risen breathlessly from his seat. The rumbling grows louder until all of the
contadini
are out in the square, throwing their caps in the air and cheering.
‘
Gli Americani!
’
‘
Gli Inglesi!
’
It takes a moment for Esmond to adjust once the first tank pulls through the triumphal arch and into the square. The smile stays on his face, the happiness flips in his stomach. The
contadini
stand in idiotic silence, their caps like shot birds at their feet.
‘
Porca Madonna,
’ Gianni whispers. Esmond’s smile finally gives way. There are now two tanks in the square, now three: a procession of them making their way over the cobbles and into the via Calimala. They come in a grey stream, thundering past the café. Some of the tables fall over at the vibration, their glass tops shattering. Each of the tanks bears on its side an unmistakable Iron Cross. White flags flutter from the Panzers’ cannons, but their turrets swivel, taking in the square until one points at the group standing amidst the tables and broken glass. A
contadino
with ruddy cheeks and the wounded blue eyes of a husky flinches. The tanks – Esmond counts sixteen – are followed by armoured personnel carriers, two enormous Hummel guns, and finally a fleet of ten covered Kübelwagens in which sit officers in the grey uniforms of the SD. Their jackets match the sky, Esmond thinks, as one of the cars stops in front of the group.
A young lieutenant leaps out and begins to speak in heavy Italian, looking past them as he passes out handbills on yellow paper. ‘We inform you that this city has been declared a site of specific strategic importance and will be occupied by the forces
of the
Großdeutsches Reich
indefinitely. All men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five should be ready to present themselves to the
Stadtskommandatur
within a day’s notice. Any resistance will be treated with the greatest severity. Please’ – a smile, thin – ‘enjoy your lunch.’
An hour later, Esmond is standing on the terrace at L’Ombrellino with Alessandro, who is looking at the town through George Keppel’s binoculars. The tanks have been arranged in formal lines in the Piazza della Signoria, the two Hummel guns on the Lungarno beside the Ponte Vecchio.
‘It looks like they’re basing themselves towards the station,’ Alessandro says. ‘All of the personnel carriers are heading that way. It’s only the tanks and artillery that are going to the centre of town. A show of force. Fuck!’
Elio is the first to arrive, his face flushed. He stands beside them on the terrace. An icy wind funnels down from the mountains. Ada comes to join them.
‘How many do you think are there?’
Alessandro puts down the binoculars and shakes his head. ‘Probably not that many, but they’re trying to make it look like a full-scale invasion. Twenty tanks, perhaps a thousand men.’
‘We can call on more than that, surely.’ She looks from Alessandro to Elio.
‘You forget’, Elio says, ‘the Fascists who’ll come crawling out of their holes. People like Carità, Koch – this is what they’ve been praying for.’
By early afternoon, they are all seated in the drawing room at L’Ombrellino. Esmond makes tea on the stove in the kitchen and brings it through to them. It is raining heavily, the city hidden under a grey wash. The Professor sits in a wing-back chair in front of the empty fireplace and blows on his tea, a standard lamp lit behind him.
‘Badoglio and the King have fled,’ he says. ‘They’re in Brindisi, well within Allied-held territory. But this alters everything. This is war, and on our doorstep.’
There is a murmur amongst the group. Esmond knows most of the men and women sitting around the dusty room. Bruno and Alessandro are there, of course, as are Antonio and Tosca. Bruno had gone from house to house on his bicycle, telling the news, ordering them up to L’Ombrellino. Maria Luigia sits on the divan next to Elio, chiding him for not eating enough. Gino Bartali is there in his cycling kit, peaked cap on his head. There is only one stranger in the room, in a shadowy corner, a wave of sculpted hair and bronzed skin and white teeth that flash whenever particular ironies are expressed. Esmond realises with surprise that this is Pretini, owner of the hair salon on the via Tornabuoni.
‘The Germans’, the Professor says, ‘have established headquarters in the Piazza San Marco, and taken over the university buildings towards Sanitissima Annunziata. There aren’t an enormous number yet, but enough to hurt us. And they’re well armed.’
‘What about the Allies?’ Alessandro asks. ‘Aren’t they supposed to be landing at Livorno? Weren’t they due to parachute into the countryside around Rome? Surely this is just a matter of a few days holing up here with Esmond and Ada until the Brits and Americans come and boot these fuckers out.’
The Professor shakes his head. ‘I spoke to the head of the
Giustizia e Libertà
cell in Milan, Ferruccio Parri. The Allies have been surprised at how quickly the Germans reinforced. They were expecting to sign the Armistice quickly, to be in Rome by early August, but Badoglio and the King dithered. The Allies are going to come up from the south, and it’s going to take time. We are in this for the long haul.’
‘So what now?’ It is Pretini who speaks, steepling his fingers and sitting back. He is wearing an expensive-looking worsted suit, well-polished ostrich loafers, a red bow-tie.
The Professor clears his throat. ‘The Germans have offered Italian soldiers a choice – they can either continue to fight alongside the Nazis or be sent to the camps. They’ll call up Florentine men in the next few days and offer them the same choice. So it’s a matter of hiding, fighting or – in all probability – dying.’
Bruno cuts in. ‘This villa is too close to the town. We can use it as a temporary base until we establish a permanent headquarters. Gino and I cycled up towards Monte Morello a few weeks ago. It’s wooded and there are caves, shepherds’ huts, plenty of routes into the mountains.’
The group continues to talk and plot well into the night. By the time Pretini drives off down the narrow lane after midnight, the plans are set. Antonio and Tosca are to go at once to Monte Morello. Bruno, Elio and Alessandro will take charge of rounding up fellow partisans in the city and driving them out to the new headquarters of the Resistance. Esmond and Ada will remain at L’Ombrellino until further notice, using the W/T to convey news from the city to the group in the hills.
The house feels empty when everyone has left. Esmond realises he’d grown used to having Alessandro there, a tough, confident presence on the floor below. Ada lies with her back to him and tugs his arms around her. ‘What are we going to do?’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’
‘With you two?’
‘I’m pregnant, I’m not disabled,’ she says, drawing herself out of his arms and turning to look at him in the dim light. ‘I want to – how do you say it? – rock the boat, not a cradle. I’m going to work for the Resistance until I go into labour. If the Germans are
still here after I have the baby, I’ll give it to the nuns and carry on fighting.’
‘But what if something happens to you?’
She pauses, takes his hand, her voice gentler. ‘There’s too much
what if?
with you, darling. Who knows what’s going to happen? I trust my friends, I trust you, I trust that things are going to work themselves out. Now let’s sleep. There are big days ahead.’
Over the next weeks, they hardly leave the bedroom. They take turns at the W/T, sitting under the triptych, reading and repeating the instructions that come through before speaking them into the small silver microphone on the desk or tapping out endless streams of Morse. At first only Ada can do this, but eventually Esmond, although slow and checking his crib with every word, manages brief messages. Pretini, whose code name is
Penna
– the Feather – has another small radio in the back room of his salon. The partisan camp at Monte Morello has a more sophisticated transmitter that the Professor pilfered from the university’s physics department.
The Professor, who comes up to L’Ombrellino as often as he can, tells them of the Germans flooding into the city by road and rail. They have taken over the Excelsior, the Grand, the Savoy. They stand in khaki uniforms in the Piazza della Signoria armed with Mauser submachine-guns, Berettas and MAB 38s requisitioned from surrendered Italian troops. The Gestapo and SD have set up in the cells of the monastery attached to San Marco. The Professor says, with a dry chuckle, that SS Captain Alberti, head of the SD in Florence, has taken Savonarola’s cell for himself and sits beneath Fra Angelico’s gorgeous frescoes as he spins his web across the city.
Mussolini, shipped from one secret location to another by his Italian captors, is finally located by the Germans at Campo Imperatore high in the Abruzzo Apennines. It would – as the Professor tells Esmond and Ada over dinner – have been easy for them to walk through the gates and seize him, so poorly guarded was the old ski resort. Instead the Germans launched a paratrooper raid, with the dashing Otto Skorzeny crashing his glider into the mountainside above the hotel and overpowering the guards. Now Mussolini has been flown to Vienna, where he is photographed with Hitler. A week later, the Germans declare northern Italy the Italian Social Republic, led by Mussolini from its
de facto
capital at Salò on Lake Garda.
In Florence, SS Captain Alberti prefers to keep a certain distance from the ugly necessities of occupation. He is an aesthete and is using his time in the city to further his knowledge of the
quattrocento
. What he likes, he takes. Göring and Hitler have both sent ‘art buyers’ to Florence to snap up the city’s treasures at joke prices. The masterpieces of the Uffizi and the Bargello stay hidden in the cellars and laundry houses and guest wings of grand Renaissance palazzi.
The Professor tells them that Alberti has dismissed Count Gaetano and replaced him with the hunchbacked Raffaele Mangianello, who cruises around town on his Aprilia motorcycle, waving a gun. The new Podestà’s first act in office – as much from personal interest as to curry favour with the Germans – is to open the Ufficio Affari Ebraici. His aim, boasted on ten thousand paper flyers, is to make Florence the first
Judenfrei
city in Italy. The day after his appointment, a group of
squadristi
raid the Great Synagogue, hauling out copies of the Torah, scrolls and sacred writings onto the steps and burning them in the street. Then artworks, silver menorahs and golden lanterns are taken out, piled in the back of a van, and sent with Mangianello’s compliments
to Alfred Rosenberg’s Library for the Jewish Question in Frankfurt-on-Main.
Carità and Mangianello are old friends, the Professor recalls sadly, and through the intercession of the new Podestà the former electrician swiftly becomes one of the most powerful men in the city. He is named head of the Ufficio Politico Investigativo, a branch of the Republican Guard styled on the Gestapo. Declaring himself the ‘Biting Axe of Florence’, he leads a group of a hundred thugs and hangers-on – the
Banda Carità
. He requisitions a grey stone apartment block in the via Bolognese which becomes his Villa Triste: the site of brutal interrogations, a storehouse for his enormous weapons cache and a place to feast and frolic with his mistress, Milly. The Professor tells them everything now with an apologetic air, taking off his spectacles and wiping them with a handkerchief, looking towards them with old, watery eyes.
Despite the Professor’s visits and the constant companionship of the wireless, Esmond and Ada feel increasingly cut off in the house on the hill. Vegetables are still plentiful in the garden, but they have run out of meat and milk, butter and eggs. Ada is growing thinner as her belly fattens, the melonish bump sticking out from beneath accordion ribs. Esmond tries to hunt partridges with Tatters as Alessandro had, but he’s unwilling to use bullets unnecessarily and so only fires when he has a clear shot. Even then he often misses. After his fifth morning hunting, when he has used sixteen of the thirty bullets he has left and has nothing more to show for it than one small pigeon, he gives up. The bread ration in the city has been reduced to two hundred grams per person; even so, the Professor brings them several grey chestnut-flour loaves when he comes. Esmond makes Ada eat spinach with every meal, for the sake of the baby.
The cold and rain that marked the first weeks of the German
occupation have given way to brilliant skies, cool nights of fresh, mountain-like air. Esmond feels gloriously healthy, rising early to go running with Tatters in the hills above Bellosguardo, feeling an extraordinary physical lightness, which he knows to be youth. He is always careful, keeping to the mule-tracks, ducking into bushes at the sound of an engine, but he wouldn’t give up those runs in the morning light for anything. The dog bounces alongside him, pink tongue flapping wild and wet as they gallop along the pale rises.