Tuscan Rose (42 page)

‘Nerezza never made that trip to Paris to tell Baron Derveaux what she had intended to,’ she said to Madre Maddalena. ‘Why?’

She laid out the notebook and the letters side by side. The date in March had been crossed out. Was it an unhappy memory? Nerezza had received a letter from the Baron in May and soon afterwards she had written to her husband, Ferdinando, wanting to see him although there was an obvious coldness between them.

Rosa sat back and sighed. She knew she had been brought to the convent in December 1914 as a newborn. She looked at the two dates again: March 1914 and December 1914, nine months
apart. Her heart gave a jolt. Why had she not seen the obvious before?

‘Oh!’ she said, standing up and looking at Madre Maddalena. The knowing feeling in her stomach told her that she was right. ‘The date that has been crossed out is the date I was conceived!’

‘The silver key was in your wrappings,’ said Madre Maddalena. ‘If the villa’s cook put it there, then it’s possible you are Nerezza’s daughter. The timing makes perfect sense. And the fact that the convent is well known to the Scarfiotti family could be the reason you were brought here.’

Madre Maddalena read the letters from the Baron Derveaux and Nerezza’s husband again herself, but could make no more sense of them than Rosa already had.

When it was time to part, Rosa said, ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am that you agreed to see me. When I was separated from you, I felt as if part of my heart was missing.’

The nun’s eyes misted. ‘I’m glad of it too,’ she said. ‘And when the war is over, I want you to bring your husband and children to see me.’

‘Truly?’ Rosa asked. She was surprised. The only men permitted to pay personal visits to the nuns of Santo Spirito were blood relatives.

‘Oh, yes, I intend for there to be changes around here,’ said Madre Maddalena with a smile. ‘I still believe in having a separate sanctuary in which to worship and pray to God—but we need to be of earthly use too.’

Rosa made her way to the hospital the following morning still feeling agitated by her discovery. Madre Maddalena had asked her to bring the notebook again the following week so they could put together more pieces of the puzzle. Until then, Rosa had to wrestle with her thoughts alone. If Nerezza’s relationship with her husband had been antagonistic, she might have been less than thrilled to find herself pregnant with his child. Rosa was surprised to discover the idea did not hurt her the way it might have if she
had learnt she was unwanted several years before. Now that she was reconciled with Madre Maddalena, her search for her roots came from a desire for understanding rather than her emotions. Or so she thought.

Rosa was so caught up in the mystery that she was halfway to the hospital before she realised something odd was happening around her. People were out on the streets much earlier than usual and they looked…
happy
! Cafés were open again, although they had nothing to offer other than ersatz coffee and sugarless cakes. Rosa wondered what had happened to make the grim mood of Florence change so dramatically. Had Italy surrendered? No, that would have produced an anxious mood with people wondering what the Allies intended to do to them. What then? Had some miracle forced the Allies off Italian soil—like the closing of the Red Sea on Pharaoh’s army?

Rosa stopped a policeman to ask him. He stared at her in disbelief. ‘You haven’t heard? Mussolini has been deposed!’

Rosa still hadn’t taken in the news when she reached the hospital. But she knew it must be true when the matron embraced her.

‘I’ve smashed all that bastard’s pictures!’ she told Rosa gleefully.

Even the patients who were without sufficient pain medication brightened with the news. One elderly patient wanted to waltz with Rosa until she convinced him she would be happier if he stayed in bed. Dottor Greco told Rosa that Mussolini had been ousted by the Fascist Grand Council, which included Galeazzo Ciano, the dictator’s own son-in-law. King Victor Emmanuel, who Mussolini had reduced to a figurehead, had taken on the role of commander-in-chief of the Italian armed forces, and Generale Badoglio was now the prime minister in Mussolini’s place.

‘But that means the war will continue,’ said Rosa. ‘How could that be good news?’

‘I don’t think that the war will go on now,’ said Dottor Greco. ‘The Grand Council ousted Mussolini because he insisted that Italy continue to fight although the country is on the verge of collapse.’

Mussolini was imprisoned high in the Abruzzi Apennines. Rosa thought it justice for all the suffering he had caused those, including herself, who had been imprisoned while he was in power.

When she had finished her shift at the hospital, she rushed to Le Murate prison to see Antonio.

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen now,’ she told him. ‘But the guard thinks that political prisoners and those who made only minor fascist breaches will be released.’

Rosa expected that Antonio would be delighted by the news. Instead he looked at her with reproach.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I wonder what Hitler will do when he finds out that the Italians have ditched their leader,’ he said.

Rosa bit her lip. She had wondered about that too. ‘The Allies are already in Italy and moving towards the north,’ she said, repeating the opinion Dottor Greco had given her earlier. ‘The Germans are retreating. Once Italy and the Allies make peace, the Italian army won’t be standing in the way of the progress of the Allied forces. The Germans will be finished.’

‘Yes, let’s hope so,’ said Antonio, looking unconvinced.

For the next few weeks, the mood of jubilation at Mussolini’s demise continued. Although the fascists remained in power and the racial laws were still in place, political prisoners were being freed daily. Rosa took it as a sign that Antonio would soon be released too. But with the possibility of peace so close, why were the Allies still bombing Italian cities?

‘Do you really think Italy will sign an armistice with the Allies?’ a patient asked Dottor Greco while he and Rosa were changing his dressings. ‘I’ve heard that Generale Badoglio has given assurances to the Germans that we are still on their side.’

‘Generale Badoglio has to conduct the talks with the Allies in secret,’ Dottor Greco replied. ‘He doesn’t want Italy to be walked over like the Allies did to Germany after the Great War.’

Although the general consensus was that things would soon get better, Rosa shared Antonio’s fear that the longer it took to sign the rumoured armistice, the more chance the Germans had of regrouping and invading Italy. If people on the street were spreading rumours that the Italians were about to join the Allies, the German command must have the same suspicions.

Rosa was fearful for the safety of her children and their guardians too. If Germany invaded Switzerland, what would they do to the Italian refugees? She couldn’t think about Nerezza and her mysterious past when the people she loved were in immediate danger. The only consolation was the good news one of the guards at the prison gave her.

‘We are getting directions every day to free someone,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we will receive an order to release your husband soon. After all, he is one of the minor offenders.’

When Rosa told Antonio the news he was pleased. ‘We will get the children, Giuseppina and our cousins out of Switzerland and take them south,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, as long as I’m not in prison I can do something. I’ve been sitting here with my hands tied, unable to do anything to protect my family.’

Rosa brought out some of the items she and Antonio had hidden away in the apartment. More people were making appointments at the furniture shop and she had to enlist Ylenia to help her. As people became more confident that Florence would not be bombed, they once again turned their attention to furnishings and the finer things of life. Between the hospital, visiting Antonio, keeping the shop running and writing to the children, time passed quickly for Rosa—but not quickly enough. Why was it taking so long to get Antonio out of prison?

One evening when Rosa was playing the piano in the apartment she remembered the day that Nerezza had ‘possessed’ her while she was playing the Bösendorfer at the Trevis’ home. Rosa stopped in the middle of her practice and went to the drawing room to look at Nerezza’s notebook again. She was unable to believe that she
hadn’t figured out earlier what was so obvious. When Nerezza wrote her letter to Baron Derveaux telling him that she intended to visit him in Paris with news of ‘great importance’, she wasn’t aware that he had married. She had written to him a few weeks after 13 March, when she would have had a suspicion that she was pregnant. From Ferdinando’s letter, Rosa understood that he had been in Libya for some time by then. It was impossible for him to have fathered Nerezza’s child, while the Baron Derveaux had only recently gone to Paris. Rosa sat down, dizzy with the shock. When Nerezza found out the Baron Derveaux had married her friend, she had tried to see her husband as soon as possible so she could pass off the child as belonging to him.

Oh my God! thought Rosa, remembering Clementina’s birthday party and the man with gangly legs and winged eyebrows. The Baron Derveaux is my father!

Rosa had always felt a yearning to know her mother but had not put as much emphasis on the identity of her father. It suddenly struck her as odd. But then maybe it was a result of having been brought up in a convent of ‘mothers’ and ‘sisters’ and being surrounded by paintings of the Christ child with the Madonna.

Now, instead of understanding her origins better, Rosa felt more confused than ever. All she knew of Baron Derveaux were the glimpses of him she’d seen at the villa, his letter to Nerezza, his polite manner, and Miss Butterfield’s admonition that he was ‘like a child himself’. It wasn’t enough to piece together a true picture of the man.

Rosa rushed to the mirror and tried to find his face in hers, his limbs in her muscular arms and legs. But the reflection gave her nothing. The Baron Derveaux saw something in me, however, she thought, remembering the curious way he had looked at her. She understood clearly now what it had been: glimpses of Nerezza.

T
he hospital was still suffering shortages but, with the improved mood of the city, more volunteers were signing up to help. Rosa, Gina and Fiamma were sent to a palazzo on the outskirts of the city that was being used as a hospital for Allied prisoners of war of the officer class. Although Italy followed the Geneva Convention, the injured prisoners of war had most likely received lesser treatment than civilians in hospitals. With the Allies approaching, the Italians had to be seen to be doing more, which was why the hospital sent three of its qualified nurses to take over from the military medical staff at the palazzo.

‘Well, they are faring better than I expected,’ said Gina, after she, Rosa and Fiamma had inspected the medical charts of the patients and the conditions of the hospital.

Rosa had wondered if she would find those Australian pilots at the palazzo, but everyone there was from the infantry. The rule about no communication beyond medical subjects with the prisoners of war was enforced by the guards, but Rosa gleaned from the men’s conversations with each other that they were expecting the Allies to arrive at any moment and repatriate them.

After a few days of working at the military hospital, it became apparent to Rosa why it was so clean and organised. Any patient
who was capable of getting out of bed did something to help the others, whether it was folding sheets, rolling bandages or helping another patient to shave. Rosa found an American officer, the day after an operation on his abdomen, mopping the corridor with one hand while holding his saline drip in the other.

‘Back to bed with you,’ she scolded him. ‘Do you want those stitches to open up?’

He smiled at Rosa’s browbeating but did as he was told. ‘It’s unmanly to leave you nurses running around from bed to bed without pitching in,’ he told her.

There was a New Zealander officer at the hospital who had lost both his legs. When Rosa was bathing him one day, and the guards were out of earshot, he asked her in his clipped accent, ‘Do you think my fiancée will still want me?’

Rosa avoided meeting his gaze when she answered. ‘If she’s worth it, she will,’ she told him. ‘If she’s not, you will find someone better.’

Rosa arrived one day at the hospital to find the guards celebrating with the patients. When the men saw her surprise, they laughed.

‘Ah, here is someone who doesn’t listen to the radio,’ one of the guards said, holding up his wineglass. ‘Generale Badoglio signed the armistice with the Allies! The war is over!’

Rosa tried to take in the words. ‘It’s really over?’

‘What does the end of the war with Italy mean for me?’ asked the American officer Rosa had found cleaning the corridor after his stomach operation. ‘I’m not sick enough to be repatriated. I can still kick some German ass.’

‘You will wait here until we receive instructions where to send you to meet up with your commanding officers,’ the guard told him.

‘But the Italians have been ordered not to hinder the Allies in any way,’ protested the American. ‘I can walk out of here right now.’

‘You could,’ the guard told him. ‘But it would be wiser to stay here. We have orders to protect you in case the Germans come. You will be safer with your unit than you will be on your own.’

Rosa went to the window. The war was over? Across the street she could see youths and some housewives pulling down a fascist insignia on the building opposite and smashing it to the ground. Did the end of the war mean the end of fascism too? Rosa hoped so.

On her way to visit Antonio, Rosa witnessed more celebrations as the news spread. People cheered and danced in the streets. In one piazza, students piled fascist propaganda—black shirts, slogans, posters and books—onto a bonfire.

‘Luciano,’ Rosa whispered. ‘If only you had lived to see Italy now. How things have turned! After twenty-one years of repression, we are free!’

The guard at the entrance to the prison grinned at Rosa. ‘I have good news for you,’ he said. ‘Your husband will be released three weeks from today.’

Rosa almost danced on the spot. It was too good to believe: Antonio safe and at home again with her.

In the visiting room, she and Antonio gazed into each other’s eyes. ‘When they release you,’ she told him, ‘I’m going to hold onto you and never let you go.’

That evening, Rosa and Ylenia watched the celebrations from the apartment window before listening to the radio and the formal announcement of the armistice. Afterwards, they put clean sheets on all the beds in the apartment. As soon as things were settled and the Germans were ousted from the north, Rosa would fetch the children and their guardians from Lugano. She washed the dust out of Ambrosio’s and Allegra’s food bowls and placed them on the kitchen floor, imagining how wonderful it would be to have the cat and the dog under her feet again.

When Rosa awoke the next morning in the shadows of dawn, she realised that once her family was reunited she had other things to take care of as well. She would contact Signora Corvetto to see if they could arrange Clementina’s removal from the Villa Scarfiotti. She needed to get away from the Marchesa. Signora Corvetto could persuade Clementina to attend finishing school in Switzerland or even to study in America. After that, Rosa intended
to visit the Baron Derveaux and show him Nerezza’s notebook. She would ask him if he knew what had happened the night she was born, but was undecided if she would tell him that he was her father.

Given the celebrations of the night before, Rosa was surprised to find a grim silence had settled over Florence when she stepped out onto the street. Signora Chianisi, who owned the dress boutique next to the furniture shop, told Rosa that the telephone lines to Rome had been cut and she couldn’t get through to her sister. ‘Something is happening,’ she said.

Rosa had some accounts she needed to settle before she went to the hospital and she worked at the shop until mid-morning. As she was closing up, Signora Chianisi approached her.

‘I found out what’s going on,’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘The Germans are swarming through Italy. They have already occupied Bologna, Padova and Verona.’

The news was a slap in the face. Rosa hurried to the hospital, where she found that the patients who had sufficiently recovered were gone and, even worse, so were the guards and the military medical staff.

Gina was in the kitchen setting out the lunch trays. ‘All those who were well enough to walk cleared out as soon as they heard the news,’ she told Rosa. ‘The Germans are spreading like a fire. They are heading towards Florence and will be here before we know it.’

‘Germans!’ Rosa glanced at the ward. There were about fifteen men left: amputees and those too ill to leave their beds. ‘The guards were supposed to stay to protect them,’ she whispered.

Gina shrugged. ‘They were listening to the BBC radio with the patients when suddenly there was a mad panic to get away. The American officer is waiting for you in the cellar with a few of the others. You’d better see them before they go.’

Rosa found the American officer dressed in his uniform and sharpening a knife. A British and a Canadian officer were in their uniforms too.

‘That damn Badoglio,’ the American swore. ‘The fool never closed the Brenner Pass. The Germans have been building up their forces all over Italy waiting for this moment. If that fool of a guard hadn’t told us to stay, we could have got away days ago. Now I’ve heard that Badoglio and the King have fled Rome for the south without leaving any instructions for the Italian army.’

‘Surely that can’t be true!’ Rosa cried. ‘Surely the King and Generale Badoglio couldn’t be so dishonourable as to abandon their people to the Germans! Not after having assured them of peace!’

The American officer didn’t answer her. Rosa felt ashamed of her country.

‘You can’t leave in those uniforms,’ she told the men. ‘Let me fetch some of my husband’s clothes for you.’

Rosa hurried to her apartment and returned with Antonio’s pants and shirts. Gina drew maps for the men of the border crossings and marked where she understood the Allies to be, while Rosa wrote out Italian phrases that they might need:
Show me where the Germans are; Do you have food you can spare for me?

Once they were ready, the officers went to the ward to bid farewell to their fellow soldiers.

‘What about me?’ asked the New Zealander officer whose legs had been amputated.

‘I will stay here to look after you,’ Rosa told him. ‘You are protected by the Geneva Convention.’

When the American officer and the others were ready to leave, they each shook hands with Rosa, Gina and Fiamma and thanked them.

‘Italian women are brave,’ the Canadian officer told Gina. ‘Even if their men are cowards.’

‘I never knew your name,’ the American officer said to Rosa. ‘I am Lieutenant Edward Barrett.’

‘And I am Sister Rosa Parigi.’

Lieutenant Barrett smiled. ‘In my mother’s garden in California she grows every kind of rose. Her favourite has always been
Rosa
Toscana
, Tuscan Rose. That’s how I will remember you, Sister Parigi: our brave Tuscan Rose.’

The nurses watched the soldiers depart. It was awful seeing them leave, despite their bravado. With the Germans at every point in the north, their chances of joining their armies were slim. But Rosa knew that if they had stayed, their chances of surviving German prisoner-of-war camps were even slimmer.

The sight of German tanks rumbling into Florence chilled Rosa. She sensed that this was a struggle in which she could no longer play a supporting role. Every Italian was going to have to choose a side and fight. When she saw the tanks position themselves in front of the Duomo, she made up her mind that the Germans were her enemy.

Rosa moved some of her things to the hospital and stayed there overnight with Gina and Fiamma. She left Ylenia what money and rations she could.

One afternoon, Rosa left the hospital early to close up Antonio’s shop again. A young woman with a child in a pram and frightened eyes entered the shop while Rosa was packing away the accounts books.

‘Can I help you?’ Rosa asked her.

The woman reached under the baby’s blanket and took out an ebony photograph frame. It had pietra dura floral plaques and was so exquisite it could have been a museum piece.

‘It is beautiful,’ Rosa said, admiring the craftsmanship.

‘It was my mother’s.’

Rosa studied the woman. She was no more than twenty-five but there were deep lines on her face. The terror in her eyes was unmistakable.

‘You’re Jewish?’ Rosa asked.

The woman nodded.

‘Do you have somewhere to hide?’

The woman started at Rosa’s question but decided to trust her. ‘My neighbours have a house in the country. They are going to hide us there.’

Rosa took out the cash book. ‘I’ll pay you for the frame and give you a receipt,’ she told the woman. ‘But I won’t sell this. I’ll put it in the safe. You can come and get it back again when…it’s safe to do so.’

Rosa and the woman exchanged glances, realising that it may never be ‘safe’ again. The Allies had bungled their occupation of Italy after the armistice. They could have taken over quickly and outsmarted Hitler if there hadn’t been so much to-ing and fro-ing with Generale Badoglio over the terms of the armistice.

Rosa watched the woman hurry down the street with the pram, looking over her shoulder at every corner. A terrible storm was coming to Italy and Rosa sensed it was going to be much worse than the bombings.

She was pulling down the grille over the window and securing it when Signora Chianisi ran up to her.

‘Signora Parigi,’ she cried. ‘It’s terrible. Have you heard?’

Oh God, what now? thought Rosa. She shook her head.

‘They’ve rescued him.’

‘Who?’ asked Rosa, her mind racing to think if Signora Chianisi had any relatives fighting overseas and wondering why news of their rescue would be terrible.

‘Mussolini!’

‘What?’ said Rosa, straightening.

‘German paratroopers stormed the place where he was being held and rescued him. He is our leader again!’

Rosa sank back against the grille. She remembered seeing a film with Antonio about a vampire. Although his pursuers shot the monster and pushed him off a bridge, he could not be killed. He rose stronger and more lethal each time. Mussolini was like that vampire.

‘What do you think will happen now?’ asked Signora Chianisi. ‘Should I close my shop?’

Rosa shook her head, thinking of Antonio in prison. Rosa had heard that there were whole units in the Italian army who didn’t accept the armistice. They
wanted
to fight on the side of the
Germans. They might take Antonio—or he might be sent as cheap labour to Germany.

‘I don’t know,’ Rosa replied, feeling sick. ‘I don’t know.’

Signora Chianisi pursed her lips. ‘We should have waited out the war on Germany’s side and taken our medicine when it was defeated,’ she said. ‘Now both the Allies and the Germans despise us as traitors. Don’t you agree?’

Rosa looked at Signora Chianisi. ‘I don’t think we should ever have entered this war in the first place. But if we did have to fight, it shouldn’t have been on the side of a madman.’

A few days later, Rosa saw notices appearing on public buildings proclaiming that young men and returning soldiers must join the army of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the new government of Italy, to fight the Allies. Anyone who did not enlist within five days would be shot. At the same time, Rosa heard rumours of men hiding in the forests and hills around Florence—anti-fascists, communists, ex-soldiers, escaped Allied prisoners of war and young men avoiding conscription or being sent to Germany to work. These men wanted to fight the Germans. More notices appeared warning that anyone who assisted these rebels would be executed. What people hadn’t expected was that innocent citizens would be rounded up and murdered each time a German soldier was killed by the partisans.

‘I’ve heard it’s ten Italians for each German soldier killed,’ said Fiamma one day when she, Gina and Rosa were checking the supply cabinet. They had received no new instructions from the hospital and had not contacted them in case they were called back. The Allied prisoners of war at the makeshift hospital needed them, so the three nurses did their best to muster what supplies they could on the black market.