Authors: Belinda Alexandra
At dawn, Luciano came with a band from the Flock to move their comrades. First, they dug a grave for Marisa. Rosa and Fiamma placed wildflowers in her hair and a bunch in her hands before she was put in the ground. Rosa could not bring herself to look at Luciano’s face, afraid of the pain she would see there.
Afterwards they moved through the forest towards the new camp. The injured were to be taken to the barn of a sympathetic farmer.
Luciano fell into step with Rosa. ‘The double agent that Orietta has been tracking,’ he said quietly, ‘I believe he is the one who gave the Germans the location of the camp. I know that Orietta returned to Borgo San Lorenzo two days ago. I want you to go there and tell her what happened to the Flock. It might help her to pinpoint who the agent is.’
After the German attack, both the Flock and the Staff broke their bands into smaller divisions. While Fiamma stayed with the injured men near Vicchio, Rosa went to Luciano’s camp near a farmhouse in the Mugello Valley. The farmer’s wife gave Rosa a floral dress for her mission into Borgo San Lorenzo. It was agreed that she should change her appearance in case anyone recognised her from her last visit. Rosa was touched because it was obviously the woman’s prettiest dress and had been kept for special occasions. The woman’s daughter cut Rosa’s hair and bleached it blonde. She had been a hairdresser in Sesto Fiorentino but had come back to live with her parents when her husband joined the army. He was now a prisoner of war in Germany.
‘Ah, Jean Harlow!’ the women cooed when the final result was revealed. ‘
Bella! Stupenda!
’
There had been a time when bleached hair was the realm of prostitutes in Italy, but Hollywood had changed that. Even though American films had been banned during the war, it didn’t stop young Italian women from imitating movie stars and dying their hair. Rosa had thought that blonde hair wouldn’t suit her dark skin and eyes, but the colour was not unflattering and did make her look younger. She plucked her thick eyebrows into arches and transformed herself into a young coquette. She didn’t wear make-up, but freshened her complexion by pinching her cheeks. The picture was completed when the farmer wheeled out Rosa’s means of transport: a bicycle with a gelato cart attached to the back of it. On the canopy were the words
Luigi’s Gelato
.
‘Be careful on the road,’ Luciano warned Rosa and the farmer, who was taking her part of the way in a donkey cart because his truck had been requisitioned by the Germans. The Allies were bombing vehicles on roads and gangs of bandits roamed the forest claiming to be partisans when they were nothing more than thieves and rapists. Luciano hated them with a passion because they turned the farmers against the partisans. ‘If I catch any,’ he vowed, ‘I will hang them.’
The farmer dropped Rosa off some distance out of Borgo San Lorenzo. By the time she reached the town her thighs were raw and her calves were aching. Although the gelato cart was empty, it had been difficult to negotiate the hills and the holes in the road that had been caused by shelling. Unlike her first visit, this time there were two German soldiers patrolling the main road into town. Rosa wondered why. Fortunately, Borgo San Lorenzo was a large town and it would be easier for her to lie that she had a cousin she was going to help there than it would have been with the smaller villages in the valley. Rosa slowed down when she reached the patrol. One of the soldiers waved her on but the other one stopped her.
‘What’s in your cart?’ he asked her.
‘It’s empty,’ she told him truthfully. ‘I will fill it when I reach my cousin’s store.’
‘What will you fill it with?’ asked the soldier.
‘With grenades,’ said Rosa, smiling.
The soldier smiled back. Rosa’s hunch had worked. He’d stopped her because he thought she was pretty, not because he suspected her. He was younger than she was and had a friendly face. He didn’t look like he belonged in a brutal war.
‘You sell gelato?’ he asked.
‘Only around the main streets and the piazza when my cousin can’t find someone else to do it.’ Rosa hoped the soldier’s questioning would end there.
His face turned serious. ‘I’m afraid business might be bad here today,’ he said. ‘I’d stay away from the centre of town, if I were you. There’s something you don’t want to see.’
The other soldier on guard coughed as if to remind his colleague that he wasn’t supposed to be friendly with the local population. The first soldier stepped back and waved Rosa on, much to her relief. She was puzzled by what he had said. Why would business be bad today? It was a warm, spring day: a perfect day for enjoying gelato.
Her sense that something was wrong increased when she rode in the direction of the hotel where she had stayed with Orietta. The shutters on the houses were closed despite the fine weather, and the few people who were out on the streets moved in haste and with stupefied expressions on their faces. Rosa caught the eye of a baker closing the grille of his shop. ‘Don’t go towards the town centre,’ he told her. Behind him, Rosa saw his wife. She was crying into her apron.
The hotel was near the centre of town so Rosa had little choice but to head in that direction. She noticed as she approached it that there were more German soldiers and fascist militiamen out on the streets. She wondered if there had been a crackdown. In that case, Orietta might have already fled the town. She was considering what to do when she approached a street lined with trees. A policeman flashed her a sarcastic smile and waved her forward. Rosa cycled down the street and straight into a sight that would haunt her forever. Halfway down the street and onwards, from every tree dangled the corpse of an executed Italian. The victims had been hanged with wire. Rosa was too far down the street now to turn back without drawing attention to herself. The Germans had executed the victims as an example to the Italian population. Each had a sign hung around his neck: this man was a partisan; this man helped Jews; this man deserted the army. Some of them had lost control of their bladders and bowels when they were hanged. Some had nearly been decapitated by the thin wire. Their hands were tied but not their feet and it was evident that their deaths had not been quick. Rosa felt the darkness inside her heart grow with each corpse she passed.
Under one tree a family was gathered, weeping. A man lay prostrate on the ground under the corpse of a boy no older than
fifteen.
Out after curfew
his sign read. Rosa felt her blood boil. The sight of the corpses did not frighten her; she had long got over the fear of dying. They made her murderous. The rest of the corpses belonged to partisans and those who had helped them. Soldiers and fascist militiaman paraded the street to stop anyone from cutting the bodies down.
Rosa was sure now that Orietta must have left the town. It was too dangerous for any partisan or
staffetta
to stay. She felt for the citizens who had helped the partisans or Jews and were now in danger of reprisals. She wondered if Orietta had discovered the identity of the double agent whom she had been tracking when Rosa last saw her. Surely much of this was the result of his work.
When Rosa was nearly at the end of the street, she slammed on the brakes of her bicycle. The last corpse was that of a woman. Her white skirt flapped in the breeze. One of her sandals had fallen off. The other was still on her foot. They were wedge sandals with bows on the ankle and peep toes: the shoes of a well-dressed woman. A picture flashed into Rosa’s mind. She saw Orietta eating ravioli and wearing her silk taffeta dress the night Rosa met her to collect the money for the Flock. To be chicly dressed was part of her disguise.
‘Oh God! No!’ Rosa cried, edging towards the tree. She looked up. The ground shifted beneath her feet when she recognised the face of her beloved Orietta. Around her neck was the word
Spy
. Rosa stumbled backwards. She let go of her bicycle and it toppled over, taking the cart with it. A militiaman appeared next to Rosa.
‘Did you know her?’ he demanded. ‘She wasn’t from this town. Are you a
staffetta
too?’
Rosa had grazed her knees when she had fallen. She stood up and looked at the militiaman but was unable to answer. She had no words for him; she had no words to express this horror. The fascist took her dumbness for that of a simple girl with a weak stomach who had come across an unpleasant sight.
‘Move along,’ he hissed. ‘Get out of here!’
Rosa barely felt her legs move beneath her as she tried to remount her bicycle. In the end, she ran along beside it until she
turned a corner and was out of view of the fascist. She sat down on a step and collapsed against a door. Of all the terrible things she had seen, this would be the one that would break her, she was sure of it. She couldn’t think clearly. She dry-retched into her hands. Orietta! Lovely, sweet Orietta!
‘Well, you caught the famous
staffeta
,’ she heard a man’s voice say.
Rosa’s spine tingled. She looked up. Her heart almost stopped when she realised she was leaning against the door to the police station. The voice had come from an open window. She grabbed her bicycle and had started to move away when the man spoke again. ‘If it eases your conscience, you can be thankful that the Germans have paid you generously for your information.’
Rosa stopped in her tracks. Her shock subsided and the military discipline she had been training herself for took over. She smoothed her skirt and hair and put the stand down on her bicycle, pretending to adjust her cart while keeping her face hidden. She grabbed her handbag from the bicycle basket; her pistol was hidden inside.
The door to the police station opened. In her peripheral vision, Rosa saw a man in civilian clothes step out. She smelled musk aftershave and expensive cigarettes. The man passed her and she felt his shadow cross with her own. Glancing up she caught his profile: Emanuele. He walked down the street and turned the corner. Rosa released the stand and climbed on her bicycle, following him.
His only weakness is that he loves the high life and isn’t good at depriving himself if the occasion calls for it.
Rosa’s blood chilled when she recalled Orietta’s words. She understood what had happened. Emanuele was the double agent and he’d been paid for informing on Orietta. Rosa knew now why the Germans had been able to find the location of the Flock. Emanuele had told them.
She dismounted her bicycle and leaned it against a wall, following Emanuele the rest of the way on foot. She would not allow him to slip away. If Italian patriots were to be made
examples of by the Germans, then Rosa would show how partisans dealt with Italian traitors. She kept enough distance to see where Emanuele was going without attracting his attention. It helped that the shutters on the houses were closed and there was no-one on the street. People had even taken their dogs and cats indoors they were so frightened. Rosa felt the gun in her handbag. She was a soldier now and she knew exactly what she had to do. If Emanuele had been a German, she might have worried about reprisals being taken out on the townspeople. But he wasn’t. He was nothing better than scum. And he had to be silenced.
Emanuele stopped in front of a house at the end of the street. He took a key from his pocket and opened the door, disappearing inside. Rosa crept under the front window, straining to hear if any other voices came from inside. A wife? Children? She heard nothing. Taking the pistol from her bag, she hid it under her arm and knocked on the door. A few seconds later it was opened by Emanuele. He grinned, pleased to see a pretty woman on his doorstep.
‘Did they pay you well for your soul?’ Rosa asked him.
Emanuele’s smile faded. Recognition flashed in his eyes. He stank of sour wine. He’d been drinking. ‘Your friend knew what she was doing was against the law,’ he said.
‘Whose law?’
‘The law of the Repubblica di Salò,’ Emanuele answered maliciously. ‘The true government of Italy.’
‘There is no Italian government any more,’ Rosa answered. ‘Mussolini is nothing more than a figurehead. We are ruled by the Germans. And you are their whore.’
Emanuele made a grab for the shelf near the door where he had a gun. But Rosa was faster. She fired her pistol. The bullet struck Emanuele between the eyes. He fell backwards, blood oozing from the wound over the tiles. Rosa kicked his feet inside and shut the door. She checked the street both ways but no-one had come out. She ran for her bike and pedalled furiously for the road out of town.
The young German soldiers on patrol waved to her as she passed them. ‘Good luck selling your gelato!’ the one who had been friendly to her shouted.
Rosa raised her hand as if to bid him farewell but kept her face turned. She rode with all her strength away from the street of horrors where her beloved Orietta had been slain; and away from the scene of her first assassination. The spring sunshine and the green forest seemed to have different qualities. They no longer seemed bright and joyful. No birdsong came from the trees. The world had taken on a grim haze. Rosa was seeing things differently now. She was not the same person she had been before. She had become a killer.
R
osa returned from Borgo San Lorenzo in the early evening.
Giovanni and the Valet were at the camp discussing tactics with the Flock’s leaders.
‘What happened?’ Luciano asked Rosa, noticing her torn dress and grazed knees.
‘I shot the double agent,’ she told him. ‘It was Emanuele. The Canary’s friend.’
‘Did you question him?’ asked Starling. ‘Did you find out what information he’d given the Germans?’
Rosa shook her head. ‘There wasn’t time. He would have got away. I followed him and shot him.’
‘Slow down,’ said Luciano, grabbing Rosa by the shoulders. He turned to Woodpecker. ‘Bring her some water.’
Giovanni stepped forward and put his jacket over Rosa’s shoulders. She was shivering although the evening was warm. The terrible image of Orietta hanging from the tree came back to her and she began to cry.
‘It’s better that Raven killed him straightaway,’ said Partridge. ‘There might be some good Germans but there are
no
good fascists.’
‘What made you so sure he was the double agent?’ asked Luciano. ‘Did the Canary tell you?’
Rosa looked up at Luciano. She shook her head. His eyes turned dark but he said nothing, waiting for her to speak. Woodpecker brought her a tin of water. She took a sip but it didn’t quench her parched throat. Nothing would bring her relief or make telling Luciano any easier.
‘Where is she?’ asked Luciano, scrutinising Rosa’s face.
Rosa trembled. ‘She’s dead,’ she said through her tears. ‘The Germans paid Emanuele to inform on her.’
Luciano’s face blanched. He staggered backwards. Giovanni caught him.
‘Who was this
staffetta
?’ Giovanni asked.
At first Luciano looked as if he had gone deaf and blind to the world. The colour had drained from his face with his grief and shock. His lips moved but no words came out.
When Giovanni repeated his question, Luciano’s mouth twisted with bitterness. He wrenched himself away from Giovanni and shoved the older man backwards. ‘You don’t remember her because she was only a year old when you walked out on us! Carlo wasn’t even born. But Piero and I suffered every day that you didn’t come home!’
Giovanni’s face turned ashen. He had the same expression of disbelief in his eyes that Emanuele had when Rosa shot him.
‘You didn’t recognise me!’ said Luciano, pointing an accusing finger at Giovanni. ‘You didn’t recognise your own son! You forgot us!’
‘No,’ said Giovanni, shaking his head. ‘No. I’ve never forgotten.’
Rosa and the other partisans looked on, unable to do anything to calm the scene that was unfolding before them.
‘If you didn’t care about us, I could forgive you,’ Luciano snarled. ‘But I’ll never forgive you for what you did to Mother! She died of a broken heart!’
‘No!’ said Giovanni. ‘You don’t understand!’
The two men circled each other. It hurt Rosa to see Giovanni cower; it was like watching a wild animal reduced to a ghost of
itself in a zoo. His dignified posture disappeared and once again he looked like the wounded, humiliated man she had first seen at the Villa Scarfiotti.
‘I knew you, Luciano,’ Giovanni said quietly. ‘From the moment you arrived at my camp. You see, you look just like your mother. But there was no way to make amends for my terrible, cowardly actions. I hoped for your sake that
you
hadn’t recognised
me
. I prayed that somehow I could be the father to you that I should have been by fighting by your side.’
Luciano paused for a moment, as if he were trying to comprehend what Giovanni had said. But then his grief over Orietta stabbed him again and he was determined to take it out on his father.
‘I don’t want anything to do with you!’ he said, turning away. ‘Once a coward always a coward!’
Giovanni seemed to age with Luciano’s harsh words. His eyes looked empty, drained.
‘We’d better go,’ said the Valet, grabbing Giovanni by the shoulders. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by staying here.’
Rosa handed Giovanni’s jacket back to him. ‘I remember you too,’ he told her. ‘What a fine fighter you’ve become.’
Giovanni allowed himself to be led by the Valet away from the camp. Nobody knew who to pity more: Luciano or Giovanni; or themselves for seeing the two greatest commanders of the partisans break apart from each other.
Luciano glared at the members of the Flock who were watching. ‘Get back to work!’ he said, struggling to regain his self-control. ‘All of you!’
The news that the Allies had liberated Rome brought a sense of euphoria to the Flock but also apprehension. The Allies were supposed to have cut the German army off before Florence but that strategy had failed. The battle front was now moving towards them. Every day Rosa awoke to the sounds of planes flying low in the sky and bridges being bombed. It was rumoured that Florence
would be an open city, handed over to the Allies in a knightly way. Rosa doubted it. If the German army had been brutal towards the Italians before the Allied victory, what would they do now? If the Germans lost the war they had so believed it was their right to win, Italy’s changing sides was a significant contributor. The broadcasts over British radio of thousands of Romans cheering in the Piazza Venezia to welcome the Allies would not endear the Germans to the Florentines, who were yet to be liberated.
The Germans mined the roads and bridges. One day, when Rosa was out on a food mission with Partridge, she nearly stepped on an S-mine. Fortunately she saw the edge of the device where the earth fell away from it and jumped back at the last moment. Partridge probed for the mine with his pocket knife and disarmed it by inserting a sewing pin into the safety catch.
‘You know, Raven,’ he said, unscrewing the mine’s sensor and gazing at her thoughtfully, ‘very few of the partisans who joined bands in 1943 are still alive today. The average life span of a patriot fighter is less than a year. When do you reckon our numbers will be up?’
Rosa looked at him. She was trying to catch her breath after the shock of nearly having detonated a device designed to launch into the air when triggered, sending shrapnel flying in all directions.
‘It’s up to God,’ she said. ‘The Falcon survived Spain against all odds. He fought fascism long before that and he always goes on the most dangerous missions. And he is still here.’
‘Yes, but the Falcon isn’t quite mortal. Not like the rest of us.’
Rosa and Partridge climbed to a vantage point where they could view the road heading north. Dozens of German lorries were leaving Florence.
‘They are moving their auxiliary forces,’ noted Partridge. ‘It may be that they intend to blow up the whole of Florence before the Allies arrive.’
Following the lorries were dozens of private cars that, Rosa knew from intelligence reports, belonged to fascists too scared to stay in the city without the Germans. Her gaze shifted to the
direction of Fiesole and the Villa Scarfiotti. Starling had been keeping his eye on the villa. According to him, the Marchesa was still there along with her SS colonel. Rosa was glad to hear it. The Marchesa was one fascist she did not intend to let get away.
When they returned to camp, Rosa could feel the excitement in the air. Starling was putting away the radio.
‘We’ve listened to a broadcast from the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces,’ he said. ‘He promises that the Allies are on their way and asks all Italian patriots to cut army communications, destroy roads and bridges, railways and telegraph wires. We are to ambush Germans trying to escape but to take prisoner any who surrender.’
Rosa wondered about the last command. How were they going to guard German prisoners of war as well as feed them? The farmer she and Partridge had visited had only been able to give them two bags of corn. Everything had been taken by the Germans at gunpoint. Rosa and Partridge had taken less than the farmer had offered them because they could see that he had barely enough for his own family. Rosa looked over at Woodpecker, who was repairing one of the tents. She had learnt from Starling that Woodpecker’s wife and one of his daughters had been raped by the Germans and their house set on fire. She wouldn’t want to be a German prisoner of war left in his hands.
Rosa spotted Luciano sitting on a log outside his tent. Although she and Partridge had just returned, she anticipated that Luciano would send them out again to pass on General Alexander’s message to the partisan groups without access to radios. Instead he continued to sit, drawing diagrams in the dirt with a stick. Luciano was still one of the finest and most daring commanders in the region, but since Orietta’s death, Rosa had seen the light go out of him.
‘
Ciao
!’ she said, taking a seat on the log next to him.
‘
Ciao
!’ he replied, glancing up at her for a moment before looking back to the ground.
She waited for him to say something but he continued to draw shapes in the dirt. ‘This is it,’ he said finally. ‘This is the big moment. A new Italy is about to be born and Piero, Carlo and Orietta aren’t here to see it.’
Rosa put her hand on his arm. Partridge had been correct when he had observed that the life of a partisan was short. Apart from herself and Fiamma, Luciano, Starling, Partridge and Woodpecker, few of the original Flock were still alive. The Allied servicemen had left to try and join their battalions, but who knew how many of them had made it. The Flock had been replenished mainly by young men of conscription age and members of the Italian
carabinieri
who had fled their police posts when they were ordered to wear black shirts like the fascist militiamen. They had always been mainly pro-partisan and saw no reason to be shot because of a lack of differentiation between them and the fascists.
‘Your brothers and sister will see it,’ Rosa told Luciano. ‘Their spirits live on in you.’
She realised that death was something you accepted when you became a partisan. You lived with its constant presence—and you dealt it out. She shivered when she remembered Emanuele’s staring eyes and thought about her near miss with the mine that morning. She had told Partridge that the time of one’s death was up to God. It was the first time she had mentioned God since she had shot Emanuele. One of the young partisans who had been killed had left behind a Bible. It was given to Rosa who had, until Emanuele’s assassination, read it faithfully each night. But since she had become an agent of death, she couldn’t bring herself to open it. She felt like a hypocrite. She remembered what Clementina had said and wondered if maybe
the last person in the world who still believes in God
had lost her faith.
‘Commander,’ she said, looking into Luciano’s eyes, ‘I think you had better tell the Gatekeeper about the broadcast. You are the two most capable partisan leaders. You have to work together.’ She gently took the stick from Luciano’s hand. ‘What your father did was nearly thirty years ago. He’s a different man now. You
can’t forget that he saved the Flock. Our band would have been annihilated by the storm-troopers if he hadn’t acted quickly and sacrificed some of his men. Your father has found his courage—it might be too late for you, but it’s not too late for Italy. You can’t change the past but you can win this country back together. I think Piero, Carlo and Orietta…and your mother would be proud if you did that.’
Luciano still didn’t answer. She had no idea if he had even heard her. A formation of Stukas roared overhead, pursued by American fighters. They disappeared in the direction of Florence. A chill ran over Rosa. She had the same uneasy feeling she experienced when she sensed a storm was coming.
When the Flock had been divided into smaller groups, Genoveffa had moved to one of the brigades further up the mountains, leaving Rosa and Fiamma to cook for Luciano’s camp. Now it was summer the food situation had improved slightly and they had been successful in thinking of different ways to serve beets, artichokes, chestnuts, potatoes and rice. Rosa was happy on that diet, but the men demanded meat. They hunted rabbits and birds and brought them to Rosa to skin or pluck but she wouldn’t touch them. To her they were still alive. Her affinity with the source of things had grown stronger with the war. Even when she passed the dead bodies of soldiers or civilians when she went out on food searches, she still saw them as whole people and mourned the potential of what might have been. It was all senseless waste as far as she could see, but she was caught up in it. She remembered what Antonio had once told her:
if you want to be moral, the only time to do that is before a war actually starts. Afterwards, it’s too late. If you think morally, you will be defeated
.
‘Those in this camp who want to eat flesh have to cook it themselves if Nightingale isn’t here. Raven is not required to do it,’ Luciano told the men when they grumbled. ‘We’re lucky to have a nurse, a cook and a
fighter
amongst us.’
One day when the men were out on patrol and Fiamma and Rosa were guarding the camp, a peasant appeared with a lamb in his arms.
‘For you,’ he said, putting the lamb on the ground. ‘For all you have sacrificed for Italy.’
A lamb was quite a gift for a poor man to bestow, although Rosa had heard the peasants preferred to give their animals to the partisans than have them taken away by the Germans. Fiamma thanked him and the peasant nodded.
‘I pray that some kind person will feed my son in Germany,’ he said. ‘That someone will take pity on him too.’
The man quickly left, not wanting to be seen. Rosa and Fiamma looked at each other and then at the lamb. She was perfectly formed, with neat little hoofs, a pink nose and gentle eyes.
‘Baa! Baa! Baa!’ she bleated, nudging Rosa.
‘She thinks I’m her mother,’ said Rosa, touching the lamb’s soft wool. ‘She thinks I’m going to feed her.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Fiamma. ‘No-one has brought us a live lamb before.’
Rosa looked at the lamb, pure white and innocent like an angel. Although she had shot a man between the eyes, she could not imagine what sort of person could rip a knife across such a trusting animal’s throat. Since Emanuele’s death, Rosa had thought of herself as a murderess. She realised how wrong that was. She still had her abhorrence of violence and unnecessary killing. If morals and compassion were fatal flaws in wartime, Rosa’s number was going to be up shortly.